Shiloh." Then a few words of counsel as to
future behavior made an impression not easily forgotten or likely to
be disregarded.

Under ordinary circumstances such devices are unjustifiable. But in
the peculiar state of things then existing they served a good purpose.
It was not only better to deter the negroes from theft and other
lawlessness in this way than to put them in the penitentiary; but it
was the only way, at this time, by which they could be controlled. The
jails would not contain them. The courts could not or would not try
them. The policy of the Klan all the while was to deter men from
wrongdoing. It was only in rare, exceptional cases, and these the most
aggravated, that it undertook to punish.[46]

FOOTNOTES:

[37] "In the spring of 1867," says Wilson in the _Century Magazine_,
July, 1884. May was the month of meeting. This was just after the
Reconstruction Acts had been passed.--_Editor._

[38] I am convinced that the authors are mistaken in saying that the
first convention adopted the Prescript containing these declarations.
The Prescript adopted was the one reproduced in Appendix I. The other
one, reproduced in Appendix II, was adopted, it is believed, in
1868.--_Editor._

[39] Ex-Confederates were practically all excluded from the
suffrage.--_Editor._

[40] Notices were posted in every public place, and even pasted on the
backs of hogs and cows running loose in the streets.--_Miss Cora R.
Jones._

[41] Most members of the Klan had been Confederate soldiers and were
familiar with military drill and discipline.--_Editor._

[42] A later estimate places the membership of Ku Klux Klan at 72,000
in Tennessee alone.--_Washington Post, August 13, 1905._

[43] Forrest denied that he had made such an estimate. There were many
other orders similar to Ku Klux Klan and the total membership was
probably about half a million.--_Editor._

[44] It made the women feel safer. "And then came the reign of martial
law, and the Freedmen's Bureau. Those dark days of the Reconstruction
period rapidly followed the horrors of civil war, and the reign of the
carpetbagger began, goading the people to desperation. For their
protection the younger and more reckless men of the community now
formed a secret society, which masqueraded at night in grotesque and
grewsome character called the Ku Klux Klan. Always silent and
mysterious, mounted on horses, they swept noiselessly by in the
darkness with gleaming death's hea