Some of the methods of the Loyal League were similar to those of the later Ku Klux Klan.Anonymous warnings were sent to obnoxious individuals, houses were burned, notices were posted at night in public places and on the houses of persons who had incurred the hostility of the order.In order to destroy the influence of the whites where kindly relations still existed, an "exodus order" issued through the League directed all members to leave their old homes and obtain work elsewhere.Some of the blacks were loath to comply with this order, but to remonstrances from the whites the usual reply was: "De word done sent to de League.We got to go." For special meetings the Negroes were in some regions called together by signal guns.In this way the call for a gathering went out over a county in a few minutes and a few hours later nearly all the members in the county assembled at the appointed place.
Negroes as organizing agents were inclined to go to extremes and for that reason were not so much used.In Bullock County, Alabama, a council of the League was organized under the direction of a Negro emissary, who proceeded to assume the government of the community.A list of crimes and punishments was adopted, a court with various officials was established, and during the night the Negroes who opposed the new regime were arrested.But the black sheriff and his deputy were in turn arrested by the civil authorities.The Negroes then organized for resistance, flocked into the county seat, and threatened to exterminate the whites and take possession of the county.Their agents visited the plantations and forced the laborers to join them by showing orders purporting to be from General Swayne, the commander in the state, giving them the authority to kill all who resisted them.Swayne, however, sent out detachments of troops and arrested fifteen of the ringleaders, and the League government collapsed.
After it was seen that existing political institutions were to be overturned in the process of reconstruction, the white councils of the League and, to a certain extent, the Negro councils were converted into training schools for the leaders of the new party soon to be formed in the state by act of Congress.The few whites who were in control were unwilling to admit more white members to share in the division of the spoils; terms of admission became more stringent, and, especially after the passage of the reconstruction acts in March 1867, many white applicants were rejected.The alien element from the North was in control and as a result, where the blacks were numerous, the largest plums fell to the carpetbaggers.The Negro leaders--the politicians, preachers, and teachers--trained in the League acted as subordinates to the whites and were sent out to drum up the country Negroes when elections drew near.The Negroes were given minor positions when offices were more plentiful than carpetbaggers.Later, after some complaint, a larger share of the offices fell to them.The League counted its largest white membership in 1865-66, and after that date it steadily decreased.The largest Negro membership was recorded in 1867 and 1868.The total membership was never made known.In North Carolina the order claimed from seventy-five thousand to one hundred and twenty-five thousand members; in states with larger Negro populations the membership was probably quite as large.After the election of 1868, only the councils in the towns remained active, many of them transformed into political clubs, loosely organized under local political leaders.The plantation Negro needed less looking after, and except in the largest towns he became a kind of visiting member of the council in the town.The League as a political organization gradually died out by 1870.** The Ku Klux Klan had much to do with the decline of the organization.The League as the ally and successor of the Freedmen's Bureau was one of the causes of the Ku Klux movement, because it helped to create the conditions which made such a movement inevitable.As early as 1870 the radical leaders missed the support formerly given by the League, and an urgent appeal was sent out all over the South from headquarters in New York advocating its reestablishment to assist in carrying the elections of 1870.
The League had served its purpose.It had enabled a few outsiders to control the Negro by separating the races politically and it had compelled the Negroes to vote as radicals for several years, when without its influence they would either not have voted at all or would have voted as Democrats along with their former masters.The order was necessary to the existence of the radical party in the Black Belt.No ordinary political organization could have welded the blacks into a solid party.The Freedmen's Bureau, which had much influence over the Negroes, was too weak in numbers to control the Negroes in politics.
The League finally absorbed the personnel of the Bureau and turned its prestige and its organization to political advantage.
