country and the rights of our countrymen have arisen to be grappled with and solved, blurted into our unwilling ears these same warnings, prophecies, and predictions, their unreasoning prejudices and passionate declamations. Time and events, which test all things, have brought discomfiture to their cause and made their illogical and ambitious rhetoric seem to be but weak and impotent drivel.

In spite of the discomfitures of the past, the champions of slavery and of the ideas, principles, and policies pertaining to it are again doing battle for their perishing cause. Again, sir, we are arraigned, again misrepresented, again denounced. Why are we again thus misrepresented, arraigned, and denounced? We, the friends of human rights, simply propose to submit to our countrymen an amendment of the Constitution of our country to secure the priceless boon of suffrage to citizens of the United States to whom the right to vote and be voted for is denied by the constitutions and laws of some of the States. This effort to remove the disabilities of the emancipated victims of the perished slave systems, to clothe them with power to maintain the dignity of manhood and the honor and rights of citizenship, spring from our love of freedom, our sense of justice, our reverence for human nature, and our recognition of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. This effort, sanctified by patriotism, liberty, justice, and humanity, is stigmatized in this Chamber as a mere partisan movement. Who make it a partisan movement? The men who are actuated by an imperative sense of duty, or the men who instinctively seize the occasion to arouse the unreasoning passions of race and caste and the prejudices of ignorance and hate? ... . . Because frivolity and fashion put their ban upon the black man, be his character ever so pure or his intelligence ever so great, statesmen in this Christian land of republican institutions must deny to him civil and political rights and privileges. Because social life has put and continues to put its brand of exclusion upon the black man, it is therefore the duty of statesmanship to maintain by class legislation the abhorrent doctrine of caste in this Christian Republic. This is the argument, the logic, the position of Senators. . .

Honorable Senators have grown weary in reminding us that it would be a breach of our plighted faith to submit to the State Legislatures this amendment to the Constitution to secure to American citizens the right to vote and to be voted for. They tell us we were pledged by our national convention of 1868; that we were committed to the doctrine that the right to regulate the suffrage properly belonged to the loyal States.

So the earlier Republican national conventions proclaimed that slavery in the States was a local institution, for which the people of each State only were responsible. But that declaration did not stand in the way of the proclamation of emancipation, did not stand in the way of the thirteenth article of the amendments of the Constitution, did not stand in the way of that series of aggressive measures by which slavery was extirpated in the States. Slavery struck at the life of the nation, and the Republican party throttled its mortal foe. The Republican party in the national convention of 1868 pronounced the guarantee by Congress of equal suffrage of all loyal men at the South as demanded by every consideration of public safety, gratitude, and of justice, and determined that it should be maintained. That declaration unreservedly committed the Republican party to the safety and justice of equal suffrage. The declaration that the suffrage in the loyal States properly belonged to the people of those States meant this, no more, no less that under the Constitution it belonged to the people of each of the loyal States to regulate suffrage therein. . .

Senators accuse us of being actuated by partisanship, by the love of power, and the hope of retaining power; yet they never tire of reminding us that the people have in several States pronounced against equal suffrage and will do so again. I took occasion early in the debate to express the opinion that in the series of measures for the extirpation of slavery and the elevation and enfranchisement of the black race the Republican party had lost at least a quarter of a million of voters. In every great battle of the last eight years the timid, the weak faltered, fell back or slunk away into the ranks of the enemy. Yes, sir; while we have been struggling often against fearful odds, timid men, weak men, and bad men, too, following the examples of timid men, weak men, and bad men, in all the great struggles for the rights of human nature, have broken from our advancing ranks and fallen back to the rear or gone over to the enemy, thus giving to the foe the strength they had pledged to us. But we have gone on prospering, and we shall go on prospering in spite of treacheries on the right hand and on the left. The timid may chide us, the weak reproach us, and the bad malign us, but we shall strive on, for in struggling to secure and protect the rights of others

we assure our own.

Appendix to the Congressional Globe, 40 Cong., 3 sess. (Rives and Bailey, Washington, 1869), 153–154 passim, February 8, 1869.

156. The Ku-Klux Klan (1871)

BY THE FEDERAL GRAND JURY

The opposition in the southern states to the fourteenth amendment took the form of secret societies, the members of which were sworn to intimidate the negroes from exerting their new-born rights, and also to put down both the "carpet-baggers' and their southern supporters, the "scalawags." The most prominent of these societies, the Ku-Klux Klan, was especially active in South Carolina, where the worst results of carpet-bag government had been shown (see No. 157 below), and where in October, 1871, the president, under the authority granted to him by an act to enforce the fourteenth amendment, had suspended the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in nine counties. The presentment of the grand jury here given was made at the Circuit Court held at Columbia after the privilege of the writ had been suspended. Many arrests were made by military authorities, and the jury found 785 true bills. — Bibliography as in No. 145 above.

To the Judges of the United States Circuit Court:

N closing the labors of the present term, the grand jury beg leave to submit the following presentment: During the whole session we have been engaged in investigations of the most grave and extraordinary character investigations of the crimes committed by the organization known as the Ku-Klux Klan. The evidence elicited has been voluminous, gathered from the victims themselves and their families, as well as those who belong to the Klan and participated in its crimes. The jury has been shocked beyond measure at the developments which have been made in their presence of the number and character of the atrocities committed, producing a state of terror and a sense of utter insecurity among a large portion of the people, especially the colored population. The evidence produced before us has established the following facts:

1. That there has existed since 1868, in many counties of the State, an organization known as the " Ku-Klux Klan," or "Invisible Empire of the South," which embraces in its membership a large proportion of the white population of every profession and class.

2. That this Klan [is] bound together by an oath, administered to its members at the time of their initiation into the order, of which the following is a copy:

OBLIGATION.

I, (name,) before the immaculate Judge of Heaven and Earth, and "Don the Holy Evangelists of Almighty God, do, of my own free will and ord, subscribe to the following sacredly binding obligation:

"1. We are on the side of justice, humanity, and constitutional liberty, as bequeathed to us in its purity by our forefathers.

"" 2. We oppose and reject the principles of the radical party.

"3. We pledge mutual aid to each other in sickness, distress, and pecuniary embarrassment.

"4. Female 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!"

That in addition to this oath the Klan has a constitution and by-laws, which provides, among other things, that each member shall furnish himself with a pistol, a Ku-Klux gown, and a signal instrument. That the operations of the Klan were executed in the night, and were invariably directed against members of the republican party by warnings to leave the country, by whippings, and by murder.

3. That in large portions of the counties of York, Union, and Spartanburgh, to which our attention has been more particularly called in our investigations during part of the time for the last eighteen months, the civil law has been set at defiance, and ceased to afford any protection to the citizens.

4. That the Klan, in carrying out the purposes for which it was organized and armed, inflicted summary vengeance on the colored citizens of these counties, by breaking into their houses at the dead of night, dragging them from their beds, torturing them in the most inhuman manner, and in many instances murdering them; and this, mainly, on account of their political affiliations. Occasionally additional reasons operated, but in no instance was the political feature wanting.

5. That for this condition of things, for all these violations of law and order, and the sacred rights of citizens, many of the leading men of those counties were responsible. It was proven that large numbers of the most prominent citizens were members of the order. Many of this class attended meetings of the Grand Klan. At a meeting of the Grand Klan, held in Spartanburgh County, at which there were representatives from the various dens of Spartanburgh, York, Union, and Chester Counties, in this State, besides a number from North Carolina, a resolution was adopted that no raids should be undertaken, or any one whipped or injured by members of the Klan, without orders from the Grand Klan. The penalty for violating this resolution was one hundred

lashes on the bare back for the first offense, and for the second, death. This testimony establishes the nature of the discipline enforced in the order, and also the fact that many of the men who were openly and publicly speaking against the Klan, and pretending to deplore the work of this murderous conspiracy, were influential members of the order, and directing its operations even in detail.

The jury has been appalled as much at the number of outrages as at their character, it appearing that eleven murders and over six hundred whippings have been committed in York County alone. Our investigation in regard to the other counties named has been less full; but it is believed, from the testimony, that an equal or greater number has been committed in Union, and that the number is not greatly less in Spartanburgh and Laurens.

We are of the opinion that the most vigorous prosecution of the parties implicated in these crimes is imperatively demanded; that without this there is great danger that these outrages will be continued, and that there will be no security to our fellow-citizens of African descent.

We would say further, that unless the strong arm of the Government is interposed to punish these crimes committed upon this class of citizens, there is every reason to believe that an organized and determined attempt at retaliation will be made, which can only result in a state of anarchy and bloodshed too horrible to contemplate.

House Reports, 42 Cong., 2 sess. (Washington, 1872), II, pt. i, No. 22, pt. 1, pp. 48-49.

157. Carpet-Bag Government (1873)

BY JAMES SHEPHERD PIKE

Before the Civil War Pike was a prominent member of the editorial staff of the New York Tribune, and its Washington correspondent. During the war he was minister to the Netherlands. In 1872 he supported the Liberal Republican movement in its opposition to further coercive measures in the southern states, and in 1873 he visited South Carolina in order to write up the evils of carpet-bag government. Bibliography as in No. 145 above.

WE

7E will enter the House of Representatives. Here sit one hundred and twenty-four members. Of these, twentythree are white men, representing the remains of the old civilization. . . . Deducting the twenty-three members referred to, who comprise the entire strength of the opposition, we find one hundred and one remain