7. The evils the Ku-Klux came to cure were indeed unbearable; but it must be said, also, that while the disease was desperate, the remedy was fearful. It is a fearful thing for men to band themselves together in secret and take the law into their own hands, and nothing but the direst necessity and the gravest emergency can ever justify it. Inseparable from every such organization, and this proved no exception to the rule, is the danger of its easy perversion to the gratification of personal malice or the improper punishment of petty offences, and this alone ought to be warning that in such a remedy lies terrible danger. 8. Governor Holden quailed before the Ku-Klux, and from his guarded house issued proclamation after proclamation, but they would not down at his bidding. When winter came and with it the Legislature, Senator Shoffner, of Alamance, at the instance of the Governor, introduced a bill into the Senate, in its terms conferring upon the Governor the right to declare any and every county in the State to be in insurrection, and to recruit and maintain an army whenever he saw proper. In other words, the bill sought to confer upon the Governor the power to declare martial law at will. Of course this was unconstitutional. 1870. 9. The Shoffner bill was ratified on the 29th of January, 1870. On the night of the 26th of February, Wyatt Outlaw, a negro, was hung in the county town of Alamance, by the Ku-Klux. On the 7th of March the county was declared to be in a state of insurrection. Federal troops were sent there, but beyond eating their rations they had no occupation, for quiet and good order prevailed throughout the county. 10. A striking fact, true of every place during these unhappy times, is that whenever white Federal troops were sent to a troubled section, whether in Alamance, Caswell, Orange or elsewhere, there was straightway an end of trouble. The law- breakers were awed into good behavior, and those who in self- protection had forced, in their own judgment, to take into their own hands the administration of justice, of course had no further occasion to do so.