The act states further: "That in all cases where insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combinations or conspiracies in any state shall so obstruct or hinder the execution of the laws thereof, and of the United States, as to deprive any portion or class of the people of any rights, privileges or immunities or protection, and the constituted authorities of such state shall either be unable to protect, or shall fail in or refuse protection, it shall be unlawful for the president, and it shall be his duty, to take such measures by the employment of the militia or the land and naval forces of the United States for the suppression of such insurrection."
"KU-KLUX" FILLS RECORDS
Pages of the Congressional Globe, as the present Congressional Record was then called, were filled during the months before the passage of this act with the word "Ku-Klux."
The verb "Kukluxed" became in the mouths of senators and representatives arguing over the bill a synonym for "intimidated." Friends of the nightriders termed them "modern knights of the Round Table," and "conservators of law and order." Opponents on the floor of the house advocated a policy of "amnesty for every rebel, hanging for every Ku-Klux."
Black and white victims of the gun-toting ghosts were brought from Tennessee, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas and other states where the Klan rode to recount before the congressional committee the details of their persecutions. Their accounts as the government documents preserve them might well have been a primer, it has been said, for the acts of later Lenines and Trotzkys.
REPORT OF OFFENSES VARIES
The report of the congressional committee is a recital varying from mirth to murder. In one county the victim of the hooded Klan might be an itinerant minister who had offended by teaching a negro mammy to pray. Next door a Ku-Klux sign, with a coffin painted in blood, might be hung over the dead body of a "bad" negro whose freedom had made him officious.
One negro was whipped for stealing a beef. Another was tarred and feathered because his daughter ran away from the white man who had employed her.
Colored cooks were beaten for talking saucily to their southern mistresses. Northern white women were threatened for hiring colored cooks.