In the next Congress the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States broadened that mandate. These reports were referred to the Select Committee of the Senate to Investigate the Alleged Outrages in the Southern States, chaired by Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts. Grant submitted several War Department reports relating to events in several southern states. After the Senate adopted Morton's resolution, President Ulysses S. Morton, an Indiana Republican, introduced a resolution requesting the president to communicate any information he had about certain incidents of threatened resistance to the execution of the laws of the United States. Even this legislation did not diminish harassment of black voters in some areas. In its first effort to counteract such use of violence and intimidation, Congress passed the Enforcement Act of May 1870, which prohibited groups of people from banding together "or to go in disguise upon the public highways, or upon the premises of another" with the intention of violating citizens’ constitutional rights.
#USA MARTIAL LAW FLAG SERIES#
In response, Congress passed a series of Enforcement Acts in 18 (also known as the Force Acts) to end such violence and empower the president to use military force to protect African Americans. Members of the Ku Klux Klan, for example, terrorized black citizens for exercising their right to vote, running for public office, and serving on juries. The adoption of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution extended civil and legal protections to former slaves and prohibited states from disenfranchising voters “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Forces in some states were at work, however, to deny black citizens their legal rights.
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