Episode 33: Season II, Episode IV: Ulysses S. Grant and the Ku Klux Klan Act
A full episode transcript can be found here.
Welcome to The Past, The Promise, The Presidency Season II, Episode IV: Ulysses S. Grant and the Ku Klux Klan Act. In our previous episode on Bleeding Kansas and the Utah War, we discussed the intense violence and bloodshed that led up to the cataclysmic wrenching of the Union in half during the Civil War.
But what happened after the Union shattered? It's not easy to put the pieces of national unity back together after a civil war, nor was it a simple task to change the hearts and minds of people who were willing to die to defend slavery and white supremacy. After the passage of the 15th amendment in 1870, African-American men in the South eagerly made the most of their new right to vote and elected many Black representatives to state and local governments.
In response, white supremacists organized into local chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, which waged vicious campaigns of violence, murder, and destruction to intimidate Black Americans and other Republicans that supported their right to vote. After investigators discovered the extent of the KKK’s reign of terror, President Grant asked Congress to pass legislation that gave him additional powers to address the threat on the ground.
Congress complied in 1871 and passed the Ku Klux Klan Act. Grant then issued a warning to Southern states, but especially to specific counties in South Carolina, that if they didn't stop their campaign of terror, he would declare martial law. Five days later, he fulfilled that promise and suspended Habeas Corpus in nine South Carolina counties. Grant sent in troops to arrest KKK members and deployed US Attorneys to try cases against the Klan.
These efforts were remarkably effective, but just a year later, Grant backed away from his efforts to protect civil liberties.
Why did Grant take such decisive action? And then why did he stop?
What were the motivations behind his handling of this crisis?
How did the public respond to the Ku Klux Klan Act?
How does this crisis inform our current moment?
We spoke with two fantastic guests. First, we spoke with Dr. Yohuru Williams who is the Distinguished University Chair and Professor of History and Founding Director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas and the author of numerous books about African American history.
We then talked to Dr. Megan Kate Nelson, a writer, historian, and expert on the Civil War and the United States West. Her most recent book, The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West was a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize.
These interviews were both excellent, so let's turn to our guests.
Guests:
Dr. Yohuru Williams is is the Distinguished University Chair and Professor of History and Founding Director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas
Dr. Yohuru Williams is the Distinguished University Chair and Professor of History and Founding Director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas. He received his Ph.D. from Howard University in 1998. Dr. Williams is the author of:
Black Politics/White Power: Civil Rights Black Power and Black Panthers in New Haven (Blackwell, 2006)
Rethinking the Black Freedom Movement (Routledge, 2015)
Teaching U.S. History Beyond the Textbook: Six Investigative Strategies (Corwin Press, 2008)
He is also the editor of A Constant Struggle: African-American History from 1865 to the Present Documents and Essays (Kendall Hunt, 2002), and is co-editor of The Black Panthers: Portraits of an Unfinished Revolution (Nation Books, 2016), In Search of the Black Panther Party, New Perspectives on a Revolutionary Movement (Duke, 2006), and Liberated Territory: Toward a Local History of the Black Panther Party (Duke, 2008).
Dr. Williams is also presently finishing a new book entitled In the Shadow of the Whipping Post: Lynching, Capital Punishment, and Jim Crow Justice in Delaware 1865-1965 under contract with Cambridge University Press.
You can also follow Dr. Williams on Twitter @YohuruWilliams.
Dr. Megan Kate Nelson is a writer and historian living in Massachusetts.
Dr. Megan Kate Nelson is a writer and historian living in Massachusetts. Her most recent book, The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West, was published by Scribner in February 2020, and was a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize.
In March 2022, Scribner will publish her next book, Saving Yellowstone, which tells the story of the creation of Yellowstone National Park in the context of Reconstruction.
She is the author of two previous books: Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War (Georgia, 2012) and Trembling Earth: A Cultural History of the Okefenokee Swamp (Georgia, 2005). She writes about the Civil War, the U.S. West, and American culture for The New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, Preservation Magazine, and Civil War Times. Her column on Civil War popular culture, "Stereoscope," appears regularly in the Civil War Monitor.
Dr. Nelson earned her BA from Harvard University in History and Literature and her PhD from Iowa in American Studies. She taught at Texas Tech, Cal State Fullerton, Harvard, MIT, and Brown before leaving academia to become a full-time writer in 2014. She is an elected fellow of the Society of American Historians and the Massachusetts Historical Society.
You can follow her on Twitter @megankatenelson.