L's" had to
be given: (1) with right hand raised to heaven, thumb and third finger
touching ends over palm, pronounce "Liberty"; (2) bring the hand down
over the shoulder and say "Lincoln"; (3) drop the hand open at the side
and say "Loyal"; (4) catch the thumb in the vest or in the waistband and
pronounce "League." This ceremony of initiation proved a most effective
means of impressing and controlling the Negro through his love and fear
of secret, mysterious, and midnight mummery. An oath taken in daylight
might be forgotten before the next day; not so an oath taken in the dead
of night under such impressive circumstances. After passing through the
ordeal, the Negro usually remained faithful.

In each populous precinct there was at least one council of the League,
and always one for blacks. In each town or city there were two councils,
one for the whites, and another, with white officers, for the blacks.
The council met once a week, sometimes oftener, nearly always at night,
and in a Negro church or schoolhouse. Guards, armed with rifles and
shotguns, were stationed about the place of meeting in order to keep
away intruders. Members of some councils made it a practice to attend
the meetings armed as if for battle. In these meetings the Negroes
listened to inflammatory speeches by the would-be statesmen of the new
regime; here they were drilled in a passionate conviction that their
interests and those of the Southern whites were eternally at war.

White men who joined the order before the Negroes were admitted and
who left when the latter became members asserted that the Negroes were
taught in these meetings that the only way to have peace and plenty, to
get "the forty acres and a mule," was to kill some of the leading whites
in each community as a warning to others. In North Carolina twenty-eight
barns were burned in one county by Negroes who believed that Governor
Holden, the head of the State League, had ordered it. The council
in Tuscumbia, Alabama, received advice from Memphis to use the torch
because the blacks were at war with the white race. The advice was
taken. Three men went in front of the council as an advance guard, three
followed with coal oil and fire, and others guarded the rear. The
plan was to burn the whole town, but first one Negro and then another
insisted on having some white man's house spared because "he is a good
man." In the end no residences were burned, and a happy compromise
was effected b