On October 17, 1871, Pres. Grant declared martial law and suspended the writ of habeas corpus in SC

[mahatmakanejeeves]

On this day -- Oct 17, 1871

Violence by KKK in South Carolina Forces Pres. Grant to Declare Martial Law

Founded in December 1865 by former Confederate Army officers, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) operated as a secret vigilante group targeting Black people and their allies with violent terrorism to resist Reconstruction and re-establish a system of white supremacy in the South.

KKK violence was so intense in South Carolina after the Civil War that U.S. Attorney General Amos Akerman and Army Major Lewis Merrill traveled there to investigate. In York County alone they found evidence of 11 murders and more than 600 whippings and other assaults. When local grand juries failed to take action, Mr. Akerman urged President Ulysses S. Grant to intervene, describing the counties as “under the domination of systematic and organized depravity.” Mr. Merrill said the situation was a “carnival of crime not paralleled in the history of any civilized community.”

In April 1871, President Grant signed the Ku Klux Klan Act, which made it a federal crime to deprive American citizens of their civil rights through racial terrorism. On October 12, 1871, President Grant warned nine South Carolina counties with prevalent KKK activity that martial law would be declared if the Klan did not disperse. The warning was ignored. On October 17, 1871, President Grant declared martial law and suspended the writ of habeas corpus in the same nine counties. Once he did so, federal forces were allowed to arrest and imprison KKK members and instigators of racial terrorism without bringing them before a judge or into court.

Many affluent Klan members fled the jurisdiction to avoid arrest but by December 1871 approximately 600 Klansmen were in jail. More than 200 arrestees were indicted, 53 pleaded guilty, and five were convicted at trial. Klan terrorism in South Carolina decreased significantly after the arrests and trials but racial violence targeting Black people continued throughout the South for decades.

[empedocles]

1. TY

[jaxexpat]

2. Unfortunately,

we live in an age where people believe the civil war is over, a conflict settled in history which cannot be repeated.

[OldBaldy1701E]

4. Well, that war is over.

But to think it 'solved' everything is where the problem lies. Well, that and always assuming that since the south had the 'slave holding states' that racism and white privilege was only located there. Bigotry is everywhere in this country, and in every corner. And, it most certainly can be repeated. Except this time, the destructive potential exist to basically turn this country into a barren plain made of glass. Is such devastation worth that fleeting feeling of superiority? I guess a third of us feel it is. One step forward, two steps back.

[bucolic_frolic]

3. If MAGA prevails they'll flip that on its head

[Native]

6. I had the exact same thought as I was reading this.

[The Jungle 1]

5. wait wait wait

I didn't learn about this in school. I don't think you are allowed to talk about this stuff.
Good Americans only talk and teach about our greatness. You just leave the apple cart alone.
I also did not learn in school how some soldiers in Vietnam wore necklaces of ears and collected scalps. Quite stylish at the time.
Accepting and learning our history is step one to preventing more Afghanistan's. There is nothing more important than that.

[AllaN01Bear]

8. yet more buried us "history."

[wnylib]

11. I was actually taught, in a junior high social studies class,

the myth that former enslaved people did not know how to handle their new freedoms so they lived in shanty towns and turned to crime, partly for survival and partly for vengeance on whites. Northern carpetbaggers encouraged them and did not protect white southerners, so it became necessary for white southern men to form vigilante groups for their own protection. But, alas, some of the vigilantes (KKK) went "too far."

This was taught in a Northern school, not in the South. It was like something out of Gone With the Wind.

[The Jungle 1]

14. The right wants to teach lies again.

We must stop them

[KS Toronado]

18. Excellent example is...."The Big Lie"

And RWNJs not only believe it but are willing to fight for it, Jan 6th.

[yardwork]

22. I was taught the same, in rural Ohio.

Except I wasn't taught that white people ever "went too far."

I believe that a significant number of white people in the U.S. still believe that Black people were better off as slaves, because that's what so many of us were taught.

The hysteria about teaching actual history in schools stems from the necessity to protect the White fantasy. It's just as bad as Holocaust denial. We're all appalled that a Texas high school suggested teaching Holocaust denial but we should be just as appalled at the suppression of Critical Race Theory, which isn't really being taught in schools but should be.

[secondwind]

15. what a horror!!!!!!!!!! My husband was in Viet Nam, he came home in 1969, and never wanted to talk

about the war... He passed away in 2019.

[The Jungle 1]

26. We must study our history if we are going to expand our humanity.

We can do better.

[LastDemocratInSC]

27. Excellent point.

[RVN VET71]

17. Much of our sordid past was excluded from the teaching in our schools because of white sensibility

But now the exclusions are being made a matter of law. What used to be kept out of textbooks because it would embarrass teachers and confuse students is now kept out of textbooks because of white backlash to black efforts (such as the BLM movement and CRT) and other anti-racist efforts (the 1619 Project) -- because so many whites are very nervous, extremely nervous, to the point of paranoia of losing their position of privilege in American society.

But I would ask everyone who has read the post to notice the months delay between the passing of the bill into law and Grant’s declaring Martial Law in the vicious, murderous, racist counties. I mention this only because so many of us want the sins of the Right to be fixed NOW -- when the law moves more deliberately, if slowly.

[NNadir]

7. For actions like this, and many others, I regard President Grant as the 2nd most important...

...President of the 19th century, only after Lincoln.

Historians have maligned his Presidency, interestingly goaded into doing so by "Lost Cause" Southern White Supremacists.

Interestingly, the Grandson and Great Grandson of two Presidents, John Adams, and J. Q. Adams, both abolitionists, helped in validating the "Lost Cause," mythology, thus disgracing his family history This would be Charles Francis Adams Jr. (not to be confused with Charles Francis Adams Sr.).

The story is chillingly told in Ty Seidule's Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause, when General Seidule (who would go on to head the history department at West Point) described his own undergraduate education at Washington and Lee University in Virginia.

General Grant was not only the greatest General in the US Civil War, he was also a superb President. No other American could have accomplished what he accomplished in the aftermath of the US Civil War.

As President Grant stands way above the majority of his peers.

[Auggie]

19. Have you read the bio on him, "Grant?"

Author: Ron Chernow

Marvelous book. Chernow writes that no other president between Lincoln and LBJ did more on behalf of Black civil rights than Grant.

[NNadir]

21. I've read several biographies and excerpts of Chernow's.

It's not a bad part of the important effort to restore the historical legacy of this outstanding American.

The malignity addressed to him is very much involved with extreme racism in this country; the fact that he was a strong proponent of winning the war and the peace, and the fact that he was very much involved in creating a basis for human rights for all Americans, obviously including our African American citizens who actually built this country for no pay.

[Martin Eden]

9. This history needs to be suppressed because ...

... it will make white children feel bad about themselves, according to the MAGA cult.

Speaking of the adults who are no better than book burners, it should not be surprising that those who worship a pathological liar cannot handle the truth.

[RVN VET71]

24. Yep. The truth is bad for little white kids.

And so, according to at least one racist educator, is treating black children with the same grace and compassion as white children. You know

There are times when I just want to throw up my hands and say the hell with it all. The blatant racism so many Americans are so shameless to support, even proud to support -- and practice --, just blackens my heart. "I’m not black,” as a seer once noted," but there are whole lots a times I’m not proud I’m white."

As for general Grant, it’s is so great to finally hear about the many, many positive things he did. His administration was wracked by corruption -- but apparently it wasn’t at his request or even with his understanding, knowledge, or involvement. But things like the KKK Act and his declaration of Martial Law in the S.C. cesspools show his heart and mind were in step with what is best in America. Thank god for the kindness, understanding, and compassion of Mark Twain to keep this true American hero out of the poorhouse.

[yardwork]

10. This wasn't in Gone With the Wind.

[wnylib]

12. See my #11.

[MyMission]

13. South Carolina, standing alone against Northern aggression since 1865

It might have said 1861...saw that on a t-shirt in 2003 when I first moved to the south.
I'd heard that term from a southerner before. Most call it the civil war or war between the states.
But I suspect it's often taught as the war of northern aggression in many parts of the south.

[marble falls]

16. Following the lead of another GOP President, Lincoln, who suspended Writ of Habeas Corpus ...

... on May 1, 1861. Which resulted (among other things) in the arrest and imprisonment of an ancestor of mine, Gov Charles Slaughter Morehead of Kentucky. He was a Whig/Know Nothing party (which folded into the GOP at this time) who supported slavery but did not support Succession. When released, he sat out the rest of the war in Argentina and then "retired" to a plantation in Mississippi.

[ShazamIam]

20. Now instead of just a state, like Texas, Florida, etc, we have the entire Republican party

engaged in depriving American citizens of their civil rights through legislation, terrorism, and of economic terrorism. and not only POC, but immigrants and LGBQT, non-Christian, etc.

[wnylib]

23. And not just in one region, either,

but throughout the country.

[ShazamIam]

25. Yes including all the red counties in the blue states.