I recently found an interesting book titled THE TRAGIC ERA by Claude Bowers and published in 1929. According to Bowers Six unnamed young men in Pulaski founded the Klan "was to act for regulation and not for punishment, and there was desperate need for regulation".
With the blessing of RE Lee so long as the Klan be purely "a protective organization" Forrest met with others at the Maxwell House hotel in Nashville under the nosees of Federal Provost.
"In the early phase only men of the highst order were in control."
In Alabama General James H(olt) Clanton (murdered in Knoxville, Tennessee 27 September 1871 by Lt Col. David Montgomery Nelson US Army)Gen John T Morgan took the helm at Clanton's death.
In Mississippi Gen James Z. George, Cav officer, jurist, Senator,
Arkansas General Albert Pike, poet, journalist, scholar, jurist, soldier, explorer, national figue in the Masonic order.
Texas Roger Q Mills later in the US House.
Georgia, Gen John B. Gordon
"Everywhere men of a high order, none of whowm would have countanced crime."
Bowers relates that on more than one occasion blacks and carpetbaggers doned the sheets "planning a personal chastisement of a fellow black and satiate their hate with whip or club." and at least one case when failing to give the proper password a group of bogus klansmen were un masked and found to be "followers of Gov Brownlow.