virtues the ferocity of Cossack warfare.  And, for this treachery, for leaving this people alone and single-handed, to fight an enemy born in the lap of self-confidence, and rocked in the cradle of arrogance and cruelty, the “party of great moral ideas” must go down to history amid the hisses and the execrations of honest men in spite of its good deeds.  There is not one extenuating circumstance to temper the indignation of him who believes in justice and humanity.

As I stand before the thirteen bulky volumes, comprising the “Ku Klux Conspiracy,” being the report of the “Joint Select Committee, to inquire into the condition of affairs in the late Insurrectionary States,” on the part of the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States, reported February 19, 1872, my blood runs cold at the merciless chronicle of murder and outrage, of defiance, inhumanity and barbarity on the one hand, and usurpation and tyranny on the other.

If the shot upon Fort Sumter was treason, what shall we call the bloody conflict which the white men of the South have waged against the Constitutional amendments from 1866 to the murder of innocent citizens at Danville, Virginia, in 1883—­even unto the present time?  If the shot upon Fort Sumter drew down upon the South the indignation and the vengeance of the Federal government, putting father against son, and brother against brother, what shall we say the Federal Government should have done to put a period to the usurpation and the murders of these leagues of horror?

The entire adult male population of the South, though no longer in armed “Rebellion,” appeared to be in league against the government of the United States.  The arm of State authority was paralyzed, the operation of courts of justice was suspended, lawlessness and individual license walked abroad, and anarchy, pure and simple, prevailed.  Under the name of the “Ku Klux Klan,” the South was bound by the following oath, ironclad, paradoxical and enigmatical as it is: 

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 obligation: 

     I. I am on the side of justice and humanity and
     constitutional liberty, as bequeathed to us by our
     forefathers in its original purity.

     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 embarrassments.  Females, friends, widows, and their households shall be the special object of my care and protection.

IV.  Should I ever divulge, or cause to be divulged, any of the secrets of this order, or any of the foregoing obligations, I must meet with the fearful punishment of death and traitor’s doom, which is death, death, death, at the hands of the brethren.

Murderers, incendiaries, midnight raiders on the “side of justice, humanity and Constitutional liberty”!  Let us see what kind of “justice, humanity and Constitutional liberty” is meant.  In Volume I, page 21, I find the following: