The Nation's Peril.: Twelve Years' Experience in the South. Then and Now. The Ku Klux Klan, a Complete Exposition of the Order: Its Purpose, Plans, Operations, Social and Political Significance; The Nation's Salvation.Anonymous
History
The Nation's Peril.: Twelve Years' Experience in the South. Then and Now. The Ku Klux Klan, a Complete Exposition of the Order: Its Purpose, Plans, Operations, Social and Political Significance; The Nation's Salvation.
Anonymous
Campaign literature, 1872 -- Republican; Ku Klux Klan (19th century)
Having murdered McLane, his pursuers returned to Mrs. Gilmore's house,
where the rest of their party were awaiting them before commencing their
inhuman indecencies. A light had been struck, and Mrs. Gilmore, her son
and daughter, the negroes, and Mary Godfrey, were found fastened to the
bed, in the most indecent positions. The negroes were first released, and
were fearfully beaten with clubs and twisted switches, until they became
utterly unconscious, when they were rudely dragged to the doorway, and
their bleeding bodies tumbled, unceremoniously, into the mud.
Mrs. Gilmore's son and daughter were then stripped of their clothing and
compelled, in this condition, to _dance_, for the edification of their
tormentors; the music of this wretched exhibition being provided by the
switches in the hands of the Klan, who applied them to the naked bodies of
their victims with terrible severity, mocking them wickedly, meantime, as
they were forced through the unwilling and miserable antics they
performed!
The son was entirely nude, but the daughter was allowed to retain her
chemise. Both became exhausted, and sank down under the terrible
punishment inflicted upon them, and the vigorous switching kept up, failed
to revive them into further action. The attentions of the Klan were then
directed towards Mrs. Gilmore.
One of the band said, "Let's make the old she radical dance now!"
"We can do better than that," said another; "we can lick the d--
nigger-loving blood out of her."
Mrs. Gilmore, now upwards of fifty years old, was then seized and thrown
violently upon the floor. Her clothes were drawn up over her head, and the
cotton under garments covering her limbs were rudely torn off, exposing
her naked person to the demons in human form who surrounded her. The
switches were then applied with all the vigor of which the executioners
were capable. The old lady uttered a few heart-rending shrieks, but
speedily fainted, and continued unconscious during the remainder of the
infliction.
The punishment of the young woman, Mary Godfrey, was reserved to the last.
She was stripped of every thread of clothing, and was thus compelled to
experience the shame of indecent exposure, added to her other tortures.
During the process of scourging this young woman the vilest and most
obscene epithets were bandied about by the Klan, and she was subjected to
many other indignities.
She sank under the treatment at last, and lie upon the floor, her life
apparently extinct. Cold water was dashed over the faces and bodies of
these unfortunate women, who, by this means, were rallied sufficiently to
render them conscious enough to listen to the final edict of the Klan,
which was, "To cease indulging in and promulgating their heresies, from
that hour forward, and abandon the country, on pain of certain death!"
With this admonition the defenders of the white man's government left the
house.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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