Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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Pi' - ff - ' . *' W^v.' City of Union and Suburbs Has II TT 1\T T /"k WK?' fTl T II 1 ~W^ i *1 City of Union and Suburbs Has Five Large Cotton Mills, One Knitting B IB Bj I % I fl 1 'I* ?^W~ \ * ^ve Graded Schools, Water Work*, and Spinning Mill with Dye Plant, Oil I BB I ^ . I B B B I 9 9 M/ 9 I 1 Sewerage System, Electric Lights,Three Mill, furniture Manufacturing and 9 fl fl Blj 9 1 | 1 I L' rM M I VI |U I J ' 1 /* PankS with aggregate capita&?250,000, Lumber Yarda, Female Seminary. JL. JL JL B A \^/ 1 V_^ JU 1 JL if X JL.J K_y 9 4? Electric Railway. rdfrifttion 7,000. . ; ^ ' : VOL. LV. NO. 86 ONION, SOUTH CAROLINA, FRIDAY^EPTEMBER 8. I90i>. " #1.00 A YEAR: | marl at v,c | I Wm. A. Nicholson Union, Sout PAY INTEI f: Time Certificat* I THE STORY OF I 1C Story of tY Time?Some Living ar BY THOMAS IPTEMBER METR "I cannot understand the pig--? headed persistence with which J the South continues blindly to | vote against her own interests?" i said an intelligent young Northerner to me just after the last; Presidential^ election. "It does look funny," I replied, "for otherwise the thing seems; to have been unanimous. But1 did you ever study the period of ( Recon struction ?'' '*T rJnn'f Irnnw wVifih t.Vr* word: I means," he answered with a' I laugh. ' No man can understand current politics or the conditions of knowfthe J* years of 1865 to 1870. Nor can he understand this period until |je has mastered the story of the rise, growth, degeneracy and death of two secret political societies, one of the North called ' 'The Union Leauge of America,'' the other of the South, known officially by its members as "The Invisible Empire,'' and popularly as the "Ku Klux Klan." The bitterness of the Civil i ' War has passed from the hearts of men, but the legacy of the Black Plague which scourgec the South during the period ol Reconstruction remains today i brooding nightmare for th< Southerner, threatening witl sinister prophecies the future o the Nation. The Northern conception o the Ku Klux Klan is voiced in recent criticism of my last nov< by an ancient Boston newspape thus: /| "He reaches the acme of h ?ndoomns when he exall IBtSCtiunai uuuu?v..M the Ku Klux Klan into an assoc ation of Southern patriots, whe he must know, or else be Strang ly ignorant of American histor that its members were as arra ruffians desperadoes and scou drels as went unhanged.'' If this be true, moral miracl have been wrought by ruffiar desperadoes and scoundrels whi require study. The like of it Y never been recorded in the h tory of the race, and if si things were done by scoundr the oasis of ethics must be built by our philosiphers. The question is not merely historical one, it is woven w the most vital and hopeless pr lem of American life. Disinl * ested foreign critics declare v ar>r>nrd that the Negro pi VIIV MVW ? lem of America is the one api entlv insoluble riddle wr shadows our future. Its ri strike deep into our hist spread wide into our every life, and grip with power of the souls of generations unb If any man thinks this is academic question of the which must be determined experts in dates and docume V[ 'a let him ask the police of ml York, Philadelphia, Chicago ' St. Louis into whose cro\ streets and tenements the I " Man is pushing his way. Hu. yhe Ku Klux Klan was a j <jm' Jjkw and Order League mounted night cavalrymen c into action by' the intole d % conditions of a reign of t >urt t & Son, Bankers, I h Carolina, 8 REST ON i es of Deposit. | (U KLUX KLAN. I le Klan Told For the B i of Its Leaders, M id Dead. H DIXON, JR. OPOLITAN MAGAZINE.) under negro rule in the South, It was the answer to their foei of an indomitable race of men conquered, betrayed, disarmec and driven to desperation. II was the old answer of organizec manhood to organized crime masquerading under the forms oi government. A group of college boys at Pulaski, Tennessee, organized il first as a local college fraternity They found a name in the Greet 5 work, "Kuklos," a band, oi j circle, and to this they addec j Clan, and then split the gern ! word into two weird monosylla #$mgntefrtne appeal to'the superstitious, and lo, the awe-in spiring "Ku Klux Klan!' The terror of these silen ghosts, riding in the night, re duced the Negro race to an 1m I mediate and profound peace The idea spread to an adjoimnj county and rapidly over the Stat of Tennessee, which was the firs to pass beneath the yoke of negr supremacy. i In 18t5Y a secret convention v. ? peace-loving, law-abiding, Goc ? fearing, patriotic Southernei I met in Nashville and organize f this society into "The Invisib i Empire," adopted a ritual, ai 3 adjourned. They met in tl i ruins of an old homestead with f the picket lines of 35,000 trooi sent there to enforce the rule f the black slave over his form a master. jl As the young German patric ir of 1812 organized their strugj for liberty under the noses of t ic garrisons of Napoleon, so the ts daring men, girt by thousands ;i_ bayonets, discussed and adopt !n under the cover of darkness t e- ritual of "The Invisible Empire yt Within a few months this E nt pire had overspread a territ< n. larger than modern Europe ? brought order out of chaos. rJ eg The triumph which they achie^ 1S was one of incredible grande They snatched power out of las cieatn, arm iuic jg_ fruits of victory from twe lch million conquerors. Suchachic e|s ments have never been wrou re_ by arrant ruffians, scound and desperadoes. The si an moral grandeur of sudh a c gives the lie to the assertion, ob- The truth of history is, t ter- as originally organized and dth the Ku Klux Klan was the ob- guardian of civilization in )ar- South from 1867 to 1870 an lich members were the salt of Dots earth. ory, Every hope of relief fo day South had been crushed, fate assassiilation of Lincoln ha orn. crazed the masses of the I* an that the Radical wing of past party in power could propo 1 by outrage too monstrous fc ;nts, consideration of Congress. New a bill to tear from the sta and Southern people the remm vded their property left by the Hack and give it to the negroef camp followers otf the arm ?reat introduced in the House ol s of resentatives by Thaddeus ;alled ens, the responsible leader rable Government, and boldly error pioned by this great mai the audacity of genius and the faith of a fanatic. The Negro had been made the ruler of his former master who was disfranchised and disarmed. The hand of the thief and ruttian clutched at every man's throat. The Negro controlled the state, county, city and town governments. Their insolence grew apace. Their women were taught to insult their old mistresses and mock their poverty as they passed in their faded dresses. A black driver. in a town near mine, struck a white child of six with a whip, and when the mother protested she was arrested 1 " a , negro policeman and fined n dollars by a negro magistrate for insulting a freedman! Thieves looted the treasury of every state and county, and taxes mounted until as many as 2,900 homesteads of white men, many of whom could not vote, were sold for taxes in a single county. The Negro and his ally the carpet-bag adventurer had at taineu undisputed control or society through the secret oathbound order known as "The Union League." The white people of the South at first scouted the idea that the negroes, who had been faithful, j through the war, could now be used as their deadliest foes in | the new order of society. But I for the signs, grip, fass-words/ j and mysterious blue flami>> altar of "The Union Leagik ; \ the whites could have held unfriendship of their former slaves/1 . As a rule the ties that bound t them were based on real affection. But theNLeague did its ^ work well. By promises to the r slaves of forty acres of the land j of their former masters, linked t with the wildest theories of I oFTraitied" . garrisonfl, a gulf between the white man of the South and the negro was dug which time can never bridge. Its passion have ; become part of the very heart beat of botn races, i. The Union League of America q was organized in Cleveland, ;t Ohio, during the war, by friends q of Thaddeus Stevens, the Radi-1 cal leader of Congress. Its prime object was the confiscation j. of the property of the South. .s The chief obstacle to this program was Abraham Lincoln. je Hence the first work of the 1(j League was to form a conspiracy le to destroy Lincoln and prevent jn his renomination for a second pS term. 0f They according nominated er John C. Fremont for President before the convention met in ^5 Baltimore to name Lincoln's sue,.je cessor, and boldly proclaimed jle war to the knife against the Presi >se dent. They figured on Fremont's prestige as the first formidabh e(j candidate of their party, his rec ord as a pathfinder and hfegriev i >> ances against the Administra j^_ tion, but they forgot that he wa ^ry born in South Carolida. Fremon in(j himself gave the League a morta Phe blow in its first political prograr /ed ^y boldly repudiating their plat >ur form of vengeance and confiscz '(jel tion. They then turned on thei the own candidate, cursed him as nty fool, and helped nominate an ?ve_ elect Lincoln as the lesser ( ght two ev^sTT""" n<sen?s;ination of tl rels upuu leer President, Thaddeus Stevens su leed denly became dictator of the n tion, and the Union League gre , rapidly into a restless politic power. Within two years ; le(?' most every negro in the Sou 3?le had been admitted to membc ^.e ship, drilled in its anarchis .A*3 program and in the manual tlie arms. When the time was ripe. H r the Stevens, in 1867, iestroyed 1 The state governments in the Soi ,d so which had been established Jorth President Johnson, permitt the the former slave to vote to se no franchise himself and disfr >r the chise his master at the same e Even tion. He divided the territ rving from the James to the Rio Gra cnt of into five military satrapies I war aent the armies back into i and South to enforce compliance \ y was Negro rule. In short, he pis ' Rep- a ballot in the hands of e' Stev- negro and a bayonet at the br of the of every white man. cham- The South felt that no pe l with had ever been so basely betrs or so wantonly humiliated. Jufl&e Albion W. Tourgee, author^ "A Fool's Errand," which' is the carpet-bagger's stor^of the Klan, pays a tribute in this book to the organizers of the "Invisible Empire," which is vetfy remarkable, when we remember that he was writing of enemies who had on more than one qgpasion sought his life. He^says: "Such, however, was tne,indomitable spirit of the Southern people that they scorned to yiel& j&>A\vhat Jjiey deemed opprossindigj tears. Ng^bdhquered foe ever passed' uhder the yoke, which ( they connived to mean servitude i and infamy with more unwilling t step or-more deeply muttered t curses. The Ku Klux Order was ] a daring conception for a conquered people. Only a race of { warlike instincts and regal pride r could have conceived or executed < it. Men, women and children ; must have, and be worthy of, implicit mutual trust. They must ] be trusted with the secrets of life and death without reserve ( and without fear. It was a mag- i nificent conception, and in a sense deserved success, it dit- ( fered frogn all other attempts at 1 revato^b-\ in the caution and ; skj^SvK^vhich it required to be , It was a movement ^ \?\v$,ie face of the enemy, ( ^#0'nemy of overwhelming '.'.--Jsti.' Should it succeed, it ^aldbe one of the most brilliant revolutions ever accomplished. j Shortla it fail?well, those who wei^i engaged in it felt they had noQ&ig more to lose.'' ! Julfee Tourgee was in my opiniou.tte most brilliant carpet-bagger.yjho ever found fame and for- | fiS8ftuhi4teanii,J?l. ?8,uth. In the IC.'i Klux Kl&n for trie part ile took in persiffeding Governor Holden to suspend the writ of Habeas Corpus in North Carolina The writ had never been suspended for a moment during the entire history of the Commonwealth, not even during the four years of war when the conscript acts were enforced. A hundred picked men were commissioned to execute Tourgee and the Governor for this usurpation of power and throw their bodies into the Capital Square at Raleigh. They failed only because of a warning received in time. And yet this big-brained, self-poised Yankee sat down afterwards and wrote the tribute to his foes I quote. We Southerners are much too intense in our feelings to do such things, i It never occurred to Judge Tourgee at the time he wrote this 1 book that the' members of this - Klan were merely a set of scoun3 drels and desperadoes. J Nothing perhaps better illus trates the chaotic conditions ol - the times than the manner in - which Judge Tourgee obtained s his title. He applied to the Sut preme Court of North Carolin? ? - - 1 il for license to practice mw am n fell through on the examination > He cursed the ancient and honor i- able Court, composed of men o ir great ability, as an aggregatioi a of solemn asses, ran for the Legis d lature on the Negro ticket am )f was elected. He passed a bi through the Black Parliament t ie deprive the Supreme Court c d- the right to examine candidate a- for the bar and placed the priv iw lege in the hands of the commo ;al justices of the peace, many < al- whom were negroes who cou tn not read or write. He went b >r- fnrn a magistrate, paid his f tic of twenty dollars, got his licen of to practise law without examin tion, ran for judge and took 1 /Ir. seat on the bench, the I do not record this fact in a nth disrespect to the memory by Judge Tourgee. He was am ing the people of North Caroli en- would have been delighted an- know under nobler conditio lec- He was one of the few men ory our state government at the ti nde who had any brains or conscie and at all. He was a prince am* the the "judges" who sat with 1 vith in those trying days. We wc iced have thanked God for the pr very lege of trading a half-dozen sc east wags of the native breed for such Yankee of ability, ople When the reign of terror wl lyed followed Negro rule reached IF. M. FARR, President. T K Merchants and Plan Successfully Doing Busin HGS is tln? OLDEST Hunk in 1 Ff 2 has a capital and surplus M ?J is tlio only NATIONAL I ; t luis paid dividends ?mo *_ C nays KOI'K percent, ii M K tbe only Hank in Unto p ?; litis Huvk far-Proof vault H SB pays more tuxes than AI | WE EARNESTLY SOLI / ii | ????? ? dimax as many as nine burning jams were seen atone time from 1 ;he Court House Square of the 1 :o\vn of Dallas in Gaston County, f North Carolina. 1 Taxpayer conventions met and 1 lppealed to Washington in vain. ( The Administration answered by j sending more rifles to arm the i Negro militia. !; The laws forbidding the inter- j marriage of races were repealed by military proclamation and the 1 commanding General of North Carolina took a negro woman with him over the state in a special < car and made speeches from the j platform, declaring that she was ] his wife, that a new era had i dawned in the history of the world, and that he was there to < eniorce us spirit with the hayo- i net if need be. The lowest type of negro, ' maddened by those wild doctrines ] began to grip the throat of the white girl with his black claws. A picture of one of these negroes i appeared in the first edition of my novel, "The Leopard's Spot3, ' but the publishers were compelled to cut it out from all I subsequent editions becai Shcti'a tiling, ui'a. IJlv-v.i're. Yet the people of the South mtfst face this living beast day and night. In this the darkest hour of the life of the South, and the lowest in public morals ever known in the Nation, the Invisible Empire j suddenly rose from the field of death and challenged the visible to mortal combat. Within a few months after the appearance of the white brotherhood, the disorders of anarchy j were succeeded by a strange j peace, positively weird in its completeness, according to the ac1 1 - t i m knowledgement or .mage xouigee. In the first campaign they overturned the Negro governments of six Southern States, and the others, one by one, were redeemed under the inspiration of this success. In North Carolina, my uncle, Colonel Leroy McAfee, was elected to the Legislature from Cleveland County, and as the representative of the Klan on ' the Judiciary Committee, imI peached Governor Holden, removed him from office, and de| prived him of his citizenship. J Colonel McAfee was in manj respects a typical leader of th< 1 Klan. He was in the officio f language of the Invisible Empir ^ a Grand Titan?that is to say '1 * '''""xv.nnrlw n f n r'nn PTCS ?. Lflti V^UIiliiiaiiuci v/x t? .o L| sional District. The chief vva 11 General Nathan Bedford Forresl o of Tennessee, the daring an ,f brilliant cavalry commander c ;s the Confederate forces of tl i_ Southwest. His title was t\ ,n Grand Wizard of the Empir 3f The Grand Dragon command* Id the State, the Giant a Count e- the Cyclops a Township Den. ee A glance at the portrait se Colonel McAfee will convin a_ even a Boston Abolitionist th nS he could hardly be called a rufim scoundrel or desperado. He w ny a man of gentle manners, coi of teous, kindly, brave, and cc an siderate, an alumnus of the U na versity of North Carolina, an* to veteran of the Confederate Ari ns> who led a company of volunte in to the front the first day of ime war? am* surrendered a shatte nce brigade with Lee at Appomat [jng His people in the old world the clans of McAlpin and Fei tuld son? were of the best bloo* >ivi- Scotland. They came to Am ala_ ca from Down and Antrim in one north of Ireland with the g martyr migrations which peoj nch America with 300,000 Sc< k its I Covenanters. J. D. ARTHUR, Cashier. C E lers National Bank, iess at the "Old Stand." L* ninn, , of $10\000, Liunk iit Union, utititifc to tmtOO, aterest on deposits, u inspected by ur. olticcr, . and Safe with Time-Lock. ,i< the thinks in Union combined. CIT YOUR BUSINESS, mm i II?? The Ku Klux Klan was comnanded and led to its triumph >y these sturdy clansmen of Scottish ancestry. Generals Forrest, and George Gordon of Tenlessee and John B. Gordon of Georgia were all of Scotch blood, md the hill counties of the South vvere the scenes of their struggles ind their victories, in the duel for supremacy between the "Union T,pnmic " ?^uuitu Willi bayonets, and the "Invisible Empire." No adequate history of America will be written uncil full credit be given the people of Covenanter blood for the part they played in creating the nation and developing its life. Here Judge Tourgee should have found the secret of that magnificent audacity which so captivated his imagination. The Covenanter of the South, had he dreamed of Negro dominion as the result of surrender would have chosen to continue the Civil War, and could have kept an army of half a million men busy for forty years. His race had defied the crown of ?bwi<irsd king and build a commonwealth, and, into led our Revolution, n hills of the South, and conquered ? the West. I have always felt it a pity that Governor William W. Holden of North Carolina died unforgiven by the state for the part he played in the tragedy of Reconstruction. With all his faults he was a man 01 genuine culture, and a high order of talent. When I lived in Raleigh he was a forlorn figure haunting the Capital, , petitioning each Legislature to remove his disabilities. But the 'state refused to forgive the man who had for any cause suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus and raised an army of aliens to enforce a military rule. The last time I saw the old Governor, he had been partly paralyzed and spoke with difficulty. I greeted him cordially and he tried to respond, stopped, 1 and feebly drawing from his 1 pocket an envelope, wrote across " it a quotation from Seneca in a quaint old-fashioned style of " handwriting?the hand which 1 1 ^ 4-A O wrote tne xauii si^uaiuic tv ? 7 proclamation which cost him his b citizenship. He did not know 1 that my mother was Colonel e McAfee's sister, and I did not , tell him, for I felt then, as I dot now, that he suffered for others* s sins as well as his own, and that t, it would have been a nobler thing: d to have forgiven him. When Colonel McAfee returned ie from the Legislature after the 10 overthrow of the Reconstruction e- government, he disbanded the iC* Ku Klux Klan in his district in y? accordance with General Forrest's orders. Younger and more ?* desperate men reorganised it as cc a local fraternity to their own at sorrow and the disgrace of some in' sections of our mountain region. as Its degeneracy into fierce neighjr" borhood feuds and its perversion )r}~ by the lawless swiftly followed al" until it became necessary for the i a organizers of the original Klan m-V to aid in the suppression of its e^s spurious successors. My father, liev. Thomas Dixon, Sr., a member of the original Klaf? under Colonel McAfee's ; ? leadership and aided him in the fu:, suppression of its reckless imi tators. He was preeminently the type man w^ose name ,' made the Klan a resistless power To 1 ^w0 years its existStch ence* never attended a meet! (Continued on last page.)