Now, how did the Southern whites deal with this state of things? Well, I
am sorry to say they manifested their discontent very much in the way
in which the Irish have for the last hundred years been manifesting
theirs. If, as the English opponents of Home Rule seem to think,
readiness to commit outrages, and refusal to sympathize with the victims
of outrages, indicate political incapacity, the whites of the South
showed, in the period between 1866 and 1876, that they were utterly
unfit to be entrusted with the work of self-government. They could not
rise openly in revolt because the United States troops were everywhere
at the service of the carpet-baggers, for the suppression of armed
resistance. They did not send petitions to Congress, or write letters to
the Northern newspapers, or hold indignation meetings. They simply
formed a huge secret society on the model of the "Molly Maguires" or
"Moonlighters," whose special function was to intimidate, flog,
mutilate, or murder political opponents in the night time. This society
was called the "Ku-Klux Klan." Let me give some account of its
operation, and I shall make it as brief as possible. It had become so
powerful in 1871 that President Grant in that year, in his message to
Congress, declared that "a condition of things existed in some of the
States of the Union rendering life and property insecure, and the
carrying of the mails and the collecting of the revenue dangerous." A
Joint Select Committee of Congress was accordingly appointed, early in
1872, to "inquire into the condition of affairs in the late
insurrectionary States, so far as regards the execution of the laws and
the safety of the lives and property of the citizens of the United
States." Its report now lies before me, and it reads uncommonly like the
speech of an Irish Secretary in the House of Commons bringing in a
"Suppression of Crime Bill." The Committee say--