eptance
of their control.

The Ku-Klux Klan was a secret movement, with slight organization, that
appeared earliest in Tennessee, but spread to nearly every crossroads in
the South. It began in the hazing of negroes and carpet-baggers who were
insolent or offensive to their neighbors. Its members rode by night, in
mask, with improvised pomp and ritual, and played as much upon the
imagination of their victims as upon their bodies. Frequently it
revenged private grievances and went to extremes of violence or murder.
From hazing it was an easy step to intimidation at election time, the
Ku-Klux Klan proving to be an efficient means of reducing the negro
vote. It was so efficient, indeed, that Grant asked and Congress voted,
in 1871, special powers for the policing of the South. In this summer a
committee of Congress visited Southern centers and accumulated a great
mass of testimony from which a picture of both the Ku-Klux Klan outrages
and the workings of reconstruction may easily be drawn. The reign of
terror subsided by 1872, but it had done much to dissuade the negro from
using his new right, and had started the movement for home rule in the
South.

That the normal politics of the South was Democratic is shown by the
votes of the border States, where a population of freedmen had to be
assimilated and Congress could not interfere. Delaware, Maryland, and
Kentucky voted against Grant in 1868, although all the restored
Confederate States but two voted for him. In Georgia the Democrats
swallowed their pride, electioneered among the negroes, and elected a
conservative State Government in 1870. Tennessee escaped negro
domination from the start. Virginia, late to be readmitted, had
consolidated her white population as she watched the troubles in South
Carolina and Mississippi, and never elected a radical administration. In
North Carolina, after a fight that approached a civil war, a Democratic
State Government was chosen in 1870. The rest of the Confederate States
followed as opportunity offered; after 1872 the process was rapid, and
after 1876 there was no Republican administration in the old South. The
Republican party, itself, almost disappeared from the South at this
time. A bare organization, largely manned by negroes, endured to enjoy
the offices which a Republican National Administration could bestow, and
to contribute pliant delegations to the national conventions of the
party. But the South had become solid in the se