"The Ku Klux Klan came into existence in the Carolinas to fight the northern railroad because they saw it as a threat to a southern way of life built around black subordination." Now Simkins claimed that the Klan was political in its purpose because it was aimed at "the Negro as a citizen- one attempting to be a voter and at times the social equal of other men". In Nelson's book, other historians agree that it was a political aim but because the Klan attacked white Republicans and freedmen. Nelson proved that just with Benjamin Hill's opening speech alone politics was not the Klan's only motivation. The violence, abuse, torture that they inflicted on men and women is just hard to imagine, that someone could be so cold as to go to such lengths to stop people from voting or to stop people from being on a equal footing as themselves. And it wasn't just a few select people, because the Klan would not have survive without the support of the community. By taking the law into their own hands, murdering many innoncent victims the Klan raised the morale of the southern conservatives, that just amazes me.