On the 12th of the following October, the President directed his proclamation to the people of South Carolina alone, declaring that hostile combinations of persons making armed resistance to the civil authorities of the "State" and the United States, in their attempt to secure the people in their rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States and the Congressional Act of April 20th, 1871, too strong to be overcome by these authorities, existed in the counties of York, Marion, Chester, Laurens, Newberry, Fairfield, Lancaster and Chesterfield, and commanding the members of these combinations to deliver their arms and accoutrements into the hands of the United States officers in those districts, and disperse to their abodes within five days. [Sidenote: Suspension of the privileges of the writ of Habeas Corpus by the President in certain counties of South Carolina.] At the end of the five days of grace, the President issued a third proclamation, declaring that the members of these unlawful combinations in the places mentioned in his former proclamation had not dispersed and had not delivered up their arms and accoutrements as ordered, and suspending the privileges of the writ of Habeas Corpus in the counties of South Carolina above designated. On the 3d day of the following November a fourth proclamation was published, in which the President {261} acknowledged his error in including the county of Marion in the list of counties in which the privileges of the writ were suspended, but declared that the situation in Union county was such as to warrant the suspension of those privileges in that county also, and warned the insurgents in that county to deliver up their arms and accoutrements and disperse to their abodes within five days. This warning not having been obeyed, according to the views of the President, a final proclamation was issued by him on the 10th day of November suspending the privileges of the writ of Habeas Corpus in Union county. [Sidenote: The Ku-Klux trials.] In execution of the Act of April 20th, and in pursuance of these proclamations, the President now sent a strong force of United States troops into the district composed of the nine counties mentioned, the commanders of which arrested some five or six hundred persons, kept them in confinement so long as they pleased, and procured the arraignment of some of them before the United States courts, where a number of them were convicted and sentenced to fine or imprisonment or to both. Whether there was any necessity for the exercise of such harshness as this is a grave question. It was felt at the South to be an abominable outrage, and the Democrats of the North held the same opinion. More ominous than all this, however, was the fact that many leading Republicans raised their voices in disapproval of it, and of the law which authorized it. [Sidenote: Corruption in the "State" governments of the South.] [Sidenote: In South Carolina.]