At first the Klan seemed to exercise a wholesome influence, but the good effect was short-lived. The order contained within itself 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. Many deeds of violence were thus done by men who were Ku-Klux, but who, while acting under cover of their connection with the Klan, were not under its orders. 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. Outrages were committed by masked men in regions far remote from any Ku-Klux organizations. Secrecy was the strength of the Ku-Klux Klan so long as it was conjoined with mystery, but when the masks and disguises ceased to be mysterious, secrecy was its greatest weakness. Causes were at work also which led the Klan to adopt measures of greater severity. It had come to pass that all the disorder done in the country was charged upon the Ku-Klux because done under disguises which they had invented and used. They felt that the charge of wrong was unfairly brought against them, and, as is frequently the case, they were carried beyond the limits of prudence and right by a hot zeal for self-vindication against unjust aspersions. The mystery and secrecy that had been courted by the Klan led to the Klan and its objects being wholly misunderstood and misinterpreted. Many people were sure that the Klan meant treason and revolution. A feeling of intense hostility succeeded the first impressions of awe and terror which the Klan had inspired. The negroes formed organizations of a military character the avowed purpose of which was “to make war upon and exterminate the Ku-Klux.” On several occasions the Klan was fired into. The effect of such attacks was to provoke counter hostility from the Klan, and so there was irritation and counter irritation till in some places the state of things was little short of open warfare.