Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 August 1873 — The “Courier-Jourual” on the Ku-Klux. [ARTICLE]

The “Courier-Jourual” on the KuKlux.

Wk are.glad to hear one voice from the Southern States denouncing the secret labors of the Ku-Klux. The Louisville Courier-Journal has at last ventured to break the silericeinwhich the Southern editors have usually watched the course of this barbarous association. For eight years the Southern press has been chained by its prejudices or its terrors, and has looked upon the destroyers of its people With complacency or with submission. In Georgia, we believe, no newspaper is permitted to exist that is not willing to hear of barbarous deeds which it is afraid to mention, to hide the persecutions of white and colored Republicans, and to aid a policy of tyranny that is driving labor and industry from the State. The misfortunes of Louisiana may be traced to the same source. It is overspread with journals and editors who are the sure instruments of the Ku-Klux, who are duelists and bravoea, the friends and allies of noted assassins, the companions and defenders of the class of men whom the Louisville Courier paints so distinctly, the enemies of education, intelligence and humanity, and from whom have come the disasters that have driven away the trade of New Orleans, and left thousands of its buildings tenantless, that reduced the planters to bankruptcy, and made Louisiana that ruined State over which Beauregard and his companions now raise their ineffectual cry of despair. The Louisville Courier-Journal has at last spoken of the Ku-Klux in language such as we have frequently used, but which has never before been permitted or heard in Kentucky. It is well known that this infamous ’society is often cbm posed of the young men of the wealthier class at the South, that it is highly popular with the former secessionists, that when seized and brought before the tribunals its guiltj- members are sometimes caressed by politicians of the fair sex, and supported by all the discontented of the sterner, and that their crimes are never told. Their crimes are committed in disguise and under the shelter of night, and they are such as the day might blush to see. But the Courier-Journal can no longer keep silence. It seems that the house of Mrs. Mason Brown, the stepmother of Governor Gratz Brown, the Liberal candidate for the Vice-Presidency, was visited at night because Mrs. Brown had chosen bo employ negro labor. ~Acolored man was brutally murdered, his property destroyed, and various other acts of barbarism were committed the same night that scarcely can be tolerated even in Kentucky.

Nothing that we or any Northern journal have ever -said can exceed the -force with which, our contemporary how denounces the Ku-Klux. They tire “bandits,” “lynchers;” they have never done a , day’s honest work, and give their lives to whisky and gambling; they deserve flic detestation of all good citizens; their “ruffianism covers the cheek with the blush of shame;” the Bender murderers ami the lowa railroad robbers are criminals of no deeper dye; they are pests of the commonwealth: they blight its dearest interests, drive off useful citizens, lower the value of land, repel capital, banish education, and impoverish and desolate Kentucky. Such are some of the epithets and objurgations which the Courier-Journal applies to the society, and adds, with a new sense of justice, that the humblest apd most ignorant negro who toils for an honest living is, in every respect, the superior of men who terrify and ill-treat defenseless women, and pretend to decide what kind of laborers the farmers of Kentucky shall employ to tend their crops. ■‘Their ;presence,” it exclaims, “is insufferable;” they should be treated with “short shrift and a long rope.” The “devilish fraternity” is dead to every generous feeling, and “the State must meet them with the halter in ■ itefcand’’ ; ——■ , This certainljris instructive laiigtiage, and shows that Kentucky, which has suffered as much as any other Southern State from the terrors of the Ku-Klux, is gathering up sufficient courage to treat them as they deserve. Yet what can now be said of those Democratic or Liberal politicians, who. on the last election and through many previous elections were in close alliance with the secret associations, who Carried Kentucky and several other Southern States by their aid, who rejoiced over their victory in- Georgia with extravagant triumph, though they knew well how it had been won, and who have Coldly defended the Ku-Klux of Louisiana in the midst of its enormities! If the courage and good sense of the CourierJournal find a general support in its own and other depressed Southern States, it seems likely that the Northern allies of the Ku-Klux will not -win many more elections, even with the aid of what the Courier calls “the pests, of society.”— Harper'* Weekly.