204 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



in controlling the elections of the people. 

 That is the point to which this misnamed Re- 

 publican party has at length brought us. 



"The President of the United States has 

 already exercised the authority vested in him 

 by this act, and a resolution was passed by 

 the other House of the Congress which had 

 clothed him with the authority to exercise 

 this power, asking him to inform the country 

 the precise circumstances under which he felt 

 himself authorized to exercise this power in 

 nine counties of the State of South Carolina 

 last fall. After long delay we have the Presi- 

 dent's response, and I propose briefly to call 

 attention to that response giving the justifica- 

 tion of the President for declaring martial law 

 in South Carolina last autumn. The President 

 says in House Executive Document No. 268, 

 of the present session, the message being 

 addressed to the House of Representatives : " 



Eepresentations having been made to me that in 

 certain portions of South Carolina a condition of 

 lawlessness and terror existed, I requested the then 

 Attorney-General, Akerman, to visit that State, and 

 after a personal examination to report to me the 

 facts in relation to the subject. On the 16th of Oc- 

 tober last he addressed me a communication from 

 South Carolina, in which he stated that in the coun- 

 ties of Spartanburg, York, Chester, Union, Laurens, 

 Newberry, Fairfield, Lancaster, and Chesterfield, 

 there were combinations for the purposes of pre- 

 venting the free political action of citizens who were 

 friendly to the Constitution and Government of the 

 United States, and of depriving the emancipated 

 class of the equal protection of the laws. " These 

 combinations embrace at least two-thirds of the 

 active white men of those counties^ and have the 

 sympathy and countenance of a majority of the other 

 third. They are connected with similar combina- 

 tions in other counties and States, and no doubt are 

 part of a grand system of criminal associations per- 

 vading most of the Southern States. The members 

 are bound to obedience and secrecy by oaths which 

 they are taught to regard as of higher obligation 

 than the lawful paths taken before civil magistrates. 

 They are organized and armed. They effect their 

 objects by personal violence, often extending to 

 murder. They terrify witnesses. They control juries 

 in the State courts and sometimes in the courts of 

 the United States. Systematic perjury is one of the 

 means by which prosecutions of the members are 

 defeated. From information given by officers of the 

 State and of the United States, and by creditable 

 private citizens, I am justified in affirming that the 

 instances of criminal violence perpetrated by these 

 combinations within the last twelve months in the 

 above-named counties could be reckoned by thou- 

 sands." 



I received information of a similar import from 

 various other sources, among which were the joint 

 select Committee of Congress upon Southern Out- 

 rages, the officers of the State, the military officers 

 of the United States on duty in South Carolina, the 

 United States attorney and marshal and other civil 

 officers of the Government, repentant and abjuring 

 members of those unlawful organizations, persons 

 specially employed by the Department of Justice to 

 detect crimes against the United States, and from 

 other credible persons. 



Most, if not all, of this information, except what 

 I derived from the Attorney-General, came to me 

 orally, and was to the effect that said counties were 

 under the sway of powerful combinations popularly 

 known as Ku-klux Klans, the objects of which were, 

 by force and terror, to prevent all political action 



not in accord with the views of the members, to 

 deprive colored citizens of the right to bear arms 

 and of the right to a free ballot, to suppress schools 

 in which colored children were taught, and to re- 

 duce the colored people to a condition closely akin 

 to that of slavery ; that these combinations were 

 organized and armed, and had rendered the local 

 law ineffectual to protect the classes whom they 

 desired to oppress ; that they had perpetrated 

 many murders and hundreds of crimes of minor 

 degree, all of which were unpunished; and that 

 witnesses could not safely testify against them un- 

 less the more active members were placed under 

 restraint. 



"Mr. President, a similar resolution to that 

 to which this message was responsive was in- 

 troduced into this House by myself and ob- 

 jected to by members on the other side. It 

 was, however, introduced into the House of 

 Representatives, and went to the joint select 

 committee on the condition of affairs in the 

 South, and was by them reported back to the 

 House with amendments, some- of the amend- 

 ments cutting out much matter which we de- 

 sired the President to respond to. But there 

 was one point retained in the resolution to 

 which I ask the attention of the Senate, and 

 to which I am very sorry to say the President 

 has not responded. It was this : among other 

 things the resolution asked 'the number and 

 character of the offences forbidden by said act 

 or the act of May 31, 1870, which are shown 

 by such combinations or other parties to have 

 been committed in the respective counties in 

 which the privileges of the writ of habeas 

 corpus had been suspended in the State of 

 South Carolina-, and the dates of all such al- 

 leged offences.' 



"The House asked the President of the 

 United States to communicate what offences, 

 if any, had been committed against the act of 

 Congress, which had led to the declaration of 

 martial law, and the date at which such of- 

 fences had been committed. We have a long 

 list of persons arrested under that act, and 

 the crimes charged against them, ninety-nine 

 out of one hundred of which is the crime of 

 conspiracy, and in no single instance has the 

 President given us the date of any single of- 

 fence which is alleged to have been committed. 

 This was omitted, I am compelled to say, de- 

 liberately, with a view of creating a false im- 

 pression, of misleading the country, of inducing 

 the country to believe that those persons ar- 

 rested had committed the offences in or about 

 the time when martial law was declared, the 

 fact being that all these offences were commit- 

 ted nine or eighteen months or two years pre- 

 vious to the passage of the law itself, of which 

 they undertook to take cognizance in their 

 court. At this point I call the attention of the 

 Senate to a brief paragraph from the report of 

 the minority of the committee. Mr. Van 

 Trump, who was in South Carolina as a mem- 

 ber of the sub-committee, states in his report, 

 page 586 : " 



We believe, we might almost say we know, that 

 nothing has transpired in South Carolina since the 



