Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the battle to save Reconstruction by Fergus Bordewich
Book Review #1
Klan War is the latest entry in the long overdue resurrection of Ulysses S. Grant’s military and political legacy. When Grant passed away in 1885, he was the most famous and beloved person in the country. A victim of decades of unrelenting criticism from the purveyors of the mythology of the Lost Cause, Grant’s military reputation was eroded and ultimately eclipsed by the veneration of Robert E. Lee. As for his political reputation, historian William Hesseltine (author of Ulysses S. Grant: Politician) described it this way in 1935: “Grant's enemies were more literate than his friends. They stuffed the ballot box of history against Grant.” According to Bordewich, “Grant was condemned not for his actions, but for what he stood for.” He adds, “As president, he fought for black equality long after his countrymen had tired of "the Negro Question."”
Klan War focuses on Grant’s efforts to keep the policies of Reconstruction from floundering into oblivion. The cold, hard truth is that the chances of success for Reconstruction were probably ended by John Wilkes Booth. This allowed avowed white supremacist Andrew Johnson four years to thwart the will of Congress. It also gave the Ku Klux Klan, “the first organized terrorist movement in America," time to evolve from its origins as “comic street theatre” in Pulaski, Tennessee, into a wide-ranging militant organization featuring the infamous Nathan Bedford Forrest as its Grand Wizard.
Although Klan War is technically not a book about the Civil War, almost all the politicians and military leaders involved were military veterans, including two of the most influential…Benjamin Butler and Carl Schurz. The book can be difficult to read at time as there were so many atrocities committed by the Klan (murder, rape, mutilation, assassination, flogging, etc.) they can be difficult to absorb. And, the magnitude of the brutality against the freedman and their white allies is almost beyond description. Bordewich writes, “The Klan embodied an ugly paradox. Although sadistic terror was its trade, the terrorists, or their leaders, were usually drawn from members of the pre-war elite.”
While Grant’s ultimate success against the Klan was thorough and complete, his efforts were ultimately doomed to failure. The irony of Reconstruction is that it was a victim of its own successes. When a state was readmitted into the Union, the military resources that ensured free and fair elections had to be withdrawn. Once that occurred, the pressure to suppress the rights of freedman escalated until white rule was re-established. This was compounded by the increasing lack of resolve showed by his fellow Republicans and the failure of the Supreme Court to recognize the equality of its black citizenry. Together they culminated in the Klan’s 1873 Easter Massacre of over one hundred black militia at Colfax, Mississippi. And, by that time, there was no need for masks. The few participants that were prosecuted were ultimately freed by the Supreme Court (U.S. v. Cruikashank) in a ruling that put an emphatic end to the era of Reconstruction.
Grant’s other main accomplishment during this period was the ratification of the three Enforcement Acts, including the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act, despite fierce Democratic resistance. This Act gave Grant the power to use Federal troops to protect the rights guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment and “made Federal courts responsible for protecting individual citizens in the exercise of their constitutional rights.” When he signed the bill, Grant declared: “I will not hesitate to exhaust the powers thus vested in the Executive whenever and wherever it shall become necessary to do so for the purpose of securing to all citizens of the United States the peaceful enjoyment of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution.”
Klan War goes against the grain of the popular narrative of Reconstruction, that “President Grant was unenthusiastic and ineffectual in his war to defend the rights, and the security of the Freedmen.” Instead, Grant is revealed to be as bold and decisive in the political arena as he was on the battlefield. And, his effort to create a colorblind society is perhaps the finest hour of his long public career. Bordewich concludes, “Grant knew that he had not prevailed over the demons of race, but he hoped, intensely, that Americans someday will.”