Show )) THE OGDEN STANDARD EXAMINER— SUNDAY MORNING AUGUST 16 1936 r- m j "'-V f QUO' - r lZ r A) 4 f v t i r £0 a ops o v' V a Wv XN V “Radical Republican Party” nor for tha Grand Army of th Republic” They! must t vu a Aj X A: ' f'0 i c vj 3' H £ ?A n ' o 'A' A v( cvS?) v jp? $x P fv MR vv V'x--- V tv 4T gs£ ' w T7& - V- ? ( - rV Mei MA rwl ‘ °SNvsvjr- r r I h -- V xr SV Uprst -- thracite fields In Wh0 £gulres from cut-throa- y' Lt er JLii ' - i ill t ii 4 3 OiiOllluoiiiiimiiffiuiitmiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiijiiiugiurifjiBijffiiifjiiti r American history —and which always adds bloody evidence of" the folly of mob action in r haved very badly Many outrages were committed the real friends of the Negro felt that he had forfeited their sympathy er o £ appears periodically ng 1 ’ ’ BOUT the time the activities of tbe Ku : Kf? l4n were ndn8 those of the ’ r mur-tierin- - Tho masked lawlessness of the Black Legion only a revival of a' madness 1 f " j Molly Maguires began The Mollies were an offshoot of the Ancient Order of Hibernians and they operated in the hard coal counties of eastern Pennsylvania in the seventies intimidating and sometimes g mine owners and bosses who did not ' obey their orders respectfully They were well organized entirely ruthless generally feared and hard to convict - Their murder jobs were done by members from a dis-tant region who would not be recognized and could be easily aided to escape The story of their overthrow is a thrilling detective story A Pinkerton agent named James McParlan was hired by the president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad to do the job ft took him two yean to worm his into the way bloody secrets of the ordei and I a ts' whackers and outlaws of every description" who kept on using its "signs passwords robes" and masks for their own purposes" ‘ It had said a leading lawyer in North Car olina “degenerated into a mob of rioters and marauders who plundered and abused friend and foe alike sparing neither party nor sex” To curb this terrorism drastic but Unenforceable law were passed by the southern states some making it legal to hunt down and shoot any disguised man A semblance of order ' was finally restored by federal troops By Henry W Lawrence lmincl t0 epoft of tIe Unifed States the Klan by 1 869 had abDepartment sorbed “all the horse thieves bush- terrorl2ed the Pennsylvania an a sketch in Harper's Weekly Professor of History and Political Science Connecticut College OMEWHAT lib the ado murdtrer lock thiaves jamhleri and e night-ridhas to crop up every other undesirable citizens that law and order to often in our history bent on threat was just around the corner enmg torturing or killing somebody in The defense of slavery was violently earned order to achieve some noble purpose that he on during ‘the years before the Civil War by thinks achieved in broad daylight groups of more or less organized and secret breakers who dealt with abolitionist meTf noble agita purpose is doubt tors and persons who aided runless crowded into ' the i background by the away slaves pleasurable excitement which this thrilling outThe penalties they inflicted door sport affords its devotees but the solemn svere tarring and feathering flog rituals and mysterious disguises which decorate ging and occasionally hanging s the whole performance help the actors to beThey were also fiercely bent on lieve they are doing something useful and 'imextending the institution of slav portant ry into the new territories not The "Black Legion which has been yet admitted to statehood Says one writer on Crowding our newspaper headlines so frequentthis period ly is only the latest of a considerable series of The evidence taken by the congressional these lawless upholders of law and order adcommittee which visited Kansas in 1856 fur ministering some such perversion of justice as nished the most incontestable proof of the power was prevalent several centuries ago in Europe and extent of those Oathbound orders The known in England as "Halifax Law” in Scotdifferent lodges were connected an by together land as “Jedburgh Justice’ in Germany as effective organization embracing great num and in Spain as “Santa Her “Vehmgericht pers of the citizens of Missouri and extending mandad” into other stave states and into the territory In America these lawless legions are to be “Its avowed pur- found at least as far back as the times of our pose was not only to Revolutionary War The “Regulators” in the extend slavery into Carolinas the “Regulars” in New V0rk and Kansas but also into the “Rangers” in Pennsylvania for example other territories of the took upon themselves the task of punishing robis United States This bers and other malefactors and of preventing dangerous society was the Loyalists from doing too much damage to which controlled by men the revolutionary cause who avowed their purIt will be noted of course that the work of pose to extend slavery such bodies in a time and region where the legal at all hazards' of machinery justice scarcely existed is very It was after the different from that required by the 1936 conCivil War had abolditions in Detroit Mich ished slavery how-&0‘! widespread and notorious T ESS organized but not less violent were the or all America s night-ridmovements sprang attacks made in New England chiefly into existence It was commonly spoken of as against the Irish Catholics during the eighteen- the Ku Klux Klan but actually it consisted of thirties and forties: the Ursu-linof the hundreds e of local burning organizations bearing many Convent near Boston and of chapels m different and- - strange-soundinames though Dorchester Mass and Manchester N H the usually bound together into federations tarring and feathering of a priest in Ellsworth i Maine and attacks on a convent in Providence black man had emerged from THE slavery R I and on the Irish quartet in Chelsea Mass with tragic suddenness He was bewildered Around the middle of the nineteenth but bumptious century His white neighbors distrusted the wildness of the ’’Wild West” was tamed a and resented him A few of them made politilittle by a great number of “vigilance comcal capital out of his helplessness and filled hi mittees” which gave “six-gun- ” and “necktie” head with bad advice demonstrations to acting and prospective desner Bewildered and badly advised be often be-- ' P""L ‘“‘‘ranans General Forrest and state” 0? tC!Srding War ully X other more or less responsible high officials saw it was going from bad to Worse and tried to dissolve it but this proved impossible ft had become as one writer puts it “a cover for a reign of outrage and crime which' all taken to-gether forms a record of wrong among the most hideous in the history of any modern X 4 to “Negro equality?' and in favor of maintaining “a white man’s governmeni” and “the constitutional rights of the South” Whoever established the 100 per cent purity of his record and intentions by meeting all these tests was thereupon initiated amid terrifying -- solemnities decorated with skulls and vials of blood and at last pronounced a fchoul Utter secrecy as to his membership m or knowledge of this mysterious order was guarded by threats of dire penalties The Klan came rapidly into a huge membership— probably more than half a million Authorities differ sharply as to whether its existence was ever justified even by the desperate Conditions which brought it into being but nobody defends the murderous and fiendish activities of its later days After a year or two 4b w £ r bt opposed full-fledg- r ‘XX 4 V n ' °f ni§hLt'riderts8pran8 °P rP °ri2ti0ni southern enough was con- - chivalry ironted cy sc imminent a menace to civilized life and white jupremacy The most famous of them all was the Ku Klux Klan which spread over the entire South though started largely at an amusement club for a group of bored Confederate veterans in the little town of Pulaski Tenn m 1866 These club members Soon discovered that their amusingly mysterious night-ridin- g with its ghostly robes and masks could be turned to the serious purpose flllllllllllllllilDllllllllllllllllllin Garb of the original Ku Klux Klan in the turbulent post-Civ- ll War period as sketched in Harper’s Weekly in 1868 i j of terrifying unruly blacks and disciplining t trou- blesome whites Their organization was widely copied and in 1867 a convention was held in Nashville which adopted the name of “the Invisible Emchose as its “Grand Wizard” an able pire Confederate officerr Gen Nathan B Forrest appointed an awesome list of subordinates! Genii Grand Dragons “Grand Titans and "Grand Cyclops" This Ku Klux Klan had high principles and an impressive ritual “It was a military or- ganization’ writes a southern historian “in which was mingled the glamour of chivalry and the awe and reverence inspiring mysticism of a ritualistic religious order” It pledged devotion to humanity mercy and patriotism and to the Constitution of the United States and promised to "protect the weak the innocent and the defenseless” Candidates for Ku Klux membership must have no connection with or sympathy for the collect the necessary evidence while disguised as a counterfeiter and a fugitive from justice The Molly Maguires went out of business after 24 of their members were convicted and 10 executed As the publicity recently given to the Black Legion remind us once more that we have today at least one possibly many secret1 Oath- bound groups of night-rider- s law-overridi- among us ng it may be useful for us to consider the spirit which more or less characterizes them all as stated by a recent writer whose eloquence does not altogether conceal his hatred for" this type of organization “The method of force which hides itself in secrecy is a method as old as humanityj The kind of thing that men are afraid or ashamed to do openly and by day they accomplish secretly masked and at night "The method has certain advantages It uses Fear to cast out Fear it dares things at which open method hesitates! it may with a certain impunity attack the high and the low it need hesitate at no outrage of maiming or murder t it shields itself in the mob mind and then throws over all a veil of darkness which becomes It attracts people who otherwise glamour could not be reached It harnesses the mob” t ’ f E - § E E S 'UiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiHioiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinijijiciiin “ |