Oliver Otis Howard, Autobiography of Oliver Otis Howard, major general , United States army : volume 2

---

[385] Southern man, successfully came to his relief, and the white citizens of Gonzales assembled and passed resolutions against the outrage, and promised the utmost aid and support to the town officers for the discovery, apprehension, and punishment of the offenders. Such affairs, thus ending, became stepping-stones to progress.

Tennessee in its middle and western sections was the leader in this Ku-Klux business. The most heinous crimes occurred just before an election. Gradually the friends of order and good government in those very much disturbed sections came to the front and were outspoken in their condemnation of the whippings, lynchings, and assassinations, and all such infamous secret proceedings; so that even when the Regulators were for a time apparently very strong, reaction in the best Southern circles had set in against them before the close of 1869.

During 1870, there were few localities which were kept in ferment by these unscrupulous secret organizations. By procuring the support of good citizens all over the South and,when necessary, action by the army to arrest outlaws, our schools whenever temporarily closed were soon reopened and steady progress made.

Colonel Beecher, in his June report from Alabama, spoke of bad feeling in a few counties. There were threats to burn school structures, but by vigilance the dreaded calamity was everywhere prevented. But in northwestern Louisiana there was still trouble enough. McCleery, the superintendent from Texas, and those aiding him, had many narrow escapes. While traveling on duty through Winn parish, a band like those so often described waylaid him and drove him to refuge in a swamp, where, by staying all night and making a