These have never been fully and fairly stated. They may be classed under three general heads: (1). Unjust charges. (2). Misapprehension of the nature and objects of the order on the part of those not members of it. (3). Unwise and over-severe legislation. As has already been pointed out, the order contained within itself, by reason of the methods practiced, sources of weakness. The devices and disguises by which the Klan deceived outsiders enabled all who were so disposed, even its own members, to practice deception on the Klan itself. It placed in the hands of its own members the facility to do deeds of violence for the gratification of personal feeling, and have them credited to the Klan. To evilly-disposed men membership in the Klan was an inducement to wrongdoing. It presented to all men a dangerous temptation, which, in certain contingencies at any time likely to arise, it required a considerable amount of moral robustness to resist. Many did not withstand it. And deeds of violence were done by men who were Ku Klux, but who, while acting under cover of their connection with the Klan, were not under its orders. But because these men were Ku Klux, the Klan had to bear the odium of wrongdoing.[48] In addition to this, the very class which the Klan proposed to hold in check and awe into good behavior, soon became wholly unmanageable. Those who had formerly committed depredations to be laid to the charge of the negroes, after a brief interval of good behavior, assumed the guise of Ku Klux and returned to their old ways, but with less boldness and more caution, showing the salutary impression which the Klan had made upon them. In some cases the negroes played Ku Klux. Outrages were committed by masked men in regions far remote from any Ku Klux organizations. The parties engaged took pains to assert that they were Ku Klux, _which the members of the Klan never did_. This was evidence that these parties were simply aping Ku Klux disguises. The proof on this point is ample and clear. After the passage of the Anti Ku Klux Statute by the State of Tennessee, several instances occurred of parties being arrested in Ku Klux disguises; but in every instance they proved to be either negroes or "radical" Brownlow Republicans. This occurred so often that the statute was allowed by the party in power to become a dead letter before its repeal. It bore too hard on "loyal" men when enforced. The same thing occurred in Georgia and other States. (See testimony of General Gordon and others before the Investigating Committee.) _No single instance occurred of the arrest of a masked man who proved to be--when stripped of his disguises--a Ku Klux._