Influential white legislators such as Rep. Thaddeus Stevens (R-Pa.) and Sen. Charles Sumner (R-Mass.) tried to make this nation live its creed, but they were no match for the swelling resentment that neutralized the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments, and welcomed the Supreme Court’s 1876 United States v. Cruikshank decision, which undercut a law aimed at stopping the terror of the Ku Klux Klan.
