s were secured,
principally in Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and
Tennessee. Most of these violations of election laws, however, had
nothing to do with the Ku Klux movement, for by 1870 the better class of
members had withdrawn from the secret orders. But though the enforcement
acts checked these irregularities to a considerable extent, they
nevertheless failed to hold the South for the radicals and essential
parts of them were declared unconstitutional a few years later.

In order to justify the passage of the enforcement acts and to obtain
campaign material for use in 1872, Congress appointed a committee,
organized on the very day when the Ku Klux Act was approved, to
investigate conditions in the Southern States. From June to August
1871, the committee took testimony in Washington, and in the fall
subcommittees visited several Southern States. Tennessee, Virginia,
Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas were, however, omitted from the
investigation. Notwithstanding the partisan purpose and methods of
the investigation, the report of the committee and the accompanying
testimony constituted a Democratic rather than a Republican document.
It is a veritable mine of information about the South between 1865
and 1871. The Democratic minority members made skillful use of their
opportunity to expose conditions in the South. They were less concerned
to meet the charges made against the Ku Klux Klan than to show why such
movements came about. The Republicans, concerned mainly about material
for the presidential campaign, neglected the broader phases of the
situation.

Opposition to the effects of reconstruction did not come to an end
with the dissolution of the more famous orders. On the contrary, it now
became public and open and resulted in the organization, after 1872, of
the White League, the Mississippi Shot Gun Plan, the White Man's Party
in Alabama, and the Rifle Clubs in South Carolina. The later movements
were distinctly but cautiously anti-Negro. There was most irritation
in the white counties where there were large numbers of Negroes. Negro
schools and churches were burned because they served as meeting places
for Negro political organizations. The color line began to be more
and more sharply drawn. Social and business ostracism continued to be
employed against white radicals, while the Negroes were discharged from
employment or were driven from their rented farms.

The Ku Klux movement, it is to be noted in