The enemy was “the most atrocious organization that the civilized part of the world has ever known,” Grant’s Justice Department declared. After Congress handed him the tools he needed, the president used the Ku Klux Klan Acts to hammer the hooded order. He sent federal authorities, backed by more federal troops, to prosecute what were now federal crimes. He declared martial law in places. He suspended habeas corpus. In the fall of 1869, nearly 2,000 Klansmen were arrested in South Carolina alone. By end of the next year, 3,000 were indicted across the South. A third of them were convicted and
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