@David T
"Where Wilson differed most from Griffith was in his treatment of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan had been, Wilson observed, 'a very tempting and dangerous instrument of power for days of disorder and social upheaval.' In the beginning, 'sober men' had advised upon and curbed the activities of the hooded order. As time went on, however, such control proved increasingly impossible to exercise as the Klan was drawn deeper and deeper 'into the ways of violence and outlawry. 'Men of hot passions who could not always be restrained,' Wilson commented, 'carried their plans into effect. Reckless men not of their order, malicious fellows of the baser sort who did not feel the compulsions of honor and who had private grudges to satisfy, imitated their disguises and borrowed their methods.' The number of abuses grew: 'Brutal crimes were committed; the innocent suffered with the guilty; a reign of terror was brought on, and society was infinitely more disturbed than defended.' In contrast with Griffith's later film, which depicted the Klan as rescuing white women from the threat posed by black men, Wilson made it clear that the Klan itself arracked female targets. 'The more ardent regulators,' he wrote, 'made no nice discriminations. All northern white men or women who came into the South to work among the negroes, though they were but school teachers, were in danger of their enmity and silent onset.' According to Wilson, the Klan was deeply unchivalrous. It was also shortlived and relatively unsuccessful. Instead of overthrowing Radical regimes and restoring white suprmeacy by force, as *The Birth of a Nation* suggested, the original Klan had been effectively destroyed by new federal laws of 1870 and 1871 and the determined actions of President Grant.."
https://books.google.com/books?id=fGJFpiTjbKwC&pg=PA200
