Book Review

This book offers a detailed examination of the most drastic instance of Federal civil rights enforcement in the post-Civil War South. Lou Falkner Williams presents an accessible account of this significant episode. The work skillfully draws upon the wider literature of Reconstruction race relations, using these trials to illuminate broader legal and constitutional issues.	1
In late 1871, in accordance with recently enacted Republican anti-Klan legislation, President U. S. Grant suspended habeas corpus in nine counties in upland South Carolina. This act was "unprecedented in the United States during peacetime," becoming the focus of nationwide attention (46). The arrest of hundreds of suspected terrorists followed. Attorney General Amos T. Akerman used the Enforcement Acts to demonstrate administration resolve in the face of widespread violence. He encouraged Federal attorneys to prosecute vigorously and, aided by the sympathetic District Judge Hugh Lennox Bond, was able to win scores of convictions. The prosecutions brought massive scrutiny to bear upon the Klan just in time to aid President Grant's 1872 reelection campaign. The prosecution dismantled the Klan in South Carolina and indeed encouraged a temporary cessation in terrorist activity throughout the South.	2
Despite these accomplishments, the book treats skeptically the constitutional implications of the arguments of the prosecution. According to the author, a wide definition of Federal responsibility was "essential if blacks were to maintain their political rights" (60). In keeping with this view, prosecution attorneys asserted wholesale authority under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments over violations by both state action and private individuals. In Williams's words, the initial indictments sought "a broad nationalization of black civil and political rights" (66). However, this conception proved too expansive for Judge Bond, despite his Republican politics and eagerness to convict Klansmen. Bond inclined toward the reasoning of the defense that the negative wording of the Reconstruction amendments bound the states, but did not allow direct Federal action against individuals. At most, Federal action to protect civil rights was appropriate when state officials were unable or unwilling to act. Bond thus sought "both to preserve state-centered federalism and to provide equal rights of citizenship for the former slaves" (73).	3
In the face of Bond's misgivings, and confronted by skilled legal adversaries, prosecution attorneys scaled back their more ambitious goals. Thus, even before the first trials started, according to Williams, "the defense had already attained its goals on the most important constitutional issues involved" (76). The evidence sustains the author's depiction of events, yet her conclusions seem overstated. After all, the subsequent convictions helped crush the Klan, by her own admission. Given the judicial retreat from protecting civil rights, detailed by the author in the final chapter, it is difficult to believe that a more expansive grant of Federal responsibility in these decisions would have mattered. Other judicial assertions of Federal responsibility were later overruled; after Reconstruction the Supreme Count would have abandoned civil rights regardless. Perhaps the expedient decision to avoid "novel" constitutional departures in the Klan cases was wise, in view of the overriding necessity to win convictions.	4
Beyond the clear explication of the legal issues in layman's terms, this book offers other strengths for those interested in African-American and southern history. To an unusual extent in contemporary writing, the author conveys the motivation of the racist defendants and their sympathizers vividly. Reconstruction violated states rights' principles, bringing increased taxation and governmental corruption; in South Carolina the Republican regime even armed state militias composed primarily of the freedmen. These changes, combined with venomous racial hatred of the emancipated slaves, motivated uninhibited lawlessness. Perhaps the very clarity of the moral issues involved makes a certain evenhandedness possible, without calling into question the author's overriding sympathy for the victims. The author might even have gone farther in this direction, in that the book oddly ignores the increasing prevalence of small scale property theft as a motivation. Still, the book demonstrates how it was possible that the terrorists drew "from every class of white society," and how the upcountry Klan could include "the greater part of the adult male population," rather than just sociopaths (28). So pervasive was the terrorist network described by Williams that it incongruously underscores the accomplishment of Federal authorities in halting the violence.	5
Another strength of the book is the discussion of the gender dimension of Klan activities, especially in their legal ramifications. While black women and children were not generally the primary target of nightrider activity, they were often victimized when male targets eluded the terrorists. White women were occasionally targeted too, especially those accused of interracial sexual behavior. Women, black and white, were assaulted in horrific fashion, which posed complex legal issues for Federal officials. The anti-Klan Enforcement Acts directly protected only political activity, in an era of male suffrage. Therefore Federal prosecutors sought a method by which they could also "bring women and children under the protection of the Federal government" (63). The gender issue thus helps explain the urgency of Federal officials in asserting broad responsibility for civil rights enforcement.	6
There are, of course, a few objections one might raise. Given the size of the literature on the Klan, the author could have engaged usefully with the existing historiography. It is not clear how this book modifies broader accounts in works like Allen Trelease's long-standard White Terror. By explicitly situating herself in this literature, the author might have better defined her work's unique contribution. Still, The Great South Carolina Ku Klux Klan Trials provides an excellent microcosm of the constitutional issues of Reconstruction, illuminating how they intersected with the wider social and political developments of the era.	7
Michael W. Fitzgerald St. Olaf College

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