As a matter of fact, the Governor of South Carolina had asked the President to give him United States soldiers for the protection of the "State" and its citizens against domestic violence, and the President had, on the 24th of March just preceding the passage of this act, issued his proclamation commanding the persons {259} composing the unlawful combinations to disperse and retire to their abodes within twenty days. This was the method prescribed by the Constitution for bringing the military power of the United States to the assistance of a "State" government whenever the "State" government might not be able to maintain itself against domestic violence. There is no doubt that General Scott of Ohio, whilom officer in the Union army and in the Freedmen's Bureau, the "carpet-bag," radical Republican Governor of South Carolina, attributed the most traitorous character possible to these combinations, exaggerated the strength and extent of them to the highest possible degree, and called for United States troops to suppress them at the earliest possible moment. The most trustworthy men in South Carolina affirmed then, and have continued to affirm to this day, that those combinations had no traitorous intent whatsoever, but were simply defensive in their nature; that the wholesale pardoning of criminals by the Governor and the vagrancy of the negroes had filled the country with desperadoes who made life, property, and female honor insecure; and that, as the militia was composed of the friends of these fiends, and the "State" government itself would not protect the white citizens, it was absolutely necessary for the white people to create some means of united action in self-defence and take the law into their own hands. Statements to this effect were made by one Judge Carpenter, a Republican "State" official of South Carolina, before the investigating committee of Congress in 1871. [Sidenote: The President's proclamation of May 3d, 1871.] On the 3d day of May following the passage of the Ku-Klux Act, the President issued his general proclamation warning the people that the law applied to the whole country, but particularly exhorting the people {260} in the newly reconstructed "States" to suppress all unlawful combinations by their own voluntary efforts, and declaring, that while he was reluctant to make use of the extraordinary powers conferred on him by the Act, he would nevertheless do so if it should be found necessary for securing all the citizens of the United States in "the peaceful enjoyment of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution and the laws." [Sidenote: The President's proclamation to the people of South Carolina.]