[197]. See Reports of Committees of House of Representatives for 2d Sess., 42d Cong., 1871–72.
[198]. The best apparently reliable source for information as to the character and purpose of this organization is a little book entitled “The Ku-Klux Klan,” written by J. C. Lester and D. L. Wilson, and published at Nashville, Tennessee, in 1884. See also, article “The Ku-Klux Klan,” signed D. L. Wilson, published in the Century Magazine, July, 1884 (6: 398).
A less valuable but an interesting book is “K. K. K. Sketches,” by J. M. Beard, published at Philadelphia in 1877.
Many writers make incidental reference to the Ku-Klux Klan; for example, Charles Stearns: “The Black Man of the South and the Rebels” (1872), Chap. 39; James Bryce: “The American Commonwealth,” II, 479.
An account of “The Ku-Klux Movement” is given in W. G. Brown’s “Lower South in American History” (1902).
Some of the characteristic, possibly exaggerated, features of the “Ku-Klux Movement” have been presented in fiction. See, for example, A. Conan Doyle: “Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Five Orange Pips” (1902), p. 104; Thomas Nelson Page: “Red Rock, a chronicle of Reconstruction” (1898).
[199]. The committee appointed to select a name reported among others the name “Kukloi,” from the Greek word kuklos, meaning a band or circle. At mention of this some one cried out: “Call it ‘Ku Klux.’” The word “Klan” at once suggested itself, and was added to complete the alliteration. It has been said that the society was named in imitation of the click heard in cocking the rifle, but this seems to be without foundation in fact.
[200]. See, for example, Nation, March 23, 1871 (12: 192); New York Times, Feb. 15, 1871; New York Times, Aug. 26, 1873; New York Tribune, July 31, 1878.
[201]. For a list of the “Molly Maguire” outrages in the mining region of Pennsylvania, and for an exposition of the origin, growth, and character of that organization, see F. P. Dewees: “The Molly Maguires” (1877).
[202]. No claim for completeness is made in regard to these statistics. Particularly in the case of lynchings in the West they are doubtless incomplete.