discharge of his duty, was called upon by one hundred and twenty armed men and warned. They informed him that the rule was, first, warning; second, whipping; third, death. He refused to leave, and they beat him until he became insensible, and left him, having previously given him to understand that the rule would be carried out, and the next call would be for his life. Twenty-six schools in that vicinity were closed by direction of these bands. In one place over eighty armed men called upon a female teacher at midnight, went to her room and gave a peremptory order for the closing of her school forthwith, which was done. The Rev. Dr. Murff, though born in the South and highly respected in the community, was obliged to resign his position as director of free schools to avoid a call which was threatened by a Ku-Klux. Another minister and a friend of the latter, Rev. John Avery, had his house burned in Winston County for the offence of teaching a free school. Five murders were committed in Monroe County, one in Lowndes, and fifteen in Noxubee.

The mode of executing many of the atrocities was in keeping with the brutal design, no regard being had to age, infirmity, or delicacy of health or sensibility of the victim. Frightful curses and imprecations accompanied the laying on of the lash, and followed the helpless victims of slaughter as they passed to the valley of the shadow of death. Mr. McBride, a Scotchman living in Sparta, who was pursued, related as follows: "There were two rooms in the house of the colored man, and I went into one of them and tried to hide. They came in and got me. The colored people prayed to them, 'Don't hurt Mr. Mac; for God's sake, let him alone.' They took me out of the house and across the yard; I asked them in what way I had injured them, to justify the attack on me. They cursed me, told me to stop talking, struck me in the side with their bowie-knives that had scabbards on, and with the but-ends of their pistols." Then they obliged him to strip naked, and whipped him with gum switches, which sting the flesh at every stroke, like nettles. They said, "God d-n you! don't you know that this is a white man's country?" He told them that the white people had employed him

to take charge of their Sunday school, and were satisfied with him, but this was of no avail, and they kept on whipping, while for his edification a portion of the party discussed the propriety of shooting or hanging as the most fit in his case. The man succeeded in getting out of their clutches by a sudden spring and escaped the destiny that was apparently in store for him.

But it would take volumes to give the details of the numerous cases that were reported to the Congressional Committee, of this general character. Senator Scott in a speech in the Senate gave as the result of the investigation that came to his own knowledge as follows: In North Carolina, in fourteen counties, there were eighteen murders and three hundred and fifteen whippings. In South Carolina, nine counties, thirty-five murders and two hundred and seventy-six other flagrant outrages. In Georgia, twenty-nine counties, seventy-two murders and one hundred and twenty-six whippings. In Alabama, twentysix counties, two hundred and fifteen murders and one hundred and sixteen other outrages. In Florida, in one county alone there were one hundred and fifty-three cases of homicide. In Mississippi, twenty counties, twenty-three homicides and seventy-six other cases of outrage. In ninety-nine counties in different States he found five hundred and twenty-six homicides and two thousand and nine cases of whippings. But the committee state that in Louisiana alone in the year 1868 there were more than one thousand murders, and most of them were the result of the operations of the Ku-Klux.

The influence of these atrocities upon political matters is shown by the remarkable change in the popular vote which took place at the time.

In South Carolina, Spring, 1868, Republican majority.

21,490

43,470

Can these stupendous changes be reasonably accounted for on any other theory than that of intimidation; and are they not the natural result of the heroic means employed? The Democratic minority of the committee denied this, and boldly asserted that the change in the vote was entirely due to the disgust of the people with the management of the carpet-bag governments. It must be obvious, however, to the most common mind that if this were the case, there would have been no occasion for the outrages, as ordinarily, in cases where outrages are perpetrated the party committing them becomes the subject of disgust unless there be intimidation. Certainly the carpet-baggers, bad as they were, did nothing to excite the disgust of fair-minded citizens that was at all comparable in enormity with the atrocities described, and if we are to allow that they were perpetrated upon a law-loving and lawabiding people, who had regard for rights or decency, the vote should have been unanimously the other way. The Democratic members of the committee, in maintaining that their party friends could be greatly aroused and exasperated by excessive taxation and the maladministration of their rulers, pay them but a sorry compliment, while the greater enormities committed against personal rights, property, and life were suffered to go unredressed, and tacitly were justified.

The enormity of the operations of the Ku-Klux and the

alarm at length became so great that Congress felt constrained to do something for the protection of the people in those places where the local authorities refused to perform their proper functions, and in April, 1871, an act known as the Enforcement Act was passed, which was approved by the President and became a law. This act gave to the executive unusual powers; but the extraordinary circumstances of the country called for unusual remedies for the evils that afflicted the people of the Southern States. On the 4th of May the President issued his proclamation, warning all persons against the continuance of illegal acts, and calling upon the local authorities to do all in their power to prevent violence and to maintain the public peace, in order to render action on his part unnecessary, under the law. On the 17th of October he issued another proclamation, suspending the habeas corpus act in nine counties of South Carolina, and on the 11th of November another county of that State was included in the suspension, by executive proclamation.

The passage of the act was stoutly resisted by the Democratic members of Congress, and by Schurz, Trumbull, and some other Republicans, as legislation not within the authority. and scope of the powers granted to the national government by the Constitution, and as tending to dangerous centralization. The President did not seem anxious to exercise the powers given him in an arbitrary spirit, or to push the authority granted beyond the legitimate purpose of maintaining order, where the local authorities signally failed, and give protection to the citizen where the State or county was incompetent or unwilling to perform that clear and necessary duty. After the President issued his proclamation, the disturbances became more infrequent, if they did not entirely cease. It is indeed claimed that the Ku-Klux Klans have abandoned their organization, and that that terrible order is a thing of the past. But recent events indicate that too much of its spirit and inspiration remains, and that its teachings have not been fully forgotten.

CHAPTER XLVI.

FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT.

Oppressive legislation. Stevens's bill. - His speech. -The bill a compromise.

-

Severe criticism. -Defeated resolution. - Plan of Robert Dale Owen. Reason for rejection. DemoFacts and principles involved in the effort. cratic arguments. — Boyer, Eldridge, Rogers. - Republicans support it for different reasons. --Schenck, Raymond, Eliot, Boutwell, Dawes, Banks.— President's policy criticised and defended. — Phelps, Ingersoll. Resolution adopted. Senate. —Amendments offered. Caucus. - Amendment as finally President's message. Mr. Seward's certificate. Action of the

adopted. Senate.

THE Thirteenth Amendment abolished chattel slavery and rendered that form of oppression impossible; but, as has been shown, it did not prevent the fact of oppression, and that the most cruel and unendurable. The action of the State governments, restored by what was called the "Johnson policy," clearly revealed the necessity of further legislation to prevent the Rebels from regaining by fraud and finesse at home what they had failed to secure by their appeal to arms. Consequently the friends of freedom in both houses were prompt in bringing the subject before Congress, and weeks and months were occupied in considering the various propositions which were presented to remedy what was seen to be so flagrantly unjust and indefensible. Nor will the annals of that body afford a parallel for the earnestness, depth of feeling, and intensity of purpose exhibited in the debates on the subject, which have extended over years and commanded the highest exercise of the ablest talent employed thereon. The results finally reached were changes in the organic law and ordinary legislation, or amendments of the Constitution, acts for their enforcement, and what were popularly termed civil rights bills.