One never knew when nor where to expect a body of Ku Klux; they would
spring up out of the ground, to all appearances; their ghostly figures
multiplying like magic; they had a manner of forming their companies
which made a band of one hundred men appear like a thousand. Their
horses' feet were always muffled, making their approach completely
noiseless. But it was only the guilty who feared them; and fear was what
the Klan worked to effect. To kill was not their aim, and only where
absolutely necessary was it ever resorted to. A rare instance was that
of the hanging of a Northern spy by the Pulaski Klan. This man came to
Pulaski and took up carpentry; he made the people like him, and worked
himself into the Klan; got their pass-words, everything in fact that
they knew; then made ready to get away to the North and expose the
secrets of the Order. They found it out before he got away, and when he
boarded the train in Pulaski, a number of the Klan boarded the car as it
turned out of the city, took the man off the train and hung him at the
bridge, thus saving their Order a gigantic tragedy. It was never known
who did it, the government could find out nothing. The matter was never
discussed by any of the Klan, even long years afterward.
In preparing this sketch of the Ku Klux Klan, I have been most fortunate
in having Capt. H. W. Head, 9th Tennessee Regiment, now a popular
physician of Santa Ana, California, a former Grand Cyclops of one of the
Nashville dens, to draw upon for material, and through his generosity in
lending me his treasured Prescript, which has never been out of his
possession since 1867, I am enabled to give a verbatim copy of their
secret oath and ritual. When Mrs. S. E. F. Rose, Historian of the
Mississippi Division, wrote her interesting booklet on the Ku Klux Klan,
she was anxious to secure a copy of this oath. She wrote to a lady in
Tennessee who had one in her possession and asked if she would, for the
sake of history, give her a copy. The lady replied that she regretted
not being able to comply with her request, as she was not able to write
it herself, and prized it too highly to allow it out of her possession
for even an hour to have a typewritten copy made. She said that her Ku
Klux papers, together with her husband's parole of honor obtained at
Appomatox, Virginia, were to her treasures whose price was far above
rubies. So you see what a treasure we have secured through Capt. Head's
gallantry and generosity. I am sure the Daughters appreciate the
interest he has taken in helping compile this data. It was my aim to get
information first-hand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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