Passed under the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, the laws also allowed the federal government to intervene when states did not act to protect these rights.
Although this act was meant to fight the KKK and help black people and freedmen, many states were reluctant to take such relatively extreme actions, for several reasons.
The main purpose under the act was the prohibited use of violence or any form of intimidation to prevent the freedmen from voting and denying them that right.
[1] The Enforcement Act of 1870 prohibited discrimination by state officials in voter registration on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
It established penalties for interfering with a person's right to vote and gave federal courts the power to enforce the act.
The Act also authorized the president to suspend the writ of habeas corpus if violence rendered efforts to suppress the Klan ineffective.
As a response to the act, Klansmen in South Carolina were put on trial in front of juries made up of mainly African Americans.
[6] After the Colfax massacre in Louisiana, the federal government brought a civil rights case against nine men (out of 97 indicted) who were accused of paramilitary activity intended to stop black people from voting.
However, in Ex Parte Yarbrough (1884) the Court allowed individuals who were not state actors to be prosecuted because Article I Section 4 of the Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate federal elections.
In Hodges v. United States (1906) the Court addressed a possible Thirteenth Amendment rationale for the Enforcement Acts, and found that the federal government did not have the authority to punish a group of men for interfering with black workers through whitecapping.