An Inquisition of Angels: Volume III of the Taliaferro Chronicles

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Mexico from Columbus to Blade Runner Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, Stanford, Stanford University Press, Politics and Religion in Early Modern England. London and New York: Religion, Politics and Society under the Tudors. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence. The Spanish Empire in America. Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I.

University of Chicago Press, English Catholic Exiles and the Problem of Britain. Willy Maley and David Baker. Cambridge University Press, forthcoming. The Travailes of an Englishman. Selections from English Wycliffe Writings. Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits. Europe and the Native Caribbean, The Birth of the Elizabethan Age: England in the s. The Reign of Elizabeth I. Parliament and the Settlement of Religion Royal Historical Society, Image Worship and Idolatry in England Write All These Down: University of California Press, Literature and Art in an Age of Religious Crisis.

Princeton University Press, Discourses of Martyrdom in English Literature, Studies in Religion and Politics, Richard Cust and Ann Hughes. Lake, Peter, and Michael Questier. The Edmund Campion Affair in Context. History of the Things of Yucata n. Their Pattern and Plan.

Chicago; University of Chicago Press, Recusant Women, Jesuits, and Ideological Fantasies. A Treatise of Schism. Interaction and Cultural Change. University of Notre Dame Press, The Banquet of Daintie Conceits. The true reporte of the prosperous successe which God gave unto our English souldiours against the forraine bands of our Romanie ememies, lately arived Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages.

The heart of New-England rent at the blasphemies of the present generation.

Or A brief tractate, concerning the doctrine of the Quakers, demonstrating the destructive nature thereof, to religion, the churches, and the state; with consideration of the remedy against it. Occasional satisfaction to objections, and confirmation of the contrary truth. London, Printed by J. The Sermon Notebook of Samuel Parris, , ed. Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Guerras civiles de Granada. Discovering the Holy in the Americas , ed. Allan Greer and Jodi Bilinkoff. Letters and Dispatches of Richard Verstegan, C. London, Catholic Record Society, Pollen, John Hungerford, and Rickaby, Joseph, ed.

General History of the Things of New Spain: University of Utah Press, University of Texas Press, Catholic Record Society Miscellanea I. Arden Edition of the Works of Shakespeare. Catholicism, Controversy, and the English Imagination, Siguenza y Gongora, Carlos de. Cummins and Alan Soons. The Poems of Robert Southwell, S. McDonald and Nancy Pollard Brown. A View of the Present State of Ireland. English Puritanism and the Literature of Religious Despair. Jeremy Dimmick et al. Catholic Martyrdom in Ireland. But if Loyal Leagues con- tinue, and negroes insist upon being insolent, we fear that some Grand Cyclops or other chief among the Ku Klux may visit our quiet community and put things in a topsy-turvy condition.

Let Captain Heitburg break up the League and thus remove all temptation from the Kluxes to come here. In Gainesville, Alabama, when some of the white people indignantly protested against such high- handed treatment, the negroes replied that 'they had the charter from the government at Washington, right direct, and they had the right to guard and they intended to do so. The negroes acted here just like an invading army after they had conquered everything and were going rough-shod over everything.

Deeply rooted in the mind of everyresident of the slave states was the latent fear of negro insurrection and[ race war. It was the "chronic Southern nightmare. The bloody ' 28 Invisible Empire history of San Domingo was constantly in the white man's mind. He felt that he was living on a smoldering volcano of racial animosity; and he had an inherent fear of negro insur- rection that was almost pathological.

The sight of armed negroes meeting in secret conclaves filled him with a shuddering fear; and the thought of his own defenselessness was terrifying to him, especially when he thought of his wife and his children. Even so prejudiced an observer as the carpetbagger Judge Tourgee said: Aside from the physical menace of the armed and truculent negroes, the principal grievance of the Southern people at this time was the quality of the office-holders under whose rule they were forced to live without having a voice in their selection.

The almost unbelievable ignorance and incompetency of some of the negro officials foisted onto the people by the Reconstruc- tion regime was well illustrated by a specimen of a release written by a North Carolina deputy United States marshal which was introduced in the testimony of one of the witnesses appearing before the committee in that state: This 2 day of November, It was asserted that these 'indulgences' were for sale at the time at prices ranging from five to ten dollars, depending on the victim's capacity to pay, and that the suspected Ku Klux who was willing to invest this much in one of these official documents was safe from prosecution, at least temporarily.

This was an extreme case; but the general character of public officials — black and white — was of a very low order. In- competence and ignorance vied with dishonesty as a qualifica- tion for office, and the plundering reached unprecedented pinnacles as the audacity of the grafters grew with their reaUza- tion of their autocratic powers and their opportunities.

In such a state of affairs, it is not surprising that the white people should come to feel that some sort of organization for self-protection was needed, and throughout the South there began spontaneously to spring up local defensive groups, generally in the form of secret societies, designed primarily to offset the aggressiveness of the Loyal Leagues. Sometimes these groups had formal organizations and names, but generally they were merely isolated bodies of alarmed citizens preparing to protect themselves from whatever mischief might flow from the secret meetings of the armed negroes.

As the Ku Klux Klan, with its awesome name, began to gain in fame, these scattered, informal local organizations began to see in it the possibiUty of a widespread secret society which could carry on this defensive work in the South in a most effective manner; and gradually these local groups became units in the network 30 Invisible Empire of the Invisible Empire, as its sphere of influence increased. Such methods of relief from unbearable official oppression are by no means rare in the annals of history.

There have been numerous instances of it in our own country on a small scale, dating as far back as when the outraged citizens of Boston staged their historic tea party. It was, of course, an act of criminal outlawry for these men to disguise themselves and board a ship and destroy private property. If they had been apprehended and arraigned before a British jury they unques- tionably would have been sentenced to prison terms; but history has been generally lenient with such criminals and the illegal form of their protest against oppression.

The members of the Boston Tea Party — and the members of the Ku Klux Klan — were but following a precedent set for them in earlier days in other lands. England had known the Moss Troopers, who took drastic means of manifesting their disapproval of the iron rule of the Normans; the misrule of Louis XI of France had resulted in the formation of that powerful and mysterious organization known as the Free Companions; Italy had its Carbonari during the Napoleonic wars.

Freedom-loving people everywhere, when overwhelmed by oppression against which they had no other defense, have never hesitated to resort to secret and, if needs be, violent organizations for relief. A thoughtful and observant Englishman named Robert Somers toured the United States in 1 , and when he got back to London he published a book called The Southern States Since the War in which he had this to say about conditions in the South as he found them: It was one of those secret organizations which spring up in The Growth of the Klan 31 disordered states of society, when the bonds of law and govern- ment are all but dissolved, and when no confidence is felt in the regular administration of justice.

But the power with which the "Ku Klux" moved in many parts of the South, the knowledge it displayed of all that was going on, the fidelity with which its secret was kept, and the complacency with which it was regarded by the general community, gave this mysterious body a prominence and importance seldom attained by such illegal and deplorable associations. Nearly every respectable man in the Southern States was not only disfranchised but under fear of arrest or confiscation; the old foundations of authority were razed before any new ones had yet been laid, and in the dark and benighted interval the remains of the Confederate armies — swept, after a long and heroic day of fair fight, from the field — flitted before the eyes of the people in this weird and midnight shape of a "Ku Klux Klan.

Before long it came to be that its principal ac- tivities were in the direction of discouraging the depredations of the Loyal Leaguers; and clashes between the two antagonistic groups soon got beyond the point of mere threats and warnings and developed into violence and even bloodshed. Rash, imprudent and bad men had gotten into the order. They had set in motion a more powerful machine than they had ever expected; and, having started it, they felt an implied responsibility to attempt to guide that force in a proper direction.

There was also a growing apprehension that the horrors of Reconstruction were likely to increase rather than diminish, and that the people of the South, in the absence of protection from the government, would have need for some sort of organized, controlled protective system of their own. Accordingly notification was sent out to all the known Dens of Ku Klux instructing them to send representatives to a meeting to be held in Nashville in April, The immediate cause for this call is not known, but it is probably more than a coincidence that it followed closely after the enactment by Congress of the drastic Reconstruction Act which, in the boastful words of James A.

The purposes of the Nashville convention were enumerated as follows: Gordon, an ex-Confederate officer then practicing law in Pulaski, who had been one of the first initiates into the V original Den. General Gordon's law office in Pulaski was just across a narrow passage from the office of the Citizen, which facilitated the job of having it printed after he had written out the first copy of it in longhand.

A loose brick in the wall of the Citizen office concealed a hole which served as a secret post-office box for communications passing between the Klan and the printers so that there need be no contact between them. McCord wrote a letter to his unknown and mysterious pro- spective customer quoting a price of Si The next morning he found in the hole the manuscript for the Prescript, attached to a hundred-dollar greenback, and the work proceeded. The printing was done at night, the type being set and the presses run by printers who were members of the Klan; and the pam- phlets were stitched and folded by hand, being trimmed with a sharp-bladed shoe knife on the floor of the attic of the printing shop.

The name of the order was nowhere mentioned. In the first sentence of its preamble the Prescript stated: The Prescript provided that the whole territory covered by the operations of the order the Southern States should be called the Empire; that the Empire should be divided into Realms corresponding to states ; each Realm into Dominions groups of counties, approximating congressional districts ; the Dominions into Provinces counties ; and the Provinces into Dens.

The officers, it was provided, should consist of a Grand Wizard of the Empire the supreme official , to be assisted by ten Genii; a Grand Dragon of the Realm, with his eight Hydras, for each state; a Grand Titan, with six Furies, for each Do- minion; a Grand Giant, with four Night Hawks, for the Prov- inces. Taking the Grand Wizard for an example, his functions are set forth as follows: He is further empowered to appoint and instruct Deputies, to organize and control Realms, Dominions, Provinces and Dens, until the same shall elect a Grand Dragon, a Grand Titan, a Grand Giant and a Grand Cyclops in the manner hereafter provided.

The Prescript also provided the oaths and obligations. Any candidate for admission to the Klan was required to take this 36 Invisible Empire preliminary obligation before he could be taken to the Grand Cyclops for examination. So help me God. Certainly there were large numbers of the members of the order caught in the net spread out when the Federal Government conducted its South- wide investigation; but although they mounted the witness stand and took the oath prescribed to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, they obviously considered their Ku Klux oath as entitled to greater consideration.

Even long years after the Ku Klux had disappeared as an active force, old men were reluctant to discuss its affairs, feeling still bound by that bond of secrecy; and even when they did in their old age weaken to the point of dropping a few morsels of information, they always did so with a stealthy and guilty air. The symbols for the months were: The hours of the clock were also covered by the code: This edition of the Prescript opened and closed with im- pressive poetic quotations, vaguely signifying the mysterious purposes of the order.

To protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenseless from the indignities, wrongs and outrages of the lawless, the violent and the brutal; to relieve the injured and oppressed; to succor the suffering and unfortunate, and especially the widows and orphans of Confederate soldiers. To protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and all laws passed in conformity thereto, and to protect the States and the people thereof from all invasion from any source whatever. To aid and assist in the execution of all constitutional laws, and to protect the people from unlawful seizure, and from trial except by their peers in conformity with the laws of the land.

The new Prescript also had more detailed and elaborate The Growth of the Klan 39 specifications for the setting up and conduct of the Judiciary,' the last section of this article providing that 'The several courts herein provided for shall be governed in their deliberations, proceedings and judgments by the rules and regulations govern- ing the proceedings of regular Courts-martial.

The article covering 'Eligibility for Membership' was con- siderably amplified and elaborated, notably by the inclusion of a list of interrogatories to be asked prospective candidates immediately following the preliminary obligation: Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Radical Republican party, or either of the organizations known as the "Loyal League" and the "Grand Army of the Republic"? Did you belong to the Federal army during the late war.

Are you opposed to negro equality, both social and political? Are you in favor of a white man's government in this country? Are you in favor of Constitutional liberty, and a govern- ment of equitable laws instead of a government of violence and oppression? Are you in favor of maintaining the Constitutional rights of the South? Are you in favor of the re-enfranchisement and emanci- pation of the white man of the South and the restitution to the Southern people of all their rights, alike proprietary, civil and political?

If he gave the wrong answers to any of the questions he was not regarded as proper timber for membership and he was forth- with discharged and dismissed 'after being solemnly admonished by the initiating officer of the deep secrecy to which the oath already taken has bound him, and that the extreme penalty of the law will follow a violation of the same.

Per- haps there had been a 'leak' which destroyed the value of the old code; at any rate, the changes were made. Another noteworthy change made in the style of the new Prescript was the use of three stars instead of two in the blank space left in the name of the order in the official title, this marking the change from the two-word title 'Kuklux Klan' to the later three- word style 'Ku Klux Klan.

In the original edition Mr.

McCord's supply of stars was exhausted before the last page was reached, and in setting up the last line of the Final Obligation it was necessary to indicate the omission of the name by the use ot that familiar printers' ornament, the dagger, in place of the stars. When a copy of this Prescript fell into the hands of the Congressional Committee later, they sought to make a mare's nest of this detail by suggesting that the daggers were used at this particular "point as an indication of the tragic fate which would befall a violator of the obHgation.

This gave a sinister touch to the proceedings, but the prosaic fact was that the typographical change was due to nothing worse than the inadequacy of the Pulaski CitizerCs supply of type. At the time there was no information whatever available as to its form of organization and its methods of procedure. Ku Klux and mystery were synonyms. During the Klan's declining days there were some actual con- fessions obtained from genuine members which threw real light on the workings of the Ku Klux organization; but these so-called confessions of the earlier period of the Klan's lifetime were generally the product of some gifted writer's highly developed imagination, highly seasoned with the blood-and-thunder touch and more than a dash of the gruesome.

They were designed to pander to the popular conception of what the wicked Ku Klux did, how they looked and how they operated; and they accomplished this purpose in the most thorough and effective manner. An outrageous, but characteristic, misrepresentation of the How the Klan Operated 43 facts was an alleged eye-witness's account of a Ku Klux initia- tion which was printed in the New York Illustrated News in May, The author of this shameless fake told of how he had interviewed an individual, identified merely as 'L.

Behind a small table, bearing the simple but suggestive garniture of a human skull, stood the Grand Cyclops, a gigantic man, naked to the waist, with a dagger in his right hand, and the whole upper portion of his body smeared with warm, smoking blood. The walls of the cavern were also lined with rows of grinning skeletons. At a signal from the chief, several of the assassins proceeded to a small sub-cavity in the darkest corner of the cave and brought therefrom a lusty negro, securely gagged and bound, whom they placed at full length on a sort of rude altar, immediately in front of the chiefs little table.

The wretched negro rolled up his eyes and quivered with terror in every limbf but could not move. Then the novice was informed that, before he could be admitted into the order, he must prove his fearless- ness of murder by striking the victim to the heart and staining his hands in the gushing life blood; and the knife was placed in his hand for that purpose. The candidate at first drew back in horror at such a proposition, but the fierce glare of the eyes and the ominous clicking of firearms around him convinced him that his own life would be the forfeiture in case of refusal.

So, closing his eyes, he rushed forward desperately and dealt the fatal blow. Then, after all the members had dipped their 44 Invisible Empire fingers in the gushing blood of the human victim, the oath was administered, the constitution signed and the ceremony of initiation rendered complete.

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Fortunately we are not dependent upon such raw-head-and- bloody-bones stories for a knowledge of Ku Klux affairs, as it is possible at the present time to present a fairly accurate account of the Klan's methods of operation, its oaths, disguises, pass- words, etc. In its system of procedure the Ku Klux Klan presented a strange combination of discipline and irresponsibility.

They did not recognize the existence of any legal authority to which they were properly subject; but within their own organization they had rigid rules of conduct which, in the beginning at least, were firmly enforced and obeyed. It should be borne in mind, of course, that the Klan changed complexion with the times.

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Not until it had been in existence a year or more did it take on the self-conferred police powers Which came to be its prin- cipal function. A widow lady of Williamson County, with three children dependent on her for support, was the grateful recipient of a similar package, inside of which she found one hundred dollars in currency and a letter which stated that the writer was formerly an intimate com- panion and fellow-soldier of her only son who was killed while a member of a Confederate regiment. A carpetbagger who was whipped by the Ku Klux in Mississippi voluntarily commented on their discipline and generally good behavior when they honored him with their attention.

One of them commenced to curse; he began "God damn " when the captain stopped him and said he should not do that. They were civil in their manner. When an excitable and impulsive member of the band began to heap abuse on the victim, suggesting that he should be killed, he was rebuked by thejeader with a stern 'Remember your oath: Justice and humanity,' and, the abusive member having been reduced to a proper gentlemanly state, the whipping continued in the proper manner.

Some Explanation of the incongruity of this may be found in the fact that the Ku Klux did not regard themselves as law- j breakers but as law-enforcers. As one of them said to a pro- spective member in Mississippi: We are going to restore law and order. Preposterous as it may seem, the Ku Klux considered them- selves as something equivalent to an entire system of juris- prudence compressed into one body, combining the functions of prosecuting attorney, grand jury, trial judge and executioner.

Until the days of the Klan's degeneration this power was not generally abused. On the contrary, in the proceedings of the individual Dens there was generally pretty close adherence to the prescribed policy of having a council or committee which decided all matters involving raids or punishments to be meted out to alleged offenders against the principles of the order. In the open meetings of the Den suggestions would be made as to persons who were thought to be in need of the Klan's ministrations; but it was the council which considered these matters, deliberated over them and decided what should be done.

If it were concluded that a raid should be made, the individual members to take part in it were designated and the nature of the punishment prescribed. The council was in the nature of a grand jury. If it reported 'no true bill' that was supposed to end that particular case. The respect for this phase of the Klan's mode of procedure, even among the most disorderly elements participating in its activities during its declining days, was shown by an incident in North Carolina. In four overzealous members of the How the Klan Operated 47 newly organized Young's Mountain Den, impatient to get to work at their new profession of Ku Kluxing and unwilling to wait until they were detailed by the council, went to a neighbor- ing still-house where they partook freely of its product and then decided on their own initiative to make a visit of re- monstrance to a widow, Mrs.

Murphy's, dropping in her yard his hat with his name written in the inside. As a result of this, all four of the volunteer regu- lators were arrested and lodged in the Marion jail. The next meeting of their Den considered their case, and it was proposed that the members storm the jail and release the prisoners, this being a part of the usual Ku Klux procedure in such instances. The other members of the Den, however, balked at the idea of exposing themselves to the danger of an attack on the jail for the purpose of rescuing brethren who had been arrested for an entirely unauthorized and unofficial raid, and they refused to take any part in the proposed rescue work.

The Cyclops, however, felt that the honor of the Ku Klux was at stake; and so he called on a neighboring Den in South Carolina to send a rescue party to Marion, which the South Carolinians obligingly did, and the four prisoners were released and managed to make their escape from the country. Ordinary visits of threat or admonition were attended to by each Den in its own territory; but when there was more serious work afoot it was generally arranged to have it done 48 Invisible Empire by a band of Klansmen from some other community.

This had a two-fold purpose: The raiders, if accidentally exposed to view, were less likely to be identified, being among strangers; and the local boys who were suspected of being and were members of the Klan were able to show themselves in public while the raid was taking place and thus establish ironclad alibis. This system of interlocking co-operation was practiced throughout the Invisible Empire, and was highly effective in preventing detection and identification. The members of the Young's Mountain Den who made the unauthorized raid on Mrs.

Murphy were violating one of th e fundamental principles of the Klan's code. They were supposed to obey the orders of their superiors; and action on individual initiative was severely frowned upon. In at least one known instance in Tennessee a Klansman was tried and executed by the members of his own Den because he whipped a negro for personal reasons while wearing his Ku Klux disguise. In the organization of local Dens it was customary to place the official positions in the hands of men of maturity and responsibility, with some degree of executive ability and leadership; and, between the ghouls and the officers, the personnel of the local Klan generally repre- sented the major part of the active men of the community.

Newspaper editors made especially valuable members, as that gave the Ku Klux a mouthpiece and advertising medium; and it is remarkable how many editors in the South were members of the order or popularly understood to be such. The Klan also had a system of auxiliary non-members, some- what similar to the 'fellow-travelers' of the modern Communist Party, composed of those who were worth more to the order outside of it than in. A typical instance of this was supplied by a well-to-do planter who lived on a farm in Tennessee not far from the Kentucky line.

One day he was visited by a How the Klan Operated 49 friend of his, a prominent doctor from a near-by town, who led the conversation into a discussion of the parlous times in which they were living and ascertained beyond any doubt that his host was a true-blue anti-Radical. Before leaving, the doctor intimated to him that he might be called upon to be of service. If you get any messages signed with three K's, like this showing him the proper arrangement , do whatever is asked.

If it is something that involves you in any expense, make out your bill by merely marking down the amount on a piece of paper — no heading nor items nor statement, just the figures — and present it to the president of the bank in town and he will pay it. But say no- thing and don't ask questions. Then if you should be called on by the Radicals why you know nothing about the matter, and you can't get in any trouble. At any rate, he performed the task assigned him and manifested no surprise at being asked to do so.

That night at a village in Kentucky, twenty miles away, two particularly objectionable carpetbaggers who had been preaching social equality to the negroes were visited by a party of Ku Klux in disguise and given a severe whipping.

The farmer, the next time he was in town, went to the bank and without a word presented to the president a piece of paper on which was written 'S3. The next week he received a note saying: One of the natives of the town was strongly suspected of the shooting, but that night he disappeared. How he made his escape was a mystery, as he had no horse and none of the horses in town were missing.

A few days later the friendly farmer was asked to send to a little deserted cabin in the near-lDy woods sufficient provisions for one man for a week; and he found his mare one morning in her stall in the stable innocently munching her oats. Similar assignments were frequently carried out, the thrifty farmer always presenting his terse invoices to the town banker and always being paid without question or comment. When the Ku Klux investigation was being carried on this man was called as a witness and bombarded with questions: Had he ever belonged to the Ku Klux Klan?

Why, no; certainly not. Had he ever seen a Ku Klux? Had he ever seen men in disguise? Had strangers ever stopped at his house? Had suspicious characters been about? Had the Ku Klux ever asked him to help them? No; no; no; he truthfully answered. Such methods of indirection, however, were the exception rather than the rule.

Generally the Klan would hold its meet- ings, pass its judgments and execute its sentences within the active body of its membership, following a systematic order of procedure. The Grand Cyclops of the Den would send out word by the Night Hawks when a meeting was to be held, naming the place, all communications being oral to prevent the existence of any incriminating documentary evidence; and the members would, one by one, gather at the prescribed rendezvous. It was customary for the local Dens to have more than one place of meeting, and they would rotate their gatherings be- tween these places so as to avoid attracting attention by too How the Klan Operated 51 frequently getting together in the same place.

Morton met sometimes in the Maxwell House, sometimes in a room over Smith's drugstore on the corner of Church and Vine Streets, sometimes in a room on the top floor of the Masonic Temple, and many times over the storeroom of the N. Another rendezvous of this Den was the old powder magazine in the abandoned Fort Negley. In the rural sections meetings were generally held in the open air, mostly in the woods, the place of one meeting being decided upon at the previous gathering. In Memphis a favorite meeting place was in the woods east of town which is now comprised in Overton Park.

At these regular meetings, generally held about once a week, the conduct of any offensive characters would be discussed; and, if the majority voted to punish them, it would be done on a prescribed night. Sometimes it was deemed necessary only to post notices of warning which, in many cases, were sufficient to induce the offenders to mend their ways and avoid the necessity for further treatment in their cases. The hailing signs, passwords and so forth in use in various parts of the Invisible Empire differed in some minor ways; but they all showed plainly their common origin, the variations doubtless being due to the natural errors incident to oral transmission.

Taliaferro, who testified that he was a member of a Den in Noxubee County, Mississippi, gave 'Avalanche' as the word of distress. Taliaferro said that the sign of recognition at night, when two parties were going in opposite directions, was for one of them to exclaim: The symbol of recognition, he said, was for one party to draw his right hand across his chin, the other responding, if a member, by taking hold of the left lapel of his coat and shaking it.

Wiley Wells, United States district attorney for the north- ern district of Mississippi, testified that the word 'Avalanche' was used in Tishomingo County, sometimes alternated with 'Blucher' or 'Star. The response was to place the closed hand on the right hip, with the thumb extended straight out. Another sign of recognition used was to stroke the beard once or twice. If the party recognized this sign, he responded by placing his thumbs in the waistband of his pants, with his forefingers extended. The hailing party would, first, stroke the fingers of his right hand briskly over his hair, begin- ning at the right forehead and bringing the hand around back of the ear — a natural gesture, as though he were merely strok- ing his hair back.

The answer was the same sign made with the left hand over the left ear. Second, the hailing party would stick the fingers of his right hand into his trousers pocket, with the thumb left outside the pocket, at the same time bringing the right heel into the hollow of the left foot. The answer was the same hand-sign with the left hand, and the left heel brought into the hollow of the right foot. Where a further precaution was needed, the first man would finger the right lapel of his coat with his right hand 'as though searching for a pin,' the answer being the same gesture with the left hand.

The grip, this man testified, 'was very simple, being given simply by placing the forefinger of the right hand on the pulse of the person whose hand was being gripped. The favored password in this Den, as in many others, was 'Avalanche' — and it may be more than a coincidence that this was the name of the leading Democratic paper in Memphis, the home of Grand Wizard Forrest. Some- times it is used as a caution. If you come up in a crowd of men and see a man in it talking too much and about to divulge something, you can make the taps with your foot on the ground.

It wouldn't be noticed by the others unless they were members; and he would understand the meaning of it — to be careful of the crowd. In North Carolina, for example, there were three entirely different versions introduced into the record.

Shotwell, as chief of the Klan in Ruther- ford County, had administered it, was as follows: I promise and swear that I will uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States as handed down by our forefathers, in its original purity. I promise and swear that I will reject and oppose the principles of the Radical party in all its forms, and forever maintain and contend that intelligent white men shall govern this country. I promise and pledge myself to assist, according to my pecuniary circum- stances, all brothers in distress.

Females, widows and their households shall ever be specially in my care and protection. I promise and swear that I will obey all instructions given me by my chief; and should I ever divulge, or cause to be divulged, any secrets, signs or passwords of the Invisible Empire, I must meet with the fearful and just penalty of the traitor, which is death — death — death, at the hands of the brethren. De Priest, who admitted that he was the Cyclops of Den No. T, , before the 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 sacredly binding obligations: We are on the side of justice, humanity and constitu- tional liberty, as bequeathed to us in its purity by our forefathers.

We oppose and reject the principles of the Radical party. We pledge mutual aid to each other in sickness, distress and pecuniary embarrassment.

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Females, friends, widows and their households shall ever be special objects of our regard and protection. Any member divulging or causing to be divulged any of the foregoing obligations shall meet the fearful penalty and traitor's doom, which is death, death, death! It was much more discursive and verbose than the Shotwell or Yorkville oaths, but was substantially the same in import. The oaths were generally memorized and transmitted orally, and it is not surprising that differences in verbiage should have crept in, reflecting the vocabular fluency of the votaries. Similar evidences of individuaHsm and initiative are to be seen in other occasional departures from the formula laid down in the Prescript.

For instance, some witnesses speak of seeing bands of Ku Klux carrying a flag with the letters 'K K K' on it. How the Klan Operated 57 Such flags were carried by some bands, and one such made of rawhide is preserved in a museum at Florence, Alabama, but they were entirely unauthorized and unofficial. The material shall be Yellow, with a Red scalloped border, about three inches in width. There shall be painted upon it, in black, a Dracovolans,t or Flying Dragon, with the following motto inscribed above the Dragon, 'quod semper, quod ubique, quod ad omnibus.

At least two of the official banners made in accordance with the specifications of the Original Prescript are now known to exist — one in the Confederate Museum at Richmond and one in the private collection of Mr. In attending regular meetings of a Den, members usually wore their ordinary clothing, the disguises being donned only on the occasion of raids, demonstrations or other group ap- pearances in public.

On such occasions they were generally carried in the saddle-bags until the time arrived to put them on; and, the demonstration over, they were doffed and replaced in the saddle-bags for concealment. Between times, they were kept hidden in some place — smokehouses, corn-cribs, hollow logs and the box tombs of cemeteries being favored repositories for the incriminating regalia. Since it was to the weird appearance of their disguises that the Ku Klux owed so much of the terror they created among the negroes, it is worth while to pay more than passing attention to this phase of their operations.

In its official investigation the Government apparently started out with the idea of trying to establish the fact of a single, central authority somewhere in the Invisible Empire which supplied the members with their robes, and the question was asked of all the early witnesses whether the disguises they may have seen seemed to have been made by tailors or other skilled hands, and if the Ku Klux were all dressed alike.

It soon became apparent, however, that there was actually little uniformity about the uniforms, paradoxical as that may sound; and they were obviously home-made and not supplied by any central quartermaster like the uniforms worn by an army. One of the most romantic features of the whole Ku Klux movement was the method pursued by the Klansmen in sup- plying themselves with the disguises in which they appeared. No man was willing to incriminate his wife, his mother, his sister or his sweetheart; but it was these women-folks who sat up till the late hours of the night to ply their needles and threads How the Klan Operated 59 to furnish the disguises needed.

Here again the indirect method was used; for, whatever they might suspect, the ladies must be able to say that they did not know anything about the Ku Klux. A Southern woman seated by her lamp at night was not startled if a package was tossed into an open window which, upon examination, was found to contain a piece of cloth with directions as to how to make it into a robe of the desired size and style, and also directions as to where to leave it when it was finished.

The women, of course, never knew the identity of any men involved in such deahngs, and they were particular not to try to find out anything definite about it. A young country girl in Tennessee found a package on the front gallery containing calico, buttons and thread, with a note: Please make this into two robes and two masks for Two Ku Klux. A man who worked in a small-town general store at the time said: Gen- erally they would buy just about enough to make a full-sized robe for a man — but of course it was none of my business what a man did with a piece of dry goods after he had bought it, and I couldn't swear that any of my customers were Ku Klux.

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Anno Domini, Misses X and T: Knowing you to be friends of the Ku Klux Klan, the Grand Cyclops takes the privilege of requesting you to make a couple of robes for some of his poor, needy followers, and if you will be so kind as to make them the protecting eye of the Great Grand Cyclops will ever rest upon you. Thinking that you will make them, the following are the directions: Make two robes reaching to the ground, open in front, bordered with white three inches wide, white cuffs and collars, half moons on the left breast with stars in the center of each moon, and caps of a conical shape twelve inches high with a tassel, with white cloth hanging over the face so as to conceal it, and behind so as to hide the back of the head.

Make the first of the caps red, the second and third white, and the rest red. By Order of G. Scribe The Grand Turk will be after them on the night of the 15th, at 10 o'clock. You are requested to burn this after reading. Although the Ku Klux in fiction and newspaper stories are invariably described as 'white-robed' figures, the fact seems to be that the matter of color and style was left largely to the individual's personal taste, although all were of a grotesque nature calculated to impress and terrify the ignorant and super- stitious.

White robes were originally used by the Pulaski organizers of the Klan, and were generally favored by other Klans at first. Their robes used in their nocturnal campaigns consisted simply of sheets wrapped around the bodies and belted around the waist. The lower portion reached to the heels, whilst the upper had eye-holes through which to see and a mouth-hole through which to breathe.

Various schemes of ornamentation were adopted in different sections, governed chiefly by the indi- vidual's personal taste and whim, and some of them went in for ingeniously terrifying appurtenances like the horns popular in some states. Accurate information as to the appearance of the Ku Klux disguises is fortunately not lacking. Aside from the detailed descriptions given by eye-witnesses, some of the uniforms have been preserved in the South although at the time of disband- ment it was specifically ordered that they be burned , and also there was an occasional instance of a captured uniform, although such instances were rare.

One such captured disguise is now on display in the museum of the Buffalo Historical Society in Buffalo, New York; and in a Yankee schoolma'am in Mississippi wrote home telling of such a capture by the soldiers there, describing the uniform as 'a suit of black, the yoke striped with white, the pants of black muslin with a stripe of white down the side, the mask of white for the head, of the same material as the sack, holes for the mouth and eyes trimmed with black. The disguise for the horse was of the same material as the man's, with a large white star in the forehead.

Over their heads were masks, of much the same description as those worn by their riders, the material being of a dark color and openings of suitable width having been contrived for the eyes and nostrils. Each steed was decorated also with a white plume, carried vertically above the head; and on the right and left of the housings of black cloth which enveloped their bodies appeared the mystical letters "K K K.

The most prominent feature of their ghostly toilet was a long black robe, extending from the head to the feet and decorated with innumerable tin buttons an inch and a half in diameter, which under the influence of the starhght shone like miniature moons. These robes were slit in front and rear, in order that they might not impede the movement of the rider, and were secured about the waist with scarfs of red silk.

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Over their faces they wore masks of some heavy material; the appertures for the eyes, nose and mouth which were ample for these purposes being lined with red cloth. The head-dress was even more unique, and consisted of tall black caps, helmet-shaped, and provided with havelocks, resembling those used by the military in the late war.

These also were decorated with the regulation buttons, and when worn by officers of commissioned rank, supplemented by gorgeous plumes, white, red or blue, ac- cording to rank. Each individual wore about his waist, in addition to the scarf, a belt supporting two large army pistols in scabbards; and on the flaps of the latter, embroidered in white characters, appeared the devices of the order — skull and crossbones, and the mystical K K K. Holden, son of Governor W. Holden of that state: The hood has three horns, made out of some common cotton-stuff, in shape something like candy bags stuffed, and wrapped with red strings, the horns standing out on the front and sides of the hood.

It is a large, loose gown, covering the whole person quite closely, buttoned close around and reaching from the head clear down to the floor, covering the feet and dragging on the ground. It is made of bleached linen, starched and ironed, and in the night by moonlight it glitters and rattles. Then there is a hood with holes cut in for eyes, and a nose six or eight inches long made of cotton cloth stuffed with cotton and lapped with red braid half an inch wide. The eyes are lined with the braid, and the eyebrows are made of the same.

The cloth is lined with red flannel. Then there is a long tongue sticking out about six inches and so fixed that it can be moved about by the man's tongue. Then in the mouth are large teeth, which are very frightful. Then under the tongue is a leather bag placed inside so that when the man calls for water he pours it inside the bag and not into his mouth at all. The greatest number had nothing to disguise them except a mask over their heads and faces, with a large crown-piece and with 64 Invisible Empire a very large face.

The places where the eye-holes and the mouth were cut was bound around with some reddish stuff, and there was either a white strip sewn on or something painted for a nose. Some had very long white beards. Some had horns which were erect; others had horns that lopped over like a mule's ears; and their caps came to a point with tassels.

One had on a red suit out and out — a great deal like those I have seen on clowns in circuses. There were a number of stripes on each arm; something bright like silver lace, like stripes on a sergeant's sleeves. There was something on the breast of one of them, something round — of a circular form. Everywhere there was evident a tendency, as time wore on, to depart from the simplicity of the early costumes and add ornamentation of one kind or another. In Arkansas it was said: Some went in for hirsute adornment, a Mississippi negro thus describing those who visited him: On the face there were some whiskers, made of hair taken from a cow's tail probably.

There was long hair on the face, about a foot long, coming out as if it were mustaches, hanging down at least a foot. This gown I found was just a loose gown with big long sleeves to it, and then they have a piece of the long gown thrown up over the head if they want to; but it has eye-holes and all Christendom could not tell who was in it just by seeing the eyes. What I call the Tennessee Ku Klux had a very good rig. They look pretty well, with a red coat trimmed off with black, and when they threw the piece up over it was lined with different color from the rest.

They had a sort of rubber capes with fixings to come all over them in a rain storm. They have on false faces and some with long beards, some with long hats, and some with no hats at all, some with long ears, some with big eyes, and some with long noses. That night when they came to my house they had on black masks and were dressed in black.

This difference in the color of the disguises worn was the means of impeaching the testimony of a government witness in the trial of the accused Ku Klux in Oxford, Mississippi, in Joe Davis, a negro, swore that he had been forced to accompany a band of white men who, in the Ku Klux disguise, went to the home of a negro named Jack Dupree and took 66 Invisible Empire him out and whipped him.

Davis said that he held the horses while Dupree was taken off and whipped; and that when the white men came back to the horses, unaccompanied by Dupree, they said that they had not only whipped him but 'had cut his damned guts out. Davis was a willing, eager witness for the government and glibly identified all the accused participants by name. He over- reached himself, however, when he attempted to tell about the disguise worn by the Ku Klux party he claimed to have ac- companied on their murderous raid. It was a red and black disguise, Joe testified, describing it in detail.

Shortly prior to this time a Ku Klux uniform had been captured in Pontotoc, Mississippi, and had been stuffed and hung up to the limb of a tree in the main street of the town as an exhibit. Joe had evidently seen this disguise and studied it closely, for his de- scription fitted it very accurately. It happened, however, that all the witnesses who had actually seen the party that Ku Kluxed Jack Dupree were unanimous in their testimony that the members of the party wore white disguises. This led to the strong suspicion that Davis had not really seen the raiding party at all, much less been a member of it; and it was eventually shown that he had admitted that he did not know anybody connected with the Ku Klux organization.

It was a general rule that members of a Ku Klux raiding party should refrain from all unnecessary conversation. In fact, generally they did not speak at all except to exchange snatches of meaningless gibberish or to groan loudly and dismally in simulation of the sufferings of a departed spirit.

It was a part of the Ku Klux regulations that every member should be sup- plied with a whistle — which made 'a shrill, gurgling noise' — and blasts of the whistle instead of spoken commands were used in giving orders when on a raid. Members of a Ku Klux party were never called by their names, but by numbers. These numbers varied from time to time, as they had different methods of numbering.

Sometimes they would start with one, the Cyclops being Number One, and assume numbers in regular rotation. Sometimes they would start numbering at one hundred, or perhaps five hun- dred, use of the larger numbers being effective in creating an exaggerated idea of the size of a Ku Klux band. During the earlier, orderly days, the Klansmen rarely did anything more r-than warn the negroes to 'behave themselves' or notify some especially obnoxious carpetbagger that he would have to leave town. These warnings were accompanied by the most hor- rendous threats of what would happen to them if their com- mands were not obeyed, but the warnings were frequently re- peated several times before any drastic action was really taken.

In a great number of instances this was all that was necessary. The carpetbagger would leave town or the negro would steer his course down the strait and narrow path, and all would be well. But some carpetbaggers refused to be stampeded into departure; some negroes did not believe in ghosts and were not terrified by browbeating. This created a serious problem of procedure. Obviously the Ku Klux would quickly lose power if it began to appear that their orders could be disobeyed with impunity and that their threats were never backed up by action.

Action seemed imperatively indicated in these instances, and 68 Invisible Empire it is not surprising that this action should have slipped into bloodshed and homicide, all conditions being considered.

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The principal basis for criticism of the Ku Klux was this violence which they sometimes employed and which eventually became synonymous with their name. By our advanced stand- ards of today it is difficult to justify, or even to understand how its apologists could justify, the corporal punishment of a fellow- man.

It seems a brutal and sadistic mode of punishment, how- ever serious may have been the offense for which the recipient of the whipping was punished. True enough, the more enlightened and advanced slave owners resorted to such whippings only as a matter of last resort, and then only in extreme cases of repeated disobedience or insubordination, or petty offenses against the law. Under the slave code the master was expected to regulate all such matters by his own authority without appealing to the consti- tuted courts; so the whipping of negroes, although by no means so common as represented by the abolitionists, was at least a recognized method of punishing negroes' offenses.

Further precedent for the Ku Klux method of regulation was to be seen in the patrol system which prevailed in the slave states before emancipation. The law provided that every slave must be in his quarters before nine o'clock at night unless he had a pass from his master; and, to enforce this law, the justices of the peace had authority to maintain a regular system of patrols who rode through their precincts at regular intervals — once a week or once a month — to see that all negroes were at home after the curfew hour.

White men of military age were subject to this duty as a public service, the same as they were How the Klan Operated 69 subject to militia duty, and they served by assignment and without pay. When they found a negro prowUng about after nine o'clock without a pass they were empowered by the law to give him a whipping of not to exceed thirty-nine lashes in some places the maximum was fifteen lashes ; and this system of patrol and punishment was accepted as a regular and proper thing by both blacks and whites.

The negroes' comic song: When the white people after the war were confronted with the problem of the growing irresponsibility and disorderliness of the recently freed negroes, with no adequate restraint avail- able through the then existing law courts, it was not entirely unnatural for them to turn for relief to an extra-legal imitation of that patrol system which had been a legal and recognized part of the system of government before the war.

When the Ku Klux first started to operating as regulators they were apparently as reluctant to resort to the lash as were the pre-war slave owners. When they did administer a whipping they generally minimized it in their own discussion of it. But as the character of the Klan's personnel began to degenerate, these whippings increased in frequency and severity; and the brutal excesses of this period of the Klan's degeneration find no apologist anywhere.

They were as severely condemned by the Klan's leaders at the time as they are today. It became the fashion during those days to attribute every murder and every rumored murder to the Ku Klux, and in the Northern press these were magnified for political purposes. Some of these murders probably were committed by assassins who used the familiar disguise of the Ku Klux as a cloak; but the genuine Ku Klux resorted to the death penalty only in the most extreme cases where, by their code, such a penalty was justified by the enormity of the offense or by self-defense.

By way of palliation it has been pointed out that most of the Ku Klux were ex-soldiers and that this was during a period follow- ing four years of bloody war when life had become cheap. And rough boys they were, indeed. Violence and bloodshed were rare in this state; but the Klan wielded its mysterious influence in practi- cally all the counties outside of East Tennessee, and in some of these counties it was for a while, in effect, the governing power.

The Reconstruction troubles in Tennessee find their root as far back as , while the war was still raging. In that year the Union army succeeded in getting possession of Middle and West Tennessee, which sections of the state were strongly pro- Confederate in sentiment. The Confederates, on the other hand, were able to cling to East Tennessee, in which section the sentiment was predominantly pro-Union.

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