John Watson Morton (19 September 1842-21 November 1914) was Secretary of State of Tennessee from 1901 to 1909, succeeding William S. Morgan and preceding Hallum W. Goodloe.
Biography[]
John Watson Morton was born in Williamson County, Tennessee in 1842, and he moved to Nashville with his parents in 1854. He served as a Confederate States Army artillery captain during the American Civil War, and he was the youngest captain in the Confederate forces. He founded the Nashville chapter of the Ku Klux Klan after the war's end, and, in the fall of 1866, he inducted Nathan Bedford Forrest into the KKK at the Maxwell House Hotel. He served as Grand Cyclops of the Louisiana Ku Klux Klan and then as assistant commissioner of agriculture of Tennessee from 1891 to 1896 and as Secretary of State of Tennessee from 1901 to 1909. He died in Memphis, Tennessee in 1914.