On the 23d of March, 1871, President Grant sent to Congress a message, in which he touched delicately but unmistakably upon this subject, as follows: _"A condition of affairs now exists in some of the States of the Union rendering life and property insecure, and the carrying of the mails and the collection of the revenue dangerous. The proof that such a condition of affairs exists in some localities is now before the Senate. That the power to correct these evils is beyond the control of State authorities, I do not doubt. That the power of the Executive of the United States, acting within the limits of existing laws, is sufficient for present emergencies is not clear."_ It was further suggested that such legislation should be had as would secure life, liberty, and property in all parts of the United States; and in pursuance of this recommendation, an act was passed by Congress, and approved April 20th, 1871, entitled, "An Act to enforce the provisions of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and for other purposes." This was a blow under which the various orders of the Ku Klux Klans reeled and staggered like quivering aspens. The leaders of these Klans had so long disregarded law as to come to think, apparently, that they were no longer amenable to it, and might be a law unto themselves. They predicted that any attempt to interfere with them would lead to results in comparison with which the scenes enacted during the war of the rebellion would sink to insignificance; but, as the results have thus far shown, they had reckoned without their host. They sought to stand upon something like tenable ground and to fortify their position before the world, by arguments that were worn threadbare long before the war of the Rebellion, and they failed most signally. Their fallacious reasonings were impotent to justify their acts, and they neither enlisted the sympathies, nor gained the support of those to whom they appealed. The march of progressive republicanism, irresistible in the force of its teachings, and the spread of the God-like principles of truth, justice, and equality among men, without distinction of race or color, which had _then_ encountered the fiercest obstruction within the power of the slaveocracy to throw in its way, _now_ swept over the country, uprooting the tyrannical oligarchy of the South, tearing asunder the flimsy veil behind which the great wrongs done to the bondmen were sought to be hid, and destined, in its onward course, to remove every vestige of those pernicious principles so inimical to sound doctrine and the stability of governments. The results produced by the spread of these principles, and the enforcement of the laws based thereon, can hardly be estimated. Taking the condition of the Southern States both before and after the war-- THEN AND NOW-- and we have an array of facts in support of these principles, surpassing all theories and arguments.