K. K. K. sketches, humorous and didactic

by James Melville Beard

This seemed a favorable moment for dispersion; and, indeed, the latter movement must have had partial reference thereto, for instantly the crowd developed as many moral agents as it had possessed caucusing elements, who, adopting their several courses, looked neither to the right nor left, but pushed for the interior with all commendable speed.

This cloud, “no bigger than a man’s hand,” but nevertheless boding a political shower of no mean consequence to dwellers thereabouts had been viewed, as we have anticipated, by a number of persons, who, in their anxiety to conceal impressions, did not linger in the vicinity after being informed, by a glance, of its ominous character. The horseman whom we have seen in another chapter speeding through the neighborhood on courier duty, took his cue from a friendly sun-glint shot from the glazed surface of one of the carpet-bags; and, indeed, all the details of preparation culminating in the forest meeting of the weird brotherhood, which we have described, and those events connected therewith, which will demand our attention as we proceed, were suspended on one of those mere accidents of discovery which frequently have so much to do with the fate of communities in times of political disquiet.

In a retired forest grove, distant from any settlement, was a dismantled church building, which had been resigned by the white settlers of Crow Hide to the slave population of the township in ante bellum times, and the title to which, in obedience to a policy of non-interference on the part of lawful claimants, had survived to their descendants in the golden era of freedom. This building performed innumerable offices for the foundlings of emancipation in those parts—marriages, funerals, revival meetings, society gatherings, etc., occupying it in turn, and even once in a while the dark-lantern fiend invading its precincts. From its sacred desk, battered with age and apostolic blows, and warped by the sunbeams of three generations, the venerable “parson” was wont to deliver castigations to the erring of his people on holy days, and anon, to receive from the High Tycoon of the League—enthroned on the same heights—the most bitter denunciations of his political shortcomings. Here, the firstlings of the flock were dedicated to the higher life of Christian rectitude in the holy rite of baptism. And here, too, the candidate for political preferment was made to feel the responsibilities of the step by being dipped seven times in the “witches’ cauldron” ere he was referred for those special services which constitute the “heated gridiron,” the most beautifully suggestive of the ritualistic conditions of League membership. Here sisters and brothers, giving way to their better instincts, harmonized on meeting days; and here, brothers and sisters, with a broader display of those principles which govern human nature—if with less consistency—refused to harmonize on League days. Here, shouting and singing constituted the mercurial forces “jurin de roasen ’ere and kant meetin’” solstice, and here (in hoc signo) broken heads and scattered fragments of benches marked the political temperature, when the League machine held right on its course, over those sensitive members of the brotherhood, which it might not be proper to denominate “sore tails” without this circumlocution.

It was on this spot, and amid these venerable surroundings, contemporaneously with the Ku-Klux demonstration to which attention has been directed, that a scene was enacted which fills an excruciating passage in our narrative, and which we have only been debarred from presenting to the reader by the obtrusion of details which could not be excerpted from the latter without injuring its consistency.

To say that the L. L. was in full bloom, and moving unflinchingly forward in the discharge of the numerous obligations which devolved upon it as a member of society, would be to depose facts that will be brought nearer to the comprehension of the reader, if we explain that three of its ablest-(bodied) speakers were coquetting for the favors of the chair, and denouncing each other in the most incendiary language—despite the remonstrance of the chair—in the same breath; that the speaker was hammering on his desk with a vehemence born of despair, and occasionally interlarding this performance with scowls that would have made his fortune in the lion-taming business; that the house had risen to its feet for the third time in a solid vote of remonstrance; and, finally, that two other members had felt themselves called upon to explain to the rebellious trio aforesaid the treasonable quality of their offence, the positive madness of their course, and, when called to order by the speaker, had flown in the face of that functionary with some very defiant language regarding their rights as citizens of a free country.

Maddened by a sense of the cold-blooded contempt aimed at him through this repeated disregard of his most cherished prerogative, the speaker (a white man) arose to his feet, and was in the act of aiming an inkstand at the pyramid of wool which served one of the malefactors the double purpose of a crown of glory and emblem of loyalty, when, lo! there was a crash, a mighty upheaval of moral forces, so to speak, a thunderous resurge of the waves of faction, and presto! the scene changes.

Now the echoes have gone to rest, and a palpable hush reigns over the assembly. Instead of those savage principles—war and rebellion—how emphatic the terms of contrast; meek-eyed peace sits enthroned on every brow. What means that half-suppressed sigh, that groan smothered in parturition? But hold! “’Sdeath” A creeping dread moves along the serried benches, laying its hand on the pulse-beat, invading the pants’ legs, and nestling close to the seat of life of the tableaux vivantes who await destiny (horrible reflection) on the ragged edge of “unfinished business.” Where late stood those mentors of the scene—shaken by the impulse of “thoughts that breathe,” and bandying hot invectives with unsparing wrath—how changed, alas! the forms of cringing suppliants whose counterparts might have been spaded from the Theban catacombs any day for a thousand years. At yonder extremity of the building, surrounded by the insignia of more than despotic rule, where towered the “thunderer of the scene,” transfixed in articulo jactanti, lo! an Ajax defying the lightning.

And now what weird forms from the “night’s Plutonian shore” are those which, joined in close procession, invade the folding doors, and with thunderous steps—matched in echo—storm down the quaking aisles? Doomed spirits, or ministers of heaven’s delayed vengeance, it matters little; and ’neath such a materialized spell from the echoless lands, who could doubt, or doubting, live? On they come, looking neither to the right nor left, neither mending their gait nor halting, until they have plunged in medias res, when, with a scarcely perceptible pause—those ponderous boot-heels, describing a half circle, smite the puncheon floor—every limb is adjusted to the most graceful of company manœuvres; and turning on their march, they move with the same echoing tread down the aisles, out at the folding-doors and into the darkness—away—away.

But stop, ha! that sigh of relief springing to a hundred throats was premature—the fiend hath but dismissed his attendants, himself remains. Standing ten feet in his boots, and clad in full Ku-Klux regalia (described in a previous chapter), an embodiment of rank ghostliness, he now occupied the centre of the building, and if anything was wanting to that “ghastly, grim, ungainly” ideal, which those who placed it there were seeking to embody, it was supplied in the most threatening of tragic postures, and a gesture whose very fixedness was not its least eloquent feature. This latter described a horizontal line from the shoulder to the finger-tips, and, horribile dictu, the index-finger was pointed squarely at the anatomy of the august personage who was—had been, we should say—presiding over the deliberations of the body. For about twenty seconds that individual had been viewing the landscape from the de mortuis standpoint; but being recalled to animation by the excessive personality of this proceeding, he executed three handslings and a somersault, and was at rest for the time being in a pile of superannuated furniture at the far end of the hall. Then there was a rush from the “third person” element, who could but feel that the grammatical situation was getting momentarily worse. Benches and desks were overturned; stoves and stove furniture came tumbling about their heads; a pillar, swept from its moorings by the human wave, fell with a boom like cannon at sea, and, hark! louder still, and rising above the din, a human voice hoarsely bawling, “Take him out!”

Who is there that has not witnessed examples of fell panic converted into a gallant defence, or brave onset, by the most seemingly trivial occurrence? It was so on the present occasion. A section of stove-pipe being projected against the uplifted arm of the ghostly personage,—who had, perhaps, contributed more than any other being to the tumult by which he was surrounded,—that member fell to the floor with a crash, and this movement having been witnessed by one of the refugees, his emotions took that form of expression which perhaps was best adapted to arrest the panic, if not to restore confidence.