not withstand it. And deeds of violence were done
by men who were Ku Klux, but who, while acting under cover of their
connection with the Klan, were not under its orders. But because these
men were Ku Klux, the Klan had to bear the odium of wrongdoing.[48]

In addition to this, the very class which the Klan proposed to hold in
check and awe into good behavior, soon became wholly unmanageable.
Those who had formerly committed depredations to be laid to the charge
of the negroes, after a brief interval of good behavior, assumed the
guise of Ku Klux and returned to their old ways, but with less
boldness and more caution, showing the salutary impression which the
Klan had made upon them. In some cases the negroes played Ku Klux.
Outrages were committed by masked men in regions far remote from any
Ku Klux organizations. The parties engaged took pains to assert that
they were Ku Klux, _which the members of the Klan never did_. This was
evidence that these parties were simply aping Ku Klux disguises. The
proof on this point is ample and clear. After the passage of the Anti
Ku Klux Statute by the State of Tennessee, several instances occurred
of parties being arrested in Ku Klux disguises; but in every instance
they proved to be either negroes or "radical" Brownlow Republicans.
This occurred so often that the statute was allowed by the party in
power to become a dead letter before its repeal. It bore too hard on
"loyal" men when enforced.

The same thing occurred in Georgia and other States. (See testimony of
General Gordon and others before the Investigating Committee.)

_No single instance occurred of the arrest of a masked man who proved
to be--when stripped of his disguises--a Ku Klux._

But it came to pass that all the disorder done in the country was
charged upon the Ku Klux, because done under disguises which they had
invented and used. The Klan had no way in which to disprove or refute
the charges. They felt that it was hard to be charged with violence of
which they were innocent. At the same time they felt that it was
natural, and, under the circumstances, not wholly unjust that this
should be the case. They had assumed the office of Regulators. It was
therefore due society, due themselves, and due the Government, which,
so far, had not molested them, that they should, at least, not afford
the lawless classes facilities for the commission of excesses greater
than any they had hitherto indulged in, and above all, tha