The Ku Klux Klan

Of all the stories I’ve read by Our Susan, The Ku Klux Klan is her most obvious attempt at humor and I dare say she should have spent more time and effort pursuing this sort of tale. I’ve finally finished transcribing it and have mustered enough courage to publish this short story, printed in the Fayetteville Observer just over three years after the conclusion of the Civil War. What seem to be several thinly veiled references certainly make me wish I knew more about the context. It’s style is not unlike Poe’s humorous pieces–Thingum Bob in particular.

The Ku-Klux Klan
by Mrs. S.A. Weiss
The Fayetteville Observer, July 23, 1868

Mr. Peter Stokes was a highly respectable citizen of Peddleville, one of the “suburban towns” of New York. For the last ten years he had been clerk to a respectable firm and the recipient of a respectable salary, which, as he was a bachelor, and had no expensive habits, amply sufficed to support himself. In disposition he was peaceable and retiring—some called him timid—while, in person, he presented a rotund appearance, with placid rosey face, a smooth and shining head, slightly bald, and light grey eyes peering through gold-rimmed spectacles. His wardrobe was of the most respectable description, his hat might have served as a mirror, and his linen was a credit to his washerwoman.

Mentally he was, without being a genius, a person of inquiring mind and consequent general information. He subscribed to three papers, and read whatsoever others came in his way. His politics were undecided and of a mild type. The only points on which he felt perfectly sure were that the radicals were all right; that the negro, though a brutish and disgusting subject, should be free, and allowed equal privileges with any other human being; and that Southerners were rebels and traitors, and desperate, bloodthirsty race, who would never rest until they had found some means of revenging themselves upon the victorious and magnanimous North for having whipped them back into the bonds of the glorious Union.

This latter idea was not a very pleasant one to Mr. Stokes. He knew that Southerners had plenty of fierce physical courage of a gorilla-like kind, and he believed them to be determined and revengeful. What act, therefore, of brutal cunning and ferocity was not to be anticipated from such a people? Mr. Peter Stokes had often felt his cheeks blanch and his heart quail at the thought.

And now it was come at last, that which he had long foreseen and foretold. Here was the dreaded and mysterious Ku Klux Klan overshadowing with its demon wings the distracted country – foredooming its victims to death, sending forth its mysterious warnings, and “heaven knows what else of horror!” exclaimed Mr. Stokes, shaking his head in melancholy presentiment.

It was at the house of his friend Brown that Mr. Stokes expressed himself as here described. Brown had recently built himself a snug little cottage on Long Island, in one of those delightful suburban localities where, consequently, people at night go stumbling amphibiously through trackless bogs and marshes, and plunging blindly into treacherous pools of stagnant rain water, and stumping toes on loose-lying brickbats, and getting themselves lost in wildernesses of brick and mortar and scaffolding, until, in their bewilderment, they are progressing upon their heads or their feet. And this was how it came to pass that Mr. Peter Stokes, bidding adieu to his friend Brown at ten o’clock at night, and walking, as he thought strait forward to the nearest ferry, presently found himself adrift in an unknown region of mud and darkness, without a landmark to direct him into the right way.

What should he do? So far as he could ascertain through the foggy gloom it seemed an uninhabited region except for the pigs and goats who gave drowsy utterance to their disapprobation as he came stumbling amongst them.

Once he ventured to call aloud, but his voice sounded so awfully hoarse and sepulchral on the stillness that he had not the courage again to try it. So he went on in silence, cautiously groping his way, and wishing he had not partaken of that last glass of lemon and sugar and hot water, until suddenly his heart was gladdened by the sight of a faint gleam of light not fifty yards before him.

Feeling his courage revive, Mr. Stokes advanced eagerly towards the light. As he did so, a black mass seemed to rise up suddenly out of the ground before him, and to strike him a violent blow upon his nose; which was was prominent. For an instant the night seemed starry, and a hum of strange music floated in his ears and then he saw that it was only a wretched shanty that he had run against, and the music resolved itself into a low hum of voices within its walls.

Mr. Stokes applied his eyes to a crevice and looked in. Four men sat there, on rough seats, cowering around the embers that glowed on the hearth. Rough and wild they looked, with their dark faces, their ragged clothing, and their long unkempt hair and untrimmed bears straggling from beneath their slouched hats. One wore a coat too big for him, another displayed no visible linen; a third had a waist encircled with a leather belt and garnished with a long, sharp-pointed knife; and a fourth, who appeared the most imposing of the group, wore a sort of coat or jacket of grey, fastened across the breast with a butcher’s skewer, which at once reminded Peter of the rebel generals’ uniforms. Altogether they looked, he thought, very much like southern chivalry, and reminded him strongly of the F.F.V’s and rebel soldiers, as depicted in Harper’s, especially when he remarked that one of them was chewing tobacco and another deliberately picking his teeth with a knife similar to that already noticed. But as yet no idea crossed his mind that they might be really southerners, and he was meditating within himself the advisability of an immediate retreat from their vicinity, when some words falling upon his ear, held him spellbound.

“It’s our rights we want. We demanded ’em before and we demand ’em now, and by the holy hokey we’ll have ’em or die!”

“S’pose we can’t get ’em? What then?”

“Strike!” responded the personage with the toothpick, bringing down that formidable-looking instrument with a mighty blow upon a rickety table beside him, and glaring awfully at his companions.

“We’ve struck before, and held out too, ’till we were nigh starved,” said the gentleman minus the linen. “If there was more of us now, there’d be a better chance of success.”

“You was always chicken-hearted,” replied the leather-belted gentleman contemptuously. “If it depended upon you we’d do nothing; but, as it is, we will have justice at last. We’ve sworn it, and we’ll stick to our oath.”

“We can’t git it, I fear,” despondently uttered the timid one, shaking his matted head.

At this the individual in the grey coat, who was a tall, spare figure, arose, elevated himself to his full height, looked steadfastly at his companions, and uttered slowly beneath his breath, and with awful emphasis, the words–”Ku Klux Klan!”

The blood of Mr. Peter Stokes ran cold within him. He would have fled, but that horror held him spell-bound.

“You’re right, Davis; we must look to him, if we’d do anything. And meantime we’ll do our work as usual, though I can’t say I like this here present job. It’s bloody nasty doin’s.”

“It’s got to be done, though,” said the man with the knife in his belt; “and for my part I like it. Look here” –striking an imaginary blow upon his own forehead and then drawing his hand rapidly across his throat–”a blow, a stroke, and it’s all over; no trouble.”

“How many’s on your hand?” inquired, with a shudder, he who had been stigmatized as chicken-hearted.

“’Bout fifteen. I’m willin’ to undertake more. I like the smell of blood.”

“What time?”

“Two o’clock precisely.–There’s to be a signal given”–here the speaker careful felt the blade of his long knife, trying its edge upon his thumb–”a horn blowed, I believe; and then, boys, there’s be a mighty yelling and squealing about here, I tell you.”

Here he whom they had called Davis buttoned his grey jacket about him, as if to retire, while two of his comrades cried,

“You’ll not forget Kit Lukes, Davis?”

Mr. Peter Stokes heard no more. Half dead with horror and afright he managed to drag his trembling limbs away from that den of conspiracy and murder, until he was suddenly arrested by a hand laid upon his shoulder in the darkness. With a yell of unutterable terror he broke away, and with supernatural agility, fled, but was soon overtaken, and the light of a dark lantern turned full upon his face.

“Mr. Stokes of Grubb & Grindles, I declare!” cried the Peddleville policeman in astonishment.

The sight of the man’s face, which he knew revived Mr. Peter Stokes.

“Why, what on airth air you a-doin’ here, old gent?” inquired the official jovially, as he surveyed Mr. Stoke’s head and mud-covered garments.

“The Ku Klux Klan!” gasped Stokes.

“What!”

Breathlessly and tremblingly the tale was told; and Policeman Sharp, seizing Mr. Peter Stokes by the arm, dragged that unfortunate gentleman in ruthless haste and unpitying zeal through the mud and the darkness of the suburbs, and thence down the lighted streets of Peddleville, to the marvel of all beholders.

“What’s the matter?” eagerly inquired one and another. To each and all of whom Mr. Stokes had but one reply– “The Ku Klux Klan!–a conspiracy—all to be murdered at two o’clock! President Davis amongst ’em!” whilst the adjurations of the policeman, bidding him “Shut up, and not be letting it all out to the rabble,” were utterly unheeded by him.

To describe the excitement which thereupon arose in Peddleville would be impossible. From house to house, from street to street, the news flew like wildfire. Men armed themselves, and women shrieked, houses were closed and barred, and the police and the military mustered in force.

Upward of forty unfortunate persons known to be, or suspected of being Southerners, or inclined to sympathize with the South, were arrested and dragged in procession through the streets, and locked up in the town-jail. Five colored gentlemen, taking a prominent part in these proceedings, proposed that these unfortunates should be hanged immediately, as being no doubt members of the Ku Klux Klan, and designing to take part in the threatened massacre.

As to Mr. Peter Stokes, he was the idol, the savior, of the adoring populace.

“Heaven bless him!” cried the women, tearfully; “but for him we should all be bloody corpses before morning.”

“If it hadn’t been for Stokes’ sagacity and courage,” said the men, “and the country been lost.”

One enthusiastic young lady even suggested the advisability of erecting a monument to Mr. Peter Stokes, as the savior and deliverer of Peddleville and the discoverer of the awful Ku Klux Klan, and had Mr. Stokes in that hour of his prosperity and greatness but condescended to have hinted upon the subject, there was not a single lady in Peddleville but would have signified her willingness to become Mrs. Peter Stokes.

But, alas, for Mr. Stokes; alas for all human greatness!

Mr. Stokes stood at the window of the police station, looking forth with pale face upon the excited populace hurrying past, and the fire engines rattling down the street—for it being supposed that incendiarism would form a feature of the purposed uprising, the fire companies were prerparing for it.

Suddenly Mr. Stokes’ face flushed.

“That’s him! Look! The man in the grey jacket. That’s the one they called President Davis!”

Like a flash of lightning was the gleam of brass buttons as a squad of the police rushed out upon the individual indicated, and in ten minutes the town was insane with the intelligence of the arrest of Jefferson Davis in disguise. Meantime that personage was undergoing an examination before the “authorities,” hastily summoned for the purpose.

“What’s your name?” was the first question proposed.

“John Davies.”

“And this person?” indicating a powerful, determined looking individual, who had accompanied him.

“Christopher Lukes.”

“What’s your business?”

“Farm-laborers. We both work on Mr. Potter’s big farm out two miles beyond Peddleville.”

“Call Potter!”

In half an hour Mr. Potter was hurried into court. He deposed that he knew the prisoners, John Davies and Christopher or Kit Lukes. He had two others—they were his hired farm-hands, and a damned dissatisfied set they were, always striking for higher wages, and gadding about trying to persuade other laborers to do the same. He wondered what they were here for now, when they knew that they had those hogs to kill before morning, and …”

“What!” roared the judge of the impromptu court.

“Two and thirty hogs to be killed at two o’clock this morning,” repeated the exasperated Potter; and every eye was instantly turned upon Mr. Peter Stokes.

“I … I … I certainly heard this man, Davies, say that the Ku Klux Klan could do it,” gasped Stokes, nearly swooning.

“Bless you, I never said no such thing,” responded Davies, indignantly. “I said—I remember it now—Kit Lukes can.”

Stokes heard no more. He was borne insensible home to his boarding house, where for some days he remained in strict seclusion.

On last accounts we were informed that he had decided to visit a relation in the country, and he was seen by our reporter on his way thither, wearing as downcast a look as though he himself had been accused of being a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Peddleville is slowly recovering from its excitement.