What's a prez to do? Grant and the Klan

Better than any other president, Ulysses Grant recognized the awkward fit of the army in politics. An army can change people's behavior but it can't change people's minds. The armies of George Washington and Andrew Jackson changed the behavior of the British; once the British decided to go home, it didn't much matter what they thought. Grant's army changed the behavior of the rebel South without changing southern minds. And when the fighting ended, it mattered greatly what southerners thought, because they did or would eventually control the politics of their part of the country. The Confederate surrender signaled an end to attempts to leave the Union, but it didn't change southern minds on the issues that had triggered secession and the war. Southerners, the white ones anyway, still thought the federal government had no right to dictate to the states on domestic matters. And white southerners, while recognizing that slavery was done, still believed black people ought to occupy a subordinate place in southern society.

The question for southerners after the war was how much of their old belief system they could retain. The question for Grant, after he became president in early 1869, was what he could do to prevent that old belief system from giving rise to unacceptable behavior. The 13th Amendment outlawed slavery. But did it outlaw debt peonage, which the new system of sharecropping was creating? The 14th Amendment commanded equal protection of the laws, But what did equal protection mean? The 15th Amendment, ratified during Grant's second year in office, gave black men the vote on the same terms as white men. But how was it to be enforced?

This last question became critical during Grant's first term. The Ku Klux Klan and kindred organizations had mounted a campaign to keep black men and Republicans—two groups that largely overlapped in southern politics—away from the polls. By this means white men and Democrats— similarly overlapping groups—were able to restore much of the status quo that had existed before the war. 

Grant didn't reject the idea of using the army to enforce the Constitution. After all, that's what the Civil War had been about. But the war was over. Using the army to enforce the law in peacetime struck him as decidedly problematic. Martial law represented a failure of democratic politics. And though the army might defend the Constitution, its use could easily violate what the Constitution represented, namely civilian self-government. The Constitution was not an end in itself; it was the means to the end of self-government.

South Carolina was the test case. South Carolina had long been the most troublesome of states; it was the loudest agitator for states’ rights and the first state to vote for secession. In 1871, South Carolina allowed the Klan to rampage out of control, threatening and committing violence, including murder, against black men who were trying to exercise their right to vote. Judges and juries in South Carolina, even if they had been inclined to deliver justice to black victims, were themselves intimidated. 

Grant had to decide what to do. If he did nothing, much of the victory his army had won during the war might be lost during the peace. Federal authority would be nullified even without secession. South Carolina's bad example would surely spread.

He pondering deploying the army, but he wasn't sure of his authority to do so. Under the Constitution he was commander in chief, but that didn't mean he could dispatch the army whenever and wherever he wished. Moreover, once he sent in the army, how would he extricate it? The army might impose good behavior on South Carolinians, but what would prevent them from bad behavior once the army left? The army couldn't stay in South Carolina forever.

Grand decided he couldn't do nothing. To bolster his authority, he had his allies in Congress present a bill to authorize the use of force against the Klan. His model was a force act Congress had approved in the 1830s giving Jackson authority to suppress a potential rebellion in South Carolina when that state was complaining about a tariff it didn't like. The Ku Klux Klan Act, as it was called when passed, aligned the legislative branch with the executive on the matter of enforcing federal law in the South. Whether the judicial branch would object remain to be seen.

Grant was willing to take that chance. He ordered the army into South Carolina for the purpose of enforcing federal law and breaking up the Klan. Martial law allowed the arrest of many hundreds of Klansmen and fellow travelers without the requirement of habeas corpus. Others got the message and fled ahead of the troops.

Southerners and Democrats howled that Grant was making himself a military dictator. Having been called worse things during the war— butcher and drunkard, most often—he was unfazed.

The action was more successful than he had hoped. Although the detainees couldn't be charged under federal law with anything worse than conspiring to deprive people of their civil rights— murder, assault and most other crimes remained under the exclusive jurisdiction of states in those days— several hundred were prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned or fined. 

The political effect was the most important consequence. The Klansmen and their abettors realized they weren’t beyond the reach of the law. Grant's action ended the reign of the Klan in the South, until it was resurrected and expanded to other sections of the country in the 20th century.

A southern judge wrote Grant an appreciative letter. “The Ku Klux Klan was an impregnable fortress," he said, referring to the situation before Grant's action. "Sixty-four times I have tried in vain to break into its walls and secure testimony sufficient to enable me to demand from juries indictment and conviction. The former had a few times been secured by a predominance of Republican jurors; the latter never. And so it would have remained until the end of time had not your wise and patriotic course so frightened the adherents of the invisible empire that they began to desert in squads. And this is the result: a Ku Klux grand jury indicts for Ku Kluxing.”