Reconstruction’s Reckoning: Grant vs. the Klan in the Fight for Equal Rights | The American Story | Ep 19

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**SPEAKER_3** (0:31)
It's July 30th, 1866, in the sweltering streets of New Orleans.
The Civil War is over. Slavery? Dead. But for four million black men and women throughout the South, true freedom is still elusive thanks to constant terrorist attacks by white supremacists. A determined procession of around 200 black men, many of them Union Army veterans, marches proudly towards the Mechanics Institute building, carrying the stars and stripes. Inside, a group of white and black Republicans have gathered for a constitutional convention. Their goal is bold and dangerous. Rewrite Louisiana's state constitution to protect civil rights and secure voting rights for black men, rights being violently suppressed by white authorities all across the state.
But this meeting has already been marked for destruction. The mayor of New Orleans is John Monroe. He's a former Confederate sympathizer, pardoned by President Andrew Johnson and restored to power. Monroe declares the convention an unlawful assembly and he pushes the idea that this meeting is dangerous and revolutionary. Well, the local press amplifies the panic with provocative stories, whipping up white rage. And then there's the sheriff of New Orleans, Harry Hayes. He's a former Confederate general. He deputizes a posse of white officers, many of them also ex-Confederates, to confront the convention and arrest the delegates.
The city's police force, along with a white mob, confront the peaceful procession outside the Mechanics Institute building. And the taunts begin, then the blows. Black marchers are kicked and then beaten with clubs.
Suddenly, the police and armed white attackers open fire. Black men fall by the dozens, blood pooling out on the streets. The marchers scatter, many rush into the Mechanics Institute and barricade the doors. But the attackers follow. Policemen smash the building's windows and pour gunfire inside, where delegates huddle for cover. Some men leap from a second story window only to be shot the moment they hit the ground. Police break inside the building. Some delegates wave white handkerchiefs in surrender only to be shot, trampled, beaten with clubs and stabbed repeatedly as they lie wounded. Some, on their knees, begging for mercy, are killed on the spot.
Even the well-known white leader of the convention is shot five times and slashed with swords. The white mob sadistically crushes the skulls and mutilates the bodies of their victims. By the time the federal troops arrive on the scene, it's far too late. It's already a massacre. Thirty-four black men, three white Republicans, dead. A hundred and sixty wounded. Two hundred more arrested.
Cyrus Hamlin, he's the son of Lincoln's first vice president, witnesses the horror first hand and later says, I have seen death on the battlefield, but time will erase the effects of that.

**SPEAKER_5** (3:45)
The wholesale slaughter and the little regard paid to human life I witnessed here on the 30th of July, I shall never forget.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:53)
General Philip Sheridan, one of Grant's most trusted commanders, investigates in the days following the slaughter. His assessment was blunt.

**SPEAKER_4** (4:02)
It was no riot.

**SPEAKER_6** (4:03)
It was an absolute massacre by the police.

**SPEAKER_3** (4:06)
America is forced to confront the truth that the Civil War may be over. But the fight over who gets to be an American has only just begun.

**SPEAKER_7** (4:18)
This is the American Story, The Beginnings, adapted from the book of the same title by David Barton and Tim Barton. Episode 19, Grant vs. The Klan in the Fight for Equal Rights.

**SPEAKER_3** (4:41)
One month after the massacre in New Orleans, President Andrew Johnson stood before a crowd in St. Louis and blamed the US.

**SPEAKER_4** (4:48)
Congress for the atrocity, saying, Every drop of blood that was shed is upon their skirts, and they are responsible for it.

**SPEAKER_3** (4:57)
That line told you almost everything you needed to know about his presidency.
Andrew Johnson was a self-taught tailor from a poor Tennessee family. He had climbed the political ladder as a Democrat, and during the Civil War, when Tennessee seceded, Johnson did something extraordinary. He refused to go along. The only Southern Senator who stayed loyal to the Union. He became Lincoln's military governor of the state. It was brave. It was a defiant stand that earned Johnson widespread respect in the North, and it made him look like living proof that the Union was bigger than party.