The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 (Oxford History of the United States)

by Richard White

The Supreme Court eventually addressed the Colfax Massacre in U.S. v. Cruikshank et al. (1875). The federal government had used the Enforcement Acts to prosecute William Cruikshank and the other defendants who had killed the black militiamen at Colfax. The Enforcement Acts depended on the Fifteenth Amendment prohibition of denying or abridging the right to vote “by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” The government also accused the defendants of violating the First Amendment right of black people to assemble and their Second Amendment right to bear arms. The court settled the question of three convictions under the Enforcement Acts by ruling that the prosecutors had not supplied enough evidence to prove that the killings were an attempt to suppress African American political rights protected under the Fifteenth Amendment.