mation may be volunteered in its support, that the rank and file of
the Order comprised the radical element in Southern politics (native),
Democrats and Republicans (and not a few of the latter), a force, which it
was reasonable to presume, would enterprise radical measures only in
support of its aims. The organization, then, standing alone, and
segregated from any influences which itself may have set in motion, could
not have failed of ungracious treatment from those domestic surroundings
which it had ignored, but upon which it was confessedly dependent. The
great _party_ from which it had seceded, controlled by a rigid system of
morals in politics, viewed from habit all such movements with suspicion;
and as there was nothing in either the manners or the policy of this
departure calculated to remove the antipathies of the prejudiced, or to
win the affections of the disengaged, reflector of opinion, it failed
altogether to secure discriminations in its favor, which would have placed
it above such considerations. From this standpoint (_i. e._, its
individuality) it conciliated nobody, for even its externals were
forbidding; and the ignorant and educated classes alike--though perhaps
from diverse considerations--cherished a suppressed sentiment unfavorable
to its affectation of the supernatural, and its partiality for the shadowy
in nature.

But while it lost popularity where it should have gained it,--through
generical belongings which, possibly, could not have been rendered more in
harmony with the public fancy,--there was certainly nothing reassuring to
its fellow-citizens in the record which it put before the world. While, as
we have said, there was nothing monstrous, nor even designedly criminal in
its acts, there was so much that offended against propriety, and required
explanation withal, that those who had not been estranged before, as well
as those who had, became hopelessly so. It had not been in existence a
twelvemonth, before its name, in the localities which it frequented most,
became a by-word signifying something very forbidding and disagreeable, if
not actually criminal. In the dozen States or more whence its force was
recruited, it had not half a hundred friends unconnected with its
patronage, and these could hardly have been induced to have made a public
profession of their preference.

Its influence on Southern politics, then, could not have been favorable;
and having said so much as to the positive eff