The Ku Klux Klan

A series of bloody slave revolts in Virginia and other parts of the South led to the widespread practice of night patrols - white men specially deputized for the purpose of prowling Southern roads enforcing the curfew for slaves, looking for runaways, and guarding rural areas against the threat of black uprisings.

They were authorized by law to give a specific number of lashes to any violators they caught. The memory of these legal night riders and their whips was still fresh in the minds of both defeated Southerners and liberated blacks when the first Klansmen took to those same roads in 1866.