The Man Who Saved the Union (72 page)

Congress complied. The legislature approved a law remanding Georgia to military rule until it obeyed the applicable federal laws and ratified the
Fifteenth Amendment.

Georgia did as it was told. The bonus for Grant and the freedmen was the momentum the president’s action supplied to the campaign for the
Fifteenth Amendment, which by February 1870 had accumulated the necessary endorsements. “
The ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment is assured!” Grant wrote
Elihu Washburne, allowing himself a rare exclamation mark. His enthusiasm got the better of him as he added, prematurely: “With this question out of politics, and reconstruction completed, I hope to see such good feeling in Congress as to secure rapid legislation and an early adjournment. My peace is when Congress is not in session.”

B
ut he couldn’t send Congress off without requesting legislation to give substance to the promise of political equality. Grant appreciated the momentous nature of the latest development. “
The adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution completes the greatest civil change and constitutes the most important event that has occurred since the nation came into life,” he declared in a special message to Congress. Scarcely a decade earlier the Supreme Court had ruled that blacks were not citizens and had no rights the government and the white majority were bound to respect; now blacks were the political equals of whites. Yet he understood that paper promises often required concrete action to make them real. To this end he requested that Congress support
education for the freedmen. “The framers of our Constitution firmly believed that a republican government could not endure without intelligence and education generally diffused among the people,” he said. “If these recommendations were important then, with a population of but a few millions, how much more important now, with a population of forty millions?” He left the details to Congress, but he urged the legislators “to take all the means within their constitutional powers to promote and encourage popular education throughout the country” and “to see to it that all who possess and exercise political rights shall have the opportunity to acquire the knowledge which will make their share in the government a blessing and not a danger.”

Congress wasn’t so generous. The egalitarian zeal that had inspired the educational programs of the
Freedmen’s Bureau was waning; new benefits for blacks, if they cost money, were out of the question.

So Grant shifted his aim. The Fifteenth Amendment, like the
Thirteenth and
Fourteenth, included a clause giving Congress the authority
to write enforcing legislation. At Grant’s urging the legislature wielded that authority. A first enforcement act criminalized the use of “
force, bribery, threats, intimidation, or other unlawful means” to keep voters from exercising their Fifteenth Amendment rights. Violations would be investigated by federal marshals and prosecuted in federal courts. Special commissioners would be appointed in the event the caseload exceeded the capacity of existing officials. The president could summon the army, navy and militia to aid in enforcement. A second enforcement act extended the federal writ to the conduct of elections, authorizing federal officials for the first time to supervise voting in the states and guard against violations of the Fifteenth Amendment.

These measures were historic in expanding the scope of federal law, which in those days rarely reached over the states to criminalize individual behavior. But Grant wanted more. “
There is a deplorable state of affairs existing in some portions of the South, demanding the immediate attention of Congress,” he wrote
James Blaine, the Republican Speaker of the House. What was necessary, the president said, was legislation to provide “means for the protection of life and property in those sections of the country where the present civil authority fails to secure that end.”

Blaine wasn’t unwilling, but he wanted Grant to speak more definitively. The president seemed to have in mind something quite forceful, perhaps even revolutionary, and Blaine didn’t want to accept the responsibility. The president must argue his own case.

Grant did so. “
A condition of affairs now exists in some of the states of the Union rendering life and property insecure and the carrying of the mails and the collection of the revenue dangerous,” he asserted in another special message to Congress. The comment about the mails and the revenues was legal cover for the audacious extension of federal authority Grant envisioned. “That the power to correct these evils is beyond the control of the state authorities I do not doubt,” he continued. “That the power of the Executive of the United States, acting within the limits of existing laws, is sufficient for present emergencies is not clear.” Grant insisted that Congress make it clear. “I urgently recommend such legislation as in the judgment of Congress shall effectually secure life, liberty, and property and the enforcement of law in all parts of the United States.”

G
rant’s demand hit Congress like a mortar shell. The
Democrats turned apoplectic at what they deemed Grant’s power grab. “
I can scarcely believe that so radical a revolution has overcome the institutions of this country,” Representative
Fernando Wood of New York declared as a bill embodying the president’s proposal moved toward a vote. “I can scarcely believe that within the short period of ten or twelve years political sentiment on the other side has become so radical as to countenance a serious proposition in the House of Representatives to create a military despotism on the ruins of a republic.” The bill was anti-American, anti-democratic, anti-republican, anti-civilized. “In no portion of our history has any such power been delegated; in no free government anywhere in the world has such power been delegated by the people,” Wood said. “Nor is there any despot for the past century who would attempt to exercise it; and even the life of the present emperor of
Russia, with all his great personal authority, holding in his hands not only the church but the state, not only the sword but the purse, whose subjects are vassals, would not be safe for twenty-four hours if he attempted to exercise the power now proposed to be given to the present president of the United States.”

At the other end of the Capitol, Democratic senators waxed equally wroth.
Francis Blair showed that he had lost none of the rhetorical verve that won him the vice presidential nomination in
1868. “
He is invited to become
dictator
,” the Missouri lawmaker said of the president and the power the Republican bill would give him. “It is proposed to confer this unlimited power upon a man whose history is wholly military, except for the two years of his presidency, which has been signalized by utter disregard of law.”
James Beck of Kentucky saw party cynicism behind the president’s coup. “
It is to divert the minds of the people,” he said. “It is a flank movement to excite the people by the cry of murder, Ku Klux, etc.” The administration’s bill included a provision to let the president suspend habeas corpus in counties where the violence was unchecked; Beck warned: “An official might throw me into jail without cause and without warrant the moment I return”—from Washington—“stating that I had done something, he would not tell me what.” Fear of losing control of the South was driving the desperate efforts by the Republicans to remain in charge, Beck said. “If these states of the South would only continue to be Radical, if they would only agree that they would vote for General Grant again, you would never hear anything about the Ku Klux; you would never more hear of reconstruction acts.”

Even some Republicans wondered what Grant was getting them
into. “
Public affairs are growing about as bad as the devil could wish if he were arranging them in his own way,” Representative
James Garfield of Ohio grumbled. Garfield didn’t deny that the Southern violence was a problem, but the administration’s solution could prove even worse. “This will virtually empower the President to abolish the state governments,” he said. Garfield was no alarmist, but he feared that Grant was destroying the Republican party. “The impression is gaining ground that the election of Grant is impossible, but it is feared that his nomination is inevitable.”

William Sherman didn’t know where it all would lead. Sherman blamed politics for nearly everything that ailed the country, and he saw his old friend becoming ever more tainted. “
Politics have again gradually but surely drawn the whole country into a situation of as much danger as before the Civil War,” he wrote
Edward Ord. “The Army left the South subdued, broken, and humbled. The party then in power”—the Republicans—“forgetful of the fact that sooner or later the people of the South must vote, labored hard to create voters out of Negroes and indifferent material.” The results were predictable. “The Negro governments, aided by a weak force of Republican whites, have been swept aside and the Union people there are hustled, branded, and even killed.” But little could be done about it, absent a thorough suspension of local rule. “Any Southern citizen may kill or abuse a Negro or Union man with as much safety as one of our frontiersmen may kill an Indian.… All crimes must be tried by juries on the spot, who of course protect their comrades.” Sherman was more discouraged than ever about democracy. The Republicans, the party of the Union, were in disarray, and his and Ord’s wartime commander faced a bleak future. “General Grant’s personal popularity seems to be waning, and the opposition to his administration is such that if they can unite they will surely prevail.”

But Grant persevered. He marshaled his allies in Congress and held their ranks firm when some started wavering. The result was a measure formally styled “An Act to Enforce the Provisions of the
Fourteenth Amendment” but commonly called the
Ku Klux Klan Act. It expanded the definition of criminal wrongdoing to include conspiracies to deprive citizens of their rights, and, most significantly, it remobilized the engines of the Civil War to deal with the Klan and the violence it practiced. Whenever “
powerful and armed combinations” threatened the integrity of a state government or the enforcement of federal laws within a state, or when a state government connived at the “unlawful purposes of such
powerful and armed combinations,” these groups would be deemed to be in “rebellion against the government of the United States.” The president was authorized to employ military force against said combinations and to suspend the writ of habeas corpus.

Grant signed the Ku Klux Klan Act in April 1871. Describing it as a measure of “
extraordinary public importance,” he suggested how he might put it to use. He wouldn’t act precipitately. “It is my earnest wish that peace and cheerful obedience to law may prevail throughout the land and that all traces of our late unhappy civil strife may be speedily removed,” he said. “These ends can be easily reached by acquiescence in the results of the conflict, now written in our Constitution, and by the due and proper enforcement of equal, just, and impartial laws in every part of our country.” But the new law had not been written without cause. “The failure of local communities to furnish such means for the attainment of results so earnestly desired imposes upon the national government the duty of putting forth all its energies for the protection of its citizens of every race and color and for the restoration of peace and order throughout the entire country.” He would do his part of the government’s duty. “I will not hesitate to exhaust the powers thus vested in the executive.”

63

T
HE SWEEPING NEW LAW GAVE HEART TO VICTIMS OF THE
S
OUTHERN
violence; once again they appealed to Grant for help. “
There is a Ku Klux organization in this county,”
Robert Flournoy, the editor of a paper called
Equal Rights
, wrote from Pontotoc, Mississippi. The Klansmen had closed a school for freedmen and were working to close others. “I am threatened with personal violence,” Flournoy said. He appreciated the new law but said it had made matters worse in the short term, in that the Klansmen and
Democrats didn’t believe Grant would follow through and were trying to demonstrate as much to the locals. The president needed to act at once. “Nothing but the strong arm of the government firmly administered can prevent very serious consequences to the integrity of the Union. All the hopes of the loyal people are fixed on you; every day loyal men come to me and enquire will anything be done for them.” Two weeks later Flournoy sent an update: “
The Ku Klux attacked us on Friday night. We drove them off, killing one and wounding others. They threaten to return and burn the town. Can we have troops immediately to protect us?”

Allen Huggins, another Mississippi Republican, wrote Grant from the safety of Washington, having been driven from Monroe County in his home state. “
The first appearance of Ku Klux in Monroe County was in the month of August 1870,” Huggins informed the president. “About fifty in number at that time visited the jail at Athens seven miles from Aberdeen and forcibly took from there a colored man by the name of
Saunders
Flint and his two grown sons—Joseph and Moses, I think were their names—who were in jail for defending themselves against an assault made upon them by three white men. The father, Saunders Flint,
escaped. The two sons were found about a week after, in the woods torn in pieces by shot.” On Flint’s testimony and additional evidence several of the perpetrators were arrested, but a white jury acquitted them. “From that time to this the county has been one continued scene of persecution and horror to Union men white and black,” Huggins told Grant. The violence was escalating. Huggins described a gruesome series of hangings and shootings. The lucky among the victims of the terror were merely whipped and beaten. Even a white woman had been beaten simply for knowing the identity of some of the murderers.

G. T. F. Boulding of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, pleaded with Grant to act quickly against the Klansmen. “
Give us poor people some guarantee of our lives,” Boulding wrote. “We are hunted and shot down as if we were wild beasts. On last Saturday night, April 30, the clique known as the K. K.’s visited the house of one of our most guileless colored citizens and shot him dead, after which they robbed his house of about $200 in money and carried off his gun and pistol. This is not the only case of the kind in the last ten days but the third or fourth case. We hope as our lives, liberty, and property are in imminent peril that you will do something for us as soon as possible. We have imperiled our lives to support you, and we look to you to help us when in distress.” Boulding invited Grant to publish his letter but requested that his name be omitted. “If the name was known I would not live for twenty-four hours.”