ed them to a new species
of bondage. Southern slaves they had been but by the new labor legislation
they were transformed into Southern serfs, chained to the soil by
cunningly devised laws to regulate their labor and movement. Force and
violence toward the blacks were relied upon to put through this
legislative and administrative program. This program was the cause of
Northern interference in the Southern situation at this juncture. But when
Congress intervened by its reconstruction measures to defeat the
reactionary program of the South, there swept over that section a
crime-storm of devastating fury. The old master class organized their
purpose in respect to the Negro, and their hatred of everything Northern
into a secret society known as the "Ku Klux Klan," which was nothing else
than a gigantic conspiracy for the commission of crime. Lawlessness and
violence filled the land, and terror stalked abroad by day and night. The
"Ku Klux Klan" burned and murdered by day, and it burned and murdered by
night. The Southern states had actually relapsed into barbarism. During
that period a new generation was conceived and born to the South by both
races--a generation that was literally conceived in lawlessness and born
into crime-producing conditions. Lawlessness was its inheritance and the
red splotch of violence its birthmark.

The period covered by this crime-storm was a bad way to begin the
education of the Negroes in respect for law, in self control and in
civilization. For they found no law strong enough to protect them in their
lives or property or freedom from the murderous attacks of that terrible
secret organization. Education in self-control, and in respect for
constituted authority became impossible where the dominating feeling of
the Negroes was one of terror. And as for civilization it was beaten down
by the red hand of violence. The blacks during these years were crushed
between two irreconcilable forces, two antagonistic governments which were
locked in a death grapple for possession of that section. The one
government was open and regular, while the other was secret and lawless.
The first was supported by a few native and Northern whites and by the
great body of the blacks, and the second was upheld by the great body of
the native whites under the trained and ruthless leadership of the old
master class, who would have no government, no social order which was not
set up by themselves.

During those dark years t