<P> Klansmen killed more than 150 African Americans in a county in Florida, and hundreds more in other counties . Florida Freedmen's Bureau records provided a detailed recounting of Klansmen's beatings and murders of freedmen and their white allies . </P> <P> Milder encounters also occurred . In Mississippi, according to the Congressional inquiry: </P> <P> One of these teachers (Miss Allen of Illinois), whose school was at Cotton Gin Port in Monroe County, was visited...between one and two o'clock in the morning on March 1871, by about fifty men mounted and disguised . Each man wore a long white robe and his face was covered by a loose mask with scarlet stripes . She was ordered to get up and dress which she did at once and then admitted to her room the captain and lieutenant who in addition to the usual disguise had long horns on their heads and a sort of device in front . The lieutenant had a pistol in his hand and he and the captain sat down while eight or ten men stood inside the door and the porch was full . They treated her "gentlemanly and quietly" but complained of the heavy school - tax, said she must stop teaching and go away and warned her that they never gave a second notice . She heeded the warning and left the county . </P> <P> By 1868, two years after the Klan's creation, its activity was beginning to decrease . Members were hiding behind Klan masks and robes as a way to avoid prosecution for freelance violence . Many influential southern Democrats feared that Klan lawlessness provided an excuse for the federal government to retain its power over the South, and they began to turn against it . There were outlandish claims made, such as Georgian B.H. Hill stating "that some of these outrages were actually perpetrated by the political friends of the parties slain ." </P>

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