the measures and methods employed
for sport might be effectually used to subserve the public welfare--to
suppress lawlessness and protect property. When propositions to this
effect began to be urged, there were many who hesitated, fearing
danger. The majority regarded such fears as groundless. They pointed
to the good results which had already been produced. The argument was
forcible--almost unanswerable. And the question was decided without
formal action. The very force of circumstances had carried the Klan
away from its original purpose. So that in the beginning of the summer
of 1867 it was virtually, though not yet professedly, a band of
regulators, honestly, but in an injudicious and dangerous way, trying
to protect property and preserve peace and order.[32]

After all, the most powerful agency in effecting this transformation,
the agency which supplied the conditions under which the two causes
just mentioned became operative, was the peculiar state of affairs
existing at the South at that time.

As every one knows, the condition of things was wholly anomalous, but
no one can fully appreciate the circumstances by which the people of
the South were surrounded except by personal observation and
experience; and no one who is not fully acquainted with all the facts
in the case is competent to pronounce a just judgment on their
behavior. On this account, not only the Ku Klux, but the mass of the
Southern people, have been tried, convicted and condemned at the bar
of public opinion, and have been denied the equity of having the
sentence modified by mitigating circumstances, which in justice, they
have a right to plead.

At that time the throes of the great revolution were settling down to
quiet. The almost universal disposition of the better class of the
people was to accept the arbitrament which the sword had accorded
them. On this point there was practical unanimity. Those who had
opportunity and facilities to do so, engaged at once in agricultural,
professional or business pursuits. There was but little disposition to
take part in politics.

But there were two causes of vexation and exasperation which the
people were in no good mood to bear. One of these causes related to
that class of men who, like scum, had been thrown to the surface in
the great upheaval.[33]

It was not simply that they were Union men from conviction. That would
have been readily forgiven then, as can be shown by pointing to
hundreds of cas