The methods of the Ku Klux and the White Camelia were similar.  Solemn parades of masked men on horses decked in long robes were held, sometimes in the daytime and sometimes at the dead of night.  Notices were sent to obnoxious persons warning them to stop certain practices.  If warning failed, something more convincing was tried.  Fright was the emotion most commonly stirred.  A horseman, at the witching hour of midnight, would ride up to the house of some offender, lift his head gear, take off a skull, and hand it to the trembling victim with the request that he hold it for a few minutes.  Frequently violence was employed either officially or unofficially by members of the Klan.  Tar and feathers were freely applied; the whip was sometimes laid on unmercifully, and occasionally a brutal murder was committed.  Often the members were fired upon from bushes or behind trees, and swift retaliation followed.  So alarming did the clashes become that in 1870 Congress forbade interference with electors or going in disguise for the purpose of obstructing the exercise of the rights enjoyed under federal law.

In anticipation of such a step on the part of the federal government, the Ku Klux was officially dissolved by the “Grand Wizard” in 1869.  Nevertheless, the local societies continued their organization and methods.  The spirit survived the national association.  “On the whole,” says a Southern writer, “it is not easy to see what other course was open to the South....  Armed resistance was out of the question.  And yet there must be some control had of the situation....  If force was denied, craft was inevitable.”

=The Struggle for the Ballot Box.=—­The effects of intimidation were soon seen at elections.  The freedman, into whose inexperienced hand the ballot had been thrust, was ordinarily loath to risk his head by the exercise of his new rights.  He had not attained them by a long and laborious contest of his own and he saw no urgent reason why he should battle for the privilege of using them.  The mere show of force, the mere existence of a threat, deterred thousands of ex-slaves from appearing at the polls.  Thus the whites steadily recovered their dominance.  Nothing could prevent it.  Congress enacted force bills establishing federal supervision of elections and the Northern politicians protested against the return of former Confederates to practical, if not official, power; but all such opposition was like resistance to the course of nature.

=Amnesty for Southerners.=—­The recovery of white supremacy in this way was quickly felt in national councils.  The Democratic party in the North welcomed it as a sign of its return to power.  The more moderate Republicans, anxious to heal the breach in American unity, sought to encourage rather than to repress it.  So it came about that amnesty for Confederates was widely advocated.  Yet it must be said that the struggle for the removal of disabilities was stubborn and bitter.  Lincoln,