It is remarkable that the most serious intervention by the federal government to protect the rights of its new African American citizens during Reconstruction (and well beyond) has not, until now, received systematic scholarly study. In The Great South Carolina Ku Klux Klan Trials, Lou Falkner Williams presents a comprehensive account of the events following the Klan uprising in the South Carolina piedmont in the Reconstruction era. It is a gripping story--one that helps us better understand the limits of constitutional change in post-Civil War America and the failure of Reconstruction. The South Carolina Klan trials represent the culmination of the federal government's most substantial effort during Reconstruction to stop white violence and provide personal security for African Americans. Federal interventions, suspension of habeas corpus in nine counties, widespread undercover investigations, and highly publicized trials resulting in the conviction of several Klansmen are all detailed in Williams's study. When the trials began, the Supreme Court had yet to interpret the Fourteenth Amendment and the Enforcement Acts. Thus the fourth federal circuit court became a forum for constitutional experimentation as the prosecution and defense squared off to present their opposing views. The fate of the individual Klansmen was almost incidental to the larger constitutional issues in these celebrated trials. It was the federal judge's devotion to state-centered federalism--not a lack of concern for the Klan's victims--that kept them from embracing constitutional doctrine that would have fundamentally altered the nature of the Union. Placing the Klan trials in the context of postemancipation race relations, Williams shows that the Klan's campaign of terror in the upcountry reflected white determination to preserve prewar racial and social standards. Her analysis of Klan violence against women breaks new ground, revealing that white women were attacked to preserve traditional southern sexual mores, while crimes against black women were designed primarily to demonstrate white male supremacy. Well-written, cogently argued, and clearly presented, this comprehensive account of the Klan uprising in the South Carolina piedmont in the late 1860s and early 1870s makes a significant contribution to the history of Reconstruction and race relations in the United States.

The Reconstruction was meant to be a time of rebuilding and healing for the South following the Civil War. But the Reconstruction, marked by the continued strong hatred and hostility between liberated African Americans and angry Ku Klux Klan members, was hardly a time of reconciliation for the South. This work deals with the Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan, a paramilitary group with political aims that used violence and intimidation to achieve its goals. It addresses exclusively the Klans activities in York County, South Carolina, during the years 1865-1877. It clarifies some misconceptions about the Reconstruction Klan and disentangles it from later organizations that used the same name. There are no reports of its burning crosses or persecuting Jews and Catholics and it has no connection to the Klan that appeared in the early part of the twentieth century or todays counterpart that marches under the Confederate flag. Throughout the Reconstruction, blacks and whites tried to out-shout each other in the new era of conversation, and, as shown in this work, made little progress in understanding, or trying to understand, each other.

In some places during Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was a social fraternity whose members enjoyed sophomoric high jinks and homemade liquor. In other areas, the KKK was a paramilitary group intent on keeping former slaves away from white women and Republicans away from ballot boxes. South Carolina saw the worst Klan violence and, in 1871, President Grant sent federal troops under the command of Major Lewis Merrill to restore law and order. Merrill did not eradicate the Klan, but he arguably did more than any other person or entity to expose the identity of the Invisible Empire as a group of hooded, brutish, homegrown terrorists. In compiling evidence to prosecute the leading Klansmen and restoring at least a semblance of order to South Carolina, Merrill and his men demonstrated that the portrayal of the KKK as a chivalric organization was at best a myth and at worst a lie. Book jacket.

After the Civil War, Republicans teamed with activist African Americans to protect black voting rights through innovative constitutional reforms--a radical transformation of southern and national political structures. The Trial of Democracy is a comprehensive analysis of both the forces and mechanisms that led to the implementation of black suffrage and the ultimate failure to maintain a stable northern constituency to support enforcement on a permanent basis. The reforms stirred fierce debates over the political and constitutional value of black suffrage, the legitimacy of racial equality, and the proper sharing of power between the state and federal governments. Unlike most studies of Reconstruction, this book follows these issues into the early twentieth century to examine the impact of the constitutional principles and the rise of Jim Crow. Tying constitutional history to party politics, The Trial of Democracy is a vital contribution to both fields.

Reveals how a political culture of violence centered on racial hierarchy has shaped the United States from its earliest days.

The Confederacy lost the Civil War but quickly began to win the peace when a mysterious organization arose called the Ku Klux Klan. The Ku Klux, as it was then called, sought to restore white supremacy by terrorizing the formerly enslaved to prevent them from voting or owning firearms. To support Black resistance to the KKK’s campaign of murder and mayhem, President Ulysses S. Grant suspended the writ of habeas corpus in large portions of South Carolina and sent the famed 7th Cavalry to make mass arrests. Grant’s new attorney general, the first former Confederate to serve in a presidential Cabinet and an ardent advocate for Black equality, Amos T. Akerman, aggressively prosecuted the Ku Klux in a series of sensational trials that shocked the nation and forced a reckoning regarding just how much the Civil War and the recently enacted Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the Constitution had changed America and its notions of citizenship. Highlighting forgotten Black and white civil rights pioneers and weaving in the story of the author’s own great-grandfather’s crimes as a member of the Ku Klux Klan, Freedom on Trial tells a gripping story of a moment pregnant with promise when race relations in the United States might have taken a dramatically different turn. It is a story that also offers a sober lesson for those engaged in the ongoing work of fulfilling the American promise of equality for all.

A stunning history of the first national anti-terrorist campaign waged on American soil—when Ulysses S. Grant wielded the power of the federal government to dismantle the KKK The Ku Klux Klan, which celebrated historian Fergus Bordewich defines as “the first organized terrorist movement in American history,” rose from the ashes of the Civil War. At its peak in the early 1870s, the Klan boasted many tens of thousands of members, no small number of them landowners, lawmen, doctors, journalists, and churchmen, as well as future governors and congressmen. And their mission was to obliterate the muscular democratic power of newly emancipated Black Americans and their white allies, often by the most horrifying means imaginable. To repel the virulent tidal wave of violence, President Ulysses S. Grant waged a two-term battle against both armed Southern enemies of Reconstruction and Northern politicians seduced by visions of postwar conciliation, testing the limits of the federal government in determining the extent of states’ rights. In this book, Bordewich transports us to the front lines, in the hamlets of the former Confederate States and in the marble corridors of Congress, reviving an unsung generation of grassroots Black leaders and key figures such as crusading Missouri senator Carl Schurz, who sacrificed the rights of Black Americans in the name of political “reform,” and the ruthless former slave trader and Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest. Klan War is a bold and bracing record of America’s past that reveals the bloody, Reconstruction-era roots of present-day battles to protect the ballot box and stamp out resurgent white supremacist ideologies.

Race, from the beginning and more than any other element, has shaped America's institutions, its economics, politics, laws, social structures, and political attitudes. Congressman Jackson considers race to be the focal point of America through the language of the economy because "the economy is the hearing aid through which Americans hear all political dialogue." In this thought provoking work, Jackson provides ample documentation and insightful analysis of the inextricable link between race and economics. More important Jackson proposes a radical economic strategy and program of new human rights that would build A More Perfect Union for all Americans and put them in a better position to come to grips with this enduring American legacy.

In this innovative book, Edmund L. Drago tells the first full story of white children and their families in the most militant Southern state, and the state where the Civil War erupted. Drawing on a rich array of sources, many of them formerly untapped, Drago shows how the War transformed the domestic world of the white South. Households were devastated by disease, death, and deprivation. Young people took up arms like adults, often with tragic results. Thousands of fathers and brothers died in battle; many returned home with grave physical and psychological wounds. Widows and orphans often had to fend for themselves. From the first volley at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor to the end of Reconstruction, Drago explores the extraordinary impact of war and defeat on the South Carolina home front. He covers a broad spectrum, from the effect of "boy soldiers" on the ideals of childhood and child rearing to changes in education, marriage customs, and community as well as family life. He surveys the children's literature of the era and explores the changing dimensions of Confederate patriarchal society. By studying the implications of the War and its legacy in cultural memory, Drago unveils the conflicting perspectives of South Carolina children--white and black--today.