Page:The traitor; a story of the fall of the invisible empire (IA traitorstoryoffa00dixo).pdf/118

 the surviving veterans of the regiment he had commanded in the Civil War.

These men he instructed to watch the movements of Steve's followers, learn in advance of their intended raids, break them up by moral suasion if possible; by force as a last resort.

He had found the task a tremendous one. For the first time he realised the terrible meaning of the lawless power of the Klan. The secrecy of their movements under his own leadership had been perfect. Yet with his knowledge of their methods he had believed it would be comparatively easy to defeat their plans. He found it next to impossible. In spite of the utmost vigilance on the part of his committees, the new Klan had inaugurated a reign of folly and terror unprecedented in the history of the whole Reconstruction saturnalia.

They whipped scalawag politicians night after night and drove them from the county. They called on carpetbagger postmasters who immediately left for parts unknown. They whipped Negroes, young and old, for all sorts of wrongdoing, real or fancied, and finally began to regulate the general morals of the community. They whipped a rowdy for abusing his wife and on the same night tarred and feathered a white girl of low origin who lived in the outskirts of town and ran her from the county.