James Melville Beard

“ But so close on the heels of the dripping “leader” pressed the frantic crew—who owed him fealty come life or death—that his opening chorus was echoed by a hundred lesser sounds that were not echoes, and with a mighty effort the panting “Ketch,” leaping sheer from the waves to the upper bank, was not too late with his base variation. And now the wild pursuit is begun anew, for the tardiest horseman is spurring into the depth of the forest beyond, and skurrying out of sight and hearing if that were possible—the wailing wood notes have a story to whisper to the deserted shore. ”

“ On the day preceding the evening to which the fates referred the K. K. K. demonstration, as aforesaid, a crowd of sable politicians might have been seen lounging in the neighborhood of the village depot; and a few moments later, as the train drew up, edging their way through the crowd to the vicinity of two small dark objects, which, though partially concealed by the crowd, undoubtedly constituted a part of it, as they were seen to wave above the heads of the tallest what could hardly have been mistaken for anything less startlingly suggestive than two glazed carpet-bags. ”

“ Now the echoes have gone to rest, and a palpable hush reigns over the assembly. Instead of those savage principles—war and rebellion—how emphatic the terms of contrast; meek-eyed peace sits enthroned on every brow. What means that half-suppressed sigh, that groan smothered in parturition? But hold! “’Sdeath” A creeping dread moves along the serried benches, laying its hand on the pulse-beat, invading the pants’ legs, and nestling close to the seat of life of the tableaux vivantes who await destiny (horrible reflection) on the ragged edge of “unfinished business.” ”

“ Just at the apex of yonder rise which the feet of the pursuers take hold upon, lives an unprotected widow and her daughter, and with ominous precision of stride the hue and cry points that way.
The instincts of both men and beasts instantly acquaint them with the situation, and, bending forward in one last despairing effort, they emulate the rush of the tornado as they bear down the enclosures and sweep up the incline, just in time to witness the most piteous spectacle that men with emotions were ever invited to commiserate. ”

“ Atrocities of which the body could not have been guilty, even in thought—horrors from which it would have shrunk with the same symptoms of dismay that clouded the brow of the Northern reader at their bare relation—were rescued from the carpet-bagger dialect, and rendered into the imaginative prose of the news-reporter, with the design of securing enemies, not for the Ku-Klux movement, but the cause of Conservatism in the South. ”

“ Reaching the banks of the river, at a point five miles below the swamp line at which their road had intersected the bottom, a halt was called, and the company sat peering into the darkness, for the first time doubtful of their enterprise, when lo! within ten feet of the rearmost file a welcome sound broke the stillness—at first low and doubtful, but gaining in volume and flowing into blended notes—one—two—three—and then a stunning, Wagnerian chorus, that lifted every horseman from his stirrups, and sent the wood echoes rolling in sonorous waves along the breast of the forest. ”

“ The provision disfranchising the white men of the South had been contemporaneously declared, and was a part of that remarkable series which had empanoplied the negro race with all the political belongings of freedom.
The policy adopted by the Southern people in concerting resistance to the attacks of these modern Sejanus was the only one which could have succeeded, and, whatever else may be said regarding its morality, was just to themselves and disinterested mankind. ”

“ The cheers of the crowd, and a few extra flourishes on the big horn, served to augment their weight of conviction, and buckling to their labor with saw-mill regularity of stroke, and a settled determination not to be overtaken by slower time, they soon blended with the verge of the horizon, and took that leap into space which rescues them from all further connection with this narrative. ”

“ But as nothing could be further from our purpose than to become the champion of this secret movement—which might be inferred from a too ready condemnation of its enemies—we hasten to add our conviction that many of its acts were lawless, many of its correctives applied to social maladies improportioned in severity, and its entire administration, social and political, an incontinent abuse of usurped prerogative. ”

“ In the summer of this year, the members of the [Pg 92] legislature of Tennessee, in council assembled, pronounced the State a Ku-Klux barracks, and resolved themselves unsafe in their granite citadel at Nashville. The League head-quarters in various parts of the State were succumbing one by one to the new element of conquest, and, indeed, the State seemed on the eve of a revolution, by which, if no more serious results were attained, its territory would be rendered untenable for that class of its population which was known to its enemies as the dark-lantern faction. ”

“ A band of regulators, whose force at this time numbered a half million well-organized and perfectly drilled men, it aimed at nothing less than the subjection of the pending elements in the Southern State governments, and as a means thereto, the total overthrow and dispersion of all secret subsidiary agencies. In its ranks all conditions of white society in the South were represented—attracted partly by the weighty political considerations upon which the movement rested, and in not a few instances by its outside of novelty and vague promise of sensation. ”

“ Murder, arson, rape, robbery, etc., all had a place in their vocabulary, not indeed as we would speak of them in the abstract, but with all those horrible belongings of sentimentality which attach to each when enterprised wilfully, cheerfully, and with scarcely a selfish end in view. Warring against women and children was a foible of the society, which they carried to such a state of development that it became first an attribute, and then a furious passion ”

“ So rapid was the transition from the war period to that of political anarchy, which followed in obedience to these conditions, that as early as the year 1867 the State was hopelessly committed to an ignorant and unprincipled minority, and in every portion thereof the white masses refrained from even attending the polls, so well assured were they that the fair majorities which they could score would be displaced by the most barefaced fictions. ”

“ A war of extermination against the League had been resolved upon months before by the leaders of the Klan, but a favorable moment for a decisive blow, or the emergency requiring it, had not arrived, until both were visible in the proposed State council of the Order and the objects it would consider. Now, destiny seemed rushing upon them, and the time almost too brief to make an intelligent feint on the enemy’s front. ”

“ Freedmen who were deemed too ignorant to cast an intelligent ballot were visited at their homes in the small hours of the night, and by measures of intimidation, which not unfrequently included the lash, were driven to accept an oath of lengthy abstinence from the League and the polls. White men, who were obnoxious because of their too active instrumentality in League affairs, or their excessive fondness for the class of society which they encountered at its meetings, were equally unfortunate. ”

“ In the States of Louisiana and South Carolina the war between the K.’s and Loyal League waged fiercest, and was longest protracted, for here the fires of political proscription were earliest lighted, and the boundaries of party maintained with the greatest fortitude. In the former State, a party of men, who were known in certain quarters by the derisive title of “Adventists,” had assumed to control its affairs, not so much in the interest of, as by [Pg 135] the use of, as a means, the negro element of its population. ”

“ This new element, however, was far from benefiting the League; its morals grew infinitely worse; its larcenies became more frequent, and were prosecuted on a larger scale; it became more arrogant in its assumption of exclusive political right on unreconstructed territory; and, finally, assayed, through the medium of politics, to accomplish a social reform that would elevate the ignorant and semi-savage race which it represented to family equality with a class of beings who recognized no title to such a claim, but that of honorable ancestry and a spotless name. ”

“ The negroes, if vicious and mean, owe it to that cruel divorcement from the Southern social plan effected by their political leaders, and to the life of vagabondage to which they are doomed under the new system; they are not more so by nature than other men. If, therefore, the writer is tempted to speak of their weaknesses, it is in no irreverential sense, and with a laudable object in view, to which this policy will be seen to be strictly antecedent. ”

“ The mother of the young man, pale and distraught from long weeping, had imprinted a kiss of heartbreaking farewell on the brow of her son, and removed her station to a neighboring window, whence she looked out upon the autumn landscape, and anon, as if seeking aid from afar, up at the pale empress of night, which, as it neared the meridian, projected great bars of golden light into the apartment. ”

“ Since the physician had passed from the apartment, whispering an attendant that he would return no more, the furniture of the room had been readjusted as if in obedience to the crisis in the affairs of its owners; that portion of the attendants who lingered had left their seats, and stood with folded arms and reclined heads, and the entire surroundings wore that abstracted and melancholy air which the reader cannot fail to have associated in fancy with such scenes. ”

“ The people of the South, young and old, who were brought up under that social regimen which embodied the negro as a prominent and necessary feature, will appreciate the feelings of the writer when he states that he has not, and never can have, any feeling of enmity towards this race. Some of the tenderest passages in his heart history he is glad to refer to that period when negroes were not only admitted en famille among the whites, but in innumerable instances given absolute control over the household affairs of their masters. ”

“ The secret political movement here introduced to the reader has contributed more to the sensational character of American politics, and, at the same time, proven a more influential factor in those political questions with which we have dealt as a people, than any or all contemporaneous issues. And yet nothing has been written on the theme bearing a just proportion thereto,—absolutely nothing,—if we subtract the unknown quantity in the news problem of the day from this estimate, and for reasons as varied as obvious. ”

“ Every secret society, enterprised with a political end in view, must, in the nature of the case, prove unpopular with the masses of those who wield the franchise, and in not unfrequent instances, as we [Pg 174] have anticipated, be deprehended by the very individuals, or parties of individuals, whom they seek to succor. In the instance of the Klan, these conditions were felt with peculiar weight; inasmuch as the people among whom it was domiciled cherished, beside this common feeling, a natural aversion to such influences in politics, derived from their ante bellum experience ”

“ The panting pack, first on the scene, leap on the frightened and weeping women with furious growls, licking their faces and hands, sniffing at their forms, and baying from all quarters, until, driven from thence, they rush into the single apartment, leap on the beds, drag them to the floor, and falling to, with the fury of wild beasts disappointed of their prey, tear them into shreds. ”

“ Here the huntsmen consult together, and the pack renew their frenzy, frisking along the river shore, scouring the woods, and soon afterwards, indicating by a yelping chorus far down the stream that the stratagem of the refugees led them that way. The impatient horsemen soon gallop at their heels, and after one or two dissentient howls from the aged skeptics of the pack, they one and all run full upon the warm scent, with a clamor that causes the woods to “ring again,” and sends the vital current tingling along the veins of the coldest-blooded horseman. ”

“ With the white man this element of his being is less on the surface, and he wears it uneasily, as though it were foreign to his genius, and at the same time a curb on his actions. With the other it is a loose-fitting garment, worn on the outside, and he seems rather pleased than otherwise that he is thus rendered a spectacle to his fellow-men. ”

“ Philosophers tell us that “self-preservation is the first law of life,” but their efforts to connect this postulate with some rational conclusion deduced [Pg 162] from the organism of the animal under discussion, is so egregiously wanting in the elements of a sound syllogism, that we are led to believe that it has no foundation in fact, and that they only meant to say that where the emotion denominated fear assumes the reigns of physical government, an open road and fair play are all that is required to render the proposed achievement a success. ”

“ On they come, looking neither to the right nor left, neither mending their gait nor halting, until they have plunged in medias res, when, with a scarcely perceptible pause—those ponderous boot-heels, describing a half circle, smite the puncheon floor—every limb is adjusted to the most graceful of company manœuvres; and turning on their march, they move with the same echoing tread down the aisles, out at the folding-doors and into the darkness—away—away. ”

“ Having examined into the philosophy of this question, with a view solely of removing certain doubts inherited from the professions of a warlike ancestry, and, predisposed to err in the opposite direction, we have arrived at the conclusion, once for all, that the “git up and git” tendencies of mankind, when the proper incentives are at hand, are as absolutely irresistible as the water-fall at Niagara, and as necessary to the happiness of the subject as the barriers that separate him from his mother-in-law. ”

“ After the building, which formed the object of attack, came in view, no time was to be lost, and its investment completed as rapidly as possible. Attempted refugees were to be forced back within the walls, and in no event was an escape to be permitted. A party of six resolute men were detached from each squadron for special duty, in securing the papers, books, and other written documents of the League meeting, and this movement was so far pivotal in its character, that their comrades were commanded to keep their proceedings in view, and be ready at a signal to render them assistance. ”

“ Lest, however, some persons should officiously infer that we mean to wrong a very excellent class of people, we will state that the analogy between the last-named objects does not cease here.
What we wish to say most in this concluding chapter, is that the work was not written to invite anybody’s pique, nor to avoid it, nor to flatter anybody, nor to parody anybody, but to gratify a whim, and as it has been announced that there would be no explanation, and the completion of the task leaves us in a mood for conundrums, we shall not interfere with the reader’s prerogative of guessing its import. ”

“ That the Klan was officially represented in the affair was generally conceded.
It was about this time, or a little previously, that the famous White League came into existence, occupying the K. K. K. basis as to politics, and in all essentials of its organization formulated upon the same model. This society assumed the duty of regulating the political affairs of the State, and that it succeeded to some extent in purifying the constitutions of the Returning Boards, those monster [Pg 141] instrumentalities of fraud belonging to the Radical elective system here, there can be no doubt. ”