The Mena weekly star., 1911-08-17
GEN. N.SHAVERTE[LS
 OF kU KLUX KHAN
CONFEDERATE HERO GIVES IN SIDE HISTORY OF INVISIBLE
 EMPIRE. IN THIS STATE.
Was Wizard for Arkansas-Stories of Days When White Man Used Strenuous Means to Assert
 His Supremacy.

The following story of the ku klux Klan, first printed in the Ar kansas Gazette of August il, will be found especially interesting to Mena people who know the man who fur nished the data, General Robert G. Shaver, and who was the leading spirit of the movement in Arkansas in the days of it's power.
 Looming gaunt and ghostly against the pale moonlight, horses and riders shrouded in sable folds, and with the livid white glinting from the stars, crescents and other cabalistic insignia fixed upon their garb, cavalry corps winds down to it's "den.' There ;n the dense gloom of the virgin forest the lead- CT hears the reports of his com mlttees, and explains the cause of the gathering.
 In neighboring township, the negroes have organized a Union League" and with primitive pas sions fired by the oratory of white renegade carpet baggers, are swear ing tho further humiliation of the white man. The leader gives the order; the company remounts. Presently the meeting place of the league is reached. The ghostly rid- CTS surround it on three sides, and wait, mute and immutable. In the midst of a passionate cutburst of. semi-savage eloquence the negro orator of the evening sees through an open window a tall black form with the sparks of light playing upon it like vivid flames of hell. The words die in his throat as, with mouth wide open, he sees another and another; on and on it seems to him the lines stretches from the shores of the living to the shores of the dead. And then, with a piercing shriek, he turns and flees, and his audience, catching the con- tagion of flight, seek the open. They, too, see the black riders and in less time than it takes to tell, the silent watchers are alone. Not a word has been spoken, not sound made.
 The meeting has been broken up, and possible bloodshed averted without even the display of wea- pon.
 The scene is laid back in the re- construction days of this state, but the happening is actually leaf from the subrosa pages of Arkansas history, brief description of the methods taken to preserve the su- premacy of the supreme race when 1t seemed that the South was to be inundated beneath the turgid tide of negro rule; short account of a raid of the Ku Klux Klan. AL so, it is story told yesterday after noon by Gen. R. G. Shaver of Mena, now visiting Gen. James r. Smith in Little Rock.
 Was Wizard for Arkansas.
 General Shaver was Wizard of Ku Klux in this state, and was pres ent at the organization of the order in Memphis in 1867. The name "Ku Kluxn was taken from a local Tennessee organization of similar purpose, or rather, bestowed upon it later, and the original cognomen adopted at the initial meeting was The Or fer of the White Man To- gether with Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the late Gen. Gordon aLd many other distinguished leaders of the Confederacy, General Shaver of Arkansas met in Memphis short ly after the practical disfranchise- ment of the white man in the South to devise means of taking the law into their own hands for the pre- servation of a government by the whites. Although there were as- sembled scores upon scores of the best known men in the South, both civil and military, with such sec- recy was the meeting conducted that majority of the Memphisians, even, knew nothing of it. General