class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">CHAPTER XVIII.

K. K. K. AS A FACTOR IN POLITICS. Late Announcement of the Earl of Beaconsfield before an Assembly of Englishmen—The Secret Societies of Europe—True Status with Regard to Current Politics—Combining the Offices of Regulator and Vigilante with that of Politician—Its Generical Belongings—Few Friends Unconnected with its Patronage—Negative Issue which it Introduced into the Great Campaign—Occupying a Voice in Southern Counsels—Unprincipled Plagiaries—Dangerous Sentimentalism Awakened at the North   172   CHAPTER XIX. THE LAST OF THE K.’S. A Popular Fallacy—Karl Konstant Kain, Esq.—Awaiting Events—An Intricate Subject for the Hospitals and Doctors—Getting Even with the Latter—Yellow Jack on a Raid—K. K. K., Esq. in his Prison Cell—Promoted to the Hospital—An Uncommon Defiance—K. Konstant Kain struggles back to Shore—“Do not Weep”—A Critical Moment—A New Cast and entire Change of Scenery—“Gruel” did it—Waited upon by a Deputation of Citizens—“Young Man, Go West”—The New Orleans Pest-House—Konfounded, Krooked Konundrum   180   CHAPTER XX. Conclusion   189

 

 

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KU-KLUX SKETCHES.

 

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

 

The treaty concluded between the conquered and conquering States at the close of the late civil war, while arranging all external differences and disarming physical resistance, yet did not provide for certain contingencies arising from the ethics of the dispute, which were destined to exert a powerful influence over the destinies of the American people. Undoubtedly the Southern troops surrendered their standards, and accepted the conqueror’s amnesty in good faith, and we can but believe that their allegiance to the restored Union—which had been promptly tendered—would have been crowned with this condition but for the disposition manifested by the civil power to review the pledges of its ambassadors in the field, and interpose supplementary conditions that could have no other beneficial effect than might be supposed to result, in a general way, from the humiliation of the conquered, and which would naturally tend to a revival of the casus belli. Having returned to their homes, and been soothed into accord with their new surroundings by those domestic Penates which had escaped the dispensation of fire and sword, through which they had mutually passed, “Lee’s ragamuffins,” as they had been styled by the Jenkinses of the period, set resolutely to work to restore their fallen fortunes, and, at the same time, so amend the shattered social fabric as that their personal and property rights might have that organized protection which cannot always be assured in times of civil disturbance. That they had forfeited any of those rights common to citizens of the republic under which they lived, by taking up arms in defence of a great national doctrine which, they were firmly persuaded, embodied its genius, if it did not represent its life, was a bombproof theory never seriously proposed until the glory of Appomattox had passed into history. To be denationalized, even in the sense which their severer critics ascribed as one of the conditions of their voluntary withdrawal from the national compact, carried with it discomforts of no mean significance; but to have the ill effects of their so-called treason visited upon them in the commonest concerns of social being, and to be denied a part in the administration of those State governments for whose (supposed) integrity they had imperilled their lives, was the harshest of all possible reconstruction issues, and one which candid thinkers will regard a very faint reflection of that peace policy which the measure purported to represent.

Having determined to supersede the military policy enforced against the Southern States by the Union generals, with such felicitous results, the National Legislature, which, immediately upon the close of the war, had developed those diagnostics which caused fair-minded men of the period to look upon it as a distempered and revolutionary body (and achieved for it the title of the “Rump Congress”), resolved to replace it by another, altogether dissimilar in type, and contrasting strangely with it even in reference to the objects supposed to be had in view. The people of the South, contending for the doctrine of State sovereignty, and pledging their fortunes and their lives in defence of a supposed inalienable right, and the masses of the North as strenuously opposing this theory, and asserting that no emergency could arise whereby a member of the Union might reclaim its sovereignty from the national compact, presented an issue altogether susceptible of settlement. And, indeed, proceeding upon the obvious plan that where questions of great practical moment cannot be adjudicated otherwise, they must submit to the a fortiori of determined majorities, the Southern people had already been driven to the amplest concessions regarding this measure; and whatever doubts they may have retained affecting the metaphysics of the discussion, were quite convinced that no other plan of adjustment would prove feasible.

But this inference (and it could be presented in no more tangible shape at the time) was far from satisfying that singular body of peace commissioners who, in the capacity of a national legislature, had assembled at Washington, not only to reaffirm the Southern doctrine, but to reconsider all the mighty results of Grant’s and Sherman’s campaigns, by disallowing the claims of the States lately in rebellion, and forcing them into that mourning period of so-called reconstruction and social and political anarchy, lately terminated. And thus, during the few years succeeding this new legislative departure, was presented the singular spectacle of States belonging to the National Union, who, by certain inherent properties of their being, could not forfeit, nor submit to forfeiture of the bond which established their identity therewith, acting independently of the national government in all things, save those non-essentials