From the moment that the resolution to compose these sketches in the interest of the reading public became fixed in the author's mind, he has been in constant communication with individuals who were not only influential leaders of the secret movement, but held high official rank under it; so that the authenticity of his statements affecting its _regime_ is placed so far beyond question that the reader is at liberty to take the latter as _ex cathedra_ utterances of this singularly reticent body. Should those passages which are occupied with the more exciting events of K. K. K. history be calculated to awaken _sensation_ in the public breast, it is a _contretemps_ from which the author begs to excuse himself in the light of the same admission, adding, moreover, that he has availed himself of those examples which have gone before him in this department of literature, and reserved his art-flourishes for less susceptible divisions of the theme. The intelligent reader will see no politics, nor evidence of political bias in the pages of this volume, if he will do the author the simple fairness of its thorough examination. If in addressing his audience from the _status in quo_, to which the Ku-Klux troubles were referred in their origin and bloody career, forcible truths are given their due emphasis, he begs to assure the public that his utterances are no less strongly inflected from a standpoint of contrasted locality and habits of political thought. A man professing no politics but those of his grandfather, and, despite settled opinions favoring such partisanship, is strongly tempted at times to question _their_ integrity, would hardly be supposed guilty of making an obnoxious necessity of some other man's property, in this most precarious of titled possessions; and lest any should fail to perceive the allegory which this sentence contains, the author begs to call attention to it, and to appropriate the _situation_ which it presents. The public mind is so excited regarding such topics at this moment, that it would fail to meet expectation, if it should decline to suspect every shadow of possessing substance, when projected from so suspicious a direction as the subject chosen; and feeling this, and perceiving the inutility of any other form of argument, the reader is invited, in conclusion, to adopt the usual method in such inquiries, and determine for himself the _vexata quaestio_. CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. Terms of Southern Surrender in the War of the Rebellion--Candor of Paroled Troops--"Lee's Ragamuffins"--Generals Grant's and Sherman's Proposed Amnesty--The "Rump Congress" and Disfranchisement--What the Latter meant--Issues which the War Settled--How these were Revived by the Pending Congress--Anarchy in the South--The Loyal League 13 CHAPTER II. CAUSES OF THE K. K. K. MOVEMENT.