Grant Removes Attorney General Akerman, Losing Key Klan Prosecutor

Attorney General Amos Akerman, the most aggressive federal prosecutor of Klan violence, was forced out of office in December 1871 under pressure from railroad interests, whom he had opposed in other cases. Akerman had personally supervised the South Carolina prosecutions and believed federal protection of Black rights was the central moral obligation of the Grant administration. His successor was less committed to enforcement; federal prosecutions of racial violence declined sharply after his re