as allies, were proved right when it was too late. Said the
_Republican_, August 10, 1868, in protesting against the plan of the
party managers in organizing the Southern wing to consist mainly of the
blacks: "The Republican party cannot long maintain its supremacy at the
South by negro votes alone. The instincts of submission and dependence
in them and of domination in the whites, are too strong to permit such a
reversal of the familiar relations and the natural order. The
slave-holding element has learned to combine, conspire and command, in
the best school on earth, and they will certainly come to the top. Nor
is it desirable that such a state of things should continue."

The old official class being excluded--to the number, it was estimated,
of 160,000,--and the stand-aloof policy, or drift rather, prevailing in
the political field, it was the more lawless element that first began to
conspicuously assert the white supremacy. There grew up an organization
called "the Ku-Klux Klan," designed at first partly as a rough sport and
masquerade, partly to overawe the negroes. There were midnight ridings
in spectral disguises, warnings, alarms and presently whippings and even
murders. The society, or imitations of it, spread over most of the
South. It was at its height in 1868-70, and in the latter year it
gradually gave way, partly owing to vigorous measures ordered from
Washington, and partly perhaps as legitimate political combinations
again occupied the whites. But it is to be noted that throughout the
decade of reconstruction, though the present fashion is to lay exclusive
stress on the wrong-doing of the negroes and their friends, yet the
physical violence, frequent and widespread, was almost wholly practiced
by the whites.

From the political torpor, due to discouragement and resentment, there
was an early recovery. When it was found that cotton-planting pure and
simple, with ignoring of politics, resulted in heavy taxes for the
planter; when to the first numbness there succeeded the active
smart,--the whites betook themselves to the resource which in most
States soon proved adequate,--the ballot, and political combination. In
several States the whites were easily in the majority, and where they
were slightly outnumbered their superior intelligence soon gave them the
advantage. In Georgia, finally readmitted at the end of 1869, the
Democrats--constituting the great body of the whites--carried the
election in the next