Joshua Zeitz: If Trump Gets Convicted, Blame Ulysses S. Grant

Our system presumes that a defendant is innocent until proven guilty. It is now incumbent upon the Department of Justice to make its case. 

• But the shameful events of late 2020 and early 2021 only reinforce the lasting relevance and importance of the 1870 Enforcement Act, a law constructed to meet challenges that, a century and a half later, still hang over America’s fragile democracy. 

HISTORY DEPT.

If Trump Gets Convicted, Blame Ulysses S. Grant

A post-Civil War statute could make all the difference in the case against the former president.

A print depicting President Ulysses S. Grant signing the Ku Klux Force Bill in the President's room with Secretary George Robeson and Gen. Horace Porter, at the Capitol, April 20, 1871. | Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

By JOSHUA ZEITZ

08/03/2023 11:48 AM EDT

"When a federal jury in Washington indicted former President Donald Trump this week for his role in attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election, it did so in part on the basis of 18 U.S.C. § 241, a statute dating originally to 1870, when President Ulysses S. Grant signed into law the first of three Enforcement Acts, aimed at ensuring that formerly enslaved people could freely vote, participate in politics and serve in public office.

Conservatives took umbrage at the use of Section 241, a century-and-a-half old law, to prosecute Trump. “Smith is charging Trump with a civil-rights violation … based on a post-Civil War statute designed to punish violent intimidation and forcible attacks against blacks attempting to exercise their right to vote,” the National Review editorialized. “What Trump did, though reprehensible, bears no relation to what the statute covers.”

And yet, it does. The Enforcement Acts, one of which was known also as the Ku Klux Klan Act, given its prime target, criminalized widespread attempts by former Confederates to deny Black Southerners their right to vote, to have their votes counted and hold office — rights they enjoyed under the Reconstruction Act of 1867, the 14th Amendment and soon, the 15th Amendment. 

• Coming at a time when American democracy teetered on the edge, these laws gave teeth to the federal government’s insistence that no eligible voter could be denied the right to vote and have his vote counted. (At the time, only men could exercise the franchise.) 
• The laws were a direct response to Southern Democrats’ efforts to abrogate the practical effects of the Civil War and nullify Black political participation and representation.

Today, American democracy stands once again at a crossroads. The refusal of many Republican officeholders to accept the outcome of a free and fair election, and Trump’s outright appeal to fraud and violence in an effort to overturn that election, are precisely the kinds of antidemocratic practices the Enforcement Acts were intended to criminalize and punish.

Joshua Zeitz, a Politico Magazine contributing writer, is the author of Lincoln's God: How Faith Transformed a President and a Nation (May 2023). Follow him @joshuamzeitz.

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