Related Research Articles
Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th president of the United States, serving from 1869 to 1877. As commanding general, Grant led the Union Army to victory in the American Civil War in 1865.
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United States. It is equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries. The department is headed by the U.S. attorney general, who reports directly to the president of the United States and is a member of the president's Cabinet. The current attorney general is Merrick Garland, who has served since March 2021.
The Reconstruction era was a period in United States history and Southern United States history that followed the American Civil War and was dominated by the legal, social, and political challenges of the abolition of slavery and the reintegration of the eleven former Confederate States of America into the United States. During this period, three amendments were added to the United States Constitution to grant citizenship and equal civil rights to the newly freed slaves. To circumvent these legal achievements, the former Confederate states imposed poll taxes and literacy tests and engaged in terrorism to intimidate and control black people and to discourage or prevent them from voting.
Amos Tappan Akerman was an American politician who served as United States Attorney General under President Ulysses S. Grant from 1870 to 1871. A native of New Hampshire, Akerman graduated from Dartmouth College in 1842 and moved South, where he spent most of his career. He first worked as headmaster of a school in North Carolina and as a tutor in Georgia. Having become interested in law, Akerman studied and passed the bar in Georgia in 1850; where he and an associate set up a law practice. He also owned a farm and enslaved eleven people. When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, Akerman joined the Confederate Army, where he achieved the rank of colonel.
The Radical Republicans were a political faction within the Republican Party originating from the party's founding in 1854—some six years before the Civil War—until the Compromise of 1877, which effectively ended Reconstruction. They called themselves "Radicals" because of their goal of immediate, complete, and permanent eradication of slavery in the United States. The Radical faction also included, though, very strong currents of Nativism, anti-Catholicism, and in favor of the Prohibition of alcoholic beverages. These policy goals and the rhetoric in their favor often made it extremely difficult for the Republican Party as a whole to avoid alienating large numbers of American voters from Irish Catholic, German, and other White ethnic backgrounds. In fact, even German-American Freethinkers and Forty-Eighters who, like Hermann Raster, otherwise sympathized with the Radical Republicans' aims, fought them tooth and nail over prohibition. They later became known as "Stalwarts".
The White League, also known as the White Man's League, was a white supremacist paramilitary terrorist organization started in the Southern United States in 1874 to intimidate freedmen into not voting and prevent Republican Party political organizing, while also being supported by regional elements of the Democratic Party. Its first chapter was formed in Grant Parish, Louisiana, and neighboring parishes and was made up of many of the Confederate veterans who had participated in the Colfax massacre in April 1873. Chapters were soon founded in New Orleans and other areas of the state.
George Sewall Boutwell was an American politician, lawyer, and statesman from Massachusetts. He served as Secretary of the Treasury under U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant, the 20th Governor of Massachusetts, a Senator and Representative from Massachusetts and the first Commissioner of Internal Revenue under President Abraham Lincoln. He was a leader in the impeachment of U.S. President Andrew Johnson, and served as a House manager (prosecutor) in the impeachment trial.
Benjamin Helm Bristow was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 30th U.S. Treasury Secretary and the first Solicitor General.
Edwards Pierrepont was an American attorney, reformer, jurist, traveler, New York U.S. Attorney, U.S. Attorney General, U.S. Minister to England, and orator. Having graduated from Yale in 1837, Pierrepont studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1840. During the American Civil War, Pierrepont was a Democrat, although he supported President Abraham Lincoln. Pierrepont initially supported President Andrew Johnson's conservative Reconstruction efforts having opposed the Radical Republicans. In both 1868 and 1872, Pierrepont supported Ulysses S. Grant for president. For his support, President Grant appointed Pierrepont United States Attorney in 1869. In 1871, Pierrepont gained the reputation as a solid reformer, having joined New York's Committee of Seventy that shut down Boss Tweed's corrupt Tammany Hall. In 1872, Pierrepont modified his views on Reconstruction and stated that African American freedman's rights needed to be protected.
Jacob Dolson Cox, Jr., was a statesman, lawyer, Union Army general during the American Civil War, Republican politician from Ohio, Liberal Republican Party founder, educator, author, and recognized microbiologist. He served as president of the University of Cincinnati, the 28th governor of Ohio and as United States Secretary of the Interior. As Governor of Ohio, Cox sided for a time with President Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction plan and was against African American suffrage in the South, though he supported it in Ohio. However, Cox increasingly expressed racist and segregationist viewpoints, advocating a separate colony for blacks to "work out their own salvation." Seeing himself caught between Johnson and the Radical Republicans, Cox decided not to run for reelection. He stayed out of politics for a year, though both Sherman and Grant advocated that Cox replace Stanton as Secretary of War as a means of stemming the demands for Johnson's impeachment. But Johnson declined. When Ulysses S. Grant became president, he nominated Cox Secretary of Interior, and Cox immediately accepted.
Columbus Delano was an American lawyer, rancher, banker, statesman, and a member of the prominent Delano family. Forced to live on his own at an early age, Delano struggled to become a self-made man. Delano was elected U.S. Congressman from Ohio, serving two full terms and one partial one. Prior to the American Civil War, Delano was a National Republican and then a Whig; as a Whig, he was identified with the faction of the party that opposed the spread of slavery into the Western territories. He became a Republican when the party was founded as the major anti-slavery party after the demise of the Whigs in the 1850s. During Reconstruction Delano advocated federal protection of African-Americans' civil rights, and argued that the former Confederate states should be administered by the federal government, but not as part of the United States until they met the requirements for readmission to the Union.
George Henry Williams was an American judge and politician. He served as chief justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, was the 32nd Attorney General of the United States, and was elected Oregon's U.S. senator, and served one term. Williams, as U.S. senator, authored and supported legislation that allowed the U.S. military to be deployed in Reconstruction of the southern states to allow for an orderly process of re-admittance into the United States. Williams was the first presidential Cabinet member to be appointed from the Pacific Coast. As attorney general under President Ulysses S. Grant, Williams continued the prosecutions that shut down the Ku Klux Klan. He had to contend with controversial election disputes in Reconstructed southern states. President Grant and Williams legally recognized P. B. S. Pinchback as the first African American state governor. Williams ruled that the Virginius, a gun-running ship delivering men and munitions to Cuban revolutionaries, which was captured by Spain during the Virginius Affair, did not have the right to bear the U.S. flag. However, he also argued that Spain did not have the right to execute American crew members. Nominated for Supreme Court Chief Justice by President Grant, Williams failed to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate primarily due to Williams's opposition to U.S. Attorney A. C. Gibbs, his former law partner, who refused to stop investigating Republican fraud in the special congressional election that resulted in a victory for Democrat James Nesmith.
The Enforcement Acts were three bills that were passed by the United States Congress between 1870 and 1871. They were criminal codes that protected African Americans’ right to vote, to hold office, to serve on juries, and receive equal protection of laws. Passed under the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, the laws also allowed the federal government to intervene when states did not act to protect these rights. The acts passed following the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, which gave full citizenship to anyone born in the United States or freed slaves, and the Fifteenth Amendment, which banned racial discrimination in voting.
The Enforcement Act of 1871, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, Third Enforcement Act, Third Ku Klux Klan Act, Civil Rights Act of 1871, or Force Act of 1871, is an Act of the United States Congress that was intended to combat the paramilitary vigilantism of the Ku Klux Klan. The act made certain acts committed by private persons federal offenses including conspiring to deprive citizens of their rights to hold office, serve on juries, or enjoy the equal protection of law. The Act authorized the President to deploy federal troops to counter the Klan and to suspend the writ of habeas corpus to make arrests without charge.
The Enforcement Act of 1870, also known as the Civil Rights Act of 1870 or First Ku Klux Klan Act, or Force Act, is a United States federal law that empowers the President to enforce the first section of the Fifteenth Amendment throughout the United States. The act was the first of three Enforcement Acts passed by the United States Congress in 1870 and 1871, during the Reconstruction Era, to combat attacks on the voting rights of African Americans from state officials or violent groups like the Ku Klux Klan.
Hugh Lennox Bond was a United States circuit judge of the United States Circuit Courts for the Fourth Circuit.
The presidency of Ulysses S. Grant began on March 4, 1869, when Ulysses S. Grant was inaugurated as the 18th President of the United States, and ended on March 4, 1877. The Reconstruction era took place during Grant's two terms of office. The Ku Klux Klan caused widespread violence throughout the South against African Americans. By 1870, all former Confederate states had been readmitted into the United States and were represented in Congress; however, Democrats and former slave owners refused to accept that freedmen were citizens who were granted suffrage by the Fifteenth Amendment, which prompted Congress to pass three Force Acts to allow the federal government to intervene when states failed to protect former slaves' rights. Following an escalation of Klan violence in the late 1860s, Grant and his attorney general, Amos T. Akerman, head of the newly created Department of Justice, began a crackdown on Klan activity in the South, starting in South Carolina, where Grant sent federal troops to capture Klan members. This led the Klan to demobilize and helped ensure fair elections in 1872. He was succeeded by fellow Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, who won the 1876 presidential election.
The Second Enforcement Act of 1871, sometimes called the Civil Rights Act of 1871 or the Second Ku Klux Klan Act, was a United States federal law. The act was the second of three Enforcement Acts passed by the United States Congress from 1870 to 1871 during the Reconstruction Era to combat attacks on the voting rights of African Americans from groups like the Ku Klux Klan.
During Ulysses S. Grant's two terms as president of the United States (1869–1877) there were several executive branch investigations, prosecutions, and reforms carried-out by President Grant, Congress, and several members of his cabinet, in the wake of several revelations of fraudulent activities within the administration. Grant's cabinet fluctuated between talented individuals or reformers and those involved with political patronage or party corruption. Some notable reforming cabinet members were persons who had outstanding abilities and made many positive contributions to the administration. These reformers resisted the Republican Party's demands for patronage to select efficient civil servants. Although Grant traditionally is known for his administration scandals, more credit has been given to him for his appointment of reformers.
Hundreds of historians and biographers have written biographies and historical accounts about the life of Ulysses S. Grant and his performance in military and presidential affairs. Very few presidential reputations have shifted as dramatically as Grant's.
References
- 1 2 3 4 "Ulysses S. Grant - State of the Union Address -- 1871". The American Presidency Project. Retrieved 19 November 2024.