e Klan's
organized existence as decisively and completely as General Lee's last
general order, on the morning of the 10th of April, 1865, disbanded
the army of Northern Virginia.

When the office of Grand Wizard was created and its duties defined, it
was explicitly provided that he should have "the power to determine
questions of paramount importance, and his decision shall be final."
To continue the organization or to disband it was such a question. He
decided in favor of disbanding, and so ordered. Therefore the Ku Klux
Klan had no organized existence after March, 1869.[54]

The report of the Congressional Investigating Committee contains some
disreputable history, which belongs to a later date, and is attributed
to the Klan, but not justly so. For several years, after March, 1869,
the papers reported and commented on "Ku Klux outrages" committed at
various points. The authors of these outrages may have acted in the
name of the Klan, and under its disguises; it may be that in some
cases they were men who had been Ku Klux. But it cannot be charged
that they were acting by the authority of an order which had formally
disbanded. They were acting on their own responsibility.

Thus lived, so died, this strange order. Its birth was an accident;
its growth was a comedy; its death a tragedy. It owed its existence
wholly to the anomalous condition of social and civil affairs in the
South during the years immediately succeeding the unfortunate contest
in which so many brave men in blue and gray fell, martyrs to their
convictions.

There never was, before or since, a period of our history when such an
order could have lived. May there never be again!

FOOTNOTES:

[53] In the copy of the Revised and Amended Prescript owned by
Columbia University Library is bound a letter in which is mentioned
this order of destruction.--_Editor._

[54] The local "Dens" were not affected by this order. Many had
already disbanded; many more remained active as long as the
Reconstruction regime lasted.--_Editor._

APPENDIX I.

PRESCRIPT OF KU KLUX KLAN

ADOPTED AT A CONVENTION OF THE ORDER
HELD IN NASHVILLE, APRIL, 1867

Copied from the Original Prescript, line for line and page
for page. The type used here is slightly larger than
in the original document.

[Page header: Damnant quod non intelligunt. 1]

PRESCRIPT

OF THE

* *