The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution

by Eric Foner

Nonetheless, in 1871 and 1872 President Grant used the powers granted to him by the Enforcement Acts to crush the Ku Klux Klan. Federal marshals arrested Klansmen in numerous parts of the South. In North Carolina, the army, which had stood by for two years without acting, effectively suppressed the organization. The president suspended the writ of habeas corpus in nine South Carolina counties wracked by violence. Troops arrested hundreds of Klansmen, and the group’s leaders fled the state. Some sought refuge in Canada, following in the footsteps, ironically, of fugitive slaves before the Civil War. A series of widely publicized trials followed. Overall, between 1871 and 1873, federal prosecutors brought nearly 2,500 criminal cases under the Enforcement Acts, mostly for conspiracy to hinder voting or to deprive a person of equal protection of the laws because of race. They did not charge defendants with murder or assault, to avoid the question of whether the federal government could punish violations of state law.48 Using the federal judicial process to put down violence was not easy. The Department of Justice, only established in 1870, was understaffed. The trials overwhelmed the federal courts. Many defendants were leading members of their communities, and local whites proved reluctant to give evidence against them. Fewer than half the cases resulted in convictions, but these, coupled with the force of massive federal action, broke the Klan’s back.