An Englishman's Statement of the Causes Somers, Southern States, p. 153. Somers traveled through the Southern states in 1870 and 1871. [1871] THE white people in the South at the close of the war were alarmed, not so much by the threatened confiscation of their property by the Federal Government, as by . . more present dangers of life and property, virtue and honour, arising from the social anarchy around them. The negroes. . were disorderly. Many of them would not settle down to labour on any terms, but roamed about with arms in their hands and hunger in their bellies, and the governing power, with the usual blind determination of a victorious party, was thinking only all the while of every device of suffrage and reconstruction by which "the freedmen" might be strengthened and made, under Northern dictation, the ruling power in the country. Agitators of the loosest fiber came down among the towns and plantations, and, organizing a Union league, held midnight meetings with the negroes in the woods, and went about uttering sentiments which, to say the least, in all the circumstances were anti-social and destructive. Crimes and outrages increased. The law, which must be always more or less weak in thinly populated countries, was all but powerless; and the new Governments in the South, . . were . . unable to repress disorder, or to spread a general sense of security throughout the community. A real terror reigned for a time among the white people; and in this situation the "Ku-Klux" started into being. It was one of those secret organizations which spring up disordered states of society, when the bonds of law and govern ment are all but dissolved, and when no confidence is felt in the regular administration of justice. But the power with which the "Ku-Klux" moved in many parts of the South, the knowledge it displayed of all that was going on, the fidelity with which its secret was kept, and the conplacency with which it was regarded by the general community, gave this mysterious body a prominence and importance seldom attained by such illegal and deplorable associations. Nearly every respectable man in the Southern States was not only disfranchised, but un der fear of arrest or confiscation; the old foundations of authority were utterly razed before any new ones had yet been laid, and in the dark and benighted interval the remains of the swept, after a long and heroic day of fair fight, from the field flitted before the eyes of the people in this weird and midnight shape of a "Ku-Klux-Klan." Confederate armies Stealing and Race Prejudice Ku Klux Report, South Carolina testimony, p. 797. Statement of Simpson Bobo, planter and iron worker. [1871] THEY take up a negro whom they know has been guilty of stealing, and make him state all that he knows about others stealing. Some thirty miles from here, the neighbors were losing their cotton last fall. . . The negroes would go into the field at night and carry it off. They caught one negro at it. They told him nothing about it, and a few neighbors put on disguises and went and took up that fellow. Well, the negroes had an impression at first that they were ghosts. . . They took him up, and asked him if he could tell what he was taken up for. . . They insisted upon his giving out what they had taken him up for. He says: "I guess you have got me here for stealing Massa Jones's cotton." . . They said yes, that was it. They said, "Have you stolen anything else? Do you know of anybody who has stolen ?" And if they did not know of anything else.. they said to him, "Now, we are going to whip you for that; but if you go home, and go to work, we will have no more trouble with you." They whipped him and turned him loose; and a day or two afterward they took up another. . . The moment they took this man up, he said it was for the killing of such a man's pig. So it was with several others that they called on and caught up, and they say it has cured the neighborhood of stealing. That is a sample of a great many cases of the kind that have occurred. Another sample I will give you is of this sort: The lower class of white people . have a great prejudice against the negro, because he is a competitor for common labor, and wherever they come into collision, those fellows form themselves into a Klan, and take up negroes that come in their way, and punish them. . . For instance, a white man rents a tract of land to a negro. Some white man wants to get the land. The owner prefers giving it to the negro. For the purpose of punishing the negro, he [some white renter] will then get up a parcel of neighbors, and in disguise they will go and whip the negro half to death. Desire to Get Rid of the Negro Ku Klux Report, Alabama testimony, pp. 1175, 1757. Statements of (1) General S. W. Crawford, United States Army, and (2) Judge W. S. Mudd, Conservative. [1871] [1] IT is a class of white men, not possessed of wealth or real estate, that exists in Alabama, many of them in the mountains, that is hostile to the negro. Those people see him on the rich lands and possessed of political privileges which increases the old jealousy, and they know that if they can get rid of the negro, have him colonized for instance, it will be better for them both on the point of association and the division of poli tical rights. [2] In some sections of the State there is a feeling of personal hostility to the negro; and in some portions of my circuit they will not let a negro live; that is, it is a white population; and they do not want to come in contact with the negro. They want to cultivate the lands themselves, and they want to have an exclusively white society. . In one of the precincts of my county, all the people of which voted the republican ticket for President, I ascertained a short time ago.. that the Ku-Klux had formed an organization there, consisting entirely of boys and young men. . . There have been no black men in that county, except a few. . and they have been made to leave it.. There is scarcely any county in the State where there is not the landholder, who was formerly a large slaveholder, and who desires to retain this [negro] labor in the country to cultivate the land; and these poorer classes, who never owned slaves or had much property, and who would much prefer to have the negro out of the country. A Scalawag's Opinion of the Causes Ku Klux Report, Alabama testimony, p. 527, et seq. Statement of [1871] THE fourteenth amendment . . made the negroes citizens, effectually changed this whole status of his situation, and . . aroused all prejudices and hostility of the southern people. The third section. . disqualifying a large class of white men, and many of them the best men in the State. . while at the time when it was adopted in Alabama negroes were eligible to office, greatly intensified the bitterness, and . . in the minds of some who otherwise might have been induced to sustain the Govern ment in its reconstruction policy, created such a prejudice that they became indifferent or opposed to it. The reconstruction measures of Congress were regarded by the great body of the white people of the South as usurpations, unconstitutional, and void, and all who sustained them were most bitterly denounced as enemies to the people. These measures, conferring on the negroes the rights of citizens, under these acts even the right to vote in reconstructing the State, met all the prejudice, bitter hostility, and denunciations that could well be entertained by any people, and every prejudice and passion was appealed to to bring them into odium and contempt, and defeat, if possible, their operation. . . Congress admitted the State of Alabama under this constitution, they regarded it as a violation of the plighted faith of Congress; and while hostility and opposition to the principles of the newly constructed State were already as strong as human nature was capable of entertaining, this greatly added fuel to the smothered fire of opposition, and it broke out in volcanic flames of denunciation, that appealed to all the prejudices of race passions of hate, that it was possible to be entertained by a brave and chivalrous people. The whole reconstruction policy was denounced as a tyrannical usurpation, the government as a usurped negro government, and every officer as a mean, tyrannical usurper a Government that placed negroes over and made white men subject to negro rule. This led to a bitterness, to social and business ostracism and 1. The constitution had not been legally adopted. A proscription, to outrages of person, to whippings, lynchings, murders, and assassinations of persons who favored the Government, and especially to negroes who set up to enjoy the rights thus conferred, the one-half of which, in my opinion, never has and probably never will be told, a great deal of which was done by disguised bands; and while, in my opinion, a comparatively few were actually engaged in these acts, such were the hostility and hatred of the great mass that they felt but little disposition to actively intervene to prevent similar outrages or to punish those who did commit. . . When the war was over, the Southern people had no idea, while they expected slavery to be abolished, that their slaves were to be made their political equals... My opinion is that the great mass felt as I believe any other good, brave and chivalrous people feeling and believ ing as they did would have felt . . the great mass of the people are as good as any other people. Violation of the Appomattox Programme Ku Klux Report, Georgia testimony, p. 316, et seq. Statement of This point [1871] I KNOW that the general feeling at the North is that our people are hostile toward the Government of the United States... Commanding as I did, Jackson's corps of the Confederate army, for some time before the surrender, and at the time of the surrender one wing of that army, I know very well that if the programme which our people saw set on foot at Appomattox Court-House had been carried out if our people had been met in the spirit which we believe existed there among the officers and soldiers, from General Grant down — we would have had no disturbance in the South. . . I know it was generally felt that there was shown toward the officers and men who surrendered at Appomattox Court-House a degree of courtesy . . which was surprising and gratifying, and which produced at the time a very fine effect. I want to say, moreover, that the alienation of our people from the Governmentan alienation which, resulting from the war, continued to some |