True or False: The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 was originally passed to prevent federal troops from enforcing civil rights laws in the South during Reconstruction.

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The Posse Comitatus Act was Congress paying the Confederate debt. Passed in 1878 as Reconstruction ended, the law banned federal troops from protecting Black voters in the South. Southern Democrats demanded this as their price for accepting Rutherford Hayes's stolen presidency. The law wasn't about protecting democracy—it was about abandoning it. Federal troops had enforced the 14th and 15th Amendments; the Act made that illegal, condemning Black Americans to 90 years of Jim Crow.

True or False: The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 was originally passed to prevent federal troops from enforcing civil rights laws in the South during Reconstruction.

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