United States V. Cruikshank - Aftermath

Aftermath

In the short term, blacks in the South were left to the mercy of increasingly hostile state governments, who did little to protect them. When Democrats regained power in the late 1870s, they passed legislation making voter registration and elections more complicated, effectively stripping many blacks from voter rolls. Paramilitary violence continued to suppress black voting. From 1890 to 1908, 10 of the 11 former Confederate states passed disfranchising constitutions or amendments, with provisions for poll taxes, residency requirements, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses that effectively disfranchised most black voters and many poor whites. The disfranchisement also meant that in most cases blacks could not serve on juries or hold any political office, which were restricted to voters.

The Cruikshank case effectively enabled political parties' use of paramilitary forces.

Ironically, and despite that era's Republican commitment to Reconstruction and black civil rights, all five Justices in the majority were appointed by Republicans (three by Lincoln, two by Grant), while the lone Democratic appointee Nathan Clifford dissented.