This demonstration had the effect for which it was designed. Perhaps the greatest illusion produced by it was in regard to the numbers participating in it. Reputable citizens--men of cool and accurate judgment--were confident that the number was not less than three thousand. Others, whose imaginations were more easily wrought upon, were quite certain there were ten thousand. The truth is, that the number of Ku Klux in the parade did not exceed four hundred. This delusion in regard to numbers prevailed wherever the Ku Klux appeared. It illustrates how little the testimony of even an eye-witness is worth in regard to anything which makes a deep impression on him by reason of its mysteriousness. The Klan had a large membership; it exerted a vast, terrifying and wholesome power; but its influence was never at any time dependent on, or proportioned to, its membership. It was in the mystery in which the comparatively few enshrouded themselves. Gen. Forrest, before the Investigating Committee, placed the number of Ku Klux in Tennessee at 40,000,[42] and in the entire South at 550,000. This was with him only a guessing estimate.[43] Careful investigation leads to the conclusion that he overshoots the mark in both cases. It is an error to suppose that the entire male population of the South were Ku Klux, or that even a majority of them were privy to its secrets and in sympathy with its extremest measures. To many of them, perhaps to a majority, the Ku Klux Klan was as vague, impersonal and mysterious as to the people of the North, or of England. They did attribute to it great good and to this day remember with gratitude the protection it afforded them in the most trying and perilous period of their history, when there was no other earthly source to which to appeal.[44] [Illustration: COSTUMES WORN IN TENNESSEE AND NORTH ALABAMA FACING PAGE 97]