certainly was not wanting in that
_respect_ for which such movements are almost wholly dependent on the
character of their constituency. Members of State legislatures,
congressmen, and governors of States, took its vows upon them, and were
not unfrequently to be found at its midnight gatherings. In all National
and State elections the Klan gave its political suffrages to members of
the Order, or known sympathizers. Indeed, to effect its political ends
(which were the ends of its organization), there were few extremes of
contumacious conduct which it did not practise towards the existing State
governments. Not only did it throw the weight of its suffrages in behalf
of favorites--it forbade others the exercise of this privilege. Freedmen
who were deemed too ignorant to cast an intelligent ballot were visited at
their homes in the small hours of the night, and by measures of
intimidation, which not unfrequently included the lash, were driven to
accept an oath of lengthy abstinence from the League and the polls. White
men, who were obnoxious because of their too active instrumentality in
League affairs, or their excessive fondness for the class of society which
they encountered at its meetings, were equally unfortunate. During the
quiet hours of the night ghostly placards, bearing the caption K. K. K. in
large letters, and inscribed with the escutcheon of the Order (skull and
cross-bones), were posted on their doors, commanding them to "skip out" (a
technicality invented by the Klan), or expect the utmost vengeance of the
Order. Where the rank of the offender required that some more dignified
means of notification be employed, or where the individual was deemed to
represent very obdurate qualities of soul, instead of the ordinary method
aforesaid, an empty coffin was carted to his door, and in this horrible
symbol of its anathemas was placed the order of ejectment.

The social system was sought to be renovated in the use of the same
summary methods, and upon crimes of this nature the severest examples of
Klan disfavor were constantly visited. The carpet-bag element recently
introduced into the country suffered most frequently in this category; and
it is not too much to say, that the strict construction placed upon the
social laws of the country, and upon social decorum as an abstraction, by
the weird fraternity, was to this class one of the most intolerable
burdens of Southern exile. To miscegenate was quite bad enough (and