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“ [382] ” This was done while he was finding his way to the hotel. He halted and faced them. They then “surrounded him, thrust their pistols into his face, beat him, kicked him,” and after abusing him for a while ordered him to run for his life. This time, by what he called a quick walk, he reached the hotel. A larger mob surrounded the public house and could only be appeased by his promise to leave town the next morning.

After the election, for a time, the excessive wrath abated. From my point of observation, the two months of 1868 that followed the Presidential election and the first six in the next year, 1869, were quite free from the Ku-Klux raids.

During the last half of 1869, however, there was a quickening of the secret pulse. In the northern part of Alabama, along the border between Alabama and Tennessee, now and then there was “trouble between the races.” “But,” said our representative, “this is attributed to incursions of Ku-Klux coming from Tennessee where, in remote localities, the organization is kept up for political effect, rather than for the bitter strife of former years.” But Tennessee herself was at this time comparatively clear of any active operations of the Ku-Klux Klan. From Kentucky, however, a teacher who had a remarkably good school about ten miles from Bowling Green wrote: “The Ku-Klux Klan came one night and told me if I did not break up my school they would kill me.” The teacher obeyed. He reported that the white people said that this action by the Ku-Klux was had because “the niggers there were getting too smart.”

North Carolina, that had made such good progress in every way under our systematic work, began in

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