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That the bitter
hostilities of the war would survive it, was to be expected. That the
hatred of the government and of the influences which were victorious would
long continue, was only natural; and that its consequences should be
turned upon the race whose slavery was the cause of the war, and whose
freedom was the sign of the victory, was not surprising. The terror which
prevails in certain parts of the late rebel States, under the name of the
Ku-Klux, is undeniable. Yet how strong party feeling upon the subject is
at the North may be seen in the fact that when the statement of a just man
from one of the Southern States was read in the Senate, that fifty
thousand persons had been murdered by the Ku-Klux since the war closed, it
was asserted by an opponent that there had not been one. And we are still,
despite railroads and telegraphs, so far from the Southern States, that
few persons who have not carefully read or heard the unquestionable
reports are willing to believe in the confusion and terror that still
prevail in many parts of that region.
If any one, however, will talk
with quiet and careful observers from the interior of the Southern States,
who are really friendly to the government, yet who would live peaceably
with their neighbors, he will find that the stories of the Ku-Klux are
true. An indirect proof of it is such a tale as the following, which we
know to be true. A negro in one of the Southern States had violently
assaulted both a black girl and a white woman. He was brought to the jail
by a crowd of whites and blacks, including among the latter the father of
the girl, at three o’clock in the afternoon. The same night about
midnight a body of men, variously estimated from twenty-five to forty, and
clad in uniform, appeared in the village, awakened the keeper of "the
store," ordered him to give them a piece of rope, then summoned the
jailer to deliver the keys, and taking out the negro, they hung him
without delay. This was not a political offense, and the verdict of many
will be that he was served right. But the point is that the man was hung
by a body of persons in uniform, and uniforms are not improvised for such
purposes between three o’clock in the afternoon and midnight. The
uniform was prepared for a purpose, and was the sign of an organized body
of lawless men. It is idle to say that the law would have been powerless
in the case, for the colored father was as hostile as any white man could
be; and had a jury been composed exclusively of the offender’s own race,
he would have suffered.
The significant fact in all this
lawlessness and terror is that it is chiefly political. The masked blow of
the Ku-Klux always falls upon some loyal man, black or white, and always
upon a Republican. Democrats are unharmed. It is not a terror for those
who attempted to destroy the government during the war, but for those who
sustained it. The conclusion is irresistible that it is an organization of
Democrats. This fact is made still more unquestionable by the denials and
sneers of Northern Democrats. They call it rawhead and bloody-bones, a
bugaboo of scared radicals, and a device invented to authorize military
coercion of Democratic districts. But if every victim in the Southern
States who is taken from his home and scourged, or mangled, or murdered
were a Democrat instead of a Republican, how the land would ring with the
cry that a radical Administration abandoned innocent citizens to the
tender mercies of savages!
Of course the darkness and the
mystery with which the Ku-Klux is enveloped serve both to exaggerate and
to conceal the truth. Some foolish fellow will foolishly threaten a
neighbor, who will laugh at him for his pains and publish his threat, and
it will then be said that such folly is a specimen of the Ku-Klux. But the
long list of terrible outrages which are authenticated, the suffering
privately revealed and proved by the scarred person, but which even the
sufferer will not publish, lest murder should follow scourging—these
things are not ridiculous. They argue a state of society which is simply
intolerable, and for whose continuance all who scornfully affect to
disbelieve are morally responsible. If the Democratic party were resolved
that the Ku-Klux should disappear, it would be heard of no more. If it
were as anxious to restore and confirm the tranquility of the Southern
States as it is to throw the odium of military despotism upon a government
which seeks to protect innocent citizens from cruel lawlessness, that
lawlessness would cease. The country will not forget that the Democratic
party sustains the Ku-Klux by affecting to deny its existence; that the
terror which is undeniable in certain parts of the Southern States is
Democratic; and that the party whose leaders refuse to assist the
authorities in maintaining order hopes to elect a President and obtain
control of the government. |
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