Editing Reconstruction era (section)

===Prosecution of the Ku Klux Klan===
[[File:Amos T Akerman - crop and minor retouch.jpg|upright|thumb|right|Grant's Attorney General [[Amos T. Akerman]] prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan, believing that the strong arm of the federal Justice Department could pacify the South.]]
[[File:Thomas Nast 1874.jpg|thumb|right|[[Thomas Nast]] illustration entitled "Halt," published October 17, 1874]]
Grant's Justice Department destroyed the Ku Klux Klan, but during both of his terms, Blacks lost their political strength in the [[Southern United States]]. By October, Grant suspended ''habeas corpus'' in part of South Carolina and he also sent federal troops to help marshals, who initiated prosecutions of Klan members.{{sfnp|Simon|2002|p=248}} Grant's Attorney General, [[Amos T. Akerman]], who replaced Hoar, was zealous in his attempt to destroy the Klan.{{sfnp|Kahan|2018|p=66}} Akerman and South Carolina's U.S. marshal arrested over 470 Klan members, but hundreds of Klansmen, including the Klan's wealthy leaders, fled the state.{{sfnp|Smith|2001|p=547}}{{sfnp|Calhoun|2017|p=324}} Akerman returned over 3,000 indictments of the Klan throughout the South and obtained 600 convictions for the worst offenders.{{sfnp|Smith|2001|p=547}} By 1872, Grant had crushed the Klan, and African Americans peacefully voted in record numbers in elections in the South.{{sfnp|Smith|2001|pp=547–548}}{{sfnp|Foner|2019|pp=120–122}} Attorney General [[George Henry Williams|George H. Williams]], Akerman's replacement, suspended his prosecutions of the Klan in North Carolina and South Carolina in the Spring of 1873, but prior to the election of 1874, he changed course and prosecuted the Klan.{{sfnp|Kahan|2018|p=122}} Civil rights prosecutions continued but with fewer yearly cases and convictions.{{sfnmp|Wang|1997|1p=102|Kaczorowski|1995|2p=182}}