“They are organized and armed.  They effect their objects by personal violence, often extending to murder.  They terrify witnesses; they control juries in the State courts, and sometimes in the courts of the United States.  Systematic perjury is one of the means by which prosecutions of the members are defeated.  From information given by officers of the State and of the United States and by credible private citizens I am justified in affirming that the instances of criminal violence perpetrated by these combinations within the last twelve months in the above-named counties could be reckoned by thousands.”

I received information of a similar import from various other sources, among which were the Joint Select Committee of Congress upon Southern Outrages, the officers of the State, the military officers of the United States on duty in South Carolina, the United States attorney and marshal, and other civil officers of the Government, repentant and abjuring members of those unlawful organizations, persons specially employed by the Department of Justice to detect crimes against the United States, and from other credible persons.

Most, if not all, of this information, except what I derived from the Attorney-General, came to me orally, and was to the effect that said counties were under the sway of powerful combinations, properly known as “Kuklux Klans,” the objects of which were by force and terror to prevent all political action not in accord with the views of the members; to deprive colored citizens of the right to bear arms and of the right to a free ballot; to suppress schools in which colored children were taught, and to reduce the colored people to a condition closely akin to that of slavery; that these combinations were organized and armed, and had rendered the local laws ineffectual to protect the classes whom they desired to oppress; that they had perpetrated many murders and hundreds of crimes of minor degree, all of which were unpunished; and that witnesses could not safely testify against them unless the more active members were placed under restraint.

U.S.  GRANT.

WASHINGTON, April 20, 1872.

To the House of Representatives:

I transmit, for the information of the House of Representatives, a report from the Secretary of State and the copy of the counter case of the United States in the matter of the claims against Great Britain, as presented to the board of arbitration at Geneva, which accompanies it.

U.S.  GRANT.

[The same message was sent to the Senate.]

WASHINGTON, April 24, 1872.

To the House of Representatives of the United States:

In answer to a resolution of the 22d instant, I transmit to the House of Representatives a report from the Secretary of State, with the British case[62] and papers which accompanied it.

U.S.  GRANT.

[Footnote 62:  Presented to the board of arbitration at Geneva.]