But while it lost popularity where it should have gained it,--through generical belongings which, possibly, could not have been rendered more in harmony with the public fancy,--there was certainly nothing reassuring to its fellow-citizens in the record which it put before the world. While, as we have said, there was nothing monstrous, nor even designedly criminal in its acts, there was so much that offended against propriety, and required explanation withal, that those who had not been estranged before, as well as those who had, became hopelessly so. It had not been in existence a twelvemonth, before its name, in the localities which it frequented most, became a by-word signifying something very forbidding and disagreeable, if not actually criminal. In the dozen States or more whence its force was recruited, it had not half a hundred friends unconnected with its patronage, and these could hardly have been induced to have made a public profession of their preference. Its influence on Southern politics, then, could not have been favorable; and having said so much as to the positive effect wrought, we shall briefly examine the negative issue which it introduced into the great campaign. And in doing this, we shall not attempt to penetrate its motives, nor inquire how far it was responsible for acts which but reflected an evil tendency. The reader has, doubtless, anticipated us in the statement that it alienated the political mind of the North, reopened the dead issues of secession and war, and licensed a political persecution which, in extent and malignity of design, has not been equalled since the Roman empire dictated government to its conquered dependencies. Reconstruction, having been inaugurated under favorable auspices, was not to be pretermitted, nor even abated, while this sage Ahithophel occupied a voice in Southern counsels (rendering a war of races possible); and who will affect to say that this policy had no basis of sound reason? The society, a mystery to itself, and sorely misinterpreted by the people among whom it was domesticated, became, of course, a monster of blended secretiveness and iniquity to those who had small means of becoming acquainted with even its aims through unprejudiced sources. Added to this, the most unprincipled plagiaries of its actual history--perpetrated by those local enemies who had most to fear from the movement--found their way constantly into the news mediums of the country, awakening, in the North at least, that dangerous sentimentalism which, more than politics and religion combined, influences the mind of the nation.