School History of North Carolina : from 1584 to the present time

by John W. Moore

4. The distinguishing event of this year in North Carolina was the appearance, in various parts of the State, of well-organized bodies of horsemen, commonly called Ku-Klux, who rode about at night in full disguise and punished crimes that the law had failed to punish. The mystery attending their coming and their going, the silence they preserved in their marches, the disguises they wore, coupled with the terrible punishment they inflicted, struck terror into the hearts of men with guilty consciences.

5. These midnight riders were doubtless in their origin the natural outgrowth of the condition of society that had prevailed in North Carolina for some time past—that is to say, they were originally nothing more nor less than local mutual protective associations, with little form about them and but little more secrecy. The first step having been taken in that direction, the next followed as a matter of course. Next came associations to prevent future crime by punishing past crime. These organizations were more complex in their character and of wider range in their operations.

6. The condition of society was very bad, but not worse than might have been expected under a government which, obnoxious in its creation, daily became more hateful in its conduct. Negro suffrage had just become a reality. Spies and eavesdroppers were everywhere catching up men's words and watching men's actions for report to the government at Raleigh. Corruption and licentiousness stalked openly in the legislative halls and sat unblushingly on the judicial bench, while in the Executive office was a Governor ready to obey the behests of his party at any cost. It was an era of extravagance, bribery, corruption, oppression, licentiousness and lawlessness. Of the negroes, ignorant slaves but yesterday, with all their passion stirred to the utmost, large numbers blindly believed that freedom and suffrage would make them masters tomorrow were it not for the native white race. First suspicious, then sullen, then aggressive, they soon came under the bad teaching of the men who were their leaders, to regard the native white men as their born enemies. The result was the murder of men, the outraging of women, the burning of barns and other like destruction of property, then of vital importance, for the law had no terror for an evil doer who had friends at court or in the Executive chamber. It is but just to the negroes, however, to say that it is not believed that if they had been left to themselves they would have acted as they did, but that they were influenced to bad deeds by bad white men, who used them as tools to accomplish political ends. Under such circumstances as these, good citizens felt that they were tried beyond human endurance, and justified themselves to their own consciences for taking the law into their own hands.

7. The evils the Ku-Klux came to cure were indeed unbearable; but it must be said, also, that while the disease was desperate, the remedy was fearful. It is a fearful thing for men to band themselves together in secret and take the law into their own hands, and nothing but the direst necessity and the gravest emergency can ever justify it. Inseparable from every such organization, and this proved no exception to the rule, is the danger of its easy perversion to the gratification of personal malice or the improper punishment of petty offences, and this alone ought to be warning that in such a remedy lies terrible danger.

8. Governor Holden quailed before the Ku-Klux, and from his guarded house issued proclamation after proclamation, but they would not down at his bidding. When winter came and with it the Legislature, Senator Shoffner, of Alamance, at the instance of the Governor, introduced a bill into the Senate, in its terms conferring upon the Governor the right to declare any and every county in the State to be in insurrection, and to recruit and maintain an army whenever he saw proper. In other words, the bill sought to confer upon the Governor the power to declare martial law at will. Of course this was unconstitutional.

1870.

9. The Shoffner bill was ratified on the 29th of January, 1870. On the night of the 26th of February, Wyatt Outlaw, a negro, was hung in the county town of Alamance, by the Ku-Klux. On the 7th of March the county was declared to be in a state of insurrection. Federal troops were sent there, but beyond eating their rations they had no occupation, for quiet and good order prevailed throughout the county.

10. A striking fact, true of every place during these unhappy times, is that whenever white Federal troops were sent to a troubled section, whether in Alamance, Caswell, Orange or elsewhere, there was straightway an end of trouble. The law- breakers were awed into good behavior, and those who in self- protection had forced, in their own judgment, to take into their own hands the administration of justice, of course had no further occasion to do so.

11. Governor Holden, however, seemed not to be satisfied with the Shoffner bill, for on the 10th of March he wrote* to the President, asking that stringent orders be sent to the commanding general, and stating that if "criminals could be arrested and tried before military tribunals and shot, there would soon be peace and order throughout the country. The remedy," he said, "would be a sharp and bloody one, but indispensable as was the suppression of the rebellion." The 14th he wrote to the members of Congress from North Carolina**, beseeching them to induce Congress to author the President to declare martial law in certain localities, so that he might "have military tribunals, by which assassins and murderers can be summarily tried and shot," and telling them at the same time that he could not have such tribunals unless the President was authorized to suspend the habeas corpus.

*For letter in full, see Governor's Letter-book, page 328.