Editing Thomas F. Bayard (section)

=== Reaction to Reconstruction ===
[[File:TFBayard.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Photograph of Thomas F. Bayard, {{circa|1870}}]]

Bayard's father retired from the Senate when his term ended in 1869, and the legislature elected his son to the seat with little opposition.{{sfn|Tansill 1946|p=23}} Bayard entered a Senate in which his fellow Democrats were greatly outnumbered by Republicans; the new president, [[Ulysses S. Grant]], was also a Republican.{{sfn|House 1940|p=48}} In the Reconstruction Era, Bayard took up the cause of the defeated South, speaking against the continued military rule of the conquered states and advocating a return to civilian (and conservative) government.{{sfn|House 1940|pp=52–54}} He protested the requirement that readmitted Southern states ratify the [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fourteenth Amendment]], which guaranteed equal protection of the laws to all Americans. Bayard also inveighed against the continued presence of federal troops in the South.{{sfn|Tansill 1946|pp=32–39}} He spoke against each of the three [[Enforcement Acts]], which increased the federal government's power to protect black Southerners' civil and political rights in the face of rising violence by the [[Ku Klux Klan]] and other groups.{{sfn|House 1940|pp=52–54}}

Although his protests were to little effect, Bayard continued to voice opposition to the majority party's plans for reconstructing the South.{{sfn|Tansill 1946|p=48}} In 1871, he was named to a joint committee sent by Congress to investigate conditions in the South. The committee, like the Congress, had a Republican majority, and their report detailed many of the Klan's outrages against the newly freed slaves. Bayard dissented, questioning the veracity of the witnesses' testimony and stating that there were few incidents of lawlessness and that the South was generally at peace.{{sfn|Tansill 1946|p=50}} The majority disagreed, and their findings were the basis for the [[Enforcement Act of 1871 (third act)|Third Enforcement Act]] later that year.{{sfn|Tansill 1946|p=51}}

As more Democrats returned to the Senate, and as Republican goals shifted elsewhere, Bayard's ideas gained some traction, but were still largely in vain. In 1873, the Senate passed a resolution he introduced that demanded that Grant disclose how much government money was being expended in enforcing Reconstruction laws in the South, and to whom it was paid; the President ignored the resolution.{{sfn|Tansill 1946|p=90}} The next year, Bayard opposed a Republican bill authorizing federal supervision of the upcoming election in Louisiana, attacking the Republican administration there as corrupt; he was unsuccessful, and the election was supervised by federal troops.{{sfn|Tansill 1946|p=92}} He spoke forcefully against the proposed [[Civil Rights Act of 1875]], which was to be the last such act for nearly a century. Again, he was unsuccessful and the bill, which guaranteed equal treatment in public accommodations regardless of race, passed Congress and became law.{{efn|The Supreme Court struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875 in the ''[[Civil Rights Cases]]'' of 1883.}}{{sfn|Tansill 1946|p=100}} Although ultimately unsuccessful, Bayard's actions endeared him to his conservative constituents, and he was elected to another six-year term in 1874.{{sfn|Tansill 1946|p=100}}