The reign of Ku Kluxism existed in the Southern States from the year 1866 until President Rutherford B. Hayes withdrew the Federal troops from the South, during which period a number of its phases present themselves for study and investigation. In some of these, if one accepts the opinions of radical members of Congress from the Northern States, the whole system was nothing but evil; while if the extremely radical Southern viewpoint is accepted, the Ku Klux movement was as spotless as a lily and was responsible for no acts of lawlessness whatever. Somewhere between the extreme Northern condemnation and the extreme Southern justification lies the truth. In any case the Ku Klux movement was the exercise of extra-legal force for the purpose of meeting a revolutionary condition of society in a revolutionary manner. In the sense that it had no standing in law and took upon itself to enforce what its leaders saw fit to declare was the law, it was an outlaw organization. Taken by itself, in the light of our present system of government and law enforcement, it has nothing on which to stand; but, studied in the light of the reconstruction period, it is shown to have been the last desperate resort of the Anglo-Saxon to resist and overthrow the attempt to Africanize his country. The movement was a revolution to meet a situation unparalled in this country's history, and the history of revolutions has never at any time manifested the character of pink teas or church socials. Personally I prefer to adopt the point of view that in a chaotic and despotic condition of society like the one forced upon the Southern people, the end justified the means, and would place the entire responsibility of what happened in the South upon the shoulders of Thaddeus Stevens and other radical leaders of Congress. A careful investigation of the history of the original movement shows that it was divided into three separate and distinct periods. It was first organized as a secret society for the amusement of its members, without any serious attempt to act as a "regulator" of social and political affairs; it was then transformed into a great political-military movement, enforced law and order, drove the negro and the carpetbagger out of politics, and was then ordered disbanded; and lastly it attempted in unorganized fashion, without the authority of its former leaders, to rule many communities, and an enormous number of acts of violence were committed either by it or in its name.