On October 17, 1871, U.S. President Ulysses Grant declared nine South Carolina counties to be in active rebellion, and suspended habeas corpus. The order allowed federal troops, under the command of Major Lewis Merrill, to execute mass-arrests and begin the process of crushing the South Carolina Ku Klux Klan in federal court. Merrill reported 169 arrests in York County before January 1872. Numerous Klansmen fled the state, and more were quieted by fear of prosecution. Nearly 500 men surrendered to Merrill voluntarily, gave confessions or evidence, and were released. At the Fourth Federal Circuit Court session in Columbia, South Carolina beginning November 1871, United States District Attorney David T. Corbin and South Carolina Attorney General Daniel H. Chamberlain convicted 5 Klansmen in trial court, and secured convictions based on confession from 49 others. In the next Fourth Federal Circuit Court session in Charleston, South Carolina in April 1872, Corbin convicted 86 more Klansmen. Klan activities vanished while prosecutions were ongoing and publicized, but, by the end of 1872, federal will dissolved in the face of waning Republican support for Reconstruction. At the end of 1872 some 1,188 Enforcement Act cases remained to be tried. White Northern interests began to seek a more conciliatory relationship with Southern states, and lamented Southern papers' exaggerated tales of "bayonet rule". During the summer of 1873, President Grant announced a policy of clemency for those Klansmen who had not yet been tried, and pardon for those who had. The remaining cases were not tried, and prosecutions under the Enforcement Acts were all but abandoned after 1874.
Background 1868–1870 The Klan had been active in South Carolina since at least 1868. Klansmen broke up Union Leagues, intimidated voters at the polls, assaulted blacks and “carpetbag” whites, and killed several Republican leaders in advance of the 1868 election. Still, a coalition of freedmen, carpetbaggers, and local white Republicans surmounted violence and intimidation to elect Republican governor Robert K. Scott. Post-civil war disenfranchising restrictions on ex-confederates barred the majority of whites from voting, increasing the power of Republicans and freedmen. Democrats managed to elect only 6 of 31 senators and 14 of 124 representatives, creating a black Republican majority in the lower house of the state legislature (South Carolina House of Representatives). This Republican majority government with full participation of free blacks incensed white South Carolinians, and was the basis for complaints of "illegitimate government".
In response to Klan violence, and to bolster his own reelection chances, governor Scott lobbied for and eventually passed the South Carolina Militia Law of 1869. The law authorized the creation of militias to suppress insurrection and support state law enforcement. The Governor raised and armed several battalions of militias, but the political and racial prejudice of white South Carolinians against the Republican governor ensured that the militias were mainly black. The sight of black men armed and drilling, parading in formation, and guarding the polls in 1870 further incensed whites and stoked bigoted Klan violence.
Between notions of political illegitimacy and inflammation of existing racial prejudice, the Klan was supported by nearly all of the white population in the nine counties of South Carolina where Grant eventually suspended habeas corpus.
Violence of 1870 Following the election of 1870, in which the Republican majority was sustained and Governor Scott re-elected, the Klan began a campaign of mass terror in the upcountry of South Carolina. The Klan rode almost nightly following the elections, forcing their way into the homes of freedmen and carpetbaggers, interrogating the men on their political activities, demanding they renounce the Republican party, then whipping and beating them severely, or murdering them. Women were often abused or raped, and houses and barns often burned to the ground. In one reported instance, the Klan visited a white woman known to be harboring two black men. The Klan beat the men, told them to run, and then shot at them as they fled. The Klansmen then forced the woman out of her home, into the road, made her lie prostrate, and poured hot tar into her "private parts. " Many black freedmen fled their homes over these months, choosing to spend the fall and winter nights in the woods and swamps in order to evade Klan violence. Congressional hearings in 1872 document 227 whippings in Spartanburg County alone. In his investigations during 1871, Major Merrill found evidence of at least 600 whippings and 11 murders in York county. The Congressional hearings report 38 murders between the election of 1870 and the suspension of habeas corpus in April 1871, but cover only four out of the nine counties subject to President Grant's order suspending habeas corpus. Historian Lou Falkner Williams reports that "this body count is undoubtedly low".
Federal Troops Arrive, 1871 By January, 1871 Republican legislators were threatening Governor Scott with impeachment if he did not get the violence in their home counties under control. Scott pleaded to President Grant to intervene, and in March 1871 Grant sent additional troops under the command of Major Lewis Merrill to Spartanburg, Union, and York counties. Scott petitioned Grant for federal military assistance after the passage of the first Enforcement Act of 1870, and the small detachments Grant had provided were enhanced in 1871. Major Merrill investigated Klan activities from March to September, utilizing all means at his disposal including a network of spies paid for by the Department of Justice. More importantly, Merrill sheltered victims of the Klan at his army camp and took their statements. This first-hand evidence was essential to future prosecutions, and the Army's protection provided an environment where witnesses could recount their victimization without fear of brutal reprisals. Merrill was required to submit his evidence to local grand juries for State prosecutions, but discovered that "the whole conduct of their duty was so broad a farce, that it was very distasteful to be forced in contact with it, and present developments show it to have been the most ghastly mockery of justice that it is possible to conceive". The local grand juries proved woefully unable or unwilling to prosecute the outrages of the Klan, indeed Merrill noted that several of the grand jury members were accessories to Klan violence. The local grand juries refused to act on Merrill's evidence. Merrill then met with US District Attorney Corbin to discuss the prosecution of future cases. The two relayed the findings to United States Attorney General Amos T. Akerman, and he soon traveled to Yorkville to review the assembled evidence of atrocities in person. Merrill related that the findings he had collected "convinced [AG Akerman] that the worst reports which had been heretofore made of the power and of the infernal purpose and conduct of the [Klan] fell far short of the facts". Attorney General Akerman left South Carolina convinced that "from the beginning of the world until now", no community "nominally civilized, has been so fully under the domination of systematic and organized depravity". Akerman had been instrumental in Klan prosecutions in North Carolina, but that violence paled in comparison and scope. Akerman considered that Klan activities in South Carolina "amount to war...and cannot be effectively crushed on any other theory." Akerman was able to convince Grant that the situation in South Carolina warranted the full extension of his Enforcement Act powers. On October 12, Grant ordered all persons to "disband and disperse" from the "unlawful combinations and conspiracies" commonly known as the Ku Klux Klan, and to hand over their weapons and disguises to federal marshals. After receiving no such compliance, Grant issued the proclamation declaring nine counties in active rebellion and suspended habeas corpus on October 17.
The suspension of habeas corpus allowed Merrill to make mass arrests in the nine counties of South Carolina upcountry: Chester, Fairfield, Laurens, Newberry, Union in the lower piedmont; Lancaster, Spartanburg, York in the upper piedmont; and Chesterfield in the sand hills. Merrill reported 169 arrests in York County alone before January 1872. Numerous Klansmen fled the state, and Klan activities were quieted by fear of prosecution. Nearly 500 men surrendered to Merrill voluntarily, gave confessions or evidence, and were released. Merrill's Seventh Cavalry division concentrated on York and Spartanburg counties, arresting all those that Merrill had accumulated evidence against. Merrill reported that "a large number of arrests were effected simultaneously all over the county". He noted that the effect of the arrests left the "rank and file" members of the Klan "bewildered and demoralized....They recognized the fact that the game was up, that the organization was broken, and all over the county they betook themselves to flight or came in and surrendered." He describes a stream of fearful participants surrendering to federal authorities, and a complete cessation of violence. "Day after day, for weeks, men came in such numbers that time to hear them confess and means to dispose of or take care of them both failed...In some instances whole Klans, headed by their chief, came in and surrendered together." Merrill resorted to holding "the persons of those most deeply criminal", but sent the rest back to their homes. Regrettably, many of the most elite and important members of the Klan fled at Grant's first pronouncement of October 12. Merrill estimates that "about fifty" of the "leading and most criminal conspirators" against whom he had clear and abundant evidence, fled before arrests could be made.
Trials United States District Attorney for South Carolina David Corbin empaneled federal grand juries to determine what charges to bring against the members of the Klan. After receiving true bills, that is criminal indictments, from the grand juries, Corbin chose and drafted indictments he would pursue at trial. Corbin, with the input of Attorney General Akerman, endeavored to craft indictments in this case that not only brought Klansmen to justice, but might set a winning precedent for the constitutionality of the Enforcement Acts. Indeed, as much as Akerman and Grant sought to bolster support for the Republican party and the project of Reconstruction by exposing the horrors of the Klan against freedmen, they also sought to win a precedent that the Enforcement Acts were valid constitutional law. Democratic opposition sought to validate the Klan as an institution upholding Southern honor, but also sought to prove the Enforcement Acts violated the Constitution.
The trials were jointly adjudicated by Hon. Hugh Lennox Bond of Maryland, a Federal Fourth Circuit Judge appointed by President Grant, and Hon. George Seabrook Bryan, a district judge for South Carolina appointed by Andrew Johnson.
The prosecution was led by DA Corbin, and supported by South Carolina Attorney General Daniel H. Chamberlain. Major Merrill also supported Corbin as he was intimately familiar with the evidence against the Klan. Corbin requested United States Attorney General Amos T. Akerman's assistance, as Akerman had personally attended the Klan trials in North Carolina. Akerman did not attend trial personally, but corresponded with Corbin frequently via telegraph and letter. Akerman saw an opportunity in South Carolina to broadcast the atrocities of the Klan and swing public opinion against them, no doubt a savvy political move to revitalize Northern support for Reconstruction as well. With this goal stated, Akerman hired a court stenographer to record the trials verbatim - a rare expense at the time.