midnight
They instituted clubs and paraded by hundreds , the trained cavalry of a ghostly army organized into companies , battalions , divisions , departments , having at their head the `` Grand Wizard of the Empire . '' It was all in sport -- a great jest , or at the worst designed only to induce the colored man to work somewhat more industriously from apprehension of ghostly displeasure . It was a funny thing -- the gravest , most saturnine , and self-conscious people on the globe making themselves ridiculous , ghostly masqueraders by the hundred thousand ! The world which had lately wept with sympathy for the misfortunes of the `` Lost Cause , '' was suddenly convulsed with merriment at the midnight antics of its chivalric defenders . The most vaunted race of warriors seized the cap and bells and stole also the plaudits showered upon the fool . Grave statesmen , reverend divines , legislators , judges , lawyers , generals , merchants , planters , all who could muster a good horse , as it would seem , joined the jolly cavalcade and rollicked through the moonlight nights , merely to make fun for their conquerors by playing on the superstitious fear of the sable allies of the Northmen . Never before was such good-natured complaisance , such untiring effort to please .