Randa Abdelfattah

Merrill was an army officer sent to York County, which was one of nine South Carolina counties where the federal government wanted to investigate the Klan.

But before Merrill and his troops could make any arrests, he needed to build strong cases against Klan members, a feat that was tough in the South.

Merrill wasn't getting any help from local law enforcement, and his troops were met with insults by the locals.

But the investigations persisted, and for months, Lewis Merrill developed white informants, followed leads from Black residents.

He reviewed legal records and coroner's reports.

And in October of 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant gave Merrill and his troops authority to go after the Klan.

The raids began.

In the end, almost 200 people were held in a building that had been converted into a jail, and hundreds more were paroled, waiting to be called to trial.

The jurors were mostly Black men.

South Carolina had a majority Black population, and potential white jurors also refused to serve, either as a boycott or because they feared or were part of the Klan.

But prosecutors weren't convincing enough.

Even the judges were afraid of expanding the constitutional powers of the federal government.

So if Ackerman and Corbyn were going to have a shot at convicting any Klan members, they had to stick with violations of the Enforcement Act and prove that the Klan and its individual members conspired to prevent Black people from voting.

And these conspiracy cases had strong witnesses from the Black community.

While the trials were underway, Amos Ackerman was fired up, pushing his rhetoric to sell these prosecutions to the public.

Where he commented on KKK men on trial in South Carolina.

Then, in the middle of the trials, Amos Ackerman was pressured by President Grant to step down.

Despite Ackerman's resignation, the federal government won many of its conspiracy cases in the South Carolina Klan trials of 1871 and 1872.

In the end, there were about 140 convictions, mostly guilty pleas.

But after Ackerman resigned and after these first few trials, the political will to prosecute the more than 1,000 open Klan cases fizzled out.