The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1872-01-04

has been no money to repair the roads, OF
even to pay the meritorious teachers OF the
public schools, although enormous taxes had
been collected, and the public officials revelline
in illgotten riches in short, that the good peo.
pie Of this State had found themselves well
nigh engulfed in whirling, bottomless vortex
of ruin. The sufferers insist that, under these
circumstances, vigilance committee such
the Ku Klux professed to be-had been the
usual American resort, and that sympathy with
it was not wholly unnatural.
THE KLAN NOT JUSTIFIED.
Notwithstanding these powerful pleas,
must confess that, for my part, / am opposed
to the Ku Klux organization, and that for va
rious reasons. In the frstplace, | do not be-
lieve that secret, oath-bound society OF any
sort corresponds to the spirit of our American
institutions. We have freedom of speech and
freedom of the press. In this country a just
cause can appear without disguise, and can
make its direct appeal to public opinion. In
the long run, that is enough. In particular,
do not believe in vigilance committees of any
sort. They may, at times, do good by the in
Fiction of summary justice. But they do even
more evil. For they encourage the redress OF
wrongs by violence, and not by law; they give
scope to reckless men, who are apt to pervert
them to their own partisan and reyengeful
uses; and they tend to depress the moral tone
of the community in which their stern work is
done. But when strive to apply my princi-
Piles to the case before me, am at loss what
to conclude. The Ku Klux of the northern
counties punished crimes which were subyer-
sive to society, and which, but for their under
taking the Office, would have remained unpun-
have passed, so to speak, Scott
TLo:, ,o{s fo hov hpon n.
ished-but, ] think, in some other way. And
now the case stands thus. Their prosecutor is
Governor Scotia man notorious for his infdel-
ity to his word, to his official oaths, and to the
financial and other public trusts committed to
his charge-a man now threatened with i'm
parchment on these accounts by Republican
terislature-a man who may not unjustly be
called the first criminal in South Carolina
The informers against them are the very dregs
of the communities in which they live, and
have been already rewarded for their testimony
by release from mprisonment-as the Presi-
dent naively admits in his message. The cap
tiyes are, many of them incapable of commit.
ting the crimes laid to their charge! Some of
them are boys; some decrepit old men; and
not few are among the most virtuous, law
abiding and God-fearing citizens we have in
the whole country. Some of them have been
arrested without any charge, some while minis
tering to poverty and sickness, many while
wors6iping God in the sanctuary on the Sab
The circumstances are unutterably
distressing and humiliating. The case is with
out a precedent. am confounded when l see
Vice grasping the fasces, and Virtue wearing
the chain. do not see how any Christian,
who knows the facts, can be true to his people,
or his country, or his God, when he encourages
these so-callcd Ku Klux prosecutions.
E. 7. w.