The radical structure, however, was still powerfully supported from without. Relations between the Federal Government and the state governments in the South were close, and the policy at Washington was frequently determined by conditions in the South. President Grant, though at first considerate, was usually consistently radical in his Southern policy. This attitude is difficult to explain except by saying that Grant fell under the control of radical advisers after his break with Johnson, that his military instincts were offended by opposition in the South which his advisers told him was rebellious, and that he was impressed by the need of holding the Southern radical vote against the inroads of the Democrats. After about 1869 Grant never really understood the conditions in the South. He was content to control by means of Federal troops and thousands of deputy marshals. For this policy the Ku Klux activities gave sufficient excuse for a time, and the continued story of "rebel outrages" was always available to justify a call for soldiers or deputies. The enforcement legislation gave the color of law to any interference which was deemed necessary.
Federal troops served other ends than the mere preservation of order and the support of the radical state governments. They were used on occasion to decide between opposing factions and to oust conservatives who had forced their way into office. The army officers purged the Legislature of Georgia in 1870, that of Alabama in 1872, and that of Louisiana in 1875. In 1875 the city government of Vicksburg and the state government of Louisiana were overturned by the whites, but General Sheridan at once intervened to put back the negroes and carpetbaggers. He suggested to President Grant that the conservatives be declared "banditti" and he would make himself responsible for the rest. As soon as a State showed signs of going over to the Democrats or an important election was lost by the radicals, one House or the other of Congress in many instances sent an investigation committee to ascertain the reasons. The Committees on the Condition of the South or on the Late Insurrectionary States were nearly always ready with reports to establish the necessity of intervention.
Besides the army there was in every State a powerful group of Federal officials who formed a "ring" for the direction of all good radicals. These marshals, deputies, postmasters, district attorneys, and customhouse officials were in close touch with Washington and frequently dictated nominations and platforms. At New Orleans the officials acted as a committee on credentials and held all the state conventions under their control in the customhouse.
Such was the machinery used to sustain a party which, with the gradual defection of the whites, became throughout the South almost uniformly black. At first few negroes asked for offices, but soon the carpetbaggers found it necessary to divide with the rapidly growing number of negro politicians. No negro was elected governor, though several reached the office of lieutenant governor, secretary of state, auditor, superintendent of education, justice of the state supreme court, and fifteen were elected to Congress. ¹ It would not be correct to say that the negro race was malicious or on evil bent. Unless deliberately stirred up by white leaders, few negroes showed signs of mean spirit. Few even made exorbitant demands. They wanted "something"—schools and freedom and "something else," they knew not what. Deprived of the leadership of the best whites, they could not possibly act with the scalawags—their traditional enemies. Nothing was left for them but to follow the carpetbagger.
¹ Revels, Lynch, and Bruce represent the better negro officeholders; Pinchback, Rainey, and Nash, the less respectable ones; and below these were the rascals whose ambition was to equal their white preceptors in corruption.
[CHAPTER XI.]
The Ku Klux Movement
The Ku Klux movement, which took the form of secret revolutionary societies, grew out of a general conviction among the whites that the reconstruction policies were impossible and not to be endured. Somers, an English traveler, says that at this time "nearly every respectable white man in the Southern States was not only disfranchised but under fear of arrest or confiscation; the old foundations of authority were utterly razed before any new ones had yet been laid, and in the dark and benighted interval the remains of the Confederate armies—swept after a long and heroic day of fair fight from the field—flitted before the eyes of the people in this weird and midnight shape of a Ku Klux Klan." Ryland Randolph, an Alabama editor who was also an official of the Klan, stated in his paper that "the origin of Ku Klux Klan is in the galling despotism that broods like a night-mare over these Southern States—a fungus growth of military tyranny superinduced by the fostering of Loyal Leagues, the abrogation of our civil laws, the habitual violation of our national Constitution, and a persistent prostitution of all government, all resources and all powers, to degrade the white man by the establishment of negro supremacy."
The secret orders, regardless of their original purposes, were all finally to be found opposing radical reconstruction. Everywhere their objects were the same: to recover for the white race their former control of society and government, and to destroy the baneful influence of the alien among the blacks. The people of the South were by law helpless to take steps towards setting up any kind of government in a land infested by a vicious element—Federal and Confederate deserters, bushwhackers, outlaws of every description, and negroes, some of whom proved insolent and violent in their newly found freedom. Nowhere was property or person safe, and for a time many feared a negro insurrection. General Hardee said to his neighbors, "I advise you to get ready for what may come. We are standing over a sleeping volcano."