200 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



" I will now give the summary to which I 

 have referred. In North Carolina fourteen 

 counties are shown in which outrages occurred, 

 and in them there occurred eighteen homicides 

 and three hundred and fifteen whippings. In 

 South Carolina, nine counties, in which the 

 testimony taken hy the committee shows there 

 were thirty-five homicides and two hundred 

 and seventy-six other outrages. The present- 

 ment of the grand-jury says there were forty 

 homicides in those counties, and over two 

 thousand cases of other outrages. In Georgia 

 there are twenty-nine counties shown, in 

 which seventy-two homicides and one hundred 

 and twenty-six cases of whippings are dis- 

 closed by the testimony. In Alabama there 

 are twenty-six counties, in which two hundred 

 and fifteen homicides are shown to have oc- 

 curred, and one hundred and sixteen cases of 

 other outrages. In Mississippi there are 

 twenty counties in which there are twenty- 

 three homicides, and seventy-six cases of out- 

 rages, by this testimony ; and in Florida, in the 

 one county of Jackson I have not had time 

 to look through the other portions of the tes- 

 timony one hundred and fifty-three homi- 

 cides have occurred in that county alone since 

 the war ; and let it not be supposed that these 

 even are all. These foot up ninety-nine coun- 

 ties, five hundred and twenty-six homicides 

 and twenty-nine hundred and nine cases of 

 other outrages shown in this testimony, and 

 by this finding of the grand-jury. 



"It is alleged that in all these proceedings 

 the men are of that class in society who have 

 no countenance. Sir, let me call your atten- 

 tion to two or three facts. The minority of 

 the committee have admitted it is an admis- 

 sion that General Napoleon B. Forrest and 

 General John B. Gordon were the first men 

 who were at the organization of this klan. 

 Who are N. B. Forrest and J. B. Gordon ? I 

 suppose that for political purposes I could give 

 them ,no higher indorsement than to state that 

 they were both delegates at large from their 

 respective States of Tennessee and Georgia in 

 the Democratic National Convention of 1868 ; 

 and taking the testimony of Schenck, of North 

 Carolina, that he considered he was swearing, 

 when he was initiated in the Ku-klux organi- 

 zation, to support the platform of that conven- 

 tion, it is not much to be wondered at that 

 the platform was so construed when two men 

 who are admitted to have organized the Ku- 

 klux were delegates at large in that conven- 

 tion, and their position ought to rank them as 

 respectable men. 



" As to the other denial, that this organiza- 

 tion has any thing political in it, I wish to say 

 here that I do not care whether it has any 

 thing political in it or not. I do not care 

 whether these outrages have been animated by 

 partisan hate or not. There is the fact : they 

 have been committed upon the poor and de- 

 fenceless, and they have been unable to secure 

 redress. Until this legislation of Congress 



and the exercise of power by the President, 

 the men who committed these offences could 

 not be brought to punishment by the courts. 

 I care not whether the offences were com- 

 mitted by Republicans on Democrats or by 

 Democrats on Republicans, or without any 

 shadow of partisan feeling, every dictate of 

 humanity, every impulse of enlightened civili- 

 zation requires and demands that the Govern- 

 ment shall extend its power for the purpose 

 bringing these offenders to justice and of prc 

 tecting the defenceless. 



"But, sir, I have given enough to sho^ 

 what its political character is. I do not w r ish 

 to go at large into the mere partisan aspect of 

 this case. There is abundant material for it. 

 Turn to its oaths ' against radicals ; ' to its 

 constitution ' to relieve those suffering from 

 radical misrule ; ' turn to the finding of that 

 grand-jury in Columbia, South Carolina; to 

 the testimony of hundreds of witnesses both in 

 and out of the order, where the victims testi- 

 fied that they were whipped to compel them 

 to renounce their radicalism ; where the mem- 

 bers of the organization testify and confess 

 that the defeat of radicalism was the purpose 

 of the organization. Go on all through this 

 testimony, that of Schenck, of North Carolina, 

 in which he admits that he went into the or- 

 ganization not believing that it would coun- 

 tenance violence, but that he went into it as a 

 political organization; that he afterward at- 

 tempted to divert it from violence and could 

 not do it. Take the identification of Forrest 

 and of Gordon with it in the beginning, Hamp- 

 ton's appeal for it in the end. Take the fact 

 that another prominent man in South Carolina. 

 J. Banks Lyle, a member of the South Carolina 

 Legislature, fled also at the time the proclama- 

 tion was issued ; and so well satisfied were Lis 

 own Democratic associates, from the county 

 from which he was elected, of his complicity 

 with this organization that they voted with 

 the other members of the Legislature to de- 

 clare his seat vacant. All these facts show 

 that there is a political significance in the or- 

 ganization. 



" I come now to the views of the minority 

 on this subject. They say that the white and 

 the black citizen cannot coexist in the same 

 Government. That feeling is inculcated in the 

 Ku-klux Klan of the South. It has been one 

 of the fruitful sources of these outrages ; and 

 I regret to find that, notwithstanding the con- 

 stitutional amendments have declared the ne- 

 gro to be free, to be a citizen, and to be enti- 

 tled to all his civil and political rights, we 

 are even now, as the result of this investiga- 

 tion, told that the time is near when those 

 rights shall be taken from him. 



" There are many causes assigned for these 

 outrages : the debts of the States, the recon- 

 struction acts, bad legislation. I do not, at 

 this time, propose to go into any discussion of 

 them. I am discussing the evil itself, its ex- 

 istence, its magnitude, its power, its extent, 



