On April 7, 1868 New York Times reported on an effort by General George Gordon Meade to halt pro-Klan propaganda efforts . Meade had commanded the Union Army of the Potomac in its victory at Gettysburg in 1863. By 1868, Meade commanded the Third Military District which placed Georgia, Alabama, and Florida under his jurisdiction. In that year, the Ku Klux Klan was spreading rapidly, supported by many white-owned newspapers in the South.
In a country where freedom of speech was part of the civil religion, the white supremacist terrorists of the Ku Klux Klan took advantage of the protections of the First Amendment to spread their message of hate and to publish “warnings” to African Americans to intimidate them and keep them away from the polls. General George Gordon Meade tried to block the spread of the violent group by banning its propaganda. Of course, such a ban opened him up to charges that he wished to suppress all political speech opposed to the enfranchisement of Blacks and Reconstruction more generally.
General Shepperd, Meade’s subordinate in Alabama, ordered civil and military authorities to arrest Klansmen. This article is from the same issue of the New York Times.
