K. K. K. sketches, humorous and didactic

by James Melville Beard

The two preceding chapters may occur to those who were not informed of the nature and degree of the excitement which waited upon the movements of these secret organizations in obscure and uninformed neighborhoods, and among the negroes in various localities, as partaking of the hypercritical in narrative. But those who, by reason of residence or other accident, were made conversant with such scenes almost every week in the year, and who were not unfrequently drawn away from the contemplation of social misdemeanors or crimes of the most serious import to split their sides over some ludicrous faux pas, or intended farce, of the perpetrators, will not be slow to discover their basis of fact, nor accord to the author that honesty of purpose to which he lays claim in the conduct of these pages. It was stated in a previous chapter that the secret organization known as the Ku Klux Klan was a political movement intended to offset what was known as the Loyal League, an order whose draft was taken from the negro population, but which was controlled by, and in the interest of, a class of political harpies known as carpet-baggers. The latter element, by means of this political engine, dominated the politics of the South for a period of more than five years, and while its power may not have been broken by the influences set in motion by the counter movement, and though the latter must be condemned on general principles, yet among the people where it had its origin, and stripped of the analogies which the imaginations of fault-finders would be apt to supply, its objects were not deemed harmful to society. As to its wisdom, there can be no doubt that it was aimed at the most salient of the enemy’s weak points.

In treating this proposition, we shall seek to avoid that ponderous science which that branch of transcendentalists who acknowledge Mr. Wendell Phillips as their leader put before the world under the title of Negropholism, and deal with the article as we find it—so much on the greasy surface of the native that the temptation of the carpet-bagger to use it for base ends must be regarded an uncommon one.

[The people of the South, young and old, who were brought up under that social regimen which embodied the negro as a prominent and necessary feature, will appreciate the feelings of the writer when he states that he has not, and never can have, any feeling of enmity towards this race. Some of the tenderest passages in his heart history he is glad to refer to that period when negroes were not only admitted en famille among the whites, but in innumerable instances given absolute control over the household affairs of their masters. He numbers among his cultured acquaintance scores of young men and maidens who never knew any other parentage, and who can never admit a dearer relation than their adopted paternity. The negroes, if vicious and mean, owe it to that cruel divorcement from the Southern social plan effected by their political leaders, and to the life of vagabondage to which they are doomed under the new system; they are not more so by nature than other men. If, therefore, the writer is tempted to speak of their weaknesses, it is in no irreverential sense, and with a laudable object in view, to which this policy will be seen to be strictly antecedent.]

That the negro is by nature grossly superstitious, no one who has had even tolerable means of information will deny. In another chapter we have prevised something on general principles concerning the superstition of mankind, but the comparison to be drawn between the negro and all other branches of the Adamic tree, as to this particular fruitage, is so unequal, that we shall ask the reader to accept the former as a very modified presentation of a theory that was made to order for the crown of Cuffey. And however much this may be untrue with regard to other animals, this faculty of the individual under discussion has nothing whatever to do with his æsthetical being. It does not in any sense enlist that high poetic principle which is one of the conditions of his tropical nativity. Left to himself, with all the appliances of civilization and the encouragement of its examples about him, his superstition will subject him, in the short space of a twelvemonth, to heathenish lapses which the weak-headed Mongolian, under the same outward conditions, has resisted for a period of six thousand years. Voudooism is, perhaps, the weakest form of heathen worship which this moral condition has developed, and, despite the few occasions admitted by the structure of our laws, it is strictly a native product. Those who contend that it is an African transplant, or borrowed from the congeners of the race on those shores, are surely not guided by convictions derived from an examination into its philosophy. But it is a very radical form of savagism in worship, including human sacrifices among its rites, and as we have anticipated that it had its birth in the rice- and cotton-fields of the South, further remark on this division of the argument is deemed unnecessary.

In contrast with other races of beings, the world of shadows is to the imagination of the black man a thing of gloom. The existences who people this realm are hobgoblins, and the standard of the latter a mild abridgment of the arch-fiend. He, nevertheless, holds them in the highest veneration, and is prepared to accept their revelations concerning himself, and indeed all other subjects of mundane philosophy, as oracular. He even holds familiar converse with them—when an interview can be contrived without endangering those barriers of etiquette which preserve to either a fair start in a foot-race—and calculates with tolerable accuracy that the churchyard spawn who affect this characterization are counterfeits. On the latter subject he has doubts, however, which on occasion might be turned to his disadvantage.

Whether it is affectation with him, or a kind of prescience with which he is gifted in view of his moral structure, we do not pretend to decide; but he boasts a knowledge of the private affairs of his spook kinsfolk (they are invariably uncles, aunts, grand relations, etc.) which would be considered sacrilege in another being. If he deems you worthy of such confidence, he will describe to you the ghostly raiment they wear, diversified in other particulars, but always sombre-hued, and in no recorded instance cut bias. He is rarely at fault in assigning the period of antiquity from which they date, and if opportunity served, could lead you to the exact spot where their archæological remains “smell sweet.” He can give, with that emphasis of detail which grows out of perfect familiarity with his subject, their occupations—ranging from yacht-building, horse-culture, and other of the fine arts, all the way down to book-making. And finally, if pressed for information, can state some astonishing facts with regard to their phrenological development. With him these essences are always evil spirits, and though he views them in the constant performance of deeds that would quickly promote them to the hangman’s offices if enterprised in the flesh, yet his philosophy so confounds the means and extremes relating to the transaction, that he can see no way out of the difficulty but to respect the latter as proceeding from the former.

Though they cherish a causeless animosity against himself and his kind, and war on the latter with a chronic wastefulness of the vital spark, which could only proceed from a want of appreciation of this blessing inseparable from their standpoint, yet he cannot go behind his apotheosis to find fault with the system of government upon which it proceeds. In fact, though he avoids the “ghoul-haunted” precincts with which his neighborhood abounds, and trembles when he recites the deeds of valor performed by some warlike example against fleshly hosts, yet when he has taken his distance, and duly calculated the chances in his favor, he delights, above all things, to gather about himself the philosophic weaklings of his race, and, having launched upon his theme, observe the absolute failure of the kink in the woolly crown of each as a thing to be depended on in time of emergency.

The ideal “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” had very little of the ghost element in its construction. In this respect, as in some others, it was a miserable failure. The real structure was a ghost’s palace, where they came and went at pleasure, and not unfrequently took up their abode. To this habitation, in ante bellum times, presided over by Uncle Dick or Aunt Rachel, it mattered little—for both were magicians of no mean order—the juveniles of both races flocked after nightfall for supplies of ghost-lore; and to say that they were accommodated will but faintly describe, we fear, that anguished state of soul (what Southern boy or man does not drop a tear on this reminiscence?) with which, a few hours later, they passed out into the darkness and fought their way through legions of shadowy foes to their “curtained rest.”

These ghost stories, which always resulted disastrously for flesh and blood, and had a churchyard twang about them that came with peculiar relish to the youngster under a strong glare of candle- or fire light, were the very apple-pie of farm-life to the “infantile sex,” despite the after-piece, which, after all, was a contingency that might be disposed of at will by the philanthropic source of the mischief. How often have we observed a circle of these young professors of the spiritual science defiantly “lean back” in their proclivities when the crooning narration began, and the great fireplace sent out effulgent rays, suddenly alter their manner for one of marked deference as the ghost-character came on with stately tread and took its place in the forefront of thrilling reminiscence; and then, as the rays of firelight went to sleep with the embers one by one, hitch up their seats within the margin that remained, getting nearer by degrees, until at length, as the story grew towards its denouement and the fire hung over its ashy tomb, crowding from all quarters, they threatened to overturn the narrator—so great was the terror inspired by the shadows which lay behind them.

But to no one had these performances such constant and deep relish as the aged patriarch or beldam, as the case might be, who was elevated by their young suffragans to the post of mentor for the time being. They revelled in this employment, first, because it suited their talents; and second, because it was perfectly adapted to their emotional nature. An African, moreover, is gratified beyond expression by the knowledge that he possesses authority, no matter how brief or weak in extent, which may be exercised over his fellows; and there is not, we believe, a living party to such a bequest of social right and liberty over conscience as that to which we have referred, who was not a sufferer under the arrangement to an extent which he rarely admits to stranger confidences. But this improvement of the occasion which came to him on the part of the fiction-vender was not always done in mere wantonness. Not unfrequently the result achieved was without design, and when the contrary was true, the design was quite an intelligent one. When he acted intelligently, the object kept in view was to gain such an ascendency over the minds of his young auditory that he might reap either present benefits, or call it up to advantage in the future; and when we reflect that his audiences were largely composed of his young masters and mistresses, whose influence was great at head-quarters, and who would one day succeed to the estate, the wisdom of his conclusions must be conceded.