Page:Journal of Negro History, vol. 7.djvu/349



named, characteristically, sought to make capital out of the episode, which was only a joke.

When I went to bed very late the night before (or rather in the morning) I thought Tilden had really been elected and I did not enjoy the sensation. Nevertheless I did not feel as I did six years before, in the Ku Klux times. We lived then in the little cottage opposite the jail. The election was in August. Madam had gone North to visit her home-folks. I was alone in the house. Diagonally across the street was a disreputable bar-room, where all the "roughs" assembled every night; and for no less than three weeks after the "Conservative" victory these fellows kept up a shouting and howling, which was far from agreeable to me.

Those were the Kuklux days and the times were very uncomfortable, especially for a carpet-bagger, whose party had been overwhelmingly defeated. But I did not know anything about the Kuklux and was simple-minded enough not to fully credit their existence.

I had become a citizen of North Carolina in November, 1868; but being unaccustomed to the ways and prejudices of the people, I was not prepared to believe what was said about the Klans. Respectable Southern gentlemen denied their existence and I felt bound by their protestations. Yet a "den" met frequently in Greensboro; sometimes in Bogart's Hall; sometimes in the old Caldwell Institute (now torn down), again upstairs over the Lindsay corner (recently destroyed) opposite the court house and more often in the woods in the northern suburbs of the town, not a great ways from the residence of Judge Dick.

These meetings were occurring after the beginning of my residence in Greensboro, for nearly a year, but I did not know of them. Indeed, young men with whom I was well acquainted, actually were members of the fraternity—men whom I met every day, on social terms, in my boarding house at Mrs. Gilmer's. I had not reason to suspect their membership. Of course the assemblages were as secret as could be. When they were held in Bogart's Hall, for example—so I have since been told by participants—the only light was a candle, placed under a table, so that its rays could not shine through the curtained windows.

While I myself was incredulous, my political friends, Union men, natives of the South, familiar with the methods and peculiarities of the people, were firm believers in the entity of the Kuklux.