On July 8, 1876, racial violence erupted in the small, all-black town of Hamburg, South Carolina. A black militia unit there clashed with whites from nearby communities. Six blacks and one white died in the fighting. The so-called Hamburg Massacre boosted the Democrats’ campaign argument that “Republican Rule” had led to racial violence. Republican governor D. H. Chamberlain appealed to President Grant for assistance. Grant’s reply signaled the federal government’s retreat from Reconstruction.

Washington, July 26, 1876

Dear Sir:

I am in receipt of your letter of the 22d of July, and all the enclosures enumerated therein, giving an account of the late barbarous massacre of innocent men at the town of Hamburg, S.C. The views which you express as to the duty you owe to your oath of office and to the citizens to secure to all their civil rights, including the right to vote according to the dictates of their own consciences, and the further duty of the Executive of the nation to give all needful aid, when properly called on to do so, to enable you to ensure this inalienable right, I fully concur in.

The scene at Hamburg, as cruel, bloodthirsty, wanton, unprovoked, and as uncalled for as it was, is only a repetition of the course that has been pursued in other States within the last few years, notably in Mississippi and Louisiana. Mississippi is governed to-day by officials chosen through fraud and violence, such as would scarcely be accredited to savages, much less to a civilized and Christian people. How long these things are to continue, or what is to be the final remedy, the Great Ruler of the Universe only knows; but I have an abiding faith that the remedy will come, and come speedily, and I earnestly hope that it will come peacefully. There has never been a desire on the part of the North to humiliate the South; nothing is claimed for one State that is not freely accorded to all the others, unless it may be the right to kill negroes and Republicans without fear of punishment and without loss of caste or reputation. This has seemed to be a privilege claimed by a few States.

I repeat again, that I fully agree with you as to the measure of your duties in the present emergency, and as to my duties. Go on, and let every Governor, where the same dangers threaten the peace of his State, go on in the conscientious discharge of his duties to the humblest as well as the proudest citizen, and I will give every aid for which I can find law or constitutional power. A government that cannot give protection to the life, property, and all guaranteed civil rights (in this country the greatest is an untrammeled ballot) to the citizen is, in so far, a failure, and every energy of the oppressed should be exerted (always within the law and by constitutional means) to regain lost privileges or protection.

Too long denial of guaranteed rights is sure to lead to revolution, bloody revolution, where suffering must fall upon the innocent as well as the guilty. Expressing the hope that the better judgment and co-operation of citizens of the State over which you have presided so ably may enable you to secure a fair trial, and punishment of all offenders without distinction of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, and without aid from the Federal Government, but with the promise of such aid on the conditions named in the foregoing, I subscribe myself very respectfully your obedient servant,

U. S. Grant.

Source: Edward McPherson, A Handbook of Politics for 1876 (Washington, D.C.: Solomons and Chapman, 1876), 207.