The majority of those lynched in these three years, as given by the Times, were forcibly taken from the custody of officers of the law. In some instances, the jails were broken into, and the prisoners were taken out and hanged or were killed in the jail; in other instances, the prisoners were taken from the officers and put to death before they could be taken to the jail. Some of the lynchings were carried on by vigilance societies, others by mobs of masked persons or by “Ku-Kluxes.” With two exceptions, nothing is said in the reports of these lynchings about any attempts to take legal action against the lynchers. In the two instances where attempts were made to prosecute the lynchers, it does not appear that there was any measure of success. It thus appears that lynch-law was in operation in nearly every part of the United States during the years immediately following the close of the Civil War, and that the ordinary penalty inflicted was death. It was, however, the application of lynch-law under the anomalous conditions in the South that rendered the reconstruction period a distinctive period in the history of lynch-law. The reconstruction of the Southern States has been rightly characterized as “one of the worst periods of misgovernment and maladministration in the history of any civilized community.”[203] The emancipation of the slaves and the reconstruction policy carried out by the political leaders in Congress not only brought about a changed relation between the two races, but made negro domination a real evil and an imminent danger. The Southern planters considered themselves justified in resorting to summary measures as a means of protecting their property and their families. Both the social and the political conditions in the South were such as to give a distinctively new impulse to the lynching spirit.[204] It is true that the extreme measures taken under Ku-Klux disguises never received the approval of the mass of the Southern people, but, on the other hand, few determined efforts were made by the civil authorities in the Southern States to bring Ku-Klux offenders to justice. The outrage upon freedmen, persons of Northern origin and Southerners accused of favoring the reconstruction acts of Congress, were not stopped until after Congress had passed the so-called “force bill” in 1871. By this measure the jurisdiction of the Federal courts was extended to Ku-Klux cases, and the President was authorized to suspend the writ of _habeas corpus_ when necessary to preserve order. The Federal troops were not entirely withdrawn from the South until 1877.