between Vancouver's Island and the continent; but the Alabama claims for the moment seemed to all eyes to stand at the front of the matter. On the 14th of September, 1872, after a three months' hearing, the Geneva tribunal rendered a decision in favor of the United States, only the English member of the court dissenting. It awarded to the United States $15,500,000 in damages. But the strain of the matter had been taken off by the treaty; the decision of the tribunal ended, not a controversy, but a judicial process at the end of controversy. The strain of domestic politics was enough to withdraw heat from such matters when once they had become mere matters of business. The reconstruction even of those southern States in which the establishment of negro majorities had miscarried and the white voters had mustered strong and stubborn enough to reject the laws Congress tried to thrust upon them (Virginia, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas) was complete by midsummer, 1870. But the mere completion of the formal process of reconstruction, as planned in Congress, did not mean order or the quiet settlement of affairs in the South. The white men, with whom effective initiative and the real weight of predominance rested in any case, had had their wits quickened and their temper hardened by what the Republican leaders had done. They were shut out from the use of the ballot and from every open and legitimate part in affairs, but they had come at their power in another way. Those who loved mastery and adventure directed the work of the Ku Klux. Those whose tastes and principles made such means unpalatable brought their influence to bear along every line of counsel or of management that promised to thrust the carpet bagger out of office and discourage the negro in the use of his vote. Congress saw where they meant to regain their mastery, at the polls, and by what means, the intimidation and control of the negroes without regard to law,-the law thrust upon them, not their own; and hastened to set up a new barrier of statute against them. In May, 1870, it had passed an Act which put southern elections and the registration of voters in the southern States under the superintendence and virtual control of federal supervisors and marshals, who were empowered to protect all voters in the exercise of their right of suffrage, and whose complaints were to be heard, not by the courts of the States, but by the circuit courts of the United States alone. At its next session it still further strengthened the Act. The forty-second Congress met on the 4th of March, 1871, in extraordinary session, to continue legislation to the same end. Not merely the acts of registration and voting needed to be guarded; every privilege conferred upon the negro as an incident of his new freedom seemed in need of protection: the Republican leaders were determined that the Fourteenth as well as the Fifteenth Amendment should be buttressed about by penal legislation and the whole force of the government, if necessary, brought to bear to put them into effectual execution. A committee of seven senators and fourteen representatives was appointed to inquire into the actual condition of the South and ascertain the facts with regard to the alleged outrages there, and a drastic Act was passed (April 20, 1871) which was meant to crush the Ku Klux Klan' and all lawless bands acting after its fashion. Its provisions made such acts, whether of violence or of 1 See pages 260, 263. 74 2 See pages 263, 277. mere intimidation, as the secret societies of the South had committed conspiracy against the government of the United States, punishable by heavy fines or by imprisonment, or by both fine and imprisonment, and authorized the President, whenever the state authorities were unable or unwilling to prevent or check them, to use the land and naval forces of the federal government for their suppression, as against an insurrection. It authorized him, also, until the close of the next regular session of Congress, to suspend at his pleasure the writ of habeas corpus "during the continuance of such rebellion against the United States," in such portions of the southern country as seemed to him most touched by the disorders of the time or most under the control of the secret associations. The Act gave to the federal courts which were empowered to enforce it the right to exclude from their juries persons suspected of sympathizing with those who violated its provisions. It was meant to destroy root and branch the organizations which had set themselves to annul the rights of the negroes. The Act of May, 1870, had made it a criminal offence "to go in disguise upon the highway, or upon the premises of another" by way of conspiracy "to deprive any citizen of his constitutional rights," striking directly at the secret orders and their more lawless imitators. General Grant used the powers conferred upon him. with the energy and directness of a soldier, as Congress had expected. On the 12th of October, 1871,' singling out nine counties of South Carolina in which such acts as Congress had aimed its blow at were most frequent, he called upon the members of all illegal associations within them to surrender their arms and disguises |