The Great South Carolina Ku Klux Trials 1871-1872 (review)

book reviews269 portant region. Through eleven chapters Mills recounts such familiar stories as the 1 86 1 Baltimore riots, the clash between the Monitor and Merrimack, and McClellan's Peninsula campaign. But many lesser-known events are also included , and Mills's work provides a sense of the intrigue that surrounded the Bay. There are many accounts of Confederate spies, smugglers, and blockade runners, and Mills seems to include nearly all the major naval engagements that occurred on the waters of the Chesapeake. This is a colorful and somewhat romanticized history. The simple question Mills addresses is "What happened on the Chesapeake?" This is unfortunate, as this book thus misses an opportunity to provide a deeper understanding of the Bay's significance to both sides. While the region was clearly a tricky area for the Union, since Southern sympathizers dominated the Chesapeake, Mills's narrative never indicates just how Northern strategists planned to pacify the Bay. And while the book is richly illustrated with photos and sketches, the frequent references to geographical locations begs for the inclusion of maps far more detailed than those provided. The colorful narrative is also the strength of this book. The popular audience should enjoy the engaging, albeit somewhat melodramatic, prose. While Mills sticks close to military and naval events, he still gives a good sense of the civilian experience. As in other border states, the Chesapeake region was dangerous territory for both sides. Mills aptly conveys this aspect of the war, particularly in bitterly divided Baltimore. This lively account can provide an introduction to the Chesapeake in the war years. A fuller understanding, however, will have to come from somewhere else. The source material is drawn from too narrow a pool, consisting mostly of older pieces from popular magazines, and does not include some important recent scholarship. Barbara Fields's seminal work on slavery in Maryland, for example, includes descriptions of the region during the war that could have made this a far more insightful account of this important theater of the war. Richard D. Loosbrock University of New Mexico The Great South Carolina Ku Klux Trials 1871-1872. By Lou Falkner Williams. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996. Pp. xiii, 197. $35.00.) In November 1 870, after economic coercion, political campaigning, and localized violence had failed to derail Reconstruction, upcountry South Carolina whites turned to the Ku Klux Klan. Night riders drew upon the antebellum slave patrol experience as well as wartime lessons to terrify white and black Republicans, including women as well as men, for nearly a year. Klansmen burned, whipped, raped, and killed with the widespread support of most whites and the local authorities as well. Unable to stop Klan violence at the local level, Governor Robert K. Scott called on the federal government for help. Congress 270CIVIL WAR HISTORY responded with the EnforcementActs; empowered by the third act, President U. S. Grant suspended the writ of habeas corpus in the region and sent in troops. Mass arrests followed. Although most Klan leaders had fled, Attorney General Amos T. Akerman was determined to prosecute the rest. Between November 1 87 1 andApril 1872, several Klansmen were convicted ofcrimes and dozens of others pleaded guilty. The Klan was broken in South Carolina. Lou Falkner Williams, in this first monograph on the trials, views those federal convictions as hollow victories in a lost war. At the beginning, she maintains , the Justice Department was determined not only to root out the Klan, but also "to establish a broad nationalization ofblack civil and political rights" (60) by establishing the principle that the Fourteenth Amendment had nationalized the Bill of Rights, especially the Second and Fourth Amendments. So empowered , the federal government could actively protect the civil rights offreedpeople. Akerman and prosecutor David T. Corbin, however, were thwarted at every turn. Conservative and crippling rulings were handed down by the Fourth Federal Circuit Court. Attempts to obtain favorable Supreme Court decisions were frustrated by Akerman's replacement, Grant crony George H. Williams, who also halted prosecutions in 1873. Despite dozens of convictions, "the federal government's most sustained effort to provide positive civil and political rights for black citizens ended with no substantial constitutional gains...