Trelease, Allen W. White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction. (Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press Publishers, 1971).

This book in effect serves to give a chronology of the development of the Ku Klux Klan from its emergence in the chaotic beginnings of Radical Reconstruction to its demise in 1872. The author looks at regional examples of Klan activity as well as the broad meaning of the fraternity as a whole. Additionally, he relates the historiography concerning the oscillating interpretations of all participants in the social experiment that was Radical Reconstruction. Up until well in the twentieth century, the Reconstruction Klan had been seen in a positive light by most whites, especially in the South; indeed, these bands of marauders were given credit for the "Redemption" of the South, finalized by the Compromise of 1877. Trelease makes it clear that he does not accept the civilizing mission of the Klan. His studies have given him a new appreciation of the idealism of the Radical Republicans, while at the same time they have painted a picture in his own mind of the terroristic nature of the Klan.

Trelease also departs from traditional notions in that he downplays the role of the Klan in ending Reconstruction, choosing instead to magnify the Negro's role in the era of Reconstruction. The only significance of the Klan put forth by the author is one of weakening the morale of the Republicans and Negroes as the years of the great social experiment went on. State governments were unable and/or unwilling to control the hooded knights; only federal intervention could keep the Klansmen at bay. By the mid-1870s Northerners were tired of the Negro issue; such citizens wanted peace and normalcy more than they wanted to insure Negro equality. This would pry open the door for Southern whites in the late nineteenth century to set forth the Jim Crow laws in effecting segregation and disfranchisement