An Enforcement Of The Fourteenth Amendment

President Ulysses S Grant signed the Enforcement Act of 1871 into law April 20^th 1871; this is also called the Civil Rights Act of 1871.

United States Senator John Scott of Pennsylvania formed a committee to take testimony about actions of the Ku Klux Klan in January 1871.  In February of that year Congressman Benjamin Franklin Butler introduced an anti-Klan bill designed to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment.  The original bill was defeated in the House, but Congressman Samuel Shallabarger of Ohio introduced a substitute bill that passed the House by a thin margin.  The bill had no trouble passing the Senate and President Ulysses S Grant signed it into law April 20^th 1871.

Under this Act, United States troops were brought in to enforce laws in the southern states where hundreds of members of the Ku Klux Klan were tried in Federal courts.  As part of this Act Habeas Corpus was suspended in many of the counties of South Carolina.  It wiped out the Klan and other white supremacy groups for many years in the former Confederate States.

Burnt To The Ground

John B Magruder

Hampton, Virginia was burned August 7th 1861 by Confederate Colonel John Bankhead Magruder.


Hampton, Virginia fell under the control of Union Brigadier General Benjamin Franklin Butler July 3rd 1861, but troops were called to protect Washington DC following the Union loss at First Bull Run. So they abandoned the town.

Reading an article in the New York Tribune, Confederate Colonel John Bankhead Magruder learned that Butler had planned to use the town as a place to house escaped slaves. Magruder ordered the town burned. Confederate Captain Jefferson Curle Phillips, a resident of Hampton carried out the order on August 7th 1861 along members of the local militia. They notified citizens that the town would be destroyed, and shortly had the whole place aflame. Only a few buildings survived, including the burnt walls of St John’s Church. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the town was nothing but, “a forest of blear-sided chimneys and brick houses tottering and the wind, scorched trees and heaps of smoldering ruins…. A more desolate sight cannot be imagined.”

A Side-wheeler

The steamer the USS Kinsman a Union Navy gunboat was run aground February 23rd 1863.


Built in Elizabeth, Pennsylvania in 1854 as the Gray Cloud, the USS Kinsman operated on the Mississippi River. Union General Benjamin Franklin Butler commandeered her in 1862 after the capture of New Orleans, Louisiana. The 245 ton steam side-wheeler was fitted out as a gunboat and renamed the USS Kinsman and place under the command of Acting Master George Wiggen in the Union Army. The Kinsman along with the Calhoun, Diana, and Estrella engage the Confederate ironclad the CSS Cotton on November 3rd 1862. The Kinsman was struck in her port bow, but the CSS Cotton was forced to retire. She was involved in several captures during the next few days.

On January 1st 1863 the USS Kinsman was transferred from the Army to the Union Navy. She was now under the command of Lieutenant Commander Thomas McKean Buchanan. On February 23rd 1863 the Kinsman was transporting troops when she struck a snag and sank near Brashear City, Louisiana in the Berwick Bay. There were six men missing.

The First Battle

Only eight weeks after the firing on Fort Sumter on June 10th 1861 the first battle fought in Virginia, Big Bethel Church was fought.


The first Civil War battle in Virginia had Major General Benjamin Franklin Butler’s troops coming together from Newport News and Hampton toward Little and Big Bethel where there were Confederate outposts. Falling back from Little Bethel the Confederates commanded by Colonel John Bankhead Magruder, went into entrenchments near Big Bethel Church behind the Brick Kiln Creek. Butler sent Union troops under the command of Brigadier General Ebenezer W Pierce at dawn on June 10th 1861 to attack the Confederate front, they were forced back after coming under heavy artillery fire. Farther downstream the Union 5th New York Zouaves hit the Confederate left flank, but were also repulsed. The Union forces retreated from the field, going back to Newport News and Hampton. Confederate forces saw only 8 casualties. The Union side saw looses of 76 men.