es. But the majority of the class referred to had
played traitor to both sides, and were Union men now only because that
was the successful side. And worse than all, they were now engaged in
keeping alive discord and strife between the sections, as the only
means of preventing themselves from sinking back into the obscurity
from which they had been upheaved. Their conduct was malicious in the
extreme and exceedingly exasperating. These men were a "thorn in the
flesh" of the body, politic and social; and the effort to expel it set
up an inflammation which for a time awakened the gravest apprehensions
as to the result.

The second disturbing element was the negroes. Their transition from
slavery to citizenship was sudden. They were not only not fitted for
the cares of self-control, and maintenance so suddenly thrust upon
them, but many of them entered their new role in life under the
delusion that freedom meant license. They regarded themselves as
freedmen, not only from bondage to former masters, but from the common
and ordinary obligations of citizenship. Many of them looked upon
obedience to the laws of the state--which had been framed by their
former owners--as in some measure a compromise of the rights with
which they had been invested. The administration of civil law was only
partially re-established. On that account, and for other reasons,
there was an amount of disorder and violence prevailing over the
country which has never been equaled at any period of its history. If
the officers of the law had had the disposition and ability to arrest
all law-breakers, a jail and court-house in every civil district would
have been required.

The depredations on property by theft and by wanton destruction for
the gratification of petty revenge, were to the last degree annoying.
A large part of these depredations was the work of bad white men, who
expected that their lawless deeds would be credited to the negroes.
But perhaps the most potent of all causes which brought about this
transformation was the existence in the South of a spurious and
perverted form of the "Union League."[34]

It would be as unfair to this organization as it existed at the North,
to charge it with the outrages committed under cover of its name, as
it is to hold the Ku Klux Klan responsible for all the lawlessness and
violence with which it is credited.

But it is a part of the history of those times that there was a
widespread and desperately activ