West Virginia argus. [volume] (Kingwood, W. Va.) 1877-1946, 1906-03-22


duly secured by The West Virginia AZ
81 cannot understand the pig.
headed persistence with which the
South continues blindly to vot,
against her own interests !" said az
intelligent young Northerner to mt
just after the last Presidential elec.
ton.
alt does look funny" replied,
"for otherwise the thing seems to
have been unanimous. But did you
ever study the period of Recon
structIon ?"
al don't know what the word
MEANS" he answered with laugh.
No man can understand current
politics or the conditions the Race
Problem unless he knows the history
of the awful years of 1865 to $40.
Nor can he understand this period
until he has mastered the story OF
the rise, growth, dengeneracy, and
death of two secret political societ-
les, one of the North called 1.-The
Union League of America, the
other of the South known officially
by its members as "The Invisible
EMPIRE" and, popularity, as the
"Ku Klux Klan."
The bitterness of the Civil War
has passed from the hearts of men,
but the legacy Of the Black Plague
which scouraged the South during
the period Of Reconstruction re-
mains to-day brooding nightmare
for the Southerner, threatening with
sinister prophecies the future of the
Nation.
The Northern conception of the
Ku Klux Klsn is voiced in a recent
criticism of my last novel by an
ancient Boston newspaper thus:
"He reaches the acme Of his Sec
tional passions when he exalts the
Ku Klux Klan into an association
of Southern patriots, when he must
know, or else be strangely ignorant
of American history, that its mem
bers were as arrant ruffians, desper-
ADDE'S and scoundrels as ever went
unhanged."
If this be true, moral miracles
have been wrought by ruffians, des-
peradoes and scoundrels which re-
quire study. The like of it has
never been recorded in the history
of the race, such things, were done
by scoundrels the basis of ethics
must be rebuilt by our philosophers.
The question is not merely an
historical one, it IS woven with the
most vital and hopeless problem of
American life. Disinterested for
eign critics declare with one accord
that the Negro problem of America
is the one apparently insoluble rid.
die whish shadows of our future.
It's roots strike deep into our history,
spread wide into our every day life,
and grip with the power of fate the
souls of generations unborn. If
any man thinks this an academic
question, of the past which must be
determined by experts in dates and
documents, let him ask the police
of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago
and St. Louis into whose crowded
streets and tenements the Black
Man IS pushing his way.
The Ku Klux Klan was a great
Law and order League Of mounted
night cavalrymen called into action
by the intolerable conditions Of a
reign of terror under Negro rule in
the South. II was the answer to
their foes Of an indomitable race Of
men, conquered, betrayed, disarm
ed and driven to desperation. 1t
was the old answer OF organized
manhood to organized crime mas
querading under the forms Of gov
eminent
It's rise was due to the mind OF
no leader. # was an accident. II
was a case Of spontaneous combus.
tion.
a group Of college boys at Pulaski,
Tennessee, organized it first as a
local college fraternity. Til y
found a name in the Greek word
"Kuklos," band or circle, and to
this they added Clan, and then split
the germ word into two weird mono.
syllables, spelling the Clan with a
X, to heighten the appeal to the