KU-KLUX KLAN. cr Ku-ELUX, the title of a secret association which existed in the southern states from 1866 to 1872, and which terrorized that section of the country (lur ing the period in question. It was first made known as an active agency in Tennessee, in 1867, when the governor of 'the state, William G. Brownlow, called upon the U. S. military authorities to suppress violence and public disturbances in the state, which were traced to this organization. The history of the Ku-klnx shows that at the close of the war various societies of a political character were formed in the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas, under the names of the knights of the white camellia, white brotherhood, con stitutional union guards, pale-faces, invisible empires, invisible circle, etc., all of which were eventually lost in the broader scope and more powerful and permanent influence of the Ku-klux klan. From the evidence afforded it would appear that the origin of these secret societies, and more particularly of the one we are specially considering, is to be found in the general dislocation of political and social interests in the southern states, consequent to the aggressive influence of a long and devastating condition of warfare. In explanation of their foundation, ex-confederates claim that they were pre ceded by the organization of loyal leagues, which, as they allege, were formed among the in the south through the efforts of " carpet-baggers," so-called, radical lead ers intriguing in the interest of the perpetuation of the power of the republican party in the southern states. It is also claimed in behalf of the southern people that, through the action of the 14th and 15th amendments to the constitution of the United States, the southern white population was endangered in its homes and its social relations, the emancipated blacks being considered in the light of a race angered by long and bitter servitude, now armed and equipped by law and public sentiment, and only waiting opportunity for an uprising and to grasp the balance of power among the high-spirited people to whom they had been slaves for more than two centuries. This is the southern explanatiou of the rise of the Ku-klux. Whatever may be the measure of truth con tained in it, this in no wise militates against the justness of public condemnation of its acts.—By joint resolution, dated April 20, 1811, the two houses of congress ordered an investigation into the condition of affairs in time states recently in a condition of insur rection. For three years the press had been filled with detailed statements describing acts of atrocity attributed to the secret and terrible Ku-klux klan, \Odell rivaled the worst instances recorded against the Spanish domination in the Netherlands and the bloody scenes of the French revolution. In every southern state except Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, and Florida, assassinations of negroes and white repub licans were of daily occurrence. The gift of suffrage to the colored man had been nullified in its outcome as a political influence through the system of terrorizing which utterly precluded the free suffrage of the emancipated blacks. Besides instances of special massacres covering large numbers, and of which there occurred ninny in South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and Tennessee, the daily and nightly assassina tions, whippings, burnings, and other outrages were innumerable, and were never recorded. In reporting the state of society in Texas, the evidence given is to the effect that the negroes were murdered with such frequency that there was no possibility of keeping an accurate record of the details. On the basis of reports of this nature and stimulated, doubtless, by the intense public feeling in the north, created by the gradually spreading conviction of the lamentable deficiency in the power of the law as applied in this south, congress, through its committee, proceeded to the investigation ordered by the joint resolution to which we have already referred. The result of this investigation
appears in the 1'2 octavo volumes reporting thd testimony taken .and published among the official documents (senate) of the year 1872. An immense mass of evidence displays the nature and acts of the Ku-klux, and fully justifies the title " conspirat7," which congress bestowed upon that organization. While the Ku-klux may have originated for a minor purpose, it is difficult to believe that this tremendous association of men sworn to fidelity; having its ramifications in every southern state, and the power of life and death in most of them; with a ritual, oath, grips, pass-words, and all the other secret and systematic machinery necessary to the carrying out of the most hidden and dan gerous purposes—it is difficult to believe that the real motive and intention of the order were not the subversion of the government of the United States, and the rehabilitation of the leaders of the rebellion. To this end, the negation of the suffrage in the south, and the efforts to defeat reconstruction, may reasonably be supposed to have tended. And whatever diverse opinions may be held regarding the good sense, judgment, and patriotism displayed in the reconstruction acts and the methods adopted to carry them into effect, it is impossible to view without the severest censure the nature of the oppo• sition to them, as conducted by a bloody and revengeful association of cruel and implacable men, crazed by the facility with which murder and incendiarism could be made to do duty for what its members chose to consider retributive justice Following is the oath of the Ku-klux klan, as it was offered in evidence before the investig,ating committee of congress: "I (name), before the great immaculate Judge of heaven and earth, and upon the holy evangelists of Almighty God, do, of my own free will and accord, subscribe to the following sacred, binding aligation. I. 1 am on the side of justice and humanity and constitutional liberty, as bequeathed to us by our forefathers. II. I reject and oppose the principles of the radical party. III. I pledge aid to a brother of the Ku-klux klan in sickness, distress, or pecuniary embarrassment. Females, friends, widow's, and their households shall be the special object of my care and protec tion. IV. Should I ever divulge, or cause to be divulged, any of the secrets of this order, or any of the foregoing 'oblhrations, I must meet with the fearful punishment of death and traitors doom, which is death, death, death, at the hands of the brethren." This sufficiently theatrical obligation becomes impressive when one reflects that its various sections were carried out with absolute rigor, and that disobedience of the orders. of the chief of a klan was actually visited with instant death. Thus were the customs of the carbonari paralleled among so prosaic and conventional a people as the Americans so late as 1871. The members of the order were obliged to deny their membership, even when answering as witnesses in a court of law, and were obligated to clear each other by their testimony in such cases or when acting as jurors. The Ku-klux gradually died out as an active organization after the investigation of 1871; and although certain of their methods continued to obtain during the progress of elections in the south, the return to sounder sense and better feeling on the part of the people of that section, and the improving condition of time relations between the north and the south, grad• ually died away with the passions in which the organization originated. It is reported that there were at one time 550,000 members of the Ku-klux klan in the south, of which number 40,000 are said to have been in Tennessee.