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Northern newspapers used the Klan to talk about the nature of citizenship, the expansion of the state, and their anxieties that the individual was subject to manipulation by an increasingly robust and centralized government and centralized newspaper press. The national conversation about the Klan largely occurred during two periods—the first from early 1868 through early 1869, the second from late 1870 through 1872—and the nature of the discussion differed dramatically between those two periods, revealing changing approaches to Klan violence. Throughout, it is striking how few articles on the Klan include descriptions and mentions of actual Klan attacks on freedpeople and their white allies. Rather, northern newspaper articles on the Klan became a way to reflect on broader issues. By the 1871 and 1872, northern newspapers had adopted a strikingly sympathetic posture to Ku-Klux, who they increasingly portrayed as victims of federal aggression rather than as perpetrators of attacks on freedpeople.

The fifth chapter explores the transformation of northern evangelical opinion regarding Andrew Johnson from 1866 to 1868 and their subsequent welcoming of Ulysses S. Grant as a two-time savior of the Union in the election of 1868. During the spring and summer of 1866, Johnson broke with Congressional Republicans over Reconstruction policy and began to lose the support of non-radical northern evangelicals in the process. Many northern evangelicals would feel compelled by Johnson’s stubbornness and southern recalcitrance to support the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment and then Johnson’s impeachment in 1868. Northern evangelicals saw an image of themselves in Grant, and they envisioned the final healing of sectional difficulties in a Grant presidency along with the opportunity to focus on other problems threatening their country.

Even as their Revolution freed Americans from direct British rule and from the East India Company’s monopoly, American merchants and consumers quickly entered into newly codependent relationships with Britain in the India trade. Americans were ideal partners for private British merchants seeking to use their capital and experience outside the East India Company’s monopoly. The U.S. flag increasingly filled the interloping role previously filled by European flags in the port of Ostend in the Austrian Netherlands. The impeachment proceedings against British India’s governor-general Warren Hastings, meanwhile, informed American debate over the making and merits of the 1787 constitution and the proper regulation of the new U.S.-India trade.

Reconstruction occurred on a blank constitutional slate. President Andrew Johnson’s rigid character and outdated values adversely affected the nation’s approach to it. After following Abraham Lincoln’s early policy, he formed his own constitutional approach to Reconstruction before Congress convened, using the pardon power to reconstruct rebel states with few of the conditions needed to protect the freed slaves. Congress then asserted its own constitutional primacy, overriding Johnson’s vetoes of its legislation. He resisted enforcing the statutes, in disregard of his faithful execution duty. He assailed the legitimacy of the Reconstruction Congress and resisted the Fourteenth Amendment. Eventually, he was impeached, and narrowly escaped conviction and removal. Ironically, he was impeached for defying an unconstitutional statute, the Tenure of Office Act, which restricted his command of the executive branch. He should have been removed for his failures of faithful execution. The disputed election of 1876 was another Electoral College crisis.

The Bureau’s end is in this chapter. Overseeing its demise in Texas was J. J. Reynolds. Reynolds appointed the second most field personnel and the most with military service. The length of tenures and reasons for leaving are compared with his three predecessors. It is here a quantitative analysis of all the reasons agents departed is examined. Under Reynolds, field agents focused primarily on readying the freedpeople for the day without the Bureau. Consequently, agents began transferring authority for the former slaves to civil authorities, yet still maintaining oversight. With the agency’s end near, white Texans hoped for a parting shot. Agents struggled with ramifications of the president’s impeachment crisis and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. A struggle, despite their best efforts, was ultimately to fail.

Judicial independence as a corollary of checks and balances had a difficult start after Independence. Judges were closely identified with the Crown and the common law they administered had no visible democratic source. The result was rampant hostility towards law-trained judges combined with legislative restrictions on judicial decision-making. In many instances these view were built into the initial architecture of judicial systems, e.g., no appellate courts with law-pronouncing powers and all judges forbidden to publish and cite judicial decisions. Other tools of “popular constitutionalism” included the abolition of disfavored courts (e.g., Maryland, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia); pressuring individual judges through impeachment, summary removal by “address” (e.g., New Hampshire, Kentucky), or not re-electing them to office (e.g., Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont); and legislative rulings deciding specific cases (e.g., New Hampshire, Virginia, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Connecticut). Salient episodes include the abolition of federal courts by the Second Judiciary Act of 1802, displacing sixteen federal judges and effectively upheld in Stuart v. Laird (1803); the attempt to impech Justice Samuel Chase and successful impeachment of federal judge John Pickering; and state struggles involving judges Alexander Addison in Pennsylvania, and William Whttington in Maryland.

While most historians analysing the 1620s have focused on Buckingham’s great expeditions – Mansfelt, Cadiz and the Ile de Re – contemporaries, particularly along the east coast, had their eyes on Dunkirkers, comparatively small Spanish warships then eviscerating English shipping. Indeed between late 1625 and early 1628, these Flemish corsairs captured no fewer than 522 English vessels. Several dozen Parliament-men in 1626 loudly and repeatedly complained about this situation, but aside from periodic bland reassurances, Buckingham apparently did nothing. Yet thanks to Add. MSS 37,816-7, we can see that Buckingham did respond to the complaints. In addition to repositioning naval assets to guard coastal shipping, he repeatedly exhorted his captains to try harder, rewarding those who did and punishing those who did not. He also pressed for the acquisition of small, more manageable warships which had some hope of catching Dunkirkers, and he organised relief schemes for those Britons imprisoned in Flemish jails. Furthermore, he constantly harped on these and many other counter-measures, all in the hope of soothing parliamentary critics. What makes this blizzard of orders so astonishing is that they effectively ended with the parliamentary dissolution.

Judges are not above the law. Like the other institutions of the State, the judiciary must be accountable. Chief Justice Edward Coke told King James I point blank that was not above the law and quoted jurist Bracton, Non-sub homine sed sub deo et lege. (The King is under no man, save under God and the law.) Ironically, judges themselves don’t appear to be following this dictum giving an impression that they are above the law. The judiciary should be accountable according to its own reasonings employed for holding all other institutions to account. But it abhors the idea of accountability for itself in the name of its independence. It is a misnomer as independence and accountability are complementary, not antagonistic.

President Trump’s inaugural speech, a dark vision of “American carnage,” foreshadowed the administration to come. He considered presidential power a monetizable asset to convert into a family fortune, and the GOP—in unified control of Congress but deeply divided as a party—needed him and his voters so much that they exercised only minimal checks and balances. Chapter 6 charts the tempestuous relationship between the president and GOP leaders during a term marked by chaos in the White House and complicity in Congress. Despite a fervent desire to disrupt government, Trump’s West Wing staff was woefully unprepared for the task. In two years of unified control, the one major accomplishment was a massive tax cut for the top 1 percent of the country. His trade wars damaged exports, bankrupted farmers, and hurt American steel producers. His preferences for dictators rattled NATO and set back efforts to control North Korea and Iran. The GOP could not even repeal Obamacare, let alone replace it with something better. Republicans were blown out in the midterm election, losing control of the House, but they maintained their loyalty to Trump, forsaking the rule of law in favor of the rule of public opinion, and acquitting him of impeachment charges in the Senate without calling a single witness. However, the self-inflicted wounds from Trump’s administration were nothing compared to his abdication of leadership in the face of a true global crisis: COVID-19. Soon, the country with the world’s best science and medicine had the most cases and the most deaths in the world.

The faith of Bill Clinton is difficult to decipher. He professed to have been “born again” as a youth, frequently testified that his faith was important to him, attended church regularly as president, had an impressive knowledge of the Bible, and often quoted Scripture. Clinton’s beliefs influenced his policies on numerous matters including racial reconciliation and international peacemaking. Despite his public displays of religiosity, Clinton engaged in tawdry actions that violated biblical moral standards, most notably the Whitewater affair, the state trooper flap, the Paula Jones case, Filegate, and the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which contributed to his impeachment. His personal behavior, especially his sexual affairs and lying, contravened traditional moral norms, leading many to question the genuineness of Clinton’s Christian profession. Three issues especially display the influence Clinton’s faith had on his presidential policies: his efforts to promote religious liberty, welfare reform, and reconciliation between nations.

What if a sitting president accepted illegal foreign campaign donations or sought to obstruct an ongoing federal investigation? Could he be charged with a crime? The conventional wisdom is no, but the Constitution is silent on this question, no court has ever decided it, and there are respectable arguments on both sides. This chapter recounts these arguments and the intense debates they provoked among the young lawyers working for past special prosecutors. Ultimately, both Leon Jaworski and Ken Starr chose not to indict the president. Future prosecutors are likely to follow the same course. This does not mean that special prosecutors are powerless to hold the president accountable for violating the law. But if they are to do so, the American people have a central—and daunting—role to play. Once again, the last, best hope for the rule of law is not judges or lawyers but democratic politics.