"The real facts of the case, and cause of the present alarm, I believe to be as follows: The colored men and Republicans generally of this county, feeling aggrieved at the many murders and outrages perpetrated on men of their party by the Ku Klux organization, have determined to protect themselves in future and have banded together for that purpose only, not to assume the offensive, or interfere with the peaceful, law-abiding portion of the community." The relation of cause and effect in this thwarted conspiracy to destroy Eutaw and the riot which followed so soon is indisputable. The trend of Lieutenant Harkins' sympathies is equally plain. He was inclined to doubt that the banded negroes intended to burn the town, but readily intimated that they had provocation in "the many murders and outrages perpetrated on men of their party by the Ku Klux organization." Not a word is there in the report concerning the burning of the store, nor of the fact that refugee white families from the widely-separated plantations were moving into Eutaw for protection against the menacing bands of negroes, nor that the "patrols and pickets" were necessary precautions not of one night only, but of three nights, and served to deter the negroes from prosecuting their design. The prompt action of the whites in driving the negroes out of town on October 25 would seem precipitate and unjustifiable if not considered in connection with the facts just recited. Nearly two thousand negroes attended that meeting, and they took with them guns, which were secreted in wagons at the foot of Prairie street. They were aware that the commanding officer of the garrison was in sympathy with them, and that they would encounter only a small body of white men should there be a collision. No doubt they counted much on the presence of the radical governor of the state, the military commander of the department, a senator and a congressional representative, all in sympathy with them, and all smarting under indignities received only a few days before at a meeting in an adjoining county. The white men remembered the nights of anxiety for the safety of the women and children and property of the town, and realized the danger of the situation in which they were placed by the group of official Republicans who heedlessly and recklessly assembled thousands of negroes who had so recently been frustrated in a design to obtain revenge for punishment administered to evildoers of their race. Those white men had courage and resolution to meet the emergency, and they met it promptly and terribly. And they taught a lesson for which there has never since been occasion for repetition. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE RESTORATION OF WHITE SUPREMACY