-
Klu Klux Klan (KKK(
Its overarching goal was to
restore white supremacy. Its method was to prevent African
Americans from exercising their political rights. -
Failure of the Enforcement acts
One act provided for the federal supervision of elections in Southern states. Another act gave the president the power to use federal troops in areas where the Klan was active. However, President Grant was not aggressive in his use of the power given to him by the Enforcement Acts, and in 1882, the Supreme Court ruled that the 1871 Enforcement Act was unconstitutional. -
Republican Unity Shattered
As the 1872 presidential election approached, the Liberal Republicans held a separate convention. They chose Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune and a vocal pre-Civil War abolitionist, as their candidate. He had sup ported some Radical Republican causes—abolition and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. However, he had broken with Radicals by calling for universal amnesty for Confederates and for an end to military rule in the South. -
Fraud and Bribery
Beginning in 1872, a series of long-simmering scandals
associated with Grant’s administration boiled over. First,
the New York Sun exposed the Crédit Mobilier affair, in
which a construction company had skimmed off large
profits from a government railroad contract. This scandal
involved several leading Republicans, including Grant’s
first vice-president, Schuyler Colfax. -
The panic of 1973
Smaller banks closed, and the stock market temporarily collapsed. Within a year, 89 railroads went broke. By 1875, more than 18,000 companies had folded. The panic triggered a five-year economic depression—a period of reduced business activity and high unemployment—in which 3 million workers lost their jobs. -
Continued Scandal
Finally, in 1876, an investigation revealed that Secretary of War William W. Belknap had accepted bribes from merchants who wanted to keep their profitable
trading concessions in Indian territory. The House of Representatives impeached Belknap, who promptly resigned. The public also learned that the secretary of the
navy had taken bribes from shipbuilders and the secretary of the interior had had shady dealings with land speculators. -
U.S. VS Reece
The Fifteenth Amendment was determined not to
grant voting rights to anyone, but rather to restrict
types of voter discrimination. -
Election of 1876
In 1876, the Republicans decided
not to run the scandal-plagued Grant for a third term.
Instead, they chose the stodgy governor of Ohio,
Rutherford B. Hayes. Smelling victory, the Democrats
put up one of their ablest leaders, Governor Samuel J.
Tilden of New York. Tilden had helped clean up the graft
that had flourished in New York City under the corrupt
Tweed Ring.