away northern officeholders with oppressive tactics, it had leaped in size until when the moment came for smothering it out its leaders discovered it beyond control.

Not until the full fire department of federal and state law had been called out did the Invisible Empire cease to operate.

TENNESSEE ACTS AGAINST IT

By 1872 the white-robed knights of midnight, whose purpose to enforce law had in itself yielded to lawlessness, were for the most part disappeared. But so, in one state after another, had the northern carpetbagger and the southern scalawag.

Tennessee, where the Klan was founded, was the first to take legislative action against it. In September, 1868, its legislature passed a statute making membership in the Klan punishable by a fine of $500 and imprisonment for not less than five years.

As a result, in February, 1869, Gen. Nathan B. Forrest, former cavalry officer of the confederate army, who was grand wizard of the order, officially proclaimed the Ku-Klux Klan and Invisible Empire dissolved and disbanded forever.

But members of the adventurous law-assuming organization were reluctant to yield their mysterious power.

The wizard's order went into effect. Klan property was burned.

NEW BANDS SPRING UP

But immediately in southern states, as far west as Arkansas, there sprang up disguised bands, some of them neighborhood groups only, some of them bands of ruffians who traveled in the night to win personal ends, still others new orders founded in imitation of the Ku-Klux and using similar methods.

Of the last, the Knights of the White Camellia was the largest. In some private notebooks of the south its membership was said to be even larger than the parent Klan.

From New Orleans early in 1868, it spread across to Texas and back to the Carolinas. Racial supremacy was its purpose.

Only white men 18 years or older were invited to the secrets of its initiation, and in their oath they promised not only to be obedient and secret, but to "maintain and defend the social and political superiority of the white race on this continent."

Initiates were enjoined, notwithstanding, to show fairness to the negroes and to concede to them in the fullest measure "those rights which we recognize as theirs."

"PALE FACES" AND OTHERS

Other bands of nightriders responded to the names of "Pale Faces," "White Leaguers," the "White Brotherhood" and the "Constitutional Union Guards."

Surviving members are hazy as to their aims and methods, the character of their membership, their members, and the connection between them.

Federal recognition that the Invisible Empire, whether it was the original Klan or not, was everywhere a real empire came in the spring of 1871, when a senate committee presented majority and minority reports on the result of its investigations of the white man's will to rule against the freedmen's militia in the south.

The majority report found that the Ku-Klux Klan was a criminal conspiracy of a distinctly political nature against the laws and against the colored citizens.

The minority found that Ku-Klux disorder and violence was due to misgovernment and an exploitation of the states below the Mason and Dixon line by radicals.

CONGRESS ACTS AGAINST KLAN

The first Ku-Klux bill was passed in April, 1871, "to enforce the fourteenth amendment." Power of the president to use troops to put down the white-hooded riders was hinted at.

In the next month the second Ku-Klux bill was passed to enforce "the right of citizens in the United States to vote."

In 1872 federal troops were sent into the south to back up his anti-Ku-Klux proclamation. By the end of 1872 the "conspiracy" was thought to be overthrown.

At various times individuals in the south and elsewhere have tried to put breath into the Klan's dead body.

It was left for "Grand Wizard" Simmons of Atlanta to accomplish it. His new organization, he explains, is imbued with the Ku-Klux "spirit."

"That this spirit may live always to warm the hearts of many men," he says, "is the paramount ideal of the Knights of the Ku-Klux Klan."

President Grant answered: "Thou shalt not" to the Ku-Klux Klan in 1871. He backed up his word with armed troops.

During the whole of one session of congress senators and representatives serving in Washington in the years just after the civil war occupied themselves in stripping the masques off the southern night-riders.

Into the country south of the Mason and Dixon line they dispatched congressional investigators, whose duty it was to enter the "portals of the invisible empire" and discover what was hiding behind them. When they reported that the Ku-Klux Klan, decked out in the uniform of ghosts, was waging midnight warfare on the negro and carpet-bagger congress passed legislation which suppressed the order.

PUTS ROBES OUT OF FASHION

Action was quick. Almost before the government printing presses had finished turning out ten volumes in which the committee recorded the results of their investigation the white robes and hoods of the Ku-Kluxes had gone out of fashion in the old south.

President Grant in 1871 was without precedent. His law enforcers, just getting acquainted with the amendment which freed the slaves, were without a statute to deal with the armed clique which proposed to keep the negro down in the day by frightening him in the night. The emergency bill which congress passed at that period empowers the regular army or the navy to put down any unlawful combination which is doing domestic violence.

When congress met for its forty-second session in 1871, the cross bones and skull and coffin with which the Ku-Klux were marking their threats had become the symbols of terrorism in the south. So grave was the situation that speakers on the floor of the house, when the session opened, classed the conspiracy of the Klan "less formidable, but not less dangerous to American liberty" than the just-ended war of the rebellion. They charged that as well as binding its members to execute crimes against its opponents in the social-political life of the south, it protected them against conviction and punishment by perjury on the witness stand and in the jury box. Representatives asked why, of all offenders, not one had been convicted.

PRESIDENT URGES ACTION

On March 23, 1871, President Grant sent a message to both houses in which he recommended that all other business be postponed until the Klan was made subservient to the flag.

"A condition of affairs now exists in some of the states of the Union rendering life and property insecure and the carrying of the mails and the collection of revenue dangerous," his message said. "The proof that such a condition of affairs exists in some localities is now before the senate. That the power to correct these evils is beyond the control of the senate authorities I do not doubt; that the power of the executive of the United States, acting within the limits of existing laws is sufficient for present emergencies, is not clear. Therefore, I urgently recommend such legislation as in the judgment of congress shall effectually secure, life, liberty and property and the enforcement of law in all parts of the United States. It may be expedient to provide that such law as shall be passed in pursuance of this recommendation shall expire at the end of the next session of congress. There is no other subject on which I would recommend legislation during the present session."

"FORCE BILL AT DISPOSAL"

The law which was at the disposal of