The revelations that follow, speak in tones that must reverberate throughout the length and breadth of the continent, and are submitted as terrible evidences of the fearful condition to which communities may be reduced, when, ignoring the cardinal principles of right and justice, they abandon themselves to the control of unscrupulous men, whose overweening ambition destroy every other sentiment, and who esteem no measures too vile or inhuman that will lead to the accomplishment of their own base ends.

ORDERS
OF THE
KU KLUX KLANS.

The Constitutional Union Guards.—Knights of the White Camelia.—Order of Invisible Empire.—The White Brotherhood.—Union and Young Men’s Democracy.

ORIGIN, ORGANIZATION, INITIATION, OATHS, OBJECTS AND OPERATIONS.

He discovereth deep things out of darkness;
And bringeth out to light the shadow of death.
Job. XII., 22.

In the early part of 1866, or nearly a year after the close of the war of the rebellion, there was organized in the Southern States, a secret order, known as the “Constitutional Union Guards,” having a constitution, by-laws, oaths of allegiance, modes of recognition and approach, and a ritual, all of which were legendary and unwritten. Its places of meetings were styled Camps. Its officers were: a “Commander,” “South Commander,” “Grand Commander,” “Chief of Dominion,” and “Grand Cyclops,” or supreme head of the order.

The Commander is the chief officer of a local Camp. He issues the call for, and presides over, all its meetings. Initiates members; administers the oath; invests them with the signs, grips, and passwords necessary in making themselves known as members of the Order; and imparts to them the signal code of sounds by which they are governed in their excursions, and at times when, for obvious reasons, it is not expedient to utter words of command.

The South Commander is, to all appearances, a lay member of the Camp. His power, however, when he chooses to exercise it, is superior to that of the Commander. He is an officer without apparent function, and yet it is a portion of the oath attached to the second, or supreme degree, that he shall be obeyed in preference to any other known or constituted authority. He can prorogue the Camp, or dissolve it altogether, whenever he deems fit, and is amenable to no one inside of the Camp of which he is a member.