President Grant Issues Preliminary Order Seeking to End Ku Klux Klan Violence

With this order to affix the seal of the United States, President Ulysses S. Grant made official his proclamation designed to end racial violence in South Carolina by the Ku Klux Klan. When Klan members ignored this order, Grant's subsequent proclamations ordered their arrest and suspended the writ of habeas corpus to curtail the Klan's activities for a generation.

White southern Democrats used racial violence, including dozens of murders and hundreds of whippings, in their attempt to overthrow the Republican government of South Carolina. President Grant ordered all members of the Ku Klux Klan to "retire peaceably" from their reign of terror. He also ordered U.S. Army Major Lewis Merrill to the state with three Companies of cavalrymen. When Klansmen ignored Grant's proclamation, he insisted that Klan activities in South Carolina amounted to warfare.

On October 12, he 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. Five days later, Grant issued a new proclamation suspending habeas corpus in nine counties that he declared to be in active rebellion.

-ULYSSES S. GRANT. Signed manuscript with authorization to affix the Seal of the United States. March 24, 1871, Washington, D.C.

Courtesy Seth Kaller, Inc.

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