Reconstruction and the Gilded Age 165upheld the right of Congress to reconstruct and in Texas v. White af-
firmed the argument by Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln that
the Union was indissoluble. More important, through a number of de-
cisions over the next several years it slowly gained recognition as the
final interpreter of the Constitution, a claim not specifically stated in
the document itself.
Although the Fifteenth Amendment forbade states from denying
citizens the right to vote on account of race, it did not forbid states from
enacting literacy, educational, and property tests that whites would later
invoke when military reconstruction ended. With these instruments
they effectively disenfranchised African-Americans and ultimately re-
stored white rule in the South. They claimed to have “Redeemed” their
states from what they called “Black Reconstruction.”
But one of the more effective ways of preventing blacks from voting
was by intimidation. The Ku Klux Klan, founded in Pulaski, Tennes-
see, in 1866 , with the former Confederate general Nathan Bedford For-
rest as the first Grand Wizard, aimed specifically at restoring white
rule through violence and lawlessness by striking terror among blacks
if they dared to vote. Lynchings and beatings became daily occur-
rences, especially during elections, and it has been estimated that ap-
proximately 400 hangings of African-Americans occurred between
1868 and 1871.
This resort to violence only convinced northerners that enforcement
of federal law by federal troops in the South was necessary and justi-
fied. Accordingly, Congress passed three Enforcement Acts in 1870 –
1871 , the first two of which outlawed the use of force or intimidation to
prevent citizens from exercising their right of suffrage and provided
federal supervisors to oversee the registration of voters. The third
Enforcement Act, also called the Ku Klux Klan Act, empowered the
President to use the military to protect black voters from intimidation
and violence and to suspend the writ of habeas corpus when necessary.
Not until the Democrats returned to power some twenty years later
were these “Force Acts,” as they called them, repealed. But the Grant
administration slowly moved away from employing the military and
the courts to carry out Congressional Reconstruction, and consequently
whites gradually “Redeemed” their states from Republican rule. More
and more ex-Confederates were elected to Congress, including the