One of the first measures they took was the enactment of the Military Reconstruction Act of 1867, in which they took power over Southern state governments by dividing them into five “military districts and made subject to the military authority of the United States.” Southerners, unwilling to accept these fast-paced and forceful changes to their society, reacted with anger and frustration, accusing this new rule of corruption and injustice. In a public speech in the House, Representative L. Q. C. Lamar of Mississippi called the North’s military occupants vessels of “rapacity, cupidity, corruption, grinding oppression, and taxation in its most devouring form,” later proclaiming them as lacking in moral judgment and insulated from the feelings and suffrages of the people of the South. Indignation towards Northern occupation and the presence of carpetbaggers in the South was also expressed in a Southern Newspaper, claiming that they “cursed and almost ruined” the government and threatening to spread this notion “regardless of cost or consequences.” These mentalities also manifested themselves in violent acts and rhetoric. The ideology of the Klu Klux Klan, a group notorious for its brutality towards Republicans and blacks during this time period, had agents in almost all Southern states by 1870 acting as instruments against Radical