Such acts of the Northern carpet-baggers frequently drew
forth the ire of Southern editors. Particularly was this true in
New Orleans, where The Bulletin in 1874 attacked so bitterly the
Reconstruction Government in a series of articles that a pitched
battle finally resulted on Canal Street with a comparatively
heavy loss of life. The Bulletin, in apologizing to its subscribers
for its meager report of the battle, offered by way of explana-
tion the excuse that the whole staff of the paper was in the fight
and consequently could do no reporting. At Columbia, South
Carolina, John T. Sloan was expelled by the House on January
15, 1869, for denouncing in his correspondence to The Charleston
Courier the attempt to turn out the white professors and to
substitute negroes at the State University.
In Memphis, Tennessee, The Appeal had two or three fights with the Reconstructionists before it accepted the results of the war and began its great work of rebuilding Tennessee in general and Memphis in particular.
The Southern press was practically unanimous in its support of the movement to disfranchise the negro. But almost without exception it insisted that nothing should be done that would in any way violate the Constitution of the United States. Some of the newspapers were very frank in acknowledging that the new constitutional conventions were designed to overthrow negro control, provided nothing be done to conflict with the laws of the United States. In this movement to avoid negro suffrage the South was seldom condemned by the press of the North. Even Republican organs, in confessing that such suffrage as had been tried was a failure, admitted that the movement to get rid of ignorance and superstition at the ballot-box was par- donable.
ORGANS OF KU-KLUX KLAN
One of the methods employed to keep colored voters from the polls of the South was the organization in Tennessee of a secret society called the Ku-Klux Klan. It was really a revival of the night patrol of slavery days when a negro was not allowed to be away from home without a pass from his owner. The chief purpose of this organization seemed to be to prey upon
