a Military government--as it had existed under Reconstruction;
but they objected to the presence of troops in States where
self-government had been conceded by Congress.

There was undoubtedly an instinctive reluctance among the people of
all sections to permit the location of troops in the neighborhood of
polling-places. It had happened that in the long-continued strife in
Kansas, Republicans complained that the anti-slavery voters felt
intimidated by the presence of troops of the Regular Army. The
application was, therefore, readily made to the existing case; and it
was not unnaturally or inaptly asked whether the presence of the
military at the elections of a State of the Union was not even more
offensive than their presence at the elections in a Territory of the
Union, which was directly under the control of the National Government.
On the abstract issue thus presented the Republicans were placed
somewhat at a disadvantage; and yet every white man making the
complaint knew that the influence of the troops was not to deprive him
of a single right, but was to prevent him from depriving the colored
man of all his rights.

Between the effort, therefore, of President Grant's administration to
protect free suffrage in the South, and the protest of the Democratic
party against protecting it by the military arm of the Government, a
physical contest ensued in the Southern States and a political contest
throughout the Union. It was perfectly understood, and openly
proclaimed, in the South, that the withdrawal of the protection of the
National Government from the States lately in rebellion meant the end
of suffrage to the colored man, or at least such impairment of its
force and influence as practically implied its total destruction. So
bitter was the hostility to impartial suffrage, so determined were the
men who had lately been in rebellion to concentrate all the political
power of the Southern States in their own hands, that vicious
organizations, of which the most notable were the Ku-Klux-Klans, were
formed throughout the South for the express purpose of depriving the
negro of the political rights conferred upon him by law. To effect
this purpose they resorted to a series of outrages calculated to
inspire the negroes with terror if they attempted to resist the will of
white men.

In prosecuting their purposes these clans and organizations hesitated
at no cruelty, were deterred by no considerations of law or of
hum