Authors: Philip Dray
In Washington, Congressman Elliott was a tactful spokesperson for his race; several times he led delegations to confer with President Grant. On the House floor, however, he could be combative, as when, in defense of the Ku Klux Klan bill, he tangled with the Democrat Michael C.
Kerr of Indiana. Kerr, arguing states' rights, suggested that the Constitution allowed the federal government to interfere only if a state requested help. "The United States shall guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government," Kerr said, citing Article IV, Section 4, of the Constitution, "and shall protect each of them against invasion, and on application of the Legislature or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence." There was no basis for federal intervention, he emphasized, when the legislature or the governor did not request assistance. Elliott disagreed with Kerr's interpretation, saying the article meant that the nation
did
have an obligation to defend, in each state, a republican form of governmentâprecisely what was under assault in South Carolina. "In this case the duty imposed upon the Federal Government is to protect the States 'against domestic violence,'" Elliot said. "The clause is not inhibitory, but mandatory. It was evidently not designed to restrict the rights, but to enlarge the duties of the Government."
Elliott pointed out that the clause about the governor's request could not stand as the sole means by which intervention would occur, for the governor himself might be complicit in affiicting the people of a state. "Otherwise," Elliott pointed out, "a faithless and undutiful Executive, assisting the insurgent authors of the 'domestic violence,' might, by withholding his 'application,' render the Government of the United States a torpid and paralyzed spectator of the oppressions of its citizens." Kerr's formula for federal intervention, Elliott quipped, reminded him of the story of the aristocrat who apologized for watching a man drown before his eyes, explaining that they had not been properly introduced. (Elliott's joking at Kerr's expense, a black man openly mocking a white, did not sit well with congressional Democrats, several of whom walked out during his remarks.)
Kerr then argued that the outrages in South Carolina were being carried out by "a very small number of persons," and only in a few localities. "They are merely common criminals," he said, "without politics or higher motives." Elliott countered by reading a long list of known offenses and deadly Ku Klux threats, as well as warnings made to employers not to hire blacks or Republicans. He also called Congress's attention to several local newspaper editorials from South Carolina that called for what had come to be known as the "Straightout" Democratic policy, one that had as its goal not only electoral victory over the Republicans but also their obliteration as an active political entity. Contradicting the frequent charge that "the Republican party is answerable for
the existing state of affairs in the South," Elliott stated that "the troubles are usually in those sections in which the Democrats have a predominance in power, and, not content with this, desire to be supreme."
Horace Greeley, the editor of the
New York Tribune,
criticized Elliott for his comments, believing he had unfairly impugned the Southern planter class. Elliott replied in a letter (which Greeley published) that he had not said that planters
were
Klansmen, only that they supported them.
Possibly, Mr. Editor, your graciousness to recalcitrant Confederates would be somewhat modified if you lived, as I do, within the theatre of their operations. Men often bear the misfortunes of their neighbors with great equanimity, and are ready most graciously to forgive wrongs to which they cannot be personally subjected. Thus the philosopher Seneca, seated in his magnificent villa, surrounded by symbols of opulence, wrote upon tablets of gold his famous "Essay on the Beauties and Advantages of Poverty."
Frederick Douglass joined the debate in the pages of his
New National Era,
arguing that the clarity of the Civil War conflict may have been preferable to the scurrilous mischief of the Klan. "Rebellion, at least, is honest, in so far that it makes war in broad daylight against organized forces, while, on the contrary, those dastardly gangs direct their attacks against single, defenseless individuals, and surprise, torture, and assassinate them in disguise and under the cover of night."
In late March 1871 Grant sided formally with the advocates of the bill, telling Congress, "A condition of affairs exists in some of the states of the Union rendering life and property insecure ... That the power to correct these evils is beyond the control of the state authorities I do not doubt ... therefore I urgently recommend such legislation as, in the judgment of Congress, shall effectually secure life, liberty, and property, and the enforcement of the law in all parts of the United States."
The Ku Klux Klan Act, which passed on April 20, expanded on the earlier Enforcement Acts by outlawing conspiracies to obstruct or hinder the equal rights protection of citizens under the law, including the rights of due process, and by asserting that such acts constituted "rebellion against the government of the United States." Its passage meant that cases involving Klan attacks on freedmen and others in South Carolina would receive a hearing in federal court and that the president was authorized to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, which gives imprisoned suspects the right to know why they are being held, so that large-scale
roundups of Klansmen could be carried out and the accused held until testimony and witnesses were arranged. It also allowed Grant the option of dispatching federal troops without a state's formal request, and it mandated that both petit and grand jurors sitting on Klan cases would have to swear they had never taken part in the organization's activities.
Visiting South Carolina that summer, Attorney General Akerman went to York County to examine the considerable evidence against the Klan assembled by Major Lewis Merrill, a local commander of federal troops. Merrill, who impressed the attorney general as "very indignant at wrong, and yet master of his indignation," told Akerman he'd gathered evidence of eleven murders and more than six hundred whippings and other crimes, and that numerous victims of the Klan, potential witnesses, were now residing in army encampments under federal protection. Merrill, called "Dog Merrill" by resentful Klansmen, confirmed that prosecutions against alleged Klan suspects in local courts were impossible. Akerman, leaving for the North, concluded that substantial parts of South Carolina were in open rebellion and "under the domination of systematic and organized depravity," and he advised Grant to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in the most troubled parts of the state.
Grant's proclamation ordering martial law and suspending the writ of habeas corpus in nine counties of the South Carolina upcountry came on October 12, but when Akerman returned to York County on October 10, local Klan leaders had already begun to slink away from the scene. In their absence, more junior participants saw the wisdom of cooperating with authorities in order to avoid being locked up indefinitely under the new federal powers. In one instance, an entire Klan den arrived en masse to surrender. They explained that they had formed a Klan unit only out of fear of retribution if they did not conform to the dominant Ku Kluxers in the neighborhood. According to Louis Post, a Northern attorney who assisted with the Klan prosecutions in South Carolina, the locking up of Klan suspects helped get individual members to "puke," or confess, thereby incriminating others. These suspects hoped their cooperation would gain them some leniency. Still, of the 1,500 suspected South Carolina Klansmen arrested by detectives and U.S. marshals under the leadership of Attorney General Akerman, only 168 were convicted of a crime. But this low percentage belies the actual success of the effort. As many as 2,000 Klansmen were rumored to have fled the state rather than risk arrest, and thus the organization was
effectively broken in South Carolina. Several of its leaders were convicted and sent to Northern penitentiaries.
By comparison, in Mississippi, another state hard-hit by Ku Kluxism, 585 convictions were obtained out of 1,100 cases; this larger number may be explained by the fact that the penalties for violation of the Enforcement Acts in Mississippi, which was not under martial law, were milder, so it was easier to compel whites to testify about Klan activity, although convincing black witnesses to do so remained difficult. A greater challenge to federal law officers lay in the state's frontier character. Arresting suspects in remote Mississippi villages where the Klan had extensive support was not easy, for the local telegraph office was frequently in Democratic hands, and "spotters" and other busybodies quickly passed the word along when federal marshals approached. Even when arrests were made, marshals often had to transport their prisoners back to the nearest railhead under threats and catcalls from local residents, suggesting that an imminent assault would be staged to free the men in custody. Death threats were common; one U.S. attorney in Mississippi was poisoned (he recovered), one was killed by a sniper firing into his kitchen window, and another was shot to death while he slept in a hotel room; several others were arrested by local law enforcers. In some places federal soldiers could back up the marshals in making arrests, but often infantry troops, rather than cavalry, were available and thus of limited effectiveness because of their lack of mobility. The growing conflict with the Indians in the western territories meant that fewer mounted units were posted in the South.
One quick-thinking U.S. attorney in Mississippi had the presence of mind to photograph several captured Klansmen in their disguises. He passed the images along to Congress and to
Harper's Weekly,
which published them not once but twice in 1872, remarking that "these lawless disturbers of the South ... are not always so elaborate in their brigand toilet. A white blanket or sheet thrown over the head, with holes for the eyes, is usually sufficient." The photographs were significant because they showed the whole nation, at long last, that the Klan actually existed and was not, as often alleged by Southerners, a "figment of the Northern imagination." In the North, Louis Post lamented, "The general disposition ... was to assign the Ku Klux Klan to the category of horseplay," and as late as December 1871 one New York newspaper was convinced that most Klan outrages were nothing more than "personal quarrels."
Harper's,
however, assured its readers that "these outlaws will speedily
be taught that the government will protect peaceable citizens in the full enjoyment of their rights, life, and property, if it takes the whole military power of the nation to do it."
In spite of the successful prosecutions, President Grant remained ill at ease with this flexing of federal muscle; one of the leading members of his cabinet, Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, had become annoyed by what appeared to be Akerman's obsession with punishing the Klan. Fish believed that the attorney general had the Ku Klux "on the brain," a view soon shared by other advisers close to the president. He had been particularly irritated by Akerman's insistence on relating the particulars of Klan atrocities in cabinet meetings, including one of "a fellow being castrated, with terribly minute and tedious details." Akerman, it so happened, had also made enemies among the nation's powerful railroad interests by introducing stricter rules about the distribution of federal land subsidies to corporations seeking to build rail lines out west. Interior Secretary Columbus Delano, an adviser to some of the rail barons, worked on their behalf to get Akerman dismissed, and at the same time Fish denigrated the attorney general to the president for having become unbearable on the subject of the Ku Klux.
Grant had always been inconsistent in his willingness to enforce Reconstruction policiesâin some instances acting convincingly to defend the freedmen's rights, at other times shrinking from that responsibility. Shortly before Christmas 1871 he made what, in retrospect, seems a colossal misjudgment, asking for Amos Akerman's resignation on the basis of "public sentiment." In his eighteen months on the job Akerman had set the new Justice Department in motion, stirred Northern concern about Southern violence, and led a fruitful campaign to vanquish the Ku Klux Klan. Although his successor, Judge George H. Williams of Oregon, would largely continue Akerman's policies, not for another century would the federal government have a leading law enforcement officer similarly willing to vigorously prosecute civil rights violations in the South.
"As a body designed to destroy Reconstruction and all its works, the Ku Klux Klan was a failure," writes historian George Rable. The Klan's terrorism had demonstrated overwhelmingly that black voters and their white allies could be intimidated by violence, but the group's excesses had left Washington no choice but to intervene in the South's affairs; the nation, after considerable doubt and reflection, had done so, breaking the terror organization and honoring Reconstruction's promise to its newest citizens.
This accomplishment, however, was only a momentary triumph. In the prolonged debate leading up to the Ku Klux Klan Act, astute white Southerners had observed that Washington, as well as the Northern press and public, was conflicted about the obligation to protect the freedmen. The Klan's blatant misbehavior had forced the government's hand, and whites in the South recognized that future efforts to restore white rule would likely fare better if pursued with greater subtlety. There was no need to confront Reconstruction directly; better to nibble at its advances, harass its flanks, and wait out its collapse. When such a campaign arose a few years later, Southern tactics would indeed be much more nuanced, and the nation's desire to intercede even more wanting.
I
T WAS DURING
the federal occupation of New Orleans in the early 1860s that Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback, the black paladin of Louisiana politics, first appeared. Hated, loved, always dapper, a maker of overly long speeches, a political operator with an ardent concern for black civil rights, Pinchback aroused conflicting passions among Louisianians, such that he could, in the course of a single day, be heckled in the New Orleans press as a "Radical," a "damned nigger," and a "usurper," yet before sundown hear the lusty voices of white men at a political rally, urging, "We are with you! We are with you, Pinchback!" During the war and Reconstruction he served as a Union officer, a delegate to two state constitutional conventions, a Louisiana state senator, the state's lieutenant governor, its acting governor (the first black governor in the nation's history), andâsimultaneouslyâthe state's appointee to the U.S. Senate and its elected representative to the House.