A Band of Regulators whose Force at this time numbered a Half Million well-organized and perfectly Drilled Men--Who composed its Draft--Considerations which recommended it to the Better Classes of Society--Its Haunts--Oath-bound Covenant, and Penalties attached--Panoply of Lower Regions--Its Raiding Rendezvous--Galloping forth to Predestined Conquest--It proceeded under a rigid Constitutional System--Territorial Subdivisions--Empire--Realm--Province--Den--Grand Wizard and his Cabinet--Grand Giant--The Commander of a Den--Grand Cyclops--Night-Hawks, etc.--Recruiting Agents--How Members were Initiated--Proposed Initiates might Retire if Displeased with the Conditions of Membership--How far the Klan was "Rebel" in its Draft--Members of State Legislatures, Congressmen, and Governors of States, took its Vows upon them--Its Political Suffrages--Compelling Ignorant Colored Men to relinquish the Franchise--K. K. K. Placards--Empty Coffins containing Ukase of Banishment Carted to the Doors of Obnoxious White Citizens--Its Ideas of Social Decorum. The mystic order of K. K. K. had scarcely emerged from its swaddling-clothes, as things go in the material universe, ere it had developed into a giant that filled the Southern zodiac, as effectually as the almanac dummy comprehends in his physical outlines the cardinal points of the seasons. Moving from county to county, and from one State to another, it invaded the most remote communities--until within three months from the time that the slogan call had been sounded on the eastern shore of the Mississippi, its bannerets formed a cordon around the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, and its dominion over the Trans-Mississippi country was undisputed. A band of regulators, whose force at this time numbered a half million well-organized and perfectly drilled men, it aimed at nothing less than the subjection of the pending elements in the Southern State governments, and as a means thereto, the total overthrow and dispersion of all secret subsidiary agencies. In its ranks all conditions of white society in the South were represented--attracted partly by the weighty political considerations upon which the movement rested, and in not a few instances by its outside of novelty and vague promise of sensation. Proceeding under an oath-bound covenant, it invoked, seemingly--by adopting the emblems of their rule--the powers of darkness to assume the protectorate over its affairs, and levied on the code of pirates for a rule of discipline that should awe the stoutest hearts into meek submissiveness. To break the least of its commandments was esteemed a crime for which death would be a weak expiation, and to retreat from its enterprises, good or evil, bold or weak, was to be exposed to a fate more horrible than the chain and vulture. Their periodical gatherings, or dark seances, were held in caves in the bowels of the earth, where they were