Hope for franchising a la McDonald's. They were just too ahead of their time.

But racism's back in fashion, baby! Ask Ye!

I think Behind the Bastards did an episode on this. Basically it started out as a frat drinking event in the offices of one of the kids' fathers at night, and they decided to do some spooky shit and fuck with people while drunk so they made these costumes and rode horses up and down the streets of the town at night whooping and hollering, pretending to be the ghosts of fallen civil war soldiers or something to that effect.

After some time they built a reputation and pivoted and started doing worse shit.

As far as I can recollect, at least, don't quote me on it, but basically boiled down to drunk edgy teen incels in bumfuck nowhere after the civil war who decided to start a race war out of boredom and spite.