The "procedure" in this case was to place the would-be Ku Klux in a barrel, provided for the purpose, and to send him whirling down the hill! To his credit, be it said, he never revealed any of the secrets of the Ku Klux Klan.[30]
These details have an important bearing on the subsequent history of the Ku Klux. They show that the originators of the Klan were not meditating treason or lawlessness in any form. Yet the Klan's later history grew naturally out of the measures and methods which characterized this period of it. Its projectors did not expect it to spread. They thought it would "have its little day and die." It lived; it grew to vast proportions.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] The writer, D.L. Wilson, was not a member. The secrets of the Klan were not printed or written, but were communicated orally. In Appendix IV, p. 197, will be found versions of the oath taken by the members.—Editor.
[15] In 1871-1872 a Committee of Congress made an investigation of affairs in the South. Its report, with the testimony collected, was published in 13 volumes, and is usually called the Ku Klux Report. See Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama, p. 701; Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, p. 344.—Editor.
[16] See above, p. 23.
[17] General Forrest said that the order was disbanded in the fall of 1868. See Ku Klux Report, Vol. XIII., pp. 3-35.—Editor.
[18] Wilson's account in the Century Magazine, July, 1884, says that the order was founded in June, 1866.—Editor.
[19] This was the law office of Judge Thomas M. Jones, father of one of the originators.—Editor.