Murder of Judge Inconveniences Young People Hoping to Marry-KKK Attack October 1868

The Pulaski Citizen was the first newspaper to express sympathy for the Ku Klux Klan. Its pages provided the original impulse for the expansion of the group. Articles on various outrages by the Klan were often couched in ironic or humorous language. Here, the killing of a Republican judge is viewed in light of the inconvenience it causes young amorous couples:

Pulaski citizen
Friday, Dec 04, 1868
Pulaski, TN
Vol: 10
Page: 4

I believe that this is the story of the killing of the judge referenced in the article above. The “Campbell” referred to in the article was First Lieutenant Lafayette Campbell of the 33rd U.S. Infantry. The killing took place on October 31, Halloween, just a week before Election Day.

For Grant to win Alabama, getting out the vote was crucial. Thus, on the Saturday night before the election, the Republicans held a rally at the Madison County Courthouse in Huntsville. As Campbell later reported, the meeting had “passed off orderly and quiet” until about 9 p.m., when a rumor reached the city that a group of Ku Klux Klan members had gathered just north of the city limits.24 By 10 p.m. about 100 to 150 armed riders, the men and their horses disguised, had entered the city and ridden around the courthouse square (they would have ridden past Robinson & Murphy’s gallery at No. 4 Bank Row, on the west side of the square). Beside them walked many men, not in disguise. When the Klan members arrived at the northeast corner of the square, they turned into a side street and held watch, poised in parade formation with pistols drawn.

Then things turned ugly. A thirty-three year old auctioneer, W. W. Cox, a married white man, father of three children, got into an altercation with a black man named Roper and told him to drop his gun. When Roper refused, a shot was fired, followed by thirty or forty more in rapid succession, evidently from the crowd of men on the courthouse lawn. A black man named Aleck Reed was killed. Probate Judge Silas Thurlow of Limestone County was mortally wounded; he died a few days later. After the firing ended, the Klan wheeled to the right by twos and rode north in an orderly fashion to the Huntsville railroad depot.

Here is a link to the scholarly article that includes the description of the killing.

The photograph below shows men in Klan robes confiscated in Huntsville after the Klan actions there. According to the scholarly article cited above, the men wearing the robes in the photo are unlikely to have been Klansmen. The three men who apparently owned the robes escaped Federal soldiers, leaving the robes behind. The men wearing them may have been Federal-alligned “models.”

The photo became the basis for a widely circulated Harpers Weekly illustration which claims, likely incorrectly, that the men in the robes are the actual members of the Ku Klux: