[388] A Ku-Klux letter of notification ran: “We can inform you that we are the law itself, and that an order from these headquarters is supreme above all others.” I closed an itemized account in a letter to the Secretary of War in these words: “I therefore report them to enable you or the President to act officially, hoping that you may be able to cleanse at least three counties, Monroe, Lowndes, and Noxubee, and that part of Lauderdale especially infested by the outlaws, in the way that your extensive war experience has taught you.” Reviewing the operations of those secret, unscrupulous organizations popularly known as “Ku-Klux Klans,” in connection with the freedmen's education, after an interval of forty years, my conclusions are as expressed in the following language:
The operations of the Ku-Klux Klan were directed principally against the negroes, and those who were supposed to especially lend them countenance, by murders, whippings, and other acts of violence, to inspire them with such terror as to render unavailable their newly conferred political privileges.But the hostility to education was rather incidental than otherwise. The grand object of the “Solid South,” so called, was to prevent what was denominated “negro domination.” The secret societies turned their machinery against Union Southerners to silence or convert them; against “carpet baggers” (which included the Northern teachers of colored schools) to banish them; and against all negroes to so intimidate and terrorize them that they would not dare to vote except as their new masters directed. All my officers and agents were naturally involved in the dangers and sufferings of their wards.
