White Robes and Burning Crosses: A History of the Ku Klux Klan from 1866 - Michael Newton - Google Books

https://books.google.de/books?id=NT0xBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA60#v=onepage&q&f=false

With its fiery crosses and nightriders in pointed hoods and flowing robes, the Ku Klux Klan remains a recurring nightmare in American life. What began in the earliest post–Civil War days as a social group engaging in drunken hijinks at the expense of…