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marked and left with its former owner. Upon the dissolution of the Confederacy, the cotton so marked became the property of the Federal government, and a swarm of officials was appointed to locate it.

The search for Confederate cotton was a sort of carpetbaggers' festival. In theory the cotton agents were supposed to seize only the bales which bore the distinguishing marks of Confederate government ownership, but in practice they took nearly all they could lay their hands on.

The statistics relating to this blatant robbery are guesswork, but it is a certain fact that most of the cotton agents went back to the North bulging with money; and it is entirely probable that not more than half the seized cotton ever reached the Federal government.

§ 5

The Ku-Klux Klan took a long breath, rolled up its sleeves, and started in to exercise its peculiar talents on the carpetbagger situation. Its activities widened into a species of guerrilla warfare, with the carpet-baggers on one side, and the Ku-Klux and Southern sentiment in opposition.

Lawless and irresponsible, yet bound by its own standards and traditions, the Ku-Klux movement of the sixties was essentially a kind of Fascism-but a Fascism adapted to the American scene. It constituted a government within a government. In some parts of the South this shadowy empire was much stronger than the governments set up by the military and the carpet-baggers. Besides keeping the negroes at work, the activities of the Klan consisted principally of the elimination of undesirable white men.

The matter of elimination was usually accomplished by means of threats. Warning letters. Skulls and crossbones. Fierce invectives. Gloomy forebodings. All these solemn portents on a sheet of paper thrust under the door of the unwel

come resident. Sometimes the threats did not work, and the next step was a brutal whipping by unknown parties clad in white sheets. The whipping generally drove its recipient out of the county, or the state. If threats and whipping failed, the process of elimination was brought to a close by a quiet murder also by unknown parties.

Most of the army officers shared with the Southerners an active dislike for the politicians and carpet-baggers. It was a curious situation. The garrisons spent money in the Southern towns and, without exception, I think, treated the inhabitants as friends and neighbors. The people, as a rule, liked the troops, and some of the officers and men married Southern women. The carpet-bagger was the pariah of the community.

The letters of warning sent by the Ku-Klux were always written in a peculiar, lugubrious style. They were flatly pessimistic pieces of literature. Instead of the ordinary "Dear Sir" at the beginning of a letter the Ku-Klux usually started theirs with "God damn your soul." After this cheerless salutation the letter would run along in this fashion:

Take heed, for the pale horse is coming. His step is terrible; lightning is in his nostrils. He looks for a rider. Now this is to warn you, William Gober, that carpetbaggers and scalawags cannot live in this country. If you are not gone in ten days we shall come to you and the pale horse shall have its rider.

The terror inspired by the Ku-Klux lasted for many years after the Klan had passed away. I remember that in the little South Carolina town in which I was brought up there lived an ex-carpet-bagger named John Woolley. He had settled down in the community, had joined the Methodist church, and paid his bills, but the people of the place still treated him with a cold, snappish courtesy. This was in the middle eighties. The Ku-Klux organization had been dissolved so many years back

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that only middle-aged men could speak of it with personal knowledge. I heard them talk, and resolved to do a little KuKluxing myself. I was at that time a boy of ten.

In great secrecy I fashioned a tiny wooden coffin with a jack-knife. Then I cut out a little spade and put it in the coffin. Next, I took a piece of paper and drew a skull in red ink at the top of the sheet. On the paper I wrote in a childish scrawl: "John Woolley. God damn your soul," and continued with this rhyme:

Here's your coffin and spade;

In your grave you'll soon be laid.

I signed the epistle, "K. K. K." The whole concoction, wrapped in black paper, was cautiously laid by me on Mr. Woolley's doorstep one dark night. Next morning he appeared on our peaceful little streets with a double-barreled shotgun. "I'm ready for 'em," he announced. "I've got their warning, but they can't scare me." Despite this confident statement, I must say that he looked very scared, indeed. I remember clearly that he sat before the village drug store with his shotgun on his knees and wiped the cold sweat from his brow.

The Federal courts, in their efforts to ferret out the leaders of the Klan, ran up against a blank wall of reticence. Nearly every witness who came before the courts had heard vaguely of the Klan, but it was in the next county; there had never been any Ku-Klux activities in their neighborhood-and in the next county the Federal officers heard the same story.

The Ku-Klux Klan did a little good and a great deal of harm. Like all other militant secret societies, it put people on trial without giving them a hearing. It turned prejudice into an established system of conduct; and the glamor of its actions fastened a spirit of lawlessness on the Southern people. Any gang of ruffians could put on sheets and call themselves

Ku-Klux, and many of them did. Long after the Klan was disbanded, so-called Ku-Klux outrages continued. Highway bandits who were caught red-handed often called themselves Ku-Klux, and credited their activities to a high and mysterious mission.

T

CHAPTER XXVI

GRANT BECOMES PRESIDENT

§1

HE war between the President and Congress began in a splutter of speeches and threats. If Johnson had shown any desire to meet the moderates half-way, he might have voted down the Radicals and obtained control of legislation. But he did nothing of the kind; his attitude was one of obstinacy and challenge; in the end he drove the moderate faction of the Republican party over to the Radical side. The first phase of the struggle was a battle of vetoes. The President vetoed one bill after another. As soon as they came back to Congress they were passed with feverish enthusiasm, over the presidential disapproval.

In June, 1866, Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution and submitted it to the states for ratification.

The first section of the amendment declared that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States and of the states in which they reside. The next section gave the states the option of enfranchising all adult male citizens or suffering a reduction of their representation in Congress. The third section was intended to exclude ex-Confederates from Congress and, indeed, from all Federal offices. "But," this section continues, "Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability."

It may be noted that the amendment does not confer the right of suffrage on the negro; it only penalizes the states which refuse to allow him to vote by reducing their representation in Congress.