A KU KLUX ORDER.

[The Ku Klux order here reproduced is typical. It was first posted on the the streets of Tuscaloosa, Ala., and later reprinted in the newspapers. It was at once an order and a notice to the members of the Klan, and a warning to offenders. Part of the order was in cipher, the rest was sheer nonsense, calculated to alarm the carpet-bagger and cause him to leave the country. It was rarely necessary to send more than one order to an obnoxious person].

GENERAL ORDERS No. 3.

KU KLUX.

Hollow Hell. Devil's Den, Horrible
Shadows. Ghostly Sepulchre.
Head Quarters of the Immortal Ate
of the K. K. K. Gloomy Month. Bloody
Moon. Black Night. Last hour,

Shrouded Brotherhood! Murdered heroes!

Fling the bloody dirt that covers you to the four winds! Erect thy Goddess on the banks of the Avernus. Mark well your foes! Strike with the redhot spear! Prepare Charon for his task!

Enemies reform! The skies shall be blackened' A single Star shall look down upon horrible deeds! The night owl shall hoot a requiem o'er Ghostly Corpses!

Beware! Beware! Beware!

The Great Cyclops is angry! Hobgoblins report! Shears and lash!
Tar and Feathers! Hell and Fury:

Revenge! Revenge! Revenge!

Bad men! white, black, yellow, repent!

The hour is at hand! Be ye ready! Life is short! J. H. S. Y. W!!
Ghosts! Ghosts!! Ghosts!!!

Drink thy tea made of distilled hell, stirred with the lightning of heaven, and sweetened with the gall of thine enemies!

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DOCUMENTS

RELATING TO RECONSTRUCTION

In this series of reprints will be reproduced documents illustrating the peculiar conditions, social, political and economic, that prevailed in the Southern states during Reconstruction. The first numbers will consist of documents relating to the Ku Klux Movement; following these will be published selections concerning the Freedmen's Bureau and the Union League; and finally several numbers illustrative of social and economic conditions under the "carpet-bag" governments will be printed. Newspaper files, public documents and pamphlets and manuscripts from private collections will furnish the material that is to be reproduced. Many of the documents are at present inaccessible to students who are not in reach of large libraries, and some of them have never been published. A special discount will be made on orders for class use. Annual subscription. one Dollar.

One number will appear each month during the college year. The following is a tentative list of titles: 1. The Constitution and the Ritual of the Knights of the White Camelia. 2. The Prescript of the Ku Klux Klan; The Revised and Amended Prescript of the Ku Klux Klan. 3. The Constitution of the White League, the Council of Safety and similar orders. 4. Ku Klux Orders, Warnings, etc. 5. The Constitution, Ritual and Catechism of the Union League. 6. Freedmen's Bureau Documents. 7 Schools and Churches During Reconstruction. Other titles will be added to the list and substitutions will be made. Correspondence is invited in regard to additions and substitutions. Address Walter L. Fleming, West. Virginia University, Morgantown, W. Va.

Copyright 1904,
by

WALTER L FLEMING

The Union League of America.

In 1862 when the outlook was gloomy for the Northern cause, the Union League movement began. Confederate victories in the field and Democratic successes in the elections, disaffection in the cities and in the West, the Southern sympathies of the upper classes of society, the hostility of the extremists of both parties to the administration,-all resulted in the low ebb of loyalty to the government and caused the formation of "Union Leagues" among those who were devoted to the Union and in favor of conquering the South. The movement began among those associated in the work of the United States Sanitary Commission. The first organization was probably in Ohio in September 1862; in December 1862, the Philadelphia Union League was organized; in January 1863, the New York Union League Club, and soon there were clubs in every part of the North. The "Loyal National League" of New York, a a similar organization, was absorbed by the Union League which also acquired control of the "Loyal Publication Society."

The members were pledged to uncompromising and unconditional loyalty to the Union, and to the repudiation of any belief in states rights. The objects of the League were social as well as political; loyalty was to be made fashionable. Supplies were sent by the order to the soldiers in the field; negro troops were enlisted at its expense; teachers were sent South in the wake of the armies to educate the negroes; and negro refugees were cared for by its agents in the camps and in the North.

After the war the Union League began immediately to agitate for negrosuffrage and white disfranchisement in the South, and for several years was foremost in demanding radical measures of reconstruction. To attain its purpose the League conducted a campaign of education, and before 1868 had distributed millions of political documents. The literature printed consisted principally of accounts of "Southern Atrocities." The Philadelphia League alone sent out between 1865 and 1868, 4,500,000 pamplets.

In the disputes between the factions of Radicals in the South the League endeavored to act as arbitrator; in 1867 several of the Northern city leagues sent delegates to Virginia to reconcile the hostile factions of the "Unionists." The Southern "Unionists" who came North to attend the political conventions were entertained, their expenses paid, and their actions controlled by the Union League.

As early as 1863 the League was carried South among the disaffected Southern "Unionists," and it spread as the Federal armies occupied Southern territory. A few months after the close of the war the order extended throughout the South among the people of the white counties of the hill and mountain country. As long as the membership was entirely white, it consisted, in the South, of United States army officers, officials of the Freedmen's Bureau, the Union element in the border states, and the "loyalists," so-called, in the states of the lower South, with the civilians who followed the Federal armies to the South, and a few old Whigs. In the mountain districts of the South the membership in 1866 probably embraced 30 per cent. of the white population.