In the years following the Civil War, the United States found itself faced with a growing force that threatened to destabilize efforts to reconstruct the South, and to reunite the former Confederate States into the Union. This force was the Ku Klux Klan. Although initially benign in nature, this organization spread rapidly throughout the south and became increasingly violent over a short period of time. The Klan took drastic measures to prevent the influence of the Federal Government in the South, and the suffrage of recently freed slaves. As a result, the United States government branded the Ku Klux Klan a terrorist organization and created three Enforcement Acts to protect the Amendments to the constitution that guaranteed rights to all Americans. As the United States and its allies fight the Global War on Terror (GWOT), it proves beneficial to remember history and study the lessons learned by the US as it engaged the Ku Klux Klan as a growing insurgency in the South, and as a terrorist organization. This thesis identifies the measures taken to ensure the fall of the first wave of the Ku Klux Klan in the postbellum south, as well as to illustrate how effective these measures were. This will enable the reader to recognize what measures are effective as well as those that are not. Applying these hard learned lessons will allow for conflicts in the future to be identified more quickly, and managed in a more efficient manner.
