Meanwhile rumor was busy, being spurred on by the thousand and one prejudices growing out of Southern defeat, and by the irritation resulting from the obnoxious Reconstruction Laws. Fresh as that period is in the memory, it is difficult to reproduce, on paper ... difficult to revive, even for a moment, an adequate recollection of that desperate crisis when the politicians on both sides gave themselves over to attacks and reprisals brutal enough to belong to the dark ages. ...