The United States is seen as a melting pot of different cultures and different ways of life for everyone. Starting in the sixteenth century there were the Native Americans who were joined by the Spanish, Dutch, French and English colonists. Also the slave trade began in this "New World-, which started as early as 1619 when the production of cotton and tobacco required a strong work force on the plantations of the South. These African Americans, or black slaves were a new race brought over from Africa, among the European whites. These slaves were considered inferior, and even lower than animals, because they could not read or write. They also could not understand English, or French in the first years in the United States, which was the languages of the "civilized nations-. .
Whites and blacks lived in a society of slavery until the Civil War during the 1860s, when slavery was abolished throughout the country. Slaves were to be freed from their owners and the society began to change hastily. Southern veterans were faced, then, with inactivity, as the Southern economy began to decrease considerably after the war and there was very little occasion for work. This resulted in a formation of certain secret societies along with one very famous one, the Ku Klux Klan. Looking into the society that the Klan was born into gives insight to the impact that it had on American society.
The nineteenth century was a period of great reformation throughout the history of the United States. After the Declaration of Independence and our war against England during the late eighteenth century, all citizens of the United States had been declared equal. However, this principal was not accomplished in the "new world-. White men were considered equal, but women, children and slaves suffered, by being excluded from this ideal of equality. It was validated that these white males, or equal citizens, should keep their slaves, especially down South where it would have been almost impossible to run a plantation if the labor force was to be paid.
