Sec. 3... That it shall be the duty of each officer assigned as aforesaid, to protect all persons in their right of person and property; to suppress insurrection, disorder, and violence, and to punish, or cause to be punished, all disturbers of the public peace and criminals; and to this end he may allow local civil tribunals to take jurisdiction of and to try offenders, or, when in his judgment it may be necessary for the trial of offenders, he shall have power to organize military commissions or tribunals for that purpose, and all interference under color of State authority with the exercise of military authority under this act, shall be null and void.

Sec. 4. . . . That all persons put under military arrest by virtue of this act shall be tried without unnecessary delay, and no cruel or unusual punishment shall be inflicted, and no sentence ... affecting the life or liberty of any person shall be executed until it is approved by the officer in command of the district, and ... no sentence of death under the provisions of this act shall be carried into effect without the approval of the President.

Sec. 5. . . . That when the people of any one of said rebel States shall have formed a constitution of government in conformity with the Constitution of the United States in all respects, framed by a convention of delegates elected by the male citizens of said State, twenty-one years old and upward, of whatever race, color, or previous condition, who have been resident in said State for one year previous to the day of such election, except such as may be disfranchised for participation in the rebellion, or for felony at common law, and when such Constitution shall provide that the elective franchise shall be enjoyed by all such persons as have the qualifications herein stated for electors of delegates, and when such constitutions shall be ratified by a majority of the persons voting on the question of ratification who are qualified as electors for delegates, and when such constitution shall have been submitted to Congress for examination and approval, and Congress shall have approved the same, and when said State, by a vote of its legislature elected under said constitution, shall have adapted the amendment to the Constitution of the United States, proposed by the thirtyninth Congress, and known as article fourteen, and when said

article shall have become part of the Constitution of the United States, said State shall be declared entitled to representation in Congress, and senators and representatives shall be admitted therefrom on their taking the oath prescribed by law, and then and thereafter the preceding sections of this act shall be inoperative in said State: Provided, That no person excluded from the privilege of holding office by said proposed amendment to the Constitution of the United States,1 shall be eligible to election as a member of the convention to frame a constitution for any of said rebel States, nor shall any such person rate for members of such convention. . . .

Klux testi

[487]

Disqualified for office-holding by the Fourteenth Amend- 102. Kument, disfranchised and subjected to the rule of the negro mony, 1871 by the Reconstruction Act, the whites of the South resorted to extra-legal methods for maintaining their supremacy. Secret societies under various names (Ku-Klux Klans, Knights of the White Camelia, Pale Faces, Councils of Safety, White Leagues, etc.) were founded in all the states of the South to thwart the execution of the Reconstruction Acts by terrorizing the negroes who had political ambitions, and harrying the scalawag and the carpetbagger out of Dixie. At the request of President Grant, Congress, on April 20, 1871, passed the "Ku-Klux Act," to enforce the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment; and a joint committee, composed of fourteen representatives and seven senators, was appointed "to inquire into the condition of the late insurrectionary States, so far as regards the execution of the laws and the safety of the lives and property of the citizens of the United States" (see Amendment XIV, Sect. I). The report of the committee (February 19, 1872), with the testimony of witnesses

1 The classes of persons disqualified are enumerated in Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

examined both in Washington and by a subcommittee in the South, fills thirteen closely printed volumes, published by the Government Printing Office. The following extracts are from the testimony of General John B. Gordon 1 and a negro, Scipio Eager, two of the one hundred and fortyeight witnesses from the state of Georgia.

Washington D.C. July 27, 1871

JOHN B. GORDON, sworn and examined.

Question. The object we had in calling you as a witness was to get from you if possible a general view of the condition of the State of Georgia, to ascertain whether property and life are protected there, whether any crimes have been committed by disguised men. From your general knowledge of affairs in that State, we desire you to tell us whatever will enable the committee to understand fully the condition of affairs in Georgia. . . .

Answer. . . . I want to say very distinctly that our people have not entertained animosity and bitterness toward the troops; our feelings are directed toward these camp-followers and men who have come in our midst since the war- men without character and without intelligence, except a certain sort of shrewdness by which they have been enabled to impose themselves upon the negro and acquire gain, some of them very much gain, out of the pittances they have been able to get out of the negro one way and another. Some of them have gotten into office from counties where they never were but once or twice during the whole canvass. . . . I know of one or two members of the legislature who never resided at all in the counties from which they were sent, except a few days before the election. My own impression, from what I have seen in Georgia, is that the

1 Gordon was candidate for Governor of Georgia in 1868. He had been a valuable officer in Lee's army, and was "in at the death" at Appomattox. It was his reply to Lee's messenger on the morning of April 9, 1865, "Tell General Lee that I have fought my corps to a frazzle," that determined the Southern commander to surrender. Quoted by J. F. Rhodes, History of the United States, Vol. V, p. 125.

negroes, left free from this influence, would have been exceedingly peaceable. The very kindliest relations exist between the old masters and their former servants. . . . Our people have no interest in driving these negroes out of the country. Their interest is directly the reverse. We want them there. We oppose their being carried away, even to Mississippi. . .

...

I will state a fact which I think will be borne out by every honest man in Georgia — that the negro today, before a jury of Southern men in Georgia, has as fair a chance of justice as a white man, if not a better chance. I believe this as firmly as that I am sitting in this chair. . . .

Question. What do you know of any combinations in Georgia known as Ku-Klux, or by any other name, who have been violating law?

Answer. I do not know anything about any Ku-Klux organization, as the papers talk about it . . . but I do know that an organization did exist in Georgia at one time. I know that in 1868... I was approached and asked to attach myself to a secret organization in Georgia. . . . The object of this organization was explained to me at the time; and I want to say that I approved of it most heartily. . . .

Question. Tell us all about what that organization was.

Answer. The organization was simply this-nothing more or nothing less: it was an organization, a brotherhood of propertyholders, the peaceable, law-abiding citizens of the State, for self-protection. The instinct of self-protection, prompted that organization; the sense of insecurity and danger, particularly in those neighborhoods where the negro population largely predominated. . . . We were afraid to have a public organization; because we supposed that it would be construed at once, by the authorities at Washington, as an organization antagonistic to the Government of the United States. . . . This organization, I think, extended nearly all over the State. It was, I say, an organization purely for self-defence. It had no more politics in it than the organization of the Masons. .. This society was purely a police organization, to keep the peace, to prevent disturbance in our State.

Question. You had no riding about at nights?

Answer. None on earth. I have no doubt that such things have occurred in Georgia. It is notoriously stated . . . that disguised parties have committed outrages in Georgia. ... There is not a good man in Georgia who does not deplore that thing as much as any radical deplores it. When I use the term "radical," I do not mean to reflect upon the Republican party generally; but in our State a republican is a very different sort of a man from a republican generally in the Northern States. In our State republicanism means nothing in the world but creating disturbance, riot, and animosity, and filching and plundering. This is what it means in our State-nothing else. . . . It strikes me as the very highest commentary upon the law-abiding spirit of the people of Georgia that such men as I could name - men in high position who have plundered our people by the million - still live and are countenanced upon the streets. . . .

I know that the general feeling at the North is that our people are hostile to the Government of the United States. Upon that point I wish to testify. ... I know very well that if the programme which our people saw set on foot at Appomattox CourtHouse [see No. 98, p. 442] had been carried out - if our people had been met in the spirit which we believe existed there among the officers and soldiers, from General Grant down

we would have had no disturbance in the South.... Right or wrong, it is the impression of the southern mind - it is the conviction of my own mind, in which I am perfectly sincere and honest that we have not been met in the proper spirit. We in Georgia do not believe that we have been allowed proper credit for our honesty of purpose. . . . To say to our people:

You are unworthy to vote; you cannot hold office; we are unwilling to trust you; you are not honest men; your former slaves are better fitted to administer the laws than you are;" this sort of dealing with us has emphatically alienated our people. The burning of Atlanta and all the devastation through Georgia never created a tithe of the animosity that has been created by this sort of treatment of our people. Not that we wanted offices; that is not the point at all, though our people feel that it is an outrage to say that the best men in our midst shall not hold office. . . . We feel a sense of wrong as honorable men. We