By year’s end, Stephenson had accomplished something that the initial Klan had not: his vigilantes were part of the system. They operated freely and openly, and their crimes were not punished, just as in Texas. And this time around, there were no federal authorities to interfere. All of it was exhilarating to the men in sheets, as a sociologist found out after reviewing questionnaires answered by individual Klansmen. “Membership in a vast mysterious empire that ‘sees and hears all’ means a sort of mystic glorification of his petty self,” wrote John Moffatt Mecklin. “The appeal is
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