How Grant and Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act to protect life and property

On April 20, 1871, Congress approved the Third Enforcement Act, often called the Ku Klux Klan Act. It let the President suspend habeas corpus (the right to challenge an unlawful imprisonment in court) and use the U.S. military wherever vigilante groups committed violence against African Americans. This National Park Service article, from Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site, tells how it came about.

Library of Congress: “President Grant Signing the Ku-Klux Force Bill in the President’s Room, at the Capitol, April 20th, 1871.”

Justice in the Reconstruction era

During Reconstruction (1863–1877), Congress passed constitutional amendments and laws to abolish slavery, promote equal protection of the laws, establish birthright citizenship and guarantee fair elections. Not everyone accepted that vision. The Ku Klux Klan, first organized in late 1865 by former Confederate military officers, opposed African American citizenship and voting rights and used intimidation and violence. Its members wore robes and white hoods to hide their identity as they attacked white and Black Southerners who supported the Republican party in the former Confederate states.

Frank Bellew, Library of Congress: “Visit of the Ku-Klux.”

On October 29, 1870, Louis Foy, a formerly enslaved African American who owned a twenty-acre farm in Terrell County, Georgia, wrote to President Grant. He said he had been badly beaten and shot in his own house by white rebels, and, unable to get protection from the local Justice of the Peace, appealed to the President. Across the South, countless African Americans sought help under the new federal laws on citizenship and voting rights.

Grant’s case for new law

Grant became the 18th President on March 4, 1869. In his first inaugural address he asked citizens to approach the future “calmly, without prejudice, hate, or sectional pride,” and held that peace needed laws protecting everyone’s rights. The 15th Amendment was ratified, and the Department of Justice established, in 1870. Violence continued. On March 9, 1871, Grant wrote to Speaker James G. Blaine that if Congress authorized the military to stop racial terrorism by groups like the Klan, he would gladly sign it to protect life and property.

Library of Congress: Grant’s letter to Speaker Blaine asking for more legislation to fight the Klan.

The three Enforcement Acts

Between May 1870 and April 1871 Congress passed three acts against white supremacist violence.

African American congressmen who voted for the Third Act included Robert De Large, Robert B. Elliot, Joseph Rainey, Benjamin S. Turner and Josiah T. Walls. Six months after it passed, Grant mobilized the military in nine South Carolina counties where Klan activity was rampant.

Currier and Ives, 1872, Library of Congress.

The Attorney General

Amos T. Akerman was Grant’s Attorney General from June 1870 through December 1871. Born in New Hampshire, he lived most of his adult life in Georgia as a lawyer and farmer, owned eleven enslaved people and served as a Confederate colonel. After the war he joined the Republican Party and backed Grant in 1868. He oversaw the federal investigation of the Klan, and after Grant suspended habeas corpus in nine South Carolina counties in October 1871, he led U.S. Marshals and the Army against it. Over the next few months he secured indictments of 3,000 Klan members across the South, 600 of whom were later convicted. His actions helped destroy the Klan and made the 1872 elections free and fair.

Library of Congress: Attorney General Amos T. Akerman.

Was it effective?

In the short term the Enforcement Acts effectively destroyed the Klan, partly achieving Grant’s goal. But violence against African Americans went on during Reconstruction and after. The Jim Crow era (1880s–1960s) brought mass disenfranchisement, segregation and lynchings, and civil rights legislation in the 1960s created a “Second Reconstruction.” Debates about justice continue.

Timeline

Sources

• National Park Service, Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site, “Protecting Life and Property: Passing the Ku Klux Klan Act” (https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/protecting-life-and-property-passing-the-ku-klux-klan-act.htm); rewritten in hubnx's own words.