uestered
forest grove, he was commanded to dismount, and with eyes still bandaged,
and the former policy of secrecy maintained in all particulars, was
conducted into the presence of the council. Here, without being permitted
to ask questions, he was requested to give heed to what was about to be
said, and when the Cyclops, or some individual commissioned by him, had
revealed to him the objects and polity of the organization known as K. K.
K., and the quality of allegiance exacted from those who entered its
ranks, he was requested to state whether he still wished to carry out his
original design of connecting himself with the Order. If this
interrogatory was replied to in the negative, some very positive oaths and
threats enjoining secrecy as to what had transpired were delivered to him,
and he was permitted to retire. [This policy was invariably pursued by the
Klan, and it is not probable that its vows were ever committed to an
individual who had not obtained the full consent of his mind to the
concessions he was required to make.] On the contrary, if an affirmative
reply was given, the ceremony of initiation was proceeded with,--a formula
which we shall not describe in this place, further than to say that the
vows, which were delivered in a kneeling posture, were of the most
approved iron-clad pattern, and that to each was attached a string of
penalties, categorically presented, which aimed at nothing less than the
annihilation of the transgressor.

It is wrong to infer, as many have done, that because the political views
maintained by the Klan corresponded to those which were avowedly held by
ex-Confederate soldiers at that period, that the former was recruited
from the latter in large measure, or, as the enemies of both were apt to
suggest, as an entirety. Though occupying the territory in which they were
domiciled, it is improbable that one-half the available force which the
former boasted was derived from the latter source, and it is certain that
a majority of the latter did not give their sanction nor countenance to
the measures adopted by the Klan in seeking redress for alleged political
wrongs. But a very large number of ex-Confederates entered its ranks, and,
perhaps for prudential (not political) reasons, the administration of Klan
affairs was, in a large measure, committed to this element. Its force, as
has been anticipated, was recruited from the entire white population of
the States which it occupied; and it