Oliver Otis Howard, Autobiography of Oliver Otis Howard, major general , United States army : volume 2

In the preceding April a good teacher, Frank Sinclair, had been slain in Ouachita, and other helpers there were so put in jeopardy of their lives that they could only teach secretly in the cabins.

At many points in the State were these “bands of desperadoes formed in secret organization, styling themselves the Ku-Klux Klan.” They shot and hung colored men. Their lifeless bodies were found, but the secrets were so well kept that no guilty parties could be discovered. In some places negroes were taken out and whipped (as a rule by night) and there was no clew to the perpetrators. Even United States agents dared not hold a public meeting in that region-a gathering at night of negroes at any place would be regarded with suspicion by the whites and result in outrage and suffering to the blacks.

The aspect of society in Arkansas in the summer and fall of 1868 presented similar combined secret planning and movement. Lawlessness, rowdyism, and depredations in some parts of the State for a while ran riot. Union men were driven from their homes and freedmen subjected to the grossest maltreatment. In Crittenden county, Mr. E. G. Barker, our Bureau agent, was shot and severely wounded, August 12, 1868. An attempt to assassinate him at Hamburg, Ashley county, two years before had failed to end his life, but the wounds received had caused him the loss of an arm.

The secret bodies had different names in different localities. They appeared as “Regulators,” “White Caps,” “Pale faces,” “Knights of the white Camellia,”