tion was very
seriously aggravated by the incendiary teachings of The Union League.
The people, therefore, in some parts of the South, offset this secret
society with another, which was called the "Ku Klux Klan." This
organization was intended to prevent violence and to restore order
in communities; but the spirit of it was very frequently violated
by lawless persons, who, acting in the name of the "Klan," subjected
defenseless negroes to cruel treatment.

There is no darker period in the history of the State than that of
reconstruction. The tax payers were robbed in the most reckless way,
and the rights of citizens were entirely disregarded. Even when the
Republican Congress, responsive to the voice of conservative Northern
opinion, turned its back on the carpet-bag government of Georgia,
these men made a tremendous effort to extend their rule unlawfully. The
carpet-bag Legislature was in session three hundred and twenty-eight
days, and cost the State nearly one million dollars; whereas the cost of
legislation from 1853 to 1862, nine years, was not nine hundred thousand
dollars. In one year the State Road took in a million dollars and a
half; and of this immense sum, only forty-five thousand dollars was paid
into the treasury. Added to this, the road had been run into debt to the
amount of six hundred thousand dollars, and it had been run down to
such an extent that five hundred thousand was needed to place it in good
condition.

During this trying period, Joseph E. Brown, who had been so popular
with the people, was under a cloud. He had advised accepting the
reconstruction measures in the first instance, so that they might be
carried out by men who had the confidence and the esteem of the State;
but this wise proposition brought upon his head only reproaches and
abuse. The public mind was in such a state of frenzied uneasiness, the
result of carpetbag robbery and recklessness, that the people would
listen to no remedy except passionate defiance and denunciation. When
the name of Brown was mentioned only as a handle of abuse, Benjamin H.
Hill became the leader and the idol of the people. When, in 1870, Hill
issued an address declaring that the reconstruction must be accepted by
the people, he was at once made the object of the most violent attacks.
But Brown was right in 1864, and Hill was right in 1870, and the people
were wrong. They paid dearly for their blindness in the wrongs imposed
on them by men who were nei