When word of the massacre reached President Grant, rage and sadness combined because he realized something horrible. Truly horrible. “Hamburg, as cruel, bloodthirsty, wanton, unprovoked, and as uncalled for as it was,” he said, “is only a repetition” of Mississippi, Louisiana, and all these Southern states. The common thread among them, Grant solemnly acknowledged, was not civilization, not Christianity, but “the right to Kill negroes … without fear of punishment, and without loss of caste or reputation.”67 Simply the right to kill Black people.
