Twenty-one years ago there was privately printed in Nashville, Tennessee, a little book by J.C. Lester and D.L. Wilson, that purported to be an account, from inside information, of the great secret order of Reconstruction days, known to the public as Ku Klux Klan. It attracted little notice then; and since that time it has not been given the attention it deserved as a historical document.[1] At the time of writing, sectional feeling was still inflamed; the Northern people were not ready to hear anything favorable about the Ku Klux Klan, which they considered a band of outlaws and murderers; and the Southern people were not desirous of being reminded of the dreadful Reconstruction period. Many of the members of the Klan who had been hunted for their lives, and who were still technically outlawed, were unwilling to make known their connection with the order and some even considered their oaths still binding. But since the book was printed, the Prescripts or Constitutions of the order have come to light, and the ex-members are now generally willing to tell all they know about the organization. As yet, no other member has written an account of the Klan, though several have been projected, and Lester and Wilson's History seems likely to remain the only one written altogether from inside sources. The authors, Capt. John C. Lester and Rev. D.L. Wilson, were in 1884, when the booklet was written, residents in Pulaski, Tennessee, where the first Den of the Klan was founded. Major Lester was one of the six original members of the Pulaski Den or Circle. He made a fine record as a soldier in the Civil War in the Third Tennessee (Confederate) Infantry, and afterwards became a lawyer and an official in the Methodist Church, and was a member of the Tennessee legislature at the time of writing the book. Rev. D.L. Wilson, who put the account into its present form, was born in 1849, in Augusta County, Virginia. He went to school to Jed Hotchkiss and was graduated as valedictorian of his class from Washington and Lee University, in 1873, and a year later from the Union Theological Seminary, near Hampden-Sidney, Virginia. From 1874 to 1880 he was pastor of a Presbyterian church at Broadway, Virginia, and from 1880 to 1902 he served a church in Pulaski, Tennessee. He died in 1902 after a six months' residence in Bristol, Tennessee, as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church. He was not a member of the Klan, but was acquainted with the founders and with many other former members, and had access to all the records of the order that had not been destroyed. In addition to information received from other members, Wilson was assisted by Captain Lester, who furnished most of the facts used, revised the manuscript and the book was printed with both names on the title page.