The Nation's Peril. AnonymousЧитать онлайн книгу.

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      INTRODUCTORY.

       The facts contained in the succeeding pages, have been compiled from authenticated sources, and with especial reference to their truthfulness.

      That portion derived from the diary of a gentleman, twelve years a resident of the South, was not originally intended for public circulation; but this, with a variety of other matter obtained from official records, formed the basis of a lecture delivered at Tremont Temple, in the city of Boston, on the evening of March 27th, 1872, and excited a great degree of interest among the people to learn more of the subject-matter treated upon.

      Communications relating thereto came in from all parts of the country, and it was decided by the friends of the compiler to present all the facts in convenient form for general circulation, as the best means of complying with this demand.

      They are here given with such additions to the original matter, as will enable the general reader more fully to comprehend the origin, rise and progress of the various orders of the Ku Klux Klans, their social and political significance, and their general bearing upon the welfare of the nation at large.

      The thrilling stories of outrage and crime herein narrated, are authenticated beyond the power of refutation.

      “Against all such crimes, as well as against incompetency and corruption in office, the power of an intelligent public sentiment and of the courts of justice should be invoked and united; and appealing for patience and forbearance in the North, while time and these powers are doing their work, let us also appeal to the good sense of Southern men, if they sincerely desire to accomplish political reforms through a change in the negro vote. If their theory is true that he votes solidly now with the republican party, and is kept there by his ignorance and by deception, all that is necessary to keep him there is to keep up by their countenance, the Ku Klux Organization. Having the rights of a citizen and a voter, neither of those rights can be abrogated by whipping him. If his political opinions are erroneous, he will not take kindly to the opposite creed when its apostles come to inflict the scourge upon himself, and outrage upon his wife and children. If he is ignorant, he will not be educated by burning his school houses and exiling his teachers. If he is wicked, he will not be made better by banishing to Liberia his religious teachers. If the resuscitation of the State is desired by his labor, neither will be secured by a persecution which depopulates townships, and prevents the introduction of new labor and of capital.”

      That these pages may be received in the same spirit of charity and kindly feeling in which they have been penned, is the sincere and earnest wish of

      THE COMPILER.

      THE NATION’S PERIL.

       The transition of the social status of the colored classes in the South, from a condition of abject servitude to one of the most enlarged freedom, crowned with that dearest of all rights to the heart of the freeman, the elective franchise, although gradual, and attended with difficulties that have seemed at times almost insurmountable, goes steadily forward, under the hand of a beneficent and all seeing God, who watcheth alike over the just and the unjust, enjoining upon them, in return for his goodness, a strict observance of his commands towards one another.

      Human progress in this country, during the past ten years, has taken giant strides, although met by obstacles of a character so formidable as to impose a most extraordinary task upon those engaged in the great work of social reform and the establishment of the rights of all to civil, religious and political liberty, as guaranteed by the Constitution. The spirit of the age is reformatory. Religion, politics, art and the sciences have ever been the subjects of reformation and progression, and by these have been lifted from comparative darkness in the past to the broad fields of light in the more intelligent present. In the grand plan of an all-wise Creator, nothing has been allowed to permanently obstruct the onward march of the races and nations of the earth; and for the accomplishment of this glorious purpose, no sacrifice, it appears, has been deemed too great that would aid in its fulfillment. The travail and labor of nations, the desolation and destruction of whole communities, and in some instances the entire annihilation of races of men, have been the penalties demanded and paid for their long persistence in the ways of sin and wickedness.

      The American Republic has been no exception to the imperative rule. It bore within its folds the crime and curse of slavery, a foul and corroding ulcer that could only be burned out and destroyed by the terrible visitations of fire and the sword, and in the eradication of which all the wisdom of the nation’s greatest counselors, all the terrible enginery of modern warfare, and the skill and persistence of the chosen leaders of the people were to be brought into requisition. A fierce and sanguinary contest of four years’ duration ended, under the hand of God, in the grand triumph of the right; but the war of the rebellion left the South in a state of social disintegration, in which the leading spirits who had fomented the internecine contest assumed to control the masses, and perpetuate under another form, and accomplish by other means, that which had been lost to them in the surrender and disorganization of their armies.

      The condition of the South, during the past twelve years, is vividly illustrated in a series of letters written by Mr. Justin Knight, a gentleman of undoubted integrity, a resident of the South during the period referred to, and which are here given in a narrative form for the better convenience of the reader. Speaking of himself and the peculiar circumstances that brought him to the Southern States, Mr. Knight says:

      “Born in close proximity to the metropolis of New England, where I received the advantages of a collegiate education, and the religious instruction of parents who, without bigotry, were opposed to every species of wrong, I early conceived a desire to enter upon the ministry, which I did in 1857, almost immediately after the close of my collegiate life.

      My constitution, at no time robust, was entirely inadequate to the labors imposed upon me by the duties of this new position. My health continued gradually to give way until the winter of 1859, when my physician decided that a change of climate was essentially necessary to my well-being, and under his advice I proceeded to Charleston, S. C., and took up my residence with a married sister, then living there in affluent circumstances.

      At this peculiar epoch in the history of the country the political atmosphere of the South was literally pestilential. Under the manipulation of skillful, but unscrupulous leaders, whole communities had become imbued with a spirit hostile to the governing powers. They were led to believe that the time for argument had past, and that nothing was now left them, but to make a demand for what they were pleased to consider their inherent rights;—that of keeping their fellow men in bondage—and if this were refused, to declare themselves for war. The portentious clouds of the impending crisis continued gathering thick and fast, and it required no prophet’s eye to discern, or voice to foretell that they must soon burst upon the country in a deluge that could only be stayed by an enormous waste of blood and treasure.

      A sojourn of nearly eighteen months among the southern people, and the facilities afforded me from the position occupied by my sister’s family, gave me an unusual opportunity to observe the passing