Although historians have generally assumed that the Compromise of 1877 and Rutherford Hayes' subsequent removal of federal troops from the deep south signaled the end of federal efforts to protect the black vote, federal trial court records reveal a different story. The federal government continued to prosecute voting rights cases in South Carolina well into the 1880s. While these cases rarely gained convictions, they nevertheless raise an important question: If the federal government wanted to protect the black franchise, why was it unable to maintain fair elections?

    Using federal trial court records as the primary vehicle of analysis, this paper explores the 1878 federal election cases in South Carolina to determine the limits of federal force in a white political culture completely opposed to the equal participation of African Americans. Prosecution of these cases demonstrates two important points that most historians have missed: the Republican national government's continuing commitment to protecting the black franchise after the Compromise of 1877 and the prevailing understanding that the Supreme Court's pinched interpretation of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments in U.S. v. Cruikshank and US. v. Reese had not foreclosed the possibility of conviction.

    The 1878 election cases manifest also the difficulties federal officials faced in South Carolina. Whites invariably perceived the federal trials as political persecution. Federal attorneys faced batteries of skilled trial lawyers ready to donate their services for the cause of white supremacy. Even more important, federal attorneys found it almost impossible to impanel an impartial jury. Regardless of the evidence, black and white perceptions of racial violence and election fraud were predetermined by race. Thus the difficulties of obtaining convictions were almost insurmountable.

    State courts kept up a steady barrage of vindictive counter prosecutions designed to wear down the determination of the Justice Department and the federal courts. State courts indicted federal witnesses for perjury, dragged federal officers into state court for alleged offenses committed in the line of duty, and even pressed libel charges against Republicans who complained in the Northern press about their treatment in South Carolina. While such usurpation of federal authority was obviously illegal, state judicial tactics often silenced federal witnesses and kept harried federal attorneys tied up in state court.

    This paper will juxtapose the ongoing federal voting enforcement efforts with these vindictive counter prosecutions in state court. South Carolina's legislative efforts to disfranchise its black majority are well known, but I am the first historian to analyze the power struggle between state and federal courts. Placing federal and state court records at the heart of the analysis advances the scholarly debate beyond the impression that the federal government could have succeeded if only it had tried harder. Blacks were not disfranchised because northern Republicans had lost interest in securing fair elections. Instead, legal records demonstrate, the federal government was overwhelmed by the intransigence of white southerners willing to use violence, fraud, and the "full force of the state's authority" to stamp out the black vote.