owed a force of eighty
thousand men; and it was here, and about this date, that some of the most
eventful scenes connected with the history of the K. K. K. were enacted.
This State had been committed to League control early after peace was
declared by the general government, and the bitter proscription at once
inaugurated against the white race, under the combined patronage of the
League and the existing State government, not only excited the strenuous
opposition of all those who anchored their faith to the Conservative idea
in politics throughout this and neighboring States, but called forth a
warm protest from those disinterested partisans at the North who had
recently been erected into what is known as the moderate Republican or
Independent party. Disfranchisement, in its most radical form, excluded
the intelligent voters of the State from all participation in its affairs;
tax laws came up for amendment at each session of the State legislature,
and in connection with other expenses of government (for such they had
become), were sextupled in the end; the most quiet and law-abiding
neighborhoods were placed under military surveillance, or driven to suffer
the penalty of confiscation acts whose terms might have included the
entire race of mankind; and finally, every device of ignorant and
intemperate legislation applied, whose effect would be to render the
government unsuited to the wants of the people, and convert the latter
into a body of malcontents. This end appears, indeed, to have been
contemplated by the League faction at that stage of its supremacy when its
attainment seemed most improbable; but when the reality, or something
which very much resembled it, came upon them, they disowned the abortion,
and invited their friends at the North to behold with what consistency
the old rebel stump was putting forth green shoots of disunion.

We shall not express a preference for either of these bad extremes of the
politics of that period, but in order to a proper understanding of the
question, we deem it no impropriety to state that it was a fact well
known, and illustrated elsewhere, that wheresoever the League animal
deposited its spawn, with due regard for atmospheric conditions, the K. K.
K. insect would shortly drop its chrysalis.

In looking over the history of those times in Tennessee, the student need
be at no loss in seeking out the exact causes of the Ku-Klux movement as
it existed on her soil, nor of finding it