 By the time Ulysses S. Grant succeeded Johnson in 1869, Garfield had moved away from the remaining radicals (Stevens, their leader, had died in 1868). He hailed the ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870 as a triumph, and he favored the re-admission of Georgia to the Union as a matter of right, not politics. In 1871, Garfield opposed passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act, saying "I have never been more perplexed by a piece of legislation". He was torn between his indignation at "these terrorists" and his concern for the freedoms endangered by the power the bill gave to the president to enforce the act through suspension of habeas corpus.
