President Biden’s new Oval Office is decorated with likenesses of people whom the president admires and takes inspiration from, including busts of civil rights icons Cesar Chavez, Rosa Parks and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and portraits of former presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
There is one president whose portrait doesn’t hang on the walls of the Oval Office, but from whom Biden can learn: Ulysses S. Grant.
As both men entered office, they faced growing threats of White supremacist violence and pressing questions about how much federal power they should harness to combat it. Philosophically, the former general had no qualms deploying force. Grant unleashed the full force of federal power against Native Americans; by one estimate, during his presidency, the U.S. Army fought more than 200 battles against Indigenous people seeking to protect themselves, their land and their culture from White settlers and U.S. corporate interests.
But he was often cautious about using such power to combat white supremacist violence against Black Americans in the former Confederacy. More concerned about stoking White resentment to federal power than combating it, Grant sought to solve the problem of anti-Black violence through access to the ballot box. Yet, he never marshaled the full power of the federal government to deliver and protect that right. His experience revealed that without enforcement, legislation is inadequate to protect voting rights.
When Grant took his oath of office in March 1869, Congress had just passed the 15th Amendment granting Black men the right to vote. The wording of the amendment had been hotly debated, with some lawmakers demanding that it grant an affirmative right of suffrage to all men over the age of 21 and others insisting that it instead prohibit disenfranchisement based on race.
This difference in wording mattered. Congressmen wanted to retain the right, under the 14th Amendment, to disenfranchise former Confederates. Northern and Western states also refused to give up discriminatory laws against immigrant, illiterate and poor voters. So they chose language that kept the door open for these other types of disenfranchisement: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” is how the final version reads.
Members of Congress such as Sen. Henry Wilson (R-Mass.) called it “very lame and halting” and argued for a stronger guarantee of voting rights, one that expressed an affirmative right to vote and that provided guarantees for Black officeholders. But Grant, who understood that his own electoral victory was made possible by Black voters, urged the states to ratify it. “The question of suffrage is one which is likely to agitate the public so long as a portion of the citizens of the nation are excluded from its privileges in any state,” Grant said in his first inaugural, “It seems to me very desirable that the question should be settled now … by the ratification of the 15th article of amendment to the Constitution.” Grant got his wish, and the 15th Amendment was ratified.
But the choice of language meant the question of suffrage was not settled. Far from it.
Although Black men in the South turned out in great numbers to vote for Grant and other Republicans in those early postwar years, they did so under watch of federal troops who occupied the former Confederacy and protected them from armed White men who tried to stop them from voting. But as the ranks of U.S. Army began to thin, the white supremacists became emboldened.
So, with Grant’s support, Congress passed additional measures, such as the 1870 Enforcement Act that criminalized violence perpetrated by the Ku Klux Klan against Black voters as well as more mundane forms of disenfranchisement such as delaying or obstructing the administration of an election. More legislation gave the federal government jurisdiction over these crimes; Congress held investigations; and the Department of Justice was created to prosecute those charged with violent acts of voter suppression. These measures provided much needed support for Black communities as they continued to defend themselves against white supremacy.
But still the problem persisted. A few weeks after Grant’s second inauguration in 1873, an armed White mob, angry over the results of an election in a majority Black district, laid siege to a courthouse in Colfax, La. As the Black men inside surrendered, the building caught fire; when they tried to escape, they were shot.
Grant sent in federal troops who arrived a week later and filed reports that made clear the racism driving this outbreak of violence. Official counts put the number of dead at 76, but eyewitnesses estimated the number of dead Black men, women and children was 300. Shaken by the massacre, Grant sent federal prosecutors into investigate what he called “a butchery of citizens,” but as the violence spread from Texas to Arkansas to South Carolina, the president continued to respond in an ad hoc manner, with no one set of rules in the federal playbook for combating the growing threat of violent White supremacy.
When violence broke out in Mississippi two years later, Grant, surrounded now by advisers who appealed to his caution about flexing federal might, failed to act to protect Black lives. Grant let his fear of stoking White resentment guide his decision-making rather than a commitment to racial justice. The exasperated Republican governor of Mississippi reported that a Grant administration official defended the decision not to send in reinforcements by explaining that the federal government had grown “’tired of the[se] autumnal outbursts in the South.’”
But without that commitment, the laws Grant had helped to make became meaningless. Under the 15th Amendment, Southern Blacks continued to vote for some time, despite the danger, but without a federal investment in enforcement, “the right of citizens of the United States to vote” was routinely and violently violated for nearly 100 years, until the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
In his inaugural speech, Biden invoked the words of Lincoln when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, but when Biden vowed to fight white supremacy he placed himself squarely in Grant’s shoes. The problems he faces will not be solved by executive order or even legislation, however. In fact, while legislation is essential, laws will not be enough. Enforcement is also needed.
This starts with voting rights. The proposed John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act seeks to repair the damaged 1965 Voting Rights Act in providing for federal oversight of elections to prevent racial discrimination. The law protects voters of color from state voter identification mandates and changing voting locations — and one would assume that it will now put the brake on attempts to roll back access to absentee voting.
It holds states responsible for discriminatory actions taken by individuals, providing a strong incentive for state and local officials to continue to guarantee safe and fair elections. If passed, this new voting rights act promises to provide communities of color with a strong means of defense against white supremacy and will establish that the administration will not settle for anything “lame and halting.” But it is not just about changing the law to effect equal access; it is about giving the law teeth to make that a reality — and then strenuously enforcing it.
Such substantial changes will generate resistance and resentment, but that’s how white supremacy will once again begin to retreat. It will not go quietly. It will take the full force of the federal government, such as when the 1965 Voting Rights Act empowered the Justice Department to protect Black voters from voter suppression, until the 2013 Shelby v. Holder decision nullified this enforcement measure. By authorizing the attorney general to monitor elections, the John Lewis VRA acknowledges the need to support voting rights laws with robust federal enforcement. Grant failed to do this. Will Biden learn from his mistakes?