anite citadel at Nashville. The
League head-quarters in various parts of the State were succumbing one by
one to the new element of conquest, and, indeed, the State seemed on the
eve of a revolution, by which, if no more serious results were attained,
its territory would be rendered untenable for that class of its population
which was known to its enemies as the dark-lantern faction. In this
emergency, the leaders of the L. L. resolved to call a State council of
the Order, over whose deliberations the Governor should preside, and whose
object would be to devise ways and means for the destruction of their
troublesome enemies. Great preparations were made accordingly, and without
divulging their plans, it was resolved, at the conclusion of the secret
proceedings, to hold a mass meeting at the capital which should review the
whole subject. This body assembled at the specified date, but not before
the rival party had become fully acquainted with its plans and purposes,
and in convention assembled resolved upon counter measures.

On the very evening which the Council had set apart for its introductory
proceedings (in the city of Nashville), the indefatigable K.'s had issued
commands throughout the State requiring every member of the Order to
report at his Den head-quarters for special service. A force of spies was
dispatched to the neighborhood of the League Council, and the brief
period which was to elapse before the Solons would arrive and enter upon
the solemn business in hand was appropriated by these secret agents, and
their co-conspirators in other neighborhoods, to the work of obtaining
information from deserters, chance prisoners, etc., as to the exact
location and surroundings of the League places of rendezvous throughout
the State. Indeed, while the League had busied itself with a very red
conflagration devoted to the Ku-Klux fat, whensoever they should overtake
that slippery substance, the much persecuted "krookeds" had doubled back
on them, and only awaited a fair wind to convert their little game into a
"double reversible," quite as complicated as any that had dawned upon the
patent-machine mind previous to that date.

A war of extermination against the League had been resolved upon months
before by the leaders of the Klan, but a favorable moment for a decisive
blow, or the emergency requiring it, had not arrived, until both were
visible in the proposed State council of the Order and the objects it
would conside