As a result, in February, 1869, Gen. Nathan B. Forrest, former cavalry officer of the confederate army, who was grand wizard of the order, officially proclaimed the Ku-Klux Klan and Invisible Empire dissolved and disbanded forever. But members of the adventurous law-assuming organization were reluctant to yield their mysterious power. The wizard's order went into effect. Klan property was burned. NEW BANDS SPRING UP But immediately in southern states, as far west as Arkansas, there sprang up disguised bands, some of them neighborhood groups only, some of them bands of ruffians who traveled in the night to win personal ends, still others new orders founded in imitation of the Ku-Klux and using similar methods. Of the last, the Knights of the White Camellia was the largest. In some private notebooks of the south its membership was said to be even larger than the parent Klan. From New Orleans early in 1868, it spread across to Texas and back to the Carolinas. Racial supremacy was its purpose. Only white men 18 years or older were invited to the secrets of its initiation, and in their oath they promised not only to be obedient and secret, but to "maintain and defend the social and political superiority of the white race on this continent." Initiates were enjoined, notwithstanding, to show fairness to the negroes and to concede to them in the fullest measure "those rights which we recognize as theirs." "PALE FACES" AND OTHERS Other bands of nightriders responded to the names of "Pale Faces," "White Leaguers," the "White Brotherhood" and the "Constitutional Union Guards." Surviving members are hazy as to their aims and methods, the character of their membership, their members, and the connection between them. Federal recognition that the Invisible Empire, whether it was the original Klan or not, was everywhere a real empire came in the spring of 1871, when a senate committee presented majority and minority reports on the result of its investigations of the white man's will to rule against the freedmen's militia in the south. The majority report found that the Ku-Klux Klan was a criminal conspiracy of a distinctly political nature against the laws and against the colored citizens. The minority found that Ku-Klux disorder and violence was due to misgovernment and an exploitation of the states below the Mason and Dixon line by radicals. CONGRESS ACTS AGAINST KLAN The first Ku-Klux bill was passed in April, 1871, "to enforce the fourteenth amendment." Power of the president to use troops to put down the white-hooded riders was hinted at. In the next month the second Ku-Klux bill was passed to enforce "the right of citizens in the United States to vote." In 1872 federal troops were sent into the south to back up his anti-Ku-Klux proclamation. By the end of 1872 the "conspiracy" was thought to be overthrown. At various times individuals in the south and elsewhere have tried to put breath into the Klan's dead body.