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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sequel of Appomattox by Walter
+Fleming #32 in the Chronicles of America series.
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost
+no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
+under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
+eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+Title: The Sequel of Appomattox
+A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States
+Author: Walter Lynwood Fleming
+Release Date: January 2, 2009 [EBook #2897]
+Last Updated: August 26, 2017
+Character set encoding: utf-8
+
+Produced by The James J. Kelly Library Of St. Gregory's University, Alev
+Akman, David Widger, and Robert Homa. Images were courtesy of the
+internet archive.
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEQUEL OF APPOMATTOX ***
+
+The Sequel of Appomattox
+
+Textbook Edition
+       ∵
+Volume 32 of the
+Chronicles of America Series
+
+Allen Johnson, Editor
+Assistant Editors
+Gerhard R. Lomer
+Charles W. Jefferys
+
+
+The Sequel of Appomattox
+
+By Walter Lynwood Fleming
+
+A Chronicle Of the Reunion of the States
+
+
+New Haven: Yale University Press
+Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Co.
+London: Humphrey Milford
+Oxford University Press
+1919
+
+
+Copyright, 1919
+by Yale University Press
+
+Contents.
+        The Sequel of Appomattox
+Chapter        Chapter Title            Page
+   I.   The Aftermath of War              1
+  II.   When Freedom Cried Out           34
+ III.   The Work of the Presidents       54
+  IV.   The Wards of the Nation          89
+   V.   The Victory of the Radicals     118
+  VI.   The Rule of the Major Generals  140
+ VII.   The Trial of President Johnson  158
+VIII.   The Union League of America     174
+  IX.   Church and School               196
+   X.   Carpetbag and Negro Rule        221
+  XI.   The Ku Klux Movement            243
+ XII.   The Changing South              265
+XIII.   Restoration of Home Rule        282
+        Bibliographical Note            305
+        Index                           309
+
+
+
+THE SEQUEL OF APPOMATTOX
+
+∵
+CHAPTER I.
+
+The Aftermath of War
+
+When the armies of the Union and of the Confederacy were disbanded in
+1865, two matters had been settled beyond further dispute: the negro was
+to be free, and the Union was to be perpetuated. But though slavery and
+state sovereignty were no longer at issue, there were still many
+problems which pressed for solution. The huge task of reconstruction
+must be faced. The nature of the situation required that the measures of
+reconstruction be first formulated in Washington by the victors and then
+worked out in the conquered South. Since the success of these policies
+would depend in a large measure upon their acceptability to both
+sections of the country, it was expected that the North would be
+influenced to some extent by the attitude of the Southern people, which
+in turn would be determined largely by local conditions in the South.
+The situation in the South at the close of the Civil War is therefore
+the point at which this narrative of the reconstruction naturally takes
+its beginning.
+
+The surviving Confederate soldiers came straggling back to communities
+which were now far from being satisfactory dwelling places for civilized
+people. Everywhere they found missing many of the best of their former
+neighbors. They found property destroyed, the labor system disorganized,
+and the inhabitants in many places suffering from want. They found the
+white people demoralized and sometimes divided among themselves, and the
+negroes free, bewildered, and disorderly, for organized government had
+lapsed with the surrender of the Confederate armies.
+
+Beneath a disorganized society lay a devastated land. The destruction of
+property affected all classes of the population. The accumulated capital
+of the South had disappeared in worthless Confederate stocks, bonds, and
+currency. The banks had failed early in the war. Two billion dollars
+invested in slaves had been wiped out. Factories which had been running
+before the war, or were developed after 1861 in order to supply the
+blockaded country, had been destroyed by Federal raiders or seized and
+sold or dismantled because they had furnished supplies to the
+Confederacy. Mining industries were paralyzed. Public buildings which
+had been used for war purposes were destroyed or confiscated for the
+uses of the army or for the new freedmen's schools. It was months before
+courthouses, state capitols, school and college buildings were again
+made available for normal uses. The military school buildings had been
+destroyed by the Federal forces. Among the schools which suffered were
+the Virginia Military Institute, the University of Alabama, the
+Louisiana State Seminary, and many smaller institutions. Nearly all
+these had been used in some way for war purposes and were therefore
+subject to destruction or confiscation.
+
+The farmers and planters found themselves "land poor." The soil
+remained, but there was a prevalent lack of labor, of agricultural
+equipment, of farm stock, of seeds, and of money with which to make good
+the deficiency. As a result, a man with hundreds of acres might be as
+poor as a negro refugee. The desolation is thus described by a Virginia
+farmer:
+
+From Harper's Ferry to New Market, which is about eighty miles ... the
+country was almost a desert.... We had no cattle, hogs, sheep, or horse
+or anything else. The fences were all gone. Some of the orchards were
+very much injured, but the fruit trees had not been destroyed. The barns
+were all burned; chimneys standing without houses, and houses standing
+without roof, or door, or window.
+
+Much land was thrown on the market at low prices--three to five dollars
+an acre for land worth fifty dollars. The poorer lands could not be sold
+at all, and thousands of farms were deserted by their owners. Everywhere
+recovery from this agricultural depression was slow. Five years after
+the war Robert Somers, an English traveler, said of the Tennessee
+Valley:
+
+It consists for the most part of plantations in a state of semi-ruin and
+plantations of which the ruin is for the present total and complete....
+The trail of war is visible throughout the valley in burnt-up
+gin-houses, ruined bridges, mills, and factories ... and in large tracts
+of once cultivated land stripped of every vestige of fencing. The roads,
+long neglected, are in disorder, and having in many places become
+impassable, new tracks have been made through the woods and fields
+without much respect to boundaries.
+
+Similar conditions existed wherever the armies had passed, and not in
+the country districts alone. Many of the cities, such as Richmond,
+Charleston, Columbia, Jackson, Atlanta, and Mobile had suffered from
+fire or bombardment.
+
+There were few stocks of merchandise in the South when the war ended,
+and Northern creditors had lost so heavily through the failure of
+Southern merchants that they were cautious about extending credit again.
+Long before 1865 all coin had been sent out in contraband trade through
+the blockade. That there was a great need of supplies from the outside
+world is shown by the following statement of General Boynton:
+
+Window-glass has given way to thin boards, in railway coaches and in the
+cities. Furniture is marred and broken, and none has been replaced for
+four years. Dishes are cemented in various styles, and half the pitchers
+have tin handles. A complete set of crockery is never seen, and in very
+few families is there enough to set a table.... A set of forks with
+whole tines is a curiosity. Clocks and watches have nearly all
+stopped.... Hair brushes and tooth brushes have all worn out; combs are
+broken.... Pins, needles, and thread, and a thousand such articles,
+which seem indispensable to housekeeping, are very scarce. Even in
+weaving on the looms, corncobs have been substituted for spindles. Few
+have pocket knives. In fact, everything that has heretofore been an
+article of sale at the South is wanting now. At the tables of those who
+were once esteemed luxurious providers you will find neither tea,
+coffee, sugar, nor spices of any kind. Even candles, in some cases, have
+been replaced by a cup of grease in which a piece of cloth is plunged
+for a wick.
+
+This poverty was prolonged and rendered more acute by the lack of
+transportation. Horses, mules, wagons, and carriages were scarce, the
+country roads were nearly impassable, and bridges were in bad repair or
+had been burned or washed away. Steamboats had almost disappeared from
+the rivers. Those which had escaped capture as blockade runners had been
+subsequently destroyed or were worn out. Postal facilities, which had
+been poor enough during the last year of the Confederacy, were entirely
+lacking for several months after the surrender.
+
+The railways were in a state of physical dilapidation little removed
+from destruction, save for those that had been captured and kept in
+partial repair by the Federal troops. The rolling stock had been lost by
+capture, by destruction to prevent capture, in wrecks, which were
+frequent, or had been worn out. The railroad companies possessed large
+sums in Confederate currency and in securities which were now valueless.
+About two-thirds of all the lines were hopelessly bankrupt. Fortunately,
+the United States War Department took over the control of the railway
+lines and in some cases effected a temporary reorganization which could
+not have been accomplished by the bankrupt companies. During the summer
+and fall of 1865 "loyal" boards of directors were appointed for most of
+the roads, and the army withdrew its control. But repairs and
+reconstruction were accomplished with difficulty because of the
+demoralization of labor and the lack of funds or credit. Freight was
+scarce and, had it not been for government shipments, some of the
+railroads would have been abandoned. Not many people were able to
+travel. It is recorded that on one trip from Montgomery to Mobile and
+return, a distance of 360 miles, the railroad which is now the
+Louisville and Nashville collected only thirteen dollars in fares.
+
+Had there been unrestricted commercial freedom in the South in 1865-66,
+the distress of the people would have been somewhat lessened, for here
+and there were to be found public and private stores of cotton, tobacco,
+rice, and other farm products, all of which were bringing high prices in
+the market. But for several months the operation of wartime laws and
+regulations hindered the distribution of even these scanty stores.
+Property upon which the Confederate Government had a claim was of course
+subject to confiscation, and private property offered for sale, even
+that of Unionists, was subject to a 25 per cent tax on sales, a shipping
+tax, and a revenue tax. The revenue tax on cotton, ranging from two to
+three cents a pound during the three years after the war, brought in
+over $68,000,000. This tax, with other Federal revenues, yielded much
+more than the entire expenses of reconstruction from 1865 to 1868 and of
+all relief measures for the South, both public and private. After May,
+1865, the 25 per cent tax was imposed only upon the produce of slave
+labor. None of the war taxes, except that on cotton, was levied upon the
+crops of 1866, but while these taxes lasted they seriously impeded the
+resumption of trade.
+
+Even these restrictions, however, might have been borne if only they had
+been honestly applied. Unfortunately, some of the most spectacular
+frauds ever perpetrated were carried through in connection with the
+attempt of the United States Treasury Department to collect and sell the
+confiscable property in the South. The property to be sold consisted of
+what had been captured and seized by the army and the navy, of
+"abandoned" property, as such was called whose owner was absent in the
+Confederate service, and of property subject to seizure under the
+confiscation acts of Congress. No captures were made after the general
+surrender, and no further seizures of "abandoned" property were made
+after Johnson's amnesty proclamation of May 29, 1865. This left only the
+"confiscable" property to be collected and sold.
+
+For collection purposes the States of the South were divided into
+districts, each under the supervision of an agent of the Treasury
+Department, who received a commission of about 25 per cent. Cotton,
+regarded as the root of the slavery evil, was singled out as the
+principal object of confiscation. It was known that the Confederate
+Government had owned in 1865 about 150,000 bales, but the records were
+defective and much of it, with no clear indication of ownership, still
+remained with the producers. Secretary Chase, foreseeing the difficulty
+of effecting a just settlement, counseled against seizure, but his
+judgment was overruled. Secretary McCulloch said of his agents: "I am
+sure I sent some honest cotton agents South; but it sometimes seems
+doubtful whether any of them remained honest very long." Some of the
+natives, even, became cotton thieves. In a report made in 1866,
+McCulloch describes their methods:
+
+Contractors, anxious for gain, were sometimes guilty of bad faith and
+peculation, and frequently took possession of cotton and delivered it
+under contracts as captured or abandoned, when in fact it was not such,
+and they had no right to touch it.... Residents and others in the
+districts where these peculations were going on took advantage of the
+unsettled condition of the country, and representing themselves as
+agents of this department, went about robbing under such pretended
+authority, and thus added to the difficulties of the situation by
+causing unjust opprobrium and suspicion to rest upon officers engaged in
+the faithful discharge of their duties. Agents, ... frequently received
+or collected property, and sent it forward which the law did not
+authorize them to take.... Lawless men, singly and in organized bands,
+engaged in general plunder; every species of intrigue and peculation and
+theft were resorted to.
+
+These agents turned over to the United States about $34,000,000. About
+40,000 claimants were subsequently indemnified on the ground that the
+property taken from them did not belong to the Confederate Government,
+but many thousands of other claimants have been unable to prove that
+their property was seized by government agents and hence have received
+nothing. It is probable that the actual Confederate property was nearly
+all stolen by the agents. One agent in Alabama sold an appointment as
+assistant for $25,000, and a few months later both the assistant and the
+agent were tried by a military court for stealing and were fined $90,000
+and $250,000 respectively in addition to being imprisoned.
+
+Other property, including horses, mules, wagons, tobacco, rice, and
+sugar which the natives claimed as their own, was seized. In some places
+the agents even collected delinquent Confederate taxes. Much of the
+confiscable property was not sold but was turned over to the Freedmen's
+Bureau ¹ for its support. The total amount seized cannot be
+satisfactorily ascertained. The Ku Klux minority report asserted that
+3,000,000 bales of cotton were taken, of which the United States
+received only 114,000. It is certain that, owing to the deliberate
+destruction of cotton by fire in 1864-65, this estimate was too high,
+but all the testimony points to the fact that the frauds were
+stupendous. As a result the United States Government did not succeed in
+obtaining the Confederate property to which it had a claim, and the
+country itself was stripped of necessities to a degree that left it not
+only destitute but outraged and embittered. "Such practices," said
+Trowbridge, "had a pernicious effect, engendering a contempt for the
+Government and a murderous ill-will which too commonly vented itself
+upon soldiers and negroes."
+
+¹ See pp. 89 et seq.
+
+The South faced the work of reconstruction not only with a shortage of
+material and greatly hampered in the employment even of that but still
+more with a shortage of men. The losses among the whites are usually
+estimated at about half the military population, but since accurate
+records are lacking the exact numbers cannot be ascertained. The best of
+the civil leaders, as well as the prominent military leaders, had so
+committed themselves to the support of the Confederacy as to be excluded
+from participation in any reconstruction that might be attempted. The
+business of reconstruction, therefore, fell of necessity to the
+Confederate private soldiers, the lower officers, nonparticipants, and
+lukewarm individuals who had not greatly compromised themselves. These
+politically and physically uninjured survivors included also all the
+"slackers" of the Confederacy. But though there were such physical and
+moral losses on the part of those to whom fell the direction of affairs
+there was also a moral strengthening in the sound element of the people
+who had been tried by the discipline of war.
+
+The greatest weakness of both races was their extreme poverty. The crops
+of 1865 turned out badly, for most of the soldiers reached home too late
+for successful planting and the negro labor was not dependable. The sale
+of such cotton and farm products as had escaped the treasury agents was
+of some help, but curiously enough much of the good money thus obtained
+was spent extravagantly by a people used to Confederate rag money and
+for four years deprived of the luxuries of life. The poorer whites who
+had lost all were close to starvation. In the white counties which had
+sent so large a proportion of men to the army the destitution was most
+acute. In many families the breadwinner had been killed in war. After
+1862 relief systems had been organized in nearly all the Confederate
+States for the purpose of aiding the poor whites, but these
+organizations were disbanded in 1865. A Freedmen's Bureau official
+traveling through the desolate back country furnishes a description
+which might have applied to two hundred counties, a third of the South:
+"It is a common, an every-day sight in Randolph County, that of women
+and children, most of whom were formerly in good circumstances, begging
+for bread from door to door. Meat of any kind has been a stranger to
+many of their mouths for months. The drought cut off what little crops
+they hoped to save, and they must have immediate help or perish. By far
+the greater suffering exists among the whites. Their scanty supplies
+have been exhausted, and now they look to the Government alone for
+support. Some are without homes of any description."
+
+Where the armies had passed, few of the people, white or black,
+remained; most of them had been forced as "refugees" within the Union
+lines or into the interior of the Confederacy. Now, along with the
+disbanded Confederate soldiers, they came straggling back to their
+war-swept homes. It was estimated, in December, 1865 that in the States
+of Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia, there were five hundred thousand
+white people who were without the necessaries of life; numbers died from
+lack of food. Within a few months relief agencies were at work. In the
+North, especially in the border States and in New York, charitable
+organizations collected and forwarded great quantities of supplies to
+the negroes and to the whites in the hill and mountain counties. The
+reorganized state and local governments sent food from the unravaged
+portions of the Black Belt to the nearest white counties, and the army
+commanders gave some aid. As soon as the Freedmen's Bureau was
+organized, it fed to the limit of its supplies the needy whites as well
+as the blacks.
+
+The extent of the relief afforded by the charity of the North and by the
+agencies of the United States Government is not now generally
+remembered, probably on account of the later objectionable activities of
+the Freedmen's Bureau, but it was at the time properly appreciated. A
+Southern journalist, writing of what he saw in Georgia, remarked that
+"it must be a matter of gratitude as well as surprise for our people to
+see a Government which was lately fighting us with fire and sword and
+shell, now generously feeding our poor and distressed. In the immense
+crowds which throng the distributing house, I notice the mothers and
+fathers, widows and orphans of our soldiers.... Again, the Confederate
+soldier, with one leg or one arm, the crippled, maimed, and broken, and
+the worn and destitute men, who fought bravely their enemies then, their
+benefactors now, have their sacks filled and are fed."
+
+Acute distress continued until 1867; after that year there was no
+further danger of starvation. Some of the poor whites, especially in the
+remote districts, never again reached a comfortable standard of living;
+some were demoralized by too much assistance; others were discouraged
+and left the South for the West or the North. But the mass of the people
+accepted the discipline of poverty and made the best of their situation.
+
+The difficulties, however, that beset even the courageous and the
+competent were enormous. The general paralysis of industry, the breaking
+up of society, and poverty on all sides bore especially hard on those
+who had not previously been manual laborers. Physicians could get
+practice enough but no fees; lawyers who had supported the Confederacy
+found it difficult to get back into the reorganized courts because of
+the test oaths and the competition of "loyal" attorneys; and for the
+teachers there were few schools. We read of officers high in the
+Confederate service selling to Federal soldiers the pies and cakes
+cooked by their wives, of others selling fish and oysters which they
+themselves had caught, and of men and women hitching themselves to plows
+when they had no horse or mule.
+
+Such incidents must, from their nature, have been infrequent, but they
+show to what straits some at least were reduced. Six years after the
+war, James S. Pike, then in South Carolina, mentions cases which might
+be duplicated in nearly every old Southern community: "In the vicinity,"
+he says, "lived a gentleman whose income when the war broke out was
+rated at $150,000 a year. Not a vestige of his whole vast estate remains
+today. Not far distant were the estates of a large proprietor and a well
+known family, rich and distinguished for generations. The slaves were
+gone. The family is gone. A single scion of the house remains, and he
+peddles tea by the pound and molasses by the quart, on a corner of the
+old homestead, to the former slaves of the family and thereby earns his
+livelihood."
+
+General Lee's good example influenced many. Commercial enterprises were
+willing to pay for the use of his name and reputation, but he wished to
+farm and could get no opportunity. "They are offering my father
+everything," his daughter said, "except the only thing he will accept, a
+place to earn honest bread while engaged in some useful work." This
+remark led to an offer of the presidency of Washington College, now
+Washington and Lee University, which he accepted. "I have a self-imposed
+task which I must accomplish," he said, "I have led the young men of the
+South in battle; I have seen many of them fall under my standard. I
+shall devote my life now to training young men to do their duty in
+life."
+
+The condition of honest folk was still further troubled by a general
+spirit of lawlessness in many regions. Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas,
+and Louisiana recognized the "Union" state government, but the coming of
+peace brought legal anarchy to the other States of the Confederacy. The
+Confederate state and local governments were abolished as the armies of
+occupation spread over the South, and for a period of four or six months
+there was no government except that exercised by the commanders of the
+military garrisons left behind when the armies marched away. Even before
+the surrender the local governments were unable to make their authority
+respected, and soon after the war ended parts of the country became
+infested with outlaws, pretend treasury agents, horse thieves, cattle
+thieves, and deserters. Away from the military posts only lynch law
+could cope with these elements of disorder. With the aid of the army in
+the more settled regions, and by extra-legal means elsewhere, the
+outlaws, thieves, cotton burners, and house burners were brought
+somewhat under control even before the state governments were
+reorganized, though the embers of lawlessness continued to smolder.
+
+The relations between the Federal soldiers stationed in the principal
+towns and the native white population were not, on the whole, so bad as
+might have been expected. If the commanding officer were well disposed,
+there was little danger of friction, though sometimes his troops got out
+of hand. The regulars had a better reputation than the volunteers. The
+Confederate soldiers were surfeited with fighting, but the
+"stay-at-home" element was often a cause of trouble. The problem of
+social relations between the conquerors and the conquered was
+troublesome. The men might get along well together, but the women would
+have nothing do with the "Yankees" and ill feeling arose because of
+their antipathy. Carl Schurz reported that "the soldier of the Union is
+looked upon as a stranger, an intruder, as the 'Yankee,' the 'enemy.'...
+The existence and intensity of this aversion is too well known to those
+who have served or are serving in the South to require proof."
+
+In retaliation the soldiers developed ingenious ways of annoying the
+whites. Women, forced for any reason to go to headquarters, were made to
+take the oath of allegiance or the "ironclad" oath before their requests
+were granted; flags were fastened over doors, gates, or sidewalks in
+order to irritate the recalcitrant dames and their daughters.
+Confederate songs and color combinations were forbidden. In Richmond,
+General Halleck ordered that no marriages be performed unless the bride,
+the groom, and the officiating clergyman took the oath of allegiance. He
+explained this as a measure taken to prevent "the propagation of
+legitimate rebels."
+
+The wearing of Confederate uniforms was forbidden by military order, but
+by May, 1865, few soldiers possessed regulation uniforms. In Tennessee
+the State also imposed fines upon wearers of the uniform. In the
+vicinity of military posts buttons and marks of rank were usually
+ordered removed and the gray clothes dyed with some other color. General
+Lee, for example, had the buttons on his coat covered with cloth. But
+frequently the Federal commander, after issuing the orders, paid no more
+attention to the matter and such conflicts as arose on account of the
+uniform were usually caused by officious enlisted men and the negro
+troops. Whitelaw Reid relates the following incident:
+
+Nothing was more touching, in all that I saw in Savannah, than the
+almost painful effort of the rebels, from generals down to privates, to
+conduct themselves so as to evince respect for our soldiers, and to
+bring no severer punishment upon the city than it had already received.
+There was a brutal scene at the hotel, where a drunken sergeant, with a
+pair of tailor's shears, insisted on cutting the buttons from the
+uniform of an elegant gray-headed old brigadier, who had just come in
+from Johnston's army; but he bore himself modestly and very handsomely
+through it. His staff was composed of fine-looking, stalwart fellows,
+evidently gentlemen, who appeared intensely mortified at such treatment.
+They had no clothes except their rebel uniforms, and had, as yet, had no
+time to procure others, but they avoided disturbances and submitted to
+what they might, with some propriety, and with the general approval of
+our officers, have resented.
+
+The negro troops, even at their best, were everywhere considered
+offensive by the native whites. General Grant, indeed, urged that only
+white troops be used to garrison the interior. But the negro soldier,
+impudent by reason of his new freedom, his new uniform, and his new gun,
+was more than Southern temper could tranquilly bear, and race conflicts
+were frequent. A New Orleans newspaper thus states the Southern point of
+view: "Our citizens who had been accustomed to meet and treat the
+negroes only as respectful servants, were mortified, pained, and shocked
+to encounter them ... wearing Federal uniforms and bearing bright
+muskets and gleaming bayonets.... They are jostled from the sidewalks by
+dusky guards, marching four abreast. They were halted, in rude and
+sullen tones, by negro sentinels."
+
+The task of the Federal forces was not easy. The garrisons were not
+large enough nor numerous enough to keep order in the absence of civil
+government. The commanders in the South asked in vain for cavalry to
+police the rural districts. Much of the disorder, violence, and
+incendiarism attributed at the time to lawless soldiers appeared later
+to be due to discharged soldiers and others pretending to be soldiers in
+order to carry out schemes of robbery. The whites complained vigorously
+of the garrisons, and petitions were sent to Washington from mass
+meetings and from state legislatures asking for their removal. The
+higher commanders, however, bore themselves well, and in a few fortunate
+cases Southern whites were on most amicable terms with the garrison
+commanders. The correspondence of responsible military officers in the
+South shows how earnestly and considerately each, as a rule, tried to
+work out his task. The good sense of most of the Federal officers
+appeared when, after the murder of Lincoln, even General Grant for a
+brief space lost his head and ordered the arrest of paroled
+Confederates.
+
+The church organizations were as much involved in the war and in the
+reconstruction as were secular institutions. Before the war every
+religious organization having members North and South, except the
+Catholic Church and the Jews, had separated into independent Northern
+and Southern bodies. In each section church feeling ran high, and when
+the war came the churches supported the armies. As the Federal armies
+occupied Southern territory, the church buildings of each denomination
+were turned over to the corresponding Northern body, and Southern
+ministers were permitted to remain only upon agreeing to conduct "loyal
+services, pray for the President of the United States and for Federal
+victories" and to foster "loyal sentiment." The Protestant Episcopal
+churches in Alabama were closed from September to December, 1865, and
+some congregations were dispersed by the soldiers because Bishop Wilmer
+had directed his clergy to omit the prayer for President Davis but had
+substituted no other. The ministers of non-liturgical churches were not
+so easily controlled. A Georgia Methodist preacher directed by a Federal
+officer to pray for the President said afterwards: "I prayed for the
+President that the Lord would take out of him and his allies the hearts
+of beasts and put into them the hearts of men or remove the cusses from
+office." Sometimes members of a congregation showed their resentment at
+the "loyal" prayers by leaving the church. But in spite of many
+irritations both sides frequently managed to get some amusement out of
+the "loyal" services. The church situation was, however, a serious
+matter during and after the reconstruction, and some of its later phases
+will have to be discussed elsewhere.
+
+The Unionist, or "Tory," of the lower and eastern South found himself,
+in 1865, a man without a country. Few in number in any community, they
+found themselves upon their return from a harsh exile the victims of
+ostracism or open hostility. One of them, William H. Smith, later
+Governor of Alabama, testified that the Southern people "manifest the
+most perfect contempt for a man who is known to be an unequivocal Union
+man; they call him a 'galvanized Yankee' and apply other terms and
+epithets to him." General George H. Thomas, speaking of a region more
+divided in sentiment than Alabama, remarked that "Middle Tennessee is
+disturbed by animosities and hatreds, much more than it is by the
+disloyalty of persons towards the Government of the United States. Those
+personal animosities would break out and overawe the civil authorities,
+but for the presence there of the troops of the United States.... They
+are more unfriendly to Union men, natives of the State of Tennessee, or
+of the South, who have been in the Union army, than they are to men of
+Northern birth."
+
+In the border States society was sharply divided and feeling was bitter.
+In eastern Tennessee, eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, and parts of
+Arkansas and Missouri returning Confederates met harsher treatment than
+did the Unionists in the lower South. Trowbridge says of east Tennessee:
+"Returning rebels were robbed; and if one had stolen unawares to his
+home, it was not safe for him to remain there. I saw in Virginia one of
+these exiles, who told me how homesickly he pined for the hills and
+meadows of east Tennessee, which he thought the most delightful region
+in the world. But there was a rope hanging from a tree for him there,
+and he dared not go back. 'The bottom rails are on top,' said he, 'that
+is the trouble.' The Union element, and the worst part of the Union
+element, was uppermost." Confederates and Confederate sympathizers in
+Maryland, West Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky were disfranchised. In
+West Virginia, Tennessee, and Missouri, "war trespass" suits were
+brought against returning Confederates for military acts done in war
+time. In Missouri and West Virginia strict test oaths excluded
+Confederates from office, from the polls, and from the professions of
+teaching, preaching, and law. On the other hand in central and western
+Kentucky the predominant Unionist population, themselves suffering
+through the abolition of slavery, and by the objectionable operations of
+the Freedmen's Bureau and the unwise military administration, showed
+more sympathy for the Confederates, welcomed them home, and soon
+relieved them of all restrictions.
+
+Still another element of discord was added by the Northerners who came
+to exploit the South. Many mustered-out soldiers proposed to stay.
+Speculators of all kinds followed the withdrawing Confederate lines and
+with the conclusion of peace spread through the country; but they were
+not cordially received. With the better class, the Southerners,
+especially the soldiers, associated freely if seldom intimately. But the
+conduct of a few of their number who considered that the war had opened
+all doors to them, who very freely expressed their views, gave advice,
+condemned old customs, and were generally offensive, did much to bring
+all Northerners into disrepute. Tactlessly critical letters published in
+Northern papers did not add to their popularity. The few Northern women
+felt the ostracism more keenly than did the men. Benjamin C. Truman, an
+agent of President Johnson, thus summed up the situation: "There is a
+prevalent disposition not to associate too freely with Northern men or
+to receive them into the circles of society; but it is far from
+unsurmountable. Over Southern society, as over every other, woman reigns
+supreme, and they are more embittered against those whom they deem the
+authors of all their calamities than are their brothers, sons, and
+husbands." But of the thousands of Northern men who overcame the
+reluctance of the Southerners to social intercourse little was heard.
+Many a Southern planter secured a Northern partner, or sold him half his
+plantation to get money to run the other half. For the irritations of
+1865 each party must take its share of responsibility.
+
+Had the South assisted in a skillful and adequate publicity, much
+disastrous misunderstanding might have been avoided. The North knew as
+little of the South as the South did of the North, but the North was
+eager for news. Able newspaper correspondents like Sidney Andrews of the
+Boston Advertiser and the Chicago Tribune, who opposed President
+Johnson's policies, Thomas W. Knox of the New York Herald, who had given
+General Sherman so much trouble in Tennessee, Whitelaw Reid, who wrote
+for several papers and tried cotton planting in Louisiana, and John T.
+Trowbridge, New England author and journalist, were dispatched
+southwards. Chief of the President's investigators was General Carl
+Schurz, German revolutionist, Federal soldier, and soon to be radical
+Republican, who held harsh views of the Southern people; and there were
+besides Harvey M. Watterson, Kentucky Democrat and Unionist, the father
+of "Marse" Henry; Benjamin C. Truman, New England journalist and
+soldier, whose long report was perhaps the best of all; Chief Justice
+Chase, who was thinking mainly of "How soon can the negro vote?"; and
+General Grant, who made a report so brief that, notwithstanding its
+value, it attracted little attention. In addition, a constant stream of
+information and misinformation was going northward from treasury agents,
+officers of the army, the Freedmen's Bureau, teachers, and missionaries.
+Among foreigners who described the conquered land were Robert Somers,
+Henry Latham, and William Hepworth Dixon. But few in the South realized
+the importance of supplying the North with correct information about
+actual conditions. The letters and reports, they thought, humiliated
+them; inquiry was felt to be prying and gloating. "Correspondents have
+added a new pang to surrender," it was said. The South was proud and
+refused to be catechized. From the Northern point of view the South, a
+new and strange region, with strange customs and principles, was of
+course not to be considered as quite normal and American, but there was
+on the part of many correspondents a determined attempt to describe
+things as they were. And yet the North persisted in its unsympathetic
+queries when it seemed to have a sufficient answer in the reports of
+Grant, Schurz, and Truman.
+
+Grant's opinion was short and direct: "I am satisfied that the mass of
+thinking men of the South accept the present situation of affairs in
+good faith.... The citizens of the Southern States are anxious to return
+to self-government within the Union as soon as possible." Truman came to
+the conclusion that "the rank and file of the disbanded Southern army
+... are the backbone and sinew of the South.... To the disbanded
+regiments of the rebel army, both officers and men, I look with great
+confidence as the best and altogether the most hopeful element of the
+South, the real basis of reconstruction and the material of worthy
+citizenship." General John Tarbell, before the Joint Committee on
+Reconstruction, testified that "there are, no doubt, disloyal and
+disorderly persons in the South, but it is an entire mistake to apply
+these terms to a whole people. I would as soon travel alone, unarmed,
+through the South as through the North. The South I left is not at all
+the South I hear and read about in the North. From the sentiment I hear
+in the North, I would scarcely recognize the people I saw, and, except
+their politics, I liked so well. I have entire faith that the better
+classes are friendly to the negroes."
+
+Carl Schurz on the other hand was not so favorably impressed. "The
+loyalty of the masses and most of the leaders of the southern people,"
+he said, "consists in submission to necessity. There is, except in
+individual instances, an entire absence of that national spirit which
+forms the basis of true loyalty and patriotism." Another government
+official in Florida was quite doubtful of the Southern whites. "I would
+pin them down at the point of the bayonet," he declared, "so close that
+they would not have room to wiggle, and allow intelligent colored people
+to go up and vote in preference to them. The only Union element in the
+South proper ... is among the colored people. The whites will treat you
+very kindly to your face, but they are deceitful. I have often thought,
+and so expressed myself, that there is so much deception among the
+people of the South since the rebellion, that if an earthquake should
+open and swallow them up, I was fearful that the devil would be
+dethroned and some of them take his place."
+
+The point of view of the Confederate military leaders was exhibited by
+General Wade Hampton in a letter to President Johnson and by General Lee
+in his advice to Governor Letcher of Virginia. General Hampton wrote:
+"The South unequivocally 'accepts the situation' in which she is placed.
+Everything that she has done has been done in perfect faith, and in the
+true and highest sense of the word, she is loyal. By this I mean that
+she intends to abide by the laws of the land honestly, to fulfill all
+her obligations faithfully and to keep her word sacredly, and I assert
+that the North has no right to demand more of her. You have no right to
+ask, or expect that she will at once profess unbounded love to that
+Union from which for four years she tried to escape at the cost of her
+best blood and all her treasures." General Lee in order to set an
+example applied through General Grant for a pardon under the amnesty
+proclamation and soon afterwards he wrote to Governor Letcher: "All
+should unite in honest efforts to obliterate the effects of war, and to
+restore the blessings of peace. They should remain, if possible, in the
+country; promote harmony and good-feeling; qualify themselves to vote;
+and elect to the State and general legislatures wise and patriotic men,
+who will devote their abilities to the interests of the country and the
+healing of all dissensions; I have invariably recommended this course
+since the cessation of hostilities, and have endeavored to practice it
+myself."
+
+Southerners of the Confederacy everywhere, then, accepted the
+destruction of slavery and the renunciation of state sovereignty; they
+welcomed an early restoration of the Union, without any punishment of
+leaders of the defeated cause. But they were proud of their Confederate
+records though now legally "loyal" to the United States; they considered
+the negro as free but inferior, and expected to be permitted to fix his
+status in the social organization and to solve the problem of free labor
+in their own way. To embarrass the easy and permanent realization of
+these views there was a society disrupted, economically prostrate,
+deprived of its natural leaders, subjected to a control not always
+wisely conceived nor effectively exercised, and, finally, containing
+within its own population unassimilated elements which presented
+problems fraught with difficulty and danger.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+When Freedom Cried Out
+
+The negro is the central figure in the reconstruction of the South.
+Without the negro there would have been no Civil War. Granting a war
+fought for any other cause, the task of reconstruction would, without
+him, have been comparatively simple. With him, however, reconstruction
+meant more than the restoring of shattered resources; it meant the more
+or less successful attempt to obtain and secure for the freedman civil
+and political rights, and to improve his economic and social status. In
+1861 the American negro was everywhere an inferior, and most of his race
+were slaves; in 1865 he was no longer a slave, but whether he was to be
+serf, ward, or citizen was an unsettled problem; in 1868 he was in the
+South the legal and political equal, frequently the superior, of the
+white; and before the end of the reconstruction period he was made by
+the legislation of some States and by Congress the legal equal of the
+white even in certain social matters.
+
+The race problem which confronted the American people had no parallel in
+the past. British and Spanish-American emancipation of slaves had
+affected only small numbers or small regions, in which one race greatly
+outnumbered the other. The results of these earlier emancipations of the
+negroes and the difficulties of European states in dealing with subject
+white populations were not such as to afford helpful example to American
+statesmen. But since it was the actual situation in the Southern States
+rather than the experience of other countries which shaped the policies
+adopted during reconstruction, it is important to examine with some care
+the conditions in which the negroes in the South found themselves at the
+close of the war.
+
+The negroes were not all helpless and without experience "when freedom
+cried out." ¹ In the Border States and in the North there were, in 1861,
+half a million free negroes accustomed to looking out for themselves.
+Nearly 200,000 negro men were enlisted in the United States army between
+1862 and 1865, and many thousands of slaves had followed raiding Federal
+forces to freedom or had escaped through the Confederate lines. State
+emancipation in Missouri, Maryland, West Virginia, and Tennessee, and
+the practical application of the Emancipation Proclamation where the
+Union armies were in control ended slavery for many thousands more.
+Wherever the armies marched, slavery ended. This was true even in
+Kentucky, where the institution was not legally abolished until the
+adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. Altogether more than a million
+negroes were free and to some extent habituated to freedom before May,
+1865.
+
+¹ A negro phrase much used in referring to emancipation.
+
+Most of these war-emancipated negroes were scattered along the borders
+of the Confederacy, in camps, in colonies, in the towns, on refugee
+farms, at work with the armies, or serving as soldiers in the ranks.
+There were large working colonies along the Atlantic coast from Maryland
+to Florida. The chief centers were near Norfolk, where General Butler
+was the first to establish a "contraband" camp, in North Carolina, and
+on the Sea Islands of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, which had
+been seized by the Federal fleet early in the war. To the Sea Islands
+also were sent, in 1865, the hordes of negroes who had followed General
+Sherman out of Georgia and South Carolina. Through the Border States
+from the Atlantic to the Mississippi and along both sides of the
+Mississippi from Cairo, Illinois, to New Orleans, there were other
+refugee camps, farms, and colonies. For periods varying from one to four
+years these free negroes had been at work, often amid conditions highly
+unfavorable to health, under the supervision of officers of the Treasury
+Department or of the army.
+
+Emancipation was therefore a gradual process, and most of the negroes,
+through their widening experience on the plantations, with the armies,
+and in the colonies, were better fitted for freedom in 1865 than they
+had been in 1861. Even their years of bondage had done something for
+them, for they knew how to work and they had adopted in part the
+language, habits, religion, and morals of the whites. But slavery had
+not made them thrifty, self-reliant, or educated. Frederick Douglass
+said of the negro at the end of his servitude: "He had none of the
+conditions of self-preservation or self-protection. He was free from the
+individual master, but he had nothing but the dusty road under his feet.
+He was free from the old quarter that once gave him shelter, but a slave
+to the rains of summer and to the frosts of winter. He was turned loose,
+naked, hungry, and destitute to the open sky."
+
+To prove that he was free the negro thought he must leave his old
+master, change his name, quit work for a time, perhaps get a new wife,
+and hang around the Federal soldiers in camp or garrison, or go to the
+towns where the Freedmen's Bureau was in process of organization. To the
+negroes who remained at home--and, curiously enough, for a time at least
+many did so--the news of freedom was made known somewhat ceremonially by
+the master or his representative. The negroes were summoned to the "big
+house," told that they were free, and advised to stay on for a share of
+the crop. The description by Mrs. Clayton, the wife of a Southern
+general, will serve for many: "My husband said, 'I think it best for me
+to inform our negroes of their freedom.' So he ordered all the grown
+slaves to come to him, and told them they no longer belonged to him as
+property, but were all free. 'You are not bound to remain with me any
+longer, and I have a proposition to make to you. If any of you desire to
+leave, I propose to furnish you with a conveyance to move you, and with
+provisions for the balance of the year.' The universal answer was,
+'Master, we want to stay right here with you.' In many instances the
+slaves were so infatuated with the idea of being, as they said, 'free as
+birds' that they left their homes and consequently suffered; but our
+slaves were not so foolish." ¹
+
+¹ Black and White under the Old Régime, p. 152,
+
+The negroes, however, had learned of their freedom before their old
+masters returned from the war; they were aware that the issues of the
+war involved in some way the question of their freedom or servitude, and
+through the "grape vine telegraph," the news brought by the invading
+soldiers, and the talk among the whites, they had long been kept fairly
+well informed. What the idea of freedom meant to the negroes it is
+difficult to say. Some thought that there would be no more work and that
+all would be cared for by the Government; others believed that education
+and opportunity were about to make them the equal of their masters. The
+majority of them were too bewildered to appreciate anything except the
+fact that they were free from enforced labor.
+
+Conditions were most disturbed in the so-called "Black Belt," consisting
+of about two hundred counties in the most fertile parts of the South,
+where the plantation system was best developed and where by far the
+majority of the negroes were segregated. The negroes in the four hundred
+more remote and less fertile "white" counties, which had been less
+disturbed by armies, were not so upset by freedom as those of the Black
+Belt, for the garrisons and the larger towns, both centers of
+demoralization, were in or near the Black Belt. But there was a moving
+to and fro on the part of those who had escaped from the South or had
+been captured during the war or carried into the interior of the South
+to prevent capture. To those who left slavery and home to find freedom
+were added those who had found freedom and were now trying to get back
+home or to get away from the negro camps and colonies which were
+breaking up. A stream of immigration which began to flow to the
+southwest affected negroes as far as the Atlantic coast. In the
+confusion of moving, families were broken up, and children, wife, or
+husband were often lost to one another. The very old people and the
+young children were often left behind for the former master to care for.
+Regiments of negro soldiers were mustered out in every large town and
+their numbers were added to the disorderly mass. Some of the Federal
+garrisons and Bureau stations were almost overwhelmed by the numbers of
+blacks who settled down upon them waiting for freedom to bestow its full
+measure of blessing, and many of the negroes continued to remain in a
+demoralized condition until the new year.
+
+The first year of freedom was indeed a year of disease, suffering, and
+death. Several partial censuses indicate that in 1865-66 the negro
+population lost as many by disease as the whites had lost in war.
+Ill-fed, crowded in cabins near the garrisons or entirely without
+shelter, and unaccustomed to caring for their own health, the blacks who
+were searching for freedom fell an easy prey to ordinary diseases and to
+epidemics. Poor health conditions prevailed for several years longer. In
+1870 Robert Somers remarked that "the health of the whites has greatly
+improved since the war, while the health of the negroes has declined
+till the mortality of the colored population, greater than the mortality
+of the whites was before the war, has now become so markedly greater,
+that nearly two colored die for every white person out of equal numbers
+of each."
+
+Morals and manners also suffered under the new dispensation. In the
+crowded and disease-stricken towns and camps, the conditions under which
+the roving negroes lived were no better for morals than for health, for
+here there were none of the restraints to which the blacks had been
+accustomed and which they now despised as being a part of their
+servitude. But in spite of all the relief that could be given there was
+much want. In fact, to restore former conditions the relief agencies
+frequently cut off supplies in order to force the negroes back to work
+and to prevent others from leaving the country for the towns. But the
+hungry freedmen turned to the nearest food supply, and "spilin de
+gypshuns" (despoiling the Egyptians, as the negroes called stealing from
+the whites) became an approved means of support. Thefts of hogs, cattle,
+poultry, field crops, and vegetables drove almost to desperation those
+whites who lived in the vicinity of the negro camps. When the ex-slave
+felt obliged to go to town, he was likely to take with him a team and
+wagon and his master's clothes if he could get them.
+
+The former good manners of the negro were now replaced by impudence and
+distrust. There were advisers among the negro troops and other agitators
+who assured them that politeness to whites was a mark of servitude.
+Pushing and crowding in public places, on street cars and on the
+sidewalks, and impudent speeches everywhere marked generally the limit
+of rudeness. And the negroes were, in this respect, perhaps no worse
+than those European immigrants who act upon the principle that bad
+manners are a proof of independence.
+
+The year following emancipation was one of religious excitement for
+large numbers of the blacks. Before 1865 the negro church members were
+attached to white congregations or were organized into missions, with
+nearly always a white minister in charge and a black assistant. With the
+coming of freedom the races very soon separated in religious matters.
+For this there were two principal reasons: the negro preachers could
+exercise more influence in independent churches; and new church
+organizations from the North were seeking negro membership. Sometimes
+negro members were urged to insist on the  "to sit together" with the
+whites. In a Richmond church a negro from the street pushed his way to
+the communion altar and knelt. There was a noticeable pause; then
+General Robert E. Lee went forward and knelt beside the negro; and the
+congregation followed his example. But this was a solitary instance.
+When the race issue was raised by either color, the church membership
+usually divided. There was much churchgoing by the negroes, day and
+night, and church festivities and baptisms were common. The blacks
+preferred immersion and wanted a new baptism each time they changed to a
+new church. Baptizings in ponds, creeks, or rivers were great occasions
+and were largely attended. "Shouting" the candidates went into the water
+and "shouting" they came out. One old woman came up screaming, "Freed
+from slavery! freed from sin! Bless God and General Grant!"
+
+In the effort to realize their new-found freedom, the negroes were
+heavily handicapped by their extreme poverty and their ignorance. The
+total value of free negro property ran up into the millions in 1860, but
+the majority of the negroes had nothing. There were a few educated
+negroes in the South, and more in the North and in Canada, but the mass
+of the race was too densely ignorant to furnish its own leadership. The
+case, however, was not hopeless; the negro was able to work and in large
+territories had little competition; wages were high, even though paid in
+shares of the crop; the cost of living was low; and land was cheap.
+Thousands seemed thirsty for an education and crowded the schools which
+were available. It was too much, however, to expect the negro to take
+immediate advantage of his opportunities. What he wanted was a long
+holiday, a gun and a dog, and plenty of hunting and fishing. He must
+have Saturday at least for a trip to town or to a picnic or a circus; he
+did not wish to be a servant. When he had any money, swindlers reaped a
+harvest. They sold him worthless finery, cheap guns, preparations to
+bleach the skin or straighten the hair, and striped pegs which, when set
+up on the master's plantation, would entitle the purchaser to "40 acres
+and a mule."
+
+The attitude of the negroes' employers not infrequently complicated the
+situation which they sought to better. The old masters were, as a rule,
+skeptical of the value of free negro labor. Carl Schurz thought this
+attitude boded ill for the future: "A belief, conviction, or prejudice,
+or whatever you may call it," he said, "so widely spread and apparently
+deeply rooted as this, that the negro will not work without physical
+compulsion, is certainly calculated to have a very serious influence
+upon the conduct of the people entertaining it. It naturally produced a
+desire to preserve slavery in its original form as much and as long as
+possible ... or to introduce into the new system that element of
+physical compulsion which would make the negro work."
+
+The negro wished to be free to leave his job when he pleased, but, as
+Benjamin C. Truman stated in his report to President Johnson, a "result
+of the settled belief in the negro's inferiority, and in the necessity
+that he should not be left to himself without a guardian, is that in
+some sections he is discouraged from leaving his old master. I have
+known of planters who considered it an offence against neighborhood
+courtesy for another to hire their old hands, and in two instances that
+were reported the disputants came to blows over the breach of
+etiquette." The new Freedmen's Bureau insisted upon written contracts,
+except for day laborers, and this undoubtedly kept many negroes from
+working regularly, for they were suspicious of contracts. Besides, the
+agitators and the negro troops led them to hope for an eventual
+distribution of property. An Alabama planter thus described the
+situation in December, 1865:
+
+They will not work for anything but wages, and few are able to pay
+wages. They are penniless but resolute in their demands. They expect to
+see all the land divided out equally between them and their old masters
+in time to make the next crop. One of the most intelligent black men I
+know told me that in a neighboring village, where several hundred blacks
+were congregated, he does not think that as many as three made
+contracts, although planters are urgent in their solicitations and
+offering highest prices for labor they can possibly afford to pay. The
+same man informed me that the impression widely prevails that Congress
+is about to divide out the lands, and that this impression is given out
+by Federal soldiers at the nearest military station. It cannot be
+disguised that in spite of the most earnest efforts of their old master
+to conciliate and satisfy them, the estrangement between races increases
+in its extent and bitterness. Nearly all the negro men are armed with
+repeaters, and many of them carry them openly, day and night.
+
+The relations between the races were better, however, than conditions
+seemed to indicate. The whites of the Black Belt were better disposed
+toward the negroes than were those of the white districts. It was in the
+towns and villages that most of the race conflicts occurred. All whites
+agreed that the negro was inferior, but there were many who were
+grateful for his conduct during the war and who wished him well. But
+others, the policemen of the towns, the "loyalists," those who had
+little but pride of race and the vote to distinguish them from the
+blacks, felt no good will toward the ex-slaves. It was Truman's opinion
+"not only that the planters are far better friends to the negroes than
+the poor whites, but also better than a majority of the Northern men who
+go South to rent plantations." John T. Trowbridge, the novelist, who
+recorded his impressions of the South after a visit in 1865, was of the
+opinion that the Unionists "do not like niggers." "For there is," he
+said, "more prejudice against color among the middle and poorer
+classes--the Union men of the South who owned few or no slaves--than
+among the planters who owned them by scores and hundreds." The reports
+of the Freedmen's Bureau are to the same effect. A Bureau agent in
+Tennessee testified: "An old citizen, a Union man, said to me, said he,
+'I tell you what, if you take away the military from Tennessee, the
+buzzards can't eat up the niggers as fast as we'll kill them.'"
+
+The lawlessness of the negroes in parts of the Black Belt and the
+disturbing influences of the black troops, of some officials of the
+Bureau, and of some of the missionary teachers and preachers, caused the
+whites to fear insurrections and to take measures for protection. Secret
+semi-military organizations were formed which later developed into the
+Ku Klux orders. When, however, New Year's Day, 1866 passed without the
+hoped-for distribution of property the negroes began to settle down.
+
+At the beginning of the period of reconstruction it seemed possible that
+the negro race might speedily fall into distinct economic groups, for
+there were some who had property and many others who had the ability and
+the opportunity to acquire it; but the later drawing of race lines and
+the political disturbances of reconstruction checked this tendency. It
+was expected also that the Northern planters who came South in large
+numbers in 1865-66 might, by controlling the negro labor and by the use
+of more efficient methods, aid in the economic upbuilding of the
+country. But they were ignorant of agricultural matters and incapable of
+wisely controlling the blacks; and they failed because at one time they
+placed too much trust in the negroes and at another treated them too
+harshly and expected too much of them.
+
+The question of negro suffrage was not a live issue in the South until
+the middle of 1866. There was almost no talk about it among the negroes;
+they did not know what it was. President Lincoln in 1864 and President
+Johnson in 1865 had merely mentioned the subject, though Chief Justice
+Chase and prominent radical members of Congress, as well as numerous
+abolitionists, had framed a negro suffrage platform. But the Southern
+whites, considering the matter an impossibility, gave it little
+consideration. There was, however, both North and South, a tendency to
+see a connection between the freedom of the negroes and their political
+rights and thus to confuse civil equality with political and social
+privileges. But the great masses of the whites were solidly opposed to
+the recognition of negro equality in any form. The poorer whites,
+especially the "Unionists" who hoped to develop an opposition party,
+were angered by any discussion of the subject. An Alabama "Unionist," M.
+J. Saffold, later prominent as a radical politician, declared to the
+Joint Committee on Reconstruction: "If you compel us to carry through
+universal suffrage of colored men ... it will prove quite an incubus
+upon us in the organization of a national union party of white men; it
+will furnish our opponents with a very effective weapon of offense
+against us."
+
+There were, however, some Southern leaders of ability and standing who,
+by 1866, were willing to consider negro suffrage. These men, among them
+General Wade Hampton of South Carolina and Governor Robert Patton of
+Alabama, were of the slaveholding class, and they fully counted on being
+able to control the negro's vote by methods similar to those actually
+put in force a quarter of a century later. The negroes were not as yet
+politically organized, were not even interested in politics, and the
+master class might reasonably hope to regain control of them. Whitelaw
+Reid published an interview with one of the Hamptons which describes the
+situation exactly:
+
+A brother of General Wade Hampton, the South Carolina Hotspur, was on
+board. He saw no great objection to negro suffrage, so far as the whites
+were concerned; and for himself, South Carolinian and secessionist
+though he was, he was quite willing to accept it. He only dreaded its
+effect on the blacks themselves. Hitherto they had in the main, been
+modest and respectful, and mere freedom was not likely to spoil them.
+But the deference to them likely to be shown by partisans eager for
+their votes would have a tendency to uplift them and unbalance them.
+Beyond this, no harm would be done the South by negro suffrage. The old
+owners would cast the votes of their people almost as absolutely and
+securely as they cast their own. If Northern men expected in this way to
+build up a northern party in the South, they were gravely mistaken. They
+would only be multiplying the power of the old and natural leaders of
+Southern politics by giving every vote to a former slave. Heretofore
+such men had served their masters only in the fields; now they would do
+no less faithful service at the polls. If the North could stand it, the
+South could. For himself, he should make no special objection to negro
+suffrage as one of the terms of reorganization, and if it came, he did
+not think the South would have much cause to regret it.
+
+To sum up the situation at this time: the negro population at the close
+of the war constituted a tremendous problem for those in authority. The
+race was free, but without status, without leaders, without property,
+and without education. Probably a fourth of them had some experience in
+freedom before the Confederate armies surrendered, and the servitude of
+the other three millions ended very quickly and without violence. But in
+the Black Belt, where the bulk of the black population was to be found,
+the labor system was broken up, and for several months the bewildered
+freedmen wandered about or remained at home under conditions which were
+bad for health, morals, and thrift. The Northern negroes did not furnish
+the expected leadership for the race, and the more capable men in the
+South showed a tendency to go North. The unsettled state of the negroes
+and their expectation of receiving a part of the property of the whites
+kept the latter uneasy and furnished the occasion of frequent conflicts.
+Not the least of the unsettling influences at work upon the negro
+population were the colored troops and the agitators furnished by the
+Freedmen's Bureau, the missions, and the Bureau schools. But at the
+beginning of the year 1866 the situation appeared to be clearing, and
+the social and economic revolution seemed on the way to a quieter ending
+than might have been expected.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+The Work of the Presidents
+
+The war ended slavery, but it left the problem of the freed slave; it
+preserved the Union in theory, but it left unsolved many delicate
+problems of readjustment. Were the seceded States in or out of the
+Union? If in the Union, what rights had they? If they were not in the
+Union, what was their status? What was the status of the Southern
+Unionist, of the ex-Confederate? What punishments should be inflicted
+upon the Southern people? What authority, executive or legislative,
+should carry out the work of reconstruction? The end of the war brought
+with it, in spite of much discussion, no clear answer to these
+perplexing questions.
+
+Unfortunately, American political life, with its controversies over
+colonial government, its conflicting interpretations of written
+constitutions, and its legally trained statesmen, had by the middle of
+the nineteenth century produced a habit of political thought which
+demanded the settlement of most governmental matters upon a theoretical
+basis. And now in 1865 each prominent leader had his own plan of
+reconstruction fundamentally irreconcilable with all the others, because
+rigidly theoretical. During the war the powers of the Executive had been
+greatly expanded and a legislative reaction was to be expected. The
+Constitution called for fresh interpretation in the light of the Civil
+War and its results.
+
+The first theory of reconstruction may be found in the
+Crittenden-Johnson resolutions of July, 1861, which declared that the
+war was being waged to maintain the Union under the Constitution and
+that it should cease when these objects were obtained. This would have
+been subscribed to in 1861 by the Union Democrats and by most of the
+Republicans, and in 1865 the conquered Southerners would have been glad
+to reënter the Union upon this basis; but though in 1865 the resolution
+still expressed the views of many Democrats, the majority of Northern
+people had moved away from this position.
+
+The attitude of Lincoln, which in 1865 met the views of a majority of
+the Northern people though not of the political leaders, was that "no
+State can upon its mere motion get out of the Union," that the States
+survived though there might be some doubt about state governments, and
+that "loyal" state organizations might be established by a population
+consisting largely of ex-Confederates who had been pardoned by the
+President and made "loyal" for the future by an oath of allegiance.
+Reconstruction was, Lincoln thought, a matter for the Executive to
+handle. But that he was not inflexibly committed to any one plan is
+indicated by his proclamation after the pocket veto of the Wade-Davis
+Bill and by his last speech, in which he declared that the question of
+whether the seceded States were in the Union or out of it was "merely a
+pernicious abstraction." In addition, Lincoln said:
+
+We are all agreed that the seceded States, so called, are out of their
+proper practical relation with the Union, and that the sole object of
+the government, civil and military, in regard to those States is to
+again get them into that proper practical relation. I believe that it is
+not only possible, but in fact easier, to do this without deciding or
+even considering whether these States have ever been out of the Union,
+than with it. Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly
+immaterial whether they had ever been abroad. Let us all join in doing
+the acts necessary to restore the proper practical relations between
+these States and the Union, and each forever after innocently indulge
+his own opinion whether in doing the acts he brought the States from
+without into the Union, or only gave them proper assistance, they never
+having been out of it.
+
+President Johnson's position was essentially that of Lincoln, but his
+attitude toward the working out of the several problems was different.
+He maintained that the States survived and that it was the duty of the
+Executive to restore them to their proper relations. "The true theory,"
+said he, "is that all pretended acts of secession were from the
+beginning null and void. The States cannot commit treason nor screen
+individual citizens who may have committed treason any more than they
+can make valid treaties or engage in lawful commerce with any foreign
+power. The States attempting to secede placed themselves in a condition
+where their vitality was impaired, but not extinguished; their functions
+suspended, but not destroyed." Lincoln would have had no severe
+punishments inflicted even on leaders, but Johnson wanted to destroy the
+"slavocracy," root and branch. Confiscation of estates would, he
+thought, be a proper measure. He said on one occasion: "Traitors should
+take a back seat in the work of restoration.... My judgment is that he
+[a rebel] should be subjected to a severe ordeal before he is restored
+to citizenship. Treason should be made odious, and traitors must be
+punished and impoverished. Their great plantations must be seized, and
+divided into small farms and sold to honest, industrious men." The
+violence of Johnson's views subsequently underwent considerable
+modification but to the last he held to the plan of executive
+restoration based upon state perdurance. Neither Lincoln nor Johnson
+favored a change of Southern institutions other than the abolition of
+slavery, though each recommended a qualified negro suffrage.
+
+There were, however, other theories in the field, notably those of the
+radical Republican leaders. According to the state-suicide theory of
+Charles Sumner, "any vote of secession or other act by which any State
+may undertake to put an end to the supremacy of the Constitution within
+its territory is inoperative and void against the Constitution, and when
+sustained by force it becomes a practical abdication by the State of all
+rights under the Constitution, while the treason it involves still
+further works an instant forfeiture of all those functions and powers
+essential to the continued existence of the State as a body politic, so
+that from that time forward the territory falls under the exclusive
+jurisdiction of Congress as other territory, and the State, being
+according to the language of the law felo de se, ceases to exist."
+Congress should punish the "rebels" by abolishing slavery, by giving
+civil and political rights to negroes, and by educating them with the
+whites.
+
+Not essentially different, but harsher, was Thaddeus Stevens's plans for
+treating the South as a conquered foreign province. Let the victors
+treat the seceded States "as conquered provinces and settle them with
+new men and exterminate or drive out the present rebels as exiles."
+Congress in dealing with these provinces was not bound even by the
+Constitution, "a bit of worthless parchment," but might legislate as it
+pleased in regard to slavery, the ballot, and confiscation. With regard
+to the white population he said: "I have never desired bloody
+punishments to any great extent. But there are punishments quite as
+appalling, and longer remembered, than death. They are more advisable,
+because they would reach a greater number. Strip a proud nobility of
+their bloated estates; reduce them to a level with plain republicans;
+send them forth to labor, and teach their children to enter the
+workshops or handle a plow, and you will thus humble the proud
+traitors." Stevens and Sumner agreed in reducing the Southern States to
+a territorial status. Sumner would then take the principles of the
+Declaration of Independence as a guide for Congress, while Stevens would
+leave Congress absolute. Neither considered the Constitution as of any
+validity in this crisis.
+
+As a rule the former abolitionists were in 1865 advocates of votes and
+lands for the negro, in whose capacity for self-rule they had complete
+confidence. The view of Gerrit Smith may be regarded as typical of the
+abolitionist position:
+
+Let the first condition of peace with them be that no people in the
+rebel States shall ever lose or gain civil or political rights by reason
+of their race or origin. The next condition of peace be that our black
+allies in the South--those saviours of our nation--shall share with
+their poor white neighbors in the subdivisions of the large landed
+estates of the South. Let the only other condition be that the rebel
+masses shall not, for say, a dozen years, be allowed access to the
+ballot-box, or be eligible to office; and that the like restrictions be
+for life on their political and military leaders.... The mass of the
+Southern blacks fall, in point of intelligence, but little, if any,
+behind the mass of the Southern whites.... In reference to the
+qualifications of the voter, men make too much account of the head and
+too little of the heart. The ballot-box, like God, says: "Give me your
+heart." The best-hearted men are the best qualified to vote; and, in
+this light, the blacks, with their characteristic gentleness, patience,
+and affectionateness, are peculiarly entitled to vote. We cannot wonder
+at Swedenborg's belief that the celestial people will be found in the
+interior of Africa; nor hardly can we wonder at the legend that the gods
+came down every year to sup with their favorite Africans.
+
+One of the most statesmanlike proposals was made by Governor John A.
+Andrew of Massachusetts. If, forgetting their theories, the
+conservatives could have united in support of a restoration conceived in
+his spirit, the goal might have been speedily achieved. Andrew demanded
+a reorganization, based upon acceptance of the results of the war, but
+carried through with the aid of "those who are by their intelligence and
+character the natural leaders of their people and who surely will lead
+them by and by." These men cannot be kept out forever, said he, for
+
+the capacity of leadership is a gift, not a device. They whose courage,
+talents, and will entitle them to lead, will lead.... If we cannot gain
+their support of the just measures needful for the work of safe
+reorganization, reorganization will be delusive and full of danger. They
+are the most hopeful subjects to deal with. They have the brain and the
+experience and the education to enable them to understand ... the
+present situation. They have the courage as well as the skill to lead
+the people in the direction their judgments point.... Is it consistent
+with reason and our knowledge of human nature, to believe the masses of
+Southern men able to face about, to turn their backs on those they have
+trusted and followed, and to adopt the lead of those who have no
+magnetic hold on their hearts or minds? It would be idle to reorganize
+by the colored vote. If the popular vote of the white race is not to be
+had in favor of the guarantees justly required, then I am in favor of
+holding on--just where we are now. I am not in favor of a surrender of
+the present rights of the Union to a struggle between a white minority
+aided by the freedmen on one hand, against the majority of the white
+race on the other. I would not consent, having rescued those states by
+arms from Secession and rebellion, to turn them over to anarchy and
+chaos.
+
+The Southerners, Unionists as well as Confederates, had their views as
+well, but at Washington these carried little influence. The former
+Confederates would naturally favor the plan which promised best for the
+white South, and their views were most nearly met by those of President
+Lincoln. Although he held that in principle a new Union had arisen out
+of the war, as a matter of immediate political expediency he was
+prepared to build on the assumption that the old Union still existed.
+The Southern Unionists cared little for theories; they wanted the
+Confederates punished, themselves promoted to high offices, and the
+negro kept from the ballot box.
+
+Even at the beginning of 1866, it was not too much to hope that the
+majority of former Republicans would accept conservative methods,
+provided the so-called "fruits of the war" were assured--that is,
+equality of civil rights, the guarantee of the United States war debt,
+the repudiation of the Confederate debt, the temporary disfranchisement
+of the leading Confederates, and some arrangement which would keep the
+South from profiting by representation based on the non-voting negro
+population. But amid many conflicting policies, none attained to
+continuous and compelling authority.
+
+The plan first put to trial was that of President Lincoln. It was a
+definite plan designed to meet actual conditions and, had he lived, he
+might have been able to carry it through successfully. Not a theorist,
+but an opportunist of the highest type, sobered by years of
+responsibility in war time, and fully understanding the precarious
+situation in 1865, Lincoln was most anxious to secure an early
+restoration of solidarity with as little friction as possible. Better
+than most Union leaders he appreciated conditions in the South, the
+problem of the races, the weakness of the Southern Unionists, and the
+advantage of calling in the old Southern leaders. He was generous and
+considerate; he wanted no executions or imprisonments; he wished the
+leaders to escape; and he was anxious that the mass of Southerners be
+welcomed back without loss of rights. "There is," he declared, "too
+little respect for their rights," an unwillingness, in short, to treat
+them as fellow citizens.
+
+This executive policy had been applied from the beginning of the war as
+pportunity offered. The President used the army to hold the Border
+States in the Union, to aid in "reorganizing" Unionist Virginia and in
+establishing West Virginia. The army, used to preserve the Union might
+be used also to restore disturbed parts of it to normal condition.
+Assuming that the "States" still existed, "loyal" state governments were
+the first necessity. By his proclamation of December 8, 1863, Lincoln
+suggested a method of beginning the reconstruction: he would pardon any
+Confederate, except specified classes of leaders, who took an oath of
+loyalty for the future; if as many as ten per cent of the voting
+population of 1860, thus made loyal, should establish a state government
+the Executive would recognize it. The matter of slavery must, indeed, be
+left to the laws and proclamations as interpreted by the courts, but
+other institutions should continue as in 1861.
+
+This plan was inaugurated in four States which had been in part
+controlled by the Federal army from nearly the beginning of the war:
+Tennessee (1862), Louisiana (1862), Arkansas (1862), and Virginia after
+the formation of West Virginia (1863). For each State, Lincoln appointed
+a military governor: for Tennessee, Andrew Johnson; for Arkansas, John
+S. Phelps; for Louisiana, General Shepley. In Virginia he recognized the
+"reorganized" government, which had been transferred to Alexandria when
+the new State of West Virginia was formed. The military governors
+undertook the slow and difficult work of reorganization, however, with
+but slight success owing to the small numbers of Unionists and of
+Confederates who would take the oath. But by 1864 "ten per cent" state
+governments were established in Arkansas and Louisiana, and progress was
+being made in Tennessee.
+
+Congress was impatient of Lincoln's claim to executive precedence in the
+matter of reconstruction, and in 1864 both Houses passed the Wade-Davis
+Bill, a plan which asserted the right of Congress to control
+reconstruction and foreshadowed a radical settlement of the question.
+Lincoln disposed of the bill by a pocket veto and, in a proclamation
+dated July 8, 1864, stated that he was unprepared "to be inflexibly
+committed to any single plan of restoration," or to discourage loyal
+citizens by setting aside the governments already established in
+Louisiana and Arkansas, or to recognize the authority of Congress to
+abolish slavery. He was ready, however, to coöperate with the people of
+any State who wished to accept the plan prepared by Congress and he
+hoped that a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery would be
+adopted.
+
+Lincoln early came to the conclusion that slavery must be destroyed, and
+he had urgently advocated deportation of the freedmen, for he believed
+that the two races could not live in harmony after emancipation. The
+nearest he came to recommending the vote for the negro was in a
+communication to Governor Hahn of Louisiana in March, 1864: "I barely
+suggest, for your private consideration, whether some of the colored
+people may not be let in, as for instance, the very intelligent, and
+especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks. They would
+probably help, in some trying time to come, to keep the jewel of liberty
+within the family of freedom. But this is only a suggestion, not to the
+public, but to you alone."
+
+Throughout the war President Lincoln assumed that the state
+organizations in the South were illegal because disloyal and that new
+governments must be established. But just at the close of the war,
+probably carried away by feeling, he all but recognized the Virginia
+Confederate Government as competent to bring the State back into the
+Union. While in Richmond on April 5, 1865, he gave to Judge Campbell a
+statement of terms: the national authority to be restored; no recession
+on slavery by the Executive; hostile forces to disband. The next day he
+notified General Weitzel, in command at Richmond, that he might permit
+the Virginia Legislature to meet and withdraw military and other support
+from the Confederacy. But these measures met strong opposition in
+Washington, especially from Secretary Stanton and Senator Wade and other
+congressional leaders, and on the 11th of April Lincoln withdrew his
+permission for the Legislature to meet. "I cannot go forward," he said,
+"with everybody opposed to me." It was on the same day that he made his
+last public speech, and Sumner, who was strongly opposed to his policy,
+remarked that "the President's speech and other things augur confusion
+and uncertainty in the future, with hot contumacy." At a cabinet meeting
+on the 14th of April, Lincoln made his last statement on the subject. It
+was fortunate, he said, that Congress had adjourned, for "we shall
+reanimate the States" before Congress meets; there should be no killing,
+no persecutions; there was too much disposition to treat the Southern
+people "not as fellow citizens."
+
+The possibility of a conciliatory restoration ended when Lincoln was
+assassinated. Moderate, firm, tactful, of great personal influence, not
+a doctrinaire, and not a Southerner like Johnson, Lincoln might have
+"prosecuted peace" successfully. His policy was very unlike that
+proposed by the radical leaders. They would base the new governments
+upon the loyalty of the past plus the aid of enfranchised slaves; he
+would establish the new régime upon the loyalty of the future. Like
+Governor Andrew he thought that restoration must be effected by the
+willing efforts of the South. He would aid and guide but not force the
+people. If the latter did not wish restoration, they might remain under
+military rule. There should be no forced negro suffrage, no sweeping
+disfranchisement of whites, no "carpetbaggism."
+
+The work of President Johnson demands for its proper understanding some
+consideration of the condition of the political parties at the close of
+the war, for politics had much to do with reconstruction. The Democratic
+party, divided and defeated in the election of 1860, lost its Southern
+members in 1861 by the secession and remained a minority party during
+the remainder of the war. It retained its organization, however, and in
+1864 polled a large vote. Discredited by its policy of opposition to
+Lincoln's Administration, its ablest leaders joined the Republicans in
+support of the war. Until 1869 the party was poorly represented in
+Congress although, as soon as hostilities ended, the War Democrats
+showed a tendency to return to the old party. As to reconstruction, the
+party stood on the Crittenden-Johnson resolutions of 1861, though most
+Democrats were now willing to have slavery abolished.
+
+The Republican party--frankly sectional and going into power on the
+single issue of opposition to the extension of slavery--was forced by
+the secession movement to take up the task of preserving the Union by
+war. Consequently, the party developed new principles, welcomed the aid
+of the War Democrats, and found it advisable to drop its name and with
+its allies to form the Union or National Union party. It was this
+National Union party which in 1864 nominated Abraham Lincoln, a
+Republican, and Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, on the same ticket.
+Lincoln's second Cabinet was composed of both Republicans and War
+Democrats. When the war ended, the conservative leaders were anxious to
+hold the Union party together in order to be in a better position to
+settle the problems of reconstruction, but the movement of the War
+Democrats back to their old party tended to leave in the Union party
+only its Republican members, with the radical leaders dominating.
+
+In the South the pressure of war so united the people that party
+divisions disappeared for a time, but the causes of division continued
+to exist and two parties, at least, would have developed had the
+pressure been removed. Though all factions supported the war after it
+began, the former Whigs and Douglas Democrats, when it was over, liked
+to remember that they had been "Union" men in 1860 and expected to
+organize in opposition to the extreme Democrats, who were now charged
+with being responsible for the misfortunes of the South. They were in a
+position to affiliate with the National Union party of the North if
+proper inducements were offered, while the regular Democrats were ready
+to rejoin their old party. But the embittered feelings resulting from
+the murder of Lincoln and the rapid development of the struggle between
+President Johnson and Congress caused the radicals "to lump the old
+Union Democrats and Whigs together with the secessionists--and many were
+driven where they did not want to go, into temporary affiliation with
+the Democratic party." Thousands went very reluctantly; the old Whigs,
+indeed, were not firmly committed to the Democrats until radical
+reconstruction had actually begun. Still other "loyalists" in the South
+were prepared to join the Northern radicals in advocating the
+disfranchisement of Confederates and in opposing the granting of
+suffrage to the negroes.
+
+The man upon whom fell the task of leading these opposing factions,
+radical and conservative, along a definite line of action looking to
+reunion had few qualifications for the task. Johnson was ill-educated,
+narrow, and vindictive and was positive that those who did not agree
+with him were dishonest. Himself a Southerner, picked up by the National
+Union Convention of 1864, as Thaddeus Stevens said, from "one of those
+damned rebel provinces," he loved the Union, worshiped the Constitution,
+and held to the strict construction views of the State Rights Democrats.
+Rising from humble beginnings, he was animated by the most intense
+dislike of the "slavocracy," as he called the political aristocracy of
+the South. Like many other American leaders he was proud of his humble
+origin, but unlike many others he never sloughed off his backwoods
+crudeness. He continually boasted of himself and vilified the
+aristocrats, who in return treated him badly. His dislike of them was so
+marked that Isham G. Harris, a rival politician, remarked that "if
+Johnson were a snake, he would lie in the grass to bite the heels of
+rich men's children." His primitive notions of punishment were evident
+in 1865 when he advocated imprisonment, execution, and confiscation; but
+like other reckless talkers he often said more than he meant.
+
+When Johnson succeeded to the presidency, the feeling was nearly
+universal among the radicals, according to Julian, that he would prove a
+godsend to the country, for "aside from Mr. Lincoln's known policy of
+tenderness to the rebels, which now so jarred upon the feelings of the
+hour, his well known views on the subject of reconstruction were as
+distasteful as possible to radical Republicans." Senator Wade declared
+to the President: "Johnson, we have faith in you. By the gods, there
+will be no trouble now in running the Government!" To which Johnson
+replied: "Treason is a crime and crime must be punished. Treason must be
+made infamous and traitors must be impoverished." These words are an
+index to the speeches of Johnson during 1863-65. Even his radical
+friends feared that he would be too vindictive. For a few weeks he was
+much inclined to the radical plans, and some of the leaders certainly
+understood that he was in favor of negro suffrage, the supreme test of
+radicalism. But when the excitement caused by the assassination of
+Lincoln and the break-up of the Confederacy had moderated somewhat,
+Johnson saw before him a task so great that his desire for violent
+measures was chilled. He must disband the great armies and bring all war
+work to an end; he must restore intercourse with the South, which had
+been blockaded for years; he must for a time police the country, look
+after the negroes, and set up a temporary civil government; and finally
+he must work out a restoration of the Union. Sobered by responsibility
+and by the influence of moderate advisers, he rather quickly adopted
+Lincoln's policy.
+
+Johnson at first set his face against the movements toward
+reconstruction by the state governments already organized and by those
+people who wished to organize new governments on Lincoln's ten per cent
+plan. As soon as possible the War Department notified the Union
+commanders to stop all attempts at reconstruction and to pursue and
+arrest all Confederate governors and other prominent civil leaders. The
+President was even anxious to arrest the military leaders who had been
+paroled but was checked in this desire by General Grant's firm protest.
+His cabinet advisers supported Johnson in refusing to recognize the
+Southern state governments; but three of them--Seward, Welles, and
+McCulloch--were influential in moderating his zeal for inflicting
+punishments. Nevertheless he soon had in prison the most prominent of
+the Confederate civilians and several general officers. The soldiers,
+however, were sent home, trade with the South was permitted, and the
+Freedmen's Bureau was rapidly extended.
+
+Previous to this Johnson had brought himself to recognize, early in May,
+the Lincoln "ten per cent" governments of Louisiana, Tennessee, and
+Arkansas, and the reconstructed Alexandria government of Virginia. Thus
+only seven States were left without legal governments, and to bring
+those States back into the Union, Johnson inaugurated on May 29, 1865, a
+plan which was like that of Lincoln but not quite so liberal. In his
+Amnesty Proclamation, Johnson made a longer list of exceptions aimed
+especially at the once wealthy slave owners. On the same day he
+proclaimed the restoration of North Carolina. A provisional governor, W.
+W. Holden, was appointed and directed to reorganize the civil government
+and to call a constitutional convention elected by those who had taken
+the amnesty oath. This convention was to make necessary amendments to
+the constitution and to "restore said State to its constitutional
+relations to the Federal Government." It is to be noted that Johnson
+fixed the qualifications of delegates and of those who elected them,
+but, this stage once passed, the convention or the legislature would
+"prescribe the qualifications of electors ... a power the people of the
+several States composing the Federal Union have rightfully exercised
+from the origin of the government to the present time." The President
+also directed the various cabinet officers to extend the work of their
+departments over the Confederate States and ordered the army officers to
+assist the civil authorities. During the next six weeks similar measures
+were undertaken for the remaining six States of the Confederacy.
+
+To set up the new order army officers were first sent into every county
+to administer the amnesty oath and thus to secure a "loyal" electorate.
+In each State the provisional governor organized out of the remains of
+the Confederate local régime a new civil government. Confederate local
+officials who could and would take the amnesty oath were directed to
+resume office until relieved; the laws of 1861, except those relating to
+slavery, were declared to be in force; the courts were directed to use
+special efforts to crush lawlessness; and the old jury lists were
+destroyed and new ones were drawn up containing only the names of those
+who had taken the amnesty oath. Since there was no money in any state
+treasury, small sums were now raised by license taxes. A full staff of
+department heads was appointed, and by July, 1865, the provisional
+governments were in fair working order.
+
+To the constitutional conventions, which met in the fall, it was made
+clear, through the governors, that the President would insist upon three
+conditions: the formal abolition of slavery, the repudiation of the
+ordinance of secession, and the repudiation of the Confederate war debt.
+To Governor Holden he telegraphed: "Every dollar of the debt created to
+aid the rebellion against the United States should be repudiated finally
+and forever. The great mass of the people should not be taxed to pay a
+debt to aid in carrying on a rebellion which they in fact, if left to
+themselves, were opposed to. Let those who had given their means for the
+obligations of the state look to that power they tried to establish in
+violation of law, constitution, and will of the people. They must meet
+their fate." With little opposition these conditions were fulfilled,
+though there was a strong feeling against the repudiation of the debt,
+much discussion as to whether the ordinance of secession should be
+"repealed" or declared "now and always null and void," and some
+quibbling as to whether slavery was being destroyed by state action or
+had already been destroyed by war.
+
+In the old state constitutions, very slight changes were made. Of these
+the chief were concerned with the abolition of slavery and the
+arrangement of representation and direct taxation on the basis of white
+population. Little effort was made to settle any of the negro problems,
+and in all States the conventions left it to the legislatures to make
+laws for the freedmen. There was no discussion of negro suffrage in the
+conventions, but President Johnson sent what was for him a remarkable
+communication to Governor Sharkey of Mississippi:
+
+If you could extend the elective franchise to all persons of color who
+can read the Constitution of the United States in English and write
+their names, and to all persons of color who own real estate valued at
+not less than two hundred and fifty dollars and pay taxes thereon, you
+would completely disarm the adversary and set an example the other
+States will follow. This you can do with perfect safety, and you would
+thus place Southern States in reference to free persons of color upon
+the same basis with the free States.... And as a consequence the
+radicals, who are wild upon negro franchise, will be completely foiled
+in their attempts to keep the Southern States from renewing their
+relations to the Union by not accepting their senators and
+representatives.
+
+In deciding upon a basis of representation it was clear that the
+majority of delegates desired to lessen the influence of the Black Belt
+and place the control of the government with the "up country." In the
+Alabama convention Robert M. Patton, then a delegate and later governor,
+frankly avowed this object, and in South Carolina Governor Perry urged
+the convention to give no consideration to negro suffrage, "because this
+is a white man's government," and if the negroes should vote they would
+be controlled by a few whites. A kindly disposition toward the negroes
+was general except on the part of extreme Unionists, who opposed any
+favors to the race. "This is a white man's country" was a doctrine to
+which all the conventions subscribed.
+
+The conventions held brief sessions, completed their work, and
+adjourned, after directing that elections be held for state and local
+officers and for members of Congress. Before December the appointed
+local officials had been succeeded by elected officers; members of
+Congress were on their way to Washington; the state legislatures were
+assembling or already in session; and the elected governors were ready
+to take office. It was understood that as soon as enough state
+legislatures ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to make it a part of the
+Constitution, the President would permit the transfer of authority to
+the new governors. The Legislature of Mississippi alone was recalcitrant
+about the amendment, and before January, 1866, the elected officials
+were everywhere installed except in Texas, where the work was not
+completed until March. When Congress met in December, 1865, the
+President reported that all former Confederate States except Texas were
+ready to be readmitted. Congress, however, refused to admit their
+senators and representatives, and thus began the struggle which ended
+over a year later with the victory of the radicals and the undoing of
+the work of the two Presidents.
+
+The plan of the Presidents was at best only imperfectly realized. It was
+found impossible to reorganize the Federal Administration in the South
+with men who could subscribe to the "ironclad oath," for nearly all who
+were competent to hold office had favored or aided the Confederacy. It
+was two years before more than a third of the post offices could be
+opened. The other Federal departments were in similar difficulties, and
+at last women and "carpetbaggers" were appointed. The Freedmen's Bureau,
+which had been established coincidently with the provisional
+governments, assumed jurisdiction over the negroes, while the army
+authorities very early took the position that any man who claimed to be
+a Unionist should not be tried in the local courts but must be given a
+better chance in a provost court. Thus a third or more of the population
+was withdrawn from the control of the state government. In several
+States the head of the Bureau made arrangements for local magistrates
+and officials to act as Bureau officials, and in such cases the two
+authorities acted in coöperation. The army of occupation, too, exerted
+an authority which not infrequently interfered with the workings of the
+new state government. Nearly everywhere there was a lack of certainty
+and efficiency due to the concurrent and sometimes conflicting
+jurisdictions of state government, army commanders, Bureau authorities,
+and even the President acting upon or through any of the others.
+
+The standing of the Southern state organizations was in doubt after the
+refusal of Congress to recognize them. Nevertheless, in spite of this
+uncertainty they continued to function as States during the year of
+controversy which followed; the courts were opened and steadily grew in
+influence; here and there militia and patrols were reorganized;
+officials who refused to "accept the situation" were dismissed;
+elections were held; the legislatures revised the laws to fit new
+conditions and enacted new laws for the emancipated blacks. To all this
+progress in reorganization the action of Congress was a severe blow,
+since it gave notice that none of the problems of reconstruction were
+yet solved. An increasing spirit of irritation and independence was
+observed throughout the States in question, and at the elections the
+former Confederates gained more and more offices. The year was marked in
+the South by the tendency toward the formation of parties, by the
+development of the "Southern outrages" issue, by an attempt to frustrate
+radical action, and finally by a line-up of the great mass of the whites
+in opposition to the Fourteenth Amendment and other radical plans of
+Congress.
+
+The Joint Committee on Reconstruction, appointed when Congress refused
+to accept the work of President Johnson, proceeded during several months
+to take testimony and to consider measures. The testimony, which was
+taken chiefly to support opinions already formed, appeared to prove that
+the negroes and the Unionists were so badly treated that the Freedmen's
+Bureau and the army must be kept in the South to protect them; that free
+negro labor was a success but that the whites were hostile to it; that
+the whites were disloyal and would, if given control of the Southern
+governments and admitted to Congress, constitute a danger to the nation
+and especially to the party in power.
+
+To convince the voters of the North of the necessity of dealing
+drastically with the South a campaign of misrepresentation was begun in
+the summer of 1865, which became more and more systematic and
+unscrupulous as the political struggle at Washington grew fiercer.
+Newspapers regularly ran columns headed "Southern Outrages" and every
+conceivable mistreatment of blacks by whites was represented as taking
+place on a large scale. As General Richard Taylor said, it would seem
+that about 1866 every white man, woman, and child in the South began
+killing and maltreating negroes. In truth, there was less and less
+ground for objection to the treatment of the blacks as time went on and
+as the several agencies of government secured firmer control over the
+lawless elements. But fortunately for the radicals their contention
+seemed to be established by riots on a large scale in Memphis and New
+Orleans where negroes were killed and injured in much greater number
+than whites.
+
+The rapid development of the radical plans of Congress checked the
+tendency toward political division in the South. Only a small party of
+rabid Unionists would now affiliate with the radicals, while all the
+others reluctantly held together, endorsed Johnson's policy, and
+attempted to affiliate with the disintegrating National Union party. But
+the defeat of the President's policies in the elections of 1866, the
+increasing radicalism of Congress as shown by the Civil Rights Act, the
+expansion of the Freedmen's Bureau, the report of the Joint Committee on
+Reconstruction, and the proposal of the Fourteenth Amendment led
+farsighted Southerners to see that the President was likely to lose in
+his fight with Congress.
+
+Now began, in the latter half of 1866, with some coöperation in the
+North and probably with the approval of the President, a movement in the
+South to forestall the radicals by means of a settlement which, although
+less severe than the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, might yet be
+acceptable to Congress. One feature of the settlement was to be some
+form of negro suffrage, either by local action or by constitutional
+amendment. Those behind this scheme were mainly of the former governing
+class. Negro suffrage, they thought, would take the wind out of the
+radical sails, the Southern whites would soon be able to control the
+blacks, representation in Congress would be increased, and the Black
+Belt would perhaps regain its former political hegemony. It is hardly
+necessary to say that the majority of the whites were solidly opposed to
+such a measure. But it was hoped to carry it under pressure through the
+Legislature or to bring it about indirectly through rulings of the
+Freedmen's Bureau.
+
+Coincident with this scheme of partial negro suffrage an attempt was
+made by the conservative leaders in Washington, working with the
+Southerners, to propose a revised Fourteenth Amendment which would give
+the vote to competent negroes and not disfranchise the whites. A
+conference of Southern governors met in Washington early in 1867 and
+drafted such an amendment. But it was too late.
+
+Meanwhile the Fourteenth Amendment submitted by Congress had been
+brought before the Southern legislatures and during the winter of
+1866-67 it was rejected by all of them. There was strong opposition to
+it because it disfranchised the leading whites, but perhaps the
+principal reason for its rejection was that the Southern people were not
+sure that still more severe conditions might not be imposed later.
+
+While the President was "restoring" the States which had seceded and
+struggling with Congress, the Border States of the South, including
+Tennessee (which was admitted in 1866 by reason of its radical state
+government), were also in the throes of reconstruction. Though there was
+less military interference in these than in the other States, many of
+the problems were similar. All had the Freedmen's Bureau, the negro
+race, the Unionists, and the Confederates; in every State, except
+Kentucky, Confederates were persecuted, the minority was in control, and
+"ring" rule was the order of the day; but in each State there were signs
+of the political revolution which a few years later was to put the
+radicals out of power.
+
+The executive plan for the restoration of the Union, begun by Lincoln
+and adopted by Johnson, was, as we have seen, at first applied in all
+the States which had seceded. A military governor was appointed in each
+State by the President by virtue of his authority as commander in chief.
+This official, aided by a civilian staff of his own choice and supported
+by the United States army and other Federal agencies, reorganized the
+state administration and after a few months turned the state and local
+governments over to regularly elected officials. Restoration should now
+have been completed, but Congress refused to admit the senators and
+representatives of these States, and entered upon a fifteen months'
+struggle with the President over details of the methods of the
+reconstruction. Meanwhile the Southern States, though unrepresented in
+Congress, continued their activities, with some interference from
+Federal authorities, until Congress in 1867 declared their governments
+non-existent.
+
+The work begun by Lincoln and Johnson deserved better success. The
+original plan restored to political rights only a small number of
+Unionists, the lukewarm Confederates, and the unimportant. But in spite
+of the threatening speeches of Johnson he used his power of pardon until
+none except the most prominent leaders were excluded. The personnel of
+the Johnson governments was fair. The officials were, in the main,
+former Douglas Democrats and Whigs, respectable and conservative, but
+not admired or loved by the people. The conventions and the legislatures
+were orderly and dignified and manifested a desire to accept the
+situation.
+
+There were no political parties at first, but material for several
+existed. If things had been allowed to take their course there would
+have arisen a normal cleavage between former Whigs and Democrats,
+between the up-country and the low country, between the slaveholders and
+the nonslaveholders. The average white man in these governments was
+willing to be fair to the negro but was not greatly concerned about his
+future. In the view of most white people it was the white man who was
+emancipated. The white districts had no desire to let the power return
+to the Black Belt by giving the negro the ballot, for the vote of the
+negroes, they believed, would be controlled by their former masters.
+
+Johnson's adoption of Lincoln's plan gave notice to all that the
+radicals had failed to control him. He and they had little in common;
+they wished to uproot a civilization, while he wished to punish
+individuals; they were not troubled by constitutional scruples, while he
+was the strictest of State Rights Democrats; they thought principally of
+the negro and his potentialities, while Johnson was thinking of the
+emancipated white man. It is possible that Lincoln might have succeeded,
+but for Johnson the task proved too great.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+The Wards of the Nation
+
+The negroes at the close of the war were not slaves or serfs, nor were
+they citizens. What was to be done with them and for them? The Southern
+answer to this question may be found in the so-called "Black Laws,"
+which were enacted by the state governments set up by President Johnson.
+The views of the dominant North may be discerned in part in the
+organization and administration of the Freedmen's Bureau. The two
+sections saw the same problem from different angles and their proposed
+solutions were of necessity opposed in principle and in practice.
+
+The South desired to fit the emancipated negro race into the new social
+order by frankly recognizing his inferiority to the whites. In some
+things racial separation was unavoidable. New legislation consequently
+must be enacted, because the slave codes were obsolete; because the old
+laws made for the small free negro class did not meet present
+conditions; and because the emancipated blacks could not be brought
+conveniently and at once under laws originally devised for a white
+population. The new laws must meet many needs; family life, morals, and
+conduct must be regulated; the former slave must be given a status in
+court in order that he might be protected in person and property; the
+old, the infirm, and the orphans must be cared for; the white race must
+be protected from lawless blacks and the blacks from unscrupulous and
+violent whites; the negro must have an opportunity for education; and
+the roving blacks must be forced to get homes, settle down, and go to
+work.
+
+Pending such legislation the affairs of the negro remained in control of
+the unpopular Freedmen's Bureau--a "system of espionage," as Judge
+Clayton of Alabama called it, and, according to Governor Humphreys of
+Mississippi, "a hideous curse" under which white men were persecuted and
+pillaged. Judge Memminger of South Carolina, in a letter to President
+Johnson, emphasized the fact that the whites of England and the United
+States gained civil and political rights through centuries of slow
+advancement and that they were far ahead of the people of European
+states. Consequently, it would be a mistake to give the freedmen a
+status equal to that of the most advanced whites. Rather, let the United
+States profit by the experience of the British in their emancipation
+policies and arrange a system of apprenticeship for a period of
+transition. When the negro should be fit, let him be advanced to
+citizenship.
+
+Most Southern leaders agreed that the removal of the master's protection
+was a real loss to the negro which must be made good to some extent by
+giving the negro a status in court and by accepting negro testimony in
+all cases in which blacks were concerned. The North Carolina committee
+on laws for freedmen agreed with objectors that "there are comparatively
+few of the slaves lately freed who are honest" and truthful, but
+maintained that the negroes were capable of improvement. The chief
+executives of Mississippi and Florida declared that there was no danger
+to the whites in admitting the more or less unreliable negro testimony,
+for the courts and juries would in every case arrive at a proper
+valuation of it. Governors Marvin of Florida and Humphreys of
+Mississippi advocated practical civil equality, while in North Carolina
+and several other States there was a disposition to admit negro
+testimony only in cases in which negroes were concerned. The North
+Carolina committee recommended the abolition of whipping as a punishment
+unfit for free people, and most States accepted this principle. Even in
+1865 the general disposition was to make uniform laws for both races,
+except in regard to violation of contracts, immoral conduct, vagrancy,
+marriage, schools, and forms of punishment. In some of these matters the
+whites were to be more strictly regulated; in others, the negroes.
+
+There was further general agreement that in economic relations both
+races must be protected, each from the other; but it is plain that the
+leaders believed that the negro had less at stake than the white. The
+negro was disposed to be indolent; he knew little of the obligations of
+contracts; he was not honest; and he would leave his job at will.
+Consequently Memminger recommended apprenticeship for all negroes;
+Governor Marvin suggested it for children alone; and others wished it
+provided for orphans only. Further, the laws enacted must force the
+negroes to settle down, to work, and to hold to contracts. Memminger
+showed that, without legislation to enforce contracts and to secure
+eviction of those who refused to work, the white planter in the South
+was wholly at the mercy of the negro. The plantations were scattered,
+the laborers' houses were already occupied, and there was no labor
+market to which a planter could go if the laborers deserted his fields.
+
+What would the negro become if these leaders of reconstruction were to
+have their way? Something better than a serf, something less than a
+citizen--a second degree citizen, perhaps, with legal rights about equal
+to those of white women and children. Governor Marvin hoped to make of
+the race a good agricultural peasantry; his successor was anxious that
+the blacks should be preferred to European immigrants; others agreed
+with Memminger that after training and education he might be advanced to
+full citizenship.
+
+These opinions are representative of those held by the men who,
+Memminger excepted, were placed in charge of affairs by President
+Johnson and who were not specially in sympathy with the negroes or with
+the planters but rather with the average white. All believed that
+emancipation was a mistake, but all agreed that "it is not the negro's
+fault" and gave no evidence of a disposition to perpetuate slavery under
+another name.
+
+The legislation finally framed showed in its discriminatory features the
+combined influence of the old laws for free negroes, the vagrancy laws
+of North and South for whites, the customs of slavery times, the British
+West Indies legislation for ex-slaves, and the regulations of the United
+States War and Treasury Departments and of the Freedmen's Bureau--all
+modified and elaborated by the Southern whites. In only two States,
+Mississippi and South Carolina, did the legislation bulk large in
+quantity; in other States discriminating laws were few; in still other
+States none were passed except those defining race and prohibiting
+intermarriage.
+
+In all of the state laws there were certain common characteristics,
+among which were the following: the descendant of a negro was to be
+classed as a negro through the third generation, ¹ even though one
+parent in each generation was white; intermarriage of the races was
+prohibited; existing slave marriages were declared valid and for the
+future marriage was generally made easier for the blacks than for the
+whites. In all States the negro was given his day in court, and in cases
+relating to negroes his testimony was accepted; in six States he might
+testify in any case. When provision was made for schooling, the rule of
+race separation was enforced. In Mississippi the "Jim Crow car," or
+separate car for negroes, was invented. In several States the negro had
+to have a license to carry weapons, to preach, or to engage in trade. In
+Mississippi, a negro could own land only in town; in other States he
+could purchase land only in the country. Why the difference, no one
+knows and probably few knew at the time. Some of the legislation was
+undoubtedly hasty and ill-considered.
+
+¹ Fourth in Tennessee.
+
+But the laws relating to apprenticeship, vagrancy, and enforced punitive
+employment turned out to be of greater practical importance. On these
+subjects the legislation of Mississippi and South Carolina was the most
+extreme. In Mississippi negro orphans were to be bound out, preferably
+to a former master, if "he or she shall be a suitable person." The
+master was given the usual control over apprentices and was bound by the
+usual duties, including that of teaching the apprentice. But the
+penalties for "enticing away" apprentices were severe. The South
+Carolina statute was not essentially different. The vagrancy laws of
+these two States were in the main the same for both races, but in
+Mississippi the definition of vagrancy was enlarged to include negroes
+not at work, those "found unlawfully assembling themselves together,"
+and "all white persons assembling themselves with freedmen." It is to be
+noted that nearly all punishment for petty offenses took the form of
+hiring out, preferably to the former master or employer. The principal
+petty offenses were, it would seem, vagrancy and "enticing away"
+laborers or apprentices. The South Carolina statute contains some other
+interesting provisions. A negro, man or woman, who had enjoyed the
+companionship of two or more spouses, must by April 1, 1866, select one
+of them as a permanent partner; a farm laborer must "rise at dawn," feed
+the animals, care for the property, be quiet and orderly, and "retire at
+reasonable hours"; on Sunday the servants must take turns in doing the
+necessary work, and they must be respectful and civil to the "master and
+his family, guests, and agents"; to engage in skilled labor the negro
+must obtain a license. Whipping and the pillory were permitted in
+Florida for certain offenses, and in South Carolina the master might
+"moderately correct" servants under eighteen years of age. Other
+punishments were generally the same for both races, except the hiring
+out for petty offenses.
+
+From the Southern point of view none of this legislation was regarded as
+a restriction of negro rights but as a wide extension to the negro of
+rights never before possessed, an adaptation of the white man's laws to
+his peculiar case. It is doubtful whether in some of the States the
+authorities believed that there were any discriminatory laws; they
+probably overlooked some of the free negro legislation already on the
+statute books. In Alabama, for example, General Wager Swayne, the head
+of the Freedmen's Bureau, reported that all such laws had either been
+dropped by the legislature or had been vetoed by the governor. Yet the
+statute books do show some discriminations. There is a marked difference
+between earlier and later legislation. The more stringent laws were
+enacted before the end of 1865. After New Year's Day had passed and the
+negroes had begun to settle down, the legislatures either passed mild
+laws or abandoned all special legislation for the negroes. Later in
+1866, several States repealed the legislation of 1865.
+
+In so far as the "Black Laws" discriminated against the negro they were
+never enforced but were suspended from the beginning by the army and the
+Freedmen's Bureau. They had, however, a very important effect upon that
+section of Northern opinion which was already suspicious of the good
+faith of the Southerners. They were part of a plan, some believed, to
+reënslave the negro or at least to create by law a class of serfs. This
+belief did much to bring about later radical legislation.
+
+If the "Black Laws" represented the reaction of the Southern
+legislatures to racial conditions, the Freedmen's Bureau was the
+corresponding result of the interest taken by the North in the welfare
+of the negro. It was established just as the war was closing and arose
+out of the various attempts to meet the negro problems that arose during
+the war. The Bureau had always a dual nature, due in part to its
+inheritance of regulations, precedents, and traditions from the various
+attempts made during war time to handle the many thousands of negroes
+who came under Federal control, and in part to the humanitarian impulses
+of 1865, born of a belief in the capacity of the negro for freedom and a
+suspicion that the Southern whites intended to keep as much of slavery
+as they could. The officials of the Bureau likewise were of two classes:
+those in control were for the most part army officers, standing as
+arbiters between white and black, usually just and seldom the victims of
+their sympathies; but the mass of less responsible officials were men of
+inferior ability and character, either blind partisans of the negro or
+corrupt and subject to purchase by the whites.
+
+In view of the fact that the Freedmen's Bureau was considered a new
+institution in 1865, it is rather remarkable how closely it followed in
+organization, purpose, and methods the precedents set during the war by
+the officers of the army and the Treasury. In Virginia, General Butler,
+in 1861, declared escaped slaves to be "contraband" and proceeded to
+organize them into communities for discipline, work, food, and care. His
+successors in Virginia and North Carolina, and others in the Sea Islands
+of Georgia and South Carolina, extended his plan and arranged a labor
+system with fixed wages, hours, and methods of work, and everywhere made
+use of the captured or abandoned property of the Confederates. In
+Tennessee and Arkansas, Chaplain John Eaton of Grant's army employed
+thousands in a modified free labor system; and further down in
+Mississippi and Louisiana Generals Grant, Butler, and Banks also put
+large numbers of captured slaves to work for themselves and for the
+Government. Everywhere, as the numbers of negroes increased, the army
+commanders divided the occupied negro regions into districts under
+superintendents and other officials, framed labor laws, coöperated with
+benevolent societies which gave schooling and medical care to the
+blacks, and developed systems of government for them.
+
+The United States Treasury Department, attempting to execute the
+confiscation laws for the benefit of the Treasury, appears now and then
+as an employer of negro labor on abandoned plantations. Either alone or
+in coöperation with the army and charitable associations, it even
+supervised negro colonies, and sometimes it assumed practically complete
+control of the economic welfare of the negro. This Department introduced
+in 1864 an elaborate lessee and trade system. The negro was regarded as
+"the ward of the nation," but he was told impressively that "labor is a
+public duty and idleness and vagrancy a crime." All wanted him to work:
+the Treasury wanted cotton and other crops to sell; the lessees and
+speculators wanted to make fortunes by his labor; and the army wanted to
+be free from the burden of the idle blacks. In spite of all these
+ministrations the negroes suffered much from harsh treatment, neglect,
+and unsanitary conditions.
+
+During 1863 and 1864 several influences were urging the establishment of
+a national bureau or department to take charge of matters relating to
+the African race. Some wished to establish on the borders of the South a
+paid labor system, which might later be extended over the entire region,
+to get more slaves out of the Confederacy into this free labor
+territory, and to prevent immigration of negroes into the North, which,
+after the Emancipation Proclamation, was apprehensive of this danger.
+Others wished to relieve the army and the treasury officials of the
+burden of caring for the blacks and to protect the latter from the
+"northern harpies and bloodhounds" who had fastened upon them the lessee
+system.
+
+The discussion lasted for two years. The Freedmen's Inquiry Commission,
+after a survey of the field in 1863, recommended a consolidation of all
+efforts under an organization which should perpetuate the best features
+of the old system. But there was much opposition to this plan in
+Congress. The negroes would be exploited, objected some; the scheme gave
+too much power to the proposed organization, said others; another
+objection was urged against the employment of a horde of incompetent and
+unscrupulous officeholders, for "the men who go down there and become
+your overseers and negro drivers will be your brokendown politicians and
+your dilapidated preachers, that description of men who are too lazy to
+work and just a little too honest to steal."
+
+As the war drew to a close the advocates of a policy of consolidation in
+negro affairs prevailed, and on March 3, 1865, an act was approved
+creating in the War Department a Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and
+Abandoned Lands. This Bureau was to continue for one year after the
+close of the war and it was to control all matters relating to freedmen
+and refugees, that is, Unionists who had been driven out of the South.
+Food, shelter, and clothing were to be given to the needy, and abandoned
+or confiscated property was to be used for or leased to freedmen. At the
+head of the Bureau was to be a commissioner with an assistant
+commissioner for each of the Southern States. These officials and other
+employees must take the "ironclad" oath.
+
+It was planned that the Bureau should have a brief existence, but the
+institution and its wards became such important factors in politics that
+on July 16, 1866, after a struggle with the President, Congress passed
+an act over his veto amplifying the powers of the Bureau and extending
+it for two years longer. This continuation of the Bureau was due to many
+things: to a belief that former slaveholders were not to be trusted in
+dealing with the negroes; to the baneful effect of the "Black Laws" upon
+Northern public opinion; to the struggle between the President and
+Congress over reconstruction; and to the foresight of radical
+politicians who saw in the institution an instrument for the political
+instruction of the blacks in the proper doctrines.
+
+The new law was supplementary to the Act of 1865, but its additional
+provisions merely endorsed what the Bureau was already doing. It
+authorized the issue of medical supplies, confirmed certain sales of
+land to negroes, and provided that the promises which Sherman made in
+1865 to the Sea Island negroes should be carried out as far as possible
+and that no lands occupied by blacks should be restored to the owners
+until the crops of 1866 were gathered; it directed the Bureau to
+coöperate with private charitable and benevolent associations, and it
+authorized the use or sale for school purposes of all confiscated
+property; and finally it ordered that the civil equality of the negro be
+upheld by the Bureau and its courts when state courts refused to accept
+the principle. By later laws the existence of the Bureau was extended to
+January 1, 1869, in the unreconstructed States, but its educational and
+financial activities were continued until June 20, 1872.
+
+The chief objections to the Bureau from the conservative Northern point
+of view were summed up in the President's veto messages. The laws
+creating it were based, he asserted, on the theory that a state of war
+still existed; there was too great a concentration of power in the hands
+of a few individuals who could not be held responsible; with such a
+large number of agents ignorant of the country and often working for
+their own advantage injustice would inevitably result; in spite of the
+fact that the negro everywhere had a status in court, arbitrary
+tribunals were established, without jury, without regular procedure or
+rules of evidence, and without appeal; the provisions in regard to
+abandoned lands amounted to confiscation without a hearing; the negro,
+who must in the end work out his own salvation, and who was protected by
+the demand for his labor, would be deluded into thinking his future
+secure without further effort on his part; although nominally under the
+War Department, the Bureau was not subject to military control; it was
+practically a great political machine; and, finally, the States most
+concerned were not represented in Congress.
+
+The Bureau was soon organized in all the former slaveholding States
+except Delaware, with general headquarters in Washington and state
+headquarters at the various capitals. General O. O. Howard, who was
+appointed commissioner, was a good officer, soft-hearted, honest, pious,
+and frequently referred to as "the Christian soldier." He was
+fair-minded and not disposed to irritate the Southern whites
+unnecessarily, but he was rather suspicious of their intentions toward
+the negroes, and he was a believer in the righteousness of the
+Freedmen's Bureau. He was not a good business man; and he was not beyond
+the reach of politicians. At one time he was seriously disturbed in his
+duties by the buzzing of the presidential bee in his bonnet. The members
+of his staff were not of his moral stature, and several of them were
+connected with commercial and political enterprises which left their
+motives open to criticism.
+
+The assistant commissioners were, as a rule, general officers of the
+army, though a few were colonels and chaplains. ¹ Nearly half of them
+had during the war been associated with the various attempts to handle
+the negro problem, and it was these men who shaped the organization of
+the Bureau. While few of them were immediately acceptable to the
+Southern whites, only ten of them proved seriously objectionable on
+account of personality, character, or politics. Among the most able
+should be mentioned Generals Schofield, Swayne, Fullerton, Steedman, and
+Fessenden, and Colonel John Eaton. The President had little or no
+control over the appointment or discipline of the officials and agents
+of the Bureau, except possibly by calling some of the higher army
+officers back to military service.
+
+¹ They numbered eleven at first and fourteen after July, 1866, and were
+changed so often that fifty, in all, served in this rank before January
+1, 1869, when the Bureau was practically discontinued.
+
+As a result of General Grant's severe criticism of the arrangement which
+removed the Bureau from control by the military establishment, the
+military commander was in a few instances also appointed assistant
+commissioner. Each assistant commissioner was aided by a headquarters
+staff and had under his jurisdiction in each State various district,
+county, and local agents, with a special corps of school officials, who
+were usually teachers and missionaries belonging to religious and
+charitable societies. The local agents were recruited from the members
+of the Veteran Reserve Corps, the subordinate officers and
+non-commissioned officers of the army, mustered-out soldiers, officers
+of negro troops, preachers, teachers, and Northern civilians who had
+come South. As a class these agents were not competent persons to guide
+the blacks in the ways of liberty or to arbitrate differences between
+the races. There were many exceptions, but the Southern view as
+expressed by General Wade Hampton had only too much foundation: "There
+may be," he said, "an honest man connected with the Bureau." John Minor
+Botts, a Virginian who had remained loyal to the Union, asserted that
+many of the agents were good men who did good work but that trouble
+resulted from the ignorance and fanaticism of others. The minority
+members of the Ku Klux Committee condemned the agents as being
+"generally of a class of fanatics without character or responsibility."
+
+The chief activities of the Bureau included the following five branches:
+relief work for both races; the regulation of negro labor; the
+administration of justice in cases concerning negroes; the management of
+abandoned and confiscated property; and the support of schools for the
+negroes.
+
+The relief work which was carried on for more than four years consisted
+of caring for sick negroes who were within reach of the hospitals,
+furnishing food and sometimes clothing and shelter to destitute blacks
+and whites, and transporting refugees of both races back to their homes.
+Nearly a hundred hospitals and clinics were established, and half a
+million patients were treated. This work was greatly needed, especially
+for the old and the infirm, and it was well done. The transportation of
+refugees did not reach large proportions, and after 1866 it was
+entangled in politics. But the issue of supplies in huge quantities
+brought much needed relief though at the same time a certain amount of
+demoralization. The Bureau claimed little credit, and is usually given
+none, for keeping alive during the fall and winter of 1865-1866
+thousands of destitute whites. Yet more than a third of the food issued
+was to whites, and without it many would have starved. Numerous
+Confederate soldiers on the way home after the surrender were fed by the
+Bureau, and in the destitute white districts a great deal of suffering
+was relieved and prevented by its operations. The negroes, dwelling for
+the most part in regions where labor was in demand, needed relief for a
+shorter time, but they were attracted in numbers to the towns by free
+food, and it was difficult to get them back to work. The political value
+of the free food issues was not generally recognized until later in 1866
+and in 1867.
+
+During the first year of the Bureau an important duty of the agents was
+the supervision of negro labor and the fixing of wages. Both officials
+and planters generally demanded that contracts be written, approved, and
+filed in the office of the Bureau. They thought that the negroes would
+work better if they were thus bound by contracts. The agents usually
+required that the agreements between employer and laborer cover such
+points as the nature of the work, the hours, food and clothes, medical
+attendance, shelter, and wages. To make wages secure, the laborer was
+given a lien on the crop; to secure the planter from loss, unpaid wages
+might be forfeited if the laborer failed to keep his part of the
+contract. When it dawned upon the Bureau authorities that other systems
+of labor had been or might be developed in the South, they permitted
+arrangements for the various forms of cash and share renting. But it was
+everywhere forbidden to place the negroes under "overseers" or to
+subject them to "unwilling apprenticeship" and "compulsory working out
+of debts."
+
+The written contract system for laborers did not work out successfully.
+The negroes at first were expecting quite other fruits of freedom. One
+Mississippi negro voiced what was doubtless the opinion of many when he
+declared that he "considered no man free who had to work for a living."
+Few negroes would contract for more than three months and none for a
+period beyond January 1, 1866, when they expected a division of lands
+among the ex-slaves. In spite of the regulations, most worked on oral
+agreements. In 1866 nearly all employers threw overboard the written
+contract system for labor and permitted oral agreements. Some States had
+passed stringent laws for the enforcing of contracts, but in Alabama,
+Governor Patton vetoed such legislation on the ground that it was not
+needed. General Swayne, the Bureau chief for the State, endorsed the
+Governor's action and stated that the negro was protected by his freedom
+to leave when mistreated, and the planter, by the need on the part of
+the negro for food and shelter. Negroes, he said, were afraid of
+contracts and, besides, contracts led to litigation.
+
+In order to safeguard the civil rights of the negroes the Bureau was
+given authority to establish courts of its own and to supervise the
+action of state courts in cases to which freedmen were parties. The
+majority of the assistant commissioners made no attempt to let the state
+courts handle negro cases but were accustomed to bring all such cases
+before the Bureau or the provost courts of the army. In Alabama, quite
+early, and later in North Carolina, Mississippi, and Georgia, the wiser
+assistant commissioners arranged for the state courts to handle
+freedmen's cases with the understanding that discriminating laws were to
+be suspended. General Swayne in so doing declared that he was "unwilling
+to establish throughout Alabama courts conducted by persons foreign to
+her citizenship and strangers to her laws." The Bureau courts were
+informal affairs, consisting usually of one or two administrative
+officers. There were no jury, no appeal beyond the assistant
+commissioner, no rules of procedure, and no accepted body of law. In
+state courts accepted by the Bureau the proceedings in negro cases were
+conducted in the same manner as for the whites.
+
+The educational work of the Bureau was at first confined to coöperation
+with such Northern religious and benevolent societies as were organizing
+schools and churches for the negroes. After the first year the Bureau
+extended financial aid and undertook a system of supervision over negro
+schools. The teachers employed were Northern whites and negroes in about
+equal numbers. Confiscated Confederate property was devoted to negro
+education, and in several States the assistant commissioners collected
+fees and percentages of the negroes' wages for the benefit of the
+schools. In addition the Bureau expended about six million dollars.
+
+The intense dislike which the Southern whites manifested for the
+Freedmen's Bureau was due in general to their resentment of outside
+control of domestic affairs and in particular to unavoidable
+difficulties inherent in the situation. Among the concrete causes of
+Southern hostility was the attitude of some of the higher officials and
+many of the lower ones toward the white people. They assumed that the
+whites were unwilling to accord fair treatment to the blacks in the
+matter of wages, schools, and justice. An official in Louisiana declared
+that the whites would exterminate the negroes if the Bureau were
+removed. A few months later General Fullerton in the same State reported
+that trouble was caused by those agents who noisily demanded special
+privileges for the negro but who objected to any penalties for his
+lawlessness and made of the negroes a pampered class. General Tillson in
+Georgia predicted the extinction of the "old time Southerner with his
+hate, cruelty, and malice." General Fisk declared that "there are some
+of the meanest, unsubjugated and unreconstructed rascally revolutionists
+in Kentucky that curse the soil of the country ... a more select number
+of vindictive, pro-slavery, rebellious legislators cannot be found than
+a majority of the Kentucky legislature." There was a disposition to
+lecture the whites about their sins in regard to slavery and to point
+out to them how far in their general ignorance and backwardness they
+fell short of enlightened people.
+
+The Bureau courts were frequently conducted in an "illegal and
+oppressive manner," with "decided partiality for the colored people,
+without regard to justice." For this reason they were suspended for a
+time in Louisiana and Georgia by General Steedman and General Fullerton,
+and cases were then sent before military courts. Men of the highest
+character were dragged before the Bureau tribunals upon frivolous
+complaints, were lectured, abused, ridiculed, and arbitrarily fined or
+otherwise punished. The jurisdiction of the Bureau courts weakened the
+civil courts and their frequent interference in trivial matters was not
+conducive to a return to normal conditions.
+
+The inferior agents, not sufficiently under the control of their
+superiors, were responsible for a great deal of this bad feeling. Many
+of them held radical opinions as to the relations of the races, and
+inculcated these views in their courts, in the schools, and in the new
+negro churches. Some were charged with even causing strikes and other
+difficulties in order to be bought off by the whites. The tendency of
+their work was to create in the negroes a pervasive distrust of the
+whites.
+
+The prevalent delusion in regard to an impending division of the lands
+among the blacks had its origin in the operation of the war-time
+confiscation laws, in some of the Bureau legislation, and in General
+Sherman's Sea Island order, but it was further fostered by the agents
+until most blacks firmly believed that each head of a family was to get
+"40 acres and a mule." This belief seriously interfered with industry
+and resulted also in widespread swindling by rascals who for years made
+a practice of selling fraudulent deeds to land with red, white, and blue
+sticks to mark off the bounds of a chosen spot on the former master's
+plantation. The assistant commissioners labored hard to disabuse the
+minds of the negroes, but their efforts were often neutralized by the
+unscrupulous attitude of the agents.
+
+As the contest over reconstruction developed in Washington, the
+officials of the Bureau soon recognized the political possibilities of
+their institution. After mid-year of 1866, the Bureau became a political
+machine for the purpose of organizing the blacks into the Union League,
+where the rank and file were taught that reënslavement would follow
+Democratic victories. Nearly all of the Bureau agents aided in the
+administration of the reconstruction acts in 1867 and in the
+organization of the new state and local governments and became officials
+under the new régime. They were the chief agents in capturing the solid
+negro vote for the Republican party.
+
+Neither of the two plans for guiding the freedmen into a place in the
+social order--the "Black Laws" and the Freedmen's Bureau--was
+successful. The former contained a program which was better suited to
+actual conditions and which might have succeeded if it had been given a
+fair trial. These laws were a measure of the extent to which the average
+white would then go in "accepting the situation" so far as the blacks
+were concerned. And on the whole the recognition of negro rights made in
+these laws, and made at a time when the whites believed that they were
+free to handle the situation, was remarkably fair. The negroes lately
+released from slavery were admitted to the enjoyment of the same rights
+as the whites as to legal protection of life, liberty, and property, as
+to education and as to the family relation, limited only by the clear
+recognition of the principles of political inferiority and social
+separation. Unhappily this legislation was not put to the test of
+practical experience because of the Freedmen's Bureau; it was
+nevertheless skillfully used to arouse the dominant Northern party to a
+course of action which made impossible any further effort to treat the
+race problem with due consideration to actual local conditions.
+
+Much of the work of the Freedmen's Bureau was of only temporary benefit
+to both races. The results of its more permanent work were not generally
+good. The institution was based upon the assumption that the negro race
+must be protected from the white race. In its organization and
+administration it was an impossible combination of the practical and the
+theoretical, of opportunism and humanitarianism, of common sense and
+idealism. It failed to exert a permanently wholesome influence because
+its lesser agents were not held to strict accountability by their
+superiors. Under these agents the alienation of the two races began, and
+the ill feelings then aroused were destined to persist into a long and
+troubled future.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+The Victory of the Radicals
+
+The soldiers who fought through the war to victory or to defeat had been
+at home nearly two years before the radicals developed sufficient
+strength to carry through their plans for a revolutionary reconstruction
+of the Southern States. At the end of the war a majority of the Northern
+people would have supported a settlement in accordance with Lincoln's
+policy. Eight months later a majority, but a smaller one, would have
+supported Johnson's work had it been possible to secure a popular
+decision on it. How then did the radicals gain the victory over the
+conservatives? The answer to this question is given by James Ford Rhodes
+in terms of personalities: "Three men are responsible for the
+Congressional policy of Reconstruction: Andrew Johnson, by his obstinacy
+and bad behavior; Thaddeus Stevens, by his vindictiveness and
+parliamentary tyranny; Charles Sumner, by his pertinacity in a misguided
+humanitarianism." The President stood alone in his responsibility, but
+his chief opponents were the ablest leaders of a resolute band of
+radicals.
+
+Radicalism did not begin in the Administration of Andrew Johnson.
+Lincoln had felt its covert opposition throughout the war, but he
+possessed the faculty of weakening his opponents, while Johnson's
+conduct usually multiplied the number and the strength of his enemies.
+At first the radicals criticized Lincoln's policy in regard to slavery,
+and after the Emancipation Proclamation they shifted their attack to his
+"ten per cent" plan for organizing the state governments as outlined in
+the Proclamation of December, 1863. Lincoln's course was distasteful to
+them because he did not admit the right of Congress to dictate terms,
+because of his liberal attitude towards former Confederates, and because
+he was conservative on the negro question. A schism among the Republican
+supporters of the war was with difficulty averted in 1864, when Frémont
+threatened to lead the radicals in opposition to the "Union" party of
+the President and his conservative policy.
+
+The breach was widened by the refusal of Congress to admit
+representatives from Arkansas and Louisiana in 1864 and to count the
+electoral vote of Louisiana and Tennessee in 1865. The passage of the
+Wade-Davis reconstruction bill in July, 1864, and the protests of its
+authors after Lincoln's pocket veto called attention to the growing
+opposition. Severe criticism caused Lincoln to withdraw the propositions
+which he had made in April, 1865, with regard to the restoration of
+Virginia. In his last public speech he referred with regret to the
+growing spirit of vindictiveness toward the South. Much of the
+opposition to Lincoln's Southern policy was based not on radicalism,
+that is, not on any desire for a revolutionary change in the South, but
+upon a belief that Congress and not the Executive should be entrusted
+with the work of reorganizing the Union. Many congressional leaders were
+willing to have Congress itself carry through the very policies which
+Lincoln had advocated; and a majority of the Northern people would have
+endorsed them without much caring who was to execute them.
+
+The murder of Lincoln, the failure of the radicals to shape Johnson's
+policy as they had hoped, and the continuing reaction against the
+excessive expansion of the executive power added strength to the
+opposition. But it was a long fight before the radical leaders won.
+Their victory was due to adroit tactics on their own part and to
+mistakes, bad judgment, and bad manners on the part of the President.
+When all hope of controlling Johnson had been given up, Thaddeus Stevens
+and other leaders of similar views began to contrive means to circumvent
+him. On December 1, 1865, before Congress met, a caucus of radicals held
+in Washington agreed that a joint committee of the two Houses should be
+selected to which should be referred matters relating to reconstruction.
+This plan would thwart the more conservative Senate and gain a desirable
+delay in which the radicals might develop their campaign. The next day
+at a caucus of the Union party the plan went through without arousing
+the suspicion of the supporters of the Administration. Next, through the
+influence of Stevens, Edward McPherson, the clerk of the House, omitted
+from the roll call of the House the names of the members from the South.
+The radical program was then adopted and a week later the Senate
+concurred in the action of the House as to the appointment of a Joint
+Committee on Reconstruction.
+
+On the issues before Congress both Houses were split into rather clearly
+defined factions: the extreme radicals with such leaders as Stevens,
+Sumner, Wade, and Boutwell; the moderate Republicans, chief among whom
+were Fessenden and Trumbull; the administration Republicans led by
+Raymond, Doolittle, Cowan, and Dixon; and the Democrats, of whom the
+ablest were Reverdy Johnson, Guthrie, and Hendricks. All except the
+extreme radicals were willing to support the President or to come to
+some fairly reasonable compromise. But at no time were they given an
+opportunity to get together. Johnson and the administration leaders did
+little in this direction and the radicals made the most skillful use of
+the divisions among the conservatives.
+
+Whatever final judgment may be passed upon the radical reconstruction
+policy and its results, there can be no doubt of the political dexterity
+of those who carried it through. Chief among them was Thaddeus Stevens,
+vindictive and unscrupulous, filled with hatred of the Southern leaders,
+bitter in speech and possessing to an extreme degree the faculty of
+making ridiculous those who opposed him. He advocated confiscation, the
+proscription or exile of leading whites, the granting of the franchise
+and of lands to the negroes, and in Southern States the establishment of
+territorial governments under the control of Congress. These States
+should, he said, "never be recognized as capable of acting in the Union
+... until the Constitution shall have been so amended as to make it what
+the makers intended, and so as to secure perpetual ascendancy to the
+party of the Union."
+
+Charles Sumner, the leader of the radicals in the Senate, was moved less
+than Stevens by personal hostility toward the whites of the South, but
+his sympathy was reserved entirely for the blacks. He was unpractical,
+theoretical, and not troubled by constitutional scruples. To him the
+Declaration of Independence was the supreme law and it was the duty of
+Congress to express its principles in appropriate legislation. Unlike
+Stevens, who had a genuine liking for the negro, Sumner's sympathy for
+the race was purely intellectual; for the individual negro he felt
+repulsion. His views were in effect not different from those of Stevens.
+And he was practical enough not to overlook the value of the negro vote.
+"To my mind," he said, "nothing is clearer than the absolute necessity
+of suffrage for all colored persons in the disorganized States. It will
+not be enough if you give it to those who read and write; you will not,
+in this way, acquire the voting force which you need there for the
+protection of unionists, whether white or black. You will not secure the
+new allies who are essential to the national cause." A leader of the
+second rank was his colleague Henry Wilson, who was also actuated by a
+desire for the negro's welfare and for the perpetuation of the
+Republican party, which he said contained in its ranks "more of moral
+and intellectual worth than was ever embodied in any political
+organization in any land ... created by no man or set of men but brought
+into being by Almighty God himself ... and endowed by the Creator with
+all political power and every office under Heaven." Shellabarger of Ohio
+was another important figure among the radicals. The following extract
+from one of his speeches gives an indication of his character and
+temperament: "They [the Confederates] framed iniquity and universal
+murder into law.... Their pirates burned your unarmed commerce upon
+every sea. They carved the bones of the dead heroes into ornaments, and
+drank from goblets made out of their skulls. They poisoned your
+fountains, put mines under your soldiers' prisons; organized bands whose
+leaders were concealed in your homes; and commissions ordered the torch
+and yellow fever to be carried to your cities and to your women and
+children. They planned one universal bonfire of the North from Lake
+Ontario to the Missouri."
+
+Among the lesser lights may be mentioned Morton and Wade, both bluff,
+coarse, and ungenerous, and thoroughly convinced that the Republican
+party had a monopoly of loyalty, wisdom, and virtues, and that by any
+means it must gain and keep control; Boutwell, fanatical and mediocre;
+and Benjamin Butler, a charlatan and demagogue. As a class the Western
+radicals were less troubled by humanitarian ideals than were those of
+the East and sought more practical political results.
+
+The Joint Committee on Reconstruction which finally decided the fate of
+the Southern States was composed of eight radicals, four moderate
+Republicans, and three Democrats. As James Gillespie Blaine wrote later,
+"it was foreseen that in an especial degree the fortunes of the
+Republican party would be in the keeping of the fifteen men who might be
+chosen." This committee was divided into four subcommittees to take
+testimony. The witnesses, all of whom were examined at Washington,
+included army officers and Bureau agents who had served in the South,
+Southern Unionists, a few politicians, and several former Confederates,
+among them General Robert E. Lee and Alexander H. Stephens. Most of the
+testimony was of the kind needed to support the contentions of the
+radicals that negroes were badly treated in the South; that the whites
+were disloyal; that, should they be left in control, the negro, free
+labor, the nation, and the Republican party would be in danger; that the
+army and the Freedmen's Bureau must be kept in the South; and that a
+radical reconstruction was necessary. No serious effort, however, was
+made to ascertain the actual conditions in the South. Slow to formulate
+a definite plan, the Joint Committee guided public sentiment toward
+radicalism, converted gradually the Republican Congressmen, and little
+by little undermined the power and influence of the President.
+
+Not until after the new year was it plain that there was to be a fight
+to the finish between Congress and the President. Congress had refused
+in December, 1865, to accept the President's program, but there was
+still hope for a compromise. Many conservatives had voted for the delay
+merely to assert the rights of Congress; but the radicals wanted time to
+frame a program. The Northern Democrats were embarrassingly cordial in
+their support of Johnson and so also were most Southerners. The
+moderates were not far away from the position of the President and the
+administration Republicans. But the radicals skillfully postponed a test
+of strength until Stevens and Sumner were ready. The latter declared
+that a generation must elapse "before the rebel communities have so far
+been changed as to become safe associates in a common government. Time,
+therefore, we must have. Through time all other guarantees may be
+obtained; but time itself is a guarantee."
+
+To the Joint Committee were referred without debate all measures
+relating to reconstruction, but the Committee was purposely making
+little progress--contented merely to take testimony and to act as a
+clearing house for the radical "facts" about "Southern outrages" while
+waiting for the tide to turn. The "Black Laws" and the election of
+popular Confederate leaders to office in the South were effectively used
+to alarm the friends of the negroes, and the reports from the Bureau
+agents gave support to those who condemned the Southern state
+governments as totally inadequate and disloyal.
+
+So apparent was the growth of radicalism that the President, alarmed by
+the attitude of Sumner and Stevens and their followers, began to fear
+for the Constitution and forced the fight. The passage of a bill on
+February 6, 1866, extending the life of the Freedmen's Bureau furnished
+the occasion for the beginning of the open struggle. On the 19th of
+February Johnson vetoed the bill, and the next day an effort was made to
+pass it over the veto. Not succeeding in this attempt, the House of
+Representatives adopted a concurrent resolution that Senators and
+Representatives from the Southern States should be excluded until
+Congress declared them entitled to representation. Ten days later the
+Senate also adopted the resolution.
+
+Though it was not yet too late for Johnson to meet the conservatives of
+Congress on middle ground, he threw away his opportunity by an
+intemperate and undignified speech on the 22d of February to a crowd at
+the White House. As usual when excited, he forgot the proprieties and
+denounced the radicals as enemies of the Union and even went so far as
+to charge Stevens, Sumner, and Wendell Phillips with endeavoring to
+destroy the fundamental principles of the government. Such conduct
+weakened his supporters and rejoiced his enemies. It was expected that
+Johnson would approve the bill to confer civil rights upon the negroes,
+but, goaded perhaps by the speeches of Stevens, he vetoed it on the 27th
+of March. Its patience now exhausted, Congress passed the bill over the
+President's veto. To secure the requisite majority in the Senate,
+Stockton, Democratic Senator from New Jersey, was unseated on technical
+grounds, and Senator Morgan, who was "paired" with a sick colleague,
+broke his word to vote aye--for which Wade offensively thanked God. The
+moderates had now fallen away from the President and at least for this
+session of Congress his policies were wrecked. On the 16th of July the
+supplementary Freedmen's Bureau Act was passed over the veto, and on the
+24th of July Tennessee was readmitted to representation by a law the
+preamble of which asserted unmistakably that Congress had assumed
+control of reconstruction.
+
+Meanwhile the Joint Committee on Reconstruction had made a report
+asserting that the Southerners had forfeited all constitutional rights,
+that their state governments were not in constitutional form, and that
+restoration could be accomplished only when Congress and the President
+acted together in fixing the terms of readmission. The uncompromising
+hostility of the South, the Committee asserted, made necessary adequate
+safeguards which should include the disfranchisement of the white
+leaders, either negro suffrage or a reduction of white representation,
+and repudiation of the Confederate war debt with recognition of the
+validity of the United States debt. These terms were embodied in the
+Fourteenth Amendment, which was adopted by Congress and sent to the
+States on June 13, 1866.
+
+In the congressional campaign of 1866 reconstruction was almost the sole
+issue. For success the Administration must gain at least one-third of
+one house, while the radicals were fighting for two-thirds of each
+House. If the Administration should fail to make the necessary gain, the
+work accomplished by the Presidents would be destroyed. The campaign was
+bitter and extended through the summer and fall. Four national
+conventions were held: the National Union party at Philadelphia made a
+respectable showing in support of the President; the Southern Unionists,
+guided by the Northern radicals met at the same place; a soldiers' and
+sailors' convention at Cleveland supported the Administration; and
+another convention of soldiers and sailors at Pittsburgh endorsed the
+radical policies. A convention of Confederate soldiers and sailors at
+Memphis endorsed the President, but the Southern support and that of the
+Northern Democrats did not encourage moderate Republicans to vote for
+the Administration. Three members of Johnson's Cabinet--Harlan, Speed,
+and Dennison--resigned because they were unwilling to follow their chief
+further in opposing Congress.
+
+The radicals had plenty of campaign material in the testimony collected
+by the Joint Committee, in the reports of the Freedmen's Bureau, and in
+the bloody race riots which had occurred in Memphis and New Orleans. The
+greatest blunder of the Administration was Johnson's speechmaking tour
+to the West which he called "Swinging Around the Circle." Every time he
+made a speech he was heckled by persons in the crowd, lost his temper,
+denounced Congress and the radical leaders, and conducted himself in an
+undignified manner. The election returns showed more than a two-thirds
+majority in each House against the President. The Fortieth Congress
+would therefore be safely radical, and in consequence the Thirty-ninth
+was encouraged to be more radical during its last session.
+
+Public interest now for a time turned to the South, where the Fourteenth
+Amendment was before the state legislatures. The radicals, taunted with
+having no plan of reconstruction beyond a desire to keep the Southern
+States out of the Union, professed to see in the ratification of the
+Fourteenth Amendment a good opportunity to readmit the States on a safe
+basis. The elections of 1866 had pointed to the ratification of the
+proposed amendment as an essential preliminary to readmission. But would
+additional demands be made upon the South? Sumner, Stevens, and
+Fessenden were sure that negro suffrage also must come, but Wade, Chase,
+Garfield, and others believed that nothing beyond the terms of the
+Fourteenth Amendment would be asked.
+
+In the Southern legislatures there was little disposition to ratify the
+amendment. The rapid development of the radical policies during 1866 had
+convinced most Southerners that nothing short of a general humiliation
+and complete revolution in the South would satisfy the dominant party,
+and there were few who wished to be "parties to our own dishonor." The
+President advised the States not to accept the amendment, but several
+Southern leaders favored it, fearing that worse would come if they
+should reject it. Only in the legislatures of Alabama and Florida was
+there any serious disposition to accept the amendment; and in the end
+all the unreconstructed States voted adversely during the fall and
+winter of 1866-67. This unanimity of action was due in part to the
+belief that, even if the amendment were ratified, the Southern States
+would still be excluded, and in part to the general dislike of the
+proscriptive section which would disfranchise all Confederates of
+prominence and result in the breaking up of the state governments. The
+example of unhappy Tennessee, which had ratified the Fourteenth
+Amendment and had been readmitted, was not one to encourage conservative
+people in the other Southern States.
+
+The rejection of the amendment put the question of reconstruction
+squarely before Congress. There was no longer a possibility of
+accomplishing the reconstruction of the Southern States by means of
+constitutional amendments. Some of the Border and Northern States were
+already showing signs of uneasiness at the continued exclusion of the
+South. But if the Constitutional Amendment had failed, other means of
+reconstruction were at hand, for the radicals now controlled the
+Thirty-ninth Congress, from which the Southern representatives were
+excluded, and would also control the Fortieth Congress.
+
+Under the lead of Stevens and Sumner the radicals now perfected their
+plans. On January 8, 1867, their first measure, conferring the franchise
+upon negroes in the District of Columbia, was passed over the
+presidential veto, though the proposal had been voted down a few weeks
+earlier by a vote of 6525 to 35 in Washington and 812 to 1 in
+Georgetown. In the next place, by an act of January 31, 1867, the
+franchise was extended to negroes in the territories, and on March 2,
+1867, three important measures were enacted: the Tenure of Office Act
+and a rider to the Army Appropriation Act--both designed to limit the
+power of the President--and the first Reconstruction Act. By the Tenure
+of Office Act the President was prohibited from removing officeholders
+except with the consent of the Senate; and by the Army Act he was
+forbidden to issue orders except through General Grant or to relieve him
+of command or to assign him to command away from Washington unless at
+the General's own request or with the previous approval of the Senate.
+The first measure was meant to check the removal of radical
+officeholders by Johnson, and the other, which was secretly drawn up for
+Boutwell by Stanton, was designed to prevent the President from
+exercising his constitutional command of the army.
+
+The first Reconstruction Act declared that no legal state government
+existed in the ten unreconstructed States and that there was no adequate
+protection for life and property. The Johnson and Lincoln governments in
+those States were declared to have no legal status and to be subject
+wholly to the authority of the United States to modify or abolish. The
+ten States were divided into five military districts, over each of which
+a general officer was to be placed in command. Military tribunals were
+to supersede the civil courts where necessary. Stevens was willing to
+rest here, though some of his less radical followers, disliking military
+rule but desiring to force negro suffrage, inserted a provision in the
+law that a State might be readmitted to representation upon the
+following conditions: a constitutional convention must be held, the
+members of which were elected by males of voting age without regard to
+color, excluding whites who would be disfranchised by the proposed
+Fourteenth Amendment; a constitution including the same rule of suffrage
+must be framed, ratified by the same electorate, and approved by
+Congress; and lastly, the legislatures elected under this constitution
+must ratify the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, after which, if the
+Fourteenth Amendment should have become a part of the Federal
+Constitution, the State should be readmitted to representation.
+
+In order that the administration of this radical legislation might be
+supervised by its friends, the Thirty-ninth Congress had passed a law
+requiring the Fortieth Congress to meet on the 4th of March instead of
+in December as was customary. According to the Reconstruction Act of the
+2nd of March it was left to the state government or to the people of a
+State to make the first move towards reconstruction. If they preferred,
+they might remain under military rule. Either by design or by
+carelessness no machinery of administration was provided for the
+execution of the act. When it became evident that the Southerners
+preferred military rule the new Congress passed a Supplementary
+Reconstruction Act on the 23d of March designed to force the earlier act
+into operation. The five commanding generals were directed to register
+the blacks of voting age and the whites who were not disfranchised, to
+hold elections for conventions, to call the conventions, to hold
+elections to ratify or reject the constitutions, and to forward the
+constitutions, if ratified, to the President for transmission to
+Congress.
+
+In these reconstruction acts the whole doctrine of radicalism was put on
+the way to accomplishment. Its spread had been rapid. In December, 1865,
+the majority of Congress would have accepted with little modification
+the work of Lincoln and Johnson. Three months later the Civil Rights Act
+measured the advance. Very soon the new Freedmen's Bureau Act and the
+Fourteenth Amendment indicated the rising tide of radicalism. The
+campaign of 1866 and the attitude of the Southern States swept all
+radicals and most moderate Republicans swiftly into a merciless course
+of reconstruction. Moderate reconstruction had nowhere strong support.
+Congress, touched in its amour propre by presidential disregard, was
+eager for extremes. Johnson, who regarded himself as defending the
+Constitution against radical assaults, was stubborn, irascible, and
+undignified, and with his associates was no match in political strategy
+for his radical opponents.
+
+The average Republican or Unionist in the North, if he had not been
+brought by skillful misrepresentation to believe a new rebellion
+impending in the South, was at any rate painfully alive to the fear that
+the Democratic party might regain power. With the freeing of the slaves
+the representation of the South in Congress would be increased. At first
+it seemed that the South might divide in politics as before the war, but
+the longer the delay the more the Southern whites tended to unite into
+one party acting with the Democrats. With their eighty-five
+representatives and a slight reaction in the North, they might gain
+control of the lower House of Congress. The Union-Republican party had a
+majority of less than one hundred in 1866 and this was lessened slightly
+in the Fortieth Congress. The President was for all practical purposes a
+Democrat again. The prospect was too much for the very human politicians
+to view without distress. Stevens, speaking in support of the Military
+Reconstruction Bill, said:
+
+There are several good reasons for the passage of this bill. In the
+first place, it is just. I am now confining my argument to negro
+suffrage in the rebel States. Have not loyal blacks quite as good a
+right to choose rulers and make laws as rebel whites? In the second
+place, it is necessary in order to protect the loyal white men in the
+seceded States. With them the blacks would act in a body, and it is
+believed that in each of these States, except one, the two united would
+form a majority, control the States, and protect themselves. Now they
+are the victims of daily murder. They must suffer constant persecution
+or be exiled. Another good reason is that it would insure the ascendancy
+of the union party.... I believe ... that on the continued ascendancy of
+that party depends the safety of this great nation. If impartial
+suffrage is excluded in the rebel States, then every one of them is sure
+to send a solid rebel electoral vote. They, with their kindred
+Copperheads of the North, would always elect the President and control
+Congress.
+
+The laws passed on the 2d and the 23d of March were war measures and
+presupposed a continuance of war conditions. The Lincoln-Johnson state
+governments were overturned; Congress fixed the qualifications of voters
+for that time and for the future; and the President, shorn of much of
+his constitutional power, could exercise but little control over the
+military government. Nothing that a State might do would secure
+restoration until it should ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the
+Federal Constitution. The war had been fought upon the theory that the
+old Union must be preserved; but the basic theory of the reconstruction
+was that a new Union was to be created.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+The Rule of the Major Generals
+
+From the passage of the reconstruction acts to the close of Johnson's
+Administration, Congress, working the will of the radical majority, was
+in supreme control. The army carried out the will of Congress and to
+that body, not to the President, the commanding general and his
+subordinates looked for direction.
+
+The official opposition of the President to the policy of Congress
+ceased when that policy was enacted into law. He believed this
+legislation to be unconstitutional, but he considered it his duty to
+execute the laws. He at once set about the appointment of generals to
+command the military districts created in the South, ¹ a task calling
+for no little discretion, since much depended upon the character of
+these military governors, or "satraps," as they were frequently called
+by the opposition. The commanding general in a district was charged with
+many duties, military, political, and administrative. It was his duty to
+carry on a government satisfactory to the radicals and not too
+irritating to the Southern whites; at the same time he must execute the
+reconstruction acts by putting old leaders out of power and negroes in.
+Violent opposition to this policy on the part of the South was not
+looked for. Notwithstanding the "Southern outrage" campaign, it was
+generally recognized in government circles that conditions in the
+seceded States had gradually been growing better since the close of the
+war. There was in many regions, to be sure, a general laxity in
+enforcing laws, but that had always been characteristic of the newer
+parts of the South. The Civil Rights Act was generally in force, the
+"Black Laws" had been suspended, and the Freedmen's Bureau was
+everywhere caring for the negroes. What disorder existed was of recent
+origin and in the main was due to the unsettling effects of the debates
+in Congress and to the organization of the negroes for political
+purposes.
+
+¹ The first five generals appointed were Schofield, Sickles, Pope, Ord,
+and Sheridan. None of these remained in his district until
+reconstruction was completed. To Schofield's command in the first
+district succeeded in turn Stoneman, Webb, and Canby; Sickles gave way
+to Canby, and Pope to Meade; Ord in the fourth district was followed by
+Gillem, McDowell, and Ames; Sheridan, in the fifth, was succeeded by
+Griffen, Mower, Hancock, Buchanan, Reynolds, and Canby. Some of the
+generals were radical; others, moderate and tactful. The most extreme
+were Sheridan, Pope, and Sickles. Those most acceptable to the whites
+were Hancock, Schofield, and Meade. General Grant himself became more
+radical in his actions as he became involved in the fight between
+Congress and the President.
+
+Military rule was established in the South with slight friction, but it
+was soon found that the reconstruction laws were not sufficiently clear
+on two points: first, whether there was any limit to the authority of
+the five generals over the local and state governments and, if so,
+whether the limiting authority was in the President; and second, whether
+the disfranchising provisions in the laws were punitive and hence to be
+construed strictly. Attorney-General Stanbery, in May and June, 1867,
+drew up opinions in which he maintained that the laws were to be
+considered punitive and therefore to be construed strictly. After
+discussions in cabinet meetings these opinions received the approval of
+all except Stanton, Secretary of War, who had already joined the radical
+camp. The Attorney-General's opinion was sent out to the district
+commanders for their information and guidance. But Congress did not
+intend to permit the President or his Cabinet to direct the process of
+reconstruction, and in the Act of July 19, 1867, it gave a radical
+interpretation to the reconstruction legislation, declared itself in
+control, gave full power to General Grant and to the district commanders
+subject only to Grant, directed the removal of all local officials who
+opposed the reconstruction policies, and warned the civil and military
+officers of the United States that none of them should "be bound in his
+action by any opinion of any civil officer of the United States." This
+interpretive legislation gave a broad basis for the military government
+and resulted in a severe application of the disfranchising provisions of
+the laws.
+
+The rule of the five generals lasted in all the States until June, 1868,
+and continued in Mississippi, Texas, Virginia, and Georgia until 1870.
+There had been, to be sure, some military government in 1865, subject,
+however, to the President, and from 1865 to 1867 the army, along with
+the Freedmen's Bureau, had exerted a strong influence in the government
+of the South, but in the régime now inaugurated the military was
+supreme. The generals had a superior at Washington, but whether it was
+the President, General Grant, or Congress was not clear until the Act of
+July 19, 1867 made Congress the source of authority.
+
+The power of the generals most strikingly appeared in their control of
+the state governments which were continued as provisional organizations.
+Since no elections were permitted, all appointments and removals were
+made from military headquarters, which soon became political beehives,
+centers of wirepulling and agencies for the distribution of spoils. At
+the outset civil officers were ordered to retain their offices during
+good behavior, subject to military control. But no local official was
+permitted to use his influence ever so slightly against reconstruction.
+Since most of them did not favor the policy of Congress, thousands were
+removed as "obstacles to reconstruction." The Governors of Georgia,
+Louisiana, Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas were displaced and others
+appointed in their stead. All kinds of subordinate offices rapidly
+became vacant. New appointments were nearly always carpetbaggers and
+native radicals who could take the "ironclad" oath. The generals
+complained that there were not enough competent native "loyalists" to
+fill the offices, and frequently an army officer was installed as
+governor, treasurer, secretary of state, auditor, or mayor. In nearly
+all towns the police force was reorganized and former Federal soldiers
+were added to the force, while the regular troops were used for general
+police purposes and for rural constabulary.
+
+Over the administration of justice the military authorities exercised a
+close supervision. Instructions were sent out to court officers covering
+the selection of juries, the suspension of certain laws, and the rules
+of evidence and procedure. Courts were often closed, court decrees set
+aside or modified, prisoners released, and many cases reserved for trial
+by military commission. Some commanders required juries to admit negro
+members and insisted that all jurors take the "ironclad" test oath.
+There was some attempt at regulating the Federal courts but without much
+success.
+
+Since the state legislatures were forbidden to meet, much legislation
+was enacted through military orders. Stay laws were enacted, the color
+line was abolished, new criminal regulations were promulgated, and the
+police power was invoked in some instances to justify sweeping measures,
+such as the prohibition of whisky manufacture in North Carolina and
+South Carolina. The military governors levied, increased, or decreased
+taxes and made appropriations which the state treasurers were forced to
+pay, but they restrained the radical conventions, all of which wished to
+spend much money. According to the Act of March 23, 1867, the generals
+and their appointees were to be paid by the United States, but in
+practice the running expenses of reconstruction were paid by the state
+treasurers.
+
+Any attempt to favor the Confederate soldiers was frowned upon. Laws
+providing wooden legs and free education for crippled Confederates were
+suspended. Militia organizations and military schools were forbidden. No
+uniform might be worn, no parades were permitted, no memorial and
+historical societies were to be organized, and no meeting of any kind
+could be held without a permit. The attempt to control the press
+resulted in what one general called "a horrible uproar." Editors were
+forbidden to express themselves too strongly against reconstruction;
+public advertising and printing were awarded only to those papers
+actively supporting reconstruction. Several newspapers were suppressed,
+a notable example being the Tuscaloosa Independent Monitor, whose
+editor, Ryland Randolph, was a picturesque figure in Alabama journalism
+and a leader in the Ku Klux Klan.
+
+The military administration was thorough, and, as a whole honest and
+efficient. With fewer than ten thousand soldiers the generals maintained
+order and carried on the reconstruction of the South. The whites made no
+attempt at resistance, though they were irritated by military rule and
+resented the loss of self-government. But most Southerners preferred the
+rule of the army to the alternative reign of the carpetbagger, scalawag,
+and negro. The extreme radicals at the North, on the other hand, were
+disgusted at the conservative policy of the generals. The apathy of the
+whites at the beginning of the military reconstruction excited surprise
+on all sides. Not only was there no violent opposition, but for a few
+weeks there was no opposition at all. The civil officials were openly
+unsympathetic, and the newspapers voiced dissent not untouched with
+disgust; others simply could not take the situation seriously because it
+seemed so absurd; many leaders were indifferent, while others--among
+them, Generals Lee, Beauregard, and Longstreet, and Governor
+Patton--without approving the policy, advised the whites to coöperate
+with the military authorities and save all they could out of the
+situation. General Beauregard, for instance, wrote in 1867: "If the
+suffrage of the negro is properly handled and directed we shall defeat
+our adversaries with their own weapons. The negro is Southern born. With
+education and property qualifications he can be made to take an interest
+in the affairs of the South and in its prosperity. He will side with the
+whites."
+
+Northern observers who were friendly to the South or who disapproved of
+this radical reconstruction saw the danger more clearly than the
+Southerners themselves, who seemed not to appreciate the full
+implication of the situation. In this connection the New York Herald
+remarked:
+
+We may regard the entire ten unreconstructed Southern States, with
+possibly one or two exceptions, as forced by a secret and overwhelming
+revolutionary influence to a common and inevitable fate. They are all
+bound to be governed by blacks spurred on by worse than blacks--white
+wretches who dare not show their faces in respectable society anywhere.
+This is the most abominable phase barbarism has assumed since the dawn
+of civilization. It was all right and proper to put down the rebellion.
+It was all right perhaps to emancipate the slaves.... But it is not
+right to make slaves of white men even though they may have been former
+masters of blacks. This is but a change in a system of bondage that is
+rendered the more odious and intolerable because it has been inaugurated
+in an enlightened instead of a dark and uncivilized age.
+
+The political parties rapidly grouped themselves for the coming
+struggle. The radical Republican party indeed was in process of
+organization in the South even before the passage of the reconstruction
+acts. Its membership was made up of negroes, carpetbaggers, or Northern
+men who had come in as speculators, officers of the Freedmen's Bureau
+and of the army, scalawags or Confederate renegades, "Peace Society"
+men, ¹ and Unionists of Civil War times, with a few old Whigs who could
+not yet bring themselves to affiliate with the Democrats. At first it
+seemed that a respectable number of whites might be secured for the
+radical party, but the rapid organization of the negroes checked the
+accession of whites. In the winter and spring of 1866-67 the negroes
+near the towns were well organized by the Union League and the
+Freedmen's Bureau and then, after the passage of the reconstruction
+acts, the organizing activities of the radical chieftains shifted to the
+rural districts. The Union League was greatly extended; Union League
+conventions were held to which local whites were not admitted; and the
+formation of a black man's party was well on the way before the
+registration of the voters was completed. Visiting statesmen from the
+North, among them Henry Wilson of Massachusetts and "Pig Iron" Kelley of
+Pennsylvania, toured the South in support of the radical program, and
+the registrars and all Federal officials aided in the work.
+
+¹ See The Day of the Confederacy, by Nathaniel W. Stephenson (in The
+Chronicles of America), p. 121, footnote.
+
+The whites, slow to comprehend the real extent of radicalism, were
+finally aroused to the necessity of organizing, if they were to
+influence the negro and have a voice in the conventions. The old party
+divisions were still evident. With difficulty a portion of the Whigs
+were brought with the Democrats into one conservative party during the
+summer and fall of 1867, though many still held aloof. The lack of the
+old skilled leadership was severely felt. In places where the white
+man's party was given a name it was called "Democratic and
+Conservative," to spare the feelings of former Whigs who were loath to
+bear the party name of their quondam opponents.
+
+The first step in the military reconstruction was the registration of
+voters. In each State a central board of registrars was appointed by the
+district commander and a local board for every county and large town.
+Each board consisted of three members--all radicals--who were required
+to subscribe to the "ironclad" oath. In several States one negro was
+appointed to each local board. The registrars listed negro voters during
+the day, and at night worked at the organization of a radical Republican
+party. The prospective voters were required to take the oath prescribed
+in the Reconstruction Act, but the registrars were empowered to go
+behind the oath and investigate the Confederate record of each
+applicant. This authority was invoked to carry the disfranchisement of
+the whites far beyond the intention of the law in an attempt to destroy
+the leadership of the whites and to register enough negroes to outvote
+them at the polls. For this purpose the registration was continued until
+October 1, 1867, and an active campaign of education and organization
+carried on.
+
+At the close of the registration, 703,000 black voters were on the rolls
+and 627,000 whites. In Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, and
+Mississippi there were black majorities, and in the other States the
+blacks and the radical whites together formed majorities. The white
+minorities included several thousand who had been rejected by the
+registrars but restored by the military commanders. Though large numbers
+of blacks were dropped from the revised rolls as fraudulently
+registered, the registration statistics nevertheless bore clear witness
+to the political purpose of those who compiled them.
+
+Next followed a vote on the question of holding a state convention and
+the election of delegates to such a convention if held--a double
+election. The whites, who had been harassed in the registration and who
+feared race conflicts at the elections, considered whether they ought
+not to abstain from voting. By staying away from the polls, they might
+bring the vote cast in each State below a majority and thus defeat the
+proposed conventions for, unless a majority of the registered voters
+actually cast ballots either for or against a convention, no convention
+could be held. Nowhere, however, was this plan of not voting fully
+carried out, for, though most whites abstained, enough of them voted
+(against the conventions, of course) to make the necessary majority in
+each State. The effect of the abstention policy upon the personnel of
+the conventions was unfortunate. In every convention there was a radical
+majority with a conservative and all but negligible minority. In South
+Carolina and Louisiana there were negro majorities. In every State
+except North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia the negroes and the
+carpetbaggers together were in the majority over native whites. The
+conservative whites were of fair ability; the carpetbaggers and
+scalawags produced in each convention a few able leaders, but most of
+them were conscienceless political soldiers of fortune; the negro
+members were inexperienced, and most of them were quite ignorant, though
+a few leaders of ability did appear among them. In Alabama, for example,
+only two negro members could write, though half had been taught to sign
+their names. They were barbers, field hands, hack drivers, and servants.
+A negro chaplain was elected who invoked divine blessings on "unioners
+and cusses on rebels." It was a sign of the new era when the convention
+specially invited the "ladies of colored members" to seats in the
+gallery.
+
+The work of the conventions was for the most part cut and dried, the
+abler members having reached a general agreement before they met. The
+constitutions, mosaics of those of other States, were noteworthy only
+for the provisions made to keep the whites out of power and to regulate
+the relations of the races in social matters. The Texas constitution
+alone contained no proscriptive clauses beyond those required by the
+Fourteenth Amendment. The most thoroughgoing proscription of
+Confederates was found in the constitutions of Mississippi, Alabama, and
+Virginia; and in these States the voter must also purge himself of guilt
+by agreeing to accept the "civil and political equality of all men" or
+by supporting reconstruction. Only in South Carolina and Louisiana were
+race lines abolished by law.
+
+The legislative work of the conventions was more interesting than the
+constitution making. By ordinance the legality of negro marriages was
+dated from November, 1867, or some date later than had been fixed by the
+white conventions of 1865. Mixed schools were provided in some States;
+militia for the black districts but not for the white was to be raised;
+while in South Carolina it was made a penal offense to call a person a
+"Yankee" or a "nigger." Few of the negro delegates demanded proscription
+of whites or social equality; they wanted schools and the vote. The
+white radicals were more anxious to keep the former Confederates from
+holding office than from voting. The generals in command everywhere used
+their influence to secure moderate action by the conventions, and for
+this they were showered with abuse.
+
+As provided by the reconstruction acts, the new constitutions were
+submitted to the electorate created by those instruments. Unless a
+majority of the registered voters in a State should take part in the
+election the reconstruction would fail and the State would remain under
+military rule. The whites now inaugurated a more systematic policy of
+abstention and in Alabama, on February 4, 1868, succeeded in holding the
+total vote below a majority. Congress then rushed to the rescue of
+radicalism with the act of the 11th of March, which provided that a mere
+majority of those voting in the State was sufficient to inaugurate
+reconstruction. Arkansas had followed the lead of Alabama, but too late;
+in Mississippi the constitution was defeated by a majority vote; in
+Texas the convention had made no provision for a vote; and in Virginia
+the commanding general, disapproving of the work of the convention,
+refused to pay the expenses of an election. In the other six States the
+constitutions were adopted. ¹
+
+¹ Except in Texas, the work of constitution making was completed between
+November 5, 1867, and May 18, 1868.
+
+These elections gave rise to more violent contests than before. They
+also were double elections, as the voters cast ballots for state and
+local officials and at the same time for or against the constitution.
+The radical nominations were made by the Union League and the Freedmen's
+Bureau, and nearly all radicals who had been members of conventions were
+nominated and elected to office. The negroes, expecting now to reap some
+benefits of reconstruction, frequently brought sacks to the polls to
+"put the franchise in." The elections were all over by June, 1868, and
+the newly elected legislatures promptly ratified the Fourteenth
+Amendment.
+
+It now remained for Congress to approve the work done in the South and
+to readmit the reorganized States. The case of Alabama gave some
+trouble. Even Stevens, for a time, thought that this State should stay
+out; but there was danger in delay. The success of the abstention policy
+in Alabama and Arkansas and the reviving interest of the whites
+foreshadowed white majorities in some places; the scalawags began to
+forsake the radical party for the conservatives; and there were
+Democratic gains in the North in 1867. Only six States, New York and
+five New England States, allowed the negro to vote, while four States,
+Minnesota, Michigan, Kansas, and Ohio, voted down negro suffrage after
+the passage of the reconstruction acts. The ascendancy of the radicals
+in Congress was menaced. The radicals needed the support of their
+radical brethren in Southern States and they could not afford to wait
+for the Fourteenth Amendment to become a part of the Constitution or to
+tolerate other delay. On the 22d and the 25th of June acts were
+therefore passed admitting seven States, Alabama included, to
+representation in Congress upon the "fundamental condition" that "the
+constitutions of neither of said States shall ever be so amended or
+changed as to deprive any citizens or class of citizens of the United
+States of the right to vote in said State, who are entitled to vote by
+the constitution thereof herein recognized."
+
+The generals now turned over the government to the recently elected
+radical officials and retired into the background. Military
+reconstruction was thus accomplished in all the States except Virginia,
+Mississippi, and Texas.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+The Trial of President Johnson
+
+While the radical program was being executed in the South, Congress was
+engaged not only in supervising reconstruction but in subduing the
+Supreme Court and in "conquering" President Johnson. One must admire the
+efficiency of the radical machine. When the Southerners showed that they
+preferred military rule as permitted by the Act of the 2nd of March,
+Congress passed the Act of the 23d of March which forced the
+reconstruction. When the President ventured to assert his power in
+behalf of a considerate administration of the reconstruction acts,
+Congress took the power out of his hands by the law of the 19th of July.
+The Southern plan to defeat the new state constitutions by abstention
+was no sooner made clear in the case of Alabama than Congress came to
+the rescue with the Act of March 11, 1868.
+
+Had it seemed necessary, Congress would have handled the Supreme Court
+as it did the Southerners. The opponents of radical reconstruction were
+anxious to get the reconstruction laws of March, 1867, before the Court.
+Chief Justice Chase was known to be opposed to military reconstruction,
+and four other justices were, it was believed, doubtful of the
+constitutionality of the laws. A series of conservative decisions gave
+hope to those who looked to the Court for relief. The first decision, in
+the case of ex parte Milligan, declared unconstitutional the trials of
+civilians by military commissions when civil courts were open. A few
+months later, in the cases of Cummings vs. Missouri and ex parte
+Garland, the Court declared invalid, because ex post facto, the state
+laws designed to punish former Confederates.
+
+But the first attempts to get the reconstruction acts before the Supreme
+Court failed. The State of Mississippi, in April, 1867, brought suit to
+restrain the President from executing the reconstruction acts. The Court
+refused to interfere with the Executive. A similar suit was then brought
+against Secretary Stanton by Georgia with a like result. But in 1868, in
+the case of ex parte McCardle, it appeared that the question of the
+constitutionality of the reconstruction acts would be passed upon.
+McCardle, a Mississippi editor arrested for opposition to reconstruction
+and convicted by military commission, appealed to the Supreme Court,
+which asserted its jurisdiction. But the radicals in alarm rushed
+through Congress an act (March 27, 1868) which took away from the Court
+its jurisdiction in cases arising under the reconstruction acts. The
+highest court was thus silenced.
+
+The attempt to remove the President from office was the only part of the
+radical program that failed, and this by the narrowest of margins.
+During the spring and summer of 1866 there was some talk among
+politicians of impeaching President Johnson, and in December a
+resolution was introduced by Representative Ashley of Ohio looking
+toward impeachment. Though the committee charged with the investigation
+of "the official conduct of Andrew Johnson" reported that enough
+testimony had been taken to justify further inquiry, the House took no
+action. There were no less than five attempts at impeachment during the
+next year. Stevens, Butler, and others were anxious to get the President
+out of the way, but the majority were as yet unwilling to impeach for
+merely political reasons. There were some who thought that the radicals
+had sufficient majorities to ensure all needed legislation and did not
+relish the thought of Ben Wade in the presidency. ¹ Others considered
+that no just grounds for action had been found in the several
+investigations of Johnson's record. Besides, the President's authority
+and influence had been much curtailed by the legislation relating to the
+Freedmen's Bureau, tenure of office, reconstruction, and command of the
+army, and Congress had also refused to recognize his amnesty and
+pardoning powers.
+
+¹ Senator Wade of Ohio was President pro tempore of the Senate and by
+the act of 1791 would succeed President Johnson if he were removed from
+office.
+
+But the desire to impeach the President was increasing in power, and
+very little was needed to provoke a trial of strength between the
+radicals and the President. The drift toward impeachment was due in part
+to the legislative reaction against the Executive, and in part to
+Johnson's own opposition to reconstruction and to his use of the
+patronage against the radicals. Specific grievances were found in his
+vetoes of the various reconstruction bills, in his criticisms of
+Congress and the radical leaders, and in the fact, as Stevens asserted,
+that he was a "radical renegade." Johnson was a Southern man, an
+old-line State Rights Democrat, somewhat anti-negro in feeling. He knew
+no book except the Constitution, and that he loved with all his soul.
+Sure of the correctness of his position, he was too stubborn to change
+or to compromise. He was no more to be moved than Stevens or Sumner. To
+overcome Johnson's vetoes required two-thirds of each House of Congress;
+to impeach and remove him would require only a majority of the House and
+two-thirds of the Senate.
+
+The desired occasion for impeachment was furnished by Johnson's attempt
+to get Edwin M. Stanton, the Secretary of War, out of the Cabinet.
+Stanton held radical views and was at no time sympathetic with or loyal
+to Johnson, but he loved office too well to resign along with those
+cabinet members who could not follow the President in his struggle with
+Congress. He was seldom frank and sincere in his dealings with the
+President, and kept up an underhand correspondence with the radical
+leaders, even assisting in framing some of the reconstruction
+legislation which was designed to render Johnson powerless. In him the
+radicals had a representative within the President's Cabinet.
+
+Wearied of Stanton's disloyalty, Johnson asked him to resign and, upon a
+refusal, suspended him in August, 1867, and placed General Grant in
+temporary charge of the War Department. General Grant, Chief Justice
+Chase, and Secretary McCulloch, though they all disliked Stanton,
+advised the President against suspending him. But Johnson was
+determined. About the same time he exercised his power in removing
+Sheridan and Sickles from their commands in the South and replaced them
+with Hancock and Canby. The radicals were furious, but Johnson had
+secured at least the support of a loyal Cabinet.
+
+The suspension of Stanton was reported to the Senate in December, 1867,
+and on January 13, 1868, the Senate voted not to concur in the
+President's action. Upon receiving notice of the vote in the Senate,
+Grant at once left the War Department and Stanton again took possession.
+Johnson now charged Grant with failing to keep a promise either to hold
+on himself or to make it possible to appoint some one else who would
+hold on until the matter might be brought into the courts. The President
+by this accusation angered Grant and threw him with his great influence
+into the arms of the radicals.
+
+Against the advice of his leading counselors Johnson persisted in his
+intention to keep Stanton out of the Cabinet. Accordingly on the 21st of
+February he dismissed Stanton from office and appointed Lorenzo Thomas,
+the Adjutant General, as acting Secretary of War. Stanton, advised by
+the radicals in Congress to "stick," refused to yield possession to
+Thomas and had him arrested for violation of the Tenure of Office Act.
+The matter now was in the courts where Johnson wanted it, but the
+radical leaders, fearing that the courts would decide against Stanton
+and the reconstruction acts, had the charges against Thomas withdrawn.
+Thus failed the last attempt to get the reconstruction laws before the
+courts. On the 22nd of February the President sent to the Senate the
+name of Thomas Ewing, General Sherman's father-in-law, as Secretary of
+War, but no attention was paid to the nomination.
+
+On February 24, 1868, the House voted, 128 to 47, to impeach the
+President "of high crimes and misdemeanors in office." The Senate was
+formally notified the next day and on the 4th of March the seven
+managers selected by the House appeared before the Senate with the
+eleven articles of impeachment. At first it seemed to the public that
+the impeachment proceedings were merely the culmination of a struggle
+for the control of the army. There were rumors that Johnson had plans to
+use the army against Congress and against reconstruction. General Grant,
+directed by Johnson to accept orders from Stanton only if he were
+satisfied that they came from the President, refused to follow these
+instructions. Stanton, professing to fear violence, barricaded himself
+in the War Department and was furnished with a guard of soldiers by
+General Grant, who from this time used his influence in favor of
+impeachment. Excited by the most sensational rumors, some people even
+believed a new rebellion to be imminent.
+
+The impeachment was rushed to trial by the House managers and was not
+ended until the decision was taken by the votes of the 16th and 26th of
+May. The eleven articles of impeachment consisted of summaries of all
+that had been charged against Johnson, except the charge that he had
+been an accomplice in the murder of Lincoln. The only one which had any
+real basis was the first, which asserted that he had violated the Tenure
+of Office Act in trying to remove Stanton. The other articles were
+merely expansions of the first or were based upon Johnson's opposition
+to reconstruction or upon his speeches in criticism of Congress. Nothing
+could be said about his control of the patronage, though this was one of
+the unwritten charges. J. W. Schuckers, in his life of Chase, says that
+the radical leaders "felt the vast importance of the presidential
+patronage; many of them felt, too, that, according to the maxim that to
+the victors belong the spoils, the Republican party was rightfully
+entitled to the Federal patronage, and they determined to get possession
+of it. There was but one method and that was by impeachment and removal
+of the President."
+
+The leading House managers were Stevens, Butler, Bingham, and Boutwell,
+all better known as politicians than as lawyers. The President was
+represented by an abler legal array: Curtis, Evarts, Stanbery, Nelson,
+and Groesbeck. Jeremiah Black was at first one of the counsel for the
+President but withdrew under conditions not entirely creditable to
+himself.
+
+The trial was a one-sided affair. The President's counsel were refused
+more than six days for the preparation of the case. Chief Justice Chase,
+who presided over the trial, insisted upon regarding the Senate as a
+judicial and not a political body, and he accordingly ruled that only
+legal evidence should be admitted; but the Senate majority preferred to
+assume that they were settling a political question. Much evidence
+favorable to the President was excluded, but everything else was
+admitted. As the trial went on the country began to understand that the
+impeachment was a mistake. Few people wanted to see Senator Wade made
+President. The partisan attitude of the Senate majority and the weakness
+of the case against Johnson had much to do in moderating public opinion,
+and the timely nomination of General Schofield as Secretary of War after
+Stanton's resignation reassured those who feared that the army might be
+placed under some extreme Democrat.
+
+As the time drew near for the decision, every possible pressure was
+brought by the radicals to induce senators to vote for conviction. To
+convict the President, thirty-six votes were necessary. There were only
+twelve Democrats in the Senate, but all were known to be in favor of
+acquittal. When the test came on the 16th of May, seven Republicans
+voted with the Democrats for acquittal on the eleventh article. Another
+vote on the 26th of May, on the first and second articles, showed that
+conviction was not possible. The radical legislative reaction was thus
+checked at its highest point and the presidency as a part of the
+American governmental system was no longer in danger. The seven
+Republicans had, however, signed their own political death warrants;
+they were never forgiven by the party leaders.
+
+The presidential campaign was beginning to take shape even before the
+impeachment trial began. Both the Democrats and the reorganized
+Republicans were turning with longing toward General Grant as a
+candidate. Though he had always been a Democrat, nevertheless when
+Johnson actually called him a liar and a promise breaker Grant went over
+to the radicals and was nominated for President on May 20, 1868, by the
+National Union Republican party. Schuyler Colfax was the candidate for
+Vice President. The Democrats, who could have won with Grant and who
+under good leadership still had a bare chance to win, nominated Horatio
+Seymour of New York and Francis P. Blair of Missouri. The former had
+served as war governor of New York, while the latter was considered an
+extreme Democrat who believed that the radical reconstruction of the
+South should be stopped, the troops withdrawn, and the people left to
+form their own governments. The Democratic platform pronounced itself
+opposed to the reconstruction policy, but Blair's opposition was too
+extreme for the North. Seymour, more moderate and a skillful campaigner,
+made headway in the rehabilitation of the Democratic party. The
+Republican party declared for radical reconstruction and negro suffrage
+in the South but held that each Northern State should be allowed to
+settle the suffrage for itself. It was not a courageous platform, but
+Grant was popular and carried his party through to success.
+
+The returns showed that in the election Grant had carried twenty-six
+States with 214 electoral votes, while Seymour had carried only eight
+States with 80 votes. But an examination of the popular vote, which was
+3,000,000 for Grant and 2,700,000 for Seymour, gave the radicals cause
+for alarm, for it showed that the Democrats had more white votes than
+the Republicans, whose total included nearly 700,000 blacks. To insure
+the continuance of the radicals in power, the Fifteenth Amendment was
+framed and sent out to the States on February 26, 1869. This amendment
+appeared not only to make safe the negro majorities in the South but
+also gave the ballot to the negroes in a score of Northern States and
+thus assured, for a time at least, 900,000 negro voters for the
+Republican party.
+
+When Johnson's term ended and he gave place to President Grant, four
+States were still unreconstructed--Virginia, Texas, and Mississippi, in
+which the reconstruction had failed, and Georgia, which, after
+accomplishing reconstruction, had again been placed under military rule
+by Congress. In Virginia, which was too near the capital for such rough
+work as readmitted Arkansas and Alabama into the Union, the new
+constitution was so severe in its provisions for disfranchisement that
+the disgusted district commander would not authorize the expenditure
+necessary to have it voted on. In Mississippi a similar constitution had
+failed of adoption, and in Texas the strife of party factions, radical
+and moderate Republican, had so delayed the framing of the constitution
+that it had not come to a vote.
+
+The Republican politicians, however, wanted the offices in these States,
+and Congress by its resolution of February 18, 1869 directed the
+district commanders to remove all civil officers who could not take the
+"ironclad" oath and to appoint those who could subscribe to it. An
+exception, however, was made in favor of the scalawags who had supported
+reconstruction and whose disabilities had been removed by Congress.
+
+President Grant was anxious to complete the reconstruction and
+recommended to Congress that the constitutions of Virginia and
+Mississippi be re-submitted to the people with a separate vote on the
+disfranchising sections. Congress, now in harmony with the Executive,
+responded by placing the reconstruction of the three States in the hands
+of the President, but with the proviso that each State must ratify the
+Fifteenth Amendment. Grant thereupon fixed a time for voting in each
+State and directed that in Virginia and Mississippi the disfranchising
+clauses be submitted separately. As a result, the constitutions were
+ratified but proscription was voted down. The radicals secured control
+of Mississippi and Texas, but a conservative combination carried
+Virginia and thus came near keeping the State out of the Union. Finally,
+during the early months of 1870 the three States were readmitted.
+
+With respect to Georgia a peculiar condition of affairs existed. In
+June, 1868, Georgia had been readmitted with the first of the
+reconstructed States. The state legislature at once expelled the
+twenty-seven negro members, on the ground that the recent legislation
+and the state constitution gave the negroes the right to vote but not to
+hold office. Congress, which had already admitted the Georgia
+representatives, refused to receive the senators and turned the State
+back to military control. In 1869-70 Georgia was again reconstructed
+after a drastic purging of the Legislature by the military commander,
+the reseating of the negro members, and the ratification of both the
+Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. The State was readmitted to
+representation in July, 1870, after the failure of a strong effort to
+extend for two years the carpetbag government of the State.
+
+Upon the last States to pass under the radical yoke heavier conditions
+were imposed than upon the earlier ones. Not only were they required to
+ratify the Fifteenth Amendment, but the "fundamental conditions"
+embraced, in addition to the prohibition against future change of the
+suffrage, a requirement that the negroes should never be deprived of
+school and officeholding rights.
+
+The congressional plan of reconstruction had thus been carried through
+by able leaders in the face of the opposition of a united white South,
+nearly half the North, the President, the Supreme Court, and in the
+beginning a majority of Congress. This success was due to the poor
+leadership of the conservatives and to the ability and solidarity of the
+radicals led by Stevens and Sumner. The radicals had a definite program;
+the moderates had not. The object of the radicals was to secure the
+supremacy in the South by the aid of the negroes and exclusion of
+whites. Was this policy politically wise? It was at least temporarily
+successful. The choice offered by the radicals seemed to lie between
+military rule for an indefinite period and negro suffrage; and since
+most Americans found military rule distasteful, they preferred to try
+negro suffrage. But, after all, negro suffrage had to be supported by
+military rule, and in the end both failed completely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+The Union League of America
+
+The elections of 1867-68 showed that the negroes were well organized
+under the control of the radical Republican leaders and that their
+former masters had none of the influence over the blacks in political
+matters which had been feared by some Northern friends of the negro and
+had been hoped for by such Southern leaders as Governor Patton and
+General Hampton. Before 1865 the discipline of slavery, the influence of
+the master's family, and of the Southern church, had sufficed to control
+the blacks. But after emancipation they looked to the Federal soldiers
+and Union officials as the givers of freedom and the guardians of the
+future.
+
+From the Union soldiers, especially the negro troops, from the Northern
+teachers, the missionaries and the organizers of negro churches, from
+the Northern officials and traveling politicians, the negroes learned
+that their interests were not those of the whites. The attitude of the
+average white in the South often confirmed this growing estrangement. It
+was difficult even for the white leaders to explain the riots at Memphis
+and New Orleans. And those who sincerely wished well for the negro and
+who desired to control him for the good of both races could not possibly
+assure him that he was fit for the suffrage. For even Patton and Hampton
+must tell him that they knew better than he and that he should follow
+their advice.
+
+The appeal made to freedmen by the Northern leaders was in every way
+more forceful, because it had behind it the prestige of victory in war
+and for the future it could promise anything. Until 1867 the principal
+agency in bringing about the separation of the races had been the
+Freedmen's Bureau which, with its authority, its courts, its rations,
+clothes, and its "forty acres and a mule," did effective work in
+breaking down the influence of the master. But to understand fully the
+almost absolute control exercised over the blacks in 1867-68 by alien
+adventurers one must examine the workings of an oath-bound society known
+as the Union or Loyal League. It was this order, dominated by a few
+radical whites, which organized, disciplined, and controlled the
+ignorant negro masses and paralyzed the influence of the conservative
+whites.
+
+The Union League of America had its origin in Ohio in the fall of 1862,
+when the outlook for the Union cause was gloomy. The moderate policies
+of the Lincoln Administration had alienated those in favor of extreme
+measures; the Confederates had won military successes in the field; the
+Democrats had made some gains in the elections; the Copperheads ¹ were
+actively opposed to the Washington Government; the Knights of the Golden
+Circle were organizing to resist the continuance of the war; and the
+Emancipation Proclamation had chilled the loyalty of many Union men,
+which was everywhere at a low ebb, especially in the Northern cities. It
+was to counteract these depressing influences that the Union League
+movement was begun among those who were associated in the work of the
+United States Sanitary Commission. Observing the threatening state of
+public opinion, members of this organization proposed that "loyalty be
+organized, consolidated and made effective."
+
+¹ See Abraham Lincoln and the Union, by Nathaniel W. Stephenson (in The
+Chronicles of America), pp. 156-7, 234-5
+
+The first organization was made by eleven men in Cleveland, Ohio, in
+November, 1862. The Philadelphia Union League was organized a month
+later, and in January, 1863, the New York Union League followed. The
+members were pledged to uncompromising and unconditional loyalty to the
+Union, to complete subordination of political views to this loyalty, and
+to the repudiation of any belief in state rights. The other large cities
+followed the example of Philadelphia and New York, and soon Leagues,
+connected in a loose federation, were formed all through the North. They
+were social as well as political in their character and assumed as their
+task the stimulation and direction of loyal Union opinion.
+
+As the Union armies proceeded to occupy the South, the Union League sent
+its agents among the disaffected Southern people. Its agents cared for
+negro refugees in the contraband camps and in the North. In such work
+the League coöperated with the various Freedmen's Aid Societies, the
+Department of Negro Affairs, and later with the Freedmen's Bureau. Part
+of the work of the League was to distribute campaign literature, and
+many of the radical pamphlets on reconstruction and the negro problem
+bore the Union League imprint. The New York League sent out about
+seventy thousand copies of various publications, while the Philadelphia
+League far surpassed this record, circulating within eight years four
+million five hundred thousand copies of 144 different pamphlets. The
+literature consisted largely of accounts of "Southern outrages" taken
+from the reports of Bureau agents and similar sources.
+
+With the close of the Civil War the League did not cease its active
+interest in things political. It was one of the first organizations to
+declare for negro suffrage and the disfranchisement of Confederates; it
+held steadily to this declaration during the four years following the
+war; and it continued as a sort of bureau in the radical Republican
+party for the purpose of controlling the negro vote in the South. Its
+representatives were found in the lobbies of Congress demanding extreme
+measures, endorsing the reconstruction policies of Congress, and
+condemning the course of the President. After the first year or two of
+reconstruction the Leagues in the larger Northern cities began to grow
+away from the strictly political Union League of America and tended to
+become mere social clubs for members of the same political belief. The
+eminently respectable Philadelphia and New York clubs had little in
+common with the leagues of the Southern and Border States except a
+general adherence to the radical program.
+
+Even before the end of the war the League was extending its organization
+into the parts of the Confederacy held by the Federal forces, admitting
+to membership the army officers and the leading Unionists, though
+maintaining for the sake of the latter "a discreet secrecy." With the
+close of the war and the establishment of army posts over the South the
+League grew rapidly. The civilians who followed the army, the Bureau
+agents, the missionaries, and the Northern teachers formed one class of
+membership; and the loyalists of the hill and mountain country, who had
+become disaffected toward the Confederate administration and had formed
+such orders as the Heroes of America, the Red String Band, and the Peace
+Society, formed another class. Soon there were added to these the
+deserters, a few old line Whigs who intensely disliked the Democrats,
+and others who decided to cast their lot with the victors. The
+disaffected politicians of the up-country, who wanted to be cared for in
+the reconstruction, saw in the organization a means of dislodging from
+power the political leaders of the low country. It has been estimated
+that thirty per cent of the white men of the hill and mountain counties
+of the South joined the Union League in 1865-66. They cared little about
+the original objects of the order but hoped to make it the nucleus of an
+anti-Democratic political organization.
+
+But on the admission of negroes into the lodges or councils controlled
+by Northern men the native white members began to withdraw. From the
+beginning the Bureau agents, the teachers, and the preachers had been
+holding meetings of negroes, to whom they gave advice about the problems
+of freedom. Very early these advisers of the blacks grasped the
+possibilities inherent in their control of the schools, the rationing
+system, and the churches. By the spring of 1866 the negroes were widely
+organized under this leadership, and it needed but slight change to
+convert the negro meetings into local councils of the Union League. ¹ As
+soon as it seemed likely that Congress would win in its struggle with
+the President the guardians of the negro planned their campaign for the
+control of the race. Negro leaders were organized into councils of the
+League or into Union Republican Clubs. Over the South went the
+organizers, until by 1868 the last negroes were gathered into the fold.
+
+¹ Of these teachers of the local blacks, E. L. Godkin, editor of the New
+York Nation, who had supported the reconstruction acts, said: "Worse
+instructors for men emerging from slavery and coming for the first time
+face to face with the problems of free life than the radical agitators
+who have undertaken the political guidance of the blacks it would be
+hard to meet with."
+
+The native whites did not all desert the Union League when the negroes
+were brought in. Where the blacks were most numerous the desertion of
+whites was general, but in the regions where they were few some of the
+whites remained for several years. The elections of 1868 showed a
+falling off of the white radical vote from that of 1867, one measure of
+the extent of loss of whites. From this time forward the order consisted
+mainly of blacks with enough whites for leaders. In the Black Belt the
+membership of native whites was discouraged by requiring an oath to the
+effect that secession was treason. The carpetbagger had found that he
+could control the negro without the help of the scalawag. The League
+organization was soon extended and centralized; in every black district
+there was a Council; for the State there was a Grand Council; and for
+the United States there was a National Grand Council with headquarters
+in New York City.
+
+The influence of the League over the negro was due in large degree to
+the mysterious secrecy of the meetings, the weird initiation ceremony
+that made him feel fearfully good from his head to his heels, the
+imposing ritual, and the songs. The ritual, it is said, was not used in
+the North; it was probably adopted for the particular benefit of the
+African. The would-be Leaguer was informed that the emblems of the order
+were the altar, the Bible, the Declaration of Independence, the
+Constitution of the United States, the flag of the Union, censer, sword,
+gavel, ballot box, sickle, shuttle, anvil, and other emblems of
+industry. He was told to the accompaniment of clanking chains and groans
+that the objects of the order were to preserve liberty, to perpetuate
+the Union, to maintain the laws and the Constitution, to secure the
+ascendancy of American institutions, to protect, defend, and strengthen
+all loyal men and members of the Union League in all rights of person
+and property, to demand the elevation of labor, to aid in the education
+of laboring men, and to teach the duties of American citizenship. This
+enumeration of the objects of the League sounded well and was
+impressive. At this point the negro was always willing to take an oath
+of secrecy, after which he was asked to swear with a solemn oath to
+support the principles of the Declaration of Independence, to pledge
+himself to resist all attempts to overthrow the United States, to strive
+for the maintenance of liberty, the elevation of labor, the education of
+all people in the duties of citizenship, to practice friendship and
+charity to all of the order, and to support for election or appointment
+to office only such men as were supporters of these principles and
+measures.
+
+The council then sang Hail, Columbia! and The Star Spangled Banner,
+after which an official lectured the candidates, saying that though the
+designs of traitors had been thwarted, there were yet to be secured
+legislative triumphs and the complete ascendancy of the true principles
+of popular government, equal liberty, education and elevation of the
+workmen, and the overthrow at the ballot box of the old oligarchy of
+political leaders. After prayer by the chaplain, the room was darkened,
+alcohol on salt flared up with a ghastly light as the "fire of liberty,"
+and the members joined hands in a circle around the candidate, who was
+made to place one hand on the flag and, with the other raised, swear
+again to support the government and to elect true Union men to office.
+Then placing his hand on a Bible, for the third time he swore to keep
+his oath, and repeated after the president "the Freedmen's Pledge": "To
+defend and perpetuate freedom and the Union, I pledge my life, my
+fortune, and my sacred honor. So help me God!" John Brown's Body was
+then sung, the president charged the members in a long speech concerning
+the principles of the order, and the marshal instructed the neophyte in
+the signs. To pass one's self as a Leaguer, the "Four L's" had to be
+given: (1) with right hand raised to heaven, thumb and third finger
+touching ends over palm, pronounce "Liberty"; (2) bring the hand down
+over the shoulder and say "Lincoln"; (3) drop the hand open at the side
+and say "Loyal"; (4) catch the thumb in the vest or in the waistband and
+pronounce "League." This ceremony of initiation proved a most effective
+means of impressing and controlling the negro through his love and fear
+of secret, mysterious, and midnight mummery. An oath taken in daylight
+might be forgotten before the next day; not so an oath taken in the dead
+of night under such impressive circumstances. After passing through the
+ordeal, the negro usually remained faithful.
+
+In each populous precinct there was at least one council of the League,
+and always one for blacks. In each town or city there were two councils,
+one for the whites, and another, with white officers, for the blacks.
+The council met once a week, sometimes oftener, nearly always at night,
+and in a negro church or schoolhouse. Guards, armed with rifles and
+shotguns, were stationed about the place of meeting in order to keep
+away intruders. Members of some councils made it a practice to attend
+the meetings armed as if for battle. In these meetings the negroes
+listened to inflammatory speeches by the would-be statesmen of the new
+régime; here they were drilled in a passionate conviction that their
+interests and those of the Southern whites were eternally at war.
+
+White men who joined the order before the negroes were admitted and who
+left when the latter became members asserted that the negroes were
+taught in these meetings that the only way to have peace and plenty, to
+get "the forty acres and a mule," was to kill some of the leading whites
+in each community as a warning to others. In North Carolina twenty-eight
+barns were burned in one county by negroes who believed that Governor
+Holden, the head of the State League, had ordered it. The council in
+Tuscumbia, Alabama, received advice from Memphis to use the torch
+because the blacks were at war with the white race. The advice was
+taken. Three men went in front of the council as an advance guard, three
+followed with coal oil and fire, and others guarded the rear. The plan
+was to burn the whole town, but first one negro and then another
+insisted on having some white man's house spared because "he is a good
+man." In the end no residences were burned, and a happy compromise was
+effected by burning the Female Academy. Three of the leaders were
+afterwards lynched.
+
+The general belief of the whites was that the ultimate object of the
+order was to secure political power and thus bring about on a large
+scale the confiscation of the property of Confederates, and meanwhile to
+appropriate and destroy the property of their political opponents
+wherever possible. Chicken houses, pigpens, vegetable gardens, and
+orchards were visited by members returning from the midnight conclaves.
+During the presidential campaign of 1868 the North Carolina League sent
+out circular instructions to the blacks advising them to drill regularly
+and to join the militia, for if Grant were not elected the negroes would
+go back to slavery; if he were elected, the negroes were to have farms,
+mules, and offices.
+
+As soon as possible after the war the negroes had supplied themselves
+with guns and dogs as badges of freedom. They carried their guns to the
+League meetings, often marching in military formation, went through the
+drill there, marched home again along the roads, shouting, firing, and
+indulging in boasts and threats against persons whom they disliked.
+Later, military parades in the daytime were much favored. Several
+hundred negroes would march up and down the streets, abusing whites, and
+shoving them off the sidewalk or out of the road. But on the whole,
+there was very little actual violence, though the whites were much
+alarmed at times. That outrages were comparatively few was due, not to
+any sensible teachings of the leaders, but to the fundamental good
+nature of the blacks, who were generally content with mere impudence.
+
+The relations between the races, indeed, continued on the whole to be
+friendly until 1867-68. For a while, in some localities before the
+advent of the League, and in others where the Bureau was conducted by
+native magistrates, the negroes looked to their old masters for guidance
+and advice; and the latter, for the good of both races, were most eager
+to retain a moral control over the blacks. They arranged barbecues and
+picnics for the negroes, made speeches, gave good advice, and believed
+that everything promised well. Sometimes the negroes themselves arranged
+the festival and invited prominent whites, for whom a separate table
+attended by negro waiters was reserved; and after dinner there followed
+speeches by both whites and blacks.
+
+With the organization of the League, the negroes grew more reserved, and
+finally became openly unfriendly to the whites. The League alone,
+however, was not responsible for this change. The League and the Bureau
+had to some extent the same personnel, and it is frequently impossible
+to distinguish clearly between the influence of the two. In many ways
+the League was simply the political side of the Bureau. The preaching
+and teaching missionaries were also at work. And apart from the
+organized influences at work, the poor whites never laid aside their
+hostility towards the blacks, bond or free.
+
+When the campaigns grew exciting, the discipline of the order was used
+to prevent the negroes from attending Democratic meetings and hearing
+Democratic speakers. The leaders even went farther and forbade the
+attendance of the blacks at political meetings where the speakers were
+not endorsed by the League. Almost invariably the scalawag disliked the
+Leaguer, black or white, and as a political teacher often found himself
+proscribed by the League. At a Republican mass meeting in Alabama a
+white Republican who wanted to make a speech was shouted down by the
+negroes because he was "opposed to the Loyal League." He then went to
+another place to speak but was followed by the crowd, which refused to
+allow him to say anything. All Republicans in good standing had to join
+the League and swear that secession was treason--a rather stiff dose for
+the scalawag. Judge (later Governor) David P. Lewis, of Alabama, was a
+member for a short while but he soon became disgusted and published a
+denunciation of the order. Albion W. Tourgée, the author, a radical
+judge, was the first chief of the League in North Carolina and was
+succeeded by Governor Holden. In Alabama, Generals Swayne, Spencer, and
+Warner, all candidates for the United States Senate, hastened to join
+the order.
+
+As soon as a candidate was nominated by the League, it was the duty of
+every member to support him actively. Failure to do so resulted in a
+fine or other more severe punishment, and members who had been expelled
+were still considered under the control of the officials. The League
+was, in fact, the machine of the radical party, and all candidates had
+to be governed by its edicts. As the Montgomery Council declared, the
+Union League was "the right arm of the Union-Republican party in the
+United States."
+
+Every negro was ex colore a member or under the control of the League.
+In the opinion of the League, white Democrats were bad enough, but black
+Democrats were not to be tolerated. It was almost necessary, as a
+measure of personal safety, for each black to support the radical
+program. It was possible in some cases for a negro to refrain from
+taking an active part in political affairs. He might even fail to vote.
+But it was actually dangerous for a black to be a Democrat; that is, to
+try to follow his old master in politics. The whites in many cases were
+forced to advise their few faithful black friends to vote the radical
+ticket in order to escape mistreatment. Those who showed Democratic
+leanings were proscribed in negro society and expelled from negro
+churches; the negro women would not "proshay" (appreciate) a black
+Democrat. Such a one was sure to find that influence was being brought
+to bear upon his dusky sweetheart or his wife to cause him to see the
+error of his ways, and persistent adherence to the white party would
+result in his losing her. The women were converted to radicalism before
+the men, and they almost invariably used their influence strongly in
+behalf of the League. If moral suasion failed to cause the delinquent to
+see the light, other methods were used. Threats were common and usually
+sufficed. Fines were levied by the League on recalcitrant members. In
+case of the more stubborn, a sound beating was effective to bring about
+a change of heart. The offending party was "bucked and gagged," or he
+was tied by the thumbs and thrashed. Usually the sufferer was too afraid
+to complain of the way he was treated.
+
+Some of the methods of the Loyal League were similar to those of the
+later Ku Klux Klan. Anonymous warnings were sent to obnoxious
+individuals, houses were burned, notices were posted at night in public
+places and on the houses of persons who had incurred the hostility of
+the order. In order to destroy the influence of the whites where kindly
+relations still existed, an "exodus order" issued through the League
+directed all members to leave their old homes and obtain work elsewhere.
+Some of the blacks were loath to comply with this order, but to
+remonstrances from the whites the usual reply was: "De word done sent to
+de League. We got to go." For special meetings the negroes were in some
+regions called together by signal guns. In this way the call for a
+gathering went out over a county in a few minutes and a few hours later
+nearly all the members in the county assembled at the appointed place.
+
+Negroes as organizing agents were inclined to go to extremes and for
+that reason were not so much used. In Bullock County, Alabama, a council
+of the League was organized under the direction of a negro emissary, who
+proceeded to assume the government of the community. A list of crimes
+and punishments was adopted, a court with various officials was
+established, and during the night the negroes who opposed the new régime
+were arrested. But the black sheriff and his deputy were in turn
+arrested by the civil authorities. The negroes then organized for
+resistance, flocked into the county seat, and threatened to exterminate
+the whites and take possession of the county. Their agents visited the
+plantations and forced the laborers to join them by showing orders
+purporting to be from General Swayne, the commander in the State, giving
+them the authority to kill all who resisted them. Swayne, however, sent
+out detachments of troops and arrested fifteen of the ringleaders, and
+the League government collapsed.
+
+After it was seen that existing political institutions were to be
+overturned in the process of reconstruction, the white councils of the
+League and, to a certain extent, the negro councils were converted into
+training schools for the leaders of the new party soon to be formed in
+the State by act of Congress. The few whites who were in control were
+unwilling to admit more white members to share in the division of the
+spoils; terms of admission became more stringent, and, especially after
+the passage of the reconstruction acts in March, 1867, many white
+applicants were rejected. The alien element from the North was in
+control and as a result, where the blacks were numerous, the largest
+plums fell to the carpetbaggers. The negro leaders--the politicians,
+preachers, and teachers--trained in the League acted as subordinates to
+the whites and were sent out to drum up the country negroes when
+elections drew near. The negroes were given minor positions when offices
+were more plentiful than carpetbaggers. Later, after some complaint, a
+larger share of the offices fell to them.
+
+The League counted its largest white membership in 1865-66, and after
+that date it steadily decreased. The largest negro membership was
+recorded in 1867 and 1868. The total membership was never made known. In
+North Carolina the order claimed from seventy-five thousand to one
+hundred and twenty-five thousand members; in States with larger negro
+populations the membership was probably quite as large. After the
+election of 1868 only the councils in the towns remained active, many of
+them transformed into political clubs, loosely organized under local
+political leaders. The plantation negro needed less looking after, and
+except in the largest towns he became a kind of visiting member of the
+council in the town. The League as a political organization gradually
+died out by 1870. ¹
+
+¹ The Ku Klux Klan had much to do with the decline of the organization.
+The League as the ally and successor of the Freedmen's Bureau was one of
+the causes of the Ku Klux movement, because it helped to create the
+conditions which made such a movement inevitable. As early as 1870 the
+radical leaders missed the support formerly given by the League, and an
+urgent appeal was sent out all over the South from headquarters in New
+York advocating its reëstablishment to assist in carrying the elections
+of 1870.
+
+The League had served its purpose. It had enabled a few outsiders to
+control the negro by separating the races politically and it had
+compelled the negroes to vote as radicals for several years, when
+without its influence they would either not have voted at all or would
+have voted as Democrats along with their former masters. The order was
+necessary to the existence of the radical party in the Black Belt. No
+ordinary political organization could have welded the blacks into a
+solid party. The Freedmen's Bureau, which had much influence over the
+negroes, was too weak in numbers to control the negroes in politics. The
+League finally absorbed the personnel of the Bureau and turned its
+prestige and its organization to political advantage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Church and School
+
+Reconstruction in the State was closely related to reconstruction in the
+churches and the schools. Here also were to be found the same hostile
+elements: negro and white, Unionist and Confederate, victor and
+vanquished. The church was at that time an important institution in the
+South, more so than in the North, and in both sections more important
+than it is today. It was inevitable, therefore, that ecclesiastical
+reconstruction should give rise to bitter feelings.
+
+Something should be said of conditions in the churches when the Federal
+armies occupied the land. The Southern organizations had lost many
+ministers and many of their members, and frequently their buildings were
+used as hospitals or had been destroyed. Their administration was
+disorganized and their treasuries were empty. The Unionists, scattered
+here and there but numerous in the mountain districts, no longer wished
+to attend the Southern churches.
+
+The military censorship in church matters, which continued for a year in
+some districts, was irritating, especially in the Border States and in
+the Union districts where Northern preachers installed by the army were
+endeavoring to remain against the will of the people. Mobs sometimes
+drove them out; others were left to preach to empty houses or to a few
+Unionists and officers, while the congregation withdrew to build a new
+church. The problems of negro membership in the white churches and of
+the future relations of the Northern and Southern denominations were
+pressing for settlement.
+
+All Northern organizations acted in 1865 upon the assumption that a
+reunion of the churches must take place and that the divisions existing
+before the war should not be continued, since slavery, the cause of the
+division, had been destroyed. But they insisted that the reunion must
+take place upon terms named by the "loyal" churches, that the negroes
+must also come under "loyal" religious direction, and that tests must be
+applied to the Confederate sinners asking for admission, in order that
+the enormity of their crimes should be made plain to them. But this
+policy did not succeed. The Confederates objected to being treated as
+"rebels and traitors" and to "sitting upon stools of repentance" before
+they should be received again into the fold.
+
+Only two denominations were reunited--the Methodist Protestant, the
+northern section of which came over to the southern, and the Protestant
+Episcopal, in which moderate counsels prevailed and into which
+Southerners were welcomed back. The Southern Baptists maintained their
+separate existence and reorganized the Southern Baptist Convention, to
+which came many of the Baptist associations in the Border States; the
+Catholics did not divide before 1861 and therefore had no reconstruction
+problems to solve; and the smaller denominations maintained the
+organizations which they had before 1861. A Unionist preacher testified
+before the Joint Committee on Reconstruction that even the Southern
+Quakers "are about as decided in regard to the respectability of
+secession as any other class of people."
+
+Two other great Southern churches, the Presbyterian and the Methodist
+Episcopal, grew stronger after the Civil War. The tendency toward
+reunion of the Presbyterians was checked when one Northern branch
+declared as "a condition precedent to the admission of southern
+applicants that these confess as sinful all opinions before held in
+regard to slavery, nullification, rebellion and slavery, and stigmatize
+secession as a crime and the withdrawal of the southern churches as a
+schism." Another Northern group declared that Southern ministers must be
+placed on probation and must either prove their loyalty or profess
+repentance for disloyalty and repudiate their former opinions. As a
+result several Presbyterian bodies in the South joined in a strong
+union, to which also adhered the synods of several Border States.
+
+The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was confronted with conditions
+similar to those which prevented the reunion of the Presbyterians. The
+Northern church, according to the declaration of its authorities, also
+came down to divide the spoils and to "disintegrate and absorb" the
+"schismatic" Southern churches. Already many Southern pulpits were
+filled with Northern Methodist ministers placed there under military
+protection; and when they finally realized that reunion was not
+possible, these Methodist worthies resolved to occupy the late
+Confederacy as a mission field and to organize congregations of blacks
+and whites who were "not tainted with treason." Bishops and clergymen
+charged with this work carried it on vigorously for a few years in close
+connection with political reconstruction.
+
+The activities of the Northern Methodists stimulated the Southern
+Methodists to a quick reorganization. The surviving bishops met in
+August, 1865, and bound together their shaken church. In reply to
+suggestions of reunion they asserted that the Northern Methodists had
+become "incurably radical," were too much involved in politics, and,
+further, that they had, without right, seized and were still holding
+Southern church buildings. They objected also to the way the Northern
+church referred to the Southerners as "schismatics" and to the Southern
+church as one built on slavery and therefore, now that slavery was gone,
+to be reconstructed. The bishops warned their people against the
+missionary efforts of the Northern brethren and against the attempts to
+"disintegrate and absorb" Methodism in the South. Within five years
+after the war the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was greatly
+increased in numbers by the accession of conferences in Maryland,
+Kentucky, Virginia, Missouri, and even from above the Ohio, while the
+Northern Methodist Church was able to organize only a few white
+congregations outside of the stronger Unionist districts, but continued
+to labor in the South as a missionary field. ¹
+
+¹ The church situation after the war was well described in 1866 by an
+editorial writer in the Nation who pointed out that the Northern
+churches thought the South determined to make the religious division
+permanent, though "slavery no longer furnishes a pretext for
+separation." "Too much pains were taken to bring about an ecclesiastical
+reunion, and irritating offers of reconciliation are made by the
+Northern churches, all based on the assumption that the South has not
+only sinned, but sinned knowingly, in slavery and in war. We expect them
+to be penitent and to gladly accept our offers of forgiveness. But the
+Southern people look upon a 'loyal' missionary as a political emissary,
+and 'loyal' men do not at present possess the necessary qualifications
+for evangelizing the Southerners or softening their hearts, and are sure
+not to succeed in doing so. We look upon their defeat as retribution and
+expect them to do the same. It will do no good if we tell the Southerner
+that 'we will forgive them if they will confess that they are criminals,
+offer to pray with them, preach with them, and labor with them over
+their hideous sins.'"
+
+But if the large Southern churches held their white membership and even
+gained in numbers and territory, they fought a losing fight to retain
+their black members. It was assumed by Northern ecclesiastics that
+whether a reunion of whites took place or not, the negroes would receive
+spiritual guidance from the North. This was necessary, they said,
+because the Southern whites were ignorant and impoverished and because
+"the state of mind among even the best classes of Southern whites
+rendered them incapable ... of doing justice to the people whom they had
+so long persistently wronged." Further, it was also necessary for
+political reasons to remove the negroes from Southern religious control.
+
+For obvious reasons, however, the Southern churches wanted to hold their
+negro members. They declared themselves in favor of negro education and
+of better organized religious work among the blacks, and made every sort
+of accommodation to hold them. The Baptists organized separate
+congregations, with white or black pastors as desired, and associations
+of black churches. In 1866 the Methodist General Conference authorized
+separate congregations, quarterly conferences, annual conferences, even
+a separate jurisdiction, with negro preachers, presiding elders, and
+bishops--but all to no avail. Every Northern political, religious, or
+ilitary agency in the South worked for separation, and negro preachers
+were not long in seeing the greater advantages which they would have in
+independent churches.
+
+Much of the separate organization was accomplished in mutual good will,
+particularly in the Baptist ranks. The Reverend I. T. Tichenor, a
+prominent Baptist minister, has described the process as it took place
+in the First Baptist Church in Montgomery. The church had nine hundred
+members, of whom six hundred were black. The negroes received a regular
+organization of their own under the supervision of the white pastors.
+When a separation of the two bodies was later deemed desirable, it was
+inaugurated by a conference of the negroes which passed a resolution
+couched in the kindliest terms, suggesting the wisdom of the division,
+and asking the concurrence of the white church in such action. The white
+church cordially approved the movement, and the two bodies united in
+erecting a suitable house of worship for the negroes. Until the new
+church was completed, both congregations continued to occupy jointly the
+old house of worship. The new house was paid for in large measure by the
+white members of the church and by individuals in the community. As soon
+as it was completed the colored church moved into it with its pastor,
+board of deacons, committees of all sorts, and the whole machinery of
+church life went into action without a jar. Similar accommodations
+occurred in all the States of the South.
+
+The Methodists lost the greater part of their negro membership to two
+organizations which came down from the North in 1865--the African
+Methodist Episcopal Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Church,
+Zion. Large numbers also went over to the Northern Methodist Church.
+After losing nearly three hundred thousand members, the Southern
+Methodists came to the conclusion that the remaining seventy-eight
+thousand negroes would be more comfortable in a separate organization
+and therefore began in 1866 the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, with
+bishops, conferences, and all the accompaniments of the parent Methodist
+Church, which continued to give friendly aid but exercised no control.
+For many years the Colored Methodist Church was under fire from the
+other negro denominations, who called it the "rebel," the "Democratic,"
+the "old slavery" church.
+
+The negro members of the Cumberland Presbyterians were similarly set off
+into a small African organization. The Southern Presbyterians and the
+Episcopalians established separate congregations and missions under
+white supervision but sanctioned no independent negro organization.
+Consequently the negroes soon deserted these churches and went with
+their own kind.
+
+Resentment at the methods employed by the Northern religious
+carpetbaggers was strong among the Southern whites. "Emissaries of
+Christ and the radical party" they were called by one Alabama leader.
+Governor Lindsay of the same State asserted that the Northern
+missionaries caused race hatred by teaching the negroes to regard the
+whites as their natural enemies, who, if possible, would put them back
+in slavery. Others were charged with teaching that to be on the safe
+side, the blacks should get into a Northern church, and that "Christ
+died for negroes and Yankees, not for rebels."
+
+The scalawags, also, developed a dislike of the Northern church work
+among the negroes and it was impossible to organize mixed congregations.
+Of the Reverend A. S. Lakin, a well-known agent of the Northern
+Methodist Church in Alabama, Nicholas Davis, a North Alabama Unionist
+and scalawag, said to the Ku Klux Committee: "The character of his
+[Lakin's] speech was this: to teach the negroes that every man that was
+born and raised in the Southern country was their enemy, that there was
+no use trusting them, no matter what they said--if they said they were
+for the Union or anything else. 'No use talking, they are your enemies.'
+And he made a pretty good speech, too; awful; a hell of a one; ...
+inflammatory and game, too.... It was enough to provoke the devil. Did
+all the mischief he could ... I tell you, that old fellow is a hell of
+an old rascal."
+
+For a time the white churches were annoyed by intrusions of strange
+blacks set on by those who were bent on separating the races. Frequently
+there were feuds in white or black congregations over the question of
+joining some Northern body. Disputes over church property also arose and
+continued for years. Lakin, referred to above, was charged with
+"stealing" negro congregations and uniting them with the Cincinnati
+Conference without their knowledge. The negroes were urged to demand
+title to all buildings formerly used for negro worship, and the
+Constitutional Convention of Alabama in 1867 directed that such property
+must be turned over to them when claimed.
+
+The agents of the Northern churches were not greatly different from
+other carpetbaggers and adventurers taking advantage of the general
+confusion to seize a little power. Many were unscrupulous; others,
+sincere and honest but narrow, bigoted, and intolerant, filled with
+distrust of the Southern whites and with corresponding confidence in the
+blacks and in themselves. The missionary and church publications were
+quite as severe on the Southern people as any radical Congressman. The
+publications of the Freedmen's Aid Society furnish illustrations of the
+feelings and views of those engaged in the Southern work. They in turn
+were made to feel the effects of a merciless social proscription. For
+this some of them cared not at all, while others or their families felt
+it keenly. One woman missionary wrote that she was delighted when a
+Southern white would speak to her. A preacher in Virginia declared that
+"the females, those especially whose pride has been humbled, are more
+intense in their bitterness and endeavor to keep up a social ostracism
+against Union and Northern people." The Ku Klux raids were directed
+against preachers and congregations whose conduct was disagreeable to
+the whites. Lakin asserted that while he was conducting a great revival
+meeting among the hills of northern Alabama, Governor Smith and other
+prominent and sinful scalawag politicians were there "under conviction"
+and about to become converted. But in came the Klan and the congregation
+scattered. Smith and the others were so angry and frightened that their
+good feelings were dissipated, and the devil reëntered them, so that
+Lakin said he was never able to "get a hold on them" again. For the
+souls lost that night he held the Klan responsible. Lakin told several
+marvelous stories of his hairbreadth escapes from death by assassination
+which, if true, would be enough to ruin the reputation of northern
+Alabama men for marksmanship.
+
+The reconstruction ended with conditions in the churches similar to
+those in politics: the races were separated and unfriendly; Northern and
+Southern church organizations were divided; and between them, especially
+in the border and mountain districts, there existed factional quarrels
+of a political origin, for every Northern Methodist was a Republican and
+every Southern Methodist was a Democrat.
+
+The schools of the South, like the churches and political institutions,
+were thrown into the melting pot of reconstruction. The spirit in which
+the work was begun may be judged from the tone of the addresses made at
+a meeting of the National Teachers Association in 1865. The president,
+S. S. Greene, declared that "the old slave States are to be the new
+missionary ground for the national school teacher." Francis Wayland, the
+former president of Brown University, remarked that "it has been a war
+of education and patriotism against ignorance and barbarism." President
+Hill of Harvard spoke of the "new work of spreading knowledge and
+intellectual culture over the regions that sat in darkness." Other
+speakers asserted that the leading Southern whites were as much opposed
+to free schools as to free governments and "we must treat them as
+western farmers do the stumps in their clearings, work around them and
+let them rot out"; that the majority of the whites were more ignorant
+than the slaves; and that the negro must be educated and strengthened
+against "the wiles, the guile, and hate of his baffled masters and their
+minions." The New England Freedmen's Aid Society considered it necessary
+to educate the negro "as a counteracting influence against the evil
+councils and designs of the white freemen."
+
+The tasks that confronted the Southern States in 1865-67 were two:
+first, to restore the shattered school systems of the whites; and
+second, to arrange for the education of the negroes. Education of the
+negro slave had been looked upon as dangerous and had been generally
+forbidden. A small number of negroes could read and write, but there
+were at the close of the war no schools for the children. Before 1861
+each State had developed at least the outlines of a school system.
+Though hindered in development by the sparseness of the population and
+by the prevalence in some districts of the Virginia doctrine that free
+schools were only for the poor, public schools were nevertheless in
+existence in 1861. Academies and colleges, however, were thronged with
+students. When the war ended, the public schools were disorganized, and
+the private academies and the colleges were closed. Teachers and
+students had been dispersed; buildings had been burned or used for
+hospitals and laboratories; and public libraries had virtually
+disappeared.
+
+The colleges made efforts to open in the fall of 1865. Only one student
+presented himself at the University of Alabama for matriculation; but
+before June, 1866, the stronger colleges were again in operation. The
+public or semi-public schools for the whites also opened in the fall. In
+the cities where Federal military authorities had brought about the
+employment of Northern teachers, there was some friction. In New
+Orleans, for example, the teachers required the children to sing
+Northern songs and patriotic airs. When the Confederates were restored
+to power these teachers were dismissed.
+
+The movement toward negro education was general throughout the South.
+Among the blacks themselves there was an intense desire to learn. They
+wished to read the Bible, to be preachers, to be as the old master and
+not have to work. Day and night and Sunday they crowded the schools.
+According to an observer, ¹ "not only are individuals seen at study, and
+under the most untoward circumstances, but in very many places I have
+found what I will call 'native schools,' often rude and very imperfect,
+but there they are, a group, perhaps, of all ages, trying to learn. Some
+young man, some woman, or old preacher, in cellar, or shed, or corner of
+a negro meeting-house, with the alphabet in hand, or a town
+spelling-book, is their teacher. All are full of enthusiasm with the new
+knowledge the book is imparting to them."
+
+¹ J. W. Alvord, Superintendent of Schools for the Freedmen's Bureau,
+1866.
+
+Not only did the negroes want schooling, but both the North and the
+South proposed to give it to them. Neither side was actuated entirely by
+altruistic motives. A Hampton Institute teacher in later days remarked:
+"When the combat was over and the Yankee school-ma'ams followed in the
+train of the northern armies, the business of educating the negroes was
+a continuation of hostilities against the vanquished and was so regarded
+to a considerable extent on both sides."
+
+The Southern churches, through their bishops and clergy, the newspapers,
+and prominent individuals such as J. L. M. Curry, John B. Gordon, J. L.
+Orr, Governors Brown, Moore, and Patton, came out in favor of negro
+education. Of this movement General Swayne said: "Quite early ... the
+several religious denominations took strong ground in favor of the
+education of the freedmen. The principal argument was an appeal to
+sectional and sectarian prejudice, lest, the work being inevitable, the
+influence which must come from it be realized by others; but it is
+believed that this was but the shield and weapon which men of unselfish
+principle found necessary at first." The newspapers took the attitude
+that the Southern whites should teach the negroes because it was their
+duty, because it was good policy, and because if they did not do so some
+one else would. The Advertiser of Montgomery stated that education was a
+danger in slavery times but that under freedom ignorance became a
+danger. For a time there were numerous schools taught by crippled
+Confederates and by Southern women.
+
+But the education of the negro, like his religious training, was taken
+from the control of the Southern white and was placed under the
+direction of the Northern teachers and missionaries who swarmed into the
+country under the fostering care of the Freedmen's Bureau, the Northern
+churches, and the various Freedmen's Aid Societies. In three years the
+Bureau spent six million dollars on negro schools and everywhere it
+exercised supervision over them. The teachers pursued a policy akin to
+that of the religious leaders. One Southerner likened them to the
+"plagues of Egypt," another described them as "saints, fools,
+incendiaries, fakirs, and plain business men and women." A Southern
+woman remarked that "their spirit was often high and noble so far as the
+black man's elevation was concerned, but toward the white it was bitter,
+judicial, and unrelenting." The Northern teachers were charged with
+ignorance of social conditions, with fraternizing with the blacks, and
+with teaching them that the Southerners were traitors, "murderers of
+Lincoln," who had been cruel taskmasters and who now wanted to restore
+servitude.
+
+The reaction against negro education, which began to show itself before
+reconstruction was inaugurated, found expression in the view of most
+whites that "schooling ruins a negro." A more intelligent opinion was
+that of J. L. M. Curry, a lifelong advocate of negro education:
+
+It is not just to condemn the negro for the education which he received
+in the early years after the war. That was the period of reconstruction,
+the saturnalia of misgovernment, the greatest possible hindrance to the
+progress of the freedmen.... The education was unsettling, demoralizing,
+[and it] pandered to a wild frenzy for schooling as a quick method of
+reversing social and political conditions. Nothing could have been
+better devised for deluding the poor negro and making him the tool, the
+slave of corrupt taskmasters. Education is a natural consequence of
+citizenship and enfranchisement ... of freedom and humanity. But with
+deliberate purpose to subject the Southern States to negro domination,
+and secure the States permanently for partisan ends, the education
+adopted was contrary to common-sense, to human experience, to all noble
+purposes. The curriculum was for a people in the highest degree of
+civilization; the aptitude and capabilities and needs of the negro were
+wholly disregarded. Especial stress was laid on classics and liberal
+culture to bring the race per saltum to the same plane with their former
+masters, and realize the theory of social and political equality. A race
+more highly civilized, with best heredities and environments, could not
+have been coddled with more disregard of all the teachings of human
+history and the necessities of the race. Colleges and universities,
+established and conducted by the Freedmen's Bureau and Northern churches
+and societies, sprang up like mushrooms, and the teachers, ignorant,
+fanatical, without self-poise, proceeded to make all possible mischief.
+It is irrational, cruel, to hold the negro, under such strange
+conditions, responsible for all the ill consequences of bad education,
+unwise teachers, reconstruction villainies, and partisan schemes. ¹
+
+¹ Quoted in Proceedings of the Montgomery Conference on Race Problems
+(1900), p. 128.
+
+Education was to be looked upon as a handmaid to a thorough
+reconstruction, and its general character and aim were determined by the
+Northern teachers. Each convention framed a more or less complicated
+school system and undertook to provide for its support. The negroes in
+the conventions were anxious for free schools; the conservatives were
+willing; but the carpetbaggers and a few mulatto leaders insisted in
+several States upon mixed schools. Only in Louisiana and South Carolina
+did the constitutions actually forbid separate schools; in Mississippi,
+Florida, Alabama, and Arkansas the question was left open, to the
+embarrassment of the whites. Generally the blacks showed no desire for
+mixed schools unless urged to it by the carpetbaggers. In the South
+Carolina convention a mulatto thus argued in favor of mixed schools:
+"The gentleman from Newberry said he was afraid we were taking a wrong
+course to remove these prejudices. The most natural method to effect
+this object would be to allow children when five or six years of age to
+mingle in schools together and associate generally. Under such training,
+prejudice must eventually die out; but if we postpone it until they
+become men and women, prejudice will be so established that no mortal
+can obliterate it. This, I think, is a sufficient reply to the argument
+of the gentleman."
+
+The state systems were top-heavy with administrative machinery and were
+officered by incompetent and corrupt officials. Such men as Cloud in
+Alabama, Cardozo in Mississippi, Conway in Louisiana, and Jillson in
+South Carolina are fair samples of them. Much of the personnel was taken
+over from the Bureau teaching force. The school officials were no better
+than the other officeholders.
+
+The first result of the attempt to use the schools as an instrument of
+reconstruction ended in the ruin of several state universities. The
+faculties of the Universities of North Carolina, Mississippi, and
+Alabama were made radical and the institutions thereupon declined to
+nothing. The negroes, unable to control the faculty of the University of
+South Carolina, forced negro students in and thus got possession. In
+Louisiana the radical Legislature cut off all funds because the
+university would not admit negroes. The establishment of the land grant
+colleges was an occasion for corruption and embezzlement.
+
+The common schools were used for radical ends. The funds set aside for
+them by the state constitutions or appropriated by the legislatures for
+these schools seldom reached their destination without being lessened by
+embezzlement or by plain stealing. Frequently the auditor, or the
+treasurer, or even the Legislature diverted the school funds to other
+purposes. Suffice it to say that all of the reconstruction systems broke
+down financially after a brief existence.
+
+The mixed school provisions in Louisiana and South Carolina and the
+uncertainty of the educational situation in other States caused white
+children to stay away from the public schools. For several years the
+negroes were better provided than the whites, having for themselves both
+all the public schools and also those supported by private benevolence.
+In Mississippi, Louisiana, and South Carolina the whites could get no
+money for schoolhouses, while large sums were spent on negro schools.
+The Peabody Board, then recently inaugurated, ¹ refused to coöperate
+with school officials in the mixed school States and, when criticized,
+replied: "It is well known that we are helping the white children of
+Louisiana as being the more destitute from the fact of their
+unwillingness to attend mixed schools."
+
+¹ To administer the fund bequeathed by George Peabody of Massachusetts
+to promote education in the Southern States. See The New South, by
+Holland Thompson (in The Chronicles of America).
+
+As was to be expected the whites criticized the attitude of the school
+officials, disapproved of the attempts made in the schools to teach the
+children radical ideas, and objected to the contents of the history
+texts and the "Freedmen's Readers." A white school board in Mississippi,
+by advertising for a Democratic teacher for a negro school, drew the
+fire of a radical editor who inquired: "What is the motive by which this
+call for a 'competent Democratic teacher' is prompted? The most damning
+that has ever moved the heart of man. It is to use the vote and action
+of a human being as a means by which to enslave him. The treachery and
+villainy of these rebels stands without parallel in the history of men."
+
+A negro politician has left this account of a radical recitation in a
+Florida negro school:
+
+After finishing the arithmetic lesson they must next go through the
+catechism:
+
+"Who is the 'Publican Government of the State of Florida?" Answer:
+"Governor Starns."
+
+"Who made him Governor?" Answer: "The colored people."
+
+"Who is trying to get him out of his seat?" Answer: "The Democrats,
+Conover, and some white and black Liberal Republicans."
+
+"What should the colored people do with the men who is trying to get
+Governor Starns out of his seat?" Answer: "They should kill them." ...
+
+This was done that the patrons, some of whom could not read, would be
+impressed by the expressions of their children, and would be ready to
+put any one to death who would come out into the country and say
+anything against Governor Starns.
+
+The native white teachers soon dropped out of negro schools, and those
+from the North met with the same social persecution as the white church
+workers. The White League and Ku Klux Klan drove off obnoxious teachers,
+whipped some, burned negro schoolhouses, and in various other ways
+manifested the reaction which was rousing the whites against negro
+schools.
+
+The several agencies working for negro education gave some training to
+hundreds of thousands of blacks, but the whites asserted that, like the
+church work, it was based on a wrong spirit and resulted in evil as well
+as in good. Free schools failed in reconstruction because of the
+dishonesty or incompetence of the authorities and because of the
+unsettled race question. It was not until the turn of the century that
+the white schools were again as good as they had been before 1861. After
+the reconstruction native whites as teachers of negro schools were
+impossible in most places. The hostile feelings of the whites resulted
+and still result in a limitation of negro schools. The best thing for
+negro schools that came out of reconstruction was Armstrong's Hampton
+Institute program, which, however, was quite opposed to the spirit of
+reconstruction education.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Carpetbag and Negro Rule
+
+The Southern States reconstructed by Congress were subject for periods
+of varying length to governments designed by radical Northerners and
+imposed by elements thrown to the surface in the upheaval of Southern
+society. Georgia, Virginia, and North Carolina each had a brief
+experience with these governments; other States escaped after four or
+five years, while Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida were not
+delivered from this domination until 1876. The States which contained
+large numbers of negroes had, on the whole, the worst experience. Here
+the officials were ignorant or corrupt, frauds upon the public were the
+rule, not the exception, and all of the reconstruction governments were
+so conducted that they could secure no support from the respectable
+elements of the electorate.
+
+The fundamental cause of the failure of these governments was the
+character of the new ruling class. Every State, except perhaps Virginia,
+was under the control of a few able leaders from the North generally
+called carpetbaggers and of a few native white radicals contemptuously
+designated scalawags. These were kept in power by negro voters, to some
+seven hundred thousand of whom the ballot had been given by the
+reconstruction acts. The adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment in March,
+1870, brought the total in the former slave States to 931,000, with
+about seventy-five thousand more negroes in the North. The negro voters
+were most numerous, comparatively, in Louisiana, Mississippi, South
+Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia. There were a few thousand carpetbaggers
+in each State, with, at first, a much larger number of scalawags. The
+latter, who were former Unionists, former Whigs, Confederate deserters,
+and a few unscrupulous politicians, were most numerous in Virginia,
+North Carolina, Texas, Arkansas, and Tennessee. The better class,
+however, rapidly left the radical party as the character of the new
+régime became evident, taking with them whatever claims the party had to
+respectability, education, political experience, and property.
+
+The conservatives, hopelessly reduced by the operation of disfranchising
+laws, were at first not well organized, nor were they at any time as
+well led as in antebellum days. In 1868 about one hundred thousand of
+them were forbidden to vote and about two hundred thousand were
+disqualified from holding office. The abstention policy of 1867-68
+resulted in an almost complete withdrawal of the influence of the
+conservatives for the two years, 1868-70. As a class they were regarded
+by the dominant party in State and nation as dangerous and untrustworthy
+and were persecuted in such irritating ways that many became indifferent
+to the appeals of civil duty. They formed a solid but almost despairing
+opposition in the black districts of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama,
+and South Carolina. For the leaders the price of amnesty was conversion
+to radicalism, but this price few would pay.
+
+The new state governments possessed certain characteristics in common.
+Since only a small number of able men were available for office, full
+powers of administration, including appointment and removal, were
+concentrated in the hands of the governor. He exercised a wide control
+over public funds and had authority to organize and command militia and
+constabulary and to call for Federal troops. The numerous administrative
+boards worked with the sole object of keeping their party in power.
+Officers were several times as numerous as under the old régime, and all
+of them received higher salaries and larger contingent fees. The moral
+support behind the government was that of President Grant and the United
+States army, not that of a free and devoted people.
+
+Of the twenty men who served as governors eight were scalawags and
+twelve were carpetbaggers--men who were abler than the scalawags and who
+had much more than an equal share of the spoils. The scalawags, such as
+Brownlow of Tennessee, Smith of Alabama, and Holden of North Carolina,
+were usually honest but narrow, vindictive men, filled with fear and
+hate of the conservative whites. Of the carpetbaggers half were
+personally honest, but all were unscrupulous in politics. Some were
+flagrantly dishonest. Governor Moses of South Carolina was several times
+bribed and at one time, according to his own statement, received $15,000
+for his vote as speaker of the House of Representatives. Governor
+Stearns of Florida was charged with stealing government supplies from
+the negroes; and it was notorious that Warmoth and Kellogg of Louisiana,
+each of whom served only one term, retired with large fortunes. Warmoth,
+indeed, went so far as to declare: "Corruption is the fashion. I do not
+pretend to be honest, but only as honest as anybody in politics."
+
+The judiciary was no better than the executive. The chief justice of
+Louisiana was convicted of fraud. A supreme court judge of South
+Carolina offered his decisions for sale, and Whipper and Moses, both
+notorious thieves, were elected judges by the South Carolina
+Legislature. In Alabama there were many illiterate magistrates, among
+them the city judge of Selma, who in April, 1865, was still living as a
+slave. Governor Chamberlain, a radical, asserted that there were two
+hundred trial judges in South Carolina who could not read.
+
+Other officers were of the same stripe. Leslie, a South Carolina
+carpetbagger, declared that "South Carolina has no right to be a State
+unless she can support her statesmen," and he proceeded to live up to
+this principle. The manager of the state railroad of Georgia, when asked
+how he had been able to accumulate twenty or thirty thousand dollars on
+a two or three thousand dollar salary, replied, "By the exercise of the
+most rigid economy." A North Carolina negro legislator was found on one
+occasion chuckling as he counted some money. "What are you laughing at,
+Uncle?" he was asked. "Well, boss, I'se been sold 'leben times in my
+life and dis is de fust time I eber got de money." Godkin, in the
+Nation, said that the Georgia officials were "probably as bad a lot of
+political tricksters and adventurers as ever got together in one place."
+This description will fit equally well the white officials of all the
+reconstructed States. Many of the negroes who attained public office
+showed themselves apt pupils of their carpetbag masters but were seldom
+permitted to appropriate a large share of the plunder. In Florida the
+negro members of the Legislature, thinking that they should have a part
+of the bribe and loot money which their carpetbag masters were said to
+be receiving, went so far as to appoint what was known as a "smelling
+committee" to locate the good things and secure a share.
+
+From 1868 to 1870 the legislatures of seven States were overwhelmingly
+radical and in several the radical majority held control for four, six,
+or eight years. Negroes were most numerous in the legislatures of
+Louisiana, South Carolina, and Mississippi, and everywhere the votes of
+these men were for sale. In Alabama and Louisiana negro legislators had
+a fixed price for their votes: for example, six hundred dollars would
+buy a senator in Louisiana. In South Carolina, negro government appeared
+at its worst. A vivid description of the Legislature of this State in
+which the negroes largely outnumbered the whites is given by James S.
+Pike, a Republican journalist: ¹
+
+¹ Pike, The Prostrate State, pp. 12 ff.
+
+In the place of this old aristocratic society stands the rude form of
+the most ignorant democracy that mankind ever saw, invested with the
+functions of government. It is the dregs of the population habilitated
+in the robes of their intelligent predecessors, and asserting over them
+the rule of ignorance and corruption.... It is barbarism overwhelming
+civilization by physical force. It is the slave rioting in the halls of
+his master, and putting that master under his feet. And, though it is
+done without malice and without vengeance, it is nevertheless none the
+less completely and absolutely done.... We will enter the House of
+Representatives. Here sit one hundred and twenty-four members. Of these,
+twenty-three are white men, representing the remains of the old
+civilization. These are good-looking, substantial citizens. They are men
+of weight and standing in the communities they represent. They are all
+from the hill country. The frosts of sixty and seventy winters whiten
+the heads of some among them. There they sit, grim and silent. They feel
+themselves to be but loose stones, thrown in to partially obstruct a
+current they are powerless to resist....
+
+This dense negro crowd ... do the debating, the squabbling, the
+lawmaking, and create all the clamor and disorder of the body. These
+twenty-three white men are but the observers, the enforced auditors of
+the dull and clumsy imitation of a deliberative body, whose appearance
+in their present capacity is at once a wonder and a shame to modern
+civilization.... The Speaker is black, the Clerk is black, the
+doorkeepers are black, the little pages are black, the chairman of the
+Ways and Means is black, and the chaplain is coal black. At some of the
+desks sit colored men whose types it would be hard to find outside of
+Congo; whose costumes, visages, attitudes, and expression, only befit
+the forecastle of a buccaneer. It must be remembered, also, that these
+men, with not more than a half dozen exceptions, have been themselves
+slaves, and that their ancestors were slaves for generations....
+
+But the old stagers admit that the colored brethren have a wonderful
+aptness at legislative proceedings. They are "quick as lightning" at
+detecting points of order, and they certainly make incessant and
+extraordinary use of their knowledge. No one is allowed to talk five
+minutes without interruption, and one interruption is a signal for
+another and another, until the original speaker is smothered under an
+avalanche of them. Forty questions of privilege will be raised in a day.
+At times, nothing goes on but alternating questions of order and of
+privilege. The inefficient colored friend who sits in the Speaker's
+chair cannot suppress this extraordinary element of the debate. Some of
+the blackest members exhibit a pertinacity of intrusion in raising these
+points of order and questions of privilege that few white men can equal.
+Their struggles to get the floor, their bellowings and physical
+contortions, baffle description. The Speaker's hammer plays a perpetual
+tattoo to no purpose. The talking and the interruptions from all
+quarters go on with the utmost license. Everyone esteems himself as good
+as his neighbor, and puts in his oar, apparently as often for love of
+riot and confusion as for anything else.... The Speaker orders a member
+whom he has discovered to be particularly unruly to take his seat. The
+member obeys, and with the same motion that he sits down, throws his
+feet on to his desk, hiding himself from the Speaker by the soles of his
+boots.... After a few experiences of this sort, the Speaker threatens,
+in a laugh, to call the "gemman" to order. This is considered a capital
+joke, and a guffaw follows. The laugh goes round and then the peanuts
+are cracked and munched faster than ever; one hand being employed in
+fortifying the inner man with this nutriment of universal use, while the
+other enforces the views of the orator. This laughing propensity of the
+sable crowd is a great cause of disorder. They laugh as hens cackle--one
+begins and all follow.
+
+But underneath all this shocking burlesque upon legislative proceedings,
+we must not forget that there is something very real to this uncouth and
+untutored multitude. It is not all sham, nor all burlesque. They have a
+genuine interest and a genuine earnestness in the business of the
+assembly which we are bound to recognize and respect.... They have an
+earnest purpose, born of conviction that their position and condition
+are not fully assured, which lends a sort of dignity to their
+proceedings. The barbarous, animated jargon in which they so often
+indulge is on occasion seen to be so transparently sincere and weighty
+in their own minds that sympathy supplants disgust. The whole thing is a
+wonderful novelty to them as well as to observers. Seven years ago these
+men were raising corn and cotton under the whip of the overseer. Today
+they are raising points of order and questions of privilege. They find
+they can raise one as well as the other. They prefer the latter. It is
+easier and better paid. Then, it is the evidence of an accomplished
+result. It means escape and defense from old oppressors. It means
+liberty. It means the destruction of prison-walls only too real to them.
+It is the sunshine of their lives. It is their day of jubilee. It is
+their long-promised vision of the Lord God Almighty.
+
+The congressional delegations were as radical as the state governments.
+During the first two years there were no Democratic senators from the
+reconstructed States and only two Democratic representatives, as against
+sixty-four radical senators and representatives. At the end of four
+years the Democrats numbered fifteen against seventy radicals. A negro
+succeeded Jefferson Davis in the Senate, and in all the race sent two
+senators and thirteen representatives to Congress, but though several
+were of high character and fair ability, they exercised practically no
+influence. The Southern delegations had no part in shaping policies but
+merely voted as they were told by the radical leaders.
+
+The effect of dishonest government was soon seen in extravagant
+expenditures, heavier taxes, increase of the bonded debt, and depression
+of property values. It was to be expected that after the ruin wrought by
+war and the admission of the negro to civil rights, the expenses of
+government would be greater. But only lack of honesty will account for
+the extraordinary expenses of the reconstruction governments. In Alabama
+and Florida the running expenses of the state government increased two
+hundred per cent, in Louisiana five hundred per cent, and in Arkansas
+fifteen hundred per cent--all this in addition to bond issues. In South
+Carolina the one item of public printing, which from 1790 to 1868 cost
+$609,000, amounted in the years 1868-1876 to $1,326,589.
+
+Corrupt state officials had two ways of getting money--by taxation and
+by the sale of bonds. Taxes were everywhere multiplied. The state tax
+rate in Alabama was increased four hundred per cent, in Louisiana eight
+hundred per cent, and in Mississippi, which could issue no bonds,
+fourteen hundred per cent. City and county taxes, where carpetbaggers
+were in control, increased in the same way. Thousands of small
+proprietors could not meet their taxes, and in Mississippi alone the
+land sold for unpaid taxes amounted to six million acres, an area as
+large as Massachusetts and Rhode Island together. Nordhoff ¹ speaks of
+seeing Louisiana newspapers of which three-fourths were taken up by
+notices of tax sales. In protest against extravagant and corrupt
+expenditures, taxpayers' conventions were held in every State, but
+without effect.
+
+¹ Charles Nordhoff, The Cotton States in the Spring and Summer of 1875.
+
+Even the increased taxation, however, did not produce enough to support
+the new governments, which now had recourse to the sale of state and
+local bonds. In this way Governor Holden's Administration managed in two
+years to increase the public debt of North Carolina from $16,000,000 to
+$32,000,000. The state debt of South Carolina rose from $7,000,000 to
+$29,000,000 in 1873. In Alabama, by 1874, the debt had mounted from
+$7,000,000 to $32,000,000. The public debt of Louisiana rose from
+$14,000,000 in 1868 to $48,000,000 in 1871, with a local debt of
+$31,000,000. Cities, towns, and counties sold bonds by the bale. The
+debt of New Orleans increased twenty-five fold and that of Vicksburg a
+thousandfold. A great deal of the debt was the result of fraudulent
+issues of bonds or overissues. For this form of fraud the state
+financial agents in New York were usually responsible. Southern bonds
+sold far below par, and the time came when they were peddled about at
+ten to twenty-five cents on the dollar.
+
+Still another disastrous result followed this corrupt financiering. In
+Alabama there was a sixty-five per cent decrease in property values, in
+Florida forty-five per cent, and in Louisiana fifty to seventy-five per
+cent. A large part of the best property was mortgaged, and foreclosure
+sales were frequent. Poorer property could be neither mortgaged nor
+sold. There was an exodus of whites from the worst governed districts in
+the West and the North. Many towns, among them Mobile and Memphis,
+surrendered their charters and were ruled directly by the governor; and
+there were numerous "strangulated" counties which on account of debt had
+lost self-government and were ruled by appointees of the governor.
+
+A part of the money raised by taxes and by bond sales was used for
+legitimate expenses and the rest went to pay forged warrants, excess
+warrants, and swollen mileage accounts, and to fill the pockets of
+embezzlers and thieves from one end of the South to the other. In
+Arkansas, for example, the auditor's clerk hire, which was $4000 in
+1866, cost twenty-three times as much in 1873. In Louisiana and South
+Carolina stealing was elevated into an art and was practiced without
+concealment. In the latter State the worthless Hell Hole Swamp was
+bought for $26,000 to be farmed by the negroes but was charged to the
+state at $120,000. A free restaurant maintained at the Capitol for the
+legislators cost $125,000 for one session. The porter who conducted it
+said that he kept it open sixteen to twenty hours a day and that someone
+was always in the room eating and drinking or smoking. When a member
+left he would fill his pockets with cigars or with bottles of drink.
+Forty different brands of beverages were paid for by the State for the
+private use of members, and all sorts of food, furniture, and clothing
+were sent to the houses of members and were paid for by the State as
+"legislative supplies." On the bills appeared such items as imported
+mushrooms, one side of bacon, one feather bed, bustles, two pairs of
+extra long stockings, one pair of garters, one bottle perfume, twelve
+monogram cut glasses, one horse, one comb and brush, three gallons of
+whisky, one pair of corsets. During the recess, supplies were sent out
+to the rural homes of the members.
+
+The endorsement of railroad securities by the State also furnished a
+source of easy money to the dishonest official and the crooked
+speculator. After the Civil War, in response to the general desire in
+the South for better railroad facilities, the "Johnson" governments
+began to underwrite railroad bonds. When the carpetbag and negro
+governments came in, the policy was continued but without proper
+safeguards. Bonds were sometimes endorsed before the roads were
+constructed, and even excess issues were authorized. Bonds were endorsed
+for some roads of which not a mile was ever built. The White River
+Valley and Texas Railroad never came into existence, but it obtained a
+grant of $175,000 from the State of Arkansas. Speaker Carter of the
+Louisiana Legislature received a financial interest in all railroad
+endorsement bills which he steered through the House. Negro members were
+regularly bribed to vote for the bond steals. A witness swore that in
+Louisiana it cost him $80,000 to get a railroad charter passed, but that
+the Governor's signature cost more than the consent of the Legislature.
+
+When the roads defaulted on the payment of interest, as most of them
+did, the burden fell upon the State. Not all of the blame for this
+perverted legislation should be placed upon the corrupt legislators,
+however, for the lawyers who saw the bills through were frequently
+Southern Democrats representing supposedly respectable Northern
+capitalists. The railroads as well as the taxpayers suffered from this
+pernicious lobbying, for the companies were loaded with debts and rarely
+profited by the loans. Valuation of railroad property rapidly decreased.
+The roads of Alabama which were valued in 1871 at $26,000,000 had
+decreased in 1875 to $9,500,000.
+
+The foundation of radical power in the South lay in the alienation of
+the races which had been accomplished between 1865 and 1868. To maintain
+this unhappy distrust, the radical leaders found an effective means in
+the negro militia. Under the constitution of every reconstructed State a
+negro constabulary was possible, but only in South Carolina, North
+Carolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi were the authorities willing to
+risk the dangers of arming the blacks. No governor dared permit the
+Southern whites to organize as militia. In South Carolina the carpetbag
+governor, Robert K. Scott, enrolled ninety-six thousand negroes as
+members of the militia and organized and armed twenty thousand of them.
+The few white companies were ordered to disband. In Louisiana the
+governor had a standing army of blacks called the Metropolitan Guard. In
+several States the negro militia was used as a constabulary and was sent
+to any part of the State to make arrests.
+
+In spite of this provocation there were, after the riots of 1866-67,
+comparatively few race conflicts until reconstruction was drawing to a
+close. The intervening period was filled with the more peaceful
+activities of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Camelia. ¹ But as the
+whites made up their minds to get rid of negro rule, the clashes came
+frequently and always ended in the death of more negroes than whites. ²
+They would probably have continued with serious consequences if the
+whites had not eventually secured control of the government.
+
+¹ See pages 243-264.
+
+² Among the bloodiest conflicts were those in Louisiana at Colfax,
+Coushatta, and New Orleans in 1873-74, and at Vicksburg and Clinton,
+Mississippi, in 1874-75.
+
+The lax election laws, framed indeed for the benefit of the party in
+power, gave the radicals ample opportunity to control the negro vote.
+The elections were frequently corrupt, though not a great deal of money
+was spent in bribery. It was found less expensive to use other methods
+of getting out the vote. The negroes were generally made to understand
+that the Democrats wanted to put them back into slavery, but sometimes
+the leaders deemed it wiser to state more concretely that "Jeff Davis
+had come to Montgomery and is ready to organize the Confederacy again"
+if the Democrats should win; or to say that "if Carter is elected, he
+will not allow your wives and daughters to wear hoopskirts." In Alabama
+many thousand pounds of bacon and hams were sent in to be distributed
+among "flood sufferers" in a region which had not been flooded since the
+days of Noah. The negroes were told that they must vote right and
+receive enough bacon for a year, or "lose their rights" if they voted
+wrongly. Ballot-box stuffing developed into an art, and each negro was
+carefully inspected to see that he had the right kind of ticket before
+he was marched to the polls.
+
+The inspection and counting of election returns were in the hands of the
+county and state boards, which were controlled by the governor, and
+which had authority to throw out or count in any number of votes. On the
+assumption that the radicals were entitled to all negro votes, the
+returning boards followed the census figures for the black population in
+order to arrive at the minimum radical vote. The action of the returning
+boards was specially flagrant in Louisiana and Florida and in the black
+counties of South Carolina.
+
+Notwithstanding the fact that the very best arrangements had been made
+at Washington and in the States for the running of the radical machine,
+everywhere there were factional fights from the beginning. Usually the
+scalawags declared hostilities after they found that the carpetbaggers
+had control of the negroes and the inside track on the way to the best
+state and federal offices. Later, after the scalawags had for the most
+part left the radicals, there were contests among the carpetbaggers
+themselves for the control of the negro vote and the distribution of
+spoils. The defeated faction usually joined the Democrats. In Arkansas a
+split started in 1869 which by 1872 resulted in two state governments.
+Alabama in 1872 and Louisiana in 1874-75 each had two rival governments.
+This factionalism contributed largely to the overthrow of the radicals.
+
+The radical structure, however, was still powerfully supported from
+without. Relations between the Federal Government and the state
+governments in the South were close, and the policy at Washington was
+frequently determined by conditions in the South. President Grant,
+though at first considerate, was usually consistently radical in his
+Southern policy. This attitude is difficult to explain except by saying
+that Grant fell under the control of radical advisers after his break
+with Johnson, that his military instincts were offended by opposition in
+the South which his advisers told him was rebellious, and that he was
+impressed by the need of holding the Southern radical vote against the
+inroads of the Democrats. After about 1869 Grant never really understood
+the conditions in the South. He was content to control by means of
+Federal troops and thousands of deputy marshals. For this policy the Ku
+Klux activities gave sufficient excuse for a time, and the continued
+story of "rebel outrages" was always available to justify a call for
+soldiers or deputies. The enforcement legislation gave the color of law
+to any interference which was deemed necessary.
+
+Federal troops served other ends than the mere preservation of order and
+the support of the radical state governments. They were used on occasion
+to decide between opposing factions and to oust conservatives who had
+forced their way into office. The army officers purged the Legislature
+of Georgia in 1870, that of Alabama in 1872, and that of Louisiana in
+1875. In 1875 the city government of Vicksburg and the state government
+of Louisiana were overturned by the whites, but General Sheridan at once
+intervened to put back the negroes and carpetbaggers. He suggested to
+President Grant that the conservatives be declared "banditti" and he
+would make himself responsible for the rest. As soon as a State showed
+signs of going over to the Democrats or an important election was lost
+by the radicals, one House or the other of Congress in many instances
+sent an investigation committee to ascertain the reasons. The Committees
+on the Condition of the South or on the Late Insurrectionary States were
+nearly always ready with reports to establish the necessity of
+intervention.
+
+Besides the army there was in every State a powerful group of Federal
+officials who formed a "ring" for the direction of all good radicals.
+These marshals, deputies, postmasters, district attorneys, and
+customhouse officials were in close touch with Washington and frequently
+dictated nominations and platforms. At New Orleans the officials acted
+as a committee on credentials and held all the state conventions under
+their control in the customhouse.
+
+Such was the machinery used to sustain a party which, with the gradual
+defection of the whites, became throughout the South almost uniformly
+black. At first few negroes asked for offices, but soon the
+carpetbaggers found it necessary to divide with the rapidly growing
+number of negro politicians. No negro was elected governor, though
+several reached the office of lieutenant governor, secretary of state,
+auditor, superintendent of education, justice of the state supreme
+court, and fifteen were elected to Congress. ¹ It would not be correct
+to say that the negro race was malicious or on evil bent. Unless
+deliberately stirred up by white leaders, few negroes showed signs of
+mean spirit. Few even made exorbitant demands. They wanted
+"something"--schools and freedom and "something else," they knew not
+what. Deprived of the leadership of the best whites, they could not
+possibly act with the scalawags--their traditional enemies. Nothing was
+left for them but to follow the carpetbagger.
+
+¹ Revels, Lynch, and Bruce represent the better negro officeholders;
+Pinchback, Rainey, and Nash, the less respectable ones; and below these
+were the rascals whose ambition was to equal their white preceptors in
+corruption.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+The Ku Klux Movement
+
+The Ku Klux movement, which took the form of secret revolutionary
+societies, grew out of a general conviction among the whites that the
+reconstruction policies were impossible and not to be endured. Somers,
+an English traveler, says that at this time "nearly every respectable
+white man in the Southern States was not only disfranchised but under
+fear of arrest or confiscation; the old foundations of authority were
+utterly razed before any new ones had yet been laid, and in the dark and
+benighted interval the remains of the Confederate armies--swept after a
+long and heroic day of fair fight from the field--flitted before the
+eyes of the people in this weird and midnight shape of a Ku Klux Klan."
+Ryland Randolph, an Alabama editor who was also an official of the Klan,
+stated in his paper that "the origin of Ku Klux Klan is in the galling
+despotism that broods like a night-mare over these Southern States--a
+fungus growth of military tyranny superinduced by the fostering of Loyal
+Leagues, the abrogation of our civil laws, the habitual violation of our
+national Constitution, and a persistent prostitution of all government,
+all resources and all powers, to degrade the white man by the
+establishment of negro supremacy."
+
+The secret orders, regardless of their original purposes, were all
+finally to be found opposing radical reconstruction. Everywhere their
+objects were the same: to recover for the white race their former
+control of society and government, and to destroy the baneful influence
+of the alien among the blacks. The people of the South were by law
+helpless to take steps towards setting up any kind of government in a
+land infested by a vicious element--Federal and Confederate deserters,
+bushwhackers, outlaws of every description, and negroes, some of whom
+proved insolent and violent in their newly found freedom. Nowhere was
+property or person safe, and for a time many feared a negro
+insurrection. General Hardee said to his neighbors, "I advise you to get
+ready for what may come. We are standing over a sleeping volcano."
+
+To cope with this situation ante-bellum patrols--the "patter-rollers" as
+the negroes called them--were often secretly reorganized. In each
+community for several months after the Civil War, and in many of them
+for months before the end of the war, there were informal vigilance
+committees. Some of these had such names as the Black Cavalry and Men of
+Justice in Alabama, the Home Guards in many other places, while the
+anti-Confederate societies of the war, the Heroes of America, the Red
+Strings, and the Peace Societies, transformed themselves in certain
+localities into regulatory bodies. Later these secret societies numbered
+scores, perhaps hundreds, varying from small bodies of local police to
+great federated bodies which covered almost the entire South and even
+had membership in the North and West. Other important organizations were
+the Constitutional Union Guards, the Pale Faces, the White Brotherhood,
+the Council of Safety, the '76 Association, the Sons of '76, the Order
+of the White Rose, and the White Boys. As the fight against
+reconstruction became bolder, the orders threw off their disguises and
+appeared openly as armed whites fighting for the control of society. The
+White League of Louisiana, the White Line of Mississippi, the White
+Man's party of Alabama, and the Rifle Clubs of South Carolina, were
+later manifestations of the general Ku Klux movement.
+
+The two largest secret orders, however, were the Ku Klux Klan, from
+which the movement took its name, and the Knights of the White Camelia.
+The Ku Klux Klan originated at Pulaski, Tennessee, in the autumn of
+1865, as a local organization for social purposes. The founders were
+young Confederates, united for fun and mischief. The name was an
+accidental corruption of the Greek word Kuklos, a circle. The officers
+adopted queer sounding titles and strange disguises. Weird night riders
+in ghostly attire thoroughly frightened the superstitious negroes, who
+were told that the spirits of dead Confederates were abroad. This
+terrorizing of the blacks successfully provided the amusement which the
+founders desired and there were many applications for admission to the
+society. The Pulaski Club, or Den, was in the habit of parading in full
+uniform at social gatherings of the whites at night, much to the delight
+of the small boys and girls. Pulaski was near the Alabama line, and many
+of the young men of Alabama who saw these parades or heard of them
+organized similar Dens in the towns of Northern Alabama. Nothing but
+horseplay, however, took place at the meetings. In 1867 and 1868 the
+order appeared in parade in the towns of the adjoining States and, as we
+are told, "cut up curious gyrations" on the public squares.
+
+There was a general belief outside the order that there was a purpose
+behind all the ceremonial and frolic of the Dens; many joined the order
+convinced that its object was serious; others saw the possibilities of
+using it as a means of terrorizing the negroes. After men discovered the
+power of the Klan over the negroes, indeed, they were generally
+inclined, owing to the disordered conditions of the time, to act as a
+sort of police patrol and to hold in check the thieving negroes, the
+Union League, and the "loyalists." In this way, from being merely a
+number of social clubs the Dens swiftly became bands of regulators,
+taking on many new fantastic qualities along with their new seriousness
+of purpose. Some of the more ardent spirits led the Dens far in the
+direction of violence and outrage. Attempts were made by the parent Den
+at Pulaski to regulate the conduct of the others, but, owing to the
+loose organization, the effort met with little success. Some of the
+Dens, indeed, lost all connection with the original order.
+
+A general organization of these societies was perfected at a convention
+held in Nashville in May, 1867, just as the Reconstruction Acts were
+being put into operation. A constitution called the Prescript was
+adopted which provided for a national organization. The former slave
+States, except Delaware, constituted the Empire, which was ruled by the
+Grand Wizard (then General Forrest) with a staff of ten Genii; each
+State was a realm under a Grand Dragon and eight Hydras; the next
+subdivision was a Dominion, consisting of several counties, ruled by a
+Grand Titan and six Furies; the county or Province was governed by a
+Grand Giant and four Goblins; the unit was the Den or community
+organization, of which there might be several in each county, each under
+a Grand Cyclops and two Nighthawks. The Genii, Hydras, Furies, Goblins,
+and Nighthawks were staff officers. The private members were called
+Ghouls. The order had no name, and at first was designated by two stars
+(**), later by three (***). Sometimes it was called the Invisible Empire
+of Ku Klux Klan.
+
+Any white man over eighteen might be admitted to the Den after
+nomination by a member and strict investigation by a committee. The oath
+demanded obedience and secrecy. The Dens governed themselves by the
+ordinary rules of deliberative bodies. The punishment for betrayal of
+secrecy was "the extreme penalty of the Law." None of the secrets was to
+be written, and there was a "Register" of alarming adjectives, such as
+terrible, horrible, furious, doleful, bloody, appalling, frightful,
+gloomy, which was used as a cipher code in dating the odd Ku Klux
+orders.
+
+The general objects of the order were thus set forth in the revised
+Prescript: first, to protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenseless
+from the indignities, wrongs, and outrages of the lawless, the violent,
+and the brutal; to relieve the injured and oppressed; to succor the
+suffering and unfortunate, and especially the widows and orphans of
+Confederate soldiers; second, to protect and defend the Constitution of
+the United States and all laws passed in conformity thereto, and to
+protect the States and people thereof from all invasion from any source
+whatever; third, to aid and assist in the execution of all
+"constitutional" laws, and to protect the people from unlawful arrest,
+and from trial except by their peers according to the laws of the land.
+But the tests for admission gave further indication of the objects of
+the order. No Republican, no Union Leaguer, and no member of the
+G. A. R. might become a member. The members were pledged to oppose negro
+equality of any kind, to favor emancipation of the Southern whites and
+the restoration of their rights, and to maintain constitutional
+government and equitable laws.
+
+Prominent men testified that the order became popular because the whites
+felt that they were persecuted and that there was no legal protection,
+no respectable government. General (later Senator) Pettus said that
+through all the workings of the Federal Government ran the principle
+that "we are an inferior, degraded people and not fit to be trusted."
+General Clanton of Alabama further explained that "there is not a
+respectable white woman in the Negro Belt of Alabama who will trust
+herself outside of her house without some protector.... So far as our
+State Government is concerned, we are in the hands of camp-followers,
+horse-holders, cooks, bottle-washers, and thieves.... We have passed out
+from the hands of the brave soldiers who overcame us, and are turned
+over to the tender mercies of squaws for torture.... I see negro
+police--great black fellows--leading white girls around the streets of
+Montgomery, and locking them up in jails."
+
+The Klan first came into general prominence in 1868 with the report of
+the Federal commanders in the South concerning its activities. Soon
+after that date the order spread through the white counties of the
+South, in many places absorbing the White Brotherhood, the Pale Faces,
+and some other local organizations which had been formed in the upper
+part of the Black Belt. But it was not alone in the field. The order
+known as the Knights of the White Camelia, founded in Louisiana in 1867
+and formally organized in 1868, spread rapidly over the lower South
+until it reached the territory occupied by the Ku Klux Klan. It was
+mainly a Black Belt order, and on the whole had a more substantial and
+more conservative membership than the other large secret bodies. Like
+the Ku Klux Klan, it also absorbed several minor local societies.
+
+The White Camelia had a national organization with headquarters in New
+Orleans. Its business was conducted by a Supreme Council of the United
+States, with Grand, Central, and Subordinate Councils for each State,
+county, and community. All communication within the order took place by
+passwords and cipher; the organization and the officers were similar to
+those of the Ku Klux Klan; and all officers were designated by initials.
+An ex-member states that "during the three years of its existence here
+[Perry County, Alabama] I believe its organization and discipline were
+as perfect as human ingenuity could have made it." The fundamental
+object of the White Camelia was the "maintenance of the supremacy of the
+white race," and to this end the members were constrained "to observe a
+marked distinction between the races" and to restrain the "African race
+to that condition of social and political inferiority for which God has
+destined it." The members were pledged to vote only for whites, to
+oppose negro equality in all things, but to respect the legitimate
+rights of negroes.
+
+The smaller orders were similar in purpose and organization to the Ku
+Klux Klan and the White Camelia. Most of them joined or were affiliated
+with the large societies. Probably a majority of the men of the South
+were associated at some time during this period with these revolutionary
+bodies. As a rule the politicians, though approving, held aloof. Public
+opinion generally supported the movement so long as the radicals made
+serious attempts to carry out the reconstruction policies.
+
+The task before the secret orders was to regulate the conduct of the
+blacks and their leaders in order that honor, life, and property might
+be secure. They planned to accomplish this aim by playing upon the
+fears, superstitions, and cowardice of the black race--in a word, by
+creating a white terror to counteract the black one. To this end they
+made use of strange disguises, mysterious and fearful conversation,
+midnight rides and drills, and silent parades. As long as secrecy and
+mystery were to be effective in dealing with the negroes, costume was an
+important matter. These disguises varied with the locality and often
+with the individual. High cardboard hats, covered with white cloth often
+decorated with stars or pictures of animals, white masks with holes cut
+for eyes, nose and mouth bound with red braid to give a horrible
+appearance, and frequently a long tongue of red flannel so fixed that it
+could be moved with the wearer's tongue, and a long white robe--these
+made up a costume which served at the same time as a disguise and as a
+means of impressing the impressionable negro. Horses were covered with
+sheets or white cloth held on by the saddle and by belts, and sometimes
+the animals were even painted. Skulls of sheep and cattle, and even of
+human beings were often carried on the saddlebows to add another element
+of terror. A framework was sometimes made to fit the shoulders of a
+Ghoul which caused him to appear twelve feet high. A skeleton wooden
+hand at the end of a stick served to greet terrified negroes at
+midnight. For safety every man carried a small whistle and a brace of
+pistols.
+
+The trembling negro who ran into a gathering of the Ku Klux on his
+return from a Loyal League meeting was informed that the white-robed
+figures he saw were the spirits of the Confederate dead killed at
+Chickamauga or Shiloh, now unable to rest in their graves because of the
+conduct of the negroes. He was told in a sepulchral voice of the
+necessity for his remaining more at home and taking a less active part
+in predatory excursions abroad. In the middle of the night a sleeping
+negro might wake to find his house surrounded by a ghostly company, or
+to see several terrifying figures standing by his bedside. They were,
+they said, the ghosts of men whom he had formerly known. They had
+scratched through from Hell to warn the negroes of the consequences of
+their misconduct. Hell was a dry and thirsty land: and they asked him
+for water. Bucket after bucket of water disappeared into a sack of
+leather, rawhide, or rubber, concealed within the flowing robe. The
+story is told of one of these night travelers who called at the cabin of
+a radical negro in Attakapas County, Louisiana. After drinking three
+buckets of water to the great astonishment of the darky, the traveler
+thanked him and told him that he had traveled nearly a thousand miles
+within twenty-four hours, and that that was the best water he had tasted
+since he was killed at the battle of Shiloh. The negro dropped the
+bucket, overturned chairs and table in making his escape through the
+window, and was never again seen or heard of by residents of that
+community. Another incident is told of a parade in Pulaski, Tennessee:
+"While the procession was passing a corner on which a negro man was
+standing, a tall horseman in hideous garb turned aside from the line,
+dismounted and stretched out his bridle rein toward the negro, as if he
+desired him to hold his horse. Not daring to refuse, the frightened
+African extended his hand to grasp the rein. As he did so, the Ku Klux
+took his own head from his shoulders and offered to place that also in
+the outstretched hand. The negro stood not upon the order of his going,
+but departed with a yell of terror. To this day he will tell you: 'He
+done it, suah, boss. I seed him do it.'"
+
+It was seldom necessary at this early stage to use violence, for the
+black population was in an ecstasy of fear. A silent host of
+white-sheeted horsemen parading the country roads at night was
+sufficient to reduce the blacks to good behavior for weeks or months.
+One silent Ghoul posted near a meeting place of the League would be the
+cause of the immediate dissolution of that club. Cow bones in a sack
+were rattled within earshot of the terrified negroes. A horrible being,
+fifteen feet tall, walking through the night toward a place of
+congregation, was very likely to find that every one had vacated the
+place before he arrived. A few figures wrapped in sheets and sitting on
+tombstones in a graveyard near which negroes were accustomed to pass
+would serve to keep the immediate community quiet for weeks and give the
+locality a reputation for "hants" which lasted long.
+
+To prevent detection on parade, members of the Klan often stayed out of
+the parade in their own town and were to be seen freely and
+conspicuously mingling with the spectators. A man who believed that he
+knew every horse in the vicinity and was sure that he would be able to
+identify the riders by their horses was greatly surprised upon lifting
+the disguise of the horse nearest him to find the animal upon which he
+himself had ridden into town a short while before. The parades were
+always silent and so arranged as to give the impression of very large
+numbers. In the regular drills which were held in town and country the
+men showed that they had not forgotten their training in the Confederate
+army. There were no commands save in a very low tone or in a mysterious
+language, and usually only signs or whistle signals were used.
+
+Such pacific methods were successful to a considerable degree until the
+carpetbaggers and scalawags were placed in office under the
+Reconstruction Acts. Then more violent methods were necessary. The Klans
+patrolled disturbed communities, visited, warned, and frightened
+obnoxious individuals, whipped some, and even hanged others. Until
+forbidden by law or military order, the newspapers were accustomed to
+print the mysterious proclamations of the Ku Klux. The following, which
+was circulated in Montgomery, Alabama, in April 1868, is a typical
+specimen:
+
+                                  K. K. K.
+                                    Clan of Vega.
+                                       hdqr's k.k.k. hospitallers.
+                                          Vega Clan, New Moon,
+                                             3rd Month, Anno K. K. K. 1.
+Order No. K. K.
+
+Clansmen--Meet at the Trysting Spot when Orion Kisses the Zenith. The
+doom of treason is Death. Dies Iræ. The wolf is on his walk--the serpent
+coils to strike. Action! Action!! Action!!! By midnight and the Tomb; by
+Sword and Torch and the Sacred Oath at Forrester's Altar, I bid you
+come! The clansmen of Glen Iran and Alpine will greet you at the
+new-made grave.
+
+Remember the Ides of April.
+
+                                    By command of the Grand D. I. H.
+                                                            Cheg. V.
+
+The work of the secret orders was successful. As bodies of vigilantes,
+the Klans and the Councils regulated the conduct of bad negroes,
+punished criminals who were not punished by the State, looked after the
+activities and teachings of Northern preachers and teachers, dispersed
+hostile gatherings of negroes, and ran out of the community the worst of
+the reconstructionist officials. They kept the negroes quiet and freed
+them to some extent from the influence of evil leaders. The burning of
+houses, gins, mills, and stores ceased; property became more secure;
+people slept safely at night; women and children walked abroad in
+security; the incendiary agents who had worked among the negroes left
+the country; agitators, political, educational, and religious, became
+more moderate; "bad niggers" ceased to be bad; labor became less
+disorganized; the carpetbaggers and scalawags ceased to batten on the
+Southern communities. It was not so much a revolution as the defeat of a
+revolution. Society was replaced in the old historic grooves from which
+war and reconstruction had jarred it.
+
+Successful as was the Ku Klux movement in these respects, it had at the
+same time many harmful results. Too often local orders fell under the
+control of reckless or lawless men and the Klan was then used as a cloak
+to cover violence and thievery; family and personal feuds were carried
+into the orders and fought out; and anti-negro feeling in many places
+found expression in activities designed to drive the blacks from the
+country. It was easy for any outlaw to hide himself behind the
+protection of a secret order. So numerous did these men become that
+after 1868 there was a general exodus of the leading reputable members,
+and in 1869 the formal disbanding of the Klan was proclaimed by General
+Forrest, the Grand Wizard. The White Camelia and other orders also
+gradually went out of existence. Numerous attempts were made to suppress
+the secret movement by the military commanders, the state governments,
+and finally by Congress, but none of these was entirely successful, for
+in each community the secret opposition lasted as long as it was needed.
+
+The political effects of the orders, however, survived their organized
+existence. Some of the Southern States began to go Democratic in spite
+of the Reconstruction Acts and the Amendments, and there was little
+doubt that the Ku Klux movement had aided in this change. In order to
+preserve the achievements of radical reconstruction Congress passed, in
+1870 and 1871, the enforcement acts which had been under debate for
+nearly two years. The first act (May 31, 1870) was designed to protect
+the negro's right to vote and was directed at individuals as well as
+against States. Section six, indeed, was aimed specifically at the Ku
+Klux Klan. This act was a long step in the direction of giving the
+Federal Government control over state elections. But as North Carolina
+went wholly and Alabama partially Democratic in 1870, a Supplementary
+Act (February 28, 1871) went further and placed the elections for
+members of Congress completely under Federal control, and also
+authorized the use of thousands of deputy marshals at elections. As the
+campaign of 1872 drew near, Grant and his advisers became solicitous to
+hold all the Southern States which had not been regained by the
+Democrats. Accordingly, on March 23, 1871, the President sent a message
+to Congress declaring that in some of the States the laws could not be
+enforced and asked for remedial legislation. Congress responded with an
+act (April 20, 1871), commonly called the "Ku Klux Act," which gave the
+President despotic military power to uphold the remaining negro
+governments and authorized him to declare a state of war when he
+considered it necessary. Of this power Grant made use in only one
+instance. In October, 1871, he declared nine counties of South Carolina
+in rebellion and put them under martial law.
+
+During the ten years following 1870, several thousand arrests were made
+under the enforcement acts and about 1250 convictions were secured,
+principally in Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and
+Tennessee. Most of these violations of election laws, however, had
+nothing to do with the Ku Klux movement, for by 1870 the better class of
+members had withdrawn from the secret orders. But though the enforcement
+acts checked these irregularities to a considerable extent, they
+nevertheless failed to hold the South for the radicals and essential
+parts of them were declared unconstitutional a few years later.
+
+In order to justify the passage of the enforcement acts and to obtain
+campaign material for use in 1872, Congress appointed a committee,
+organized on the very day when the Ku Klux Act was approved, to
+investigate conditions in the Southern States. From June to August,
+1871, the committee took testimony in Washington, and in the fall
+subcommittees visited several Southern States. Tennessee, Virginia,
+Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas were, however, omitted from the
+investigation. Notwithstanding the partisan purpose and methods of the
+investigation, the report of the committee and the accompanying
+testimony constituted a Democratic rather than a Republican document. It
+is a veritable mine of information about the South between 1865 and
+1871. The Democratic minority members made skillful use of their
+opportunity to expose conditions in the South. They were less concerned
+to meet the charges made against the Ku Klux Klan than to show why such
+movements came about. The Republicans, concerned mainly about material
+for the presidential campaign, neglected the broader phases of the
+situation.
+
+Opposition to the effects of reconstruction did not come to an end with
+the dissolution of the more famous orders. On the contrary, it now
+became public and open and resulted in the organization, after 1872, of
+the White League, the Mississippi Shot Gun Plan, the White Man's Party
+in Alabama, and the Rifle Clubs in South Carolina. The later movements
+were distinctly but cautiously anti-negro. There was most irritation in
+the white counties where there were large numbers of negroes. Negro
+schools and churches were burned because they served as meeting places
+for negro political organizations. The color line began to be more and
+more sharply drawn. Social and business ostracism continued to be
+employed against white radicals, while the negroes were discharged from
+employment or were driven from their rented farms.
+
+The Ku Klux movement, it is to be noted in retrospect, originated as an
+effort to restore order in the war-stricken Southern States. The secrecy
+of its methods appealed to the imagination and caused its rapid
+expansion, and this secrecy was inevitable because opposition to
+reconstruction was not lawful. As the reconstruction policies were put
+into operation, the movement became political and used violence when
+appeals to superstitious fears ceased to be effective. The Ku Klux Klan
+centered, directed, and crystallized public opinion, and united the
+whites upon a platform of white supremacy. The Southern politicians
+stood also from the movement but accepted the results of its work. It
+frightened the negroes and bad whites into better conduct, and it
+encouraged the conservatives and aided them to regain control of
+society, for without the operations of the Klan the black districts
+would never have come again under white control. Towards the end,
+however, its methods frequently became unnecessarily violent and did
+great harm to Southern society. The Ku Klux system of regulating society
+is as old as history; it had often been used before; it may even be used
+again. When a people find themselves persecuted by aliens under legal
+forms, they will invent some means outside the law for protecting
+themselves; and such experiences will inevitably result in a weakening
+of respect for law and in a return to more primitive methods of justice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+The Changing South
+
+"The bottom rail is on top" was a phrase which had flashed throughout
+the late Confederate States. It had been coined by the negroes in 1867
+to express their view of the situation, but its aptness had been
+recognized by all. After ten years of social and economic revolution,
+however, it was not so clear that the phrase of 1867 correctly described
+the new situation. "The white man made free" would have been a more
+accurate epitome, for the white man had been able, in spite of his
+temporary disabilities, to compete with the negro in all industries.
+
+It will be remembered that the negro districts were least exposed to the
+destruction of war. The well-managed plantation, lying near the highways
+of commerce, with its division of labor, nearly or quite self-sufficing,
+was the bulwark of the Confederacy. When the fighting ended, an
+industrial revolution began in these untouched parts of the Black Belt.
+The problem of free negro labor now appeared. During the year 1865 no
+general plan for a labor system was formulated except by the Freedmen's
+Bureau. That, however, was not a success. There were all sorts of
+makeshifts, such as cash wages, deferred wages, coöperation, even
+sharing of expense and product, and contracts, either oral or written.
+
+The employers showed a disposition to treat the negro family as a unit
+in making contracts for labor, wages, food, clothes, and care. ¹ In
+general these early arrangements were made to transform slavery with its
+mutual duties and obligations into a free labor system with wages and
+"privileges." The "privileges" of slavery could not be destroyed; in
+fact, they have never yet been destroyed in numerous places. Curious
+demands were made by the negroes: here, farm bells must not ring; there,
+overseers or managers must be done away with; in some places plantation
+courts were to settle matters of work, rent, and conduct; elsewhere,
+agreements were made that on Saturday the laborer should be permitted to
+go to town and, perhaps, ride a mule or horse. In South Carolina the Sea
+Island negroes demanded that in laying out work the old "tasks" or
+"stints" of slavery days be retained as the standard. The farming
+districts at the edge of the Black Belt, where the races were about
+equal in numbers, already had a kind of "share system," and in these
+sections the economic chaos after the war was not so complete. The
+former owners worked in the field with their ex-slaves and thus provided
+steady employment for many. Farms were rented for a fixed sum of money,
+or for a part of the crop, or on "shares."
+
+¹ J. D. B. De Bow, the economist, testified before the Joint Committee
+on Reconstruction that, if the negro would work, free labor would be
+better for the planters than slave labor. He called attention to the
+fact, however, that negro women showed a desire to avoid field labor,
+and there is also evidence to show that they objected to domestic
+service and other menial work.
+
+The white districts, which had previously fought a losing competition
+with the efficiently managed and inexpensive slave labor of the Black
+Belt, were affected most disastrously by war and its aftermath. They
+were distant from transportation lines and markets; they employed poor
+farming methods; they had no fertilizers; they raised no staple crops on
+their infertile land; and in addition they now had to face the
+destitution that follows fighting. Yet these regions had formerly been
+almost self-supporting, although the farms were small and no elaborate
+labor system had been developed.
+
+In the planting districts where the owner was land-poor he made an
+attempt to bring in Northern capital and Northern or foreign labor. In
+the belief that the negroes would work better for a Northern man, every
+planter who could do so secured a Northern partner or manager,
+frequently a soldier. Nevertheless these imported managers nearly always
+failed because they did not understand cotton, rice, or sugar planting,
+and because they were either too severe or too easy upon the blacks.
+
+No Northern labor was to be had, and the South could not retain even all
+its own native whites. Union soldiers and others seeking to better their
+prospects moved west and northwest to fill the newly opened lands, while
+the Confederates, kept out of the homestead region by the test oath,
+swarmed into Texas, which owned its own public lands, or went North to
+other occupations. Nor could the desperate planters hire foreign
+immigrants. Several States, among them South Carolina, Alabama, and
+Louisiana, advertised for laborers and established labor bureaus, but
+without avail. The negro politicians in 1867 declared themselves opposed
+to all movements to foster immigration. So in the Black Belt the negro
+had, for forty years, a monopoly of farm labor.
+
+The share system of tenantry, with its attendant evils of credit and
+crop lien, was soon established in the Southern States, mainly in the
+Black Belt, but to some extent also in the white districts. The landlord
+furnished land, house, fuel, water, and all or a part of the seed,
+fertilizer, farm implements, and farm animals. In return he received a
+"half," or a "third and fourth," his share depending upon how much he
+had furnished. The best class of tenants would rent for cash or a fixed
+rental, the poorest laborers would work for wages only.
+
+The "privileges" brought over from slavery, which were included in the
+share renting, astonished outside observers. To the laborer was usually
+given a house, a water supply, wood for fuel, pasture for pigs or cows,
+a "patch" for vegetables and fruit, and the right to hunt and fish.
+These were all that some needed in order to live. Somers, the English
+traveler already quoted, pronounced this generous custom "outrageously
+absurd," for the negroes had so many privileges that they refused to
+make use of their opportunities. "The soul is often crushed out of labor
+by penury and oppression," he said, "but here a soul cannot begin to be
+infused into it through the sheer excess of privilege and license with
+which it is surrounded."
+
+The credit system which was developed beside the share system made a bad
+condition worse. On the 1st of January, a planter could mortgage his
+future crop to a merchant or landlord in exchange for subsistence until
+the harvest. Since, as a rule, neither tenant nor landlord had any
+surplus funds, the latter would be supplied by the banker or banker
+merchant, who would then dictate the crops to be planted and the time of
+sale. As a result of these conditions, the planter or farmer was held to
+staple crops, high prices for necessities, high interest rate, and
+frequently unfair bookkeeping. The system was excellent for a thrifty,
+industrious, and intelligent man, for it enabled him to get a start. It
+worked to the advantage of a bankrupt landlord, who could in this way
+get banking facilities. But it had a mischievous effect upon the average
+tenant, who had too small a share of the crop to feel a strong sense of
+responsibility as well as too many "privileges" and too little
+supervision to make him anxious to produce the best results.
+
+The negroes entered into their freedom with several advantages: they
+were trained to labor; they were occupying the most fertile soil and
+could purchase land at low prices; the tenant system was most liberal;
+cotton, sugar, and rice were bringing high prices; and access to markets
+was easy. In the white districts land was cheap, and prices of
+commodities were high, but otherwise the negroes seemed to have the
+better position. Yet as early as 1870, keen observers called attention
+to the fact that the hill and mountain whites were thriving as compared
+with their former condition, and that the negroes were no longer their
+serious competitors. In the white districts better methods were coming
+into use, labor was steady, fertilizers were used, and conditions of
+transportation were improving. The whites were also encroaching on the
+Black Belt; they were opening new lands in the Southwest; and within the
+border of the Black Belt they were bringing negro labor under some
+control. In the South Carolina rice lands, crowds of Irish were imported
+to do the ditching which the negroes refused to do and were carried back
+North when the job was finished. ¹ President Thach of the Alabama
+Agricultural College has thus described the situation:
+
+By the use of commercial fertilizers, vast regions once considered
+barren have been brought into profitable cultivation, and really afford
+a more reliable and constant crop than the rich alluvial lands of the
+old slave plantations. In nearly every agricultural county in the South
+there is to be observed, on the one hand, this section of fertile soils,
+once the heart of the old civilization, now abandoned by the whites,
+held in tenantry by a dense negro population, full of dilapidation and
+ruin; while on the other hand, there is the region of light, thin soils,
+occupied by the small white freeholder, filled with schools, churches,
+and good roads, and all the elements of a happy, enlightened country
+life.
+
+¹ The Census of 1880 gave proof of the superiority of the whites in
+cotton production. For purposes of comparison the cotton area may be
+divided into three regions: first, the Black Belt, in which the farmers
+were black, the soil fertile, the plantations large, the credit evil at
+its worst, and the yield of cotton per acre the least; second, the white
+districts, where the soil was the poorest, the farms small, the workers
+nearly all white, and the yield per acre better than on the fertile
+Black Belt lands; third, the regions in which the races were nearly
+equal in numbers or where the whites were in a slight majority, with
+soil of medium fertility, good methods of agriculture, and, owing to
+better controlled labor, the best yield. In other words, negroes,
+fertile soil, and poor crops went together; and on the other hand the
+whites got better crops on less fertile soil. The Black Belt has never
+again reached the level of production it had in 1860. But the white
+district kept improving slowly.
+
+All the systems devised for handling negro labor proved to be only
+partially successful. The laborer was migratory, wanted easy work, with
+one or two holidays a week, and the privilege of attending political
+meetings, camp meetings, and circuses. A thrifty negro could not make
+headway because his fellows stole from him or his less energetic
+relations and friends visited him and ate up his substance. One Alabama
+planter declared that he could not raise a turkey, a chicken, a hog, or
+a cow; and another asserted that "a hog has no more chance to live among
+these thieving negro farmers than a June bug in a gang of puddle ducks."
+Lands were mortgaged to the supply houses in the towns, the whites
+gradually deserted the country, and many rice and cotton fields grew up
+in weeds. Crop stealing at night became a business which no legislation
+could ever completely stop.
+
+A traveler has left the following description of "a model negro farm" in
+1874. The farmer purchased an old mule on credit and rented land on
+shares or for so many bales of cotton; any old tools were used; corn,
+bacon, and other supplies were bought on credit, and a crop lien was
+given; a month later, corn and cotton were planted on soil that was not
+well broken up; the negro "would not pay for no guano" to put on other
+people's land; by turns the farmer planted and fished, plowed and
+hunted, hoed and frolicked, or went to "meeting." At the end of the year
+he sold his cotton, paid part of his rent and some of his debt, returned
+the mule to its owner, and sang:
+
+   Nigger work hard all de year,
+   White man tote de money.
+
+The great landholdings did not break up into small farms as was
+predicted, though sales were frequent and in 1865 enormous amounts of
+land were put on the market. After 1867, additional millions of acres
+were offered at small prices, and tax and mortgage sales were numerous.
+The result of these operations, however, was a change of landlords
+rather than a breaking up of large plantations. New men, negroes,
+merchants, and Jews became landowners. The number of small farms
+naturally increased but so in some instances did the land concentrated
+into large holdings.
+
+It was inevitable that conditions of negro life should undergo a
+revolutionary change during the reconstruction. The serious matter of
+looking out for himself and his family and of making a living dampened
+the negro's cheerful spirits. Released from the discipline of slavery
+and often misdirected by the worst of teachers, the negro race naturally
+ran into excesses of petty criminality. Even under the reconstruction
+governments the proportion of negro to white criminals was about ten to
+one. Theft was frequent; arson was the accepted means of revenge on
+white people; and murder became common in the brawls of the city negro
+quarters. The laxness of the marriage relation worked special hardship
+on the women and children in so many cases deserted by the head of the
+family.
+
+Out of the social anarchy of reconstruction the negroes emerged with
+numerous organizations of their own which may have been imitations of
+the Union League, the Lincoln Brotherhood, and the various church
+organizations. These societies were composed entirely of blacks and have
+continued with prolific reproduction to the present day. They were
+characterized by high names, gorgeous regalia, and frequent parades.
+"The Brothers and Sisters of Pleasure and Prosperity" and the "United
+Order of African Ladies and Gentlemen" played a large, and on the whole
+useful, part in negro social life, teaching lessons of thrift,
+insurance, coöperation, and mutual aid.
+
+The reconstructionists were not able in 1867-68 to carry through
+Congress any provision for the social equality of the races, but in the
+reconstructed States the equal rights issue was alive throughout the
+period. Legislation giving to the negro equal rights in hotels, places
+of amusements, and common carriers, was first enacted in Louisiana and
+South Carolina. Frequently the carpetbaggers brought up the issue in
+order to rid the radical ranks of the scalawags who were opposed to
+equal rights. In Florida, for example, the carpetbaggers framed a
+comprehensive Equal Rights Law, passed it, and presented it to Governor
+Reed, who was known to be opposed to such legislation. He vetoed the
+measure and thus lost the negro support. Intermarriage with whites was
+made legal in Louisiana and South Carolina and by court decision was
+permitted in Alabama and Mississippi, but the Georgia Supreme Court held
+it to be illegal. Mixed marriages were few, but these were made
+occasions of exultation over the whites and of consequent ill feeling.
+
+Charles Sumner was a persistent agitator for equal rights. In 1871 he
+declared in a letter to a South Carolina negro convention that the race
+must insist not only upon equality in hotels and on public carriers but
+also in the schools. "It is not enough," he said, "to provide separate
+accommodations for colored citizens even if in all respects as good as
+those of other persons.... The discrimination is an insult and a
+hindrance, and a bar, which not only destroys comfort and prevents
+equality, but weakens all other rights. The right to vote will have new
+security when your equal right in public conveyances, hotels, and common
+schools, is at last established; but here you must insist for yourselves
+by speech, petition, and by vote." The Southern whites began to develop
+the "Jim Crow" theory of "separate but equal" accommodations. Senator
+Hill of Georgia, for example, thought that hotels might have separate
+divisions for the two races, and he cited the division in the churches
+as proof that the negro wanted separation.
+
+About 1874, it was plain that the last radical Congress was nearly ready
+to enact social equality legislation. This fact turned many of the
+Southern Unionist class back to the Democratic party, there to remain
+for a long time. In 1875, as a sort of memorial to Sumner, Congress
+passed the Civil Rights Act, which gave to negroes equal rights in
+hotels, places of amusement, on public carriers, and on juries. Some
+Democratic leaders were willing to see such legislation enacted, because
+in the first place, it would have little effect except in the Border and
+Northern States, where it would turn thousands into the Democratic fold,
+and in the second place, because they were sure that in time the Supreme
+Court would declare the law unconstitutional. And so it happened.
+
+In regions where the more unprincipled radical leaders were in control,
+the whites lived at times in fear of negro uprisings. The negroes were
+armed and insolent, and the whites were few and widely scattered. Here
+and there outbreaks occurred and individual whites and isolated families
+suffered, but as a rule all such movements were crushed with much
+heavier loss to the negroes than to the better organized whites.
+Nevertheless everlasting apprehension for the safety of women and
+children kept the white men nervous. General Garnett Andrews remarked
+about the situation in Mississippi:
+
+I have never suffered such an amount of anguish and alarm in all my
+life. I have served through the whole war as a soldier in the army of
+Northern Virginia, and saw all of it; but I never did experience ... the
+fear and alarm and sense of danger which I felt that time. And this was
+the universal feeling among the population, among the white people. I
+think that both sides were alarmed and felt uneasy. It showed itself
+upon the countenance of the people; it made many of them sick. Men
+looked haggard and pale, after undergoing this sort of thing for six
+weeks or a month, and I have felt when I laid [sic] down that neither
+myself, nor my wife and children were in safety. I expected, and
+honestly anticipated, and thought it highly probable, that I might be
+assassinated and my house set on fire at any time.
+
+By the fires of reconstruction the whites were fused into a more
+homogeneous society, social as well as political. The former
+slaveholding class continued to be more considerate of the negro than
+were the poor whites; but, as misrule went on, all classes tended to
+unite against the negro in politics. They were tired of reconstruction,
+new amendments, force bills, Federal troops--tired of being ruled as
+conquered provinces by the incompetent and the dishonest. Every measure
+aimed at the South seemed to them to mean that they were considered
+incorrigible and unworthy of trust, and that they were being made to
+suffer for the deeds of irresponsible whites. And, to make matters
+worse, strong opposition to proscriptive measures was called fresh
+rebellion. "When the Jacobins say and do low and bitter things, their
+charge of want of loyalty in the South because our people grumble back a
+little seems to me as unreasonable as the complaint of the little boy:
+'Mamma, make Bob 'have hisself. He makes mouths at me every time I hit
+him with my stick.'" ¹
+
+¹ Usually ascribed to General D. H. Hill of North Carolina, and quoted
+in The Land We Love, vol. 1, p. 146.
+
+Probably this burden fell heavier on the young men, who had life before
+them and who were growing up with diminished opportunities. Sidney
+Lanier, then an Alabama school-teacher, wrote to Bayard Taylor: "Perhaps
+you know that with us of the young generation in the South, since the
+war, pretty much the whole of life has been merely not dying." Negro and
+alien rule was a constant insult to the intelligence of the country. The
+taxpayers were nonparticipants in the affairs of government. Some people
+withdrew entirely from public life, went to their farms or plantations,
+kept away from towns and from speechmaking, waiting for the end to come.
+There were some who refused for several years to read the newspapers, so
+unpleasant was the news. The good feeling produced by the magnanimity of
+Grant at Appomattox was destroyed by the severity of his Southern policy
+when he became President. There was no gratitude for any so-called
+leniency of the North, no repentance for the war, no desire for
+humiliation, for sackcloth and ashes, and no confession of wrong. The
+insistence of the radicals upon obtaining a confession of depravity only
+made things much worse. Scarcely a measure of Congress during
+reconstruction was designed or received in a conciliatory spirit.
+
+The new generation of whites was poor, bitter because of persecution,
+ill educated, overworked, without a bright future, and shadowed by the
+race problem. Though their new political leaders were shrewd, narrow,
+conservative, honest, and parsimonious, the constant fighting of fire
+with fire scorched all. In the bitter discipline of reconstruction, the
+pleasantest side of Southern life came to an end. During the war and the
+consequent reconstruction there was a marked change in Southern
+temperament toward the severe. Hospitality declined; the old Southern
+life had never been on a business basis, but the new Southern life now
+adjusted itself to a stricter economy; the old individuality was
+partially lost; but class distinctions were less obvious in a more
+homogeneous society. The material evils of reconstruction may be only
+temporary; state debts may be paid and wasted resources renewed; but the
+moral and intellectual results of the revolution will be the more
+permanent.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Restoration of Home Rule
+
+The radical program of reconstruction ended after ten years in failure
+rather because of a change in public opinion in the North than because
+of the resistance of the Southern whites. The North of 1877, indeed, was
+not the North of 1867. A more tolerant attitude toward the South
+developed as the North passed through its own period of misgovernment
+when all the large cities were subject to "ring rule" and corruption, as
+in New York under "Boss" Tweed and in the District of Columbia under
+"Boss" Shepherd. The Federal civil service was discredited by the
+scandals connected with the Sanborn contracts, the Whisky Ring, and the
+Star Routes, while some leaders in Congress were under a cloud from the
+"Salary Grab" and Credit Mobilier disclosures. ¹
+
+¹ See The Boss and the Machine, by Samuel P. Orth (in The Chronicles of
+America).
+
+The marvelous material development of the North and West also drew
+attention away from sectional controversies. Settlers poured into the
+plains beyond the Mississippi and the valleys of the Far West; new
+industries sprang up; unsuspected mineral wealth was discovered;
+railroads were built. Not only bankers but taxpaying voters took an
+interest in the financial readjustments of the time. Many thousand
+people followed the discussions over the funding and refunding of the
+national debt, the retirement of the greenbacks, and the proposed
+lowering of tariff duties. Yet the Black Friday episode of 1869, when
+Jay Gould and James Fisk cornered the visible supply of gold, and the
+panic of 1873 were indications of unsound financial conditions.
+
+These new developments and the new domestic problems which they involved
+all tended to divert public thought from the old political issues
+arising out of the war. Foreign relations, too, began to take on a new
+interest. The Alabama claims controversy with England continued to hold
+the public attention until finally settled by the Geneva Arbitration in
+1872. President Grant, as much of an expansionist as Seward, for two
+years (1869-71) tried to secure Santo Domingo or a part of it for an
+American naval base in the West Indies. But the United States had race
+problems enough already and the Senate, led by Sumner, refused to
+sanction the acquisition. Relations with Spain were frequently strained
+on account of American filibustering expeditions to aid Cuban
+insurgents. Spain repeatedly charged the United States with laxness
+toward such violations of international law; and President Grant, seeing
+no other way out, recommended in 1869 and again in 1870 that the Cuban
+insurgents be recognized as belligerents, but still the Senate held
+back. The climax came in 1873, when the Spanish authorities in Cuba
+captured on the high seas the Virginius ¹ with a filibustering
+expedition on board and executed fifty-three of the crew and passengers,
+among them eight Americans. For a time war seemed imminent, but Spain
+acted quickly and effected a peaceable settlement.
+
+¹ See The Path of Empire, by Carl Russell Fish (in The Chronicles of
+America), p. 119.
+
+It became evident soon after 1867 that the issues involved in
+reconstruction were not in themselves sufficient to hold the North
+solidly Republican. Toward negro suffrage, for example, Northern public
+opinion was on the whole unfriendly. In 1867 the negro was permitted to
+vote only in New York and in New England, except in Connecticut. Before
+1869 negro suffrage was rejected in Connecticut, Wisconsin, Kansas,
+Ohio, Maryland, Missouri, Michigan, and Minnesota. The Republicans in
+their national platform of 1868 went only so far as to say that, while
+negro suffrage was to be forced upon the South, it must remain a local
+question in the North. The Border States rapidly lined up with the white
+South on matters of race, church, and politics.
+
+It was not until 1874, however, that the changing opinion was made
+generally effective in the elections. The skillfully managed radical
+organization held large majorities in every Congress from the
+Thirty-ninth to the Forty-third, and the electoral votes in 1868 and
+1872 seemed to show that the conservative opposition was insignificant.
+But these figures do not tell the whole story. Even in 1864, when
+Lincoln won by nearly half a million, the popular vote was as eighteen
+to twenty-two, and four years later Grant, the most popular man in the
+United States, had a majority of only three hundred thousand over
+Seymour, and this majority and more came from the new negro voters. Four
+years later with about a million negro voters available and an
+opposition not pleased with its own candidate, Grant's majority reached
+only seven hundred thousand. At no one time in elections did the North
+pronounce itself in favor of all the reconstruction policies. The break,
+signs of which were visible as early as 1869, came in 1874 when the
+Republicans lost control of the House of Representatives.
+
+Strength was given to the opposition because of the dissatisfaction with
+President Grant, who knew little about politics and politicians. He felt
+that his Cabinet should be made up of personal friends, not of strong
+advisers, and that the military ideal of administration was the proper
+one. He was faithful but undiscriminating in his friendships and
+frequently chose as his associates men of vulgar tastes and low motives;
+and he showed a naïve love of money and an undisguised admiration for
+rich men such as Gould and Fisk. His appointees were often incompetent
+friends or relatives, and his cynical attitude toward civil service
+reform lost him the support of influential men. When forced by party
+exigencies to select first-class men for his Cabinet, he still preferred
+to go for advice to practical politicians. On the Southern question he
+easily fell under control of the radicals, who in order to retain their
+influence had only to convince his military mind that the South was
+again in rebellion, and who found it easy to distract public opinion
+from political corruption by "waving the bloody shirt." Dissatisfaction
+with his Administration, it is true, was confined to the intellectuals,
+the reformers, and the Democrats, but they were strong enough to defeat
+him for a second term if they could only be organized.
+
+The Liberal Republican movement began in the West about 1869 with
+demands for amnesty and for reform, particularly in the civil service,
+and it soon spread rapidly over the North. When it became certain that
+the "machine" would renominate Grant, the liberal movement became an
+anti-Grant party. The "New Departure" Democrats gave comfort and
+prospect of aid to the Liberal Republicans by declaring for a
+constructive, forward-looking policy in place of reactionary opposition.
+The Liberal chiefs were led to believe that the new Democratic leaders
+would accept their platform and candidates in order to defeat Grant. The
+principal candidates for the Liberal Republican nomination were Charles
+Francis Adams, Lyman Trumbull, Gratz Brown, David Davis, and Horace
+Greeley. Adams was the strongest candidate but was jockeyed out of place
+and the nomination was given to Horace Greeley, able enough as editor of
+the New York Tribune but impossible as a candidate for the presidency.
+The Democratic party accepted him as their candidate also, although he
+had been a lifelong opponent of Democratic principles and policies. But
+disgusted Liberals either returned to the Republican ranks or stayed
+away from the polls, and many Democrats did likewise. Under these
+circumstances the reëlection of Grant was a foregone conclusion. There
+was certainly a potential majority against Grant, but the opposition had
+failed to organize, while the Republican machine was in good working
+order, the negroes were voting, and the Enforcement Acts proved a great
+aid to the Republicans in the Southern States.
+
+One good result of the growing liberal sentiment was the passage of an
+Amnesty Act by Congress on May 22, 1872. By statute and by the
+Fourteenth Amendment, Congress had refused to recognize the complete
+validity of President Johnson's pardons and amnesty proclamations, and
+all Confederate leaders who wished to regain political rights had
+therefore to appeal to Congress. During the Forty-first Congress
+(1869-71) more than three thousand Southerners were amnestied in order
+that they might hold office. These, however, were for the most part
+scalawags; the most respectable whites would not seek an amnesty which
+they could secure only by self-stultification. ¹ It was the pressure of
+public opinion against white disfranchisement and the necessity for
+meeting the Liberal Republican arguments which caused the passage of the
+Act of 1872. By this act about 150,000 whites were reënfranchised,
+leaving out only about five hundred of the most prominent of the old
+régime, most of whom were never restored to citizenship. Both Robert E.
+Lee and Jefferson Davis died disfranchised.
+
+¹ The machinery of government and politics was all in radical hands--the
+carpetbaggers and scalawags, who were numerous enough to fill
+practically all the offices. These men were often able leaders and
+skillful managers, and they did not intend to surrender control; and the
+black race was obedient and furnished the votes. In 1868, with Virginia,
+Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas unrepresented, the first radical
+contingent in Congress from the South numbered 42, of whom 10 out of 12
+senators and 26 out of 32 representatives were carpetbaggers. There were
+two lone conservative Congressmen. A few months later, in 1869, there
+were 64 radical representatives from the South, 20 senators and 44
+members of the House of Representatives. In 1877 this number had
+dwindled to two senators and four representatives. The difference
+between these figures measures in some degree the extent of the undoing
+of reconstruction within the period of Grant's Administration.
+
+How the Southern whites escaped from negro domination has often been
+told and may here be sketched only in outline. The first States regained
+from radicalism were those in which the negro population was small and
+the black vote large enough to irritate but not to dominate. Although
+Northern sentiment, excited by the stories of "Southern outrage," was
+then unfavorable, the conservatives of the South, by organizing a "white
+man's party" and by the use of Ku Klux methods, made a fight for social
+safety which they won nearly everywhere, and, in addition, they gained
+political control of several States--Tennessee in 1869, Virginia in
+1869-1870, and North Carolina and Georgia in 1870. They almost won
+Louisiana in 1868 and Alabama in 1870, but the alarmed radicals came to
+the rescue of the situation with the Fifteenth Amendment and the
+Enforcement Laws of 1870-1871. With more troops and a larger number of
+deputy marshals it seemed that the radicals might securely hold the
+remaining States. Arrests of conservatives were numerous, plundering was
+at its height, the Federal Government was interested and was friendly to
+the new Southern rulers, and the carpetbaggers and scalawags feasted,
+troubled only by the disposition of their negro supporters to demand a
+share of the spoils. Although the whites made little gain from 1870 to
+1874, the States already rescued became more firmly conservative; white
+counties here and there in the black States voted out the radicals; a
+few more representatives of the whites got into Congress; and the Border
+States ranged themselves more solidly with the conservatives.
+
+But while the Southern whites were becoming desperate under oppression,
+public opinion in the North was at last beginning to affect politics.
+The elections of 1874 resulted in a Democratic landslide of which the
+Administration was obliged to take notice. Grant now grew more
+responsive to criticism. In 1875 he replied to a request for troops to
+hold down Mississippi: "The whole public are tired out with these annual
+autumnal outbreaks in the South and the great majority are ready now to
+condemn any interference on the part of the Government." As soon as
+conditions in the South were better understood in the North, ready
+sympathy and political aid were offered by many who had hitherto acted
+with the radicals. The Ku Klux report as well as the newspaper writings
+and the books of J. S. Pike and Charles Nordhoff, both former opponents
+of slavery, opened the eyes of many to the evil results of negro
+suffrage. Some who had been considered friends of the negro, now
+believing that he had proven to be a political failure, coldly abandoned
+him and turned their altruistic interests to other objects more likely
+to succeed. Many real friends of the negro were alarmed at the evils of
+the reconstruction and were anxious to see the corrupt political leaders
+deprived of further influence over the race. To others the constantly
+recurring Southern problem was growing stale and they desired to hear
+less of it. Within the Republican party in each Southern State there
+were serious divisions over the spoils. First it was carpetbagger and
+negro against the scalawag; later, when the black leaders insisted that
+those who furnished the votes must have the larger share of the rewards,
+the fight became triangular. As a result, by 1874 the Republican party
+in the South was split into factions and was deserted by a large
+proportion of its white membership.
+
+The conservative whites, fiercely resentful after their experiences
+under the enforcement laws and hopeful of Northern sympathy, now planned
+a supreme effort to regain their former power. Race lines were more
+strictly drawn; ostracism of all that was radical became the rule; the
+Republican party in the South, it was apparent, was doomed to be only a
+negro party weighed down by the scandal of bad government; the state
+treasuries were bankrupt, and there was little further opportunity for
+plunder. These considerations had much to do with the return of
+scalawags to the "white man's party" and the retirement of carpetbaggers
+from Southern politics. There was no longer anything in it, they said;
+let the negro have it!
+
+It was under these conditions that the "white man's party" carried the
+elections in Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas in 1874, and Mississippi in
+1875. Asserting that it was a contest between civilization and
+barbarism, and that the whites under the radical régime had no
+opportunity to carry an election legally, the conservatives openly made
+use of every method of influencing the result that could possibly come
+within the radical law and they even employed many effective methods
+that lay outside the law. Negroes were threatened with discharge from
+employment and whites with tar and feathers if they voted the radical
+ticket; there were night-riding parties, armed and drilled "white
+leagues," and mysterious firing of guns and cannon at night; much plain
+talk assailed the ears of the radical leaders; and several bloody
+outbreaks occurred, principally in Louisiana and Mississippi. Louisiana
+had been carried by the Democrats in the fall of 1872, but the radical
+returning board had reversed the election. In 1874 the whites rose in
+rebellion and turned out Kellogg, the usurping Governor, but President
+Grant intervened to restore him to office. The "Mississippi" or
+"shot-gun plan" ¹ was very generally employed, except where the contest
+was likely to go in favor of the whites without the use of undue
+pressure. The white leaders exercised a moderating influence, but the
+average white man had determined to do away with negro government even
+though the alternative might be a return of military rule. Congress
+investigated the elections in each State which overthrew the
+reconstructionists, but nothing came of the inquiry and the population
+rapidly settled down into good order. After 1875 only three States were
+left under radical government--Louisiana and Florida, where the
+returning boards could throw out any Democratic majority, and South
+Carolina, where the negroes greatly outnumbered the whites.
+
+¹ See The New South, by Holland Thompson (in The Chronicles of America).
+
+Reconstruction could hardly be a genuine issue in the presidential
+campaign of 1876, because all except these three reconstructed States
+had escaped from radical control, and there was no hope and little real
+desire of regaining them. It was even expected that in this year the
+radicals would lose Louisiana and Florida to the "white man's party."
+The leaders of the best element of the Republicans, both North and
+South, looked upon the reconstruction as one of the prime causes of the
+moral breakdown of their party; they wanted no more of the Southern
+issue but planned a forward-looking, constructive reform.
+
+To some of the Republican leaders, however, among whom was James G.
+Blaine, it was clear that the Republican party, with its unsavory record
+under Grant's Administration, could hardly go before the people with a
+reform program. The only possible thing to do was to revive some Civil
+War issue--"wave the bloody shirt" and fan the smoldering embers of
+sectional feeling. Blaine met with complete success in raising the
+desired issue. In January 1876, when an amnesty measure was brought
+before the House, he moved that Jefferson Davis be excepted on the
+ground that he was responsible for the mistreatment of Union prisoners
+during the war. Southern hot-bloods replied, and Blaine skillfully led
+them on until they had foolishly furnished him with ample material for
+campaign purposes. The feeling thus aroused was so strong that it even
+galvanized into seeming life the dying interest in the wrongs of the
+negro. The rallying cry "Vote as you shot!" gave the Republicans
+something to fight for; the party referred to its war record, claimed
+credit for preserving the Union, emancipating the negro, and
+reconstructing the South, and demanded that the country be not
+"surrendered to rebel rule."
+
+Hayes and Tilden, the rival candidates for the presidency, were both men
+of high character and of moderate views. Their nominations had been
+forced by the better element of each party. Hayes, the Republican
+candidate, had been a good soldier, was moderate in his views on
+Southern questions, and had a clean political reputation. Tilden, his
+opponent, had a good record as a party man and as a reformer, and his
+party needed only to attack the past record of the Republicans. The
+principal Democratic weakness lay in the fact that the party drew so
+much of its strength from the white South and was therefore subjected to
+criticism on Civil War issues.
+
+The campaign was hotly contested and was conducted on a low plane. Even
+Hayes soon saw that the "bloody shirt" issue was the main vote winner.
+The whites of the three "unredeemed" Southern States nerved themselves
+for the final struggle. In South Carolina and in some parishes of
+Louisiana there was a considerable amount of violence, in which the
+whites had the advantage, and much fraud, which the Republicans, who
+controlled the election machinery, turned to best account. It has been
+said that out of the confusion which the Republicans created they won
+the presidency.
+
+The first election returns seemed to give Tilden the victory with 184
+undisputed electoral votes and popular majorities of ninety and over six
+thousand respectively in Florida and Louisiana; only 185 votes were
+needed for a choice. Hayes had 166 votes, not counting Oregon, in which
+one vote was in dispute, and South Carolina, which for a time was
+claimed by both parties. Had Louisiana and Florida been Northern States,
+there would have been no controversy, but the Republican general
+headquarters knew that the Democratic majorities in these States had to
+go through Republican returning boards, which had never yet failed to
+throw them out.
+
+The interest of the nation now centered around the action of the two
+returning boards. At the suggestion of President Grant, prominent
+Republicans went South to witness the count. Later prominent Democrats
+went also. These "visiting statesmen" were to support the frail
+returning boards in their duty. It was generally understood that these
+boards, certainly the one in Louisiana, were for sale, and there is
+little doubt that the Democrats inquired the price. But they were afraid
+to bid on such uncertain quantities as Governor Wells and T. C. Anderson
+of Louisiana, both notorious spoilsmen. The members of the boards in
+both States soon showed the stiffening effect of the moral support of
+the Federal Administration and of the "visiting statesmen." Reassured as
+to their political future, they proceeded to do their duty: in Florida
+they threw out votes until the ninety majority for Tilden was changed to
+925 for Hayes, and in Louisiana, by throwing out about fifteen thousand
+carefully selected ballots, they changed Tilden's lowest majority of six
+thousand to a Hayes majority of nearly four thousand. Naturally the
+Democrats sent in contesting returns, but the presidency was really won
+when the Republicans secured in Louisiana and Florida returns which were
+regular in form. But hoping to force Congress to go behind the returns,
+the Democrats carried up contests also from Oregon and South Carolina,
+whose votes properly belonged to Hayes.
+
+The final contest came in Congress over the counting of the electoral
+votes. The Constitution provides that "the President of the Senate
+shall, in the presence of the Senate and the House of Representatives,
+open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted." But
+there was no agreement as to where authority lay for deciding disputed
+votes. Never before had the presidency turned on a disputed count. From
+1864 to 1874 the "twenty-second joint rule" had been in force under
+which either House might reject a certificate. The votes of Georgia in
+1868 and of Louisiana in 1872 had thus been thrown out. But the rule had
+not been readopted by the present Congress, and the Republicans very
+naturally would not listen to a proposal to readopt it now.
+
+With the country apparently on the verge of civil war, Congress finally
+created by law an Electoral Commission to which were to be referred all
+disputes about the counting of votes and the decision of which was to be
+final unless both Houses concurred in rejecting it. The act provided
+that the commission should consist of five senators, five
+representatives, four designated associate justices of the Supreme
+Court, and a fifth associate justice to be chosen by these four. While
+nothing was said in the act about the political affiliations of the
+members of the commission, every one understood that the House would
+select three Democrats and two Republicans, and that the Senate would
+name two Democrats and three Republicans. It was also well known that of
+the four justices designated two were Republicans and two Democrats, and
+it was tacitly agreed that the fifth would be Justice David Davis, an
+"independent." But at the last moment Davis was elected Senator by the
+Illinois Legislature and declined to serve on the Commission. Justice
+Bradley, a Republican, was then named as the fifth justice, and in this
+way the Republicans obtained a majority on the Commission.
+
+The Democrats deserve the credit for the Electoral Commission. The
+Republicans did not favor it, even after they were sure of a party
+majority on it. They were conscious that they had a weak case, and they
+were afraid to trust it to judges of the Supreme Court. Their fears were
+groundless, however, since all important questions were decided by an 8
+to 7 vote, Bradley voting with his fellow Republicans. Every contested
+vote was given to Hayes, and with 185 electoral votes he was declared
+elected on March 2, 1877.
+
+Ten years before, Senator Morton of Indiana had said: "I would have been
+in favor of having the colored people of the South wait a few years
+until they were prepared for the suffrage, until they were to some
+extent educated, but the necessities of the times forbade that; the
+conditions of things required that they should be brought to the polls
+at once." Now the condition of things required that some arrangement be
+made with the Southern whites which would involve a complete reversal of
+the situation of 1867. In order to secure the unopposed succession of
+Hayes, to defeat filibustering which might endanger the decision of the
+Electoral Commission, politicians who could speak with authority for
+Hayes assured influential Southern politicians, who wanted no more civil
+war but who did want home rule, that an arrangement might be made which
+would be satisfactory to both sides.
+
+So the contest was ended. Hayes was to be President; the South, with the
+negro, was to be left to the whites; there would be no further military
+aid to carpetbag governments. In so far as the South was concerned, it
+was a fortunate settlement--better, indeed, than if Tilden had been
+inducted into office. The remnants of the reconstruction policy were
+surrendered by a Republican President, the troops were soon withdrawn,
+and the three radical States fell at once under the control of the
+whites. Hayes could not see in his election any encouragement to adopt a
+vigorous radical position, and Congress was deadlocked on party issues
+for fifteen years. As a result the radical Republicans had to develop
+other interests, and the North gradually accepted the Southern
+situation.
+
+Although the radical policy of reconstruction came to an end in 1877,
+some of its results were more lasting. The Southern States were burdened
+heavily with debt, much of which had been fraudulently incurred. There
+now followed a period of adjustment, of refunding, scaling, and
+repudiation, which not only injured the credit of the States but left
+them with enormous debts. The Democratic party under the leadership of
+former Confederates began its régime of strict economy, race fairness,
+and inelastic Jeffersonianism. There was a political rest which almost
+amounted to stagnation and which the leaders were unwilling to disturb
+by progressive measures lest a developing democracy make trouble with
+the settlement of 1877.
+
+The undoing of reconstruction was not entirely completed with the
+understanding of 1877. There remained a large but somewhat shattered
+Republican party in the South, with control over county and local
+government in many negro districts. Little by little the Democrats
+rooted out these last vestiges of negro control, using all the old
+radical methods and some improvements,¹ such as tissue ballots, the
+shuffling of ballot boxes, bribery, force, and redistricting, while some
+regions were placed entirely under executive control and were ruled by
+appointed commissions. With the good government which followed these
+changes a deadlocked Congress showed no great desire to interfere. The
+Supreme Court came to the aid of the Democrats with decisions in 1875,
+1882, and 1883 which drew the teeth from the Enforcement Laws, and
+Congress in 1894 repealed what was left of these regulations.
+
+¹ See The New South, by Holland Thompson (in The Chronicles of America).
+
+Under such discouraging conditions the voting strength of the
+Republicans rapidly melted away. The party organization existed for the
+Federal offices only and was interested in keeping down the number of
+those who desired to be rewarded. As a consequence, the leaders could
+work in harmony with those Democratic chiefs who were content with a
+"solid South" and local home rule. The negroes of the Black Belt, with
+less enthusiasm and hope, but with quite the same docility as in 1868,
+began to vote as the Democratic leaders directed. This practice brought
+up in another form the question of "negro government" and resulted in a
+demand from the people of the white counties that the negro be put
+entirely out of politics. The answer came between 1890 to 1902 in the
+form of new and complicated election laws or new constitutions which in
+various ways shut out the negro from the polls and left the government
+to the whites. Three times have the Black Belt regions dominated the
+Southern States: under slavery, when the master class controlled; under
+reconstruction, when the leaders of the negroes had their own way; and
+after reconstruction until negro disfranchisement, when the Democratic
+dictators of the negro vote ruled fairly but not always acceptably to
+the white counties which are now the source of their political power.
+
+
+
+ Bibliographical Note.
+
+The best general accounts of the reconstruction period are found in
+James Ford Rhodes's History of the United States from the Compromise of
+1850 to the Restoration of Home Rule at the South in 1877, volumes V,
+VI, VII (1906); in William A. Dunning's Reconstruction, Political and
+Economic, 1865-1877, in the American Nation Series, volume XXII (1907);
+and in Peter Joseph Hamilton's The Reconstruction Period (1905), which
+is volume XVI of The History of North America, edited by F. N. Thorpe.
+The work of Rhodes is spacious and fair-minded but there are serious
+gaps in his narrative; Dunning's briefer account covers the entire field
+with masterly handling; Hamilton's history throws new light on all
+subjects and is particularly useful for an understanding of the Southern
+point of view. A valuable discussion of constitutional problems is
+contained in William A. Dunning's Essay on the Civil War and
+Reconstruction and Related Topics (1904); and a criticism of the
+reconstruction policies from the point of view of political science and
+constitutional law is to be found in J. W. Burgess's Reconstruction and
+the Constitution, 1866-1876 (1902). E. B. Andrews's The United States in
+our own Time (1903) gives a popular treatment of the later period. A
+collection of brief monographs entitled Why the Solid South? by Hilary
+A. Herbert and others (1890) was written as a campaign document to
+offset the drive made by the Republicans in 1889 for new enforcement
+laws.
+
+There are many scholarly monographs on reconstruction in the several
+States. The best of these are: J. W. Garner's Reconstruction in
+Mississippi (1901), W. L. Fleming's Civil War and Reconstruction in
+Alabama (1905), J. G. deR. Hamilton's Reconstruction in North Carolina
+(1914), W. W. Davis's The Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida
+(1913), J. S. Reynolds's Reconstruction in South Carolina, 1865-1877
+(1905); C. W. Ramsdell's Reconstruction in Texas (1910), and C. M.
+Thompson's Reconstruction in Georgia (1915).
+
+Books of interest on special phases of reconstruction are not numerous,
+but among those deserving mention are Paul S. Pierce's The Freedmen's
+Bureau (1904), D. M. DeWitt's The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew
+Johnson (1903), and Paul L. Haworth's The Hayes-Tilden Disputed
+Presidential Election of 1876 (1906), each of which is a thorough study
+of its field. J. C. Lester and D. L. Wilson's Ku Klux Klan (1905) and M.
+L. Avary's Dixie After the War (1906) contribute much to a fair
+understanding of the feeling of the whites after the Civil War; and
+Gideon Welles, Diary, 3 vols. (1911), is a mine of information from a
+conservative cabinet officer's point of view.
+
+For the politician's point of view one may go to James G. Blaine's
+Twenty Years of Congress, 2 vols. (1884, 1886) and Samuel S. Cox's Three
+Decades of Federal Legislation (1885). Good biographies are James A.
+Woodburn's The Life of Thaddeus Stevens (1913), Moorfield Storey's
+Charles Sumner (1900), C. F. Adams's Charles Francis Adams (1900). Less
+satisfactory because more partisan is Edward Stanwood's James Gillespie
+Blaine (1906). There are no adequate biographies of the Democratic and
+Southern leaders.
+
+The official documents are found conveniently arranged in William
+McDonald's Select Statutes, 1861-1898 (1903), and also with other
+material in Walter L. Fleming's Documentary History of Reconstruction, 2
+vols. (1906, 1907). The general reader is usually repelled by the
+collections known as Public Documents. The valuable Ku Klux Trials
+(1872) is, however, separately printed and to be found in most good
+libraries. By a judicious use of the indispensable Tables and Index to
+Public Documents, one can find much vividly interesting material in
+connection with contested election cases and reports of congressional
+investigations into conditions in the South.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+A.
+
+Abolitionists, views on reconstruction, 60-61.
+Adams, C. F., candidate for presidential nomination, 287.
+Advertiser, Boston, Sidney Andrews as correspondent for, 28.
+Advertiser of Montgomery, and education, 212.
+Agriculture in the South, 267-269, 271, 273-274.
+Alabama, corruption, 10-11; poverty, 14; Protestant Episcopal churches
+closed, 23; labor, 47, 110, 268; negro legislation, 97; courts, 111; and
+Fourteenth Amendment, 132; negro voters, 151, 222; constitutional
+convention, 153; constitution, 153-154, 155; abstention policy, 155,
+156, 158, 223; readmitted, 157, 170; Union League in, 189; negro
+churches, 206; schools, 215; illiterate magistrates, 225; negro
+legislators, 226; taxes, 231; public debt, 232; decrease in property
+values, 233; value of railroads, 236; negro voting, 238; two governments
+in, 239; legislature, 240; vigilance committee, 245; Ku Klux in, 246;
+partially Democratic in 1870, 260; permits mixed marriages, 276; and
+radicalism, 290; election (1874), 293.
+Alabama claims, 283.
+Alabama, University of, 3, 210, 216.
+Alexandria (Va.), Virginia Government transferred to, 65, 74.
+Alvord, J. W., quoted, 211.
+Amendments, see Constitution.
+Ames, General Adelbert, commands military district, 141 (note).
+Amnesty, Johnson's proclamation, 9, 75; use of pardoning power, 87; Act
+of 1872, 288-289; measure (1876), 295.
+Anderson, T. C., of Louisiana, 298.
+Andrew, J. A., Governor of Massachusetts, reconstruction policy, 61-62,
+68.
+Andrews, General Garnett, on fear of negroes, 278.
+Andrews, Sidney, correspondent for Boston Advertiser, 28.
+Appomattox, Grant at, 280.
+Arkansas, 262; recognizes "Union" State government, 18; Lincoln's
+reconstruction plan adopted (1862), 65; Johnson recognizes government,
+74; negro labor, 99; representatives refused admission to Congress, 119;
+abstention policy in regard to constitution, 155, 156, 170; schools,
+215; scalawags in, 222; corruption, 233; railroad grant, 235; split in
+state government, 239; election (1874), 293.
+Armstrong's Hampton Institute, see Hampton Institute.
+Army, officers assist civil authorities in South, 75-76; utilizes negro
+labor, 99-100; military rule in South, 135, 140 et seq.; see also
+Occupation, Army of.
+Ashley, J. M., of Ohio, 160.
+Atlanta (Ga.), post-war condition, 5.
+Attakapas Parish (La.), Ku Klux incident, 254-255.
+
+
+B.
+
+Banks, General Nathaniel, and captured slaves, 99.
+Baptist Church, 198, 202.
+Beauregard, General P. G. T., on negro suffrage, 147-148.
+Bingham, J. A., and impeachment of Johnson, 166.
+Black, Jeremiah, and impeachment of Johnson, 166.
+"Black Belt," post-war condition, 40-41; industrial revolution in,
+265-267; and whites, 271; cotton production, 271-272 (note); domination
+of South by, 304; see also South.
+Black Cavalry, 245.
+Black Friday episode, 283.
+"Black Laws," 89-90, 93-98, 115-116, 127, 141; see also Negroes,
+legislation.
+Blaine, J. G., quoted, 125; and Republican party, 295.
+Blair, F. P., of Missouri, Democratic nomination (1868), 168-169.
+"Bloody shirt" issue in campaign of 1876, 295-296.
+Border States, reconstruction in, 85-86; see also South.
+Botts, J. M., of Virginia, 107.
+Boutwell, G. S., radical leader, 122, 125; and tenure of office act,
+134; and impeachment of Johnson, 166.
+Boynton, General H. V. N., on Southern need of supplies, 5-6.
+Bradley, Justice J. P., on electoral commission, 300.
+"Brothers and Sisters of Pleasure and Prosperity," 275.
+Brown, J. E., Governor of Georgia, and negro education, 212.
+Brown, Gratz, candidate for presidential nomination, 287.
+Brownlow, W. G., Governor of Tennessee, 224.
+Bruce, B. K., negro senator, 242 (note).
+Buchanan, General R. C., commands military district in South, 141
+(note).
+Bullock County (Ala.), Union League in, 192.
+Butler, General B. F., and negro labor, 99; radical, 125; and
+impeachment of Johnson, 160, 166.
+
+
+C.
+
+Campbell, Judge, Lincoln gives reconstruction terms to, 67.
+Canby, General, commands military department in South, 140-141 (note),
+163.
+Cardozo, school official in Mississippi, 216.
+Carpetbaggers, appointed to Federal offices, 80; in radical Republican
+party, 149; in conventions, 153; and Union League, 193; and religion,
+205; rule in South, 221 et seq.; use of term, 222; and equal rights
+issue, 275-276; government in hands of, 289 (note); against scalawags,
+292.
+Carter, Speaker of Louisiana Legislature, and railroad bills, 235.
+Catholic Church, 23, 198.
+Chamberlain, D. H., Governor of South Carolina, 225.
+Charleston (S. C.), post-war condition, 5.
+Chase, S. P., counsels against seizure of cotton, 9; and negro suffrage,
+28, 50, 132; opposed to military reconstruction, 159; advises Johnson
+against suspending Stanton, 163; and impeachment of Johnson, 166-167.
+Civil Rights Act, 84, 137, 141, 277.
+Clanton, General J. H., of Alabama, on position of whites, 250.
+Clayton, Judge, of Alabama, opinion of Freedmen's Bureau, 90.
+Clayton, Mrs., Black and White under the Old Régime, quoted, 38-39.
+Cleveland, soldiers' and sailors' convention at, 130; Union League
+formed (1862), 176-177.
+Clinton (Miss.), race conflict in, 237 (note).
+Cloud, school official in Alabama, 216.
+Colfax, Schuyler, candidate for Vice President (1868), 168.
+Colfax (La.), race conflict in, 237 (note).
+Columbia (S. C.), post-war condition, 5.
+Congress, impatient of executive precedence, 65-66, 119-120; and
+Southern representatives, 80, 86, 119-120, 128; refuses to recognize
+reconstructed governments, 81; Joint Committee on Reconstruction, 82,
+84, 121, 125-126, 127, 129-130, 131, 198, 266 (note); Fourteenth
+Amendment, 82, 85, 130; see also Constitution; radical reconstruction
+plans, 83-84; radicalism, 83-84, 118 et seq., 285; Civil Rights Act, 84,
+137, 141, 277; and Johnson, 126 et seq.; assumes control of
+reconstruction, 129, 142-143; Tenure of Office Act, 134; Army
+Appropriation Act, 134; reconstruction acts, 134-137, 158-160; supreme
+control, 140; and Supreme Court, 158-159; impeachment of President, 160
+et seq.; and Grant, 171; negro members, 230, 242; Committee on the
+Condition of the South, 241; Committee on the Late Insurrectionary
+States, 241; enforcement acts, 260, 261-262, 290, 292, 303; "Ku Klux
+Bill," 261, 262; committee to investigate conditions in Southern States,
+262; Amnesty Act (1872), 288-289; decline of radicalism, 289 (note),
+290; investigates election, 294; amnesty measure (1876), 295; Electoral
+Commission, 299-300; deadlocked by party issues, 302.
+Connecticut and negro suffrage, 285.
+Constitution, Johnson and, 72, 162; Thirteenth Amendment, 79; Fourteenth
+Amendment, 82, 84, 85, 130, 131-133, 135-136, 137, 156, 172; Fifteenth
+Amendment, 169-170, 171, 172, 222, 290.
+Constitutional conventions in South, 152 et seq.
+Constitutional Union Guards, 245.
+Conway, school official in Louisiana, 216.
+Copperheads, 176.
+Cotton, tax on, 8; seized, 9-11; destruction of, 11; production (1880),
+271-272 (note).
+Council of Safety, 245.
+Coushatta (La.), race conflict in, 237 (note).
+Cowan, administration Republican, 122.
+Credit Mobilier, 282.
+Crittenden-Johnson resolutions, 55, 69.
+Cuba, United States and, 284.
+Cumberland Presbyterian Church, 204.
+Cummings vs. Missouri, 159.
+Curry, J. L. M., and negro education, 212, 214-215.
+Curtis, B. R., counsel at impeachment, 166.
+
+
+D.
+
+Davis, David, candidate for presidential nomination, 287; and Electoral
+Commission, 300.
+Davis, Jefferson, prayer in Church for, 23; succeeded by negro in
+Senate, 230; disfranchised, 289; and amnesty, 295.
+Davis, Nicholas, characterizes Lakin, 205-206.
+De Bow, J. D. B., on negro labor, 266 (note).
+Democratic party, and Crittenden-Johnson resolutions, 55, 69; at end of
+war, 70; Douglas Democrats, 70, 87; and Johnson, 70, 88, 138;
+"Democratic and Conservative" party, 150; platform (1868), 169; Union
+League and, 188, 190-191; in Congress from South, 230; Southern
+Unionists turn to, 277; and Civil Rights Act, 277; "New Departure,"
+Democrats, 287; supports Greeley, 288; and election of 1876, 297-298;
+and Electoral Commission, 300; during period of adjustment, 302, 303.
+Dennison, William, resigns from Cabinet, 131.
+District of Columbia, negro suffrage in, 134; corruption, 282.
+Dixon, James, administration Republican, 122.
+Dixon, W. H., 29.
+Doolittle, administration Republican, 122.
+Douglass, Frederick, quoted, 37-38.
+
+
+E.
+
+Eaton, John, chaplain in Grant's army, 99.
+Eaton, Colonel John, 106.
+Education, negro, 45; Freedmen's Bureau and, 111-112; in South, 208-220.
+Elections under carpetbag rule, 237-239.
+Electoral Commission, 299-300.
+Emancipation Proclamation, 36, 176.
+Enforcement acts, 260-261, 290, 292, 303.
+Episcopal Church, 198, 204.
+Evarts, W. M., counsel at impeachment, 166.
+Ewing, Thomas, nominated Secretary of War, 164.
+
+
+F.
+
+Fessenden, General, Freedmen's Bureau official, 106.
+Fessenden, W. P., moderate Republican, 122; and negro suffrage, 132.
+Finance, post-war condition in South, 2, 5; war taxes, 8; license taxes,
+76; repudiation of Confederate war debt, 77, 130; under military
+governors, 145-146; effect of bad government in South, 230-236; credit
+system, 270; readjustments, 283; panic of 1873, 283.
+Fish, C. R., The Path of Empire, cited, 284 (note).
+Fisk, General, criticism of Kentucky Legislature, 113.
+Fisk, James, 283, 286.
+Florida, negro colony in, 36; negro legislation, 96; and Fourteenth
+Amendment, 132; negro voters, 151; schools, 215; recitation in negro
+school, 218-219; and reconstruction government, 221; corruption, 226;
+taxes, 231; decrease in property values, 233; Equal Rights Law, 276; and
+radicals, 294, 295; election of 1876, 297, 298.
+Forrest, General, Grand Wizard of Ku Klux, 248, 259.
+Freedmen, see Negroes.
+Freedmen's Aid Societies, 177, 207, 213.
+Freedmen's Bureau, 38, 81, 82, 85, 86, 90, 126, 161, 187; confiscable
+property turned over to, 11; official describes conditions in South,
+13-14; as relief agency, 15; in Kentucky, 26; as publicity agent, 28;
+and contract labor, 46; on relations between races, 48; agitators from,
+53; extension, 74, 84, 128, 129; and negroes, 80, 142, 149, 175; views
+of North carried out in, 89; influence on legislation and government,
+94, 97, 143; officials of, 97, 98-99; character of, 98; established
+(1865), 102-103; functions, 103-104, 107-109; objections to, 104-105,
+112-113; organization, 105-107; courts, 110-111, 113-114; educational
+work, 111-112; political possibilities, 115; results, 116-117; and
+radicals, 131, 156; Union League and, 177, 188, 194 (note), 195; negro
+education, 213.
+Freedmen's Bureau Act, 128, 129, 137.
+Freedmen's Inquiry Commission, 101.
+"Freedmen's Readers," 218.
+Frémont, J. C., and the radicals, 119.
+Fullerton, General, and Freedmen's Bureau, 106, 113; on treatment of
+negroes, 112-113.
+
+
+G.
+
+Garfield, J. A., 132.
+Garland, ex parte, 159.
+Geneva Arbitration (1872), 283.
+Georgetown (D. C.), vote on negro suffrage in, 134.
+Georgia, poverty in, 14; government relief, 15; negro colony in, 36;
+courts, 111, 113; military government, 143, 144; suit against Stanton,
+159; military rule resumed, 170; reconstruction in, 171-172, 221;
+legislature, 172, 240; representatives in Congress, 172, 289 (note);
+negro voters, 222; Godkin characterizes officials of, 226; holds mixed
+marriages illegal, 276; conservatives gain control in, 290; election
+(1868), 299.
+Gillem, General, commands military department, 141 (note).
+Godkin, E. L., quoted, 180 (note); on Georgia politicians, 226.
+Gordon, J. B., and negro education, 212.
+Gould, Jay, 283, 286.
+Grant, U. S., 186, 224, 280, 297; urges use of white troops in South,
+21; orders arrest of paroled Confederates, 22; report on South, 28, 29;
+protests arrest of Southern military leaders, 74; and captured slaves,
+99; and Freedmen's Bureau, 106; Army Appropriation Act, 134; radicalism,
+141 (note), 239-240; Congress gives full powers to, 143; temporarily
+Secretary of War, 163; and Stanton, 163, 165; nominated by National
+Union party, 168; elected President, 169; reconstruction, 171; and
+enforcement acts, 260-261; expansionist, 283-284; vote for, 285-286;
+appointees, 286; reëlection, 288; refuses to interfere in Mississippi,
+291; restores Kellogg to office, 294.
+Greeley, Horace, candidate for Presidency, 287-288.
+Greene, S. S., quoted, 208.
+Groesbeck, W. S., counsel at impeachment, 166.
+Guthrie, James, Democratic leader, 122.
+
+
+H.
+
+Hahn, Michael, Governor of Louisiana, Lincoln's letter to, 66-67.
+Hail Columbia sung at Union League initiation, 183.
+Halleck, General H. W., orders in regard to marriage, 20.
+Hampton, General Wade, 174, 175; letter to Johnson, 31; and negro
+suffrage, 51; and Freedmen's Bureau, 107.
+Hampton Institute, 220; teacher's remark on negro education, 211-212.
+Hancock, General W. S., commands military department, 141 (note), 163.
+Hardee, General W. J., quoted, 244.
+Harlan, James, resigns from Cabinet, 131.
+Harris, I. G., on Johnson, 72.
+Hayes, R. B., candidate for presidency, 296, 297, 298; elected, 300,
+301; and radicalism, 302.
+Hell Hole Swamp, 234.
+Hendricks, T. A., Democratic leader, 122.
+Herald, New York, Knox as correspondent of, 28; on radical
+reconstruction, 148.
+Heroes of America, 179, 245.
+Hill, B. H., of Georgia, and "Jim Crow" theory, 277.
+Hill, General D. H., of North Carolina, 279 (note).
+Hill, Thomas, President of Harvard, 209.
+Holden, W. W., provisional governor of North Carolina, 75, 77, 224, 232;
+and Union League, 185, 189.
+Home Guards, 245.
+Howard, General O. O., head of Freedmen's Bureau, 105.
+Humphreys, B. G., Governor of Mississippi, opinion of Freedmen's Bureau,
+90; advocates civil equality, 91.
+
+
+I.
+
+Immigration to South, negroes against, 268.
+Impeachment of President, 160 et seq.
+Irish, South Carolina imports, 271.
+
+
+J.
+
+Jackson (Miss.), post-war condition, 5.
+Jews in South, 23, 274.
+Jillson, school official in South Carolina, 216.
+"Jim Crow," car, 95; theory of "separate but equal" rights, 277.
+John Brown's Body sung in Union League initiation, 184.
+Johnson, Andrew, amnesty proclamation, 9, 75; policies opposed by
+Andrews, 28; and negro suffrage, 50, 78; reconstruction policy, 57-58,
+73 et seq., 83; military governor of Tennessee, 65; nomination, 70;
+personal characteristics, 71-72, 73; adopts Lincoln's policy, 73, 88;
+and Congress, 80 et seq., 118, 119, 120-121, 126 et seq., 288; use of
+pardoning power, 87; speechmaking tour to the West, 131; impeachment,
+158 et seq.; and Stanton, 163-165.
+Johnson, Reverdy, 122.
+
+
+K.
+
+Kansas and negro suffrage, 156, 285.
+Kelley, "Pig Iron," of Pennsylvania, 150.
+Kellogg, W. P., Governor of Louisiana, 224-225, 294.
+Kentucky, Confederates in, 25-26; and abolition of slavery, 36;
+exception in reconstruction problem, 86.
+Knights of the Golden Circle, 176.
+Knights of the White Camelia, 237, 246, 251-252, 259.
+Knox, T. W., correspondent for New York Herald, 28.
+Ku Klux Klan, 191, 237, 243 et seq., 290; development, 49, 243-246; and
+Freedmen's Bureau, 107; and Union League, 194 (note); activities, 207,
+219, 240, 252 et seq., 263-264; organization, 246-249; objects, 249-250,
+252, 263; report of Federal commanders, 250-251; political effects,
+260-261; "Ku Klux Act," 261-262; and negro suffrage, 291.
+
+
+L.
+
+Labor, free negro, 45-47, 266-267, 272-273; Freedmen's Bureau, 46,
+109-110, 266; testimony of Joint Committee concerning, 82; importation
+of labor, 268.
+Lakin, Rev. A. S., agent of Northern Methodist Church in Alabama,
+205-206, 207-208.
+Land, price after Civil War, 4; fertilizers for, 271, 272.
+Lanier, Sidney, letter to Taylor, quoted, 279-280.
+Latham, Henry, 29.
+Lee, General R. E., president of Washington College, 17-18; and his
+uniform, 20; letter to Letcher, 31, 32; kneels beside negro in church,
+44; witness before Joint Committee, 125; and military reconstruction,
+147; disfranchised, 289.
+Legislation, Negro, see "Black Laws."
+Leslie, South Carolina carpetbagger, 225.
+Letcher, John, Governor of Virginia, Lee writes to, 31, 32.
+Lewis, D. P., of Alabama, and Union League, 189.
+Lincoln, Abraham, and negro suffrage, 50, 66-67; reconstruction policy,
+55-57, 58, 62; and Wade-Davis Bill, 56, 66, 120; last speech quoted,
+56-57; reconstruction plan put to trial, 63-68; Proclamation of
+December, 1863, 64, 119; and Congress, 65-66, 67-68; nominated by
+National Union party (1864), 70; second Cabinet, 70; and radicalism,
+119; vote for (1864), 285.
+Lincoln Brotherhood, 275.
+Lindsay, R. B., Governor of Alabama, on Northern missionaries, 205.
+Longstreet, General James, 147.
+Louisiana, recognizes "Union" state government, 18; Whitelaw Reid in,
+28; Lincoln's reconstruction plan adopted (1862), 65; Johnson recognizes
+government of, 74; treatment of negroes by army in, 99; Freedmen's
+Bureau courts in, 113; representatives refused admission to Congress,
+119-120; military government in, 144; negro voters, 151, 152, 222, 239;
+equal rights legislation, 154, 275, 276; schools, 215, 217; carpetbag
+rule, 221; conservatives, 223; corruption, 225, 233-234, 235;
+legislature, 226, 227, 240; taxes, 231; public debt, 232; decrease in
+property values, 233; negro militia, 236-237, two governments in, 239;
+government over-turned, 240-241, omitted from Federal investigation,
+262; labor, 268; and radicalism, 290, 294, 295; elections, 293-294, 297,
+298, 299.
+Louisiana State Seminary, 3.
+Louisiana State University, 217.
+Louisville and Nashville Railroad, 7.
+Loyal League, see Union League.
+Lynch, negro officeholder, 242 (note).
+
+
+M.
+
+McCardle, ex parte, 159-160.
+McCulloch, Hugh, Secretary of Treasury, and seizure of cotton in South,
+9-10; and Johnson, 74, 163.
+McDowell, General Irvin, commands military district, 141 (note).
+McPherson, Edward, clerk of the House, 121.
+Marvin, William, Governor of Florida, on status of negroes, 91, 92, 93.
+Maryland, disfranchisement in, 25-26; state emancipation in, 36; and
+negro suffrage, 285.
+Meade, General G. G., commands military district, 140-141 (note).
+Memminger, C. G., Governor of South Carolina, on status of freedmen,
+90-91, 92-93.
+Memphis (Tenn.), 185; race riots in, 83, 131, 175; convention of
+Confederate soldiers and sailors at, 130; surrenders charter, 233.
+Men of Justice, 245.
+Methodist Church, 198, 199-201, 202, 203-204, 208.
+Metropolitan Guard, 237.
+Michigan rejects negro suffrage, 156, 285.
+Milligan, ex parte, 159.
+Minnesota rejects negro suffrage, 156, 285.
+Mississippi, poverty in, 14; rejects Thirteenth Amendment, 79; negro
+legislation in, 94, 95-96; treatment of negroes by army in, 99; courts,
+111; military government, 143, 144, 157; negro voters, 151, 222;
+constitution, 153-154, 155; suit against President, 159; reconstruction
+fails in, 170; and radicalism, 171; schools, 215, 217, 218;
+conservatives, 223; negroes in legislature, 226; taxes, 231; negro
+militia, 236; and enforcement acts, 261; permits mixed marriages, 276;
+unrepresented in Congress, 289 (note); Grant and interference in, 291;
+elections (1875), 293.
+Mississippi River, negro colonies along, 37.
+Mississippi Shot Gun Plan, 263, 294.
+Mississippi, University of, 216.
+Missouri, and Confederates, 26; state emancipation in, 36; rejects negro
+suffrage, 285.
+Mobile (Ala.), post-war condition, 5; surrenders charter, 233.
+Montgomery (Ala.), separate organization of Baptist Church in, 203;
+negro education, 212; Ku Klux proclamation, 257-258.
+Montgomery Conference on Race Problems (1900), Proceedings quoted,
+214-215.
+Moore, Governor, and negro education, 212.
+Morgan, E. D., Senator, and Freedmen's Bureau Act, 129.
+Morton, O. P., of Indiana, 125; on negro suffrage, 300-301.
+Moses, F. J., Jr., Governor of South Carolina, 224.
+Moses, Judge, in South Carolina, 225.
+
+
+N.
+
+Nash, negro officeholder, 242 (note).
+Nation, New York, 180 (note); editorial on post-war church situation
+quoted, 201 (note); on corruption of government, 226.
+National Teachers Association meeting (1865), 208.
+National Union party, Republican party becomes, 70; Whigs and Douglas
+Democrats join, 70-71; convention at Philadelphia, 130; nominates Grant,
+168.
+Negro Affairs, Department of, 177.
+Negroes, as soldiers in South, 21-22; problems of reconstruction, 34 et
+seq.; health conditions among, 41-42; morals and manners, 42-43;
+poverty, 44-45; education, 44-45, 209, 211-220; relations with whites,
+47-48, 277-278; lawlessness, 48-49; suffrage, 49-52, 58, 66-67, 78, 84,
+85, 134, 169, 284-285, 300-301, 304; Lincoln urges deportation of
+freedmen, 66; legislation concerning, 77-78, 89-90, 93-98, 115-116, 127,
+141; status at close of war, 89 et seq.; Freedmen's Bureau supervises,
+109; Union League and, 181 et seq.; religion, 201-206; rule in South,
+221 et seq.; in Congress, 230, 242; and state offices, 242; and Ku Klux,
+258; anti-negro movements, 263; labor, 266, 272; "privileges," 269;
+advantages, 270-271; as farmers, 271-274; change in condition during
+reconstruction, 274-275; mixed marriages, 276.
+Nelson, counsel at impeachment, 166.
+New England, and negro suffrage, 156, 285; Freedmen's Aid Society, 209.
+New Orleans, negro soldiers in, 21-22; riots in, 83, 131, 175, 237
+(note); Northern teachers in, 210; public debt, 232; Federal officials
+at, 241.
+New York, charity for relief of South, 14; and negro suffrage, 156, 284.
+New York City, Union League organized, 177; headquarters for Union
+League, 181; corruption in, 282.
+Nordhoff, Charles, 291; The Cotton States in the Spring and Summer of
+1875, cited, 232 (note).
+Norfolk, "contraband" camp, 36.
+North, free negroes of, 35-36; planters from, 49; capital and labor
+from, 268; change in attitude toward South, 282; politics, 291.
+North Carolina, negro colonies in, 36, 99; Johnson proclaims restoration
+of, 75; committee on laws for freedmen, 91, 92; courts, 111; negro
+voters, 152; Union League, 185, 186, 194; carpetbag rule, 221; public
+debt, 232; negro militia, 236; Democratic in 1870, 260; and enforcement
+acts, 261; conservatives gain control of, 290.
+North Carolina, University of, 216.
+
+
+O.
+
+Occupation, Army of, 18-22, 81; see also Army.
+Ohio rejects negro suffrage, 156, 285.
+Ord, General E. O. C., commands military division, 140 (note).
+Oregon, election of 1876, 297, 298.
+Orr, J. L., and negro education, 212.
+Orth, S. P., The Boss and the Machine, cited, 282 (note).
+
+
+P.
+
+Pale Faces, 245, 251.
+Patton, R. M., Governor of Alabama, 174, 175; and negro suffrage, 51,
+78; and contract labor, 110; and negro education, 212.
+Peabody Board, 217-218.
+"Peace Societies," 149, 179, 245.
+Perry, B. F., Governor of South Carolina, and negro suffrage, 78-79.
+Pettus, General, quoted, 250.
+Phelps, J. S., military governor of Arkansas, 65.
+Philadelphia, convention of National Union party at, 130; Union League
+organized (1863), 177.
+Phillips, Wendell, Johnson and, 128.
+Pike, J. S., 291; account of conditions in South Carolina, 16-17; The
+Prostrate State, quoted, 227-230.
+Pinchback, P. B. S., negro officeholder, 242 (note).
+Pittsburgh, soldiers' and sailors' convention at, 130.
+Politics, theoretical basis of, 54-55; see also names of parties.
+Pope, General John, commands military district, 140-141 (note).
+Poverty, of South after Civil War, 13-14; among negroes, 44.
+Presbyterian Church, 198-199, 204.
+Prescript, constitution of Ku Klux Klan, 248, 249.
+Professions in South after Civil War, 16.
+Propaganda, campaign of misrepresentation against South, 82-83; by Union
+League, 177-178; see also Publicity.
+Publicity, newspaper correspondents in South, 27-29.
+Pulaski (Tenn.), Ku Klux Klan originates at, 246; Ku Klux incident, 255.
+
+
+Q.
+
+Quakers, opinion as to secession, 198.
+
+
+R.
+
+Radicalism, 118 et seq.; decline of, 289-294.
+Railroads, post-war condition in South, 6-7; dishonest speculation,
+234-236.
+Rainey, negro officeholder, 242 (note).
+Randolph, Ryland, editor of Tuscaloosa Independent Monitor, 146,
+243-244.
+Raymond, administration Republican, 122.
+Reconstruction, problems in South, 1 et seq., 86; negro as central
+figure, 34 et seq.; executive plans for, 54 et seq.; Crittenden-Johnson
+resolutions, 55; Democratic party on, 69; Joint Committee on, 82, 84,
+121, 125-126, 127, 129-130, 131, 198, 266 (note); congressional policy
+of, 134-139; political issue, 169, 294-295; results of radical policy,
+302-304; bibliography, 305-307.
+Red String Band, 179, 245.
+Reed, Governor of Florida, 276.
+Refugees, 14, 108.
+Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, Bureau of, 102; see also
+Freedmen's Bureau.
+Reid, Whitelaw, relates incident of Confederate uniforms, 20-21; as
+newspaper correspondent, 28; interview with Hampton, 51-52.
+Relief agencies, after Civil War, 14-15; Freedmen's Bureau, 15, 107-109;
+Government, 15.
+Religion, separation of Northern and Southern churches, 23; among
+negroes, 43-44; in South, 196-208; military censorship in church
+matters, 197; see also names of denominations.
+Republican party, and reconstruction, 63, 295; during Civil War, 69-70;
+secures negro vote, 115; majority in Congress, 138; in South, 148-149,
+151, 292; platform (1868), 169; and the North, 284; negro suffrage,
+284-285; loses control in House, 286; Liberal Republican movement, 287;
+issues (1876), 295-296; and Electoral Commission, 300; decline of
+strength, 303.
+Revels, negro officeholder, 242 (note).
+Rhodes, J. F., on congressional policy of reconstruction, 118-119.
+Richmond (Va.), post-war condition, 5; Halleck's order in regard to
+marriage, 20; incident of Lee and a negro in church, 43-44; Lincoln and
+Confederate Government in, 67.
+Rifle Clubs of South Carolina, 245-246, 263.
+Roads in Tennessee after Civil War, 4.
+
+
+S.
+
+Saffold, M. J., on negro suffrage, 50.
+"Salary Grab," 282.
+Santo Domingo, Grant seeks annexation of, 283-284.
+Savannah (Ga.), incident relating to Confederate uniforms, 20-21.
+Scalawags, in constitutional conventions, 153; desert radicals, 156;
+disabilities removed, 171; and the churches, 205; use of term, 222.
+Schofield, General J. M., 106; commands military district, 140 (note);
+Secretary of War, 167.
+Schuckers, J. W., quoted, 166.
+Schurz, Carl, on army of occupation, 19; report on conditions in South,
+28, 29, 30; on negro labor, 45-46.
+Scott, R. K., Governor of South Carolina, 236.
+Sea Islands, negroes sent to, 36, 103, 114.
+Seward, W. H., and Jackson, 74; expansionist, 283.
+Seymour, Horatio, of New York, 168, 169.
+Sharkey, W. L., Governor of Mississippi, 78.
+Shepherd, A. R., 282.
+Shepley, General G. F., military governor of Louisiana, 65.
+Sheridan, General P. H., commands military district, 140-141 (note);
+Johnson removes, 163; "banditti" report, 241.
+Sherman, General W. T., 28, 36; Sea Island order, 103, 114.
+Shot Gun Plan, see Mississippi Shot Gun Plan.
+Sickles, General D. E., commands military district, 140-141 (note);
+removed by Johnson, 163.
+Slavery, Abolition of, Lincoln and, 58, 66; Johnson and, 58, 76; Sumner
+and, 59; see also Emancipation Proclamation.
+Smith, Gerrit, view of reconstruction, 60-61.
+Smith, W. H., Governor of Alabama, 207, 224; quoted, 24.
+Somers, Robert, English writer on the South, 4, 28-29, 41-42, 269.
+Sons of '76, 245.
+South, post-war condition, 2 et seq.; exploitation by Northerners,
+26-27; relation between races, 47-48; Presidents' work of
+reconstruction, 54 et seq.; see also Reconstruction; conference of
+governors of, 85; military rule in, 140 et seq.; churches, 196-208;
+schools, 208-220; carpetbag and negro rule, 221 et seq.; social
+conditions, 265 et seq.
+South Carolina, Pike's account of post-war condition, 16-17; negroes on
+Sea Islands of, 36; negro legislation, 94, 95, 96, 275, 276; negro
+voters, 151, 152, 222; race lines abolished, 154; schools, 215-216, 217;
+carpetbag rule, 221, 225; conservatives, 223; judiciary, 225; negroes in
+legislature of, 226, 227; taxes, 231; public debt, 232; corruption, 234;
+negro militia, 236; elections, 239, 297, 298; put under martial law,
+261; labor, 267, 268; Irish in, 271; and radicalism, 294.
+South Carolina, University of, 216-217.
+Southwest, Southern whites open lands in, 271.
+Spain, relations with United States, 284.
+Speed, James, resigns from Cabinet, 131.
+Spencer, General, 189.
+Stanbery, Henry, Attorney-General, opinion on reconstruction laws, 142;
+counsel at impeachment, 166.
+Stanton, E. M., Secretary of War, 67; draws up army act, 134; radical,
+142; Johnson and, 162-163; suit brought against, by Georgia, 159.
+Star Routes, 282.
+Star Spangled Banner, The, sung at Union League initiation, 183.
+Stearns, M. L., Governor of Florida, 224.
+Steedman, General J. B., 106, 113.
+Stephens, A. H., witness before Joint Committee, 125-126.
+Stephenson, N. W., The Day of the Confederacy, cited, 149 (note);
+Abraham Lincoln and the Union, cited, 176 (note).
+Stevens, Thaddeus, reconstruction policy, 59-60, 118, 122-123; and
+Johnson, 71, 121, 128, 160, 161, 162, 166; radical leader, 122, 127,
+133, 173; and negro suffrage, 132; on Military Reconstruction Bill, 135,
+138-139; and Alabama, 156.
+Stockton, Senator from New Jersey, unseated, 129.
+Stoneman, General George, commands military district, 140 (note).
+Suffrage, Negro, see Negroes.
+Sumner, Charles, reconstruction policy, 58-59, 60, 119; radical leader,
+122, 123-124, 127, 133, 173; Johnson and, 128, 162; and negro suffrage,
+132; and equal rights, 276-277; and expansion, 284.
+Supreme Court, Congress and, 158-160; and Civil Rights Act, 277; and
+Enforcement Laws, 303.
+Swayne, General Wager, head of Freedmen's Bureau in Alabama, 97, 106; on
+contract labor, 110; and courts, 111; and Union League, 189, 192-193; on
+negro education, 212.
+"Swinging Around the Circle," Johnson's tour of the West, 131.
+
+
+T.
+
+Tarbell, General John, before Joint Committee on Reconstruction, 30.
+Taxation, see Finance.
+Taylor, Bayard, Lanier writes to, 279-280.
+Taylor, General Richard, 83.
+Tennessee, recognizes "Union" government, 18; imposes fines for wearing
+Confederate uniform, 20; Confederates in, 25-26; State emancipation in,
+36; attitude toward negroes in, 48; Lincoln's reconstruction plan
+adopted (1862), 65; Johnson recognizes government of, 74; reconstruction
+in, 85; negro labor, 99; readmitted to Congress, 129, 133; and
+Fourteenth Amendment, 133; negro voters, 222; and enforcement acts, 261;
+omitted from investigation, 262; conservatives gain control of, 290.
+Tennessee Valley after Civil War, 4.
+Tenure of office act, 134.
+Texas, 152, 157, 262; delay in electing officials, 79; military
+government in, 143, 144; constitution, 153, 155; reconstruction fails
+in, 170; radicals in, 171; Confederates go to, 268; unrepresented in
+Congress, 289 (note); elections (1874), 293.
+Thach, president of Alabama Agricultural College, 271-272.
+Thomas, General G. H., on sentiment of Tennessee, 24-25.
+Thomas, Lorenzo, as acting Secretary of War, 164.
+Thompson, Holland, The New South, cited, 218 (note), 294 (note), 303
+(note).
+Tichenor, Rev. I. T., 202-203.
+Tilden, S. J., candidate for presidency, 296, 298, 301.
+Tillson, General, quoted, 113.
+Tourgée, A. W., chief of Union League in North Carolina, 189.
+Trade restrictions in South, 7-12.
+Treasury Department, frauds in selling confiscable property in South,
+8-12; supervise negro colonies, 37; employer of negro labor, 100.
+Tribune, Chicago, Sidney Andrews correspondent for, 28.
+Tribune, New York, Horace Greeley as editor of, 288.
+Trowbridge, J. T., on frauds in South, 11-12; on sentiment of East
+Tennessee toward rebels, 25; correspondent in South, 28; on relation of
+races, 48.
+Truman, B. C., on society in South, 27; report on conditions in South,
+28, 29-30; on negro labor, 46; on relation of races, 48.
+Trumbull, Lyman, moderate Republican, 122; candidate for presidential
+nomination, 287.
+Tuscaloosa Independent Monitor suppressed, 146.
+Tuscumbia (Ala.), Female Academy burned in, 185-186.
+Tweed, W. M., 282.
+
+
+U.
+
+Uniforms, wearing of Confederate, forbidden, 20.
+Union League of America, 174 et seq., 275; Freedmen's Bureau and, 115;
+negroes in, 115, 149; and radicals, 156; and Ku Klux Klan, 247, 256.
+Union party, see National Union party.
+"United Order of African Ladies and Gentlemen," 275.
+United States Sanitary Commission, 176.
+
+
+V.
+
+Vicksburg (Miss.), public debt, 232; race conflicts, 237 (note);
+government overturned, 240-241.
+Virginia, 152, 157, 262; recognizes "Union" State government, 18; army
+in, 64; Lincoln's reconstruction plan adopted (1863), 65; Lincoln and,
+67, 120; Johnson recognizes government of, 74; escaped slaves declared
+contraband, 99; military government in, 143, 144; constitution, 154-155,
+171; reconstruction fails in, 170; schools, 210; carpetbag rule, 221;
+scalawags in, 222; unrepresented in Congress, 289 (note); conservatives
+gain control of, 290.
+Virginia Military Institute, 3.
+Virginius dispute, 284.
+
+
+W.
+
+Wade, B. F., of Ohio, 67, 129; and Johnson, 73; radical leader, 122,
+125; and negro suffrage, 132; and the presidency, 161, 167.
+Wade-Davis Bill, 56, 65-66, 120.
+Wages, Freedmen's Bureau fixes, 109.
+War Department, takes over railways, 6-7; Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen
+and Abandoned Lands, 102; see also Freedmen's Bureau.
+Warmoth, H. C., Governor of Louisiana, 224-225.
+Warner, General, and Union League, 189.
+Washington, headquarters of Freedmen's Bureau, 105; vote on negro
+suffrage, 134.
+Washington and Lee University, 17.
+Washington College, later Washington and Lee University, 17.
+Watterson, H. M., 28.
+Wayland, Francis, President of Brown University, 208-209.
+Webb, General A. S., commands military district, 140 (note).
+Weitzel, General Godfrey, Lincoln and, 67.
+Welles, Gideon, and Johnson, 74.
+Wells, Governor of Louisiana, 298.
+West, development of, 268, 283.
+West Virginia, Confederates in, 25-26; State emancipation in, 36;
+established, 64, 65.
+Whig party, 70, 71, 87, 149, 150, 179.
+Whipper, judge in South Carolina, 225.
+Whisky Ring, 282.
+White Boys, 245.
+White Brotherhood, 245, 251.
+White Camelia, see Knights of the White Camelia.
+White League, 219, 245, 263.
+White Line of Mississippi, 245.
+White Man's party of Alabama, 245, 263.
+White River Valley and Texas Railroad obtains grant, 235.
+White Rose, Order of the, 245.
+Wilmer, Bishop R. H., and prayers for Davis, 23.
+Wilson, Henry, on reconstruction, 124-125; tours the South, 150.
+Wisconsin and negro suffrage, 285.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Chronicles of America Series
+
+ 1. The Red Man's Continent
+    by Ellsworth Huntington
+ 2. The Spanish Conquerors
+    by Irving Berdine Richman
+ 3. Elizabethan Sea-Dogs
+    by William Charles Henry Wood
+ 4. The Crusaders of New France
+    by William Bennett Munro
+ 5. Pioneers of the Old South
+    by Mary Johnson
+ 6. The Fathers of New England
+    by Charles McLean Andrews
+ 7. Dutch and English on the Hudson
+    by Maud Wilder Goodwin
+ 8. The Quaker Colonies
+    by Sydney George Fisher
+ 9. Colonial Folkways
+    by Charles McLean Andrews
+10. The Conquest of New France
+    by George McKinnon Wrong
+11. The Eve of the Revolution
+    by Carl Lotus Becker
+12. Washington and His Comrades in Arms
+    by George McKinnon Wrong
+13. The Fathers of the Constitution
+    by Max Farrand
+14. Washington and His Colleagues
+    by Henry Jones Ford
+15. Jefferson and his Colleagues
+    by Allen Johnson
+16. John Marshall and the Constitution
+    by Edward Samuel Corwin
+17. The Fight for a Free Sea
+    by Ralph Delahaye Paine
+18. Pioneers of the Old Southwest
+    by Constance Lindsay Skinner
+19. The Old Northwest
+    by Frederic Austin Ogg
+20. The Reign of Andrew Jackson
+    by Frederic Austin Ogg
+21. The Paths of Inland Commerce
+    by Archer Butler Hulbert
+22. Adventurers of Oregon
+    by Constance Lindsay Skinner
+23. The Spanish Borderlands
+    by Herbert Eugene Bolton
+24. Texas and the Mexican War
+    by Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
+25. The Forty-Niners
+    by Stewart Edward White
+26. The Passing of the Frontier
+    by Emerson Hough
+27. The Cotton Kingdom
+    by William E. Dodd
+28. The Anti-Slavery Crusade
+    by Jesse Macy
+29. Abraham Lincoln and the Union
+    by Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
+30. The Day of the Confederacy
+    by Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
+31. Captains of the Civil War
+    by William Charles Henry Wood
+32. The Sequel of Appomattox
+    by Walter Lynwood Fleming
+33. The American Spirit in Education
+    by Edwin E. Slosson
+34. The American Spirit in Literature
+    by Bliss Perry
+35. Our Foreigners
+    by Samuel Peter Orth
+36. The Old Merchant Marine
+    by Ralph Delahaye Paine
+37. The Age of Invention
+    by Holland Thompson
+38. The Railroad Builders
+    by John Moody
+39. The Age of Big Business
+    by Burton Jesse Hendrick
+40. The Armies of Labor
+    by Samuel Peter Orth
+41. The Masters of Capital
+    by John Moody
+42. The New South
+    by Holland Thompson
+43. The Boss and the Machine
+    by Samuel Peter Orth
+44. The Cleveland Era
+    by Henry Jones Ford
+45. The Agrarian Crusade
+    by Solon Justus Buck
+46. The Path of Empire
+    by Carl Russell Fish
+47. Theodore Roosevelt and His Times
+    by Harold Howland
+48. Woodrow Wilson and the World War
+    by Charles Seymour
+49. The Canadian Dominion
+    by Oscar D. Skelton
+50. The Hispanic Nations of the New World
+    by William R. Shepherd
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes
+
+
+Introduction
+
+Welcome to Project Gutenberg's edition of Sequel to Appomattox by Walter
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+Index:
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+On Page 313, Re-election is transcribed as reëlection.
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+       The Sequel of Appomattox by Walter Lynwood Fleming,
+			 A Chronicle Of The Reunion of the States,
+			 Volume 32 of the Chronicles of America series,
+       an e-book presented by Project Gutenberg
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+<p>
+   The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sequel of Appomattox by Walter Fleming
+	 #32 in the Chronicles of America series.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+</p>
+
+<p>
+   Title: The Sequel of Appomattox<br />
+	 A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States<br />
+   Author: Walter Lynwood Fleming<br />
+	 Release Date: January 2, 2009 [EBook #2897]<br />
+   Last Updated: August 26, 2017<br />
+	 Character set encoding: utf-8 <br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+   Produced by The James J. Kelly Library Of St. Gregory's
+   University, Alev Akman, David Widger, and Robert Homa.
+	 Images were courtesy of the internet archive.
+</p>
+<br />
+<p class="start">
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEQUEL OF APPOMATTOX ***
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div id="titlepage">
+    <div id="editorspage">
+    <p class="book-title">The Sequel of Appomattox</p>
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">i</a></span></p>
+		<p class="edition">Abraham Lincoln Edition</p>
+		<p>
+	     &#8757;<br />
+			 Volume 32 of the<br />
+			 Chronicles of America Series <br />
+			 </p>
+
+		<p>
+	     Allen Johnson, Editor<br />
+			 Assistant Editors<br />
+			 Gerhard R. Lomer <br />
+			 Charles W. Jefferys
+	 </p>
+	 </div>
+	 <div class="figcenter">
+<a name="sumner.png" id="sumner.png"></a>
+<img src="images/sumner.png" width="320" height="457"
+alt="[Illustration: Charles Sumner]"
+title="[Illustration: Charles Sumner]" /><br />
+<span class="caption"><a href="#Illustrations">Charles Sumner.</a><br />
+Photograph by J. W. Black and Co., Boston.  In the collection
+				of the Bostonian Society, Old State House, Boston.</span>
+	 <hr  />
+</div>
+
+	 <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">v</a></span></p>
+   <h1>The Sequel of Appomattox</h1>
+	 <p class="author">By Walter Lynwood Fleming</p>
+	 <p class="book-subtitle">A Chronicle Of the Reunion of the States</p>
+	 <div class="figcenter">
+<a name="logo.png" id="logo.png"></a>
+<img src="images/logo.png" width="299" height="475"
+alt="[Illustration: Logo for Chronicles of America Series]"
+title="[Illustration: Logo for Chronicles of America Series]" />
+   <hr />
+</div>
+   <p class="publisher-branch">
+	     New Haven: Yale University Press<br />
+	 		 Toronto: Glasgow, Brook &amp; Co.<br />
+			 London: Humphrey Milford<br />
+       Oxford University Press<br />
+			 1919
+	 </p>
+	 <p><br /></p>
+   <p class="copyright">
+	    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">vi</a></span>
+	                Copyright, 1919<br />
+                  by Yale University Press <br />
+   </p>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+      <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">vii</a></span>
+	    <a name="Contents" id="Contents"></a>
+     </p>
+		 <h2>Contents.</h2>
+<table summary="Table of Contents for The Sequel of Appomattox">
+<caption>The Sequel of Appomattox</caption>
+<thead>
+<tr>
+<th>Chapter</th>
+<th>Chapter Title</th>
+<th>Page</th>
+</tr>
+</thead>
+<tbody>
+		<tr>
+				<td>I.</td>
+				<td>The Aftermath of War</td>
+				<td><a href="#Chapter01">1</a></td>
+		</tr>
+		<tr>
+				<td>II.</td>
+				<td>When Freedom Cried Out</td>
+				<td><a href="#Chapter02">34</a></td>
+		</tr>
+		<tr>
+				<td>III.</td>
+				<td>The Work of the Presidents</td>
+				<td><a href="#Chapter03">54</a></td>
+		</tr>
+		<tr>
+				<td>IV.</td>
+				<td>The Wards of the Nation</td>
+				<td><a href="#Chapter04">89</a></td>
+		</tr>
+		<tr>
+				<td>V.</td>
+				<td>The Victory of the Radicals</td>
+				<td><a href="#Chapter05">118</a></td>
+    </tr>
+		<tr>
+				<td>VI.</td>
+				<td>The Rule of the Major Generals</td>
+				<td><a href="#Chapter06">140</a></td>
+    </tr>
+    <tr>
+				<td>VII.</td>
+				<td>The Trial of President Johnson</td>
+				<td><a href="#Chapter07">158</a></td>
+    </tr>
+		<tr>
+				<td>VIII.</td>
+				<td>The Union League of America</td>
+				<td><a href="#Chapter08">174</a></td>
+    </tr>
+		<tr>
+				<td>IX.</td>
+				<td>Church and School</td>
+				<td><a href="#Chapter09">196</a></td>
+    </tr>
+		<tr>
+				<td>X.</td>
+				<td>Carpetbag and Negro Rule</td>
+				<td><a href="#Chapter10">221</a></td>
+    </tr>
+		<tr>
+				<td>XI.</td>
+				<td>The Ku Klux Movement</td>
+				<td><a href="#Chapter11">243</a></td>
+    </tr>
+		<tr>
+				<td>XII.</td>
+				<td>The Changing South</td>
+				<td><a href="#Chapter12">265</a></td>
+    </tr>
+		<tr>
+				<td>XIII.</td>
+				<td>Restoration of Home Rule</td>
+				<td><a href="#Chapter13">282</a></td>
+    </tr>
+		<tr>
+		    <td></td>
+				<td>Bibliographical Note</td>
+			  <td><a href="#Biblio">305</a></td>
+    </tr>
+		<tr>
+		    <td></td>
+				<td>Index</td>
+			  <td><a href="#indexChapter">309</a></td>
+    </tr>
+</tbody>
+</table>
+
+
+<p>
+      <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">ix</a></span>
+	    <a name="Illustrations" id="Illustrations"></a>
+     </p>
+		 <h2>Illustrations.</h2>
+<table class="pics" summary="Table of Illustrations for The Sequel of Appomattox">
+<tbody>
+		<tr>
+				<td>Charles Sumner</td>
+				<td></td>
+				<td></td>
+		</tr>
+		<tr>
+				<td>Photograph by J. W. Black and Co., Boston.  In the collection
+				of the Bostonian Society, Old State House, Boston.</td>
+				<td><a href="#sumner.png">Frontispiece</a></td>
+				<td></td>
+		</tr>
+		<tr>
+				<td>Wade Hampton</td>
+				<td></td>
+				<td></td>
+		</tr>
+		<tr>
+		    <td>Photograph by H. P. Cook, Richmond, Virginia.</td>
+				<td>Facing Page</td>
+				<td><a href="#hampton.png">30</a></td>
+		</tr>
+		<tr>
+				<td>Andrew Johnson</td>
+				<td></td>
+				<td></td>
+		</tr>
+		<tr>
+		    <td>Engraving after a Photograph by Brady.</td>
+				<td class="quotes">  "&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"</td>
+				<td><a href="#johnson.jpg">70</a></td>
+		</tr>
+		<tr>
+				<td>Thaddeus Stevens</td>
+				<td></td>
+				<td></td>
+		</tr>
+		<tr>
+		    <td>Photograph by Brady.</td>
+				<td class="quotes">  "&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"</td>
+				<td><a href="#stevens.png">122</a></td>
+		</tr>
+		<tr>
+				<td>President Grant</td>
+				<td></td>
+				<td></td>
+		</tr>
+		<tr>
+		    <td>Photograph.  In the collection of L. C. Handy, Washington.</td>
+				<td class="quotes">  "&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"</td>
+				<td><a href="#grant.jpg">170</a></td>
+		</tr>
+		</tbody>
+		</table>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+		<hr />
+
+		<div id="start-of-book">
+		  <p class="book-title">
+			   <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_001" id="Page_001">1</a></span>
+			   <a name="Chapter01" id="Chapter01"></a>
+				 THE SEQUEL OF APPOMATTOX
+			</p>
+			<p class="triangle-dots">&#8757;</p>
+			<h2>
+      <a href="#Contents">CHAPTER I.</a>
+    </h2>
+    </div>
+
+		<p class="chaptertitle">The Aftermath of War</p>
+
+    <p class="noindent">
+    <span class="first-word">When</span>
+      the armies of the Union and of the Confederacy were disbanded in
+      1865, two matters had been settled beyond further dispute: the negro was
+      to be free, and the Union was to be perpetuated. But though slavery and
+      state sovereignty were no longer at issue, there were still many problems
+      which pressed for solution. The huge task of reconstruction must be faced.
+      The nature of the situation required that the measures of reconstruction
+      be first formulated in Washington by the victors and then worked out in
+      the conquered South. Since the success of these policies would depend in a
+      large measure upon their acceptability to both sections of the country, it
+      was expected that the North would be influenced to some extent
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_002" id="Page_002">2</a></span>
+			by the
+      attitude of the Southern people, which in turn would be determined largely
+      by local conditions in the South. The situation in the South at the close
+      of the Civil War is therefore the point at which this narrative of the
+      reconstruction naturally takes its beginning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The surviving Confederate soldiers came straggling back to communities
+      which were now far from being satisfactory dwelling places for civilized
+      people. Everywhere they found missing many of the best of their former
+      neighbors. They found property destroyed, the labor system disorganized,
+      and the inhabitants in many places suffering from want. They found the
+      white people demoralized and sometimes divided among themselves, and the
+      negroes free, bewildered, and disorderly, for organized government had
+      lapsed with the surrender of the Confederate armies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beneath a disorganized society lay a devastated land. The destruction of
+      property affected all classes of the population. The accumulated capital
+      of the South had disappeared in worthless Confederate stocks, bonds, and
+      currency. The banks had failed early in the war. Two billion dollars
+      invested in slaves had been wiped out. Factories which had been running
+      before the war, or
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_003" id="Page_003">3</a></span>
+		  were developed after 1861 in order to supply the
+      blockaded country, had been destroyed by Federal raiders or seized and
+      sold or dismantled because they had furnished supplies to the Confederacy.
+      Mining industries were paralyzed. Public buildings which had been used for
+      war purposes were destroyed or confiscated for the uses of the army or for
+      the new freedmen's schools. It was months before courthouses, state
+      capitols, school and college buildings were again made available for
+      normal uses. The military school buildings had been destroyed by the
+      Federal forces. Among the schools which suffered were the Virginia
+      Military Institute, the University of Alabama, the Louisiana State
+      Seminary, and many smaller institutions. Nearly all these had been used in
+      some way for war purposes and were therefore subject to destruction or
+      confiscation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The farmers and planters found themselves "land poor." The soil remained,
+      but there was a prevalent lack of labor, of agricultural equipment, of
+      farm stock, of seeds, and of money with which to make good the deficiency.
+      As a result, a man with hundreds of acres might be as poor as a negro
+      refugee. The desolation is thus described by a Virginia farmer:
+    </p>
+		<blockquote>
+    <p class="noindent">
+		  <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_004" id="Page_004">4</a></span>
+      From Harper's Ferry to New Market, which is about eighty miles &hellip; the
+      country was almost a desert.&hellip; We had no cattle, hogs, sheep, or horse or
+      anything else. The fences were all gone. Some of the orchards were very
+      much injured, but the fruit trees had not been destroyed. The barns were
+      all burned; chimneys standing without houses, and houses standing without
+      roof, or door, or window.
+    </p>
+		</blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Much land was thrown on the market at low prices&mdash;three to five
+      dollars an acre for land worth fifty dollars. The poorer lands could not
+      be sold at all, and thousands of farms were deserted by their owners.
+      Everywhere recovery from this agricultural depression was slow. Five years
+      after the war Robert Somers, an English traveler, said of the Tennessee
+      Valley:
+    </p>
+		<blockquote>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      It consists for the most part of plantations in a state of semi-ruin and
+      plantations of which the ruin is for the present total and complete.&hellip;
+      The trail of war is visible throughout the valley in burnt-up gin-houses,
+      ruined bridges, mills, and factories &hellip; and in large tracts of once
+      cultivated land stripped of every vestige of fencing. The roads, long
+      neglected, are in disorder, and having in many places become impassable,
+      new tracks have been made through the woods and fields without much
+      respect to boundaries.
+    </p>
+		</blockquote>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      Similar conditions existed wherever the armies had passed, and not in the
+      country districts alone.
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_005" id="Page_005">5</a></span>
+			Many of the cities, such as Richmond, Charleston,
+      Columbia, Jackson, Atlanta, and Mobile had suffered from fire or
+      bombardment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were few stocks of merchandise in the South when the war ended, and
+      Northern creditors had lost so heavily through the failure of Southern
+      merchants that they were cautious about extending credit again. Long
+      before 1865 all coin had been sent out in contraband trade through the
+      blockade. That there was a great need of supplies from the outside world
+      is shown by the following statement of General Boynton:
+    </p>
+		<blockquote>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      Window-glass has given way to thin boards, in railway coaches and in the
+      cities. Furniture is marred and broken, and none has been replaced for
+      four years. Dishes are cemented in various styles, and half the pitchers
+      have tin handles. A complete set of crockery is never seen, and in very
+      few families is there enough to set a table.&hellip; A set of forks with
+			whole tines is a curiosity. Clocks and watches have nearly all
+			stopped.&hellip; Hair brushes and tooth brushes have all worn out; combs
+			are broken.&hellip; Pins, needles, and thread, and a thousand such
+			articles, which seem indispensable to housekeeping, are very scarce.
+			Even in weaving on the looms, corncobs have been substituted for spindles.
+			Few have pocket knives. In fact, everything that has heretofore been an
+			article of sale at the South is wanting now. At the tables of those who
+			were once esteemed luxurious providers you will find neither tea, coffee,
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_006" id="Page_006">6</a></span>
+			sugar, nor spices of any kind. Even candles, in some cases, have been
+			replaced by a cup of grease in which a piece of cloth is plunged for
+			a wick.
+    </p>
+		</blockquote>
+    <p>
+      This poverty was prolonged and rendered more acute by the lack of
+      transportation. Horses, mules, wagons, and carriages were scarce, the
+      country roads were nearly impassable, and bridges were in bad repair or
+      had been burned or washed away. Steamboats had almost disappeared from the
+      rivers. Those which had escaped capture as blockade runners had been
+      subsequently destroyed or were worn out. Postal facilities, which had
+      been poor enough during the last year of the Confederacy, were entirely
+      lacking for several months after the surrender.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The railways were in a state of physical dilapidation little removed from
+      destruction, save for those that had been captured and kept in partial
+      repair by the Federal troops. The rolling stock had been lost by capture,
+      by destruction to prevent capture, in wrecks, which were frequent, or had
+      been worn out. The railroad companies possessed large sums in Confederate
+      currency and in securities which were now valueless. About two-thirds of
+      all the lines were hopelessly bankrupt. Fortunately, the United States War
+      Department took over the
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_007" id="Page_007">7</a></span>
+			control of the railway lines and in some cases
+      effected a temporary reorganization which could not have been accomplished
+      by the bankrupt companies. During the summer and fall of 1865 "loyal"
+      boards of directors were appointed for most of the roads, and the army
+      withdrew its control. But repairs and reconstruction were accomplished
+      with difficulty because of the demoralization of labor and the lack of
+      funds or credit. Freight was scarce and, had it not been for government
+      shipments, some of the railroads would have been abandoned. Not many
+      people were able to travel. It is recorded that on one trip from
+      Montgomery to Mobile and return, a distance of 360 miles, the railroad
+      which is now the Louisville and Nashville collected only thirteen dollars
+      in fares.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had there been unrestricted commercial freedom in the South in 1865-66,
+      the distress of the people would have been somewhat lessened, for here and
+      there were to be found public and private stores of cotton, tobacco, rice,
+      and other farm products, all of which were bringing high prices in the
+      market. But for several months the operation of wartime laws and
+      regulations hindered the distribution of even these scanty stores.
+      Property upon which the Confederate Government had a
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_008" id="Page_008">8</a></span>
+			claim was of course subject to confiscation, and private property offered
+			for sale, even that of Unionists, was subject to a 25 per cent tax on
+			sales, a shipping tax, and a revenue tax. The revenue tax on cotton,
+			ranging from two to three cents a pound during the three years after
+			the war, brought in over $68,000,000. This tax, with other Federal
+			revenues, yielded much more than the entire expenses of reconstruction
+			from 1865 to 1868 and of all relief measures for the South, both public
+			and private. After May, 1865, the 25 per cent tax was imposed only upon
+			the produce of slave labor. None of the war taxes, except that on
+			cotton, was levied upon the crops of 1866, but while these taxes lasted
+			they seriously impeded the resumption of trade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even these restrictions, however, might have been borne if only they had
+      been honestly applied. Unfortunately, some of the most spectacular frauds
+      ever perpetrated were carried through in connection with the attempt of
+      the United States Treasury Department to collect and sell the confiscable
+      property in the South. The property to be sold consisted of what had been
+      captured and seized by the army and the navy, of "abandoned" property, as
+      such was called whose owner
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_009" id="Page_009">9</a></span>
+			was absent in the Confederate service, and of property subject to seizure
+			under the confiscation acts of Congress. No captures were made after the
+			general surrender, and no further seizures of "abandoned" property were
+			made after Johnson's amnesty proclamation of May 29, 1865. This left only
+			the "confiscable" property to be collected and sold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For collection purposes the States of the South were divided into
+      districts, each under the supervision of an agent of the Treasury
+      Department, who received a commission of about 25 per cent. Cotton,
+      regarded as the root of the slavery evil, was singled out as the principal
+      object of confiscation. It was known that the Confederate Government had
+      owned in 1865 about 150,000 bales, but the records were defective and much
+      of it, with no clear indication of ownership, still remained with the
+      producers. Secretary Chase, foreseeing the difficulty of effecting a just
+      settlement, counseled against seizure, but his judgment was overruled.
+      Secretary McCulloch said of his agents: "I am sure I sent some honest
+      cotton agents South; but it sometimes seems doubtful whether any of them
+      remained honest very long." Some of the natives, even, became cotton
+      thieves. In a report made in 1866, McCulloch describes their methods:
+		</p>
+		<blockquote>
+		<p class="noindent">
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_010" id="Page_010">10</a></span>
+      Contractors, anxious for gain, were sometimes guilty of bad faith and
+      peculation, and frequently took possession of cotton and delivered it
+      under contracts as captured or abandoned, when in fact it was not such,
+      and they had no right to touch it.&hellip; Residents and others in the
+      districts where these peculations were going on took advantage of the
+      unsettled condition of the country, and representing themselves as agents
+      of this department, went about robbing under such pretended authority, and
+      thus added to the difficulties of the situation by causing unjust
+      opprobrium and suspicion to rest upon officers engaged in the faithful
+      discharge of their duties. Agents, &hellip; frequently received or collected
+      property, and sent it forward which the law did not authorize them to
+      take.&hellip; Lawless men, singly and in organized bands, engaged in general
+      plunder; every species of intrigue and peculation and theft were resorted
+      to.
+    </p>
+		</blockquote>
+    <p>
+      These agents turned over to the United States about $34,000,000. About
+      40,000 claimants were subsequently indemnified on the ground that the
+      property taken from them did not belong to the Confederate Government, but
+      many thousands of other claimants have been unable to prove that their
+      property was seized by government agents and hence have received nothing.
+      It is probable that the actual Confederate property was nearly all stolen
+      by the agents. One agent in Alabama sold an appointment as assistant for
+      $25,000, and a
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_011" id="Page_011">11</a></span>
+			few months later both the assistant and the agent were
+      tried by a military court for stealing and were fined $90,000 and $250,000
+      respectively in addition to being imprisoned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Other property, including horses, mules, wagons, tobacco, rice, and sugar
+      which the natives claimed as their own, was seized. In some places the
+      agents even collected delinquent Confederate taxes. Much of the
+      confiscable property was not sold but was turned over to the Freedmen's
+      Bureau &sup1; for its support. The total amount seized cannot be
+			satisfactorily ascertained. The Ku Klux minority report asserted that
+			3,000,000 bales of cotton were taken, of which the United States received
+			only 114,000. It is certain that, owing to the deliberate destruction of
+			cotton by fire in 1864-65, this estimate was too high, but all the
+			testimony points to the fact that the frauds were stupendous. As a result
+			the United States Government did not succeed in obtaining the Confederate
+		  property to which it had a claim, and the country itself was stripped of
+			necessities to a degree that left it not only destitute but outraged and
+			embittered. "Such practices," said Trowbridge, "had a pernicious effect,
+			engendering a contempt for the Government and a murderous
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_012" id="Page_012">12</a></span>
+			ill-will which too commonly vented itself upon soldiers and negroes."
+    </p>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_01-1" name="footer_01-1"></a>
+&sup1; See pp. 89 <i>et seq</i>.</p>
+</div>
+
+    <p>
+      The South faced the work of reconstruction not only with a shortage of
+      material and greatly hampered in the employment even of that but still
+      more with a shortage of men. The losses among the whites are usually
+      estimated at about half the military population, but since accurate
+      records are lacking the exact numbers cannot be ascertained. The best of
+      the civil leaders, as well as the prominent military leaders, had so
+      committed themselves to the support of the Confederacy as to be excluded
+      from participation in any reconstruction that might be attempted. The
+      business of reconstruction, therefore, fell of necessity to the
+      Confederate private soldiers, the lower officers, nonparticipants, and
+      lukewarm individuals who had not greatly compromised themselves. These
+      politically and physically uninjured survivors included also all the
+      "slackers" of the Confederacy. But though there were such physical and
+      moral losses on the part of those to whom fell the direction of affairs
+      there was also a moral strengthening in the sound element of the people
+      who had been tried by the discipline of war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The greatest weakness of both races was their
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_013" id="Page_013">13</a></span>
+			extreme poverty. The crops of 1865 turned out badly, for most of the
+			soldiers reached home too late for successful planting and the negro
+			labor was not dependable. The sale of such cotton and farm products as
+			had escaped the treasury agents was of some help, but curiously enough
+			much of the good money thus obtained was spent extravagantly by a people
+			used to Confederate rag money and for four years deprived of the luxuries
+			of life. The poorer whites who had lost all were close to starvation. In
+			the white counties which had sent so large a proportion of men to the
+			army the destitution was most acute. In many families the breadwinner
+			had been killed in war. After 1862 relief systems had been organized in
+			nearly all the Confederate States for the purpose of aiding the poor
+			whites, but these organizations were disbanded in 1865. A Freedmen's
+			Bureau official traveling through the desolate back country furnishes a
+			description which might have applied to two hundred counties, a third
+			of the South: "It is a common, an every-day sight in Randolph County,
+			that of women and children, most of whom were formerly in good
+			circumstances, begging for bread from door to door. Meat of any kind
+      has been a stranger to many of their mouths
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_014" id="Page_014">14</a></span>
+			for months. The drought cut off what little crops they hoped to save,
+			and they must have immediate help or perish. By far the greater
+			suffering exists among the whites. Their scanty supplies have been
+			exhausted, and now they look to the Government alone for support.
+			Some are without homes of any description."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where the armies had passed, few of the people, white or black, remained;
+      most of them had been forced as "refugees" within the Union lines or into
+      the interior of the Confederacy. Now, along with the disbanded Confederate
+      soldiers, they came straggling back to their war-swept homes. It was
+      estimated, in December, 1865 that in the States of Alabama, Mississippi,
+      and Georgia, there were five hundred thousand white people who were
+      without the necessaries of life; numbers died from lack of food. Within a
+      few months relief agencies were at work. In the North, especially in the
+      border States and in New York, charitable organizations collected and
+      forwarded great quantities of supplies to the negroes and to the whites in
+      the hill and mountain counties. The reorganized state and local
+      governments sent food from the unravaged portions of the Black Belt to the
+      nearest white counties, and the army commanders gave some
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_015" id="Page_015">15</a></span>
+			aid. As soon as the Freedmen's Bureau was organized, it fed to the limit
+			of its supplies the needy whites as well as the blacks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The extent of the relief afforded by the charity of the North and by the
+      agencies of the United States Government is not now generally remembered,
+      probably on account of the later objectionable activities of the
+      Freedmen's Bureau, but it was at the time properly appreciated. A Southern
+      journalist, writing of what he saw in Georgia, remarked that "it must be a
+      matter of gratitude as well as surprise for our people to see a Government
+      which was lately fighting us with fire and sword and shell, now generously
+      feeding our poor and distressed. In the immense crowds which throng the
+      distributing house, I notice the mothers and fathers, widows and orphans
+      of our soldiers.&hellip; Again, the Confederate soldier, with one leg or
+			one arm, the crippled, maimed, and broken, and the worn and destitute men,
+			who fought bravely their enemies then, their benefactors now, have their
+			sacks filled and are fed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Acute distress continued until 1867; after that year there was no further
+      danger of starvation. Some of the poor whites, especially in the remote
+      districts, never again reached a comfortable standard
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_016" id="Page_016">16</a></span>
+			of living; some were demoralized by too much assistance; others were
+			discouraged and left the South for the West or the North. But the mass
+			of the people accepted the discipline of poverty and made the best of
+			their situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The difficulties, however, that beset even the courageous and the
+      competent were enormous. The general paralysis of industry, the breaking
+      up of society, and poverty on all sides bore especially hard on those who
+      had not previously been manual laborers. Physicians could get practice
+      enough but no fees; lawyers who had supported the Confederacy found it
+      difficult to get back into the reorganized courts because of the test
+      oaths and the competition of "loyal" attorneys; and for the teachers there
+      were few schools. We read of officers high in the Confederate service
+      selling to Federal soldiers the pies and cakes cooked by their wives, of
+      others selling fish and oysters which they themselves had caught, and of
+      men and women hitching themselves to plows when they had no horse or mule.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such incidents must, from their nature, have been infrequent, but they
+      show to what straits some at least were reduced. Six years after the war,
+      James S. Pike, then in South Carolina,
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_017" id="Page_017">17</a></span>
+			mentions cases which might be duplicated in nearly every old Southern
+			community: "In the vicinity," he says, "lived a gentleman whose income
+			when the war broke out was rated at $150,000 a year. Not a vestige of
+			his whole vast estate remains today. Not far distant were the estates
+			of a large proprietor and a well known family, rich and distinguished
+			for generations. The slaves were gone. The family is gone. A single
+			scion of the house remains, and he peddles tea by the pound and
+			molasses by the quart, on a corner of the old homestead, to the
+      former slaves of the family and thereby earns his livelihood."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      General Lee's good example influenced many. Commercial enterprises were
+      willing to pay for the use of his name and reputation, but he wished to
+      farm and could get no opportunity. "They are offering my father
+      everything," his daughter said, "except the only thing he will accept, a
+      place to earn honest bread while engaged in some useful work." This remark
+      led to an offer of the presidency of Washington College, now Washington
+      and Lee University, which he accepted. "I have a self-imposed task which I
+      must accomplish," he said, "I have led the young men of the South in
+      battle; I have seen many of them fall under my
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_018" id="Page_018">18</a></span>
+			standard. I shall devote my life now to training young men to do their
+			duty in life."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The condition of honest folk was still further troubled by a general
+      spirit of lawlessness in many regions. Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and
+      Louisiana recognized the "Union" state government, but the coming of peace
+      brought legal anarchy to the other States of the Confederacy. The
+      Confederate state and local governments were abolished as the armies of
+      occupation spread over the South, and for a period of four or six months
+      there was no government except that exercised by the commanders of the
+      military garrisons left behind when the armies marched away. Even before
+      the surrender the local governments were unable to make their authority
+      respected, and soon after the war ended parts of the country became
+      infested with outlaws, pretend treasury agents, horse thieves, cattle
+      thieves, and deserters. Away from the military posts only lynch law could
+      cope with these elements of disorder. With the aid of the army in the
+			more settled regions, and by extra-legal means elsewhere, the outlaws,
+			thieves, cotton burners, and house burners were brought somewhat under
+			control even before the state governments were reorganized, though the
+			embers of lawlessness continued to smolder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+		  <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_019" id="Page_019">19</a></span>
+      The relations between the Federal soldiers stationed in the principal
+      towns and the native white population were not, on the whole, so bad as
+      might have been expected. If the commanding officer were well disposed,
+      there was little danger of friction, though sometimes his troops got out
+      of hand. The regulars had a better reputation than the volunteers. The
+      Confederate soldiers were surfeited with fighting, but the "stay-at-home"
+      element was often a cause of trouble. The problem of social relations
+      between the conquerors and the conquered was troublesome. The men might
+      get along well together, but the women would have nothing do with the
+      "Yankees" and ill feeling arose because of their antipathy. Carl Schurz
+      reported that "the soldier of the Union is looked upon as a stranger, an
+      intruder, as the 'Yankee,' the 'enemy.'&hellip; The existence and
+			intensity of this aversion is too well known to those who have served or
+			are serving in the South to require proof."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In retaliation the soldiers developed ingenious ways of annoying the
+      whites. Women, forced for any reason to go to headquarters, were made to
+      take the oath of allegiance or the "ironclad" oath before their requests
+      were granted; flags were fastened over doors, gates, or sidewalks in order
+      to
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_020" id="Page_020">20</a></span>
+			irritate the recalcitrant dames and their daughters. Confederate songs
+      and color combinations were forbidden. In Richmond, General Halleck
+      ordered that no marriages be performed unless the bride, the groom, and
+      the officiating clergyman took the oath of allegiance. He explained this
+      as a measure taken to prevent "the propagation of legitimate rebels."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wearing of Confederate uniforms was forbidden by military order, but
+      by May, 1865, few soldiers possessed regulation uniforms. In Tennessee the
+      State also imposed fines upon wearers of the uniform. In the vicinity of
+			military posts buttons and marks of rank were usually ordered removed and
+			the gray clothes dyed with some other color. General Lee, for example,
+			had the buttons on his coat covered with cloth. But frequently the
+			Federal commander, after issuing the orders, paid no more attention to
+      the matter and such conflicts as arose on account of the uniform were
+      usually caused by officious enlisted men and the negro troops. Whitelaw
+      Reid relates the following incident:
+    </p>
+		<blockquote>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      Nothing was more touching, in all that I saw in Savannah, than the almost
+      painful effort of the rebels, from generals down to privates, to conduct
+      themselves so as to evince respect for our soldiers, and to bring no
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_021" id="Page_021">21</a></span>
+      severer punishment upon the city than it had already received. There was a
+      brutal scene at the hotel, where a drunken sergeant, with a pair of
+      tailor's shears, insisted on cutting the buttons from the uniform of an
+      elegant gray-headed old brigadier, who had just come in from Johnston's
+      army; but he bore himself modestly and very handsomely through it. His
+      staff was composed of fine-looking, stalwart fellows, evidently gentlemen,
+      who appeared intensely mortified at such treatment. They had no clothes
+      except their rebel uniforms, and had, as yet, had no time to procure
+      others, but they avoided disturbances and submitted to what they might,
+      with some propriety, and with the general approval of our officers, have
+      resented.
+    </p>
+		</blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The negro troops, even at their best, were everywhere considered offensive
+      by the native whites. General Grant, indeed, urged that only white troops
+      be used to garrison the interior. But the negro soldier, impudent by
+      reason of his new freedom, his new uniform, and his new gun, was more than
+      Southern temper could tranquilly bear, and race conflicts were frequent. A
+      New Orleans newspaper thus states the Southern point of view: "Our
+      citizens who had been accustomed to meet and treat the negroes only as
+      respectful servants, were mortified, pained, and shocked to encounter
+      them &hellip; wearing Federal uniforms and bearing bright muskets and gleaming
+      bayonets.&hellip; They
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_022" id="Page_022">22</a></span>
+			are jostled from the sidewalks by dusky guards, marching
+      four abreast. They were halted, in rude and sullen tones, by negro
+      sentinels."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The task of the Federal forces was not easy. The garrisons were not large
+      enough nor numerous enough to keep order in the absence of civil
+      government. The commanders in the South asked in vain for cavalry to
+      police the rural districts. Much of the disorder, violence, and
+      incendiarism attributed at the time to lawless soldiers appeared later to
+      be due to discharged soldiers and others pretending to be soldiers in
+      order to carry out schemes of robbery. The whites complained vigorously of
+      the garrisons, and petitions were sent to Washington from mass meetings
+      and from state legislatures asking for their removal. The higher
+      commanders, however, bore themselves well, and in a few fortunate cases
+      Southern whites were on most amicable terms with the garrison commanders.
+      The correspondence of responsible military officers in the South shows how
+      earnestly and considerately each, as a rule, tried to work out his task.
+      The good sense of most of the Federal officers appeared when, after the
+      murder of Lincoln, even General Grant for a brief space lost his head and
+      ordered the arrest of paroled Confederates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+		  <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_023" id="Page_023">23</a></span>
+      The church organizations were as much involved in the war and in the
+      reconstruction as were secular institutions. Before the war every
+      religious organization having members North and South, except the Catholic
+      Church and the Jews, had separated into independent Northern and Southern
+      bodies. In each section church feeling ran high, and when the war came
+      the churches supported the armies. As the Federal armies occupied Southern
+      territory, the church buildings of each denomination were turned over to
+      the corresponding Northern body, and Southern ministers were permitted to
+      remain only upon agreeing to conduct "loyal services, pray for the
+      President of the United States and for Federal victories" and to foster
+      "loyal sentiment." The Protestant Episcopal churches in Alabama were
+      closed from September to December, 1865, and some congregations were
+      dispersed by the soldiers because Bishop Wilmer had directed his clergy to
+      omit the prayer for President Davis but had substituted no other. The
+      ministers of non-liturgical churches were not so easily controlled. A
+      Georgia Methodist preacher directed by a Federal officer to pray for the
+      President said afterwards: "I prayed for the President that the Lord would
+      take out of him
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_024" id="Page_024">24</a></span>
+			and his allies the hearts of beasts and put into them the
+      hearts of men or remove the cusses from office." Sometimes members of a
+      congregation showed their resentment at the "loyal" prayers by leaving the
+      church. But in spite of many irritations both sides frequently managed to
+      get some amusement out of the "loyal" services. The church situation was,
+      however, a serious matter during and after the reconstruction, and some of
+      its later phases will have to be discussed elsewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Unionist, or "Tory," of the lower and eastern South found himself, in
+      1865, a man without a country. Few in number in any community, they found
+      themselves upon their return from a harsh exile the victims of ostracism
+      or open hostility. One of them, William H. Smith, later Governor of
+      Alabama, testified that the Southern people "manifest the most perfect
+      contempt for a man who is known to be an unequivocal Union man; they call
+      him a 'galvanized Yankee' and apply other terms and epithets to him."
+      General George H. Thomas, speaking of a region more divided in sentiment
+      than Alabama, remarked that "Middle Tennessee is disturbed by animosities
+      and hatreds, much more than it is by the disloyalty of persons towards the
+      Government of the United States.
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_025" id="Page_025">25</a></span>
+			Those personal animosities would break out and overawe the civil
+			authorities, but for the presence there of the troops of the United
+			States.&hellip; They are more unfriendly to Union men, natives of the
+			State of Tennessee, or of the South, who have been in the Union army,
+			than they are to men of Northern birth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the border States society was sharply divided and feeling was bitter.
+      In eastern Tennessee, eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, and parts of
+      Arkansas and Missouri returning Confederates met harsher treatment than
+      did the Unionists in the lower South. Trowbridge says of east Tennessee:
+      "Returning rebels were robbed; and if one had stolen unawares to his home,
+      it was not safe for him to remain there. I saw in Virginia one of these
+      exiles, who told me how homesickly he pined for the hills and meadows of
+      east Tennessee, which he thought the most delightful region in the world.
+      But there was a rope hanging from a tree for him there, and he dared not
+      go back. 'The bottom rails are on top,' said he, 'that is the trouble.'
+      The Union element, and the worst part of the Union element, was
+      uppermost." Confederates and Confederate sympathizers in Maryland, West
+      Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_026" id="Page_026">26</a></span>
+			were disfranchised. In West Virginia,
+      Tennessee, and Missouri, "war trespass" suits were brought against
+      returning Confederates for military acts done in war time. In Missouri and
+      West Virginia strict test oaths excluded Confederates from office, from
+      the polls, and from the professions of teaching, preaching, and law. On
+      the other hand in central and western Kentucky the predominant Unionist
+      population, themselves suffering through the abolition of slavery, and by
+      the objectionable operations of the Freedmen's Bureau and the unwise
+      military administration, showed more sympathy for the Confederates,
+      welcomed them home, and soon relieved them of all restrictions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still another element of discord was added by the Northerners who came to
+      exploit the South. Many mustered-out soldiers proposed to stay.
+      Speculators of all kinds followed the withdrawing Confederate lines and
+      with the conclusion of peace spread through the country; but they were not
+      cordially received. With the better class, the Southerners, especially the
+      soldiers, associated freely if seldom intimately. But the conduct of a few
+      of their number who considered that the war had opened all doors to them,
+      who very freely expressed their views, gave advice, condemned old
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_027" id="Page_027">27</a></span>
+			customs, and were generally offensive, did much to bring all Northerners
+		  into disrepute. Tactlessly critical letters published in Northern papers
+			did not add to their popularity. The few Northern women felt the ostracism
+      more keenly than did the men. Benjamin C. Truman, an agent of President
+      Johnson, thus summed up the situation: "There is a prevalent disposition
+      not to associate too freely with Northern men or to receive them into the
+      circles of society; but it is far from unsurmountable. Over Southern
+      society, as over every other, woman reigns supreme, and they are more
+      embittered against those whom they deem the authors of all their
+      calamities than are their brothers, sons, and husbands." But of the
+      thousands of Northern men who overcame the reluctance of the Southerners
+      to social intercourse little was heard. Many a Southern planter secured a
+      Northern partner, or sold him half his plantation to get money to run the
+      other half. For the irritations of 1865 each party must take its share of
+      responsibility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had the South assisted in a skillful and adequate publicity, much
+      disastrous misunderstanding might have been avoided. The North knew as
+      little of the South as the South did of the North, but the North was eager
+      for news. Able newspaper
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_028" id="Page_028">28</a></span>
+			correspondents like Sidney Andrews of the Boston <i>Advertiser</i> and
+			the Chicago <i>Tribune</i>, who opposed President Johnson's policies,
+			Thomas W. Knox of the New York <i>Herald</i>, who had given General
+      Sherman so much trouble in Tennessee, Whitelaw Reid, who wrote for several
+      papers and tried cotton planting in Louisiana, and John T. Trowbridge, New
+      England author and journalist, were dispatched southwards. Chief of the
+      President's investigators was General Carl Schurz, German revolutionist,
+      Federal soldier, and soon to be radical Republican, who held harsh views
+      of the Southern people; and there were besides Harvey M. Watterson,
+      Kentucky Democrat and Unionist, the father of "Marse" Henry; Benjamin C.
+      Truman, New England journalist and soldier, whose long report was perhaps
+      the best of all; Chief Justice Chase, who was thinking mainly of "How soon
+      can the negro vote?"; and General Grant, who made a report so brief that,
+      notwithstanding its value, it attracted little attention. In addition, a
+      constant stream of information and misinformation was going northward from
+      treasury agents, officers of the army, the Freedmen's Bureau, teachers,
+      and missionaries. Among foreigners who described the conquered land were
+      Robert
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_029" id="Page_029">29</a></span>
+			Somers, Henry Latham, and William Hepworth Dixon. But few in the
+      South realized the importance of supplying the North with correct
+      information about actual conditions. The letters and reports, they
+      thought, humiliated them; inquiry was felt to be prying and gloating.
+      "Correspondents have added a new pang to surrender," it was said. The
+      South was proud and refused to be catechized. From the Northern point of
+      view the South, a new and strange region, with strange customs and
+      principles, was of course not to be considered as quite normal and
+      American, but there was on the part of many correspondents a determined
+      attempt to describe things as they were. And yet the North persisted in
+      its unsympathetic queries when it seemed to have a sufficient answer in
+      the reports of Grant, Schurz, and Truman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grant's opinion was short and direct: "I am satisfied that the mass of
+      thinking men of the South accept the present situation of affairs in good
+      faith.&hellip; The citizens of the Southern States are anxious to return
+			to self-government within the Union as soon as possible." Truman came to
+			the conclusion that "the rank and file of the disbanded Southern army
+			&hellip; are the backbone and sinew of the South.&hellip; To the
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_030" id="Page_030">30</a></span>
+			disbanded regiments of the rebel army, both officers and men, I look with
+			great confidence as the best and altogether the most hopeful element of
+			the South, the real basis of reconstruction and the material of worthy
+			citizenship." General John Tarbell, before the Joint Committee on
+			Reconstruction, testified that "there are, no doubt, disloyal and
+			disorderly persons in the South, but it is an entire mistake to apply
+			these terms to a whole people. I would as soon travel alone, unarmed,
+			through the South as through the North. The South I left is not at all
+			the South I hear and read about in the North. From the sentiment I hear
+			in the North, I would scarcely recognize the people I saw, and, except
+			their politics, I liked so well. I have entire faith that the better
+			classes are friendly to the negroes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carl Schurz on the other hand was not so favorably impressed. "The loyalty
+      of the masses and most of the leaders of the southern people," he said,
+      "consists in submission to necessity. There is, except in individual
+      instances, an entire absence of that national spirit which forms the basis
+      of true loyalty and patriotism." Another government official in Florida
+      was quite doubtful of the Southern whites. "I would pin them down at the
+      point
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_031" id="Page_031">31</a></span>
+			of the bayonet," he declared, "so close that they would not have room to
+			wiggle, and allow intelligent colored people to go up and vote in
+			preference to them. The only Union element in the South proper &hellip;
+			is among the colored people. The whites will treat you very kindly to
+			your face, but they are deceitful. I have often thought, and so expressed
+			myself, that there is so much deception among the people of the South
+			since the rebellion, that if an earthquake should open and swallow them
+			up, I was fearful that the devil would be dethroned and some of them
+			take his place."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The point of view of the Confederate military leaders was exhibited by
+      General Wade Hampton in a letter to President Johnson and by General Lee
+      in his advice to Governor Letcher of Virginia. General Hampton wrote: "The
+      South unequivocally 'accepts the situation' in which she is placed.
+      Everything that she has done has been done in perfect faith, and in the
+      true and highest sense of the word, she is loyal. By this I mean that she
+      intends to abide by the laws of the land honestly, to fulfill all her
+      obligations faithfully and to keep her word sacredly, and I assert that
+      the North has no right to demand more of her. You have no right to ask, or
+      expect that she will at once profess
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_032" id="Page_032">32</a></span>
+			unbounded love to that Union from which for four years she tried to
+			escape at the cost of her best blood and all her treasures." General Lee
+			in order to set an example applied through General Grant for a pardon
+			under the amnesty proclamation and soon afterwards he wrote to Governor
+			Letcher: "All should unite in honest efforts to obliterate the effects
+			of war, and to restore the blessings of peace. They should remain, if
+			possible, in the country; promote harmony and good-feeling; qualify
+			themselves to vote; and elect to the State and general legislatures wise
+			and patriotic men, who will devote their abilities to the interests of
+			the country and the healing of all dissensions; I have invariably
+			recommended this course since the cessation of hostilities, and have
+			endeavored to practice it myself."
+    </p>
+		<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="hampton.png" id="hampton.png"></a>
+<img src="images/hampton.png" width="360" height="500"
+alt="[Illustration: Wade Hampton]"
+title="[Illustration: Wade Hampton]" /><br />
+<span class="caption"><a href="#Illustrations">Wade Hampton.</a><br />
+Photograph by H. P. Cook, Richmond, Virginia.</span>
+   <hr  />
+</div>
+    <p>
+      Southerners of the Confederacy everywhere, then, accepted the destruction
+      of slavery and the renunciation of state sovereignty; they welcomed an
+      early restoration of the Union, without any punishment of leaders of the
+      defeated cause. But they were proud of their Confederate records though
+      now legally "loyal" to the United States; they considered the negro as
+      free but inferior, and expected to be permitted to fix his status in the
+      <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_033" id="Page_033">33</a></span>
+			social organization and to solve the problem of free labor in their own
+      way. To embarrass the easy and permanent realization of these views there
+      was a society disrupted, economically prostrate, deprived of its natural
+      leaders, subjected to a control not always wisely conceived nor
+      effectively exercised, and, finally, containing within its own population
+      unassimilated elements which presented problems fraught with difficulty
+      and danger.
+    </p>
+
+
+		<div class="chapterhead">
+		  <p>
+			   <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_034" id="Page_034">34</a></span>
+			   <a name="Chapter02" id="Chapter02"></a>
+				 <br /><br /><br />
+			</p>
+    </div>
+	  <h2>
+      <a href="#Contents">CHAPTER II.</a>
+    </h2>
+		<p class="chaptertitle">When Freedom Cried Out</p>
+
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="first-word">The</span>
+      negro is the central figure in the reconstruction of the South.
+      Without the negro there would have been no Civil War. Granting a war
+      fought for any other cause, the task of reconstruction would, without him,
+      have been comparatively simple. With him, however, reconstruction meant
+      more than the restoring of shattered resources; it meant the more or less
+      successful attempt to obtain and secure for the freedman civil and
+      political rights, and to improve his economic and social status. In 1861
+      the American negro was everywhere an inferior, and most of his race were
+      slaves; in 1865 he was no longer a slave, but whether he was to be serf,
+      ward, or citizen was an unsettled problem; in 1868 he was in the South
+      the legal and political equal, frequently the superior, of the white; and
+      before the end of the reconstruction period he was made by the legislation
+      of some
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_035" id="Page_035">35</a></span>
+			States and by Congress the legal equal of the white even in
+      certain social matters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The race problem which confronted the American people had no parallel in
+      the past. British and Spanish-American emancipation of slaves had affected
+      only small numbers or small regions, in which one race greatly outnumbered
+      the other. The results of these earlier emancipations of the negroes and
+      the difficulties of European states in dealing with subject white
+      populations were not such as to afford helpful example to American
+      statesmen. But since it was the actual situation in the Southern States
+      rather than the experience of other countries which shaped the policies
+      adopted during reconstruction, it is important to examine with some care
+      the conditions in which the negroes in the South found themselves at the
+      close of the war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The negroes were not all helpless and without experience "when freedom
+      cried out." &sup1; In the Border States and in the North there were, in 1861,
+      half a million free negroes accustomed to looking out for themselves.
+      Nearly 200,000 negro men were enlisted in the United States army between
+      1862 and 1865, and many thousands of slaves had followed raiding Federal
+      forces to freedom or had
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_036" id="Page_036">36</a></span>
+			escaped through the Confederate lines. State
+      emancipation in Missouri, Maryland, West Virginia, and Tennessee, and the
+      practical application of the Emancipation Proclamation where the Union
+      armies were in control ended slavery for many thousands more. Wherever the
+      armies marched, slavery ended. This was true even in Kentucky, where the
+      institution was not legally abolished until the adoption of the Thirteenth
+      Amendment. Altogether more than a million negroes were free and to some
+      extent habituated to freedom before May, 1865.
+    </p>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_02-1" name="footer_02-1"></a>
+&sup1; A negro phrase much used in referring to emancipation.</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      Most of these war-emancipated negroes were scattered along the borders of
+      the Confederacy, in camps, in colonies, in the towns, on refugee farms, at
+      work with the armies, or serving as soldiers in the ranks. There were
+      large working colonies along the Atlantic coast from Maryland to Florida.
+      The chief centers were near Norfolk, where General Butler was the first to
+      establish a "contraband" camp, in North Carolina, and on the Sea Islands
+      of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, which had been seized by the
+      Federal fleet early in the war. To the Sea Islands also were sent, in
+      1865, the hordes of negroes who had followed General Sherman out of
+      Georgia and South Carolina. Through
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_037" id="Page_037">37</a></span>
+			the Border States from the Atlantic to the Mississippi and along both
+			sides of the Mississippi from Cairo, Illinois, to New Orleans, there
+			were other refugee camps, farms, and colonies. For periods varying
+			from one to four years these free negroes had been at work, often amid
+			conditions highly unfavorable to health, under the supervision of
+			officers of the Treasury Department or of the army.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emancipation was therefore a gradual process, and most of the negroes,
+      through their widening experience on the plantations, with the armies, and
+      in the colonies, were better fitted for freedom in 1865 than they had been
+      in 1861. Even their years of bondage had done something for them, for they
+      knew how to work and they had adopted in part the language, habits,
+      religion, and morals of the whites. But slavery had not made them thrifty,
+      self-reliant, or educated. Frederick Douglass said of the negro at the end
+      of his servitude: "He had none of the conditions of self-preservation or
+      self-protection. He was free from the individual master, but he had
+      nothing but the dusty road under his feet. He was free from the old
+      quarter that once gave him shelter, but a slave to the rains of summer and
+      to the frosts of winter. He was turned loose, naked, hungry, and destitute
+      to the open sky."
+	 </p>
+	 <p>
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_038" id="Page_038">38</a></span>
+			To prove that he was free the negro thought he must
+      leave his old master, change his name, quit work for a time, perhaps get a
+      new wife, and hang around the Federal soldiers in camp or garrison, or go
+      to the towns where the Freedmen's Bureau was in process of organization.
+      To the negroes who remained at home&mdash;and, curiously enough, for a
+      time at least many did so&mdash;the news of freedom was made known
+      somewhat ceremonially by the master or his representative. The negroes
+      were summoned to the "big house," told that they were free, and advised to
+      stay on for a share of the crop. The description by Mrs. Clayton, the wife
+      of a Southern general, will serve for many: "My husband said, 'I think it
+      best for me to inform our negroes of their freedom.' So he ordered all the
+      grown slaves to come to him, and told them they no longer belonged to him
+      as property, but were all free. 'You are not bound to remain with me any
+      longer, and I have a proposition to make to you. If any of you desire to
+      leave, I propose to furnish you with a conveyance to move you, and with
+      provisions for the balance of the year.' The universal answer was,
+      'Master, we want to stay right here with you.' In many instances the
+      slaves were so infatuated with the idea of being, as they said,
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_039" id="Page_039">39</a></span>
+			'free as birds' that they left their homes and consequently suffered;
+			but our slaves were not so foolish." &sup1;
+    </p>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_02-2" name="footer_02-2"></a>
+&sup1; <i>Black and White under the Old R&eacute;gime</i>, p. 152,</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      The negroes, however, had learned of their freedom before their old
+      masters returned from the war; they were aware that the issues of the war
+      involved in some way the question of their freedom or servitude, and
+      through the "grape vine telegraph," the news brought by the invading
+      soldiers, and the talk among the whites, they had long been kept fairly
+      well informed. What the idea of freedom meant to the negroes it is
+      difficult to say. Some thought that there would be no more work and that
+      all would be cared for by the Government; others believed that education
+      and opportunity were about to make them the equal of their masters. The
+      majority of them were too bewildered to appreciate anything except the
+      fact that they were free from enforced labor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Conditions were most disturbed in the so-called "Black Belt," consisting
+      of about two hundred counties in the most fertile parts of the South,
+      where the plantation system was best developed and where by far the
+      majority of the negroes were segregated. The negroes in the four hundred
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_040" id="Page_040">40</a></span>
+      more remote and less fertile "white" counties, which had been less
+      disturbed by armies, were not so upset by freedom as those of the Black
+      Belt, for the garrisons and the larger towns, both centers of
+      demoralization, were in or near the Black Belt. But there was a moving to
+      and fro on the part of those who had escaped from the South or had been
+      captured during the war or carried into the interior of the South to
+      prevent capture. To those who left slavery and home to find freedom were
+      added those who had found freedom and were now trying to get back home or
+      to get away from the negro camps and colonies which were breaking up. A
+      stream of immigration which began to flow to the southwest affected
+      negroes as far as the Atlantic coast. In the confusion of moving, families
+      were broken up, and children, wife, or husband were often lost to one
+      another. The very old people and the young children were often left behind
+      for the former master to care for. Regiments of negro soldiers were
+      mustered out in every large town and their numbers were added to the
+      disorderly mass. Some of the Federal garrisons and Bureau stations were
+      almost overwhelmed by the numbers of blacks who settled down upon them
+      waiting for freedom to bestow its full measure
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_041" id="Page_041">41</a></span>
+			of blessing, and many of the negroes continued to remain in a
+			demoralized condition until the new year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first year of freedom was indeed a year of disease, suffering, and
+      death. Several partial censuses indicate that in 1865-66 the negro
+      population lost as many by disease as the whites had lost in war. Ill-fed,
+      crowded in cabins near the garrisons or entirely without shelter, and
+      unaccustomed to caring for their own health, the blacks who were searching
+      for freedom fell an easy prey to ordinary diseases and to epidemics. Poor
+      health conditions prevailed for several years longer. In 1870 Robert
+      Somers remarked that "the health of the whites has greatly improved since
+      the war, while the health of the negroes has declined till the mortality
+      of the colored population, greater than the mortality of the whites was
+      before the war, has now become so markedly greater, that nearly two
+      colored die for every white person out of equal numbers of each."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Morals and manners also suffered under the new dispensation. In the
+      crowded and disease-stricken towns and camps, the conditions under which
+      the roving negroes lived were no better for morals than for health, for
+      here there were none of the
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_042" id="Page_042">42</a></span>
+			restraints to which the blacks had been
+      accustomed and which they now despised as being a part of their servitude.
+      But in spite of all the relief that could be given there was much want. In
+      fact, to restore former conditions the relief agencies frequently cut off
+      supplies in order to force the negroes back to work and to prevent others
+      from leaving the country for the towns. But the hungry freedmen turned to
+      the nearest food supply, and "spilin de gypshuns" (despoiling the
+      Egyptians, as the negroes called stealing from the whites) became an
+      approved means of support. Thefts of hogs, cattle, poultry, field crops,
+      and vegetables drove almost to desperation those whites who lived in the
+      vicinity of the negro camps. When the ex-slave felt obliged to go to town,
+      he was likely to take with him a team and wagon and his master's clothes
+      if he could get them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The former good manners of the negro were now replaced by impudence and
+      distrust. There were advisers among the negro troops and other agitators
+      who assured them that politeness to whites was a mark of servitude.
+      Pushing and crowding in public places, on street cars and on the
+      sidewalks, and impudent speeches everywhere marked generally the limit of
+      rudeness. And the negroes were,
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_043" id="Page_043">43</a></span>
+			in this respect, perhaps no worse than
+      those European immigrants who act upon the principle that bad manners are
+      a proof of independence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The year following emancipation was one of religious excitement for large
+      numbers of the blacks. Before 1865 the negro church members were attached
+      to white congregations or were organized into missions, with nearly always
+      a white minister in charge and a black assistant. With the coming of
+      freedom the races very soon separated in religious matters. For this there
+      were two principal reasons: the negro preachers could exercise more
+      influence in independent churches; and new church organizations from the
+      North were seeking negro membership. Sometimes negro members were urged to
+      insist on the right "to sit together" with the whites. In a Richmond
+      church a negro from the street pushed his way to the communion altar and
+      knelt. There was a noticeable pause; then General Robert E. Lee went
+      forward and knelt beside the negro; and the congregation followed his
+      example. But this was a solitary instance. When the race issue was raised
+      by either color, the church membership usually divided. There was much
+      churchgoing by the negroes, day and night, and church festivities and
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_044" id="Page_044">44</a></span>
+      baptisms were common. The blacks preferred immersion and wanted a new
+      baptism each time they changed to a new church. Baptizings in ponds,
+      creeks, or rivers were great occasions and were largely attended.
+      "Shouting" the candidates went into the water and "shouting" they came
+      out. One old woman came up screaming, "Freed from slavery! freed from sin!
+      Bless God and General Grant!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the effort to realize their new-found freedom, the negroes were heavily
+      handicapped by their extreme poverty and their ignorance. The total value
+      of free negro property ran up into the millions in 1860, but the majority
+      of the negroes had nothing. There were a few educated negroes in the
+      South, and more in the North and in Canada, but the mass of the race was
+      too densely ignorant to furnish its own leadership. The case, however, was
+      not hopeless; the negro was able to work and in large territories had
+      little competition; wages were high, even though paid in shares of the
+      crop; the cost of living was low; and land was cheap. Thousands seemed
+      thirsty for an education and crowded the schools which were available. It
+      was too much, however, to expect the negro to take immediate advantage of
+      his opportunities. What
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_045" id="Page_045">45</a></span>
+			he wanted was a long holiday, a gun and a dog, and
+      plenty of hunting and fishing. He must have Saturday at least for a trip
+      to town or to a picnic or a circus; he did not wish to be a servant. When
+      he had any money, swindlers reaped a harvest. They sold him worthless
+      finery, cheap guns, preparations to bleach the skin or straighten the
+      hair, and striped pegs which, when set up on the master's plantation,
+      would entitle the purchaser to "40 acres and a mule."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The attitude of the negroes' employers not infrequently complicated the
+      situation which they sought to better. The old masters were, as a rule,
+      skeptical of the value of free negro labor. Carl Schurz thought this
+      attitude boded ill for the future: "A belief, conviction, or prejudice, or
+      whatever you may call it," he said, "so widely spread and apparently
+      deeply rooted as this, that the negro will not work without physical
+      compulsion, is certainly calculated to have a very serious influence upon
+      the conduct of the people entertaining it. It naturally produced a desire
+      to preserve slavery in its original form as much and as long as
+      possible &hellip; or to introduce into the new system that element of physical
+      compulsion which would make the negro work."
+		</p>
+		<p>
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_046" id="Page_046">46</a></span>
+			The negro wished to be free to leave his job when he pleased, but,
+			as Benjamin C. Truman stated in his report to President Johnson, a
+			"result of the settled belief in the negro's inferiority, and in the
+			necessity that he should not be left to himself without a guardian,
+			is that in some sections he is discouraged from leaving his old master.
+			I have known of planters who considered it an offence against
+			neighborhood courtesy for another to hire their old hands, and in two
+			instances that were reported the disputants came to blows over the
+			breach of etiquette." The new Freedmen's Bureau insisted upon written
+      contracts, except for day laborers, and this undoubtedly kept many negroes
+      from working regularly, for they were suspicious of contracts. Besides,
+      the agitators and the negro troops led them to hope for an eventual
+      distribution of property. An Alabama planter thus described the situation
+      in December, 1865:
+    </p>
+		<blockquote>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      They will not work for anything but wages, and few are able to pay wages.
+      They are penniless but resolute in their demands. They expect to see all
+      the land divided out equally between them and their old masters in time to
+      make the next crop. One of the most intelligent black men I know told me
+      that in a neighboring village, where several hundred blacks were
+      congregated,
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_047" id="Page_047">47</a></span>
+			he does not think that as many as three made contracts,
+      although planters are urgent in their solicitations and offering highest
+      prices for labor they can possibly afford to pay. The same man informed me
+      that the impression widely prevails that Congress is about to divide out
+      the lands, and that this impression is given out by Federal soldiers at
+      the nearest military station. It cannot be disguised that in spite of the
+      most earnest efforts of their old master to conciliate and satisfy them,
+      the estrangement between races increases in its extent and bitterness.
+      Nearly all the negro men are armed with repeaters, and many of them carry
+      them openly, day and night.
+    </p>
+		</blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The relations between the races were better, however, than conditions
+      seemed to indicate. The whites of the Black Belt were better disposed
+      toward the negroes than were those of the white districts. It was in the
+      towns and villages that most of the race conflicts occurred. All whites
+      agreed that the negro was inferior, but there were many who were grateful
+      for his conduct during the war and who wished him well. But others, the
+      policemen of the towns, the "loyalists," those who had little but pride of
+      race and the vote to distinguish them from the blacks, felt no good will
+      toward the ex-slaves. It was Truman's opinion "not only that the planters
+      are far better friends to the negroes than the poor whites, but also
+      better
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_048" id="Page_048">48</a></span>
+			than a majority of the Northern men who go South to rent
+      plantations." John T. Trowbridge, the novelist, who recorded his
+      impressions of the South after a visit in 1865, was of the opinion that
+      the Unionists "do not like niggers." "For there is," he said, "more
+      prejudice against color among the middle and poorer classes&mdash;the
+      Union men of the South who owned few or no slaves&mdash;than among the
+      planters who owned them by scores and hundreds." The reports of the
+      Freedmen's Bureau are to the same effect. A Bureau agent in Tennessee
+      testified: "An old citizen, a Union man, said to me, said he, 'I tell you
+      what, if you take away the military from Tennessee, the buzzards can't eat
+      up the niggers as fast as we'll kill them.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lawlessness of the negroes in parts of the Black Belt and the
+      disturbing influences of the black troops, of some officials of the
+      Bureau, and of some of the missionary teachers and preachers, caused the
+      whites to fear insurrections and to take measures for protection. Secret
+      semi-military organizations were formed which later developed into the Ku
+      Klux orders. When, however, New Year's Day, 1866 passed without the
+      hoped-for distribution of property the negroes began to settle down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the beginning of the period of reconstruction
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_049" id="Page_049">49</a></span>
+			it seemed possible that
+      the negro race might speedily fall into distinct economic groups, for
+      there were some who had property and many others who had the ability and
+      the opportunity to acquire it; but the later drawing of race lines and the
+      political disturbances of reconstruction checked this tendency. It was
+      expected also that the Northern planters who came South in large numbers
+      in 1865-66 might, by controlling the negro labor and by the use of more
+      efficient methods, aid in the economic upbuilding of the country. But they
+      were ignorant of agricultural matters and incapable of wisely controlling
+      the blacks; and they failed because at one time they placed too much trust
+      in the negroes and at another treated them too harshly and expected too
+      much of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The question of negro suffrage was not a live issue in the South until the
+      middle of 1866. There was almost no talk about it among the negroes; they
+      did not know what it was. President Lincoln in 1864 and President Johnson
+      in 1865 had merely mentioned the subject, though Chief Justice Chase and
+      prominent radical members of Congress, as well as numerous abolitionists,
+      had framed a negro suffrage platform. But the Southern whites, considering
+      the matter an impossibility, gave it
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_050" id="Page_050">50</a></span>
+			little consideration. There was, however, both North and South, a
+			tendency to see a connection between the freedom of the negroes and
+			their political rights and thus to confuse civil equality with political
+			and social privileges. But the great masses of the whites were solidly
+			opposed to the recognition of negro equality in any form. The poorer
+			whites, especially the "Unionists" who hoped to develop an opposition
+			party, were angered by any discussion of the subject. An Alabama
+			"Unionist," M.&nbsp;J. Saffold, later prominent as a radical politician,
+			declared to the Joint Committee on Reconstruction: "If you compel us to
+			carry through universal suffrage of colored men &hellip; it will prove
+			quite an incubus upon us in the organization of a national union party
+			of white men; it will furnish our opponents with a very effective weapon
+			of offense against us."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were, however, some Southern leaders of ability and standing who, by
+      1866, were willing to consider negro suffrage. These men, among them
+      General Wade Hampton of South Carolina and Governor Robert Patton of
+      Alabama, were of the slaveholding class, and they fully counted on being
+      able to control the negro's vote by methods similar to those actually put
+      in force a quarter of a
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_051" id="Page_051">51</a></span>
+			century later. The negroes were not as yet politically organized,
+			were not even interested in politics, and the master class might
+			reasonably hope to regain control of them. Whitelaw Reid published
+			an interview with one of the Hamptons which describes the situation
+			exactly:
+    </p>
+		<blockquote>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      A brother of General Wade Hampton, the South Carolina Hotspur, was on
+      board. He saw no great objection to negro suffrage, so far as the whites
+      were concerned; and for himself, South Carolinian and secessionist though
+      he was, he was quite willing to accept it. He only dreaded its effect on
+      the blacks themselves. Hitherto they had in the main, been modest and
+      respectful, and mere freedom was not likely to spoil them. But the
+      deference to them likely to be shown by partisans eager for their votes
+      would have a tendency to uplift them and unbalance them. Beyond this, no
+      harm would be done the South by negro suffrage. The old owners would cast
+      the votes of their people almost as absolutely and securely as they cast
+      their own. If Northern men expected in this way to build up a northern
+      party in the South, they were gravely mistaken. They would only be
+      multiplying the power of the old and natural leaders of Southern politics
+      by giving every vote to a former slave. Heretofore such men had served
+      their masters only in the fields; now they would do no less faithful
+      service at the polls. If the North could stand it, the South could. For
+      himself, he should make no special objection to negro suffrage as one of
+      the terms of reorganization, and
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_052" id="Page_052">52</a></span>
+			if it came, he did not think the South
+      would have much cause to regret it.
+    </p>
+		</blockquote>
+    <p>
+      To sum up the situation at this time: the negro population at the close of
+      the war constituted a tremendous problem for those in authority. The race
+      was free, but without status, without leaders, without property, and
+      without education. Probably a fourth of them had some experience in
+      freedom before the Confederate armies surrendered, and the servitude of
+      the other three millions ended very quickly and without violence. But in
+      the Black Belt, where the bulk of the black population was to be found,
+      the labor system was broken up, and for several months the bewildered
+      freedmen wandered about or remained at home under conditions which were
+      bad for health, morals, and thrift. The Northern negroes did not furnish
+      the expected leadership for the race, and the more capable men in the
+      South showed a tendency to go North. The unsettled state of the negroes
+      and their expectation of receiving a part of the property of the whites
+      kept the latter uneasy and furnished the occasion of frequent conflicts.
+      Not the least of the unsettling influences at work upon the negro
+      population were the colored troops and the agitators furnished by the
+      Freedmen's Bureau, the missions,
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_053" id="Page_053">53</a></span>
+			and the Bureau schools. But at the beginning of the year 1866 the
+			situation appeared to be clearing, and the social and economic
+			revolution seemed on the way to a quieter ending than might have
+			been expected.
+    </p>
+
+		<div class="chapterhead">
+		  <p>
+			   <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_054" id="Page_054">54</a></span>
+			   <a name="Chapter03" id="Chapter03"></a>
+				 <br /><br /><br />
+			</p>
+    </div>
+	  <h2>
+      <a href="#Contents">CHAPTER III.</a>
+    </h2>
+		<p class="chaptertitle">The Work of the Presidents</p>
+
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="first=word">The</span>
+      war ended slavery, but it left the problem of the freed slave; it
+      preserved the Union in theory, but it left unsolved many delicate problems
+      of readjustment. Were the seceded States in or out of the Union? If in the
+      Union, what rights had they? If they were not in the Union, what was their
+      status? What was the status of the Southern Unionist, of the
+      ex-Confederate? What punishments should be inflicted upon the Southern
+      people? What authority, executive or legislative, should carry out the
+      work of reconstruction? The end of the war brought with it, in spite of
+      much discussion, no clear answer to these perplexing questions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unfortunately, American political life, with its controversies over
+      colonial government, its conflicting interpretations of written
+      constitutions, and its legally trained statesmen, had by the middle of the
+      nineteenth century produced a habit
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_055" id="Page_055">55</a></span>
+			of political thought which demanded the settlement of most governmental
+			matters upon a theoretical basis. And now in 1865 each prominent leader
+			had his own plan of reconstruction fundamentally irreconcilable with all
+			the others, because rigidly theoretical. During the war the powers of
+			the Executive had been greatly expanded and a legislative reaction was
+			to be expected. The Constitution called for fresh interpretation in the
+			light of the Civil War and its results.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first theory of reconstruction may be found in the Crittenden-Johnson
+      resolutions of July, 1861, which declared that the war was being waged to
+      maintain the Union under the Constitution and that it should cease when
+      these objects were obtained. This would have been subscribed to in 1861 by
+      the Union Democrats and by most of the Republicans, and in 1865 the
+      conquered Southerners would have been glad to re&euml;nter the Union upon
+			this basis; but though in 1865 the resolution still expressed the views of
+			many Democrats, the majority of Northern people had moved away from this
+      position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The attitude of Lincoln, which in 1865 met the views of a majority of the
+      Northern people though not of the political leaders, was that "no State
+      can
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_056" id="Page_056">56</a></span>
+			upon its mere motion get out of the Union," that the States survived
+      though there might be some doubt about state governments, and that "loyal"
+      state organizations might be established by a population consisting
+      largely of ex-Confederates who had been pardoned by the President and made
+      "loyal" for the future by an oath of allegiance. Reconstruction was,
+      Lincoln thought, a matter for the Executive to handle. But that he was not
+      inflexibly committed to any one plan is indicated by his proclamation
+      after the pocket veto of the Wade-Davis Bill and by his last speech, in
+      which he declared that the question of whether the seceded States were in
+      the Union or out of it was "merely a pernicious abstraction." In addition,
+      Lincoln said:
+    </p>
+		<blockquote>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      We are all agreed that the seceded States, so called, are out of their
+      proper practical relation with the Union, and that the sole object of the
+      government, civil and military, in regard to those States is to again get
+      them into that proper practical relation. I believe that it is not only
+      possible, but in fact easier, to do this without deciding or even
+      considering whether these States have ever been out of the Union, than
+      with it. Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial
+      whether they had ever been abroad. Let us all join in doing the acts
+      necessary to restore the proper practical relations between these States
+      and the Union, and each
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_057" id="Page_057">57</a></span>
+			forever after innocently indulge his own opinion whether in doing the
+			acts he brought the States from without into the Union, or only gave
+			them proper assistance, they never having been out of it.
+    </p>
+		</blockquote>
+    <p>
+      President Johnson's position was essentially that of Lincoln, but his
+      attitude toward the working out of the several problems was different. He
+      maintained that the States survived and that it was the duty of the
+      Executive to restore them to their proper relations. "The true theory,"
+      said he, "is that all pretended acts of secession were from the beginning
+      null and void. The States cannot commit treason nor screen individual
+      citizens who may have committed treason any more than they can make valid
+      treaties or engage in lawful commerce with any foreign power. The States
+      attempting to secede placed themselves in a condition where their vitality
+      was impaired, but not extinguished; their functions suspended, but not
+      destroyed." Lincoln would have had no severe punishments inflicted even on
+      leaders, but Johnson wanted to destroy the "slavocracy," root and branch.
+      Confiscation of estates would, he thought, be a proper measure. He said on
+      one occasion: "Traitors should take a back seat in the work of
+      restoration.&hellip; My judgment is that he [a rebel]
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_058" id="Page_058">58</a></span>
+			should be subjected to a severe ordeal before he is restored to
+			citizenship. Treason should be made odious, and traitors must be
+			punished and impoverished. Their great plantations must be seized,
+			and divided into small farms and sold to honest, industrious men."
+			The violence of Johnson's views subsequently underwent considerable
+			modification but to the last he held to the plan of executive
+			restoration based upon state perdurance. Neither Lincoln nor
+      Johnson favored a change of Southern institutions other than the
+			abolition of slavery, though each recommended a qualified negro suffrage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were, however, other theories in the field, notably those of the
+      radical Republican leaders. According to the state-suicide theory of
+      Charles Sumner, "any vote of secession or other act by which any State may
+      undertake to put an end to the supremacy of the Constitution within its
+      territory is inoperative and void against the Constitution, and when
+      sustained by force it becomes a practical <em>abdication</em> by the State
+			of all rights under the Constitution, while the treason it involves still
+			further works an instant <em>forfeiture</em> of all those functions and
+			powers essential to the continued existence of the State as a body
+			politic, so that from
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_059" id="Page_059">59</a></span>
+			that time forward the territory falls under the exclusive jurisdiction of
+      Congress as other territory, and the State, being according to the
+      language of the law <i>felo de se</i>, ceases to exist." Congress should
+			punish the "rebels" by abolishing slavery, by giving civil and political
+			rights to negroes, and by educating them with the whites.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not essentially different, but harsher, was Thaddeus Stevens's plans for
+      treating the South as a conquered foreign province. Let the victors treat
+      the seceded States "as conquered provinces and settle them with new men
+      and exterminate or drive out the present rebels as exiles." Congress in
+      dealing with these provinces was not bound even by the Constitution, "a
+      bit of worthless parchment," but might legislate as it pleased in regard
+      to slavery, the ballot, and confiscation. With regard to the white
+      population he said: "I have never desired bloody punishments to any great
+      extent. But there are punishments quite as appalling, and longer
+      remembered, than death. They are more advisable, because they would reach
+      a greater number. Strip a proud nobility of their bloated estates; reduce
+      them to a level with plain republicans; send them forth to labor, and
+      teach their children to enter the workshops or handle a plow,
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_060" id="Page_060">60</a></span>
+			and you will thus humble the proud traitors." Stevens and Sumner agreed
+			in reducing the Southern States to a territorial status. Sumner would
+			then take the principles of the Declaration of Independence as a guide
+			for Congress, while Stevens would leave Congress absolute. Neither
+			considered the Constitution as of any validity in this crisis.
+    </p>
+
+    <p>
+      As a rule the former abolitionists were in 1865 advocates of votes and
+      lands for the negro, in whose capacity for self-rule they had complete
+      confidence. The view of Gerrit Smith may be regarded as typical of the
+      abolitionist position:
+    </p>
+		<blockquote>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      Let the first condition of peace with them be that no people in the rebel
+      States shall ever lose or gain civil or political rights by reason of
+      their race or origin. The next condition of peace be that our black allies
+      in the South&mdash;those saviours of our nation&mdash;shall share with
+      their poor white neighbors in the subdivisions of the large landed estates
+      of the South. Let the only other condition be that the rebel masses shall
+      not, for say, a dozen years, be allowed access to the ballot-box, or be
+      eligible to office; and that the like restrictions be for life on their
+      political and military leaders.&hellip; The mass of the Southern blacks
+			fall, in point of intelligence, but little, if any, behind the mass of the
+      Southern whites.&hellip; In reference to the qualifications of the voter,
+			men make too much account of the head and too little of the heart. The
+      ballot-box, like God, says: "Give me your heart."
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_061" id="Page_061">61</a></span>
+			The best-hearted men are the best qualified to vote; and, in this light,
+			the blacks, with their characteristic gentleness, patience, and
+			affectionateness, are peculiarly entitled to vote. We cannot wonder at
+			Swedenborg's belief that the celestial people will be found in the
+			interior of Africa; nor hardly can we wonder at the legend that the
+			gods came down every year to sup with their favorite Africans.
+    </p>
+		</blockquote>
+    <p>
+      One of the most statesmanlike proposals was made by Governor John A.
+      Andrew of Massachusetts. If, forgetting their theories, the conservatives
+      could have united in support of a restoration conceived in his spirit, the
+      goal might have been speedily achieved. Andrew demanded a reorganization,
+      based upon acceptance of the results of the war, but carried through with
+      the aid of "those who are by their intelligence and character the natural
+      leaders of their people and who surely will lead them by and by." These
+			men cannot be kept out forever, said he, for
+	</p>
+	<blockquote>
+	<p class="noindent">
+			the capacity of leadership is a gift, not a device. They whose courage,
+		  talents, and will entitle them to lead, will lead.&hellip; If we cannot
+			gain their support of the just measures needful for the work of safe
+			reorganization, reorganization will be delusive and full of danger.
+			They are the most hopeful subjects to deal with. They have the brain and
+			the experience and the education to enable them to understand &hellip;
+			the present situation.
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_062" id="Page_062">62</a></span>
+			They have the courage as well as the skill to lead the people in the
+			direction their judgments point.&hellip; Is it consistent with reason
+			and our knowledge of human nature, to believe the masses of Southern men
+			able to face about, to turn their backs on those they have trusted and
+			followed, and to adopt the lead of those who have no magnetic hold on
+			their hearts or minds? It would be idle to reorganize by the colored vote.
+			If the popular vote of the white race is not to be had in favor of the
+			guarantees justly required, then I am in favor of holding on&mdash;just
+			where we are now. I am not in favor of a surrender of the present rights
+			of the Union to a struggle between a white minority aided by the freedmen
+			on one hand, against the majority of the white race on the other. I would
+			not consent, having rescued those states by arms from Secession and
+			rebellion, to turn them over to anarchy and chaos.
+    </p>
+		</blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The Southerners, Unionists as well as Confederates, had their views as
+      well, but at Washington these carried little influence. The former
+      Confederates would naturally favor the plan which promised best for the
+      white South, and their views were most nearly met by those of President
+      Lincoln. Although he held that in principle a new Union had arisen out of
+      the war, as a matter of immediate political expediency he was prepared to
+      build on the assumption that the old Union still existed. The Southern
+      Unionists cared little for theories; they wanted the Confederates
+      punished, themselves
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_063" id="Page_063">63</a></span>
+			promoted to high offices, and the negro kept from the
+      ballot box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even at the beginning of 1866, it was not too much to hope that the
+      majority of former Republicans would accept conservative methods, provided
+      the so-called "fruits of the war" were assured&mdash;that is, equality of
+      civil rights, the guarantee of the United States war debt, the repudiation
+      of the Confederate debt, the temporary disfranchisement of the leading
+      Confederates, and some arrangement which would keep the South from
+      profiting by representation based on the non-voting negro population. But
+      amid many conflicting policies, none attained to continuous and compelling
+      authority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The plan first put to trial was that of President Lincoln. It was a
+      definite plan designed to meet actual conditions and, had he lived, he
+      might have been able to carry it through successfully. Not a theorist, but
+      an opportunist of the highest type, sobered by years of responsibility in
+      war time, and fully understanding the precarious situation in 1865,
+      Lincoln was most anxious to secure an early restoration of solidarity with
+      as little friction as possible. Better than most Union leaders he
+      appreciated conditions in the South, the problem of the races, the
+      weakness of the Southern Unionists,
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_064" id="Page_064">64</a></span>
+			and the advantage of calling in the old Southern leaders. He was generous
+			and considerate; he wanted no executions or imprisonments; he wished the
+			leaders to escape; and he was anxious that the mass of Southerners be
+			welcomed back without loss of rights. "There is," he declared, "too
+			little respect for their rights," an unwillingness, in short, to treat
+			them as fellow citizens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This executive policy had been applied from the beginning of the war as
+      opportunity offered. The President used the army to hold the Border States
+      in the Union, to aid in "reorganizing" Unionist Virginia and in
+      establishing West Virginia. The army, used to preserve the Union might be
+      used also to restore disturbed parts of it to normal condition. Assuming
+      that the "States" still existed, "loyal" state governments were the first
+      necessity. By his proclamation of December 8, 1863, Lincoln suggested a
+      method of beginning the reconstruction: he would pardon any Confederate,
+      except specified classes of leaders, who took an oath of loyalty for the
+      future; if as many as ten per cent of the voting population of 1860, thus
+      made loyal, should establish a state government the Executive would
+      recognize it. The matter of slavery must, indeed, be left to the laws and
+      proclamations
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_065" id="Page_065">65</a></span>
+			as interpreted by the courts, but other institutions should
+      continue as in 1861.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This plan was inaugurated in four States which had been in part controlled
+      by the Federal army from nearly the beginning of the war: Tennessee
+      (1862), Louisiana (1862), Arkansas (1862), and Virginia after the
+      formation of West Virginia (1863). For each State, Lincoln appointed a
+      military governor: for Tennessee, Andrew Johnson; for Arkansas, John S.
+      Phelps; for Louisiana, General Shepley. In Virginia he recognized the
+      "reorganized" government, which had been transferred to Alexandria when
+      the new State of West Virginia was formed. The military governors
+      undertook the slow and difficult work of reorganization, however, with but
+      slight success owing to the small numbers of Unionists and of Confederates
+      who would take the oath. But by 1864 "ten per cent" state governments were
+      established in Arkansas and Louisiana, and progress was being made in
+      Tennessee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Congress was impatient of Lincoln's claim to executive precedence in the
+      matter of reconstruction, and in 1864 both Houses passed the Wade-Davis
+      Bill, a plan which asserted the right of Congress to control
+      reconstruction and foreshadowed a
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_066" id="Page_066">66</a></span>
+			radical settlement of the question. Lincoln disposed of the bill by a
+			pocket veto and, in a proclamation dated July 8, 1864, stated that he
+			was unprepared "to be inflexibly committed to any single plan of
+			restoration," or to discourage loyal citizens by setting aside the
+			governments already established in Louisiana and Arkansas, or to
+			recognize the authority of Congress to abolish slavery. He was ready,
+			however, to co&ouml;perate with the people of any State who wished to
+			accept the plan prepared by Congress and he hoped that a constitutional
+      amendment abolishing slavery would be adopted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lincoln early came to the conclusion that slavery must be destroyed, and
+      he had urgently advocated deportation of the freedmen, for he believed
+      that the two races could not live in harmony after emancipation. The
+      nearest he came to recommending the vote for the negro was in a
+      communication to Governor Hahn of Louisiana in March, 1864: "I barely
+      suggest, for your private consideration, whether some of the colored
+      people may not be let in, as for instance, the very intelligent, and
+      especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks. They would
+      probably help, in some trying time to come, to keep the jewel of liberty
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_067" id="Page_067">67</a></span>
+      within the family of freedom. But this is only a suggestion, not to the
+      public, but to you alone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Throughout the war President Lincoln assumed that the state organizations
+      in the South were illegal because disloyal and that new governments must
+      be established. But just at the close of the war, probably carried away by
+      feeling, he all but recognized the Virginia Confederate Government as
+      competent to bring the State back into the Union. While in Richmond on
+      April 5, 1865, he gave to Judge Campbell a statement of terms: the
+      national authority to be restored; no recession on slavery by the
+      Executive; hostile forces to disband. The next day he notified General
+      Weitzel, in command at Richmond, that he might permit the Virginia
+      Legislature to meet and withdraw military and other support from the
+      Confederacy. But these measures met strong opposition in Washington,
+      especially from Secretary Stanton and Senator Wade and other congressional
+      leaders, and on the 11th of April Lincoln withdrew his permission for the
+      Legislature to meet. "I cannot go forward," he said, "with everybody
+      opposed to me." It was on the same day that he made his last public
+      speech, and Sumner, who was strongly opposed to his policy, remarked that
+      "the President's
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_068" id="Page_068">68</a></span>
+			speech and other things augur confusion and uncertainty
+      in the future, with hot contumacy." At a cabinet meeting on the 14th of
+      April, Lincoln made his last statement on the subject. It was fortunate,
+      he said, that Congress had adjourned, for "we shall reanimate the States"
+      before Congress meets; there should be no killing, no persecutions; there
+      was too much disposition to treat the Southern people "not as fellow
+      citizens."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The possibility of a conciliatory restoration ended when Lincoln was
+      assassinated. Moderate, firm, tactful, of great personal influence, not a
+      doctrinaire, and not a Southerner like Johnson, Lincoln might have
+      "prosecuted peace" successfully. His policy was very unlike that proposed
+      by the radical leaders. They would base the new governments upon the
+      loyalty of the past plus the aid of enfranchised slaves; he would
+      establish the new r&eacute;gime upon the loyalty of the future. Like
+			Governor Andrew he thought that restoration must be effected by the
+			willing efforts of the South. He would aid and guide but not force the
+			people. If the latter did not wish restoration, they might remain under
+			military rule. There should be no forced negro suffrage, no sweeping
+			disfranchisement of whites, no "carpetbaggism."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+		  <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_069" id="Page_069">69</a></span>
+      The work of President Johnson demands for its proper understanding some
+      consideration of the condition of the political parties at the close of
+      the war, for politics had much to do with reconstruction. The Democratic
+      party, divided and defeated in the election of 1860, lost its Southern
+      members in 1861 by the secession and remained a minority party during the
+      remainder of the war. It retained its organization, however, and in 1864
+      polled a large vote. Discredited by its policy of opposition to Lincoln's
+      Administration, its ablest leaders joined the Republicans in support of
+      the war. Until 1869 the party was poorly represented in Congress
+      although, as soon as hostilities ended, the War Democrats showed a
+      tendency to return to the old party. As to reconstruction, the party stood
+      on the Crittenden-Johnson resolutions of 1861, though most Democrats were
+      now willing to have slavery abolished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Republican party&mdash;frankly sectional and going into power on the
+      single issue of opposition to the extension of slavery&mdash;was forced by
+      the secession movement to take up the task of preserving the Union by war.
+      Consequently, the party developed new principles, welcomed the aid of the
+      War Democrats, and found it advisable to
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_070" id="Page_070">70</a></span>
+			drop its name and with its allies to form the Union or National Union
+			party. It was this National Union party which in 1864 nominated Abraham
+			Lincoln, a Republican, and Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, on the same ticket.
+			Lincoln's second Cabinet was composed of both Republicans and War
+			Democrats. When the war ended, the conservative leaders were anxious to
+			hold the Union party together in order to be in a better position to
+			settle the problems of reconstruction, but the movement of the War
+			Democrats back to their old party tended to leave in the Union party only
+			its Republican members, with the radical leaders dominating.
+    </p>
+		<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="johnson.jpg" id="johnson.jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/johnson.jpg" width="480" height="420"
+alt="[Illustration: Andrew Johnson]"
+title="[Illustration: Andrew Johnson]" /><br />
+<span class="caption"><a href="#Illustrations">Andrew Johnson.</a><br />
+Engraving after a Photograph by Brady.</span>
+   <hr />
+</div>
+    <p>
+      In the South the pressure of war so united the people that party divisions
+      disappeared for a time, but the causes of division continued to exist and
+      two parties, at least, would have developed had the pressure been removed.
+      Though all factions supported the war after it began, the former Whigs and
+      Douglas Democrats, when it was over, liked to remember that they had been
+      "Union" men in 1860 and expected to organize in opposition to the extreme
+      Democrats, who were now charged with being responsible for the misfortunes
+      of the South. They were in a position to affiliate with the
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_071" id="Page_071">71</a></span>
+			National Union
+      party of the North if proper inducements were offered, while the regular
+      Democrats were ready to rejoin their old party. But the embittered
+      feelings resulting from the murder of Lincoln and the rapid development of
+      the struggle between President Johnson and Congress caused the radicals
+      "to lump the old Union Democrats and Whigs together with the secessionists&mdash;and
+      many were driven where they did not want to go, into temporary affiliation
+      with the Democratic party." Thousands went very reluctantly; the old
+      Whigs, indeed, were not firmly committed to the Democrats until radical
+      reconstruction had actually begun. Still other "loyalists" in the South
+      were prepared to join the Northern radicals in advocating the
+      disfranchisement of Confederates and in opposing the granting of suffrage
+      to the negroes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man upon whom fell the task of leading these opposing factions,
+      radical and conservative, along a definite line of action looking to
+      reunion had few qualifications for the task. Johnson was ill-educated,
+      narrow, and vindictive and was positive that those who did not agree with
+      him were dishonest. Himself a Southerner, picked up by the National Union
+      Convention of 1864, as Thaddeus Stevens said, from "one of those damned
+      rebel
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_072" id="Page_072">72</a></span>
+			provinces," he loved the Union, worshiped the Constitution, and held
+      to the strict construction views of the State Rights Democrats. Rising
+      from humble beginnings, he was animated by the most intense dislike of the
+      "slavocracy," as he called the political aristocracy of the South. Like
+      many other American leaders he was proud of his humble origin, but unlike
+      many others he never sloughed off his backwoods crudeness. He continually
+      boasted of himself and vilified the aristocrats, who in return treated him
+      badly. His dislike of them was so marked that Isham G. Harris, a rival
+      politician, remarked that "if Johnson were a snake, he would lie in the
+      grass to bite the heels of rich men's children." His primitive notions of
+      punishment were evident in 1865 when he advocated imprisonment, execution,
+      and confiscation; but like other reckless talkers he often said more than
+      he meant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Johnson succeeded to the presidency, the feeling was nearly universal
+      among the radicals, according to Julian, that he would prove a godsend to
+      the country, for "aside from Mr. Lincoln's known policy of tenderness to
+      the rebels, which now so jarred upon the feelings of the hour, his well
+      known views on the subject of reconstruction were as distasteful as
+      possible to radical Republicans."
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_073" id="Page_073">73</a></span>
+			Senator Wade declared to the President:
+      "Johnson, we have faith in you. By the gods, there will be no trouble now
+      in running the Government!" To which Johnson replied: "Treason is a crime
+      and crime must be punished. Treason must be made infamous and traitors
+      must be impoverished." These words are an index to the speeches of Johnson
+      during 1863-65. Even his radical friends feared that he would be too
+      vindictive. For a few weeks he was much inclined to the radical plans, and
+      some of the leaders certainly understood that he was in favor of negro
+      suffrage, the supreme test of radicalism. But when the excitement caused
+      by the assassination of Lincoln and the break-up of the Confederacy had
+      moderated somewhat, Johnson saw before him a task so great that his desire
+      for violent measures was chilled. He must disband the great armies and
+      bring all war work to an end; he must restore intercourse with the South,
+      which had been blockaded for years; he must for a time police the country,
+      look after the negroes, and set up a temporary civil government; and
+      finally he must work out a restoration of the Union. Sobered by
+      responsibility and by the influence of moderate advisers, he rather
+      quickly adopted Lincoln's policy.
+	</p>
+	<p>
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_074" id="Page_074">74</a></span>
+			Johnson at first set his face against the movements toward reconstruction
+			by the state governments already organized and by those people who wished
+			to organize new governments on Lincoln's ten per cent plan. As soon as
+			possible the War Department notified the Union commanders to stop all
+			attempts at reconstruction and to pursue and arrest all Confederate
+			governors and other prominent civil leaders. The President was even
+			anxious to arrest the military leaders who had been paroled but was
+			checked in this desire by General Grant's firm protest. His cabinet
+			advisers supported Johnson in refusing to recognize the Southern state
+			governments; but three of them&mdash;Seward, Welles, and
+			McCulloch&mdash;were influential in moderating his zeal for inflicting
+      punishments. Nevertheless he soon had in prison the most prominent of the
+      Confederate civilians and several general officers. The soldiers, however,
+      were sent home, trade with the South was permitted, and the Freedmen's
+      Bureau was rapidly extended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Previous to this Johnson had brought himself to recognize, early in May,
+      the Lincoln "ten per cent" governments of Louisiana, Tennessee, and
+      Arkansas, and the reconstructed Alexandria government of Virginia. Thus
+      only seven States were
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_075" id="Page_075">75</a></span>
+			left without legal governments, and to bring those States back into the
+			Union, Johnson inaugurated on May 29, 1865, a plan which was like that
+			of Lincoln but not quite so liberal. In his Amnesty Proclamation, Johnson
+			made a longer list of exceptions aimed especially at the once wealthy
+			slave owners. On the same day he proclaimed the restoration of North
+			Carolina. A provisional governor, W.&nbsp;W. Holden, was appointed and
+			directed to reorganize the civil government and to call a constitutional
+			convention elected by those who had taken the amnesty oath. This
+			convention was to make necessary amendments to the constitution and
+      to "restore said State to its constitutional relations to the Federal
+      Government." It is to be noted that Johnson fixed the qualifications of
+      delegates and of those who elected them, but, this stage once passed, the
+      convention or the legislature would "prescribe the qualifications of
+      electors &hellip; a power the people of the several States composing the
+			Federal Union have rightfully exercised from the origin of the government
+			to the present time." The President also directed the various cabinet
+			officers to extend the work of their departments over the Confederate
+			States and ordered the army officers to assist the civil
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_076" id="Page_076">76</a></span>
+			authorities. During the next six weeks similar measures were undertaken
+			for the remaining six States of the Confederacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To set up the new order army officers were first sent into every county
+      to administer the amnesty oath and thus to secure a "loyal" electorate. In
+      each State the provisional governor organized out of the remains of the
+      Confederate local r&eacute;gime a new civil government. Confederate local
+      officials who could and would take the amnesty oath were directed to
+      resume office until relieved; the laws of 1861, except those relating to
+      slavery, were declared to be in force; the courts were directed to use
+      special efforts to crush lawlessness; and the old jury lists were
+      destroyed and new ones were drawn up containing only the names of those
+      who had taken the amnesty oath. Since there was no money in any state
+      treasury, small sums were now raised by license taxes. A full staff of
+      department heads was appointed, and by July, 1865, the provisional
+      governments were in fair working order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the constitutional conventions, which met in the fall, it was made
+      clear, through the governors, that the President would insist upon three
+      conditions: the formal abolition of slavery, the repudiation of the
+      ordinance of secession, and
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_077" id="Page_077">77</a></span>
+			the repudiation of the Confederate war debt.
+      To Governor Holden he telegraphed: "Every dollar of the debt created to
+      aid the rebellion against the United States should be repudiated finally
+      and forever. The great mass of the people should not be taxed to pay a
+      debt to aid in carrying on a rebellion which they in fact, if left to
+      themselves, were opposed to. Let those who had given their means for the
+      obligations of the state look to that power they tried to establish in
+      violation of law, constitution, and will of the people. They must meet
+      their fate." With little opposition these conditions were fulfilled,
+      though there was a strong feeling against the repudiation of the debt,
+      much discussion as to whether the ordinance of secession should be
+      "repealed" or declared "now and always null and void," and some quibbling
+      as to whether slavery was being destroyed by state action or had already
+      been destroyed by war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the old state constitutions, very slight changes were made. Of these
+      the chief were concerned with the abolition of slavery and the arrangement
+      of representation and direct taxation on the basis of white population.
+      Little effort was made to settle any of the negro problems, and in all
+      States the conventions left it to the legislatures to make
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_078" id="Page_078">78</a></span>
+			laws for the freedmen. There was no discussion of negro suffrage in the
+			conventions, but President Johnson sent what was for him a remarkable
+			communication to Governor Sharkey of Mississippi:
+    </p>
+		<blockquote>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      If you could extend the elective franchise to all persons of color who
+      can read the Constitution of the United States in English and write their
+      names, and to all persons of color who own real estate valued at not less
+      than two hundred and fifty dollars and pay taxes thereon, you would
+      completely disarm the adversary and set an example the other States will
+      follow. This you can do with perfect safety, and you would thus place
+      Southern States in reference to free persons of color upon the same basis
+      with the free States.&hellip; And as a consequence the radicals, who are
+			wild upon negro franchise, will be completely foiled in their attempts to
+			keep the Southern States from renewing their relations to the Union by not
+      accepting their senators and representatives.
+    </p>
+		</blockquote>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      In deciding upon a basis of representation it was clear that the majority
+      of delegates desired to lessen the influence of the Black Belt and place
+      the control of the government with the "up country." In the Alabama
+      convention Robert M. Patton, then a delegate and later governor, frankly
+      avowed this object, and in South Carolina Governor Perry urged the
+      convention to give no consideration to negro suffrage, "because this is a
+      white man's
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_079" id="Page_079">79</a></span>
+			government," and if the negroes should vote they would be
+      controlled by a few whites. A kindly disposition toward the negroes was
+      general except on the part of extreme Unionists, who opposed any favors to
+      the race. "This is a white man's country" was a doctrine to which all the
+      conventions subscribed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conventions held brief sessions, completed their work, and adjourned,
+      after directing that elections be held for state and local officers and
+      for members of Congress. Before December the appointed local officials had
+      been succeeded by elected officers; members of Congress were on their way
+      to Washington; the state legislatures were assembling or already in
+      session; and the elected governors were ready to take office. It was
+      understood that as soon as enough state legislatures ratified the
+      Thirteenth Amendment to make it a part of the Constitution, the President
+      would permit the transfer of authority to the new governors. The
+      Legislature of Mississippi alone was recalcitrant about the amendment, and
+      before January, 1866, the elected officials were everywhere installed
+      except in Texas, where the work was not completed until March. When
+      Congress met in December, 1865, the President reported that all former
+      Confederate States except Texas were
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_080" id="Page_080">80</a></span>
+			ready to be readmitted. Congress, however, refused to admit their
+			senators and representatives, and thus began the struggle which ended
+			over a year later with the victory of the radicals and the undoing of
+			the work of the two Presidents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The plan of the Presidents was at best only imperfectly realized. It was
+      found impossible to reorganize the Federal Administration in the South
+      with men who could subscribe to the "ironclad oath," for nearly all who
+      were competent to hold office had favored or aided the Confederacy. It was
+      two years before more than a third of the post offices could be opened.
+      The other Federal departments were in similar difficulties, and at last
+      women and "carpetbaggers" were appointed. The Freedmen's Bureau, which had
+      been established coincidently with the provisional governments, assumed
+      jurisdiction over the negroes, while the army authorities very early took
+      the position that any man who claimed to be a Unionist should not be tried
+      in the local courts but must be given a better chance in a provost court.
+      Thus a third or more of the population was withdrawn from the control of
+      the state government. In several States the head of the Bureau made
+      arrangements for local magistrates and officials to act as
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_081" id="Page_081">81</a></span>
+			Bureau officials, and in such cases the two authorities acted in
+			co&ouml;peration. The army of occupation, too, exerted an authority which
+			not infrequently interfered with the workings of the new state government.
+			Nearly everywhere there was a lack of certainty and efficiency due to the
+      concurrent and sometimes conflicting jurisdictions of state government,
+      army commanders, Bureau authorities, and even the President acting upon or
+      through any of the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The standing of the Southern state organizations was in doubt after the
+      refusal of Congress to recognize them. Nevertheless, in spite of this
+      uncertainty they continued to function as States during the year of
+      controversy which followed; the courts were opened and steadily grew in
+      influence; here and there militia and patrols were reorganized; officials
+      who refused to "accept the situation" were dismissed; elections were held;
+      the legislatures revised the laws to fit new conditions and enacted new
+      laws for the emancipated blacks. To all this progress in reorganization
+      the action of Congress was a severe blow, since it gave notice that none
+      of the problems of reconstruction were yet solved. An increasing spirit of
+      irritation and independence was observed throughout the States in
+      question,
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_082" id="Page_082">82</a></span>
+			and at the elections the former Confederates gained more and
+      more offices. The year was marked in the South by the tendency toward the
+      formation of parties, by the development of the "Southern outrages" issue,
+      by an attempt to frustrate radical action, and finally by a line-up of the
+      great mass of the whites in opposition to the Fourteenth Amendment and
+      other radical plans of Congress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Joint Committee on Reconstruction, appointed when Congress refused to
+      accept the work of President Johnson, proceeded during several months to
+      take testimony and to consider measures. The testimony, which was taken
+      chiefly to support opinions already formed, appeared to prove that the
+      negroes and the Unionists were so badly treated that the Freedmen's Bureau
+      and the army must be kept in the South to protect them; that free negro
+      labor was a success but that the whites were hostile to it; that the
+      whites were disloyal and would, if given control of the Southern
+      governments and admitted to Congress, constitute a danger to the nation
+      and especially to the party in power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To convince the voters of the North of the necessity of dealing
+      drastically with the South a campaign of misrepresentation was begun in
+      the
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_083" id="Page_083">83</a></span>
+			summer of 1865, which became more and more systematic and unscrupulous
+      as the political struggle at Washington grew fiercer. Newspapers regularly
+      ran columns headed "Southern Outrages" and every conceivable mistreatment
+      of blacks by whites was represented as taking place on a large scale. As
+      General Richard Taylor said, it would seem that about 1866 every white
+      man, woman, and child in the South began killing and maltreating negroes.
+      In truth, there was less and less ground for objection to the treatment of
+      the blacks as time went on and as the several agencies of government
+      secured firmer control over the lawless elements. But fortunately for the
+      radicals their contention seemed to be established by riots on a large
+      scale in Memphis and New Orleans where negroes were killed and injured in
+      much greater number than whites.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rapid development of the radical plans of Congress checked the
+      tendency toward political division in the South. Only a small party of
+      rabid Unionists would now affiliate with the radicals, while all the
+      others reluctantly held together, endorsed Johnson's policy, and attempted
+      to affiliate with the disintegrating National Union party. But the defeat
+      of the President's policies in the
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_084" id="Page_084">84</a></span>
+			elections of 1866, the increasing radicalism of Congress as shown by the
+			Civil Rights Act, the expansion of the Freedmen's Bureau, the report of
+			the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, and the proposal of the Fourteenth
+			Amendment led farsighted Southerners to see that the President was likely
+			to lose in his fight with Congress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now began, in the latter half of 1866, with some co&ouml;peration in the
+			North and probably with the approval of the President, a movement in the
+			South to forestall the radicals by means of a settlement which, although
+			less severe than the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, might yet be
+			acceptable to Congress. One feature of the settlement was to be some form
+			of negro suffrage, either by local action or by constitutional amendment.
+			Those behind this scheme were mainly of the former governing class. Negro
+      suffrage, they thought, would take the wind out of the radical sails, the
+      Southern whites would soon be able to control the blacks, representation
+      in Congress would be increased, and the Black Belt would perhaps regain
+      its former political hegemony. It is hardly necessary to say that the
+      majority of the whites were solidly opposed to such a measure. But it was
+      hoped to carry it under pressure through the
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_085" id="Page_085">85</a></span>
+			Legislature or to bring it about indirectly through rulings of the
+			Freedmen's Bureau.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coincident with this scheme of partial negro suffrage an attempt was made
+      by the conservative leaders in Washington, working with the Southerners,
+      to propose a revised Fourteenth Amendment which would give the vote to
+      competent negroes and not disfranchise the whites. A conference of
+      Southern governors met in Washington early in 1867 and drafted such an
+      amendment. But it was too late.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile the Fourteenth Amendment submitted by Congress had been brought
+      before the Southern legislatures and during the winter of 1866-67 it was
+      rejected by all of them. There was strong opposition to it because it
+      disfranchised the leading whites, but perhaps the principal reason for its
+      rejection was that the Southern people were not sure that still more
+      severe conditions might not be imposed later.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While the President was "restoring" the States which had seceded and
+      struggling with Congress, the Border States of the South, including
+      Tennessee (which was admitted in 1866 by reason of its radical state
+      government), were also in the throes of reconstruction. Though there was
+      less military
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_086" id="Page_086">86</a></span>
+			interference in these than in the other States, many of the
+      problems were similar. All had the Freedmen's Bureau, the negro race, the
+      Unionists, and the Confederates; in every State, except Kentucky,
+      Confederates were persecuted, the minority was in control, and "ring" rule
+      was the order of the day; but in each State there were signs of the
+      political revolution which a few years later was to put the radicals out
+      of power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The executive plan for the restoration of the Union, begun by Lincoln and
+      adopted by Johnson, was, as we have seen, at first applied in all the
+      States which had seceded. A military governor was appointed in each State
+      by the President by virtue of his authority as commander in chief. This
+      official, aided by a civilian staff of his own choice and supported by the
+      United States army and other Federal agencies, reorganized the state
+      administration and after a few months turned the state and local
+      governments over to regularly elected officials. Restoration should now
+      have been completed, but Congress refused to admit the senators and
+      representatives of these States, and entered upon a fifteen months'
+      struggle with the President over details of the methods of the
+      reconstruction. Meanwhile the Southern States, though unrepresented in
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_087" id="Page_087">87</a></span>
+      Congress, continued their activities, with some interference from Federal
+      authorities, until Congress in 1867 declared their governments
+      non-existent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The work begun by Lincoln and Johnson deserved better success. The
+      original plan restored to political rights only a small number of
+      Unionists, the lukewarm Confederates, and the unimportant. But in spite of
+      the threatening speeches of Johnson he used his power of pardon until
+      none except the most prominent leaders were excluded. The personnel of the
+      Johnson governments was fair. The officials were, in the main, former
+      Douglas Democrats and Whigs, respectable and conservative, but not admired
+      or loved by the people. The conventions and the legislatures were orderly
+      and dignified and manifested a desire to accept the situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were no political parties at first, but material for several
+      existed. If things had been allowed to take their course there would have
+      arisen a normal cleavage between former Whigs and Democrats, between the
+      up-country and the low country, between the slaveholders and the
+      nonslaveholders. The average white man in these governments was willing to
+      be fair to the negro but was not greatly concerned about his future. In
+      the view of most white people it was the white
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_088" id="Page_088">88</a></span>
+			man who was emancipated. The white districts had no desire to let the
+			power return to the Black Belt by giving the negro the ballot, for the
+			vote of the negroes, they believed, would be controlled by their former
+			masters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Johnson's adoption of Lincoln's plan gave notice to all that the radicals
+      had failed to control him. He and they had little in common; they wished
+      to uproot a civilization, while he wished to punish individuals; they were
+      not troubled by constitutional scruples, while he was the strictest of
+      State Rights Democrats; they thought principally of the negro and his
+      potentialities, while Johnson was thinking of the emancipated white man.
+      It is possible that Lincoln might have succeeded, but for Johnson the task
+      proved too great.
+    </p>
+
+		<div class="chapterhead">
+		  <p>
+			   <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_089" id="Page_089">89</a></span>
+			   <a name="Chapter04" id="Chapter04"></a>
+				 <br /><br /><br />
+			</p>
+    </div>
+	  <h2>
+      <a href="#Contents">CHAPTER IV.</a>
+    </h2>
+		<p class="chaptertitle">The Wards of the Nation</p>
+		<p class="noindent"><span class="first-word">The</span>
+      negroes at the close of the war were not slaves or serfs, nor were
+      they citizens. What was to be done with them and for them? The Southern
+      answer to this question may be found in the so-called "Black Laws," which
+      were enacted by the state governments set up by President Johnson. The
+      views of the dominant North may be discerned in part in the organization
+      and administration of the Freedmen's Bureau. The two sections saw the same
+      problem from different angles and their proposed solutions were of
+      necessity opposed in principle and in practice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The South desired to fit the emancipated negro race into the new social
+      order by frankly recognizing his inferiority to the whites. In some things
+      racial separation was unavoidable. New legislation consequently must be
+      enacted, because the slave codes were obsolete; because the old laws
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_090" id="Page_090">90</a></span>
+			made for the small free negro class did not meet present conditions; and
+      because the emancipated blacks could not be brought conveniently and at
+      once under laws originally devised for a white population. The new laws
+      must meet many needs; family life, morals, and conduct must be regulated;
+      the former slave must be given a status in court in order that he might be
+      protected in person and property; the old, the infirm, and the orphans
+      must be cared for; the white race must be protected from lawless blacks
+      and the blacks from unscrupulous and violent whites; the negro must have
+      an opportunity for education; and the roving blacks must be forced to get
+      homes, settle down, and go to work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pending such legislation the affairs of the negro remained in control of
+      the unpopular Freedmen's Bureau&mdash;a "system of espionage," as Judge
+      Clayton of Alabama called it, and, according to Governor Humphreys of
+      Mississippi, "a hideous curse" under which white men were persecuted and
+      pillaged. Judge Memminger of South Carolina, in a letter to President
+      Johnson, emphasized the fact that the whites of England and the United
+      States gained civil and political rights through centuries of slow
+      advancement and that they were far ahead
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_091" id="Page_091">91</a></span>
+			of the people of European states. Consequently, it would be a mistake to
+			give the freedmen a status equal to that of the most advanced whites.
+			Rather, let the United States profit by the experience of the British in
+			their emancipation policies and arrange a system of apprenticeship for a
+			period of transition. When the negro should be fit, let him be advanced
+			to citizenship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Most Southern leaders agreed that the removal of the master's protection
+      was a real loss to the negro which must be made good to some extent by
+      giving the negro a status in court and by accepting negro testimony in all
+      cases in which blacks were concerned. The North Carolina committee on laws
+      for freedmen agreed with objectors that "there are comparatively few of
+      the slaves lately freed who are honest" and truthful, but maintained that
+      the negroes were capable of improvement. The chief executives of
+      Mississippi and Florida declared that there was no danger to the whites in
+      admitting the more or less unreliable negro testimony, for the courts and
+      juries would in every case arrive at a proper valuation of it. Governors
+      Marvin of Florida and Humphreys of Mississippi advocated practical civil
+      equality, while in North Carolina and several other States there was a
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_092" id="Page_092">92</a></span>
+      disposition to admit negro testimony only in cases in which negroes were
+      concerned. The North Carolina committee recommended the abolition of
+      whipping as a punishment unfit for free people, and most States accepted
+      this principle. Even in 1865 the general disposition was to make uniform
+      laws for both races, except in regard to violation of contracts, immoral
+      conduct, vagrancy, marriage, schools, and forms of punishment. In some of
+      these matters the whites were to be more strictly regulated; in others,
+      the negroes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was further general agreement that in economic relations both races
+      must be protected, each from the other; but it is plain that the leaders
+      believed that the negro had less at stake than the white. The negro was
+      disposed to be indolent; he knew little of the obligations of contracts;
+      he was not honest; and he would leave his job at will. Consequently
+      Memminger recommended apprenticeship for all negroes; Governor Marvin
+      suggested it for children alone; and others wished it provided for orphans
+      only. Further, the laws enacted must force the negroes to settle down, to
+      work, and to hold to contracts. Memminger showed that, without legislation
+      to enforce contracts and to secure eviction of those who refused
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_093" id="Page_093">93</a></span>
+			to work, the white planter in the South was wholly at the mercy of the
+			negro. The plantations were scattered, the laborers' houses were already
+			occupied, and there was no labor market to which a planter could go if
+			the laborers deserted his fields.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What would the negro become if these leaders of reconstruction were to
+      have their way? Something better than a serf, something less than a
+      citizen&mdash;a second degree citizen, perhaps, with legal rights about
+      equal to those of white women and children. Governor Marvin hoped to make
+      of the race a good agricultural peasantry; his successor was anxious that
+      the blacks should be preferred to European immigrants; others agreed with
+      Memminger that after training and education he might be advanced to full
+      citizenship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These opinions are representative of those held by the men who, Memminger
+      excepted, were placed in charge of affairs by President Johnson and who
+      were not specially in sympathy with the negroes or with the planters but
+      rather with the average white. All believed that emancipation was a
+      mistake, but all agreed that "it is not the negro's fault" and gave no
+      evidence of a disposition to perpetuate slavery under another name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The legislation finally framed showed in its
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_094" id="Page_094">94</a></span>
+			discriminatory features the combined influence of the old laws for free
+			negroes, the vagrancy laws of North and South for whites, the customs of
+			slavery times, the British West Indies legislation for ex-slaves, and the
+			regulations of the United States War and Treasury Departments and of the
+			Freedmen's Bureau&mdash;all modified and elaborated by the Southern
+			whites. In only two States, Mississippi and South Carolina, did the
+			legislation bulk large in quantity; in other States discriminating laws
+			were few; in still other States none were passed except those defining
+			race and prohibiting intermarriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In all of the state laws there were certain common characteristics, among
+      which were the following: the descendant of a negro was to be classed as a
+      negro through the third generation, &sup1; even though one parent in each
+      generation was white; intermarriage of the races was prohibited; existing
+      slave marriages were declared valid and for the future marriage was
+      generally made easier for the blacks than for the whites. In all States
+      the negro was given his day in court, and in cases relating to negroes his
+      testimony was accepted; in six States he might testify in any case. When
+      provision was
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_095" id="Page_095">95</a></span>
+			made for schooling, the rule of race separation was enforced. In
+			Mississippi the "Jim Crow car," or separate car for negroes, was invented.
+			In several States the negro had to have a license to carry weapons, to
+			preach, or to engage in trade. In Mississippi, a negro could own land
+			only in town; in other States he could purchase land only in the
+      country. Why the difference, no one knows and probably few knew at the
+      time. Some of the legislation was undoubtedly hasty and ill-considered.
+    </p>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_04-1" name="footer_04-1"></a>
+&sup1; Fourth in Tennessee.</p>
+</div>
+
+    <p>
+      But the laws relating to apprenticeship, vagrancy, and enforced punitive
+      employment turned out to be of greater practical importance. On these
+      subjects the legislation of Mississippi and South Carolina was the most
+      extreme. In Mississippi negro orphans were to be bound out, preferably to
+			a former master, if "he or she shall be a suitable person." The master was
+      given the usual control over apprentices and was bound by the usual
+      duties, including that of teaching the apprentice. But the penalties for
+      "enticing away" apprentices were severe. The South Carolina statute was
+      not essentially different. The vagrancy laws of these two States were in
+      the main the same for both races, but in Mississippi the definition of
+      vagrancy was enlarged to include negroes not at work,
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_096" id="Page_096">96</a></span>
+			those "found unlawfully assembling themselves together," and "all white
+			persons assembling themselves with freedmen." It is to be noted that
+			nearly all punishment for petty offenses took the form of hiring out,
+			preferably to the former master or employer. The principal petty offenses
+			were, it would seem, vagrancy and "enticing away" laborers or apprentices.
+			The South Carolina statute contains some other interesting provisions. A
+			negro, man or woman, who had enjoyed the companionship of two or more
+			spouses, must by April 1, 1866, select one of them as a permanent partner;
+			a farm laborer must "rise at dawn," feed the animals, care for the
+			property, be quiet and orderly, and "retire at reasonable hours"; on
+			Sunday the servants must take turns in doing the necessary work, and they
+			must be respectful and civil to the "master and his family, guests, and
+		  agents"; to engage in skilled labor the negro must obtain a license.
+			Whipping and the pillory were permitted in Florida for certain offenses,
+			and in South Carolina the master might "moderately correct" servants under
+			eighteen years of age. Other punishments were generally the same for both
+			races, except the hiring out for petty offenses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the Southern point of view none of this
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_097" id="Page_097">97</a></span>
+			legislation was regarded as a restriction of negro rights but as a wide
+			extension to the negro of rights never before possessed, an adaptation of
+			the white man's laws to his peculiar case. It is doubtful whether in some
+			of the States the authorities believed that there were any discriminatory
+			laws; they probably overlooked some of the free negro legislation already
+			on the statute books. In Alabama, for example, General Wager Swayne, the
+			head of the Freedmen's Bureau, reported that all such laws had either been
+			dropped by the legislature or had been vetoed by the governor. Yet the
+			statute books do show some discriminations. There is a marked difference
+			between earlier and later legislation. The more stringent laws were
+			enacted before the end of 1865. After New Year's Day had passed and the
+			negroes had begun to settle down, the legislatures either passed mild laws
+			or abandoned all special legislation for the negroes. Later in 1866,
+			several States repealed the legislation of 1865.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In so far as the "Black Laws" discriminated against the negro they were
+      never enforced but were suspended from the beginning by the army and the
+      Freedmen's Bureau. They had, however, a very important effect upon that
+      section of
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_098" id="Page_098">98</a></span>
+			Northern opinion which was already suspicious of the good faith
+      of the Southerners. They were part of a plan, some believed, to
+			re&euml;nslave the negro or at least to create by law a class of serfs.
+			This belief did much to bring about later radical legislation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the "Black Laws" represented the reaction of the Southern legislatures
+      to racial conditions, the Freedmen's Bureau was the corresponding result
+      of the interest taken by the North in the welfare of the negro. It was
+      established just as the war was closing and arose out of the various
+      attempts to meet the negro problems that arose during the war. The Bureau
+      had always a dual nature, due in part to its inheritance of regulations,
+      precedents, and traditions from the various attempts made during war time
+      to handle the many thousands of negroes who came under Federal control,
+      and in part to the humanitarian impulses of 1865, born of a belief in the
+      capacity of the negro for freedom and a suspicion that the Southern whites
+      intended to keep as much of slavery as they could. The officials of the
+      Bureau likewise were of two classes: those in control were for the most
+      part army officers, standing as arbiters between white and black, usually
+      just and seldom the victims of their sympathies; but the mass of less
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_099" id="Page_099">99</a></span>
+			responsible officials were men of inferior ability and character, either
+      blind partisans of the negro or corrupt and subject to purchase by the
+      whites.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In view of the fact that the Freedmen's Bureau was considered a new
+      institution in 1865, it is rather remarkable how closely it followed in
+      organization, purpose, and methods the precedents set during the war by
+      the officers of the army and the Treasury. In Virginia, General Butler, in
+      1861, declared escaped slaves to be "contraband" and proceeded to organize
+      them into communities for discipline, work, food, and care. His successors
+      in Virginia and North Carolina, and others in the Sea Islands of Georgia
+      and South Carolina, extended his plan and arranged a labor system with
+      fixed wages, hours, and methods of work, and everywhere made use of the
+      captured or abandoned property of the Confederates. In Tennessee and
+      Arkansas, Chaplain John Eaton of Grant's army employed thousands in a
+      modified free labor system; and further down in Mississippi and Louisiana
+      Generals Grant, Butler, and Banks also put large numbers of captured
+      slaves to work for themselves and for the Government. Everywhere, as the
+      numbers of negroes increased, the army commanders divided the occupied
+      negro regions into
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">100</a></span>
+			districts under superintendents and other officials,
+      framed labor laws, co&ouml;perated with benevolent societies which gave
+      schooling and medical care to the blacks, and developed systems of
+      government for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The United States Treasury Department, attempting to execute the
+      confiscation laws for the benefit of the Treasury, appears now and then as
+      an employer of negro labor on abandoned plantations. Either alone or in
+      co&ouml;peration with the army and charitable associations, it even
+			supervised negro colonies, and sometimes it assumed practically complete
+			control of the economic welfare of the negro. This Department introduced
+			in 1864 an elaborate lessee and trade system. The negro was regarded as
+			"the ward of the nation," but he was told impressively that "labor is a
+			public duty and idleness and vagrancy a crime." All wanted him to work:
+			the Treasury wanted cotton and other crops to sell; the lessees and
+			speculators wanted to make fortunes by his labor; and the army wanted to
+			be free from the burden of the idle blacks. In spite of all these
+			ministrations the negroes suffered much from harsh treatment, neglect, and
+			unsanitary conditions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During 1863 and 1864 several influences were
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">101</a></span>
+			urging the establishment of a national bureau or department to take charge
+			of matters relating to the African race. Some wished to establish on the
+			borders of the South a paid labor system, which might later be extended
+			over the entire region, to get more slaves out of the Confederacy into
+			this free labor territory, and to prevent immigration of negroes into the
+			North, which, after the Emancipation Proclamation, was apprehensive of
+			this danger. Others wished to relieve the army and the treasury officials
+			of the burden of caring for the blacks and to protect the latter from the
+			"northern harpies and bloodhounds" who had fastened upon them the lessee
+			system.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The discussion lasted for two years. The Freedmen's Inquiry Commission,
+      after a survey of the field in 1863, recommended a consolidation of all
+      efforts under an organization which should perpetuate the best features of
+      the old system. But there was much opposition to this plan in Congress.
+      The negroes would be exploited, objected some; the scheme gave too much
+      power to the proposed organization, said others; another objection was
+      urged against the employment of a horde of incompetent and unscrupulous
+      officeholders, for "the men who go down there and become your overseers
+      and
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">102</a></span>
+			negro drivers will be your brokendown politicians and your
+      dilapidated preachers, that description of men who are too lazy to work
+      and just a little too honest to steal."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the war drew to a close the advocates of a policy of consolidation in
+      negro affairs prevailed, and on March 3, 1865, an act was approved
+      creating in the War Department a Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and
+      Abandoned Lands. This Bureau was to continue for one year after the close
+      of the war and it was to control all matters relating to freedmen and
+      refugees, that is, Unionists who had been driven out of the South. Food,
+      shelter, and clothing were to be given to the needy, and abandoned or
+      confiscated property was to be used for or leased to freedmen. At the head
+      of the Bureau was to be a commissioner with an assistant commissioner for
+      each of the Southern States. These officials and other employees must take
+      the "ironclad" oath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was planned that the Bureau should have a brief existence, but the
+      institution and its wards became such important factors in politics that
+      on July 16, 1866, after a struggle with the President, Congress passed an
+      act over his veto amplifying the powers of the Bureau and extending it for
+      two
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">103</a></span>
+			years longer. This continuation of the Bureau was due to many things:
+      to a belief that former slaveholders were not to be trusted in dealing
+      with the negroes; to the baneful effect of the "Black Laws" upon Northern
+      public opinion; to the struggle between the President and Congress over
+      reconstruction; and to the foresight of radical politicians who saw in the
+      institution an instrument for the political instruction of the blacks in
+      the proper doctrines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The new law was supplementary to the Act of 1865, but its additional
+      provisions merely endorsed what the Bureau was already doing. It
+      authorized the issue of medical supplies, confirmed certain sales of land
+      to negroes, and provided that the promises which Sherman made in 1865 to
+      the Sea Island negroes should be carried out as far as possible and that
+      no lands occupied by blacks should be restored to the owners until the
+      crops of 1866 were gathered; it directed the Bureau to co&ouml;perate with
+      private charitable and benevolent associations, and it authorized the use
+      or sale for school purposes of all confiscated property; and finally it
+      ordered that the civil equality of the negro be upheld by the Bureau and
+      its courts when state courts refused to accept the principle. By
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">104</a></span>
+			later laws the existence of the Bureau was extended to January 1, 1869,
+			in the unreconstructed States, but its educational and financial
+			activities were continued until June 20, 1872.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief objections to the Bureau from the conservative Northern point of
+      view were summed up in the President's veto messages. The laws creating it
+      were based, he asserted, on the theory that a state of war still existed;
+      there was too great a concentration of power in the hands of a few
+      individuals who could not be held responsible; with such a large number of
+      agents ignorant of the country and often working for their own advantage
+      injustice would inevitably result; in spite of the fact that the negro
+      everywhere had a status in court, arbitrary tribunals were established,
+      without jury, without regular procedure or rules of evidence, and without
+      appeal; the provisions in regard to abandoned lands amounted to
+      confiscation without a hearing; the negro, who must in the end work out
+      his own salvation, and who was protected by the demand for his labor,
+      would be deluded into thinking his future secure without further effort on
+      his part; although nominally under the War Department, the Bureau was not
+      subject to military control; it was practically a
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">105</a></span>
+			great political machine; and, finally, the States most concerned were not
+			represented in Congress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bureau was soon organized in all the former slaveholding States except
+      Delaware, with general headquarters in Washington and state headquarters
+      at the various capitals. General O.&nbsp;O. Howard, who was appointed
+      commissioner, was a good officer, soft-hearted, honest, pious, and
+      frequently referred to as "the Christian soldier." He was fair-minded and
+      not disposed to irritate the Southern whites unnecessarily, but he was
+      rather suspicious of their intentions toward the negroes, and he was a
+      believer in the righteousness of the Freedmen's Bureau. He was not a good
+      business man; and he was not beyond the reach of politicians. At one time
+      he was seriously disturbed in his duties by the buzzing of the
+      presidential bee in his bonnet. The members of his staff were not of his
+      moral stature, and several of them were connected with commercial and
+      political enterprises which left their motives open to criticism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The assistant commissioners were, as a rule, general officers of the army,
+      though a few were colonels and chaplains. &sup1; Nearly half of them had
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">106</a></span>
+			during the war been associated with the various attempts to handle the
+			negro problem, and it was these men who shaped the organization of the
+			Bureau. While few of them were immediately acceptable to the Southern
+			whites, only ten of them proved seriously objectionable on account of
+			personality, character, or politics. Among the most able should be
+			mentioned Generals Schofield, Swayne, Fullerton, Steedman, and Fessenden,
+			and Colonel John Eaton. The President had little or no control over the
+			appointment or discipline of the officials and agents of the Bureau,
+			except possibly by calling some of the higher army officers back to
+			military service.
+    </p>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_04-2" name="footer_04-2"></a>
+&sup1; They numbered eleven at first and fourteen after July,
+     1866, and were changed so often that fifty, in all, served
+     in this rank before January 1, 1869, when the Bureau was
+     practically discontinued.</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      As a result of General Grant's severe criticism of the arrangement which
+      removed the Bureau from control by the military establishment, the
+      military commander was in a few instances also appointed assistant
+      commissioner. Each assistant commissioner was aided by a headquarters
+      staff and had under his jurisdiction in each State various district,
+      county, and local agents, with a special corps of school officials, who
+      were usually teachers and missionaries belonging to religious and
+      charitable societies. The local agents were recruited from the members of
+      the Veteran Reserve Corps,
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">107</a></span>
+			the subordinate officers and non-commissioned
+      officers of the army, mustered-out soldiers, officers of negro troops,
+      preachers, teachers, and Northern civilians who had come South. As a class
+      these agents were not competent persons to guide the blacks in the ways of
+      liberty or to arbitrate differences between the races. There were many
+      exceptions, but the Southern view as expressed by General Wade Hampton had
+      only too much foundation: "There <em>may</em> be," he said, "an honest man
+      connected with the Bureau." John Minor Botts, a Virginian who had remained
+      loyal to the Union, asserted that many of the agents were good men who did
+      good work but that trouble resulted from the ignorance and fanaticism of
+      others. The minority members of the Ku Klux Committee condemned the agents
+      as being "generally of a class of fanatics without character or
+      responsibility."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief activities of the Bureau included the following five branches:
+      relief work for both races; the regulation of negro labor; the
+      administration of justice in cases concerning negroes; the management of
+      abandoned and confiscated property; and the support of schools for the
+      negroes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The relief work which was carried on for more than four years consisted of
+      caring for sick negroes
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">108</a></span>
+			who were within reach of the hospitals, furnishing
+      food and sometimes clothing and shelter to destitute blacks and whites,
+      and transporting refugees of both races back to their homes. Nearly a
+      hundred hospitals and clinics were established, and half a million
+      patients were treated. This work was greatly needed, especially for the
+      old and the infirm, and it was well done. The transportation of refugees
+      did not reach large proportions, and after 1866 it was entangled in
+      politics. But the issue of supplies in huge quantities brought much needed
+      relief though at the same time a certain amount of demoralization. The
+      Bureau claimed little credit, and is usually given none, for keeping alive
+      during the fall and winter of 1865-1866 thousands of destitute whites. Yet
+      more than a third of the food issued was to whites, and without it many
+      would have starved. Numerous Confederate soldiers on the way home after
+      the surrender were fed by the Bureau, and in the destitute white districts
+      a great deal of suffering was relieved and prevented by its operations.
+      The negroes, dwelling for the most part in regions where labor was in
+      demand, needed relief for a shorter time, but they were attracted in
+      numbers to the towns by free food, and it was difficult to get them back
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">109</a></span>
+      to work. The political value of the free food issues was not generally
+      recognized until later in 1866 and in 1867.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the first year of the Bureau an important duty of the agents was
+      the supervision of negro labor and the fixing of wages. Both officials and
+      planters generally demanded that contracts be written, approved, and filed
+      in the office of the Bureau. They thought that the negroes would work
+      better if they were thus bound by contracts. The agents usually required
+      that the agreements between employer and laborer cover such points as the
+      nature of the work, the hours, food and clothes, medical attendance,
+      shelter, and wages. To make wages secure, the laborer was given a lien on
+      the crop; to secure the planter from loss, unpaid wages might be forfeited
+      if the laborer failed to keep his part of the contract. When it dawned
+      upon the Bureau authorities that other systems of labor had been or might
+      be developed in the South, they permitted arrangements for the various
+      forms of cash and share renting. But it was everywhere forbidden to place
+      the negroes under "overseers" or to subject them to "unwilling
+      apprenticeship" and "compulsory working out of debts."
+		</p>
+		<p>
+		  <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">110</a></span>
+			The written contract system for laborers did not work out successfully.
+			The negroes at first were expecting quite other fruits of freedom. One
+			Mississippi negro voiced what was doubtless the opinion of many when he
+			declared that he "considered no man free who had to work for a living."
+			Few negroes would contract for more than three months and none for a
+			period beyond January 1, 1866, when they expected a division of lands
+			among the ex-slaves. In spite of the regulations, most worked on oral
+			agreements. In 1866 nearly all employers threw overboard the written
+			contract system for labor and permitted oral agreements. Some States
+			had passed stringent laws for the enforcing of contracts, but in Alabama,
+			Governor Patton vetoed such legislation on the ground that it was not
+			needed. General Swayne, the Bureau chief for the State, endorsed the
+			Governor's action and stated that the negro was protected by his freedom
+			to leave when mistreated, and the planter, by the need on the part of
+			the negro for food and shelter. Negroes, he said, were afraid of
+			contracts and, besides, contracts led to litigation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In order to safeguard the civil rights of the negroes the Bureau was
+      given authority to establish
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">111</a></span>
+			courts of its own and to supervise the action of state courts in cases to
+			which freedmen were parties. The majority of the assistant commissioners
+			made no attempt to let the state courts handle negro cases but were
+			accustomed to bring all such cases before the Bureau or the provost courts
+			of the army. In Alabama, quite early, and later in North Carolina,
+			Mississippi, and Georgia, the wiser assistant commissioners arranged for
+			the state courts to handle freedmen's cases with the understanding that
+			discriminating laws were to be suspended. General Swayne in so doing
+			declared that he was "unwilling to establish throughout Alabama courts
+			conducted by persons foreign to her citizenship and strangers to her
+			laws." The Bureau courts were informal affairs, consisting usually of one
+			or two administrative officers. There were no jury, no appeal beyond the
+			assistant commissioner, no rules of procedure, and no accepted body of
+			law. In state courts accepted by the Bureau the proceedings in negro
+			cases were conducted in the same manner as for the whites.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The educational work of the Bureau was at first confined to
+			co&ouml;peration with such Northern religious and benevolent societies as
+			were organizing schools and churches for the negroes. After
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">112</a></span>
+			the first year the Bureau extended financial aid and undertook a system
+			of supervision over negro schools. The teachers employed were Northern
+			whites and negroes in about equal numbers. Confiscated Confederate
+			property was devoted to negro education, and in several States the
+			assistant commissioners collected fees and percentages of the negroes'
+			wages for the benefit of the schools. In addition the Bureau expended
+			about six million dollars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The intense dislike which the Southern whites manifested for the
+      Freedmen's Bureau was due in general to their resentment of outside
+      control of domestic affairs and in particular to unavoidable difficulties
+      inherent in the situation. Among the concrete causes of Southern hostility
+      was the attitude of some of the higher officials and many of the lower
+      ones toward the white people. They assumed that the whites were unwilling
+      to accord fair treatment to the blacks in the matter of wages, schools,
+      and justice. An official in Louisiana declared that the whites would
+      exterminate the negroes if the Bureau were removed. A few months later
+      General Fullerton in the same State reported that trouble was caused by
+      those agents who noisily demanded special privileges for the
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">113</a></span>
+			negro but who objected to any penalties for his lawlessness and made of
+			the negroes a pampered class. General Tillson in Georgia predicted the
+			extinction of the "old time Southerner with his hate, cruelty, and
+			malice." General Fisk declared that "there are some of the meanest,
+			unsubjugated and unreconstructed rascally revolutionists in Kentucky that
+			curse the soil of the country &hellip; a more select number of vindictive,
+			pro-slavery, rebellious legislators cannot be found than a majority of the
+			Kentucky legislature." There was a disposition to lecture the whites about
+			their sins in regard to slavery and to point out to them how far in their
+			general ignorance and backwardness they fell short of enlightened people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bureau courts were frequently conducted in an "illegal and oppressive
+      manner," with "decided partiality for the colored people, without regard
+      to justice." For this reason they were suspended for a time in Louisiana
+      and Georgia by General Steedman and General Fullerton, and cases were then
+      sent before military courts. Men of the highest character were dragged
+      before the Bureau tribunals upon frivolous complaints, were lectured,
+      abused, ridiculed, and arbitrarily fined or otherwise punished. The
+      jurisdiction of the
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">114</a></span>
+			Bureau courts weakened the civil courts and their frequent interference
+			in trivial matters was not conducive to a return to normal conditions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inferior agents, not sufficiently under the control of their
+      superiors, were responsible for a great deal of this bad feeling. Many of
+      them held radical opinions as to the relations of the races, and
+      inculcated these views in their courts, in the schools, and in the new
+      negro churches. Some were charged with even causing strikes and other
+      difficulties in order to be bought off by the whites. The tendency of
+      their work was to create in the negroes a pervasive distrust of the
+      whites.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prevalent delusion in regard to an impending division of the lands
+      among the blacks had its origin in the operation of the war-time
+      confiscation laws, in some of the Bureau legislation, and in General
+      Sherman's Sea Island order, but it was further fostered by the agents
+      until most blacks firmly believed that each head of a family was to get
+      "40 acres and a mule." This belief seriously interfered with industry and
+      resulted also in widespread swindling by rascals who for years made a
+      practice of selling fraudulent deeds to land with red, white, and blue
+      sticks to mark off the bounds of a chosen spot on the former master's
+      plantation. The
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">115</a></span>
+			assistant commissioners labored hard to disabuse the minds
+      of the negroes, but their efforts were often neutralized by the
+      unscrupulous attitude of the agents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the contest over reconstruction developed in Washington, the officials
+      of the Bureau soon recognized the political possibilities of their
+      institution. After mid-year of 1866, the Bureau became a political machine
+      for the purpose of organizing the blacks into the Union League, where the
+      rank and file were taught that re&euml;nslavement would follow Democratic
+      victories. Nearly all of the Bureau agents aided in the administration of
+      the reconstruction acts in 1867 and in the organization of the new state
+      and local governments and became officials under the new r&eacute;gime.
+			They were the chief agents in capturing the solid negro vote for the
+			Republican party.
+    </p>
+		<hr class="break"/>
+    <p>
+      Neither of the two plans for guiding the freedmen into a place in the
+      social order&mdash;the "Black Laws" and the Freedmen's Bureau&mdash;was
+      successful. The former contained a program which was better suited to
+      actual conditions and which might have succeeded if it had been given a
+      fair trial. These laws were a measure of the extent to which
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">116</a></span>
+			the average
+      white would then go in "accepting the situation" so far as the blacks were
+      concerned. And on the whole the recognition of negro rights made in these
+      laws, and made at a time when the whites believed that they were free to
+      handle the situation, was remarkably fair. The negroes lately released
+      from slavery were admitted to the enjoyment of the same rights as the
+      whites as to legal protection of life, liberty, and property, as to
+      education and as to the family relation, limited only by the clear
+      recognition of the principles of political inferiority and social
+      separation. Unhappily this legislation was not put to the test of
+      practical experience because of the Freedmen's Bureau; it was nevertheless
+      skillfully used to arouse the dominant Northern party to a course of
+      action which made impossible any further effort to treat the race problem
+      with due consideration to actual local conditions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Much of the work of the Freedmen's Bureau was of only temporary benefit to
+      both races. The results of its more permanent work were not generally
+      good. The institution was based upon the assumption that the negro race
+      must be protected from the white race. In its organization and
+      administration it was an impossible combination of
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">117</a></span>
+			the practical and the theoretical, of opportunism and humanitarianism, of
+			common sense and idealism. It failed to exert a permanently wholesome
+			influence because its lesser agents were not held to strict accountability
+			by their superiors. Under these agents the alienation of the two races
+			began, and the ill feelings then aroused were destined to persist into a
+			long and troubled future.
+    </p>
+		<div class="chapterhead">
+		  <p>
+			   <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">118</a></span>
+			   <a name="Chapter05" id="Chapter05"></a>
+				 <br /><br /><br />
+			</p>
+    </div>
+	  <h2>
+      <a href="#Contents">CHAPTER V.</a>
+    </h2>
+		<p class="chaptertitle">The Victory of the Radicals</p>
+		<p class="noindent"><span class="first-word">The</span>
+      soldiers who fought through the war to victory or to defeat had been
+      at home nearly two years before the radicals developed sufficient strength
+      to carry through their plans for a revolutionary reconstruction of the
+      Southern States. At the end of the war a majority of the Northern people
+      would have supported a settlement in accordance with Lincoln's policy.
+      Eight months later a majority, but a smaller one, would have supported
+      Johnson's work had it been possible to secure a popular decision on it.
+      How then did the radicals gain the victory over the conservatives? The
+      answer to this question is given by James Ford Rhodes in terms of
+      personalities: "Three men are responsible for the Congressional policy of
+      Reconstruction: Andrew Johnson, by his obstinacy and bad behavior;
+      Thaddeus Stevens,
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">119</a></span>
+			by his vindictiveness and parliamentary tyranny; Charles Sumner, by his
+			pertinacity in a misguided humanitarianism." The President stood alone in
+			his responsibility, but his chief opponents were the ablest leaders of a
+			resolute band of radicals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Radicalism did not begin in the Administration of Andrew Johnson. Lincoln
+      had felt its covert opposition throughout the war, but he possessed the
+      faculty of weakening his opponents, while Johnson's conduct usually
+      multiplied the number and the strength of his enemies. At first the
+      radicals criticized Lincoln's policy in regard to slavery, and after the
+      Emancipation Proclamation they shifted their attack to his "ten per cent"
+      plan for organizing the state governments as outlined in the Proclamation
+      of December, 1863. Lincoln's course was distasteful to them because he did
+      not admit the right of Congress to dictate terms, because of his liberal
+      attitude towards former Confederates, and because he was conservative on
+      the negro question. A schism among the Republican supporters of the war
+      was with difficulty averted in 1864, when Fr&eacute;mont threatened to
+			lead the radicals in opposition to the "Union" party of the President
+			and his conservative policy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The breach was widened by the refusal of Congress to admit representatives
+      from Arkansas and
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">120</a></span>
+			Louisiana in 1864 and to count the electoral vote of Louisiana and
+			Tennessee in 1865. The passage of the Wade-Davis reconstruction bill in
+			July, 1864, and the protests of its authors after Lincoln's pocket veto
+			called attention to the growing opposition. Severe criticism caused
+			Lincoln to withdraw the propositions which he had made in April, 1865,
+			with regard to the restoration of Virginia. In his last public
+      speech he referred with regret to the growing spirit of vindictiveness
+      toward the South. Much of the opposition to Lincoln's Southern policy was
+      based not on radicalism, that is, not on any desire for a revolutionary
+      change in the South, but upon a belief that Congress and not the Executive
+      should be entrusted with the work of reorganizing the Union. Many
+      congressional leaders were willing to have Congress itself carry through
+      the very policies which Lincoln had advocated; and a majority of the
+      Northern people would have endorsed them without much caring who was to
+      execute them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The murder of Lincoln, the failure of the radicals to shape Johnson's
+      policy as they had hoped, and the continuing reaction against the
+      excessive expansion of the executive power added strength to the
+      opposition. But it was a long fight before the
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">121</a></span>
+			radical leaders won. Their victory was due to adroit tactics on their own
+		  part and to mistakes, bad judgment, and bad manners on the part of the
+			President. When all hope of controlling Johnson had been given up,
+			Thaddeus Stevens and other leaders of similar views began to contrive
+			means to circumvent him. On December 1, 1865, before Congress met, a
+			caucus of radicals held in Washington agreed that a joint committee of the
+			two Houses should be selected to which should be referred matters relating
+			to reconstruction. This plan would thwart the more conservative Senate and
+			gain a desirable delay in which the radicals might develop their campaign.
+			The next day at a caucus of the Union party the plan went through without
+			arousing the suspicion of the supporters of the Administration. Next,
+			through the influence of Stevens, Edward McPherson, the clerk of the
+			House, omitted from the roll call of the House the names of the members
+			from the South. The radical program was then adopted and a week later the
+			Senate concurred in the action of the House as to the appointment of a
+			Joint Committee on Reconstruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the issues before Congress both Houses were split into rather clearly
+      defined factions:
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">122</a></span>
+			the extreme radicals with such leaders as Stevens, Sumner, Wade, and
+			Boutwell; the moderate Republicans, chief among whom were Fessenden and
+			Trumbull; the administration Republicans led by Raymond, Doolittle, Cowan,
+			and Dixon; and the Democrats, of whom the ablest were Reverdy Johnson,
+			Guthrie, and Hendricks. All except the extreme radicals were willing to
+			support the President or to come to some fairly reasonable compromise. But
+			at no time were they given an opportunity to get together. Johnson and the
+			administration leaders did little in this direction and the radicals made
+			the most skillful use of the divisions among the conservatives.
+    </p>
+		<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="stevens.png" id="stevens.png"></a>
+<img src="images/stevens.png" width="375" height="500"
+alt="[Illustration: Thaddeus Stevens]"
+title="[Illustration: Thaddeus Stevens]" /><br />
+<span class="caption"><a href="#Illustrations">Thaddeus Stevens.</a><br />
+Photograph by Brady.</span>
+   <hr />
+</div>
+    <p>
+      Whatever final judgment may be passed upon the radical reconstruction
+      policy and its results, there can be no doubt of the political dexterity
+      of those who carried it through. Chief among them was Thaddeus Stevens,
+      vindictive and unscrupulous, filled with hatred of the Southern leaders,
+      bitter in speech and possessing to an extreme degree the faculty of making
+      ridiculous those who opposed him. He advocated confiscation, the
+      proscription or exile of leading whites, the granting of the franchise and
+      of lands to the negroes, and in Southern States the establishment of
+      territorial
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">123</a></span>
+			governments under the control of Congress. These States should, he said,
+			"never be recognized as capable of acting in the Union &hellip;
+      until the Constitution shall have been so amended as to make it what the
+      makers intended, and so as to secure perpetual ascendancy to the party of
+      the Union."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles Sumner, the leader of the radicals in the Senate, was moved less
+      than Stevens by personal hostility toward the whites of the South, but his
+      sympathy was reserved entirely for the blacks. He was unpractical,
+      theoretical, and not troubled by constitutional scruples. To him the
+      Declaration of Independence was the supreme law and it was the duty of
+      Congress to express its principles in appropriate legislation. Unlike
+      Stevens, who had a genuine liking for the negro, Sumner's sympathy for the
+      race was purely intellectual; for the individual negro he felt repulsion.
+      His views were in effect not different from those of Stevens. And he was
+      practical enough not to overlook the value of the negro vote. "To my
+      mind," he said, "nothing is clearer than the absolute necessity of
+      suffrage for all colored persons in the disorganized States. It will not
+      be enough if you give it to those who read and write; you will not, in
+      this way, acquire the voting force which you need there for
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">124</a></span>
+			the protection of unionists, whether white or black. You will not secure
+			the new allies who are essential to the national cause." A leader of the
+			second rank was his colleague Henry Wilson, who was also actuated by a
+			desire for the negro's welfare and for the perpetuation of the Republican
+			party, which he said contained in its ranks "more of moral and
+			intellectual worth than was ever embodied in any political organization
+			in any land &hellip; created by no man or set of men but brought into
+			being by Almighty God himself &hellip; and endowed by the Creator with all
+			political power and every office under Heaven." Shellabarger of Ohio was
+		  another important figure among the radicals. The following extract from
+			one of his speeches gives an indication of his character and temperament:
+			"They [the Confederates] framed iniquity and universal murder into
+			law.&hellip; Their pirates burned your unarmed commerce upon every sea.
+			They carved the bones of the dead heroes into ornaments, and drank from
+			goblets made out of their skulls. They poisoned your fountains, put mines
+			under your soldiers' prisons; organized bands whose leaders were concealed
+			in your homes; and commissions ordered the torch and yellow fever to be
+			carried to your cities and to your women and
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">125</a></span>
+			children. They planned one universal bonfire of the North from Lake
+			Ontario to the Missouri."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the lesser lights may be mentioned Morton and Wade, both bluff,
+      coarse, and ungenerous, and thoroughly convinced that the Republican party
+      had a monopoly of loyalty, wisdom, and virtues, and that by any means it
+      must gain and keep control; Boutwell, fanatical and mediocre; and Benjamin
+      Butler, a charlatan and demagogue. As a class the Western radicals were
+      less troubled by humanitarian ideals than were those of the East and
+      sought more practical political results.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Joint Committee on Reconstruction which finally decided the fate of
+      the Southern States was composed of eight radicals, four moderate
+      Republicans, and three Democrats. As James Gillespie Blaine wrote later,
+      "it was foreseen that in an especial degree the fortunes of the Republican
+      party would be in the keeping of the fifteen men who might be chosen."
+      This committee was divided into four subcommittees to take testimony. The
+      witnesses, all of whom were examined at Washington, included army officers
+      and Bureau agents who had served in the South, Southern Unionists, a few
+      politicians, and several former Confederates, among them General Robert E.
+      Lee and Alexander
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">126</a></span>
+			H. Stephens. Most of the testimony was of the kind needed to support the
+			contentions of the radicals that negroes were badly treated in the South;
+			that the whites were disloyal; that, should they be left in control, the
+			negro, free labor, the nation, and the Republican party would be in
+			danger; that the army and the Freedmen's Bureau must be kept in the South;
+			and that a radical reconstruction was necessary. No serious effort,
+			however, was made to ascertain the actual conditions in the South. Slow to
+			formulate a definite plan, the Joint Committee guided public sentiment
+			toward radicalism, converted gradually the Republican Congressmen, and
+			little by little undermined the power and influence of the President.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not until after the new year was it plain that there was to be a fight to
+      the finish between Congress and the President. Congress had refused in
+      December, 1865, to accept the President's program, but there was still hope
+      for a compromise. Many conservatives had voted for the delay merely to
+      assert the rights of Congress; but the radicals wanted time to frame a
+      program. The Northern Democrats were embarrassingly cordial in their
+      support of Johnson and so also were most Southerners. The moderates were
+      not far away
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">127</a></span>
+			from the position of the President and the administration Republicans. But
+			the radicals skillfully postponed a test of strength until Stevens and
+			Sumner were ready. The latter declared that a generation must elapse
+			"before the rebel communities have so far been changed as to become safe
+			associates in a common government. Time, therefore, we must have. Through
+			time all other guarantees may be obtained; but time itself is a
+			guarantee."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the Joint Committee were referred without debate all measures relating
+      to reconstruction, but the Committee was purposely making little
+			progress&mdash;contented merely to take testimony and to act as a clearing
+			house for the radical "facts" about "Southern outrages" while waiting for
+			the tide to turn. The "Black Laws" and the election of popular Confederate
+			leaders to office in the South were effectively used to alarm the friends
+			of the negroes, and the reports from the Bureau agents gave support to
+			those who condemned the Southern state governments as totally inadequate
+			and disloyal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So apparent was the growth of radicalism that the President, alarmed by
+      the attitude of Sumner and Stevens and their followers, began to fear for
+      the
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">128</a></span>
+			Constitution and forced the fight. The passage of a bill on February
+      6, 1866, extending the life of the Freedmen's Bureau furnished the
+      occasion for the beginning of the open struggle. On the 19th of February
+      Johnson vetoed the bill, and the next day an effort was made to pass it
+      over the veto. Not succeeding in this attempt, the House of
+      Representatives adopted a concurrent resolution that Senators and
+      Representatives from the Southern States should be excluded until Congress
+      declared them entitled to representation. Ten days later the Senate also
+      adopted the resolution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though it was not yet too late for Johnson to meet the conservatives of
+      Congress on middle ground, he threw away his opportunity by an intemperate
+      and undignified speech on the 22d of February to a crowd at the White
+      House. As usual when excited, he forgot the proprieties and denounced the
+      radicals as enemies of the Union and even went so far as to charge
+      Stevens, Sumner, and Wendell Phillips with endeavoring to destroy the
+      fundamental principles of the government. Such conduct weakened his
+      supporters and rejoiced his enemies. It was expected that Johnson would
+      approve the bill to confer civil rights upon the negroes, but, goaded
+      perhaps by the speeches of Stevens,
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">129</a></span>
+			he vetoed it on the 27th of March. Its patience now exhausted, Congress
+			passed the bill over the President's veto. To secure the requisite
+			majority in the Senate, Stockton, Democratic Senator from New Jersey, was
+			unseated on technical grounds, and Senator Morgan, who was "paired" with
+			a sick colleague, broke his word to vote aye&mdash;for which Wade
+			offensively thanked God. The moderates had now fallen away from the
+      President and at least for this session of Congress his policies
+      were wrecked. On the 16th of July the supplementary Freedmen's Bureau Act
+      was passed over the veto, and on the 24th of July Tennessee was readmitted
+      to representation by a law the preamble of which asserted unmistakably
+      that Congress had assumed control of reconstruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile the Joint Committee on Reconstruction had made a report
+      asserting that the Southerners had forfeited all constitutional rights,
+      that their state governments were not in constitutional form, and that
+      restoration could be accomplished only when Congress and the President
+      acted together in fixing the terms of readmission. The uncompromising
+      hostility of the South, the Committee asserted, made necessary adequate
+      safeguards which should include the disfranchisement
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">130</a></span>
+			of the white leaders, either negro suffrage or a reduction of white
+			representation, and repudiation of the Confederate war debt with
+			recognition of the validity of the United States debt. These terms were
+			embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment, which was adopted by Congress and
+			sent to the States on June 13, 1866.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the congressional campaign of 1866 reconstruction was almost the sole
+      issue. For success the Administration must gain at least one-third of one
+      house, while the radicals were fighting for two-thirds of each House. If
+      the Administration should fail to make the necessary gain, the work
+      accomplished by the Presidents would be destroyed. The campaign was bitter
+      and extended through the summer and fall. Four national conventions were
+      held: the National Union party at Philadelphia made a respectable showing
+      in support of the President; the Southern Unionists, guided by the
+      Northern radicals met at the same place; a soldiers' and sailors'
+      convention at Cleveland supported the Administration; and another
+      convention of soldiers and sailors at Pittsburgh endorsed the radical
+      policies. A convention of Confederate soldiers and sailors at Memphis
+      endorsed the President, but the Southern support
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">131</a></span>
+			and that of the Northern Democrats did not encourage moderate Republicans
+			to vote for the Administration. Three members of Johnson's
+			Cabinet&mdash;Harlan, Speed, and Dennison&mdash;resigned because they were
+			unwilling to follow their chief further in opposing Congress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The radicals had plenty of campaign material in the testimony collected by
+      the Joint Committee, in the reports of the Freedmen's Bureau, and in the
+      bloody race riots which had occurred in Memphis and New Orleans. The
+      greatest blunder of the Administration was Johnson's speechmaking tour to
+      the West which he called "Swinging Around the Circle." Every time he made
+      a speech he was heckled by persons in the crowd, lost his temper,
+      denounced Congress and the radical leaders, and conducted himself in an
+      undignified manner. The election returns showed more than a two-thirds
+      majority in each House against the President. The Fortieth Congress would
+      therefore be safely radical, and in consequence the Thirty-ninth was
+      encouraged to be more radical during its last session.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Public interest now for a time turned to the South, where the Fourteenth
+      Amendment was before the state legislatures. The radicals, taunted with
+      having no plan of reconstruction beyond a
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">132</a></span>
+			desire to keep the Southern States out of the Union, professed to see in
+			the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment a good opportunity to readmit
+			the States on a safe basis. The elections of 1866 had pointed to the
+			ratification of the proposed amendment as an essential preliminary to
+			readmission. But would additional demands be made upon the South? Sumner,
+			Stevens, and Fessenden were sure that negro suffrage also must come, but
+			Wade, Chase, Garfield, and others believed that nothing beyond the terms
+			of the Fourteenth Amendment would be asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the Southern legislatures there was little disposition to ratify the
+      amendment. The rapid development of the radical policies during 1866 had
+      convinced most Southerners that nothing short of a general humiliation and
+      complete revolution in the South would satisfy the dominant party, and
+      there were few who wished to be "parties to our own dishonor." The
+      President advised the States not to accept the amendment, but several
+      Southern leaders favored it, fearing that worse would come if they should
+      reject it. Only in the legislatures of Alabama and Florida was there any
+      serious disposition to accept the amendment; and in the end all the
+      unreconstructed States voted adversely
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">133</a></span>
+			during the fall and winter of 1866-67. This unanimity of action was due
+			in part to the belief that, even if the amendment were ratified, the
+			Southern States would still be excluded, and in part to the general
+			dislike of the proscriptive section which would disfranchise all
+			Confederates of prominence and result in the breaking up of the state
+			governments. The example of unhappy Tennessee, which had ratified the
+			Fourteenth Amendment and had been readmitted, was not one to encourage
+			conservative people in the other Southern States.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rejection of the amendment put the question of reconstruction squarely
+      before Congress. There was no longer a possibility of accomplishing the
+      reconstruction of the Southern States by means of constitutional
+      amendments. Some of the Border and Northern States were already showing
+      signs of uneasiness at the continued exclusion of the South. But if the
+      Constitutional Amendment had failed, other means of reconstruction were at
+      hand, for the radicals now controlled the Thirty-ninth Congress, from
+      which the Southern representatives were excluded, and would also control
+      the Fortieth Congress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under the lead of Stevens and Sumner the radicals now perfected their
+      plans. On January 8, 1867,
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">134</a></span>
+			their first measure, conferring the franchise upon negroes in the
+			District of Columbia, was passed over the presidential veto, though the
+			proposal had been voted down a few weeks earlier by a vote of 6525 to
+			35 in Washington and 812 to 1 in Georgetown. In the next place, by an
+			act of January 31, 1867, the franchise was extended to negroes in the
+			territories, and on March 2, 1867, three important measures were enacted:
+			the Tenure of Office Act and a rider to the Army Appropriation
+			Act&mdash;both designed to limit the power of the President&mdash;and the
+			first Reconstruction Act. By the Tenure of Office Act the President was
+			prohibited from removing officeholders except with the consent of the
+      Senate; and by the Army Act he was forbidden to issue orders except
+      through General Grant or to relieve him of command or to assign him to
+      command away from Washington unless at the General's own request or with
+      the previous approval of the Senate. The first measure was meant to check
+      the removal of radical officeholders by Johnson, and the other, which was
+      secretly drawn up for Boutwell by Stanton, was designed to prevent the
+      President from exercising his constitutional command of the army.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first Reconstruction Act declared that no
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">135</a></span>
+			legal state government existed in the ten unreconstructed States and that
+			there was no adequate protection for life and property. The Johnson and
+			Lincoln governments in those States were declared to have no legal status
+			and to be subject wholly to the authority of the United States to modify
+			or abolish. The ten States were divided into five military districts, over
+			each of which a general officer was to be placed in command. Military
+			tribunals were to supersede the civil courts where necessary. Stevens was
+			willing to rest here, though some of his less radical followers, disliking
+			military rule but desiring to force negro suffrage, inserted a provision
+			in the law that a State might be readmitted to representation upon the
+			following conditions: a constitutional convention must be held, the
+			members of which were elected by males of voting age without regard to
+			color, excluding whites who would be disfranchised by the proposed
+			Fourteenth Amendment; a constitution including the same rule of suffrage
+			must be framed, ratified by the same electorate, and approved by Congress;
+			and lastly, the legislatures elected under this constitution must ratify
+			the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, after which, if the Fourteenth
+			Amendment should have become a part of the Federal
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">136</a></span>
+			Constitution, the State should be readmitted to representation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In order that the administration of this radical legislation might be
+      supervised by its friends, the Thirty-ninth Congress had passed a law
+      requiring the Fortieth Congress to meet on the 4th of March instead of in
+      December as was customary. According to the Reconstruction Act of the 2nd
+      of March it was left to the state government or to the people of a State
+      to make the first move towards reconstruction. If they preferred, they
+      might remain under military rule. Either by design or by carelessness no
+      machinery of administration was provided for the execution of the act.
+      When it became evident that the Southerners preferred military rule the
+      new Congress passed a Supplementary Reconstruction Act on the 23d of March
+      designed to force the earlier act into operation. The five commanding
+      generals were directed to register the blacks of voting age and the whites
+      who were not disfranchised, to hold elections for conventions, to call the
+      conventions, to hold elections to ratify or reject the constitutions, and
+      to forward the constitutions, if ratified, to the President for
+      transmission to Congress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In these reconstruction acts the whole doctrine
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">137</a></span>
+			of radicalism was put on the way to accomplishment. Its spread had been
+			rapid. In December, 1865, the majority of Congress would have accepted
+			with little modification the work of Lincoln and Johnson. Three months
+			later the Civil Rights Act measured the advance. Very soon the new
+			Freedmen's Bureau Act and the Fourteenth Amendment indicated the rising
+			tide of radicalism. The campaign of 1866 and the attitude of the Southern
+			States swept all radicals and most moderate Republicans swiftly into a
+			merciless course of reconstruction. Moderate reconstruction had nowhere
+			strong support. Congress, touched in its <i>amour propre</i> by
+			presidential disregard, was eager for extremes. Johnson, who regarded
+			himself as defending the Constitution against radical assaults, was
+			stubborn, irascible, and undignified, and with his associates was no
+			match in political strategy for his radical opponents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The average Republican or Unionist in the North, if he had not been
+      brought by skillful misrepresentation to believe a new rebellion impending
+      in the South, was at any rate painfully alive to the fear that the
+      Democratic party might regain power. With the freeing of the slaves the
+      representation of the South in Congress would be
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">138</a></span>
+			increased. At first it seemed that the South might divide in politics as
+			before the war, but the longer the delay the more the Southern whites
+			tended to unite into one party acting with the Democrats. With their
+			eighty-five representatives and a slight reaction in the North, they might
+			gain control of the lower House of Congress. The Union-Republican party
+			had a majority of less than one hundred in 1866 and this was lessened
+			slightly in the Fortieth Congress. The President was for all practical
+			purposes a Democrat again. The prospect was too much for the very human
+			politicians to view without distress. Stevens, speaking in support of the
+			Military Reconstruction Bill, said:
+    </p>
+		<blockquote>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      There are several good reasons for the passage of this bill. In the first
+      place, it is just. I am now confining my argument to negro suffrage in the
+      rebel States. Have not loyal blacks quite as good a right to choose rulers
+      and make laws as rebel whites? In the second place, it is necessary in
+      order to protect the loyal white men in the seceded States. With them the
+      blacks would act in a body, and it is believed that in each of these
+      States, except one, the two united would form a majority, control the
+      States, and protect themselves. Now they are the victims of daily murder.
+      They must suffer constant persecution or be exiled. Another good reason is
+      that it would insure the ascendancy of the union party.&hellip; I believe
+			&hellip; that on the continued
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">139</a></span>
+			ascendancy of that party depends the safety of this great nation. If
+			impartial suffrage is excluded in the rebel States, then every one of
+			them is sure to send a solid rebel electoral vote. They, with their
+			kindred Copperheads of the North, would always elect the President and
+			control Congress.
+    </p>
+		</blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The laws passed on the 2d and the 23d of March were war measures and
+      presupposed a continuance of war conditions. The Lincoln-Johnson state
+      governments were overturned; Congress fixed the qualifications of voters
+      for that time and for the future; and the President, shorn of much of his
+      constitutional power, could exercise but little control over the military
+      government. Nothing that a State might do would secure restoration until
+      it should ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution. The
+      war had been fought upon the theory that the old Union must be preserved;
+      but the basic theory of the reconstruction was that a new Union was to be
+      created.
+    </p>
+
+		<div class="chapterhead">
+		  <p>
+			   <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">140</a></span>
+			   <a name="Chapter06" id="Chapter06"></a>
+				 <br /><br /><br />
+			</p>
+    </div>
+	  <h2>
+      <a href="#Contents">CHAPTER VI.</a>
+    </h2>
+		<p class="chaptertitle">The Rule of the Major Generals</p>
+		<p class="noindent"><span class="first-word">From</span>
+      the passage of the reconstruction acts to the close of Johnson's
+      Administration, Congress, working the will of the radical majority, was in
+      supreme control. The army carried out the will of Congress and to that
+      body, not to the President, the commanding general and his subordinates
+      looked for direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The official opposition of the President to the policy of Congress ceased
+      when that policy was enacted into law. He believed this legislation to be
+      unconstitutional, but he considered it his duty to execute the laws. He at
+      once set about the appointment of generals to command the military
+      districts created in the South, &sup1; a task
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">141</a></span>
+			calling for no little discretion, since much depended upon the character
+			of these military governors, or "satraps," as they were frequently called
+			by the opposition. The commanding general in a district was charged with
+			many duties, military, political, and administrative. It was his duty to
+			carry on a government satisfactory to the radicals and not too irritating
+			to the Southern whites; at the same time he must execute the
+			reconstruction acts by putting old leaders out of power and negroes in.
+			Violent opposition to this policy on the part of the South was not looked
+			for. Notwithstanding the "Southern outrage" campaign, it was generally
+			recognized in government circles that conditions in the seceded States had
+			gradually been growing better since the close of the war. There was in
+			many regions, to be sure, a general laxity in enforcing laws, but that had
+			always been characteristic of the newer parts of the South. The Civil
+			Rights Act was generally in force, the "Black Laws" had been suspended,
+			and
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">142</a></span>
+			the Freedmen's Bureau was everywhere caring for the negroes. What disorder
+      existed was of recent origin and in the main was due to the unsettling
+      effects of the debates in Congress and to the organization of the negroes
+      for political purposes.
+    </p>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_06-1" name="footer_06-1"></a>
+&sup1; The first five generals appointed were Schofield, Sickles,
+     Pope, Ord, and Sheridan. None of these remained in his
+     district until reconstruction was completed. To Schofield's
+     command in the first district succeeded in turn Stoneman,
+     Webb, and Canby; Sickles gave way to Canby, and Pope to
+     Meade; Ord in the fourth district was followed by Gillem,
+     McDowell, and Ames; Sheridan, in the fifth, was succeeded by
+     Griffen, Mower, Hancock, Buchanan, Reynolds, and Canby. Some
+     of the generals were radical; others, moderate and tactful.
+     The most extreme were Sheridan, Pope, and Sickles. Those
+     most acceptable to the whites were Hancock, Schofield, and
+     Meade. General Grant himself became more radical in his
+     actions as he became involved in the fight between Congress
+     and the President.</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      Military rule was established in the South with slight friction, but it
+      was soon found that the reconstruction laws were not sufficiently clear on
+      two points: first, whether there was any limit to the authority of the
+      five generals over the local and state governments and, if so, whether the
+      limiting authority was in the President; and second, whether the
+      disfranchising provisions in the laws were punitive and hence to be
+      construed strictly. Attorney-General Stanbery, in May and June, 1867, drew
+      up opinions in which he maintained that the laws were to be considered
+      punitive and therefore to be construed strictly. After discussions in
+      cabinet meetings these opinions received the approval of all except
+      Stanton, Secretary of War, who had already joined the radical camp. The
+      Attorney-General's opinion was sent out to the district commanders for
+      their information and guidance. But Congress did not intend to permit the
+      President or his Cabinet to direct the process of reconstruction, and in
+      the Act of
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">143</a></span>
+			July 19, 1867, it gave a radical interpretation to the
+      reconstruction legislation, declared itself in control, gave full power to
+      General Grant and to the district commanders subject only to Grant,
+      directed the removal of all local officials who opposed the reconstruction
+      policies, and warned the civil and military officers of the United States
+      that none of them should "be bound in his action by any opinion of any
+      civil officer of the United States." This interpretive legislation gave a
+      broad basis for the military government and resulted in a severe
+      application of the disfranchising provisions of the laws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rule of the five generals lasted in all the States until June, 1868,
+      and continued in Mississippi, Texas, Virginia, and Georgia until 1870.
+      There had been, to be sure, some military government in 1865, subject,
+      however, to the President, and from 1865 to 1867 the army, along with the
+      Freedmen's Bureau, had exerted a strong influence in the government of the
+      South, but in the r&eacute;gime now inaugurated the military was supreme.
+			The generals had a superior at Washington, but whether it was the
+			President, General Grant, or Congress was not clear until the Act of July
+			19, 1867 made Congress the source of authority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+		  <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">144</a></span>
+      The power of the generals most strikingly appeared in their control of the
+      state governments which were continued as provisional organizations. Since
+      no elections were permitted, all appointments and removals were made from
+      military headquarters, which soon became political beehives, centers of
+      wirepulling and agencies for the distribution of spoils. At the outset
+      civil officers were ordered to retain their offices during good behavior,
+      subject to military control. But no local official was permitted to use
+      his influence ever so slightly against reconstruction. Since most of them
+      did not favor the policy of Congress, thousands were removed as "obstacles
+      to reconstruction." The Governors of Georgia, Louisiana, Virginia,
+      Mississippi, and Texas were displaced and others appointed in their stead.
+      All kinds of subordinate offices rapidly became vacant. New appointments
+      were nearly always carpetbaggers and native radicals who could take the
+      "ironclad" oath. The generals complained that there were not enough
+      competent native "loyalists" to fill the offices, and frequently an army
+      officer was installed as governor, treasurer, secretary of state, auditor,
+      or mayor. In nearly all towns the police force was reorganized and
+      former Federal soldiers were added to the force, while the
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">145</a></span>
+			regular troops were used for general police purposes and for rural
+			constabulary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Over the administration of justice the military authorities exercised a
+      close supervision. Instructions were sent out to court officers covering
+      the selection of juries, the suspension of certain laws, and the rules of
+      evidence and procedure. Courts were often closed, court decrees set aside
+      or modified, prisoners released, and many cases reserved for trial by
+      military commission. Some commanders required juries to admit negro
+      members and insisted that all jurors take the "ironclad" test oath. There
+      was some attempt at regulating the Federal courts but without much
+      success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since the state legislatures were forbidden to meet, much legislation was
+      enacted through military orders. Stay laws were enacted, the color line
+      was abolished, new criminal regulations were promulgated, and the police
+      power was invoked in some instances to justify sweeping measures, such as
+      the prohibition of whisky manufacture in North Carolina and South
+      Carolina. The military governors levied, increased, or decreased taxes and
+      made appropriations which the state treasurers were forced to pay, but
+      they restrained the radical conventions, all of which wished to spend much
+      money.
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">146</a></span>
+			According to the Act of March 23, 1867, the generals and their
+      appointees were to be paid by the United States, but in practice the
+      running expenses of reconstruction were paid by the state treasurers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Any attempt to favor the Confederate soldiers was frowned upon. Laws
+      providing wooden legs and free education for crippled Confederates were
+      suspended. Militia organizations and military schools were forbidden. No
+      uniform might be worn, no parades were permitted, no memorial and
+      historical societies were to be organized, and no meeting of any kind
+      could be held without a permit. The attempt to control the press resulted
+      in what one general called "a horrible uproar." Editors were forbidden to
+      express themselves too strongly against reconstruction; public advertising
+      and printing were awarded only to those papers actively supporting
+      reconstruction. Several newspapers were suppressed, a notable example
+      being the <i>Tuscaloosa Independent Monitor</i>, whose editor,
+			Ryland Randolph, was a picturesque figure in Alabama journalism and a
+			leader in the Ku Klux Klan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The military administration was thorough, and, as a whole honest and
+      efficient. With fewer than ten thousand soldiers the generals maintained
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">147</a></span>
+      order and carried on the reconstruction of the South. The whites made no
+      attempt at resistance, though they were irritated by military rule and
+      resented the loss of self-government. But most Southerners preferred the
+      rule of the army to the alternative reign of the carpetbagger, scalawag,
+      and negro. The extreme radicals at the North, on the other hand, were
+      disgusted at the conservative policy of the generals. The apathy of the
+      whites at the beginning of the military reconstruction excited surprise on
+      all sides. Not only was there no violent opposition, but for a few weeks
+      there was no opposition at all. The civil officials were openly
+      unsympathetic, and the newspapers voiced dissent not untouched with
+      disgust; others simply could not take the situation seriously because it
+      seemed so absurd; many leaders were indifferent, while others&mdash;among
+			them, Generals Lee, Beauregard, and Longstreet, and Governor
+	    Patton&mdash;without approving the policy, advised the whites to
+			co&ouml;perate with the military authorities and save all they could out
+			of the situation. General Beauregard, for instance, wrote in 1867: "If the
+			suffrage of the negro is properly handled and directed we shall defeat
+			our adversaries with their own weapons. The negro
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">148</a></span>
+			is Southern born. With education and property qualifications he can be
+			made to take an interest in the affairs of the South and in its
+			prosperity. He will side with the whites."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Northern observers who were friendly to the South or who disapproved of
+      this radical reconstruction saw the danger more clearly than the
+      Southerners themselves, who seemed not to appreciate the full implication
+      of the situation. In this connection the New York <i>Herald</i> remarked:
+    </p>
+		<blockquote>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      We may regard the entire ten unreconstructed Southern States, with
+      possibly one or two exceptions, as forced by a secret and overwhelming
+      revolutionary influence to a common and inevitable fate. They are all
+      bound to be governed by blacks spurred on by worse than blacks&mdash;white
+      wretches who dare not show their faces in respectable society anywhere.
+      This is the most abominable phase barbarism has assumed since the dawn of
+      civilization. It was all right and proper to put down the rebellion. It
+      was all right perhaps to emancipate the slaves.&hellip; But it is not
+			right to make slaves of white men even though they may have been former
+			masters of blacks. This is but a change in a system of bondage that is
+			rendered the more odious and intolerable because it has been inaugurated
+			in an enlightened instead of a dark and uncivilized age.
+    </p>
+		</blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The political parties rapidly grouped themselves for the coming struggle.
+      The radical Republican
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">149</a></span>
+			party indeed was in process of organization in the South even before the
+			passage of the reconstruction acts. Its membership was made up of negroes,
+			carpetbaggers, or Northern men who had come in as speculators, officers
+			of the Freedmen's Bureau and of the army, scalawags or Confederate
+			renegades, "Peace Society" men, &sup1; and Unionists of Civil War times,
+			with a few old Whigs who could not yet bring themselves to affiliate with
+			the Democrats. At first it seemed that a respectable number of whites
+			might be secured for the radical party, but the rapid organization of the
+			negroes checked the accession of whites. In the winter and spring of
+			1866-67 the negroes near the towns were well organized by the Union League
+			and the Freedmen's Bureau and then, after the passage of the
+			reconstruction acts, the organizing activities of the radical chieftains
+			shifted to the rural districts. The Union League was greatly extended;
+			Union League conventions were held to which local whites were not
+			admitted; and the formation of a black man's party was well on the way
+      before the registration of the voters was completed. Visiting statesmen
+      from the North, among them
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">150</a></span>
+			Henry Wilson of Massachusetts and "Pig Iron" Kelley of Pennsylvania,
+			toured the South in support of the radical program, and the registrars
+			and all Federal officials aided in the work.
+    </p>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_06-2" name="footer_06-2"></a>
+&sup1; See <i>The Day of the Confederacy,</i> by Nathaniel W.
+     Stephenson (in <i>The Chronicles of America</i>), p. 121,
+     footnote.</p>
+</div>
+
+    <p>
+      The whites, slow to comprehend the real extent of radicalism, were finally
+      aroused to the necessity of organizing, if they were to influence the
+      negro and have a voice in the conventions. The old party divisions were
+      still evident. With difficulty a portion of the Whigs were brought with
+			the Democrats into one conservative party during the summer and fall of
+			1867, though many still held aloof. The lack of the old skilled leadership
+			was severely felt. In places where the white man's party was given a name
+			it was called "Democratic <em>and</em> Conservative," to spare the
+			feelings of former Whigs who were loath to bear the party name of their
+			quondam opponents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first step in the military reconstruction was the registration of
+      voters. In each State a central board of registrars was appointed by the
+      district commander and a local board for every county and large town. Each
+      board consisted of three members&mdash;all radicals&mdash;who were
+      required to subscribe to the "ironclad" oath. In several States one negro
+      was appointed to each local board. The
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">151</a></span>
+			registrars listed negro voters during the day, and at night worked at the
+		  organization of a radical Republican party. The prospective voters were
+			required to take the oath prescribed in the Reconstruction Act, but the
+			registrars were empowered to go behind the oath and investigate the
+			Confederate record of each applicant. This authority was invoked to carry
+			the disfranchisement of the whites far beyond the intention of the law in
+			an attempt to destroy the leadership of the whites and to register enough
+			negroes to outvote them at the polls. For this purpose the registration
+			was continued until October 1, 1867, and an active campaign of education
+			and organization carried on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the close of the registration, 703,000 black voters were on the rolls
+      and 627,000 whites. In Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, and
+      Mississippi there were black majorities, and in the other States the
+      blacks and the radical whites together formed majorities. The white
+      minorities included several thousand who had been rejected by the
+      registrars but restored by the military commanders. Though large numbers
+      of blacks were dropped from the revised rolls as fraudulently registered,
+      the registration statistics nevertheless
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">152</a></span>
+			bore clear witness to the political purpose of those who compiled them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next followed a vote on the question of holding a state convention and the
+      election of delegates to such a convention if held&mdash;a double
+      election. The whites, who had been harassed in the registration and who
+      feared race conflicts at the elections, considered whether they ought not
+      to abstain from voting. By staying away from the polls, they might bring
+      the vote cast in each State below a majority and thus defeat the proposed
+      conventions for, unless a majority of the registered voters actually cast
+      ballots either for or against a convention, no convention could be held.
+      Nowhere, however, was this plan of not voting fully carried out, for,
+      though most whites abstained, enough of them voted (against the
+      conventions, of course) to make the necessary majority in each State. The
+      effect of the abstention policy upon the personnel of the conventions was
+      unfortunate. In every convention there was a radical majority with a
+      conservative and all but negligible minority. In South Carolina and
+      Louisiana there were negro majorities. In every State except North
+      Carolina, Texas, and Virginia the negroes and the carpetbaggers together
+      were in the majority over native whites.
+		  <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">153</a></span>
+      The conservative whites were of fair ability; the carpetbaggers and
+      scalawags produced in each convention a few able leaders, but most of them
+      were conscienceless political soldiers of fortune; the negro members were
+      inexperienced, and most of them were quite ignorant, though a few leaders
+      of ability did appear among them. In Alabama, for example, only two negro
+      members could write, though half had been taught to sign their names. They
+      were barbers, field hands, hack drivers, and servants. A negro chaplain
+      was elected who invoked divine blessings on "unioners and cusses on
+      rebels." It was a sign of the new era when the convention specially
+      invited the "ladies of colored members" to seats in the gallery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The work of the conventions was for the most part cut and dried, the abler
+      members having reached a general agreement before they met. The
+      constitutions, mosaics of those of other States, were noteworthy only for
+      the provisions made to keep the whites out of power and to regulate the
+      relations of the races in social matters. The Texas constitution alone
+      contained no proscriptive clauses beyond those required by the Fourteenth
+      Amendment. The most thoroughgoing proscription of Confederates was found
+      in the constitutions
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">154</a></span>
+			of Mississippi, Alabama, and Virginia; and in these States the voter must
+			also purge himself of guilt by agreeing to accept the "civil and political
+			equality of all men" or by supporting reconstruction. Only in South
+			Carolina and Louisiana were race lines abolished by law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The legislative work of the conventions was more interesting than the
+      constitution making. By ordinance the legality of negro marriages was
+      dated from November, 1867, or some date later than had been fixed by the
+      white conventions of 1865. Mixed schools were provided in some States;
+      militia for the black districts but not for the white was to be raised;
+      while in South Carolina it was made a penal offense to call a person a
+      "Yankee" or a "nigger." Few of the negro delegates demanded proscription
+      of whites or social equality; they wanted schools and the vote. The white
+      radicals were more anxious to keep the former Confederates from holding
+      office than from voting. The generals in command everywhere used their
+      influence to secure moderate action by the conventions, and for this they
+      were showered with abuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As provided by the reconstruction acts, the new constitutions were
+      submitted to the electorate
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">155</a></span>
+			created by those instruments. Unless a majority of the registered voters
+			in a State should take part in the election the reconstruction would fail
+			and the State would remain under military rule. The whites now inaugurated
+			a more systematic policy of abstention and in Alabama, on February 4,
+			1868, succeeded in holding the total vote below a majority. Congress then
+			rushed to the rescue of radicalism with the act of the 11th of March,
+			which provided that a mere majority of those voting in the State was
+			sufficient to inaugurate reconstruction. Arkansas had followed the lead of
+			Alabama, but too late; in Mississippi the constitution was defeated by a
+			majority vote; in Texas the convention had made no provision for a vote;
+			and in Virginia the commanding general, disapproving of the work of the
+			convention, refused to pay the expenses of an election. In the other six
+			States the constitutions were adopted. &sup1;
+    </p>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_06-3" name="footer_06-3"></a>
+&sup1; Except in Texas, the work of constitution making was
+     completed between November 5, 1867, and May 18, 1868.</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      These elections gave rise to more violent contests than before. They also
+      were double elections, as the voters cast ballots for state and local
+      officials and at the same time for or against the constitution. The
+      radical nominations were made by the
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">156</a></span>
+			Union League and the Freedmen's Bureau, and nearly all radicals who had
+			been members of conventions were nominated and elected to office. The
+			negroes, expecting now to reap some benefits of reconstruction, frequently
+			brought sacks to the polls to "put the franchise in." The elections were
+			all over by June, 1868, and the newly elected legislatures promptly
+			ratified the Fourteenth Amendment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It now remained for Congress to approve the work done in the South and to
+      readmit the reorganized States. The case of Alabama gave some trouble.
+      Even Stevens, for a time, thought that this State should stay out; but
+      there was danger in delay. The success of the abstention policy in Alabama
+      and Arkansas and the reviving interest of the whites foreshadowed white
+      majorities in some places; the scalawags began to forsake the radical
+      party for the conservatives; and there were Democratic gains in the North
+      in 1867. Only six States, New York and five New England States, allowed
+      the negro to vote, while four States, Minnesota, Michigan, Kansas, and
+      Ohio, voted down negro suffrage after the passage of the reconstruction
+      acts. The ascendancy of the radicals in Congress was menaced. The radicals
+      needed the support of their radical brethren in Southern States
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">157</a></span>
+			and they could not afford to wait for the Fourteenth Amendment to become
+			a part of the Constitution or to tolerate other delay. On the 22d and the
+			25th of June acts were therefore passed admitting seven States, Alabama
+			included, to representation in Congress upon the "fundamental condition"
+			that "the constitutions of neither of said States shall ever be so amended
+			or changed as to deprive any citizens or class of citizens of the United
+      States of the right to vote in said State, who are entitled to vote by the
+      constitution thereof herein recognized."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The generals now turned over the government to the recently elected
+      radical officials and retired into the background. Military reconstruction
+      was thus accomplished in all the States except Virginia, Mississippi, and
+      Texas.
+    </p>
+		<div class="chapterhead">
+		  <p>
+			   <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">158</a></span>
+			   <a name="Chapter07" id="Chapter07"></a>
+				 <br /><br /><br />
+			</p>
+    </div>
+	  <h2>
+      <a href="#Contents">CHAPTER VII.</a>
+    </h2>
+		<p class="chaptertitle">The Trial of President Johnson</p>
+		<p class="noindent"><span class="first-word">While</span>
+      the radical program was being executed in the South, Congress was
+      engaged not only in supervising reconstruction but in subduing the Supreme
+      Court and in "conquering" President Johnson. One must admire the
+      efficiency of the radical machine. When the Southerners showed that they
+      preferred military rule as permitted by the Act of the 2nd of March,
+      Congress passed the Act of the 23d of March which forced the
+      reconstruction. When the President ventured to assert his power in behalf
+      of a considerate administration of the reconstruction acts, Congress took
+      the power out of his hands by the law of the 19th of July. The Southern
+      plan to defeat the new state constitutions by abstention was no sooner
+      made clear in the case of Alabama than Congress came to the rescue with
+      the Act of March 11, 1868.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had it seemed necessary, Congress would have
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">159</a></span>
+			handled the Supreme Court as it did the Southerners. The opponents of
+			radical reconstruction were anxious to get the reconstruction laws of
+			March, 1867, before the Court. Chief Justice Chase was known to be
+		  opposed to military reconstruction, and four other justices were, it was
+			believed, doubtful of the constitutionality of the laws. A series of
+			conservative decisions gave hope to those who looked to the Court for
+			relief. The first decision, in the case of <i>ex parte</i> Milligan,
+			declared unconstitutional the trials of civilians by military commissions
+			when civil courts were open. A few months later, in the cases of Cummings
+			<i>vs</i>. Missouri and <i>ex parte</i> Garland, the Court declared
+			invalid, because <i>ex post facto</i>, the state laws designed to punish
+			former Confederates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the first attempts to get the reconstruction acts before the Supreme
+      Court failed. The State of Mississippi, in April, 1867, brought suit to
+      restrain the President from executing the reconstruction acts. The Court
+      refused to interfere with the Executive. A similar suit was then brought
+      against Secretary Stanton by Georgia with a like result. But in 1868, in
+      the case of <i>ex parte</i> McCardle, it appeared that the question of the
+      constitutionality of the reconstruction acts
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">160</a></span>
+			would be passed upon. McCardle, a Mississippi editor arrested for
+			opposition to reconstruction and convicted by military commission,
+			appealed to the Supreme Court, which asserted its jurisdiction. But the
+			radicals in alarm rushed through Congress an act (March 27, 1868) which
+			took away from the Court its jurisdiction in cases arising under the
+			reconstruction acts. The highest court was thus silenced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The attempt to remove the President from office was the only part of the
+      radical program that failed, and this by the narrowest of margins. During
+      the spring and summer of 1866 there was some talk among politicians of
+      impeaching President Johnson, and in December a resolution was introduced
+      by Representative Ashley of Ohio looking toward impeachment. Though the
+      committee charged with the investigation of "the official conduct of
+      Andrew Johnson" reported that enough testimony had been taken to justify
+      further inquiry, the House took no action. There were no less than five
+      attempts at impeachment during the next year. Stevens, Butler, and others
+      were anxious to get the President out of the way, but the majority were as
+      yet unwilling to impeach for merely political reasons. There were some
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">161</a></span>
+			who thought that the radicals had sufficient majorities to ensure all
+			needed legislation and did not relish the thought of Ben Wade in the
+		  presidency. &sup1; Others considered that no just grounds for action had
+			been found in the several investigations of Johnson's record. Besides,
+		  the President's authority and influence had been much curtailed by the
+			legislation relating to the Freedmen's Bureau, tenure of office,
+			reconstruction, and command of the army, and Congress had also refused to
+			recognize his amnesty and pardoning powers.
+    </p>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_07-1" name="footer_07-1"></a>
+&sup1; Senator Wade of Ohio was President <i>pro tempore</i> of the
+     Senate and by the act of 1791 would succeed President
+     Johnson if he were removed from office.</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      But the desire to impeach the President was increasing in power, and very
+      little was needed to provoke a trial of strength between the radicals and
+      the President. The drift toward impeachment was due in part to the
+      legislative reaction against the Executive, and in part to Johnson's own
+      opposition to reconstruction and to his use of the patronage against the
+      radicals. Specific grievances were found in his vetoes of the various
+      reconstruction bills, in his criticisms of Congress and the radical
+      leaders, and in the fact, as Stevens asserted, that he was a "radical
+      renegade."
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">162</a></span>
+			Johnson was a Southern man, an old-line State Rights Democrat,
+      somewhat anti-negro in feeling. He knew no book except the Constitution,
+      and that he loved with all his soul. Sure of the correctness of his
+      position, he was too stubborn to change or to compromise. He was no more
+      to be moved than Stevens or Sumner. To overcome Johnson's vetoes required
+      two-thirds of each House of Congress; to impeach and remove him would
+      require only a majority of the House and two-thirds of the Senate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The desired occasion for impeachment was furnished by Johnson's attempt to
+      get Edwin M. Stanton, the Secretary of War, out of the Cabinet. Stanton
+      held radical views and was at no time sympathetic with or loyal to
+      Johnson, but he loved office too well to resign along with those cabinet
+      members who could not follow the President in his struggle with Congress.
+      He was seldom frank and sincere in his dealings with the President, and
+      kept up an underhand correspondence with the radical leaders, even
+      assisting in framing some of the reconstruction legislation which was
+      designed to render Johnson powerless. In him the radicals had a
+      representative within the President's Cabinet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+		  <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">163</a></span>
+      Wearied of Stanton's disloyalty, Johnson asked him to resign and, upon a
+      refusal, suspended him in August, 1867, and placed General Grant in
+      temporary charge of the War Department. General Grant, Chief Justice
+      Chase, and Secretary McCulloch, though they all disliked Stanton, advised
+      the President against suspending him. But Johnson was determined. About
+      the same time he exercised his power in removing Sheridan and Sickles from
+      their commands in the South and replaced them with Hancock and Canby. The
+      radicals were furious, but Johnson had secured at least the support of a
+      loyal Cabinet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The suspension of Stanton was reported to the Senate in December, 1867,
+			and on January 13, 1868, the Senate voted not to concur in the
+		  President's action. Upon receiving notice of the vote in the Senate,
+	    Grant at once left the War Department and Stanton again took possession.
+			Johnson now charged Grant with failing to keep a promise either to hold
+			on himself or to make it possible to appoint some one else who would hold
+			on until the matter might be brought into the courts. The President by
+			this accusation angered Grant and threw him with his great influence
+			into the arms of the radicals.
+		</p>
+		<p>
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">164</a></span>
+			Against the advice of his leading counselors Johnson persisted
+      in his intention to keep Stanton out of the Cabinet. Accordingly on the
+      21st of February he dismissed Stanton from office and appointed Lorenzo
+      Thomas, the Adjutant General, as acting Secretary of War. Stanton, advised
+      by the radicals in Congress to "stick," refused to yield possession to
+      Thomas and had him arrested for violation of the Tenure of Office Act. The
+      matter now was in the courts where Johnson wanted it, but the radical
+      leaders, fearing that the courts would decide against Stanton and the
+      reconstruction acts, had the charges against Thomas withdrawn. Thus failed
+      the last attempt to get the reconstruction laws before the courts. On the
+      22nd of February the President sent to the Senate the name of Thomas
+      Ewing, General Sherman's father-in-law, as Secretary of War, but no
+      attention was paid to the nomination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On February 24, 1868, the House voted, 128 to 47, to impeach the President
+      "of high crimes and misdemeanors in office." The Senate was formally
+      notified the next day and on the 4th of March the seven managers selected
+      by the House appeared before the Senate with the eleven articles of
+      impeachment. At first it seemed to the public
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">165</a></span>
+			that the impeachment proceedings were merely the culmination of a struggle
+		  for the control of the army. There were rumors that Johnson had plans to
+			use the army against Congress and against reconstruction. General Grant,
+			directed by Johnson to accept orders from Stanton only if he were
+			satisfied that they came from the President, refused to follow these
+			instructions. Stanton, professing to fear violence, barricaded himself in
+			the War Department and was furnished with a guard of soldiers by General
+			Grant, who from this time used his influence in favor of impeachment.
+			Excited by the most sensational rumors, some people even believed a new
+			rebellion to be imminent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The impeachment was rushed to trial by the House managers and was not
+      ended until the decision was taken by the votes of the 16th and 26th of
+      May. The eleven articles of impeachment consisted of summaries of all that
+      had been charged against Johnson, except the charge that he had been an
+      accomplice in the murder of Lincoln. The only one which had any real basis
+      was the first, which asserted that he had violated the Tenure of Office
+      Act in trying to remove Stanton. The other articles were merely expansions
+      of the first or
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">166</a></span>
+			were based upon Johnson's opposition to reconstruction or upon his
+			speeches in criticism of Congress. Nothing could be said about his
+			control of the patronage, though this was one of the unwritten charges.
+			J.&nbsp;W. Schuckers, in his life of Chase, says that the radical
+      leaders "felt the vast importance of the presidential patronage; many of
+      them felt, too, that, according to the maxim that to the victors belong
+      the spoils, the Republican party was rightfully entitled to the Federal
+      patronage, and they determined to get possession of it. There was but one
+      method and that was by impeachment and removal of the President."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The leading House managers were Stevens, Butler, Bingham, and Boutwell,
+      all better known as politicians than as lawyers. The President was
+      represented by an abler legal array: Curtis, Evarts, Stanbery, Nelson,
+			and Groesbeck. Jeremiah Black was at first one of the counsel for the
+      President but withdrew under conditions not entirely creditable to
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The trial was a one-sided affair. The President's counsel were refused
+      more than six days for the preparation of the case. Chief Justice Chase,
+      who presided over the trial, insisted upon regarding the Senate as a
+      judicial and not a political
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">167</a></span>
+			body, and he accordingly ruled that only legal evidence should be
+			admitted; but the Senate majority preferred to assume that they were
+			settling a political question. Much evidence favorable to the President
+			was excluded, but everything else was admitted. As the trial went on the
+		  country began to understand that the impeachment was a mistake. Few
+			people wanted to see Senator Wade made President. The partisan attitude
+			of the Senate majority and the weakness of the case against Johnson had
+			much to do in moderating public opinion, and the timely nomination of
+		  General Schofield as Secretary of War after Stanton's resignation
+			reassured those who feared that the army might be placed under some
+			extreme Democrat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the time drew near for the decision, every possible pressure was
+      brought by the radicals to induce senators to vote for conviction. To
+      convict the President, thirty-six votes were necessary. There were only
+      twelve Democrats in the Senate, but all were known to be in favor of
+      acquittal. When the test came on the 16th of May, seven Republicans voted
+      with the Democrats for acquittal on the eleventh article. Another vote on
+      the 26th of May, on the first and second articles,
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">168</a></span>
+			showed that conviction was not possible. The radical legislative reaction
+			was thus checked at its highest point and the presidency as a part of the
+			American governmental system was no longer in danger. The seven
+			Republicans had, however, signed their own political death warrants;
+		  they were never forgiven by the party leaders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The presidential campaign was beginning to take shape even before the
+      impeachment trial began. Both the Democrats and the reorganized
+      Republicans were turning with longing toward General Grant as a candidate.
+      Though he had always been a Democrat, nevertheless when Johnson actually
+      called him a liar and a promise breaker Grant went over to the radicals
+      and was nominated for President on May 20, 1868, by the National Union
+      Republican party. Schuyler Colfax was the candidate for Vice President.
+      The Democrats, who could have won with Grant and who under good leadership
+      still had a bare chance to win, nominated Horatio Seymour of New York and
+      Francis P. Blair of Missouri. The former had served as war governor of New
+      York, while the latter was considered an extreme Democrat who believed
+      that the radical reconstruction of the South should be stopped, the troops
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">169</a></span>
+      withdrawn, and the people left to form their own governments. The
+      Democratic platform pronounced itself opposed to the reconstruction
+      policy, but Blair's opposition was too extreme for the North. Seymour,
+      more moderate and a skillful campaigner, made headway in the
+      rehabilitation of the Democratic party. The Republican party declared for
+      radical reconstruction and negro suffrage in the South but held that each
+      Northern State should be allowed to settle the suffrage for itself. It was
+      not a courageous platform, but Grant was popular and carried his party
+      through to success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The returns showed that in the election Grant had carried twenty-six
+      States with 214 electoral votes, while Seymour had carried only eight
+      States with 80 votes. But an examination of the popular vote, which was
+      3,000,000 for Grant and 2,700,000 for Seymour, gave the radicals cause for
+      alarm, for it showed that the Democrats had more white votes than the
+      Republicans, whose total included nearly 700,000 blacks. To insure the
+      continuance of the radicals in power, the Fifteenth Amendment was framed
+      and sent out to the States on February 26, 1869. This amendment appeared
+      not only to make safe the negro
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">170</a></span>
+			majorities in the South but also gave the ballot to the negroes in a
+		  score of Northern States and thus assured, for a time at least,
+			900,000 negro voters for the Republican party.
+    </p>
+		<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="grant.jpg" id="grant.jpg"></a>
+<img src="images/grant.jpg" width="504" height="524"
+alt="[Illustration: Hiram Ulysses Grant]"
+title="[Illustration: Hiram Ulysses Grant]" /><br />
+<span class="caption"><a href="#Illustrations">President Grant.</a><br />
+Photograph. In the collection of L. C. Handy, Washington.</span>
+   <hr />
+</div>
+    <p>
+      When Johnson's term ended and he gave place to President Grant, four
+      States were still unreconstructed&mdash;Virginia, Texas, and Mississippi,
+      in which the reconstruction had failed, and Georgia, which, after
+      accomplishing reconstruction, had again been placed under military rule by
+      Congress. In Virginia, which was too near the capital for such rough work
+      as readmitted Arkansas and Alabama into the Union, the new constitution
+      was so severe in its provisions for disfranchisement that the disgusted
+      district commander would not authorize the expenditure necessary to have
+      it voted on. In Mississippi a similar constitution had failed of adoption,
+      and in Texas the strife of party factions, radical and moderate
+      Republican, had so delayed the framing of the constitution that it had not
+      come to a vote.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Republican politicians, however, wanted the offices in these States,
+      and Congress by its resolution of February 18, 1869 directed the district
+      commanders to remove all civil officers who could not take the "ironclad"
+      oath and to appoint
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">171</a></span>
+			those who could subscribe to it. An exception, however, was made in favor
+		  of the scalawags who had supported reconstruction and whose disabilities
+			had been removed by Congress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      President Grant was anxious to complete the reconstruction and recommended
+      to Congress that the constitutions of Virginia and Mississippi be
+      re-submitted to the people with a separate vote on the disfranchising
+      sections. Congress, now in harmony with the Executive, responded by
+      placing the reconstruction of the three States in the hands of the
+      President, but with the proviso that each State must ratify the Fifteenth
+      Amendment. Grant thereupon fixed a time for voting in each State and
+      directed that in Virginia and Mississippi the disfranchising clauses be
+      submitted separately. As a result, the constitutions were ratified but
+      proscription was voted down. The radicals secured control of Mississippi
+      and Texas, but a conservative combination carried Virginia and thus came
+      near keeping the State out of the Union. Finally, during the early months
+      of 1870 the three States were readmitted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With respect to Georgia a peculiar condition of affairs existed. In June,
+      1868, Georgia had been readmitted with the first of the reconstructed
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">172</a></span>
+      States. The state legislature at once expelled the twenty-seven negro
+      members, on the ground that the recent legislation and the state
+      constitution gave the negroes the right to vote but not to hold office.
+      Congress, which had already admitted the Georgia representatives, refused
+      to receive the senators and turned the State back to military control. In
+      1869-70 Georgia was again reconstructed after a drastic purging of the
+      Legislature by the military commander, the reseating of the negro members,
+      and the ratification of both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. The
+      State was readmitted to representation in July, 1870, after the failure of
+      a strong effort to extend for two years the carpetbag government of the
+      State.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon the last States to pass under the radical yoke heavier conditions
+      were imposed than upon the earlier ones. Not only were they required to
+      ratify the Fifteenth Amendment, but the "fundamental conditions" embraced,
+      in addition to the prohibition against future change of the suffrage, a
+      requirement that the negroes should never be deprived of school and
+      officeholding rights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The congressional plan of reconstruction had thus been carried through by
+      able leaders in the face of the opposition of a united white South,
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">173</a></span>
+			nearly half the North, the President, the Supreme Court, and in the
+			beginning a majority of Congress. This success was due to the poor
+			leadership of the conservatives and to the ability and solidarity of
+			the radicals led by Stevens and Sumner. The radicals had a definite
+			program; the moderates had not. The object of the radicals was to secure
+			the supremacy in the South by the aid of the negroes and exclusion of
+			whites. Was this policy politically wise? It was at least temporarily
+			successful. The choice offered by the radicals seemed to lie between
+		  military rule for an indefinite period and negro suffrage; and since
+			most Americans found military rule distasteful, they preferred to try
+			negro suffrage. But, after all, negro suffrage had to be supported by
+			military rule, and in the end both failed completely.
+    </p>
+		<div class="chapterhead">
+		  <p>
+			   <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">174</a></span>
+			   <a name="Chapter08" id="Chapter08"></a>
+				 <br /><br /><br />
+			</p>
+    </div>
+	  <h2>
+      <a href="#Contents">CHAPTER VIII.</a>
+    </h2>
+		<p class="chaptertitle">The Union League of America</p>
+		<p class="noindent"><span class="first-word">The</span>
+      elections of 1867-68 showed that the negroes were well organized under
+      the control of the radical Republican leaders and that their former
+      masters had none of the influence over the blacks in political matters
+      which had been feared by some Northern friends of the negro and had been
+      hoped for by such Southern leaders as Governor Patton and General Hampton.
+      Before 1865 the discipline of slavery, the influence of the master's
+      family, and of the Southern church, had sufficed to control the blacks.
+			But after emancipation they looked to the Federal soldiers and Union
+			officials as the givers of freedom and the guardians of the future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the Union soldiers, especially the negro troops, from the Northern
+      teachers, the missionaries and the organizers of negro churches, from the
+      Northern officials and traveling politicians, the negroes learned that
+      their interests were not those
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">175</a></span>
+			of the whites. The attitude of the average white in the South often
+			confirmed this growing estrangement. It was difficult even for the white
+			leaders to explain the riots at Memphis and New Orleans. And those who
+			sincerely wished well for the negro and who desired to control him for
+			the good of both races could not possibly assure him that he was fit for
+			the suffrage. For even Patton and Hampton must tell him that they knew
+			better than he and that he should follow their advice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The appeal made to freedmen by the Northern leaders was in every way more
+      forceful, because it had behind it the prestige of victory in war and for
+      the future it could promise anything. Until 1867 the principal agency in
+      bringing about the separation of the races had been the Freedmen's Bureau
+      which, with its authority, its courts, its rations, clothes, and its
+      "forty acres and a mule," did effective work in breaking down the
+      influence of the master. But to understand fully the almost absolute
+      control exercised over the blacks in 1867-68 by alien adventurers one
+      must examine the workings of an oath-bound society known as the Union or
+      Loyal League. It was this order, dominated by a few radical whites, which
+      organized, disciplined, and controlled the ignorant
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">176</a></span>
+			negro masses and paralyzed the influence of the conservative whites.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Union League of America had its origin in Ohio in the fall of 1862,
+      when the outlook for the Union cause was gloomy. The moderate policies of
+      the Lincoln Administration had alienated those in favor of extreme
+      measures; the Confederates had won military successes in the field; the
+      Democrats had made some gains in the elections; the Copperheads &sup1;
+			were actively opposed to the Washington Government; the Knights of the
+			Golden Circle were organizing to resist the continuance of the war; and
+			the Emancipation Proclamation had chilled the loyalty of many Union men,
+		  which was everywhere at a low ebb, especially in the Northern cities. It
+		  was to counteract these depressing influences that the Union League
+		  movement was begun among those who were associated in the work of the
+		  United States Sanitary Commission. Observing the threatening state of
+		  public opinion, members of this organization proposed that "loyalty be
+		  organized, consolidated and made effective."
+    </p>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_08-1" name="footer_08-1"></a>
+&sup1; See <i>Abraham Lincoln and the Union,</i> by Nathaniel W.
+     Stephenson (in <i>The Chronicles of America</i>), pp. 156-7,
+     234-5</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      The first organization was made by eleven
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">177</a></span>
+			men in Cleveland, Ohio, in November, 1862. The Philadelphia Union League
+			was organized a month later, and in January, 1863, the New York Union
+			League followed. The members were pledged to uncompromising and
+			unconditional loyalty to the Union, to complete subordination of
+			political views to this loyalty, and to the repudiation of any belief
+			in state rights. The other large cities followed the example of
+			Philadelphia and New York, and soon Leagues, connected in a loose
+			federation, were formed all through the North. They were social as
+      well as political in their character and assumed as their task the
+      stimulation and direction of loyal Union opinion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the Union armies proceeded to occupy the South, the Union League sent
+      its agents among the disaffected Southern people. Its agents cared for
+      negro refugees in the contraband camps and in the North. In such work the
+      League co&ouml;perated with the various Freedmen's Aid Societies, the
+      Department of Negro Affairs, and later with the Freedmen's Bureau. Part of
+      the work of the League was to distribute campaign literature, and many of
+      the radical pamphlets on reconstruction and the negro problem bore the
+      Union League imprint. The New York League sent out about seventy
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">178</a></span>
+			thousand copies of various publications, while the Philadelphia League far
+      surpassed this record, circulating within eight years four million five
+      hundred thousand copies of 144 different pamphlets. The literature
+      consisted largely of accounts of "Southern outrages" taken from the
+      reports of Bureau agents and similar sources.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the close of the Civil War the League did not cease its active
+      interest in things political. It was one of the first organizations to
+      declare for negro suffrage and the disfranchisement of Confederates; it
+      held steadily to this declaration during the four years following the war;
+      and it continued as a sort of bureau in the radical Republican party for
+      the purpose of controlling the negro vote in the South. Its
+      representatives were found in the lobbies of Congress demanding extreme
+      measures, endorsing the reconstruction policies of Congress, and
+      condemning the course of the President. After the first year or two of
+      reconstruction the Leagues in the larger Northern cities began to grow
+      away from the strictly political Union League of America and tended to
+      become mere social clubs for members of the same political belief. The
+      eminently respectable Philadelphia and New York clubs had little in common
+      with
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">179</a></span>
+			the leagues of the Southern and Border States except a general
+      adherence to the radical program.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even before the end of the war the League was extending its organization
+      into the parts of the Confederacy held by the Federal forces, admitting to
+      membership the army officers and the leading Unionists, though maintaining
+      for the sake of the latter "a discreet secrecy." With the close of the war
+      and the establishment of army posts over the South the League grew
+      rapidly. The civilians who followed the army, the Bureau agents, the
+      missionaries, and the Northern teachers formed one class of membership;
+      and the loyalists of the hill and mountain country, who had become
+      disaffected toward the Confederate administration and had formed such
+      orders as the Heroes of America, the Red String Band, and the Peace
+      Society, formed another class. Soon there were added to these the
+      deserters, a few old line Whigs who intensely disliked the Democrats, and
+      others who decided to cast their lot with the victors. The disaffected
+      politicians of the up-country, who wanted to be cared for in the
+      reconstruction, saw in the organization a means of dislodging from power
+      the political leaders of the low country. It has been estimated that
+      thirty per cent of the white men of
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">180</a></span>
+			the hill and mountain counties of the South joined the Union League in
+			1865-66. They cared little about the original objects of the order but
+			hoped to make it the nucleus of an anti-Democratic political organization.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But on the admission of negroes into the lodges or councils controlled by
+      Northern men the native white members began to withdraw. From the
+      beginning the Bureau agents, the teachers, and the preachers had been
+      holding meetings of negroes, to whom they gave advice about the problems
+      of freedom. Very early these advisers of the blacks grasped the
+      possibilities inherent in their control of the schools, the rationing
+      system, and the churches. By the spring of 1866 the negroes were widely
+      organized under this leadership, and it needed but slight change to
+      convert the negro meetings into local councils of the Union League. &sup1;
+			As soon as it seemed likely that Congress would win in its struggle with
+			the President the guardians of the negro planned their campaign for the
+      control
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">181</a></span>
+			of the race. Negro leaders were organized into councils of the
+      League or into Union Republican Clubs. Over the South went the organizers,
+      until by 1868 the last negroes were gathered into the fold.
+    </p>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_08-2" name="footer_08-2"></a>
+&sup1; Of these teachers of the local blacks, E.&nbsp;L. Godkin,
+     editor of the New York <i>Nation,</i> who had supported the
+     reconstruction acts, said: "Worse instructors for men
+     emerging from slavery and coming for the first time face to
+     face with the problems of free life than the radical
+     agitators who have undertaken the political guidance of the
+     blacks it would be hard to meet with."</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      The native whites did not all desert the Union League when the negroes
+      were brought in. Where the blacks were most numerous the desertion of
+      whites was general, but in the regions where they were few some of the
+      whites remained for several years. The elections of 1868 showed a falling
+      off of the white radical vote from that of 1867, one measure of the extent
+      of loss of whites. From this time forward the order consisted mainly of
+      blacks with enough whites for leaders. In the Black Belt the membership of
+      native whites was discouraged by requiring an oath to the effect that
+      secession was treason. The carpetbagger had found that he could control
+      the negro without the help of the scalawag. The League organization was
+      soon extended and centralized; in every black district there was a
+      Council; for the State there was a Grand Council; and for the United
+      States there was a National Grand Council with headquarters in New York
+      City.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The influence of the League over the negro was
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">182</a></span>
+			due in large degree to the mysterious secrecy of the meetings, the weird
+			initiation ceremony that made him feel fearfully good from his head to his
+			heels, the imposing ritual, and the songs. The ritual, it is said, was not
+			used in the North; it was probably adopted for the particular benefit of
+			the African. The would-be Leaguer was informed that the emblems of the
+			order were the altar, the Bible, the Declaration of Independence, the
+			Constitution of the United States, the flag of the Union, censer, sword,
+			gavel, ballot box, sickle, shuttle, anvil, and other emblems of industry.
+			He was told to the accompaniment of clanking chains and groans that the
+			objects of the order were to preserve liberty, to perpetuate the Union,
+			to maintain the laws and the Constitution, to secure the ascendancy of
+			American institutions, to protect, defend, and strengthen all loyal men
+			and members of the Union League in all rights of person and property, to
+			demand the elevation of labor, to aid in the education of laboring men,
+			and to teach the duties of American citizenship. This enumeration of the
+			objects of the League sounded well and was impressive. At this point the
+			negro was always willing to take an oath of secrecy, after which he was
+			asked to swear with a solemn oath to support the
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">183</a></span>
+			principles of the Declaration of Independence, to pledge himself to resist
+			all attempts to overthrow the United States, to strive for the maintenance
+			of liberty, the elevation of labor, the education of all people in the
+			duties of citizenship, to practice friendship and charity to all of the
+		  order, and to support for election or appointment to office only such men
+			as were supporters of these principles and measures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The council then sang <i>Hail, Columbia!</i> and <i>The Star Spangled
+			Banner</i>, after which an official lectured the candidates, saying that
+			though the designs of traitors had been thwarted, there were yet to be
+			secured legislative triumphs and the complete ascendancy of the true
+			principles of popular government, equal liberty, education and elevation
+			of the workmen, and the overthrow at the ballot box of the old oligarchy
+			of political leaders. After prayer by the chaplain, the room was darkened,
+			alcohol on salt flared up with a ghastly light as the "fire of liberty,"
+			and the members joined hands in a circle around the candidate, who was
+			made to place one hand on the flag and, with the other raised, swear
+			again to support the government and to elect true Union men to office.
+			Then placing his hand on a Bible, for the third time he
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">184</a></span>
+			swore to keep his oath, and repeated after the president "the Freedmen's
+			Pledge": "To defend and perpetuate freedom and the Union, I pledge my
+			life, my fortune, and my sacred honor. So help me God!" <i>John Brown's
+			Body</i> was then sung, the president charged the members in a long
+			speech concerning the principles of the order, and the marshal instructed
+			the neophyte in the signs. To pass one's self as a Leaguer, the "Four
+			L's" had to be given: (1) with right hand raised to heaven, thumb and
+			third finger touching ends over palm, pronounce "Liberty"; (2) bring the
+			hand down over the shoulder and say "Lincoln"; (3) drop the hand open at
+			the side and say "Loyal"; (4) catch the thumb in the vest or in the
+			waistband and pronounce "League." This ceremony of initiation proved a
+			most effective means of impressing and controlling the negro through his
+			love and fear of secret, mysterious, and midnight mummery. An oath taken
+			in daylight might be forgotten before the next day; not so an oath taken
+			in the dead of night under such impressive circumstances. After passing
+			through the ordeal, the negro usually remained faithful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In each populous precinct there was at least one council of the League,
+      and always one for blacks.
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">185</a></span>
+			In each town or city there were two councils, one for the whites, and
+			another, with white officers, for the blacks. The council met once a week,
+			sometimes oftener, nearly always at night, and in a negro church or
+			schoolhouse. Guards, armed with rifles and shotguns, were stationed about
+			the place of meeting in order to keep away intruders. Members of some
+			councils made it a practice to attend the meetings armed as if for battle.
+			In these meetings the negroes listened to inflammatory speeches by the
+			would-be statesmen of the new r&eacute;gime; here they were drilled in a
+			passionate conviction that their interests and those of the Southern
+			whites were eternally at war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      White men who joined the order before the negroes were admitted and who
+      left when the latter became members asserted that the negroes were taught
+      in these meetings that the only way to have peace and plenty, to get "the
+      forty acres and a mule," was to kill some of the leading whites in each
+      community as a warning to others. In North Carolina twenty-eight barns
+      were burned in one county by negroes who believed that Governor Holden,
+      the head of the State League, had ordered it. The council in Tuscumbia,
+      Alabama, received advice from Memphis to use the torch
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">186</a></span>
+			because the blacks were at war with the white race. The advice was taken.
+		  Three men went in front of the council as an advance guard, three followed
+			with coal oil and fire, and others guarded the rear. The plan was to burn
+		  the whole town, but first one negro and then another insisted on having
+			some white man's house spared because "he is a good man." In the end no
+			residences were burned, and a happy compromise was effected by burning
+			the Female Academy. Three of the leaders were afterwards lynched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The general belief of the whites was that the ultimate object of the order
+      was to secure political power and thus bring about on a large scale the
+      confiscation of the property of Confederates, and meanwhile to appropriate
+      and destroy the property of their political opponents wherever possible.
+      Chicken houses, pigpens, vegetable gardens, and orchards were visited by
+      members returning from the midnight conclaves. During the presidential
+      campaign of 1868 the North Carolina League sent out circular instructions
+      to the blacks advising them to drill regularly and to join the militia,
+      for if Grant were not elected the negroes would go back to slavery; if he
+      were elected, the negroes were to have farms, mules, and offices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+		  <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">187</a></span>
+      As soon as possible after the war the negroes had supplied themselves with
+      guns and dogs as badges of freedom. They carried their guns to the League
+      meetings, often marching in military formation, went through the drill
+      there, marched home again along the roads, shouting, firing, and indulging
+      in boasts and threats against persons whom they disliked. Later, military
+      parades in the daytime were much favored. Several hundred negroes would
+      march up and down the streets, abusing whites, and shoving them off the
+      sidewalk or out of the road. But on the whole, there was very little
+      actual violence, though the whites were much alarmed at times. That
+      outrages were comparatively few was due, not to any sensible teachings of
+      the leaders, but to the fundamental good nature of the blacks, who were
+      generally content with mere impudence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The relations between the races, indeed, continued on the whole to be
+      friendly until 1867-68. For a while, in some localities before the advent
+      of the League, and in others where the Bureau was conducted by native
+      magistrates, the negroes looked to their old masters for guidance and
+      advice; and the latter, for the good of both races, were most eager to
+      retain a moral control over the blacks.
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">188</a></span>
+			They arranged barbecues and
+      picnics for the negroes, made speeches, gave good advice, and believed
+      that everything promised well. Sometimes the negroes themselves arranged
+      the festival and invited prominent whites, for whom a separate table
+      attended by negro waiters was reserved; and after dinner there followed
+      speeches by both whites and blacks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the organization of the League, the negroes grew more reserved, and
+      finally became openly unfriendly to the whites. The League alone, however,
+      was not responsible for this change. The League and the Bureau had to some
+      extent the same personnel, and it is frequently impossible to distinguish
+      clearly between the influence of the two. In many ways the League was
+      simply the political side of the Bureau. The preaching and teaching
+      missionaries were also at work. And apart from the organized influences at
+      work, the poor whites never laid aside their hostility towards the blacks,
+      bond or free.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the campaigns grew exciting, the discipline of the order was used to
+      prevent the negroes from attending Democratic meetings and hearing
+      Democratic speakers. The leaders even went farther and forbade the
+      attendance of the blacks
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">189</a></span>
+			at political meetings where the speakers were not endorsed by the League.
+			Almost invariably the scalawag disliked the Leaguer, black or white, and
+			as a political teacher often found himself proscribed by the League. At a
+			Republican mass meeting in Alabama a white Republican who wanted to make
+			a speech was shouted down by the negroes because he was "opposed to the
+			Loyal League." He then went to another place to speak but was followed by
+			the crowd, which refused to allow him to say anything. All Republicans in
+			good standing had to join the League and swear that secession was
+			treason&mdash;a rather stiff dose for the scalawag. Judge (later Governor)
+			David P. Lewis, of Alabama, was a member for a short while but he soon
+			became disgusted and published a denunciation of the order. Albion W.
+			Tourg&eacute;e, the author, a radical judge, was the first chief of the
+			League in North Carolina and was succeeded by Governor Holden. In Alabama,
+			Generals Swayne, Spencer, and Warner, all candidates for the United
+			States Senate, hastened to join the order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as a candidate was nominated by the League, it was the duty of
+      every member to support him actively. Failure to do so resulted in a fine
+      or other more severe punishment, and members
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">190</a></span>
+			who had been expelled were still considered under the control of the
+			officials. The League was, in fact, the machine of the radical party,
+			and all candidates had to be governed by its edicts. As the Montgomery
+			Council declared, the Union League was "the right arm of the
+			Union-Republican party in the United States."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every negro was <i>ex colore</i> a member or under the control of the
+			League. In the opinion of the League, white Democrats were bad enough,
+			but black Democrats were not to be tolerated. It was almost necessary,
+			as a measure of personal safety, for each black to support the radical
+			program. It was possible in some cases for a negro to refrain from
+		  taking an active part in political affairs. He might even fail to vote.
+			But it was actually dangerous for a black to be a Democrat; that is,
+			to try to follow his old master in politics. The whites in many cases
+			were forced to advise their few faithful black friends to vote the
+			radical ticket in order to escape mistreatment. Those who showed
+			Democratic leanings were proscribed in negro society and expelled
+			from negro churches; the negro women would not "proshay" (appreciate)
+			a black Democrat. Such a one was sure to find that influence was being
+			brought to bear upon
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">191</a></span>
+			his dusky sweetheart or his wife
+      to cause him to see the error of his ways, and persistent adherence to the
+      white party would result in his losing her. The women were converted to
+      radicalism before the men, and they almost invariably used their influence
+      strongly in behalf of the League. If moral suasion failed to cause the
+      delinquent to see the light, other methods were used. Threats were common
+      and usually sufficed. Fines were levied by the League on recalcitrant
+      members. In case of the more stubborn, a sound beating was effective to
+      bring about a change of heart. The offending party was "bucked and
+      gagged," or he was tied by the thumbs and thrashed. Usually the sufferer
+      was too afraid to complain of the way he was treated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some of the methods of the Loyal League were similar to those of the later
+      Ku Klux Klan. Anonymous warnings were sent to obnoxious individuals,
+      houses were burned, notices were posted at night in public places and on
+      the houses of persons who had incurred the hostility of the order. In
+      order to destroy the influence of the whites where kindly relations still
+      existed, an "exodus order" issued through the League directed all members
+      to leave their old homes and obtain work elsewhere. Some of the blacks
+      were loath to comply with this order,
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">192</a></span>
+			but to remonstrances from the whites the usual reply was: "De word done
+			sent to de League. We got to go." For special meetings the negroes were
+			in some regions called together by signal guns. In this way the call
+			for a gathering went out over a county in a few minutes and a few hours
+			later nearly all the members in the county assembled at the appointed
+			place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Negroes as organizing agents were inclined to go to extremes and for that
+      reason were not so much used. In Bullock County, Alabama, a council of the
+      League was organized under the direction of a negro emissary, who
+      proceeded to assume the government of the community. A list of crimes and
+      punishments was adopted, a court with various officials was established,
+      and during the night the negroes who opposed the new r&eacute;gime were
+			arrested. But the black sheriff and his deputy were in turn arrested by
+			the civil authorities. The negroes then organized for resistance, flocked
+			into the county seat, and threatened to exterminate the whites and take
+			possession of the county. Their agents visited the plantations and forced
+			the laborers to join them by showing orders purporting to be from General
+      Swayne, the commander in the State, giving them the authority to kill all
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">193</a></span>
+      who resisted them. Swayne, however, sent out detachments of troops and
+      arrested fifteen of the ringleaders, and the League government collapsed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After it was seen that existing political institutions were to be
+      overturned in the process of reconstruction, the white councils of the
+      League and, to a certain extent, the negro councils were converted into
+      training schools for the leaders of the new party soon to be formed in the
+      State by act of Congress. The few whites who were in control were
+      unwilling to admit more white members to share in the division of the
+			spoils; terms of admission became more stringent, and, especially after
+			the passage of the reconstruction acts in March, 1867, many white
+			applicants were rejected. The alien element from the North was in control
+			and as a result, where the blacks were numerous, the largest plums fell
+			to the carpetbaggers. The negro leaders&mdash;the politicians, preachers,
+			and teachers&mdash;trained in the League acted as subordinates to the
+			whites and were sent out to drum up the country negroes when elections
+			drew near. The negroes were given minor positions when offices were more
+			plentiful than carpetbaggers. Later, after some complaint, a larger share
+			of the offices fell to them.
+		</p>
+		<p>
+		  <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">194</a></span>
+			The League counted its largest white membership in 1865-66, and after that
+			date it steadily decreased. The largest negro membership was recorded in
+			1867 and 1868. The total membership was never made known. In North
+			Carolina the order claimed from seventy-five thousand to one hundred and
+			twenty-five thousand members; in States with larger negro populations the
+			membership was probably quite as large. After the election of 1868 only
+			the councils in the towns remained active, many of them transformed into
+			political clubs, loosely organized under local political leaders. The
+			plantation negro needed less looking after, and except in the largest
+			towns he became a kind of visiting member of the council in the town.
+			The League as a political organization gradually died out by 1870. &sup1;
+    </p>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_08-3" name="footer_08-3"></a>
+&sup1; The Ku Klux Klan had much to do with the decline of the
+     organization. The League as the ally and successor of the
+     Freedmen's Bureau was one of the causes of the Ku Klux
+     movement, because it helped to create the conditions which
+     made such a movement inevitable. As early as 1870 the
+     radical leaders missed the support formerly given by the
+     League, and an urgent appeal was sent out all over the South
+     from headquarters in New York advocating its re&euml;stablishment
+     to assist in carrying the elections of 1870.</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      The League had served its purpose. It had enabled a few outsiders to
+      control the negro by separating the races politically and it had compelled
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">195</a></span>
+      the negroes to vote as radicals for several years, when without its
+      influence they would either not have voted at all or would have voted as
+      Democrats along with their former masters. The order was necessary to the
+      existence of the radical party in the Black Belt. No ordinary political
+      organization could have welded the blacks into a solid party. The
+      Freedmen's Bureau, which had much influence over the negroes, was too weak
+      in numbers to control the negroes in politics. The League finally absorbed
+      the personnel of the Bureau and turned its prestige and its organization
+      to political advantage.
+    </p>
+
+		<div class="chapterhead">
+		  <p>
+			   <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">196</a></span>
+			   <a name="Chapter09" id="Chapter09"></a>
+				 <br /><br /><br />
+			</p>
+    </div>
+	  <h2>
+      <a href="#Contents">CHAPTER IX.</a>
+    </h2>
+		<p class="chaptertitle">Church and School</p>
+		<p class="noindent"><span class="first-word">Reconstruction</span>
+      in the State was closely related to reconstruction in the
+      churches and the schools. Here also were to be found the same hostile
+      elements: negro and white, Unionist and Confederate, victor and
+      vanquished. The church was at that time an important institution in the
+      South, more so than in the North, and in both sections more important than
+      it is today. It was inevitable, therefore, that ecclesiastical
+      reconstruction should give rise to bitter feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Something should be said of conditions in the churches when the Federal
+      armies occupied the land. The Southern organizations had lost many
+      ministers and many of their members, and frequently their buildings were
+      used as hospitals or had been destroyed. Their administration was
+      disorganized and their treasuries were empty. The Unionists, scattered
+      here and there but numerous
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">197</a></span>
+			in the mountain districts, no longer wished to attend the Southern
+			churches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The military censorship in church matters, which continued for a year in
+      some districts, was irritating, especially in the Border States and in the
+      Union districts where Northern preachers installed by the army were
+      endeavoring to remain against the will of the people. Mobs sometimes drove
+      them out; others were left to preach to empty houses or to a few Unionists
+      and officers, while the congregation withdrew to build a new church. The
+      problems of negro membership in the white churches and of the future
+      relations of the Northern and Southern denominations were pressing for
+      settlement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All Northern organizations acted in 1865 upon the assumption that a
+      reunion of the churches must take place and that the divisions existing
+      before the war should not be continued, since slavery, the cause of the
+      division, had been destroyed. But they insisted that the reunion must take
+      place upon terms named by the "loyal" churches, that the negroes must also
+      come under "loyal" religious direction, and that tests must be applied to
+      the Confederate sinners asking for admission, in order that the enormity
+      of their
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">198</a></span>
+			crimes should be made plain to them. But this policy did not succeed. The
+			Confederates objected to being treated as "rebels and traitors" and to
+			"sitting upon stools of repentance" before they should be received again
+			into the fold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only two denominations were reunited&mdash;the Methodist Protestant, the
+      northern section of which came over to the southern, and the Protestant
+      Episcopal, in which moderate counsels prevailed and into which Southerners
+      were welcomed back. The Southern Baptists maintained their separate
+      existence and reorganized the Southern Baptist Convention, to which came
+      many of the Baptist associations in the Border States; the Catholics did
+      not divide before 1861 and therefore had no reconstruction problems to
+      solve; and the smaller denominations maintained the organizations which
+      they had before 1861. A Unionist preacher testified before the Joint
+      Committee on Reconstruction that even the Southern Quakers "are about as
+      decided in regard to the respectability of secession as any other class of
+      people."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two other great Southern churches, the Presbyterian and the Methodist
+      Episcopal, grew stronger after the Civil War. The tendency toward reunion
+      of the Presbyterians was checked
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">199</a></span>
+			when one Northern branch declared as "a condition precedent to the
+			admission of southern applicants that these confess as sinful all opinions
+			before held in regard to slavery, nullification, rebellion and slavery,
+			and stigmatize secession as a crime and the withdrawal of the southern
+			churches as a schism." Another Northern group declared that Southern
+			ministers must be placed on probation and must either prove their loyalty
+			or profess repentance for disloyalty and repudiate their former opinions.
+			As a result several Presbyterian bodies in the South joined in a strong
+			union, to which also adhered the synods of several Border States.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was confronted with conditions
+      similar to those which prevented the reunion of the Presbyterians. The
+      Northern church, according to the declaration of its authorities, also
+      came down to divide the spoils and to "disintegrate and absorb" the
+      "schismatic" Southern churches. Already many Southern pulpits were filled
+      with Northern Methodist ministers placed there under military protection;
+      and when they finally realized that reunion was not possible, these
+      Methodist worthies resolved to occupy the late Confederacy as a mission
+      field and to organize congregations of blacks and
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">200</a></span>
+			whites who were "not tainted with treason." Bishops and clergymen charged
+			with this work carried it on vigorously for a few years in close
+			connection with political reconstruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The activities of the Northern Methodists stimulated the Southern
+      Methodists to a quick reorganization. The surviving bishops met in August,
+      1865, and bound together their shaken church. In reply to suggestions of
+      reunion they asserted that the Northern Methodists had become "incurably
+      radical," were too much involved in politics, and, further, that they had,
+      without right, seized and were still holding Southern church buildings.
+      They objected also to the way the Northern church referred to the
+      Southerners as "schismatics" and to the Southern church as one built on
+      slavery and therefore, now that slavery was gone, to be reconstructed. The
+      bishops warned their people against the missionary efforts of the Northern
+      brethren and against the attempts to "disintegrate and absorb" Methodism
+      in the South. Within five years after the war the Methodist Episcopal
+      Church, South, was greatly increased in numbers by the accession of
+      conferences in Maryland, Kentucky, Virginia, Missouri, and even from above
+      the Ohio, while the Northern
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">201</a></span>
+			Methodist Church was able to organize only a few white congregations
+			outside of the stronger Unionist districts, but continued to labor in
+			the South as a missionary field. &sup1;
+    </p>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_09-1" name="footer_09-1"></a>
+&sup1; The church situation after the war was well described in
+     1866 by an editorial writer in the <i>Nation</i> who pointed out
+     that the Northern churches thought the South determined to
+     make the religious division permanent, though "slavery no
+     longer furnishes a pretext for separation." "Too much pains
+     were taken to bring about an ecclesiastical reunion, and
+     irritating offers of reconciliation are made by the Northern
+     churches, all based on the assumption that the South has not
+     only sinned, but sinned knowingly, in slavery and in war. We
+     expect them to be penitent and to gladly accept our offers
+     of forgiveness. But the Southern people look upon a 'loyal'
+     missionary as a political emissary, and 'loyal' men do not
+     at present possess the necessary qualifications for
+     evangelizing the Southerners or softening their hearts, and
+     are sure not to succeed in doing so. We look upon their
+     defeat as retribution and expect them to do the same. It
+     will do no good if we tell the Southerner that 'we will
+     forgive them if they will confess that they are criminals,
+     offer to pray with them, preach with them, and labor with
+     them over their hideous sins.'"</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      But if the large Southern churches held their white membership and even
+      gained in numbers and territory, they fought a losing fight to retain
+      their black members. It was assumed by Northern ecclesiastics that whether
+      a reunion of whites took place or not, the negroes would receive spiritual
+      guidance from the North. This was necessary, they said, because the
+      Southern whites were ignorant and impoverished and because "the state of
+      mind among even the best classes of Southern
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">202</a></span>
+			whites rendered them incapable &hellip; of doing justice to the people
+			whom they had so long persistently wronged." Further, it was also
+			necessary for political reasons to remove the negroes from Southern
+			religious control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For obvious reasons, however, the Southern churches wanted to hold their
+      negro members. They declared themselves in favor of negro education and of
+      better organized religious work among the blacks, and made every sort of
+      accommodation to hold them. The Baptists organized separate congregations,
+      with white or black pastors as desired, and associations of black
+      churches. In 1866 the Methodist General Conference authorized separate
+      congregations, quarterly conferences, annual conferences, even a separate
+      jurisdiction, with negro preachers, presiding elders, and bishops&mdash;but
+      all to no avail. Every Northern political, religious, or military agency
+      in the South worked for separation, and negro preachers were not long in
+      seeing the greater advantages which they would have in independent
+      churches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Much of the separate organization was accomplished in mutual good will,
+      particularly in the Baptist ranks. The Reverend I.&nbsp;T. Tichenor, a
+      prominent Baptist minister, has described the
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">203</a></span>
+			process as it took place in the First Baptist Church in Montgomery. The
+			church had nine hundred members, of whom six hundred were black. The
+			negroes received a regular organization of their own under the supervision
+			of the white pastors. When a separation of the two bodies was later deemed
+			desirable, it was inaugurated by a conference of the negroes which passed
+			a resolution couched in the kindliest terms, suggesting the wisdom of the
+			division, and asking the concurrence of the white church in such action.
+			The white church cordially approved the movement, and the two bodies
+			united in erecting a suitable house of worship for the negroes. Until the
+			new church was completed, both congregations continued to occupy jointly
+			the old house of worship. The new house was paid for in large measure by
+			the white members of the church and by individuals in the community. As
+			soon as it was completed the colored church moved into it with its
+			pastor, board of deacons, committees of all sorts, and the whole machinery
+			of church life went into action without a jar. Similar accommodations
+			occurred in all the States of the South.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Methodists lost the greater part of their negro membership to two
+      organizations which
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">204</a></span>
+			came down from the North in 1865&mdash;the African Methodist Episcopal
+			Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Zion. Large numbers
+			also went over to the Northern Methodist Church. After losing nearly
+			three hundred thousand members, the Southern Methodists came to the
+			conclusion that the remaining seventy-eight thousand negroes would be
+			more comfortable in a separate organization and therefore began in 1866
+      the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, with bishops, conferences, and all
+      the accompaniments of the parent Methodist Church, which continued to give
+      friendly aid but exercised no control. For many years the Colored
+      Methodist Church was under fire from the other negro denominations, who
+      called it the "rebel," the "Democratic," the "old slavery" church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The negro members of the Cumberland Presbyterians were similarly set off
+      into a small African organization. The Southern Presbyterians and the
+      Episcopalians established separate congregations and missions under white
+      supervision but sanctioned no independent negro organization. Consequently
+      the negroes soon deserted these churches and went with their own kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Resentment at the methods employed by the
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">205</a></span>
+			Northern religious carpetbaggers was strong among the Southern whites.
+			"Emissaries of Christ and the radical party" they were called by one
+			Alabama leader. Governor Lindsay of the same State asserted that the
+			Northern missionaries caused race hatred by teaching the negroes to
+	    regard the whites as their natural enemies, who, if possible, would put
+			them back in slavery. Others were charged with teaching that to be on the
+			safe side, the blacks should get into a Northern church, and that "Christ
+			died for negroes and Yankees, not for rebels."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The scalawags, also, developed a dislike of the Northern church work among
+      the negroes and it was impossible to organize mixed congregations. Of the
+      Reverend A.&nbsp;S. Lakin, a well-known agent of the Northern Methodist
+			Church in Alabama, Nicholas Davis, a North Alabama Unionist and scalawag,
+		  said to the Ku Klux Committee: "The character of his [Lakin's] speech was
+			this: to teach the negroes that every man that was born and raised in the
+		  Southern country was their enemy, that there was no use trusting them, no
+			matter what they said&mdash;if they said they were for the Union or
+		  anything else. 'No use talking, they are your enemies.' And he made a
+			pretty good speech,
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">206</a></span>
+			too; awful; a hell of a one; &hellip; inflammatory and game, too.&hellip;
+			It was enough to provoke the devil. Did all the mischief he could &hellip;
+			I tell you, that old fellow is a hell of an old rascal."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a time the white churches were annoyed by intrusions of strange blacks
+      set on by those who were bent on separating the races. Frequently there
+      were feuds in white or black congregations over the question of joining
+      some Northern body. Disputes over church property also arose and continued
+      for years. Lakin, referred to above, was charged with "stealing" negro
+      congregations and uniting them with the Cincinnati Conference without
+      their knowledge. The negroes were urged to demand title to all buildings
+      formerly used for negro worship, and the Constitutional Convention of
+      Alabama in 1867 directed that such property must be turned over to them
+      when claimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The agents of the Northern churches were not greatly different from other
+      carpetbaggers and adventurers taking advantage of the general confusion to
+      seize a little power. Many were unscrupulous; others, sincere and honest
+      but narrow, bigoted, and intolerant, filled with distrust of the Southern
+      whites and with corresponding confidence in the blacks and in themselves.
+      The
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">207</a></span>
+			missionary and church publications were quite as severe on the
+      Southern people as any radical Congressman. The publications of the
+      Freedmen's Aid Society furnish illustrations of the feelings and views of
+      those engaged in the Southern work. They in turn were made to feel the
+      effects of a merciless social proscription. For this some of them cared
+      not at all, while others or their families felt it keenly. One woman
+      missionary wrote that she was delighted when a Southern white would speak
+      to her. A preacher in Virginia declared that "the females, those
+      especially whose pride has been humbled, are more intense in their
+      bitterness and endeavor to keep up a social ostracism against Union and
+      Northern people." The Ku Klux raids were directed against preachers and
+      congregations whose conduct was disagreeable to the whites. Lakin asserted
+      that while he was conducting a great revival meeting among the hills of
+      northern Alabama, Governor Smith and other prominent and sinful scalawag
+      politicians were there "under conviction" and about to become converted.
+      But in came the Klan and the congregation scattered. Smith and the others
+			were so angry and frightened that their good feelings were dissipated, and
+			the devil re&euml;ntered them, so that Lakin said he was
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">208</a></span>
+      never able to "get a hold on them" again. For the souls lost that night he
+      held the Klan responsible. Lakin told several marvelous stories of his
+      hairbreadth escapes from death by assassination which, if true, would be
+      enough to ruin the reputation of northern Alabama men for marksmanship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reconstruction ended with conditions in the churches similar to those
+      in politics: the races were separated and unfriendly; Northern and
+      Southern church organizations were divided; and between them, especially
+      in the border and mountain districts, there existed factional quarrels of
+      a political origin, for every Northern Methodist was a Republican and
+      every Southern Methodist was a Democrat.
+    </p>
+		<hr class="break" />
+    <p>
+      The schools of the South, like the churches and political institutions,
+      were thrown into the melting pot of reconstruction. The spirit in which
+      the work was begun may be judged from the tone of the addresses made at a
+      meeting of the National Teachers Association in 1865. The president, S. S.
+      Greene, declared that "the old slave States are to be the new missionary
+      ground for the national school teacher." Francis Wayland, the former
+      president of Brown University, remarked
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">209</a></span>
+			that "it has been a war of education and patriotism against ignorance and
+		  barbarism." President Hill of Harvard spoke of the "new work of spreading
+			knowledge and intellectual culture over the regions that sat in darkness."
+			Other speakers asserted that the leading Southern whites were as much
+			opposed to free schools as to free governments and "we must treat them as
+			western farmers do the stumps in their clearings, work around them and let
+			them rot out"; that the majority of the whites were more ignorant than the
+			slaves; and that the negro must be educated and strengthened against "the
+			wiles, the guile, and hate of his baffled masters and their minions." The
+			New England Freedmen's Aid Society considered it necessary to educate the
+			negro "as a counteracting influence against the evil councils and designs
+			of the white freemen."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tasks that confronted the Southern States in 1865-67 were two: first,
+      to restore the shattered school systems of the whites; and second, to
+      arrange for the education of the negroes. Education of the negro slave had
+      been looked upon as dangerous and had been generally forbidden. A small
+      number of negroes could read and write, but there were at the close of the
+      war no schools
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">210</a></span>
+			for the children. Before 1861 each State had developed at least the
+			outlines of a school system. Though hindered in development by the
+			sparseness of the population and by the prevalence in some districts
+			of the Virginia doctrine that free schools were only for the poor, public
+      schools were nevertheless in existence in 1861. Academies and colleges,
+      however, were thronged with students. When the war ended, the public
+      schools were disorganized, and the private academies and the colleges were
+      closed. Teachers and students had been dispersed; buildings had been
+      burned or used for hospitals and laboratories; and public libraries had
+      virtually disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The colleges made efforts to open in the fall of 1865. Only one student
+      presented himself at the University of Alabama for matriculation; but
+      before June, 1866, the stronger colleges were again in operation. The
+      public or semi-public schools for the whites also opened in the fall. In
+      the cities where Federal military authorities had brought about the
+      employment of Northern teachers, there was some friction. In New Orleans,
+      for example, the teachers required the children to sing Northern songs and
+      patriotic airs. When the Confederates were restored to power these
+      teachers were dismissed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+		  <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">211</a></span>
+      The movement toward negro education was general throughout the South.
+      Among the blacks themselves there was an intense desire to learn. They
+      wished to read the Bible, to be preachers, to be as the old master and not
+      have to work. Day and night and Sunday they crowded the schools. According
+      to an observer, &sup1; "not only are individuals seen at study, and under
+			the most untoward circumstances, but in very many places I have found
+			what I will call 'native schools,' often rude and very imperfect, but
+			there they are, a group, perhaps, of all ages, trying to learn. Some young
+			man, some woman, or old preacher, in cellar, or shed, or corner of a negro
+      meeting-house, with the alphabet in hand, or a town spelling-book, is
+      their teacher. All are full of enthusiasm with the new knowledge the book
+      is imparting to them."
+    </p>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_09-2" name="footer_09-2"></a>
+&sup1; J.&nbsp;W. Alvord, Superintendent of Schools for the Freedmen's
+     Bureau, 1866.</p>
+</div>
+
+    <p>
+      Not only did the negroes want schooling, but both the North and the South
+      proposed to give it to them. Neither side was actuated entirely by
+      altruistic motives. A Hampton Institute teacher in later days remarked:
+      "When the combat was over and the Yankee school-ma'ams followed in the
+      train of the northern armies, the business of
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">212</a></span>
+			educating the negroes was a continuation of hostilities against the
+			vanquished and was so regarded to a considerable extent on both sides."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Southern churches, through their bishops and clergy, the newspapers,
+      and prominent individuals such as J.&nbsp;L.&nbsp;M. Curry, John B.
+			Gordon, J.&nbsp;L. Orr, Governors Brown, Moore, and Patton, came out in
+			favor of negro education. Of this movement General Swayne said: "Quite
+			early &hellip; the several religious denominations took strong ground in
+			favor of the education of the freedmen. The principal argument was an
+			appeal to sectional and sectarian prejudice, lest, the work being
+			inevitable, the influence which must come from it be realized by others;
+			but it is believed that this was but the shield and weapon which men of
+			unselfish principle found necessary at first." The newspapers took the
+			attitude that the Southern whites should teach the negroes because it was
+			their duty, because it was good policy, and because if they did not do so
+			some one else would. The <i>Advertiser</i> of Montgomery stated that
+			education was a danger in slavery times but that under freedom ignorance
+			became a danger. For a time there were numerous schools taught by crippled
+			Confederates and by Southern women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+		  <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">213</a></span>
+      But the education of the negro, like his religious training, was taken
+      from the control of the Southern white and was placed under the direction
+      of the Northern teachers and missionaries who swarmed into the country
+      under the fostering care of the Freedmen's Bureau, the Northern churches,
+      and the various Freedmen's Aid Societies. In three years the Bureau spent
+      six million dollars on negro schools and everywhere it exercised
+      supervision over them. The teachers pursued a policy akin to that of the
+      religious leaders. One Southerner likened them to the "plagues of Egypt,"
+      another described them as "saints, fools, incendiaries, fakirs, and plain
+      business men and women." A Southern woman remarked that "their spirit was
+      often high and noble so far as the black man's elevation was concerned,
+      but toward the white it was bitter, judicial, and unrelenting." The
+      Northern teachers were charged with ignorance of social conditions, with
+      fraternizing with the blacks, and with teaching them that the Southerners
+      were traitors, "murderers of Lincoln," who had been cruel taskmasters and
+      who now wanted to restore servitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reaction against negro education, which began to show itself before
+      reconstruction was inaugurated, found expression in the view of most
+      whites
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">214</a></span>
+			that "schooling ruins a negro." A more intelligent opinion was that
+      of J.&nbsp;L.&nbsp;M. Curry, a lifelong advocate of negro education:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+		<p class="noindent">
+      It is not just to condemn the negro for the education which he received
+      in the early years after the war. That was the period of reconstruction,
+      the saturnalia of misgovernment, the greatest possible hindrance to the
+      progress of the freedmen.&hellip; The education was unsettling,
+			demoralizing, [and it] pandered to a wild frenzy for schooling as a quick
+			method of reversing social and political conditions. Nothing could have
+			been better devised for deluding the poor negro and making him the tool,
+			the slave of corrupt taskmasters. Education is a natural consequence of
+			citizenship and enfranchisement &hellip; of freedom and humanity. But with
+		  deliberate purpose to subject the Southern States to negro domination,
+			and secure the States permanently for partisan ends, the education adopted
+			was contrary to common-sense, to human experience, to all noble purposes.
+			The curriculum was for a people in the highest degree of civilization; the
+			aptitude and capabilities and needs of the negro were wholly disregarded.
+			Especial stress was laid on classics and liberal culture to bring the race
+			<i>per saltum</i> to the same plane with their former masters, and realize
+			the theory of social and political equality. A race more highly civilized,
+			with best heredities and environments, could not have been coddled with
+			more disregard of all the teachings of human history and the necessities
+			of the race. Colleges and universities, established and conducted by the
+      Freedmen's Bureau and Northern churches and societies, sprang up like
+      mushrooms,
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">215</a></span>
+			and the teachers, ignorant, fanatical, without self-poise,
+      proceeded to make all possible mischief. It is irrational, cruel, to hold
+      the negro, under such strange conditions, responsible for all the ill
+      consequences of bad education, unwise teachers, reconstruction villainies,
+      and partisan schemes. &sup1;
+    </p>
+		</blockquote>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_09-3" name="footer_09-3"></a>
+&sup1; Quoted in <i>Proceedings</i> of the Montgomery Conference on
+     Race Problems (1900), p. 128.</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      Education was to be looked upon as a handmaid to a thorough
+      reconstruction, and its general character and aim were determined by the
+      Northern teachers. Each convention framed a more or less complicated
+      school system and undertook to provide for its support. The negroes in the
+      conventions were anxious for free schools; the conservatives were willing;
+      but the carpetbaggers and a few mulatto leaders insisted in several States
+      upon mixed schools. Only in Louisiana and South Carolina did the
+      constitutions actually forbid separate schools; in Mississippi, Florida,
+      Alabama, and Arkansas the question was left open, to the embarrassment of
+      the whites. Generally the blacks showed no desire for mixed schools unless
+      urged to it by the carpetbaggers. In the South Carolina convention a
+      mulatto thus argued in favor of mixed schools: "The gentleman from
+      Newberry said he was afraid we were taking a wrong
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">216</a></span>
+			course to remove these
+      prejudices. The most natural method to effect this object would be to
+      allow children when five or six years of age to mingle in schools together
+      and associate generally. Under such training, prejudice must eventually
+      die out; but if we postpone it until they become men and women, prejudice
+      will be so established that no mortal can obliterate it. This, I think, is
+      a sufficient reply to the argument of the gentleman."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The state systems were top-heavy with administrative machinery and were
+      officered by incompetent and corrupt officials. Such men as Cloud in
+      Alabama, Cardozo in Mississippi, Conway in Louisiana, and Jillson in South
+      Carolina are fair samples of them. Much of the personnel was taken over
+      from the Bureau teaching force. The school officials were no better than
+      the other officeholders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first result of the attempt to use the schools as an instrument of
+      reconstruction ended in the ruin of several state universities. The
+      faculties of the Universities of North Carolina, Mississippi, and Alabama
+      were made radical and the institutions thereupon declined to nothing. The
+      negroes, unable to control the faculty of the University of South
+      Carolina, forced negro students in and thus
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">217</a></span>
+			got possession. In Louisiana the radical Legislature cut off all funds
+			because the university would not admit negroes. The establishment of the
+			land grant colleges was an occasion for corruption and embezzlement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The common schools were used for radical ends. The funds set aside for
+      them by the state constitutions or appropriated by the legislatures for
+      these schools seldom reached their destination without being lessened by
+      embezzlement or by plain stealing. Frequently the auditor, or the
+      treasurer, or even the Legislature diverted the school funds to other
+      purposes. Suffice it to say that all of the reconstruction systems broke
+      down financially after a brief existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mixed school provisions in Louisiana and South Carolina and the
+      uncertainty of the educational situation in other States caused white
+      children to stay away from the public schools. For several years the
+      negroes were better provided than the whites, having for themselves both
+      all the public schools and also those supported by private benevolence. In
+      Mississippi, Louisiana, and South Carolina the whites could get no money
+      for schoolhouses, while large sums were spent on negro schools. The
+      Peabody Board, then recently
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">218</a></span>
+			inaugurated, &sup1; refused to co&ouml;perate with school officials in the
+			mixed school States and, when criticized, replied: "It is well known
+			that we are helping the white children of Louisiana as being the more
+			destitute from the fact of their unwillingness to attend mixed schools."
+    </p>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_09-4" name="footer_09-4"></a>
+&sup1; To administer the fund bequeathed by George Peabody of
+     Massachusetts to promote education in the Southern States.
+     See <i>The New South,</i> by Holland Thompson (in <i>The Chronicles
+     of America</i>).</p>
+</div>
+
+    <p>
+      As was to be expected the whites criticized the attitude of the school
+      officials, disapproved of the attempts made in the schools to teach the
+      children radical ideas, and objected to the contents of the history texts
+      and the "Freedmen's Readers." A white school board in Mississippi, by
+      advertising for a Democratic teacher for a negro school, drew the fire of
+      a radical editor who inquired: "What is the motive by which this call for
+      a 'competent Democratic teacher' is prompted? The most damning that has
+      ever moved the heart of man. It is to use the vote and action of a human
+      being as a means by which to enslave him. The treachery and villainy of
+      these rebels stands without parallel in the history of men."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A negro politician has left this account of a radical recitation in a
+      Florida negro school:
+    </p>
+		<blockquote>
+    <p class="noindent">
+		  <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">219</a></span>
+      After finishing the arithmetic lesson they must next go through the
+      catechism:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who is the 'Publican Government of the State of Florida?"
+			<span class="answer">Answer</span>: "Governor Starns."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who made him Governor?"
+			<span class="answer">Answer</span>: "The colored people."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who is trying to get him out of his seat?"
+			<span class="answer">Answer</span>: "The Democrats, Conover, and some
+			white and black Liberal Republicans."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What should the colored people do with the men who is trying to get
+      Governor Starns out of his seat?"
+			<span class="answer">Answer</span>: "They should kill them." &hellip;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was done that the patrons, some of whom could not read, would be
+      impressed by the expressions of their children, and would be ready to put
+      any one to death who would come out into the country and say anything
+      against Governor Starns.
+    </p>
+		</blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The native white teachers soon dropped out of negro schools, and those
+      from the North met with the same social persecution as the white church
+      workers. The White League and Ku Klux Klan drove off obnoxious teachers,
+      whipped some, burned negro schoolhouses, and in various other ways
+      manifested the reaction which was rousing the whites against negro
+      schools.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The several agencies working for negro education gave some training to
+      hundreds of thousands of blacks, but the whites asserted that, like the
+      church work, it was based on a wrong spirit and resulted in evil as well
+      as in good. Free schools
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">220</a></span>
+			failed in reconstruction because of the
+      dishonesty or incompetence of the authorities and because of the unsettled
+      race question. It was not until the turn of the century that the white
+      schools were again as good as they had been before 1861. After the
+      reconstruction native whites as teachers of negro schools were impossible
+      in most places. The hostile feelings of the whites resulted and still
+      result in a limitation of negro schools. The best thing for negro schools
+      that came out of reconstruction was Armstrong's Hampton Institute program,
+      which, however, was quite opposed to the spirit of reconstruction
+      education.
+    </p>
+
+		<div class="chapterhead">
+		  <p>
+			   <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">221</a></span>
+			   <a name="Chapter10" id="Chapter10"></a>
+				 <br /><br /><br />
+			</p>
+    </div>
+	  <h2>
+      <a href="#Contents">CHAPTER X.</a>
+    </h2>
+		<p class="chaptertitle">Carpetbag and Negro Rule</p>
+		<p class="noindent"><span class="first-word">The</span>
+      Southern States reconstructed by Congress were subject for periods of
+      varying length to governments designed by radical Northerners and imposed
+      by elements thrown to the surface in the upheaval of Southern society.
+      Georgia, Virginia, and North Carolina each had a brief experience with
+      these governments; other States escaped after four or five years, while
+      Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida were not delivered from this
+      domination until 1876. The States which contained large numbers of negroes
+      had, on the whole, the worst experience. Here the officials were ignorant
+      or corrupt, frauds upon the public were the rule, not the exception, and
+      all of the reconstruction governments were so conducted that they could
+      secure no support from the respectable elements of the electorate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fundamental cause of the failure of these
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">222</a></span>
+			governments was the character of the new ruling class. Every State,
+			except perhaps Virginia, was under the control of a few able leaders
+			from the North generally called carpetbaggers and of a few native
+			white radicals contemptuously designated scalawags. These were kept
+			in power by negro voters, to some seven hundred thousand of whom the
+			ballot had been given by the reconstruction acts. The adoption of the
+			Fifteenth Amendment in March, 1870, brought the total in the former
+			slave States to 931,000, with about seventy-five thousand more negroes
+			in the North. The negro voters were most numerous, comparatively, in
+			Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia. There
+			were a few thousand carpetbaggers in each State, with, at first, a
+			much larger number of scalawags. The latter, who were former Unionists,
+			former Whigs, Confederate deserters, and a few unscrupulous politicians,
+			were most numerous in Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, Arkansas, and
+			Tennessee. The better class, however, rapidly left the radical party
+			as the character of the new r&eacute;gime became evident, taking with
+			them whatever claims the party had to respectability, education,
+			political experience, and property.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conservatives, hopelessly reduced by the
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">223</a></span>
+			operation of disfranchising laws, were at first not well organized, nor
+			were they at any time as well led as in antebellum days. In 1868 about
+			one hundred thousand of them were forbidden to vote and about two
+			hundred thousand were disqualified from holding office. The abstention
+			policy of 1867-68 resulted in an almost complete withdrawal of the
+			influence of the conservatives for the two years, 1868-70. As a class
+			they were regarded by the dominant party in State and nation as
+			dangerous and untrustworthy and were persecuted in such irritating ways
+			that many became indifferent to the appeals of civil duty. They formed
+			a solid but almost despairing opposition in the black districts of
+			Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and South Carolina. For the leaders
+			the price of amnesty was conversion to radicalism, but this price
+      few would pay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The new state governments possessed certain characteristics in common.
+      Since only a small number of able men were available for office, full
+      powers of administration, including appointment and removal, were
+      concentrated in the hands of the governor. He exercised a wide control
+      over public funds and had authority to organize and command militia and
+      constabulary and to call for Federal
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">224</a></span>
+			troops. The numerous administrative boards worked with the sole object
+			of keeping their party in power. Officers were several times as
+			numerous as under the old r&eacute;gime, and all of them received higher
+			salaries and larger contingent fees. The moral support behind the
+			government was that of President Grant and the United States army,
+			not that of a free and devoted people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of the twenty men who served as governors eight were scalawags and twelve
+      were carpetbaggers&mdash;men who were abler than the scalawags and who had
+			much more than an equal share of the spoils. The scalawags, such as
+			Brownlow of Tennessee, Smith of Alabama, and Holden of North Carolina,
+			were usually honest but narrow, vindictive men, filled with fear and hate
+			of the conservative whites. Of the carpetbaggers half were personally
+			honest, but all were unscrupulous in politics. Some were flagrantly
+		  dishonest. Governor Moses of South Carolina was several times bribed and
+			at one time, according to his own statement, received $15,000 for his vote
+			as speaker of the House of Representatives. Governor Stearns of Florida
+			was charged with stealing government supplies from the negroes; and it was
+			notorious that Warmoth and Kellogg of Louisiana, each of whom served only
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">225</a></span>
+			one term, retired with large fortunes. Warmoth, indeed, went so far as to
+			declare: "Corruption is the fashion. I do not pretend to be honest, but
+			only as honest as anybody in politics."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The judiciary was no better than the executive. The chief justice of
+      Louisiana was convicted of fraud. A supreme court judge of South Carolina
+      offered his decisions for sale, and Whipper and Moses, both notorious
+      thieves, were elected judges by the South Carolina Legislature. In Alabama
+      there were many illiterate magistrates, among them the city judge of
+      Selma, who in April, 1865, was still living as a slave. Governor
+      Chamberlain, a radical, asserted that there were two hundred trial judges
+      in South Carolina who could not read.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Other officers were of the same stripe. Leslie, a South Carolina
+      carpetbagger, declared that "South Carolina has no right to be a State
+      unless she can support her statesmen," and he proceeded to live up to this
+      principle. The manager of the state railroad of Georgia, when asked how he
+      had been able to accumulate twenty or thirty thousand dollars on a two or
+      three thousand dollar salary, replied, "By the exercise of the most rigid
+      economy." A North Carolina negro legislator was found on one occasion
+      chuckling as he counted
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">226</a></span>
+			some money. "What are you laughing at, Uncle?" he was asked. "Well, boss,
+			I'se been sold 'leben times in my life and dis is de fust time I eber got
+			de money." Godkin, in the <i>Nation,</i> said that the Georgia officials
+			were "probably as bad a lot of political tricksters and adventurers as
+			ever got together in one place." This description will fit equally well
+			the white officials of all the reconstructed States. Many of the negroes
+			who attained public office showed themselves apt pupils of their
+			carpetbag masters but were seldom permitted to appropriate a large
+      share of the plunder. In Florida the negro members of the Legislature,
+      thinking that they should have a part of the bribe and loot money which
+      their carpetbag masters were said to be receiving, went so far as to
+      appoint what was known as a "smelling committee" to locate the good things
+      and secure a share.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From 1868 to 1870 the legislatures of seven States were overwhelmingly
+      radical and in several the radical majority held control for four, six, or
+      eight years. Negroes were most numerous in the legislatures of Louisiana,
+      South Carolina, and Mississippi, and everywhere the votes of these men
+      were for sale. In Alabama and Louisiana negro legislators had a fixed
+      price for their votes: for
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">227</a></span>
+			example, six hundred dollars would buy a senator in Louisiana. In South
+			Carolina, negro government appeared at its worst. A vivid description of
+			the Legislature of this State in which the negroes largely outnumbered
+			the whites is given by James S. Pike, a Republican journalist: &sup1;
+    </p>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_10-1" name="footer_10-1"></a>
+&sup1; Pike, <i>The Prostrate State,</i> pp. 12 ff.</p>
+</div>
+    <blockquote>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      In the place of this old aristocratic society stands the rude form of the
+      most ignorant democracy that mankind ever saw, invested with the functions
+      of government. It is the dregs of the population habilitated in the robes
+      of their intelligent predecessors, and asserting over them the rule of
+      ignorance and corruption.&hellip; It is barbarism overwhelming civilization by
+      physical force. It is the slave rioting in the halls of his master, and
+      putting that master under his feet. And, though it is done without malice
+      and without vengeance, it is nevertheless none the less completely and
+      absolutely done.&hellip; We will enter the House of Representatives. Here sit
+      one hundred and twenty-four members. Of these, twenty-three are white men,
+      representing the remains of the old civilization. These are good-looking,
+      substantial citizens. They are men of weight and standing in the
+      communities they represent. They are all from the hill country. The frosts
+      of sixty and seventy winters whiten the heads of some among them. There
+      they sit, grim and silent. They feel themselves to be but loose stones,
+      thrown in to partially obstruct a current they are powerless to resist.&hellip;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This dense negro crowd &hellip; do the debating, the
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">228</a></span>
+			squabbling, the lawmaking,
+      and create all the clamor and disorder of the body. These twenty-three
+      white men are but the observers, the enforced auditors of the dull and
+      clumsy imitation of a deliberative body, whose appearance in their present
+      capacity is at once a wonder and a shame to modern civilization.&hellip; The
+      Speaker is black, the Clerk is black, the doorkeepers are black, the
+      little pages are black, the chairman of the Ways and Means is black, and
+      the chaplain is coal black. At some of the desks sit colored men whose
+      types it would be hard to find outside of Congo; whose costumes, visages,
+      attitudes, and expression, only befit the forecastle of a buccaneer. It
+      must be remembered, also, that these men, with not more than a half dozen
+      exceptions, have been themselves slaves, and that their ancestors were
+      slaves for generations.&hellip;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the old stagers admit that the colored brethren have a wonderful
+      aptness at legislative proceedings. They are "quick as lightning" at
+      detecting points of order, and they certainly make incessant and
+      extraordinary use of their knowledge. No one is allowed to talk five
+      minutes without interruption, and one interruption is a signal for another
+      and another, until the original speaker is smothered under an avalanche of
+      them. Forty questions of privilege will be raised in a day. At times,
+      nothing goes on but alternating questions of order and of privilege. The
+      inefficient colored friend who sits in the Speaker's chair cannot suppress
+      this extraordinary element of the debate. Some of the blackest members
+      exhibit a pertinacity of intrusion in raising these points of order and
+      questions of privilege that few white men can equal. Their struggles to
+      get the floor, their bellowings and physical contortions, baffle
+      description.
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">229</a></span>
+      The Speaker's hammer plays a perpetual tattoo to no purpose. The talking
+      and the interruptions from all quarters go on with the utmost license.
+      Everyone esteems himself as good as his neighbor, and puts in his oar,
+      apparently as often for love of riot and confusion as for anything
+      else.&hellip; The Speaker orders a member whom he has discovered to be
+      particularly unruly to take his seat. The member obeys, and with the same
+      motion that he sits down, throws his feet on to his desk, hiding himself
+      from the Speaker by the soles of his boots.&hellip; After a few experiences of
+      this sort, the Speaker threatens, in a laugh, to call the "gemman" to
+      order. This is considered a capital joke, and a guffaw follows. The laugh
+      goes round and then the peanuts are cracked and munched faster than ever;
+      one hand being employed in fortifying the inner man with this nutriment of
+      universal use, while the other enforces the views of the orator. This
+      laughing propensity of the sable crowd is a great cause of disorder. They
+      laugh as hens cackle&mdash;one begins and all follow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But underneath all this shocking burlesque upon legislative proceedings,
+      we must not forget that there is something very real to this uncouth and
+      untutored multitude. It is not all sham, nor all burlesque. They have a
+      genuine interest and a genuine earnestness in the business of the assembly
+      which we are bound to recognize and respect.&hellip; They have an earnest
+      purpose, born of conviction that their position and condition are not
+      fully assured, which lends a sort of dignity to their proceedings. The
+      barbarous, animated jargon in which they so often indulge is on occasion
+      seen to be so transparently sincere and weighty in their own minds that
+      sympathy supplants disgust. The whole thing is a wonderful novelty
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">230</a></span>
+			to them as well as to observers. Seven years ago these men were raising
+			corn and cotton under the whip of the overseer. Today they are raising
+			points of order and questions of privilege. They find they can raise
+			one as well as the other. They prefer the latter. It is easier and
+			better paid. Then, it is the evidence of an accomplished result. It
+			means escape and defense from old oppressors. It means liberty. It
+			means the destruction of prison-walls only too real to them. It is the
+		  sunshine of their lives. It is their day of jubilee. It is their
+		  long-promised vision of the Lord God Almighty.
+    </p>
+		</blockquote>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      The congressional delegations were as radical as the state governments.
+      During the first two years there were no Democratic senators from the
+      reconstructed States and only two Democratic representatives, as against
+      sixty-four radical senators and representatives. At the end of four years
+      the Democrats numbered fifteen against seventy radicals. A negro succeeded
+      Jefferson Davis in the Senate, and in all the race sent two senators and
+      thirteen representatives to Congress, but though several were of high
+      character and fair ability, they exercised practically no influence. The
+      Southern delegations had no part in shaping policies but merely voted as
+      they were told by the radical leaders.
+    </p>
+		<hr class="break" />
+    <p>
+      The effect of dishonest government was soon seen in extravagant
+      expenditures, heavier taxes,
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">231</a></span>
+			increase of the bonded debt, and depression of property values. It was to
+			be expected that after the ruin wrought by war and the admission of the
+			negro to civil rights, the expenses of government would be greater. But
+			only lack of honesty will account for the extraordinary expenses of the
+			reconstruction governments. In Alabama and Florida the running expenses
+			of the state government increased two hundred per cent, in Louisiana five
+			hundred per cent, and in Arkansas fifteen hundred per cent&mdash;all this
+			in addition to bond issues. In South Carolina the one item of public
+			printing, which from 1790 to 1868 cost $609,000, amounted in the years
+			1868-1876 to $1,326,589.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Corrupt state officials had two ways of getting money&mdash;by taxation
+      and by the sale of bonds. Taxes were everywhere multiplied. The state tax
+      rate in Alabama was increased four hundred per cent, in Louisiana eight
+      hundred per cent, and in Mississippi, which could issue no bonds, fourteen
+      hundred per cent. City and county taxes, where carpetbaggers were in
+      control, increased in the same way. Thousands of small proprietors could
+      not meet their taxes, and in Mississippi alone the land sold for unpaid
+      taxes amounted to six million acres, an area as large as Massachusetts and
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">232</a></span>
+      Rhode Island together. Nordhoff &sup1; speaks of seeing Louisiana
+			newspapers of which three-fourths were taken up by notices of tax sales.
+			In protest against extravagant and corrupt expenditures, taxpayers'
+			conventions were held in every State, but without effect.
+    </p>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_10-2" name="footer_10-2"></a>
+&sup1; Charles Nordhoff, <i>The Cotton States in the Spring and
+     Summer of 1875.</i></p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      Even the increased taxation, however, did not produce enough to support
+      the new governments, which now had recourse to the sale of state and local
+      bonds. In this way Governor Holden's Administration managed in two years
+      to increase the public debt of North Carolina from $16,000,000 to
+      $32,000,000. The state debt of South Carolina rose from $7,000,000 to
+      $29,000,000 in 1873. In Alabama, by 1874, the debt had mounted from
+      $7,000,000 to $32,000,000. The public debt of Louisiana rose from
+      $14,000,000 in 1868 to $48,000,000 in 1871, with a local debt of
+      $31,000,000. Cities, towns, and counties sold bonds by the bale. The debt
+      of New Orleans increased twenty-five fold and that of Vicksburg a
+      thousandfold. A great deal of the debt was the result of fraudulent issues
+      of bonds or overissues. For this form of fraud the state financial agents
+      in New York were usually
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">233</a></span>
+			responsible. Southern bonds sold far below par, and the time came when
+			they were peddled about at ten to twenty-five cents on the dollar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still another disastrous result followed this corrupt financiering. In
+      Alabama there was a sixty-five per cent decrease in property values, in
+      Florida forty-five per cent, and in Louisiana fifty to seventy-five
+      per cent. A large part of the best property was mortgaged, and foreclosure
+      sales were frequent. Poorer property could be neither mortgaged nor sold.
+      There was an exodus of whites from the worst governed districts in the
+      West and the North. Many towns, among them Mobile and Memphis, surrendered
+      their charters and were ruled directly by the governor; and there were
+      numerous "strangulated" counties which on account of debt had lost
+      self-government and were ruled by appointees of the governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A part of the money raised by taxes and by bond sales was used for
+      legitimate expenses and the rest went to pay forged warrants, excess
+      warrants, and swollen mileage accounts, and to fill the pockets of
+      embezzlers and thieves from one end of the South to the other. In
+      Arkansas, for example, the auditor's clerk hire, which was $4000 in 1866,
+      cost twenty-three times as much in 1873. In Louisiana
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">234</a></span>
+			and South Carolina stealing was elevated into an art and was practiced
+			without concealment. In the latter State the worthless Hell Hole Swamp
+			was bought for $26,000 to be farmed by the negroes but was charged to
+			the state at $120,000. A free restaurant maintained at the Capitol for
+			the legislators cost $125,000 for one session. The porter who conducted
+			it said that he kept it open sixteen to twenty hours a day and that
+			someone was always in the room eating and drinking or smoking. When a
+			member left he would fill his pockets with cigars or with bottles of
+			drink. Forty different brands of beverages were paid for by the State
+			for the private use of members, and all sorts of food, furniture, and
+			clothing were sent to the houses of members and were paid for by the
+			State as "legislative supplies." On the bills appeared such items as
+			imported mushrooms, one side of bacon, one feather bed, bustles, two
+			pairs of extra long stockings, one pair of garters, one bottle perfume,
+			twelve monogram cut glasses, one horse, one comb and brush, three
+			gallons of whisky, one pair of corsets. During the recess, supplies
+			 were sent out to the rural homes of the members.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The endorsement of railroad securities by the State also furnished a
+      source of easy money to
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">235</a></span>
+			the dishonest official and the crooked speculator.
+      After the Civil War, in response to the general desire in the South for
+      better railroad facilities, the "Johnson" governments began to underwrite
+      railroad bonds. When the carpetbag and negro governments came in, the
+      policy was continued but without proper safeguards. Bonds were sometimes
+      endorsed before the roads were constructed, and even excess issues were
+      authorized. Bonds were endorsed for some roads of which not a mile was
+      ever built. The White River Valley and Texas Railroad never came into
+      existence, but it obtained a grant of $175,000 from the State of Arkansas.
+      Speaker Carter of the Louisiana Legislature received a financial interest
+      in all railroad endorsement bills which he steered through the House.
+      Negro members were regularly bribed to vote for the bond steals. A witness
+      swore that in Louisiana it cost him $80,000 to get a railroad charter
+      passed, but that the Governor's signature cost more than the consent of
+      the Legislature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the roads defaulted on the payment of interest, as most of them did,
+      the burden fell upon the State. Not all of the blame for this perverted
+      legislation should be placed upon the corrupt legislators, however, for
+      the lawyers who saw the
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">236</a></span>
+			bills through were frequently Southern Democrats representing supposedly
+			respectable Northern capitalists. The railroads as well as the taxpayers
+			suffered from this pernicious lobbying, for the companies were loaded
+			with debts and rarely profited by the loans. Valuation of railroad
+			property rapidly decreased. The roads of Alabama which were valued in
+			1871 at $26,000,000 had decreased in 1875 to $9,500,000.
+    </p>
+		<hr class="break" />
+    <p>
+      The foundation of radical power in the South lay in the alienation of the
+      races which had been accomplished between 1865 and 1868. To maintain this
+      unhappy distrust, the radical leaders found an effective means in the
+      negro militia. Under the constitution of every reconstructed State a
+      negro constabulary was possible, but only in South Carolina, North
+      Carolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi were the authorities willing to risk
+      the dangers of arming the blacks. No governor dared permit the Southern
+      whites to organize as militia. In South Carolina the carpetbag governor,
+      Robert K. Scott, enrolled ninety-six thousand negroes as members of the
+      militia and organized and armed twenty thousand of them. The few white
+      companies were ordered to disband. In Louisiana the governor
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">237</a></span>
+			had a standing army of blacks called the Metropolitan Guard. In several
+			States the negro militia was used as a constabulary and was sent to any
+			part of the State to make arrests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of this provocation there were, after the riots of 1866-67,
+      comparatively few race conflicts until reconstruction was drawing to a
+      close. The intervening period was filled with the more peaceful activities
+      of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Camelia. &sup1; But as the whites made
+			up their minds to get rid of negro rule, the clashes came frequently and
+      always ended in the death of more negroes than whites. &sup2; They would
+      probably have continued with serious consequences if the whites had not
+      eventually secured control of the government.
+    </p>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_10-3" name="footer_10-3"></a>
+&sup1; See pages 243-264.</p>
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_10-4" name="footer_10-4"></a>
+&sup2; Among the bloodiest conflicts were those in Louisiana at
+     Colfax, Coushatta, and New Orleans in 1873-74, and at
+     Vicksburg and Clinton, Mississippi, in 1874-75.</p>
+</div>
+
+    <p>
+      The lax election laws, framed indeed for the benefit of the party in
+      power, gave the radicals ample opportunity to control the negro vote. The
+      elections were frequently corrupt, though not a great deal of money was
+      spent in bribery. It was found less expensive to use other methods of
+      getting out the vote. The negroes were generally
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">238</a></span>
+			made to understand that
+      the Democrats wanted to put them back into slavery, but sometimes the
+      leaders deemed it wiser to state more concretely that "Jeff Davis had come
+      to Montgomery and is ready to organize the Confederacy again" if the
+      Democrats should win; or to say that "if Carter is elected, he will not
+      allow your wives and daughters to wear hoopskirts." In Alabama many
+      thousand pounds of bacon and hams were sent in to be distributed among
+      "flood sufferers" in a region which had not been flooded since the days of
+      Noah. The negroes were told that they must vote right and receive enough
+      bacon for a year, or "lose their rights" if they voted wrongly. Ballot-box
+      stuffing developed into an art, and each negro was carefully inspected to
+      see that he had the right kind of ticket before he was marched to the
+      polls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inspection and counting of election returns were in the hands of the
+      county and state boards, which were controlled by the governor, and which
+      had authority to throw out or count in any number of votes. On the
+      assumption that the radicals were entitled to all negro votes, the
+      returning boards followed the census figures for the black population in
+      order to arrive at the minimum radical vote. The action of the returning
+      boards
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">239</a></span>
+			was specially flagrant in Louisiana and Florida and in the black
+      counties of South Carolina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Notwithstanding the fact that the very best arrangements had been made at
+      Washington and in the States for the running of the radical machine,
+      everywhere there were factional fights from the beginning. Usually the
+      scalawags declared hostilities after they found that the carpetbaggers had
+      control of the negroes and the inside track on the way to the best state
+      and federal offices. Later, after the scalawags had for the most part left
+      the radicals, there were contests among the carpetbaggers themselves for
+      the control of the negro vote and the distribution of spoils. The defeated
+      faction usually joined the Democrats. In Arkansas a split started in 1869
+      which by 1872 resulted in two state governments. Alabama in 1872 and
+      Louisiana in 1874-75 each had two rival governments. This factionalism
+      contributed largely to the overthrow of the radicals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The radical structure, however, was still powerfully supported from
+      without. Relations between the Federal Government and the state
+      governments in the South were close, and the policy at Washington was
+      frequently determined by conditions in the South. President Grant, though
+      at
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">240</a></span>
+			first considerate, was usually consistently radical in his Southern
+      policy. This attitude is difficult to explain except by saying that Grant
+      fell under the control of radical advisers after his break with Johnson,
+      that his military instincts were offended by opposition in the South which
+      his advisers told him was rebellious, and that he was impressed by the
+      need of holding the Southern radical vote against the inroads of the
+      Democrats. After about 1869 Grant never really understood the conditions
+      in the South. He was content to control by means of Federal troops and
+      thousands of deputy marshals. For this policy the Ku Klux activities gave
+      sufficient excuse for a time, and the continued story of "rebel outrages"
+      was always available to justify a call for soldiers or deputies. The
+      enforcement legislation gave the color of law to any interference which
+      was deemed necessary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Federal troops served other ends than the mere preservation of order and
+      the support of the radical state governments. They were used on occasion
+      to decide between opposing factions and to oust conservatives who had
+      forced their way into office. The army officers purged the Legislature of
+      Georgia in 1870, that of Alabama in 1872, and that of Louisiana in 1875.
+      In 1875 the city government
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">241</a></span>
+			of Vicksburg and the state government of Louisiana were overturned by
+			the whites, but General Sheridan at once intervened to put back the
+			negroes and carpetbaggers. He suggested to President Grant that the
+			conservatives be declared "banditti" and he would make himself
+			responsible for the rest. As soon as a State showed signs of going over
+			to the Democrats or an important election was lost by the radicals, one
+			House or the other of Congress in many instances sent an investigation
+			committee to ascertain the reasons. The Committees on the Condition of
+			the South or on the Late Insurrectionary States were nearly always ready
+			with reports to establish the necessity of intervention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides the army there was in every State a powerful group of Federal
+      officials who formed a "ring" for the direction of all good radicals.
+      These marshals, deputies, postmasters, district attorneys, and customhouse
+      officials were in close touch with Washington and frequently dictated
+      nominations and platforms. At New Orleans the officials acted as a
+      committee on credentials and held all the state conventions under their
+      control in the customhouse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the machinery used to sustain a party
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">242</a></span>
+			which, with the gradual defection of the whites, became throughout the
+			South almost uniformly black. At first few negroes asked for offices,
+			but soon the carpetbaggers found it necessary to divide with the rapidly
+			growing number of negro politicians. No negro was elected governor,
+			though several reached the office of lieutenant governor, secretary of
+			state, auditor, superintendent of education, justice of the state supreme
+			court, and fifteen were elected to Congress. &sup1; It would not be
+			correct to say that the negro race was malicious or on evil bent. Unless
+			deliberately stirred up by white leaders, few negroes showed signs of
+			mean spirit. Few even made exorbitant demands. They wanted
+			"something"&mdash;schools and freedom and "something else," they knew not
+			what. Deprived of the leadership of the best whites, they could not
+			possibly act with the scalawags&mdash;their traditional enemies. Nothing
+			was left for them but to follow the carpetbagger.
+    </p>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_10-5" name="footer_10-5"></a>
+&sup1; Revels, Lynch, and Bruce represent the better negro
+     officeholders; Pinchback, Rainey, and Nash, the less
+     respectable ones; and below these were the rascals whose
+     ambition was to equal their white preceptors in corruption.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+    <div class="chapterhead">
+		  <p>
+			   <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">243</a></span>
+			   <a name="Chapter11" id="Chapter11"></a>
+				 <br /><br /><br />
+			</p>
+    </div>
+	  <h2>
+      <a href="#Contents">CHAPTER XI.</a>
+    </h2>
+		<p class="chaptertitle">The Ku Klux Movement</p>
+		<p class="noindent"><span class="first-word">The</span>
+      Ku Klux movement, which took the form of secret revolutionary
+      societies, grew out of a general conviction among the whites that the
+      reconstruction policies were impossible and not to be endured. Somers, an
+      English traveler, says that at this time "nearly every respectable white
+      man in the Southern States was not only disfranchised but under fear of
+      arrest or confiscation; the old foundations of authority were utterly
+      razed before any new ones had yet been laid, and in the dark and benighted
+      interval the remains of the Confederate armies&mdash;swept after a long
+      and heroic day of fair fight from the field&mdash;flitted before the eyes
+      of the people in this weird and midnight shape of a Ku Klux Klan." Ryland
+      Randolph, an Alabama editor who was also an official of the Klan, stated
+      in his paper that "the origin of Ku Klux Klan is in the galling despotism
+      that broods like a night-mare
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">244</a></span>
+			over these Southern States&mdash;a fungus
+      growth of military tyranny superinduced by the fostering of Loyal Leagues,
+      the abrogation of our civil laws, the habitual violation of our national
+      Constitution, and a persistent prostitution of all government, all
+      resources and all powers, to degrade the white man by the establishment of
+      negro supremacy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The secret orders, regardless of their original purposes, were all finally
+      to be found opposing radical reconstruction. Everywhere their objects were
+      the same: to recover for the white race their former control of society
+      and government, and to destroy the baneful influence of the alien among
+      the blacks. The people of the South were by law helpless to take steps
+      towards setting up any kind of government in a land infested by a vicious
+      element&mdash;Federal and Confederate deserters, bushwhackers, outlaws of
+      every description, and negroes, some of whom proved insolent and violent
+      in their newly found freedom. Nowhere was property or person safe, and for
+      a time many feared a negro insurrection. General Hardee said to his
+      neighbors, "I advise you to get ready for what may come. We are standing
+      over a sleeping volcano."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To cope with this situation ante-bellum patrols&mdash;the
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">245</a></span>
+			"patter-rollers" as the negroes called them&mdash;were often secretly
+			reorganized. In each community for several months after the Civil War,
+			and in many of them for months before the end of the war, there were
+			informal vigilance committees. Some of these had such names as the Black
+			Cavalry and Men of Justice in Alabama, the Home Guards in many other
+			places, while the anti-Confederate societies of the war, the Heroes of
+			America, the Red Strings, and the Peace Societies, transformed themselves
+			in certain localities into regulatory bodies. Later these secret
+			societies numbered scores, perhaps hundreds, varying from small bodies
+			of local police to great federated bodies which covered almost the entire
+			South and even had membership in the North and West. Other important
+			organizations were the Constitutional Union Guards, the Pale Faces, the
+		  White Brotherhood, the Council of Safety, the '76 Association, the Sons
+			of '76, the Order of the White Rose, and the White Boys. As the fight
+			against reconstruction became bolder, the orders threw off their
+			disguises and appeared openly as armed whites fighting for the control
+			of society. The White League of Louisiana, the White Line of Mississippi,
+			the White Man's party of Alabama, and the Rifle
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">246</a></span>
+      Clubs of South Carolina, were later manifestations of the general Ku Klux
+      movement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two largest secret orders, however, were the Ku Klux Klan, from which
+      the movement took its name, and the Knights of the White Camelia. The Ku
+      Klux Klan originated at Pulaski, Tennessee, in the autumn of 1865, as a
+      local organization for social purposes. The founders were young
+      Confederates, united for fun and mischief. The name was an accidental
+      corruption of the Greek word <i>Kuklos</i>, a circle. The officers adopted
+			queer sounding titles and strange disguises. Weird night riders in ghostly
+			attire thoroughly frightened the superstitious negroes, who were told that
+			the spirits of dead Confederates were abroad. This terrorizing of the
+			blacks successfully provided the amusement which the founders desired and
+			there were many applications for admission to the society. The Pulaski
+			Club, or Den, was in the habit of parading in full uniform at social
+			gatherings of the whites at night, much to the delight of the small boys
+			and girls. Pulaski was near the Alabama line, and many of the young men of
+			Alabama who saw these parades or heard of them organized similar Dens in
+			the towns of Northern Alabama. Nothing but horseplay, however, took
+			place at the
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">247</a></span>
+      meetings. In 1867 and 1868 the order appeared in parade in the towns of
+      the adjoining States and, as we are told, "cut up curious gyrations" on
+      the public squares.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a general belief outside the order that there was a purpose
+      behind all the ceremonial and frolic of the Dens; many joined the order
+      convinced that its object was serious; others saw the possibilities of
+      using it as a means of terrorizing the negroes. After men discovered the
+      power of the Klan over the negroes, indeed, they were generally inclined,
+      owing to the disordered conditions of the time, to act as a sort of police
+      patrol and to hold in check the thieving negroes, the Union League, and
+      the "loyalists." In this way, from being merely a number of social clubs
+      the Dens swiftly became bands of regulators, taking on many new fantastic
+      qualities along with their new seriousness of purpose. Some of the more
+      ardent spirits led the Dens far in the direction of violence and outrage.
+      Attempts were made by the parent Den at Pulaski to regulate the conduct of
+      the others, but, owing to the loose organization, the effort met with
+      little success. Some of the Dens, indeed, lost all connection with the
+      original order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A general organization of these societies was
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">248</a></span>
+			perfected at a convention held in Nashville in May, 1867, just as the
+			Reconstruction Acts were being put into operation. A constitution called
+			the <i>Prescript</i> was adopted which provided for a national
+			organization. The former slave States, except Delaware, constituted the
+			Empire, which was ruled by the Grand Wizard (then General Forrest) with
+			a staff of ten Genii; each State was a realm under a Grand Dragon and
+			eight Hydras; the next subdivision was a Dominion, consisting of several
+			counties, ruled by a Grand Titan and six Furies; the county or Province
+			was governed by a Grand Giant and four Goblins; the unit was the Den or
+			community organization, of which there might be several in each county,
+			each under a Grand Cyclops and two Nighthawks. The Genii, Hydras, Furies,
+			Goblins, and Nighthawks were staff officers. The private members were
+			called Ghouls. The order had no name, and at first was designated by
+			two stars (**), later by three (***). Sometimes it was called the
+			Invisible Empire of Ku Klux Klan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Any white man over eighteen might be admitted to the Den after nomination
+      by a member and strict investigation by a committee. The oath demanded
+      obedience and secrecy. The Dens governed themselves by the ordinary rules
+      of
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">249</a></span>
+			deliberative bodies. The punishment for betrayal of secrecy was "the
+      extreme penalty of the Law." None of the secrets was to be written, and
+      there was a "Register" of alarming adjectives, such as terrible, horrible,
+      furious, doleful, bloody, appalling, frightful, gloomy, which was used as
+      a cipher code in dating the odd Ku Klux orders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The general objects of the order were thus set forth in the revised
+      <i>Prescript</i>: first, to protect the weak, the innocent, and the
+			defenseless from the indignities, wrongs, and outrages of the lawless,
+			the violent, and the brutal; to relieve the injured and oppressed; to
+			succor the suffering and unfortunate, and especially the widows and
+			orphans of Confederate soldiers; second, to protect and defend the
+			Constitution of the United States and all laws passed in conformity
+			thereto, and to protect the States and people thereof from all invasion
+			from any source whatever; third, to aid and assist in the execution of all
+      "constitutional" laws, and to protect the people from unlawful arrest, and
+      from trial except by their peers according to the laws of the land. But
+      the tests for admission gave further indication of the objects of the
+      order. No Republican, no Union Leaguer, and no member of the
+			G.&nbsp;A.&nbsp;R. might become a member. The members
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">250</a></span>
+			were pledged to oppose negro equality of any kind, to favor emancipation
+			of the Southern whites and the restoration of their rights, and to
+			maintain constitutional government and equitable laws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Prominent men testified that the order became popular because the whites
+      felt that they were persecuted and that there was no legal protection, no
+      respectable government. General (later Senator) Pettus said that through
+      all the workings of the Federal Government ran the principle that "we are
+      an inferior, degraded people and not fit to be trusted." General Clanton
+      of Alabama further explained that "there is not a respectable white woman
+      in the Negro Belt of Alabama who will trust herself outside of her house
+      without some protector.&hellip; So far as our State Government is
+			concerned, we are in the hands of camp-followers, horse-holders, cooks,
+			bottle-washers, and thieves.&hellip; We have passed out from the hands of
+			the brave soldiers who overcame us, and are turned over to the tender
+			mercies of squaws for torture.&hellip; I see negro police&mdash;great
+			black fellows&mdash;leading white girls around the streets of Montgomery,
+			and locking them up in jails."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Klan first came into general prominence in 1868 with the report of the
+      Federal commanders in
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">251</a></span>
+			the South concerning its activities. Soon after that date the order
+			spread through the white counties of the South, in many places absorbing
+			the White Brotherhood, the Pale Faces, and some other local organizations
+			which had been formed in the upper part of the Black Belt. But it was not
+			alone in the field. The order known as the Knights of the White Camelia,
+			founded in Louisiana in 1867 and formally organized in 1868, spread
+			rapidly over the lower South until it reached the territory occupied by
+			the Ku Klux Klan. It was mainly a Black Belt order, and on the whole had
+			a more substantial and more conservative membership than the other large
+			secret bodies. Like the Ku Klux Klan, it also absorbed several minor
+			local societies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The White Camelia had a national organization with headquarters in New
+      Orleans. Its business was conducted by a Supreme Council of the United
+      States, with Grand, Central, and Subordinate Councils for each State,
+      county, and community. All communication within the order took place by
+      passwords and cipher; the organization and the officers were similar to
+      those of the Ku Klux Klan; and all officers were designated by initials.
+      An ex-member states that "during the three years of its existence here
+      [Perry County, Alabama] I believe
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">252</a></span>
+			its organization and discipline were as perfect as human ingenuity could
+			have made it." The fundamental object of the White Camelia was the
+			"maintenance of the supremacy of the white race," and to this end the
+			members were constrained "to observe a marked distinction between the
+			races" and to restrain the "African race to that condition of social and
+			political inferiority for which God has destined it." The members were
+			pledged to vote only for whites, to oppose negro equality in all things,
+			but to respect the legitimate rights of negroes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The smaller orders were similar in purpose and organization to the Ku Klux
+      Klan and the White Camelia. Most of them joined or were affiliated with
+      the large societies. Probably a majority of the men of the South were
+      associated at some time during this period with these revolutionary
+      bodies. As a rule the politicians, though approving, held aloof. Public
+      opinion generally supported the movement so long as the radicals made
+      serious attempts to carry out the reconstruction policies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The task before the secret orders was to regulate the conduct of the
+      blacks and their leaders in order that honor, life, and property might be
+      secure. They planned to accomplish this aim by playing
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">253</a></span>
+			upon the fears, superstitions, and cowardice of the black race&mdash;in a
+			word, by creating a white terror to counteract the black one. To this end
+			they made use of strange disguises, mysterious and fearful conversation,
+			midnight rides and drills, and silent parades. As long as secrecy and
+			mystery were to be effective in dealing with the negroes, costume was an
+			important matter. These disguises varied with the locality and often with
+			the individual. High cardboard hats, covered with white cloth often
+			decorated with stars or pictures of animals, white masks with holes cut
+			for eyes, nose and mouth bound with red braid to give a horrible
+			appearance, and frequently a long tongue of red flannel so fixed that it
+			could be moved with the wearer's tongue, and a long white robe&mdash;these
+			made up a costume which served at the same time as a disguise and as a
+			means of impressing the impressionable negro. Horses were covered with
+			sheets or white cloth held on by the saddle and by belts, and sometimes
+			the animals were even painted. Skulls of sheep and cattle, and even of
+			human beings were often carried on the saddlebows to add another element
+			of terror. A framework was sometimes made to fit the shoulders of a Ghoul
+			which caused him to appear twelve feet high. A
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">254</a></span>
+			skeleton wooden hand at the end of a stick served to greet terrified
+			negroes at midnight. For safety every man carried a small whistle and
+			a brace of pistols.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The trembling negro who ran into a gathering of the Ku Klux on his return
+      from a Loyal League meeting was informed that the white-robed figures he
+      saw were the spirits of the Confederate dead killed at Chickamauga or
+      Shiloh, now unable to rest in their graves because of the conduct of the
+      negroes. He was told in a sepulchral voice of the necessity for his
+      remaining more at home and taking a less active part in predatory
+      excursions abroad. In the middle of the night a sleeping negro might wake
+      to find his house surrounded by a ghostly company, or to see several
+      terrifying figures standing by his bedside. They were, they said, the
+      ghosts of men whom he had formerly known. They had scratched through from
+      Hell to warn the negroes of the consequences of their misconduct. Hell was
+      a dry and thirsty land: and they asked him for water. Bucket after bucket
+      of water disappeared into a sack of leather, rawhide, or rubber, concealed
+      within the flowing robe. The story is told of one of these night travelers
+      who called at the cabin of a radical negro in Attakapas
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">255</a></span>
+			County, Louisiana.
+      After drinking three buckets of water to the great astonishment of the
+      darky, the traveler thanked him and told him that he had traveled nearly a
+      thousand miles within twenty-four hours, and that that was the best water
+      he had tasted since he was killed at the battle of Shiloh. The negro
+      dropped the bucket, overturned chairs and table in making his escape
+      through the window, and was never again seen or heard of by residents of
+      that community. Another incident is told of a parade in Pulaski,
+      Tennessee: "While the procession was passing a corner on which a negro man
+      was standing, a tall horseman in hideous garb turned aside from the line,
+      dismounted and stretched out his bridle rein toward the negro, as if he
+      desired him to hold his horse. Not daring to refuse, the frightened
+      African extended his hand to grasp the rein. As he did so, the Ku Klux
+      took his own head from his shoulders and offered to place that also in the
+      outstretched hand. The negro stood not upon the order of his going, but
+      departed with a yell of terror. To this day he will tell you: 'He done it,
+      suah, boss. I seed him do it.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was seldom necessary at this early stage to use violence, for the black
+      population was in an ecstasy of fear. A silent host of white-sheeted
+      horsemen
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">256</a></span>
+			parading the country roads at night was sufficient to reduce the
+      blacks to good behavior for weeks or months. One silent Ghoul posted near
+      a meeting place of the League would be the cause of the immediate
+      dissolution of that club. Cow bones in a sack were rattled within earshot
+      of the terrified negroes. A horrible being, fifteen feet tall, walking
+      through the night toward a place of congregation, was very likely to find
+      that every one had vacated the place before he arrived. A few figures
+      wrapped in sheets and sitting on tombstones in a graveyard near which
+      negroes were accustomed to pass would serve to keep the immediate
+      community quiet for weeks and give the locality a reputation for "hants"
+      which lasted long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To prevent detection on parade, members of the Klan often stayed out of
+      the parade in their own town and were to be seen freely and conspicuously
+      mingling with the spectators. A man who believed that he knew every horse
+      in the vicinity and was sure that he would be able to identify the riders
+      by their horses was greatly surprised upon lifting the disguise of the
+      horse nearest him to find the animal upon which he himself had ridden into
+      town a short while before. The parades were always silent and so arranged
+      as to give the impression of very large
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">257</a></span>
+			numbers. In the regular drills which were held in town and country the
+			men showed that they had not forgotten their training in the Confederate
+			army. There were no commands save in a very low tone or in a mysterious
+			language, and usually only signs or whistle signals were used.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such pacific methods were successful to a considerable degree until the
+      carpetbaggers and scalawags were placed in office under the Reconstruction
+      Acts. Then more violent methods were necessary. The Klans patrolled
+      disturbed communities, visited, warned, and frightened obnoxious
+      individuals, whipped some, and even hanged others. Until forbidden by law
+      or military order, the newspapers were accustomed to print the mysterious
+      proclamations of the Ku Klux. The following, which was circulated in
+      Montgomery, Alabama, in April 1868, is a typical specimen:
+    </p>
+		<div id="klanProclamation">
+		<div id="klanOrg">
+    <p class="twelve-em">K. K. K.</p>
+		<p class="nine-half-em">Clan of Vega.</p>
+		<p class="two-em">hdqr's k.k.k. hospitallers.</p>
+		<p class="four-em">Vega Clan, New Moon,</p>
+		<p class="one-em">3rd Month, Anno K. K. K. 1.</p>
+    </div>
+    <p class="order"><span class="sc">Order</span> No. K. K.</p>
+    <p>
+      Clansmen&mdash;Meet at the Trysting Spot when Orion Kisses the Zenith. The
+      doom of treason is Death. <i>Dies Ir&aelig;</i>. The wolf is on his
+			walk&mdash;the serpent coils
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">258</a></span>
+			to strike. Action! Action!! Action!!! By midnight and the
+      Tomb; by Sword and Torch and the Sacred Oath at Forrester's Altar, I bid
+      you come! The clansmen of Glen Iran and Alpine will greet you at the
+      new-made grave.
+    </p>
+    <p class="remember">
+      Remember the Ides of April.
+    </p>
+		<div id="klanSig">
+    <p class="one-em">By command of the Grand D. I. H.</p>
+    <p>Cheg. V.</p>
+    </div>
+		</div>
+    <p>
+      The work of the secret orders was successful. As bodies of vigilantes, the
+      Klans and the Councils regulated the conduct of bad negroes, punished
+      criminals who were not punished by the State, looked after the activities
+      and teachings of Northern preachers and teachers, dispersed hostile
+      gatherings of negroes, and ran out of the community the worst of the
+      reconstructionist officials. They kept the negroes quiet and freed them to
+      some extent from the influence of evil leaders. The burning of houses,
+      gins, mills, and stores ceased; property became more secure; people slept
+      safely at night; women and children walked abroad in security; the
+      incendiary agents who had worked among the negroes left the country;
+      agitators, political, educational, and religious, became more moderate;
+      "bad niggers" ceased to be bad; labor became less disorganized; the
+      carpetbaggers and scalawags ceased to batten on the Southern communities.
+      It was
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">259</a></span>
+			not so much a revolution as the defeat of a revolution. Society was
+      replaced in the old historic grooves from which war and reconstruction had
+      jarred it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Successful as was the Ku Klux movement in these respects, it had at the
+      same time many harmful results. Too often local orders fell under the
+      control of reckless or lawless men and the Klan was then used as a cloak
+      to cover violence and thievery; family and personal feuds were carried
+      into the orders and fought out; and anti-negro feeling in many places
+      found expression in activities designed to drive the blacks from the
+      country. It was easy for any outlaw to hide himself behind the protection
+      of a secret order. So numerous did these men become that after 1868 there
+      was a general exodus of the leading reputable members, and in 1869 the
+      formal disbanding of the Klan was proclaimed by General Forrest, the Grand
+      Wizard. The White Camelia and other orders also gradually went out of
+      existence. Numerous attempts were made to suppress the secret movement by
+      the military commanders, the state governments, and finally by Congress,
+      but none of these was entirely successful, for in each community the
+      secret opposition lasted as long as it was needed.
+	</p>
+	<p>
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">260</a></span>
+			The political effects of the orders, however, survived their organized
+			existence. Some of the Southern States began to go Democratic in spite
+			of the Reconstruction Acts and the Amendments, and there was little
+			doubt that the Ku Klux movement had aided in this change. In order to
+			preserve the achievements of radical reconstruction Congress passed, in
+			1870 and 1871, the enforcement acts which had been under debate for
+			nearly two years. The first act (May 31, 1870) was designed to protect
+			the negro's right to vote and was directed at individuals as well as
+			against States. Section six, indeed, was aimed specifically at the Ku
+			Klux Klan. This act was a long step in the direction of giving the
+			Federal Government control over state elections. But as North Carolina
+			went wholly and Alabama partially Democratic in 1870, a Supplementary
+			Act (February 28, 1871) went further and placed the elections for
+			members of Congress completely under Federal control, and also authorized
+			the use of thousands of deputy marshals at elections. As the campaign of
+			1872 drew near, Grant and his advisers became solicitous to hold all the
+			Southern States which had not been regained by the Democrats. Accordingly,
+			on March 23, 1871, the President sent a message to Congress declaring
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">261</a></span>
+			that in some of the States the laws could not be enforced and asked for
+			remedial legislation. Congress responded with an act (April 20, 1871),
+			commonly called the "Ku Klux Act," which gave the President despotic
+			military power to uphold the remaining negro governments and authorized
+			him to declare a state of war when he considered it necessary. Of this
+			power Grant made use in only one instance. In October, 1871, he declared
+			nine counties of South Carolina in rebellion and put them under martial
+			law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the ten years following 1870, several thousand arrests were made
+      under the enforcement acts and about 1250 convictions were secured,
+      principally in Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.
+      Most of these violations of election laws, however, had nothing to do with
+      the Ku Klux movement, for by 1870 the better class of members had
+      withdrawn from the secret orders. But though the enforcement acts checked
+      these irregularities to a considerable extent, they nevertheless failed to
+      hold the South for the radicals and essential parts of them were declared
+      unconstitutional a few years later.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In order to justify the passage of the enforcement acts and to obtain
+      campaign material for use
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">262</a></span>
+			in 1872, Congress appointed a committee, organized on the very day when
+			the Ku Klux Act was approved, to investigate conditions in the Southern
+			States. From June to August, 1871, the committee took testimony in
+			Washington, and in the fall subcommittees visited several Southern States.
+			Tennessee, Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas were, however,
+			omitted from the investigation. Notwithstanding the partisan purpose and
+			methods of the investigation, the report of the committee and the
+			accompanying testimony constituted a Democratic rather than a Republican
+			document. It is a veritable mine of information about the South between
+			1865 and 1871. The Democratic minority members made skillful use of their
+			opportunity to expose conditions in the South. They were less concerned
+			to meet the charges made against the Ku Klux Klan than to show why such
+			movements came about. The Republicans, concerned mainly about material
+			for the presidential campaign, neglected the broader phases of the
+			situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Opposition to the effects of reconstruction did not come to an end with
+      the dissolution of the more famous orders. On the contrary, it now became
+      public and open and resulted in the organization,
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">263</a></span>
+			after 1872, of the White League, the Mississippi Shot Gun Plan, the White
+			Man's Party in Alabama, and the Rifle Clubs in South Carolina. The later
+			movements were distinctly but cautiously anti-negro. There was most
+			irritation in the white counties where there were large numbers of
+			negroes. Negro schools and churches were burned because they served as
+			meeting places for negro political organizations. The color line began
+			to be more and more sharply drawn. Social and business ostracism
+			continued to be employed against white radicals, while the negroes were
+			discharged from employment or were driven from their rented farms.
+    </p>
+		<hr class="break" />
+    <p>
+      The Ku Klux movement, it is to be noted in retrospect, originated as an
+      effort to restore order in the war-stricken Southern States. The secrecy
+      of its methods appealed to the imagination and caused its rapid expansion,
+      and this secrecy was inevitable because opposition to reconstruction was
+      not lawful. As the reconstruction policies were put into operation, the
+      movement became political and used violence when appeals to superstitious
+      fears ceased to be effective. The Ku Klux Klan centered, directed, and
+      crystallized public opinion, and united the whites upon a platform of
+      white
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">264</a></span>
+			supremacy. The Southern politicians stood aloof from the movement
+      but accepted the results of its work. It frightened the negroes and bad
+      whites into better conduct, and it encouraged the conservatives and aided
+      them to regain control of society, for without the operations of the Klan
+      the black districts would never have come again under white control.
+      Towards the end, however, its methods frequently became unnecessarily
+      violent and did great harm to Southern society. The Ku Klux system of
+      regulating society is as old as history; it had often been used before; it
+      may even be used again. When a people find themselves persecuted by aliens
+      under legal forms, they will invent some means outside the law for
+      protecting themselves; and such experiences will inevitably result in a
+      weakening of respect for law and in a return to more primitive methods of
+      justice.
+    </p>
+		<div class="chapterhead">
+		  <p>
+			   <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">265</a></span>
+			   <a name="Chapter12" id="Chapter12"></a>
+				 <br /><br /><br />
+			</p>
+    </div>
+	  <h2>
+      <a href="#Contents">CHAPTER XII.</a>
+    </h2>
+		<p class="chaptertitle">The Changing South</p>
+		<p class="noindent"><span class="first-word">"The</span>
+      bottom rail is on top" was a phrase which had flashed throughout the
+      late Confederate States. It had been coined by the negroes in 1867 to
+      express their view of the situation, but its aptness had been recognized
+      by all. After ten years of social and economic revolution, however, it was
+      not so clear that the phrase of 1867 correctly described the new
+      situation. "The white man made free" would have been a more accurate
+      epitome, for the white man had been able, in spite of his temporary
+      disabilities, to compete with the negro in all industries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will be remembered that the negro districts were least exposed to the
+      destruction of war. The well-managed plantation, lying near the highways
+      of commerce, with its division of labor, nearly or quite self-sufficing,
+      was the bulwark of the Confederacy. When the fighting ended, an industrial
+      revolution began in these untouched parts of the
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">266</a></span>
+			Black Belt. The problem of free negro labor now appeared. During the year
+			1865 no general plan for a labor system was formulated except by the
+			Freedmen's Bureau. That, however, was not a success. There were all sorts
+			of makeshifts, such as cash wages, deferred wages, co&ouml;peration, even
+			sharing of expense and product, and contracts, either oral or written.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The employers showed a disposition to treat the negro family as a unit in
+      making contracts for labor, wages, food, clothes, and care. &sup1; In
+			general these early arrangements were made to transform slavery with its
+			mutual duties and obligations into a free labor system with wages and
+      "privileges." The "privileges" of slavery could not be destroyed; in fact,
+      they have never yet been destroyed in numerous places. Curious demands
+      were made by the negroes: here, farm bells must not ring; there, overseers
+      or managers must be done away with; in some places plantation courts were
+      to settle matters of work, rent, and conduct; elsewhere, agreements were
+      made that on Saturday the laborer
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">267</a></span>
+			should be permitted to go to town and, perhaps, ride a mule or horse.
+			In South Carolina the Sea Island negroes demanded that in laying out
+			work the old "tasks" or "stints" of slavery days be retained as the
+			standard. The farming districts at the edge of the Black Belt, where
+			the races were about equal in numbers, already had a kind of "share
+			system," and in these sections the economic chaos after the war was
+			not so complete. The former owners worked in the field with their
+      ex-slaves and thus provided steady employment for many. Farms were rented
+      for a fixed sum of money, or for a part of the crop, or on "shares."
+    </p>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_12-1" name="footer_12-1"></a>
+     &sup1; J.&nbsp;D.&nbsp;B. De Bow, the economist, testified before the Joint
+     Committee on Reconstruction that, if the negro would work,
+     free labor would be better for the planters than slave
+     labor. He called attention to the fact, however, that negro
+     women showed a desire to avoid field labor, and there is
+     also evidence to show that they objected to domestic service
+     and other menial work.</p>
+</div>
+
+    <p>
+      The white districts, which had previously fought a losing competition with
+      the efficiently managed and inexpensive slave labor of the Black Belt,
+      were affected most disastrously by war and its aftermath. They were
+      distant from transportation lines and markets; they employed poor farming
+      methods; they had no fertilizers; they raised no staple crops on their
+      infertile land; and in addition they now had to face the destitution that
+      follows fighting. Yet these regions had formerly been almost
+      self-supporting, although the farms were small and no elaborate labor
+      system had been developed.
+		</p>
+		<p>
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">268</a></span>
+			In the planting districts where the owner was land-poor he made an
+			attempt to bring in Northern capital and Northern or foreign labor. In
+			the belief that the negroes would work better for a Northern man, every
+			planter who could do so secured a Northern partner or manager, frequently
+			a soldier. Nevertheless these imported managers nearly always failed
+			because they did not understand cotton, rice, or sugar planting, and
+			because they were either too severe or too easy upon the blacks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No Northern labor was to be had, and the South could not retain even all
+      its own native whites. Union soldiers and others seeking to better their
+      prospects moved west and northwest to fill the newly opened lands, while
+      the Confederates, kept out of the homestead region by the test oath,
+      swarmed into Texas, which owned its own public lands, or went North to
+      other occupations. Nor could the desperate planters hire foreign
+      immigrants. Several States, among them South Carolina, Alabama, and
+      Louisiana, advertised for laborers and established labor bureaus, but
+      without avail. The negro politicians in 1867 declared themselves opposed
+      to all movements to foster immigration. So in the Black Belt the negro
+      had, for forty years, a monopoly of farm labor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+		  <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">269</a></span>
+      The share system of tenantry, with its attendant evils of credit and crop
+      lien, was soon established in the Southern States, mainly in the Black
+      Belt, but to some extent also in the white districts. The landlord
+      furnished land, house, fuel, water, and all or a part of the seed,
+      fertilizer, farm implements, and farm animals. In return he received a
+      "half," or a "third and fourth," his share depending upon how much he had
+      furnished. The best class of tenants would rent for cash or a fixed
+      rental, the poorest laborers would work for wages only.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The "privileges" brought over from slavery, which were included in the
+      share renting, astonished outside observers. To the laborer was usually
+      given a house, a water supply, wood for fuel, pasture for pigs or cows, a
+      "patch" for vegetables and fruit, and the right to hunt and fish. These
+      were all that some needed in order to live. Somers, the English traveler
+      already quoted, pronounced this generous custom "outrageously absurd," for
+      the negroes had so many privileges that they refused to make use of their
+      opportunities. "The soul is often crushed out of labor by penury and
+      oppression," he said, "but here a soul cannot begin to be infused into it
+      through the sheer excess of privilege and license with which it is
+      surrounded."
+		</p>
+		<p>
+		  <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">270</a></span>
+			The credit system which was developed beside the share system
+      made a bad condition worse. On the 1st of January, a planter could
+      mortgage his future crop to a merchant or landlord in exchange for
+      subsistence until the harvest. Since, as a rule, neither tenant nor
+      landlord had any surplus funds, the latter would be supplied by the banker
+      or banker merchant, who would then dictate the crops to be planted and the
+      time of sale. As a result of these conditions, the planter or farmer was
+      held to staple crops, high prices for necessities, high interest rate, and
+      frequently unfair bookkeeping. The system was excellent for a thrifty,
+      industrious, and intelligent man, for it enabled him to get a start. It
+      worked to the advantage of a bankrupt landlord, who could in this way get
+      banking facilities. But it had a mischievous effect upon the average
+      tenant, who had too small a share of the crop to feel a strong sense of
+      responsibility as well as too many "privileges" and too little supervision
+      to make him anxious to produce the best results.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The negroes entered into their freedom with several advantages: they were
+      trained to labor; they were occupying the most fertile soil and could
+      purchase land at low prices; the tenant system was
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">271</a></span>
+			most liberal; cotton, sugar, and rice were bringing high prices; and
+			access to markets was easy. In the white districts land was cheap, and
+			prices of commodities were high, but otherwise the negroes seemed to have
+			the better position. Yet as early as 1870, keen observers called attention
+			to the fact that the hill and mountain whites were thriving as compared
+			with their former condition, and that the negroes were no longer their
+			serious competitors. In the white districts better methods were coming
+			into use, labor was steady, fertilizers were used, and conditions of
+			transportation were improving. The whites were also encroaching on the
+			Black Belt; they were opening new lands in the Southwest; and within the
+			border of the Black Belt they were bringing negro labor under some
+			control. In the South Carolina rice lands, crowds of Irish were imported
+			to do the ditching which the negroes refused to do and were carried back
+			North when the job was finished. &sup1; President Thach
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">272</a></span>
+			of the Alabama Agricultural College has thus described the
+      situation:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      By the use of commercial fertilizers, vast regions once considered barren
+      have been brought into profitable cultivation, and really afford a more
+      reliable and constant crop than the rich alluvial lands of the old slave
+      plantations. In nearly every agricultural county in the South there is to
+      be observed, on the one hand, this section of fertile soils, once the
+      heart of the old civilization, now abandoned by the whites, held in
+      tenantry by a dense negro population, full of dilapidation and ruin; while
+      on the other hand, there is the region of light, thin soils, occupied by
+      the small white freeholder, filled with schools, churches, and good roads,
+      and all the elements of a happy, enlightened country life.
+    </p>
+		</blockquote>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_12-2" name="footer_12-2"></a>
+&sup1; The Census of 1880 gave proof of the superiority of the
+     whites in cotton production. For purposes of comparison the
+     cotton area may be divided into three regions: first, the
+     Black Belt, in which the farmers were black, the soil
+     fertile, the plantations large, the credit evil at its
+     worst, and the yield of cotton per acre the least; second,
+     the white districts, where the soil was the poorest, the
+     farms small, the workers nearly all white, and the yield per
+     acre better than on the fertile Black Belt lands; third, the
+     regions in which the races were nearly equal in numbers or
+     where the whites were in a slight majority, with soil of
+     medium fertility, good methods of agriculture, and, owing to
+     better controlled labor, the best yield. In other words,
+     negroes, fertile soil, and poor crops went together; and on
+     the other hand the whites got better crops on less fertile
+     soil. The Black Belt has never again reached the level of
+     production it had in 1860. But the white district kept
+     improving slowly.</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      All the systems devised for handling negro labor proved to be only
+      partially successful. The laborer was migratory, wanted easy work, with
+      one or two holidays a week, and the privilege of attending political
+      meetings, camp meetings, and circuses. A thrifty negro could not make
+      headway because his fellows stole from him or his less energetic relations
+      and friends visited him and ate up
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">273</a></span>
+			his substance. One Alabama planter declared that he could not raise a
+			turkey, a chicken, a hog, or a cow; and another asserted that "a hog has
+			no more chance to live among these thieving negro farmers than a June bug
+			in a gang of puddle ducks." Lands were mortgaged to the supply houses in
+			the towns, the whites gradually deserted the country, and many rice and
+			cotton fields grew up in weeds. Crop stealing at night became a business
+			which no legislation could ever completely stop. </p>
+			<p>A traveler has left the following description of "a model negro farm"
+			in 1874. The farmer purchased an old mule on credit and rented land on
+			shares or for so many bales of cotton; any old tools were used; corn,
+			bacon, and other supplies were bought on credit, and a crop lien was
+      given; a month later, corn and cotton were planted on soil that was not
+      well broken up; the negro "would not pay for no guano" to put on other
+      people's land; by turns the farmer planted and fished, plowed and hunted,
+      hoed and frolicked, or went to "meeting." At the end of the year he sold
+      his cotton, paid part of his rent and some of his debt, returned the mule
+      to its owner, and sang:
+    </p>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <p class="indent30 left-indent15">Nigger work hard all de year,</p>
+			<p class="indent30 left-indent15">White man tote de money.</p>
+    </div>
+    <p>
+		  <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">274</a></span>
+      The great landholdings did not break up into small farms as was predicted,
+      though sales were frequent and in 1865 enormous amounts of land were put
+      on the market. After 1867, additional millions of acres were offered at
+      small prices, and tax and mortgage sales were numerous. The result of
+      these operations, however, was a change of landlords rather than a
+      breaking up of large plantations. New men, negroes, merchants, and Jews
+      became landowners. The number of small farms naturally increased but so in
+      some instances did the land concentrated into large holdings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was inevitable that conditions of negro life should undergo a
+      revolutionary change during the reconstruction. The serious matter of
+      looking out for himself and his family and of making a living dampened the
+      negro's cheerful spirits. Released from the discipline of slavery and
+      often misdirected by the worst of teachers, the negro race naturally ran
+      into excesses of petty criminality. Even under the reconstruction
+      governments the proportion of negro to white criminals was about ten to
+      one. Theft was frequent; arson was the accepted means of revenge on white
+      people; and murder became common in the brawls of the city negro quarters.
+      The laxness of the marriage relation worked special
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">275</a></span>
+			hardship on the women and children in so many cases deserted by the head
+			of the family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out of the social anarchy of reconstruction the negroes emerged with
+      numerous organizations of their own which may have been imitations of the
+      Union League, the Lincoln Brotherhood, and the various church
+      organizations. These societies were composed entirely of blacks and have
+      continued with prolific reproduction to the present day. They were
+      characterized by high names, gorgeous regalia, and frequent parades. "The
+      Brothers and Sisters of Pleasure and Prosperity" and the "United Order of
+      African Ladies and Gentlemen" played a large, and on the whole useful,
+      part in negro social life, teaching lessons of thrift, insurance,
+      co&ouml;peration, and mutual aid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reconstructionists were not able in 1867-68 to carry through Congress
+      any provision for the social equality of the races, but in the
+      reconstructed States the equal rights issue was alive throughout the
+      period. Legislation giving to the negro equal rights in hotels, places of
+      amusements, and common carriers, was first enacted in Louisiana and South
+      Carolina. Frequently the carpetbaggers brought up the issue in order to
+      rid the radical ranks of the scalawags who were opposed to equal
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">276</a></span>
+			rights. In Florida, for example, the carpetbaggers framed a comprehensive
+			Equal Rights Law, passed it, and presented it to Governor Reed, who was
+			known to be opposed to such legislation. He vetoed the measure and thus
+			lost the negro support. Intermarriage with whites was made legal in
+			Louisiana and South Carolina and by court decision was permitted in
+			Alabama and Mississippi, but the Georgia Supreme Court held it to be
+			illegal. Mixed marriages were few, but these were made occasions of
+			exultation over the whites and of consequent ill feeling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles Sumner was a persistent agitator for equal rights. In 1871 he
+      declared in a letter to a South Carolina negro convention that the race
+      must insist not only upon equality in hotels and on public carriers but
+      also in the schools. "It is not enough," he said, "to provide separate
+      accommodations for colored citizens even if in all respects as good as
+      those of other persons.&hellip; The discrimination is an insult and a
+      hindrance, and a bar, which not only destroys comfort and prevents
+      equality, but weakens all other rights. The right to vote will have new
+      security when your equal right in public conveyances, hotels, and common
+      schools, is at last established; but here you must
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">277</a></span>
+			insist for yourselves by speech, petition, and by vote." The Southern
+			whites began to develop the "Jim Crow" theory of "separate but equal"
+			accommodations. Senator Hill of Georgia, for example, thought that hotels
+			might have separate divisions for the two races, and he cited the division
+			in the churches as proof that the negro wanted separation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About 1874, it was plain that the last radical Congress was nearly ready
+      to enact social equality legislation. This fact turned many of the
+      Southern Unionist class back to the Democratic party, there to remain for
+      a long time. In 1875, as a sort of memorial to Sumner, Congress passed the
+      Civil Rights Act, which gave to negroes equal rights in hotels, places of
+      amusement, on public carriers, and on juries. Some Democratic leaders were
+      willing to see such legislation enacted, because in the first place, it
+      would have little effect except in the Border and Northern States, where
+      it would turn thousands into the Democratic fold, and in the second place,
+      because they were sure that in time the Supreme Court would declare the
+      law unconstitutional. And so it happened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In regions where the more unprincipled radical leaders were in control,
+      the whites lived at times in fear of negro uprisings. The negroes were
+      armed
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">278</a></span>
+			and insolent, and the whites were few and widely scattered. Here and
+      there outbreaks occurred and individual whites and isolated families
+      suffered, but as a rule all such movements were crushed with much heavier
+      loss to the negroes than to the better organized whites. Nevertheless
+      everlasting apprehension for the safety of women and children kept the
+      white men nervous. General Garnett Andrews remarked about the situation in
+      Mississippi:
+    </p>
+		<blockquote>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      I have never suffered such an amount of anguish and alarm in all my life.
+      I have served through the whole war as a soldier in the army of Northern
+      Virginia, and saw all of it; but I never did experience &hellip; the fear
+			and alarm and sense of danger which I felt that time. And this was the
+      universal feeling among the population, among the white people. I think
+      that both sides were alarmed and felt uneasy. It showed itself upon the
+      countenance of the people; it made many of them sick. Men looked haggard
+      and pale, after undergoing this sort of thing for six weeks or a month,
+      and I have felt when I laid [sic] down that neither myself, nor my wife
+      and children were in safety. I expected, and honestly anticipated, and
+      thought it highly probable, that I might be assassinated and my house set
+      on fire at any time.
+    </p>
+		</blockquote>
+    <p>
+      By the fires of reconstruction the whites were fused into a more
+      homogeneous society, social as well as political. The former slaveholding
+      class
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">279</a></span>
+			continued to be more considerate of the negro than were the poor
+      whites; but, as misrule went on, all classes tended to unite against the
+      negro in politics. They were tired of reconstruction, new amendments,
+      force bills, Federal troops&mdash;tired of being ruled as conquered
+      provinces by the incompetent and the dishonest. Every measure aimed at the
+      South seemed to them to mean that they were considered incorrigible and
+      unworthy of trust, and that they were being made to suffer for the deeds
+      of irresponsible whites. And, to make matters worse, strong opposition to
+      proscriptive measures was called fresh rebellion. "When the Jacobins say
+      and do low and bitter things, their charge of want of loyalty in the South
+      because our people grumble back a little seems to me as unreasonable as
+      the complaint of the little boy: 'Mamma, make Bob 'have hisself. He makes
+      mouths at me every time I hit him with my stick.'" &sup1;    </p>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_12-3" name="footer_12-3"></a>
+&sup1; Usually ascribed to General D.&nbsp;H. Hill of North Carolina,
+     and quoted in <i>The Land We Love,</i> vol. 1, p. 146.</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      Probably this burden fell heavier on the young men, who had life before
+      them and who were growing up with diminished opportunities. Sidney Lanier,
+      then an Alabama school-teacher, wrote to Bayard Taylor: "Perhaps you know
+      that with us
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">280</a></span>
+			of the young generation in the South, since the war, pretty
+      much the whole of life has been merely not dying." Negro and alien rule
+      was a constant insult to the intelligence of the country. The taxpayers
+      were nonparticipants in the affairs of government. Some people withdrew
+      entirely from public life, went to their farms or plantations, kept away
+      from towns and from speechmaking, waiting for the end to come. There were
+      some who refused for several years to read the newspapers, so unpleasant
+      was the news. The good feeling produced by the magnanimity of Grant at
+      Appomattox was destroyed by the severity of his Southern policy when he
+      became President. There was no gratitude for any so-called leniency of the
+      North, no repentance for the war, no desire for humiliation, for sackcloth
+      and ashes, and no confession of wrong. The insistence of the radicals upon
+      obtaining a confession of depravity only made things much worse. Scarcely
+      a measure of Congress during reconstruction was designed or received in a
+      conciliatory spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The new generation of whites was poor, bitter because of persecution,
+      ill educated, overworked, without a bright future, and shadowed by the
+      race problem. Though their new political leaders were
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">281</a></span>
+			shrewd, narrow, conservative, honest, and parsimonious, the constant
+			fighting of fire with fire scorched all. In the bitter discipline of
+			reconstruction, the pleasantest side of Southern life came to an end.
+			During the war and the consequent reconstruction there was a marked
+			change in Southern temperament toward the severe. Hospitality declined;
+			the old Southern life had never been on a business basis, but the new
+			Southern life now adjusted itself to a stricter economy; the old
+			individuality was partially lost; but class distinctions were less
+			obvious in a more homogeneous society. The material evils of
+			reconstruction may be only temporary; state debts may be paid and
+			wasted resources renewed; but the moral and intellectual results of
+			the revolution will be the more permanent.
+    </p>
+		<div class="chapterhead">
+		  <p>
+			   <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">282</a></span>
+			   <a name="Chapter13" id="Chapter13"></a>
+				 <br /><br /><br />
+			</p>
+    </div>
+	  <h2>
+      <a href="#Contents">CHAPTER XIII.</a>
+    </h2>
+		<p class="chaptertitle">Restoration of Home Rule</p>
+		<p class="noindent"><span class="first-word">The</span>
+      radical program of reconstruction ended after ten years in failure
+      rather because of a change in public opinion in the North than because of
+      the resistance of the Southern whites. The North of 1877, indeed, was not
+      the North of 1867. A more tolerant attitude toward the South developed as
+      the North passed through its own period of misgovernment when all the
+      large cities were subject to "ring rule" and corruption, as in New York
+      under "Boss" Tweed and in the District of Columbia under "Boss" Shepherd.
+      The Federal civil service was discredited by the scandals connected with
+      the Sanborn contracts, the Whisky Ring, and the Star Routes, while some
+      leaders in Congress were under a cloud from the "Salary Grab" and Credit
+      Mobilier disclosures. &sup1;
+    </p>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_13-1" name="footer_13-1"></a>
+&sup1; See <i>The Boss and the Machine,</i> by Samuel P. Orth
+     (in <i>The Chronicles of America).</i></p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+		  <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">283</a></span>
+      The marvelous material development of the North and West also drew
+      attention away from sectional controversies. Settlers poured into the
+      plains beyond the Mississippi and the valleys of the Far West; new
+      industries sprang up; unsuspected mineral wealth was discovered; railroads
+      were built. Not only bankers but taxpaying voters took an interest in the
+      financial readjustments of the time. Many thousand people followed the
+      discussions over the funding and refunding of the national debt, the
+      retirement of the greenbacks, and the proposed lowering of tariff duties.
+      Yet the Black Friday episode of 1869, when Jay Gould and James Fisk
+      cornered the visible supply of gold, and the panic of 1873 were
+      indications of unsound financial conditions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These new developments and the new domestic problems which they involved
+      all tended to divert public thought from the old political issues arising
+      out of the war. Foreign relations, too, began to take on a new interest.
+      The <i>Alabama</i> claims controversy with England continued to hold the
+			public attention until finally settled by the Geneva Arbitration in 1872.
+      President Grant, as much of an expansionist as Seward, for two years
+      (1869-71) tried to secure Santo Domingo or a part of it for an
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">284</a></span>
+			American naval base in the West Indies. But the United States had race
+			problems enough already and the Senate, led by Sumner, refused to
+			sanction the acquisition. Relations with Spain were frequently strained
+			on account of American filibustering expeditions to aid Cuban insurgents.
+			Spain repeatedly charged the United States with laxness toward such
+			violations of international law; and President Grant, seeing no other
+			way out, recommended in 1869 and again in 1870 that the Cuban insurgents
+			be recognized as belligerents, but still the Senate held back. The climax
+      came in 1873, when the Spanish authorities in Cuba captured on the high
+      seas the <i>Virginius</i> &sup1; with a filibustering expedition on board
+			and executed fifty-three of the crew and passengers, among them eight
+			Americans. For a time war seemed imminent, but Spain acted quickly and
+			effected a peaceable settlement.
+    </p>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_13-2" name="footer_13-2"></a>
+&sup1; See <i>The Path of Empire,</i> by Carl Russell Fish
+     (in <i>The Chronicles of America</i>), p. 119.</p>
+</div>
+    <p>
+      It became evident soon after 1867 that the issues involved in
+      reconstruction were not in themselves sufficient to hold the North solidly
+      Republican. Toward negro suffrage, for example, Northern public opinion
+      was on the whole unfriendly. In 1867 the negro was permitted to vote only
+      in New York
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">285</a></span>
+			and in New England, except in Connecticut. Before 1869 negro
+      suffrage was rejected in Connecticut, Wisconsin, Kansas, Ohio, Maryland,
+      Missouri, Michigan, and Minnesota. The Republicans in their national
+      platform of 1868 went only so far as to say that, while negro suffrage was
+      to be forced upon the South, it must remain a local question in the North.
+      The Border States rapidly lined up with the white South on matters of
+      race, church, and politics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not until 1874, however, that the changing opinion was made
+      generally effective in the elections. The skillfully managed radical
+      organization held large majorities in every Congress from the Thirty-ninth
+      to the Forty-third, and the electoral votes in 1868 and 1872 seemed to
+      show that the conservative opposition was insignificant. But these figures
+      do not tell the whole story. Even in 1864, when Lincoln won by nearly half
+      a million, the popular vote was as eighteen to twenty-two, and four years
+      later Grant, the most popular man in the United States, had a majority of
+      only three hundred thousand over Seymour, and this majority and more came
+      from the new negro voters. Four years later with about a million negro
+      voters available and an opposition not pleased with its own
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">286</a></span>
+      candidate, Grant's majority reached only seven hundred thousand. At no
+			one time in elections did the North pronounce itself in favor of all the
+      reconstruction policies. The break, signs of which were visible as early
+      as 1869, came in 1874 when the Republicans lost control of the House of
+      Representatives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strength was given to the opposition because of the dissatisfaction with
+      President Grant, who knew little about politics and politicians. He felt
+      that his Cabinet should be made up of personal friends, not of strong
+      advisers, and that the military ideal of administration was the proper
+      one. He was faithful but undiscriminating in his friendships and
+      frequently chose as his associates men of vulgar tastes and low motives;
+      and he showed a na&iuml;ve love of money and an undisguised admiration
+			for rich men such as Gould and Fisk. His appointees were often incompetent
+			friends or relatives, and his cynical attitude toward civil service reform
+			lost him the support of influential men. When forced by party exigencies
+			to select first-class men for his Cabinet, he still preferred to go for
+      advice to practical politicians. On the Southern question he easily fell
+      under control of the radicals, who in order to retain their influence had
+      only to convince
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">287</a></span>
+			his military mind that the South was again in rebellion, and who found
+			it easy to distract public opinion from political corruption by
+			"waving the bloody shirt." Dissatisfaction with his Administration, it
+      is true, was confined to the intellectuals, the reformers, and the
+      Democrats, but they were strong enough to defeat him for a second term if
+      they could only be organized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Liberal Republican movement began in the West about 1869 with demands
+      for amnesty and for reform, particularly in the civil service, and it soon
+      spread rapidly over the North. When it became certain that the "machine"
+      would renominate Grant, the liberal movement became an anti-Grant party.
+      The "New Departure" Democrats gave comfort and prospect of aid to the
+      Liberal Republicans by declaring for a constructive, forward-looking
+      policy in place of reactionary opposition. The Liberal chiefs were led to
+      believe that the new Democratic leaders would accept their platform and
+      candidates in order to defeat Grant. The principal candidates for the
+      Liberal Republican nomination were Charles Francis Adams, Lyman Trumbull,
+      Gratz Brown, David Davis, and Horace Greeley. Adams was the strongest
+      candidate but was jockeyed out of place and the nomination was
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">288</a></span>
+			given to Horace Greeley, able enough as editor of the <i>New York
+			Tribune</i> but impossible as a candidate for the presidency. The
+			Democratic party accepted him as their candidate also, although he had
+			been a lifelong opponent of Democratic principles and policies. But
+			disgusted Liberals either returned to the Republican ranks or stayed away
+			from the polls, and many Democrats did likewise. Under these circumstances
+			the re&euml;lection of Grant was a foregone conclusion. There was
+			certainly a potential majority against Grant, but the opposition had
+			failed to organize, while the Republican machine was in good working
+			order, the negroes were voting, and the Enforcement Acts proved a great
+			aid to the Republicans in the Southern States.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One good result of the growing liberal sentiment was the passage of an
+      Amnesty Act by Congress on May 22, 1872. By statute and by the Fourteenth
+      Amendment, Congress had refused to recognize the complete validity of
+      President Johnson's pardons and amnesty proclamations, and all Confederate
+      leaders who wished to regain political rights had therefore to appeal to
+      Congress. During the Forty-first Congress (1869-71) more than three
+      thousand Southerners were amnestied in order that they might hold office.
+      These, however, were
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">289</a></span>
+			for the most part scalawags; the most respectable whites would not seek
+			an amnesty which they could secure only by self-stultification. &sup1; It
+			was the pressure of public opinion against white disfranchisement and the
+			necessity for meeting the Liberal Republican arguments which caused the
+			passage of the Act of 1872. By this act about 150,000 whites were
+			re&euml;nfranchised, leaving out only about five hundred of the most
+			prominent of the old r&eacute;gime, most of whom were never restored to
+      citizenship. Both Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis died disfranchised.
+    </p>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_13-3" name="footer_13-3"></a>
+&sup1; The machinery of government and politics was all in
+     radical hands&mdash;the carpetbaggers and scalawags, who were
+     numerous enough to fill practically all the offices. These
+     men were often able leaders and skillful managers, and they
+     did not intend to surrender control; and the black race was
+     obedient and furnished the votes. In 1868, with Virginia,
+     Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas unrepresented, the first
+     radical contingent in Congress from the South numbered 42,
+     of whom 10 out of 12 senators and 26 out of 32
+     representatives were carpetbaggers. There were two lone
+     conservative Congressmen. A few months later, in 1869, there
+     were 64 radical representatives from the South, 20 senators
+     and 44 members of the House of Representatives. In 1877 this
+     number had dwindled to two senators and four
+     representatives. The difference between these figures
+     measures in some degree the extent of the undoing of
+     reconstruction within the period of Grant's Administration.</p>
+</div>
+   <hr class="break" />
+    <p>
+      How the Southern whites escaped from negro domination has often been told
+      and may here be sketched only in outline. The first States regained
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">290</a></span>
+			from radicalism were those in which the negro population was small and the
+      black vote large enough to irritate but not to dominate. Although Northern
+      sentiment, excited by the stories of "Southern outrage," was then
+      unfavorable, the conservatives of the South, by organizing a "white man's
+      party" and by the use of Ku Klux methods, made a fight for social safety
+      which they won nearly everywhere, and, in addition, they gained political
+      control of several States&mdash;Tennessee in 1869, Virginia in 1869-1870,
+      and North Carolina and Georgia in 1870. They almost won Louisiana in 1868
+      and Alabama in 1870, but the alarmed radicals came to the rescue of the
+      situation with the Fifteenth Amendment and the Enforcement Laws of
+      1870-1871. With more troops and a larger number of deputy marshals it
+      seemed that the radicals might securely hold the remaining States. Arrests
+      of conservatives were numerous, plundering was at its height, the Federal
+      Government was interested and was friendly to the new Southern rulers, and
+      the carpetbaggers and scalawags feasted, troubled only by the disposition
+      of their negro supporters to demand a share of the spoils. Although the
+      whites made little gain from 1870 to 1874, the States already rescued
+      became more firmly conservative;
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">291</a></span>
+			white counties here and there in the black States voted out the radicals;
+			a few more representatives of the whites got into Congress; and the Border
+			States ranged themselves more solidly with the conservatives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But while the Southern whites were becoming desperate under oppression,
+      public opinion in the North was at last beginning to affect politics. The
+      elections of 1874 resulted in a Democratic landslide of which the
+      Administration was obliged to take notice. Grant now grew more responsive
+      to criticism. In 1875 he replied to a request for troops to hold down
+      Mississippi: "The whole public are tired out with these annual autumnal
+      outbreaks in the South and the great majority are ready now to condemn any
+      interference on the part of the Government." As soon as conditions in the
+      South were better understood in the North, ready sympathy and political
+      aid were offered by many who had hitherto acted with the radicals. The Ku
+      Klux report as well as the newspaper writings and the books of J.&nbsp;S.
+			Pike and Charles Nordhoff, both former opponents of slavery, opened the
+			eyes of many to the evil results of negro suffrage. Some who had been
+			considered friends of the negro, now believing that he had proven to
+			be a political failure,
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">292</a></span>
+			coldly abandoned him and turned their altruistic interests to other
+			objects more likely to succeed. Many real friends of the negro were
+      alarmed at the evils of the reconstruction and were anxious to see the
+      corrupt political leaders deprived of further influence over the race. To
+      others the constantly recurring Southern problem was growing stale and
+      they desired to hear less of it. Within the Republican party in each
+      Southern State there were serious divisions over the spoils. First it was
+      carpetbagger and negro against the scalawag; later, when the black leaders
+      insisted that those who furnished the votes must have the larger share of
+      the rewards, the fight became triangular. As a result, by 1874 the
+      Republican party in the South was split into factions and was deserted by
+      a large proportion of its white membership.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conservative whites, fiercely resentful after their experiences under
+      the enforcement laws and hopeful of Northern sympathy, now planned a
+      supreme effort to regain their former power. Race lines were more strictly
+      drawn; ostracism of all that was radical became the rule; the Republican
+      party in the South, it was apparent, was doomed to be only a negro party
+      weighed down by the scandal of bad government; the state treasuries were
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">293</a></span>
+      bankrupt, and there was little further opportunity for plunder. These
+      considerations had much to do with the return of scalawags to the "white
+      man's party" and the retirement of carpetbaggers from Southern politics.
+      There was no longer anything in it, they said; let the negro have it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was under these conditions that the "white man's party" carried the
+      elections in Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas in 1874, and Mississippi in
+      1875. Asserting that it was a contest between civilization and barbarism,
+      and that the whites under the radical r&eacute;gime had no opportunity to
+			carry an election legally, the conservatives openly made use of every
+			method of influencing the result that could possibly come within the
+			radical law and they even employed many effective methods that lay outside
+			the law. Negroes were threatened with discharge from employment and whites
+			with tar and feathers if they voted the radical ticket; there were
+			night-riding parties, armed and drilled "white leagues," and mysterious
+			firing of guns and cannon at night; much plain talk assailed the ears of
+			the radical leaders; and several bloody outbreaks occurred, principally in
+			Louisiana and Mississippi. Louisiana had been carried by the Democrats in
+			the fall of 1872, but the radical returning board had
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">294</a></span>
+			reversed the election. In 1874 the whites rose in rebellion and turned out
+			Kellogg, the usurping Governor, but President Grant intervened to restore
+			him to office. The "Mississippi" or "shot-gun plan" &sup1; was very
+			generally employed, except where the contest was likely to go in favor of
+			the whites without the use of undue pressure. The white leaders exercised
+			a moderating influence, but the average white man had determined to do
+			away with negro government even though the alternative might be a return
+			of military rule. Congress investigated the elections in each State which
+			overthrew the reconstructionists, but nothing came of the inquiry and the
+			population rapidly settled down into good order. After 1875 only three
+			States were left under radical government&mdash;Louisiana and Florida,
+			where the returning boards could throw out any Democratic majority, and
+			South Carolina, where the negroes greatly outnumbered the whites.
+    </p>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_13-4" name="footer_13-4"></a>
+&sup1; See <i>The New South,</i> by Holland Thompson
+     (in <i>The Chronicles of America</i>).</p>
+</div>
+
+    <p>
+      Reconstruction could hardly be a genuine issue in the presidential
+      campaign of 1876, because all except these three reconstructed States had
+      escaped from radical control, and there was no hope and
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">295</a></span>
+			little real desire of regaining them. It was even expected that in this
+			year the radicals would lose Louisiana and Florida to the "white man's
+			party." The leaders of the best element of the Republicans, both North
+			and South, looked upon the reconstruction as one of the prime causes of
+			the moral breakdown of their party; they wanted no more of the Southern
+			issue but planned a forward-looking, constructive reform.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To some of the Republican leaders, however, among whom was James G.
+			Blaine, it was clear that the Republican party, with its unsavory record
+			under Grant's Administration, could hardly go before the people with a
+			reform program. The only possible thing to do was to revive some Civil War
+			issue&mdash;"wave the bloody shirt" and fan the smoldering embers of
+			sectional feeling. Blaine met with complete success in raising the desired
+			issue. In January 1876, when an amnesty measure was brought before the
+			House, he moved that Jefferson Davis be excepted on the ground that he was
+			responsible for the mistreatment of Union prisoners during the war.
+			Southern hot-bloods replied, and Blaine skillfully led them on until they
+			had foolishly furnished him with ample material for campaign purposes.
+			The feeling thus
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">296</a></span>
+      aroused was so strong that it even galvanized into seeming life the dying
+      interest in the wrongs of the negro. The rallying cry "Vote as you shot!"
+      gave the Republicans something to fight for; the party referred to its war
+      record, claimed credit for preserving the Union, emancipating the negro,
+      and reconstructing the South, and demanded that the country be not
+      "surrendered to rebel rule."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hayes and Tilden, the rival candidates for the presidency, were both men
+      of high character and of moderate views. Their nominations had been forced
+      by the better element of each party. Hayes, the Republican candidate, had
+      been a good soldier, was moderate in his views on Southern questions, and
+      had a clean political reputation. Tilden, his opponent, had a good record
+      as a party man and as a reformer, and his party needed only to attack the
+      past record of the Republicans. The principal Democratic weakness lay in
+      the fact that the party drew so much of its strength from the white South
+      and was therefore subjected to criticism on Civil War issues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The campaign was hotly contested and was conducted on a low plane. Even
+      Hayes soon saw that the "bloody shirt" issue was the main vote winner. The
+      whites of the three "unredeemed" Southern
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">297</a></span>
+			States nerved themselves for the final struggle. In South Carolina and in
+			some parishes of Louisiana there was a considerable amount of violence,
+			in which the whites had the advantage, and much fraud, which the
+			Republicans, who controlled the election machinery, turned to best
+			account. It has been said that out of the confusion which the Republicans
+			created they won the presidency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first election returns seemed to give Tilden the victory with 184
+      undisputed electoral votes and popular majorities of ninety and over six
+      thousand respectively in Florida and Louisiana; only 185 votes were needed
+      for a choice. Hayes had 166 votes, not counting Oregon, in which one vote
+      was in dispute, and South Carolina, which for a time was claimed by both
+      parties. Had Louisiana and Florida been Northern States, there would have
+      been no controversy, but the Republican general headquarters knew that the
+      Democratic majorities in these States had to go through Republican
+      returning boards, which had never yet failed to throw them out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The interest of the nation now centered around the action of the two
+      returning boards. At the suggestion of President Grant, prominent
+      Republicans went South to witness the count. Later
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">298</a></span>
+			prominent Democrats went also. These "visiting statesmen" were to support
+			the frail returning boards in their duty. It was generally understood that
+			these boards, certainly the one in Louisiana, were for sale, and there is
+			little doubt that the Democrats inquired the price. But they were afraid
+			to bid on such uncertain quantities as Governor Wells and T.&nbsp;C.
+			Anderson of Louisiana, both notorious spoilsmen. The members of the boards
+			in both States soon showed the stiffening effect of the moral support of
+			the Federal Administration and of the "visiting statesmen." Reassured as
+			to their political future, they proceeded to do their duty: in Florida
+			they threw out votes until the ninety majority for Tilden was changed to
+			925 for Hayes, and in Louisiana, by throwing out about fifteen thousand
+			carefully selected ballots, they changed Tilden's lowest majority of six
+			thousand to a Hayes majority of nearly four thousand. Naturally the
+			Democrats sent in contesting returns, but the presidency was really won
+			when the Republicans secured in Louisiana and Florida returns which were
+			regular in form. But hoping to force Congress to go behind the returns,
+			the Democrats carried up contests also from Oregon and South Carolina,
+			whose votes properly belonged to Hayes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+		  <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">299</a></span>
+      The final contest came in Congress over the counting of the electoral
+      votes. The Constitution provides that "the President of the Senate shall,
+      in the presence of the Senate and the House of Representatives, open all
+      the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted." But there was no
+      agreement as to where authority lay for deciding disputed votes. Never
+      before had the presidency turned on a disputed count. From 1864 to 1874
+      the "twenty-second joint rule" had been in force under which either House
+      might reject a certificate. The votes of Georgia in 1868 and of Louisiana
+      in 1872 had thus been thrown out. But the rule had not been readopted by
+      the present Congress, and the Republicans very naturally would not listen
+      to a proposal to readopt it now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the country apparently on the verge of civil war, Congress finally
+      created by law an Electoral Commission to which were to be referred all
+      disputes about the counting of votes and the decision of which was to be
+      final unless both Houses concurred in rejecting it. The act provided that
+      the commission should consist of five senators, five representatives, four
+      designated associate justices of the Supreme Court, and a fifth associate
+      justice to be chosen by these four. While nothing was
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">300</a></span>
+			said in the act
+      about the political affiliations of the members of the commission, every
+      one understood that the House would select three Democrats and two
+      Republicans, and that the Senate would name two Democrats and three
+      Republicans. It was also well known that of the four justices designated
+      two were Republicans and two Democrats, and it was tacitly agreed that the
+      fifth would be Justice David Davis, an "independent." But at the last
+      moment Davis was elected Senator by the Illinois Legislature and declined
+      to serve on the Commission. Justice Bradley, a Republican, was then named
+      as the fifth justice, and in this way the Republicans obtained a majority
+      on the Commission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Democrats deserve the credit for the Electoral Commission. The
+      Republicans did not favor it, even after they were sure of a party
+      majority on it. They were conscious that they had a weak case, and they
+      were afraid to trust it to judges of the Supreme Court. Their fears were
+      groundless, however, since all important questions were decided by an 8 to
+      7 vote, Bradley voting with his fellow Republicans. Every contested vote
+      was given to Hayes, and with 185 electoral votes he was declared elected
+      on March 2, 1877.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten years before, Senator Morton of Indiana had
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">301</a></span>
+			said: "I would have been in favor of having the colored people of the
+			South wait a few years until they were prepared for the suffrage, until
+			they were to some extent educated, but the necessities of the times
+			forbade that; the conditions of things required that they should be
+			brought to the polls at once." Now the condition of things required that
+			some arrangement be made with the Southern whites which would involve a
+			complete reversal of the situation of 1867. In order to secure the
+			unopposed succession of Hayes, to defeat filibustering which might
+			endanger the decision of the Electoral Commission, politicians who could
+			speak with authority for Hayes assured influential Southern politicians,
+			who wanted no more civil war but who did want home rule, that an
+			arrangement might be made which would be satisfactory to both sides.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the contest was ended. Hayes was to be President; the South, with the
+      negro, was to be left to the whites; there would be no further military
+      aid to carpetbag governments. In so far as the South was concerned, it was
+      a fortunate settlement&mdash;better, indeed, than if Tilden had been
+			inducted into office. The remnants of the reconstruction policy were
+			surrendered by a Republican President,
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">302</a></span>
+			the troops were soon withdrawn, and the three radical States fell at once
+			under the control of the whites. Hayes could not see in his election any
+			encouragement to adopt a vigorous radical position, and Congress was
+			deadlocked on party issues for fifteen years. As a result the radical
+			Republicans had to develop other interests, and the North gradually
+			accepted the Southern situation.
+    </p>
+		<hr class="break" />
+    <p>
+      Although the radical policy of reconstruction came to an end in 1877, some
+      of its results were more lasting. The Southern States were burdened
+      heavily with debt, much of which had been fraudulently incurred. There now
+      followed a period of adjustment, of refunding, scaling, and repudiation,
+      which not only injured the credit of the States but left them with
+      enormous debts. The Democratic party under the leadership of former
+      Confederates began its r&eacute;gime of strict economy, race fairness,
+			and inelastic Jeffersonianism. There was a political rest which almost
+      amounted to stagnation and which the leaders were unwilling to disturb by
+      progressive measures lest a developing democracy make trouble with the
+      settlement of 1877.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The undoing of reconstruction was not entirely completed with the
+      understanding of 1877. There
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">303</a></span>
+			remained a large but somewhat shattered Republican party in the South,
+			with control over county and local government in many negro districts.
+			Little by little the Democrats rooted out these last vestiges of negro
+			control, using all the old radical methods and some improvements,&sup1;
+			such as tissue ballots, the shuffling of ballot boxes, bribery, force,
+			and redistricting, while some regions were placed entirely under
+			executive control and were ruled by appointed commissions. With the
+			good government which followed these changes a deadlocked Congress
+			showed no great desire to interfere. The Supreme Court came to the aid
+			of the Democrats with decisions in 1875, 1882, and 1883 which drew the
+			teeth from the Enforcement Laws, and Congress in 1894 repealed what
+			was left of these regulations.
+    </p>
+		<div class="footer">
+		  <p>
+      <a id="footer_13-5" name="footer_13-5"></a>
+&sup1; See <i>The New South,</i> by Holland Thompson
+     (in <i>The Chronicles of America</i>).</p>
+</div>
+
+
+    <p>
+      Under such discouraging conditions the voting strength of the Republicans
+      rapidly melted away. The party organization existed for the Federal
+      offices only and was interested in keeping down the number of those who
+      desired to be rewarded. As a consequence, the leaders could work in
+      harmony with those Democratic chiefs who were content with a "solid South"
+      and local home rule. The negroes
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">304</a></span>
+			of the Black Belt, with less enthusiasm and hope, but with quite the same
+			docility as in 1868, began to vote as the Democratic leaders directed.
+			This practice brought up in another form the question of "negro
+			government" and resulted in a demand from the people of the white counties
+			that the negro be put entirely out of politics. The answer came between
+			1890 to 1902 in the form of new and complicated election laws or new
+			constitutions which in various ways shut out the negro from the polls and
+			left the government to the whites. Three times have the Black Belt regions
+			dominated the Southern States: under slavery, when the master class
+			controlled; under reconstruction, when the leaders of the negroes had
+			their own way; and after reconstruction until negro disfranchisement,
+			when the Democratic dictators of the negro vote ruled fairly but not
+			always acceptably to the white counties which are now the source of their
+			political power.
+    </p>
+
+		<div class="chapterhead">
+		  <p>
+			   <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">305</a></span>
+			   <a name="Biblio" id="Biblio"></a>
+				 <br /><br /><br />
+			</p>
+    </div>
+	  <h2>
+      <a href="#Contents">Bibliographical Note.</a>
+    </h2>
+		<p class="noindent"><span class="first-word">The</span>
+      best general accounts of the reconstruction period are found in James
+      Ford Rhodes's <i>History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850
+			to the Restoration of Home Rule at the South in 1877,</i> volumes V, VI,
+			VII (1906); in William A. Dunning's <i>Reconstruction, Political and
+			Economic, 1865-1877</i>, in the <i>American Nation</i> Series, volume
+			XXII (1907); and in Peter Joseph Hamilton's <i>The Reconstruction
+			Period</i> (1905), which is volume XVI of <i>The History of North
+			America,</i> edited by F.&nbsp;N. Thorpe. The work of Rhodes is spacious
+			and fair-minded but there are serious gaps in his narrative; Dunning's
+			briefer account covers the entire field with masterly handling; Hamilton's
+			history throws new light on all subjects and is particularly useful for
+			an understanding of the Southern point of view. A valuable discussion of
+			constitutional problems is contained in William A. Dunning's <i>Essay on
+			the Civil War and Reconstruction and Related Topics</i> (1904); and a
+			criticism of the reconstruction policies from the point of view of
+			political science and constitutional law is to be found in J.&nbsp;W.
+			Burgess's <i>Reconstruction and the Constitution, 1866-1876</i> (1902).
+			E.&nbsp;B. Andrews's <i>The United States in our own Time</i> (1903) gives
+			a popular treatment of the later period. A collection of brief monographs
+      entitled <i>Why the Solid South?</i> by Hilary A. Herbert and others
+			(1890) was written as a
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">306</a></span>
+			campaign document to offset the drive made by the Republicans in 1889
+			for new enforcement laws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are many scholarly monographs on reconstruction in the several
+      States. The best of these are: J.&nbsp;W. Garner's <i>Reconstruction in
+      Mississippi</i> (1901), W.&nbsp;L. Fleming's <i>Civil War and
+			Reconstruction in Alabama</i> (1905), J.&nbsp;G. deR. Hamilton's
+			<i>Reconstruction in North Carolina</i> (1914), W.&nbsp;W. Davis's
+			<i>The Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida</i> (1913), J.&nbsp;S.
+			Reynolds's <i>Reconstruction in South Carolina, 1865-1877</i> (1905);
+			C.&nbsp;W. Ramsdell's <i>Reconstruction in Texas</i> (1910), and
+			C.&nbsp;M. Thompson's <i>Reconstruction in Georgia</i> (1915).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Books of interest on special phases of reconstruction are not numerous,
+      but among those deserving mention are Paul S. Pierce's <i>The Freedmen's
+      Bureau</i> (1904), D.&nbsp;M. DeWitt's <i>The Impeachment and Trial of
+			Andrew Johnson</i> (1903), and Paul L. Haworth's <i>The Hayes-Tilden
+			Disputed Presidential Election of 1876</i> (1906), each of which is a
+			thorough study of its field. J.&nbsp;C. Lester and D.&nbsp;L. Wilson's
+			<i>Ku Klux Klan</i> (1905) and M.&nbsp;L. Avary's <i>Dixie After the
+			War</i> (1906) contribute much to a fair understanding of the feeling of
+			the whites after the Civil War; and Gideon Welles, <i>Diary,</i> 3 vols.
+			(1911), is a mine of information from a conservative cabinet officer's
+			point of view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the politician's point of view one may go to James G. Blaine's
+			<i>Twenty Years of Congress,</i> 2 vols. (1884, 1886) and Samuel S.
+			Cox's <i>Three Decades of Federal Legislation</i> (1885). Good
+			biographies are James A. Woodburn's <i>The Life of Thaddeus Stevens</i>
+			(1913), Moorfield Storey's <i>Charles Sumner</i> (1900), C.&nbsp;F.
+			Adams's <i>Charles Francis Adams</i> (1900). Less satisfactory because
+			more partisan is Edward Stanwood's <i>James
+			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">307</a></span>
+      Gillespie Blaine</i> (1906). There are no adequate biographies of the
+      Democratic and Southern leaders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The official documents are found conveniently arranged in William
+      McDonald's <i>Select Statutes, 1861-1898</i> (1903), and also with other
+      material in Walter L. Fleming's <i>Documentary History of
+			Reconstruction,</i> 2 vols. (1906, 1907). The general reader is usually
+			repelled by the collections known as <i>Public Documents.</i> The
+			valuable <i>Ku Klux Trials</i> (1872) is, however, separately printed
+			and to be found in most good libraries. By a judicious use of the
+			indispensable <i>Tables and Index to Public Documents,</i> one can find
+			much vividly interesting material in connection with contested election
+			cases and reports of congressional investigations into conditions in the
+			South.
+    </p>
+<div class="chapterhead">
+			<a name="indexChapter" id="indexChapter"></a>
+      <br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">309</a></span>
+			<br /><br /><br />
+			<h2><a href="#Contents">INDEX</a></h2>
+			<p><br /></p>
+    </div>
+    <div id="index">
+
+
+		<h3>A.</h3>
+    <p>
+Abolitionists, views on reconstruction,
+   <a href="#Page_060">60</a>-<a href="#Page_061">61</a>.<br />
+Adams, C.&nbsp;F., candidate for presidential nomination,
+   <a href="#Page_287">287</a>.<br />
+<i>Advertiser</i>, Boston,
+   Sidney Andrews as correspondent for, <a href="#Page_028">28</a>.<br />
+<i>Advertiser</i> of Montgomery,
+   and education, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>.<br />
+Agriculture in the South,
+   <a href="#Page_267">267</a>-<a href="#Page_269">269</a>,
+	 <a href="#Page_271">271</a>,
+	 <a href="#Page_273">273</a>-<a href="#Page_274">274</a>.<br />
+Alabama, corruption,
+   <a href="#Page_010">10</a>-<a href="#Page_011">11</a>;
+   poverty, <a href="#Page_014">14</a>;
+   Protestant Episcopal churches closed, <a href="#Page_023">23</a>;
+   labor, <a href="#Page_047">47</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>;
+   negro legislation, <a href="#Page_097">97</a>;
+   courts, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>;
+   and Fourteenth Amendment, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>;
+   negro voters, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;
+   constitutional convention, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>;
+   constitution, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>-<a href="#Page_154">154</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_155">155</a>;
+   abstention policy,
+	    <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>;
+   readmitted, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>;
+   Union League in, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>;
+   negro churches, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>;
+   schools, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>;
+   illiterate magistrates, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>;
+   negro legislators, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>;
+   taxes, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>;
+   public debt, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>;
+   decrease in property values, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>;
+   value of railroads, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>;
+   negro voting, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>;
+   two governments in, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>;
+   legislature, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;
+   vigilance committee, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>;
+   Ku Klux in, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;
+   partially Democratic in 1870, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>;
+   permits mixed marriages, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>;
+   and radicalism, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>;
+   election (1874), <a href="#Page_293">293</a>.<br />
+<i>Alabama</i> claims, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>.<br />
+Alabama, University of, <a href="#Page_003">3</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>.<br />
+Alexandria (Va.),
+   Virginia Government transferred to, <a href="#Page_065">65</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_074">74</a>.<br />
+Alvord, J.&nbsp;W., quoted, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>.<br />
+Amendments,
+   <i>see</i> <a href="#indexConstitution">Constitution</a>.<br />
+Ames, General Adelbert,
+   commands military district, <a href="#footer_06-1">141 (note)</a>.<br />
+Amnesty, Johnson's proclamation,
+   <a href="#Page_009">9</a>, <a href="#Page_075">75</a>;
+   use of pardoning power, <a href="#Page_087">87</a>;
+   Act of 1872, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>-<a href="#Page_289">289</a>;
+   measure (1876), <a href="#Page_295">295</a>.<br />
+Anderson, T.&nbsp;C., of Louisiana, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>.<br />
+Andrew, J.&nbsp;A., Governor of Massachusetts,
+   reconstruction policy,
+	    <a href="#Page_061">61</a>-<a href="#Page_062">62</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_068">68</a>.<br />
+Andrews, General Garnett, on fear of negroes,
+   <a href="#Page_278">278</a>.<br />
+Andrews, Sidney, correspondent for Boston <i>Advertiser</i>,
+   <a href="#Page_028">28</a>.<br />
+Appomattox, Grant at, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>.<br />
+Arkansas, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>;
+   recognizes "Union" State government, <a href="#Page_018">18</a>;
+   Lincoln's reconstruction plan adopted (1862),
+	    <a href="#Page_065">65</a>;
+   Johnson recognizes government, <a href="#Page_074">74</a>;
+   negro labor, <a href="#Page_099">99</a>;
+   representatives refused admission to Congress, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>;
+   abstention policy in regard to constitution,
+	    <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_170">170</a>;
+   schools, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>;
+   scalawags in, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;
+   corruption, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>;
+   railroad grant, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>;
+   split in state government, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>;
+   election (1874), <a href="#Page_293">293</a>.<br />
+Armstrong's Hampton Institute, <i>see</i>
+  <a href="#indexHamptonInstitute">Hampton Institute</a>.<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">310</a></span>
+<a name="indexArmy" id="indexArmy"></a>
+Army,
+   officers assist civil authorities in South,
+	    <a href="#Page_075">75</a>-<a href="#Page_076">76</a>;
+   utilizes negro labor, <a href="#Page_099">99</a>-<a href="#Page_100">100</a>;
+   military rule in South, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_140">140</a> <i>et seq.</i>;
+   <i>see also</i>  <a href="#indexOccupation">Occupation, Army of</a>.<br />
+Ashley, J.&nbsp;M., of Ohio, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>.<br />
+Atlanta (Ga.), post-war condition, <a href="#Page_005">5</a>.<br />
+Attakapas Parish (La.), Ku Klux incident,
+   <a href="#Page_254">254</a>-<a href="#Page_255">255</a>.<br />
+</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+<h3>B.</h3>
+<p>
+Banks, General Nathaniel, and captured slaves, <a href="#Page_099">99</a>.<br />
+Baptist Church, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_202">202</a>.<br />
+Beauregard, General P.&nbsp;G.&nbsp;T., on negro suffrage,
+   <a href="#Page_147">147</a>-<a href="#Page_148">148</a>.<br />
+Bingham, J.&nbsp;A., and impeachment of Johnson,
+   <a href="#Page_166">166</a>.<br />
+Black, Jeremiah, and impeachment of Johnson, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>.<br />
+"Black Belt," post-war condition,
+   <a href="#Page_040">40</a>-<a href="#Page_041">41</a>;
+   industrial revolution in,
+	    <a href="#Page_265">265</a>-<a href="#Page_267">267</a>;
+   and whites, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>;
+   cotton production,  <a href="#footer_12-2">271-272 (note)</a>;
+   domination of South by, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>;
+   <i>see</i> also <a href="#indexSouth">South</a>.<br />
+Black Cavalry, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.<br />
+Black Friday episode, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>.<br />
+<a name="indexBlackLaws" id="indexBlackLaws"></a>
+"Black Laws,"
+   <a href="#Page_089">89</a>-<a href="#Page_090">90</a>,
+	 <a href="#Page_093">93</a>-<a href="#Page_098">98</a>,
+	 <a href="#Page_115">115</a>-<a href="#Page_116">116</a>,
+	 <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>;
+   <i>see also</i> <a href="#indexNegroes">Negroes</a>,
+	 <a href="#indexLegislation">legislation</a>.<br />
+Blaine, J.&nbsp;G., quoted, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>;
+   and Republican party, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>.<br />
+Blair, F.&nbsp;P., of Missouri, Democratic nomination (1868),
+   <a href="#Page_168">168</a>-<a href="#Page_169">169</a>.<br />
+"Bloody shirt" issue in campaign of 1876,
+   <a href="#Page_295">295</a>-<a href="#Page_296">296</a>.<br />
+Border States, reconstruction in,
+   <a href="#Page_085">85</a>-<a href="#Page_086">86</a>;
+   <i>see also</i> <a href="#indexSouth">South</a>.<br />
+Botts, J.&nbsp;M., of Virginia, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.<br />
+Boutwell, G.&nbsp;S., radical leader,
+   <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>;
+   and tenure of office act, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>;
+   and impeachment of Johnson, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>.<br />
+Boynton, General H.&nbsp;V.&nbsp;N., on Southern need of supplies,
+   <a href="#Page_005">5</a>-<a href="#Page_006">6</a>.<br />
+Bradley, Justice J.&nbsp;P., on electoral commission,
+   <a href="#Page_300">300</a>.<br />
+"Brothers and Sisters of Pleasure and Prosperity,"
+   <a href="#Page_275">275</a>.<br />
+Brown, J.&nbsp;E., Governor of Georgia, and negro education,
+   <a href="#Page_212">212</a>.<br />
+Brown, Gratz, candidate for presidential nomination,
+   <a href="#Page_287">287</a>.<br />
+Brownlow, W.&nbsp;G., Governor of Tennessee,
+   <a href="#Page_224">224</a>.<br />
+Bruce, B.&nbsp;K., negro senator, <a href="#footer_10-4">242 (note)</a>.<br />
+Buchanan, General R.&nbsp;C.,
+   commands military district in South,
+	    <a href="#footer_06-1">141 (note)</a>.<br />
+Bullock County (Ala.), Union League in, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>.<br />
+Butler, General B.&nbsp;F., and negro labor, <a href="#Page_099">99</a>;
+   radical, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>;
+   and impeachment of Johnson,
+      <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>.<br />
+</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+<h3>C.</h3>
+<p>
+Campbell, Judge, Lincoln gives reconstruction terms to,
+   <a href="#Page_067">67</a>.<br />
+Canby, General,
+   commands military department in South,
+	    <a href="#footer_06-1">140-141 (note)</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_163">163</a>.<br />
+Cardozo, school official in Mississippi, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>.<br />
+Carpetbaggers, appointed to Federal offices, <a href="#Page_080">80</a>;
+   in radical Republican party, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>;
+   in conventions, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>;
+   and Union League, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>;
+	 and religion, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>;
+   rule in South, <a href="#Page_221">221</a> <i>et seq.</i>;
+   use of term, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;
+   and equal rights issue,
+	    <a href="#Page_275">275</a>-<a href="#Page_276">276</a>;
+   government in hands of, <a href="#footer_13-3">289 (note)</a>;
+   against scalawags, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>.<br />
+Carter, Speaker of Louisiana Legislature,
+   and railroad bills, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>.<br />
+Catholic Church, <a href="#Page_023">23</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>.<br />
+Chamberlain, D.&nbsp;H., Governor of South Carolina,
+   <a href="#Page_225">225</a>.<br />
+Charleston (S.&nbsp;C.), post-war condition, <a href="#Page_005">5</a>.<br />
+Chase, S.&nbsp;P., counsels against seizure of cotton,
+   <a href="#Page_009">9</a>;
+   and negro suffrage, <a href="#Page_028">28</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_050">50</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>;
+   opposed to military reconstruction, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">311</a></span>
+   advises Johnson against suspending Stanton, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>;
+   and impeachment of Johnson,
+	    <a href="#Page_166">166</a>-<a href="#Page_167">167</a>.<br />
+Civil Rights Act,
+   <a href="#Page_084">84</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>,
+	 <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>.<br />
+Clanton, General J.&nbsp;H., of Alabama,
+   on position of whites, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>.<br />
+Clayton, Judge, of Alabama, opinion of Freedmen's Bureau,
+   <a href="#Page_090">90</a>.<br />
+Clayton, Mrs.,
+   <i>Black and White under the Old R&eacute;gime</i>,
+      quoted, <a href="#Page_038">38</a>-<a href="#Page_039">39</a>.<br />
+Cleveland, soldiers' and sailors' convention at,
+   <a href="#Page_130">130</a>;
+   Union League formed (1862),
+	    <a href="#Page_176">176</a>-<a href="#Page_177">177</a>.<br />
+Clinton (Miss.), race conflict in,
+   <a href="#footer_10-4">237 (note)</a>.<br />
+Cloud, school official in Alabama, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>.<br />
+Colfax, Schuyler, candidate for Vice President (1868),
+   <a href="#Page_168">168</a>.<br />
+Colfax (La.), race conflict in, <a href="#footer_10-4">237 (note)</a>.<br />
+Columbia (S.&nbsp;C.), post-war condition, <a href="#Page_005">5</a>.<br />
+Congress, impatient of executive precedence,
+   <a href="#Page_065">65</a>-<a href="#Page_066">66</a>,
+	 <a href="#Page_119">119</a>-<a href="#Page_120">120</a>;
+   and Southern representatives,
+	    <a href="#Page_080">80</a>, <a href="#Page_086">86</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_119">119</a>-<a href="#Page_120">120</a>,
+      <a href="#Page_128">128</a>;
+   refuses to recognize reconstructed governments, <a href="#Page_081">81</a>;
+   Joint Committee on Reconstruction, <a href="#Page_082">82</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_084">84</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_125">125</a>-<a href="#Page_126">126</a>,
+      <a href="#Page_127">127</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_129">129</a>-<a href="#Page_130">130</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>,
+			<a href="#footer_12-1">266 (note)</a>;
+   Fourteenth Amendment, <a href="#Page_082">82</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_085">85</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>;
+      <i>see also</i> <a href="#indexConstitution">Constitution</a>;
+   radical reconstruction plans,
+	    <a href="#Page_083">83</a>-<a href="#Page_084">84</a>;
+   radicalism, <a href="#Page_083">83</a>-<a href="#Page_084">84</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_118">118</a> <i>et seq.</i>,
+			<a href="#Page_285">285</a>;
+   Civil Rights Act,
+	    <a href="#Page_084">84</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>;
+   and Johnson, <a href="#Page_126">126</a> <i>et seq.</i>;
+   assumes control of reconstruction, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_142">142</a>-<a href="#Page_143">143</a>;
+   Tenure of Office Act, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>;
+   Army Appropriation Act, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>;
+   reconstruction acts,
+	    <a href="#Page_134">134</a>-<a href="#Page_137">137</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_158">158</a>-<a href="#Page_160">160</a>;
+   supreme control, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>;
+   and Supreme Court, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>-<a href="#Page_159">159</a>;
+   impeachment of President, <a href="#Page_160">160</a> <i>et seq.</i>;
+   and Grant, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>;
+   negro members, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>;
+   Committee on the Condition of the South, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>;
+   Committee on the Late Insurrectionary States, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>;
+   enforcement acts, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_261">261</a>-<a href="#Page_262">262</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_303">303</a>;
+   "Ku Klux Bill," <a href="#Page_261">261</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_262">262</a>;
+   committee to investigate conditions in Southern States,
+	    <a href="#Page_262">262</a>;
+   Amnesty Act (1872), <a href="#Page_288">288</a>-<a href="#Page_289">289</a>;
+   decline of radicalism, <a href="#footer_13-3">289 (note)</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_290">290</a>;
+   investigates election, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>;
+   amnesty measure (1876), <a href="#Page_295">295</a>;
+   Electoral Commission,
+	    <a href="#Page_299">299</a>-<a href="#Page_300">300</a>;
+   deadlocked by party issues, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>.<br />
+Connecticut and negro suffrage, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>.<br />
+<a name="indexConstitution" id="indexConstitution"></a>
+Constitution, Johnson and, <a href="#Page_072">72</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_162">162</a>;
+   Thirteenth Amendment, <a href="#Page_079">79</a>;
+   Fourteenth Amendment,
+	     <a href="#Page_082">82</a>, <a href="#Page_084">84</a>,
+	     <a href="#Page_085">85</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>,
+       <a href="#Page_131">131</a>-<a href="#Page_133">133</a>,
+			 <a href="#Page_135">135</a>-<a href="#Page_136">136</a>,
+			 <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>,
+			 <a href="#Page_172">172</a>;
+   Fifteenth Amendment,
+	    <a href="#Page_169">169</a>-<a href="#Page_170">170</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>.<br />
+Constitutional conventions in South,
+   <a href="#Page_152">152</a> <i>et seq</i>. <br />
+Constitutional Union Guards, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.<br />
+Conway, school official in Louisiana, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>.<br />
+Copperheads, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>.<br />
+Cotton, tax on, <a href="#Page_008">8</a>;
+   seized, <a href="#Page_009">9</a>-<a href="#Page_011">11</a>;
+   destruction of, <a href="#Page_011">11</a>;
+   production (1880), <a href="#footer_12-2">271-272 (note)</a>.<br />
+Council of Safety, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.<br />
+Coushatta (La.), race conflict in, <a href="#footer_10-4">237 (note)</a>.<br />
+Cowan, administration Republican, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>.<br />
+Credit Mobilier, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>.<br />
+Crittenden-Johnson resolutions, <a href="#Page_055">55</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_069">69</a>.<br />
+Cuba, United States and, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>.<br />
+Cumberland Presbyterian Church, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>.<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">312</a></span>
+
+Cummings <i>vs</i>. Missouri, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>.<br />
+Curry, J.&nbsp;L.&nbsp;M., and negro education, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_214">214</a>-<a href="#Page_215">215</a>.<br />
+Curtis, B.&nbsp;R., counsel at impeachment, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>.<br />
+</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+<h3>D.</h3>
+<p>
+Davis, David, candidate for presidential nomination,
+   <a href="#Page_287">287</a>;
+   and Electoral Commission, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>.<br />
+Davis, Jefferson, prayer in Church for, <a href="#Page_023">23</a>;
+   succeeded by negro in Senate, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>;
+   disfranchised, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>;
+   and amnesty, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>.<br />
+Davis, Nicholas, characterizes Lakin,
+   <a href="#Page_205">205</a>-<a href="#Page_206">206</a>.<br />
+De Bow, J.&nbsp;D.&nbsp;B., on negro labor,
+   <a href="#footer_12-1">266 (note)</a>.<br />
+Democratic party, and Crittenden-Johnson resolutions,
+   <a href="#Page_055">55</a>, <a href="#Page_069">69</a>;
+   at end of war, <a href="#Page_070">70</a>;
+   Douglas Democrats, <a href="#Page_070">70</a>, <a href="#Page_087">87</a>;
+   and Johnson, <a href="#Page_070">70</a>, <a href="#Page_088">88</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_138">138</a>;
+   "Democratic and Conservative" party, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>;
+   platform (1868), <a href="#Page_169">169</a>;
+   Union League and, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_190">190</a>-<a href="#Page_191">191</a>;
+   in Congress from South, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>;
+   Southern Unionists turn to, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>;
+   and Civil Rights Act, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>;
+   "New Departure," Democrats, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>;
+   supports Greeley, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>;
+   and election of 1876,
+	    <a href="#Page_297">297</a>-<a href="#Page_298">298</a>;
+   and Electoral Commission, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>;
+   during period of adjustment, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_303">303</a>.<br />
+Dennison, William, resigns from Cabinet, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.<br />
+District of Columbia, negro suffrage in, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>;
+   corruption, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>.<br />
+Dixon, James, administration Republican, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>.<br />
+Dixon, W.&nbsp;H., <a href="#Page_029">29</a>.<br />
+Doolittle, administration Republican, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>.<br />
+Douglass, Frederick, quoted,
+   <a href="#Page_037">37</a>-<a href="#Page_038">38</a>.<br />
+</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+<h3>E.</h3>
+<p>
+Eaton, John, chaplain in Grant's army, <a href="#Page_099">99</a>.<br />
+Eaton, Colonel John, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.<br />
+Education, negro, <a href="#Page_045">45</a>;
+   Freedmen's Bureau and,
+	    <a href="#Page_111">111</a>-<a href="#Page_112">112</a>;
+   in South, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>-<a href="#Page_220">220</a>.<br />
+Elections under carpetbag rule,
+   <a href="#Page_237">237</a>-<a href="#Page_239">239</a>.<br />
+Electoral Commission,
+   <a href="#Page_299">299</a>-<a href="#Page_300">300</a>.<br />
+<a name="indexEmancipationProc" id="indexEmancipationProc"></a>
+Emancipation Proclamation, <a href="#Page_036">36</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_176">176</a>.<br />
+Enforcement acts,
+   <a href="#Page_260">260</a>-<a href="#Page_261">261</a>,
+	 <a href="#Page_290">290</a>,
+	 <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>.<br />
+Episcopal Church,
+   <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>.<br />
+Evarts, W.&nbsp;M., counsel at impeachment, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>.<br />
+Ewing, Thomas, nominated Secretary of War, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>.<br />
+</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+<h3>F.</h3>
+<p>
+Fessenden, General, Freedmen's Bureau official,
+   <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.<br />
+Fessenden, W.&nbsp;P., moderate Republican, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>;
+   and negro suffrage, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>.<br />
+<a name="indexFinance" id="indexFinance"></a>
+Finance, post-war condition in South,
+   <a href="#Page_002">2</a>, <a href="#Page_005">5</a>;
+   war taxes, <a href="#Page_008">8</a>;
+   license taxes, <a href="#Page_076">76</a>;
+   repudiation of Confederate war debt, <a href="#Page_077">77</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_130">130</a>;
+   under military governors,
+	 <a href="#Page_145">145</a>-<a href="#Page_146">146</a>;
+   effect of bad government in South,
+	 <a href="#Page_230">230</a>-<a href="#Page_236">236</a>;
+   credit system, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>;
+   readjustments, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>;
+   panic of 1873, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>.<br />
+Fish, C.&nbsp;R., <i>The Path of Empire</i>, cited,
+   <a href="#footer_13-2">284 (note)</a>.<br />
+Fisk, General, criticism of Kentucky Legislature,
+   <a href="#Page_113">113</a>.<br />
+Fisk, James, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_286">286</a>.<br />
+Florida, negro colony in, <a href="#Page_036">36</a>;
+   negro legislation, <a href="#Page_096">96</a>;
+   and Fourteenth Amendment, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>;
+   negro voters, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>;
+	 schools, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>;
+   recitation in negro school,
+	    <a href="#Page_218">218</a>-<a href="#Page_219">219</a>;
+   and reconstruction government, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>;
+   corruption, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>;
+   taxes, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>;
+   decrease in property values, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>;
+   Equal Rights Law, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>;
+   and radicals, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>;
+   election of 1876, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_298">298</a>.<br />
+Forrest, General, Grand Wizard of Ku Klux, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_259">259</a>.<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">313</a></span>
+
+Freedmen, <i>see</i> <a href="#indexNegroes">Negroes</a>.<br />
+Freedmen's Aid Societies, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>.<br />
+<a id="indexFreedmensBureau" name="indexFreedmensBureau"></a>
+Freedmen's Bureau, <a href="#Page_038">38</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_081">81</a>, <a href="#Page_082">82</a>,
+	 <a href="#Page_085">85</a>, <a href="#Page_086">86</a>,
+	 <a href="#Page_090">90</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>,
+	 <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>;
+   confiscable property turned over to, <a href="#Page_011">11</a>;
+   official describes conditions in South,
+	    <a href="#Page_013">13</a>-<a href="#Page_014">14</a>;
+   as relief agency, <a href="#Page_015">15</a>;
+   in Kentucky, <a href="#Page_026">26</a>;
+   as publicity agent, <a href="#Page_028">28</a>;
+   and contract labor, <a href="#Page_046">46</a>;
+   on relations between races, <a href="#Page_048">48</a>;
+   agitators from, <a href="#Page_053">53</a>;
+   extension,
+	    <a href="#Page_074">74</a>, <a href="#Page_084">84</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>;
+   and negroes,
+	    <a href="#Page_080">80</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>;
+   views of North carried out in, <a href="#Page_089">89</a>;
+   influence on legislation and government, <a href="#Page_094">94</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_097">97</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>;
+   officials of, <a href="#Page_097">97</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_098">98</a>-<a href="#Page_099">99</a>;
+   character of, <a href="#Page_098">98</a>;
+   established (1865), <a href="#Page_102">102</a>-<a href="#Page_103">103</a>;
+   functions,
+	    <a href="#Page_103">103</a>-<a href="#Page_104">104</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_107">107</a>-<a href="#Page_109">109</a>;
+   objections to,
+	    <a href="#Page_104">104</a>-<a href="#Page_105">105</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_112">112</a>-<a href="#Page_113">113</a>;
+   organization, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>-<a href="#Page_107">107</a>;
+   courts,
+	    <a href="#Page_110">110</a>-<a href="#Page_111">111</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_113">113</a>-<a href="#Page_114">114</a>;
+   educational work, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>-<a href="#Page_112">112</a>;
+   political possibilities, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>;
+   results, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>-<a href="#Page_117">117</a>;
+   and radicals, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>;
+   Union League and, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>,
+	    <a href="#footer_08-3">194 (note)</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>;
+   negro education, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>.<br />
+<a name="indexFreedmensBureauAct" id="indexFreedmensBureauAct"></a>
+Freedmen's Bureau Act, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>.<br />
+Freedmen's Inquiry Commission, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>.<br />
+"Freedmen's Readers," <a href="#Page_218">218</a>.<br />
+Fr&eacute;mont, J.&nbsp;C., and the radicals, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.<br />
+Fullerton, General, and Freedmen's Bureau,
+   <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>;
+   on treatment of negroes,
+	    <a href="#Page_112">112</a>-<a href="#Page_113">113</a>.<br />
+</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+<h3>G.</h3>
+<p>
+Garfield, J.&nbsp;A., <a href="#Page_132">132</a>.<br />
+Garland, <i>ex parte</i>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>.<br />
+Geneva Arbitration (1872), <a href="#Page_283">283</a>.<br />
+Georgetown (D.&nbsp;C.), vote on negro suffrage in,
+   <a href="#Page_134">134</a>.<br />
+Georgia, poverty in, <a href="#Page_014">14</a>;
+   government relief, <a href="#Page_015">15</a>;
+   negro colony in, <a href="#Page_036">36</a>;
+   courts, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>;
+   military government,
+	    <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>;
+   suit against Stanton, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>;
+   military rule resumed, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>;
+   reconstruction in,
+	    <a href="#Page_171">171</a>-<a href="#Page_172">172</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_221">221</a>;
+   legislature, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;
+   representatives in Congress, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>,
+	    <a href="#footer_13-3">289 (note)</a>;
+   negro voters, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;
+   Godkin characterizes officials of, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>;
+   holds mixed marriages illegal, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>;
+   conservatives gain control in, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>;
+   election (1868), <a href="#Page_299">299</a>.<br />
+Gillem, General, commands military department,
+   <a href="#footer_06-1">141 (note)</a>.<br />
+Godkin, E.&nbsp;L., quoted, <a href="#footer_08-2">180 (note)</a>;
+   on Georgia politicians, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>.<br />
+Gordon, J.&nbsp;B., and negro education, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>.<br />
+Gould, Jay, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>.<br />
+Grant, U.&nbsp;S.,
+   <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>,
+	 <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>;
+   urges use of white troops in South, <a href="#Page_021">21</a>;
+   orders arrest of paroled Confederates, <a href="#Page_022">22</a>;
+   report on South, <a href="#Page_028">28</a>, <a href="#Page_029">29</a>;
+   protests arrest of Southern military leaders, <a href="#Page_074">74</a>;
+   and captured slaves, <a href="#Page_099">99</a>;
+   and Freedmen's Bureau, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>;
+   Army Appropriation Act, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>;
+   radicalism, <a href="#footer_06-1">141 (note)</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_239">239</a>-<a href="#Page_240">240</a>;
+   Congress gives full powers to, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>;
+   temporarily Secretary of War, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>;
+   and Stanton,  <a href="#Page_163">163</a>,  <a href="#Page_165">165</a>;
+   nominated by National Union party, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>;
+   elected President, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>;
+   reconstruction, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>;
+   and enforcement acts, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>-<a href="#Page_261">261</a>;
+   expansionist, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>-<a href="#Page_284">284</a>;
+   vote for, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>-<a href="#Page_286">286</a>;
+   appointees, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>;
+   re&euml;lection, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>;
+   refuses to interfere in Mississippi, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>;
+   restores Kellogg to office, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>.<br />
+Greeley, Horace, candidate for Presidency,
+   <a href="#Page_287">287</a>-<a href="#Page_288">288</a>.<br />
+Greene, S.&nbsp;S., quoted, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>.<br />
+Groesbeck, W.&nbsp;S., counsel at impeachment, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>.<br />
+Guthrie, James, Democratic leader, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>.<br />
+</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">314</a></span>
+<h3>H.</h3>
+<p>
+Hahn, Michael, Governor of Louisiana, Lincoln's letter to,
+   <a href="#Page_066">66</a>-<a href="#Page_067">67</a>.<br />
+<i>Hail Columbia</i> sung at Union League initiation,
+   <a href="#Page_183">183</a>.<br />
+Halleck, General H.&nbsp;W., orders in regard to marriage,
+   <a href="#Page_020">20</a>.<br />
+Hampton, General Wade, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>;
+   letter to Johnson, <a href="#Page_031">31</a>;
+   and negro suffrage, <a href="#Page_051">51</a>;
+   and Freedmen's Bureau, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.<br />
+<a name="indexHamptonInstitute" id="indexHamptonInstitute"></a>
+Hampton Institute, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>;
+   teacher's remark on negro education,
+	    <a href="#Page_211">211</a>-<a href="#Page_212">212</a>.<br />
+Hancock, General W.&nbsp;S.,
+   commands military department, <a href="#footer_06-1">141 (note)</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_163">163</a>.<br />
+Hardee, General W.&nbsp;J., quoted, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.<br />
+Harlan, James, resigns from Cabinet, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.<br />
+Harris, I.&nbsp;G., on Johnson, <a href="#Page_072">72</a>.<br />
+Hayes, R.&nbsp;B., candidate for presidency, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>;
+   elected, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>;
+   and radicalism, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>.<br />
+Hell Hole Swamp, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>.<br />
+Hendricks, T.&nbsp;A., Democratic leader, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>.<br />
+<i>Herald</i>, New York,
+   Knox as correspondent of, <a href="#Page_028">28</a>;
+   on radical reconstruction, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>.<br />
+Heroes of America, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.<br />
+Hill, B.&nbsp;H., of Georgia, and "Jim Crow" theory,
+   <a href="#Page_277">277</a>.<br />
+Hill, General D.&nbsp;H., of North Carolina,
+   <a href="#footer_12-3">279 (note)</a>.<br />
+Hill, Thomas, President of Harvard, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>.<br />
+Holden, W.&nbsp;W.,
+   provisional governor of North Carolina,
+	    <a href="#Page_075">75</a>, <a href="#Page_077">77</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>;
+   and Union League, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.<br />
+Home Guards, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.<br />
+Howard, General O.&nbsp;O.,
+   head of Freedmen's Bureau, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>.<br />
+Humphreys, B.&nbsp;G., Governor of Mississippi,
+   opinion of Freedmen's Bureau, <a href="#Page_090">90</a>;
+   advocates civil equality, <a href="#Page_091">91</a>.<br />
+</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+<h3>I.</h3>
+<p>
+Immigration to South, negroes against, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>.<br />
+Impeachment of President, <a href="#Page_160">160</a> <i>et seq</i>.<br />
+Irish, South Carolina imports, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>.<br />
+</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+<h3>J.</h3>
+<p>
+Jackson (Miss.), post-war condition, <a href="#Page_005">5</a>.<br />
+Jews in South, <a href="#Page_023">23</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>.<br />
+Jillson, school official in South Carolina, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>.<br />
+"Jim Crow," car, <a href="#Page_095">95</a>;
+   theory of "separate but equal" rights,
+	    <a href="#Page_277">277</a>.<br />
+<i>John Brown's Body</i> sung in Union League initiation,
+   <a href="#Page_184">184</a>.<br />
+Johnson, Andrew, amnesty proclamation, <a href="#Page_009">9</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_075">75</a>;
+   policies opposed by Andrews, <a href="#Page_028">28</a>;
+   and negro suffrage, <a href="#Page_050">50</a>, <a href="#Page_078">78</a>;
+   reconstruction policy, <a href="#Page_057">57</a>-<a href="#Page_058">58</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_073">73</a> <i>et seq</i>., <a href="#Page_083">83</a>;
+   military governor of Tennessee, <a href="#Page_065">65</a>;
+   nomination, <a href="#Page_070">70</a>;
+   personal characteristics,
+	    <a href="#Page_071">71</a>-<a href="#Page_072">72</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_073">73</a>;
+   adopts Lincoln's policy, <a href="#Page_073">73</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_088">88</a>;
+   and Congress, <a href="#Page_080">80</a> <i>et seq</i>.,
+	    <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_120">120</a>-<a href="#Page_121">121</a>,
+      <a href="#Page_126">126</a> <i>et seq</i>., <a href="#Page_288">288</a>;
+   use of pardoning power, <a href="#Page_087">87</a>;
+   speechmaking tour to the West, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>;
+   impeachment, <a href="#Page_158">158</a> <i>et seq</i>.;
+   and Stanton, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>-<a href="#Page_165">165</a>.<br />
+Johnson, Reverdy, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>.<br />
+</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+<h3>K.</h3>
+<p>
+Kansas and negro suffrage, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_285">285</a>.<br />
+Kelley, "Pig Iron," of Pennsylvania,
+   <a href="#Page_150">150</a>.<br />
+Kellogg, W.&nbsp;P., Governor of Louisiana,
+   <a href="#Page_224">224</a>-<a href="#Page_225">225</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_294">294</a>.<br />
+Kentucky, Confederates in,
+   <a href="#Page_025">25</a>-<a href="#Page_026">26</a>;
+   and abolition of slavery, <a href="#Page_036">36</a>;
+   exception in reconstruction problem, <a href="#Page_086">86</a>.<br />
+Knights of the Golden Circle, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>.<br />
+<a name="indexKnightsWC" id="indexKnightsWC"></a>
+Knights of the White Camelia,
+   <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>,
+	 <a href="#Page_251">251</a>-<a href="#Page_252">252</a>,
+	 <a href="#Page_259">259</a>.<br />
+Knox, T.&nbsp;W., correspondent for New York <i>Herald</i>,
+   <a href="#Page_028">28</a>.<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">315</a></span>
+Ku Klux Klan,
+   <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>,
+	 <a href="#Page_243">243</a> <i>et seq</i>., <a href="#Page_290">290</a>;
+   development, <a href="#Page_049">49</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_243">243</a>-<a href="#Page_246">246</a>;
+   and Freedmen's Bureau, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>;
+   and Union League, <a href="#footer_08-3">194 (note)</a>;
+   activities,
+	    <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a> <i>et seq.</i>,
+	    <a href="#Page_263">263</a>-<a href="#Page_264">264</a>;
+   organization,
+	    <a href="#Page_246">246</a>-<a href="#Page_249">249</a>;
+   objects,
+	    <a href="#Page_249">249</a>-<a href="#Page_250">250</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>;
+   report of Federal commanders,
+	    <a href="#Page_250">250</a>-<a href="#Page_251">251</a>;
+   political effects,
+	    <a href="#Page_260">260</a>-<a href="#Page_261">261</a>;
+   "Ku Klux Act,"
+	    <a href="#Page_261">261</a>-<a href="#Page_262">262</a>;
+   and negro suffrage, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>.<br />
+</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+<h3>L.</h3>
+<p>
+Labor, free negro,
+   <a href="#Page_045">45</a>-<a href="#Page_047">47</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_266">266</a>-<a href="#Page_267">267</a>,
+	 <a href="#Page_272">272</a>-<a href="#Page_273">273</a>;
+   Freedmen's Bureau, <a href="#Page_046">46</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_109">109</a>-<a href="#Page_110">110</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_266">266</a>;
+   testimony of Joint Committee concerning, <a href="#Page_082">82</a>;
+   importation of labor, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>.<br />
+Lakin, Rev. A.&nbsp;S.,
+   agent of Northern Methodist Church in Alabama,
+	    <a href="#Page_205">205</a>-<a href="#Page_206">206</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_207">207</a>-<a href="#Page_208">208</a>.<br />
+Land, price after Civil War, <a href="#Page_004">4</a>;
+   fertilizers for, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_272">272</a>.<br />
+Lanier, Sidney, letter to Taylor, quoted,
+   <a href="#Page_279">279</a>-<a href="#Page_280">280</a>.<br />
+Latham, Henry, <a href="#Page_029">29</a>.<br />
+Lee, General R.&nbsp;E.,
+   president of Washington College,
+	     <a href="#Page_017">17</a>-<a href="#Page_018">18</a>;
+   and his uniform, <a href="#Page_020">20</a>;
+   letter to Letcher, <a href="#Page_031">31</a>, <a href="#Page_032">32</a>;
+   kneels beside negro in church, <a href="#Page_044">44</a>;
+   witness before Joint Committee, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>;
+   and military reconstruction, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>;
+   disfranchised, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>.<br />
+<a name="indexLegislation" id="indexLegislation"></a>
+Legislation, Negro, <i>see</i>
+   <a href="#indexBlackLaws">"Black Laws."</a><br />
+Leslie, South Carolina carpetbagger, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>.<br />
+Letcher, John, Governor of Virginia, Lee writes to,
+   <a href="#Page_031">31</a>, <a href="#Page_032">32</a>.<br />
+Lewis, D.&nbsp;P., of Alabama, and Union League,
+   <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.<br />
+Lincoln, Abraham,
+   and negro suffrage, <a href="#Page_050">50</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_066">66</a>-<a href="#Page_067">67</a>;
+   reconstruction policy,
+	    <a href="#Page_055">55</a>-<a href="#Page_057">57</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_058">58</a>, <a href="#Page_062">62</a>;
+   and Wade-Davis Bill, <a href="#Page_056">56</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_066">66</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>;
+   last speech quoted,
+	    <a href="#Page_056">56</a>-<a href="#Page_057">57</a>;
+   reconstruction plan put to trial,
+	    <a href="#Page_063">63</a>-<a href="#Page_068">68</a>;
+   Proclamation of December, 1863, <a href="#Page_064">64</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_119">119</a>;
+   and Congress,
+	    <a href="#Page_065">65</a>-<a href="#Page_066">66</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_067">67</a>-<a href="#Page_068">68</a>;
+   nominated by National Union party (1864), <a href="#Page_070">70</a>;
+   second Cabinet, <a href="#Page_070">70</a>;
+   and radicalism, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>;
+   vote for (1864), <a href="#Page_285">285</a>.<br />
+Lincoln Brotherhood, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>.<br />
+Lindsay, R.&nbsp;B., Governor of Alabama,
+   on Northern missionaries, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>.<br />
+Longstreet, General James, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>.<br />
+Louisiana, recognizes "Union" state government,
+   <a href="#Page_018">18</a>;
+   Whitelaw Reid in, <a href="#Page_028">28</a>;
+   Lincoln's reconstruction plan adopted (1862),
+	     <a href="#Page_065">65</a>;
+   Johnson recognizes government of, <a href="#Page_074">74</a>;
+   treatment of negroes by army in, <a href="#Page_099">99</a>;
+   Freedmen's Bureau courts in, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>;
+   representatives refused admission to Congress,
+	    <a href="#Page_119">119</a>-<a href="#Page_120">120</a>;
+   military government in, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>;
+   negro voters,
+	    <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>;
+   equal rights legislation, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>;
+   schools, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>;
+   carpetbag rule, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>;
+   conservatives, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>;
+   corruption, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_233">233</a>-<a href="#Page_234">234</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_235">235</a>;
+   legislature, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;
+   taxes, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>;
+   public debt, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>;
+   decrease in property values, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>;
+   negro militia, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>-<a href="#Page_237">237</a>,
+   two governments in, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>;
+   government over-turned,
+	    <a href="#Page_240">240</a>-<a href="#Page_241">241</a>,
+   omitted from Federal investigation, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>;
+   labor, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>;
+   and radicalism, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>;
+   elections,
+	    <a href="#Page_293">293</a>-<a href="#Page_294">294</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_299">299</a>.<br />
+Louisiana State Seminary, <a href="#Page_003">3</a>.<br />
+Louisiana State University, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>.<br />
+Louisville and Nashville Railroad, <a href="#Page_007">7</a>.<br />
+Loyal League, <i>see</i> <a href="#indexUnionLeague">Union League</a>.<br />
+Lynch, negro officeholder, <a href="#footer_10-4">242 (note)</a>.<br />
+</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+<h3>M.</h3>
+<p>
+McCardle, <i>ex parte</i>,
+   <a href="#Page_159">159</a>-<a href="#Page_160">160</a>.<br />
+McCulloch, Hugh, Secretary of Treasury,
+   and seizure of cotton
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">316</a></span>
+   in South, <a href="#Page_009">9</a>-<a href="#Page_010">10</a>;
+	 and Johnson, <a href="#Page_074">74</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>.<br />
+McDowell, General Irvin, commands military district,
+   <a href="#footer_06-1">141 (note)</a>.<br />
+McPherson, Edward, clerk of the House, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>.<br />
+Marvin, William, Governor of Florida,
+   on status of negroes, <a href="#Page_091">91</a>,
+	 <a href="#Page_092">92</a>, <a href="#Page_093">93</a>.<br />
+Maryland, disfranchisement in,
+   <a href="#Page_025">25</a>-<a href="#Page_026">26</a>;
+   state emancipation in, <a href="#Page_036">36</a>;
+   and negro suffrage, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>.<br />
+Meade, General G.&nbsp;G.,
+   commands military district,
+	    <a href="#footer_06-1">140-141 (note)</a>.<br />
+Memminger, C. G., Governor of South Carolina,
+   on status of freedmen,
+	   <a href="#Page_090">90</a>-<a href="#Page_091">91</a>,
+	   <a href="#Page_092">92</a>-<a href="#Page_093">93</a>.<br />
+Memphis (Tenn.), <a href="#Page_185">185</a>;
+   race riots in, <a href="#Page_083">83</a>,
+	     <a href="#Page_131">131</a>,  <a href="#Page_175">175</a>;
+   convention of Confederate soldiers and sailors at,
+	    <a href="#Page_130">130</a>;
+   surrenders charter, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>.<br />
+Men of Justice, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.<br />
+Methodist Church, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>,
+	 <a href="#Page_199">199</a>-<a href="#Page_201">201</a>,
+	 <a href="#Page_202">202</a>,
+	 <a href="#Page_203">203</a>-<a href="#Page_204">204</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_208">208</a>.<br />
+Metropolitan Guard, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>.<br />
+Michigan rejects negro suffrage, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_285">285</a>.<br />
+Milligan, <i>ex parte</i>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>.<br />
+Minnesota rejects negro suffrage, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_285">285</a>.<br />
+Mississippi, poverty in, <a href="#Page_014">14</a>;
+   rejects Thirteenth Amendment, <a href="#Page_079">79</a>;
+   negro legislation in, <a href="#Page_094">94</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_095">95</a>-<a href="#Page_096">96</a>;
+   treatment of negroes by army in, <a href="#Page_099">99</a>;
+   courts, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>;
+   military government, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>;
+   negro voters, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;
+   constitution,
+	    <a href="#Page_153">153</a>-<a href="#Page_154">154</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_155">155</a>;
+   suit against President, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>;
+   reconstruction fails in, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>;
+   and radicalism, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>;
+   schools, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>;
+   conservatives, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>;
+   negroes in legislature, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>;
+   taxes, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>;
+   negro militia, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>;
+   and enforcement acts, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>;
+   permits mixed marriages, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>;
+   unrepresented in Congress, <a href="#footer_13-3">289 (note)</a>;
+   Grant and interference in, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>;
+   elections (1875), <a href="#Page_293">293</a>.<br />
+Mississippi River, negro colonies along, <a href="#Page_037">37</a>.<br />
+<a name="indexMissShotGunPlan" id="indexMissShotGunPlan"></a>
+Mississippi Shot Gun Plan, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_294">294</a>.<br />
+Mississippi, University of, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>.<br />
+Missouri, and Confederates, <a href="#Page_026">26</a>;
+   state emancipation in, <a href="#Page_036">36</a>;
+   rejects negro suffrage, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>.<br />
+Mobile (Ala.), post-war condition, <a href="#Page_005">5</a>;
+   surrenders charter, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>.<br />
+Montgomery (Ala.),
+   separate organization of Baptist Church in, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>;
+   negro education, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>;
+   Ku Klux proclamation,
+	    <a href="#Page_257">257</a>-<a href="#Page_258">258</a>.<br />
+Montgomery Conference on Race Problems (1900),
+   <i>Proceedings</i> quoted,
+	    <a href="#Page_214">214</a>-<a href="#Page_215">215</a>.<br />
+Moore, Governor, and negro education, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>.<br />
+Morgan, E.&nbsp;D., Senator, and Freedmen's Bureau Act,
+   <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.<br />
+Morton, O.&nbsp;P., of Indiana, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>;
+   on negro suffrage,
+	    <a href="#Page_300">300</a>-<a href="#Page_301">301</a>.<br />
+Moses, F.&nbsp;J., Jr., Governor of South Carolina,
+   <a href="#Page_224">224</a>.<br />
+Moses, Judge, in South Carolina, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>.<br />
+</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+<h3>N.</h3>
+<p>
+Nash, negro officeholder, <a href="#footer_10-4">242 (note)</a>.<br />
+<i>Nation</i>, New York, <a href="#footer_08-2">180 (note)</a>;
+   editorial on post-war church situation quoted,
+	    <a href="#footer_09-1">201 (note)</a>;
+   on corruption of government, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>.<br />
+National Teachers Association meeting (1865), <a href="#Page_208">208</a>.<br />
+<a name="indexNationalUnionParty" id="indexNationalUnionParty"></a>
+National Union party, Republican party becomes, <a href="#Page_070">70</a>;
+   Whigs and Douglas Democrats join,
+	    <a href="#Page_070">70</a>-<a href="#Page_071">71</a>;
+   convention at Philadelphia, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>;
+   nominates Grant, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>.<br />
+Negro Affairs, Department of, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>.<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">317</a></span>
+<a name="indexNegroes" id="indexNegroes"></a>
+Negroes, as soldiers in South,
+   <a href="#Page_021">21</a>-<a href="#Page_022">22</a>;
+   problems of reconstruction, <a href="#Page_034">34</a> <i>et seq</i>.;
+   health conditions among,
+	    <a href="#Page_041">41</a>-<a href="#Page_042">42</a>;
+   morals and manners,
+	    <a href="#Page_042">42</a>-<a href="#Page_043">43</a>;
+   poverty,
+	    <a href="#Page_044">44</a>-<a href="#Page_045">45</a>;
+   education,
+	    <a href="#Page_044">44</a>-<a href="#Page_045">45</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_209">209</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_211">211</a>-<a href="#Page_220">220</a>;
+   relations with whites,
+	    <a href="#Page_047">47</a>-<a href="#Page_048">48</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_277">277</a>-<a href="#Page_278">278</a>;
+   lawlessness, <a href="#Page_048">48</a>-<a href="#Page_049">49</a>;
+   suffrage,
+	    <a href="#Page_049">49</a>-<a href="#Page_052">52</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_058">58</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_066">66</a>-<a href="#Page_067">67</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_078">78</a>, <a href="#Page_084">84</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_085">85</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_169">169</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_284">284</a>-<a href="#Page_285">285</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_300">300</a>-<a href="#Page_301">301</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_304">304</a>;
+   Lincoln urges deportation of freedmen, <a href="#Page_066">66</a>;
+   legislation concerning,
+	    <a href="#Page_077">77</a>-<a href="#Page_078">78</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_089">89</a>-<a href="#Page_090">90</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_093">93</a>-<a href="#Page_098">98</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_115">115</a>-<a href="#Page_116">116</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>;
+   status at close of war, <a href="#Page_089">89</a> <i>et seq</i>.;
+   Freedmen's Bureau supervises, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>;
+   Union League and, <a href="#Page_181">181</a> <i>et seq</i>.;
+   religion, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>-<a href="#Page_206">206</a>;
+   rule in South, <a href="#Page_221">221</a> <i>et seq</i>.;
+   in Congress, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>;
+   and state offices, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>;
+   and Ku Klux, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>;
+   anti-negro movements, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>;
+   labor, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>;
+   "privileges," <a href="#Page_269">269</a>;
+   advantages, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>-<a href="#Page_271">271</a>;
+   as farmers, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>-<a href="#Page_274">274</a>;
+   change in condition during reconstruction,
+	    <a href="#Page_274">274</a>-<a href="#Page_275">275</a>;
+   mixed marriages, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>.<br />
+Nelson, counsel at impeachment, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>.<br />
+New England, and negro suffrage,
+   <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>;
+   Freedmen's Aid Society, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>.<br />
+New Orleans, negro soldiers in,
+   <a href="#Page_021">21</a>-<a href="#Page_022">22</a>;
+   riots in, <a href="#Page_083">83</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>,
+	    <a href="#footer_10-4">237 (note)</a>;
+   Northern teachers in, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>;
+   public debt, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>;
+   Federal officials at, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>.<br />
+New York, charity for relief of South, <a href="#Page_014">14</a>;
+   and negro suffrage, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>,
+      <a href="#Page_284">284</a>.<br />
+New York City, Union League organized, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>;
+   headquarters for Union League, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>;
+   corruption in, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>.<br />
+Nordhoff, Charles, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>;
+   <i>The Cotton States in the Spring and Summer of 1875</i>,
+      cited, <a href="#footer_10-2">232 (note)</a>.<br />
+Norfolk, "contraband" camp, <a href="#Page_036">36</a>.<br />
+North, free negroes of, <a href="#Page_035">35</a>-<a href="#Page_036">36</a>;
+   planters from, <a href="#Page_049">49</a>;
+   capital and labor from, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>;
+   change in attitude toward South, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>;
+   politics, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>.<br />
+North Carolina, negro colonies in, <a href="#Page_036">36</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_099">99</a>;
+   Johnson proclaims restoration of, <a href="#Page_075">75</a>;
+   committee on laws for freedmen, <a href="#Page_091">91</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_092">92</a>;
+   courts, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>;
+   negro voters, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>;
+   Union League, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>;
+   carpetbag rule, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>;
+   public debt, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>;
+   negro militia, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>;
+   Democratic in 1870, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>;
+   and enforcement acts, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>;
+   conservatives gain control of, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>.<br />
+North Carolina, University of, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>.<br />
+</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+<h3>O.</h3>
+<p>
+<a name="indexOccupation" id="indexOccupation"></a>
+Occupation, Army of, <a href="#Page_018">18</a>-<a href="#Page_022">22</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_081">81</a>;
+   <i>see</i> also <a href="#indexArmy">Army</a>.<br />
+Ohio rejects negro suffrage, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_285">285</a>.<br />
+Ord, General E.&nbsp;O.&nbsp;C.,
+   commands military division, <a href="#footer_06-1">140 (note)</a>.<br />
+Oregon, election of 1876, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_298">298</a>.<br />
+Orr, J.&nbsp;L., and negro education, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>.<br />
+Orth, S.&nbsp;P., <i>The Boss and the Machine</i>, cited,
+   <a href="#footer_13-1">282 (note)</a>.<br />
+</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+<h3>P.</h3>
+<p>
+Pale Faces, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_251">251</a>.<br />
+Patton, R.&nbsp;M., Governor of Alabama,
+   <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>;
+   and negro suffrage, <a href="#Page_051">51</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_078">78</a>;
+   and contract labor, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>;
+   and negro education, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>.<br />
+Peabody Board, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>-<a href="#Page_218">218</a>.<br />
+"Peace Societies," <a href="#Page_149">149</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.<br />
+Perry, B.&nbsp;F., Governor of South Carolina,
+   and negro suffrage,
+	    <a href="#Page_078">78</a>-<a href="#Page_079">79</a>.<br />
+Pettus, General, quoted, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>.<br />
+Phelps, J.&nbsp;S., military governor of Arkansas,
+   <a href="#Page_065">65</a>.<br />
+Philadelphia, convention of National Union party at,
+   <a href="#Page_130">130</a>;
+   Union League organized (1863), <a href="#Page_177">177</a>.<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">318</a></span>
+Phillips, Wendell, Johnson and, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>.<br />
+Pike, J.&nbsp;S., <a href="#Page_291">291</a>;
+   account of conditions in South Carolina,
+	    <a href="#Page_016">16</a>-<a href="#Page_017">17</a>;
+   <i>The Prostrate State</i>, quoted,
+	    <a href="#Page_227">227</a>-<a href="#Page_230">230</a>.<br />
+Pinchback, P.&nbsp;B.&nbsp;S., negro officeholder,
+   <a href="#footer_10-4">242 (note)</a>.<br />
+Pittsburgh, soldiers' and sailors' convention at,
+   <a href="#Page_130">130</a>.<br />
+Politics, theoretical basis of,
+   <a href="#Page_054">54</a>-<a href="#Page_055">55</a>;
+   <i>see also</i> names of parties.<br />
+Pope, General John, commands military district,
+   <a href="#footer_06-1">140-141 (note)</a>.<br />
+Poverty, of South after Civil War,
+   <a href="#Page_013">13</a>-<a href="#Page_014">14</a>;
+   among negroes, <a href="#Page_044">44</a>.<br />
+Presbyterian Church,
+   <a href="#Page_198">198</a>-<a href="#Page_199">199</a>,
+	 <a href="#Page_204">204</a>.<br />
+<i>Prescript</i>, constitution of Ku Klux Klan, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_249">249</a>.<br />
+Professions in South after Civil War, <a href="#Page_016">16</a>.<br />
+Propaganda,
+   campaign of misrepresentation against South,
+	    <a href="#Page_082">82</a>-<a href="#Page_083">83</a>;
+   by Union League, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>-<a href="#Page_178">178</a>;
+   <i>see also</i> Publicity.<br />
+<a name="indexPublicity" id="indexPublicity"></a>
+Publicity, newspaper correspondents in South,
+   <a href="#Page_027">27</a>-<a href="#Page_029">29</a>.<br />
+Pulaski (Tenn.), Ku Klux Klan originates at, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;
+   Ku Klux incident, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>.<br />
+</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+<h3>Q.</h3>
+<p>
+Quakers, opinion as to secession, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>.<br />
+</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+<h3>R.</h3>
+<p>
+Radicalism, <a href="#Page_118">118</a> <i>et seq</i>.;
+   decline of,
+      <a href="#Page_289">289</a>-<a href="#Page_294">294</a>.<br />
+Railroads, post-war condition in South,
+   <a href="#Page_006">6</a>-<a href="#Page_007">7</a>;
+   dishonest speculation,
+	    <a href="#Page_234">234</a>-<a href="#Page_236">236</a>.<br />
+Rainey, negro officeholder,  <a href="#footer_10-5">242 (note)</a>.<br />
+Randolph, Ryland,
+   editor of <i>Tuscaloosa Independent Monitor</i>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_243">243</a>-<a href="#Page_244">244</a>.<br />
+Raymond, administration Republican, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>.<br />
+<a name="indexReconstruction" id="indexReconstruction"></a>
+Reconstruction, problems in South, <a href="#Page_001">1</a> <i>et seq</i>.,
+   <a href="#Page_086">86</a>;
+   negro as central figure, <a href="#Page_034">34</a> <i>et seq</i>.;
+   executive plans for, <a href="#Page_054">54</a> <i>et seq</i>.;
+   Crittenden-Johnson resolutions, <a href="#Page_055">55</a>;
+   Democratic party on, <a href="#Page_069">69</a>;
+   Joint Committee on, <a href="#Page_082">82</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_084">84</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_125">125</a>-<a href="#Page_126">126</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_127">127</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_129">129</a>-<a href="#Page_130">130</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>,
+      <a href="#footer_10-1">266 (note)</a>;
+   congressional policy of,
+	    <a href="#Page_134">134</a>-<a href="#Page_139">139</a>;
+   political issue, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_294">294</a>-<a href="#Page_295">295</a>;
+   results of radical policy,
+	    <a href="#Page_302">302</a>-<a href="#Page_304">304</a>;
+   bibliography, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>-<a href="#Page_307">307</a>.<br />
+Red String Band, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.<br />
+Reed, Governor of Florida, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>.<br />
+Refugees, <a href="#Page_014">14</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>.<br />
+Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, Bureau of, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>;
+   <i>see also</i> <a href="#indexFreedmensBureau">Freedmen's
+	 Bureau</a>.<br />
+Reid, Whitelaw,
+   relates incident of Confederate uniforms,
+	    <a href="#Page_020">20</a>-<a href="#Page_021">21</a>;
+   as newspaper correspondent, <a href="#Page_028">28</a>;
+   interview with Hampton,
+	    <a href="#Page_051">51</a>-<a href="#Page_052">52</a>.<br />
+Relief agencies, after Civil War,
+   <a href="#Page_014">14</a>-<a href="#Page_015">15</a>;
+   Freedmen's Bureau, <a href="#Page_015">15</a>,
+	 <a href="#Page_107">107</a>-<a href="#Page_109">109</a>;
+   Government, <a href="#Page_015">15</a>.<br />
+Religion, separation of Northern and Southern churches,
+   <a href="#Page_023">23</a>;
+   among negroes, <a href="#Page_043">43</a>-<a href="#Page_044">44</a>;
+   in South, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>-<a href="#Page_208">208</a>;
+   military censorship in church matters, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>;
+   <i>see also</i> names of denominations.<br />
+Republican party, and reconstruction, <a href="#Page_063">63</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_295">295</a>;
+   during Civil War, <a href="#Page_069">69</a>-<a href="#Page_070">70</a>;
+   secures negro vote, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>;
+   majority in Congress, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>;
+   in South, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>-<a href="#Page_149">149</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>;
+   platform (1868), <a href="#Page_169">169</a>;
+   and the North, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>;
+   negro suffrage, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>-<a href="#Page_285">285</a>;
+   loses control in House, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>;
+   Liberal Republican movement, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>;
+   issues (1876), <a href="#Page_295">295</a>-<a href="#Page_296">296</a>;
+   and Electoral Commission, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>;
+   decline of strength, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>.<br />
+Revels, negro officeholder, <a href="#footer_10-4">242 (note)</a>.<br />
+Rhodes, J.&nbsp;F.,
+   on congressional policy of reconstruction,
+	    <a href="#Page_118">118</a>-<a href="#Page_119">119</a>.<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">319</a></span>
+Richmond (Va.), post-war condition, <a href="#Page_005">5</a>;
+   Halleck's order in regard to marriage, <a href="#Page_020">20</a>;
+   incident of Lee and a negro in church,
+	    <a href="#Page_043">43</a>-<a href="#Page_044">44</a>;
+   Lincoln and Confederate Government in, <a href="#Page_067">67</a>.<br />
+Rifle Clubs of South Carolina,
+   <a href="#Page_245">245</a>-<a href="#Page_246">246</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_263">263</a>.<br />
+Roads in Tennessee after Civil War, <a href="#Page_004">4</a>.<br />
+</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+<h3>S.</h3>
+<p>
+Saffold, M.&nbsp;J., on negro suffrage, <a href="#Page_050">50</a>.<br />
+"Salary Grab," <a href="#Page_282">282</a>.<br />
+Santo Domingo, Grant seeks annexation of,
+   <a href="#Page_283">283</a>-<a href="#Page_284">284</a>.<br />
+Savannah (Ga.), incident relating to Confederate uniforms,
+   <a href="#Page_020">20</a>-<a href="#Page_021">21</a>.<br />
+Scalawags, in constitutional conventions, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>;
+   desert radicals, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>;
+   disabilities removed, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>;
+   and the churches, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>;
+   use of term, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.<br />
+Schofield, General J.&nbsp;M., <a href="#Page_106">106</a>;
+   commands military district, <a href="#footer_06-1">140 (note)</a>;
+   Secretary of War, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>.<br />
+Schuckers, J.&nbsp;W., quoted, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>.<br />
+Schurz, Carl, on army of occupation, <a href="#Page_019">19</a>;
+   report on conditions in South, <a href="#Page_028">28</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_029">29</a>, <a href="#Page_030">30</a>;
+   on negro labor, <a href="#Page_045">45</a>-<a href="#Page_046">46</a>.<br />
+Scott, R.&nbsp;K., Governor of South Carolina,
+   <a href="#Page_236">236</a>.<br />
+Sea Islands, negroes sent to, <a href="#Page_036">36</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>.<br />
+Seward, W.&nbsp;H., and Jackson, <a href="#Page_074">74</a>;
+   expansionist, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>.<br />
+Seymour, Horatio, of New York,
+   <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>.<br />
+Sharkey, W.&nbsp;L., Governor of Mississippi, <a href="#Page_078">78</a>.<br />
+Shepherd, A.&nbsp;R., <a href="#Page_282">282</a>.<br />
+Shepley, General G.&nbsp;F.,
+   military governor of Louisiana, <a href="#Page_065">65</a>.<br />
+Sheridan, General P.&nbsp;H.,
+   commands military district, <a href="#footer_06-1">140-141 (note)</a>;
+   Johnson removes, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>;
+   "banditti" report, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>.<br />
+Sherman, General W.&nbsp;T.,
+   <a href="#Page_028">28</a>, <a href="#Page_036">36</a>;
+   Sea Island order,
+	    <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>.<br />
+Shot Gun Plan,
+   see <a href="#indexMissShotGunPlan">Mississippi Shot Gun Plan.</a><br />
+Sickles, General D.&nbsp;E.,
+   commands military district, <a href="#footer_06-1">140-141 (note)</a>;
+   removed by Johnson, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>.<br />
+Slavery, Abolition of,
+   Lincoln and, <a href="#Page_058">58</a>, <a href="#Page_066">66</a>;
+   Johnson and, <a href="#Page_058">58</a>, <a href="#Page_076">76</a>;
+   Sumner and, <a href="#Page_059">59</a>;
+   <i>see also</i>
+	    <a href="#indexEmancipationProc">Emancipation Proclamation.</a><br />
+Smith, Gerrit, view of reconstruction,
+   <a href="#Page_060">60</a>-<a href="#Page_061">61</a>.<br />
+Smith, W.&nbsp;H., Governor of Alabama, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_224">224</a>;
+   quoted, <a href="#Page_024">24</a>.<br />
+Somers, Robert,
+   English writer on the South, <a href="#Page_004">4</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_028">28</a>-<a href="#Page_029">29</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_041">41</a>-<a href="#Page_042">42</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_269">269</a>.<br />
+Sons of '76, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.<br />
+<a name="indexSouth" id="indexSouth"></a>
+South, post-war condition, <a href="#Page_002">2</a> <i>et seq</i>.;
+   exploitation by Northerners,
+	    <a href="#Page_026">26</a>-<a href="#Page_027">27</a>;
+   relation between races,
+	    <a href="#Page_047">47</a>-<a href="#Page_048">48</a>;
+   Presidents' work of reconstruction,
+	    <a href="#Page_054">54</a> <i>et seq</i>.;
+   <i>see also</i> <a href="#indexReconstruction">Reconstruction</a>;
+   conference of governors of, <a href="#Page_085">85</a>;
+   military rule in, <a href="#Page_140">140</a> <i>et seq.</i>;
+   churches, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>-<a href="#Page_208">208</a>;
+   schools, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>-<a href="#Page_220">220</a>;
+   carpetbag and negro rule, <a href="#Page_221">221</a> <i>et seq.</i>;
+   social conditions, <a href="#Page_265">265</a> <i>et seq</i>.<br />
+South Carolina,
+   Pike's account of post-war condition,
+	   <a href="#Page_016">16</a>-<a href="#Page_017">17</a>;
+   negroes on Sea Islands of, <a href="#Page_036">36</a>;
+   negro legislation, <a href="#Page_094">94</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_095">95</a>, <a href="#Page_096">96</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>;
+   negro voters, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;
+   race lines abolished, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>;
+   schools,
+	    <a href="#Page_215">215</a>-<a href="#Page_216">216</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_217">217</a>;
+   carpetbag rule, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>;
+   conservatives, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>;
+   judiciary, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>;
+   negroes in legislature of, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_227">227</a>;
+   taxes, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>;
+   public debt, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>;
+   corruption, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>;
+   negro militia, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>;
+   elections, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>;
+   put under martial law, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>;
+   labor, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>;
+   Irish in, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>;
+   and radicalism, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>.<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">320</a></span>
+
+South Carolina, University of,
+   <a href="#Page_216">216</a>-<a href="#Page_217">217</a>.<br />
+Southwest, Southern whites open lands in, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>.<br />
+Spain, relations with United States, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>.<br />
+Speed, James, resigns from Cabinet, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.<br />
+Spencer, General, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.<br />
+Stanbery, Henry, Attorney-General,
+   opinion on reconstruction laws, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>;
+   counsel at impeachment, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>.<br />
+Stanton, E.&nbsp;M., Secretary of War, <a href="#Page_067">67</a>;
+   draws up army act, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>;
+   radical, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>;
+   Johnson and, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>-<a href="#Page_163">163</a>;
+   suit brought against, by Georgia, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>.<br />
+Star Routes, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>.<br />
+<i>Star Spangled Banner, The</i>,
+   sung at Union League initiation, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>.<br />
+Stearns, M.&nbsp;L., Governor of Florida, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>.<br />
+Steedman, General J.&nbsp;B.,
+   <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>.<br />
+Stephens, A.&nbsp;H., witness before Joint Committee,
+   <a href="#Page_125">125</a>-<a href="#Page_126">126</a>.<br />
+Stephenson, N.&nbsp;W.,
+   <i>The Day of the Confederacy</i>, cited,
+	    <a href="#footer_06-2">149 (note)</a>;
+   <i>Abraham Lincoln and the Union</i>, cited,
+	    <a href="#footer_08-1">176 (note)</a>.<br />
+Stevens, Thaddeus,
+   reconstruction policy,
+	    <a href="#Page_059">59</a>-<a href="#Page_060">60</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_118">118</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_122">122</a>-<a href="#Page_123">123</a>;
+   and Johnson, <a href="#Page_071">71</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>;
+   radical leader,
+	    <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>;
+   and negro suffrage, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>;
+   on Military Reconstruction Bill, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_138">138</a>-<a href="#Page_139">139</a>;
+   and Alabama, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>.<br />
+Stockton, Senator from New Jersey, unseated, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.<br />
+Stoneman, General George,
+   commands military district, <a href="#footer_06-1">140 (note)</a>.<br />
+Suffrage, Negro, see <a href="#indexNegroes">Negroes</a>.<br />
+Sumner, Charles,
+   reconstruction policy,
+	    <a href="#Page_058">58</a>-<a href="#Page_059">59</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_060">60</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>;
+   radical leader, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_123">123</a>-<a href="#Page_124">124</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_173">173</a>;
+   Johnson and, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>;
+   and negro suffrage, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>;
+   and equal rights, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>-<a href="#Page_277">277</a>;
+   and expansion, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>.<br />
+Supreme Court, Congress and,
+   <a href="#Page_158">158</a>-<a href="#Page_160">160</a>;
+   and Civil Rights Act, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>;
+   and Enforcement Laws, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>.<br />
+Swayne, General Wager,
+   head of Freedmen's Bureau in Alabama,
+	    <a href="#Page_097">97</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>;
+   on contract labor, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>;
+   and courts, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>;
+   and Union League, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_192">192</a>-<a href="#Page_193">193</a>;
+   on negro education, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>.<br />
+"Swinging Around the Circle,"
+   Johnson's tour of the West, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.<br />
+</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+<h3>T.</h3>
+<p>
+Tarbell, General John,
+   before Joint Committee on Reconstruction, <a href="#Page_030">30</a>.<br />
+Taxation, see <a href="#indexFinance">Finance</a>.<br />
+Taylor, Bayard, Lanier writes to,
+   <a href="#Page_279">279</a>-<a href="#Page_280">280</a>.<br />
+Taylor, General Richard, <a href="#Page_083">83</a>.<br />
+Tennessee, recognizes "Union" government, <a href="#Page_018">18</a>;
+   imposes fines for wearing Confederate uniform, <a href="#Page_020">20</a>;
+   Confederates in, <a href="#Page_025">25</a>-<a href="#Page_026">26</a>;
+   State emancipation in, <a href="#Page_036">36</a>;
+   attitude toward negroes in, <a href="#Page_048">48</a>;
+   Lincoln's reconstruction plan adopted (1862),
+	    <a href="#Page_065">65</a>;
+   Johnson recognizes government of, <a href="#Page_074">74</a>;
+   reconstruction in, <a href="#Page_085">85</a>;
+   negro labor, <a href="#Page_099">99</a>;
+   readmitted to Congress, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_133">133</a>;
+   and Fourteenth Amendment, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>;
+   negro voters, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;
+   and enforcement acts, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>;
+   omitted from investigation, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>;
+   conservatives gain control of, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>.<br />
+Tennessee Valley after Civil War, <a href="#Page_004">4</a>.<br />
+Tenure of office act, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>.<br />
+Texas, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>;
+   delay in electing officials, <a href="#Page_079">79</a>;
+   military government in,
+	    <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>;
+   constitution, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>;
+   reconstruction fails in, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>;
+   radicals in,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">321</a></span>
+   <a href="#Page_171">171</a>;
+   Confederates go to, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>;
+   unrepresented in Congress, <a href="#footer_13-3">289 (note)</a>;
+   elections (1874), <a href="#Page_293">293</a>.<br />
+Thach, president of Alabama Agricultural College,
+   <a href="#Page_271">271</a>-<a href="#Page_272">272</a>.<br />
+Thomas, General G.&nbsp;H., on sentiment of Tennessee,
+   <a href="#Page_024">24</a>-<a href="#Page_025">25</a>.<br />
+Thomas, Lorenzo, as acting Secretary of War, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>.<br />
+Thompson, Holland,
+   <i>The New South</i>, cited,
+	    <a href="#footer_09-4">218 (note)</a>,
+			<a href="#footer_13-4">294 (note)</a>,
+			<a href="#footer_13-5">303 (note)</a>.<br />
+Tichenor, Rev. I.&nbsp;T.,
+   <a href="#Page_202">202</a>-<a href="#Page_203">203</a>.<br />
+Tilden, S.&nbsp;J., candidate for presidency, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_298">298</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>.<br />
+Tillson, General, quoted, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>.<br />
+Tourg&eacute;e, A.&nbsp;W., chief of Union League in North Carolina,
+   <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.<br />
+Trade restrictions in South,
+   <a href="#Page_007">7</a>-<a href="#Page_012">12</a>.<br />
+Treasury Department,
+   frauds in selling confiscable property in South,
+	    <a href="#Page_008">8</a>-<a href="#Page_012">12</a>;
+   supervise negro colonies, <a href="#Page_037">37</a>;
+   employer of negro labor, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>.<br />
+<i>Tribune</i>, Chicago, Sidney Andrews correspondent for,
+   <a href="#Page_028">28</a>.<br />
+<i>Tribune</i>, New York, Horace Greeley as editor of,
+   <a href="#Page_288">288</a>.<br />
+Trowbridge, J.&nbsp;T., on frauds in South,
+   <a href="#Page_011">11</a>-<a href="#Page_012">12</a>;
+   on sentiment of East Tennessee toward rebels, <a href="#Page_025">25</a>;
+   correspondent in South, <a href="#Page_028">28</a>;
+   on relation of races, <a href="#Page_048">48</a>.<br />
+Truman, B.&nbsp;C., on society in South, <a href="#Page_027">27</a>;
+   report on conditions in South, <a href="#Page_028">28</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_029">29</a>-<a href="#Page_030">30</a>;
+   on negro labor, <a href="#Page_046">46</a>;
+   on relation of races, <a href="#Page_048">48</a>.<br />
+Trumbull, Lyman, moderate Republican, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>;
+   candidate for presidential nomination, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>.<br />
+<i>Tuscaloosa Independent Monitor</i> suppressed,
+   <a href="#Page_146">146</a>.<br />
+Tuscumbia (Ala.), Female Academy burned in,
+   <a href="#Page_185">185</a>-<a href="#Page_186">186</a>.<br />
+Tweed, W.&nbsp;M., <a href="#Page_282">282</a>.<br />
+</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+<h3>U.</h3>
+<p>
+Uniforms, wearing of Confederate, forbidden, <a href="#Page_020">20</a>.<br />
+<a name="indexUnionLeague" id="indexUnionLeague"></a>
+Union League of America, <a href="#Page_174">174</a> <i>et seq</i>.,
+   <a href="#Page_275">275</a>;
+   Freedmen's Bureau and, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>;
+   negroes in, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>;
+   and radicals, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>;
+   and Ku Klux Klan, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_256">256</a>.<br />
+Union party, <i>see</i> <a href="#indexNationalUnionParty">National
+   Union party</a>.<br />
+"United Order of African Ladies and Gentlemen,"
+   <a href="#Page_275">275</a>.<br />
+United States Sanitary Commission, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>.<br />
+</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+<h3>V.</h3>
+<p>
+Vicksburg (Miss.), public debt, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>;
+   race conflicts, <a href="#footer_10-4">237 (note)</a>;
+   government overturned,
+	    <a href="#Page_240">240</a>-<a href="#Page_241">241</a>.<br />
+Virginia, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>;
+   recognizes "Union" State government, <a href="#Page_018">18</a>;
+   army in, <a href="#Page_064">64</a>;
+   Lincoln's reconstruction plan adopted (1863),
+	    <a href="#Page_065">65</a>;
+   Lincoln and, <a href="#Page_067">67</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>;
+   Johnson recognizes government of, <a href="#Page_074">74</a>;
+   escaped slaves declared contraband, <a href="#Page_099">99</a>;
+   military government in, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>,
+	    <a href="#Page_144">144</a>;
+   constitution,
+	    <a href="#Page_154">154</a>-<a href="#Page_155">155</a>,
+			<a href="#Page_171">171</a>;
+   reconstruction fails in, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>;
+   schools, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>;
+   carpetbag rule, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>;
+   scalawags in, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;
+   unrepresented in Congress, <a href="#footer_13-3">289 (note)</a>;
+   conservatives gain control of, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>.<br />
+Virginia Military Institute, <a href="#Page_003">3</a>.<br />
+<i>Virginius</i> dispute, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>.<br />
+</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+<h3>W.</h3>
+<p>
+Wade, B.&nbsp;F., of Ohio, <a href="#Page_067">67</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_129">129</a>;
+   and Johnson, <a href="#Page_073">73</a>;
+   radical leader, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>;
+   and negro suffrage, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>;
+   and the presidency,
+	    <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>.<br />
+Wade-Davis Bill, <a href="#Page_056">56</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_065">65</a>-<a href="#Page_066">66</a>,
+	 <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.<br />
+Wages, Freedmen's Bureau fixes, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>.<br />
+War Department, takes over railways,
+   <a href="#Page_006">6</a>-<a href="#Page_007">7</a>;
+   Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands,
+	 <a href="#Page_102">102</a>;
+   <i>see also</i>
+	    <a href="#indexFreedmensBureau">Freedmen's Bureau</a>.<br />
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">322</a></span>
+
+Warmoth, H.&nbsp;C., Governor of Louisiana,
+   <a href="#Page_224">224</a>-<a href="#Page_225">225</a>.<br />
+Warner, General, and Union League, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.<br />
+Washington, headquarters of Freedmen's Bureau,
+   <a href="#Page_105">105</a>;
+   vote on negro suffrage, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>.<br />
+Washington and Lee University, <a href="#Page_017">17</a>.<br />
+Washington College,
+   later Washington and Lee University, <a href="#Page_017">17</a>.<br />
+Watterson, H.&nbsp;M., <a href="#Page_028">28</a>.<br />
+Wayland, Francis, President of Brown University,
+   <a href="#Page_208">208</a>-<a href="#Page_209">209</a>.<br />
+Webb, General A.&nbsp;S., commands military district,
+   <a href="#footer_06-1">140 (note)</a>.<br />
+Weitzel, General Godfrey, Lincoln and, <a href="#Page_067">67</a>.<br />
+Welles, Gideon, and Johnson, <a href="#Page_074">74</a>.<br />
+Wells, Governor of Louisiana, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>.<br />
+West, development of,
+   <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>.<br />
+West Virginia, Confederates in,
+   <a href="#Page_025">25</a>-<a href="#Page_026">26</a>;
+   State emancipation in, <a href="#Page_036">36</a>;
+   established, <a href="#Page_064">64</a>, <a href="#Page_065">65</a>.<br />
+Whig party,
+   <a href="#Page_070">70</a>, <a href="#Page_071">71</a>,
+	 <a href="#Page_087">87</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>,
+	 <a href="#Page_150">150</a>,  <a href="#Page_179">179</a>.<br />
+Whipper, judge in South Carolina, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>.<br />
+Whisky Ring, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>.<br />
+White Boys, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.<br />
+White Brotherhood, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_251">251</a>.<br />
+White Camelia, see <a href="#indexKnightsWC">Knights of the
+    White Camelia</a>.<br />
+White League, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_263">263</a>.<br />
+White Line of Mississippi, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.<br />
+White Man's party of Alabama, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>,
+   <a href="#Page_263">263</a>.<br />
+White River Valley and Texas Railroad obtains grant,
+   <a href="#Page_235">235</a>.<br />
+White Rose, Order of the, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.<br />
+Wilmer, Bishop R.&nbsp;H., and prayers for Davis,
+   <a href="#Page_023">23</a>.<br />
+Wilson, Henry, on reconstruction,
+   <a href="#Page_124">124</a>-<a href="#Page_125">125</a>;
+   tours the South, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>.<br />
+Wisconsin and negro suffrage, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>.<br />
+</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+		<div class="chapterhead">
+      <br />
+			<a name="chroniclesAmerica" id="chroniclesAmerica"></a>
+			<br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+		<h2><a href="#Contents">The Chronicles of America Series</a></h2>
+    <ol>
+			 <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3066">The
+			     Red Man's Continent</a><br /> by Ellsworth Huntington</li>
+       <li>The Spanish Conquerors<br /> by Irving Berdine Richman</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12855">Elizabethan
+			     Sea-Dogs</a><br />  by William Charles Henry Wood</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12523">The
+			     Crusaders of New France</a><br />  by William Bennett Munro</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2898">Pioneers
+			     of the Old South</a><br />  by Mary Johnson</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29853">The
+			     Fathers of New England</a><br />  by Charles McLean Andrews</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34977">Dutch
+			     and English on the Hudson</a><br />  by Maud Wilder Goodwin</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3043">The
+			     Quaker Colonies</a><br />  by Sydney George Fisher</li>
+       <li>Colonial Folkways<br /> by Charles McLean Andrews</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3092">The
+			     Conquest of New France</a><br />  by George McKinnon Wrong</li>
+			 <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3093">The
+			     Eve of the Revolution</a><br />  by Carl Lotus Becker</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2704">Washington
+			     and His Comrades in Arms</a><br />  by George McKinnon Wrong</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3032">The
+			     Fathers of the Constitution</a><br />  by Max Farrand</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11702">Washington
+			     and His Colleagues</a><br />  by Henry Jones Ford</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3004">Jefferson
+			     and his Colleagues</a><br />  by Allen Johnson</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3291">John
+			     Marshall and the Constitution</a><br /> by Edward Samuel Corwin</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18941">The
+			     Fight for a Free Sea</a><br />  by Ralph Delahaye Paine</li>
+			 <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3073">Pioneers
+			     of the Old Southwest</a><br /> by Constance Lindsay Skinner</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3014">The
+			     Old Northwest</a><br />  by Frederic Austin Ogg</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13009">The
+			     Reign of Andrew Jackson</a><br />  by Frederic Austin Ogg</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3098">The
+			     Paths of Inland Commerce</a><br /> by Archer Butler Hulbert</li>
+       <li>Adventurers of Oregon<br />  by Constance Lindsay Skinner</li>
+       <li>The Spanish Borderlands<br />  by Herbert Eugene Bolton</li>
+       <li>Texas and the Mexican War<br />  by Nathaniel Wright Stephenson</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12764">The
+			     Forty-Niners</a><br />  by Stewart Edward White</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3033">The
+			     Passing of the Frontier</a><br />  by Emerson Hough</li>
+			 <li>The Cotton Kingdom<br />  by William E. Dodd</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3034">The
+			     Anti-Slavery Crusade</a><br />  by Jesse Macy</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2836">Abraham
+			     Lincoln and the Union</a><br />  by Nathaniel Wright Stephenson</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3035">The
+			     Day of the Confederacy</a><br />  by Nathaniel Wright Stephenson</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2649">Captains
+			     of the Civil War</a><br />  by William Charles Henry Wood</li>
+       <li><span class="smcap">The Sequel of Appomattox<br />
+			     by Walter Lynwood Fleming</span></li>
+			 <li>The American Spirit in Education<br />  by Edwin E. Slosson</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3410">The
+			     American Spirit in Literature</a><br />  by Bliss Perry</li>
+			 <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14825">Our
+			     Foreigners</a><br />  by Samuel Peter Orth</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3099">The
+			     Old Merchant Marine</a><br />  by Ralph Delahaye Paine</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2900">The
+			     Age of Invention</a><br />  by Holland Thompson</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3036">The
+			     Railroad Builders</a><br />  by John Moody</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3037">The
+			     Age of Big Business</a><br />  by Burton Jesse Hendrick</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3038">The
+			     Armies of Labor</a><br />  by Samuel Peter Orth</li>
+       <li>The Masters of Capital<br />  by John Moody</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13107">The
+			     New South</a><br />by Holland Thompson</li>
+			 <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3040">The
+			     Boss and the Machine</a><br />  by Samuel Peter Orth</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3041">The
+			     Cleveland Era</a><br />  by Henry Jones Ford</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2899">The
+			     Agrarian Crusade</a><br /> by Solon Justus Buck</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3157">The
+			     Path of Empire</a><br />  by Carl Russell Fish</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2724">Theodore
+			     Roosevelt and His Times</a><br />  by Harold Howland</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21877">Woodrow
+			     Wilson and the World War</a><br />  by Charles Seymour</li>
+			 <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2835">The
+			     Canadian Dominion</a><br />  by Oscar D. Skelton</li>
+       <li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3042">The
+			     Hispanic Nations of the New World</a><br />
+					 by William R. Shepherd</li>
+    </ol>
+		<p><br /></p>
+
+
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+
+		<div class="chapterhead">
+      <br />
+			<a name="transNotes" id="transNotes"></a>
+			<br /><br /><br />
+	 <h2><a href="#Contents">Transcriber's Notes</a></h2>
+	 <p><br /></p>
+	 <h3>Introduction</h3>
+</div>
+
+<div id="notes">
+<p>
+Welcome to <span class="PG">Project Gutenberg's</span> edition of
+<i>Sequel to Appomattox</i> by Walter Fleming in the <i>Chronicles of
+America</i> series.  The images were courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln
+Edition on the internet archive from the University of Michigan.
+We also consulted the textbook edition from the Internet Archive
+to produce an e-book without images.</p>
+<p>The images have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs
+and so that they are next to the text that they illustrate. The page
+number of the illustration might not match the page number in the List
+of Illustrations.</p>
+
+<p>We have made the following emendations to the text:
+</p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+<h4>Index:</h4>
+<p>
+   On <a href="#Page_313">Page 313</a>, Re-election is transcribed as
+	 re&euml;lection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+   On <a href="#Page_321">Page 321</a>, Tourg&eacute;e is spelled without the
+	 acute accent, but the entry refers to a passage in the text where
+	 the acute accent is used.  We put the accent on the entry in the index.
+</p>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="boilerplate">
+<p class="end">
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEQUEL OF APPOMATTOX ***
+</p>
+<br />
+<p>
+***** This file should be named 2897-h.htm or 2897-h.zip *****
+</p>
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+Project Gutenberg's The Sequel of Appomattox, by Walter Lynwood Fleming
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Sequel of Appomattox
+       A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The
+       Chronicles Of America Series
+
+Author: Walter Lynwood Fleming
+
+Editor: Allen Johnson
+
+Posting Date: January 2, 2009 [EBook #2897]
+Release Date: November, 2001
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEQUEL OF APPOMATTOX ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The James J. Kelly Library Of St. Gregory's
+University, and Alev Akman
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SEQUEL OF APPOMATTOX
+
+A CHRONICLE OF THE REUNION OF THE STATES
+
+By Walter Lynwood Fleming
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. THE AFTERMATH OF WAR
+
+When the armies of the Union and of the Confederacy were disbanded in
+1865, two matters had been settled beyond further dispute: the Negro was
+to be free, and the Union was to be perpetuated. But, though slavery
+and state sovereignty were no longer at issue, there were still many
+problems which pressed for solution. The huge task of reconstruction
+must be faced. The nature of the situation required that the measures of
+reconstruction be first formulated in Washington by the victors and then
+worked out in the conquered South. Since the success of these policies
+would depend in a large measure upon their acceptability to both
+sections of the country, it was expected that the North would be
+influenced to some extent by the attitude of the Southern people, which
+in turn would be determined largely by local conditions in the South.
+The situation in the South at the close of the Civil War is, therefore,
+the point at which this narrative of the reconstruction naturally takes
+its beginning.
+
+The surviving Confederate soldiers came straggling back to communities,
+which were now far from being satisfactory dwelling places for civilized
+people. Everywhere they found missing many of the best of their former
+neighbors. They found property destroyed, the labor system disorganized,
+and the inhabitants in many places suffering from want. They found the
+white people demoralized and sometimes divided among themselves and the
+Negroes free, bewildered, and disorderly, for organized government had
+lapsed with the surrender of the Confederate armies.
+
+Beneath a disorganized society lay a devastated land. The destruction of
+property affected all classes of the population. The accumulated capital
+of the South had disappeared in worthless Confederate stocks, bonds,
+and currency. The banks had failed early in the war. Two billion dollars
+invested in slaves had been wiped out. Factories, which had been running
+before the war or were developed after 1861 in order to supply the
+blockaded country, had been destroyed by Federal raiders or seized
+and sold or dismantled because they had furnished supplies to the
+Confederacy. Mining industries were paralyzed. Public buildings which
+had been used for war purposes were destroyed or confiscated for the
+uses of the army or for the new freedmen's schools. It was months before
+courthouses, state capitols, school and college buildings were again
+made available for normal uses. The military school buildings had been
+destroyed by the Federal forces. Among the schools which suffered
+were the Virginia Military Institute, the University of Alabama, the
+Louisiana State Seminary, and many smaller institutions. Nearly all
+these had been used in some way for war purposes and were therefore
+subject to destruction or confiscation.
+
+The farmers and planters found themselves "land poor." The soil
+remained, but there was a prevalent lack of labor, of agricultural
+equipment, of farm stock, of seeds, and of money with which to make good
+the deficiency. As a result, a man with hundreds of acres might be as
+poor as a Negro refugee. The desolation is thus described by a Virginia
+farmer:
+
+"From Harper's Ferry to New Market, which is about eighty miles... the
+country was almost a desert.... We had no cattle, hogs, sheep, or horse
+or anything else. The fences were all gone. Some of the orchards were
+very much injured, but the fruit trees had not been destroyed. The barns
+were all burned; chimneys standing without houses, and houses standing
+without roof, or door, or window."
+
+Much land was thrown on the market at low prices--three to five dollars
+an acre for land worth fifty dollars. The poorer lands could not be sold
+at all, and thousands of farms were deserted by their owners. Everywhere
+recovery from this agricultural depression was slow. Five years after
+the war Robert Somers, an English traveler, said of the Tennessee
+Valley:
+
+"It consists for the most part of plantations in a state of semi-ruin
+and plantations of which the ruin is for the present total and
+complete.... The trail of war is visible throughout the valley in
+burnt-up gin-houses, ruined bridges, mills, and factories... and in
+large tracts of once cultivated land stripped of every vestige of
+fencing. The roads, long neglected, are in disorder, and having in many
+places become impassable, new tracks have been made through the woods
+and fields without much respect to boundaries."
+
+Similar conditions existed wherever the armies had passed, and not
+in the country districts alone. Many of the cities, such as Richmond,
+Charleston, Columbia, Jackson, Atlanta, and Mobile had suffered from
+fire or bombardment.
+
+There were few stocks of merchandise in the South when the war ended,
+and Northern creditors had lost so heavily through the failure of
+Southern merchants that they were cautious about extending credit again.
+Long before 1865 all coin had been sent out in contraband trade through
+the blockade. That there was a great need of supplies from the outside
+world is shown by the following statement of General Boynton:
+
+"Window-glass has given way to thin boards, in railway coaches and in
+the cities. Furniture is marred and broken, and none has been replaced
+for four years. Dishes are cemented in various styles, and half the
+pitchers have tin handles. A complete set of crockery is never seen, and
+in very few families is there enough to set a table.... A set of forks
+with whole tines is a curiosity. Clocks and watches have nearly all
+stopped.... Hairbrushes and toothbrushes have all worn out; combs are
+broken.... Pins, needles, and thread, and a thousand such articles,
+which seem indispensable to housekeeping, are very scarce. Even in
+weaving on the looms, corncobs have been substituted for spindles.
+Few have pocketknives. In fact, everything that has heretofore been an
+article of sale in the South is wanting now. At the tables of those
+who were once esteemed luxurious providers you will find neither tea,
+coffee, sugar, nor spices of any kind. Even candles, in some cases, have
+been replaced by a cup of grease in which a piece of cloth is plunged
+for a wick."
+
+This poverty was prolonged and rendered more acute by the lack of
+transportation. Horses, mules, wagons, and carriages were scarce, the
+country roads were nearly impassable, and bridges were in bad repair or
+had been burned or washed away. Steamboats had almost disappeared from
+the rivers. Those which had escaped capture as blockade runners had been
+subsequently destroyed or were worn out.. Postal facilities, which had
+been poor enough during the last year of the Confederacy, were entirely
+lacking for several months after the surrender.
+
+The railways were in a state of physical dilapidation little removed
+from destruction, save for those that had been captured and kept in
+partial repair by the Federal troops. The rolling stock had been lost
+by capture, by destruction to prevent capture, in wrecks, which were
+frequent, or had been worn out. The railroad companies possessed large
+sums in Confederate currency and in securities which were now valueless.
+About two-thirds of all the lines were hopelessly bankrupt. Fortunately,
+the United States War Department took over the control of the railway
+lines and in some cases effected a temporary reorganization which could
+not have been accomplished by the bankrupt companies. During the summer
+and fall of 1865, "loyal" boards of directors were appointed for most
+of the railroads, and the army withdrew its control. But repairs
+and reconstruction were accomplished with difficulty because of the
+demoralization of labor and the lack of funds or credit. Freight was
+scarce and, had it not been for government shipments, some of the
+railroads would have been abandoned. Not many people were able to
+travel. It is recorded that on one trip from Montgomery to Mobile
+and return, a distance of 360 miles, the railroad which is now the
+Louisville and Nashville collected only thirteen dollars in fares.
+
+Had there been unrestricted commercial freedom in the South in 1865-66,
+the distress of the people would have been somewhat lessened, for here
+and there were to be found public and private stores of cotton, tobacco,
+rice, and other farm products, all of which were bringing high prices
+in the market. But for several months the operation of wartime laws
+and regulations hindered the distribution of even these scanty stores.
+Property upon which the Confederate Government had a claim was, of
+course, subject to Confiscation, and private property offered for sale,
+even that of Unionists, was subject to a 25 percent tax on sales, a
+shipping tax, and a revenue tax. The revenue tax on cotton, ranging from
+two to three cents a pound during the three years after the war, brought
+in over $68,000,000. This tax, with other Federal revenues, yielded much
+more than the entire expenses of reconstruction from 1865 to 1868 and
+of all relief measures for the South, both public and private. After
+May 1865, the 25 percent tax was imposed only upon the produce of slave
+labor. None of the war taxes, except that on cotton, was levied upon the
+crops of 1866, but while these taxes lasted, they seriously impeded the
+resumption of trade.
+
+Even these restrictions, however, might have been borne if only they
+had been honestly applied. Unfortunately, some of the most spectacular
+frauds ever perpetrated were carried through in connection with the
+attempt of the United States Treasury Department to collect and sell the
+confiscable property in the South. The property to be sold consisted
+of what had been captured and seized by the army and the navy, of
+"abandoned" property, as such was called whose owner was absent in
+the Confederate service, and of property subject to seizure under the
+confiscation acts of Congress. No captures were made after the general
+surrender, and no further seizures of "abandoned" property were made
+after Johnson's amnesty proclamation of May 29, 1865. This left only the
+"confiscable" property to be collected and sold.
+
+For collection purposes the states of the South were divided into
+districts, each under the supervision of an agent of the Treasury
+Department, who received a commission of about 25 percent. Cotton,
+regarded as the root of the slavery evil, was singled out as the
+principal object of confiscation. It was known that the Confederate
+Government had owned in 1865 about 150,000 bales, but the records were
+defective and much of it, with no clear indication of ownership, still
+remained with the producers. Secretary Chase, foreseeing the difficulty
+of effecting a just settlement, counseled against seizure, but his
+judgment was overruled. Secretary McCulloch said of his agents: "I am
+sure I sent some honest cotton agents South; but it sometimes seems
+doubtful whether any of them remained honest very long." Some of
+the natives, even, became cotton thieves. In a report made in 1866,
+McCulloch describes their methods: "Contractors, anxious for gain,
+were sometimes guilty of bad faith and peculation, and frequently took
+possession of cotton and delivered it under contracts as captured or
+abandoned, when in fact it was not such, and they had no right to touch
+it.... Residents and others in the districts where these peculations
+were going on took advantage of the unsettled condition of the country,
+and representing themselves as agents of this department, went
+about robbing under such pretended authority, and thus added to the
+difficulties of the situation by causing unjust opprobrium and suspicion
+to rest upon officers engaged in the faithful discharge of their duties.
+Agents,... frequently received or collected property, and sent it
+forward which the law did not authorize them to take.... Lawless men,
+singly and in organized bands, engaged in general plunder; every species
+of intrigue and peculation and theft were resorted to."
+
+These agents turned over to the United States about $34,000,000. About
+40,000 claimants were subsequently indemnified on the ground that the
+property taken from them did not belong to the Confederate Government,
+but many thousands of other claimants have been unable to prove that
+their property was seized by government agents and hence have received
+nothing. It is probable that the actual Confederate property was nearly
+all stolen by the agents. One agent in Alabama sold an appointment as
+assistant for $25,000, and a few months later both the assistant and the
+agent were tried by a military court for stealing and were fined $90,000
+and $250,000 respectively in addition to being imprisoned.
+
+Other property, including horses, mules, wagons, tobacco, rice, and
+sugar which the natives claimed as their own, was seized. In some places
+the agents even collected delinquent Confederate taxes. Much of the
+confiscable property was not sold but was turned over to the
+Freedmen's Bureau* for its support. The total amount seized cannot be
+satisfactorily ascertained. The Ku Klux minority report asserted
+that 3,000,000 bales of cotton were taken, of which the United States
+received only 114,000. It is certain that, owing to the deliberate
+destruction of cotton by fire in 1864-65, this estimate was too
+high, but all the testimony points to the fact that the frauds were
+stupendous. As a result the United States Government did not succeed
+in obtaining the Confederate property to which it had a claim, and the
+country itself was stripped of necessities to a degree that left it
+not only destitute but outraged and embittered. "Such practices," said
+Trowbridge, "had a pernicious effect, engendering a contempt for the
+Government and a murderous ill will which too commonly vented itself
+upon soldiers and Negroes."
+
+     * See pp. 89 et seq.
+
+The South faced the work of reconstruction not only with a shortage of
+material and greatly hampered in the employment even of that but still
+more with a shortage of men. The losses among the whites are usually
+estimated at about half the military population, but since accurate
+records are lacking, the exact numbers cannot be ascertained. The best
+of the civil leaders, as well as the prominent military leaders, had so
+committed themselves to the support of the Confederacy as to be excluded
+from participation in any reconstruction that might be attempted.
+The business of reconstruction, therefore, fell of necessity to the
+Confederate private soldiers, the lower officers, nonparticipants, and
+lukewarm individuals who had not greatly compromised themselves. These
+politically and physically uninjured survivors included also all the
+"slackers" of the Confederacy. But though there were such physical and
+moral losses on the part of those to whom fell the direction of affairs,
+there was also a moral strengthening in the sound element of the people
+who had been tried by the discipline of war.
+
+The greatest weakness of both races was their extreme poverty. The crops
+of 1865 turned out badly, for most of the soldiers reached home too late
+for successful planting, and the Negro labor was not dependable. The
+sale of such cotton and farm products as had escaped the treasury agents
+was of some help, but curiously enough much of the good money thus
+obtained was spent extravagantly by a people used to Confederate rag
+money and for four years deprived of the luxuries of life. The poorer
+whites who had lost all were close to starvation. In the white counties
+which had sent so large a proportion of men to the army, the destitution
+was most acute. In many families the breadwinner had been killed in
+war. After 1862, relief systems had been organized in nearly all the
+Confederate States for the purpose of aiding the poor whites, but these
+organizations were disbanded in 1865. A Freedmen's Bureau official
+traveling through the desolate back country furnishes a description
+which might have applied to two hundred counties, a third of the South:
+"It is a common, an every-day sight in Randolph County, that of women
+and children, most of whom were formerly in good circumstances, begging
+for bread from door to door. Meat of any kind has been a stranger to
+many of their mouths for months. The drought cut off what little crops
+they hoped to save, and they must have immediate help or perish. By far
+the greater suffering exists among the whites. Their scanty supplies
+have been exhausted, and now they look to the Government alone for
+support. Some are without homes of any description."
+
+Where the armies had passed, few of the people, white or black,
+remained; most of them had been forced as "refugees" within the Union
+lines or into the interior of the Confederacy. Now, along with the
+disbanded Confederate soldiers, they came straggling back to their
+war-swept homes. It was estimated, in December 1865, that in the states
+of Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia, there were five hundred thousand
+white people who were without the necessaries of life; numbers died from
+lack of food. Within a few months, relief agencies were at work. In
+the North, especially in the border states and in New York, charitable
+organizations collected and forwarded great quantities of supplies to
+the Negroes and to the whites in the hill and mountain counties. The
+reorganized state and local governments sent food from the unravaged
+portions of the Black Belt to the nearest white counties, and the
+army commanders gave some aid. As soon as the Freedmen's Bureau was
+organized, it fed to the limit of its supplies the needy whites as well
+as the blacks.
+
+The extent of the relief afforded by the charity of the North and by
+the agencies of the United States Government is not now generally
+remembered, probably on account of the later objectionable activities
+of the Freedmen's Bureau, but it was at the time properly appreciated.
+A Southern journalist, writing of what he saw in Georgia, remarked that
+"it must be a matter of gratitude as well as surprise for our people to
+see a Government which was lately fighting us with fire and sword and
+shell, now generously feeding our poor and distressed. In the immense
+crowds which throng the distributing house, I notice the mothers and
+fathers, widows and orphans of our soldiers. ... Again, the Confederate
+soldier, with one leg or one arm, the crippled, maimed, and broken, and
+the worn and destitute men, who fought bravely their enemies then, their
+benefactors now, have their sacks filled and are fed."
+
+Acute distress continued until 1867; after that year there was no
+further danger of starvation. Some of the poor whites, especially in the
+remote districts, never again reached a comfortable standard of living;
+some were demoralized by too much assistance; others were discouraged
+and left the South for the West or the North. But the mass of the people
+accepted the discipline of poverty and made the best of their situation.
+
+The difficulties, however, that beset even the courageous and the
+competent were enormous. The general paralysis of industry, the breaking
+up of society, and poverty on all sides bore especially hard on those
+who had not previously been manual laborers. Physicians could get
+practice enough but no fees; lawyers who had supported the Confederacy
+found it difficult to get back into the reorganized courts because of
+the test oaths and the competition of "loyal" attorneys; and for
+the teachers there were few schools. We read of officers high in the
+Confederate service selling to Federal soldiers the pies and cakes
+cooked by their wives, of others selling fish and oysters which they
+themselves had caught, and of men and women hitching themselves to plows
+when they had no horse or mule.
+
+Such incidents must, from their nature, have been infrequent, but they
+show to what straits some at least were reduced. Six years after the
+war, James S. Pike, then in South Carolina, mentions cases which might
+be duplicated in nearly every old Southern community: "In the vicinity,"
+he says, "lived a gentleman whose income when the war broke out was
+rated at $150,000 a year. Not a vestige of his whole vast estate remains
+today. Not far distant were the estates of a large proprietor and a
+well-known family, rich and distinguished for generations. The slaves
+were gone. The family is gone. A single scion of the house remains, and
+he peddles tea by the pound and molasses by the quart, on a corner of
+the old homestead, to the former slaves of the family and thereby earns
+his livelihood."
+
+General Lee's good example influenced many. Commercial enterprises were
+willing to pay for the use of his name and reputation, but he wished
+to farm and could get no opportunity. "They are offering my father
+everything," his daughter said, "except the only thing he will accept,
+a place to earn honest bread while engaged in some useful work." This
+remark led to an offer of the presidency of Washington College, now
+Washington and Lee University, which he accepted. "I have a self-imposed
+task which I must accomplish," he said, "I have led the young men of
+the South in battle; I have seen many of them fall under my standard.
+I shall devote my life now to training young men to do their duty in
+life."
+
+The condition of honest folk was still further troubled by a general
+spirit of lawlessness in many regions. Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas,
+and Louisiana recognized the "Union" state government, but the coming of
+peace brought legal anarchy to the other states of the Confederacy. The
+Confederate state and local governments were abolished as the armies of
+occupation spread over the South, and for a period of four or six months
+there was no government except that exercised by the commanders of the
+military garrisons left behind when the armies marched away. Even before
+the surrender, the local governments were unable to make their authority
+respected, and soon after the war ended, parts of the country became
+infested with outlaws, pretend treasury agents, horse thieves, cattle
+thieves, and deserters. Away from the military posts only lynch law
+could cope with these elements of disorder.
+
+With the aid of the army in the more settled regions, and by extra-legal
+means elsewhere, the outlaws, thieves, cotton burners, and house burners
+were brought somewhat under control even before the state governments
+were reorganized, though the embers of lawlessness continued to smolder.
+
+The relations between the Federal soldiers stationed in the principal
+towns and the native white population were not, on the whole, so bad as
+might have been expected. If the commanding officer were well disposed,
+there was little danger of friction, though sometimes his troops got out
+of hand. The regulars had a better reputation than the volunteers.
+The Confederate soldiers were surfeited with fighting, but the
+"stay-at-home" element was often a cause of trouble. The problem
+of social relations between the conquerors and the conquered was
+troublesome. The men might get along well together, but the women would
+have nothing do with the "Yankees," and ill feeling arose because of
+their antipathy. Carl Schurz reported that "the soldier of the Union is
+looked upon as a stranger, an intruder, as the 'Yankee,' the 'enemy.'...
+The existence and intensity of this aversion is too well known to those
+who have served or are serving in the South to require proof."
+
+In retaliation the soldiers developed ingenious ways of annoying the
+whites. Women, forced for any reason to go to headquarters, were made to
+take the oath of allegiance or the "ironclad" oath before their requests
+were granted; flags were fastened over doors, gates, or sidewalks
+in order to irritate the recalcitrant dames and their daughters.
+Confederate songs and color combinations were forbidden. In Richmond,
+General Halleck ordered that no marriages be performed unless the bride,
+the groom, and the officiating clergyman took the oath of allegiance.
+He explained this as a measure taken to prevent "the propagation of
+legitimate rebels."
+
+The wearing of Confederate uniforms was forbidden by military order, but
+by May 1865, few soldiers possessed regulation uniforms. In Tennessee
+the State also imposed fines upon *wear wearers of the uniform. In
+the vicinity of military posts, buttons and marks of rank were usually
+ordered removed and the gray clothes dyed with some other color. General
+Lee, for example, had the buttons on his coat covered with cloth. But
+frequently the Federal commander, after issuing the orders, paid no more
+attention to the matter and such conflicts as arose on account of the
+uniform were usually caused by officious enlisted men and the Negro
+troops. Whitelaw Reid relates the following incident:
+
+"Nothing was more touching, in all that I saw in Savannah, than the
+almost painful effort of the rebels, from generals down to privates,
+to conduct themselves so as to evince respect for our soldiers, and to
+bring no severer punishment upon the city than it had already received.
+There was a brutal scene at the hotel, where a drunken sergeant, with
+a pair of tailor's shears, insisted on cutting the buttons from the
+uniform of an elegant gray-headed old brigadier, who had just come in
+from Johnston's army; but he bore himself modestly and very handsomely
+through it. His staff was composed of fine-looking, stalwart fellows,
+evidently gentlemen, who appeared intensely mortified at such treatment.
+They had no clothes except their rebel uniforms, and had, as yet, had no
+time to procure others, but they avoided disturbances and submitted to
+what they might, with some propriety, and with the general approval of
+our officers, have resented."
+
+The Negro troops, even at their best, were everywhere considered
+offensive by the native whites. General Grant, indeed, urged that only
+white troops be used to garrison the interior. But the Negro soldier,
+impudent by reason of his new freedom, his new uniform, and his new gun,
+was more than Southern temper could tranquilly bear, and race conflicts
+were frequent. A New Orleans newspaper thus states the Southern point
+of view: "Our citizens who had been accustomed to meet and treat the
+Negroes only as respectful servants, were mortified, pained, and shocked
+to encounter them... wearing Federal uniforms and bearing bright muskets
+and gleaming bayonets.... They are jostled from the sidewalks by dusky
+guards, marching four abreast. They were halted, in rude and sullen
+tones, by Negro sentinels."
+
+The task of the Federal forces was not easy. The garrisons were not
+large enough nor numerous enough to keep order in the absence of civil
+government. The commanders in the South asked in vain for cavalry
+to police the rural districts. Much of the disorder, violence, and
+incendiarism attributed at the time to lawless soldiers appeared later
+to be due to discharged soldiers and others pretending to be soldiers in
+order to carry out schemes of robbery. The whites complained vigorously
+of the garrisons, and petitions were sent to Washington from mass
+meetings and from state legislatures asking for their removal. The
+higher commanders, however, bore themselves well, and in a few fortunate
+cases Southern whites were on most amicable terms with the garrison
+commanders. The correspondence of responsible military officers in the
+South shows how earnestly and considerately each, as a rule, tried
+to work out his task. The good sense of most of the Federal officers
+appeared when, after the murder of Lincoln, even General Grant for
+a brief space lost his head and ordered the arrest of paroled
+Confederates.
+
+
+The church organizations were as much involved in the war and in the
+reconstruction as were secular institutions. Before the war every
+religious organization having members North and South, except the
+Catholic Church and the Jews, had separated into independent Northern
+and Southern bodies. In each section church feeling ran high, and when
+the war came, the churches supported the armies. As the Federal armies
+occupied Southern territory, the church buildings of each denomination
+were turned over to the corresponding Northern body, and Southern
+ministers were permitted to remain only upon agreeing to conduct "loyal
+services, pray for the President of the United States and for Federal
+victories" and to foster "loyal sentiment." The Protestant Episcopal
+churches in Alabama were closed from September to December 1865, and
+some congregations were dispersed by the soldiers because Bishop Wilmer
+had directed his clergy to omit the prayer for President Davis but had
+substituted no other. The ministers of non-liturgical churches were not
+so easily controlled. A Georgia Methodist preacher directed by a Federal
+officer to pray for the President said afterwards: "I prayed for the
+President that the Lord would take out of him and his allies the hearts
+of beasts and put into them the hearts of men or remove the cusses from
+office." Sometimes members of a congregation showed their resentment
+at the "loyal" prayers by leaving the church. But in spite of many
+irritations, both sides frequently managed to get some amusement out
+of the "loyal" services. The church situation was, however, a serious
+matter during and after the reconstruction, and some of its later phases
+will have to be discussed elsewhere.
+
+The Unionist, or "Tory," of the lower and eastern South found himself,
+in 1865, a man without a country. Few in number in any community, they
+found themselves, upon their return from a harsh exile, the victims
+of ostracism or open hostility. One of them, William H. Smith, later
+Governor of Alabama, testified that the Southern people "manifest the
+most perfect contempt for a man who is known to be an unequivocal Union
+man; they call him a 'galvanized Yankee' and apply other terms and
+epithets to him." General George H. Thomas, speaking of a region more
+divided in sentiment than Alabama, remarked that "Middle Tennessee
+is disturbed by animosities and hatreds, much more than it is by the
+disloyalty of persons towards the Government of the United States.
+Those personal animosities would break out and overawe the civil
+authorities, but for the presence there of the troops of the United
+States.... They are more unfriendly to Union men, natives of the State
+of Tennessee, or of the South, who have been in the Union army, than
+they are to men of Northern birth."
+
+In the border states, society was sharply divided, and feeling was
+bitter. In eastern Tennessee, eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, and parts
+of Arkansas and Missouri, returning Confederates met harsher treatment
+than did the Unionists in the lower South. Trowbridge says of east
+Tennessee: "Returning rebels were robbed; and if one had stolen unawares
+to his home, it was not safe for him to remain there. I saw in Virginia
+one of these exiles, who told me how homesickly he pined for the hills
+and meadows of east Tennessee, which he thought the most delightful
+region in the world. But, there was a rope hanging from a tree for him
+there, and he dared not go back. 'The bottom rails are on top,' said
+he, 'that is the trouble.' The Union element, and the worst part of the
+Union element, was uppermost." Confederates and Confederate sympathizers
+in Maryland, West Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, were disfranchised.
+In West Virginia, Tennessee, and Missouri, "war trespass" suits were
+brought against returning Confederates for military acts done in
+war time. In Missouri and West Virginia, strict test oaths excluded
+Confederates from office, from the polls, and from the professions of
+teaching, preaching, and law. On the other hand in central and western
+Kentucky, the predominant Unionist population, themselves suffering
+through the abolition of slavery, and by the objectionable operations
+of the Freedmen's Bureau and the unwise military administration,
+showed more sympathy for the Confederates, welcomed them home, and soon
+relieved them of all restrictions.
+
+Still another element of discord was added by the Northerners who came
+to exploit the South. Many mustered-out soldiers proposed to stay.
+Speculators of all kinds followed the withdrawing Confederate lines and
+with the conclusion of peace spread through the country, but they
+were not cordially received. With the better class, the Southerners,
+especially the soldiers, associated freely if seldom intimately. But the
+conduct of a few of their number who considered that the war had opened
+all doors to them, who very freely expressed their views, gave advice,
+condemned old customs, and were generally offensive, did much to bring
+all Northerners into disrepute. Tactlessly critical letters published in
+Northern papers did not add to their popularity. The few Northern women
+felt the ostracism more keenly than did the men. Benjamin C. Truman, an
+agent of President Johnson, thus summed up the situation: "There is a
+prevalent disposition not to associate too freely with Northern men
+or to receive them into the circles of society; but it is far from
+unsurmountable. Over Southern society, as over every other, woman reigns
+supreme, and they are more embittered against those whom they deem
+the authors of all their calamities than are their brothers, sons,
+and husbands." But, of the thousands of Northern men who overcame the
+reluctance of the Southerners to social intercourse, little was heard.
+Many a Southern planter secured a Northern partner or sold him half his
+plantation to get money to run the other half. For the irritations of
+1865, each party must take its share of responsibility.
+
+Had the South assisted in a skillful and adequate publicity, much
+disastrous misunderstanding might have been avoided. The North knew as
+little of the South as the South did of the North, but the North was
+eager for news. Able newspaper correspondents like Sidney Andrews of
+the Boston Advertiser and the Chicago Tribune, who opposed President
+Johnson's policies, Thomas W. Knox of the New York Herald, who had given
+General Sherman so much trouble in Tennessee, Whitelaw Reid, who wrote
+for several papers and tried cotton planting in Louisiana, and John
+T. Trowbridge, New England author and journalist, were dispatched
+southwards. Chief of the President's investigators was General Carl
+Schurz, German revolutionist, Federal soldier, and soon to be radical
+Republican, who held harsh views of the Southern people; and there were
+besides Harvey M. Watterson, Kentucky Democrat and Unionist, the
+father of "Marse" Henry; Benjamin C. Truman, New England journalist and
+soldier, whose long report was perhaps the best of all; Chief Justice
+Chase, who was thinking mainly of "How soon can the Negro vote?"; and
+General Grant, who made a report so brief that, notwithstanding its
+value, it attracted little attention. In addition a constant stream of
+information and misinformation was going northward from treasury agents,
+officers of the army, the Freedmen's Bureau, teachers, and missionaries.
+Among foreigners who described the conquered land were Robert Somers,
+Henry Latham, and William Hepworth Dixon. But few in the South realized
+the importance of supplying the North with correct information about
+actual conditions. The letters and reports, they thought, humiliated
+them; inquiry was felt to be prying and gloating. "Correspondents have
+added a new pang to surrender," it was said. The South was proud and
+refused to be catechized. From the Northern point of view, the South,
+a new and strange region with strange customs and principles, was of
+course, not to be considered as quite normal and American, but there
+was on the part of many correspondents a determined attempt to describe
+things as they were. And yet the North persisted in its unsympathetic
+queries when it seemed to have a sufficient answer in the reports of
+Grant, Schurz, and Truman.
+
+Grant's opinion was short and direct: "I am satisfied that the mass of
+thinking men of the South accept the present situation of affairs in
+good faith.... The citizens of the Southern States are anxious to return
+to self-government within the Union as soon as possible." Truman came to
+the conclusion that "the rank and file of the disbanded Southern army...
+are the backbone and sinew of the South.... To the disbanded regiments
+of the rebel army, both officers and men, I look with great confidence
+as the best and altogether the most hopeful element of the South, the
+real basis of reconstruction and the material of worthy citizenship."
+General John Tarbell, before the Joint Committee on Reconstruction,
+testified that "there are, no doubt, disloyal and disorderly persons in
+the South, but it is an entire mistake to apply these terms to a whole
+people. I would as soon travel alone, unarmed, through the South as
+through the North. The South I left is not at all the South I hear and
+read about in the North. From the sentiment I hear in the North, I would
+scarcely recognize the people I saw, and, except their politics, I liked
+so well. I have entire faith that the better classes are friendly to the
+Negroes."
+
+Carl Schurz on the other hand was not so favorably impressed. "The
+loyalty of the masses and most of the leaders of the southern people,"
+he said, "consists in submission to necessity. There is, except in
+individual instances, an entire absence of that national spirit which
+forms the basis of true loyalty and patriotism." Another government
+official in Florida was quite doubtful of the Southern whites. "I would
+pin them down at the point of the bayonet," he declared, "so close that
+they would not have room to wiggle, and allow intelligent colored people
+to go up and vote in preference to them. The only Union element in the
+South proper... is among the colored people. The whites will treat you
+very kindly to your face, but they are deceitful. I have often thought,
+and so expressed myself, that there is so much deception among the
+people of the South since the rebellion, that if an earthquake should
+open and swallow them up, I was fearful that the devil would be
+dethroned and some of them take his place."
+
+The point of view of the Confederate military leaders was exhibited by
+General Wade Hampton in a letter to President Johnson and by General Lee
+in his advice to Governor Letcher of Virginia. General Hampton wrote:
+"The South unequivocally 'accepts the situation' in which she is placed.
+Everything that she has done has been done in perfect faith, and in the
+true and highest sense of the word, she is loyal. By this I mean that
+she intends to abide by the laws of the land honestly, to fulfill all
+her obligations faithfully and to keep her word sacredly, and I assert
+that the North has no right to demand more of her. You have no right
+to ask, or expect that she will at once profess unbounded love to that
+Union from which for four years she tried to escape at the cost of
+her best blood and all her treasures." General Lee in order to set an
+example applied through General Grant for a pardon under the amnesty
+proclamation and soon afterwards he wrote to Governor Letcher: "All
+should unite in honest efforts to obliterate the effects of war, and to
+restore the blessings of peace. They should remain, if possible, in the
+country; promote harmony and good-feeling; qualify themselves to vote;
+and elect to the State and general legislatures wise and patriotic men,
+who will devote their abilities to the interests of the country and the
+healing of all dissensions; I have invariably recommended this course
+since the cessation of hostilities, and have endeavored to practice it
+myself."
+
+Southerners of the Confederacy everywhere, then, accepted the
+destruction of slavery and the renunciation of state sovereignty; they
+welcomed an early restoration of the Union, without any punishment of
+leaders of the defeated cause. But they were proud of their Confederate
+records though now legally "loyal" to the United States; they considered
+the Negro as free but inferior, and expected to be permitted to fix his
+status in the social organization and to solve the problem of free labor
+in their own way. To embarrass the easy and permanent realization of
+these views there was a society disrupted, economically prostrate,
+deprived of its natural leaders, subjected to a control not always
+wisely conceived nor effectively exercised, and, finally, containing
+within its own population unassimilated elements which presented
+problems fraught with difficulty and danger.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. WHEN FREEDOM CRIED OUT
+
+The Negro is the central figure in the reconstruction of the South.
+Without the Negro there would have been no Civil War. Granting a war
+fought for any other cause, the task of reconstruction would, without
+him, have been comparatively simple. With him, however, reconstruction
+meant more than the restoring of shattered resources; it meant the more
+or less successful attempt to obtain and secure for the freedman civil
+and political rights, and to improve his economic and social status.
+In 1861, the American Negro was everywhere an inferior, and most of his
+race were slaves; in 1865, he was no longer a slave, but whether he was
+to be serf, ward, or citizen was an unsettled problem; in 1868, he was
+in the South the legal and political equal, frequently the superior, of
+the white; and before the end of the reconstruction period he was made
+by the legislation of some states and by Congress the legal equal of the
+white even in certain social matters.
+
+The race problem which confronted the American people had no parallel
+in the past. British and Spanish-American emancipation of slaves had
+affected only small numbers or small regions, in which one race greatly
+outnumbered the other. The results of these earlier emancipations of the
+Negroes and the difficulties of European states in dealing with subject
+white populations were not such as to afford helpful example to American
+statesmen. But since it was the actual situation in the Southern States
+rather than the experience of other countries which shaped the policies
+adopted during reconstruction, it is important to examine with some care
+the conditions in which the Negroes in the South found themselves at the
+close of the war.
+
+The Negroes were not all helpless and without experience "when freedom
+cried out."* In the Border States and in the North there were, in 1861,
+half a million free Negroes accustomed to looking out for themselves.
+Nearly 200,000 Negro men were enlisted in the United States army between
+1862 and 1865, and many thousands of slaves had followed raiding Federal
+forces to freedom or had escaped through the Confederate lines. State
+emancipation in Missouri, Maryland, West Virginia, and Tennessee, and
+the practical application of the Emancipation Proclamation where the
+Union armies were in control ended slavery for many thousands more.
+Wherever the armies marched, slavery ended. This was true even in
+Kentucky, where the institution was not legally abolished until the
+adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. Altogether more than a million
+Negroes were free and to some extent habituated to freedom before May
+1865.
+
+     * A Negro phrase much used in referring to emancipation.
+
+
+Most of these war-emancipated Negroes were scattered along the borders
+of the Confederacy, in camps, in colonies, in the towns, on refugee
+farms, at work with the armies, or serving as soldiers in the ranks.
+There were large working colonies along the Atlantic coast from Maryland
+to Florida. The chief centers were near Norfolk, where General Butler
+was the first to establish a "contraband" camp, in North Carolina, and
+on the Sea Islands of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, which had
+been seized by the Federal fleet early in the war. To the Sea Islands
+also were sent, in 1865, the hordes of Negroes who had followed General
+Sherman out of Georgia and South Carolina. Through the border states
+from the Atlantic to the Mississippi and along both sides of the
+Mississippi from Cairo, Illinois, to New Orleans, there were other
+refugee camps, farms, and colonies. For periods varying from one to four
+years these free Negroes had been at work, often amid conditions highly
+unfavorable to health, under the supervision of officers of the Treasury
+Department or of the army.
+
+Emancipation was therefore a gradual process, and most of the Negroes,
+through their widening experience on the plantations, with the armies,
+and in the colonies, were better fitted for freedom in 1865 than they
+had been in 1861. Even their years of bondage had done something
+for them, for they knew how to work and they had adopted in part the
+language, habits, religion, and morals of the whites. But slavery had
+not made them thrifty, self-reliant, or educated. Frederick Douglass
+said of the Negro at the end of his servitude: "He had none of the
+conditions of self-preservation or self-protection. He was free from the
+individual master, but he had nothing but the dusty road under his feet.
+He was free from the old quarter that once gave him shelter, but a slave
+to the rains of summer and to the frosts of winter. He was turned loose,
+naked, hungry, and destitute to the open sky." To prove that he was free
+the Negro thought he must leave his old master, change his name, quit
+work for a time, perhaps get a new wife, and hang around the Federal
+soldiers in camp or garrison, or go to the towns where the Freedmen's
+Bureau was in process of organization. To the Negroes who remained at
+home--and, curiously enough, for a time at least many did so--the news
+of freedom was made known somewhat ceremonially by the master or his
+representative. The Negroes were summoned to the "big house," told that
+they were free, and advised to stay on for a share of the crop. The
+description by Mrs. Clayton, the wife of a Southern general, will
+serve for many: "My husband said, 'I think it best for me to inform our
+Negroes of their freedom.' So he ordered all the grown slaves to come to
+him, and told them they no longer belonged to him as property, but were
+all free. 'You are not bound to remain with me any longer, and I have a
+proposition to make to you. If any of you desire to leave, I propose to
+furnish you with a conveyance to move you, and with provisions for the
+balance of the year.' The universal answer was, 'Master, we want to stay
+right here with you.' In many instances the slaves were so infatuated
+with the idea of being, as they said, 'free as birds' that they left
+their homes and consequently suffered; but our slaves were not so
+foolish."*
+
+     * "Black and White under the Old Regime", p. 158,
+
+
+The Negroes, however, had learned of their freedom before their old
+masters returned from the war; they were aware that the issues of the
+war involved in some way the question of their freedom or servitude,
+and through the "grapevine telegraph," the news brought by the invading
+soldiers, and the talk among the whites, they had long been kept fairly
+well informed. What the idea of freedom meant to the Negroes it is
+difficult to say. Some thought that there would be no more work and that
+all would be cared for by the Government; others believed that education
+and opportunity were about to make them the equal of their masters. The
+majority of them were too bewildered to appreciate anything except the
+fact that they were free from enforced labor.
+
+Conditions were most disturbed in the so-called "Black Belt," consisting
+of about two hundred counties in the most fertile parts of the South,
+where the plantation system was best developed and where by far the
+majority of the Negroes were segregated. The Negroes in the four hundred
+more remote and less fertile "white" counties, which had been less
+disturbed by armies, were not so upset by freedom as those of the
+Black Belt, for the garrisons and the larger towns, both centers of
+demoralization, were in or near the Black Belt. But there was a moving
+to and fro on the part of those who had escaped from the South or had
+been captured during the war or carried into the interior of the South
+to prevent capture. To those who left slavery and home to find freedom
+were added those who had found freedom and were now trying to get
+back home or to get away from the Negro camps and colonies which
+were breaking up. A stream of immigration which began to flow to
+the southwest affected Negroes as far as the Atlantic coast. In the
+confusion of moving, families were broken up, and children, wife, or
+husband were often lost to one another. The very old people and the
+young children were often left behind for the former master to care for.
+Regiments of Negro soldiers were mustered out in every large town and
+their numbers were added to the disorderly mass. Some of the Federal
+garrisons and Bureau stations were almost overwhelmed by the numbers of
+blacks who settled down upon them waiting for freedom to bestow its full
+measure of blessing, and many of the Negroes continued to remain in a
+demoralized condition until the new year.
+
+The first year of freedom was indeed a year of disease, suffering,
+and death. Several partial censuses indicate that in 1865-66 the Negro
+population lost as many by disease as the whites had lost in war.
+Ill-fed, crowded in cabins near the garrisons or entirely without
+shelter, and unaccustomed to caring for their own health, the blacks who
+were searching for freedom fell an easy prey to ordinary diseases and to
+epidemics. Poor health conditions prevailed for several years longer. In
+1870, Robert Somers remarked that "the health of the whites has greatly
+improved since the war, while the health of the Negroes has declined
+till the mortality of the colored population, greater than the mortality
+of the whites was before the war, has now become so markedly greater,
+that nearly two colored die for every white person out of equal numbers
+of each."
+
+Morals and manners also suffered under the new dispensation. In the
+crowded and disease-stricken towns and camps, the conditions under which
+the roving Negroes lived were no better for morals than for health,
+for here there were none of the restraints to which the blacks had
+been accustomed and which they now despised as being a part of their
+servitude. But in spite of all the relief that could be given there was
+much want. In fact, to restore former conditions the relief agencies
+frequently cut off supplies in order to force the Negroes back to work
+and to prevent others from leaving the country for the towns. But
+the hungry freedmen turned to the nearest food supply, and "spilin de
+gypshuns" (despoiling the Egyptians, as the Negroes called stealing from
+the whites) became an approved means of support. Thefts of hogs, cattle,
+poultry, field crops, and vegetables drove almost to desperation those
+whites who lived in the vicinity of the Negro camps. When the ex-slave
+felt obliged to go to town, he was likely to take with him a team and
+wagon and his master's clothes if he could get them.
+
+The former good manners of the Negro were now replaced by impudence and
+distrust. There were advisers among the Negro troops and other agitators
+who assured them that politeness to whites was a mark of servitude.
+Pushing and crowding in public places, on street cars and on the
+sidewalks, and impudent speeches everywhere marked generally the limit
+of rudeness. And the Negroes were, in this respect, perhaps no worse
+than those European immigrants who act upon the principle that bad
+manners are a proof of independence.
+
+The year following emancipation was one of religious excitement for
+large numbers of the blacks. Before 1865, the Negro church members were
+attached to white congregations or were organized into missions, with
+nearly always a white minister in charge and a black assistant. With the
+coming of freedom the races very soon separated in religious matters.
+For this there were two principal reasons: the Negro preachers could
+exercise more influence in independent churches; and new church
+organizations from the North were seeking Negro membership. Sometimes
+Negro members were urged to insist on the right "to sit together" with
+the whites. In a Richmond church a Negro from the street pushed his way
+to the communion altar and knelt. There was a noticeable pause; then
+General Robert E. Lee went forward and knelt beside the Negro; and the
+congregation followed his example. But this was a solitary instance.
+When the race issue was raised by either color, the church membership
+usually divided. There was much churchgoing by the Negroes, day and
+night, and church festivities and baptisms were common. The blacks
+preferred immersion and, wanted a new baptism each time they changed
+to a new church. Baptizings in ponds, creeks, or rivers were great
+occasions and were largely attended. "Shouting" the candidates went into
+the water and "shouting" they came out. One old woman came up screaming,
+"Freed from slavery! freed from sin! Bless God and General Grant!"
+
+In the effort to realize their new-found freedom, the Negroes were
+heavily handicapped by their extreme poverty and their ignorance. The
+total value of free Negro property ran up into the millions in 1860,
+but the majority of the Negroes had nothing. There were a few educated
+Negroes in the South, and more in the North and in Canada, but the mass
+of the race was too densely ignorant to furnish its own leadership. The
+case, however, was not hopeless; the Negro was able to work and in large
+territories had little competition; wages were high, even though paid
+in shares of the crop; the cost of living was low; and land was cheap.
+Thousands seemed thirsty for an education and crowded the schools which
+were available. It was too much, however, to expect the Negro to take
+immediate advantage of his opportunities. What he wanted was a long
+holiday, a gun and a dog, and plenty of hunting and fishing. He must
+have Saturday at least for a trip to town or to a picnic or a circus; he
+did not wish to be a servant. When he had any money, swindlers reaped
+a harvest. They sold him worthless finery, cheap guns, preparations to
+bleach the skin or straighten the hair, and striped pegs which, when set
+up on the master's plantation, would entitle the purchaser to "40 acres
+and a mule."
+
+The attitude of the Negroes' employers not infrequently complicated the
+situation which they sought to better. The old masters were, as a rule,
+skeptical of the value of free Negro labor. Carl Schurz thought this
+attitude boded ill for the future: "A belief, conviction, or prejudice,
+or whatever you may call it," he said, "so widely spread and apparently
+deeply rooted as this, that the Negro will not work without physical
+compulsion, is certainly calculated to have a very serious influence
+upon the conduct of the people entertaining it. It naturally produced a
+desire to preserve slavery in its original form as much and as long as
+possible... or to introduce into the new system that element of physical
+compulsion which would make the Negro work." The Negro wished to be free
+to leave his job when he pleased, but, as Benjamin C. Truman stated in
+his report to President Johnson, a "result of the settled belief in the
+Negro's inferiority, and in the necessity that he should not be left to
+himself without a guardian, is that in some sections he is discouraged
+from leaving his old master. I have known of planters who considered it
+an offence against neighborhood courtesy for another to hire their old
+hands, and in two instances that were reported the disputants came to
+blows over the breach of etiquette." The new Freedmen's Bureau insisted
+upon written contracts, except for day laborers, and this undoubtedly
+kept many Negroes from working regularly, for they were suspicious of
+contracts. Besides, the agitators and the Negro troops led them to
+hope for an eventual distribution of property. An Alabama planter thus
+described the situation in December 1865:
+
+"They will not work for anything but wages, and few are able to pay
+wages. They are penniless but resolute in their demands. They expect to
+see all the land divided out equally between them and their old masters
+in time to make the next crop. One of the most intelligent black men I
+know told me that in a neighboring village, where several hundred
+blacks were congregated, he does not think that as many as three made
+contracts, although planters are urgent in their solicitations and
+offering highest prices for labor they can possibly afford to pay. The
+same man informed me that the impression widely prevails that Congress
+is about to divide out the lands, and that this impression is given
+out by Federal soldiers at the nearest military station. It cannot be
+disguised that in spite of the most earnest efforts of their old master
+to conciliate and satisfy them, the estrangement between races increases
+in its extent and bitterness. Nearly all the Negro men are armed with
+repeaters, and many of them carry them openly, day and night."
+
+The relations between the races were better, however, than conditions
+seemed to indicate. The whites of the Black Belt were better disposed
+toward the Negroes than were those of the white districts. It was in the
+towns and villages that most of the race conflicts occurred. All
+whites agreed that the Negro was inferior, but there were many who were
+grateful for his conduct during the war and who wished him well. But
+others, the policemen of the towns, the "loyalists," those who had
+little but pride of race and the vote to distinguish them from the
+blacks, felt no good will toward the ex-slaves. It was Truman's opinion
+"not only that the planters are far better friends to the Negroes than
+the poor whites, but also better than a majority of the Northern men
+who go South to rent plantations." John T. Trowbridge, the novelist, who
+recorded his impressions of the South after a visit in 1865, was of the
+opinion that the Unionists "do not like niggers." "For there is,"
+he said, "more prejudice against color among the middle and poorer
+classes--the Union men of the South who owned few or no slaves--than
+among the planters who owned them by scores and hundreds." The reports
+of the Freedmen's Bureau are to the same effect. A Bureau agent in
+Tennessee testified: "An old citizen, a Union man, said to me, said
+he, 'I tell you what, if you take away the military from Tennessee, the
+buzzards can't eat up the niggers as fast as we'll kill them.'"
+
+The lawlessness of the Negroes in parts of the Black Belt and the
+disturbing influences of the black troops, of some officials of the
+Bureau, and of some of the missionary teachers and preachers, caused the
+whites to fear insurrections and to take measures for protection. Secret
+semi-military organizations were formed which later developed into the
+Ku Klux orders. When, however, New Year's Day 1866 passed without the
+hoped-for distribution of Property, the Negroes began to settle down.
+
+At the beginning of the period of reconstruction, it seemed possible
+that the Negro race might speedily fall into distinct economic groups,
+for there were some who had property and many others who had the ability
+and the opportunity to acquire it; but the later drawing of race lines
+and the political disturbances of reconstruction checked this tendency.
+It was expected also that the Northern planters who came South in large
+numbers in 1865-66 might, by controlling the Negro labor and by the
+use of more efficient methods, aid in the economic upbuilding of the
+country. But they were ignorant of agricultural matters and incapable of
+wisely controlling the blacks; and they failed because at one time they
+placed too much trust in the Negroes and at another treated them too
+harshly and expected too much of them.
+
+The question of Negro suffrage was not a live issue in the South until
+the middle of 1866. There was almost no talk about it among the Negroes;
+they did not know what it was. President Lincoln in 1864 and President
+Johnson in 1865 had merely mentioned the subject, though Chief Justice
+Chase and prominent radical members of Congress, as well as numerous
+abolitionists, had framed a Negro suffrage platform. But the Southern
+whites, considering the matter an impossibility, gave it little
+consideration. There was, however, both North and South, a tendency to
+see a connection between the freedom of the Negroes and their political
+rights and thus to confuse civil equality with political and social
+privileges. But the great masses of the whites were solidly opposed
+to the recognition of Negro equality in any form. The poorer whites,
+especially the "Unionists" who hoped to develop an opposition party,
+were angered by any discussion of the subject. An Alabama "Unionist,"
+M. J. Saffold, later prominent as a radical politician, declared to the
+Joint Committee on Reconstruction: "If you compel us to carry through
+universal suffrage of colored, men... it will prove quite an *incubus
+upon us in the organization of a national union party of white men;
+it will furnish our opponents with a very effective weapon of offense
+against us."
+
+There were, however, some Southern leaders of ability and standing who,
+by 1866, were willing to consider Negro suffrage. These men, among them
+General Wade Hampton of South Carolina and Governor Robert Patton of
+Alabama, were of the slaveholding class, and they fully counted on being
+able to control the Negro's vote by methods similar to those actually
+put in force a quarter of a century later. The Negroes were not as yet
+politically organized were not even interested in politics, and the
+master class might reasonably hope to regain control of them. Whitelaw
+Reid published an interview with one of the Hamptons which describes the
+situation exactly:
+
+"A brother of General Wade Hampton, the South Carolina Hotspur, was on
+board. He saw no great objection to Negro suffrage, so far as the whites
+were concerned; and for himself, South Carolinian and secessionist
+though he was, he was quite willing to accept it. He only dreaded its
+effect on the blacks themselves. Hitherto they had in the main, been
+modest and respectful, and mere freedom was not likely to spoil them.
+But the deference to them likely to be shown by partisans eager for
+their votes would have a tendency to uplift them and unbalance them.
+Beyond this, no harm would be done the South by Negro suffrage. The old
+owners would cast the votes of their people almost as absolutely and
+securely as they cast their own. If Northern men expected in this way to
+build up a northern party in the South, they were gravely mistaken. They
+would only be multiplying the power of the old and natural leaders of
+Southern politics by giving every vote to a former slave. Heretofore
+such men had served their masters only in the fields; now they would do
+no less faithful service at the polls. If the North could stand it, the
+South could. For himself, he should make no special objection to Negro
+suffrage as one of the terms of reorganization, and if it came, he did
+not think the South would have much cause to regret it."
+
+To sum up the situation at this time: the Negro population at the close
+of the war constituted a tremendous problem for those in authority. The
+race was free, but without status, without leaders, without property,
+and without education. Probably a fourth of them had some experience in
+freedom before the Confederate armies surrendered, and the servitude of
+the other three millions ended very quickly and without violence. But in
+the Black Belt, where the bulk of the black population was to be found,
+the labor system was broken up, and for several months the bewildered
+freedmen wandered about or remained at home under conditions which were
+bad for health, morals, and thrift. The Northern Negroes did not furnish
+the expected leadership for the race, and the more capable men in the
+South showed a tendency to go North. The unsettled state of the Negroes
+and their expectation of receiving a part of the property of the whites
+kept the latter uneasy and furnished the occasion of frequent conflicts.
+Not the least of the unsettling influences at work upon the Negro
+population were the colored troops and the agitators furnished by the
+Freedmen's Bureau, the missions, and the Bureau schools. But at the
+beginning of the year 1866, the situation appeared to be clearing, and
+the social and economic revolution seemed on the way to a quieter ending
+than might have been expected.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. THE WORK OF THE PRESIDENTS
+
+The war ended slavery, but it left the problem of the freed slave;
+it preserved the Union in theory, but it left unsolved many delicate
+problems of readjustment. Were the seceded States in or out of the
+Union? If in the Union, what rights had they? If they were not in
+the Union, what was their status? What was the status of the Southern
+Unionist, of the ex-Confederate? What punishments should be inflicted
+upon the Southern people? What authority, executive or legislative,
+should carry out the work of reconstruction? The end of the war
+brought with it, in spite of much discussion, no clear answer to these
+perplexing questions.
+
+Unfortunately, American political life, with its controversies over
+colonial government, its conflicting interpretations of written
+constitutions, and its legally trained statesmen, had by the middle
+of the nineteenth century produced a habit of political thought which
+demanded the settlement of most governmental matters upon a theoretical
+basis. And now in 1865, each prominent leader had his own plan of
+reconstruction fundamentally irreconcilable with all the others, because
+rigidly theoretical. During the war the powers of the executive had
+been greatly expanded and a legislative reaction was to be expected. The
+Constitution called for fresh interpretation in the light of the Civil
+War and its results.
+
+The first theory of reconstruction may be found in the
+Crittenden-Johnson resolutions of July 1861, which declared that the war
+was being waged to maintain the Union under the Constitution and that
+it should cease when these objects were obtained. This would have
+been subscribed to in 1861 by the Union Democrats and by most of the
+Republicans, and in 1865 the conquered Southerners would have been glad
+to reenter the Union upon this basis; but though in 1865 the resolution
+still expressed the views of many Democrats, the majority of Northern
+people had moved away from this position.
+
+The attitude of Lincoln, which in 1865 met the views of a majority of
+the Northern people though not of the political leaders, was that "no
+State can upon its mere motion get out of the Union," that the States
+survived though there might be some doubt about state governments, and
+that "loyal" state organizations might be established by a population
+consisting largely of ex-Confederates who had been pardoned by the
+President and made "loyal" for the future by an oath of allegiance.
+Reconstruction was, Lincoln thought, a matter for the executive to
+handle. But that he was not inflexibly committed to any one plan is
+indicated by his proclamation after the pocket veto of the Wade-Davis
+Bill and by his last speech, in which he declared that the question of
+whether the seceded States were in the Union or out of it was "merely a
+pernicious abstraction." In addition, Lincoln said:
+
+"We are all agreed that the seceded States, so called, are out of their
+proper practical relation with the Union, and that the sole object of
+the government, civil and military, in regard to those States is to
+again get them into that proper practical relation. I believe that it
+is not only possible, but in fact easier, to do this without deciding or
+even considering whether these States have ever been out of the Union,
+than with it. Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly
+immaterial whether they had ever been abroad. Let us all join in doing
+the acts necessary to restore the proper practical relations between
+these States and the Union, and each forever after innocently indulge
+his own opinion whether in doing the acts he brought the States from
+without into the Union, or only gave them proper assistance, they never
+having been out of it."
+
+President Johnson's position was essentially that of Lincoln, but his
+attitude toward the working out of the several problems was different.
+He maintained that the states survived and that it was the duty of the
+executive to restore them to their proper relations. "The true theory,"
+said he, "is that all pretended acts of secession were from the
+beginning null and void. The States cannot commit treason nor screen
+individual citizens who may have committed treason any more than they
+can make valid treaties or engage in lawful commerce with any foreign
+power. The states attempting to secede placed themselves in a condition
+where their vitality was impaired, but not extinguished; their functions
+suspended, but not destroyed." Lincoln would have had no severe
+punishments inflicted even on leaders, but Johnson wanted to destroy
+the "slavocracy," root and branch. Confiscation of estates would, he
+thought, be a proper measure. He said on one occasion: "Traitors should
+take a back seat in the work of restoration.... My judgment is that he
+[a rebel] should be subjected to a severe ordeal before he is restored
+to citizenship. Treason should be made odious, and traitors must be
+punished and impoverished. Their great plantations must be seized,
+and divided into small farms and sold to honest, industrious men."
+The violence of Johnson's views subsequently underwent considerable
+modification but to the last he held to the plan of executive
+restoration based upon state perdurance. Neither Lincoln nor Johnson
+favored a change of Southern institutions other than the abolition of
+slavery, though each recommended a qualified Negro suffrage.
+
+There were, however, other theories in the field, notably those of the
+radical Republican leaders. According to the state-suicide theory of
+Charles Sumner, "any vote of secession or other act by which any State
+may undertake to put an end to the supremacy of the Constitution within
+its territory is inoperative and void against the Constitution, and when
+sustained by force it becomes a practical ABDICATION by the State of
+all rights under the Constitution, while the treason it involves still
+further works an instant FORFEITURE of all those functions and powers
+essential to the continued existence of the State as a body politic,
+so that from that time forward the territory falls under the exclusive
+jurisdiction of Congress as other territory, and the State, being
+according to the language of the law felo de se, ceases to exist."
+Congress should punish the "rebels" by abolishing slavery, by giving
+civil and political rights to Negroes, and by educating them with the
+whites.
+
+Not essentially different, but harsher, was Thaddeus Stevens's plans
+for treating the South as a conquered foreign province. Let the victors
+treat the seceded States "as conquered provinces and settle them with
+new men and exterminate or drive out the present rebels as exiles."
+Congress in dealing with these provinces was not bound even by the
+Constitution, "a bit of worthless parchment," but might legislate as it
+pleased in regard to slavery, the ballot, and confiscation. With
+regard to the white population, he said: "I have never desired bloody
+punishments to any great extent. But there are punishments quite as
+appalling, and longer remembered, than death. They are more advisable,
+because they would reach a greater number. Strip a proud nobility of
+their bloated estates; reduce them to a level with plain republicans;
+send them forth to labor, and teach their children to enter the
+workshops or handle a plow, and you will thus humble the proud
+traitors." Stevens and Sumner agreed in reducing the Southern States
+to a territorial status. Sumner would then take the principles of the
+Declaration of Independence as a guide for Congress, while Stevens would
+leave Congress absolute. Neither considered the Constitution as of any
+validity in this crisis.
+
+As a rule the former abolitionists were in 1865 advocates of votes and
+lands for the Negro, in whose capacity for self-rule they had complete
+confidence. The view of Gerrit Smith may be regarded as typical of the
+abolitionist position:
+
+"Let the first condition of peace with them be that no people in the
+rebel States shall ever lose or gain civil or political rights by reason
+of their race or origin. The next condition of peace be that our black
+allies in the South--those saviours of our nation--shall share with
+their poor white neighbors in the subdivisions of the large landed
+estates of the South. Let the only other condition be that the rebel
+masses shall not, for say, a dozen years, be allowed access to the
+ballot-box, or be eligible to office; and that the like restrictions be
+for life on their political and military leaders.. .. The mass of the
+Southern blacks fall, in point of intelligence, but little, if
+any, behind the mass of the Southern whites.... In reference to the
+qualifications of the voter, men make too much account of the head and
+too little of the heart. The ballot-box, like God, says: 'Give me your
+heart.' The best-hearted men are the best qualified to vote; and, in
+this light, the blacks, with their characteristic gentleness, patience,
+and affectionateness, are peculiarly entitled to vote. We cannot wonder
+at Swedenborg's belief that the celestial people will be found in the
+interior of Africa; nor hardly can we wonder at the legend that the gods
+came down every year to sup with their favorite Africans."
+
+One of the most statesmanlike proposals was made by Governor John
+A. Andrew of Massachusetts. If, forgetting their theories, the
+conservatives could have united in support of a restoration conceived in
+his spirit, the goal might have been speedily achieved. Andrew demanded
+a reorganization, based upon acceptance of the results of the war, but
+carried through with the aid of "those who are by their intelligence and
+character the natural leaders of their people and who surely will lead
+them by and by. These men cannot be kept out forever," said he, "for
+the capacity of leadership is a gift, not a device. They whose courage,
+talents, and will entitle them to lead, will lead .... If we cannot
+gain their support of the just measures needful for the work of safe
+reorganization, reorganization will be delusive and full of danger. They
+are the most hopeful subjects to deal with. They have the brain and the
+experience and the education to enable them to understand... the present
+situation. They have the courage as well as the skill to lead the people
+in the direction their judgments point.... Is it consistent with reason
+and our knowledge of human nature, to believe the masses of Southern men
+able to face about, to turn their backs on those they have trusted and
+followed, and to adopt the lead of those who have no magnetic hold on
+their hearts or minds? It would be idle to reorganize by the colored
+vote. If the popular vote of the white race is not to be had in favor of
+the guarantees justly required, then I am in favor of holding on--just
+where we are now. I am not in favor of a surrender of the present
+rights of the Union to a struggle between a white minority aided by
+the freedmen on one hand, against the majority of the white race on the
+other. I would not consent, having rescued those states by arms from
+Secession and rebellion, to turn them over to anarchy and chaos."
+
+The Southerners, Unionists as well as Confederates, had their views
+as well, but at Washington these carried little influence. The former
+Confederates would naturally favor the plan which promised best for the
+white South, and their views were most nearly met by those of President
+Lincoln. Although he held that in principle a new Union had arisen
+out of the war, as a matter of immediate political expediency he was
+prepared to build on the assumption that the old Union still existed.
+The Southern Unionists cared little for theories; they wanted the
+Confederates punished, themselves promoted to high offices, and the
+Negro kept from the ballot box.
+
+Even at the beginning of 1866, it was not too much to hope that the
+majority of former Republicans would accept conservative methods,
+provided the so-called "fruits of the war" were assured--that is,
+equality of civil rights, the guarantee of the United States war debt,
+the repudiation of the Confederate debt, the temporary disfranchisement
+of the leading Confederates, and some arrangement which would keep the
+South from profiting by representation based on the non-voting Negro
+population. But amid many conflicting policies, none attained to
+continuous and compelling authority.
+
+The plan first put to trial was that of President Lincoln. It was a
+definite plan designed to meet actual conditions and, had he lived, he
+might have been able to carry it through successfully. Not a
+theorist, but an opportunist of the highest type, sobered by years
+of responsibility in war time, and fully understanding the precarious
+situation in 1865, Lincoln was most anxious to secure an early
+restoration of solidarity with as little friction as possible. Better
+than most Union leaders he appreciated conditions in the South, the
+problem of the races, the weakness of the Southern Unionists, and the
+advantage of calling in the old Southern leaders. He was generous and
+considerate; he wanted no executions or imprisonments; he wished the
+leaders to escape; and he was anxious that the mass of Southerners be
+welcomed back without loss of rights. "There is," he declared, "too
+little respect for their rights," an unwillingness, in short, to treat
+them as fellow citizens.
+
+This executive policy had been applied from the beginning of the war
+as opportunity offered. The President used the army to hold the Border
+States in the Union, to aid in "reorganizing" Unionist Virginia and in
+establishing West Virginia. The army, used to preserve the Union might
+be used also to restore disturbed parts of it to normal condition.
+Assuming that the "States" still existed, "loyal" state governments were
+the first necessity. By his proclamation of December 8, 1863, Lincoln
+suggested a method of beginning the reconstruction: he would pardon any
+Confederate, except specified classes of leaders, who took an oath
+of loyalty for the future; if as many as ten percent of the voting
+population of 1860, thus made loyal, should establish a state government
+the executive would recognize it. The matter of slavery must, indeed,
+be left to the laws and proclamations as interpreted by the courts, but
+other institutions should continue as in 1861.
+
+This plan was inaugurated in four States which had been in part
+controlled by the Federal army from nearly the beginning of the war:
+Tennessee (1862), Louisiana (1862), Arkansas (1862), and Virginia after
+the formation of West Virginia (1863). For each state Lincoln appointed
+a military governor: for Tennessee, Andrew Johnson; for Arkansas, John
+S. Phelps; for Louisiana, General Shepley. In Virginia he recognized the
+"reorganized" government, which had been transferred to Alexandria
+when the new State of West Virginia was formed. The military governors
+undertook the slow and difficult work of reorganization, however,
+with but slight success owing to the small numbers of Unionists and of
+Confederates who would take the oath. But by 1864, "ten percent" state
+governments were established in Arkansas and Louisiana, and progress was
+being made in Tennessee.
+
+Congress was impatient of Lincoln's claim to executive precedence in the
+matter of reconstruction, and in 1864, both Houses passed the
+Wade-Davis Bill, a plan which asserted the right of Congress to control
+reconstruction and foreshadowed a radical settlement of the question.
+Lincoln disposed of the bill by a pocket veto and, in a proclamation
+dated July 8, 1864, stated that he was unprepared "to be inflexibly
+committed to any single plan of restoration," or to discourage loyal
+citizens by setting aside the governments already established in
+Louisiana and Arkansas, or to recognize the authority of Congress to
+abolish slavery. He was ready, however, to cooperate with the people
+of any State who wished to accept the plan prepared by Congress and
+he hoped that a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery would be
+adopted.
+
+Lincoln early came to the conclusion that slavery must be destroyed, and
+he had urgently advocated deportation of the freedmen, for he believed
+that the two races could not live in harmony after emancipation.
+The nearest he came to recommending the vote for the Negro was in a
+communication to Governor Hahn of Louisiana in March 1864: "I barely
+suggest, for your private consideration, whether some of the colored
+people may not be let in, as for instance, the very intelligent, and
+especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks. They would
+probably help, in some trying time to come, to keep the jewel of liberty
+within the family of freedom. But this is only a suggestion, not to the
+public, but to you alone."
+
+Throughout the war President Lincoln assumed that the state
+organizations in the South were illegal because disloyal and that new
+governments must be established. But just at the close of the war,
+probably carried away by feeling, he all but recognized the Virginia
+Confederate Government as competent to bring the state back into the
+Union. While in Richmond on April 5, 1865, he gave to Judge Campbell a
+statement of terms: the national authority to be restored; no recession
+on slavery by the executive; hostile forces to disband. The next day he
+notified General Weitzel, in command at Richmond, that he might permit
+the Virginia Legislature to meet and withdraw military and other support
+from the Confederacy. But these measures met strong opposition in
+Washington, especially from Secretary Stanton and Senator Wade and other
+congressional leaders, and on the 11th of April, Lincoln withdrew his
+permission for the legislature to meet. "I cannot go forward," he said,
+"with everybody opposed to me." It was on the same day that he made his
+last public speech, and Sumner, who was strongly opposed to his policy,
+remarked that "the President's speech and other things augur confusion
+and uncertainty in the future, with hot contumacy." At a cabinet meeting
+on the 14th of April, Lincoln made his last statement on the subject.
+It was fortunate, he said, that Congress had adjourned, for "we shall
+reanimate the States" before Congress meets; there should be no killing,
+no persecutions; there was too much disposition to treat the Southern
+people "not as fellow citizens."
+
+The possibility of a conciliatory restoration ended when Lincoln was
+assassinated. Moderate, firm, tactful, of great personal influence, not
+a doctrinaire, and not a Southerner like Johnson, Lincoln might have
+"prosecuted peace" successfully. His policy was very unlike that
+proposed by the radical leaders. They would base the new governments
+upon the loyalty of the past plus the aid of enfranchised slaves; he
+would establish the new regime upon the loyalty of the future. Like
+Governor Andrew he thought that restoration must be effected by the
+willing efforts of the South. He would aid and guide but not force the
+people. If the latter did not wish restoration, they might remain under
+military rule. There should be no forced Negro suffrage, no sweeping
+disfranchisement of whites, no "carpetbaggism."
+
+The work of President Johnson demands for its proper understanding some
+consideration of the condition of the political parties at the close of
+the war, for politics had much to do with reconstruction. The Democratic
+party, divided and defeated in the election of 1860, lost its Southern
+members in 1861 by the secession and remained a minority party during
+the remainder of the war. It retained its organization, however, and
+in 1864 polled a large vote. Discredited by its policy of opposition to
+Lincoln's administration, its ablest leaders joined the Republicans
+in support of the war. Until 1869, the party was poorly represented
+in Congress although, as soon as hostilities ended, the War Democrats
+showed a tendency to return to the old party. As to reconstruction, the
+party stood on the Crittenden-Johnson resolutions of 1861, though most
+Democrats were now willing to have slavery abolished.
+
+The Republican party--frankly sectional and going into power on the
+single issue of opposition to the extension of slavery--was forced by
+the secession movement to take up the task of preserving the Union by
+war. Consequently, the party developed new principles, welcomed the aid
+of the War Democrats, and found it advisable to drop its name and
+with its allies to form the Union or National Union party. It was
+this National Union party which in 1864 nominated Abraham Lincoln,
+a Republican, and Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, on the same ticket.
+Lincoln's second Cabinet was composed of both Republicans and War
+Democrats. When the war ended, the conservative leaders were anxious
+to hold the Union party together in order to be in a better position
+to settle the problems of reconstruction, but the movement of the War
+Democrats back to their old party tended to leave in the Union party
+only its Republican members, with the radical leaders dominating.
+
+In the South the pressure of war so united the people that party
+divisions disappeared for a time, but the causes of division continued
+to exist, and two parties, at least, would have developed had the
+pressure been removed. Though all factions supported the war after it
+began, the former Whigs and Douglas Democrats, when it was over, liked
+to remember that they had been "Union" men in 1860 and expected to
+organize in opposition to the extreme Democrats, who were now charged
+with being responsible for the misfortunes of the South. They were in
+a position to affiliate with the National Union party of the North if
+proper inducements were offered, while the regular Democrats were ready
+to rejoin their old party. But the embittered feelings resulting from
+the murder of Lincoln and the rapid development of the struggle between
+President Johnson and Congress caused the radicals "to lump the old
+Union Democrats and Whigs together with the secessionists--and many were
+driven where they did not want to go, into temporary affiliation with
+the Democratic party." Thousands went very reluctantly; the old Whigs,
+indeed, were not firmly committed to the Democrats until radical
+reconstruction had actually begun. Still other "loyalists" in the
+South were prepared to join the Northern radicals in advocating the
+disfranchisement of Confederates and in opposing the granting of
+suffrage to the Negroes.
+
+The man upon whom fell the task of leading these opposing factions,
+radical and conservative, along a definite line of action looking to
+reunion had few qualifications for the task. Johnson was ill-educated,
+narrow, and vindictive and was positive that those who did not agree
+with him were dishonest. Himself a Southerner, picked up by the National
+Union Convention of 1864, as Thaddeus Stevens said, from "one of those
+damned rebel provinces," he loved the Union, worshiped the Constitution,
+and held to the strict construction views of the State Rights Democrats.
+Rising from humble beginnings, he was animated by the most intense
+dislike of the "slavocracy," as he called the political aristocracy of
+the South. Like many other American leaders he was proud of his humble
+origin, but unlike many others he never sloughed off his backwoods
+crudeness. He continually boasted of himself and vilified the
+aristocrats, who in return treated him badly. His dislike of them was
+so marked that Isham G. Harris, a rival politician, remarked that "if
+Johnson were a snake, he would lie in the grass to bite the heels of
+rich men's children." His primitive notions of punishment were evident
+in 1865 when he advocated imprisonment, execution, and confiscation; but
+like other reckless talkers he often said more than he meant.
+
+When Johnson succeeded to the presidency, the feeling was nearly
+universal among the radicals, according to Julian, that he would prove
+a godsend to the country, for "aside from Mr. Lincoln's known policy of
+tenderness to the rebels, which now so jarred upon the feelings of the
+hour, his well known views on the subject of reconstruction were as
+distasteful as possible to radical Republicans." Senator Wade declared
+to the President: "Johnson, we have faith in you. By the gods, there
+will be no trouble now in running the Government!" To which Johnson
+replied: "Treason is a crime and crime must be punished. Treason must
+be made infamous and traitors must be impoverished." These words are
+an index to the speeches of Johnson during 1863-65. Even his radical
+friends feared that he would be too vindictive. For a few weeks he was
+much inclined to the radical plans, and some of the leaders certainly
+understood that he was in favor of Negro suffrage, the supreme test
+of radicalism. But when the excitement caused by the assassination of
+Lincoln and the break-up of the Confederacy had moderated somewhat,
+Johnson saw before him a task so great that his desire for violent
+measures was chilled. He must disband the great armies and bring all war
+work to an end; he must restore intercourse with the South, which had
+been blockaded for years; he must for a time police the country, look
+after the Negroes, and set up a temporary civil government; and finally
+he must work out a restoration of the Union. Sobered by responsibility
+and by the influence of moderate advisers, he rather quickly adopted
+Lincoln's policy. Johnson at first set his face against the movements
+toward reconstruction by the state governments already organized and
+by those people who wished to organize new governments on Lincoln's ten
+percent plan. As soon as possible the War Department notified the Union
+commanders to stop all attempts at reconstruction and to pursue and
+arrest all Confederate governors and other prominent civil leaders. The
+President was even anxious to arrest the military leaders who had been
+paroled but was checked in this desire by General Grant's firm protest.
+His cabinet advisers supported Johnson in refusing to recognize the
+Southern state governments; but three of them--Seward, Welles, and
+McCulloch--were influential in moderating his zeal for inflicting
+punishments. Nevertheless, he soon had in prison the most prominent of
+the Confederate civilians and several general officers. The soldiers,
+however, were sent home, trade with the South was permitted, and the
+Freedmen's Bureau was rapidly extended.
+
+Previous to this Johnson had brought himself to recognize, early in
+May, the Lincoln "ten percent" governments of Louisiana, Tennessee, and
+Arkansas, and the reconstructed Alexandria government of Virginia. Thus
+only seven states were left without legal governments, and to bring
+those states back into the Union, Johnson inaugurated on May 29, 1865,
+a plan which was like that of Lincoln but not quite so liberal. In his
+Amnesty Proclamation, Johnson made a longer list of exceptions aimed
+especially at the once wealthy slave owners. On the same day he
+proclaimed the restoration of North Carolina. A provisional governor, W.
+W. Holden, was appointed and directed to reorganize the civil government
+and to call a constitutional convention elected by those who had taken
+the amnesty oath. This convention was to make necessary amendments
+to the constitution and to "restore said State to its constitutional
+relations to the Federal Government." It is to be noted that Johnson
+fixed the qualifications of delegates and of those who elected them,
+but, this stage once passed, the convention or the legislature would
+"prescribe the qualifications of electors... a power the people of the
+several States composing the Federal Union have rightfully exercised
+from the origin of the government to the present time." The President
+also directed the various cabinet officers to extend the work of their
+departments over the Confederate States and ordered the army officers
+to assist the civil authorities. During the next six weeks, similar
+measures were undertaken for the remaining six states of the
+Confederacy.
+
+To set up the new order, army officers were first sent into every county
+to administer the amnesty oath and thus to secure a "loyal" electorate.
+In each state the provisional governor organized out of the remains of
+the Confederate local regime a new civil government. Confederate local
+officials who could and would take the amnesty oath were directed to
+resume office until relieved; the laws of 1861, except those relating to
+slavery, were declared to be in force; the courts were directed to
+use special efforts to crush lawlessness; and the old jury lists were
+destroyed and new ones were drawn up containing only the names of those
+who had taken the amnesty oath. Since there was no money in any state
+treasury, small sums were now raised by license taxes. A full staff
+of department heads was appointed, and by July 1865, the provisional
+governments were in fair working order.
+
+To the constitutional conventions, which met in the fall, it was made
+clear, through the governors, that the President would insist upon three
+conditions: the formal abolition of slavery, the repudiation of the
+ordinance of secession, and the repudiation of the Confederate war debt.
+To Governor Holden he telegraphed: "Every dollar of the debt created to
+aid the rebellion against the United States should be repudiated finally
+and forever. The great mass of the people should not be taxed to pay a
+debt to aid in carrying on a rebellion which they in fact, if left to
+themselves, were opposed to. Let those who had given their means for the
+obligations of the state look to that power they tried to establish in
+violation of law, constitution, and will of the people. They must meet
+their fate." With little opposition these conditions were fulfilled,
+though there was a strong feeling against the repudiation of the debt,
+much discussion as to whether the ordinance of secession should
+be "repealed" or declared "now and always null and void," and some
+quibbling as to whether slavery was being destroyed by state action or
+had already been destroyed by war.
+
+In the old state constitutions, very slight changes were made. Of
+these the chief were concerned with the abolition of slavery and the
+arrangement of representation and direct taxation on the basis of white
+population. Little effort was made to settle any of the Negro problems,
+and in all states the conventions left it to the legislatures to make
+laws for the freedmen. There was no discussion of Negro, suffrage in the
+conventions, but President Johnson sent what was for him a remarkable
+communication to Governor Sharkey of Mississippi:
+
+"If you could extend the elective franchise to all persons of color
+who can read the Constitution of the United States in English and write
+their names, and to all persons of color who own real estate valued at
+not less than two hundred and fifty dollars and pay taxes thereon,
+you would completely disarm the adversary and set an example the other
+states will follow. This you can do with perfect safety, and you would
+thus place Southern States in reference to free persons of color
+upon the same basis with the free states.... And as a consequence the
+radicals, who are wild upon Negro franchise, will be completely foiled
+in their attempts to keep the Southern states from renewing
+their relations to the Union by not accepting their senators and
+representatives."
+
+In deciding upon a basis of representation, it was clear that the
+majority of delegates desired to lessen the influence of the Black Belt
+and place the control of the government with the "up country." In the
+Alabama convention Robert M. Patton, then a delegate and later governor,
+frankly avowed this object, and in South Carolina, Governor Perry urged
+the convention to give no consideration to Negro suffrage, "because this
+is a white man's government," and if the Negroes should vote they would
+be controlled by a few whites. A kindly disposition toward the Negroes
+was general except on the part of extreme Unionists, who opposed any
+favors to the race. "This is a white man's country" was a doctrine to
+which all the conventions subscribed.
+
+The conventions held brief sessions, completed their work, and
+adjourned, after directing that elections be held for state and local
+officers and for members of Congress. Before December the appointed
+local officials had been succeeded by elected officers; members of
+Congress were on their way to Washington; the state legislatures were
+assembling or already in session; and the elected governors were
+ready to take office. It was understood that as soon as enough state
+legislatures ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to make it a part of the
+Constitution, the President would permit the transfer of authority to
+the new governors. The legislature of Mississippi alone was recalcitrant
+about the amendment, and before January 1866, the elected officials were
+everywhere installed except in Texas, where the work was not completed
+until March. When Congress met in December 1865, the President reported
+that all former Confederate States except Texas were ready to be
+readmitted. Congress, however, refused to admit their senators and
+representatives, and thus began the struggle which ended over a year
+later with the victory of the radicals and the undoing of the work of
+the two Presidents.
+
+The plan of the Presidents was at best only imperfectly realized. It was
+found impossible to reorganize the Federal Administration in the South
+with men who could subscribe to the "ironclad oath," for nearly all who
+were competent to hold office had favored or aided the Confederacy.
+It was two years before more than a third of the post offices could be
+opened. The other Federal departments were in similar difficulties, and
+at last women and "carpetbaggers" were appointed. The Freedmen's
+Bureau, which had been established coincidently with the provisional
+governments, assumed jurisdiction over the Negroes, while the army
+authorities very early took the position that any man who claimed to be
+a Unionist should not be tried in the local courts but must be given a
+better chance in a provost court. Thus a third or more of the population
+was withdrawn from the control of the state government. In several
+states the head of the Bureau made arrangements for local magistrates
+and officials to act as Bureau officials, and in such cases the two
+authorities acted in cooperation. The army of occupation, too, exerted
+an authority which not infrequently interfered with the workings of the
+new state government. Nearly everywhere there was a lack of certainty
+and efficiency due to the concurrent and sometimes conflicting
+jurisdictions of state government, army commanders, Bureau authorities,
+and even the President acting upon or through any of the others.
+
+The standing of the Southern state organizations was in doubt after the
+refusal of Congress to recognize them. Nevertheless, in spite of this
+uncertainty they continued to function as states during the year of
+controversy which followed; the courts were opened and steadily grew
+in influence; here and there militia and patrols were reorganized;
+officials who refused to "accept the situation" were dismissed;
+elections were held; the legislatures revised the laws to fit new
+conditions and enacted new laws for the emancipated blacks. To all this
+progress in reorganization, the action of Congress was a severe blow,
+since it gave notice that none of the problems of reconstruction were
+yet solved. An increasing spirit of irritation and independence was
+observed throughout the states in question, and at the elections the
+former Confederates gained more and more offices. The year was marked
+in the South by the tendency toward the formation of parties, by the
+development of the "Southern outrages" issue, by an attempt to frustrate
+radical action, and finally by a lineup of the great mass of the whites
+in opposition to the Fourteenth Amendment and other radical plans of
+Congress.
+
+The Joint Committee on Reconstruction, appointed when Congress refused
+to accept the work of President Johnson, proceeded during several months
+to take testimony and to consider measures. The testimony, which was
+taken chiefly to support opinions already formed, appeared to prove that
+the Negroes and the Unionists were so badly treated that the Freedmen's
+Bureau and the army must be kept in the South to protect them; that free
+Negro labor was a success but that the whites were hostile to it; that
+the whites were disloyal and would, if given control of the Southern
+governments and admitted to Congress, constitute a danger to the nation
+and especially to the party in power.
+
+To convince the voters of the North of the necessity of dealing
+drastically with the South a campaign of misrepresentation was begun
+in the summer of 1865, which became more and more systematic and
+unscrupulous as the political struggle at Washington grew fiercer.
+Newspapers regularly ran columns headed "Southern Outrages," and every
+conceivable mistreatment of blacks by whites was represented as taking
+place on a large scale. As General Richard Taylor said, it would seem
+that about 1866 every white man, woman, and child in the South began
+killing and maltreating Negroes. In truth, there was less and less
+ground for objection to the treatment of the blacks as time went on and
+as the several agencies of government secured firmer control over the
+lawless elements. But fortunately for the radicals their contention
+seemed to be established by riots on a large scale in Memphis and New
+Orleans where Negroes were killed and injured in much greater number
+than whites.
+
+The rapid development of the radical plans of Congress checked the
+tendency toward political division in the South. Only a small party of
+rabid Unionists would now affiliate with the radicals, while all
+the others reluctantly held together, endorsed Johnson's policy, and
+attempted to affiliate with the disintegrating National Union party.
+But the defeat of the President's policies in the elections of 1866, the
+increasing radicalism of Congress as shown by the Civil Rights Act, the
+expansion of the Freedmen's Bureau, the report of the Joint Committee
+on Reconstruction, and the proposal of the Fourteenth Amendment led
+farsighted Southerners to see that the President was likely to lose in
+his fight with Congress.
+
+Now began, in the latter half of 1866, with some cooperation in the
+North and probably with the approval of the President, a movement in the
+South to forestall the radicals by means of a settlement which, although
+less severe than the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, might yet be
+acceptable to Congress. One feature of the settlement was to be some
+form of Negro suffrage, either by local action or by constitutional
+amendment. Those behind this scheme were mainly of the former governing
+class. Negro suffrage, they thought, would take the wind out of the
+radical sails, the Southern whites would soon be able to control the
+blacks, representation in Congress would be increased, and the Black
+Belt would perhaps regain its former political hegemony. It is hardly
+necessary to say that the majority of the whites were solidly opposed to
+such a measure. But it was hoped to carry it under pressure through
+the legislature or to bring it about indirectly through rulings of the
+Freedmen's Bureau.
+
+Coincident with this scheme of partial Negro suffrage an attempt
+was made by the conservative leaders in Washington, working with the
+Southerners, to propose a revised Fourteenth Amendment which would
+give the vote to competent Negroes and not disfranchise the whites. A
+conference of Southern governors met in Washington early in 1867 and
+drafted such an amendment. But, it was too late.
+
+Meanwhile the Fourteenth Amendment submitted by Congress had been
+brought before the Southern legislatures, and during the winter of
+1866-67 it was rejected by all of them. There was strong opposition
+to it because it disfranchised the leading whites, but perhaps the
+principal reason for its rejection was that the Southern people were not
+sure that still more severe conditions might not be imposed later.
+
+While the President was "restoring" the states which had seceded and
+struggling with Congress, the Border States of the South, including
+Tennessee (which was admitted in 1866 by reason of its radical state
+government), were also in the throes of reconstruction. Though there was
+less military interference in these than in the other states, many of
+the problems were similar. All had the Freedmen's Bureau, the Negro
+race, the Unionists, and the Confederates; in every state, except
+Kentucky, Confederates were persecuted, the minority was in control, and
+"ring" rule was the order of the day; but in each state there were
+signs of the political revolution which a few years later was to put the
+radicals out of power.
+
+The executive plan for the restoration of the Union, begun by Lincoln
+and adopted by Johnson, was, as we have seen, at first applied in all
+the states which had seceded. A military governor was appointed in each
+state by the President by virtue of his authority as commander in chief.
+This official, aided by a civilian staff of his own choice and supported
+by the United States army and other Federal agencies, reorganized the
+state administration and after a few months turned the state and local
+governments over to regularly elected officials. Restoration should
+now have been completed, but Congress refused to admit the senators
+and representatives of these states, and entered upon a fifteen
+months' struggle with the President over details of the methods of the
+reconstruction. Meanwhile the Southern States, though unrepresented
+in Congress, continued their activities, with some interference from
+Federal authorities, until Congress in 1867 declared their governments
+nonexistent.
+
+The work begun by Lincoln and Johnson deserved better success. The
+original plan restored to political rights only a small number of
+Unionists, the lukewarm Confederates, and the unimportant. But in spite
+of the threatening speeches of Johnson, he used his power of pardon
+until none except the most prominent leaders were excluded. The
+personnel of the Johnson governments was fair. The officials were,
+in the main, former Douglas Democrats and Whigs, respectable and
+conservative, but not admired or loved by the people. The conventions
+and the legislatures were orderly and dignified and manifested a desire
+to accept the situation.
+
+There were no political parties at first, but material for several
+existed. If things had been allowed to take their course, there would
+have arisen a normal cleavage between former Whigs and Democrats,
+between the upcountry and the low country, between the slaveholders
+and the nonslaveholders. The average white man in these governments was
+willing to be fair to the Negro but was not greatly concerned about his
+future. In the view of most white people, it was the white man who was
+emancipated. The white districts had no desire to let the power return
+to the Black Belt by giving the Negro the ballot, for the vote of the
+Negroes, they believed, would be controlled by their former masters.
+
+Johnson's adoption of Lincoln's plan gave notice to all that the
+radicals had failed to control him. He and they had little in common;
+they wished to uproot a civilization, while he wished to punish
+individuals; they were not troubled by constitutional scruples, while he
+was the strictest of State Rights Democrats; they thought principally
+of the Negro and his potentialities, while Johnson was thinking of the
+emancipated white man. It is possible that Lincoln might have succeeded,
+but for Johnson the task proved too great.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. THE WARDS OF THE NATION
+
+The Negroes at the close of the war were not slaves or serfs, nor were
+they citizens. What was to be done with them and for them? The Southern
+answer to this question may be found in the so-called "Black Laws,"
+which were enacted by the state governments set up by President
+Johnson. The views of the dominant North may be discerned in part in
+the organization and administration of the Freedmen's Bureau. The two
+sections saw the same problem from different angles, and their proposed
+solutions were of necessity opposed in principle and in practice.
+
+The South desired to fit the emancipated Negro race into the new social
+order by frankly recognizing his inferiority to the whites. In some
+things racial separation was unavoidable. New legislation consequently
+must be enacted, because the slave codes were obsolete; because the
+old laws made for the small free Negro class did not meet present
+conditions; and because the emancipated blacks could not be brought
+conveniently and at once under laws originally devised for a white
+population. The new laws must meet many needs; family life, morals, and
+conduct must be regulated; the former slave must be given a status in
+court in order that he might be protected in person and property; the
+old, the infirm, and the orphans must be cared for; the white race must
+be protected from lawless blacks and the blacks from unscrupulous and
+violent whites; the Negro must have an opportunity for education; and
+the roving blacks must be forced to get homes, settle down, and go to
+work.
+
+Pending such legislation the affairs of the Negro remained in control
+of the unpopular Freedmen's Bureau--a "system of espionage," as Judge
+Clayton of Alabama called it, and, according to Governor Humphreys of
+Mississippi, "a hideous curse" under which white men were persecuted and
+pillaged. Judge Memminger of South Carolina, in a letter to President
+Johnson, emphasized the fact that the whites of England and the United
+States gained civil and political rights through centuries of slow
+advancement and that they were far ahead of the people of European
+states. Consequently, it would be a mistake to give the freedmen a
+status equal to that of the most advanced whites. Rather, let the United
+States profit by the experience of the British in their emancipation
+policies and arrange a system of apprenticeship for a period of
+transition. When the Negro should be fit, let him be advanced to
+citizenship.
+
+Most Southern leaders agreed that the removal of the master's protection
+was a real loss to the Negro which must be made good to some extent by
+giving the Negro a status in court and by accepting Negro testimony in
+all cases in which blacks were concerned. The North Carolina committee
+on laws for freedmen agreed with objectors that "there are comparatively
+few of the slaves lately freed who are honest" and truthful, but
+maintained that the Negroes were capable of improvement. The chief
+executives of Mississippi and Florida declared that there was no danger
+to the whites in admitting the more or less unreliable Negro testimony,
+for the courts and juries would in every case arrive at a proper
+valuation of it. Governors Marvin of Florida and Humphreys of
+Mississippi advocated practical civil equality, while in North Carolina
+and several other States there was a disposition to admit Negro
+testimony only in cases in which Negroes were concerned. The North
+Carolina committee recommended the abolition of whipping as a punishment
+unfit for free people, and most States accepted this principle. Even in
+1865, the general disposition was to make uniform laws for both races,
+except in regard to violation of contracts, immoral conduct, vagrancy,
+marriage, schools, and forms of punishment. In some of these matters the
+whites were to be more strictly regulated; in others, the Negroes.
+
+There was further general agreement that in economic relations both
+races must be protected, each from the other; but it is plain that the
+leaders believed that the Negro had less at stake than the white. The
+Negro was disposed to be indolent; he knew little of the obligations
+of contracts; he was not honest; and he would leave his job at will.
+Consequently Memminger recommended apprenticeship for all Negroes;
+Governor Marvin suggested it for children alone; and others wished it
+provided for orphans only. Further, the laws enacted must force the
+Negroes to settle down, to work, and to hold to contracts. Memminger
+showed that, without legislation to enforce contracts and to secure
+eviction of those who refused to work, the white planter in the South
+was wholly at the mercy of the Negro. The plantations were scattered,
+the laborers' houses were already occupied, and there was no labor
+market to which a planter could go if the laborers deserted his fields.
+
+What would the Negro become if these leaders of reconstruction were
+to have their way? Something better than a serf, something less than a
+citizen--a second degree citizen, perhaps, with legal rights about equal
+to those of white women and children. Governor Marvin hoped to make of
+the race a good agricultural peasantry; his successor was anxious that
+the blacks should be preferred to European immigrants; others agreed
+with Memminger that after training and education he might be advanced to
+full citizenship.
+
+These opinions are representative of those held by the men who,
+Memminger excepted, were placed in charge of affairs by President
+Johnson and who were not especially in sympathy with the Negroes or
+with the planters but rather with the average white. All believed that
+emancipation was a mistake, but all agreed that "it is not the Negro's
+fault" and gave no evidence of a disposition to perpetuate slavery under
+another name.
+
+The legislation finally framed showed in its discriminatory features the
+combined influence of the old laws for free Negroes, the vagrancy laws
+of North and South for whites, the customs of slavery times, the British
+West Indies legislation for ex-slaves, and the regulations of the United
+States War and Treasury Departments and of the Freedmen's Bureau--all
+modified and elaborated by the Southern whites. In only two states,
+Mississippi and South Carolina, did the legislation bulk large in
+quantity; in other states discriminating laws were few; in still other
+states none were passed except those defining race and prohibiting
+intermarriage.
+
+In all of the state laws there were certain common characteristics,
+among which were the following: the descendant of a Negro was to be
+classed as a Negro through the third generation,* even though one parent
+in each generation was white; intermarriage of the races was prohibited;
+existing slave marriages were declared valid and for the future marriage
+was generally made easier for the blacks than for the whites. In all
+states the Negro was given his day in court, and in cases relating to
+Negroes his testimony was accepted; in six states he might testify
+in any case. When provision was made for schooling, the rule of race
+separation was enforced. In Mississippi the "Jim Crow car," or separate
+car for Negroes, was invented. In several states the Negro had to have
+a license to carry weapons, to preach, or to engage in trade. In
+Mississippi, a Negro could own land only in town; in other states he
+could purchase land only in the country. Why the difference? No one
+knows and probably few knew at the time. Some of the legislation was
+undoubtedly hasty and ill-considered.
+
+     * Fourth in Tennessee.
+
+
+But the laws relating to apprenticeship, vagrancy, and enforced punitive
+employment turned out to be of greater practical importance. On these
+subjects the legislation of Mississippi and South Carolina was the most
+extreme. In Mississippi orphans were to be bound out, preferably to a
+former master, if "he or she shall be a suitable person." The master
+was given the usual control over apprentices and was bound by the usual
+duties, including that of teaching the apprentice. But the penalties for
+"enticing away" apprentices were severe. The South Carolina statute was
+not essentially different. The vagrancy laws of these two states were in
+the main the same for both races, but in Mississippi the definition
+of vagrancy was enlarged to include Negroes not at work, those "found
+unlawfully assembling themselves together," and "all white persons
+assembling themselves with freedmen." It is to be noted that nearly all
+punishment for petty offenses took the form of hiring out, preferably
+to the former master or employer. The principal petty offenses were, it
+would seem, vagrancy and "enticing away" laborers or apprentices. The
+South Carolina statute contains some other interesting provisions. A
+Negro, man or woman, who had enjoyed the companionship of two or more
+spouses, must by April 1, 1866, select one of them as a permanent
+partner; a farm laborer must "rise at dawn," feed the animals, care for
+the property, be quiet and orderly, and "retire at reasonable hours;"
+on Sunday the servants must take turns in doing the necessary work, and
+they must be respectful and civil to the "master and his family, guests,
+and agents;" to engage in skilled labor the Negro must obtain a license.
+Whipping and the pillory were permitted in Florida for certain offenses,
+and in South Carolina the master might "moderately correct" servants
+under eighteen years of age. Other punishments were generally the same
+for both races, except the hiring out for petty offenses.
+
+From the Southern point of view none of this legislation was regarded
+as a restriction of Negro rights but as a wide extension to the Negro of
+rights never before possessed, an adaptation of the white man's laws
+to his peculiar case. It is doubtful whether in some of the states
+the authorities believed that there were any discriminatory laws; they
+probably overlooked some of the free Negro legislation already on the
+statute books. In Alabama, for example, General Wager Swayne, the head
+of the Freedmen's Bureau, reported that all such laws had either been
+dropped by the legislature or had been vetoed by the governor. Yet the
+statute books do show some discriminations. There is a marked difference
+between earlier and later legislation. The more stringent laws were
+enacted before the end of 1865. After New Year's Day had passed and the
+Negroes had begun to settle down, the legislatures either passed mild
+laws or abandoned all special legislation for the Negroes. Later in
+1866, several states repealed the legislation of 1865.
+
+In so far as the "Black Laws" discriminated against the Negro they were
+never enforced but were suspended from the beginning by the army and the
+Freedmen's Bureau. They had, however, a very important effect upon that
+section of Northern opinion which was already suspicious of the good
+faith of the Southerners. They were part of a plan, some believed, to
+reenslave the Negro or at least to create by law a class of serfs. This
+belief did much to bring about later radical legislation.
+
+If the "Black Laws" represented the reaction of the Southern
+legislatures to racial conditions, the Freedmen's Bureau was the
+corresponding result of the interest taken by the North in the welfare
+of the Negro. It was established just as the war was closing and arose
+out of the various attempts to meet the Negro problems that arose
+during the war. The Bureau had always a dual nature, due in part to its
+inheritance of regulations, precedents, and traditions from the various
+attempts made during war time to handle the many thousands of Negroes
+who came under Federal control, and in part to the humanitarian impulses
+of 1865, born of a belief in the capacity of the Negro for freedom and
+a suspicion that the Southern whites intended to keep as much of slavery
+as they could. The officials of the Bureau likewise were of two classes:
+those in control were for the most part army officers, standing as
+arbiters between white and black, usually just and seldom the victims of
+their sympathies but the mass of less responsible officials were men of
+inferior ability and character, either blind partisans of the Negro or
+corrupt and subject to purchase by the whites.
+
+In view of the fact that the Freedmen's Bureau was considered a new
+institution in 1865, it is rather remarkable how closely it followed in
+organization, purpose, and methods the precedents set during the war by
+the officers of the army and the Treasury. In Virginia, General Butler,
+in 1861, declared escaped slaves to be "contraband" and proceeded to
+organize them into communities for discipline, work, food, and care. His
+successors in Virginia and North Carolina, and others in the Sea Islands
+of Georgia and South Carolina, extended his plan and arranged a labor
+system with fixed wages, hours, and methods of work, and everywhere
+made use of the captured or abandoned property of the Confederates. In
+Tennessee and Arkansas, Chaplain John Eaton of Grant's army employed
+thousands in a modified free labor system; and further down in
+Mississippi and Louisiana Generals Grant, Butler, and Banks also put
+large numbers of captured slaves to work for themselves and for the
+Government. Everywhere, as the numbers of Negroes increased, the army
+commanders divided the occupied Negro regions into districts under
+superintendents and other officials, framed labor laws, cooperated
+with benevolent societies which gave schooling and medical care to the
+blacks, and developed systems of government for them.
+
+The United States Treasury Department, attempting to execute the
+confiscation laws for the benefit of the Treasury, appears now and then
+as an employer of Negro labor on abandoned plantations. Either alone
+or in cooperation with the army and charitable associations, it even
+supervised Negro colonies, and sometimes it assumed practically complete
+control of the economic welfare of the Negro. This Department introduced
+in 1864 an elaborate lessee and trade system. The Negro was regarded as
+"the ward of the nation," but he was told impressively that "labor is a
+public duty and idleness and vagrancy a crime." All wanted him to work:
+the Treasury wanted cotton and other crops to sell; the lessees and
+speculators wanted to make fortunes by his labor; and the army wanted
+to be free from the burden of the idle blacks. In spite of all these
+ministrations, the Negroes suffered much from harsh treatment, neglect,
+and unsanitary conditions.
+
+During 1863 and 1864, several influences were urging the establishment
+of a national bureau or department to take charge of matters relating to
+the African race. Some wished to establish on the borders of the South a
+paid labor system, which might later be extended over the entire
+region, to get more slaves out of the Confederacy into this free labor
+territory, and to prevent immigration of Negroes into the North, which,
+after the Emancipation Proclamation, was apprehensive of this danger.
+Others wished to relieve the army and the treasury officials of the
+burden of caring for the blacks and to protect the latter from the
+"northern harpies and bloodhounds" who had fastened upon them the lessee
+system.
+
+The discussion lasted for two years. The Freedmen's Inquiry Commission,
+after a survey of the field in 1863, recommended a consolidation of all
+efforts under an organization which should perpetuate the best features
+of the old system. But there was much opposition to this plan in
+Congress. The Negroes would be exploited, objected some; the scheme
+gave too much power to the proposed organization, said others; another
+objection was urged against the employment of a horde of incompetent and
+unscrupulous officeholders, for "the men who go down there and become
+your overseers and Negro drivers will be your broken-down politicians
+and your dilapidated preachers, that description of men who are too lazy
+to work and just a little too honest to steal."
+
+As the war drew to a close, the advocates of a policy of consolidation
+in Negro affairs prevailed, and on March 3, 1865, an act was approved
+creating in the War Department a Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and
+Abandoned Lands. This Bureau was to continue for one year after the
+close of the war, and it was to control all matters relating to freedmen
+and refugees, that is, Unionists who had been driven out of the South.
+Food, shelter, and clothing were to be given to the needy, and abandoned
+or confiscated property was to be used for or leased to freedmen. At
+the head of the Bureau was to be a commissioner with an assistant
+commissioner for each of the Southern States. These officials and other
+employees must take the "ironclad" oath.
+
+It was planned that the Bureau should have a brief existence, but the
+institution and its wards became such important factors in politics that
+on July 16, 1866, after a struggle with the President, Congress passed
+an act over his veto amplifying the powers of the Bureau and extending
+it for two years longer. This continuation of the Bureau was due to many
+things: to a belief that former slaveholders were not to be trusted in
+dealing with the Negroes; to the baneful effect of the "Black Laws"
+upon Northern public opinion; to the struggle between the President
+and Congress over reconstruction; and to the foresight of radical
+politicians who saw in the institution an instrument for the political
+instruction of the blacks in the proper doctrines.
+
+The new law was supplementary to the Act of 1865, but its additional
+provisions merely endorsed what the Bureau was already doing. It
+authorized the issue of medical supplies, confirmed certain sales of
+land to Negroes, and provided that the promises which Sherman made in
+1865 to the Sea Island Negroes should be carried out as far as possible
+and that no lands occupied by blacks should be restored to the owners
+until the crops of 1866 were gathered; it directed the Bureau to
+cooperate with private charitable and benevolent associations, and
+it authorized the use or sale for school purposes of all confiscated
+property; and finally it ordered that the civil equality of the Negro be
+upheld by the Bureau and its courts when state courts refused to accept
+the principle. By later laws the existence of the Bureau was extended to
+January 1, 1869, in the unreconstructed States, but its educational and
+financial activities were continued until June 20, 1872.
+
+The chief objections to the Bureau from the conservative Northern
+point of view were summed up in the President's veto messages. The laws
+creating it were based, he asserted, on the theory that a state of war
+still existed; there was too great a concentration of power in the hands
+of a few individuals who could not be held responsible; with such a
+large number of agents ignorant of the country and often working for
+their own advantage injustice would inevitably result; in spite of
+the fact that the Negro everywhere had a status in court, arbitrary
+tribunals were established, without jury, without regular procedure
+or rules of evidence, and without appeal; the provisions in regard to
+abandoned lands amounted to confiscation without a hearing; the Negro,
+who must in the end work out his own salvation, and who was protected
+by the demand for his labor, would be deluded into thinking his future
+secure without further effort on his part; although nominally under the
+War Department, the Bureau was not subject to military control; it was
+practically a great political machine; and, finally, the states most
+concerned were not represented in Congress.
+
+The Bureau was soon organized in all the former slaveholding States
+except Delaware, with general headquarters in Washington and state
+headquarters at the various capitals. General O. O. Howard, who was
+appointed commissioner, was a good officer, softhearted, honest,
+pious, and frequently referred to as "the Christian soldier." He
+was fair-minded and not disposed to irritate the Southern whites
+unnecessarily, but he was rather suspicious of their intentions
+toward the Negroes, and he was a believer in the righteousness of the
+Freedmen's Bureau. He was not a good business man; and he was not beyond
+the reach of politicians. At one time he was seriously disturbed in his
+duties by the buzzing of the presidential bee in his bonnet. The members
+of his staff were not of his moral stature, and several of them were
+connected with commercial and political enterprises which left their
+motives open to criticism.
+
+The assistant commissioners were, as a rule, general officers of the
+army, though a few were colonels and chaplains.* Nearly half of them had
+during the war been associated with the various attempts to handle the
+Negro problem, and it was these men who shaped the organization of the
+Bureau. While few of them were immediately acceptable to the Southern
+whites, only ten of them proved seriously objectionable on account
+of personality, character, or politics. Among the most able should
+be mentioned Generals Schofield, Swayne, Fullerton, Steedman, and
+Fessenden, and Colonel John Eaton. The President had little or no
+control over the appointment or discipline of the officials and agents
+of the Bureau, except possibly by calling some of the higher army
+officers back to military service.
+
+     * They numbered eleven at first and fourteen after July
+     1866, and were changed so often that fifty, in all, served
+     in this rank before January 1, 1869, when the Bureau was
+     practically discontinued.
+
+
+As a result of General Grant's severe criticism of the arrangement
+which removed the Bureau from control by the military establishment,
+the military commander was in a few instances also appointed assistant
+commissioner. Each assistant commissioner was aided by a headquarters
+staff and had under his jurisdiction in each state various district,
+county, and local agents, with a special corps of school officials,
+who were usually teachers and missionaries belonging to religious and
+charitable societies. The local agents were recruited from the
+members of the Veteran Reserve Corps, the subordinate officers and
+non-commissioned officers of the army, mustered-out soldiers, officers
+of Negro troops, preachers, teachers, and Northern civilians who had
+come South. As a class these agents were not competent persons to guide
+the blacks in the ways of liberty or to arbitrate differences between
+the races. There were many exceptions, but the Southern view as
+expressed by General Wade Hampton had only too much foundation: "There
+MAY be," he said, "an honest man connected with the Bureau." John Minor
+Botts, a Virginian who had remained loyal to the Union, asserted that
+many of the agents were good men who did good work but that trouble
+resulted from the ignorance and fanaticism of others. The minority
+members of the Ku Klux Committee condemned the agents as being
+"generally of a class of fanatics without character or responsibility."
+
+The chief activities of the Bureau included the following five
+branches: relief work for both races; the regulation of Negro labor; the
+administration of justice in cases concerning Negroes; the management of
+abandoned and confiscated property; and the support of schools for the
+Negroes.
+
+The relief work which was carried on for more than four years consisted
+of caring for sick Negroes who were within reach of the hospitals,
+furnishing food and sometimes clothing and shelter to destitute blacks
+and whites, and transporting refugees of both races back to their homes.
+Nearly a hundred hospitals and clinics were established, and half a
+million patients were treated. This work was greatly needed, especially
+for the old and the infirm, and it was well done. The transportation
+of refugees did not reach large proportions, and after 1866 it was
+entangled in politics. But the issue of supplies in huge quantities
+brought much needed relief though at the same time a certain amount of
+demoralization. The Bureau claimed little credit, and is usually
+given none, for keeping alive during the fall and winter of 1865-1866
+thousands of destitute whites. Yet more than a third of the food
+issued was to whites, and without it many would have starved. Numerous
+Confederate soldiers on the way home after the surrender were fed by the
+Bureau, and in the destitute white districts a great deal of suffering
+was relieved and prevented by its operations. The Negroes, dwelling for
+the most part in regions where labor was in demand, needed relief for
+a shorter time, but they were attracted in numbers to the towns by free
+food, and it was difficult to get them back to work. The political value
+of the free food issues was not generally recognized until later in 1866
+and in 1867.
+
+During the first year of the Bureau an important duty of the agents was
+the supervision of Negro labor and the fixing of wages. Both officials
+and planters generally demanded that contracts be written, approved, and
+filed in the office of the Bureau. They thought that the Negroes would
+work better if they were thus bound by contracts. The agents usually
+required that the agreements between employer and laborer cover such
+points as the nature of the work, the hours, food and clothes, medical
+attendance, shelter, and wages. To make wages secure, the laborer was
+given a lien on the crop; to secure the planter from loss, unpaid
+wages might be forfeited if the laborer failed to keep his part of the
+contract. When it dawned upon the Bureau authorities that other systems
+of labor had been or might be developed in the South, they permitted
+arrangements for the various forms of cash and share renting. But it
+was everywhere forbidden to place the Negroes under "overseers" or to
+subject them to "unwilling apprenticeship" and "compulsory working out
+of debts." The written contract system for laborers did not work out
+successfully. The Negroes at first were expecting quite other fruits of
+freedom. One Mississippi Negro voiced what was doubtless the opinion of
+many when he declared that he "considered no man free who had to work
+for a living." Few Negroes would contract for more than three months and
+none for a period beyond January 1, 1866, when they expected a division
+of lands among the ex-slaves. In spite of the regulations, most worked
+on oral agreements. In 1866 nearly all employers threw overboard the
+written contract system for labor and permitted oral agreements. Some
+states had passed stringent laws for the enforcing of contracts, but in
+Alabama, Governor Patton vetoed such legislation on the ground that it
+was not needed. General Swayne, the Bureau chief for the state, endorsed
+the Governor's action and stated that the Negro was protected by his
+freedom to leave when mistreated, and the planter, by the need on the
+part of the Negro for food and shelter. Negroes, he said, were afraid of
+contracts and, besides, contracts led to litigation.
+
+In order to safeguard the civil rights of the Negroes, the Bureau was
+given authority to establish courts of its own and to supervise the
+action of state courts in cases to which freedmen were parties. The
+majority of the assistant commissioners made no attempt to let the state
+courts handle Negro cases but were accustomed to bring all such cases
+before the Bureau or the provost courts of the army. In Alabama, quite
+early, and later in North Carolina, Mississippi, and Georgia, the
+wiser assistant commissioners arranged for the state courts to handle
+freedmen's cases with the understanding that discriminating laws were to
+be suspended. General Swayne in so doing declared that he was "unwilling
+to establish throughout Alabama courts conducted by persons foreign
+to her citizenship and strangers to her laws." The Bureau courts were
+informal affairs, consisting usually of one or two administrative
+officers. There were no jury, no appeal beyond the assistant
+commissioner, no rules of procedure, and no accepted body of law. In
+state courts accepted by the Bureau, the proceedings in Negro cases were
+conducted in the same manner as for the whites.
+
+The educational work of the Bureau was at first confined to cooperation
+with such Northern religious and benevolent societies as were organizing
+schools and churches for the Negroes. After the first year, the Bureau
+extended financial aid and undertook a system of supervision over Negro
+schools. The teachers employed were Northern whites and Negroes in about
+equal numbers. Confiscated Confederate property was devoted to Negro
+education, and in several states the assistant commissioners collected
+fees and percentages of the Negroes' wages for the benefit of the
+schools. In addition the Bureau expended about six million dollars.
+
+The intense dislike which the Southern whites manifested for the
+Freedmen's Bureau was due in general to their resentment of outside
+control of domestic affairs and in particular to unavoidable
+difficulties inherent in the situation. Among the concrete causes of
+Southern hostility was the attitude of some of the higher officials and
+many of the lower ones toward the white people. They assumed that the
+whites were unwilling to accord fair treatment to the blacks in the
+matter of wages, schools, and justice. An official in Louisiana declared
+that the whites would exterminate the Negroes if the Bureau were
+removed. A few months later General Fullerton in the same State reported
+that trouble was caused by those agents who noisily demanded special
+privileges for the Negro but who objected to any penalties for his
+lawlessness and made of the Negroes a pampered class. General Tillson
+in Georgia predicted the extinction of the "old time Southerner with his
+hate, cruelty, and malice." General Fisk declared that "there are some
+of the meanest, unsubjugated and unreconstructed rascally revolutionists
+in Kentucky that curse the soil of the country... a more select number
+of vindictive, pro-slavery, rebellious legislators cannot be found than
+a majority of the Kentucky legislature." There was a disposition to
+lecture the whites about their sins in regard to slavery and to point
+out to them how far in their general ignorance and backwardness they
+fell short of enlightened people.
+
+The Bureau courts were frequently conducted in an "illegal and
+oppressive manner," with "decided partiality for the colored people,
+without regard to justice." For this reason they were suspended for a
+time in Louisiana and Georgia by General Steedman and General Fullerton,
+and cases were then sent before military courts. Men of the highest
+character were dragged before the Bureau tribunals upon frivolous
+complaints, were lectured, abused, ridiculed, and arbitrarily fined or
+otherwise punished. The jurisdiction of the Bureau courts weakened the
+civil courts and their frequent interference in trivial matters was not
+conducive to a return to normal conditions.
+
+The inferior agents, not sufficiently under the control of their
+superiors, were responsible for a great deal of this bad feeling. Many
+of them held radical opinions as to the relations of the races, and
+inculcated these views in their courts, in the schools, and in the new
+Negro churches. Some were charged with even causing strikes and other
+difficulties in order to be bought off by the whites. The tendency of
+their work was to create in the Negroes a pervasive distrust of the
+whites.
+
+The prevalent delusion in regard to an impending division of the
+lands among the blacks had its origin in the operation of the war-time
+confiscation laws, in some of the Bureau legislation, and in General
+Sherman's Sea Island order, but it was further fostered by the agents
+until most blacks firmly believed that each head of a family was to get
+"40 acres and a mule." This belief seriously interfered with industry
+and resulted also in widespread swindling by rascals who for years made
+a practice of selling fraudulent deeds to land with red, white, and blue
+sticks to mark off the bounds of a chosen spot on the former master's
+plantation. The assistant commissioners labored hard to disabuse the
+minds of the Negroes, but their efforts were often neutralized by the
+unscrupulous attitude of the agents.
+
+As the contest over reconstruction developed in Washington, the
+officials of the Bureau soon recognized the political possibilities of
+their institution. After midyear of 1866, the Bureau became a political
+machine for the purpose of organizing the blacks into the Union League,
+where the rank and file were taught that reenslavement would follow
+Democratic victories. Nearly all of the Bureau agents aided in
+the administration of the reconstruction acts in 1867 and in the
+organization of the new state and local governments and became officials
+under the new regime. They were the chief agents in capturing the solid
+Negro vote for the Republican party.
+
+Neither of the two plans for guiding the freedmen into a place in
+the social order--the "Black Laws" and the Freedmen's Bureau--was
+successful. The former contained a program which was better suited to
+actual conditions and which might have succeeded if it had been given a
+fair trial. These laws were a measure of the extent to which the average
+white would then go in "accepting the situation" so far as the blacks
+were concerned. And on the whole the recognition of Negro rights made in
+these laws, and made at a time when the whites believed that they were
+free to handle the situation, was remarkably fair. The Negroes lately
+released from slavery were admitted to the enjoyment of the same rights
+as the whites as to legal protection of life, liberty, and property, as
+to education and as to the family relation, limited only by the clear
+recognition of the principles of political inferiority and social
+separation. Unhappily this legislation was not put to the test
+of practical experience because of the Freedmen's Bureau; it was
+nevertheless skillfully used to arouse the dominant Northern party to a
+course of action which made impossible any further effort to treat the
+race problem with due consideration to actual local conditions.
+
+Much of the work of the Freedmen's Bureau was of only temporary benefit
+to both races. The results of its more permanent work were not generally
+good. The institution was based upon the assumption that the Negro
+race must be protected from the white race. In its organization and
+administration it was an impossible combination of the practical and
+the theoretical, of opportunism and humanitarianism, of common sense and
+idealism. It failed to exert a permanently wholesome influence because
+its lesser agents were not held to strict accountability by their
+superiors. Under these agents the alienation of the two races began, and
+the ill feelings then aroused were destined to persist into a long and
+troubled future.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. THE VICTORY OF THE RADICALS
+
+The soldiers who fought through the war to victory or to defeat had
+been at home nearly two years before the radicals developed sufficient
+strength to carry through their plans for a revolutionary reconstruction
+of the Southern states. At the end of the war, a majority of the
+Northern people would have supported a settlement in accordance with
+Lincoln's policy. Eight months later a majority, but a smaller one,
+would have supported Johnson's work had it been possible to secure a
+popular decision on it. How then did the radicals gain the victory over
+the conservatives? The answer to this question is given by James Ford
+Rhodes in terms of personalities: "Three men are responsible for the
+Congressional policy of Reconstruction: Andrew Johnson, by his
+obstinacy and bad behavior; Thaddeus Stevens, by his vindictiveness and
+parliamentary tyranny; Charles Sumner, by his pertinacity in a misguided
+humanitarianism." The President stood alone in his responsibility,
+but his chief opponents were the ablest leaders of a resolute band of
+radicals.
+
+Radicalism did not begin in the Administration of Andrew Johnson.
+Lincoln had felt its covert opposition throughout the war, but he
+possessed the faculty of weakening his opponents, while Johnson's
+conduct usually multiplied the number and the strength of his enemies.
+At first the radicals criticized Lincoln's policy in regard to slavery,
+and after the Emancipation Proclamation they shifted their attack to his
+"ten percent" plan for organizing the state governments as outlined in
+the Proclamation of December 1863. Lincoln's course was distasteful to
+them because he did not admit the right of Congress to dictate terms,
+because of his liberal attitude towards former Confederates, and because
+he was conservative on the Negro question. A schism among the Republican
+supporters of the war was with difficulty averted in 1864, when Fremont
+threatened to lead the radicals in opposition to the "Union" party of
+the President and his conservative policy.
+
+The breach was widened by the refusal of Congress to admit
+representatives from Arkansas and Louisiana in 1864 and to count the
+electoral vote of Louisiana and Tennessee in 1865. The passage of the
+Wade-Davis reconstruction bill in July 1864, and the protests of its
+authors after Lincoln's pocket veto called attention to the growing
+opposition. Severe criticism caused Lincoln to withdraw the propositions
+which he had made in April 1865, with regard to the restoration of
+Virginia. In his last public speech, he referred with regret to
+the growing spirit of vindictiveness toward the South. Much of the
+opposition to Lincoln's Southern policy was based not on radicalism,
+that is, not on any desire for a revolutionary change in the South, but
+upon a belief that Congress and not the executive should be entrusted
+with the work of reorganizing the Union. Many congressional leaders were
+willing to have Congress itself carry through the very policies which
+Lincoln had advocated, and a majority of the Northern people would have
+endorsed them without much caring who was to execute them.
+
+The murder of Lincoln, the failure of the radicals to shape Johnson's
+policy as they had hoped, and the continuing reaction against the
+excessive expansion of the executive power added strength to the
+opposition. But it was a long fight before the radical leaders won.
+Their victory was due to adroit tactics on their own part and to
+mistakes, bad judgment, and bad manners on the part of the President.
+When all hope of controlling Johnson had been given up, Thaddeus Stevens
+and other leaders of similar views began to contrive means to circumvent
+him. On December 1, 1865, before Congress met, a caucus of radicals held
+in Washington agreed that a joint committee of the two Houses should be
+selected to which should be referred matters relating to reconstruction.
+This plan would thwart the more conservative Senate and gain a desirable
+delay in which the radicals might develop their campaign. The next day
+at a caucus of the Union party the plan went through without arousing
+the suspicion of the supporters of the Administration. Next, through the
+influence of Stevens, Edward McPherson, the clerk of the House, omitted
+from the roll call of the House the names of the members from the
+South. The radical program was then adopted and a week later the Senate
+concurred in the action of the House as to the appointment of a Joint
+Committee on Reconstruction.
+
+On the issues before Congress both Houses were split into rather clearly
+defined factions: the extreme radicals with such leaders as Stevens,
+Sumner, Wade, and Boutwell; the moderate Republicans, chief among whom
+were Fessenden and Trumbull; the administration Republicans led by
+Raymond, Doolittle, Cowan, and Dixon; and the Democrats, of whom the
+ablest were Reverdy Johnson, Guthrie, and Hendricks. All except the
+extreme radicals were willing to support the President or to come to
+some fairly reasonable compromise. But at no time were they given an
+opportunity to get together. Johnson and the administration leaders did
+little in this direction and the radicals made the most skillful use of
+the divisions among the conservatives.
+
+Whatever final judgment may be passed upon the radical reconstruction
+policy and its results, there can be no doubt of the political dexterity
+of those who carried it through. Chief among them was Thaddeus Stevens,
+vindictive and unscrupulous, filled with hatred of the Southern leaders,
+bitter in speech and possessing to an extreme degree the faculty of
+making ridiculous those who opposed him. He advocated confiscation, the
+proscription or exile of leading whites, the granting of the franchise
+and of lands to the Negroes, and in Southern states the establishment
+of territorial governments under the control of Congress. These states
+should, he said, "never be recognized as capable of acting in the
+Union... until the Constitution shall have been so amended as to make
+it what the makers intended, and so as to secure perpetual ascendancy to
+the party of the Union."
+
+Charles Sumner, the leader of the radicals in the Senate, was moved less
+than Stevens by personal hostility toward the whites of the South, but
+his sympathy was reserved entirely for the blacks. He was unpractical,
+theoretical, and not troubled by constitutional scruples. To him the
+Declaration of Independence was the supreme law, and it was the duty of
+Congress to express its principles in appropriate legislation. Unlike
+Stevens, who had a genuine liking for the Negro, Sumner's sympathy
+for the race was purely intellectual; for the individual Negro he felt
+repulsion. His views were in effect not different from those of Stevens.
+And he was practical enough not to overlook the value of the Negro vote.
+"To my mind," he said, "nothing is clearer than the absolute necessity
+of suffrage for all colored persons in the disorganized states. It will
+not be enough if you give it to those who read and write; you will
+not, in this way, acquire the voting force which you need there for the
+protection of unionists, whether white or black. You will not secure
+the new allies who are essential to the national cause." A leader of the
+second rank was his colleague Henry Wilson, who was also actuated by
+a desire for the Negro's welfare and for the perpetuation of the
+Republican party, which he said contained in its ranks "more of
+moral and intellectual worth than was ever embodied in any political
+organization in any land... created by no man or set of men but brought
+into being by Almighty God himself... and endowed by the Creator with
+all political power and every office under Heaven." Shellabarger of Ohio
+was another important figure among the radicals. The following extract
+from one of his speeches gives an indication of his character and
+temperament: "They [the Confederates] framed iniquity and universal
+murder into law.... Their pirates burned your unarmed commerce upon
+every sea. They carved the bones of the dead heroes into ornaments,
+and drank from goblets made out of their skulls. They poisoned your
+fountains, put mines under your soldiers' prisons; organized bands whose
+leaders were concealed in your homes; and commissions ordered the torch
+and yellow fever to be carried to your cities and to your women and
+children. They planned one universal bonfire of the North from Lake
+Ontario to the Missouri."
+
+Among the lesser lights may be mentioned Morton and Wade, both bluff,
+coarse, and ungenerous, and thoroughly convinced that the Republican
+party had a monopoly of loyalty, wisdom, and virtues, and that by any
+means it must gain and keep control; Boutwell, fanatical and mediocre;
+and Benjamin Butler, a charlatan and demagogue. As a class the Western
+radicals were less troubled by humanitarian ideals than were those of
+the East and sought more practical political results.
+
+The Joint Committee on Reconstruction which finally decided the fate
+of the Southern states was composed of eight radicals, four moderate
+Republicans, and three Democrats. As James Gillespie Blaine wrote
+later, "it was foreseen that in an especial degree the fortunes of the
+Republican party would be in the keeping of the fifteen men who might
+be chosen." This committee was divided into four subcommittees to take
+testimony. The witnesses, all of whom were examined at Washington,
+included army officers and Bureau agents who had served in the South,
+Southern Unionists, a few politicians, and several former Confederates,
+among them General Robert E. Lee and Alexander H. Stephens. Most of
+the testimony was of the kind needed to support the contentions of the
+radicals that Negroes were badly treated in the South; that the whites
+were disloyal; that, should they be left in control, the Negro, free
+labor, the nation, and the Republican party would be in danger; that
+the army and the Freedmen's Bureau must be kept in the South; and that
+a radical reconstruction was necessary. No serious effort, however, was
+made to ascertain the actual conditions in the South. Slow to formulate
+a definite plan, the Joint Committee guided public sentiment toward
+radicalism, converted gradually the Republican Congressmen, and little
+by little undermined the power and influence of the President.
+
+Not until after the new year was it plain that there was to be a fight
+to the finish between Congress and the President. Congress had refused
+in December 1865, to accept the President's program, but there was still
+hope for a compromise. Many conservatives had voted for the delay merely
+to assert the rights of Congress; but the radicals wanted time to frame
+a program. The Northern Democrats were embarrassingly cordial in their
+support of Johnson and so also were most Southerners. The moderates were
+not far away from the position of the President and the administration
+Republicans. But the radicals skillfully postponed a test of strength
+until Stevens and Sumner were ready. The latter declared that a
+generation must elapse "before the rebel communities have so far been
+changed as to become safe associates in a common government. Time,
+therefore, we must have. Through time all other guarantees may be
+obtained; but time itself is a guarantee."
+
+To the Joint Committee were referred without debate all measures
+relating to reconstruction, but the Committee was purposely making
+little progress--contented merely to take testimony and to act as a
+clearing house for the radical "facts" about "Southern outrages" while
+waiting for the tide to turn. The "Black Laws" and the election of
+popular Confederate leaders to office in the South were effectively used
+to alarm the friends of the Negroes, and the reports from the
+Bureau agents gave support to those who condemned the Southern state
+governments as totally inadequate and disloyal.
+
+So apparent was the growth of radicalism that the President, alarmed by
+the attitude of Sumner and Stevens and their followers, began to fear
+for the Constitution and forced the fight. The passage of a bill on
+February 6, 1866, extending the life of the Freedmen's Bureau furnished
+the occasion for the beginning of the open struggle. On the 19th of
+February, Johnson vetoed the bill, and the next day an effort was made
+to pass it over the veto. Not succeeding in this attempt, the House
+of Representatives adopted a concurrent resolution that Senators and
+Representatives from the Southern states should be excluded until
+Congress declared them entitled to representation. Ten days later the
+Senate also adopted the resolution.
+
+Though it was not yet too late for Johnson to meet the conservatives
+of Congress on middle ground, he threw away his opportunity by an
+intemperate and undignified speech on the 22d of February to a crowd at
+the White House. As usual when excited, he forgot the proprieties and
+denounced the radicals as enemies of the Union and even went so far
+as to charge Stevens, Sumner, and Wendell Phillips with endeavoring
+to destroy the fundamental principles of the government. Such conduct
+weakened his supporters and rejoiced his enemies. It was expected that
+Johnson would approve the bill to confer civil rights upon the Negroes,
+but, goaded perhaps by the speeches of Stevens, he vetoed it on the 27th
+of March. Its patience now exhausted, Congress passed the bill over
+the President's veto. To secure the requisite majority in the Senate,
+Stockton, Democratic Senator from New Jersey, was unseated on technical
+grounds, and Senator Morgan, who was "paired" with a sick colleague,
+broke his word to vote aye--for which Wade offensively thanked God. The
+moderates had now fallen away from the President, and at least for this
+session of Congress, his policies were wrecked. On the 16th of July, the
+supplementary Freedmen's Bureau Act was passed over the veto, and on
+the 24th of July Tennessee was readmitted to representation by a law
+the preamble of which asserted unmistakably that Congress had assumed
+control of reconstruction.
+
+Meanwhile the Joint Committee on Reconstruction had made a report
+asserting that the Southerners had forfeited all constitutional rights,
+that their state governments were not in constitutional form, and that
+restoration could be accomplished only when Congress and the President
+acted together in fixing the terms of readmission. The uncompromising
+hostility of the South, the Committee asserted, made necessary adequate
+safeguards which should include the disfranchisement of the white
+leaders, either Negro suffrage or a reduction of white representation,
+and repudiation of the Confederate war debt with recognition of the
+validity of the United States debt. These terms were embodied in the
+Fourteenth Amendment, which was adopted by Congress and sent to the
+States on June 13, 1866.
+
+In the congressional campaign of 1866, reconstruction was almost the
+sole issue. For success the Administration must gain at least one-third
+of one house, while the radicals were fighting for two-thirds of each
+House. If the Administration should fail to make the necessary gain, the
+work accomplished by the Presidents would be destroyed. The campaign
+was bitter and extended through the summer and fall. Four national
+conventions were held: the National Union party at Philadelphia made a
+respectable showing in support of the President; the Southern Unionists,
+guided by the Northern radicals met at the same place; a soldiers'
+and sailors' convention at Cleveland supported the Administration; and
+another convention of soldiers and sailors at Pittsburgh endorsed the
+radical policies. A convention of Confederate soldiers and sailors at
+Memphis endorsed the President, but the Southern support and that of the
+Northern Democrats did not encourage moderate Republicans to vote for
+the Administration. Three members of Johnson's Cabinet--Harlan, Speed,
+and Dennison--resigned because they were unwilling to follow their chief
+further in opposing Congress.
+
+The radicals had plenty of campaign material in the testimony collected
+by the Joint Committee, in the reports of the Freedmen's Bureau, and in
+the bloody race riots which had occurred in Memphis and New Orleans. The
+greatest blunder of the Administration was Johnson's speechmaking tour
+to the West which he called "Swinging Around the Circle." Every time he
+made a speech he was heckled by persons in the crowd, lost his temper,
+denounced Congress and the radical leaders, and conducted himself in an
+undignified manner. The election returns showed more than a two-thirds
+majority in each House against the President. The Fortieth Congress
+would therefore be safely radical, and in consequence the Thirty-ninth
+was encouraged to be more radical during its last session.
+
+Public interest now for a time turned to the South, where the Fourteenth
+Amendment was before the state legislatures. The radicals, taunted with
+having no plan of reconstruction beyond a desire to keep the Southern
+States out of the Union, professed to see in the ratification of the
+Fourteenth Amendment a good opportunity to readmit the States on a safe
+basis. The elections of 1866 had pointed to the ratification of the
+proposed amendment as an essential preliminary to readmission. But
+would additional demands be made upon the South? Sumner, Stevens, and
+Fessenden were sure that Negro suffrage also must come, but Wade, Chase,
+Garfield, and others believed that nothing beyond the terms of the
+Fourteenth Amendment would be asked.
+
+In the Southern legislatures there was little disposition to ratify the
+amendment. The rapid development of the radical policies during 1866 had
+convinced most Southerners that nothing short of a general humiliation
+and complete revolution in the South would satisfy the dominant party,
+and there were few who wished to be "parties to our own dishonor." The
+President advised the States not to accept the amendment, but several
+Southern leaders favored it, fearing that worse would come if they
+should reject it. Only in the legislatures of Alabama and Florida was
+there any serious disposition to accept the amendment; and in the end
+all the unreconstructed States voted adversely during the fall and
+winter of 1866-67. This unanimity of action was due in part to the
+belief that, even if the amendment were ratified, the Southern states
+would still be excluded, and in part to the general dislike of the
+proscriptive section which would disfranchise all Confederates of
+prominence and result in the breaking up of the state governments.
+The example of unhappy Tennessee, which had ratified the Fourteenth
+Amendment and had been readmitted, was not one to encourage conservative
+people in the other Southern states.
+
+The rejection of the amendment put the question of reconstruction
+squarely before Congress. There was no longer a possibility of
+accomplishing the reconstruction of the Southern states by means of
+constitutional amendments. Some of the Border and Northern states were
+already showing signs of uneasiness at the continued exclusion of the
+South. But if the Constitutional Amendment had failed, other means
+of reconstruction were at hand, for the radicals now controlled the
+Thirty-ninth Congress, from which the Southern representatives were
+excluded, and would also control the Fortieth Congress.
+
+Under the lead of Stevens and Sumner, the radicals now perfected their
+plans. On January 8,1867, their first measure, conferring the
+franchise upon Negroes in the District of Columbia, was passed over the
+presidential veto, though the proposal had been voted down a few
+weeks earlier by a vote of 6525 to 35 in Washington and 812 to 1 in
+Georgetown. In the next place, by an act of January 31, 1867, the
+franchise was extended to Negroes in the territories, and on March 2,
+1867, three important measures were enacted: the Tenure of Office Act
+and a rider to the Army Appropriation Act--both designed to limit the
+power of the President--and the first Reconstruction Act. By the Tenure
+of Office Act, the President was prohibited from removing officeholders
+except with the consent of the Senate; and by the Army Act he was
+forbidden to issue orders except through General Grant or to relieve him
+of command or to assign him to command away from Washington unless at
+the General's own request or with the previous approval of the
+Senate. The first measure was meant to check the removal of radical
+officeholders by Johnson, and the other, which was secretly drawn up
+for Boutwell by Stanton, was designed to prevent the President from
+exercising his constitutional command of the army.
+
+The first Reconstruction Act declared that no legal state government
+existed in the ten unreconstructed states and that there was no adequate
+protection for life and property. The Johnson and Lincoln governments
+in those States were declared to have no legal status and to be subject
+wholly to the authority of the United States to modify or abolish. The
+ten states were divided into five military districts, over each of which
+a general officer was to be placed in command. Military tribunals were
+to supersede the civil courts where necessary. Stevens was willing to
+rest here, though some of his less radical followers, disliking military
+rule but desiring to force Negro suffrage, inserted a provision in
+the law that a State might be readmitted to representation upon the
+following conditions: a constitutional convention must be held, the
+members of which were elected by males of voting age without regard
+to color, excluding whites who would be disfranchised by the proposed
+Fourteenth Amendment; a constitution including the same rule of suffrage
+must be framed, ratified by the same electorate, and approved by
+Congress; and lastly, the legislatures elected under this constitution
+must ratify the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, after which, if
+the Fourteenth Amendment should have become a part of the Federal
+Constitution, the State should be readmitted to representation.
+
+In order that the administration of this radical legislation might be
+supervised by its friends, the Thirty-ninth Congress had passed a law
+requiring the Fortieth Congress to meet on the 4th of March instead of
+in December as was customary. According to the Reconstruction Act of the
+2nd of March, it was left to the state government or to the people of a
+state to make the first move towards reconstruction. If they preferred,
+they might remain under military rule. Either by design or by
+carelessness no machinery of administration was provided for the
+execution of the act. When it became evident that the Southerners
+preferred military rule, the new Congress passed a Supplementary
+Reconstruction Act on the 23d of March designed to force the earlier act
+into operation. The five commanding generals were directed to register
+the blacks of voting age and the whites who were not disfranchised,
+to hold elections for conventions, to call the conventions, to hold
+elections to ratify or reject the constitutions, and to forward the
+constitutions, if ratified, to the President for transmission to
+Congress.
+
+In these reconstruction acts the whole doctrine of radicalism was put on
+the way to accomplishment. Its spread had been rapid. In December 1865,
+the majority of Congress would have accepted with little modification
+the work of Lincoln and Johnson. Three months later the Civil Rights Act
+measured the advance. Very soon the new Freedmen's Bureau Act and
+the Fourteenth Amendment indicated the rising tide of radicalism. The
+campaign of 1866 and the attitude of the Southern states swept all
+radicals and most moderate Republicans swiftly into a merciless course
+of reconstruction. Moderate reconstruction had nowhere strong support.
+Congress, touched in its amour propre by presidential disregard, was
+eager for extremes. Johnson, who regarded himself as defending the
+Constitution against radical assaults, was stubborn, irascible, and
+undignified, and with his associates was no match in political strategy
+for his radical opponents.
+
+The average Republican or Unionist in the North, if he had not been
+brought by skillful misrepresentation to believe a new rebellion
+impending in the South, was at any rate painfully alive to the fear that
+the Democratic party might regain power. With the freeing of the slaves,
+the representation of the South in Congress would be increased. At first
+it seemed that the South might divide in politics as before the war, but
+the longer the delay the more the Southern whites tended to unite
+into one party acting with the Democrats. With their eighty-five
+representatives and a slight reaction in the North, they might gain
+control of the lower House of Congress. The Union-Republican party had
+a majority of less than one hundred in 1866, and this was lessened
+slightly in the Fortieth Congress. The President was for all practical
+purposes a Democrat again. The prospect was too much for the very human
+politicians to view without distress. Stevens, speaking in support of
+the Military Reconstruction Bill, said:
+
+"There are several good reasons for the passage of this bill. In
+the first place, it is just. I am now confining my argument to Negro
+suffrage in the rebel states. Have not loyal blacks quite as good a
+right to choose rulers and make laws as rebel whites? In the second
+place, it is necessary in order to protect the loyal white men in the
+seceded states. With them the blacks would act in a body, and it is
+believed that in each of these states, except one, the two united would
+form a majority, control the states, and protect themselves. Now they
+are the victims of daily murder. They must suffer constant persecution
+or be exiled. Another good reason is that it would insure the ascendancy
+of the union party.... I believe... that on the continued ascendancy
+of that party depends the safety of this great nation. If impartial
+suffrage is excluded in the rebel states, then every one of them is
+sure to send a solid rebel electoral vote. They, with their kindred
+Copperheads of the North, would always elect the President and control
+Congress."
+
+The laws passed on the 2d and the 23d of March were war measures and
+presupposed a continuance of war conditions. The Lincoln-Johnson state
+governments were overturned; Congress fixed the qualifications of voters
+for that time and for the future; and the President, shorn of much of
+his constitutional power, could exercise but little control over
+the military government. Nothing that a state might do would secure
+restoration until it should ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the
+Federal Constitution. The war had been fought upon the theory that the
+old Union must be preserved; but the basic theory of the reconstruction
+was that a new Union was to be created.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. THE RULE OF THE MAJOR GENERALS
+
+From the passage of the reconstruction acts to the close of Johnson's
+Administration, Congress, working the will of the radical majority, was
+in supreme control. The army carried out the will of Congress and
+to that body, not to the President, the commanding general and his
+subordinates looked for direction.
+
+The official opposition of the President to the policy of Congress
+ceased when that policy was enacted into law. He believed this
+legislation to be unconstitutional, but he considered it his duty to
+execute the laws. He at once set about the appointment of generals to
+command the military districts created in the South,* a task calling for
+no little discretion, since much depended upon the character of these
+military governors, or "satraps," as they were frequently called by the
+opposition. The commanding general in a district was charged with many
+duties, military, political, and administrative. It was his duty
+to carry on a government satisfactory to the radicals and not too
+irritating to the Southern whites; at the same time he must execute the
+reconstruction acts by putting old leaders out of power and Negroes
+in. Violent opposition to this policy on the part of the South was not
+looked for. Notwithstanding the "Southern outrage" campaign, it was
+generally recognized in government circles that conditions in the
+seceded states had gradually been growing better since the close of
+the war. There was in many regions, to be sure, a general laxity in
+enforcing laws, but that had always been characteristic of the newer
+parts of the South. The Civil Rights Act was generally in force,
+the "Black Laws" had been suspended, and the Freedmen's Bureau was
+everywhere caring for the Negroes. What disorder existed was of recent
+origin and in the main was due to the unsettling effects of the debates
+in Congress and to the organization of the Negroes for political
+purposes.
+
+     * The first five generals appointed were Schofield, Sickles.
+     Pope, Ord, and Sheridan. None of these remained in his
+     district until reconstruction was completed. To Schofield's
+     command in the first district succeeded in turn Stoneman,
+     Webb, and Canby; Sickles gave way to Canby, and Pope to
+     Meade; Ord in the fourth district was followed by Gillem,
+     McDowell, and Ames; Sheridan, in the fifth, was succeeded by
+     Griffen, Mower, Hancock, Buchanan, Reynolds, and Canby. Some
+     of the generals were radical; others, moderate and tactful.
+     The most extreme were Sheridan, Pope, and Sickles. Those
+     most acceptable to the whites were Hancock, Schofield, and
+     Meade. General Grant himself became more radical in his
+     actions as he became involved in the fight between Congress
+     and the President.
+
+
+Military rule was established in the South with slight friction, but it
+was soon found that the reconstruction laws were not sufficiently clear
+on two points: first, whether there was any limit to the authority
+of the five generals over the local and state governments and, if so,
+whether the limiting authority was in the President; and second, whether
+the disfranchising provisions in the laws were punitive and hence to
+be construed strictly. Attorney-General Stanbery, in May and June
+1867, drew up opinions in which he maintained that the laws were to
+be considered punitive and therefore to be construed strictly. After
+discussions in cabinet meetings, these opinions received the approval of
+all except Stanton, Secretary of War, who had already joined the radical
+camp. The Attorney-General's opinion was sent out to the district
+commanders for their information and guidance. But Congress did not
+intend to permit the President or his Cabinet to direct the process
+of reconstruction, and in the Act of July 19, 1867, it gave a radical
+interpretation to the reconstruction legislation, declared itself in
+control, gave full power to General Grant and to the district commanders
+subject only to Grant, directed the removal of all local officials who
+opposed the reconstruction policies, and warned the civil and military
+officers of the United States that none of them should "be bound in his
+action by any opinion of any civil officer of the United States." This
+interpretive legislation gave a broad basis for the military government
+and resulted in a severe application of the disfranchising provisions of
+the laws.
+
+The rule of the five generals lasted in all the States until June 1868,
+and continued in Mississippi, Texas, Virginia, and Georgia until 1870.
+There had been, to be sure, some military government in 1865, subject,
+however, to the President, and from 1865 to 1867 the army, along with
+the Freedmen's Bureau, had exerted a strong influence in the government
+of the South, but in the regime now inaugurated the military was
+supreme. The generals had a superior at Washington, but whether it was
+the President, General Grant, or Congress was not clear until the Act of
+July 19, 1867 made Congress the source of authority.
+
+The power of the generals most strikingly appeared in their control of
+the state governments which were continued as provisional organizations.
+Since no elections were permitted, all appointments and removals were
+made from military headquarters, which soon became political beehives,
+centers of wirepulling and agencies for the distribution of spoils. At
+the outset civil officers were ordered to retain their offices during
+good behavior, subject to military control. But no local official was
+permitted to use his influence ever so slightly against reconstruction.
+Since most of them did not favor the policy of Congress, thousands were
+removed as "obstacles to reconstruction." The Governors of Georgia,
+Louisiana, Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas were displaced and others
+appointed in their stead. All kinds of subordinate offices rapidly
+became vacant. New appointments were nearly always carpetbaggers
+and native radicals who could take the "ironclad" oath. The generals
+complained that there were not enough competent native "loyalists"
+to fill the offices, and frequently an army officer was installed as
+governor, treasurer, secretary of state, auditor, or mayor. In nearly
+all towns, the police force was reorganized, and former Federal soldiers
+were added to the force, while the regular troops were used for general
+police purposes and for rural constabulary.
+
+Over the administration of justice the military authorities exercised a
+close supervision. Instructions were sent out to court officers covering
+the selection of juries, the suspension of certain laws, and the rules
+of evidence and procedure. Courts were often closed, court decrees set
+aside or modified, prisoners released, and many cases reserved for trial
+by military commission. Some commanders required juries to admit Negro
+members and insisted that all jurors take the "ironclad" test oath.
+There was some attempt at regulating the Federal courts but without much
+success.
+
+Since the state legislatures were forbidden to meet, much legislation
+was enacted through military orders. Stay laws were enacted, the color
+line was abolished, new criminal regulations were promulgated, and the
+police power was invoked in some instances to justify sweeping measures,
+such as the prohibition of whisky manufacture in North Carolina and
+South Carolina. The military governors levied, increased, or decreased
+taxes and made appropriations which the state treasurers were forced to
+pay, but they restrained the radical conventions, all of which wished to
+spend much money. According to the Act of March 23, 1867, the generals
+and their appointees were to be paid by the United States, but in
+practice the running expenses of reconstruction were paid by the state
+treasurers.
+
+Any attempt to favor the Confederate soldiers was frowned upon. Laws
+providing wooden legs and free education for crippled Confederates were
+suspended. Militia organizations and military schools were forbidden.
+No uniform might be worn, no parades were permitted, no memorial and
+historical societies were to be organized, and no meeting of any
+kind could be held without a permit. The attempt to control the press
+resulted in what one general called "a horrible uproar." Editors were
+forbidden to express themselves too strongly against reconstruction;
+public advertising and printing were awarded only to those papers
+actively supporting reconstruction. Several newspapers were suppressed,
+a notable example being the "Tuscaloosa Independent Monitor", whose
+editor, Ryland Randolph, was a picturesque figure in Alabama journalism
+and a leader in the Ku Klux Klan.
+
+The military administration was thorough and, as a whole, honest
+and efficient. With fewer than ten thousand soldiers, the generals
+maintained order and carried on the reconstruction of the South. The
+whites made no attempt at resistance, though they were irritated
+by military rule and resented the loss of self-government. But most
+Southerners preferred the rule of the army to the alternative reign
+of the carpetbagger, scalawag, and Negro. The extreme radicals at the
+North, on the other hand, were disgusted at the conservative policy of
+the generals. The apathy of the whites at the beginning of the military
+reconstruction excited surprise on all sides. Not only was there no
+violent opposition, but for a few weeks there was no opposition at all.
+The civil officials were openly unsympathetic, and the newspapers voiced
+dissent not untouched with disgust; others simply could not take the
+situation seriously because it seemed so absurd; many leaders were
+indifferent, while others among them, Generals Lee, Beauregard, and
+Longstreet, and Governor Patton--without approving the policy, advised
+the whites to cooperate with the military authorities and save all they
+could out of the situation. General Beauregard, for instance, wrote in
+1867: "If the suffrage of the Negro is properly handled and directed,
+we shall defeat our adversaries with their own weapons. The Negro is
+Southern born. With education and property qualifications he can be made
+to take an interest in the affairs of the South and in its prosperity.
+He will side with the whites."
+
+Northern observers who were friendly to the South or who disapproved
+of this radical reconstruction saw the danger more clearly than
+the Southerners themselves, who seemed not to appreciate the full
+implication of the situation. In this connection the New York "Herald"
+remarked:
+
+"We may regard the entire ten unreconstructed Southern States, with
+possibly one or two exceptions, as forced by a secret and overwhelming
+revolutionary influence to a common and inevitable fate. They are all
+bound to be governed by blacks spurred on by worse than blacks--white
+wretches who dare not show their faces in respectable society anywhere.
+This is the most abominable phase barbarism has assumed since the dawn
+of civilization. It was all right and proper to put down the rebellion.
+It was all right perhaps to emancipate the slaves.... But it is not
+right to make slaves of white men even though they may have been former
+masters of blacks. This is but a change in a system of bondage that is
+rendered the more odious and intolerable because it has been inaugurated
+in an enlightened instead of a dark and uncivilized age."
+
+The political parties rapidly grouped themselves for the coming
+struggle. The radical Republican party indeed was in process of
+organization in the South even before the passage of the reconstruction
+acts. Its membership was made up of Negroes, carpetbaggers, or Northern
+men who had come in as speculators, officers of the Freedmen's Bureau
+and of the army, scalawags or Confederate renegades, "Peace Society"
+men,* and Unionists of Civil War times, with a few old Whigs who could
+not yet bring themselves to affiliate with the Democrats. At first it
+seemed that a respectable number of whites might be secured for the
+radical party, but the rapid organization of the Negroes checked the
+accession of whites. In the winter and spring of 1866-67, the Negroes
+near the towns were well organized by the Union League and the
+Freedmen's Bureau and then, after the passage of the reconstruction
+acts, the organizing activities of the radical chieftains shifted to
+the rural districts. The Union League was greatly extended; Union League
+conventions were held to which local whites were not admitted; and
+the formation of a black man's party was well on the way before the
+registration of the voters was completed. Visiting statesmen from the
+North, among them Henry Wilson of Massachusetts and "Pig Iron" Kelley
+of Pennsylvania, toured the South in support of the radical program, and
+the registrars and all Federal officials aided in the work.
+
+     * See "The Day of the Confederacy", by Nathaniel W.
+     Stephenson (in "The Chronicles of America"), p. 121,
+     footnote.
+
+
+The whites, slow to comprehend the real extent of radicalism, were
+finally aroused to the necessity of organizing, if they were to
+influence the Negro and have a voice in the conventions. The old party
+divisions were still evident. With difficulty a portion of the Whigs was
+brought with the Democrats into one conservative party during the summer
+and fall of 1867, though many still held aloof. The lack of the old
+skilled leadership was severely felt. In places where the white man's
+party was given a name, it was called "Democratic and Conservative," to
+spare the feelings of former Whigs who were loath to bear the party name
+of their quondam opponents.
+
+The first step in the military reconstruction was the registration of
+voters. In each State a central board of registrars was appointed by the
+district commander and a local board for every county and large town.
+Each board consisted of three members--all radicals--who were required
+to subscribe to the "ironclad" oath. In several states one Negro was
+appointed to each local board. The registrars listed Negro voters during
+the day, and at night worked at the organization of a radical Republican
+party. The prospective voters were required to take the oath prescribed
+in the Reconstruction Act, but the registrars were empowered to
+go behind the oath and investigate the Confederate record of each
+applicant. This authority was invoked to carry the disfranchisement of
+the whites far beyond the intention of the law in an attempt to destroy
+the leadership of the whites and to register enough Negroes to outvote
+them at the polls. For this purpose the registration was continued until
+October 1, 1867, and an active campaign of education and organization
+carried on.
+
+At the close of the registration, 703,000 black voters were on the rolls
+and 627,000 whites. In Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, and
+Mississippi there were black majorities, and in the other States the
+blacks and the radical whites together formed majorities. The white
+minorities included several thousand who had been rejected by the
+registrars but restored by the military commanders. Though large
+numbers of blacks were dropped from the revised rolls as fraudulently
+registered, the registration statistics, nevertheless, bore clear
+witness to the political purpose of those who compiled them.
+
+Next followed a vote on the question of holding a state convention
+and the election of delegates to such a convention if held--a double
+election. The whites, who had been harassed in the registration and who
+feared race conflicts at the elections, considered whether they ought
+not to abstain from voting. By staying away from the polls, they might
+bring the vote cast in each State below a majority and thus defeat the
+proposed conventions for, unless a majority of the registered voters
+actually cast ballots either for or against a convention, no convention
+could be held. Nowhere, however, was this plan of not voting fully
+carried out, for, though most whites abstained, enough of them voted
+(against the conventions, of course) to make the necessary majority in
+each State. The effect of the abstention policy upon the personnel of
+the conventions was unfortunate. In every convention there was a radical
+majority with a conservative and all but negligible minority. In South
+Carolina and Louisiana, there were Negro majorities. In every State
+except North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia, the Negroes and the
+carpetbaggers together were in the majority over native whites.
+
+The conservative whites were of fair ability; the carpetbaggers and
+scalawags produced in each convention a few able leaders, but most
+of them were conscienceless political soldiers of fortune; the Negro
+members were inexperienced, and most of them were quite ignorant, though
+a few leaders of ability did appear among them. In Alabama, for example,
+only two Negro members could write, though half had been taught to sign
+their names. They were barbers, field hands, hack drivers, and servants.
+A Negro chaplain was elected who invoked divine blessings on "unioners
+and cusses on rebels." It was a sign of the new era when the convention
+specially invited the "ladies of colored members" to seats in the
+gallery.
+
+The work of the conventions was for the most part cut and dried, the
+abler members having reached a general agreement before they met. The
+constitutions, mosaics of those of other states, were noteworthy only
+for the provisions made to keep the whites out of power and to regulate
+the relations of the races in social matters. The Texas constitution
+alone contained no proscriptive clauses beyond those required by
+the Fourteenth Amendment. The most thoroughgoing proscription of
+Confederates was found in the constitutions of Mississippi, Alabama, and
+Virginia; and in these states the voter must also purge himself of guilt
+by agreeing to accept the "civil and political equality of all men" or
+by supporting reconstruction. Only in South Carolina and Louisiana were
+race lines abolished by law.
+
+The legislative work of the conventions was more interesting than the
+constitution making. By ordinance the legality of Negro marriages was
+dated from November 1867, or some date later than had been fixed by the
+white conventions of 1865. Mixed schools were provided in some States;
+militia for the black districts but not for the white was to be raised;
+while in South Carolina it was made a penal offense to call a person a
+"Yankee" or a "nigger." Few of the Negro delegates demanded proscription
+of whites or social equality; they wanted schools and the vote. The
+white radicals were more anxious to keep the former Confederates from
+holding office than from voting. The generals in command everywhere used
+their influence to secure moderate action by the conventions, and for
+this they were showered with abuse.
+
+As provided by the reconstruction acts, the new constitutions were
+submitted to the electorate created by those instruments. Unless a
+majority of the registered voters in a State should take part in the
+election, the reconstruction would fail and the State would remain under
+military rule. The whites now inaugurated a more systematic policy of
+abstention and in Alabama, on February 4, 1868, succeeded in holding
+the total vote below a majority. Congress then rushed to the rescue of
+radicalism with the act of the 11th of March, which provided that a
+mere majority of those voting in the State was sufficient to inaugurate
+reconstruction. Arkansas had followed the lead of Alabama, but too late;
+in Mississippi the constitution was defeated by a majority vote; in
+Texas the convention had made no provision for a vote; and in Virginia
+the commanding general, disapproving of the work of the convention,
+refused to pay the expenses of an election. In the other six States the
+constitutions were adopted.*
+
+     * Except in Texas, the work of constitution making was
+     completed between November 5, 1867, and May 18, 1868.
+
+These elections gave rise to more violent contests than before. They
+also were double elections, as the voters cast ballots for state and
+local officials and at the same time for or against the constitution.
+The radical nominations were made by the Union League and the Freedmen's
+Bureau, and nearly all radicals who had been members of conventions were
+nominated and elected to office. The Negroes, expecting now to reap some
+benefits of reconstruction, frequently brought sacks to the polls to
+"put the franchise in." The elections were all over by June 1868,
+and the newly elected legislatures promptly ratified the Fourteenth
+Amendment.
+
+It now remained for Congress to approve the work done in the South
+and to readmit the reorganized states. The case of Alabama gave some
+trouble. Even Stevens, for a time, thought that this state should stay
+out; but there was danger in delay. The success of the abstention
+policy in Alabama and Arkansas and the reviving interest of the whites
+foreshadowed white majorities in some places; the scalawags began
+to forsake the radical party for the conservatives; and there were
+Democratic gains in the North in 1867. Only six states, New York and
+five New England States, allowed the Negro to vote, while four states,
+Minnesota, Michigan, Kansas, and Ohio, voted down Negro suffrage after
+the passage of the reconstruction acts. The ascendancy of the radicals
+in Congress was menaced. The radicals needed the support of their
+radical brethren in Southern States and they could not afford to wait
+for the Fourteenth Amendment to become a part of the Constitution or
+to tolerate other delay. On the 22d and the 25th of June, acts
+were therefore passed admitting seven states, Alabama included, to
+representation in Congress upon the "fundamental condition" that "the
+constitutions of neither of said States shall ever be so amended or
+changed as to deprive any citizens or class of citizens of the United
+States of the right to vote in said State, who are entitled to vote by
+the constitution thereof herein recognized."
+
+The generals now turned over the government to the recently
+elected radical officials and retired into the background. Military
+reconstruction was thus accomplished in all the States except Virginia,
+Mississippi, and Texas.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. THE TRIAL OF PRESIDENT JOHNSON
+
+While the radical program was being executed in the South, Congress
+was engaged not only in supervising reconstruction but in subduing the
+Supreme Court and in "conquering" President Johnson. One must admire the
+efficiency of the radical machine. When the Southerners showed that they
+preferred military rule as permitted by the Act of the 2nd of
+March, Congress passed the Act of the 23d of March which forced the
+reconstruction. When the President ventured to assert his power in
+behalf of a considerate administration of the reconstruction acts,
+Congress took the power out of his hands by the law of the 19th of July.
+The Southern plan to defeat the new state constitutions by abstention
+was no sooner made clear in the case of Alabama than Congress came to
+the rescue with the Act of March 11, 1868.
+
+Had it seemed necessary, Congress would have handled the Supreme Court
+as it did the Southerners. The opponents of radical reconstruction were
+anxious to get the reconstruction laws of March 1867, before the Court.
+Chief Justice Chase was known to be opposed to military reconstruction,
+and four other justices were, it was believed, doubtful of the
+constitutionality of the laws. A series of conservative decisions gave
+hope to those who looked to the Court for relief. The first decision, in
+the case of ex parte Milligan, declared unconstitutional the trials of
+civilians by military commissions when civil courts were open. A
+few months later, in the cases of Cummings vs. Missouri and ex parte
+Garland, the Court declared invalid, because ex post facto, the state
+laws designed to punish former Confederates.
+
+But the first attempts to get the reconstruction acts before the Supreme
+Court failed. The State of Mississippi, in April 1867, brought suit to
+restrain the President from executing the reconstruction acts. The Court
+refused to interfere with the executive. A similar suit was then brought
+against Secretary Stanton by Georgia with a like result. But in 1868,
+in the case of ex parte McCardle, it appeared that the question of
+the constitutionality of the reconstruction acts would be passed upon.
+McCardle, a Mississippi editor arrested for opposition to reconstruction
+and convicted by military commission, appealed to the Supreme Court,
+which asserted its jurisdiction. But the radicals in alarm rushed
+through Congress an act (March 27, 1868) which took away from the Court
+its jurisdiction in cases arising under the reconstruction acts. The
+highest court was thus silenced.
+
+The attempt to remove the President from office was the only part of
+the radical program that failed, and this by the narrowest of margins.
+During the spring and summer of 1866, there was some talk among
+politicians of impeaching President Johnson, and in December a
+resolution was introduced by Representative Ashley of Ohio looking
+toward impeachment. Though the committee charged with the investigation
+of "the official conduct of Andrew Johnson" reported that enough
+testimony had been taken to justify further inquiry, the House took no
+action. There were no less than five attempts at impeachment during the
+next year. Stevens, Butler, and others were anxious to get the President
+out of the way, but the majority were as yet unwilling to impeach for
+merely political reasons. There were some who thought that the radicals
+had sufficient majorities to ensure all needed legislation and did not
+relish the thought of Ben Wade in the presidency.* Others considered
+that no just grounds for action had been found in the several
+investigations of Johnson's record. Besides, the President's authority
+and influence had been much curtailed by the legislation relating to the
+Freedmen's Bureau, tenure of office, reconstruction, and command of
+the army, and Congress had also refused to recognize his amnesty and
+pardoning powers.
+
+     * Senator Wade of Ohio was President pro tempore of the
+     Senate and by the act of 1791 would succeed President
+     Johnson if he were removed from office.
+
+But the desire to impeach the President was increasing in power, and
+very little was needed to provoke a trial of strength between the
+radicals and the President. The drift toward impeachment was due in
+part to the legislative reaction against the executive, and in part
+to Johnson's own opposition to reconstruction and to his use of the
+patronage against the radicals. Specific grievances were found in
+his vetoes of the various reconstruction bills, in his criticisms of
+Congress and the radical leaders, and in the fact, as Stevens asserted,
+that he was a "radical renegade." Johnson was a Southern man, an
+old-line State Rights Democrat, somewhat anti-Negro in feeling. He knew
+no book except the Constitution, and that he loved with all his soul.
+Sure of the correctness of his position, he was too stubborn to change
+or to compromise. He was no more to be moved than Stevens or Sumner. To
+overcome Johnson's vetoes required two-thirds of each House of Congress;
+to impeach and remove him would require only a majority of the House and
+two-thirds of the Senate.
+
+The desired occasion for impeachment was furnished by Johnson's attempt
+to get Edwin M. Stanton, the Secretary of War, out of the Cabinet.
+Stanton held radical views and was at no time sympathetic with or loyal
+to Johnson, but he loved office too well to resign along with those
+cabinet members who could not follow the President in his struggle
+with Congress. He was seldom frank and sincere in his dealings with
+the President, and kept up an underhand correspondence with the
+radical leaders, even assisting in framing some of the reconstruction
+legislation which was designed to render Johnson powerless. In him the
+radicals had a representative within the President's Cabinet.
+
+
+Wearied of Stanton's disloyalty, Johnson asked him to resign and, upon
+a refusal, suspended him in August 1867, and placed General Grant in
+temporary charge of the War Department. General Grant, Chief Justice
+Chase, and Secretary McCulloch, though they all disliked Stanton,
+advised the President against suspending him. But Johnson was
+determined. About the same time he exercised his power in removing
+Sheridan and Sickles from their commands in the South and replaced
+them with Hancock and Canby. The radicals were furious, but Johnson had
+secured at least the support of a loyal Cabinet.
+
+The suspension of Stanton was reported to the Senate in December
+1867, and on January 13, 1868, the Senate voted not to concur in the
+President's action. Upon receiving notice of the vote in the Senate,
+Grant at once left the War Department and Stanton again took possession.
+Johnson now charged Grant with failing to keep a promise either to hold
+on himself or to make it possible to appoint some one else who would
+hold on until the matter might be brought into the courts. The President
+by this accusation angered Grant and threw him with his great influence
+into the arms of the radicals. Against the advice of his leading
+counselors, Johnson persisted in his intention to keep Stanton out of
+the Cabinet. Accordingly on the 21st of February he dismissed Stanton
+from office and appointed Lorenzo Thomas, the Adjutant General, as
+acting Secretary of War. Stanton, advised by the radicals in Congress to
+"stick," refused to yield possession to Thomas and had him arrested for
+violation of the Tenure of Office Act. The matter now was in the courts
+where Johnson wanted it, but the radical leaders, fearing that the
+courts would decide against Stanton and the reconstruction acts, had the
+charges against Thomas withdrawn. Thus failed the last attempt to get
+the reconstruction laws before the courts. On the 22nd of February, the
+President sent to the Senate the name of Thomas Ewing, General Sherman's
+father-in-law, as Secretary of War, but no attention was paid to the
+nomination.
+
+On February 24, 1868, the House voted, 128 to 47, to impeach the
+President "of high crimes and misdemeanors in office." The Senate
+was formally notified the next day, and on the 4th of March the seven
+managers selected by the House appeared before the Senate with the
+eleven articles of impeachment. At first it seemed to the public that
+the impeachment proceedings were merely the culmination of a struggle
+for the control of the army. There were rumors that Johnson had plans to
+use the army against Congress and against reconstruction. General
+Grant, directed by Johnson to accept orders from Stanton only if he were
+satisfied that they came from the President, refused to follow these
+instructions. Stanton, professing to fear violence, barricaded himself
+in the War Department and was furnished with a guard of soldiers
+by General Grant, who from this time used his influence in favor of
+impeachment. Excited by the most sensational rumors, some people even
+believed a new rebellion to be imminent.
+
+The impeachment was rushed to trial by the House managers and was not
+ended until the decision was taken by the votes of the 16th and 26th of
+May. The eleven articles of impeachment consisted of summaries of all
+that had been charged against Johnson, except the charge that he had
+been an accomplice in the murder of Lincoln. The only one which had any
+real basis was the first, which asserted that he had violated the Tenure
+of Office Act in trying to remove Stanton. The other articles were
+merely expansions of the first or were based upon Johnson's opposition
+to reconstruction or upon his speeches in criticism of Congress. Nothing
+could be said about his control of the patronage, though this was one of
+the unwritten charges. J. W. Schuckers, in his life of Chase, says
+that the radical leaders "felt the vast importance of the presidential
+patronage; many of them felt, too, that, according to the maxim that
+to the victors belong the spoils, the Republican party was rightfully
+entitled to the Federal patronage, and they determined to get possession
+of it. There was but one method and that was by impeachment and removal
+of the President."
+
+The leading House managers were Stevens, Butler, Bingham, and Boutwell,
+all better known as politicians than as lawyers. The President was
+represented by an abler legal array: Curtis, Evarts, Stanbery, Nelson,
+and Groesbeck. Jeremiah Black was at first one of the counsel for the
+President but withdrew under conditions not entirely creditable to
+himself.
+
+The trial was a one-sided affair. The President's counsel were refused
+more than six days for the preparation of the case. Chief Justice Chase,
+who presided over the trial, insisted upon regarding the Senate as a
+judicial and not a political body, and he accordingly ruled that only
+legal evidence should be admitted; but the Senate majority preferred
+to assume that they were settling a political question. Much evidence
+favorable to the President was excluded, but everything else was
+admitted. As the trial went on, the country began to understand that the
+impeachment was a mistake. Few people wanted to see Senator Wade made
+President. The partisan attitude of the Senate majority and the weakness
+of the case against Johnson had much to do in moderating public opinion,
+and the timely nomination of General Schofield as Secretary of War after
+Stanton's resignation reassured those who feared that the army might be
+placed under some extreme Democrat.
+
+As the time drew near for the decision, every possible pressure was
+brought by the radicals to induce senators to vote for conviction. To
+convict the President, thirty-six votes were necessary. There were only
+twelve Democrats in the Senate, but all were known to be in favor of
+acquittal. When the test came on the 16th of May, seven Republicans
+voted with the Democrats for acquittal on the eleventh article. Another
+vote on the 26th of May, on the first and second articles, showed that
+conviction was not possible. The radical legislative reaction was
+thus checked at its highest point and the presidency as a part of
+the American governmental system was no longer in danger. The seven
+Republicans had, however, signed their own political death warrants;
+they were never forgiven by the party leaders.
+
+The presidential campaign was beginning to take shape even before
+the impeachment trial began. Both the Democrats and the reorganized
+Republicans were turning with longing toward General Grant as a
+candidate. Though he had always been a Democrat, Nevertheless, when
+Johnson actually called him a liar and a promise breaker, Grant went
+over to the radicals and was nominated for President on May 20, 1868, by
+the National Union Republican party. Schuyler Colfax was the candidate
+for Vice President. The Democrats, who could have won with Grant and who
+under good leadership still had a bare chance to win, nominated Horatio
+Seymour of New York and Francis P. Blair of Missouri. The former had
+served as war governor of New York, while the latter was considered an
+extreme Democrat who believed that the radical reconstruction of the
+South should be stopped, the troops withdrawn, and the people left to
+form their own governments. The Democratic platform pronounced itself
+opposed to the reconstruction policy, but Blair's opposition was too
+extreme for the North. Seymour, more moderate and a skillful campaigner,
+made headway in the rehabilitation of the Democratic party. The
+Republican party declared for radical reconstruction and Negro suffrage
+in the South but held that each Northern State should be allowed to
+settle the suffrage for itself. It was not a courageous platform, but
+Grant was popular and carried his party through to success.
+
+The returns showed that in the election Grant had carried twenty-six
+States with 214 electoral votes, while Seymour had carried only eight
+States with 80 votes. But an examination of the popular vote, which was
+3,000,000 for Grant and 2,700,000 for Seymour, gave the radicals cause
+for alarm, for it showed that the Democrats had more white votes than
+the Republicans, whose total included nearly 700,000 blacks. To insure
+the continuance of the radicals in power, the Fifteenth Amendment was
+framed and sent out to the States on February 26, 1869. This amendment
+appeared not only to make safe the Negro majorities in the South but
+also gave the ballot to the Negroes in a score of Northern States
+and thus assured, for a time at least, 900,000 Negro voters for the
+Republican party.
+
+When Johnson's term ended and he gave place to President Grant, four
+states were still unreconstructed--Virginia, Texas, and Mississippi,
+in which the reconstruction had failed, and Georgia, which, after
+accomplishing reconstruction, had again been placed under military rule
+by Congress. In Virginia, which was too near the capital for such
+rough work as readmitted Arkansas and Alabama into the Union, the new
+constitution was so severe in its provisions for disfranchisement that
+the disgusted district commander would not authorize the expenditure
+necessary to have it voted on. In Mississippi a similar constitution had
+failed of adoption, and in Texas the strife of party factions, radical
+and moderate Republican, had so delayed the framing of the constitution
+that it had not come to a vote.
+
+The Republican politicians, however, wanted the offices in these States,
+and Congress by its resolution of February 18, 1869, directed the
+district commanders to remove all civil officers who could not take
+the "ironclad" oath and to appoint those who could subscribe to it. An
+exception, however, was made in favor of the scalawags who had supported
+reconstruction and whose disabilities had been removed by Congress.
+
+President Grant was anxious to complete the reconstruction and
+recommended to Congress that the constitutions of Virginia and
+Mississippi be re-submitted to the people with a separate vote on the
+disfranchising sections. Congress, now in harmony with the executive,
+responded by placing the reconstruction of the three states in the hands
+of the President, but with the proviso that each state must ratify the
+Fifteenth Amendment. Grant thereupon fixed a time for voting in each
+state and directed that in Virginia and Mississippi the disfranchising
+clauses be submitted separately. As a result, the constitutions were
+ratified but proscription was voted down. The radicals secured control
+of Mississippi and Texas, but a conservative combination carried
+Virginia and thus came near keeping the state out of the Union. Finally,
+during the early months of 1870 the three states were readmitted.
+
+With respect to Georgia a peculiar condition of affairs existed. In June
+1868, Georgia had been readmitted with the first of the reconstructed
+States. The state legislature at once expelled the twenty-seven Negro
+members, on the ground that the recent legislation and the state
+constitution gave the Negroes the right to vote but not to hold office.
+Congress, which had already admitted the Georgia representatives,
+refused to receive the senators and turned the state back to military
+control. In 1869-70, Georgia was again reconstructed after a drastic
+purging of the legislature by the military commander, the reseating
+of the Negro members, and the ratification of both the Fourteenth and
+Fifteenth Amendments. The state was readmitted to representation in July
+1870, after the failure of a strong effort to extend for two years the
+carpetbag government of the state.
+
+Upon the last states to pass under the radical yoke, heavier conditions
+were imposed than upon the earlier ones. Not only were they required
+to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment, but the "fundamental conditions"
+embraced, in addition to the prohibition against future change of the
+suffrage, a requirement that the Negroes should never be deprived of
+school and office-holding rights.
+
+The congressional plan of reconstruction had thus been carried through
+by able leaders in the face of the opposition of a united white South,
+nearly half the North, the President, the Supreme Court, and in the
+beginning a majority of Congress. This success was due to the poor
+leadership of the conservatives and to the ability and solidarity of the
+radicals led by Stevens and Sumner. The radicals had a definite program;
+the moderates had not. The object of the radicals was to secure the
+supremacy in the South by the aid of the Negroes and exclusion of
+whites. Was this policy politically wise? It was at least temporarily
+successful. The choice offered by the radicals seemed to lie between
+military rule for an indefinite period and Negro suffrage; and since
+most Americans found military rule distasteful, they preferred to try
+Negro suffrage. But, after all, Negro suffrage had to be supported by
+military rule, and in the end both failed completely.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. THE UNION LEAGUE OF AMERICA
+
+The elections of 1867-68 showed that the Negroes were well organized
+under the control of the radical Republican leaders and that their
+former masters had none of the influence over the blacks in political
+matters which had been feared by some Northern friends of the Negro
+and had been hoped for by such Southern leaders as Governor Patton and
+General Hampton. Before 1865 the discipline of slavery, the influence of
+the master's family, and of the Southern church had sufficed to control
+the blacks. But after emancipation they looked to the Federal soldiers
+and Union officials as the givers of freedom and the guardians of the
+future.
+
+From the Union soldiers, especially the Negro troops, from the Northern
+teachers, the missionaries and the organizers of Negro churches, from
+the Northern officials and traveling politicians, the Negroes learned
+that their interests were not those of the whites. The attitude of the
+average white in the South often confirmed this growing estrangement. It
+was difficult even for the white leaders to explain the riots at Memphis
+and New Orleans. And those who sincerely wished well for the Negro and
+who desired to control him for the good of both races could not possibly
+assure him that he was fit for the suffrage. For even Patton and Hampton
+must tell him that they knew better than he and that he should follow
+their advice.
+
+The appeal made to freedmen by the Northern leaders was in every way
+more forceful, because it bad behind it the prestige of victory in war
+and for the future it could promise anything. Until 1867, the principal
+agency in bringing about the separation of the races had been the
+Freedmen's Bureau which, with its authority, its courts, its rations,
+clothes, and its "forty acres and a mule," did effective work in
+breaking down the influence of the master. But to understand fully the
+almost absolute control exercised over the blacks in 1867-68 by alien
+adventurers, one must examine the workings of an oath-bound society
+known as the Union or Loyal League. It was this order, dominated by a
+few radical whites, which organized, disciplined, and controlled the
+ignorant Negro masses and paralyzed the influence of the conservative
+whites.
+
+The Union League of America had its origin in Ohio in the fall of 1862,
+when the outlook for the Union cause was gloomy. The moderate policies
+of the Lincoln Administration had alienated those in favor of extreme
+measures; the Confederates had won military successes in the field; the
+Democrats had made some gains in the elections; the Copperheads* were
+actively opposed to the Washington Government; the Knights of the Golden
+Circle were organizing to resist the continuance of the war; and the
+Emancipation Proclamation had chilled the loyalty of many Union men,
+which was everywhere at a low ebb, especially in the Northern cities.
+It was to counteract these depressing influences that the Union League
+movement was begun among those who were associated in the work of the
+United States Sanitary Commission. Observing the threatening state of
+public opinion, members of this organization proposed that "loyalty be
+organized, consolidated and made effective."
+
+     * See "Abraham Lincoln and the Union", by Nathaniel W.
+     Stephenson (in "The Chronicles of America"), pp. 156-7,
+     234-5
+
+
+The first organization was made by eleven men in Cleveland, Ohio, in
+November 1862. The Philadelphia Union League was organized a month
+later, and in January 1863, the New York Union League followed. The
+members were pledged to uncompromising and unconditional loyalty to the
+Union, to complete subordination of political views to this loyalty, and
+to the repudiation of any belief in state rights. The other large cities
+followed the example of Philadelphia and New York, and soon Leagues,
+connected in a loose federation, were formed all through the North. They
+were social as well as political in their character and assumed as their
+task the stimulation and direction of loyal Union opinion.
+
+As the Union armies proceeded to occupy the South, the Union League sent
+its agents among the disaffected Southern people. Its agents cared for
+Negro refugees in the contraband camps and in the North. In such work
+the League cooperated with the various Freedmen's Aid Societies, the
+Department of Negro Affairs, and later with the Freedmen's Bureau. Part
+of the work of the League was to distribute campaign literature, and
+many of the radical pamphlets on reconstruction and the Negro problem
+bore the Union League imprint. The New York League sent out about
+seventy thousand copies of various publications, while the Philadelphia
+League far surpassed this record, circulating within eight years four
+million five hundred thousand copies of 144 different pamphlets. The
+literature consisted largely of accounts of "Southern outrages" taken
+from the reports of Bureau agents and similar sources.
+
+With the close of the Civil War the League did not cease its active
+interest in things political. It was one of the first organizations to
+declare for Negro suffrage and the disfranchisement of Confederates; it
+held steadily to this declaration during the four years following the
+war; and it continued as a sort of bureau in the radical Republican
+party for the purpose of controlling the Negro vote in the South. Its
+representatives were found in the lobbies of Congress demanding extreme
+measures, endorsing the reconstruction policies of Congress, and
+condemning the course of the President. After the first year or two of
+reconstruction, the Leagues in the larger Northern cities began to grow
+away from the strictly political Union League of America and tended to
+become mere social clubs for members of the same political belief. The
+eminently respectable Philadelphia and New York clubs had little in
+common with the leagues of the Southern and Border States except a
+general adherence to the radical program.
+
+Even before the end of the war the League was extending its organization
+into the parts of the Confederacy held by the Federal forces, admitting
+to membership the army officers and the leading Unionists, though
+maintaining for the sake of the latter "a discreet secrecy." With the
+close of the war and the establishment of army posts over the South,
+the League grew rapidly. The civilians who followed the army, the Bureau
+agents, the missionaries, and the Northern teachers formed one class of
+membership; and the loyalists of the hill and mountain country, who had
+become disaffected toward the Confederate administration and had formed
+such orders as the Heroes of America, the Red String Band, and the
+Peace Society, formed another class. Soon there were added to these the
+deserters, a few old line Whigs who intensely disliked the Democrats,
+and others who decided to cast their lot with the victors. The
+disaffected politicians of the up-country, who wanted to be cared for in
+the reconstruction, saw in the organization a means of dislodging from
+power the political leaders of the low country. It has been estimated
+that thirty percent of the white men of the hill and mountain counties
+of the South joined the Union League in 1865-66. They cared little about
+the original objects of the order but hoped to make it the nucleus of an
+anti-Democratic political organization.
+
+But on the admission of Negroes into the lodges or councils controlled
+by Northern men the native white members began to withdraw. From the
+beginning the Bureau agents, the teachers, and the preachers had been
+holding meetings of Negroes, to whom they gave advice about the
+problems of freedom. Very early these advisers of the blacks grasped the
+possibilities inherent in their control of the schools, the rationing
+system, and the churches. By the spring of 1866, the Negroes were widely
+organized under this leadership, and it needed but slight change to
+convert the Negro meetings into local councils of the Union League.* As
+soon as it seemed likely that Congress would win in its struggle with
+the President the guardians of the Negro planned their campaign for the
+control of the race. Negro leaders were organized into councils of
+the League or into Union Republican Clubs. Over the South went the
+organizers, until by 1868 the last Negroes were gathered into the fold.
+
+     * Of these teachers of the local blacks, E. L. Godkin,
+     editor of the New York Nation, who had supported the
+     reconstruction acts, said: "Worse instructors for men
+     emerging from slavery and coming for the first time face to
+     face with the problems of free life than the radical
+     agitators who have undertaken the political guidance of the
+     blacks it would be hard to meet with."
+
+
+The native whites did not all desert the Union League when the Negroes
+were brought in. Where the blacks were most numerous the desertion of
+whites was general, but in the regions where they were few some of
+the whites remained for several years. The elections of 1868 showed a
+falling off of the white radical vote from that of 1867, one measure of
+the extent of loss of whites. From this time forward the order consisted
+mainly of blacks with enough whites for leaders. In the Black Belt the
+membership of native whites was discouraged by requiring an oath to the
+effect that secession was treason. The carpetbagger had found that he
+could control the Negro without the help of the scalawag. The League
+organization was soon extended and centralized; in every black district
+there was a Council; for the state there was a Grand Council; and for
+the United States there was a National Grand Council with headquarters
+in New York City.
+
+The influence of the League over the Negro was due in large degree to
+the mysterious secrecy of the meetings, the weird initiation ceremony
+that made him feel fearfully good from his head to his heels, the
+imposing ritual, and the songs. The ritual, it is said, was not used
+in the North; it was probably adopted for the particular benefit of the
+African. The would-be Leaguer was informed that the emblems of the
+order were the altar, the Bible, the Declaration of Independence, the
+Constitution of the United States, the flag of the Union, censer,
+sword, gavel, ballot box, sickle, shuttle, anvil, and other emblems of
+industry. He was told to the accompaniment of clanking chains and groans
+that the objects of the order were to preserve liberty, to perpetuate
+the Union, to maintain the laws and the Constitution, to secure the
+ascendancy of American institutions, to protect, defend, and strengthen
+all loyal men and members of the Union League in all rights of person
+and property, to demand the elevation of labor, to aid in the education
+of laboring men, and to teach the duties of American citizenship.
+This enumeration of the objects of the League sounded well and was
+impressive. At this point the Negro was always willing to take an oath
+of secrecy, after which he was asked to swear with a solemn oath to
+support the principles of the Declaration of Independence, to pledge
+himself to resist all attempts to overthrow the United States, to strive
+for the maintenance of liberty, the elevation of labor, the education
+of all people in the duties of citizenship, to practice friendship and
+charity to all of the order, and to support for election or appointment
+to office only such men as were supporters of these principles and
+measures.
+
+The council then sang "Hail, Columbia!" and "The Star Spangled Banner,"
+after which an official lectured the candidates, saying that though
+the designs of traitors had been thwarted, there were yet to be secured
+legislative triumphs and the complete ascendancy of the true principles
+of popular government, equal liberty, education and elevation of the
+workmen, and the overthrow at the ballot box of the old oligarchy of
+political leaders. After prayer by the chaplain, the room was darkened,
+alcohol on salt flared up with a ghastly light as the "fire of liberty,"
+and the members joined hands in a circle around the candidate, who was
+made to place one hand on the flag and, with the other raised, swear
+again to support the government and to elect true Union men to office.
+Then placing his hand on a Bible, for the third time he swore to keep
+his oath, and repeated after the president "the Freedmen's Pledge":
+"To defend and perpetuate freedom and the Union, I pledge my life, my
+fortune, and my sacred honor. So help me God!" "John Brown's Body" was
+then sung, the president charged the members in a long speech concerning
+the principles of the order, and the marshal instructed the neophyte
+in the signs. To pass one's self as a Leaguer, the "Four L's" had to
+be given: (1) with right hand raised to heaven, thumb and third finger
+touching ends over palm, pronounce "Liberty"; (2) bring the hand down
+over the shoulder and say "Lincoln"; (3) drop the hand open at the side
+and say "Loyal"; (4) catch the thumb in the vest or in the waistband and
+pronounce "League." This ceremony of initiation proved a most effective
+means of impressing and controlling the Negro through his love and fear
+of secret, mysterious, and midnight mummery. An oath taken in daylight
+might be forgotten before the next day; not so an oath taken in the dead
+of night under such impressive circumstances. After passing through the
+ordeal, the Negro usually remained faithful.
+
+In each populous precinct there was at least one council of the League,
+and always one for blacks. In each town or city there were two councils,
+one for the whites, and another, with white officers, for the blacks.
+The council met once a week, sometimes oftener, nearly always at night,
+and in a Negro church or schoolhouse. Guards, armed with rifles and
+shotguns, were stationed about the place of meeting in order to keep
+away intruders. Members of some councils made it a practice to attend
+the meetings armed as if for battle. In these meetings the Negroes
+listened to inflammatory speeches by the would-be statesmen of the new
+regime; here they were drilled in a passionate conviction that their
+interests and those of the Southern whites were eternally at war.
+
+White men who joined the order before the Negroes were admitted and
+who left when the latter became members asserted that the Negroes were
+taught in these meetings that the only way to have peace and plenty, to
+get "the forty acres and a mule," was to kill some of the leading whites
+in each community as a warning to others. In North Carolina twenty-eight
+barns were burned in one county by Negroes who believed that Governor
+Holden, the head of the State League, had ordered it. The council
+in Tuscumbia, Alabama, received advice from Memphis to use the torch
+because the blacks were at war with the white race. The advice was
+taken. Three men went in front of the council as an advance guard, three
+followed with coal oil and fire, and others guarded the rear. The
+plan was to burn the whole town, but first one Negro and then another
+insisted on having some white man's house spared because "he is a good
+man." In the end no residences were burned, and a happy compromise
+was effected by burning the Female Academy. Three of the leaders were
+afterwards lynched.
+
+The general belief of the whites was that the ultimate object of the
+order was to secure political power and thus bring about on a large
+scale the confiscation of the property of Confederates, and meanwhile
+to appropriate and destroy the property of their political opponents
+wherever possible. Chicken houses, pigpens, vegetable gardens, and
+orchards were visited by members returning from the midnight conclaves.
+During the presidential campaign of 1868, the North Carolina League sent
+out circular instructions to the blacks advising them to drill regularly
+and to join the militia, for if Grant were not elected the Negroes would
+go back to slavery; if he were elected, the Negroes were to have farms,
+mules, and offices.
+
+As soon as possible after the war the Negroes had supplied themselves
+with guns and dogs as badges of freedom. They carried their guns to the
+League meetings, often marching in military formation, went through the
+drill there, marched home again along the roads, shouting, firing, and
+indulging in boasts and threats against persons whom they disliked.
+Later, military parades in the daytime were much favored. Several
+hundred Negroes would march up and down the streets, abusing whites,
+and shoving them off the sidewalk or out of the road. But on the whole,
+there was very little actual violence, though the whites were much
+alarmed at times. That outrages were comparatively few was due, not
+to any sensible teachings of the leaders, but to the fundamental good
+nature of the blacks, who were generally content with mere impudence.
+
+The relations between the races, indeed, continued on the whole to
+be friendly until 1867-68. For a while, in some localities before the
+advent of the League, and in others where the Bureau was conducted by
+native magistrates, the Negroes looked to their old masters for guidance
+and advice; and the latter, for the good of both races, were most eager
+to retain a moral control over the blacks. They arranged barbecues and
+picnics for the Negroes, made speeches, gave good advice, and believed
+that everything promised well. Sometimes the Negroes themselves arranged
+the festival and invited prominent whites, for whom a separate table
+attended by Negro waiters was reserved; and after dinner there followed
+speeches by both whites and blacks.
+
+With the organization of the League, the Negroes grew more reserved,
+and finally became openly unfriendly to the whites. The League alone,
+however, was not responsible for this change. The League and the Bureau
+had to some extent the same personnel, and it is frequently impossible
+to distinguish clearly between the influence of the two. In many ways
+the League was simply the political side of the Bureau. The preaching
+and teaching missionaries were also at work. And apart from the
+organized influences at work, the poor whites never laid aside their
+hostility towards the blacks, bond or free.
+
+When the campaigns grew exciting, the discipline of the order was used
+to prevent the Negroes from attending Democratic meetings and hearing
+Democratic speakers. The leaders even went farther and forbade the
+attendance of the blacks at political meetings where the speakers were
+not endorsed by the League. Almost invariably the scalawag disliked the
+Leaguer, black or white, and as a political teacher often found himself
+proscribed by the League. At a Republican mass meeting in Alabama, a
+white Republican who wanted to make a speech was shouted down by the
+Negroes because he was "opposed to the Loyal League." He then went to
+another place to speak but was followed by the crowd, which refused to
+allow him to say anything. All Republicans in good standing had to join
+the League and swear that secession was treason--a rather stiff dose for
+the scalawag. Judge (later Governor) David P. Lewis, of Alabama, was a
+member for a short while but he soon became disgusted and published
+a denunciation of the order. Albion W. Tourgee, the author, a radical
+judge, was the first chief of the League in North Carolina and was
+succeeded by Governor Holden. In Alabama, Generals Swayne, Spencer, and
+Warner, all candidates for the United States Senate, hastened to join
+the order.
+
+As soon as a candidate was nominated by the League, it was the duty of
+every member to support him actively. Failure to do so resulted in a
+fine or other more severe punishment, and members who had been expelled
+were still considered under the control of the officials. The League
+was, in fact, the machine of the radical party, and all candidates had
+to be governed by its edicts. As the Montgomery Council declared, the
+Union League was "the right arm of the Union-Republican party in the
+United States."
+
+Every Negro was ex colore a member or under the control of the League.
+In the opinion of the League, white Democrats were bad enough, but
+black Democrats were not to be tolerated. It was almost necessary, as
+a measure of personal safety, for each black to support the radical
+program. It was possible in some cases for a Negro to refrain from
+taking an active part in political affairs. He might even fail to vote.
+But it was actually dangerous for a black to be a Democrat; that is, to
+try to follow his old master in politics. The whites in many cases were
+forced to advise their few faithful black friends to vote the radical
+ticket in order to escape mistreatment. Those who showed Democratic
+leanings were proscribed in Negro society and expelled from Negro
+churches; the Negro women would not "proshay" (appreciate) a black
+Democrat. Such a one was sure to find that influence was being brought
+to bear upon his dusky sweetheart or his wife to cause him to see the
+error of his ways, and persistent adherence to the white party would
+result in his losing her. The women were converted to radicalism before
+the men, and they almost invariably used their influence strongly in
+behalf of the League. If moral suasion failed to cause the delinquent to
+see the light, other methods were used. Threats were common and usually
+sufficed. Fines were levied by the League on recalcitrant members. In
+case of the more stubborn, a sound beating was effective to bring about
+a change of heart. The offending party was "bucked and gagged," or he
+was tied by the thumbs and thrashed. Usually the sufferer was too afraid
+to complain of the way he was treated.
+
+Some of the methods of the Loyal League were similar to those of
+the later Ku Klux Klan. Anonymous warnings were sent to obnoxious
+individuals, houses were burned, notices were posted at night in public
+places and on the houses of persons who had incurred the hostility of
+the order. In order to destroy the influence of the whites where kindly
+relations still existed, an "exodus order" issued through the League
+directed all members to leave their old homes and obtain work elsewhere.
+Some of the blacks were loath to comply with this order, but to
+remonstrances from the whites the usual reply was: "De word done sent to
+de League. We got to go." For special meetings the Negroes were in
+some regions called together by signal guns. In this way the call for a
+gathering went out over a county in a few minutes and a few hours later
+nearly all the members in the county assembled at the appointed place.
+
+Negroes as organizing agents were inclined to go to extremes and for
+that reason were not so much used. In Bullock County, Alabama, a council
+of the League was organized under the direction of a Negro emissary, who
+proceeded to assume the government of the community. A list of crimes
+and punishments was adopted, a court with various officials was
+established, and during the night the Negroes who opposed the new
+regime were arrested. But the black sheriff and his deputy were in
+turn arrested by the civil authorities. The Negroes then organized for
+resistance, flocked into the county seat, and threatened to exterminate
+the whites and take possession of the county. Their agents visited
+the plantations and forced the laborers to join them by showing orders
+purporting to be from General Swayne, the commander in the state, giving
+them the authority to kill all who resisted them. Swayne, however, sent
+out detachments of troops and arrested fifteen of the ringleaders, and
+the League government collapsed.
+
+After it was seen that existing political institutions were to be
+overturned in the process of reconstruction, the white councils of the
+League and, to a certain extent, the Negro councils were converted into
+training schools for the leaders of the new party soon to be formed in
+the state by act of Congress. The few whites who were in control were
+unwilling to admit more white members to share in the division of the
+spoils; terms of admission became more stringent, and, especially
+after the passage of the reconstruction acts in March 1867, many white
+applicants were rejected. The alien element from the North was in
+control and as a result, where the blacks were numerous, the largest
+plums fell to the carpetbaggers. The Negro leaders--the politicians,
+preachers, and teachers--trained in the League acted as subordinates
+to the whites and were sent out to drum up the country Negroes when
+elections drew near. The Negroes were given minor positions when offices
+were more plentiful than carpetbaggers. Later, after some complaint, a
+larger share of the offices fell to them. The League counted its largest
+white membership in 1865-66, and after that date it steadily decreased.
+The largest Negro membership was recorded in 1867 and 1868. The total
+membership was never made known. In North Carolina the order claimed
+from seventy-five thousand to one hundred and twenty-five thousand
+members; in states with larger Negro populations the membership was
+probably quite as large. After the election of 1868, only the councils
+in the towns remained active, many of them transformed into political
+clubs, loosely organized under local political leaders. The plantation
+Negro needed less looking after, and except in the largest towns he
+became a kind of visiting member of the council in the town. The League
+as a political organization gradually died out by 1870.*
+
+     * The Ku Klux Klan had much to do with the decline of the
+     organization. The League as the ally and successor of the
+     Freedmen's Bureau was one of the causes of the Ku Klux
+     movement, because it helped to create the conditions which
+     made such a movement inevitable. As early as 1870 the
+     radical leaders missed the support formerly given by the
+     League, and an urgent appeal was sent out all over the South
+     from headquarters in New York advocating its reestablishment
+     to assist in carrying the elections of 1870.
+
+
+The League had served its purpose. It had enabled a few outsiders
+to control the Negro by separating the races politically and it had
+compelled the Negroes to vote as radicals for several years, when
+without its influence they would either not have voted at all or would
+have voted as Democrats along with their former masters. The order was
+necessary to the existence of the radical party in the Black Belt. No
+ordinary political organization could have welded the blacks into a
+solid party. The Freedmen's Bureau, which had much influence over the
+Negroes, was too weak in numbers to control the Negroes in politics.
+The League finally absorbed the personnel of the Bureau and turned its
+prestige and its organization to political advantage.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. CHURCH AND SCHOOL
+
+Reconstruction in the state was closely related to reconstruction in the
+churches and the schools. Here also were to be found the same hostile
+elements: Negro and white, Unionist and Confederate, victor and
+vanquished. The church was at that time an important institution in the
+South, more so than in the North, and in both sections more important
+than it is today. It was inevitable, therefore, that ecclesiastical
+reconstruction should give rise to bitter feelings.
+
+Something should be said of conditions in the churches when the Federal
+armies occupied the land. The Southern organizations had lost many
+ministers and many of their members, and frequently their buildings
+were used as hospitals or had been destroyed. Their administration was
+disorganized and their treasuries were empty. The Unionists, scattered
+here and there but numerous in the mountain districts, no longer wished
+to attend the Southern churches.
+
+The military censorship in church matters, which continued for a year in
+some districts, was irritating, especially in the Border States and in
+the Union districts where Northern preachers installed by the army were
+endeavoring to remain against the will of the people. Mobs sometimes
+drove them out; others were left to preach to empty houses or to a few
+Unionists and officers, while the congregation withdrew to build a new
+church. The problems of Negro membership in the white churches and of
+the future relations of the Northern and Southern denominations were
+pressing for settlement.
+
+All Northern organizations acted in 1865 upon the assumption that a
+reunion of the churches must take place and that the divisions existing
+before the war should not be continued, since slavery, the cause of the
+division, had been destroyed. But they insisted that the reunion must
+take place upon terms named by the "loyal" churches, that the Negroes
+must also come under "loyal" religious direction, and that tests must be
+applied to the Confederate sinners asking for admission, in order that
+the enormity of their crimes should be made plain to them. But this
+policy did not succeed. The Confederates objected to being treated as
+"rebels and traitors" and to "sitting upon stools of repentance" before
+they should be received again into the fold.
+
+Only two denominations were reunited--the Methodist Protestant, the
+northern section of which came over to the southern, and the Protestant
+Episcopal, in which moderate counsels prevailed and into which
+Southerners were welcomed back. The Southern Baptists maintained their
+separate existence and reorganized the Southern Baptist Convention, to
+which came many of the Baptist associations in the Border States; the
+Catholics did not divide before 1861 and therefore had no reconstruction
+problems to solve; and the smaller denominations maintained the
+organizations which they had before 1861. A Unionist preacher testified
+before the Joint Committee on Reconstruction that even the Southern
+Quakers "are about as decided in regard to the respectability of
+secession as any other class of people."
+
+Two other great Southern churches, the Presbyterian and the Methodist
+Episcopal, grew stronger after the Civil War. The tendency toward
+reunion of the Presbyterians was checked when one Northern branch
+declared as "a condition precedent to the admission of southern
+applicants that these confess as sinful all opinions before held in
+regard to slavery, nullification, rebellion and slavery, and stigmatize
+secession as a crime and the withdrawal of the southern churches as a
+schism." Another Northern group declared that southern ministers must
+be placed on probation and must either prove their loyalty or profess
+repentance for disloyalty and repudiate their former opinions. As a
+result several Presbyterian bodies in the South joined in a strong
+union, to which also adhered the synods of several Border States.
+
+The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was confronted with conditions
+similar to those which prevented the reunion of the Presbyterians. The
+Northern church, according to the declaration of its authorities, also
+came down to divide the spoils and to "disintegrate and absorb" the
+"schismatic" Southern churches. Already many Southern pulpits were
+filled with Northern Methodist ministers placed there under military
+protection; and when they finally realized that reunion was not
+possible, these Methodist worthies resolved to occupy the late
+Confederacy as a mission field and to organize congregations of blacks
+and whites who were "not tainted with treason." Bishops and clergymen
+charged with this work carried it on vigorously for a few years in close
+connection with political reconstruction.
+
+The activities of the Northern Methodists stimulated the Southern
+Methodists to a quick reorganization. The surviving bishops met in
+August 1865, and bound together their shaken church. In reply to
+suggestions of reunion they asserted that the Northern Methodists had
+become "incurably radical," were too much involved in politics, and,
+further, that they had, without right, seized and were still holding
+Southern church buildings. They objected also to the way the Northern
+church referred to the Southerners as "schismatics" and to the Southern
+church as one built on slavery and therefore, now that slavery was
+gone, to be reconstructed. The bishops warned their people against the
+missionary efforts of the Northern brethren and against the attempts
+to "disintegrate and absorb" Methodism in the South. Within five years
+after the war, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was greatly
+increased in numbers by the accession of conferences in Maryland,
+Kentucky, Virginia, Missouri, and even from above the Ohio, while
+the Northern Methodist Church was able to organize only a few white
+congregations outside of the stronger Unionist districts, but continued
+to labor in the South as a missionary field.*
+
+     * The church situation after the war was well described in
+     1866 by an editorial writer in the "Nation" who pointed out
+     that the Northern churches thought the South determined to
+     make the religious division permanent, though "slavery no
+     longer furnishes a pretext for separation." "Too much pains
+     were taken to bring about an ecclesiastical reunion, and
+     irritating offers of reconciliation are made by the Northern
+     churches, all based on the assumption that the South has not
+     only sinned, but sinned knowingly, in slavery and in war. We
+     expect them to be penitent and to gladly accept our offers
+     of forgiveness. But the Southern people look upon a 'loyal'
+     missionary as a political emissary, and 'loyal' men do not
+     at present possess the necessary qualifications for
+     evangelizing the Southerners or softening their hearts, and
+     are sure not to succeed in doing so. We look upon their
+     defeat as retribution and expect them to do the same. It
+     will do no good if we tell the Southerner that 'we will
+     forgive them if they will confess that they are criminals,
+     offer to pray with them, preach with them, and labor with
+     them over their hideous sins.'"
+
+
+But if the large Southern churches held their white membership and even
+gained in numbers and territory, they fought a losing fight to retain
+their black members. It was assumed by Northern ecclesiastics that
+whether a reunion of whites took place or not, the Negroes would receive
+spiritual guidance from the North. This was necessary, they said,
+because the Southern whites were ignorant and impoverished and because
+"the state of mind among even the best classes of Southern whites
+rendered them incapable... of doing justice to the people whom they
+had so long persistently wronged." Further, it was also necessary for
+political reasons to remove the Negroes from Southern religious control.
+
+For obvious reasons, however, the Southern churches wanted to hold their
+Negro members. They declared themselves in favor of Negro education and
+of better organized religious work among the blacks, and made every
+sort of accommodation to hold them. The Baptists organized separate
+congregations, with white or black pastors as desired, and associations
+of black churches. In 1866 the Methodist General Conference authorized
+separate congregations, quarterly conferences, annual conferences, even
+a separate jurisdiction, with Negro preachers, presiding elders, and
+bishops--but all to no avail. Every, Northern political, religious, or
+military agency in the South worked for separation, and Negro preachers
+were not long in seeing the greater advantages which they would have in
+independent churches.
+
+Much of the separate organization was accomplished in mutual good
+will, particularly in the Baptist ranks. The Reverend I. T. Tichenor, a
+prominent Baptist minister, has described the process as it took place
+in the First Baptist Church in Montgomery. The church had nine hundred
+members, of whom six hundred were black. The Negroes received a regular
+organization of their own under the supervision of the white pastors.
+When a separation of the two bodies was later deemed desirable, it was
+inaugurated by a conference of the Negroes which passed a resolution
+couched in the kindliest terms, suggesting the wisdom of the division,
+and asking the concurrence of the white church in such action. The white
+church cordially approved the movement, and the two bodies united in
+erecting a suitable house of worship for the Negroes. Until the new
+church was completed, both congregations continued to occupy jointly the
+old house of worship. The new house was paid for in large measure by the
+white members of the church and by individuals in the community. As soon
+as it was completed, the colored church moved into it with its pastor,
+board of deacons, committees of all sorts, and the whole machinery
+of church life went into action without a jar. Similar accommodations
+occurred in all the states of the South.
+
+The Methodists lost the greater part of their Negro membership to
+two organizations which came down from the North in 1865--the African
+Methodist Episcopal Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Church,
+Zion. Large numbers also went over to the Northern Methodist Church.
+After losing nearly three hundred thousand members, the Southern
+Methodists came to the conclusion that the remaining seventy-eight
+thousand Negroes would be more comfortable in a separate organization
+and therefore began in 1866 the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, with
+bishops, conferences, and all the accompaniments of the parent Methodist
+Church, which continued to give friendly aid but exercised no control.
+For many years the Colored Methodist Church was under fire from the
+other Negro denominations, who called it the "rebel," the "Democratic,"
+the "old slavery" church.
+
+The Negro members of the Cumberland Presbyterians were similarly set off
+into a small African organization. The Southern Presbyterians and the
+Episcopalians established separate congregations and missions under
+white supervision but sanctioned no independent Negro organization.
+Consequently the Negroes soon deserted these churches and went with
+their own kind.
+
+Resentment at the methods employed by the Northern religious
+carpetbaggers was strong among the Southern whites. "Emissaries of
+Christ and the radical party" they were called by one Alabama
+leader. Governor Lindsay of the same state asserted that the Northern
+missionaries caused race hatred by teaching the Negroes to regard the
+whites as their natural enemies, who, if possible, would put them back
+in slavery. Others were charged with teaching that to be on the safe
+side, the blacks should get into a Northern church, and that "Christ
+died for Negroes and Yankees, not for rebels."
+
+The scalawags, also, developed a dislike of the Northern church
+work among the Negroes, and it was impossible to organize mixed
+congregations. Of the Reverend A. S. Lakin, a well-known agent of the
+Northern Methodist Church in Alabama, Nicholas Davis, a North Alabama
+Unionist and scalawag, said to the Ku Klux Committee: "The character of
+his [Lakin's] speech was this: to teach the Negroes that every man that
+was born and raised in the Southern country was their enemy, that there
+was no use trusting them, no matter what they said--if they said they
+were for the Union or anything else. 'No use talking, they are your
+enemies.' And he made a pretty good speech, too; awful; a hell of a one;
+... inflammatory and game, too.... It was enough to provoke the devil.
+Did all the mischief he could... I tell you, that old fellow is a hell
+of an old rascal."
+
+For a time the white churches were annoyed by intrusions of strange
+blacks set on by those who were bent on separating the races. Frequently
+there were feuds in white or black congregations over the question of
+joining some Northern body. Disputes over church property also arose
+and continued for years. Lakin, referred to above, was charged with
+"stealing" Negro congregations and uniting them with the Cincinnati
+Conference without their knowledge. The Negroes were urged to demand
+title to all buildings formerly used for Negro worship, and the
+Constitutional Convention of Alabama in 1867 directed that such property
+must be turned over to them when claimed.
+
+The agents of the Northern churches were not greatly different from
+other carpetbaggers and adventurers taking advantage of the general
+confusion to seize a little power. Many were unscrupulous; others,
+sincere and honest but narrow, bigoted, and intolerant, filled with
+distrust of the Southern whites and with corresponding confidence in the
+blacks and in themselves. The missionary and church publications were
+quite as severe on the Southern people as any radical Congressman. The
+publications of the Freedmen's Aid Society furnish illustrations of the
+feelings and views of those engaged in the Southern work. They in turn
+were made to feel the effects of a merciless social proscription. For
+this some of them cared not at all, while others or their families felt
+it keenly. One woman missionary wrote that she was delighted when a
+Southern white would speak to her. A preacher in Virginia declared that
+"the females, those especially whose pride has been humbled, are more
+intense in their bitterness and endeavor to keep up a social ostracism
+against Union and Northern people." The Ku Klux raids were directed
+against preachers and congregations whose conduct was disagreeable to
+the whites. Lakin asserted that while he was conducting a great revival
+meeting among the hills of northern Alabama, Governor Smith and other
+prominent and sinful scalawag politicians were there "under conviction"
+and about to become converted. But in came the Klan and the congregation
+scattered.
+
+Smith and the others were so angry and frightened that their good
+feelings were dissipated, and the devil reentered them, so that Lakin
+said he was never able to "get a hold on them" again. For the souls lost
+that night he held the Klan responsible. Lakin told several marvelous
+stories of his hairbreadth escapes from death by assassination which, if
+true, would be enough to ruin the reputation of northern Alabama men for
+marksmanship.
+
+The reconstruction ended with conditions in the churches similar to
+those in politics: the races were separated and unfriendly; Northern and
+Southern church organizations were divided; and between them, especially
+in the border and mountain districts, there existed factional quarrels
+of a political origin, for every Northern Methodist was a Republican and
+every Southern Methodist was a Democrat.
+
+The schools of the South, like the churches and political institutions,
+were thrown into the melting pot of reconstruction. The spirit in which
+the work was begun may be judged from the tone of the addresses made at
+a meeting of the National Teachers Association in 1865. The president,
+S. S. Greene, declared that "the old slave States are to be the new
+missionary ground for the national school teacher." Francis Wayland, the
+former president of Brown University, remarked that "it has been a war
+of education and patriotism against ignorance and barbarism." President
+Hill of Harvard spoke of the "new work of spreading knowledge and
+intellectual culture over the regions that sat in darkness." Other
+speakers asserted that the leading Southern whites were as much opposed
+to free schools as to free governments and "we must treat them as
+western farmers do the stumps in their clearings, work around them and
+let them rot out"; that the majority of the whites were more ignorant
+than the slaves; and that the Negro must be educated and strengthened
+against "the wiles, the guile, and hate of his baffled masters and their
+minions." The New England Freedmen's Aid Society considered it necessary
+to educate the Negro "as a counteracting influence against the evil
+councils and designs of the white freemen."
+
+The tasks that confronted the Southern States in 1865-67 were two:
+first, to restore the shattered school systems of the whites; and
+second, to arrange for the education of the Negroes. Education of the
+Negro slave had been looked upon as dangerous and had been generally
+forbidden. A small number of Negroes could read and write, but there
+were at the close of the war no schools for the children. Before 1861,
+each state had developed at least the outlines of a school system.
+Though hindered in development by the sparseness of the population and
+by the prevalence in some districts of the Virginia doctrine that free
+schools were only for the poor, public schools were nevertheless in
+existence in 1861. Academies and colleges, however, were thronged with
+students. When the war ended, the public schools were disorganized,
+and the private academies and the colleges were closed. Teachers and
+students had been dispersed; buildings had been burned or used
+for hospitals and laboratories; and public libraries had virtually
+disappeared.
+
+The colleges made efforts to open in the fall of 1865. Only one student
+presented himself at the University of Alabama for matriculation; but
+before June 1866, the stronger colleges were again in operation. The
+public or semi-public schools for the whites also opened in the fall.
+In the cities where Federal military authorities had brought about
+the employment of Northern teachers, there was some friction. In
+New Orleans, for example, the teachers required the children to sing
+Northern songs and patriotic airs. When the Confederates were restored
+to power, these teachers were dismissed.
+
+The movement toward Negro education was general throughout the South.
+Among the blacks themselves there was an intense desire to learn. They
+wished to read the Bible, to be preachers, to be as the old master and
+not have to work. Day and night and Sunday they crowded the schools.
+According to an observer,* "not only are individuals seen at study, and
+under the most untoward circumstances, but in very many places I have
+found what I will call 'native schools,' often rude and very imperfect,
+but there they are, a group, perhaps, of all ages, trying to learn. Some
+young man, some woman, or old preacher, in cellar, or shed, or corner
+of a Negro meeting-house, with the alphabet in hand, or a town
+spelling-book, is their teacher. All are full of enthusiasm with the new
+knowledge the book is imparting to them."
+
+     * J. W. Alvord, Superintendent of Schools for the Freedmen's
+     Bureau, 1866.
+
+
+Not only did the Negroes want schooling, but both the North and the
+South proposed to give it to them. Neither side was actuated entirely by
+altruistic motives. A Hampton Institute teacher in later days remarked:
+"When the combat was over and the Yankee school-ma'am followed in the
+train of the northern armies, the business of educating the Negroes was
+a continuation of hostilities against the vanquished and was so regarded
+to a considerable extent on both sides."
+
+The Southern churches, through their bishops and clergy, the newspapers,
+and prominent individuals such as J. L. M. Curry, John B. Gordon, J.
+L. Orr, Governors Brown, Moore, and Patton, came out in favor of Negro
+education. Of this movement General Swayne said: "Quite early.... the
+several religious denominations took strong ground in favor of the
+education of the freedmen. The principal argument was an appeal to
+sectional and sectarian prejudice, lest, the work being inevitable,
+the influence which must come from it be realized by others; but it is
+believed that this was but the shield and weapon which men of unselfish
+principle found necessary at first." The newspapers took the attitude
+that the Southern whites should teach the Negroes because it was their
+duty, because it was good policy, and because if they did not do so some
+one else would. The "Advertiser" of Montgomery stated that education
+was a danger in slavery times but that under freedom ignorance became
+a danger. For a time there were numerous schools taught by crippled
+Confederates and by Southern women.
+
+But the education of the Negro, like his religious training, was
+taken from the control of the Southern white and was placed under the
+direction of the Northern teachers and missionaries who swarmed into the
+country under the fostering care of the Freedmen's Bureau, the Northern
+churches, and the various Freedmen's Aid Societies. In three years the
+Bureau spent six million dollars on Negro schools and everywhere it
+exercised supervision over them. The teachers pursued a policy akin
+to that of the religious leaders. One Southerner likened them to
+the "plagues of Egypt," another described them as "saints, fools,
+incendiaries, fakirs, and plain business men and women." A Southern
+woman remarked that "their spirit was often high and noble so far as the
+black man's elevation was concerned, but toward the white it was bitter,
+judicial, and unrelenting." The Northern teachers were charged with
+ignorance of social conditions, with fraternizing with the blacks, and
+with teaching them that the Southerners were traitors, "murderers of
+Lincoln," who had been cruel taskmasters and who now wanted to restore
+servitude.
+
+The reaction against Negro education, which began to show itself before
+reconstruction was inaugurated, found expression in the view of most
+whites that "schooling ruins a Negro." A more intelligent opinion was
+that of J. L. M. Curry, a lifelong advocate of Negro education:
+
+"It is not just to condemn the Negro for the education which he received
+in the early years after the war. That was the period of reconstruction,
+the saturnalia of misgovernment, the greatest possible hindrance to the
+progress of the freedmen.... The education was unsettling, demoralizing,
+[and it] pandered to a wild frenzy for schooling as a quick method
+of reversing social and political conditions. Nothing could have been
+better devised for deluding the poor Negro and making him the tool,
+the slave of corrupt taskmasters. Education is a natural consequence
+of citizenship and enfranchisement... of freedom and humanity. But with
+deliberate purpose to subject the Southern States to Negro domination,
+and secure the States permanently for partisan ends, the education
+adopted was contrary to commonsense, to human experience, to all noble
+purposes. The curriculum was for a people in the highest degree of
+civilization; the aptitude and capabilities and needs of the Negro were
+wholly disregarded. Especial stress was laid on classics and liberal
+culture to bring the race per saltum to the same plane with their former
+masters, and realize the theory of social and political equality. A race
+more highly civilized, with best heredities and environments, could
+not have been coddled with more disregard of all the teachings of human
+history and the necessities of the race. Colleges and universities,
+established and conducted by the Freedmen's Bureau and Northern churches
+and societies, sprang up like mushrooms, and the teachers, ignorant,
+fanatical, without self-poise, proceeded to make all possible mischief.
+It is irrational, cruel, to hold the Negro, under such strange
+conditions, responsible for all the ill consequences of bad education,
+unwise teachers, reconstruction villainies, and partisan schemes."
+
+     * Quoted in "Proceedings of the Montgomery Conference on
+     Race Problems" (1900), p. 128.
+
+
+Education was to be looked upon as a handmaid to a thorough
+reconstruction, and its general character and aim were determined by
+the Northern teachers. Each convention framed a more or less complicated
+school system and undertook to provide for its support. The Negroes in
+the conventions were anxious for free schools; the conservatives were
+willing; but the carpetbaggers and a few mulatto leaders insisted in
+several States upon mixed schools. Only in Louisiana and South Carolina
+did the constitutions actually forbid separate schools; in Mississippi,
+Florida, Alabama, and Arkansas the question was left open, to the
+embarrassment of the whites. Generally the blacks showed no desire for
+mixed schools unless urged to it by the carpetbaggers. In the South
+Carolina convention, a mulatto thus argued in favor of mixed schools:
+"The gentleman from Newberry said he was afraid we were taking a wrong
+course to remove these prejudices. The most natural method to effect
+this object would be to allow children when five or six years of age to
+mingle in schools together and associate generally. Under such training,
+prejudice must eventually die out; but if we postpone it until they
+become men and women, prejudice will be so established that no mortal
+can obliterate it. This, I think, is a sufficient reply to the argument
+of the gentleman."
+
+The state systems were top-heavy with administrative machinery and were
+officered by incompetent and corrupt officials. Such men as Cloud in
+Alabama, Cardozo in Mississippi, Conway in Louisiana, and Jillson in
+South Carolina are fair samples of them. Much of the personnel was taken
+over from the Bureau teaching force. The school officials were no better
+than the other officeholders.
+
+The first result of the attempt to use the schools as an instrument
+of reconstruction ended in the ruin of several state universities.
+The faculties of the Universities of North Carolina, Mississippi, and
+Alabama were made radical and the institutions thereupon declined to
+nothing. The Negroes, unable to control the faculty of the University
+of South Carolina, forced Negro students in and thus got possession.
+In Louisiana the radical legislature cut off all funds because the
+university would not admit Negroes. The establishment of the land grant
+colleges was an occasion for corruption and embezzlement.
+
+The common schools were used for radical ends. The funds set aside for
+them by the state constitutions or appropriated by the legislatures for
+these schools seldom reached their destination without being lessened
+by embezzlement or by plain stealing. Frequently the auditor, or the
+treasurer, or even the legislature diverted the school funds to other
+purposes. Suffice it to say that all of the reconstruction systems broke
+down financially after a brief existence.
+
+The mixed school provisions in Louisiana and South Carolina and the
+uncertainty of the educational situation in other States caused white
+children to stay away from the public schools. For several years the
+Negroes were better provided than the whites, having for themselves both
+all the public schools and also those supported by private benevolence.
+In Mississippi, Louisiana, and South Carolina the whites could get no
+money for schoolhouses, while large sums were spent on Negro schools.
+The Peabody Board, then recently inaugurated,* refused to cooperate
+with school officials in the mixed school states and, when criticized,
+replied: "It is well known that we are helping the white children
+of Louisiana as being the more destitute from the fact of their
+unwillingness to attend mixed schools."
+
+     * To administer the fund bequeathed by George Peabody of
+     Massachusetts to promote education in the Southern States.
+     See "The New South", by Holland Thompson (in "The Chronicles
+     of America").
+
+
+As was to be expected, the whites criticized the attitude of the school
+officials, disapproved of the attempts made in the schools to teach
+the children radical ideas, and objected to the contents of the history
+texts and the "Freedmen's Readers." A white school board in Mississippi,
+by advertising for a Democratic teacher for a Negro school, drew the
+fire of a radical editor who inquired: "What is the motive by which this
+call for a 'competent Democratic teacher' is prompted? The most damning
+that has ever moved the heart of man. It is to use the vote and action
+of a human being as a means by which to enslave him. The treachery and
+villainy of these rebels stands without parallel in the history of men."
+
+A Negro politician has left this account of a radical recitation in a
+Florida Negro school:
+
+After finishing the arithmetic lesson they must next go through the
+catechism:
+
+"Who is the 'Publican Government of the State of Florida?" Answer:
+"Governor Starns."
+
+"Who made him Governor?" Answer: "The colored people."
+
+"Who is trying to get him out of his seat?" Answer: "The Democrats,
+Conover, and some white and black Liberal Republicans."
+
+"What should the colored people do with the men who is trying to get
+Governor Starns out of his seat?" Answer: "They should kill them."....
+
+This was done that the patrons, some of whom could not read, would be
+impressed by the expressions of their children, and would be ready
+to put any one to death who would come out into the country and say
+anything against Governor Starns.
+
+The native white teachers soon dropped out of Negro schools, and those
+from the North met with the same social persecution as the white church
+workers. The White League and Ku Klux Klan drove off obnoxious teachers,
+whipped some, burned Negro schoolhouses, and in various other ways
+manifested the reaction which was rousing the whites against Negro
+schools.
+
+The several agencies working for Negro education gave some training to
+hundreds of thousands of blacks, but the whites asserted that, like the
+church work, it was based on a wrong spirit and resulted in evil as
+well as in good. Free schools failed in reconstruction because of
+the dishonesty or incompetence of the authorities and because of the
+unsettled race question. It was not until the turn of the century that
+the white schools were again as good as they had been before 1861.
+After the reconstruction native whites as teachers of Negro schools were
+impossible in most places. The hostile feelings of the whites resulted
+and still result in a limitation of Negro schools. The best thing for
+Negro schools that came out of reconstruction was Armstrong's Hampton
+Institute program, which, however, was quite opposed to the spirit of
+reconstruction education.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. CARPETBAG AND NEGRO RULE
+
+The Southern States reconstructed by Congress were subject for periods
+of varying length to governments designed by radical Northerners and
+imposed by elements thrown to the surface in the upheaval of Southern
+society. Georgia, Virginia, and North Carolina each had a brief
+experience with these governments; other States escaped after four
+or five years, while Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida were not
+delivered from this domination until 1876. The states which contained
+large numbers of Negroes had, on the whole, the worst experience. Here
+the officials were ignorant or corrupt, frauds upon the public were the
+rule, not the exception, and all of the reconstruction governments were
+so conducted that they could secure no support from the respectable
+elements of the electorate.
+
+The fundamental cause of the failure of these governments was the
+character of the new ruling class. Every state, except perhaps Virginia,
+was under the control of a few able leaders from the North generally
+called carpetbaggers and of a few native white radicals contemptuously
+designated scalawags. These were kept in power by Negro voters, to
+some seven hundred thousand of whom the ballot had been given by the
+reconstruction acts. The adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment in March
+1870, brought the total in the former slave states to 931,000, with
+about seventy-five thousand more Negroes in the North. The Negro voters
+were most numerous, comparatively, in Louisiana, Mississippi, South
+Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia. There were a few thousand carpetbaggers
+in each State, with, at first, a much larger number of scalawags. The
+latter, who were former Unionists, former Whigs, Confederate deserters,
+and a few unscrupulous politicians, were most numerous in Virginia,
+North Carolina, Texas, Arkansas, and Tennessee. The better class,
+however, rapidly left the radical party as the character of the new
+regime became evident, taking with them whatever claims the party had to
+respectability, education, political experience, and property.
+
+The conservatives, hopelessly reduced by the operation of disfranchising
+laws, were at first not well organized, nor were they at any time as
+well led as in antebellum days. In 1868, about one hundred thousand
+of them were forbidden to vote and about two hundred thousand were
+disqualified from holding office. The abstention policy of 1867-68
+resulted in an almost complete withdrawal of the influence of the
+conservatives for the two years, 1868-70. As a class they were regarded
+by the dominant party in state and nation as dangerous and untrustworthy
+and were persecuted in such irritating ways that many became indifferent
+to the appeals of civil duty. They formed a solid but almost despairing
+opposition in the black districts of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama,
+and South Carolina. For the leaders the price of amnesty was conversion
+to radicalism, but this price few would pay.
+
+The new state governments possessed certain characteristics in common.
+Since only a small number of able men were available for office, full
+powers of administration, including appointment and removal, were
+concentrated in the hands of the governor. He exercised a wide control
+over public funds and had authority to organize and command militia and
+constabulary and to call for Federal troops. The numerous administrative
+boards worked with the sole object of keeping their party in power.
+Officers were several times as numerous as under the old regime, and all
+of them received higher salaries and larger contingent fees. The moral
+support behind the government was that of President Grant and the United
+States army, not that of a free and devoted people.
+
+Of the twenty men who served as governors, eight were scalawags and
+twelve were carpetbaggers, men who were abler than the scalawags and who
+had much more than an equal share of the spoils. The scalawags, such as
+Brownlow of Tennessee, Smith of Alabama, and Holden of North Carolina,
+were usually honest but narrow, vindictive men, filled with fear and
+hate of the conservative whites.
+
+Of the carpetbaggers half were personally honest, but all were
+unscrupulous in politics.' Some were flagrantly dishonest.* Governor
+Moses of South Carolina was several times bribed and at one time,
+according to his own statement, received $15,000 for his vote as speaker
+of the House of Representatives. Governor Stearns of Florida was charged
+with stealing government supplies from the Negroes; and it was notorious
+that Warmoth and Kellogg of Louisiana, each of whom served only one
+term, retired with large fortunes. Warmoth, indeed, went so far as to
+declare: "Corruption is the fashion. I do not pretend to be honest, but
+only as honest as anybody in politics."
+
+The judiciary was no better than the executive. The chief justice
+of Louisiana was convicted of fraud. A supreme court judge of South
+Carolina offered his decisions for sale, and Whipper and Moses,
+both notorious thieves, were elected judges by the South Carolina
+Legislature. In Alabama there were many illiterate magistrates, among
+them the city judge of Selma, who in April 1865, was still living as
+a slave. Governor Chamberlain, a radical, asserted that there were two
+hundred trial judges in South Carolina who could not read.
+
+Other officers were of the same stripe. Leslie, a South Carolina
+carpetbagger, declared that "South Carolina has no right to be a state
+unless she can support her statesmen," and he proceeded to live up to
+this principle. The manager of the state railroad of Georgia, when asked
+how he had been able to accumulate twenty or thirty thousand dollars on
+a two or three thousand dollar salary, replied, "By the exercise of the
+most rigid economy." A North Carolina Negro legislator was found on one
+occasion chuckling as he counted some money. "What are you laughing at,
+Uncle?" he was asked. "Well, boss, I'se been sold 'leben times in
+my life and dis is de fust time I eber got de money." Godkin, in the
+"Nation", said that the Georgia officials were "probably as bad a lot of
+political tricksters and adventurers as ever got together in one place."
+This description will fit equally well the white officials of all the
+reconstructed states. Many of the Negroes who attained public office
+showed themselves apt pupils of their carpetbag masters but were seldom
+permitted to appropriate a large share of the plunder. In Florida the
+Negro members of the legislature, thinking that they should have a part
+of the bribe and loot money which their carpetbag masters were said to
+be receiving, went so far as to appoint what was known as a "smelling
+committee" to locate the good things and secure a share.
+
+From 1868 to 1870, the legislatures of seven states were overwhelmingly
+radical and in several the radical majority held control for four,
+six, or eight years. Negroes were most numerous in the legislatures of
+Louisiana, South Carolina, and Mississippi, and everywhere the votes of
+these men were for sale. In Alabama and Louisiana, Negro legislators had
+a fixed price for their votes: for example, six hundred dollars would
+buy a senator in Louisiana. In South Carolina, Negro government appeared
+at its worst. A vivid description of the Legislature of this State in
+which the Negroes largely outnumbered the whites is given by James S.
+Pike, a Republican journalist*:
+
+     *Pike, "The Prostrate State", pp. 12 ff.
+
+
+"In the place of this old aristocratic society stands the rude form of
+the most ignorant democracy that mankind ever saw, invested with the
+functions of government. It is the dregs of the population habilitated
+in the robes of their intelligent predecessors, and asserting over them
+the rule of ignorance and corruption.... It is barbarism overwhelming
+civilization by physical force. It is the slave rioting in the halls of
+his master, and putting that master under his feet. And, though it is
+done without malice and without vengeance, it is nevertheless none
+the less completely and absolutely done.... We will enter the House of
+Representatives. Here sit one hundred and twenty-four members. Of
+these, twenty-three are white men, representing the remains of the old
+civilization. These are good-looking, substantial citizens. They are men
+of weight and standing in the communities they represent. They are all
+from the hill country. The frosts of sixty and seventy winters whiten
+the heads of some among them. There they sit, grim and silent. They feel
+themselves to be but loose stones, thrown in to partially obstruct a
+current they are powerless to resist....
+
+"This dense Negro crowd... do the debating, the squabbling, the
+lawmaking, and create all the clamor and disorder of the body. These
+twenty-three white men are but the observers, the enforced auditors of
+the dull and clumsy imitation of a deliberative body, whose appearance
+in their present capacity is at once a wonder and a shame to modern
+civilization.... The Speaker is black, the Clerk is black, the
+doorkeepers are black, the little pages are black, the chairman of the
+Ways and Means is black, and the chaplain is coal black. At some of the
+desks sit colored men whose types it would be hard to find outside of
+Congo; whose costumes, visages, attitudes, and expression, only befit
+the forecastle of a buccaneer. It must be remembered, also, that these
+men, with not more than a half dozen exceptions, have been themselves
+slaves, and that their ancestors were slaves for generations...
+
+"But the old stagers admit that the colored brethren have a wonderful
+aptness at legislative proceedings. They are 'quick as lightning'
+at detecting points of order, and they certainly make incessant and
+extraordinary use of their knowledge. No one is allowed to talk five
+minutes without interruption, and one interruption is a signal for
+another and another, until the original speaker is smothered under an
+avalanche of them. Forty questions of privilege will be raised in a
+day. At times, nothing goes on but alternating questions of order and
+of privilege. The inefficient colored friend who sits in the Speaker's
+chair cannot suppress this extraordinary element of the debate. Some of
+the blackest members exhibit a pertinacity of intrusion in raising these
+points of order and questions of privilege that few white men can
+equal. Their struggles to get the floor, their bellowings and physical
+contortions, baffle description.
+
+"The Speaker's hammer plays a perpetual tattoo to no purpose. The
+talking and the interruptions from all quarters go on with the utmost
+license. Everyone esteems himself as good as his neighbor, and puts
+in his oar, apparently as often for love of riot and confusion as for
+anything else.... The Speaker orders a member whom he has discovered to
+be particularly unruly to take his seat. The member obeys, and with the
+same motion that he sits down, throws his feet on to his desk, hiding
+himself from the Speaker by the soles of his boots .... After a few
+experiences of this sort, the Speaker threatens, in a laugh, to call
+the 'gemman' to order. This is considered a capital joke, and a guffaw
+follows. The laugh goes round and then the peanuts are cracked and
+munched faster than ever; one hand being employed in fortifying the
+inner man with this nutriment of universal use, while the other enforces
+the views of the orator. This laughing propensity of the sable crowd is
+a great cause of disorder. They laugh as hens cackle--one begins and all
+follow.
+
+"But underneath all this shocking burlesque upon legislative
+proceedings, we must not forget that there is something very real
+to this uncouth and untutored multitude. It is not all sham, nor all
+burlesque. They have a genuine interest and a genuine earnestness in the
+business of the assembly which we are bound to recognize and respect....
+They have an earnest purpose, born of conviction that their position and
+condition are not fully assured, which lends a sort of dignity to their
+proceedings. The barbarous, animated jargon in which they so often
+indulge is on occasion seen to be so transparently sincere and weighty
+in their own minds that sympathy supplants disgust. The whole thing is a
+wonderful novelty to them as well as to observers. Seven years ago these
+men were raising corn and cotton under the whip of the overseer. Today
+they are raising points of order and questions of privilege. They find
+they can raise one as well as the other. They prefer the latter. It
+is easier and better paid. Then, it is the evidence of an accomplished
+result. It means escape and defense from old oppressors. It means
+liberty. It means the destruction of prison-walls only too real to them.
+It is the sunshine of their lives. It is their day of jubilee. It is
+their long-promised vision of the Lord God Almighty."
+
+The congressional delegations were as radical as the state governments.
+During the first two years, there were no Democratic senators from the
+reconstructed states and only two Democratic representatives, as against
+sixty-four radical senators and representatives. At the end of four
+years, the Democrats numbered fifteen against seventy radicals. A Negro
+succeeded Jefferson Davis in the Senate, and in all the race sent two
+senators and thirteen representatives to Congress; but though several
+were of high character and fair ability, they exercised practically no
+influence. The Southern delegations had no part in shaping policies but
+merely voted as they were told by the radical leaders.
+
+The effect of dishonest government was soon seen in extravagant
+expenditures, heavier taxes, increase of the bonded debt, and depression
+of property values. It was to be expected that after the ruin wrought
+by war and the admission of the Negro to civil rights, the expenses of
+government would be greater. But only lack of honesty will account for
+the extraordinary expenses of the reconstruction governments. In Alabama
+and Florida, the running expenses of the state government increased
+two hundred percent, in Louisiana five hundred percent, and in Arkansas
+fifteen hundred percent--all this in addition to bond issues. In South
+Carolina the one item of public printing, which from 1790 to 1868 cost
+$609,000, amounted in the years 1868-1876 to $1,326,589.
+
+Corrupt state officials had two ways of getting money--by taxation and
+by the sale of bonds. Taxes were everywhere multiplied. The state tax
+rate in Alabama was increased four hundred percent, in Louisiana
+eight hundred percent, and in Mississippi, which could issue no bonds,
+fourteen hundred percent. City and county taxes, where carpetbaggers
+were in control, increased in the same way. Thousands of small
+proprietors could not meet their taxes, and in Mississippi alone the
+land sold for unpaid taxes amounted to six million acres, an area as
+large as Massachusetts and Rhode Island together. Nordhoff* speaks of
+seeing Louisiana newspapers of which three-fourths were taken up
+by notices of tax sales. In protest against extravagant and corrupt
+expenditures, taxpayers' conventions were held in every state, but
+without effect.
+
+     *Charles Nordhoff, "The Cotton States in the Spring and
+     Summer of 1875".
+
+
+Even the increased taxation, however, did not produce enough to support
+the new governments, which now had recourse to the sale of state and
+local bonds. In this way Governor Holden's Administration managed in two
+years to increase the public debt of North Carolina from $16,000,000 to
+$32,000,000. The state debt of South Carolina rose from $7,000,000 to
+$29,000,000 in 1873. In Alabama, by 1874, the debt had mounted from
+$7,000,000 to $32,000,000. The public debt of Louisiana rose from
+$14,000,000 in 1868 to $48,000,000 in 1871, with a local debt of
+$31,000,000. Cities, towns, and counties sold bonds by the bale. The
+debt of New Orleans increased twenty-five fold and that of Vicksburg
+a thousandfold. A great deal of the debt was the result of fraudulent
+issues of bonds or over-issue. For this form of fraud, the state
+financial agents in New York were usually responsible. Southern bonds
+sold far below par, and the time came when they were peddled about at
+ten to twenty-five cents on the dollar.
+
+Still another disastrous result followed this corrupt financiering. In
+Alabama there was a sixty-five percent decrease in property values,
+in Florida forty-five percent, and in Louisiana fifty to seventy-five
+percent. A large part of the best property was mortgaged, and
+foreclosure sales were frequent. Poorer property could be neither
+mortgaged nor sold. There was an exodus of whites from the worst
+governed districts in the West and the North. Many towns, among them
+Mobile and Memphis, surrendered their charters and were ruled directly
+by the governor; and there were numerous "strangulated" counties which
+on account of debt had lost self-government and were ruled by appointees
+of the governor.
+
+A part of the money raised by taxes and by bond sales was used for
+legitimate expenses and the rest went to pay forged warrants, excess
+warrants, and swollen mileage accounts, and to fill the pockets of
+embezzlers and thieves from one end of the South to the other. In
+Arkansas, for example, the auditor's clerk hire, which was $4000 in
+1866, cost twenty-three times as much in 1873. In Louisiana and South
+Carolina, stealing was elevated into an art and was practiced without
+concealment. In the latter state, the worthless Hell Hole Swamp was
+bought for $26,000 to be farmed by the Negroes but was charged to the
+state at $120,000. A free restaurant maintained at the Capitol for the
+legislators cost $125,000 for one session. The porter who conducted it
+said that he kept it open sixteen to twenty hours a day and that someone
+was always in the room eating and drinking or smoking. When a member
+left, he would fill his pockets with cigars or with bottles of drink.
+Forty different brands of beverages were paid for by the state for the
+private use of members, and all sorts of food, furniture, and clothing
+were sent to the houses of members and were paid for by the state as
+"legislative supplies." On the bills appeared such items as imported
+mushrooms, one side of bacon, one feather bed, bustles, two pairs of
+extra long stockings, one pair of garters, one bottle perfume, twelve
+monogram cut glasses, one horse, one comb and brush, three gallons of
+whisky, one pair of corsets. During the recess, supplies were sent out
+to the rural homes of the members.
+
+The endorsement of railroad securities by the state also furnished
+a source of easy money to the dishonest official and the crooked
+speculator. After the Civil War, in response to the general desire in
+the South for better railroad facilities, the "Johnson" governments
+began to underwrite railroad bonds. When the carpetbag and Negro
+governments came in, the policy was continued but without proper
+safeguards. Bonds were sometimes endorsed before the roads were
+constructed, and even excess issues were authorized. Bonds were endorsed
+for some roads of which not a mile was ever built. The White River
+Valley and Texas Railroad never came into existence, but it obtained
+a grant of $175,000 from the State of Arkansas. Speaker Carter of the
+Louisiana Legislature received a financial interest in all railroad
+endorsement bills which he steered through the House. Negro members were
+regularly bribed to vote for the bond steals. A witness swore that in
+Louisiana it cost him $80,000 to get a railroad charter passed, but that
+the Governor's signature cost more than the consent of the legislature.
+
+When the roads defaulted on the payment of interest, as most of them
+did, the burden fell upon the state. Not all of the blame for this
+perverted legislation should be placed upon the corrupt legislators,
+however, for the lawyers who saw the bills through were frequently
+Southern Democrats representing supposedly respectable Northern
+capitalists. The railroads as well as the taxpayers suffered from this
+pernicious lobbying, for the companies were loaded with debts and rarely
+profited by the loans. Valuation of railroad property rapidly decreased.
+The roads of Alabama which were valued in 1871 at $26,000,000 had
+decreased in 1875 to $9,500,000.
+
+The foundation of radical power in the South lay in the alienation of
+the races which had been accomplished between 1865 and 1868. To maintain
+this unhappy distrust, the radical leaders found an effective means in
+the Negro militia. Under the constitution of every reconstructed state,
+a Negro constabulary was possible, but only in South Carolina, North
+Carolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi were the authorities willing to
+risk the dangers of arming the blacks. No governor dared permit the
+Southern whites to organize as militia. In South Carolina the carpetbag
+governor, Robert K. Scott, enrolled ninety-six thousand Negroes as
+members of the militia and organized and armed twenty thousand of
+them. The few white companies were ordered to disband. In Louisiana the
+governor had a standing army of blacks called the Metropolitan Guard. In
+several states the Negro militia was used as a constabulary and was sent
+to any part of the state to make arrests.
+
+In spite of this provocation there were, after the riots of 1866-67,
+comparatively few race conflicts until reconstruction was drawing to
+a close. The intervening period was filled with the more peaceful
+activities of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Camellia. But as the
+whites made up their minds to get rid of Negro rule, the clashes came
+frequently and always ended in the death of more Negroes than whites.*
+They would probably have continued with serious consequences if the
+whites had not eventually secured control of the government.
+
+     * Among the bloodiest conflicts were those in Louisiana at
+     Colfax, Coushatta, and New Orleans in 1873-74, and at
+     Vicksburg and Clinton, Mississippi, in 1874-75.
+
+
+The lax election laws, framed indeed for the benefit of the party in
+power, gave the radicals ample opportunity to control the Negro vote.
+The elections were frequently corrupt, though not a great deal of money
+was spent in bribery. It was found less expensive to use other methods
+of getting out the vote. The Negroes were generally made to understand
+that the Democrats wanted to put them back into slavery, but sometimes
+the leaders deemed it wiser to state more concretely that "Jeff Davis
+had come to Montgomery and is ready to organize the Confederacy again"
+if the Democrats should win; or to say that "if Carter is elected, he
+will not allow your wives and daughters to wear hoopskirts." In Alabama
+many thousand pounds of bacon and hams were sent in to be distributed
+among "flood sufferers" in a region which had not been flooded since
+the days of Noah. The Negroes were told that they must vote right and
+receive enough bacon for a year, or "lose their rights" if they voted
+wrongly. Ballot-box stuffing developed into an art, and each Negro was
+carefully inspected to see that he had the right kind of ticket before
+he was marched to the polls.
+
+The inspection and counting of election returns were in the hands of
+the county and state boards, which were controlled by the governor, and
+which had authority to throw out or count in any number of votes. On
+the assumption that the radicals were entitled to all Negro votes, the
+returning boards followed the census figures for the black population in
+order to arrive at the minimum radical vote. The action of the returning
+boards was specially flagrant in Louisiana and Florida and in the black
+counties of South Carolina.
+
+Notwithstanding the fact that the very best arrangements had been made
+at Washington and in the states for the running of the radical machine,
+everywhere there were factional fights from the beginning. Usually the
+scalawags declared hostilities after they found that the carpetbaggers
+had control of the Negroes and the inside track on the way to the best
+state and federal offices. Later, after the scalawags had for the most
+part left the radicals, there were contests among the carpetbaggers
+themselves for the control of the Negro vote and the distribution of
+spoils. The defeated faction usually joined the Democrats. In Arkansas
+a split started in 1869 which by 1872 resulted in two state governments.
+Alabama in 1872 and Louisiana in 1874-75 each had two rival governments.
+This factionalism contributed largely to the overthrow of the radicals.
+
+The radical structure, however, was still powerfully supported from
+without. Relations between the Federal Government and the state
+governments in the South were close, and the policy at Washington was
+frequently determined by conditions in the South. President Grant,
+though at first considerate, was usually consistently radical in his
+Southern policy. This attitude is difficult to explain except by saying
+that Grant fell under the control of radical advisers after his break
+with Johnson, that his military instincts were offended by opposition
+in the South which his advisers told him was rebellious, and that he was
+impressed by the need of holding the Southern radical vote against
+the inroads of the Democrats. After about 1869, Grant never really
+understood the conditions in the South. He was content to control by
+means of Federal troops and thousands of deputy marshals. For this
+policy the Ku Klux activities gave sufficient excuse for a time, and the
+continued story of "rebel outrages" was always available to justify
+a call for soldiers or deputies. The enforcement legislation gave the
+color of law to any interference which was deemed necessary.
+
+Federal troops served other ends than the mere preservation of order and
+the support of the radical state governments. They were used on occasion
+to decide between opposing factions and to oust conservatives who had
+forced their way into office. The army officers purged the Legislature
+of Georgia in 1870, that of Alabama in 1872, and that of Louisiana in
+1875. In 1875 the city government of Vicksburg and the state government
+of Louisiana were overturned by the whites, but General Sheridan at once
+intervened to put back the Negroes and carpetbaggers. He suggested to
+President Grant that the conservatives be declared "banditti" and he
+would make himself responsible for the rest. As soon as a State showed
+signs of going over to the Democrats or an important election was lost
+by the radicals, one House or the other of Congress in many instances
+sent an investigation committee to ascertain the reasons. The Committees
+on the Condition of the South or on the Late Insurrectionary States
+were nearly always ready with reports to establish the necessity of
+intervention.
+
+Besides the army there was in every state a powerful group of Federal
+officials who formed a "ring" for the direction of all good radicals.
+These marshals, deputies, postmasters, district attorneys, and
+customhouse officials were in close touch with Washington and frequently
+dictated nominations and platforms. At New Orleans the officials acted
+as a committee on credentials and held all the state conventions under
+their control in the customhouse.
+
+Such was the machinery used to sustain a party which, with the gradual
+defection of the whites, became throughout the South almost
+uniformly black. At first few Negroes asked for offices, but soon the
+carpetbaggers found it necessary to divide with the rapidly growing
+number of Negro politicians. No Negro was elected governor, though
+several reached the office of lieutenant governor, secretary of state,
+auditor, superintendent of education, justice of the state supreme
+court, and fifteen were elected to Congress.* It would not be correct
+to say that the Negro race was malicious or on evil bent. Unless
+deliberately stirred up by white leaders, few Negroes showed signs
+of mean spirit. Few even made exorbitant demands. They wanted
+"something"--schools and freedom and "something else," they knew not
+what. Deprived of the leadership of the best whites, they could not
+possibly act with the scalawags--their traditional enemies. Nothing was
+left for them but to follow the carpetbagger.
+
+     * Revels, Lynch, and Bruce represent the better Negro
+     officeholders; Pinchback, Rainey, and Nash, the less
+     respectable ones; and below these were the rascals whose
+     ambition was to equal their white preceptors in corruption.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. THE KU KLUX MOVEMENT
+
+The Ku Klux movement, which took the form of secret revolutionary
+societies, grew out of a general conviction among the whites that the
+reconstruction policies were impossible and not to be endured. Somers,
+an English traveler, says that at this time "nearly every respectable
+white man in the Southern States was not only disfranchised but under
+fear of arrest or confiscation; the old foundations of authority were
+utterly razed before any new ones had yet been laid, and in the dark and
+benighted interval the remains of the Confederate armies--swept after
+a long and heroic day of fair fight from the field--flitted before the
+eyes of the people in this weird and midnight shape of a Ku Klux Klan."
+Ryland Randolph, an Alabama editor who was also an official of the Klan,
+stated in his paper that "the origin of Ku Klux Klan is in the galling
+despotism that broods like a nightmare over these Southern States--a
+fungus growth of military tyranny superinduced by the fostering of Loyal
+Leagues, the abrogation of our civil laws, the habitual violation of our
+national Constitution, and a persistent prostitution of all government,
+all resources and all powers, to degrade the white man by the
+establishment of Negro supremacy."
+
+The secret orders, regardless of their original purposes, were all
+finally to be found opposing radical reconstruction. Everywhere their
+objects were the same: to recover for the white race their former
+control of society and government, and to destroy the baneful influence
+of the alien among the blacks. The people of the South were by law
+helpless to take steps towards setting up any kind of government in a
+land infested by a vicious element--Federal and Confederate deserters,
+bushwhackers, outlaws of every description, and Negroes, some of whom
+proved insolent and violent in their newly found freedom. Nowhere
+was property or person safe, and for a time many feared a Negro
+insurrection. General Hardee said to his neighbors, "I advise you to get
+ready for what may come. We are standing over a sleeping volcano."
+
+To cope with this situation ante-bellum patrols--the "patter-rollers"
+as the Negroes called them--were often secretly reorganized. In each
+community for several months after the Civil War, and in many of them
+for months before the end of the war, there were informal vigilance
+committees. Some of these had such names as the Black Cavalry and Men of
+Justice in Alabama, the Home Guards in many other places, while the
+anti Confederate societies of the war, the Heroes of America, the Red
+Strings, and the Peace Societies, transformed themselves in certain
+localities into regulatory bodies. Later these secret societies numbered
+scores, perhaps hundreds, varying from small bodies of local police to
+great federated bodies which covered almost the entire South and even
+had membership in the North and West. Other important organizations were
+the Constitutional Union Guards, the Pale Faces, the White Brotherhood,
+the Council of Safety, the '76 Association, the Sons of '76, the
+Order of the White Rose, and the White Boys. As the fight against
+reconstruction became bolder, the orders threw off their disguises and
+appeared openly as armed whites fighting for the control of society.
+The White League of Louisiana, the White Line of Mississippi, the White
+Man's party of Alabama, and the Rifle Clubs of South Carolina, were
+later manifestations of the general Ku Klux movement.
+
+The two largest secret orders, however, were the Ku Klux Klan, from
+which the movement took its name, and the Knights of the White Camelia.
+The Ku Klux Klan originated at Pulaski, Tennessee, in the autumn of
+1865, as a local organization for social purposes. The founders were
+young Confederates, united for fun and mischief. The name was an
+accidental corruption of the Greek word Kuklos, a circle. The officers
+adopted queer sounding titles and strange disguises. Weird nightriders
+in ghostly attire thoroughly frightened the superstitious Negroes,
+who were told that the spirits of dead Confederates were abroad. This
+terrorizing of the blacks successfully provided the amusement which the
+founders desired, and there were many applications for admission to the
+society. The Pulaski Club, or Den, was in the habit of parading in full
+uniform at social gatherings of the whites at night, much to the delight
+of the small boys and girls. Pulaski was near the Alabama line, and
+many of the young men of Alabama who saw these parades or heard of them
+organized similar Dens in the towns of Northern Alabama. Nothing but
+horseplay, however, took place at the meetings. In 1867 and 1868, the
+order appeared in parade in the towns of the adjoining states and, as we
+are told, "cut up curious gyrations" on the public squares.
+
+There was a general belief outside the order that there was a purpose
+behind all the ceremonial and frolic of the Dens; many joined the order
+convinced that its object was serious; others saw the possibilities of
+using it as a means of terrorizing the Negroes. After men discovered
+the power of the Klan over the Negroes, indeed, they were generally
+inclined, owing to the disordered conditions of the time, to act as a
+sort of police patrol and to hold in check the thieving Negroes, the
+Union League, and the "loyalists." In this way, from being merely a
+number of social clubs the Dens swiftly became bands of regulators,
+taking on many new fantastic qualities along with their new seriousness
+of purpose. Some of the more ardent spirits led the Dens far in the
+direction of violence and outrage. Attempts were made by the parent
+Den at Pulaski to regulate the conduct of the others, but, owing to
+the loose organization, the effort met with little success. Some of the
+Dens, indeed, lost all connection with the original order.
+
+A general organization of these societies was perfected at a convention
+held in Nashville in May 1867, just as the Reconstruction Acts were
+being put into operation. A constitution called the Prescript was
+adopted which provided for a national organization. The former slave
+states, except Delaware, constituted the Empire, which was ruled by
+the Grand Wizard (then General Forrest) with a staff of ten Genii;
+each State was a realm under a Grand Dragon and eight Hydras; the next
+subdivision was a Dominion, consisting of several counties, ruled by
+a Grand Titan and six Furies; the county or Province was governed by
+a Grand Giant and four Goblins; the unit was the Den or community
+organization, of which there might be several in each county, each under
+a Grand Cyclops and two Nighthawks. The Genii, Hydras, Furies, Goblins,
+and Nighthawks were staff officers. The private members were called
+Ghouls. The order had no name, and at first was designated by two stars
+(**), later by three (***). Sometimes it was called the Invisible Empire
+of Ku Klux Klan.
+
+Any white man over eighteen might be admitted to the Den after
+nomination by a member and strict investigation by a committee. The
+oath demanded obedience and secrecy. The Dens governed themselves by the
+ordinary rules of deliberative bodies. The punishment for betrayal of
+secrecy was "the extreme penalty of the Law." None of the secrets was to
+be written, and there was a "Register" of alarming adjectives, such
+as terrible, horrible, furious, doleful, bloody, appalling, frightful,
+gloomy, which was used as a cipher code in dating the odd Ku Klux
+orders.
+
+The general objects of the order were thus set forth in the revised
+Prescript: first, to protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenseless
+from the indignities, wrongs, and outrages of the lawless, the violent,
+and the brutal; to relieve the injured and oppressed; to succor the
+suffering and unfortunate, and especially the widows and orphans of
+Confederate soldiers; second, to protect and defend the Constitution
+of the United States and all laws passed in conformity thereto, and to
+protect the States and people thereof from all invasion from any
+source whatever; third, to aid and assist in the execution of all
+"constitutional" laws, and to protect the people from unlawful arrest,
+and from trial except by their peers according to the laws of the land.
+But the tests for admission gave further indication of the objects of
+the order. No Republican, no Union Leaguer, and no member of the G.
+A. R. might become a member. The members were pledged to oppose Negro
+equality of any kind, to favor emancipation of the Southern whites
+and the restoration of their rights, and to maintain constitutional
+government and equitable laws.
+
+Prominent men testified that the order became popular because the whites
+felt that they were persecuted and that there was no legal protection,
+no respectable government. General (later Senator) Pettus said that
+through all the workings of the Federal Government ran the principle
+that "we are an inferior, degraded people and not fit to be trusted."
+General Clanton of Alabama further explained that "there is not a
+respectable white woman in the Negro Belt of Alabama who will trust
+herself outside of her house without some protector.... So far as our
+State Government is concerned, we are in the hands of camp-followers,
+horse-holders, cooks, bottle-washers, and thieves.. .. We have passed
+out from the hands of the brave soldiers who overcame us, and are
+turned over to the tender mercies of squaws for torture.... I see Negro
+police--great black fellows--leading white girls around the streets of
+Montgomery, and locking them up in jails."
+
+The Klan first came into general prominence in 1868 with the report
+of the Federal commanders in the South concerning its activities. Soon
+after that date the order spread through the white counties of the
+South, in many places absorbing the White Brotherhood, the Pale Faces,
+and some other local organizations which had been formed in the upper
+part of the Black Belt. But it was not alone in the field. The order
+known as the Knights of the White Camelia, founded in Louisiana in 1867
+and formally organized in 1868, spread rapidly over the lower South
+until it reached the territory occupied by the Ku Klux Klan. It was
+mainly a Black Belt order, and on the whole had a more substantial and
+more conservative membership than the other large secret bodies. Like
+the Ku Klux Klan, it also absorbed several minor local societies.
+
+The White Camelia had a national organization with headquarters in New
+Orleans. Its business was conducted by a Supreme Council of the United
+States, with Grand, Central, and Subordinate Councils for each state,
+county, and community. All communication within the order took place by
+passwords and cipher; the organization and the officers were similar to
+those of the Ku Klux Klan; and all officers were designated by initials.
+An ex-member states that "during the three years of its existence here
+[Perry County, Alabama] I believe its organization and discipline were
+as perfect as human ingenuity could have made it." The fundamental
+object of the White Camelia was the "maintenance of the supremacy of the
+white race," and to this end the members were constrained "to observe a
+marked distinction between the races" and to restrain the "African race
+to that condition of social and political inferiority for which God
+has destined it." The members were pledged to vote only for whites,
+to oppose Negro equality in all things, but to respect the legitimate
+rights of Negroes.
+
+The smaller orders were similar in purpose and organization to the Ku
+Klux Klan and the White Camelia. Most of them joined or were affiliated
+with the large societies. Probably a majority of the men of the South
+were associated at some time during this period with these revolutionary
+bodies. As a rule the politicians, though approving, held aloof. Public
+opinion generally supported the movement so long as the radicals made
+serious attempts to carry out the reconstruction policies.
+
+The task before the secret orders was to regulate the conduct of the
+blacks and their leaders in order that honor, life, and property might
+be secure. They planned to accomplish this aim by playing upon the
+fears, superstitions, and cowardice of the black race--in a word, by
+creating a white terror to counteract the black one. To this end they
+made use of strange disguises, mysterious and fearful conversation,
+midnight rides and drills, and silent parades. As long as secrecy and
+mystery were to be effective in dealing with the Negroes, costume was
+an important matter. These disguises varied with the locality and often
+with the individual. High cardboard hats, covered with white cloth often
+decorated with stars or pictures of animals, white masks with holes
+cut for eyes, nose and mouth bound with red braid to give a horrible
+appearance, and frequently a long tongue of red flannel so fixed that
+it could be moved with the wearer's tongue, and a long white robe--these
+made up a costume which served at the same time as a disguise and as a
+means of impressing the impressionable Negro. Horses were covered with
+sheets or white cloth held on by the saddle and by belts, and sometimes
+the animals were even painted. Skulls of sheep and cattle, and even of
+human beings were often carried on the saddlebows to add another element
+of terror. A framework was sometimes made to fit the shoulders of a
+Ghoul which caused him to appear twelve feet high. A skeleton wooden
+hand at the end of a stick served to greet terrified Negroes at
+midnight. For safety every man carried a small whistle and a brace of
+pistols.
+
+The trembling Negro who ran into a gathering of the Ku Klux on his
+return from a Loyal League meeting was informed that the white-robed
+figures he saw were the spirits of the Confederate dead killed at
+Chickamauga or Shiloh, now unable to rest in their graves because of
+the conduct of the Negroes. He was told in a sepulchral voice of the
+necessity for his remaining more at home and taking a less active part
+in predatory excursions abroad. In the middle of the night, a sleeping
+Negro might wake to find his house surrounded by a ghostly company, or
+to see several terrifying figures standing by his bedside. They were,
+they said, the ghosts of men whom he had formerly known. They had
+scratched through from Hell to warn the Negroes of the consequences of
+their misconduct. Hell was a dry and thirsty land; and they asked him
+for water. Bucket after bucket of water disappeared into a sack of
+leather, rawhide, or rubber, concealed within the flowing robe. The
+story is told of one of these night travelers who called at the cabin
+of a radical Negro in Attakapas County, Louisiana. After drinking three
+buckets of water to the great astonishment of the darky, the traveler
+thanked him and told him that he had traveled nearly a thousand miles
+within twenty-four hours, and that that was the best water he had tasted
+since he was killed at the battle of Shiloh. The Negro dropped the
+bucket, overturned chairs and table in making his escape through the
+window, and was never again seen or heard of by residents of that
+community. Another incident is told of a parade in Pulaski, Tennessee:
+"While the procession was passing a corner on which a Negro man was
+standing, a tall horseman in hideous garb turned aside from the line,
+dismounted and stretched out his bridle rein toward the Negro, as if
+he desired him to hold his horse. Not daring to refuse, the frightened
+African extended his hand to grasp the rein. As he did so, the Ku Klux
+took his own head from his shoulders and offered to place that also in
+the outstretched hand. The Negro stood not upon the order of his going,
+but departed with a yell of terror. To this day he will tell you: 'He
+done it, suah, boss. I seed him do it.'"
+
+It was seldom necessary at this early stage to use violence, for
+the black population was in an ecstasy of fear. A silent host of
+white-sheeted horsemen parading the country roads at night was
+sufficient to reduce the blacks to good behavior for weeks or months.
+One silent Ghoul posted near a meeting place of the League would be the
+cause of the immediate dissolution of that club. Cow bones in a sack
+were rattled within earshot of the terrified Negroes. A horrible
+being, fifteen feet tall, walking through the night toward a place of
+congregation, was very likely to find that every one had vacated the
+place before he arrived. A few figures wrapped in sheets and sitting
+on tombstones in a graveyard near which Negroes were accustomed to pass
+would serve to keep the immediate community quiet for weeks and give the
+locality a reputation for "hants" which lasted long.
+
+To prevent detection on parade, members of the Klan often stayed out
+of the parade in their own town and were to be seen freely and
+conspicuously mingling with the spectators. A man who believed that he
+knew every horse in the vicinity and was sure that he would be able to
+identify the riders by their horses was greatly surprised upon lifting
+the disguise of the horse nearest him to find the animal upon which
+he himself had ridden into town a short while before. The parades were
+always silent and so arranged as to give the impression of very large
+numbers. In the regular drills which were held in town and country, the
+men showed that they had not forgotten their training in the Confederate
+army. There were no commands save in a very low tone or in a mysterious
+language, and usually only signs or whistle signals were used.
+
+Such pacific methods were successful to a considerable degree until
+the carpetbaggers and scalawags were placed in office under the
+Reconstruction Acts. Then more violent methods were necessary. The
+Mans patrolled disturbed communities, visited, warned, and frightened
+obnoxious individuals, whipped some, and even hanged others. Until
+forbidden by law or military order, the newspapers were accustomed to
+print the mysterious proclamations of the Ku Klux. The following, which
+was circulated in Montgomery, Alabama, in April 1868, is a typical
+specimen:
+
+K. K. K. Clan of Vega. HDQRS K.K.K. HOSPITALLERS.
+
+Vega Clan, New Moon, 3rd Month, Anno K. K. K. 1.
+
+ORDER No. K. K.
+
+Clansmen--Meet at the Trysting Spot when Orion Kisses the Zenith.
+The doom of treason is Death. Dies Irae. The wolf is on his walk--the
+serpent coils to strike. Action! Action!! Action!!! By midnight and the
+Tomb; by Sword and Torch and the Sacred Oath at Forrester's Altar, I
+bid you come! The clansmen of Glen Iran and Alpine will greet you at the
+new-made grave.
+
+Remember the Ides of April.
+
+By command of the Grand D. I. H.
+
+Cheg. V.
+
+The work of the secret orders was successful. As bodies of vigilantes,
+the Mans and the Councils regulated the conduct of bad Negroes,
+punished criminals who were not punished by the state, looked after the
+activities and teachings of Northern preachers and teachers, dispersed
+hostile gatherings of Negroes, and ran out of the community the worst of
+the reconstructionist officials. They kept the Negroes quiet and freed
+them to some extent from the influence of evil leaders. The burning of
+houses, gins, mills, and stores ceased; property became more secure;
+people slept safely at night; women and children walked abroad in
+security; the incendiary agents who had worked among the Negroes left
+the country; agitators, political, educational, and religious, became
+more moderate; "bad niggers" ceased to be bad; labor became less
+disorganized; the carpetbaggers and scalawags ceased to batten on the
+Southern communities. It was not so much a revolution as the defeat of a
+revolution. Society was replaced in the old historic grooves from which
+war and reconstruction had jarred it.
+
+Successful as was the Ku Klux movement in these respects, it had at the
+same time many harmful results. Too often local orders fell under the
+control of reckless or lawless men and the Klan was then used as a cloak
+to cover violence and thievery; family and personal feuds were carried
+into the orders and fought out; and anti-Negro feeling in many places
+found expression in activities designed to drive the blacks from
+the country. It was easy for any outlaw to hide himself behind the
+protection of a secret order. So numerous did these men become that
+after 1868 there was a general exodus of the leading reputable members,
+and in 1869 the formal disbanding of the Klan was proclaimed by General
+Forrest, the Grand Wizard. The White Camelia and other orders also
+gradually went out of existence. Numerous attempts were made to suppress
+the secret movement by the military commanders, the state governments,
+and finally by Congress, but none of these was entirely successful, for
+in each community the secret opposition lasted as long as it was needed.
+The political effects of the orders, however, survived their organized
+existence. Some of the Southern States began to go Democratic in spite
+of the Reconstruction Acts and the Amendments, and there was little
+doubt that the Ku Klux movement had aided in this change. In order to
+preserve the achievements of radical reconstruction Congress passed,
+in 1870 and 1871, the enforcement acts which had been under debate for
+nearly two years. The first act (May 31, 1870) was designed to protect
+the Negro's right to vote and was directed at individuals as well as
+against states. Section six, indeed, was aimed specifically at the
+Ku Klux Klan. This act was a long step in the direction of giving the
+Federal Government control over state elections. But as North Carolina
+went wholly and Alabama partially Democratic in 1870, a Supplementary
+Act (February 28, 1871) went further and placed the elections for
+members of Congress completely under Federal control, and also
+authorized the use of thousands of deputy marshals at elections. As the
+campaign of 1872 drew near, Grant and his advisers became solicitous
+to hold all the Southern States which had not been regained by the
+Democrats. Accordingly, on March 23, 1871, the President sent a message
+to Congress declaring that in some of the states the laws could not be
+enforced and asked for remedial legislation. Congress responded with an
+act (April 20, 1871), commonly called the "Ku Klux Act," which gave
+the President despotic military power to uphold the remaining Negro
+governments and authorized him to declare a state of war when he
+considered it necessary. Of this power Grant made use in only one
+instance. In October 1871, he declared nine counties of South Carolina
+in rebellion and put them under martial law.
+
+During the ten years following 1870, several thousand arrests were made
+under the enforcement acts and about 1,250 convictions were secured,
+principally in Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and
+Tennessee. Most of these violations of election laws, however, had
+nothing to do with the Ku Klux movement, for by 1870 the better class of
+members had withdrawn from the secret orders. But though the enforcement
+acts checked these irregularities to a considerable extent, they
+nevertheless failed to hold the South for the radicals and essential
+parts of them were declared unconstitutional a few years later.
+
+In order to justify the passage of the enforcement acts and to obtain
+campaign material for use in 1872, Congress appointed a committee,
+organized on the very day when the Ku Klux Act was approved, to
+investigate conditions in the Southern States. From June to August
+1871, the committee took testimony in Washington, and in the fall
+subcommittees visited several Southern States. Tennessee, Virginia,
+Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas were, however, omitted from the
+investigation. Notwithstanding the partisan purpose and methods of
+the investigation, the report of the committee and the accompanying
+testimony constituted a Democratic rather than a Republican document.
+It is a veritable mine of information about the South between 1865
+and 1871. The Democratic minority members made skillful use of their
+opportunity to expose conditions in the South. They were less concerned
+to meet the charges made against the Ku Klux Klan than to show why such
+movements came about. The Republicans, concerned mainly about material
+for the presidential campaign, neglected the broader phases of the
+situation.
+
+Opposition to the effects of reconstruction did not come to an end
+with the dissolution of the more famous orders. On the contrary, it now
+became public and open and resulted in the organization, after 1872, of
+the White League, the Mississippi Shot Gun Plan, the White Man's Party
+in Alabama, and the Rifle Clubs in South Carolina. The later movements
+were distinctly but cautiously anti-Negro. There was most irritation
+in the white counties where there were large numbers of Negroes. Negro
+schools and churches were burned because they served as meeting places
+for Negro political organizations. The color line began to be more
+and more sharply drawn. Social and business ostracism continued to be
+employed against white radicals, while the Negroes were discharged from
+employment or were driven from their rented farms.
+
+The Ku Klux movement, it is to be noted in retrospect, originated as an
+effort to restore order in the war-stricken Southern States. The
+secrecy of its methods appealed to the imagination and caused its
+rapid expansion, and this secrecy was inevitable because opposition to
+reconstruction was not lawful. As the reconstruction policies were put
+into operation, the movement became political and used violence when
+appeals to superstitious fears ceased to be effective. The Ku Klux Klan
+centered, directed, and crystallized public opinion, and united the
+whites upon a platform of white supremacy. The Southern politicians
+stood aloof from the movement but accepted the results of its work.
+It frightened the Negroes and bad whites into better conduct, and
+it encouraged the conservatives and aided them to regain control of
+society, for without the operations of the Klan the black districts
+would never have come again under white control. Towards the end,
+however, its methods frequently became unnecessarily violent and did
+great harm to Southern society. The Ku Klux system of regulating society
+is as old as history; it had often been used before; it may even be used
+again. When a people find themselves persecuted by aliens under legal
+forms, they will invent some means outside the law for protecting
+themselves; and such experiences will inevitably result in a weakening
+of respect for law and in a return to more primitive methods of justice.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. THE CHANGING SOUTH
+
+"The bottom rail is on top" was a phrase which had flashed throughout
+the late Confederate States. It had been coined by the Negroes in
+1867 to express their view of the situation, but its aptness had been
+recognized by all. After ten years of social and economic revolution,
+however, it was not so clear that the phrase of 1867 correctly described
+the new situation. "The white man made free" would have been a more
+accurate epitome, for the white man had been able, in spite of his
+temporary disabilities, to compete with the Negro in all industries.
+
+It will be remembered that the Negro districts were least exposed to the
+destruction of war. The well-managed plantation, lying near the highways
+of commerce, with its division of labor, nearly or quite self-sufficing,
+was the bulwark of the Confederacy. When the fighting ended, an
+industrial revolution began in these untouched parts of the Black Belt.
+The problem of free Negro labor now appeared. During the year 1865, no
+general plan for a labor system was formulated except by the Freedmen's
+Bureau. That, however, was not a success. There were all sorts of
+makeshifts, such as cash wages, deferred wages, cooperation, even
+sharing of expense and product, and contracts, either oral or written.
+
+The employers showed a disposition to treat the Negro family as a unit
+in making contracts for labor, wages, food, clothes, and care.* In
+general these early arrangements were made to transform slavery with its
+mutual duties and obligations into a free labor system with wages and
+"privileges." The "privileges" of slavery could not be destroyed; in
+fact, they have never yet been destroyed in numerous places. Curious
+demands were made by the Negroes: here, farm bells must not ring; there,
+overseers or managers must be done away with; in some places plantation
+courts were to settle matters of work, rent, and conduct; elsewhere,
+agreements were made that on Saturday the laborer should be permitted to
+go to town and, perhaps, ride a mule or horse. In South Carolina the
+Sea Island Negroes demanded that in laying out work the old "tasks"
+or "stints" of slavery days be retained as the standard. The farming
+districts at the edge of the Black Belt, where the races were about
+equal in numbers, already had a kind of "share system," and in these
+sections the economic chaos after the war was not so complete. The
+former owners worked in the field with their ex-slaves and thus provided
+steady employment for many. Farms were rented for a fixed sum of money,
+or for a part of the crop, or on "shares."
+
+     * J. D. B. De Bow, the economist, testified before the Joint
+     Committee on Reconstruction that, if the Negro would work,
+     free labor would be better for the planters than slave
+     labor. He called attention to the fact, however, that Negro
+     women showed a desire to avoid field labor, and there is
+     also evidence to show that they objected to domestic service
+     and other menial work.
+
+
+The white districts, which had previously fought a losing competition
+with the efficiently managed and inexpensive slave labor of the Black
+Belt, were affected most disastrously by war and its aftermath. They
+were distant from transportation lines and markets; they employed poor
+farming methods; they had no fertilizers; they raised no staple crops
+on their infertile land; and in addition they now had to face the
+destitution that follows fighting. Yet these regions had formerly been
+almost self-supporting, although the farms were small and no elaborate
+labor system had been developed. In the planting districts where the
+owner was land-poor, he made an attempt to bring in Northern capital
+and Northern or foreign labor. In the belief that the Negroes would
+work better for a Northern man, every planter who could do so secured
+a Northern partner or manager, frequently a soldier. Nevertheless these
+imported managers nearly always failed because they did not understand
+cotton, rice, or sugar planting, and because they were either too severe
+or too easy upon the blacks.
+
+No Northern labor was to be had, and the South could not retain even all
+its own native whites. Union soldiers and others seeking to better their
+prospects moved west and northwest to fill the newly opened lands, while
+the Confederates, kept out of the homestead region by the test oath,
+swarmed into Texas, which owned its own public lands, or went North
+to other occupations. Nor could the desperate planters hire foreign
+immigrants. Several states, among them South Carolina, Alabama, and
+Louisiana, advertised for laborers and established labor bureaus, but
+without avail. The Negro politicians in 1867 declared themselves opposed
+to all movements to foster immigration. So in the Black Belt the Negro
+had, for forty years, a monopoly of farm labor.
+
+The share system of tenantry, with its attendant evils of credit and
+crop lien, was soon established in the Southern States, mainly in the
+Black Belt, but to some extent also in the white districts. The landlord
+furnished land, house, fuel, water, and all or a part of the seed,
+fertilizer, farm implements, and farm animals. In return he received a
+"half," or a "third and fourth," his share depending upon how much he
+had furnished. The best class of tenants would rent for cash or a fixed
+rental, the poorest laborers would work for wages only.
+
+The "privileges" brought over from slavery, which were included in the
+share renting, astonished outside observers. To the laborer was usually
+given a house, a water supply, wood for fuel, pasture for pigs or cows,
+a "patch" for vegetables and fruit, and the right to hunt and fish.
+These were all that some needed in order to live. Somers, the English
+traveler already quoted, pronounced this generous custom "outrageously
+absurd," for the Negroes had so many privileges that they refused to
+make use of their opportunities. "The soul is often crushed out of labor
+by penury and oppression," he said, "but here a soul cannot begin to be
+infused into it through the sheer excess of privilege and license with
+which it is surrounded." The credit system which was developed beside
+the share system made a bad condition worse. On the 1st of January,
+a planter could mortgage his future crop to a merchant or landlord in
+exchange for subsistence until the harvest. Since, as a rule, neither
+tenant nor landlord had any surplus funds, the latter would be supplied
+by the banker or banker merchant, who would then dictate the crops to
+be planted and the time of sale. As a result of these conditions, the
+planter or farmer was held to staple crops, high prices for necessities,
+high interest rate, and frequently unfair bookkeeping. The system
+was excellent for a thrifty, industrious, and intelligent man, for it
+enabled him to get a start. It worked to the advantage of a bankrupt
+landlord, who could in this way get banking facilities. But it had a
+mischievous effect upon the average tenant, who had too small a share
+of the crop to feel a strong sense of responsibility as well as too many
+"privileges" and too little supervision to make him anxious to produce
+the best results.
+
+The Negroes entered into their freedom with several advantages: they
+were trained to labor; they were occupying the most fertile soil and
+could purchase land at low prices; the tenant system was most liberal;
+cotton, sugar, and rice were bringing high prices; and access to
+markets was easy. In the white districts, land was cheap and prices
+of commodities were high, but otherwise the Negroes seemed to have the
+better position. Yet as early as 1870, keen observers called attention
+to the fact that the hill and mountain whites were thriving as compared
+with their former condition, and that the Negroes were no longer their
+serious competitors. In the white districts, better methods were coming
+into use, labor was steady, fertilizers were used, and conditions of
+transportation were improving. The whites were also encroaching on the
+Black Belt; they were opening new lands in the Southwest; and within
+the border of the Black Belt they were bringing Negro labor under some
+control. In the South Carolina rice lands, crowds of Irish were imported
+to do the ditching which the Negroes refused to do and were carried
+back North when the job was finished.* President Thach of the Alabama
+Agricultural College has thus described the situation:
+
+     * The Census of 1880 gave proof of the superiority of the
+     whites in cotton production. For purposes of comparison the
+     cotton area may be divided into three regions: first, the
+     Black Belt, in which the farmers were black, the soil
+     fertile, the plantations large, the credit evil at its
+     worst, and the yield of cotton per acre the least; second,
+     the white districts, where the soil was the poorest, the
+     farms small, the workers nearly all white, and the yield per
+     acre better than on the fertile Black Belt lands; third, the
+     regions in which the races were nearly equal in numbers or
+     where the whites were in a slight majority, with soil of
+     medium fertility, good methods of agriculture, and, owing to
+     better controlled labor, the best yield. In ether words,
+     Negroes, fertile soil, and poor crops went together; and on
+     the other hand the whites got better crops on less fertile
+     soil. The Black Belt has never again reached the level of
+     production it had in 1880. But the white district kept
+     improving slowly.
+
+"By the use of commercial fertilizers, vast regions once considered
+barren have been brought into profitable cultivation, and really afford
+a more reliable and constant crop than the rich alluvial lands of the
+old slave plantations. In nearly every agricultural county in the South
+there is to be observed, on the one hand, this section of fertile soils,
+once the heart, of the old civilization, now abandoned by the whites,
+held in tenantry by a dense Negro population, full of dilapidation and
+ruin; while on the other hand, there is the region of light, thin soils,
+occupied by the small white freeholder, filled with schools, churches,
+and good roads, and all the elements of a happy, enlightened country
+life."
+
+All the systems devised for handling Negro labor proved to be only
+partially successful. The laborer was migratory, wanted easy work, with
+one or two holidays a week, and the privilege of attending political
+meetings, camp meetings, and circuses. A thrifty Negro could not
+make headway because his fellows stole from him or his less energetic
+relations and friends visited him and ate up his substance. One Alabama
+planter declared that he could not raise a turkey, a chicken, a hog, or
+a cow; and another asserted that "a hog has no more chance to live among
+these thieving Negro farmers than a June bug in a gang of puddle ducks."
+Lands were mortgaged to the supply houses in the towns, the whites
+gradually deserted the country, and many rice and cotton fields grew up
+in weeds. Crop stealing at night became a business which no legislation
+could ever completely stop. A traveler has left the following
+description of "a model Negro farm" in 1874. The farmer purchased an old
+mule on credit and rented land on shares or for so many bales of cotton;
+any old tools were used; corn, bacon, and other supplies were bought on
+credit, and a crop lien was given; a month later, corn and cotton were
+planted on soil that was not well broken up; the Negro "would not pay
+for no guano" to put on other people's land; by turns the farmer planted
+and fished, plowed and hunted, hoed and frolicked, or went to "meeting."
+At the end of the year he sold his cotton, paid part of his rent and
+some of his debt, returned the mule to its owner, and sang:
+
+Nigger work hard all de year, White man tote de money.
+
+The great landholdings did not break up into small farms as was
+predicted, though sales were frequent and in 1865 enormous amounts of
+land were put on the market. After 1867, additional millions of acres
+were offered at small prices, and tax and mortgage sales were numerous.
+The result of these operations, however, was a change of landlords
+rather than a breaking up of large plantations. New men, Negroes,
+merchants, and Jews became landowners. The number of small farms
+naturally increased but so in some instances did the land concentrated
+into large holdings.
+
+It was inevitable that conditions of Negro life should undergo a
+revolutionary change during the reconstruction. The serious matter of
+looking out for himself and his family and of making a living dampened
+the Negro's cheerful spirits. Released from the discipline of slavery
+and often misdirected by the worst of teachers, the Negro race naturally
+ran into excesses of petty criminality. Even under the reconstruction
+governments the proportion of Negro to white criminals was about ten
+to one. Theft was frequent; arson was the accepted means of revenge on
+white people; and murder became common in the brawls of the city Negro
+quarters. The laxness of the marriage relation worked special hardship
+on the women and children in so many cases deserted by the head of the
+family.
+
+Out of the social anarchy of reconstruction the Negroes emerged with
+numerous organizations of their own which may have been imitations
+of the Union League, the Lincoln Brotherhood, and the various church
+organizations. These societies were composed entirely of blacks and
+have continued with prolific reproduction to the present day. They were
+characterized by high names, gorgeous regalia, and frequent parades.
+"The Brothers and Sisters of Pleasure and Prosperity" and the "United
+Order of African Ladies and Gentlemen" played a large, and on the
+whole useful, part in Negro social life, teaching lessons of thrift,
+insurance, cooperation, and mutual aid.
+
+The reconstructionists were not able in 1867-68 to carry through
+Congress any provision for the social equality of the races, but in the
+reconstructed states, the equal rights issue was alive throughout the
+period. Legislation giving to the Negro equal rights in hotels, places
+of amusements, and common carriers, was first enacted in Louisiana and
+South Carolina. Frequently the carpetbaggers brought up the issue in
+order to rid the radical ranks of the scalawags who were opposed to
+equal rights. In Florida, for example, the carpetbaggers framed a
+comprehensive Equal Rights Law, passed it, and presented it to Governor
+Reed, who was known to be opposed to such legislation. He vetoed the
+measure and thus lost the Negro support. Intermarriage with whites was
+made legal in Louisiana and South Carolina and by court decision was
+permitted in Alabama and Mississippi, but the Georgia Supreme Court
+held it to be illegal. Mixed marriages were few, but these were made
+occasions of exultation over the whites and of consequent ill feeling.
+
+Charles Sumner was a persistent agitator for equal rights. In 1871 he
+declared in a letter to a South Carolina Negro convention that the race
+must insist not only upon equality in hotels and on public carriers but
+also in the schools. "It is not enough," he said, "to provide separate
+accommodations for colored citizens even if in all respects as good
+as those of other persons.... The discrimination is an insult and a
+hindrance, and a bar, which not only destroys comfort and prevents
+equality, but weakens all other rights. The right to vote will have new
+security when your equal right in public conveyances, hotels, and common
+schools, is at last established; but here you must insist for yourselves
+by speech, petition, and by vote." The Southern whites began to develop
+the "Jim Crow" theory of "separate but equal" accommodations. Senator
+Hill of Georgia, for example, thought that hotels might have separate
+divisions for the two races, and he cited the division in the churches
+as proof that the Negro wanted separation.
+
+About 1874, it was plain that the last radical Congress was nearly
+ready to enact social equality legislation. This fact turned many of the
+Southern Unionist class back to the Democratic party, there to remain
+for a long time. In 1875, as a sort of memorial to Sumner, Congress
+passed the Civil Rights Act, which gave to Negroes equal rights in
+hotels, places of amusement, on public carriers, and on juries. Some
+Democratic leaders were willing to see such legislation enacted, because
+in the first place, it would have little effect except in the Border and
+Northern States, where it would turn thousands into the Democratic fold,
+and in the second place, because they were sure that in time the Supreme
+Court would declare the law unconstitutional. And so it happened.
+
+In regions where the more unprincipled radical leaders were in control,
+the whites lived at times in fear of Negro uprisings. The Negroes were
+armed and insolent, and the whites were few and widely scattered. Here
+and there outbreaks occurred and individual whites and isolated families
+suffered, but as a rule all such movements were crushed with much
+heavier loss to the Negroes than to the better organized whites.
+Nevertheless everlasting apprehension for the safety of women and
+children kept the white men nervous. General Garnett Andrews remarked
+about the situation in Mississippi:
+
+"I have never suffered such an amount of anguish and alarm in all my
+life. I have served through the whole war as a soldier in the army of
+Northern Virginia, and saw all of it; but I never did experience... the
+fear and alarm and sense of danger which I felt that time. And this was
+the universal feeling among the population, among the white people. I
+think that both sides were alarmed and felt uneasy. It showed itself
+upon the countenance of the people; it made many of them sick. Men
+looked haggard and pale, after undergoing this sort of thing for six
+weeks or a month, and I have felt when I laid [sic] down that neither
+myself, nor my wife and children were in safety. I expected, and
+honestly anticipated, and thought it highly probable, that I might be
+assassinated and my house set on fire at any time."
+
+By the fires of reconstruction the whites were fused into a more
+homogeneous society, social as well as political. The former
+slaveholding class continued to be more considerate of the Negro than
+were the poor whites; but, as misrule went on, all classes tended to
+unite against the Negro in politics. They were tired of reconstruction,
+new amendments, force bills, Federal troops--tired of being ruled as
+conquered provinces by the incompetent and the dishonest. Every measure
+aimed at the South seemed to them to mean that they were considered
+incorrigible and unworthy of trust, and that they were being made to
+suffer for the deeds of irresponsible whites. And, to make matters
+worse, strong opposition to proscriptive measures was called fresh
+rebellion. "When the Jacobins say and do low and bitter things, their
+charge of want of loyalty in the South because our people grumble back
+a little seems to me as unreasonable as the complaint of the little boy:
+'Mamma, make Bob 'have hisself. He makes mouths at me every time I hit
+him with my stick.'"*
+
+     * Usually ascribed to General D. H. Hill of North Carolina,
+     and quoted in "The Land We Love", vol. 1, p. 146.
+
+
+Probably this burden fell heavier on the young men, who had life before
+them and who were growing up with diminished opportunities. Sidney
+Lanier, then an Alabama school teacher, wrote to Bayard Taylor: "Perhaps
+you know that with us of the young generation in the South, since the
+war, pretty much the whole of life has been merely not dying." Negro and
+alien rule was a constant insult to the intelligence of the country. The
+taxpayers were nonparticipants in the affairs of government. Some people
+withdrew entirely from public life, went to their farms or plantations,
+kept away from towns and from speechmaking, waiting for the end to come.
+There were some who refused for several years to read the newspapers, so
+unpleasant was the news. The good feeling produced by the magnanimity of
+Grant at Appomattox was destroyed by the severity of his Southern policy
+when he became President. There was no gratitude for any so-called
+leniency of the North, no repentance for the war, no desire for
+humiliation, for sackcloth and ashes, and no confession of wrong. The
+insistence of the radicals upon obtaining a confession of depravity
+only made things much worse. Scarcely a measure of Congress during
+reconstruction was designed or received in a conciliatory spirit.
+
+The new generation of whites was poor, bitter because of persecution,
+ill-educated, overworked, without a bright future, and shadowed by the
+race problem. Though their new political leaders were shrewd, narrow,
+conservative, honest, and parsimonious, the constant fighting of fire
+with fire scorched all. In the bitter discipline of reconstruction, the
+pleasantest side of Southern life came to an end. During the war and
+the consequent reconstruction there was a marked change in Southern
+temperament toward the severe. Hospitality declined; the old Southern
+life had never been on a business basis, but the new Southern life
+now adjusted itself to a stricter economy; the old individuality was
+partially lost; but class distinctions were less obvious in a more
+homogeneous society. The material evils of reconstruction may be only
+temporary; state debts may be paid and wasted resources renewed; but
+the moral and intellectual results of the revolution will be the more
+permanent.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. RESTORATION OF HOME RULE
+
+The radical program of reconstruction ended after ten years in failure
+rather because of a change in public opinion in the North than because
+of the resistance of the Southern whites. The North of 1877, indeed,
+was not the North of 1867. A more tolerant attitude toward the South
+developed as the North passed through its own period of misgovernment
+when all the large cities were subject to "ring rule" and corruption,
+as in New York under "Boss" Tweed and in the District of Columbia
+under "Boss" Shepherd. The Federal civil service was discredited by the
+scandals connected with the Sanborn contracts, the Whisky Ring, and the
+Star Routes, while some leaders in Congress were under a cloud from the
+"Salary Grab" and Credit Mobilier disclosures.*
+
+     * See "The Boss and the Machine", by Samuel P. Orth in "The
+     Chronicles of America".
+
+
+The marvelous material development of the North and West also drew
+attention away from sectional controversies. Settlers poured into the
+plains beyond the Mississippi and the valleys of the Far West; new
+industries sprang up; unsuspected mineral wealth was discovered;
+railroads were built. Not only bankers but taxpaying voters took an
+interest in the financial readjustments of the time. Many thousand
+people followed the discussions over the funding and refunding of
+the national debt, the retirement of the greenbacks, and the proposed
+lowering of tariff duties. Yet the Black Friday episode of 1869, when
+Jay Gould and James Fisk cornered the visible supply of gold, and the
+panic of 1873 were indications of unsound financial conditions.
+
+These new developments and the new domestic problems which they involved
+all tended to divert public thought from the old political issues
+arising out of the war. Foreign relations, too, began to take on a new
+interest. The Alabama claims controversy with England continued to hold
+the public attention until finally settled by the Geneva Arbitration
+in 1872. President Grant, as much of an expansionist as Seward, for two
+years (1869-71) tried to secure Santo Domingo or a part of it for an
+American naval base in the West Indies. But the United States had
+race problems enough already and the Senate, led by Sumner, refused to
+sanction the acquisition. Relations with Spain were frequently
+strained on account of American filibustering expeditions to aid Cuban
+insurgents. Spain repeatedly charged the United States with laxness
+toward such violations of international law; and President Grant, seeing
+no other way out, recommended in 1869 and again in 1870 that the Cuban
+insurgents be recognized as belligerents, but still the Senate held
+back. The climax came in 1873, when the Spanish authorities in Cuba
+captured on the high seas the Virginius* with a filibustering expedition
+on board and executed fifty-three of the crew and passengers, among them
+eight Americans. For a time war seemed imminent, but Spain acted quickly
+and effected a peaceable settlement.
+
+     * See "The Path of Empire", by Carl Russell Fish (in "The
+     Chronicles of America"), p. 119.
+
+
+It became evident soon after 1867 that the issues involved in
+reconstruction were not in themselves sufficient to hold the North
+solidly Republican. Toward Negro suffrage, for example, Northern public
+opinion was on the whole unfriendly. In 1867, the Negro was permitted to
+vote only in New York and in New England, except in Connecticut. Before
+1869, Negro suffrage was rejected in Connecticut, Wisconsin, Kansas,
+Ohio, Maryland, Missouri, Michigan, and Minnesota. The Republicans in
+their national platform of 1868 went only so far as to say that, while
+Negro suffrage was to be forced upon the South, it must remain a local
+question in the North. The Border States rapidly lined up with the white
+South on matters of race, church, and politics.
+
+It was not until 1874, however, that the changing opinion was made
+generally effective in the elections. The skillfully managed radical
+organization held large majorities in every Congress from the
+Thirty-ninth to the Forty-third, and the electoral votes in 1868 and
+1879 seemed to show that the conservative opposition was insignificant.
+But these figures do not tell the whole story. Even in 1864, when
+Lincoln won by nearly half a million, the popular vote was as eighteen
+to twenty-two, and four years later Grant, the most popular man in
+the United States, had a majority of only three hundred thousand over
+Seymour, and this majority and more came from the new Negro voters.
+Four years later with about a million Negro voters available and an
+opposition not pleased with its own candidate, Grant's majority reached
+only seven hundred thousand. At no one time in elections did the North
+pronounce itself in favor of all the reconstruction policies. The break,
+signs of which were visible as early as 1869, came in 1874 when the
+Republicans lost control of the House of Representatives.
+
+Strength was given to the opposition because of the dissatisfaction with
+President Grant, who knew little about politics and politicians. He felt
+that his Cabinet should be made up of personal friends, not of strong
+advisers, and that the military ideal of administration was the proper
+one. He was faithful but undiscriminating in his friendships and
+frequently chose as his associates men of vulgar tastes and low motives;
+and he showed a naive love of money and an undisguised admiration for
+rich men such as Gould and Fisk. His appointees were often incompetent
+friends or relatives, and his cynical attitude toward civil service
+reform lost him the support of influential men. When forced by party
+exigencies to select first-class men for his Cabinet, he still preferred
+to go for advice to practical politicians. On the Southern question he
+easily fell under control of the radicals, who in order to retain their
+influence had only to convince his military mind that the South was
+again in rebellion, and who found it easy to distract public opinion
+from political corruption by "waving the bloody shirt." Dissatisfaction
+with his Administration, it is true, was confined to the intellectuals,
+the reformers, and the Democrats, but they were strong enough to defeat
+him for a second term if they could only be organized.
+
+The Liberal Republican movement began in the West about 1869 with
+demands for amnesty and for reform, particularly in the civil service,
+and it soon spread rapidly over the North. When it became certain that
+the "machine" would renominate Grant, the liberal movement became
+an anti-Grant party. The "New Departure" Democrats gave comfort
+and prospect of aid to the Liberal Republicans by declaring for a
+constructive, forward-looking policy in place of reactionary opposition.
+The Liberal chiefs were led to believe that the new Democratic leaders
+would accept their platform and candidates in order to defeat Grant. The
+principal candidates for the Liberal Republican nomination were Charles
+Francis Adams, Lyman Trumbull, Gratz Brown, David Davis, and Horace
+Greeley. Adams was the strongest candidate but was jockeyed out of place
+and the nomination was given to Horace Greeley, able enough as editor of
+the "New York Tribune" but impossible as a candidate for the presidency.
+The Democratic party accepted him as their candidate also, although he
+had been a lifelong opponent of Democratic principles and policies. But
+disgusted Liberals either returned to the Republican ranks or stayed
+away from the polls, and many Democrats did likewise. Under these
+circumstances the reelection of Grant was a foregone conclusion. There
+was certainly a potential majority against Grant, but the opposition
+had failed to organize, while the Republican machine was in good working
+order, the Negroes were voting, and the Enforcement Acts proved a great
+aid to the Republicans in the Southern States.
+
+One good result of the growing liberal sentiment was the passage of
+an Amnesty Act by Congress on May 22, 1872. By statute and by the
+Fourteenth Amendment, Congress had refused to recognize the complete
+validity of President Johnson's pardons and amnesty proclamations,
+and all Confederate leaders who wished to regain political rights
+had therefore to appeal to Congress. During the Forty-first Congress
+(1869-71) more than three thousand Southerners were amnestied in order
+that they might hold office. These, however, were for the most part
+scalawags; the most respectable whites would not seek an amnesty which
+they could secure only by self-stultification.* It was the pressure
+of public opinion against white disfranchisement and the necessity for
+meeting the Liberal Republican arguments which caused the passage of
+the Act of 1872. By this act about 150,000 whites were reenfranchised,
+leaving out only about five hundred of the most prominent of the old
+regime, most of whom were never restored to citizenship. Both Robert E.
+Lee and Jefferson Davis died disfranchised.
+
+     * The machinery of government and politics was all in
+     radical hands--the carpetbaggers and scalawags, who were
+     numerous enough to fill practically all the offices. These
+     men were often able leaders and skillful managers, and they
+     did not intend to surrender control; and the black race was
+     obedient and furnished the votes. In 1868, with Virginia,
+     Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas unrepresented, the first
+     radical contingent in Congress from the South numbered 41,
+     of whom 10 out of 12 senators and 26 out of 32
+     representatives were carpetbaggers. There were two lone
+     conservative Congressmen. A few months later, in 1869, there
+     were 64 radical representatives from the South, 20 senators
+     and 44 members of the House of Representatives. In 1877 this
+     number had dwindled to two senators and four
+     representatives. The difference between these figures
+     measures in some degree the extent of the undoing of
+     reconstruction within the period of Grant's Administration.
+
+How the Southern whites escaped from Negro domination has often been
+told and may here be sketched only in outline. The first States regained
+from radicalism were those in which the Negro population was small and
+the black vote large enough to irritate but not to dominate. Although
+Northern sentiment, excited by the stories of "Southern outrage," was
+then unfavorable, the conservatives of the South, by organizing a "white
+man's party" and by the use of Ku Klux methods, made a fight for social
+safety which they won nearly everywhere, and, in addition, they gained
+political control of several States--Tennessee in 1869, Virginia in
+1869-1870, and North Carolina and Georgia in 1870. They almost won
+Louisiana in 1868 and Alabama in 1870, but the alarmed radicals came
+to the rescue of the situation with the Fifteenth Amendment and the
+Enforcement Laws of 1870-1871. With more troops and a larger number of
+deputy marshals, it seemed that the radicals might securely hold the
+remaining states. Arrests of conservatives were numerous, plundering was
+at its height, the Federal Government was interested and was friendly
+to the new Southern rulers, and the carpetbaggers and scalawags feasted,
+troubled only by the disposition of their Negro supporters to demand a
+share of the spoils. Although the whites made little gain from 1870 to
+1874, the states already rescued became more firmly conservative; white
+counties here and there in the black states voted out the radicals; a
+few more representatives of the whites got into Congress; and the Border
+States ranged themselves more solidly with the conservatives.
+
+But while the Southern whites were becoming desperate under oppression,
+public opinion in the North was at last beginning to affect politics.
+The elections of 1874 resulted in a Democratic landslide of which
+the Administration was obliged to take notice. Grant now grew more
+responsive to criticism. In 1875 he replied to a request for troops to
+hold down Mississippi: "The whole public are tired out with these annual
+autumnal outbreaks in the South and the great majority are ready now
+to condemn any interference on the part of the Government." As soon
+as conditions in the South were better understood in the North, ready
+sympathy and political aid were offered by many who had hitherto acted
+with the radicals. The Ku Klux report as well as the newspaper writings
+and the books of J. S. Pike and Charles Nordhoff, both former opponents
+of slavery, opened the eyes of many to the evil results of Negro
+suffrage. Some who had been considered friends of the Negro, now
+believing that he had proven to be a political failure, coldly abandoned
+him and turned their altruistic interests to other objects more likely
+to succeed. Many real friends of the Negro were alarmed at the evils of
+the reconstruction and were anxious to see the corrupt political leaders
+deprived of further influence over the race. To others the constantly
+recurring Southern problem was growing stale, and they desired to hear
+less of it. Within the Republican party in each Southern State, there
+were serious divisions over the spoils. First it was carpetbagger and
+Negro against the scalawag; later, when the black leaders insisted that
+those who furnished the votes must have the larger share of the rewards,
+the fight became triangular. As a result, by 1874 the Republican
+party in the South was split into factions and was deserted by a large
+proportion of its white membership.
+
+The conservative whites, fiercely resentful after their experiences
+under the enforcement laws and hopeful of Northern sympathy, now planned
+a supreme effort to regain their former power. Race lines were more
+strictly drawn; ostracism of all that was radical became the rule; the
+Republican party in the South, it was apparent, was doomed to be only
+a Negro party weighed down by the scandal of bad government; the state
+treasuries were bankrupt, and there was little further opportunity
+for plunder. These considerations had much to do with the return of
+scalawags to the "white man's party" and the retirement of carpetbaggers
+from Southern politics. There was no longer anything in it, they said;
+let the Negro have it!
+
+It was under these conditions that the "white man's party" carried the
+elections in Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas in 1874, and Mississippi
+in 1875. Asserting that it was a contest between civilization and
+barbarism, and that the whites under the radical regime had no
+opportunity to carry an election legally, the conservatives openly made
+use of every method of influencing the result that could possibly come
+within the radical law and they even employed many effective methods
+that lay outside the law. Negroes were threatened with discharge from
+employment and whites with tar and feathers if they voted the radical
+ticket; there were nightriding parties, armed and drilled "white
+leagues," and mysterious firing of guns and cannon at night; much
+plain talk assailed the ears of the radical leaders; and several bloody
+outbreaks occurred, principally in Louisiana and Mississippi. Louisiana
+had been carried by the Democrats in the fall of 1872, but the radical
+returning board had reversed the election. In 1874 the whites rose in
+rebellion and turned out Kellogg, the usurping Governor, but President
+Grant intervened to restore him to office. The "Mississippi" or
+"shot-gun plan"* was very generally employed, except where the contest
+was likely to go in favor of the whites without the use of undue
+pressure. The white leaders exercised a moderating influence, but the
+average white man had determined to do away with Negro government even
+though the alternative might be a return of military rule. Congress
+investigated the elections in each State which overthrew the
+reconstructionists, but nothing came of the inquiry and the population
+rapidly settled down into good order. After 1875 only three States
+were left under radical government--Louisiana and Florida, where the
+returning boards could throw out any Democratic majority, and South
+Carolina, where the Negroes greatly outnumbered the whites.
+
+     * See "The New South", by Holland Thompson (in "The
+     Chronicles of America").
+
+
+Reconstruction could hardly be a genuine issue in the presidential
+campaign of 1876, because all except these three reconstructed States
+had escaped from radical control, and there was no hope and little real
+desire of regaining them. It was even expected that in this year the
+radicals would lose Louisiana and Florida to the "white man's party."
+The leaders of the best element of the Republicans, both North and
+South, looked upon the reconstruction as one of the prime causes of
+the moral breakdown of their party; they wanted no more of the Southern
+issue but planned a forward-looking, constructive reform.
+
+To some of the Republican leaders, however, among whom was James G.
+Blame, it was clear that the Republican party, with its unsavory record
+under Grant's Administration, could hardly go before the people with a
+reform program. The only possible thing to do was to revive some Civil
+War issue--"wave the bloody shirt" and fan the smoldering embers of
+sectional feeling. Blame met with complete success in raising the
+desired issue. In January 1876, when an amnesty measure was brought
+before the House, he moved that Jefferson Davis be excepted on the
+ground that he was responsible for the mistreatment of Union prisoners
+during the war. Southern hot-bloods replied, and Blaine skillfully led
+them on until they had foolishly furnished him with ample material for
+campaign purposes. The feeling thus aroused was so strong that it even
+galvanized into seeming life the dying interest in the wrongs of
+the Negro. The rallying cry "Vote as you shot!" gave the Republicans
+something to fight for; the party referred to its war record,
+claimed credit for preserving the Union, emancipating the Negro,
+and reconstructing the South, and demanded that the country be not
+"surrendered to rebel rule."
+
+Hayes and Tilden, the rival candidates for the presidency, were both
+men of high character and of moderate views. Their nominations had
+been forced by the better element of each party. Hayes, the Republican
+candidate, had been a good soldier, was moderate in his views on
+Southern questions, and had a clean political reputation. Tilden, his
+opponent, had a good record as a party man and as a reformer, and his
+party needed only to attack the past record of the Republicans. The
+principal Democratic weakness lay in the fact that the party drew so
+much of its strength from the white South and was therefore subjected to
+criticism on Civil War issues.
+
+The campaign was hotly contested and was conducted on a low plane. Even
+Hayes soon saw that the "bloody shirt" issue was the main vote winner.
+The whites of the three "unredeemed" Southern States nerved themselves
+for the final struggle. In South Carolina and in some parishes of
+Louisiana, there was a considerable amount of violence, in which the
+whites had the advantage, and much fraud, which the Republicans, who
+controlled the election machinery, turned to best account. It has been
+said that out of the confusion which the Republicans created they won
+the presidency.
+
+The first election returns seemed to give Tilden the victory with 184
+undisputed electoral votes and popular majorities of ninety and over
+six thousand respectively in Florida and Louisiana; only 185 votes were
+needed for a choice. Hayes had 166 votes, not counting Oregon, in
+which one vote was in dispute, and South Carolina, which for a time was
+claimed by both parties. Had Louisiana and Florida been Northern
+States, there would have been no controversy, but the Republican general
+headquarters knew that the Democratic majorities in these States had to
+go through Republican returning boards, which had never yet failed to
+throw them out.
+
+The interest of the nation now centered around the action of the two
+returning boards. At the suggestion of President Grant, prominent
+Republicans went South to witness the count. Later prominent Democrats
+went also. These "visiting statesmen" were to support the frail
+returning boards in their duty. It was generally understood that these
+boards, certainly the one in Louisiana, were for sale, and there is
+little doubt that the Democrats inquired the price. But they were afraid
+to bid on such uncertain quantities as Governor Wells and T. C. Anderson
+of Louisiana, both notorious spoilsmen. The members of the boards in
+both States soon showed the stiffening effect of the moral support of
+the Federal Administration and of the "visiting statesmen." Reassured as
+to their political future, they proceeded to do their duty: in Florida
+they threw out votes until the ninety majority for Tilden was changed to
+925 for Hayes, and in Louisiana, by throwing out about fifteen thousand
+carefully selected ballots, they changed Tilden's lowest majority of
+six thousand to a Hayes majority of nearly four thousand. Naturally the
+Democrats sent in contesting returns, but the presidency was really won
+when the Republicans secured in Louisiana and Florida returns which were
+regular in form. But hoping to force Congress to go behind the returns,
+the Democrats carried up contests also from Oregon and South Carolina,
+whose votes properly belonged to Hayes.
+
+The final contest came in Congress over the counting of the electoral
+votes. The Constitution provides that "the President of the Senate
+shall, in the presence of the Senate and the House of Representatives,
+open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted." But
+there was no agreement as to where authority lay for deciding disputed
+votes. Never before had the presidency turned on a disputed count. From
+1864 to 1874 the "twenty-second joint rule" had been in force under
+which either House might reject a certificate. The votes of Georgia in
+1868 and of Louisiana in 1879 had thus been thrown out. But the rule
+had not been readopted by the present Congress, and the Republicans very
+naturally would not listen to a proposal to readopt it now.
+
+With the country apparently on the verge of civil war, Congress finally
+created by law an Electoral Commission to which were to be referred all
+disputes about the counting of votes and the decision of which was to
+be final unless both Houses concurred in rejecting it. The act
+provided that the commission should consist of five senators, five
+representatives, four designated associate justices of the Supreme
+Court, and a fifth associate justice to be chosen by these four. While
+nothing was said in the act about the political affiliations of the
+members of the commission, every one understood that the House would
+select three Democrats and two Republicans, and that the Senate would
+name two Democrats and three Republicans. It was also well known that of
+the four justices designated two were Republicans and two Democrats, and
+it was tacitly agreed that the fifth would be Justice David Davis, an
+"independent." But at the last moment Davis was elected Senator by the
+Illinois Legislature and declined to serve on the Commission. Justice
+Bradley, a Republican, was then named as the fifth justice, and in this
+way the Republicans obtained a majority on the Commission.
+
+The Democrats deserve the credit for the Electoral Commission. The
+Republicans did not favor it, even after they were sure of a party
+majority on it. They were conscious that they had a weak case, and they
+were afraid to trust it to judges of the Supreme Court. Their fears were
+groundless, however, since all important questions were decided by an 8
+to 7 vote, Bradley voting with his fellow Republicans. Every contested
+vote was given to Hayes, and with 185 electoral votes he was declared
+elected on March 2, 1877.
+
+Ten years before, Senator Morton of Indiana had said: "I would have
+been in favor of having the colored people of the South wait a few
+years until they were prepared for the suffrage, until they were to
+some extent educated, but the necessities of the times forbade that; the
+conditions of things required that they should be brought to the polls
+at once." Now the condition of things required that some arrangement be
+made with the Southern whites which would involve a complete reversal
+of the situation of 1867. In order to secure the unopposed succession of
+Hayes, to defeat filibustering which might endanger the decision of the
+Electoral Commission, politicians who could speak with authority for
+Hayes assured influential Southern politicians, who wanted no more civil
+war but who did want home rule, that an arrangement might be made which
+would be satisfactory to both sides.
+
+So the contest was ended. Hayes was to be President; the South, with the
+Negro, was to be left to the whites; there would be no further military
+aid to carpetbag governments. In so far as the South was concerned,
+it was a fortunate settlement better, indeed, than if Tilden had been
+inducted into office. The remnants of the reconstruction policy were
+surrendered by a Republican President, the troops were soon withdrawn,
+and the three radical states fell at once under the control of the
+whites. Hayes could not see in his election any encouragement to adopt
+a vigorous radical position, and Congress was deadlocked on party issues
+for fifteen years. As a result the radical Republicans had to develop
+other interests, and the North gradually accepted the Southern
+situation.
+
+Although the radical policy of reconstruction came to an end in 1877,
+some of its results were more lasting. The Southern States were burdened
+heavily with debt, much of which had been fraudulently incurred.
+There now followed a period of adjustment, of refunding, scaling, and
+repudiation, which not only injured the credit of the states but left
+them with enormous debts. The Democratic party under the leadership of
+former Confederates began its regime of strict economy, race fairness,
+and inelastic Jeffersonianism. There was a political rest which almost
+amounted to stagnation and which the leaders were unwilling to disturb
+by progressive measures lest a developing democracy make trouble with
+the settlement of 1877.
+
+The undoing of reconstruction was not entirely completed with the
+understanding of 1877. There remained a large but somewhat shattered
+Republican party in the South, with control over county and local
+government in many Negro districts. Little by little the Democrats
+rooted out these last vestiges of Negro control, using all the old
+radical methods and some improvements,* such as tissue ballots, the
+shuffling of ballot boxes, bribery, force, and redistricting, while some
+regions were placed entirely under executive control and were ruled by
+appointed commissions. With the good government which followed these
+changes a deadlocked Congress showed no great desire to interfere. The
+Supreme Court came to the aid of the Democrats with decisions in 1875,
+1882, and 1883 which drew the teeth from the Enforcement Laws, and
+Congress in 1894 repealed what was left of these regulations.
+
+     *See "The New South", by Holland Thompson (in "The
+     Chronicles of America").
+
+Under such discouraging conditions the voting strength of the
+Republicans rapidly melted away. The party organization existed for the
+Federal offices only and was interested in keeping down the number of
+those who desired to be rewarded. As a consequence, the leaders could
+work in harmony with those Democratic chiefs who were content with a
+"solid South" and local home rule. The Negroes of the Black Belt, with
+less enthusiasm and hope, but with quite the same docility as in 1868,
+began to vote as the Democratic leaders directed. This practice brought
+up in another form the question of "Negro government" and resulted in
+a demand from the people of the white counties that the Negro be put
+entirely out of politics. The answer came between 1890 and 1902 in the
+form of new and complicated election laws or new constitutions which in
+various ways shut out the Negro from the polls and left the government
+to the whites. Three times have the Black Belt regions dominated the
+Southern States: under slavery, when the master class controlled; under
+reconstruction, when the leaders of the Negroes had their own way; and
+after reconstruction until Negro disfranchisement, when the Democratic
+dictators of the Negro vote ruled fairly but not always acceptably to
+the white counties which are now the source of their political power.
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
+
+The best general accounts of the reconstruction period are found in
+James Ford Rhodes's "History of the United States from the Compromise of
+1850 to the Restoration of Home Rule at the South in 1877", volumes V,
+VI, VII (1906); in William A. Dunning's "Reconstruction, Political
+and Economic", 1865-1877, in the "American Nation" Series, volume XXII
+(1907); and in Peter Joseph Hamilton's "The Reconstruction Period"
+(1905), which is volume XVI of "The History of North America", edited by
+F. N. Thorpe. The work of Rhodes is spacious and fair-minded but there
+are serious gaps in his narrative; Dunning's briefer account covers the
+entire field with masterly handling; Hamilton's history throws new light
+on all subjects and is particularly useful for an understanding of the
+Southern point of view. A valuable discussion of constitutional problems
+is contained in William A. Dunning's "Essay on the Civil War and
+Reconstruction and Related Topics" (1904); and a criticism of the
+reconstruction policies from the point of view of political science and
+constitutional law is to be found in J. W. Burgess's "Reconstruction and
+the Constitution, 1866-1876" (1902). E. B. Andrews's "The United States
+in our own Time" (1903) gives a popular treatment of the later period. A
+collection of brief monographs entitled "Why the Solid South?" by Hilary
+A. Herbert and others (1890) was written as a campaign document to
+offset the drive made by the Republicans in 1889 for new enforcement
+laws.
+
+There are many scholarly monographs on reconstruction in the several
+states. The best of these are: J. W. Garner's "Reconstruction in
+Mississippi" (1901), W. L. Fleming's "Civil War and Reconstruction
+in Alabama" (1905), J. G. de R. Hamilton's "Reconstruction in North
+Carolina" (1914), W. W. Davis's "The Civil War and Reconstruction in
+Florida" (1913), J. S. Reynolds's "Reconstruction in South Carolina",
+1865-1877 (1905); C. W. Ramsdell's "Reconstruction in Texas" (1910), and
+C. M. Thompson's "Reconstruction in Georgia" (1915).
+
+Books of interest on special phases of reconstruction are not numerous,
+but among those deserving mention are Paul S. Pierce's "The Freedmen's
+Bureau" (1904), D. M. DeWitt's "The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew
+Johnson" (1903), and Paul L. Haworth's "The Hayes-Tilden Disputed
+Presidential Election of 1876" (1906), each of which is a thorough study
+of its field. J. C. Lester and D. L. Wilson's "Ku Klux Klan" (1905) and
+M. L. Avary's "Dixie After the War" (1906) contribute much to a fair
+understanding of the feeling of the whites after the Civil War; and
+Gideon Welles, "Diary", 3 vols. (1911), is a mine of information from a
+conservative cabinet officer's point of view.
+
+For the politician's point of view one may go to James G. Blaine's
+"Twenty Years of Congress", 2 vols. (1884, 1886) and Samuel S. Cox's
+"Three Decades of Federal Legislation" (1885). Good biographies are
+James A. Woodburn's "The Life of Thaddeus Stevens" (1913), Moorfield
+Storey's "Charles Sumner" (1900), C. F. Adams's "Charles Francis Adams"
+(1900). Less satisfactory because more partisan is Edward Stanwood's
+"James Gillespie Blaine" (1906). There are no adequate biographies of
+the Democratic and Southern leaders.
+
+The official documents are found conveniently arranged in William
+McDonald's "Select Statutes", 1861-1898 (1903), and also with other
+material in Walter L. Fleming's "Documentary History of Reconstruction",
+2 vols. (1906, 1907). The general reader is usually repelled by the
+collections known as "Public Documents". The valuable "Ku Klux Trials"
+(1872) is, however, separately printed and to be found in most good
+libraries. By a judicious use of the indispensable "Tables and Index
+to Public Documents," one can find much vividly interesting material in
+connection with contested election cases and reports of congressional
+investigations into conditions in the South.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Sequel of Appomattox, by Walter Lynwood Fleming
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+Project Gutenberg Sequel of Appomattox by Walter Lynwood Fleming
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+Title: The Sequel of Appomattox, A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States
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+Author: Walter Lynwood Fleming
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+
+THE SEQUEL OF APPOMATTOX
+A CHRONICLE OF THE REUNION OF THE STATES
+
+BY WALTER LYNWOOD FLEMING
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. THE AFTERMATH OF WAR
+
+When the armies of the Union and of the Confederacy were disbanded in 1865,
+two matters had been settled beyond further dispute: the Negro was to be free,
+and the Union was to be perpetuated. But, though slavery and state sovereignty
+were no longer at issue, there were still many problems which pressed for
+solution. The huge task of reconstruction must be faced. The nature of the
+situation required that the measures of reconstruction be first formulated in
+Washington by the victors and then worked out in the conquered South. Since
+the success of these policies would depend in a large measure upon their
+acceptability to both sections of the country, it was expected that the North
+would be influenced to some extent by the attitude of the Southern people,
+which in turn would be determined largely by local conditions in the South.
+The situation in the South at the close of the Civil War is, therefore, the
+point at which this narrative of the reconstruction naturally takes its
+beginning.
+
+The surviving Confederate soldiers came straggling back to communities, which
+were now far from being satisfactory dwelling places for civilized people.
+Everywhere they found missing many of the best of their former neighbors. They
+found property destroyed, the labor system disorganized, and the inhabitants
+in many places suffering from want. They found the white people demoralized
+and sometimes divided among themselves and the Negroes free, bewildered, and
+disorderly, for organized government had lapsed with the surrender of the
+Confederate armies.
+
+Beneath a disorganized society lay a devastated land. The destruction of
+property affected all classes of the population. The accumulated capital of
+the South had disappeared in worthless Confederate stocks, bonds, and
+currency. The banks had failed early in the war. Two billion dollars invested
+in slaves had been wiped out. Factories, which had been running before the war
+or were developed after 1861 in order to supply the blockaded country, had
+been destroyed by Federal raiders or seized and sold or dismantled because
+they had furnished supplies to the Confederacy. Mining industries were
+paralyzed. Public buildings which had been used for war purposes were
+destroyed or confiscated for the uses of the army or for the new freedmen's
+schools. It was months before courthouses, state capitols, school and college
+buildings were again made available for normal uses. The military school
+buildings had been destroyed by the Federal forces. Among the schools which
+suffered were the Virginia Military Institute, the University of Alabama, the
+Louisiana State Seminary, and many smaller institutions. Nearly all these had
+been used in some way for war purposes and were therefore subject to
+destruction or confiscation.
+
+The farmers and planters found themselves "land poor." The soil remained, but
+there was a prevalent lack of labor, of agricultural equipment, of farm stock,
+of seeds, and of money with which to make good the deficiency. As a result, a
+man with hundreds of acres might be as poor as a Negro refugee. The desolation
+is thus described by a Virginia farmer:
+
+"From Harper's Ferry to New Market, which is about eighty miles . . . the
+country was almost a desert . . . . We had no cattle, hogs, sheep, or horse or
+anything else. The fences were all gone. Some of the orchards were very much
+injured, but the fruit trees had not been destroyed. The barns were all
+burned; chimneys standing without houses, and houses standing without roof, or
+door, or window."
+
+Much land was thrown on the market at low prices--three to five dollars an
+acre for land worth fifty dollars. The poorer lands could not be sold at all,
+and thousands of farms were deserted by their owners. Everywhere recovery from
+this agricultural depression was slow. Five years after the war Robert Somers,
+an English traveler, said of the Tennessee Valley:
+
+"It consists for the most part of plantations in a state of semi- ruin and
+plantations of which the ruin is for the present total and complete . . . .
+The trail of war is visible throughout the valley in burnt-up gin-houses,
+ruined bridges, mills, and factories . . . and in large tracts of once
+cultivated land stripped of every vestige of fencing. The roads, long
+neglected, are in disorder, and having in many places become impassable, new
+tracks have been made through the woods and fields without much respect to
+boundaries."
+
+Similar conditions existed wherever the armies had passed, and not in the
+country districts alone. Many of the cities, such as Richmond, Charleston,
+Columbia, Jackson, Atlanta, and Mobile had suffered from fire or bombardment.
+
+There were few stocks of merchandise in the South when the war ended, and
+Northern creditors had lost so heavily through the failure of Southern
+merchants that they were cautious about extending credit again. Long before
+1865 all coin had been sent out in contraband trade through the blockade. That
+there was a great need of supplies from the outside world is shown by the
+following statement of General Boynton:
+
+"Window-glass has given way to thin boards, in railway coaches and in the
+cities. Furniture is marred and broken, and none has been replaced for four
+years. Dishes are cemented in various styles, and half the pitchers have tin
+handles. A complete set of crockery is never seen, and in very few families is
+there enough to set a table .... A set of forks with whole tines is a
+curiosity. Clocks and watches have nearly all stopped . . . . Hairbrushes and
+toothbrushes have all worn out; combs are broken . . . . Pins, needles, and
+thread, and a thousand such articles, which seem indispensable to
+housekeeping, are very scarce. Even in weaving on the looms, corncobs have
+been substituted for spindles. Few have pocketknives. In fact, everything that
+has heretofore been an article of sale in the South is wanting now. At the
+tables of those who were once esteemed luxurious providers you will find
+neither tea, coffee, sugar, nor spices of any kind. Even candles, in some
+cases, have been replaced by a cup of grease in which a piece of cloth is
+plunged for a wick."
+
+This poverty was prolonged and rendered more acute by the lack of
+transportation. Horses, mules, wagons, and carriages were scarce, the country
+roads were nearly impassable, and bridges were in bad repair or had been
+burned or washed away. Steamboats had almost disappeared from the rivers.
+Those which had escaped capture as blockade runners had been subsequently
+destroyed or were worn out.. Postal facilities, which had been poor enough
+during the last year of the Confederacy, were entirely lacking for several
+months after the surrender.
+
+The railways were in a state of physical dilapidation little removed from
+destruction, save for those that had been captured and kept in partial repair
+by the Federal troops. The rolling stock had been lost by capture, by
+destruction to prevent capture, in wrecks, which were frequent, or had been
+worn out. The railroad companies possessed large sums in Confederate currency
+and in securities which were now valueless. About two-thirds of all the lines
+were hopelessly bankrupt. Fortunately, the United States War Department took
+over the control of the railway lines and in some cases effected a temporary
+reorganization which could not have been accomplished by the bankrupt
+companies. During the summer and fall of 1865, "loyal" boards of directors
+were appointed for most of the railroads, and the army withdrew its control.
+But repairs and reconstruction were accomplished with difficulty because of
+the demoralization of labor and the lack of funds or credit. Freight was
+scarce and, had it not been for government shipments, some of the railroads
+would have been abandoned. Not many people were able to travel. It is recorded
+that on one trip from Montgomery to Mobile and return, a distance of 360
+miles, the railroad which is now the Louisville and Nashville collected only
+thirteen dollars in fares.
+
+Had there been unrestricted commercial freedom in the South in 1865-66, the
+distress of the people would have been somewhat lessened, for here and there
+were to be found public and private stores of cotton, tobacco, rice, and other
+farm products, all of which were bringing high prices in the market. But for
+several months the operation of wartime laws and regulations hindered the
+distribution of even these scanty stores. Property upon which the Confederate
+Government had a claim was, of course, subject to Confiscation, and private
+property offered for sale, even that of Unionists, was subject to a 25 percent
+tax on sales, a shipping tax, and a revenue tax. The revenue tax on cotton,
+ranging from two to three cents a pound during the three years after the war,
+brought in over $68,000,000. This tax, with other Federal revenues, yielded
+much more than the entire expenses of reconstruction from 1865 to 1868 and of
+all relief measures for the South, both public and private. After May 1865,
+the 25 percent tax was imposed only upon the produce of slave labor. None of
+the war taxes, except that on cotton, was levied upon the crops of 1866, but
+while these taxes lasted, they seriously impeded the resumption of trade.
+
+Even these restrictions, however, might have been borne if only they had been
+honestly applied. Unfortunately, some of the most spectacular frauds ever
+perpetrated were carried through in connection with the attempt of the United
+States Treasury Department to collect and sell the confiscable property in the
+South. The property to be sold consisted of what had been captured and seized
+by the army and the navy, of "abandoned" property, as such was called whose
+owner was absent in the Confederate service, and of property subject to
+seizure under the confiscation acts of Congress. No captures were made after
+the general surrender, and no further seizures of "abandoned" property were
+made after Johnson's amnesty proclamation of May 29, 1865. This left only the
+"confiscable" property to be collected and sold.
+
+For collection purposes the states of the South were divided into districts,
+each under the supervision of an agent of the Treasury Department, who
+received a commission of about 25 percent. Cotton, regarded as the root of the
+slavery evil, was singled out as the principal object of confiscation. It was
+known that the Confederate Government had owned in 1865 about 150,000 bales,
+but the records were defective and much of it, with no clear indication of
+ownership, still remained with the producers. Secretary Chase, foreseeing the
+difficulty of effecting a just settlement, counseled against seizure, but his
+judgment was overruled. Secretary McCulloch said of his agents: "I am sure I
+sent some honest cotton agents South; but it sometimes seems doubtful whether
+any of them remained honest very long." Some of the natives, even, became
+cotton thieves. In a report made in 1866, McCulloch describes their methods:
+"Contractors, anxious for gain, were sometimes guilty of bad faith and
+peculation, and frequently took possession of cotton and delivered it under
+contracts as captured or abandoned, when in fact it was not such, and they had
+no right to touch it . . . . Residents and others in the districts where these
+peculations were going on took advantage of the unsettled condition of the
+country, and representing themselves as agents of this department, went about
+robbing under such pretended authority, and thus added to the difficulties of
+the situation by causing unjust opprobrium and suspicion to rest upon officers
+engaged in the faithful discharge of their duties. Agents, . . . frequently
+received or collected property, and sent it forward which the law did not
+authorize them to take . . . . Lawless men, singly and in organized bands,
+engaged in general plunder; every species of intrigue and peculation and theft
+were resorted to."
+
+These agents turned over to the United States about $34,000,000. About 40,000
+claimants were subsequently indemnified on the ground that the property taken
+from them did not belong to the Confederate Government, but many thousands of
+other claimants have been unable to prove that their property was seized by
+government agents and hence have received nothing. It is probable that the
+actual Confederate property was nearly all stolen by the agents. One agent in
+Alabama sold an appointment as assistant for $25,000, and a few months later
+both the assistant and the agent were tried by a military court for stealing
+and were fined $90,000 and $250,000 respectively in addition to being
+imprisoned.
+
+Other property, including horses, mules, wagons, tobacco, rice, and sugar
+which the natives claimed as their own, was seized. In some places the agents
+even collected delinquent Confederate taxes. Much of the confiscable property
+was not sold but was turned over to the Freedmen's Bureau* for its support.
+The total amount seized cannot be satisfactorily ascertained. The Ku Klux
+minority report asserted that 3,000,000 bales of cotton were taken, of which
+the United States received only 114,000. It is certain that, owing to the
+deliberate destruction of cotton by fire in 1864-65, this estimate was too
+high, but all the testimony points to the fact that the frauds were
+stupendous. As a result the United States Government did not succeed in
+obtaining the Confederate property to which it had a claim, and the country
+itself was stripped of necessities to a degree that left it not only destitute
+but outraged and embittered. "Such practices," said Trowbridge, "had a
+pernicious effect, engendering a contempt for the Government and a murderous
+ill will which too commonly vented itself upon soldiers and Negroes." * See
+pp. 89 et seq.
+
+The South faced the work of reconstruction not only with a shortage of
+material and greatly hampered in the employment even of that but still more
+with a shortage of men. The losses among the whites are usually estimated at
+about half the military population, but since accurate records are lacking,
+the exact numbers cannot be ascertained. The best of the civil leaders, as
+well as the prominent military leaders, had so committed themselves to the
+support of the Confederacy as to be excluded from participation in any
+reconstruction that might be attempted. The business of reconstruction,
+therefore, fell of necessity to the Confederate private soldiers, the lower
+officers, nonparticipants, and lukewarm individuals who had not greatly
+compromised themselves. These politically and physically uninjured survivors
+included also all the "slackers" of the Confederacy. But though there were
+such physical and moral losses on the part of those to whom fell the direction
+of affairs, there was also a moral strengthening in the sound element of the
+people who had been tried by the discipline of war.
+
+The greatest weakness of both races was their extreme poverty. The crops of
+1865 turned out badly, for most of the soldiers reached home too late for
+successful planting, and the Negro labor was not dependable. The sale of such
+cotton and farm products as had escaped the treasury agents was of some help,
+but curiously enough much of the good money thus obtained was spent
+extravagantly by a people used to Confederate rag money and for four years
+deprived of the luxuries of life. The poorer whites who had lost all were
+close to starvation. In the white counties which had sent so large a
+proportion of men to the army, the destitution was most acute. In many
+families the breadwinner had been killed in war. After 1862, relief systems
+had been organized in nearly all the Confederate States for the purpose of
+aiding the poor whites, but these organizations were disbanded in 1865. A
+Freedmen's Bureau official traveling through the desolate back country
+furnishes a description which might have applied to two hundred counties, a
+third of the South: "It is a common, an every-day sight in Randolph County,
+that of women and children, most of whom were formerly in good circumstances,
+begging for bread from door to door. Meat of any kind has been a stranger to
+many of their mouths for months. The drought cut off what little crops they
+hoped to save, and they must have immediate help or perish. By far the greater
+suffering exists among the whites. Their scanty supplies have been exhausted,
+and now they look to the Government alone for support. Some are without homes
+of any description."
+
+Where the armies had passed, few of the people, white or black, remained; most
+of them had been forced as "refugees" within the Union lines or into the
+interior of the Confederacy. Now, along with the disbanded Confederate
+soldiers, they came straggling back to their war-swept homes. It was
+estimated, in December 1865, that in the states of Alabama, Mississippi, and
+Georgia, there were five hundred thousand white people who were without the
+necessaries of life; numbers died from lack of food. Within a few months,
+relief agencies were at work. In the North, especially in the border states
+and in New York, charitable organizations collected and forwarded great
+quantities of supplies to the Negroes and to the whites in the hill and
+mountain counties. The reorganized state and local governments sent food from
+the unravaged portions of the Black Belt to the nearest white counties, and
+the army commanders gave some aid. As soon as the Freedmen's Bureau was
+organized, it fed to the limit of its supplies the needy whites as well as the
+blacks.
+
+The extent of the relief afforded by the charity of the North and by the
+agencies of the United States Government is not now generally remembered,
+probably on account of the later objectionable activities of the Freedmen's
+Bureau, but it was at the time properly appreciated. A Southern journalist,
+writing of what he saw in Georgia, remarked that "it must be a matter of
+gratitude as well as surprise for our people to see a Government which was
+lately fighting us with fire and sword and shell, now generously feeding our
+poor and distressed. In the immense crowds which throng the distributing
+house, I notice the mothers and fathers, widows and orphans of our soldiers .
+. . . Again, the Confederate soldier, with one leg or one arm, the crippled,
+maimed, and broken, and the worn and destitute men, who fought bravely their
+enemies then, their benefactors now, have their sacks filled and are fed."
+
+Acute distress continued until 1867; after that year there was no further
+danger of starvation. Some of the poor whites, especially in the remote
+districts, never again reached a comfortable standard of living; some were
+demoralized by too much assistance; others were discouraged and left the South
+for the West or the North. But the mass of the people accepted the discipline
+of poverty and made the best of their situation.
+
+The difficulties, however, that beset even the courageous and the competent
+were enormous. The general paralysis of industry, the breaking up of society,
+and poverty on all sides bore especially hard on those who had not previously
+been manual laborers. Physicians could get practice enough but no fees;
+lawyers who had supported the Confederacy found it difficult to get back into
+the reorganized courts because of the test oaths and the competition of
+"loyal" attorneys; and for the teachers there were few schools. We read of
+officers high in the Confederate service selling to Federal soldiers the pies
+and cakes cooked by their wives, of others selling fish and oysters which they
+themselves had caught, and of men and women hitching themselves to plows when
+they had no horse or mule.
+
+Such incidents must, from their nature, have been infrequent, but they show to
+what straits some at least were reduced. Six years after the war, James S.
+Pike, then in South Carolina, mentions cases which might be duplicated in
+nearly every old Southern community: "In the vicinity," he says, "lived a
+gentleman whose income when the war broke out was rated at $150,000 a year.
+Not a vestige of his whole vast estate remains today. Not far distant were the
+estates of a large proprietor and a well-known family, rich and distinguished
+for generations. The slaves were gone. The family is gone. A single scion of
+the house remains, and he peddles tea by the pound and molasses by the quart,
+on a corner of the old homestead, to the former slaves of the family and
+thereby earns his livelihood."
+
+General Lee's good example influenced many. Commercial enterprises were
+willing to pay for the use of his name and reputation, but he wished to farm
+and could get no opportunity. "They are offering my father everything," his
+daughter said, "except the only thing he will accept, a place to earn honest
+bread while engaged in some useful work." This remark led to an offer of the
+presidency of Washington College, now Washington and Lee University, which he
+accepted. "I have a self-imposed task which I must accomplish," he said, "I
+have led the young men of the South in battle; I have seen many of them fall
+under my standard. I shall devote my life now to training young men to do
+their duty in life."
+
+The condition of honest folk was still further troubled by a general spirit of
+lawlessness in many regions. Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana
+recognized the "Union" state government, but the coming of peace brought legal
+anarchy to the other states of the Confederacy. The Confederate state and
+local governments were abolished as the armies of occupation spread over the
+South, and for a period of four or six months there was no government except
+that exercised by the commanders of the military garrisons left behind when
+the armies marched away. Even before the surrender, the local governments were
+unable to make their authority respected, and soon after the war ended, parts
+of the country became infested with outlaws, pretend treasury agents, horse
+thieves, cattle thieves, and deserters. Away from the military posts only
+lynch law could cope with these elements of disorder.
+
+With the aid of the army in the more settled regions, and by extra-legal means
+elsewhere, the outlaws, thieves, cotton burners, and house burners were
+brought somewhat under control even before the state governments were
+reorganized, though the embers of lawlessness continued to smolder.
+
+The relations between the Federal soldiers stationed in the principal towns
+and the native white population were not, on the whole, so bad as might have
+been expected. If the commanding officer were well disposed, there was little
+danger of friction, though sometimes his troops got out of hand. The regulars
+had a better reputation than the volunteers. The Confederate soldiers were
+surfeited with fighting, but the "stay-at-home" element was often a cause of
+trouble. The problem of social relations between the conquerors and the
+conquered was troublesome. The men might get along well together, but the
+women would have nothing do with the "Yankees," and ill feeling arose because
+of their antipathy. Carl Schurz reported that "the soldier of the Union is
+looked upon as a stranger, an intruder, as the 'Yankee,' the 'enemy.' . . .
+The existence and intensity of this aversion is too well known to those who
+have served or are serving in the South to require proof."
+
+In retaliation the soldiers developed ingenious ways of annoying the whites.
+Women, forced for any reason to go to headquarters, were made to take the oath
+of allegiance or the "ironclad" oath before their requests were granted; flags
+were fastened over doors, gates, or sidewalks in order to irritate the
+recalcitrant dames and their daughters. Confederate songs and color
+combinations were forbidden. In Richmond, General Halleck ordered that no
+marriages be performed unless the bride, the groom, and the officiating
+clergyman took the oath of allegiance. He explained this as a measure taken to
+prevent "the propagation of legitimate rebels."
+
+The wearing of Confederate uniforms was forbidden by military order, but by
+May 1865, few soldiers possessed regulation uniforms. In Tennessee the State
+also imposed fines upon *wear wearers of the uniform. In the vicinity of
+military posts, buttons and marks of rank were usually ordered removed and the
+gray clothes dyed with some other color. General Lee, for example, had the
+buttons on his coat covered with cloth. But frequently the Federal commander,
+after issuing the orders, paid no more attention to the matter and such
+conflicts as arose on account of the uniform were usually caused by officious
+enlisted men and the Negro troops. Whitelaw Reid relates the following
+incident:
+
+"Nothing was more touching, in all that I saw in Savannah, than the almost
+painful effort of the rebels, from generals down to privates, to conduct
+themselves so as to evince respect for our soldiers, and to bring no severer
+punishment upon the city than it had already received. There was a brutal
+scene at the hotel, where a drunken sergeant, with a pair of tailor's shears,
+insisted on cutting the buttons from the uniform of an elegant gray-headed old
+brigadier, who had just come in from Johnston's army; but he bore himself
+modestly and very handsomely through it. His staff was composed of
+fine-looking, stalwart fellows, evidently gentlemen, who appeared intensely
+mortified at such treatment. They had no clothes except their rebel uniforms,
+and had, as yet, had no time to procure others, but they avoided disturbances
+and submitted to what they might, with some propriety, and with the general
+approval of our officers, *have resented."
+
+The Negro troops, even at their best, were everywhere considered offensive by
+the native whites. General Grant, indeed, urged that only white troops be used
+to garrison the interior. But the Negro soldier, impudent by reason of his new
+freedom, his new uniform, and his new gun, was more than Southern temper could
+tranquilly bear, and race conflicts were frequent. A New Orleans newspaper
+thus states the Southern point of view: "Our citizens who had been accustomed
+to meet and treat the Negroes only as respectful servants, were mortified,
+pained, and shocked to encounter them . . . wearing Federal uniforms and
+bearing bright muskets and gleaming bayonets . . . . They are jostled from the
+sidewalks by dusky guards, marching four abreast. They were halted, in rude
+and sullen tones, by Negro sentinels."
+
+The task of the Federal forces was not easy. The garrisons were not large
+enough nor numerous enough to keep order in the absence of civil government.
+The commanders in the South asked in vain for cavalry to police the rural
+districts. Much of the disorder, violence, and incendiarism attributed at the
+time to lawless soldiers appeared later to be due to discharged soldiers and
+others pretending to be soldiers in order to carry out schemes of robbery. The
+whites complained vigorously of the garrisons, and petitions were sent to
+Washington from mass meetings and from state legislatures asking for their
+removal. The higher commanders, however, bore themselves well, and in a few
+fortunate cases Southern whites were on most amicable terms with the garrison
+commanders. The correspondence of responsible military officers in the South
+shows how earnestly and considerately each, as a rule, tried to work out his
+task. The good sense of most of the Federal officers appeared when, after the
+murder of Lincoln, even General Grant for a brief space lost his head and
+ordered the arrest of paroled Confederates.
+
+
+The church organizations were as much involved in the war and in the
+reconstruction as were secular institutions. Before the war every religious
+organization having members North and South, except the Catholic Church and
+the Jews, had separated into independent Northern and Southern bodies. In each
+section church feeling ran high, and when the war came, the churches supported
+the armies. As the Federal armies occupied Southern territory, the church
+buildings of each denomination were turned over to the corresponding Northern
+body, and Southern ministers were permitted to remain only upon agreeing to
+conduct "loyal services, pray for the President of the United States and for
+Federal victories" and to foster "loyal sentiment." The Protestant Episcopal
+churches in Alabama were closed from September to December 1865, and some
+congregations were dispersed by the soldiers because Bishop Wilmer had
+directed his clergy to omit the prayer for President Davis but had substituted
+no other. The ministers of non-liturgical churches were not so easily
+controlled. A Georgia Methodist preacher directed by a Federal officer to pray
+for the President said afterwards: "I prayed for the President that the Lord
+would take out of him and his allies the hearts of beasts and put into them
+the hearts of men or remove the cusses from office." Sometimes members of a
+congregation showed their resentment at the "loyal" prayers by leaving the
+church. But in spite of many irritations, both sides frequently managed to get
+some amusement out of the "loyal" services. The church situation was, however,
+a serious matter during and after the reconstruction, and some of its later
+phases will have to be discussed elsewhere.
+
+The Unionist, or "Tory," of the lower and eastern South found himself, in
+1865, a man without a country. Few in number in any community, they found
+themselves, upon their return from a harsh exile, the victims of ostracism or
+open hostility. One of them, William H. Smith, later Governor of Alabama,
+testified that the Southern people "manifest the most perfect contempt for a
+man who is known to be an unequivocal Union man; they call him a 'galvanized
+Yankee' and apply other terms and epithets to him." General George H. Thomas,
+speaking of a region more divided in sentiment than Alabama, remarked that
+"Middle Tennessee is disturbed by animosities and hatreds, much more than it
+is by the disloyalty of persons towards the Government of the United States.
+
+Those personal animosities would break out and overawe the civil authorities,
+but for the presence there of the troops of the United States . . . . They are
+more unfriendly to Union men, natives of the State of Tennessee, or of the
+South, who have been in the Union army, than they are to men of Northern
+birth."
+
+In the border states, society was sharply divided, and feeling was bitter. In
+eastern Tennessee, eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, and parts of Arkansas and
+Missouri, returning Confederates met harsher treatment than did the Unionists
+in the lower South. Trowbridge says of east Tennessee: "Returning rebels were
+robbed; and if one had stolen unawares to his home, it was not safe for him to
+remain there. I saw in Virginia one of these exiles, who told me how
+homesickly he pined for the hills and meadows of east Tennessee, which he
+thought the most delightful region in the world. But, there was a rope hanging
+from a tree for him there, and he dared not go back. 'The bottom rails are on
+top,' said he, 'that is the trouble.' The Union element, and the worst part of
+the Union element, was uppermost." Confederates and Confederate sympathizers
+in Maryland, West Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, were disfranchised. In
+West Virginia, Tennessee, and Missouri, "war trespass" suits were brought
+against returning Confederates for military acts done in war time. In Missouri
+and West Virginia, strict test oaths excluded Confederates from office, from
+the polls, and from the professions of teaching, preaching, and law. On the
+other hand in central and western Kentucky, the predominant Unionist
+population, themselves suffering through the abolition of slavery, and by the
+objectionable operations of the Freedmen's Bureau and the unwise military
+administration, showed more sympathy for the Confederates, welcomed them home,
+and soon relieved them of all restrictions.
+
+Still another element of discord was added by the Northerners who came to
+exploit the South. Many mustered-out soldiers proposed to stay. Speculators of
+all kinds followed the withdrawing Confederate lines and with the conclusion
+of peace spread through the country, but they were not cordially received.
+With the better class, the Southerners, especially the soldiers, associated
+freely if seldom intimately. But the conduct of a few of their number who
+considered that the war had opened all doors to them, who very freely
+expressed their views, gave advice, condemned old customs, and were generally
+offensive, did much to bring all Northerners into disrepute. Tactlessly
+critical letters published in Northern papers did not add to their popularity.
+The few Northern women felt the ostracism more keenly than did the men.
+Benjamin C. Truman, an agent of President Johnson, thus summed up the
+situation: "There is a prevalent disposition not to associate too freely with
+Northern men or to receive them into the circles of society; but it is far
+from unsurmountable. Over Southern society, as over every other, woman reigns
+supreme, and they are more embittered against those whom they deem the authors
+of all their calamities than are their brothers, sons, and husbands." But, of
+the thousands of Northern men who overcame the reluctance of the Southerners
+to social intercourse, little was heard. Many a Southern planter secured a
+Northern partner or sold him half his plantation to get money to run the other
+half. For the irritations of 1865, each party must take its share of
+responsibility.
+
+Had the South assisted in a skillful and adequate publicity, much disastrous
+misunderstanding might have been avoided. The North knew as little of the
+South as the South did of the North, but the North was eager for news. Able
+newspaper correspondents like Sidney Andrews of the Boston Advertiser and the
+Chicago Tribune, who opposed President Johnson's policies, Thomas W. Knox of
+the New York Herald, who had given General Sherman so much trouble in
+Tennessee, Whitelaw Reid, who wrote for several papers and tried cotton
+planting in Louisiana, and John T. Trowbridge, New England author and
+journalist, were dispatched southwards. Chief of the President's investigators
+was General Carl Schurz, German revolutionist, Federal soldier, and soon to be
+radical Republican, who held harsh views of the Southern people; and there
+were besides Harvey M. Watterson, Kentucky Democrat and Unionist, the father
+of "Marse" Henry; Benjamin C. Truman, New England journalist and soldier,
+whose long report was perhaps the best of all; Chief Justice Chase, who was
+thinking mainly of "How soon can the Negro vote?"; and General Grant, who made
+a report so brief that, notwithstanding its value, it attracted little
+attention. In addition a constant stream of information and misinformation was
+going northward from treasury agents, officers of the army, the Freedmen's
+Bureau, teachers, and missionaries. Among foreigners who described the
+conquered land were Robert Somers, Henry Latham, and William Hepworth Dixon.
+But few in the South realized the importance of supplying the North with
+correct information about actual conditions. The letters and reports, they
+thought, humiliated them; inquiry was felt to be prying and gloating.
+"Correspondents have added a new pang to surrender," it was said. The South
+was proud and refused to be catechized. From the Northern point of view, the
+South, a new and strange region with strange customs and principles, was of
+course, not to be considered as quite normal and American, but there was on
+the part of many correspondents a determined attempt to describe things as
+they were. And yet the North persisted in its unsympathetic queries when it
+seemed to have a sufficient answer in the reports of Grant, Schurz, and
+Truman.
+
+Grant's opinion was short and direct: "I am satisfied that the mass of
+thinking men of the South accept the present situation of affairs in good
+faith . . . . The citizens of the Southern States are anxious to return to
+self-government within the Union as soon as possible." Truman came to the
+conclusion that "the rank and file of the disbanded Southern army . . . are
+the backbone and sinew of the South . . . . To the disbanded regiments of the
+rebel army, both officers and men, I look with great confidence as the best
+and altogether the most hopeful element of the South, the real basis of
+reconstruction and the material of worthy citizenship." General John Tarbell,
+before the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, testified that "there are, no
+doubt, disloyal and disorderly persons in the South, but it is an entire
+mistake to apply these terms to a whole people. I would as soon travel alone,
+unarmed, through the South as through the North. The South I left is not at
+all the South I hear and read about in the North. From the sentiment I hear in
+the North, I would scarcely recognize the people I saw, and, except their
+politics, I liked so well. I have entire faith that the better classes are
+friendly to the Negroes."
+
+Carl Schurz on the other hand was not so favorably impressed. "The loyalty of
+the masses and most of the leaders of the southern people," he said, "consists
+in submission to necessity. There is, except in individual instances, an
+entire absence of that national spirit which forms the basis of true loyalty
+and patriotism." Another government official in Florida was quite doubtful of
+the Southern whites. "I would pin them down at the point of the bayonet," he
+declared, "so close that they would not have room to wiggle, and allow
+intelligent colored people to go up and vote in preference to them. The only
+Union element in the South proper . . . is among the colored people. The
+whites will treat you very kindly to your face, but they are deceitful. I have
+often thought, and so expressed myself, that there is so much deception among
+the people of the South since the rebellion, that if an earthquake should open
+and swallow them up, I was fearful that the devil would be dethroned and some
+of them take his place."
+
+The point of view of the Confederate military leaders was exhibited by General
+Wade Hampton in a letter to President Johnson and by General Lee in his advice
+to Governor Letcher of Virginia. General Hampton wrote: "The South
+unequivocally 'accepts the situation' in which she is placed. Everything that
+she has done has been done in perfect faith, and in the true and highest sense
+of the word, she is loyal. By this I mean that she intends to abide by the
+laws of the land honestly, to fulfill all her obligations faithfully and to
+keep her word sacredly, and I assert that the North has no right to demand
+more of her. You have no right to ask, or expect that she will at once profess
+unbounded love to that Union from which for four years she tried to escape at
+the cost of her best blood and all her treasures." General Lee in order to set
+an example applied through General Grant for a pardon under the amnesty
+proclamation and soon afterwards he wrote to Governor Letcher: "All should
+unite in honest efforts to obliterate the effects of war, and to restore the
+blessings of peace. They should remain, if possible, in the country; promote
+harmony and good-feeling; qualify themselves to vote; and elect to the State
+and general legislatures wise and patriotic men, who will devote their
+abilities to the interests of the country and the healing of all dissensions;
+I have invariably recommended this course since the cessation of hostilities,
+and have endeavored to practice it myself."
+
+Southerners of the Confederacy everywhere, then, accepted the destruction of
+slavery and the renunciation of state sovereignty; they welcomed an early
+restoration of the Union, without any punishment of leaders of the defeated
+cause. But they were proud of their Confederate records though now legally
+"loyal" to the United States; they considered the Negro as free but inferior,
+and expected to be permitted to fix his status in the social organization and
+to solve the problem of free labor in their own way. To *embarrass the easy
+and permanent realization of these views there was a society disrupted,
+economically prostrate, deprived of its natural leaders, subjected to a
+control not always wisely conceived nor effectively exercised, and, finally,
+containing within its own population unassimilated elements which presented
+problems fraught with difficulty and danger.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. WHEN FREEDOM CRIED OUT
+
+The Negro is the central figure in the reconstruction of the South. Without
+the Negro there would have been no Civil War. Granting a war fought for any
+other cause, the task of reconstruction would, without him, have been
+comparatively simple. With him, however, reconstruction meant more than the
+restoring of shattered resources; it meant the more or less successful attempt
+to obtain and secure for the freedman civil and political rights, and to
+improve his economic and social status. In 1861, the American Negro was
+everywhere an inferior, and most of his race were slaves; in 1865, he was no
+longer a slave, but whether he was to be serf, ward, or citizen was an
+unsettled problem; in 1868, he was in the South the legal and political equal,
+frequently the superior, of the white; and before the end of the
+reconstruction period he was made by the legislation of some states and by
+Congress the legal equal of the white even in certain social matters.
+
+The race problem which confronted the American people had no parallel in the
+past. British and Spanish-American emancipation of slaves had affected only
+small numbers or small regions, in which one race greatly outnumbered the
+other. The results of these earlier emancipations of the Negroes and the
+difficulties of European states in dealing with subject white populations were
+not such as to afford helpful example to American statesmen. But since it was
+the actual situation in the Southern States rather than the experience of
+other countries which shaped the policies adopted during reconstruction, it is
+important to examine with some care the conditions in which the Negroes in the
+South found themselves at the close of the war.
+
+The Negroes were not all helpless and without experience "when freedom cried
+out."* In the Border States and in the North there were, in 1861, half a
+million free Negroes accustomed to looking out for themselves. Nearly 200,000
+Negro men were enlisted in the United States army between 1862 and 1865, and
+many thousands of slaves had followed raiding Federal forces to freedom or had
+escaped through the Confederate lines. State emancipation in Missouri,
+Maryland, West Virginia, and Tennessee, and the practical application of the
+Emancipation Proclamation where the Union armies were in control ended slavery
+for many thousands more. Wherever the armies marched, slavery ended. This was
+true even in Kentucky, where the institution was not legally abolished until
+the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. Altogether more than a million
+Negroes were free and to some extent habituated to freedom before May 1865.
+
+*A Negro phrase much used in referring to emancipation.
+
+
+Most of these war-emancipated Negroes were scattered along the borders of the
+Confederacy, in camps, in colonies, in the towns, on refugee farms, at work
+with the armies, or serving as soldiers in the ranks. There were large working
+colonies along the Atlantic coast from Maryland to Florida. The chief centers
+were near Norfolk, where General Butler was the first to establish a
+"contraband" camp, in North Carolina, and on the Sea Islands of South
+Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, which had been seized by the Federal fleet
+early in the war. To the Sea Islands also were sent, in 1865, the hordes of
+Negroes who had followed General Sherman out of Georgia and South Carolina.
+Through the border states from the Atlantic to the Mississippi and along both
+sides of the Mississippi from Cairo, Illinois, to New Orleans, there were
+other refugee camps, farms, and colonies. For periods varying from one to four
+years these free Negroes had been at work, often amid conditions highly
+unfavorable to health, under the supervision of officers of the Treasury
+Department or of the army.
+
+Emancipation was therefore a gradual process, and most of the Negroes, through
+their widening experience on the plantations, with the armies, and in the
+colonies, were better fitted for freedom in 1865 than they had been in 1861.
+Even their years of bondage had done something for them, for they knew how to
+work and they had adopted in part the language, habits, religion, and morals
+of the whites. But slavery had not made them thrifty, self-reliant, or
+educated. Frederick Douglass said of the Negro at the end of his servitude:
+"He had none of the conditions of self-preservation or self-protection. He was
+free from the individual master, but he had nothing but the dusty road under
+his feet. He was free from the old quarter that once gave him shelter, but a
+slave to the rains of summer and to the frosts of winter. He was turned loose,
+naked, hungry, and destitute to the open sky." To prove that he was free the
+Negro thought he must leave his old master, change his name, quit work for a
+time, perhaps get a new wife, and hang around the Federal soldiers in camp or
+garrison, or go to the towns where the Freedmen's Bureau was in process of
+organization. To the Negroes who remained at home--and, curiously enough, for
+a time at least many did so--the news of freedom was made known somewhat
+ceremonially by the master or his representative. The Negroes were summoned to
+the "big house," told that they were free, and advised to stay on for a share
+of the crop. The description by Mrs. Clayton, the wife of a Southern general,
+will serve for many: "My husband said, 'I think it best for me to inform our
+Negroes of their freedom.' So he ordered all the grown slaves to come to him,
+and told them they no longer belonged to him as property, but were all free.
+'You are not bound to remain with me any longer, and I have a proposition to
+make to you. If any of you desire to leave, I propose to furnish you with a
+conveyance to move you, and with provisions for the balance of the year.' The
+universal answer was, 'Master, we want to stay right here with you.' In many
+instances the slaves were so infatuated with the idea of being, as they said,
+'free as birds' that they left their homes and consequently suffered; but our
+slaves were not so foolish."*
+
+* "Black and White under the Old Regime", p. 158,
+
+
+The Negroes, however, had learned of their freedom before their old masters
+returned from the war; they were aware that the issues of the war involved in
+some way the question of their freedom or servitude, and through the
+"grapevine telegraph," the news brought by the invading soldiers, and the talk
+among the whites, they had long been kept fairly well informed. What the idea
+of freedom meant to the Negroes it is difficult to say. Some thought that
+there would be no more work and that all would be cared for by the Government;
+others believed that education and opportunity were about to make them the
+equal of their masters. The majority of them were too bewildered to appreciate
+anything except the fact that they were free from enforced labor.
+
+Conditions were most disturbed in the so-called "Black Belt," consisting of
+about two hundred counties in the most fertile parts of the South, where the
+plantation system was best developed and where by far the majority of the
+Negroes were segregated. The Negroes in the four hundred more remote and less
+fertile "white" counties, which had been less disturbed by armies, were not so
+upset by freedom as those of the Black Belt, for the garrisons and the larger
+towns, both centers of demoralization, were in or near the Black Belt. But
+there was a moving to and fro on the part of those who had escaped from the
+South or had been captured during the war or carried into the interior of the
+South to prevent capture. To those who left slavery and home to find freedom
+were added those who had found freedom and were now trying to get back home or
+to get away from the Negro camps and colonies which were breaking up. A stream
+of immigration which began to flow to the southwest affected Negroes as far as
+the Atlantic coast. In the confusion of moving, families were broken up, and
+children, wife, or husband were often lost to one another. The very old people
+and the young children were often left behind for the former master to care
+for. Regiments of Negro soldiers were mustered out in every large town and
+their numbers were added to the disorderly mass. Some of the Federal garrisons
+and Bureau stations were almost overwhelmed by the numbers of blacks who
+settled down upon them waiting for freedom to bestow its full measure of
+blessing, and many of the Negroes continued to remain in a demoralized
+condition until the new year.
+
+The first year of freedom was indeed a year of disease, suffering, and death.
+Several partial censuses indicate that in 1865-66 the Negro population lost as
+many by disease as the whites had lost in war. Ill-fed, crowded in cabins near
+the garrisons or entirely without shelter, and unaccustomed to caring for
+their own health, the blacks who were searching for freedom fell an easy prey
+to ordinary diseases and to epidemics. Poor health conditions prevailed for
+several years longer. In 1870, Robert Somers remarked that "the health of the
+whites has greatly improved since the war, while the health of the Negroes has
+declined till the mortality of the colored population, greater than the
+mortality of the whites was before the war, has now become so markedly
+greater, that nearly two colored die for every white person out of equal
+numbers of each."
+
+Morals and manners also suffered under the new dispensation. In the crowded
+and disease-stricken towns and camps, the conditions under which the roving
+Negroes lived were no better for morals than for health, for here there were
+none of the restraints to which the blacks had been accustomed and which they
+now despised as being a part of their servitude. But in spite of all the
+relief that could be given there was much want. In fact, to restore former
+conditions the relief agencies frequently cut off supplies in order to force
+the Negroes back to work and to prevent others from leaving the country for
+the towns. But the hungry freedmen turned to the nearest food supply, and
+"spilin de gypshuns" (despoiling the Egyptians, as the Negroes called stealing
+from the whites) became an approved means of support. Thefts of hogs, cattle,
+poultry, field crops, and vegetables drove almost to desperation those whites
+who lived in the vicinity of the Negro camps. When the ex-slave felt obliged
+to go to town, he was likely to take with him a team and wagon and his
+master's clothes if he could get them.
+
+The former good manners of the Negro were now replaced by impudence and
+distrust. There were advisers among the Negro troops and other agitators who
+assured them that politeness to whites was a mark of servitude. Pushing and
+crowding in public places, on street cars and on the sidewalks, and impudent
+speeches everywhere marked generally the limit of rudeness. And the Negroes
+were, in this respect, perhaps no worse than those European immigrants who act
+upon the principle that bad manners are a proof of independence.
+
+The year following emancipation was one of religious excitement for large
+numbers of the blacks. Before 1865, the Negro church members were attached to
+white congregations or were organized into missions, with nearly always a
+white minister in charge and a black assistant. With the coming of freedom the
+races very soon separated in religious matters. For this there were two
+principal reasons: the Negro preachers could exercise more influence in
+independent churches; and new church organizations from the North were seeking
+Negro membership. Sometimes Negro members were urged to insist on the right
+"to sit together" with the whites. In a Richmond church a Negro from the
+street pushed his way to the communion altar and knelt. There was a noticeable
+pause; then General Robert E. Lee went forward and knelt beside the Negro; and
+the congregation followed his example. But this was a solitary instance. When
+the race issue was raised by either color, the church membership usually
+divided. There was much churchgoing by the Negroes, day and night, and church
+festivities and baptisms were common. The blacks preferred immersion and,
+wanted a new baptism each time they changed to a new church. Baptizings in
+ponds, creeks, or rivers were great occasions and were largely attended.
+"Shouting" the candidates went into the water and "shouting" they came out.
+One old woman came up screaming, "Freed from slavery! freed from sin! Bless
+God and General Grant!"
+
+In the effort to realize their new-found freedom, the Negroes were heavily
+handicapped by their extreme poverty and their ignorance. The total value of
+free Negro property ran up into the millions in 1860, but the majority of the
+Negroes had nothing. There were a few educated Negroes in the South, and more
+in the North and in Canada, but the mass of the race was too densely ignorant
+to furnish its own leadership. The case, however, was not hopeless; the Negro
+was able to work and in large territories had little competition; wages were
+high, even though paid in shares of the crop; the cost of living was low; and
+land was cheap. Thousands seemed thirsty for an education and crowded the
+schools which were available. It was too much, however, to expect the Negro to
+take immediate advantage of his opportunities. What he wanted was a long
+holiday, a gun and a dog, and plenty of hunting and fishing. He must have
+Saturday at least for a trip to town or to a picnic or a circus; he did not
+wish to be a servant. When he had any money, swindlers reaped a harvest. They
+sold him worthless finery, cheap guns, preparations to bleach the skin or
+straighten the hair, and striped pegs which, when set up on the master's
+plantation, would entitle the purchaser to "40 acres and a mule."
+
+The attitude of the Negroes' employers not infrequently complicated the
+situation which they sought to better. The old masters were, as a rule,
+skeptical of the value of free Negro labor. Carl Schurz thought this attitude
+boded ill for the future: "A belief, conviction, or prejudice, or whatever you
+may call it," he said, "so widely spread and apparently deeply rooted as this,
+that the Negro will not work without physical compulsion, is certainly
+calculated to have a very serious influence upon the conduct of the people
+entertaining it. It naturally produced a desire to preserve slavery in its
+original form as much and as long as possible . . . or to introduce into the
+new system that element of physical compulsion which would make the Negro
+work." The Negro wished to be free to leave his job when he pleased, but, as
+Benjamin C. Truman stated in his report to President Johnson, a "result of the
+settled belief in the Negro's inferiority, and in the necessity that he should
+not be left to himself without a guardian, is that in some sections he is
+discouraged from leaving his old master. I have known of planters who
+considered it an offence against neighborhood courtesy for another to hire
+their old hands, and in two instances that were reported the disputants came
+to blows over the breach of etiquette." The new Freedmen's Bureau insisted
+upon written contracts, except for day laborers, and this undoubtedly kept
+many Negroes from working regularly, for they were suspicious of contracts.
+Besides, the agitators and the Negro troops led them to hope for an eventual
+distribution of property. An Alabama planter thus described the situation in
+December 1865:
+
+"They will not work for anything but wages, and few are able to pay wages.
+They are penniless but resolute in their demands. They expect to see all the
+land divided out equally between them and their old masters in time to make
+the next crop. One of the most intelligent black men I know told me that in a
+neighboring village, where several hundred blacks were congregated, he does
+not think that as many as three made contracts, although planters are urgent
+in their solicitations and offering highest prices for labor they can possibly
+afford to pay. The same man informed me that the impression widely prevails
+that Congress is about to divide out the lands, and that this impression is
+given out by Federal soldiers at the nearest military station. It cannot be
+disguised that in spite of the most earnest efforts of their old master to
+conciliate and satisfy them, the estrangement between races increases in its
+extent and bitterness. Nearly all the Negro men are armed with repeaters, and
+many of them carry them openly, day and night."
+
+The relations between the races were better, however, than conditions seemed
+to indicate. The whites of the Black Belt were better disposed toward the
+Negroes than were those of the white districts. It was in the towns and
+villages that most of the race conflicts occurred. All whites agreed that the
+Negro was inferior, but there were many who were grateful for his conduct
+during the war and who wished him well. But others, the policemen of the
+towns, the "loyalists," those who had little but pride of race and the vote to
+distinguish them from the blacks, felt no good will toward the ex-slaves. It
+was Truman's opinion "not only that the planters are far better friends to the
+Negroes than the poor whites, but also better than a majority of the Northern
+men who go South to rent plantations." John T. Trowbridge, the novelist, who
+recorded his impressions of the South after a visit in 1865, was of the
+opinion that the Unionists "do not like niggers." "For there is," he said,
+"more prejudice against color among the middle and poorer classes--the Union
+men of the South who owned few or no slaves--than among the planters who owned
+them by scores and hundreds." The reports of the Freedmen's Bureau are to the
+same effect. A Bureau agent in Tennessee testified: "An old citizen, a Union
+man, said to me, said he, 'I tell you what, if you take away the military from
+Tennessee, the buzzards can't eat up the niggers as fast as we'll kill them.'"
+
+The lawlessness of the Negroes in parts of the Black Belt and the disturbing
+influences of the black troops, of some officials of the Bureau, and of some
+of the missionary teachers and preachers, caused the whites to fear
+insurrections and to take measures for protection. Secret semi-military
+organizations were formed which later developed into the Ku Klux orders. When,
+however, New Year's Day 1866 passed without the hoped-for distribution of
+Property, the Negroes began to settle down.
+
+At the beginning of the period of reconstruction, it seemed possible that the
+Negro race might speedily fall into distinct economic groups, for there were
+some who had property and many others who had the ability and the opportunity
+to acquire it; but the later drawing of race lines and the political
+disturbances of reconstruction checked this tendency. It was expected also
+that the Northern planters who came South in large numbers in 1865-66 might,
+by controlling the Negro labor and by the use of more efficient methods, aid
+in the economic upbuilding of the country. But they were ignorant of
+agricultural matters and incapable of wisely controlling the blacks; and they
+failed because at one time they placed too much trust in the Negroes and at
+another treated them too harshly and expected too much of them.
+
+The question of Negro suffrage was not a live issue in the South until the
+middle of 1866. There was almost no talk about it among the Negroes; they did
+not know what it was. President Lincoln in 1864 and President Johnson in 1865
+had merely mentioned the subject, though Chief Justice Chase and prominent
+radical members of Congress, as well as numerous abolitionists, had framed a
+Negro suffrage platform. But the Southern whites, considering the matter an
+impossibility, gave it little consideration. There was, however, both North
+and South, a tendency to see a connection between the freedom of the Negroes
+and their political rights and thus to confuse civil equality with political
+and social privileges. But the great masses of the whites were solidly opposed
+to the recognition of Negro equality in any form. The poorer whites,
+especially the "Unionists" who hoped to develop an opposition party, were
+angered by any discussion of the subject. An Alabama "Unionist," M. J.
+Saffold, later prominent as a radical politician, declared to the Joint
+Committee on Reconstruction: "If you compel us to carry through universal
+suffrage of colored, men . . . it will prove quite an *incubus upon us in the
+organization of a national union party of white men; it will furnish our
+opponents with a very effective weapon of offense against us."
+
+There were, however, some Southern leaders of ability and standing who, by
+1866, were willing to consider Negro suffrage. These men, among them General
+Wade Hampton of South Carolina and Governor Robert Patton of Alabama, were of
+the slaveholding class, and they fully counted on being able to control the
+Negro's vote by methods similar to those actually put in force a quarter of a
+century later. The Negroes were not as yet politically organized were not even
+interested in politics, and the master class might reasonably hope to regain
+control of them. Whitelaw Reid published an interview with one of the Hamptons
+which describes the situation exactly:
+
+"A brother of General Wade Hampton, the South Carolina Hotspur, was on board.
+He saw no great objection to Negro suffrage, so far as the whites were
+concerned; and for himself, South Carolinian and secessionist though he was,
+he was quite willing to accept it. He only dreaded its effect on the blacks
+themselves. Hitherto they had in the main, been modest and respectful, and
+mere freedom was not likely to spoil them. But the deference to them likely to
+be shown by partisans eager for their votes would have a tendency to uplift
+them and unbalance them. Beyond this, no harm would be done the South by Negro
+suffrage. The old owners would cast the votes of their people almost as
+absolutely and securely as they cast their own. If Northern men expected in
+this way to build up a northern party in the South, they were gravely
+mistaken. They would only be multiplying the power of the old and natural
+leaders of Southern politics by giving every vote to a former slave.
+Heretofore such men had served their masters only in the fields; now they
+would do no less faithful service at the polls. If the North could stand it,
+the South could. For himself, he should make no special objection to Negro
+suffrage as one of the terms of reorganization, and if it came, he did not
+think the South would have much cause to regret it."
+
+To sum up the situation at this time: the Negro population at the close of the
+war constituted a tremendous problem for those in authority. The race was
+free, but without status, without leaders, without property, and without
+education. Probably a fourth of them had some experience in freedom before the
+Confederate armies surrendered, and the servitude of the other three millions
+ended very quickly and without violence. But in the Black Belt, where the bulk
+of the black population was to be found, the labor system was broken up, and
+for several months the bewildered freedmen wandered about or remained at home
+under conditions which were bad for health, morals, and thrift. The Northern
+Negroes did not furnish the expected leadership for the race, and the more
+capable men in the South showed a tendency to go North. The unsettled state of
+the Negroes and their expectation of receiving a part of the property of the
+whites kept the latter uneasy and furnished the occasion of frequent
+conflicts. Not the least of the unsettling influences at work upon the Negro
+population were the colored troops and the agitators furnished by the
+Freedmen's Bureau, the missions, and the Bureau schools. But at the beginning
+of the year 1866, the situation appeared to be clearing, and the social and
+economic revolution seemed on the way to a quieter ending than might have been
+expected.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. THE WORK OF THE PRESIDENTS
+
+The war ended slavery, but it left the problem of the freed slave; it
+preserved the Union in theory, but it left unsolved many delicate problems of
+readjustment. Were the seceded States in or out of the Union? If in the Union,
+what rights had they? If they were not in the Union, what was their status?
+What was the status of the Southern Unionist, of the ex-Confederate? What
+punishments should be inflicted upon the Southern people? What authority,
+executive or legislative, should carry out the work of reconstruction? The end
+of the war brought with it, in spite of much discussion, no clear answer to
+these perplexing questions.
+
+Unfortunately, American political life, with its controversies over colonial
+government, its conflicting interpretations of written constitutions, and its
+legally trained statesmen, had by the middle of the nineteenth century
+produced a habit of political thought which demanded the settlement of most
+governmental matters upon a theoretical basis. And now in 1865, each prominent
+leader had his own plan of reconstruction fundamentally irreconcilable with
+all the others, because rigidly theoretical. During the war the powers of the
+executive had been greatly expanded and a legislative reaction was to be
+expected. The Constitution called for fresh interpretation in the light of the
+Civil War and its results.
+
+The first theory of reconstruction may be found in the Crittenden-Johnson
+resolutions of July 1861, which declared that the war was being waged to
+maintain the Union under the Constitution and that it should cease when these
+objects were obtained. This would have been subscribed to in 1861 by the Union
+Democrats and by most of the Republicans, and in 1865 the conquered
+Southerners would have been glad to reenter the Union upon this basis; but
+though in 1865 the resolution still expressed the views of many Democrats, the
+majority of Northern people had moved away from this position.
+
+The attitude of Lincoln, which in 1865 met the views of a majority of the
+Northern people though not of the political leaders, was that "no State can
+upon its mere motion get out of the Union," that the States survived though
+there might be some doubt about state governments, and that "loyal" state
+organizations might be established by a population consisting largely of
+ex-Confederates who had been pardoned by the President and made "loyal" for
+the future by an oath of allegiance. Reconstruction was, Lincoln thought, a
+matter for the executive to handle. But that he was not inflexibly committed
+to any one plan is indicated by his proclamation after the pocket veto of the
+Wade-Davis Bill and by his last speech, in which he declared that the question
+of whether the seceded States were in the Union or out of it was "merely a
+pernicious abstraction." In addition, Lincoln said:
+
+"We are all agreed that the seceded States, so called, are out of their proper
+practical relation with the Union, and that the sole object of the government,
+civil and military, in regard to those States is to again get them into that
+proper practical relation. I believe that it is not only possible, but in fact
+easier, to do this without deciding or even considering whether these States
+have ever been out of the Union, than with it. Finding themselves safely at
+home, it would be utterly immaterial whether they had ever been abroad. Let us
+all join in doing the acts necessary to restore the proper practical relations
+between these States and the Union, and each forever after innocently indulge
+his own opinion whether in doing the acts he brought the States from without
+into the Union, or only gave them proper assistance, they never having been
+out of it."
+
+President Johnson's position was essentially that of Lincoln, but his attitude
+toward the working out of the several problems was different. He maintained
+that the states survived and that it was the duty of the executive to restore
+them to their proper relations. "The true theory," said he, "is that all
+pretended acts of secession were from the beginning null and void. The States
+cannot commit treason nor screen individual citizens who may have committed
+treason any more than they can make valid treaties or engage in lawful
+commerce with any foreign power. The states attempting to secede placed
+themselves in a condition where their vitality was impaired, but not
+extinguished; their functions suspended, but not destroyed." Lincoln would
+have had no severe punishments inflicted even on leaders, but Johnson wanted
+to destroy the "slavocracy," root and branch. Confiscation of estates would,
+he thought, be a proper measure. He said on one occasion: "Traitors should
+take a back seat in the work of restoration .. . . My judgment is that he [a
+rebel] should be subjected to a severe ordeal before he is restored to
+citizenship. Treason should be made odious, and traitors must be punished and
+impoverished. Their great plantations must be seized, and divided into small
+farms and sold to honest, industrious men." The violence of Johnson's views
+subsequently underwent considerable modification but to the last he held to
+the plan of executive restoration based upon state perdurance. Neither Lincoln
+nor Johnson favored a change of Southern institutions other than the abolition
+of slavery, though each recommended a qualified Negro suffrage.
+
+There were, however, other theories in the field, notably those of the radical
+Republican leaders. According to the state-suicide theory of Charles Sumner,
+"any vote of secession or other act by which any State may undertake to put an
+end to the supremacy of the Constitution within its territory is inoperative
+and void against the Constitution, and when sustained by force it becomes a
+practical ABDICATION by the State of all rights under the Constitution, while
+the treason it involves still further works an instant FORFEITURE of all those
+functions and powers essential to the continued existence of the State as a
+body politic, so that from that time forward the territory falls under the
+exclusive jurisdiction of Congress as other territory, and the State, being
+according to the language of the law felo de se, ceases to exist." Congress
+should punish the "rebels" by abolishing slavery, by giving civil and
+political rights to Negroes, and by educating them with the whites.
+
+Not essentially different, but harsher, was Thaddeus Stevens's plans for
+treating the South as a conquered foreign province. Let the victors treat the
+seceded States "as conquered provinces and settle them with new men and
+exterminate or drive out the present rebels as exiles." Congress in dealing
+with these provinces was not bound even by the Constitution, "a bit of
+worthless parchment," but might legislate as it pleased in regard to slavery,
+the ballot, and confiscation. With regard to the white population, he said: "I
+have never desired bloody punishments to any great extent. But there are
+punishments quite as appalling, and longer remembered, than death. They are
+more advisable, because they would reach a greater number. Strip a proud
+nobility of their bloated estates; reduce them to a level with plain
+republicans; send them forth to labor, and teach their children to enter the
+workshops or handle a plow, and you will thus humble the proud traitors."
+Stevens and Sumner agreed in reducing the Southern States to a territorial
+status. Sumner would then take the principles of the Declaration of
+Independence as a guide for Congress, while Stevens would leave Congress
+absolute. Neither considered the Constitution as of any validity in this
+crisis.
+
+As a rule the former abolitionists were in 1865 advocates of votes and lands
+for the Negro, in whose capacity for self-rule they had complete confidence.
+The view of Gerrit Smith may be regarded as typical of the abolitionist
+position:
+
+"Let the first condition of peace with them be that no people in the rebel
+States shall ever lose or gain civil or political rights by reason of their
+race or origin. The next condition of peace be that our black allies in the
+South--those saviours of our nation--shall share with their poor white
+neighbors in the subdivisions of the large landed estates of the South. Let
+the only other condition be that the rebel masses shall not, for say, a dozen
+years, be allowed access to the ballot-box, or be eligible to office; and that
+the like restrictions be for life on their political and military leaders . .
+. . The mass of the Southern blacks fall, in point of intelligence, but
+little, if any, behind the mass of the Southern whites . . . . In reference to
+the qualifications of the voter, men make too much account of the head and too
+little of the heart. The ballot-box, like God, says: "Give me your heart." The
+best-hearted men are the best qualified to vote; and, in this light, the
+blacks, with their characteristic gentleness, patience, and affectionateness,
+are peculiarly entitled to vote. We cannot wonder at Swedenborg's belief that
+the celestial people will be found in the interior of Africa; nor hardly can
+we wonder at the legend that the gods came down every year to sup with their
+favorite Africans."
+
+One of the most statesmanlike proposals was made by Governor John A. Andrew of
+Massachusetts. If, forgetting their theories, the conservatives could have
+united in support of a restoration conceived in his spirit, the goal might
+have been speedily achieved. Andrew demanded a reorganization, based upon
+acceptance of the results of the war, but carried through with the aid of
+"those who are by their intelligence and character the natural leaders of
+their people and who surely will lead them by and by. "These men cannot be
+kept out forever, said he, for the capacity of leadership is a gift, not a
+device. They whose courage, talents, and will entitle them to lead, will lead
+. . . . If we cannot gain their support of the just measures needful for the
+work of safe reorganization, reorganization will be delusive and full of
+danger. They are the most hopeful subjects to deal with. They have the brain
+and the experience and the education to enable them to understand . . . the
+present situation. They have the courage as well as the skill to lead the
+people in the direction their judgments point . . . . Is it consistent with
+reason and our knowledge of human nature, to believe the masses of Southern
+men able to face about, to turn their backs on those they have trusted and
+followed, and to adopt the lead of those who have no magnetic hold on their
+hearts or minds? It would be idle to reorganize by the colored vote. If the
+popular vote of the white race is not to be had in favor of the guarantees
+justly required, then I am in favor of holding on--just where we are now. I am
+not in favor of a surrender of the present rights of the Union to a struggle
+between a white minority aided by the freedmen on one hand, against the
+majority of the white race on the other. I would not consent, having rescued
+those states by arms from Secession and rebellion, to turn them over to
+anarchy and chaos."
+
+The Southerners, Unionists as well as Confederates, had their views as well,
+but at Washington these carried little influence. The former Confederates
+would naturally favor the plan which promised best for the white South, and
+their views were most nearly met by those of President Lincoln. Although he
+held that in principle a new Union had arisen out of the war, as a matter of
+immediate political expediency he was prepared to build on the assumption that
+the old Union still existed. The Southern Unionists cared little for theories;
+they wanted the Confederates punished, themselves promoted to high offices,
+and the Negro kept from the ballot box.
+
+Even at the beginning of 1866, it was not too much to hope that the majority
+of former Republicans would accept conservative methods, provided the
+so-called "fruits of the war" were assured--that is, equality of civil rights,
+the guarantee of the United States war debt, the repudiation of the
+Confederate debt, the temporary disfranchisement of the leading Confederates,
+and some arrangement which would keep the South from profiting by
+representation based on the non-voting Negro population. But amid many
+conflicting policies, none attained to continuous and compelling authority.
+
+The plan first put to trial was that of President Lincoln. It was a definite
+plan designed to meet actual conditions and, had he lived, he might have been
+able to carry it through successfully. Not a theorist, but an opportunist of
+the highest type, sobered by years of responsibility in war time, and fully
+understanding the precarious situation in 1865, Lincoln was most anxious to
+secure an early restoration of solidarity with as little friction as possible.
+Better than most Union leaders he appreciated conditions in the South, the
+problem of the races, the weakness of the Southern Unionists, and the
+advantage of calling in the old Southern leaders. He was generous and
+considerate; he wanted no executions or imprisonments; he wished the leaders
+to escape; and he was anxious that the mass of Southerners be welcomed back
+without loss of rights. "There is," he declared, "too little respect for their
+rights," an unwillingness, in short, to treat them as fellow citizens.
+
+This executive policy had been applied from the beginning of the war as
+opportunity offered. The President used the army to hold the Border States in
+the Union, to aid in "reorganizing" Unionist Virginia and in establishing West
+Virginia. The army, used to preserve the Union might be used also to restore
+disturbed parts of it to normal condition. Assuming that the "States" still
+existed, "loyal" state governments were the first necessity. By his
+proclamation of December 8, 1863, Lincoln suggested a method of beginning the
+reconstruction: he would pardon any Confederate, except specified classes of
+leaders, who took an oath of loyalty for the future; if as many as ten percent
+of the voting population of 1860, thus made loyal, should establish a state
+government the executive would recognize it. The matter of slavery must,
+indeed, be left to the laws and proclamations as interpreted by the courts,
+but other institutions should continue as in 1861.
+
+This plan was inaugurated in four States which had been in part controlled by
+the Federal army from nearly the beginning of the war: Tennessee (1862),
+Louisiana (1862), Arkansas (1862), and Virginia after the formation of West
+Virginia (1863). For each state Lincoln appointed a military governor: for
+Tennessee, Andrew Johnson; for Arkansas, John S. Phelps; for Louisiana,
+General Shepley. In Virginia he recognized the "reorganized" government, which
+had been transferred to Alexandria when the new State of West Virginia was
+formed. The military governors undertook the slow and difficult work of
+reorganization, however, with but slight success owing to the small numbers of
+Unionists and of Confederates who would take the oath. But by 1864, "ten
+percent" state governments were established in Arkansas and Louisiana, and
+progress was being made in Tennessee.
+
+Congress was impatient of Lincoln's claim to executive precedence in the
+matter of reconstruction, and in 1864, both Houses passed the Wade-Davis Bill,
+a plan which asserted the right of Congress to control reconstruction and
+foreshadowed a radical settlement of the question. Lincoln disposed of the
+bill by a pocket veto and, in a proclamation dated July 8, 1864, stated that
+he was unprepared "to be inflexibly committed to any single plan of
+restoration," or to discourage loyal citizens by setting aside the governments
+already established in Louisiana and Arkansas, or to recognize the authority
+of Congress to abolish slavery. He was ready, however, to cooperate with the
+people of any State who wished to accept the plan prepared by Congress and he
+hoped that a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery would be adopted.
+
+Lincoln early came to the conclusion that slavery must be destroyed, and he
+had urgently advocated deportation of the freedmen, for he believed that the
+two races could not live in harmony after emancipation. The nearest he came to
+recommending the vote for the Negro was in a communication to Governor Hahn of
+Louisiana in March 1864: "I barely suggest, for your private consideration,
+whether some of the colored people may not be let in, as for instance, the
+very intelligent, and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks.
+They would probably help, in some trying time to come, to keep the jewel of
+liberty within the family of freedom. But this is only a suggestion, not to
+the public, but to you alone."
+
+Throughout the war President Lincoln assumed that the state organizations in
+the South were illegal because disloyal and that new governments must be
+established. But just at the close of the war, probably carried away by
+feeling, he all but recognized the Virginia Confederate Government as
+competent to bring the state back into the Union. While in Richmond on April
+5, 1865, he gave to Judge Campbell a statement of terms: the national
+authority to be restored; no recession on slavery by the executive; hostile
+forces to disband. The next day he notified General Weitzel, in command at
+Richmond, that he might permit the Virginia Legislature to meet and withdraw
+military and other support from the Confederacy. But these measures met strong
+opposition in Washington, especially from Secretary Stanton and Senator Wade
+and other congressional leaders, and on the 11th of April, Lincoln withdrew
+his permission for the legislature to meet. "I cannot go forward," he said,
+"with everybody opposed to me." It was on the same day that he made his last
+public speech, and Sumner, who was strongly opposed to his policy, remarked
+that "the President's speech and other things augur confusion and uncertainty
+in the future, with hot contumacy." At a cabinet meeting on the 14th of April,
+Lincoln made his last statement on the subject. It was fortunate, he said,
+that Congress had adjourned, for "we shall reanimate the States" before
+Congress meets; there should be no killing, no persecutions; there was too
+much disposition to treat the Southern people "not as fellow citizens."
+
+The possibility of a conciliatory restoration ended when Lincoln was
+assassinated. Moderate, firm, tactful, of great personal influence, not a
+doctrinaire, and not a Southerner like Johnson, Lincoln might have "prosecuted
+peace" successfully. His policy was very unlike that proposed by the radical
+leaders. They would base the new governments upon the loyalty of the past plus
+the aid of enfranchised slaves; he would establish the new regime upon the
+loyalty of the future. Like Governor Andrew he thought that restoration must
+be effected by the willing efforts of the South. He would aid and guide but
+not force the people. If the latter did not wish restoration, they might
+remain under military rule. There should be no forced Negro suffrage, no
+sweeping disfranchisement of whites, no "carpetbaggism."
+
+The work of President Johnson demands for its proper understanding some
+consideration of the condition of the political parties at the close of the
+war, for politics had much to do with reconstruction. The Democratic party,
+divided and defeated in the election of 1860, lost its Southern members in
+1861 by the secession and remained a minority party during the remainder of
+the war. It retained its organization, however, and in 1864 polled a large
+vote. Discredited by its policy of opposition to Lincoln's administration, its
+ablest leaders joined the Republicans in support of the war. Until 1869, the
+party was poorly represented in Congress although, as soon as hostilities
+ended, the War Democrats showed a tendency to return to the old party. As to
+reconstruction, the party stood on the Crittenden-Johnson resolutions of 1861,
+though most Democrats were now willing to have slavery abolished.
+
+The Republican party--frankly sectional and going into power on the single
+issue of opposition to the extension of slavery--was forced by the secession
+movement to take up the task of preserving the Union by war. Consequently, the
+party developed new principles, welcomed the aid of the War Democrats, and
+found it advisable to drop its name and with its allies to form the Union or
+National Union party. It was this National Union party which in 1864 nominated
+Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, and Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, on the same
+ticket. Lincoln's second Cabinet was composed of both Republicans and War
+Democrats. When the war ended, the conservative leaders were anxious to hold
+the Union party together in order to be in a better position to settle the
+problems of reconstruction, but the movement of the War Democrats back to
+their old party tended to leave in the Union party only its Republican
+members, with the radical leaders dominating.
+
+In the South the pressure of war so united the people that party divisions
+disappeared for a time, but the causes of division continued to exist, and two
+parties, at least, would have developed had the pressure been removed. Though
+all factions supported the war after it began, the former Whigs and Douglas
+Democrats, when it was over, liked to remember that they had been "Union" men
+in 1860 and expected to organize in opposition to the extreme Democrats, who
+were now charged with being responsible for the misfortunes of the South. They
+were in a position to affiliate with the National Union party of the North if
+proper inducements were offered, while the regular Democrats were ready to
+rejoin their old party. But the embittered feelings resulting from the murder
+of Lincoln and the rapid development of the struggle between President Johnson
+and Congress caused the radicals "to lump the old Union Democrats and Whigs
+together with the secessionists--and many were driven where they did not want
+to go, into temporary affiliation with the Democratic party." Thousands went
+very reluctantly; the old Whigs, indeed, were not firmly committed to the
+Democrats until radical reconstruction had actually begun. Still other
+"loyalists" in the South were prepared to join the Northern radicals in
+advocating the disfranchisement of Confederates and in opposing the granting
+of suffrage to the Negroes.
+
+The man upon whom fell the task of leading these opposing factions, radical
+and conservative, along a definite line of action looking to reunion had few
+qualifications for the task. Johnson was ill-educated, narrow, and vindictive
+and was positive that those who did not agree with him were dishonest. Himself
+a Southerner, picked up by the National Union Convention of 1864, as Thaddeus
+Stevens said, from "one of those damned rebel provinces," he loved the Union,
+worshiped the Constitution, and held to the strict construction views of the
+State Rights Democrats. Rising from humble beginnings, he was animated by the
+most intense dislike of the "slavocracy," as he called the political
+aristocracy of the South. Like many other American leaders he was proud of his
+humble origin, but unlike many others he never sloughed off his backwoods
+crudeness. He continually boasted of himself and vilified the aristocrats, who
+in return treated him badly. His dislike of them was so marked that Isham G.
+Harris, a rival politician, remarked that "if Johnson were a snake, he would
+lie in the grass to bite the heels of rich men's children." His primitive
+notions of punishment were evident in 1865 when he advocated imprisonment,
+execution, and confiscation; but like other reckless talkers he often said
+more than he meant.
+
+When Johnson succeeded to the presidency, the feeling was nearly universal
+among the radicals, according to Julian, that he would prove a godsend to the
+country, for "aside from Mr. Lincoln's known policy of tenderness to the
+rebels, which now so jarred upon the feelings of the hour, his well known
+views on the subject of reconstruction were as distasteful as possible to
+radical Republicans." Senator Wade declared to the President: "Johnson, we
+have faith in you. By the gods, there will be no trouble now in running the
+Government!" To which Johnson replied: "Treason is a crime and crime must be
+punished. Treason must be made infamous and traitors must be impoverished."
+These words are an index to the speeches of Johnson during 1863-65. Even his
+radical friends feared that he would be too vindictive. For a few weeks he was
+much inclined to the radical plans, and some of the leaders certainly
+understood that he was in favor of Negro suffrage, the supreme test of
+radicalism. But when the excitement caused by the assassination of Lincoln and
+the break-up of the Confederacy had moderated somewhat, Johnson saw before him
+a task so great that his desire for violent measures was chilled. He must
+disband the great armies and bring all war work to an end; he must restore
+intercourse with the South, which had been blockaded for years; he must for a
+time police the country, look after the Negroes, and set up a temporary civil
+government; and finally he must work out a restoration of the Union. Sobered
+by responsibility and by the influence of moderate advisers, he rather quickly
+adopted Lincoln's policy. Johnson at first set his face against the movements
+toward reconstruction by the state governments already organized and by those
+people who wished to organize new governments on Lincoln's ten percent plan.
+As soon as possible the War Department notified the Union commanders to stop
+all attempts at reconstruction and to pursue and arrest all Confederate
+governors and other prominent civil leaders. The President was even anxious to
+arrest the military leaders who had been paroled but was checked in this
+desire by General Grant's firm protest. His cabinet advisers supported Johnson
+in refusing to recognize the Southern state governments; but three of
+them--Seward, Welles, and McCulloch--were influential in moderating his zeal
+for inflicting punishments. Nevertheless,he soon had in prison the most
+prominent of the Confederate civilians and several general officers. The
+soldiers, however, were sent home, trade with the South was permitted, and the
+Freedmen's Bureau was rapidly extended.
+
+Previous to this Johnson had brought himself to recognize, early in May, the
+Lincoln "ten percent" governments of Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arkansas, and
+the reconstructed Alexandria government of Virginia. Thus only seven states
+were left without legal governments, and to bring those states back into the
+Union, Johnson inaugurated on May 29, 1865, a plan which was like that of
+Lincoln but not quite so liberal. In his Amnesty Proclamation, Johnson made a
+longer list of exceptions aimed especially at the once wealthy slave owners.
+On the same day he proclaimed the restoration of North Carolina. A provisional
+governor, W. W. Holden, was appointed and directed to reorganize the civil
+government and to call a constitutional convention elected by those who had
+taken the amnesty oath. This convention was to make necessary amendments to
+the constitution and to "restore said State to its constitutional relations to
+the Federal Government." It is to be noted that Johnson fixed the
+qualifications of delegates and of those who elected them, but, this stage
+once passed, the convention or the legislature would "prescribe the
+qualifications of electors . . . a power the people of the several States
+composing the Federal Union have rightfully exercised from the origin of the
+government to the present time." The President also directed the various
+cabinet officers to extend the work of their departments over the Confederate
+States and ordered the army officers to assist the civil authorities. During
+the next six weeks, similar measures were undertaken for the remaining six
+states of the Confederacy.
+
+To set up the new order, army officers were first sent into every county to
+administer the amnesty oath and thus to secure a "loyal" electorate. In each
+state the provisional governor organized out of the remains of the Confederate
+local regime a new civil government. Confederate local officials who could and
+would take the amnesty oath were directed to resume office until relieved; the
+laws of 1861, except those relating to slavery, were declared to be in force;
+the courts were directed to use special efforts to crush lawlessness; and the
+old jury lists were destroyed and new ones were drawn up containing only the
+names of those who had taken the amnesty oath. Since there was no money in any
+state treasury, small sums were now raised by license taxes. A full staff of
+department heads was appointed, and by July 1865, the provisional governments
+were in fair working order.
+
+To the constitutional conventions, which met in the fall, it was made clear,
+through the governors, that the President would insist upon three conditions:
+the formal abolition of slavery, the repudiation of the ordinance of
+secession, and the repudiation of the Confederate war debt. To Governor Holden
+he telegraphed: "Every dollar of the debt created to aid the rebellion against
+the United States should be repudiated finally and forever. The great mass of
+the people should not be taxed to pay a debt to aid in carrying on a rebellion
+which they in fact, if left to themselves, were opposed to. Let those who had
+given their means for the obligations of the state look to that power they
+tried to establish in violation of law, constitution, and will of the people.
+They must meet their fate." With little opposition these conditions were
+fulfilled, though there was a strong feeling against the repudiation of the
+debt, much discussion as to whether the ordinance of secession should be
+"repealed" or declared "now and always null and void," and some quibbling as
+to whether slavery was being destroyed by state action or had already been
+destroyed by war.
+
+In the old state constitutions, very slight changes were made. Of these the
+chief were concerned with the abolition of slavery and the arrangement of
+representation and direct taxation on the basis of white population. Little
+effort was made to settle any of the Negro problems, and in all states the
+conventions left it to the legislatures to make laws for the freedmen. There
+was no discussion of Negro, suffrage in the conventions, but President Johnson
+sent what was for him a remarkable communication to Governor Sharkey of
+Mississippi:
+
+"If you could extend the elective franchise to all persons of color who can
+read the Constitution of the United States in English and write their names,
+and to all persons of color who own real estate valued at not less than two
+hundred and fifty dollars and pay taxes thereon, you would completely disarm
+the adversary and set an example the other states will follow. This you can do
+with perfect safety, and you would thus place Southern States in reference to
+free persons of color upon the same basis with the free states . . . . And as
+a consequence the radicals, who are wild upon Negro franchise, will be
+completely foiled in their attempts to keep the Southern states from renewing
+their relations to the Union by not accepting their senators and
+representatives."
+
+In deciding upon a basis of representation, it was clear that the majority of
+delegates desired to lessen the influence of the Black Belt and place the
+control of the government with the "up country." In the Alabama convention
+Robert M. Patton, then a delegate and later governor, frankly avowed this
+object, and in South Carolina, Governor Perry urged the convention to give no
+consideration to Negro suffrage, "because this is a white man's government,"
+and if the Negroes should vote they would be controlled by a few whites. A
+kindly disposition toward the Negroes was general except on the part of
+extreme Unionists, who opposed any favors to the race. "This is a white man's
+country" was a doctrine to which all the conventions subscribed.
+
+The conventions held brief sessions, completed their work, and adjourned,
+after directing that elections be held for state and local officers and for
+members of Congress. Before December the appointed local officials had been
+succeeded by elected officers; members of Congress were on their way to
+Washington; the state legislatures were assembling or already in session; and
+the elected governors were ready to take office. It was understood that as
+soon as enough state legislatures ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to make it
+a part of the Constitution, the President would permit the transfer of
+authority to the new governors. The legislature of Mississippi alone was
+recalcitrant about the amendment, and before January 1866, the elected
+officials were everywhere installed except in Texas, where the work was not
+completed until March. When Congress met in December 1865, the President
+reported that all former Confederate States except Texas were ready to be
+readmitted. Congress, however, refused to admit their senators and
+representatives, and thus began the struggle which ended over a year later
+with the victory of the radicals and the undoing of the work of the two
+Presidents.
+
+The plan of the Presidents was at best only imperfectly realized. It was found
+impossible to reorganize the Federal Administration in the South with men who
+could subscribe to the "ironclad oath," for nearly all who were competent to
+hold office had favored or aided the Confederacy. It was two years before more
+than a third of the post offices could be opened. The other Federal
+departments were in similar difficulties, and at last women and
+"carpetbaggers" were appointed. The Freedmen's Bureau, which had been
+established coincidently with the provisional governments, assumed
+jurisdiction over the Negroes, while the army authorities very early took the
+position that any man who claimed to be a Unionist should not be tried in the
+local courts but must be given a better chance in a provost court. Thus a
+third or more of the population was withdrawn from the control of the state
+government. In several states the head of the Bureau made arrangements for
+local magistrates and officials to act as Bureau officials, and in such cases
+the two authorities acted in cooperation. The army of occupation, too, exerted
+an authority which not infrequently interfered with the workings of the new
+state government. Nearly everywhere there was a lack of certainty and
+efficiency due to the concurrent and sometimes conflicting jurisdictions of
+state government, army commanders, Bureau authorities, and even the President
+acting upon or through any of the others.
+
+The standing of the Southern state organizations was in doubt after the
+refusal of Congress to recognize them. Nevertheless, in spite of this
+uncertainty they continued to function as states during the year of
+controversy which followed; the courts were opened and steadily grew in
+influence; here and there militia and patrols were reorganized; officials who
+refused to "accept the situation" were dismissed; elections were held; the
+legislatures revised the laws to fit new conditions and enacted new laws for
+the emancipated blacks. To all this progress in reorganization, the action of
+Congress was a severe blow, since it gave notice that none of the problems of
+reconstruction were yet solved. An increasing spirit of irritation and
+independence was observed throughout the states in question, and at the
+elections the former Confederates gained more and more offices. The year was
+marked in the South by the tendency toward the formation of parties, by the
+development of the "Southern outrages" issue, by an attempt to frustrate
+radical action, and finally by a lineup of the great mass of the whites in
+opposition to the Fourteenth Amendment and other radical plans of Congress.
+
+The Joint Committee on Reconstruction, appointed when Congress refused to
+accept the work of President Johnson, proceeded during several months to take
+testimony and to consider measures. The testimony, which was taken chiefly to
+support opinions already formed, appeared to prove that the Negroes and the
+Unionists were so badly treated that the Freedmen's Bureau and the army must
+be kept in the South to protect them; that free Negro labor was a success but
+that the whites were hostile to it; that the whites were disloyal and would,
+if given control of the Southern governments and admitted to Congress,
+constitute a danger to the nation and especially to the party in power.
+
+To convince the voters of the North of the necessity of dealing drastically
+with the South a campaign of misrepresentation was begun in the summer of
+1865, which became more and more systematic and unscrupulous as the political
+struggle at Washington grew fiercer. Newspapers regularly ran columns headed
+"Southern Outrages," and every conceivable mistreatment of blacks by whites
+was represented as taking place on a large scale. As General Richard Taylor
+said, it would seem that about 1866 every white man, woman, and child in the
+South began killing and maltreating Negroes. In truth, there was less and less
+ground for objection to the treatment of the blacks as time went on and as the
+several agencies of government secured firmer control over the lawless
+elements. But fortunately for the radicals their contention seemed to be
+established by riots on a large scale in Memphis and New Orleans where Negroes
+were killed and injured in much greater number than whites.
+
+The rapid development of the radical plans of Congress checked the tendency
+toward political division in the South. Only a small party of rabid Unionists
+would now affiliate with the radicals, while all the others reluctantly held
+together, endorsed Johnson's policy, and attempted to affiliate with the
+disintegrating National Union party. But the defeat of the President's
+policies in the elections of 1866, the increasing radicalism of Congress as
+shown by the Civil Rights Act, the expansion of the Freedmen's Bureau, the
+report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, and the proposal of the
+Fourteenth Amendment led farsighted Southerners to see that the President was
+likely to lose in his fight with Congress.
+
+Now began, in the latter half of 1866, with some cooperation in the North and
+probably with the approval of the President, a movement in the South to
+forestall the radicals by means of a settlement which, although less severe
+than the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, might yet be acceptable to Congress.
+One feature of the settlement was to be some form of Negro suffrage, either by
+local action or by constitutional amendment. Those behind this scheme were
+mainly of the former governing class. Negro suffrage, they thought, would take
+the wind out of the radical sails, the Southern whites would soon be able to
+control the blacks, representation in Congress would be increased, and the
+Black Belt would perhaps regain its former political hegemony. It is hardly
+necessary to say that the majority of the whites were solidly opposed to such
+a measure. But it was hoped to carry it under pressure through the legislature
+or to bring it about indirectly through rulings of the Freedmen's Bureau.
+
+Coincident with this scheme of partial Negro suffrage an attempt was made by
+the conservative leaders in Washington, working with the Southerners, to
+propose a revised Fourteenth Amendment which would give the vote to competent
+Negroes and not disfranchise the whites. A conference of Southern governors
+met in Washington early in 1867 and drafted such an amendment. But, it was too
+late.
+
+Meanwhile the Fourteenth Amendment submitted by Congress had been brought
+before the Southern legislatures, and during the winter of 1866-67 it was
+rejected by all of them. There was strong opposition to it because it
+disfranchised the leading whites, but perhaps the principal reason for its
+rejection was that the Southern people were not sure that still more severe
+conditions might not be imposed later.
+
+While the President was "restoring" the states which had seceded and
+struggling with Congress, the Border States of the South, including Tennessee
+(which was admitted in 1866 by reason of its radical state government), were
+also in the throes of reconstruction. Though there was less military
+interference in these than in the other states, many of the problems were
+similar. All had the Freedmen's Bureau, the Negro race, the Unionists, and the
+Confederates; in every state, except Kentucky, Confederates were persecuted,
+the minority was in control, and "ring" rule was the order of the day; but in
+each state there were signs of the political revolution which a few years
+later was to put the radicals out of power.
+
+The executive plan for the restoration of the Union, begun by Lincoln and
+adopted by Johnson, was, as we have seen, at first applied in all the states
+which had seceded. A military governor was appointed in each state by the
+President by virtue of his authority as commander in chief. This official,
+aided by a civilian staff of his own choice and supported by the United States
+army and other Federal agencies, reorganized the state administration and
+after a few months turned the state and local governments over to regularly
+elected officials. Restoration should now have been completed, but Congress
+refused to admit the senators and representatives of these states, and entered
+upon a fifteen months' struggle with the President over details of the methods
+of the reconstruction. Meanwhile the Southern States, though unrepresented in
+Congress, continued their activities, with some interference from Federal
+authorities, until Congress in 1867 declared their governments nonexistent.
+
+The work begun by Lincoln and Johnson deserved better success. The original
+plan restored to political rights only a small number of Unionists, the
+lukewarm Confederates, and the unimportant. But in spite of the threatening
+speeches of Johnson, he used his power of pardon until none except the most
+prominent leaders were excluded. The personnel of the Johnson governments was
+fair. The officials were, in the main, former Douglas Democrats and Whigs,
+respectable and conservative, but not admired or loved by the people. The
+conventions and the legislatures were orderly and dignified and manifested a
+desire to accept the situation.
+
+There were no political parties at first, but material for several existed. If
+things had been allowed to take their course, there would have arisen a normal
+cleavage between former Whigs and Democrats, between the upcountry and the low
+country, between the slaveholders and the nonslaveholders. The average white
+man in these governments was willing to be fair to the Negro but was not
+greatly concerned about his future. In the view of most white people, it was
+the white man who was emancipated. The white districts had no desire to let
+the power return to the Black Belt by giving the Negro the ballot, for the
+vote of the Negroes, they believed, would be controlled by their former
+masters.
+
+Johnson's adoption of Lincoln's plan gave notice to all that the radicals had
+failed to control him. He and they had little in common; they wished to uproot
+a civilization, while he wished to punish individuals; they were not troubled
+by constitutional scruples, while he was the strictest of State Rights
+Democrats; they thought principally of the Negro and his potentialities, while
+Johnson was thinking of the emancipated white man. It is possible that Lincoln
+might have succeeded, but for Johnson the task proved too great.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. THE WARDS OF THE NATION
+
+The Negroes at the close of the war were not slaves or serfs, nor were they
+citizens. What was to be done with them and for them? The Southern answer to
+this question may be found in the so- called "Black Laws," which were enacted
+by the state governments set up by President Johnson. The views of the
+dominant North may be discerned in part in the organization and administration
+of the Freedmen's Bureau. The two sections saw the same problem from different
+angles, and their proposed solutions were of necessity opposed in principle
+and in practice.
+
+The South desired to fit the emancipated Negro race into the new social order
+by frankly recognizing his inferiority to the whites. In some things racial
+separation was unavoidable. New legislation consequently must be enacted,
+because the slave codes were obsolete; because the old laws made for the small
+free Negro class did not meet present conditions; and because the emancipated
+blacks could not be brought conveniently and at once under laws originally
+devised for a white population. The new laws must meet many needs; family
+life, morals, and conduct must be regulated; the former slave must be given a
+status in court in order that he might be protected in person and property;
+the old, the infirm, and the orphans must be cared for; the white race must be
+protected from lawless blacks and the blacks from unscrupulous and violent
+whites; the Negro must have an opportunity for education; and the roving
+blacks must be forced to get homes, settle down, and go to work.
+
+Pending such legislation the affairs of the Negro remained in control of the
+unpopular Freedmen's Bureau--a "system of espionage," as Judge Clayton of
+Alabama called it, and, according to Governor Humphreys of Mississippi, "a
+hideous curse" under which white men were persecuted and pillaged. Judge
+Memminger of South Carolina, in a letter to President Johnson, emphasized the
+fact that the whites of England and the United States gained civil and
+political rights through centuries of slow advancement and that they were far
+ahead of the people of European states. Consequently, it would be a mistake to
+give the freedmen a status equal to that of the most advanced whites. Rather,
+let the United States profit by the experience of the British in their
+emancipation policies and arrange a system of apprenticeship for a period of
+transition. When the Negro should be fit, let him be advanced to citizenship.
+
+Most Southern leaders agreed that the removal of the master's protection was a
+real loss to the Negro which must be made good to some extent by giving the
+Negro a status in court and by accepting Negro testimony in all cases in which
+blacks were concerned. The North Carolina committee on laws for freedmen
+agreed with objectors that "there are comparatively few of the slaves lately
+freed who are honest" and truthful, but maintained that the Negroes were
+capable of improvement. The chief executives of Mississippi and Florida
+declared that there was no danger to the whites in admitting the more or less
+unreliable Negro testimony, for the courts and juries would in every case
+arrive at a proper valuation of it. Governors Marvin of Florida and Humphreys
+of Mississippi advocated practical civil equality, while in North Carolina and
+several other States there was a disposition to admit Negro testimony only in
+cases in which Negroes were concerned. The North Carolina committee
+recommended the abolition of whipping as a punishment unfit for free people,
+and most States accepted this principle. Even in 1865, the general disposition
+was to make uniform laws for both races, except in regard to violation of
+contracts, immoral conduct, vagrancy, marriage, schools, and forms of
+punishment. In some of these matters the whites were to be more strictly
+regulated; in others, the Negroes.
+
+There was further general agreement that in economic relations both races must
+be protected, each from the other; but it is plain that the leaders believed
+that the Negro had less at stake than the white. The Negro was disposed to be
+indolent; he knew little of the obligations of contracts; he was not honest;
+and he would leave his job at will. Consequently Memminger recommended
+apprenticeship for all Negroes; Governor Marvin suggested it for children
+alone; and others wished it provided for orphans only. Further, the laws
+enacted must force the Negroes to settle down, to work, and to hold to
+contracts. Memminger showed that, without legislation to enforce contracts and
+to secure eviction of those who refused to work, the white planter in the
+South was wholly at the mercy of the Negro. The plantations were scattered,
+the laborers' houses were already occupied, and there was no labor market to
+which a planter could go if the laborers deserted his fields.
+
+What would the Negro become if these leaders of reconstruction were to have
+their way? Something better than a serf, something less than a citizen--a
+second degree citizen, perhaps, with legal rights about equal to those of
+white women and children. Governor Marvin hoped to make of the race a good
+agricultural peasantry; his successor was anxious that the blacks should be
+preferred to European immigrants; others agreed with Memminger that after
+training and education he might be advanced to full citizenship.
+
+These opinions are representative of those held by the men who, Memminger
+excepted, were placed in charge of affairs by President Johnson and who were
+not especially in sympathy with the Negroes or with the planters but rather
+with the average white. All believed that emancipation was a mistake, but all
+agreed that "it is not the Negro's fault" and gave no evidence of a
+disposition to perpetuate slavery under another name.
+
+The legislation finally framed showed in its discriminatory features the
+combined influence of the old laws for free Negroes, the vagrancy laws of
+North and South for whites, the customs of slavery times, the British West
+Indies legislation for ex-slaves, and the regulations of the United States War
+and Treasury Departments and of the Freedmen's Bureau--all modified and
+elaborated by the Southern whites. In only two states, Mississippi and South
+Carolina, did the legislation bulk large in quantity; in other states
+discriminating laws were few; in still other states none were passed except
+those defining race and prohibiting intermarriage.
+
+In all of the state laws there were certain common characteristics, among
+which were the following: the descendant of a Negro was to be classed as a
+Negro through the third generation,* even though one parent in each generation
+was white; intermarriage of the races was prohibited; existing slave marriages
+were declared valid and for the future marriage was generally made easier for
+the blacks than for the whites. In all states the Negro was given his day in
+court, and in cases relating to Negroes his testimony was accepted; in six
+states he might testify in any case. When provision was made for schooling,
+the rule of race separation was enforced. In Mississippi the "Jim Crow car,"
+or separate car for Negroes, was invented. In several states the Negro had to
+have a license to carry weapons, to preach, or to engage in trade. In
+Mississippi, a Negro could own land only in town; in other states he could
+purchase land only in the country. Why the difference? No one knows and
+probably few knew at the time. Some of the legislation was undoubtedly hasty
+and ill-considered.
+
+* Fourth in Tennessee.
+
+
+But the laws relating to apprenticeship, vagrancy, and enforced punitive
+employment turned out to be of greater practical importance. On these subjects
+the legislation of Mississippi and South Carolina was the most extreme. In
+Mississippi orphans- orphans were to be bound out, preferably to a former
+master, if "he or she shall be a suitable person." The master was given the
+usual control over apprentices and was bound by the usual duties, including
+that of teaching the apprentice. But the penalties for "enticing away"
+apprentices were severe. The South Carolina statute was not essentially
+different. The vagrancy laws of these two states were in the main the same for
+both races, but in Mississippi the definition of vagrancy was enlarged to
+include Negroes not at work, those "found unlawfully assembling themselves
+together," and "all white persons assembling themselves with freedmen." It is
+to be noted that nearly all punishment for petty offenses took the form of
+hiring out, preferably to the former master or employer. The principal petty
+offenses were, it would seem, vagrancy and "enticing away" laborers or
+apprentices. The South Carolina statute contains some other interesting
+provisions. A Negro, man or woman, who had enjoyed the companionship of two or
+more spouses, must by April 1, 1866, select one of them as a permanent
+partner; a farm laborer must "rise at dawn," feed the animals, care for the
+property, be quiet and orderly, and "retire at reasonable hours;" on Sunday
+the servants must take turns in doing the necessary work, and they must be
+respectful and civil to the "master and his family, guests, and agents;" to
+engage in skilled labor the Negro must obtain a license. Whipping and the
+pillory were permitted in Florida for certain offenses, and in South Carolina
+the master might "moderately correct" servants under eighteen years of age.
+Other punishments were generally the same for both races, except the hiring
+out for petty offenses.
+
+From the Southern point of view none of this legislation was regarded as a
+restriction of Negro rights but as a wide extension to the Negro of rights
+never before possessed, an adaptation of the white man's laws to his peculiar
+case. It is doubtful whether in some of the states the authorities believed
+that there were any discriminatory laws; they probably overlooked some of the
+free Negro legislation already on the statute books. In Alabama, for example,
+General Wager Swayne, the head of the Freedmen's Bureau, reported that all
+such laws had either been dropped by the legislature or had been vetoed by the
+governor. Yet the statute books do show some discriminations. There is a
+marked difference between earlier and later legislation. The more stringent
+laws were enacted before the end of 1865. After New Year's Day had passed and
+the Negroes had begun to settle down, the legislatures either passed mild laws
+or abandoned all special legislation for the Negroes. Later in 1866, several
+states repealed the legislation of 1865.
+
+In so far as the "Black Laws" discriminated against the Negro they were never
+enforced but were suspended from the beginning by the army and the Freedmen's
+Bureau. They had, however, a very important effect upon that section of
+Northern opinion which was already suspicious of the good faith of the
+Southerners. They were part of a plan, some believed, to reenslave the Negro
+or at least to create by law a class of serfs. This belief did much to bring
+about later radical legislation.
+
+If the "Black Laws" represented the reaction of the Southern legislatures to
+racial conditions, the Freedmen's Bureau was the corresponding result of the
+interest taken by the North in the welfare of the Negro. It was established
+just as the war was closing and arose out of the various attempts to meet the
+Negro problems that arose during the war. The Bureau had always a dual nature,
+due in part to its inheritance of regulations, precedents, and traditions from
+the various attempts made during war time to handle the many thousands of
+Negroes who came under Federal control, and in part to the humanitarian
+impulses of 1865, born of a belief in the capacity of the Negro for freedom
+and a suspicion that the Southern whites intended to keep as much of slavery
+as they could. The officials of the Bureau likewise were of two classes: those
+in control were for the most part army officers, standing as arbiters between
+white and black, usually just and seldom the victims of their sympathies but
+the mass of less responsible officials were men of inferior ability and
+character, either blind partisans of the Negro or corrupt and subject to
+purchase by the whites.
+
+In view of the fact that the Freedmen's Bureau was considered a new
+institution in 1865, it is rather remarkable how closely it followed in
+organization, purpose, and methods the precedents set during the war by the
+officers of the army and the Treasury. In Virginia, General Butler, in 1861,
+declared escaped slaves to be "contraband" and proceeded to organize them into
+communities for discipline, work, food, and care. His successors in Virginia
+and North Carolina, and others in the Sea Islands of Georgia and South
+Carolina, extended his plan and arranged a labor system with fixed wages,
+hours, and methods of work, and everywhere made use of the captured or
+abandoned property of the Confederates. In Tennessee and Arkansas, Chaplain
+John Eaton of Grant's army employed thousands in a modified free labor system;
+and further down in Mississippi and Louisiana Generals Grant, Butler, and
+Banks also put large numbers of captured slaves to work for themselves and for
+the Government. Everywhere, as the numbers of Negroes increased, the army
+commanders divided the occupied Negro regions into districts under
+superintendents and other officials, framed labor laws, cooperated with
+benevolent societies which gave schooling and medical care to the blacks, and
+developed systems of government for them.
+
+The United States Treasury Department, attempting to execute the confiscation
+laws for the benefit of the Treasury, appears now and then as an employer of
+Negro labor on abandoned plantations. Either alone or in cooperation with the
+army and charitable associations, it even supervised Negro colonies, and
+sometimes it assumed practically complete control of the economic welfare of
+the Negro. This Department introduced in 1864 an elaborate lessee and trade
+system. The Negro was regarded as "the ward of the nation," but he was told
+impressively that "labor is a public duty and idleness and vagrancy a crime."
+All wanted him to work: the Treasury wanted cotton and other crops to sell;
+the lessees and speculators wanted to make fortunes by his labor; and the army
+wanted to be free from the burden of the idle blacks. In spite of all these
+ministrations, the Negroes suffered much from harsh treatment, neglect, and
+unsanitary conditions.
+
+During 1863 and 1864, several influences were urging the establishment of a
+national bureau or department to take charge of matters relating to the
+African race. Some wished to establish on the borders of the South a paid
+labor system, which might later be extended over the entire region, to get
+more slaves out of the Confederacy into this free labor territory, and to
+prevent immigration of Negroes into the North, which, after the Emancipation
+Proclamation, was apprehensive of this danger. Others wished to relieve the
+army and the treasury officials of the burden of caring for the blacks and to
+protect the latter from the "northern harpies and bloodhounds" who had
+fastened upon them the lessee system.
+
+The discussion lasted for two years. The Freedmen's Inquiry Commission, after
+a survey of the field in 1863, recommended a consolidation of all efforts
+under an organization which should perpetuate the best features of the old
+system. But there was much opposition to this plan in Congress. The Negroes
+would be exploited, objected some; the scheme gave too much power to the
+proposed organization, said others; another objection was urged against the
+employment of a horde of incompetent and unscrupulous officeholders, for "the
+men who go down there and become your overseers and Negro drivers will be your
+broken-down politicians and your dilapidated preachers, that description of
+men who are too lazy to work and just a little too honest to steal."
+
+As the war drew to a close, the advocates of a policy of consolidation in
+Negro affairs prevailed, and on March 3, 1865, an act was approved creating in
+the War Department a Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. This
+Bureau was to continue for one year after the close of the war, and it was to
+control all matters relating to freedmen and refugees, that is, Unionists who
+had been driven out of the South. Food, shelter, and clothing were to be given
+to the needy, and abandoned or confiscated property was to be used for or
+leased to freedmen. At the head of the Bureau was to be a commissioner with an
+assistant commissioner for each of the Southern States. These officials and
+other employees must take the "ironclad" oath.
+
+It was planned that the Bureau should have a brief existence, but the
+institution and its wards became such important factors in politics that on
+July 16, 1866, after a struggle with the President, Congress passed an act
+over his veto amplifying the powers of the Bureau and extending it for two
+years longer. This continuation of the Bureau was due to many things: to a
+belief that former slaveholders were not to be trusted in dealing with the
+Negroes; to the baneful effect of the "Black Laws" upon Northern public
+opinion; to the struggle between the President and Congress over
+reconstruction; and to the foresight of radical politicians who saw in the
+institution an instrument for the political instruction of the blacks in the
+proper doctrines.
+
+The new law was supplementary to the Act of 1865, but its additional
+provisions merely endorsed what the Bureau was already doing. It authorized
+the issue of medical supplies, confirmed certain sales of land to Negroes, and
+provided that the promises which Sherman made in 1865 to the Sea Island
+Negroes should be carried out as far as possible and that no lands occupied by
+blacks should be restored to the owners until the crops of 1866 were gathered;
+it directed the Bureau to cooperate with private charitable and benevolent
+associations, and it authorized the use or sale for school purposes of all
+confiscated property; and finally it ordered that the civil equality of the
+Negro be upheld by the Bureau and its courts when state courts refused to
+accept the principle. By later laws the existence of the Bureau was extended
+to January 1, 1869, in the unreconstructed States, but its educational and
+financial activities were continued until June 20, 1872.
+
+The chief objections to the Bureau from the conservative Northern point of
+view were summed up in the President's veto messages. The laws creating it
+were based, he asserted, on the theory that a state of war still existed;
+there was too great a concentration of power in the hands of a few individuals
+who could not be held responsible; with such a large number of agents ignorant
+of the country and often working for their own advantage injustice would
+inevitably result; in spite of the fact that the Negro everywhere had a status
+in court, arbitrary tribunals were established, without jury, without regular
+procedure or rules of evidence, and without appeal; the provisions in regard
+to abandoned lands amounted to confiscation without a hearing; the Negro, who
+must in the end work out his own salvation, and who was protected by the
+demand for his labor, would be deluded into thinking his future secure without
+further effort on his part; although nominally under the War Department, the
+Bureau was not subject to military control; it was practically a great
+political machine; and, finally, the states most concerned were not
+represented in Congress.
+
+The Bureau was soon organized in all the former slaveholding States except
+Delaware, with general headquarters in Washington and state headquarters at
+the various capitals. General O. O. Howard, who was appointed commissioner,
+was a good officer, softhearted, honest, pious, and frequently referred to as
+"the Christian soldier." He was fair-minded and not disposed to irritate the
+Southern whites unnecessarily, but he was rather suspicious of their
+intentions toward the Negroes, and he was a believer in the righteousness of
+the Freedmen's Bureau. He was not a good business man; and he was not beyond
+the reach of politicians. At one time he was seriously disturbed in his duties
+by the buzzing of the presidential bee in his bonnet. The members of his staff
+were not of his moral stature, and several of them were connected with
+commercial and political enterprises which left their motives open to
+criticism.
+
+The assistant commissioners were, as a rule, general officers of the army,
+though a few were colonels and chaplains.* Nearly half of them had during the
+war been associated with the various attempts to handle the Negro problem, and
+it was these men who shaped the organization of the Bureau. While few of them
+were immediately acceptable to the Southern whites, only ten of them proved
+seriously objectionable on account of personality, character, or politics.
+Among the most able should be mentioned Generals Schofield, Swayne, Fullerton,
+Steedman, and Fessenden, and Colonel John Eaton. The President had little or
+no control over the appointment or discipline of the officials and agents of
+the Bureau, except possibly by calling some of the higher army officers back
+to military service.
+
+* They numbered eleven at first and fourteen after July 1866, and were changed
+so often that fifty, in all, served in this rank before January 1, 1869, when
+the Bureau was practically discontinued.
+
+
+As a result of General Grant's severe criticism of the arrangement which
+removed the Bureau from control by the military establishment, the military
+commander was in a few instances also appointed assistant commissioner. Each
+assistant commissioner was aided by a headquarters staff and had under his
+jurisdiction in each state various district, county, and local agents, with a
+special corps of school officials, who were usually teachers and missionaries
+belonging to religious and charitable societies. The local agents were
+recruited from the members of the Veteran Reserve Corps, the subordinate
+officers and non-commissioned officers of the army, mustered-out soldiers,
+officers of Negro troops, preachers, teachers, and Northern civilians who had
+come South. As a class these agents were not competent persons to guide the
+blacks in the ways of liberty or to arbitrate differences between the races.
+There were many exceptions, but the Southern view as expressed by General Wade
+Hampton had only too much foundation: "There MAY be," he said, "an honest man
+connected with the Bureau." John Minor Botts, a Virginian who had remained
+loyal to the Union, asserted that many of the agents were good men who did
+good work but that trouble resulted from the ignorance and fanaticism of
+others. The minority members of the Ku Klux Committee condemned the agents as
+being "generally of a class of fanatics without character or responsibility."
+
+The chief activities of the Bureau included the following five branches:
+relief work for both races; the regulation of Negro labor; the administration
+of justice in cases concerning Negroes; the management of abandoned and
+confiscated property; and the support of schools for the Negroes.
+
+The relief work which was carried on for more than four years consisted of
+caring for sick Negroes who were within reach of the hospitals, furnishing
+food and sometimes clothing and shelter to destitute blacks and whites, and
+transporting refugees of both races back to their homes. Nearly a hundred
+hospitals and clinics were established, and half a million patients were
+treated. This work was greatly needed, especially for the old and the infirm,
+and it was well done. The transportation of refugees did not reach large
+proportions, and after 1866 it was entangled in politics. But the issue of
+supplies in huge quantities brought much needed relief though at the same time
+a certain amount of demoralization. The Bureau claimed little credit, and is
+usually given none, for keeping alive during the fall and winter of 1865-1866
+thousands of destitute whites. Yet more than a third of the food issued was to
+whites, and without it many would have starved. Numerous Confederate soldiers
+on the way home after the surrender were fed by the Bureau, and in the
+destitute white districts a great deal of suffering was relieved and prevented
+by its operations. The Negroes, dwelling for the most part in regions where
+labor was in demand, needed relief for a shorter time, but they were attracted
+in numbers to the towns by free food, and it was difficult to get them back to
+work. The political value of the free food issues was not generally recognized
+until later in 1866 and in 1867.
+
+During the first year of the Bureau an important duty of the agents was the
+supervision of Negro labor and the fixing of wages. Both officials and
+planters generally demanded that contracts be written, approved, and filed in
+the office of the Bureau. They thought that the Negroes would work better if
+they were thus bound by contracts. The agents usually required that the
+agreements between employer and laborer cover such points as the nature of the
+work, the hours, food and clothes, medical attendance, shelter, and wages. To
+make wages secure, the laborer was given a lien on the crop; to secure the
+planter from loss, unpaid wages might be forfeited if the laborer failed to
+keep his part of the contract. When it dawned upon the Bureau authorities that
+other systems of labor had been or might be developed in the South, they
+permitted arrangements for the various forms of cash and share renting. But it
+was everywhere forbidden to place the Negroes under "overseers" or to subject
+them to "unwilling apprenticeship" and "compulsory working out of debts." The
+written contract system for laborers did not work out successfully. The
+Negroes at first were expecting quite other fruits of freedom. One Mississippi
+Negro voiced what was doubtless the opinion of many when he declared that he
+"considered no man free who had to work for a living." Few Negroes would
+contract for more than three months and none for a period beyond January 1,
+1866, when they expected a division of lands among the ex-slaves. In spite of
+the regulations, most worked on oral agreements. In 1866 nearly all employers
+threw overboard the written contract system for labor and permitted oral
+agreements. Some states had passed stringent laws for the enforcing of
+contracts, but in Alabama, Governor Patton vetoed such legislation on the
+ground that it was not needed. General Swayne, the Bureau chief for the state,
+endorsed the Governor's action and stated that the Negro was protected by his
+freedom to leave when mistreated, and the planter, by the need on the part of
+the Negro for food and shelter. Negroes, he said, were afraid of contracts
+and, besides, contracts led to litigation.
+
+In order to safeguard the civil rights of the Negroes, the Bureau was given
+authority to establish courts of its own and to supervise the action of state
+courts in cases to which freedmen were parties. The majority of the assistant
+commissioners made no attempt to let the state courts handle Negro cases but
+were accustomed to bring all such cases before the Bureau or the provost
+courts of the army. In Alabama, quite early, and later in North Carolina,
+Mississippi, and Georgia, the wiser assistant commissioners arranged for the
+state courts to handle freedmen's cases with the understanding that
+discriminating laws were to be suspended. General Swayne in so doing declared
+that he was "unwilling to establish throughout Alabama courts conducted by
+persons foreign to her citizenship and strangers to her laws." The Bureau
+courts were informal affairs, consisting usually of one or two administrative
+officers. There were no jury, no appeal beyond the assistant commissioner, no
+rules of procedure, and no accepted body of law. In state courts accepted by
+the Bureau, the proceedings in Negro cases were conducted in the same manner
+as for the whites.
+
+The educational work of the Bureau was at first confined to cooperation with
+such Northern religious and benevolent societies as were organizing schools
+and churches for the Negroes. After the first year, the Bureau extended
+financial aid and undertook a system of supervision over Negro schools. The
+teachers employed were Northern whites and Negroes in about equal numbers.
+Confiscated Confederate property was devoted to Negro education, and in
+several states the assistant commissioners collected fees and percentages of
+the Negroes' wages for the benefit of the schools. In addition the Bureau
+expended about six million dollars.
+
+The intense dislike which the Southern whites manifested for the Freedmen's
+Bureau was due in general to their resentment of outside control of domestic
+affairs and in particular to unavoidable difficulties inherent in the
+situation. Among the concrete causes of Southern hostility was the attitude of
+some of the higher officials and many of the lower ones toward the white
+people. They assumed that the whites were unwilling to accord fair treatment
+to the blacks in the matter of wages, schools, and justice. An official in
+Louisiana declared that the whites would exterminate the Negroes if the Bureau
+were removed. A few months later General Fullerton in the same State reported
+that trouble was caused by those agents who noisily demanded special
+privileges for the Negro but who objected to any penalties for his lawlessness
+and made of the Negroes a pampered class. General Tillson in Georgia predicted
+the extinction of the "old time Southerner with his hate, cruelty, and
+malice." General Fisk declared that "there are some of the meanest,
+unsubjugated and unreconstructed rascally revolutionists in Kentucky that
+curse the soil of the country . . . a more select number of vindictive,
+pro-slavery, rebellious legislators cannot be found than a majority of the
+Kentucky legislature." There was a disposition to lecture the whites about
+their sins in regard to slavery and to point out to them how far in their
+general ignorance and backwardness they fell short of enlightened people.
+
+The Bureau courts were frequently conducted in an "illegal and oppressive
+manner," with "decided partiality for the colored people, without regard to
+justice." For this reason they were suspended for a time in Louisiana and
+Georgia by General Steedman and General Fullerton, and cases were then sent
+before military courts. Men of the highest character were dragged before the
+Bureau tribunals upon frivolous complaints, were lectured, abused, ridiculed,
+and arbitrarily fined or otherwise punished. The jurisdiction of the Bureau
+courts weakened the civil courts and their frequent interference in trivial
+matters was not conducive to a return to normal conditions.
+
+The inferior agents, not sufficiently under the control of their superiors,
+were responsible for a great deal of this bad feeling. Many of them held
+radical opinions as to the relations of the races, and inculcated these views
+in their courts, in the schools, and in the new Negro churches. Some were
+charged with even causing strikes and other difficulties in order to be bought
+off by the whites. The tendency of their work was to create in the Negroes a
+pervasive distrust of the whites.
+
+The prevalent delusion in regard to an impending division of the lands among
+the blacks had its origin in the operation of the war-time confiscation laws,
+in some of the Bureau legislation, and in General Sherman's Sea Island order,
+but it was further fostered by the agents until most blacks firmly believed
+that each head of a family was to get "40 acres and a mule." This belief
+seriously interfered with industry and resulted also in widespread swindling
+by rascals who for years made a practice of selling fraudulent deeds to land
+with red, white, and blue sticks to mark off the bounds of a chosen spot on
+the former master's plantation. The assistant commissioners labored hard to
+disabuse the minds of the Negroes, but their efforts were often neutralized by
+the unscrupulous attitude of the agents.
+
+As the contest over reconstruction developed in Washington, the officials of
+the Bureau soon recognized the political possibilities of their institution.
+After midyear of 1866, the Bureau became a political machine for the purpose
+of organizing the blacks into the Union League, where the rank and file were
+taught that reenslavement would follow Democratic victories. Nearly all of the
+Bureau agents aided in the administration of the reconstruction acts in 1867
+and in the organization of the new state and local governments and became
+officials under the new regime. They were the chief agents in capturing the
+solid Negro vote for the Republican party.
+
+Neither of the two plans for guiding the freedmen into a place in the social
+order--the "Black Laws" and the Freedmen's Bureau--was successful. The former
+contained a program which was better suited to actual conditions and which
+might have succeeded if it had been given a fair trial. These laws were a
+measure of the extent to which the average white would then go in "accepting
+the situation" so far as the blacks were concerned. And on the whole the
+recognition of Negro rights made in these laws, and made at a time when the
+whites believed that they were free to handle the situation, was remarkably
+fair. The Negroes lately released from slavery were admitted to the enjoyment
+of the same rights as the whites as to legal protection of life, liberty, and
+property, as to education and as to the family relation, limited only by the
+clear recognition of the principles of political inferiority and social
+separation. Unhappily this legislation was not put to the test of practical
+experience because of the Freedmen's Bureau; it was nevertheless skillfully
+used to arouse the dominant Northern party to a course of action which made
+impossible any further effort to treat the race problem with due consideration
+to actual local conditions.
+
+Much of the work of the Freedmen's Bureau was of only temporary benefit to
+both races. The results of its more permanent work were not generally good.
+The institution was based upon the assumption that the Negro race must be
+protected from the white race. In its organization and administration it was
+an impossible combination of the practical and the theoretical, of opportunism
+and humanitarianism, of common sense and idealism. It failed to exert a
+permanently wholesome influence because its lesser agents were not held to
+strict accountability by their superiors. Under these agents the alienation of
+the two races began, and the ill feelings then aroused were destined to
+persist into a long and troubled future.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. THE VICTORY OF THE RADICALS
+
+The soldiers who fought through the war to victory or to defeat had been at
+home nearly two years before the radicals developed sufficient strength to
+carry through their plans for a revolutionary reconstruction of the Southern
+states. At the end of the war, a majority of the Northern people would have
+supported a settlement in accordance with Lincoln's policy. Eight months later
+a majority, but a smaller one, would have supported Johnson's work had it been
+possible to secure a popular decision on it. How then did the radicals gain
+the victory over the conservatives? The answer to this question is given by
+James Ford Rhodes in terms of personalities: "Three men are responsible for
+the Congressional policy of Reconstruction: Andrew Johnson, by his obstinacy
+and bad behavior; Thaddeus Stevens, by his vindictiveness and parliamentary
+tyranny; Charles Sumner, by his pertinacity in a misguided humanitarianism."
+The President stood alone in his responsibility, but his chief opponents were
+the ablest leaders of a resolute band of radicals.
+
+Radicalism did not begin in the Administration of Andrew Johnson. Lincoln had
+felt its covert opposition throughout the war, but he possessed the faculty of
+weakening his opponents, while Johnson's conduct usually multiplied the number
+and the strength of his enemies. At first the radicals criticized Lincoln's
+policy in regard to slavery, and after the Emancipation Proclamation they
+shifted their attack to his "ten percent" plan for organizing the state
+governments as outlined in the Proclamation of December 1863. Lincoln's course
+was distasteful to them because he did not admit the right of Congress to
+dictate terms, because of his liberal attitude towards former Confederates,
+and because he was conservative on the Negro question. A schism among the
+Republican supporters of the war was with difficulty averted in 1864, when
+Fremont threatened to lead the radicals in opposition to the "Union" party of
+the President and his conservative policy.
+
+The breach was widened by the refusal of Congress to admit representatives
+from Arkansas and Louisiana in 1864 and to count the electoral vote of
+Louisiana and Tennessee in 1865. The passage of the Wade-Davis reconstruction
+bill in July 1864, and the protests of its authors after Lincoln's pocket veto
+called attention to the growing opposition. Severe criticism caused Lincoln to
+withdraw the propositions which he had made in April 1865, with regard to the
+restoration of Virginia. In his last public speech, he referred with regret to
+the growing spirit of vindictiveness toward the South. Much of the opposition
+to Lincoln's Southern policy was based not on radicalism, that is, not on any
+desire for a revolutionary change in the South, but upon a belief that
+Congress and not the executive should be entrusted with the work of
+reorganizing the Union. Many congressional leaders were willing to have
+Congress itself carry through the very policies which Lincoln had advocated,
+and a majority of the Northern people would have endorsed them without much
+caring who was to execute them.
+
+The murder of Lincoln, the failure of the radicals to shape Johnson's policy
+as they had hoped, and the continuing reaction against the excessive expansion
+of the executive power added strength to the opposition. But it was a long
+fight before the radical leaders won. Their victory was due to adroit tactics
+on their own part and to mistakes, bad judgment, and bad manners on the part
+of the President. When all hope of controlling Johnson had been given up,
+Thaddeus Stevens and other leaders of similar views began to contrive means to
+circumvent him. On December 1, 1865, before Congress met, a caucus of radicals
+held in Washington agreed that a joint committee of the two Houses should be
+selected to which should be referred matters relating to reconstruction. This
+plan would thwart the more conservative Senate and gain a desirable delay in
+which the radicals might develop their campaign. The next day at a caucus of
+the Union party the plan went through without arousing the suspicion of the
+supporters of the Administration. Next, through the influence of Stevens,
+Edward McPherson, the clerk of the House, omitted from the roll call of the
+House the names of the members from the South. The radical program was then
+adopted and a week later the Senate concurred in the action of the House as to
+the appointment of a Joint Committee on Reconstruction.
+
+On the issues before Congress both Houses were split into rather clearly
+defined factions: the extreme radicals with such leaders as Stevens, Sumner,
+Wade, and Boutwell; the moderate Republicans, chief among whom were Fessenden
+and Trumbull; the administration Republicans led by Raymond, Doolittle, Cowan,
+and Dixon; and the Democrats, of whom the ablest were Reverdy Johnson,
+Guthrie, and Hendricks. All except the extreme radicals were willing to
+support the President or to come to some fairly reasonable compromise. But at
+no time were they given an opportunity to get together. Johnson and the
+administration leaders did little in this direction and the radicals made the
+most skillful use of the divisions among the conservatives.
+
+Whatever final judgment may be passed upon the radical reconstruction policy
+and its results, there can be no doubt of the political dexterity of those who
+carried it through. Chief among them was Thaddeus Stevens, vindictive and
+unscrupulous, filled with hatred of the Southern leaders, bitter in speech and
+possessing to an extreme degree the faculty of making ridiculous those who
+opposed him. He advocated confiscation, the proscription or exile of leading
+whites, the granting of the franchise and of lands to the Negroes, and in
+Southern states the establishment of territorial governments under the control
+of Congress. These states should, he said, "never be recognized as capable of
+acting in the Union . . . until the Constitution shall have been so amended as
+to make it what the makers intended, and so as to secure perpetual ascendancy
+to the party of the Union."
+
+Charles Sumner, the leader of the radicals in the Senate, was moved less than
+Stevens by personal hostility toward the whites of the South, but his sympathy
+was reserved entirely for the blacks. He was unpractical, theoretical, and not
+troubled by constitutional scruples. To him the Declaration of Independence
+was the supreme law, and it was the duty of Congress to express its principles
+in appropriate legislation. Unlike Stevens, who had a genuine liking for the
+Negro, Sumner's sympathy for the race was purely intellectual; for the
+individual Negro he felt repulsion. His views were in effect not different
+from those of Stevens. And he was practical enough not to overlook the value
+of the Negro vote. "To my mind," he said, "nothing is clearer than the
+absolute necessity of suffrage for all colored persons in the disorganized
+states. It will not be enough if you give it to those who read and write; you
+will not, in this way, acquire the voting force which you need there for the
+protection of unionists, whether white or black. You will not secure the new
+allies who are essential to the national cause." A leader of the second rank
+was his colleague Henry Wilson, who was also actuated by a desire for the
+Negro's welfare and for the perpetuation of the Republican party, which he
+said contained in its ranks "more of moral and intellectual worth than was
+ever embodied in any political organization in any land . . . created by no
+man or set of men but brought into being by Almighty God himself . . . and
+endowed by the Creator with all political power and every office under
+Heaven." Shellabarger of Ohio was another important figure among the radicals.
+The following extract from one of his speeches gives an indication of his
+character and temperament: "They [the Confederates] framed iniquity and
+universal murder into law . . . . Their pirates burned your unarmed commerce
+upon every sea. They carved the bones of the dead heroes into ornaments, and
+drank from goblets made out of their skulls. They poisoned your fountains, put
+mines under your soldiers' prisons; organized bands whose leaders were
+concealed in your homes; and commissions ordered the torch and yellow fever to
+be carried to your cities and to your women and children. They planned one
+universal bonfire of the North from Lake Ontario to the Missouri."
+
+Among the lesser lights may be mentioned Morton and Wade, both bluff, coarse,
+and ungenerous, and thoroughly convinced that the Republican party had a
+monopoly of loyalty, wisdom, and virtues, and that by any means it must gain
+and keep control; Boutwell, fanatical and mediocre; and Benjamin Butler, a
+charlatan and demagogue. As a class the Western radicals were less troubled by
+humanitarian ideals than were those of the East and sought more practical
+political results.
+
+The Joint Committee on Reconstruction which finally decided the fate of the
+Southern states was composed of eight radicals, four moderate Republicans, and
+three Democrats. As James Gillespie Blaine wrote later, "it was foreseen that
+in an especial degree the fortunes of the Republican party would be in the
+keeping of the fifteen men who might be chosen." This committee was divided
+into four subcommittees to take testimony. The witnesses, all of whom were
+examined at Washington, included army officers and Bureau agents who had
+served in the South, Southern Unionists, a few politicians, and several former
+Confederates, among them General Robert E. Lee and Alexander H. Stephens. Most
+of the testimony was of the kind needed to support the contentions of the
+radicals that Negroes were badly treated in the South; that the whites were
+disloyal; that, should they be left in control, the Negro, free labor, the
+nation, and the Republican party would be in danger; that the army and the
+Freedmen's Bureau must be kept in the South; and that a radical reconstruction
+was necessary. No serious effort, however, was made to ascertain the actual
+conditions in the South. Slow to formulate a definite plan, the Joint
+Committee guided public sentiment toward radicalism, converted gradually the
+Republican Congressmen, and little by little undermined the power and
+influence of the President.
+
+Not until after the new year was it plain that there was to be a fight to the
+finish between Congress and the President. Congress had refused in December
+1865, to accept the President's program, but there was still hope for a
+compromise. Many conservatives had voted for the delay merely to assert the
+rights of Congress; but the radicals wanted time to frame a program. The
+Northern Democrats were embarrassingly cordial in their support of Johnson and
+so also were most Southerners. The moderates were not far away from the
+position of the President and the administration Republicans. But the radicals
+skillfully postponed a test of strength until Stevens and Sumner were ready.
+The latter declared that a generation must elapse "before the rebel
+communities have so far been changed as to become safe associates in a common
+government. Time, therefore, we must have. Through time all other guarantees
+may be obtained; but time itself is a guarantee."
+
+To the Joint Committee were referred without debate all measures relating to
+reconstruction, but the Committee was purposely making little
+progress--contented merely to take testimony and to act as a clearing house
+for the radical "facts" about "Southern outrages" while waiting for the tide
+to turn. The "Black Laws" and the election of popular Confederate leaders to
+office in the South were effectively used to alarm the friends of the Negroes,
+and the reports from the Bureau agents gave support to those who condemned the
+Southern state governments as totally inadequate and disloyal.
+
+So apparent was the growth of radicalism that the President, alarmed by the
+attitude of Sumner and Stevens and their followers, began to fear for the
+Constitution and forced the fight. The passage of a bill on February 6, 1866,
+extending the life of the Freedmen's Bureau furnished the occasion for the
+beginning of the open struggle. On the 19th of February, Johnson vetoed the
+bill, and the next day an effort was made to pass it over the veto. Not
+succeeding in this attempt, the House of Representatives adopted a concurrent
+resolution that Senators and Representatives from the Southern states should
+be excluded until Congress declared them entitled to representation. Ten days
+later the Senate also adopted the resolution.
+
+Though it was not yet too late for Johnson to meet the conservatives of
+Congress on middle ground, he threw away his opportunity by an intemperate and
+undignified speech on the 22d of February to a crowd at the White House. As
+usual when excited, he forgot the proprieties and denounced the radicals as
+enemies of the Union and even went so far as to charge Stevens, Sumner, and
+Wendell Phillips with endeavoring to destroy the fundamental principles of the
+government. Such conduct weakened his supporters and rejoiced his enemies. It
+was expected that Johnson would approve the bill to confer civil rights upon
+the Negroes, but, goaded perhaps by the speeches of Stevens, he vetoed it on
+the 27th of March. Its patience now exhausted, Congress passed the bill over
+the President's veto. To secure the requisite majority in the Senate,
+Stockton, Democratic Senator from New Jersey, was unseated on technical
+grounds, and Senator Morgan, who was "paired" with a sick colleague, broke his
+word to vote aye--for which Wade offensively thanked God. The moderates had
+now fallen away from the President, and at least for this session of Congress,
+his policies were wrecked. On the 16th of July, the supplementary Freedmen's
+Bureau Act was passed over the veto, and on the 24th of July Tennessee was
+readmitted to representation by a law the preamble of which asserted
+unmistakably that Congress had assumed control of reconstruction.
+
+Meanwhile the Joint Committee on Reconstruction had made a report asserting
+that the Southerners had forfeited all constitutional rights, that their state
+governments were not in constitutional form, and that restoration could be
+accomplished only when Congress and the President acted together in fixing the
+terms of readmission. The uncompromising hostility of the South, the Committee
+asserted, made necessary adequate safeguards which should include the
+disfranchisement of the white leaders, either Negro suffrage or a reduction of
+white representation, and repudiation of the Confederate war debt with
+recognition of the validity of the United States debt. These terms were
+embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment, which was adopted by Congress and sent
+to the States on June 13, 1866.
+
+In the congressional campaign of 1866, reconstruction was almost the sole
+issue. For success the Administration must gain at least one-third of one
+house, while the radicals were fighting for two-thirds of each House. If the
+Administration should fail to make the necessary gain, the work accomplished
+by the Presidents would be destroyed. The campaign was bitter and extended
+through the summer and fall. Four national conventions were held: the National
+Union party at Philadelphia made a respectable showing in support of the
+President; the Southern Unionists, guided by the Northern radicals met at the
+same place; a soldiers' and sailors' convention at Cleveland supported the
+Administration; and another convention of soldiers and sailors at Pittsburgh
+endorsed the radical policies. A convention of Confederate soldiers and
+sailors at Memphis endorsed the President, but the Southern support and that
+of the Northern Democrats did not encourage moderate Republicans to vote for
+the Administration. Three members of Johnson's Cabinet--Harlan, Speed, and
+Dennison--resigned because they were unwilling to follow their chief further
+in opposing Congress.
+
+The radicals had plenty of campaign material in the testimony collected by the
+Joint Committee, in the reports of the Freedmen's Bureau, and in the bloody
+race riots which had occurred in Memphis and New Orleans. The greatest blunder
+of the Administration was Johnson's speechmaking tour to the West which he
+called "Swinging Around the Circle." Every time he made a speech he was
+heckled by persons in the crowd, lost his temper, denounced Congress and the
+radical leaders, and conducted himself in an undignified manner. The election
+returns showed more than a two-thirds majority in each House against the
+President. The Fortieth Congress would therefore be safely radical, and in
+consequence the Thirty-ninth was encouraged to be more radical during its last
+session.
+
+Public interest now for a time turned to the South, where the Fourteenth
+Amendment was before the state legislatures. The radicals, taunted with having
+no plan of reconstruction beyond a desire to keep the Southern States out of
+the Union, professed to see in the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment a
+good opportunity to readmit the States on a safe basis. The elections of 1866
+had pointed to the ratification of the proposed amendment as an essential
+preliminary to readmission. But would additional demands be made upon the
+South? Sumner, Stevens, and Fessenden were sure that Negro suffrage also must
+come, but Wade, Chase, Garfield, and others believed that nothing beyond the
+terms of the Fourteenth Amendment would be asked.
+
+In the Southern legislatures there was little disposition to ratify the
+amendment. The rapid development of the radical policies during 1866 had
+convinced most Southerners that nothing short of a general humiliation and
+complete revolution in the South would satisfy the dominant party, and there
+were few who wished to be "parties to our own dishonor." The President advised
+the States not to accept the amendment, but several Southern leaders favored
+it, fearing that worse would come if they should reject it. Only in the
+legislatures of Alabama and Florida was there any serious disposition to
+accept the amendment; and in the end all the unreconstructed States voted
+adversely during the fall and winter of 1866-67. This unanimity of action was
+due in part to the belief that, even if the amendment were ratified, the
+Southern states would still be excluded, and in part to the general dislike of
+the proscriptive section which would disfranchise all Confederates of
+prominence and result in the breaking up of the state governments. The example
+of unhappy Tennessee, which had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and had been
+readmitted, was not one to encourage conservative people in the other Southern
+states.
+
+The rejection of the amendment put the question of reconstruction squarely
+before Congress. There was no longer a possibility of accomplishing the
+reconstruction of the Southern states by means of constitutional amendments.
+Some of the Border and Northern states were already showing signs of
+uneasiness at the continued exclusion of the South. But if the Constitutional
+Amendment had failed, other means of reconstruction were at hand, for the
+radicals now controlled the Thirty-ninth Congress, from which the Southern
+representatives were excluded, and would also control the Fortieth Congress.
+
+Under the lead of Stevens and Sumner, the radicals now perfected their plans.
+On January 8,1867, their first measure, conferring the franchise upon Negroes
+in the District of Columbia, was passed over the presidential veto, though the
+proposal had been voted down a few weeks earlier by a vote of 6525 to 35 in
+Washington and 812 to 1 in Georgetown. In the next place, by an act of January
+31, 1867, the franchise was extended to Negroes in the territories, and on
+March 2, 1867, three important measures were enacted: the Tenure of Office Act
+and a rider to the Army Appropriation Act--both designed to limit the power of
+the President--and the first Reconstruction Act. By the Tenure of Office Act,
+the President was prohibited from removing officeholders except with the
+consent of the Senate; and by the Army Act he was forbidden to issue orders
+except through General Grant or to relieve him of command or to assign him to
+command away from Washington unless at the General's own request or with the
+previous approval of the Senate. The first measure was meant to check the
+removal of radical officeholders by Johnson, and the other, which was secretly
+drawn up for Boutwell by Stanton, was designed to prevent the President from
+exercising his constitutional command of the army.
+
+The first Reconstruction Act declared that no legal state government existed
+in the ten unreconstructed states and that there was no adequate protection
+for life and property. The Johnson and Lincoln governments in those States
+were declared to have no legal status and to be subject wholly to the
+authority of the United States to modify or abolish. The ten states were
+divided into five military districts, over each of which a general officer was
+to be placed in command. Military tribunals were to supersede the civil courts
+where necessary. Stevens was willing to rest here, though some of his less
+radical followers, disliking military rule but desiring to force Negro
+suffrage, inserted a provision in the law that a State might be readmitted to
+representation upon the following conditions: a constitutional convention must
+be held, the members of which were elected by males of voting age without
+regard to color, excluding whites who would be disfranchised by the proposed
+Fourteenth Amendment; a constitution including the same rule of suffrage must
+be framed, ratified by the same electorate, and approved by Congress; and
+lastly, the legislatures elected under this constitution must ratify the
+proposed Fourteenth Amendment, after which, if the Fourteenth Amendment should
+have become a part of the Federal Constitution, the State should be readmitted
+to representation.
+
+In order that the administration of this radical legislation might be
+supervised by its friends, the Thirty-ninth Congress had passed a law
+requiring the Fortieth Congress to meet on the 4th of March instead of in
+December as was customary. According to the Reconstruction Act of the 2nd of
+March, it was left to the state government or to the people of a state to make
+the first move towards reconstruction. If they preferred, they might remain
+under military rule. Either by design or by carelessness no machinery of
+administration was provided for the execution of the act. When it became
+evident that the Southerners preferred military rule, the new Congress passed
+a Supplementary Reconstruction Act on the 23d of March designed to force the
+earlier act into operation. The five commanding generals were directed to
+register the blacks of voting age and the whites who were not disfranchised,
+to hold elections for conventions, to call the conventions, to hold elections
+to ratify or reject the constitutions, and to forward the constitutions, if
+ratified, to the President for transmission to Congress.
+
+In these reconstruction acts the whole doctrine of radicalism was put on the
+way to accomplishment. Its spread had been rapid. In December 1865, the
+majority of Congress would have accepted with little modification the work of
+Lincoln and Johnson. Three months later the Civil Rights Act measured the
+advance. Very soon the new Freedmen's Bureau Act and the Fourteenth Amendment
+indicated the rising tide of radicalism. The campaign of 1866 and the attitude
+of the Southern states swept all radicals and most moderate Republicans
+swiftly into a merciless course of reconstruction. Moderate reconstruction had
+nowhere strong support. Congress, touched in its amour propre by presidential
+disregard, was eager for extremes. Johnson, who regarded himself as defending
+the Constitution against radical assaults, was stubborn, irascible, and
+undignified, and with his associates was no match in political strategy for
+his radical opponents.
+
+The average Republican or Unionist in the North, if he had not been brought by
+skillful misrepresentation to believe a new rebellion impending in the South,
+was at any rate painfully alive to the fear that the Democratic party might
+regain power. With the freeing of the slaves, the representation of the South
+in Congress would be increased. At first it seemed that the South might divide
+in politics as before the war, but the longer the delay the more the Southern
+whites tended to unite into one party acting with the Democrats. With their
+eighty-five representatives and a slight reaction in the North, they might
+gain control of the lower House of Congress. The Union-Republican party had a
+majority of less than one hundred in 1866, and this was lessened slightly in
+the Fortieth Congress. The President was for all practical purposes a Democrat
+again. The prospect was too much for the very human politicians to view
+without distress. Stevens, speaking in support of the Military Reconstruction
+Bill, said:
+
+"There are several good reasons for the passage of this bill. In the first
+place, it is just. I am now confining my argument to Negro suffrage in the
+rebel states. Have not loyal blacks quite as good a right to choose rulers and
+make laws as rebel whites? In the second place, it is necessary in order to
+protect the loyal white men in the seceded states. With them the blacks would
+act in a body, and it is believed that in each of these states, except one,
+the two united would form a majority, control the states, and protect
+themselves. Now they are the victims of daily murder. They must suffer
+constant persecution or be exiled. Another good reason is that it would insure
+the ascendancy of the union party .... I believe . . . that on the continued
+ascendancy of that party depends the safety of this great nation. If impartial
+suffrage is excluded in the rebel states, then every one of them is sure to
+send a solid rebel electoral vote. They, with their kindred Copperheads of the
+North, would always elect the President and control Congress."
+
+The laws passed on the 2d and the 23d of March were war measures and
+presupposed a continuance of war conditions. The Lincoln-Johnson state
+governments were overturned; Congress fixed the qualifications of voters for
+that time and for the future; and the President, shorn of much of his
+constitutional power, could exercise but little control over the military
+government. Nothing that a state might do would secure restoration until it
+should ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution. The war
+had been fought upon the theory that the old Union must be preserved; but the
+basic theory of the reconstruction was that a new Union was to be created.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. THE RULE OF THE MAJOR GENERALS
+
+From the passage of the reconstruction acts to the close of Johnson's
+Administration, Congress, working the will of the radical majority, was in
+supreme control. The army carried out the will of Congress and to that body,
+not to the President, the commanding general and his subordinates looked for
+direction.
+
+The official opposition of the President to the policy of Congress ceased when
+that policy was enacted into law. He believed this legislation to be
+unconstitutional, but he considered it his duty to execute the laws. He at
+once set about the appointment of generals to command the military districts
+created in the South,* a task calling for no little discretion, since much
+depended upon the character of these military governors, or "satraps," as they
+were frequently called by the opposition. The commanding general in a district
+was charged with many duties, military, political, and administrative. It was
+his duty to carry on a government satisfactory to the radicals and not too
+irritating to the Southern whites; at the same time he must execute the
+reconstruction acts by putting old leaders out of power and Negroes in.
+Violent opposition to this policy on the part of the South was not looked for.
+Notwithstanding the "Southern outrage" campaign, it was generally recognized
+in government circles that conditions in the seceded states had gradually been
+growing better since the close of the war. There was in many regions, to be
+sure, a general laxity in enforcing laws, but that had always been
+characteristic of the newer parts of the South. The Civil Rights Act was
+generally in force, the "Black Laws" had been suspended, and the Freedmen's
+Bureau was everywhere caring for the Negroes. What disorder existed was of
+recent origin and in the main was due to the unsettling effects of the debates
+in Congress and to the organization of the Negroes for political purposes.
+
+* The first five generals appointed were Schofield, Sickles. Pope, Ord, and
+Sheridan. None of these remained in his district until reconstruction was
+completed. To Schofield's command in the first district succeeded in turn
+Stoneman, Webb, and Canby; Sickles gave way to Canby, and Pope to Meade; Ord
+in the fourth district was followed by Gillem, McDowell, and Ames; Sheridan,
+in the fifth, was succeeded by Griffen, Mower, Hancock, Buchanan, Reynolds,
+and Canby. Some of the generals were radical; others, moderate and tactful.
+The most extreme were Sheridan, Pope, and Sickles. Those most acceptable to
+the whites were Hancock, Schofield, and Meade. General Grant himself became
+more radical in his actions as he became involved in the fight between
+Congress and the President.
+
+
+Military rule was established in the South with slight friction, but it was
+soon found that the reconstruction laws were not sufficiently clear on two
+points: first, whether there was any limit to the authority of the five
+generals over the local and state governments and, if so, whether the limiting
+authority was in the President; and second, whether the disfranchising
+provisions in the laws were punitive and hence to be construed strictly.
+Attorney-General Stanbery, in May and June 1867, drew up opinions in which he
+maintained that the laws were to be considered punitive and therefore to be
+construed strictly. After discussions in cabinet meetings, these opinions
+received the approval of all except Stanton, Secretary of War, who had already
+joined the radical camp. The Attorney-General's opinion was sent out to the
+district commanders for their information and guidance. But Congress did not
+intend to permit the President or his Cabinet to direct the process of
+reconstruction, and in the Act of July 19, 1867, it gave a radical
+interpretation to the reconstruction legislation, declared itself in control,
+gave full power to General Grant and to the district commanders subject only
+to Grant, directed the removal of all local officials who opposed the
+reconstruction policies, and warned the civil and military officers of the
+United States that none of them should "be bound in his action by any opinion
+of any civil officer of the United States." This interpretive legislation gave
+a broad basis for the military government and resulted in a severe application
+of the disfranchising provisions of the laws.
+
+The rule of the five generals lasted in all the States until June 1868, and
+continued in Mississippi, Texas, Virginia, and Georgia until 1870. There had
+been, to be sure, some military government in 1865, subject, however, to the
+President, and from 1865 to 1867 the army, along with the Freedmen's Bureau,
+had exerted a strong influence in the government of the South, but in the
+regime now inaugurated the military was supreme. The generals had a superior
+at Washington, but whether it was the President, General Grant, or Congress
+was not clear until the Act of July 19, 1867 made Congress the source of
+authority.
+
+The power of the generals most strikingly appeared in their control of the
+state governments which were continued as provisional organizations. Since no
+elections were permitted, all appointments and removals were made from
+military headquarters, which soon became political beehives, centers of
+wirepulling and agencies for the distribution of spoils. At the outset civil
+officers were ordered to retain their offices during good behavior, subject to
+military control. But no local official was permitted to use his influence
+ever so slightly against reconstruction. Since most of them did not favor the
+policy of Congress, thousands were removed as "obstacles to reconstruction."
+The Governors of Georgia, Louisiana, Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas were
+displaced and others appointed in their stead. All kinds of subordinate
+offices rapidly became vacant. New appointments were nearly always
+carpetbaggers and native radicals who could take the "ironclad" oath. The
+generals complained that there were not enough competent native "loyalists" to
+fill the offices, and frequently an army officer was installed as governor,
+treasurer, secretary of state, auditor, or mayor. In nearly all towns, the
+police force was reorganized, and former Federal soldiers were added to the
+force, while the regular troops were used for general police purposes and for
+rural constabulary.
+
+Over the administration of justice the military authorities exercised a close
+supervision. Instructions were sent out to court officers covering the
+selection of juries, the suspension of certain laws, and the rules of evidence
+and procedure. Courts were often closed, court decrees set aside or modified,
+prisoners released, and many cases reserved for trial by military commission.
+Some commanders required juries to admit Negro members and insisted that all
+jurors take the "ironclad" test oath. There was some attempt at regulating the
+Federal courts but without much success.
+
+Since the state legislatures were forbidden to meet, much legislation was
+enacted through military orders. Stay laws were enacted, the color line was
+abolished, new criminal regulations were promulgated, and the police power was
+invoked in some instances to justify sweeping measures, such as the
+prohibition of whisky manufacture in North Carolina and South Carolina. The
+military governors levied, increased, or decreased taxes and made
+appropriations which the state treasurers were forced to pay, but they
+restrained the radical conventions, all of which wished to spend much money.
+According to the Act of March 23, 1867, the generals and their appointees were
+to be paid by the United States, but in practice the running expenses of
+reconstruction were paid by the state treasurers.
+
+Any attempt to favor the Confederate soldiers was frowned upon. Laws providing
+wooden legs and free education for crippled Confederates were suspended.
+Militia organizations and military schools were forbidden. No uniform might be
+worn, no parades were permitted, no memorial and historical societies were to
+be organized, and no meeting of any kind could be held without a permit. The
+attempt to control the press resulted in what one general called "a horrible
+uproar." Editors were forbidden to express themselves too strongly against
+reconstruction; public advertising and printing were awarded only to those
+papers actively supporting reconstruction. Several newspapers were suppressed,
+a notable example being the "Tuscaloosa Independent Monitor", whose editor,
+Ryland Randolph, was a picturesque figure in Alabama journalism and a leader
+in the Ku Klux Klan.
+
+The military administration was thorough and, as a whole, honest and
+efficient. With fewer than ten thousand soldiers, the generals maintained
+order and carried on the reconstruction of the South. The whites made no
+attempt at resistance, though they were irritated by military rule and
+resented the loss of self-government. But most Southerners preferred the rule
+of the army to the alternative reign of the carpetbagger, scalawag, and Negro.
+The extreme radicals at the North, on the other hand, were disgusted at the
+conservative policy of the generals. The apathy of the whites at the beginning
+of the military reconstruction excited surprise on all sides. Not only was
+there no violent opposition, but for a few weeks there was no opposition at
+all. The civil officials were openly unsympathetic, and the newspapers voiced
+dissent not untouched with disgust; others simply could not take the situation
+seriously because it seemed so absurd; many leaders were indifferent, while
+others among them, Generals Lee, Beauregard, and Longstreet, and Governor
+Patton--without approving the policy, advised the whites to cooperate with the
+military authorities and save all they could out of the situation. General
+Beauregard, for instance, wrote in 1867: "If the suffrage of the Negro is
+properly handled and directed, we shall defeat our adversaries with their own
+weapons. The Negro is Southern born. With education and property
+qualifications he can be made to take an interest in the affairs of the South
+and in its prosperity. He will side with the whites."
+
+Northern observers who were friendly to the South or who disapproved of this
+radical reconstruction saw the danger more clearly than the Southerners
+themselves, who seemed not to appreciate the full implication of the
+situation. In this connection the New York "Herald" remarked:
+
+"We may regard the entire ten unreconstructed Southern States, with possibly
+one or two exceptions, as forced by a secret and overwhelming revolutionary
+influence to a common and inevitable fate. They are all bound to be governed
+by blacks spurred on by worse than blacks - white wretches who dare not show
+their faces in respectable society anywhere. This is the most abominable phase
+barbarism has assumed since the dawn of civilization. It was all right and
+proper to put down the rebellion. It was all right perhaps to emancipate the
+slaves . . . . But it is not right to make slaves of white men even though
+they may have been former masters of blacks. This is but a change in a system
+of bondage that is rendered the more odious and intolerable because it has
+been inaugurated in an enlightened instead of a dark and uncivilized age."
+
+The political parties rapidly grouped themselves for the coming struggle. The
+radical Republican party indeed was in process of organization in the South
+even before the passage of the reconstruction acts. Its membership was made up
+of Negroes, carpetbaggers, or Northern men who had come in as speculators,
+officers of the Freedmen's Bureau and of the army, scalawags or Confederate
+renegades, "Peace Society" men,* and Unionists of Civil War times, with a few
+old Whigs who could not yet bring themselves to affiliate with the Democrats.
+At first it seemed that a respectable number of whites might be secured for
+the radical party, but the rapid organization of the Negroes checked the
+accession of whites. In the winter and spring of 1866-67, the Negroes near the
+towns were well organized by the Union League and the Freedmen's Bureau and
+then, after the passage of the reconstruction acts, the organizing activities
+of the radical chieftains shifted to the rural districts. The Union League was
+greatly extended; Union League conventions were held to which local whites
+were not admitted; and the formation of a black man's party was well on the
+way before the registration of the voters was completed. Visiting statesmen
+from the North, among them Henry Wilson of Massachusetts and "Pig Iron" Kelley
+of Pennsylvania, toured the South in support of the radical program, and the
+registrars and all Federal officials aided in the work.
+
+* See "The Day of the Confederacy", by Nathaniel W. Stephenson (in "The
+Chronicles of America"), p. 121, footnote.
+
+
+The whites, slow to comprehend the real extent of radicalism, were finally
+aroused to the necessity of organizing, if they were to influence the Negro
+and have a voice in the conventions. The old party divisions were still
+evident. With difficulty a portion of the Whigs was brought with the Democrats
+into one conservative party during the summer and fall of 1867, though many
+still held aloof. The lack of the old skilled leadership was severely felt. In
+places where the white man's party was given a name, it was called "Democratic
+and Conservative," to spare the feelings of former Whigs who were loath to
+bear the party name of their quondam opponents.
+
+The first step in the military reconstruction was the registration of voters.
+In each State a central board of registrars was appointed by the district
+commander and a local board for every county and large town. Each board
+consisted of three members--all radicals--who were required to subscribe to
+the "ironclad" oath. In several states one Negro was appointed to each local
+board. The registrars listed Negro voters during the day, and at night worked
+at the organization of a radical Republican party. The prospective voters were
+required to take the oath prescribed in the Reconstruction Act, but the
+registrars were empowered to go behind the oath and investigate the
+Confederate record of each applicant. This authority was invoked to carry the
+disfranchisement of the whites far beyond the intention of the law in an
+attempt to destroy the leadership of the whites and to register enough Negroes
+to outvote them at the polls. For this purpose the registration was continued
+until October 1, 1867, and an active campaign of education and organization
+carried on.
+
+At the close of the registration, 703,000 black voters were on the rolls and
+627,000 whites. In Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, and
+Mississippi there were black majorities, and in the other States the blacks
+and the radical whites together formed majorities. The white minorities
+included several thousand who had been rejected by the registrars but restored
+by the military commanders. Though large numbers of blacks were dropped from
+the revised rolls as fraudulently registered, the registration statistics,
+nevertheless, bore clear witness to the political purpose of those who
+compiled them.
+
+Next followed a vote on the question of holding a state convention and the
+election of delegates to such a convention if held--a double election. The
+whites, who had been harassed in the registration and who feared race
+conflicts at the elections, considered whether they ought not to abstain from
+voting. By staying away from the polls, they might bring the vote cast in each
+State below a majority and thus defeat the proposed conventions for, unless a
+majority of the registered voters actually cast ballots either for or against
+a convention, no convention could be held. Nowhere, however, was this plan of
+not voting fully carried out, for, though most whites abstained, enough of
+them voted (against the conventions, of course) to make the necessary majority
+in each State. The effect of the abstention policy upon the personnel of the
+conventions was unfortunate. In every convention there was a radical majority
+with a conservative and all but negligible minority. In South Carolina and
+Louisiana, there were Negro majorities. In every State except North Carolina,
+Texas, and Virginia, the Negroes and the carpetbaggers together were in the
+majority over native whites.
+
+The conservative whites were of fair ability; the carpetbaggers and scalawags
+produced in each convention a few able leaders, but most of them were
+conscienceless political soldiers of fortune; the Negro members were
+inexperienced, and most of them were quite ignorant, though a few leaders of
+ability did appear among them. In Alabama, for example, only two Negro members
+could write, though half had been taught to sign their names. They were
+barbers, field hands, hack drivers, and servants. A Negro chaplain was elected
+who invoked divine blessings on "unioners and cusses on rebels." It was a sign
+of the new era when the convention specially invited the "ladies of colored
+members" to seats in the gallery.
+
+The work of the conventions was for the most part cut and dried, the abler
+members having reached a general agreement before they met. The constitutions,
+mosaics of those of other states, were noteworthy only for the provisions made
+to keep the whites out of power and to regulate the relations of the races in
+social matters. The Texas constitution alone contained no proscriptive clauses
+beyond those required by the Fourteenth Amendment. The most thoroughgoing
+proscription of Confederates was found in the constitutions of Mississippi,
+Alabama, and Virginia; and in these states the voter must also purge himself
+of guilt by agreeing to accept the "civil and political equality of all men"
+or by supporting reconstruction. Only in South Carolina and Louisiana were
+race lines abolished by law.
+
+The legislative work of the conventions was more interesting than the
+constitution making. By ordinance the legality of Negro marriages was dated
+from November 1867, or some date later than had been fixed by the white
+conventions of 1865. Mixed schools were provided in some States; militia for
+the black districts but not for the white was to be raised; while in South
+Carolina it was made a penal offense to call a person a "Yankee" or a
+"nigger." Few of the Negro delegates demanded proscription of whites or social
+equality; they wanted schools and the vote. The white radicals were more
+anxious to keep the former Confederates from holding office than from voting.
+The generals in command everywhere used their influence to secure moderate
+action by the conventions, and for this they were showered with abuse.
+
+As provided by the reconstruction acts, the new constitutions were submitted
+to the electorate created by those instruments. Unless a majority of the
+registered voters in a State should take part in the election, the
+reconstruction would fail and the State would remain under military rule. The
+whites now inaugurated a more systematic policy of abstention and in Alabama,
+on February 4, 1868, succeeded in holding the total vote below a majority.
+Congress then rushed to the rescue of radicalism with the act of the 11th of
+March, which provided that a mere majority of those voting in the State was
+sufficient to inaugurate reconstruction. Arkansas had followed the lead of
+Alabama, but too late; in Mississippi the constitution was defeated by a
+majority vote; in Texas the convention had made no provision for a vote; and
+in Virginia the commanding general, disapproving of the work of the
+convention, refused to pay the expenses of an election. In the other six
+States the constitutions were adopted.*
+
+* Except in Texas, the work of constitution making was completed between
+November 5, 1867, and May 18, 1868.
+
+These elections gave rise to more violent contests than before. They also were
+double elections, as the voters cast ballots for state and local officials and
+at the same time for or against the constitution. The radical nominations were
+made by the Union League and the Freedmen's Bureau, and nearly all radicals
+who had been members of conventions were nominated and elected to office. The
+Negroes, expecting now to reap some benefits of reconstruction, frequently
+brought sacks to the polls to "put the franchise in." The elections were all
+over by June 1868, and the newly elected legislatures promptly ratified the
+Fourteenth Amendment.
+
+It now remained for Congress to approve the work done in the South and to
+readmit the reorganized states. The case of Alabama gave some trouble. Even
+Stevens, for a time, thought that this state should stay out; but there was
+danger in delay. The success of the abstention policy in Alabama and Arkansas
+and the reviving interest of the whites foreshadowed white majorities in some
+places; the scalawags began to forsake the radical party for the
+conservatives; and there were Democratic gains in the North in 1867. Only six
+states, New York and five New England States, allowed the Negro to vote, while
+four states, Minnesota, Michigan, Kansas, and Ohio, voted down Negro suffrage
+after the passage of the reconstruction acts. The ascendancy of the radicals
+in Congress was menaced. The radicals needed the support of their radical
+brethren in Southern States and they could not afford to wait for the
+Fourteenth Amendment to become a part of the Constitution or to tolerate other
+delay. On the 22d and the 25th of June, acts were therefore passed admitting
+seven states, Alabama included, to representation in Congress upon the
+"fundamental condition" that "the constitutions of neither of said States
+shall ever be so amended or changed as to deprive any citizens or class of
+citizens of the United States of the right to vote in said State, who are
+entitled to vote by the constitution thereof herein recognized."
+
+The generals now turned over the government to the recently elected radical
+officials and retired into the background. Military reconstruction was thus
+accomplished in all the States except Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. THE TRIAL OF PRESIDENT JOHNSON
+
+While the radical program was being executed in the South, Congress was
+engaged not only in supervising reconstruction but in subduing the Supreme
+Court and in "conquering" President Johnson. One must admire the efficiency of
+the radical machine. When the Southerners showed that they preferred military
+rule as permitted by the Act of the 2nd of March, Congress passed the Act of
+the 23d of March which forced the reconstruction. When the President ventured
+to assert his power in behalf of a considerate administration of the
+reconstruction acts, Congress took the power out of his hands by the law of
+the 19th of July. The Southern plan to defeat the new state constitutions by
+abstention was no sooner made clear in the case of Alabama than Congress came
+to the rescue with the Act of March 11, 1868.
+
+Had it seemed necessary, Congress would have handled the Supreme Court as it
+did the Southerners. The opponents of radical reconstruction were anxious to
+get the reconstruction laws of March 1867, before the Court. Chief Justice
+Chase was known to be opposed to military reconstruction, and four other
+justices were, it was believed, doubtful of the constitutionality of the laws.
+A series of conservative decisions gave hope to those who looked to the Court
+for relief. The first decision, in the case of ex parte Milligan, declared
+unconstitutional the trials of civilians by military commissions when civil
+courts were open. A few months later, in the cases of Cummings vs. Missouri
+and ex parte Garland, the Court declared invalid, because ex post facto, the
+state laws designed to punish former Confederates.
+
+But the first attempts to get the reconstruction acts before the Supreme Court
+failed. The State of Mississippi, in April 1867, brought suit to restrain the
+President from executing the reconstruction acts. The Court refused to
+interfere with the executive. A similar suit was then brought against
+Secretary Stanton by Georgia with a like result. But in 1868, in the case of
+ex parte McCardle, it appeared that the question of the constitutionality of
+the reconstruction acts would be passed upon. McCardle, a Mississippi editor
+arrested for opposition to reconstruction and convicted by military
+commission, appealed to the Supreme Court, which asserted its jurisdiction.
+But the radicals in alarm rushed through Congress an act (March 27, 1868)
+which took away from the Court its jurisdiction in cases arising under the
+reconstruction acts. The highest court was thus silenced.
+
+The attempt to remove the President from office was the only part of the
+radical program that failed, and this by the narrowest of margins. During the
+spring and summer of 1866, there was some talk among politicians of impeaching
+President Johnson, and in December a resolution was introduced by
+Representative Ashley of Ohio looking toward impeachment. Though the committee
+charged with the investigation of "the official conduct of Andrew Johnson"
+reported that enough testimony had been taken to justify further inquiry, the
+House took no action. There were no less than five attempts at impeachment
+during the next year. Stevens, Butler, and others were anxious to get the
+President out of the way, but the majority were as yet unwilling to impeach
+for merely political reasons. There were some who thought that the radicals
+had sufficient majorities to ensure all needed legislation and did not relish
+the thought of Ben Wade in the presidency.* Others considered that no just
+grounds for action had been found in the several investigations of Johnson's
+record. Besides, the President's authority and influence had been much
+curtailed by the legislation relating to the Freedmen's Bureau, tenure of
+office, reconstruction, and command of the army, and Congress had also refused
+to recognize his amnesty and pardoning powers.
+
+* Senator Wade of Ohio was President pro tempore of the Senate and by the act
+of 1791 would succeed President Johnson if he were removed from office.
+
+But the desire to impeach the President was increasing in power, and very
+little was needed to provoke a trial of strength between the radicals and the
+President. The drift toward impeachment was due in part to the legislative
+reaction against the executive, and in part to Johnson's own opposition to
+reconstruction and to his use of the patronage against the radicals. Specific
+grievances were found in his vetoes of the various reconstruction bills, in
+his criticisms of Congress and the radical leaders, and in the fact, as
+Stevens asserted, that he was a "radical renegade." Johnson was a Southern
+man, an old-line State Rights Democrat, somewhat anti-Negro in feeling. He
+knew no book except the Constitution, and that he loved with all his soul.
+Sure of the correctness of his position, he was too stubborn to change or to
+compromise. He was no more to be moved than Stevens or Sumner. To overcome
+Johnson's vetoes required two-thirds of each House of Congress; to impeach and
+remove him would require only a majority of the House and two-thirds of the
+Senate.
+
+The desired occasion for impeachment was furnished by Johnson's attempt to get
+Edwin M. Stanton, the Secretary of War, out of the Cabinet. Stanton held
+radical views and was at no time sympathetic with or loyal to Johnson, but he
+loved office too well to resign along with those cabinet members who could not
+follow the President in his struggle with Congress. He was seldom frank and
+sincere in his dealings with the President, and kept up an underhand
+correspondence with the radical leaders, even assisting in framing some of the
+reconstruction legislation which was designed to render Johnson powerless. In
+him the radicals had a representative within the President's Cabinet.
+
+
+Wearied of Stanton's disloyalty, Johnson asked him to resign and, upon a
+refusal, suspended him in August 1867, and placed General Grant in temporary
+charge of the War Department. General Grant, Chief Justice Chase, and
+Secretary McCulloch, though they all disliked Stanton, advised the President
+against suspending him. But Johnson was determined. About the same time he
+exercised his power in removing Sheridan and Sickles from their commands in
+the South and replaced them with Hancock and Canby. The radicals were furious,
+but Johnson had secured at least the support of a loyal Cabinet.
+
+The suspension of Stanton was reported to the Senate in December 1867, and on
+January 13, 1868, the Senate voted not to concur in the President's action.
+Upon receiving notice of the vote in the Senate, Grant at once left the War
+Department and Stanton again took possession. Johnson now charged Grant with
+failing to keep a promise either to hold on himself or to make it possible to
+appoint some one else who would hold on until the matter might be brought into
+the courts. The President by this accusation angered Grant and threw him with
+his great influence into the arms of the radicals. Against the advice of his
+leading counselors, Johnson persisted in his intention to keep Stanton out of
+the Cabinet. Accordingly on the 21st of February he dismissed Stanton from
+office and appointed Lorenzo Thomas, the Adjutant General, as acting Secretary
+of War. Stanton, advised by the radicals in Congress to "stick," refused to
+yield possession to Thomas and had him arrested for violation of the Tenure of
+Office Act. The matter now was in the courts where Johnson wanted it, but the
+radical leaders, fearing that the courts would decide against Stanton and the
+reconstruction acts, had the charges against Thomas withdrawn. Thus failed the
+last attempt to get the reconstruction laws before the courts. On the 22nd of
+February, the President sent to the Senate the name of Thomas Ewing, General
+Sherman's father-in-law, as Secretary of War, but no attention was paid to the
+nomination.
+
+On February 24, 1868, the House voted, 128 to 47, to impeach the President "of
+high crimes and misdemeanors in office." The Senate was formally notified the
+next day, and on the 4th of March the seven managers selected by the House
+appeared before the Senate with the eleven articles of impeachment. At first
+it seemed to the public that the impeachment proceedings were merely the
+culmination of a struggle for the control of the army. There were rumors that
+Johnson had plans to use the army against Congress and against reconstruction.
+General Grant, directed by Johnson to accept orders from Stanton only if he
+were satisfied that they came from the President, refused to follow these
+instructions. Stanton, professing to fear violence, barricaded himself in the
+War Department and was furnished with a guard of soldiers by General Grant,
+who from this time used his influence in favor of impeachment. Excited by the
+most sensational rumors, some people even believed a new rebellion to be
+imminent.
+
+The impeachment was rushed to trial by the House managers and was not ended
+until the decision was taken by the votes of the 16th and 26th of May. The
+eleven articles of impeachment consisted of summaries of all that had been
+charged against Johnson, except the charge that he had been an accomplice in
+the murder of Lincoln. The only one which had any real basis was the first,
+which asserted that he had violated the Tenure of Office Act in trying to
+remove Stanton. The other articles were merely expansions of the first or were
+based upon Johnson's opposition to reconstruction or upon his speeches in
+criticism of Congress. Nothing could be said about his control of the
+patronage, though this was one of the unwritten charges. J. W. Schuckers, in
+his life of Chase, says that the radical leaders "felt the vast importance of
+the presidential patronage; many of them felt, too, that, according to the
+maxim that to the victors belong the spoils, the Republican party was
+rightfully entitled to the Federal patronage, and they determined to get
+possession of it. There was but one method and that was by impeachment and
+removal of the President."
+
+The leading House managers were Stevens, Butler, Bingham, and Boutwell, all
+better known as politicians than as lawyers. The President was represented by
+an abler legal array: Curtis, Evarts, Stanbery, Nelson, and Groesbeck.
+Jeremiah Black was at first one of the counsel for the President but withdrew
+under conditions not entirely creditable to himself.
+
+The trial was a one-sided affair. The President's counsel were refused more
+than six days for the preparation of the case. Chief Justice Chase, who
+presided over the trial, insisted upon regarding the Senate as a judicial and
+not a political body, and he accordingly ruled that only legal evidence should
+be admitted; but the Senate majority preferred to assume that they were
+settling a political question. Much evidence favorable to the President was
+excluded, but everything else was admitted. As the trial went on, the country
+began to understand that the impeachment was a mistake. Few people wanted to
+see Senator Wade made President. The partisan attitude of the Senate majority
+and the weakness of the case against Johnson had much to do in moderating
+public opinion, and the timely nomination of General Schofield as Secretary of
+War after Stanton's resignation reassured those who feared that the army might
+be placed under some extreme Democrat.
+
+As the time drew near for the decision, every possible pressure was brought by
+the radicals to induce senators to vote for conviction. To convict the
+President, thirty-six votes were necessary. There were only twelve Democrats
+in the Senate, but all were known to be in favor of acquittal. When the test
+came on the 16th of May, seven Republicans voted with the Democrats for
+acquittal on the eleventh article. Another vote on the 26th of May, on the
+first and second articles, showed that conviction was not possible. The
+radical legislative reaction was thus checked at its highest point and the
+presidency as a part of the American governmental system was no longer in
+danger. The seven Republicans had, however, signed their own political death
+warrants; they were never forgiven by the party leaders.
+
+The presidential campaign was beginning to take shape even before the
+impeachment trial began. Both the Democrats and the reorganized Republicans
+were turning with longing toward General Grant as a candidate. Though he had
+always been a Democrat, Nevertheless, when Johnson actually called him a liar
+and a promise breaker, Grant went over to the radicals and was nominated for
+President on May 20, 1868, by the National Union Republican party. Schuyler
+Colfax was the candidate for Vice President. The Democrats, who could have won
+with Grant and who under good leadership still had a bare chance to win,
+nominated Horatio Seymour of New York and Francis P. Blair of Missouri. The
+former had served as war governor of New York, while the latter was considered
+an extreme Democrat who believed that the radical reconstruction of the South
+should be stopped, the troops withdrawn, and the people left to form their own
+governments. The Democratic platform pronounced itself opposed to the
+reconstruction policy, but Blair's opposition was too extreme for the North.
+Seymour, more moderate and a skillful campaigner, made headway in the
+rehabilitation of the Democratic party. The Republican party declared for
+radical reconstruction and Negro suffrage in the South but held that each
+Northern State should be allowed to settle the suffrage for itself. It was not
+a courageous platform, but Grant was popular and carried his party through to
+success.
+
+The returns showed that in the election Grant had carried twenty-six States
+with 214 electoral votes, while Seymour had carried only eight States with 80
+votes. But an examination of the popular vote, which was 3,000,000 for Grant
+and 2,700,000 for Seymour, gave the radicals cause for alarm, for it showed
+that the Democrats had more white votes than the Republicans, whose total
+included nearly 700,000 blacks. To insure the continuance of the radicals in
+power, the Fifteenth Amendment was framed and sent out to the States on
+February 26, 1869. This amendment appeared not only to make safe the Negro
+majorities in the South but also gave the ballot to the Negroes in a score of
+Northern States and thus assured, for a time at least, 900,000 Negro voters
+for the Republican party.
+
+When Johnson's term ended and he gave place to President Grant, four states
+were still unreconstructed--Virginia, Texas, and Mississippi, in which the
+reconstruction had failed, and Georgia, which, after accomplishing
+reconstruction, had again been placed under military rule by Congress. In
+Virginia, which was too near the capital for such rough work as readmitted
+Arkansas and Alabama into the Union, the new constitution was so severe in its
+provisions for disfranchisement that the disgusted district commander would
+not authorize the expenditure necessary to have it voted on. In Mississippi a
+similar constitution had failed of adoption, and in Texas the strife of party
+factions, radical and moderate Republican, had so delayed the framing of the
+constitution that it had not come to a vote.
+
+The Republican politicians, however, wanted the offices in these States, and
+Congress by its resolution of February 18, 1869, directed the district
+commanders to remove all civil officers who could not take the "ironclad" oath
+and to appoint those who could subscribe to it. An exception, however, was
+made in favor of the scalawags who had supported reconstruction and whose
+disabilities had been removed by Congress.
+
+President Grant was anxious to complete the reconstruction and recommended to
+Congress that the constitutions of Virginia and Mississippi be re-submitted to
+the people with a separate vote on the disfranchising sections. Congress, now
+in harmony with the executive, responded by placing the reconstruction of the
+three states in the hands of the President, but with the proviso that each
+state must ratify the Fifteenth Amendment. Grant thereupon fixed a time for
+voting in each state and directed that in Virginia and Mississippi the
+disfranchising clauses be submitted separately. As a result, the constitutions
+were ratified but proscription was voted down. The radicals secured control of
+Mississippi and Texas, but a conservative combination carried Virginia and
+thus came near keeping the state out of the Union. Finally, during the early
+months of 1870 the three states were readmitted.
+
+With respect to Georgia a peculiar condition of affairs existed. In June 1868,
+Georgia had been readmitted with the first of the reconstructed States. The
+state legislature at once expelled the twenty-seven Negro members, on the
+ground that the recent legislation and the state constitution gave the Negroes
+the right to vote but not to hold office. Congress, which had already admitted
+the Georgia representatives, refused to receive the senators and turned the
+state back to military control. In 1869-70, Georgia was again reconstructed
+after a drastic purging of the legislature by the military commander, the
+reseating of the Negro members, and the ratification of both the Fourteenth
+and Fifteenth Amendments. The state was readmitted to representation in July
+1870, after the failure of a strong effort to extend for two years the
+carpetbag government of the state.
+
+Upon the last states to pass under the radical yoke, heavier conditions were
+imposed than upon the earlier ones. Not only were they required to ratify the
+Fifteenth Amendment, but the "fundamental conditions" embraced, in addition to
+the prohibition against future change of the suffrage, a requirement that the
+Negroes should never be deprived of school and office-holding rights.
+
+The congressional plan of reconstruction had thus been carried through by able
+leaders in the face of the opposition of a united white South, nearly half the
+North, the President, the Supreme Court, and in the beginning a majority of
+Congress. This success was due to the poor leadership of the conservatives and
+to the ability and solidarity of the radicals led by Stevens and Sumner. The
+radicals had a definite program; the moderates had not. The object of the
+radicals was to secure the supremacy in the South by the aid of the Negroes
+and exclusion of whites. Was this policy politically wise? It was at least
+temporarily successful. The choice offered by the radicals seemed to lie
+between military rule for an indefinite period and Negro suffrage; and since
+most Americans found military rule distasteful, they preferred to try Negro
+suffrage. But, after all, Negro suffrage had to be supported by military rule,
+and in the end both failed completely.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. THE UNION LEAGUE OF AMERICA
+
+The elections of 1867-68 showed that the Negroes were well organized under the
+control of the radical Republican leaders and that their former masters had
+none of the influence over the blacks in political matters which had been
+feared by some Northern friends of the Negro and had been hoped for by such
+Southern leaders as Governor Patton and General Hampton. Before 1865 the
+discipline of slavery, the influence of the master's family, and of the
+Southern church had sufficed to control the blacks. But after emancipation
+they looked to the Federal soldiers and Union officials as the givers of
+freedom and the guardians of the future.
+
+From the Union soldiers, especially the Negro troops, from the Northern
+teachers, the missionaries and the organizers of Negro churches, from the
+Northern officials and traveling politicians, the Negroes learned that their
+interests were not those of the whites. The attitude of the average white in
+the South often confirmed this growing estrangement. It was difficult even for
+the white leaders to explain the riots at Memphis and New Orleans. And those
+who sincerely wished well for the Negro and who desired to control him for the
+good of both races could not possibly assure him that he was fit for the
+suffrage. For even Patton and Hampton must tell him that they knew better than
+he and that he should follow their advice.
+
+The appeal made to freedmen by the Northern leaders was in every way more
+forceful, because it bad behind it the prestige of victory in war and for the
+future it could promise anything. Until 1867, the principal agency in bringing
+about the separation of the races had been the Freedmen's Bureau which, with
+its authority, its courts, its rations, clothes, and its "forty acres and a
+mule," did effective work in breaking down the influence of the master. But to
+understand fully the almost absolute control exercised over the blacks in
+1867-68 by alien adventurers, one must examine the workings of an oath-bound
+society known as the Union or Loyal League. It was this order, dominated by a
+few radical whites, which organized, disciplined, and controlled the ignorant
+Negro masses and paralyzed the influence of the conservative whites.
+
+The Union League of America had its origin in Ohio in the fall of 1862, when
+the outlook for the Union cause was gloomy. The moderate policies of the
+Lincoln Administration had alienated those in favor of extreme measures; the
+Confederates had won military successes in the field; the Democrats had made
+some gains in the elections; the Copperheads* were actively opposed to the
+Washington Government; the Knights of the Golden Circle were organizing to
+resist the continuance of the war; and the Emancipation Proclamation had
+chilled the loyalty of many Union men, which was everywhere at a low ebb,
+especially in the Northern cities. It was to counteract these depressing
+influences that the Union League movement was begun among those who were
+associated in the work of the United States Sanitary Commission. Observing the
+threatening state of public opinion, members of this organization proposed
+that "loyalty be organized, consolidated and made effective."
+
+* See "Abraham Lincoln and the Union", by Nathaniel W. Stephenson (in "The
+Chronicles of America"), pp. 156-7, 234-5.
+
+
+The first organization was made by eleven men in Cleveland, Ohio, in November
+1862. The Philadelphia Union League was organized a month later, and in
+January 1863, the New York Union League followed. The members were pledged to
+uncompromising and unconditional loyalty to the Union, to complete
+subordination of political views to this loyalty, and to the repudiation of
+any belief in state rights. The other large cities followed the example of
+Philadelphia and New York, and soon Leagues, connected in a loose federation,
+were formed all through the North. They were social as well as political in
+their character and assumed as their task the stimulation and direction of
+loyal Union opinion.
+
+As the Union armies proceeded to occupy the South, the Union League sent its
+agents among the disaffected Southern people. Its agents cared for Negro
+refugees in the contraband camps and in the North. In such work the League
+cooperated with the various Freedmen's Aid Societies, the Department of Negro
+Affairs, and later with the Freedmen's Bureau. Part of the work of the League
+was to distribute campaign literature, and many of the radical pamphlets on
+reconstruction and the Negro problem bore the Union League imprint. The New
+York League sent out about seventy thousand copies of various publications,
+while the Philadelphia League far surpassed this record, circulating within
+eight years four million five hundred thousand copies of 144 different
+pamphlets. The literature consisted largely of accounts of "Southern outrages"
+taken from the reports of Bureau agents and similar sources.
+
+With the close of the Civil War the League did not cease its active interest
+in things political. It was one of the first organizations to declare for
+Negro suffrage and the disfranchisement of Confederates; it held steadily to
+this declaration during the four years following the war; and it continued as
+a sort of bureau in the radical Republican party for the purpose of
+controlling the Negro vote in the South. Its representatives were found in the
+lobbies of Congress demanding extreme measures, endorsing the reconstruction
+policies of Congress, and condemning the course of the President. After the
+first year or two of reconstruction, the Leagues in the larger Northern cities
+began to grow away from the strictly political Union League of America and
+tended to become mere social clubs for members of the same political belief.
+The eminently respectable Philadelphia and New York clubs had little in common
+with the leagues of the Southern and Border States except a general adherence
+to the radical program.
+
+Even before the end of the war the League was extending its organization into
+the parts of the Confederacy held by the Federal forces, admitting to
+membership the army officers and the leading Unionists, though maintaining for
+the sake of the latter "a discreet secrecy." With the close of the war and the
+establishment of army posts over the South, the League grew rapidly. The
+civilians who followed the army, the Bureau agents, the missionaries, and the
+Northern teachers formed one class of membership; and the loyalists of the
+hill and mountain country, who had become disaffected toward the Confederate
+administration and had formed such orders as the Heroes of America, the Red
+String Band, and the Peace Society, formed another class. Soon there were
+added to these the deserters, a few old line Whigs who intensely disliked the
+Democrats, and others who decided to cast their lot with the victors. The
+disaffected politicians of the up-country, who wanted to be cared for in the
+reconstruction, saw in the organization a means of dislodging from power the
+political leaders of the low country. It has been estimated that thirty
+percent of the white men of the hill and mountain counties of the South joined
+the Union League in 1865-66. They cared little about the original objects of
+the order but hoped to make it the nucleus of an anti-Democratic political
+organization.
+
+But on the admission of Negroes into the lodges or councils controlled by
+Northern men the native white members began to withdraw. From the beginning
+the Bureau agents, the teachers, and the preachers had been holding meetings
+of Negroes, to whom they gave advice about the problems of freedom. Very early
+these advisers of the blacks grasped the possibilities inherent in their
+control of the schools, the rationing system, and the churches. By the spring
+of 1866, the Negroes were widely organized under this leadership, and it
+needed but slight change to convert the Negro meetings into local councils of
+the Union League.* As soon as it seemed likely that Congress would win in its
+struggle with the President the guardians of the Negro planned their campaign
+for the control of the race. Negro leaders were organized into councils of the
+League or into Union Republican Clubs. Over the South went the organizers,
+until by 1868 the last Negroes were gathered into the fold.
+
+* Of these teachers of the local blacks, E. L. Godkin, editor of the New York
+Nation, who had supported the reconstruction acts, said: "Worse instructors
+for men emerging from slavery and coming for the first time face to face with
+the problems of free life than the radical agitators who have undertaken the
+political guidance of the blacks it would be hard to meet with."
+
+
+The native whites did not all desert the Union League when the Negroes were
+brought in. Where the blacks were most numerous the desertion of whites was
+general, but in the regions where they were few some of the whites remained
+for several years. The elections of 1868 showed a falling off of the white
+radical vote from that of 1867, one measure of the extent of loss of whites.
+From this time forward the order consisted mainly of blacks with enough whites
+for leaders. In the Black Belt the membership of native whites was discouraged
+by requiring an oath to the effect that secession was treason. The
+carpetbagger had found that he could control the Negro without the help of the
+scalawag. The League organization was soon extended and centralized; in every
+black district there was a Council; for the state there was a Grand Council;
+and for the United States there was a National Grand Council with headquarters
+in New York City.
+
+The influence of the League over the Negro was due in large degree to the
+mysterious secrecy of the meetings, the weird initiation ceremony that made
+him feel fearfully good from his head to his heels, the imposing ritual, and
+the songs. The ritual, it is said, was not used in the North; it was probably
+adopted for the particular benefit of the African. The would-be Leaguer was
+informed that the emblems of the order were the altar, the Bible, the
+Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, the flag
+of the Union, censer, sword, gavel, ballot box, sickle, shuttle, anvil, and
+other emblems of industry. He was told to the accompaniment of clanking chains
+and groans that the objects of the order were to preserve liberty, to
+perpetuate the Union, to maintain the laws and the Constitution, to secure the
+ascendancy of American institutions, to protect, defend, and strengthen all
+loyal men and members of the Union League in all rights of person and
+property, to demand the elevation of labor, to aid in the education of
+laboring men, and to teach the duties of American citizenship. This
+enumeration of the objects of the League sounded well and was impressive. At
+this point the Negro was always willing to take an oath of secrecy, after
+which he was asked to swear with a solemn oath to support the principles of
+the Declaration of Independence, to pledge himself to resist all attempts to
+overthrow the United States, to strive for the maintenance of liberty, the
+elevation of labor, the education of all people in the duties of citizenship,
+to practice friendship and charity to all of the order, and to support for
+election or appointment to office only such men as were supporters of these
+principles and measures.
+
+The council then sang "Hail, Columbia!" and "The Star Spangled Banner," after
+which an official lectured the candidates, saying that though the designs of
+traitors had been thwarted, there were yet to be secured legislative triumphs
+and the complete ascendancy of the true principles of popular government,
+equal liberty, education and elevation of the workmen, and the overthrow at
+the ballot box of the old oligarchy of political leaders. After prayer by the
+chaplain, the room was darkened, alcohol on salt flared up with a ghastly
+light as the "fire of liberty," and the members joined hands in a circle
+around the candidate, who was made to place one hand on the flag and, with the
+other raised, swear again to support the government and to elect true Union
+men to office. Then placing his hand on a Bible, for the third time he swore
+to keep his oath, and repeated after the president "the Freedmen's Pledge":
+"To defend and perpetuate freedom and the Union, I pledge my life, my fortune,
+and my sacred honor. So help me God!" "John Brown's Body" was then sung, the
+president charged the members in a long speech concerning the principles of
+the order, and the marshal instructed the neophyte in the signs. To pass one's
+self as a Leaguer, the "Four L's" had to be given: (1) with right hand raised
+to heaven, thumb and third finger touching ends over palm, pronounce
+"Liberty"; (2) bring the hand down over the shoulder and say "Lincoln"; (3)
+drop the hand open at the side and say "Loyal"; (4) catch the thumb in the
+vest or in the waistband and pronounce "League." This ceremony of initiation
+proved a most effective means of impressing and controlling the Negro through
+his love and fear of secret, mysterious, and midnight mummery. An oath taken
+in daylight might be forgotten before the next day; not so an oath taken in
+the dead of night under such impressive circumstances. After passing through
+the ordeal, the Negro usually remained faithful.
+
+In each populous precinct there was at least one council of the League, and
+always one for blacks. In each town or city there were two councils, one for
+the whites, and another, with white officers, for the blacks. The council met
+once a week, sometimes oftener, nearly always at night, and in a Negro church
+or schoolhouse. Guards, armed with rifles and shotguns, were stationed about
+the place of meeting in order to keep away intruders. Members of some councils
+made it a practice to attend the meetings armed as if for battle. In these
+meetings the Negroes listened to inflammatory speeches by the would-be
+statesmen of the new regime; here they were drilled in a passionate conviction
+that their interests and those of the Southern whites were eternally at war.
+
+White men who joined the order before the Negroes were admitted and who left
+when the latter became members asserted that the Negroes were taught in these
+meetings that the only way to have peace and plenty, to get "the forty acres
+and a mule," was to kill some of the leading whites in each community as a
+warning to others. In North Carolina twenty-eight barns were burned in one
+county by Negroes who believed that Governor Holden, the head of the State
+League, had ordered it. The council in Tuscumbia, Alabama, received advice
+from Memphis to use the torch because the blacks were at war with the white
+race. The advice was taken. Three men went in front of the council as an
+advance guard, three followed with coal oil and fire, and others guarded the
+rear. The plan was to burn the whole town, but first one Negro and then
+another insisted on having some white man's house spared because "he is a good
+man." In the end no residences were burned, and a happy compromise was
+effected by burning the Female Academy. Three of the leaders were afterwards
+lynched.
+
+The general belief of the whites was that the ultimate object of the order was
+to secure political power and thus bring about on a large scale the
+confiscation of the property of Confederates, and meanwhile to appropriate and
+destroy the property of their political opponents wherever possible. Chicken
+houses, pigpens, vegetable gardens, and orchards were visited by members
+returning from the midnight conclaves. During the presidential campaign of
+1868, the North Carolina League sent out circular instructions to the blacks
+advising them to drill regularly and to join the militia, for if Grant were
+not elected the Negroes would go back to slavery; if he were elected, the
+Negroes were to have farms, mules, and offices.
+
+As soon as possible after the war the Negroes had supplied themselves with
+guns and dogs as badges of freedom. They carried their guns to the League
+meetings, often marching in military formation, went through the drill there,
+marched home again along the roads, shouting, firing, and indulging in boasts
+and threats against persons whom they disliked. Later, military parades in the
+daytime were much favored. Several hundred Negroes would march up and down the
+streets, abusing whites, and shoving them off the sidewalk or out of the road.
+But on the whole, there was very little actual violence, though the whites
+were much alarmed at times. That outrages were comparatively few was due, not
+to any sensible teachings of the leaders, but to the fundamental good nature
+of the blacks, who were generally content with mere impudence.
+
+The relations between the races, indeed, continued on the whole to be friendly
+until 1867-68. For a while, in some localities before the advent of the
+League, and in others where the Bureau was conducted by native magistrates,
+the Negroes looked to their old masters for guidance and advice; and the
+latter, for the good of both races, were most eager to retain a moral control
+over the blacks. They arranged barbecues and picnics for the Negroes, made
+speeches, gave good advice, and believed that everything promised well.
+Sometimes the Negroes themselves arranged the festival and invited prominent
+whites, for whom a separate table attended by Negro waiters was reserved; and
+after dinner there followed speeches by both whites and blacks.
+
+With the organization of the League, the Negroes grew more reserved, and
+finally became openly unfriendly to the whites. The League alone, however, was
+not responsible for this change. The League and the Bureau had to some extent
+the same personnel, and it is frequently impossible to distinguish clearly
+between the influence of the two. In many ways the League was simply the
+political side of the Bureau. The preaching and teaching missionaries were
+also at work. And apart from the organized influences at work, the poor whites
+never laid aside their hostility towards the blacks, bond or free.
+
+When the campaigns grew exciting, the discipline of the order was used to
+prevent the Negroes from attending Democratic meetings and hearing Democratic
+speakers. The leaders even went farther and forbade the attendance of the
+blacks at political meetings where the speakers were not endorsed by the
+League. Almost invariably the scalawag disliked the Leaguer, black or white,
+and as a political teacher often found himself proscribed by the League. At a
+Republican mass meeting in Alabama, a white Republican who wanted to make a
+speech was shouted down by the Negroes because he was "opposed to the Loyal
+League." He then went to another place to speak but was followed by the crowd,
+which refused to allow him to say anything. All Republicans in good standing
+had to join the League and swear that secession was treason--a rather stiff
+dose for the scalawag. Judge (later Governor) David P. Lewis, of Alabama, was
+a member for a short while but he soon became disgusted and published a
+denunciation of the order. Albion W. Tourgee, the author, a radical judge, was
+the first chief of the League in North Carolina and was succeeded by Governor
+Holden. In Alabama, Generals Swayne, Spencer, and Warner, all candidates for
+the United States Senate, hastened to join the order.
+
+As soon as a candidate was nominated by the League, it was the duty of every
+member to support him actively. Failure to do so resulted in a fine or other
+more severe punishment, and members who had been expelled were still
+considered under the control of the officials. The League was, in fact, the
+machine of the radical party, and all candidates had to be governed by its
+edicts. As the Montgomery Council declared, the Union League was "the right
+arm of the Union-Republican party in the United States."
+
+Every Negro was ex colore a member or under the control of the League. In the
+opinion of the League, white Democrats were bad enough, but black Democrats
+were not to be tolerated. It was almost necessary, as a measure of personal
+safety, for each black to support the radical program. It was possible in some
+cases for a Negro to refrain from taking an active part in political affairs.
+He might even fail to vote. But it was actually dangerous for a black to be a
+Democrat; that is, to try to follow his old master in politics. The whites in
+many cases were forced to advise their few faithful black friends to vote the
+radical ticket in order to escape mistreatment. Those who showed Democratic
+leanings were proscribed in Negro society and expelled from Negro churches;
+the Negro women would not "proshay" (appreciate) a black Democrat. Such a one
+was sure to find that influence was being brought to bear upon his dusky
+sweetheart or his wife to cause him to see the error of his ways, and
+persistent adherence to the white party would result in his losing her. The
+women were converted to radicalism before the men, and they almost invariably
+used their influence strongly in behalf of the League. If moral suasion failed
+to cause the delinquent to see the light, other methods were used. Threats
+were common and usually sufficed. Fines were levied by the League on
+recalcitrant members. In case of the more stubborn, a sound beating was
+effective to bring about a change of heart. The offending party was "bucked
+and gagged," or he was tied by the thumbs and thrashed. Usually the sufferer
+was too afraid to complain of the way he was treated.
+
+Some of the methods of the Loyal League were similar to those of the later Ku
+Klux Klan. Anonymous warnings were sent to obnoxious individuals, houses were
+burned, notices were posted at night in public places and on the houses of
+persons who had incurred the hostility of the order. In order to destroy the
+influence of the whites where kindly relations still existed, an "exodus
+order" issued through the League directed all members to leave their old homes
+and obtain work elsewhere. Some of the blacks were loath to comply with this
+order, but to remonstrances from the whites the usual reply was: "De word done
+sent to de League. We got to go." For special meetings the Negroes were in
+some regions called together by signal guns. In this way the call for a
+gathering went out over a county in a few minutes and a few hours later nearly
+all the members in the county assembled at the appointed place.
+
+Negroes as organizing agents were inclined to go to extremes and for that
+reason were not so much used. In Bullock County, Alabama, a council of the
+League was organized under the direction of a Negro emissary, who proceeded to
+assume the government of the community. A list of crimes and punishments was
+adopted, a court with various officials was established, and during the night
+the Negroes who opposed the new regime were arrested. But the black sheriff
+and his deputy were in turn arrested by the civil authorities. The Negroes
+then organized for resistance, flocked into the county seat, and threatened to
+exterminate the whites and take possession of the county. Their agents visited
+the plantations and forced the laborers to join them by showing orders
+purporting to be from General Swayne, the commander in the state, giving them
+the authority to kill all who resisted them. Swayne, however, sent out
+detachments of troops and arrested fifteen of the ringleaders, and the League
+government collapsed.
+
+After it was seen that existing political institutions were to be overturned
+in the process of reconstruction, the white councils of the League and, to a
+certain extent, the Negro councils were converted into training schools for
+the leaders of the new party soon to be formed in the state by act of
+Congress. The few whites who were in control were unwilling to admit more
+white members to share in the division of the spoils; terms of admission
+became more stringent, and, especially after the passage of the reconstruction
+acts in March 1867, many white applicants were rejected. The alien element
+from the North was in control and as a result, where the blacks were numerous,
+the largest plums fell to the carpetbaggers. The Negro leaders--the
+politicians, preachers, and teachers--trained in the League acted as
+subordinates to the whites and were sent out to drum up the country Negroes
+when elections drew near. The Negroes were given minor positions when offices
+were more plentiful than carpetbaggers. Later, after some complaint, a larger
+share of the offices fell to them. The League counted its largest white
+membership in 1865-66, and after that date it steadily decreased. The largest
+Negro membership was recorded in 1867 and 1868. The total membership was never
+made known. In North Carolina the order claimed from seventy-five thousand to
+one hundred and twenty-five thousand members; in states with larger Negro
+populations the membership was probably quite as large. After the election of
+1868, only the councils in the towns remained active, many of them transformed
+into political clubs, loosely organized under local political leaders. The
+plantation Negro needed less looking after, and except in the largest towns he
+became a kind of visiting member of the council in the town. The League as a
+political organization gradually died out by 1870.*
+
+* The Ku Klux Klan had much to do with the decline of the organization. The
+League as the ally and successor of the Freedmen's Bureau was one of the
+causes of the Ku Klux movement, because it helped to create the conditions
+which made such a movement inevitable. As early as 1870 the radical leaders
+missed the support formerly given by the League, and an urgent appeal was sent
+out all over the South from headquarters in New York advocating its
+reestablishment to assist in carrying the elections of 1870.
+
+
+The League had served its purpose. It had enabled a few outsiders to control
+the Negro by separating the races politically and it had compelled the Negroes
+to vote as radicals for several years, when without its influence they would
+either not have voted at all or would have voted as Democrats along with their
+former masters. The order was necessary to the existence of the radical party
+in the Black Belt. No ordinary political organization could have welded the
+blacks into a solid party. The Freedmen's Bureau, which had much influence
+over the Negroes, was too weak in numbers to control the Negroes in politics.
+The League finally absorbed the personnel of the Bureau and turned its
+prestige and its organization to political advantage.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. CHURCH AND SCHOOL
+
+Reconstruction in the state was closely related to reconstruction in the
+churches and the schools. Here also were to be found the same hostile
+elements: Negro and white, Unionist and Confederate, victor and vanquished.
+The church was at that time an important institution in the South, more so
+than in the North, and in both sections more important than it is today. It
+was inevitable, therefore, that ecclesiastical reconstruction should give rise
+to bitter feelings.
+
+Something should be said of conditions in the churches when the Federal armies
+occupied the land. The Southern organizations had lost many ministers and many
+of their members, and frequently their buildings were used as hospitals or had
+been destroyed. Their administration was disorganized and their treasuries
+were empty. The Unionists, scattered here and there but numerous in the
+mountain districts, no longer wished to attend the Southern churches.
+
+The military censorship in church matters, which continued for a year in some
+districts, was irritating, especially in the Border States and in the Union
+districts where Northern preachers installed by the army were endeavoring to
+remain against the will of the people. Mobs sometimes drove them out; others
+were left to preach to empty houses or to a few Unionists and officers, while
+the congregation withdrew to build a new church. The problems of Negro
+membership in the white churches and of the future relations of the Northern
+and Southern denominations were pressing for settlement.
+
+All Northern organizations acted in 1865 upon the assumption that a reunion of
+the churches must take place and that the divisions existing before the war
+should not be continued, since slavery, the cause of the division, had been
+destroyed. But they insisted that the reunion must take place upon terms named
+by the "loyal" churches, that the Negroes must also come under "loyal"
+religious direction, and that tests must be applied to the Confederate sinners
+asking for admission, in order that the enormity of their crimes should be
+made plain to them. But this policy did not succeed. The Confederates objected
+to being treated as "rebels and traitors" and to "sitting upon stools of
+repentance" before they should be received again into the fold.
+
+Only two denominations were reunited--the Methodist Protestant, the northern
+section of which came over to the southern, and the Protestant Episcopal, in
+which moderate counsels prevailed and into which Southerners were welcomed
+back. The Southern Baptists maintained their separate existence and
+reorganized the Southern Baptist Convention, to which came many of the Baptist
+associations in the Border States; the Catholics did not divide before 1861
+and therefore had no reconstruction problems to solve; and the smaller
+denominations maintained the organizations which they had before 1861. A
+Unionist preacher testified before the Joint Committee on Reconstruction that
+even the Southern Quakers "are about as decided in regard to the
+respectability of secession as any other class of people."
+
+Two other great Southern churches, the Presbyterian and the Methodist
+Episcopal, grew stronger after the Civil War. The tendency toward reunion of
+the Presbyterians was checked when one Northern branch declared as "a
+condition precedent to the admission of southern applicants that these confess
+as sinful all opinions before held in regard to slavery, nullification,
+rebellion and slavery, and stigmatize secession as a crime and the withdrawal
+of the southern churches as a schism." Another Northern group declared that
+southern ministers must be placed on probation and must either prove their
+loyalty or profess repentance for disloyalty and repudiate their former
+opinions. As a result several Presbyterian bodies in the South joined in a
+strong union, to which also adhered the synods of several Border States.
+
+The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was confronted with conditions similar
+to those which prevented the reunion of the Presbyterians. The Northern
+church, according to the declaration of its authorities, also came down to
+divide the spoils and to "disintegrate and absorb" the "schismatic" Southern
+churches. Already many Southern pulpits were filled with Northern Methodist
+ministers placed there under military protection; and when they finally
+realized that reunion was not possible, these Methodist worthies resolved to
+occupy the late Confederacy as a mission field and to organize congregations
+of blacks and whites who were "not tainted with treason." Bishops and
+clergymen charged with this work carried it on vigorously for a few years in
+close connection with political reconstruction.
+
+The activities of the Northern Methodists stimulated the Southern Methodists
+to a quick reorganization. The surviving bishops met in August 1865, and bound
+together their shaken church. In reply to suggestions of reunion they asserted
+that the Northern Methodists had become "incurably radical," were too much
+involved in politics, and, further, that they had, without right, seized and
+were still holding Southern church buildings. They objected also to the way
+the Northern church referred to the Southerners as "schismatics" and to the
+Southern church as one built on slavery and therefore, now that slavery was
+gone, to be reconstructed. The bishops warned their people against the
+missionary efforts of the Northern brethren and against the attempts to
+"disintegrate and absorb" Methodism in the South. Within five years after the
+war, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was greatly increased in numbers
+by the accession of conferences in Maryland, Kentucky, Virginia, Missouri, and
+even from above the Ohio, while the Northern Methodist Church was able to
+organize only a few white congregations outside of the stronger Unionist
+districts, but continued to labor in the South as a missionary field.*
+
+*The church situation after the war was well described in 1866 by an editorial
+writer in the "Nation" who pointed out that the Northern churches thought the
+South determined to make the religious division permanent, though "slavery no
+longer furnishes a pretext for separation." "Too much pains were taken to
+bring about an ecclesiastical reunion, and irritating offers of reconciliation
+are made by the Northern churches, all based on the assumption that the South
+has not only sinned, but sinned knowingly, in slavery and in war. We expect
+them to be penitent and to gladly accept our offers of forgiveness. But the
+Southern people look upon a 'loyal' missionary as a political emissary, and
+'loyal' men do not at present possess the necessary qualifications for
+evangelizing the Southerners or softening their hearts, and are sure not to
+succeed in doing so. We look upon their defeat as retribution and expect them
+to do the same. It will do no good if we tell the Southerner that 'we will
+forgive them if they will confess that they are criminals, offer to pray with
+them, preach with them, and labor with them over their hideous sins.'"
+
+
+But if the large Southern churches held their white membership and even gained
+in numbers and territory, they fought a losing fight to retain their black
+members. It was assumed by Northern ecclesiastics that whether a reunion of
+whites took place or not, the Negroes would receive spiritual guidance from
+the North. This was necessary, they said, because the Southern whites were
+ignorant and impoverished and because "the state of mind among even the best
+classes of Southern whites rendered them incapable . . . of doing justice to
+the people whom they had so long persistently wronged." Further, it was also
+necessary for political reasons to remove the Negroes from Southern religious
+control.
+
+For obvious reasons, however, the Southern churches wanted to hold their Negro
+members. They declared themselves in favor of Negro education and of better
+organized religious work among the blacks, and made every sort of
+accommodation to hold them. The Baptists organized separate congregations,
+with white or black pastors as desired, and associations of black churches. In
+1866 the Methodist General Conference authorized separate congregations,
+quarterly conferences, annual conferences, even a separate jurisdiction, with
+Negro preachers, presiding elders, and bishops--but all to no avail. Every,
+Northern political, religious, or military agency in the South worked for
+separation, and Negro preachers were not long in seeing the greater advantages
+which they would have in independent churches.
+
+Much of the separate organization was accomplished in mutual good will,
+particularly in the Baptist ranks. The Reverend I. T. Tichenor, a prominent
+Baptist minister, has described the process as it took place in the First
+Baptist Church in Montgomery. The church had nine hundred members, of whom six
+hundred were black. The Negroes received a regular organization of their own
+under the supervision of the white pastors. When a separation of the two
+bodies was later deemed desirable, it was inaugurated by a conference of the
+Negroes which passed a resolution couched in the kindliest terms, suggesting
+the wisdom of the division, and asking the concurrence of the white church in
+such action. The white church cordially approved the movement, and the two
+bodies united in erecting a suitable house of worship for the Negroes. Until
+the new church was completed, both congregations continued to occupy jointly
+the old house of worship. The new house was paid for in large measure by the
+white members of the church and by individuals in the community. As soon as it
+was completed, the colored church moved into it with its pastor, board of
+deacons, committees of all sorts, and the whole machinery of church life went
+into action without a jar. Similar accommodations occurred in all the states
+of the South.
+
+The Methodists lost the greater part of their Negro membership to two
+organizations which came down from the North in 1865--the African Methodist
+Episcopal Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Zion. Large
+numbers also went over to the Northern Methodist Church. After losing nearly
+three hundred thousand members, the Southern Methodists came to the conclusion
+that the remaining seventy-eight thousand Negroes would be more comfortable in
+a separate organization and therefore began in 1866 the Colored Methodist
+Episcopal Church, with bishops, conferences, and all the accompaniments of the
+parent Methodist Church, which continued to give friendly aid but exercised no
+control. For many years the Colored Methodist Church was under fire from the
+other Negro denominations, who called it the "rebel," the "Democratic," the
+"old slavery" church.
+
+The Negro members of the Cumberland Presbyterians were similarly set off into
+a small African organization. The Southern Presbyterians and the Episcopalians
+established separate congregations and missions under white supervision but
+sanctioned no independent Negro organization. Consequently the Negroes soon
+deserted these churches and went with their own kind.
+
+Resentment at the methods employed by the Northern religious carpetbaggers was
+strong among the Southern whites. "Emissaries of Christ and the radical party"
+they were called by one Alabama leader. Governor Lindsay of the same state
+asserted that the Northern missionaries caused race hatred by teaching the
+Negroes to regard the whites as their natural enemies, who, if possible, would
+put them back in slavery. Others were charged with teaching that to be on the
+safe side, the blacks should get into a Northern church, and that "Christ died
+for Negroes and Yankees, not for rebels."
+
+The scalawags, also, developed a dislike of the Northern church work among the
+Negroes, and it was impossible to organize mixed congregations. Of the
+Reverend A. S. Lakin, a well-known agent of the Northern Methodist Church in
+Alabama, Nicholas Davis, a North Alabama Unionist and scalawag, said to the Ku
+Klux Committee: "The character of his [Lakin's] speech was this: to teach the
+Negroes that every man that was born and raised in the Southern country was
+their enemy, that there was no use trusting them, no matter what they said--if
+they said they were for the Union or anything else. 'No use talking, they are
+your enemies.' And he made a pretty good speech, too; awful; a hell of a one;
+. . . inflammatory and game, too . . . . It was enough to provoke the devil.
+Did all the mischief he could . . . I tell you, that old fellow is a hell of
+an old rascal."
+
+For a time the white churches were annoyed by intrusions of strange blacks set
+on by those who were bent on separating the races. Frequently there were feuds
+in white or black congregations over the question of joining some Northern
+body. Disputes over church property also arose and continued for years. Lakin,
+referred to above, was charged with "stealing" Negro congregations and uniting
+them with the Cincinnati Conference without their knowledge. The Negroes were
+urged to demand title to all buildings formerly used for Negro worship, and
+the Constitutional Convention of Alabama in 1867 directed that such property
+must be turned over to them when claimed.
+
+The agents of the Northern churches were not greatly different from other
+carpetbaggers and adventurers taking advantage of the general confusion to
+seize a little power. Many were unscrupulous; others, sincere and honest but
+narrow, bigoted, and intolerant, filled with distrust of the Southern whites
+and with corresponding confidence in the blacks and in themselves. The
+missionary and church publications were quite as severe on the Southern people
+as any radical Congressman. The publications of the Freedmen's Aid Society
+furnish illustrations of the feelings and views of those engaged in the
+Southern work. They in turn were made to feel the effects of a merciless
+social proscription. For this some of them cared not at all, while others or
+their families felt it keenly. One woman missionary wrote that she was
+delighted when a Southern white would speak to her. A preacher in Virginia
+declared that "the females, those especially whose pride has been humbled, are
+more intense in their bitterness and endeavor to keep up a social ostracism
+against Union and Northern people." The Ku Klux raids were directed against
+preachers and congregations whose conduct was disagreeable to the whites.
+Lakin asserted that while he was conducting a great revival meeting among the
+hills of northern Alabama, Governor Smith and other prominent and sinful
+scalawag politicians were there "under conviction" and about to become
+converted. But in came the Klan and the congregation scattered.
+
+Smith and the others were so angry and frightened that their good feelings
+were dissipated, and the devil reentered them, so that Lakin said he was never
+able to "get a hold on them" again. For the souls lost that night he held the
+Klan responsible. Lakin told several marvelous stories of his hairbreadth
+escapes from death by assassination which, if true, would be enough to ruin
+the reputation of northern Alabama men for marksmanship.
+
+The reconstruction ended with conditions in the churches similar to those in
+politics: the races were separated and unfriendly; Northern and Southern
+church organizations were divided; and between them, especially in the border
+and mountain districts, there existed factional quarrels of a political
+origin, for every Northern Methodist was a Republican and every Southern
+Methodist was a Democrat.
+
+The schools of the South, like the churches and political institutions, were
+thrown into the melting pot of reconstruction. The spirit in which the work
+was begun may be judged from the tone of the addresses made at a meeting of
+the National Teachers Association in 1865. The president, S. S. Greene,
+declared that "the old slave States are to be the new missionary ground for
+the national school teacher." Francis Wayland, the former president of Brown
+University, remarked that "it has been a war of education and patriotism
+against ignorance and barbarism." President Hill of Harvard spoke of the "new
+work of spreading knowledge and intellectual culture over the regions that sat
+in darkness." Other speakers asserted that the leading Southern whites were as
+much opposed to free schools as to free governments and "we must treat them as
+western farmers do the stumps in their clearings, work around them and let
+them rot out"; that the majority of the whites were more ignorant than the
+slaves; and that the Negro must be educated and strengthened against "the
+wiles, the guile, and hate of his baffled masters and their minions." The New
+England Freedmen's Aid Society considered it necessary to educate the Negro
+"as a counteracting influence against the evil councils and designs of the
+white freemen."
+
+The tasks that confronted the Southern States in 1865-67 were two: first, to
+restore the shattered school systems of the whites; and second, to arrange for
+the education of the Negroes. Education of the Negro slave had been looked
+upon as dangerous and had been generally forbidden. A small number of Negroes
+could read and write, but there were at the close of the war no schools for
+the children. Before 1861, each state had developed at least the outlines of a
+school system. Though hindered in development by the sparseness of the
+population and by the prevalence in some districts of the Virginia doctrine
+that free schools were only for the poor, public schools were nevertheless in
+existence in 1861. Academies and colleges, however, were thronged with
+students. When the war ended, the public schools were disorganized, and the
+private academies and the colleges were closed. Teachers and students had been
+dispersed; buildings had been burned or used for hospitals and laboratories;
+and public libraries had virtually disappeared.
+
+The colleges made efforts to open in the fall of 1865. Only one student
+presented himself at the University of Alabama for matriculation; but before
+June 1866, the stronger colleges were again in operation. The public or
+semi-public schools for the whites also opened in the fall. In the cities
+where Federal military authorities had brought about the employment of
+Northern teachers, there was some friction. In New Orleans, for example, the
+teachers required the children to sing Northern songs and patriotic airs. When
+the Confederates were restored to power, these teachers were dismissed.
+
+The movement toward Negro education was general throughout the South. Among
+the blacks themselves there was an intense desire to learn. They wished to
+read the Bible, to be preachers, to be as the old master and not have to work.
+Day and night and Sunday they crowded the schools. According to an observer,*
+"not only are individuals seen at study, and under the most untoward
+circumstances, but in very many places I have found what I will call 'native
+schools,' often rude and very imperfect, but there they are, a group, perhaps,
+of all ages, trying to learn. Some young man, some woman, or old preacher, in
+cellar, or shed, or corner of a Negro meeting-house, with the alphabet in
+hand, or a town spelling-book, is their teacher. All are full of enthusiasm
+with the new knowledge the book is imparting to them."
+
+* J. W. Alvord, Superintendent of Schools for the Freedmen's Bureau, 1866.
+
+
+Not only did the Negroes want schooling, but both the North and the South
+proposed to give it to them. Neither side was actuated entirely by altruistic
+motives. A Hampton Institute teacher in later days remarked: "When the combat
+was over and the Yankee school-ma'am followed in the train of the northern
+armies, the business of educating the Negroes was a continuation of
+hostilities against the vanquished and was so regarded to a considerable
+extent on both sides."
+
+The Southern churches, through their bishops and clergy, the newspapers, and
+prominent individuals such as J. L. M. Curry, John B. Gordon, J. L. Orr,
+Governors Brown, Moore, and Patton, came out in favor of Negro education. Of
+this movement General Swayne said: "Quite early . . . . the several religious
+denominations took strong ground in favor of the education of the freedmen.
+The principal argument was an appeal to sectional and sectarian prejudice,
+lest, the work being inevitable, the influence which must come from it be
+realized by others; but it is believed that this was but the shield and weapon
+which men of unselfish principle found necessary at first." The newspapers
+took the attitude that the Southern whites should teach the Negroes because it
+was their duty, because it was good policy, and because if they did not do so
+some one else would. The "Advertiser" of Montgomery stated that education was
+a danger in slavery times but that under freedom ignorance became a danger.
+For a time there were numerous schools taught by crippled Confederates and by
+Southern women.
+
+But the education of the Negro, like his religious training, was taken from
+the control of the Southern white and was placed under the direction of the
+Northern teachers and missionaries who swarmed into the country under the
+fostering care of the Freedmen's Bureau, the Northern churches, and the
+various Freedmen's Aid Societies. In three years the Bureau spent six million
+dollars on Negro schools and everywhere it exercised supervision over them.
+The teachers pursued a policy akin to that of the religious leaders. One
+Southerner likened them to the "plagues of Egypt," another described them as
+"saints, fools, incendiaries, fakirs, and plain business men and women." A
+Southern woman remarked that "their spirit was often high and noble so far as
+the black man's elevation was concerned, but toward the white it was bitter,
+judicial, and unrelenting." The Northern teachers were charged with ignorance
+of social conditions, with fraternizing with the blacks, and with teaching
+them that the Southerners were traitors, "murderers of Lincoln," who had been
+cruel taskmasters and who now wanted to restore servitude.
+
+The reaction against Negro education, which began to show itself before
+reconstruction was inaugurated, found expression in the view of most whites
+that "schooling ruins a Negro." A more intelligent opinion was that of J. L.
+M. Curry, a lifelong advocate of Negro education:
+
+"It is not just to condemn the Negro for the education which he received in
+the early years after the war. That was the period of reconstruction, the
+saturnalia of misgovernment, the greatest possible hindrance to the progress
+of the freedmen . . . . The education was unsettling, demoralizing, [and it]
+pandered to a wild frenzy for schooling as a quick method of reversing social
+and political conditions. Nothing could have been better devised for deluding
+the poor Negro and making him the tool, the slave of corrupt taskmasters.
+Education is a natural consequence of citizenship and enfranchisement . . . of
+freedom and humanity. But with deliberate purpose to subject the Southern
+States to Negro domination, and secure the States permanently for partisan
+ends, the education adopted was contrary to commonsense, to human experience,
+to all noble purposes. The curriculum was for a people in the highest degree
+of civilization; the aptitude and capabilities and needs of the Negro were
+wholly disregarded. Especial stress was laid on classics and liberal culture
+to bring the race per saltum to the same plane with their former masters, and
+realize the theory of social and political equality. A race more highly
+civilized, with best heredities and environments, could not have been coddled
+with more disregard of all the teachings of human history and the necessities
+of the race. Colleges and universities, established and conducted by the
+Freedmen's Bureau and Northern churches and societies, sprang up like
+mushrooms, and the teachers, ignorant, fanatical, without self-poise,
+proceeded to make all possible mischief. It is irrational, cruel, to hold the
+Negro, under such strange conditions, responsible for all the ill consequences
+of bad education, unwise teachers, reconstruction villainies, and partisan
+schemes."
+
+* Quoted in "Proceedings of the Montgomery Conference on Race Problems"
+(1900), p. 128.
+
+
+Education was to be looked upon as a handmaid to a thorough reconstruction,
+and its general character and aim were determined by the Northern teachers.
+Each convention framed a more or less complicated school system and undertook
+to provide for its support. The Negroes in the conventions were anxious for
+free schools; the conservatives were willing; but the carpetbaggers and a few
+mulatto leaders insisted in several States upon mixed schools. Only in
+Louisiana and South Carolina did the constitutions actually forbid separate
+schools; in Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, and Arkansas the question was left
+open, to the embarrassment of the whites. Generally the blacks showed no
+desire for mixed schools unless urged to it by the carpetbaggers. In the South
+Carolina convention, a mulatto thus argued in favor of mixed schools: "The
+gentleman from Newberry said he was afraid we were taking a wrong course to
+remove these prejudices. The most natural method to effect this object would
+be to allow children when five or six years of age to mingle in schools
+together and associate generally. Under such training, prejudice must
+eventually die out; but if we postpone it until they become men and women,
+prejudice will be so established that no mortal can obliterate it. This, I
+think, is a sufficient reply to the argument of the gentleman."
+
+The state systems were top-heavy with administrative machinery and were
+officered by incompetent and corrupt officials. Such men as Cloud in Alabama,
+Cardozo in Mississippi, Conway in Louisiana, and Jillson in South Carolina are
+fair samples of them. Much of the personnel was taken over from the Bureau
+teaching force. The school officials were no better than the other
+officeholders.
+
+The first result of the attempt to use the schools as an instrument of
+reconstruction ended in the ruin of several state universities. The faculties
+of the Universities of North Carolina, Mississippi, and Alabama were made
+radical and the institutions thereupon declined to nothing. The Negroes,
+unable to control the faculty of the University of South Carolina, forced
+Negro students in and thus got possession. In Louisiana the radical
+legislature cut off all funds because the university would not admit Negroes.
+The establishment of the land grant colleges was an occasion for corruption
+and embezzlement.
+
+The common schools were used for radical ends. The funds set aside for them by
+the state constitutions or appropriated by the legislatures for these schools
+seldom reached their destination without being lessened by embezzlement or by
+plain stealing. Frequently the auditor, or the treasurer, or even the
+legislature diverted the school funds to other purposes. Suffice it to say
+that all of the reconstruction systems broke down financially after a brief
+existence.
+
+The mixed school provisions in Louisiana and South Carolina and the
+uncertainty of the educational situation in other States caused white children
+to stay away from the public schools. For several years the Negroes were
+better provided than the whites, having for themselves both all the public
+schools and also those supported by private benevolence. In Mississippi,
+Louisiana, and South Carolina the whites could get no money for schoolhouses,
+while large sums were spent on Negro schools. The Peabody Board, then recently
+inaugurated,* refused to cooperate with school officials in the mixed school
+states and, when criticized, replied: "It is well known that we are helping
+the white children of Louisiana as being the more destitute from the fact of
+their unwillingness to attend mixed schools."
+
+* To administer the fund bequeathed by George Peabody of Massachusetts to
+promote education in the Southern States. See "The New South", by Holland
+Thompson (in "The Chronicles of America").
+
+
+As was to be expected, the whites criticized the attitude of the school
+officials, disapproved of the attempts made in the schools to teach the
+children radical ideas, and objected to the contents of the history texts and
+the "Freedmen's Readers." A white school board in Mississippi, by advertising
+for a Democratic teacher for a Negro school, drew the fire of a radical editor
+who inquired: "What is the motive by which this call for a 'competent
+Democratic teacher' is prompted? The most damning that has ever moved the
+heart of man. It is to use the vote and action of a human being as a means by
+which to enslave him. The treachery and villainy of these rebels stands
+without parallel in the history of men."
+
+A Negro politician has left this account of a radical recitation in a Florida
+Negro school:
+
+After finishing the arithmetic lesson they must next go through the catechism:
+
+"Who is the 'Publican Government of the State of Florida?" Answer: "Governor
+Starns."
+
+"Who made him Governor?" Answer: "The colored people."
+
+"Who is trying to get him out of his seat?" Answer: "The Democrats, Conover,
+and some white and black Liberal Republicans."
+
+"What should the colored people do with the men who is trying to get Governor
+Starns out of his seat?" Answer: "They should kill them." . . . .
+
+This was done that the patrons, some of whom could not read, would be
+impressed by the expressions of their children, and would be ready to put any
+one to death who would come out into the country and say anything against
+Governor Starns.
+
+The native white teachers soon dropped out of Negro schools, and those from
+the North met with the same social persecution as the white church workers.
+The White League and Ku Klux Klan drove off obnoxious teachers, whipped some,
+burned Negro schoolhouses, and in various other ways manifested the reaction
+which was rousing the whites against Negro schools.
+
+The several agencies working for Negro education gave some training to
+hundreds of thousands of blacks, but the whites asserted that, like the church
+work, it was based on a wrong spirit and resulted in evil as well as in good.
+Free schools failed in reconstruction because of the dishonesty or
+incompetence of the authorities and because of the unsettled race question. It
+was not until the turn of the century that the white schools were again as
+good as they had been before 1861. After the reconstruction native whites as
+teachers of Negro schools were impossible in most places. The hostile feelings
+of the whites resulted and still result in a limitation of Negro schools. The
+best thing for Negro schools that came out of reconstruction was Armstrong's
+Hampton Institute program, which, however, was quite opposed to the spirit of
+reconstruction education.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. CARPETBAG AND NEGRO RULE
+
+The Southern States reconstructed by Congress were subject for periods of
+varying length to governments designed by radical Northerners and imposed by
+elements thrown to the surface in the upheaval of Southern society. Georgia,
+Virginia, and North Carolina each had a brief experience with these
+governments; other States escaped after four or five years, while Louisiana,
+South Carolina, and Florida were not delivered from this domination until
+1876. The states which contained large numbers of Negroes had, on the whole,
+the worst experience. Here the officials were ignorant or corrupt, frauds upon
+the public were the rule, not the exception, and all of the reconstruction
+governments were so conducted that they could secure no support from the
+respectable elements of the electorate.
+
+The fundamental cause of the failure of these governments was the character of
+the new ruling class. Every state, except perhaps Virginia, was under the
+control of a few able leaders from the North generally called carpetbaggers
+and of a few native white radicals contemptuously designated scalawags. These
+were kept in power by Negro voters, to some seven hundred thousand of whom the
+ballot had been given by the reconstruction acts. The adoption of the
+Fifteenth Amendment in March 1870, brought the total in the former slave
+states to 931,000, with about seventy-five thousand more Negroes in the North.
+The Negro voters were most numerous, comparatively, in Louisiana, Mississippi,
+South Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia. There were a few thousand carpetbaggers
+in each State, with, at first, a much larger number of scalawags. The latter,
+who were former Unionists, former Whigs, Confederate deserters, and a few
+unscrupulous politicians, were most numerous in Virginia, North Carolina,
+Texas, Arkansas, and Tennessee. The better class, however, rapidly left the
+radical party as the character of the new regime became evident, taking with
+them whatever claims the party had to respectability, education, political
+experience, and property.
+
+The conservatives, hopelessly reduced by the operation of disfranchising laws,
+were at first not well organized, nor were they at any time as well led as in
+antebellum days. In 1868, about one hundred thousand of them were forbidden to
+vote and about two hundred thousand were disqualified from holding office. The
+abstention policy of 1867-68 resulted in an almost complete withdrawal of the
+influence of the conservatives for the two years, 1868-70. As a class they
+were regarded by the dominant party in state and nation as dangerous and
+untrustworthy and were persecuted in such irritating ways that many became
+indifferent to the appeals of civil duty. They formed a solid but almost
+despairing opposition in the black districts of Mississippi, Louisiana,
+Alabama, and South Carolina. For the leaders the price of amnesty was
+conversion to radicalism, but this price few would pay.
+
+The new state governments possessed certain characteristics in common. Since
+only a small number of able men were available for office, full powers of
+administration, including appointment and removal, were concentrated in the
+hands of the governor. He exercised a wide control over public funds and had
+authority to organize and command militia and constabulary and to call for
+Federal troops. The numerous administrative boards worked with the sole object
+of keeping their party in power. Officers were several times as numerous as
+under the old regime, and all of them received higher salaries and larger
+contingent fees. The moral support behind the government was that of President
+Grant and the United States army, not that of a free and devoted people.
+
+Of the twenty men who served as governors, eight were scalawags and twelve
+were carpetbaggers, men who were abler than the scalawags and who had much
+more than an equal share of the spoils. The scalawags, such as Brownlow of
+Tennessee, Smith of Alabama, and Holden of North Carolina, were usually honest
+but narrow, vindictive men, filled with fear and hate of the conservative
+whites.
+
+Of the carpetbaggers half were personally honest, but all were unscrupulous in
+politics.' Some were flagrantly dishonest.* Governor Moses of South Carolina
+was several times bribed and at one time, according to his own statement,
+received $15,000 for his vote as speaker of the House of Representatives.
+Governor Stearns of Florida was charged with stealing government supplies from
+the Negroes; and it was notorious that Warmoth and Kellogg of Louisiana, each
+of whom served only one term, retired with large fortunes. Warmoth, indeed,
+went so far as to declare: "Corruption is the fashion. I do not pretend to be
+honest, but only as honest as anybody in politics."
+
+The judiciary was no better than the executive. The chief justice of Louisiana
+was convicted of fraud. A supreme court judge of South Carolina offered his
+decisions for sale, and Whipper and Moses, both notorious thieves, were
+elected judges by the South Carolina Legislature. In Alabama there were many
+illiterate magistrates, among them the city judge of Selma, who in April 1865,
+was still living as a slave. Governor Chamberlain, a radical, asserted that
+there were two hundred trial judges in South Carolina who could not read.
+
+Other officers were of the same stripe. Leslie, a South Carolina carpetbagger,
+declared that "South Carolina has no right to be a state unless she can
+support her statesmen," and he proceeded to live up to this principle. The
+manager of the state railroad of Georgia, when asked how he had been able to
+accumulate twenty or thirty thousand dollars on a two or three thousand dollar
+salary, replied, "By the exercise of the most rigid economy." A North Carolina
+Negro legislator was found on one occasion chuckling as he counted some money.
+"What are you laughing at, Uncle?" he was asked. "Well, boss, I'se been sold
+'leben times in my life and dis is de fust time I eber got de money." Godkin,
+in the "Nation", said that the Georgia officials were "probably as bad a lot
+of political tricksters and adventurers as ever got together in one place."
+This description will fit equally well the white officials of all the
+reconstructed states. Many of the Negroes who attained public office showed
+themselves apt pupils of their carpetbag masters but were seldom permitted to
+appropriate a large share of the plunder. In Florida the Negro members of the
+legislature, thinking that they should have a part of the bribe and loot money
+which their carpetbag masters were said to be receiving, went so far as to
+appoint what was known as a "smelling committee" to locate the good things and
+secure a share.
+
+From 1868 to 1870, the legislatures of seven states were overwhelmingly
+radical and in several the radical majority held control for four, six, or
+eight years. Negroes were most numerous in the legislatures of Louisiana,
+South Carolina, and Mississippi, and everywhere the votes of these men were
+for sale. In Alabama and Louisiana, Negro legislators had a fixed price for
+their votes: for example, six hundred dollars would buy a senator in
+Louisiana. In South Carolina, Negro government appeared at its worst. A vivid
+description of the Legislature of this State in which the Negroes largely
+outnumbered the whites is given by James S. Pike, a Republican journalist*:
+
+*Pike, "The Prostrate State", pp. 12 ff.
+
+
+"In the place of this old aristocratic society stands the rude form of the
+most ignorant democracy that mankind ever saw, invested with the functions of
+government. It is the dregs of the population habilitated in the robes of
+their intelligent predecessors, and asserting over them the rule of ignorance
+and corruption . . . . It is barbarism overwhelming civilization by physical
+force. It is the slave rioting in the halls of his master, and putting that
+master under his feet. And, though it is done without malice and without
+vengeance, it is nevertheless none the less completely and absolutely done. .
+. . We will enter the House of Representatives. Here sit one hundred and
+twenty-four members. Of these, twenty-three are white men, representing the
+remains of the old civilization. These are good-looking, substantial citizens.
+They are men of weight and standing in the communities they represent. They
+are all from the hill country. The frosts of sixty and seventy winters whiten
+the heads of some among them. There they sit, grim and silent. They feel
+themselves to be but loose stones, thrown in to partially obstruct a current
+they are powerless to resist . . . .
+
+"This dense Negro crowd . . . do the debating, the squabbling, the lawmaking,
+and create all the clamor and disorder of the body. These twenty-three white
+men are but the observers, the enforced auditors of the dull and clumsy
+imitation of a deliberative body, whose appearance in their present capacity
+is at once a wonder and a shame to modern civilization .... The Speaker is
+black, the Clerk is black, the doorkeepers are black, the little pages are
+black, the chairman of the Ways and Means is black, and the chaplain is coal
+black. At some of the desks sit colored men whose types it would be hard to
+find outside of Congo; whose costumes, visages, attitudes, and expression,
+only befit the forecastle of a buccaneer. It must be remembered, also, that
+these men, with not more than a half dozen exceptions, have been themselves
+slaves, and that their ancestors were slaves for generations. . .
+
+"But the old stagers admit that the colored brethren have a wonderful aptness
+at legislative proceedings. They are "quick as lightning" at detecting points
+of order, and they certainly make incessant and extraordinary use of their
+knowledge. No one is allowed to talk five minutes without interruption, and
+one interruption is a signal for another and another, until the original
+speaker is smothered under an avalanche of them. Forty questions of privilege
+will be raised in a day. At times, nothing goes on but alternating questions
+of order and of privilege. The inefficient colored friend who sits in the
+Speaker's chair cannot suppress this extraordinary element of the debate. Some
+of the blackest members exhibit a pertinacity of intrusion in raising these
+points of order and questions of privilege that few white men can equal. Their
+struggles to get the floor, their bellowings and physical contortions, baffle
+description.
+
+"The Speaker's hammer plays a perpetual tattoo to no purpose. The talking and
+the interruptions from all quarters go on with the utmost license. Everyone
+esteems himself as good as his neighbor, and puts in his oar, apparently as
+often for love of riot and confusion as for anything else . . . . The Speaker
+orders a member whom he has discovered to be particularly unruly to take his
+seat. The member obeys, and with the same motion that he sits down, throws his
+feet on to his desk, hiding himself from the Speaker by the soles of his boots
+. . . . After a few experiences of this sort, the Speaker threatens, in a
+laugh, to call the "gemman" to order. This is considered a capital joke, and a
+guffaw follows. The laugh goes round and then the peanuts are cracked and
+munched faster than ever; one hand being employed in fortifying the inner man
+with this nutriment of universal use, while the other enforces the views of
+the orator. This laughing propensity of the sable crowd is a great cause of
+disorder. They laugh as hens cackle--one begins and all follow.
+
+"But underneath all this shocking burlesque upon legislative proceedings, we
+must not forget that there is something very real to this uncouth and
+untutored multitude. It is not all sham, nor all burlesque. They have a
+genuine interest and a genuine earnestness in the business of the assembly
+which we are bound to recognize and respect . . . . They have an earnest
+purpose, born of conviction that their position and condition are not fully
+assured, which lends a sort of dignity to their proceedings. The barbarous,
+animated jargon in which they so often indulge is on occasion seen to be so
+transparently sincere and weighty in their own minds that sympathy supplants
+disgust. The whole thing is a wonderful novelty to them as well as to
+observers. Seven years ago these men were raising corn and cotton under the
+whip of the overseer. Today they are raising points of order and questions of
+privilege. They find they can raise one as well as the other. They prefer the
+latter. It is easier and better paid. Then, it is the evidence of an
+accomplished result. It means escape and defense from old oppressors. It means
+liberty. It means the destruction of prison-walls only too real to them. It is
+the sunshine of their lives. It is their day of jubilee. It is their
+long-promised vision of the Lord God Almighty."
+
+The congressional delegations were as radical as the state governments. During
+the first two years, there were no Democratic senators from the reconstructed
+states and only two Democratic representatives, as against sixty-four radical
+senators and representatives. At the end of four years, the Democrats numbered
+fifteen against seventy radicals. A Negro succeeded Jefferson Davis in the
+Senate, and in all the race sent two senators and thirteen representatives to
+Congress; but though several were of high character and fair ability, they
+exercised practically no influence. The Southern delegations had no part in
+shaping policies but merely voted as they were told by the radical leaders.
+
+The effect of dishonest government was soon seen in extravagant expenditures,
+heavier taxes, increase of the bonded debt, and depression of property values.
+It was to be expected that after the ruin wrought by war and the admission of
+the Negro to civil rights, the expenses of government would be greater. But
+only lack of honesty will account for the extraordinary expenses of the
+reconstruction governments. In Alabama and Florida, the running expenses of
+the state government increased two hundred percent, in Louisiana five hundred
+percent, and in Arkansas fifteen hundred percent--all this in addition to bond
+issues. In South Carolina the one item of public printing, which from 1790 to
+1868 cost $609,000, amounted in the years 1868-1876 to $1,326,589.
+
+Corrupt state officials had two ways of getting money--by taxation and by the
+sale of bonds. Taxes were everywhere multiplied. The state tax rate in Alabama
+was increased four hundred percent, in Louisiana eight hundred percent, and in
+Mississippi, which could issue no bonds, fourteen hundred percent. City and
+county taxes, where carpetbaggers were in control, increased in the same way.
+Thousands of small proprietors could not meet their taxes, and in Mississippi
+alone the land sold for unpaid taxes amounted to six million acres, an area as
+large as Massachusetts and Rhode Island together. Nordhoff* speaks of seeing
+Louisiana newspapers of which three-fourths were taken up by notices of tax
+sales. In protest against extravagant and corrupt expenditures, taxpayers'
+conventions were held in every state, but without effect.
+
+*Charles Nordhoff, "The Cotton States in the Spring and Summer of 1875".
+
+
+Even the increased taxation, however, did not produce enough to support the
+new governments, which now had recourse to the sale of state and local bonds.
+In this way Governor Holden's Administration managed in two years to increase
+the public debt of North Carolina from $16,000,000 to $32,000,000. The state
+debt of South Carolina rose from $7,000,000 to $29,000,000 in 1873. In
+Alabama, by 1874, the debt had mounted from $7,000,000 to $32,000,000. The
+public debt of Louisiana rose from $14,000,000 in 1868 to $48,000,000 in 1871,
+with a local debt of $31,000,000. Cities, towns, and counties sold bonds by
+the bale. The debt of New Orleans increased twenty-five fold and that of
+Vicksburg a thousandfold. A great deal of the debt was the result of
+fraudulent issues of bonds or over-issue. For this form of fraud, the state
+financial agents in New York were usually responsible. Southern bonds sold far
+below par, and the time came when they were peddled about at ten to
+twenty-five cents on the dollar.
+
+Still another disastrous result followed this corrupt financiering. In Alabama
+there was a sixty-five percent decrease in property values, in Florida
+forty-five percent, and in Louisiana fifty to seventy-five percent. A large
+part of the best property was mortgaged, and foreclosure sales were frequent.
+Poorer property could be neither mortgaged nor sold. There was an exodus of
+whites from the worst governed districts in the West and the North. Many
+towns, among them Mobile and Memphis, surrendered their charters and were
+ruled directly by the governor; and there were numerous "strangulated"
+counties which on account of debt had lost self-government and were ruled by
+appointees of the governor.
+
+A part of the money raised by taxes and by bond sales was used for legitimate
+expenses and the rest went to pay forged warrants, excess warrants, and
+swollen mileage accounts, and to fill the pockets of embezzlers and thieves
+from one end of the South to the other. In Arkansas, for example, the
+auditor's clerk hire, which was $4000 in 1866, cost twenty-three times as much
+in 1873. In Louisiana and South Carolina, stealing was elevated into an art
+and was practiced without concealment. In the latter state, the worthless Hell
+Hole Swamp was bought for $26,000 to be farmed by the Negroes but was charged
+to the state at $120,000. A free restaurant maintained at the Capitol for the
+legislators cost $125,000 for one session. The porter who conducted it said
+that he kept it open sixteen to twenty hours a day and that someone was always
+in the room eating and drinking or smoking. When a member left, he would fill
+his pockets with cigars or with bottles of drink. Forty different brands of
+beverages were paid for by the state for the private use of members, and all
+sorts of food, furniture, and clothing were sent to the houses of members and
+were paid for by the state as "legislative supplies." On the bills appeared
+such items as imported mushrooms, one side of bacon, one feather bed, bustles,
+two pairs of extra long stockings, one pair of garters, one bottle perfume,
+twelve monogram cut glasses, one horse, one comb and brush, three gallons of
+whisky, one pair of corsets. During the recess, supplies were sent out to the
+rural homes of the members.
+
+The endorsement of railroad securities by the state also furnished a source of
+easy money to the dishonest official and the crooked speculator. After the
+Civil War, in response to the general desire in the South for better railroad
+facilities, the "Johnson" governments began to underwrite railroad bonds. When
+the carpetbag and Negro governments came in, the policy was continued but
+without proper safeguards. Bonds were sometimes endorsed before the roads were
+constructed, and even excess issues were authorized. Bonds were endorsed for
+some roads of which not a mile was ever built. The White River Valley and
+Texas Railroad never came into existence, but it obtained a grant of $175,000
+from the State of Arkansas. Speaker Carter of the Louisiana Legislature
+received a financial interest in all railroad endorsement bills which he
+steered through the House. Negro members were regularly bribed to vote for the
+bond steals. A witness swore that in Louisiana it cost him $80,000 to get a
+railroad charter passed, but that the Governor's signature cost more than the
+consent of the legislature.
+
+When the roads defaulted on the payment of interest, as most of them did, the
+burden fell upon the state. Not all of the blame for this perverted
+legislation should be placed upon the corrupt legislators, however, for the
+lawyers who saw the bills through were frequently Southern Democrats
+representing supposedly respectable Northern capitalists. The railroads as
+well as the taxpayers suffered from this pernicious lobbying, for the
+companies were loaded with debts and rarely profited by the loans. Valuation
+of railroad property rapidly decreased. The roads of Alabama which were valued
+in 1871 at $26,000,000 had decreased in 1875 to $9,500,000.
+
+The foundation of radical power in the South lay in the alienation of the
+races which had been accomplished between 1865 and 1868. To maintain this
+unhappy distrust, the radical leaders found an effective means in the Negro
+militia. Under the constitution of every reconstructed state, a Negro
+constabulary was possible, but only in South Carolina, North Carolina,
+Louisiana, and Mississippi were the authorities willing to risk the dangers of
+arming the blacks. No governor dared permit the Southern whites to organize as
+militia. In South Carolina the carpetbag governor, Robert K. Scott, enrolled
+ninety-six thousand Negroes as members of the militia and organized and armed
+twenty thousand of them. The few white companies were ordered to disband. In
+Louisiana the governor had a standing army of blacks called the Metropolitan
+Guard. In several states the Negro militia was used as a constabulary and was
+sent to any part of the state to make arrests.
+
+In spite of this provocation there were, after the riots of 1866-67,
+comparatively few race conflicts until reconstruction was drawing to a close.
+The intervening period was filled with the more peaceful activities of the Ku
+Klux Klan and the White Camellia. But as the whites made up their minds to get
+rid of Negro rule, the clashes came frequently and always ended in the death
+of more Negroes than whites.* They would probably have continued with serious
+consequences if the whites had not eventually secured control of the
+government.
+
+* Among the bloodiest conflicts were those in Louisiana at Colfax, Coushatta,
+and New Orleans in 1873-74, and at Vicksburg and Clinton, Mississippi, in
+1874-75.
+
+
+The lax election laws, framed indeed for the benefit of the party in power,
+gave the radicals ample opportunity to control the Negro vote. The elections
+were frequently corrupt, though not a great deal of money was spent in
+bribery. It was found less expensive to use other methods of getting out the
+vote. The Negroes were generally made to understand that the Democrats wanted
+to put them back into slavery, but sometimes the leaders deemed it wiser to
+state more concretely that "Jeff Davis had come to Montgomery and is ready to
+organize the Confederacy again" if the Democrats should win; or to say that
+"if Carter is elected, he will not allow your wives and daughters to wear
+hoopskirts." In Alabama many thousand pounds of bacon and hams were sent in to
+be distributed among "flood sufferers" in a region which had not been flooded
+since the days of Noah. The Negroes were told that they must vote right and
+receive enough bacon for a year, or "lose their rights" if they voted wrongly.
+Ballot-box stuffing developed into an art, and each Negro was carefully
+inspected to see that he had the right kind of ticket before he was marched to
+the polls.
+
+The inspection and counting of election returns were in the hands of the
+county and state boards, which were controlled by the governor, and which had
+authority to throw out or count in any number of votes. On the assumption that
+the radicals were entitled to all Negro votes, the returning boards followed
+the census figures for the black population in order to arrive at the minimum
+radical vote. The action of the returning boards was specially flagrant in
+Louisiana and Florida and in the black counties of South Carolina.
+
+Notwithstanding the fact that the very best arrangements had been made at
+Washington and in the states for the running of the radical machine,
+everywhere there were factional fights from the beginning. Usually the
+scalawags declared hostilities after they found that the carpetbaggers had
+control of the Negroes and the inside track on the way to the best state and
+federal offices. Later, after the scalawags had for the most part left the
+radicals, there were contests among the carpetbaggers themselves for the
+control of the Negro vote and the distribution of spoils. The defeated faction
+usually joined the Democrats. In Arkansas a split started in 1869 which by
+1872 resulted in two state governments. Alabama in 1872 and Louisiana in
+1874-75 each had two rival governments. This factionalism contributed largely
+to the overthrow of the radicals.
+
+The radical structure, however, was still powerfully supported from without.
+Relations between the Federal Government and the state governments in the
+South were close, and the policy at Washington was frequently determined by
+conditions in the South. President Grant, though at first considerate, was
+usually consistently radical in his Southern policy. This attitude is
+difficult to explain except by saying that Grant fell under the control of
+radical advisers after his break with Johnson, that his military instincts
+were offended by opposition in the South which his advisers told him was
+rebellious, and that he was impressed by the need of holding the Southern
+radical vote against the inroads of the Democrats. After about 1869, Grant
+never really understood the conditions in the South. He was content to control
+by means of Federal troops and thousands of deputy marshals. For this policy
+the Ku Klux activities gave sufficient excuse for a time, and the continued
+story of "rebel outrages" was always available to justify a call for soldiers
+or deputies. The enforcement legislation gave the color of law to any
+interference which was deemed necessary.
+
+Federal troops served other ends than the mere preservation of order and the
+support of the radical state governments. They were used on occasion to decide
+between opposing factions and to oust conservatives who had forced their way
+into office. The army officers purged the Legislature of Georgia in 1870, that
+of Alabama in 1872, and that of Louisiana in 1875. In 1875 the city government
+of Vicksburg and the state government of Louisiana were overturned by the
+whites, but General Sheridan at once intervened to put back the Negroes and
+carpetbaggers. He suggested to President Grant that the conservatives be
+declared "banditti" and he would make himself responsible for the rest. As
+soon as a State showed signs of going over to the Democrats or an important
+election was lost by the radicals, one House or the other of Congress in many
+instances sent an investigation committee to ascertain the reasons. The
+Committees on the Condition of the South or on the Late Insurrectionary States
+were nearly always ready with reports to establish the necessity of
+intervention.
+
+Besides the army there was in every state a powerful group of Federal
+officials who formed a "ring" for the direction of all good radicals. These
+marshals, deputies, postmasters, district attorneys, and customhouse officials
+were in close touch with Washington and frequently dictated nominations and
+platforms. At New Orleans the officials acted as a committee on credentials
+and held all the state conventions under their control in the customhouse.
+
+Such was the machinery used to sustain a party which, with the gradual
+defection of the whites, became throughout the South almost uniformly black.
+At first few Negroes asked for offices, but soon the carpetbaggers found it
+necessary to divide with the rapidly growing number of Negro politicians. No
+Negro was elected governor, though several reached the office of lieutenant
+governor, secretary of state, auditor, superintendent of education, justice of
+the state supreme court, and fifteen were elected to Congress.* It would not
+be correct to say that the Negro race was malicious or on evil bent. Unless
+deliberately stirred up by white leaders, few Negroes showed signs of mean
+spirit. Few even made exorbitant demands. They wanted "something"--schools and
+freedom and "something else," they knew not what. Deprived of the leadership
+of the best whites, they could not possibly act with the scalawags--their
+traditional enemies. Nothing was left for them but to follow the carpetbagger.
+
+* Revels, Lynch, and Bruce represent the better Negro officeholders;
+Pinchback, Rainey, and Nash, the less respectable ones; and below these were
+the rascals whose ambition was to equal their white preceptors in corruption.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. THE KU KLUX MOVEMENT
+
+The Ku Klux movement, which took the form of secret revolutionary societies,
+grew out of a general conviction among the whites that the reconstruction
+policies were impossible and not to be endured. Somers, an English traveler,
+says that at this time "nearly every respectable white man in the Southern
+States was not only disfranchised but under fear of arrest or confiscation;
+the old foundations of authority were utterly razed before any new ones had
+yet been laid, and in the dark and benighted interval the remains of the
+Confederate armies--swept after a long and heroic day of fair fight from the
+field--flitted before the eyes of the people in this weird and midnight shape
+of a Ku Klux Klan." Ryland Randolph, an Alabama editor who was also an
+official of the Klan, stated in his paper that "the origin of Ku Klux Klan is
+in the galling despotism that broods like a nightmare over these Southern
+States--a fungus growth of military tyranny superinduced by the fostering of
+Loyal Leagues, the abrogation of our civil laws, the habitual violation of our
+national Constitution, and a persistent prostitution of all government, all
+resources and all powers, to degrade the white man by the establishment of
+Negro supremacy."
+
+The secret orders, regardless of their original purposes, were all finally to
+be found opposing radical reconstruction. Everywhere their objects were the
+same: to recover for the white race their former control of society and
+government, and to destroy the baneful influence of the alien among the
+blacks. The people of the South were by law helpless to take steps towards
+setting up any kind of government in a land infested by a vicious
+element--Federal and Confederate deserters, bushwhackers, outlaws of every
+description, and Negroes, some of whom proved insolent and violent in their
+newly found freedom. Nowhere was property or person safe, and for a time many
+feared a Negro insurrection. General Hardee said to his neighbors, "I advise
+you to get ready for what may come. We are standing over a sleeping volcano."
+
+To cope with this situation ante-bellum patrols--the "patter-rollers" as the
+Negroes called them--were often secretly reorganized. In each community for
+several months after the Civil War, and in many of them for months before the
+end of the war, there were informal vigilance committees. Some of these had
+such names as the Black Cavalry and Men of Justice in Alabama, the Home Guards
+in many other places, while the anti Confederate societies of the war, the
+Heroes of America, the Red Strings, and the Peace Societies, transformed
+themselves in certain localities into regulatory bodies. Later these secret
+societies numbered scores, perhaps hundreds, varying from small bodies of
+local police to great federated bodies which covered almost the entire South
+and even had membership in the North and West. Other important organizations
+were the Constitutional Union Guards, the Pale Faces, the White Brotherhood,
+the Council of Safety, the '76 Association, the Sons of '76, the Order of the
+White Rose, and the White Boys. As the fight against reconstruction became
+bolder, the orders threw off their disguises and appeared openly as armed
+whites fighting for the control of society. The White League of Louisiana, the
+White Line of Mississippi, the White Man's party of Alabama, and the Rifle
+Clubs of South Carolina, were later manifestations of the general Ku Klux
+movement.
+
+The two largest secret orders, however, were the Ku Klux Klan, from which the
+movement took its name, and the Knights of the White Camelia. The Ku Klux Klan
+originated at Pulaski, Tennessee, in the autumn of 1865, as a local
+organization for social purposes. The founders were young Confederates, united
+for fun and mischief. The name was an accidental corruption of the Greek word
+Kuklos, a circle. The officers adopted queer sounding titles and strange
+disguises. Weird nightriders in ghostly attire thoroughly frightened the
+superstitious Negroes, who were told that the spirits of dead Confederates
+were abroad. This terrorizing of the blacks successfully provided the
+amusement which the founders desired, and there were many applications for
+admission to the society. The Pulaski Club, or Den, was in the habit of
+parading in full uniform at social gatherings of the whites at night, much to
+the delight of the small boys and girls. Pulaski was near the Alabama line,
+and many of the young men of Alabama who saw these parades or heard of them
+organized similar Dens in the towns of Northern Alabama. Nothing but
+horseplay, however, took place at the meetings. In 1867 and 1868, the order
+appeared in parade in the towns of the adjoining states and, as we are told,
+"cut up curious gyrations" on the public squares.
+
+There was a general belief outside the order that there was a purpose behind
+all the ceremonial and frolic of the Dens; many joined the order convinced
+that its object was serious; others saw the possibilities of using it as a
+means of terrorizing the Negroes. After men discovered the power of the Klan
+over the Negroes, indeed, they were generally inclined, owing to the
+disordered conditions of the time, to act as a sort of police patrol and to
+hold in check the thieving Negroes, the Union League, and the "loyalists." In
+this way, from being merely a number of social clubs the Dens swiftly became
+bands of regulators, taking on many new fantastic qualities along with their
+new seriousness of purpose. Some of the more ardent spirits led the Dens far
+in the direction of violence and outrage. Attempts were made by the parent Den
+at Pulaski to regulate the conduct of the others, but, owing to the loose
+organization, the effort met with little success. Some of the Dens, indeed,
+lost all connection with the original order.
+
+A general organization of these societies was perfected at a convention held
+in Nashville in May 1867, just as the Reconstruction Acts were being put into
+operation. A constitution called the Prescript was adopted which provided for
+a national organization. The former slave states, except Delaware, constituted
+the Empire, which was ruled by the Grand Wizard (then General Forrest) with a
+staff of ten Genii; each State was a realm under a Grand Dragon and eight
+Hydras; the next subdivision was a Dominion, consisting of several counties,
+ruled by a Grand Titan and six Furies; the county or Province was governed by
+a Grand Giant and four Goblins; the unit was the Den or community
+organization, of which there might be several in each county, each under a
+Grand Cyclops and two Nighthawks. The Genii, Hydras, Furies, Goblins, and
+Nighthawks were staff officers. The private members were called Ghouls. The
+order had no name, and at first was designated by two stars (**), later by
+three (***). Sometimes it was called the Invisible Empire of Ku Klux Klan.
+
+Any white man over eighteen might be admitted to the Den after nomination by a
+member and strict investigation by a committee. The oath demanded obedience
+and secrecy. The Dens governed themselves by the ordinary rules of
+deliberative bodies. The punishment for betrayal of secrecy was "the extreme
+penalty of the Law." None of the secrets was to be written, and there was a
+"Register" of alarming adjectives, such as terrible, horrible, furious,
+doleful, bloody, appalling, frightful, gloomy, which was used as a cipher code
+in dating the odd Ku Klux orders.
+
+The general objects of the order were thus set forth in the revised Prescript:
+first, to protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenseless from the
+indignities, wrongs, and outrages of the lawless, the violent, and the brutal;
+to relieve the injured and oppressed; to succor the suffering and unfortunate,
+and especially the widows and orphans of Confederate soldiers; second, to
+protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and all laws passed
+in conformity thereto, and to protect the States and people thereof from all
+invasion from any source whatever; third, to aid and assist in the execution
+of all "constitutional" laws, and to protect the people from unlawful arrest,
+and from trial except by their peers according to the laws of the land. But
+the tests for admission gave further indication of the objects of the order.
+No Republican, no Union Leaguer, and no member of the G. A. R. might become a
+member. The members were pledged to oppose Negro equality of any kind, to
+favor emancipation of the Southern whites and the restoration of their rights,
+and to maintain constitutional government and equitable laws.
+
+Prominent men testified that the order became popular because the whites felt
+that they were persecuted and that there was no legal protection, no
+respectable government. General (later Senator) Pettus said that through all
+the workings of the Federal Government ran the principle that "we are an
+inferior, degraded people and not fit to be trusted." General Clanton of
+Alabama further explained that "there is not a respectable white woman in the
+Negro Belt of Alabama who will trust herself outside of her house without some
+protector . . . . So far as our State Government is concerned, we are in the
+hands of camp-followers, horse-holders, cooks, bottle-washers, and thieves . .
+. . We have passed out from the hands of the brave soldiers who overcame us,
+and are turned over to the tender mercies of squaws for torture. . . . I see
+Negro police--great black fellows--leading white girls around the streets of
+Montgomery, and locking them up in jails."
+
+The Klan first came into general prominence in 1868 with the report of the
+Federal commanders in the South concerning its activities. Soon after that
+date the order spread through the white counties of the South, in many places
+absorbing the White Brotherhood, the Pale Faces, and some other local
+organizations which had been formed in the upper part of the Black Belt. But
+it was not alone in the field. The order known as the Knights of the White
+Camelia, founded in Louisiana in 1867 and formally organized in 1868, spread
+rapidly over the lower South until it reached the territory occupied by the Ku
+Klux Klan. It was mainly a Black Belt order, and on the whole had a more
+substantial and more conservative membership than the other large secret
+bodies. Like the Ku Klux Klan, it also absorbed several minor local societies.
+
+The White Camelia had a national organization with headquarters in New
+Orleans. Its business was conducted by a Supreme Council of the United States,
+with Grand, Central, and Subordinate Councils for each state, county, and
+community. All communication within the order took place by passwords and
+cipher; the organization and the officers were similar to those of the Ku Klux
+Klan; and all officers were designated by initials. An ex-member states that
+"during the three years of its existence here [Perry County, Alabama] I
+believe its organization and discipline were as perfect as human ingenuity
+could have made it." The fundamental object of the White Camelia was the
+"maintenance of the supremacy of the white race," and to this end the members
+were constrained "to observe a marked distinction between the races" and to
+restrain the "African race to that condition of social and political
+inferiority for which God has destined it." The members were pledged to vote
+only for whites, to oppose Negro equality in all things, but to respect the
+legitimate rights of Negroes.
+
+The smaller orders were similar in purpose and organization to the Ku Klux
+Klan and the White Camelia. Most of them joined or were affiliated with the
+large societies. Probably a majority of the men of the South were associated
+at some time during this period with these revolutionary bodies. As a rule the
+politicians, though approving, held aloof. Public opinion generally supported
+the movement so long as the radicals made serious attempts to carry out the
+reconstruction policies.
+
+The task before the secret orders was to regulate the conduct of the blacks
+and their leaders in order that honor, life, and property might be secure.
+They planned to accomplish this aim by playing upon the fears, superstitions,
+and cowardice of the black race--in a word, by creating a white terror to
+counteract the black one. To this end they made use of strange disguises,
+mysterious and fearful conversation, midnight rides and drills, and silent
+parades. As long as secrecy and mystery were to be effective in dealing with
+the Negroes, costume was an important matter. These disguises varied with the
+locality and often with the individual. High cardboard hats, covered with
+white cloth often decorated with stars or pictures of animals, white masks
+with holes cut for eyes, nose and mouth bound with red braid to give a
+horrible appearance, and frequently a long tongue of red flannel so fixed that
+it could be moved with the wearer's tongue, and a long white robe--these made
+up a costume which served at the same time as a disguise and as a means of
+impressing the impressionable Negro. Horses were covered with sheets or white
+cloth held on by the saddle and by belts, and sometimes the animals were even
+painted. Skulls of sheep and cattle, and even of human beings were often
+carried on the saddlebows to add another element of terror. A framework was
+sometimes made to fit the shoulders of a Ghoul which caused him to appear
+twelve feet high. A skeleton wooden hand at the end of a stick served to greet
+terrified Negroes at midnight. For safety every man carried a small whistle
+and a brace of pistols.
+
+The trembling Negro who ran into a gathering of the Ku Klux on his return from
+a Loyal League meeting was informed that the white-robed figures he saw were
+the spirits of the Confederate dead killed at Chickamauga or Shiloh, now
+unable to rest in their graves because of the conduct of the Negroes. He was
+told in a sepulchral voice of the necessity for his remaining more at home and
+taking a less active part in predatory excursions abroad. In the middle of the
+night, a sleeping Negro might wake to find his house surrounded by a ghostly
+company, or to see several terrifying figures standing by his bedside. They
+were, they said, the ghosts of men whom he had formerly known. They had
+scratched through from Hell to warn the Negroes of the consequences of their
+misconduct. Hell was a dry and thirsty land; and they asked him for water.
+Bucket after bucket of water disappeared into a sack of leather, rawhide, or
+rubber, concealed within the flowing robe. The story is told of one of these
+night travelers who called at the cabin of a radical Negro in Attakapas
+County, Louisiana. After drinking three buckets of water to the great
+astonishment of the darky, the traveler thanked him and told him that he had
+traveled nearly a thousand miles within twenty-four hours, and that that was
+the best water he had tasted since he was killed at the battle of Shiloh. The
+Negro dropped the bucket, overturned chairs and table in making his escape
+through the window, and was never again seen or heard of by residents of that
+community. Another incident is told of a parade in Pulaski, Tennessee: "While
+the procession was passing a corner on which a Negro man was standing, a tall
+horseman in hideous garb turned aside from the line, dismounted and stretched
+out his bridle rein toward the Negro, as if he desired him to hold his horse.
+Not daring to refuse, the frightened African extended his hand to grasp the
+rein. As he did so, the Ku Klux took his own head from his shoulders and
+offered to place that also in the outstretched hand. The Negro stood not upon
+the order of his going, but departed with a yell of terror. To this day he
+will tell you: 'He done it, suah, boss. I seed him do it.'"
+
+It was seldom necessary at this early stage to use violence, for the black
+population was in an ecstasy of fear. A silent host of white-sheeted horsemen
+parading the country roads at night was sufficient to reduce the blacks to
+good behavior for weeks or months. One silent Ghoul posted near a meeting
+place of the League would be the cause of the immediate dissolution of that
+club. Cow bones in a sack were rattled within earshot of the terrified
+Negroes. A horrible being, fifteen feet tall, walking through the night toward
+a place of congregation, was very likely to find that every one had vacated
+the place before he arrived. A few figures wrapped in sheets and sitting on
+tombstones in a graveyard near which Negroes were accustomed to pass would
+serve to keep the immediate community quiet for weeks and give the locality a
+reputation for "hants" which lasted long.
+
+To prevent detection on parade, members of the Klan often stayed out of the
+parade in their own town and were to be seen freely and conspicuously mingling
+with the spectators. A man who believed that he knew every horse in the
+vicinity and was sure that he would be able to identify the riders by their
+horses was greatly surprised upon lifting the disguise of the horse nearest
+him to find the animal upon which he himself had ridden into town a short
+while before. The parades were always silent and so arranged as to give the
+impression of very large numbers. In the regular drills which were held in
+town and country, the men showed that they had not forgotten their training in
+the Confederate army. There were no commands save in a very low tone or in a
+mysterious language, and usually only signs or whistle signals were used.
+
+Such pacific methods were successful to a considerable degree until the
+carpetbaggers and scalawags were placed in office under the Reconstruction
+Acts. Then more violent methods were necessary. The Mans patrolled disturbed
+communities, visited, warned, and frightened obnoxious individuals, whipped
+some, and even hanged others. Until forbidden by law or military order, the
+newspapers were accustomed to print the mysterious proclamations of the Ku
+Klux. The following, which was circulated in Montgomery, Alabama, in April
+1868, is a typical specimen:
+
+K. K. K. Clan of Vega. HDQRS K.K.K. HOSPITALLERS.
+
+Vega Clan, New Moon, 3rd Month, Anno K. K. K. 1.
+
+ORDER No. K. K.
+
+Clansmen--Meet at the Trysting Spot when Orion Kisses the Zenith. The doom of
+treason is Death. Dies Irae. The wolf is on his walk--the serpent coils to
+strike. Action! Action!! Action!!! By midnight and the Tomb; by Sword and
+Torch and the Sacred Oath at Forrester's Altar, I bid you come! The clansmen
+of Glen Iran and Alpine will greet you at the new-made grave.
+
+Remember the Ides of April.
+
+By command of the Grand D. I. H.
+
+Cheg. V.
+
+The work of the secret orders was successful. As bodies of vigilantes, the
+Mans and the Councils regulated the conduct of bad Negroes, punished criminals
+who were not punished by the state, looked after the activities and teachings
+of Northern preachers and teachers, dispersed hostile gatherings of Negroes,
+and ran out of the community the worst of the reconstructionist officials.
+They kept the Negroes quiet and freed them to some extent from the influence
+of evil leaders. The burning of houses, gins, mills, and stores ceased;
+property became more secure; people slept safely at night; women and children
+walked abroad in security; the incendiary agents who had worked among the
+Negroes left the country; agitators, political, educational, and religious,
+became more moderate; "bad niggers" ceased to be bad; labor became less
+disorganized; the carpetbaggers and scalawags ceased to batten on the Southern
+communities. It was not so much a revolution as the defeat of a revolution.
+Society was replaced in the old historic grooves from which war and
+reconstruction had jarred it.
+
+Successful as was the Ku Klux movement in these respects, it had at the same
+time many harmful results. Too often local orders fell under the control of
+reckless or lawless men and the Klan was then used as a cloak to cover
+violence and thievery; family and personal feuds were carried into the orders
+and fought out; and anti-Negro feeling in many places found expression in
+activities designed to drive the blacks from the country. It was easy for any
+outlaw to hide himself behind the protection of a secret order. So numerous
+did these men become that after 1868 there was a general exodus of the leading
+reputable members, and in 1869 the formal disbanding of the Klan was
+proclaimed by General Forrest, the Grand Wizard. The White Camelia and other
+orders also gradually went out of existence. Numerous attempts were made to
+suppress the secret movement by the military commanders, the state
+governments, and finally by Congress, but none of these was entirely
+successful, for in each community the secret opposition lasted as long as it
+was needed. The political effects of the orders, however, survived their
+organized existence. Some of the Southern States began to go Democratic in
+spite of the Reconstruction Acts and the Amendments, and there was little
+doubt that the Ku Klux movement had aided in this change. In order to preserve
+the achievements of radical reconstruction Congress passed, in 1870 and 1871,
+the enforcement acts which had been under debate for nearly two years. The
+first act (May 31, 1870) was designed to protect the Negro's right to vote and
+was directed at individuals as well as against states. Section six, indeed,
+was aimed specifically at the Ku Klux Klan. This act was a long step in the
+direction of giving the Federal Government control over state elections. But
+as North Carolina went wholly and Alabama partially Democratic in 1870, a
+Supplementary Act (February 28, 1871) went further and placed the elections
+for members of Congress completely under Federal control, and also authorized
+the use of thousands of deputy marshals at elections. As the campaign of 1872
+drew near, Grant and his advisers became solicitous to hold all the Southern
+States which had not been regained by the Democrats. Accordingly, on March 23,
+1871, the President sent a message to Congress declaring that in some of the
+states the laws could not be enforced and asked for remedial legislation.
+Congress responded with an act (April 20, 1871), commonly called the "Ku Klux
+Act," which gave the President despotic military power to uphold the remaining
+Negro governments and authorized him to declare a state of war when he
+considered it necessary. Of this power Grant made use in only one instance. In
+October 1871, he declared nine counties of South Carolina in rebellion and put
+them under martial law.
+
+During the ten years following 1870, several thousand arrests were made under
+the enforcement acts and about 1,250 convictions were secured, principally in
+Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Most of these
+violations of election laws, however, had nothing to do with the Ku Klux
+movement, for by 1870 the better class of members had withdrawn from the
+secret orders. But though the enforcement acts checked these irregularities to
+a considerable extent, they nevertheless failed to hold the South for the
+radicals and essential parts of them were declared unconstitutional a few
+years later.
+
+In order to justify the passage of the enforcement acts and to obtain campaign
+material for use in 1872, Congress appointed a committee, organized on the
+very day when the Ku Klux Act was approved, to investigate conditions in the
+Southern States. From June to August 1871, the committee took testimony in
+Washington, and in the fall subcommittees visited several Southern States.
+Tennessee, Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas were, however, omitted
+from the investigation. Notwithstanding the partisan purpose and methods of
+the investigation, the report of the committee and the accompanying testimony
+constituted a Democratic rather than a Republican document. It is a veritable
+mine of information about the South between 1865 and 1871. The Democratic
+minority members made skillful use of their opportunity to expose conditions
+in the South. They were less concerned to meet the charges made against the Ku
+Klux Klan than to show why such movements came about. The Republicans,
+concerned mainly about material for the presidential campaign, neglected the
+broader phases of the situation.
+
+Opposition to the effects of reconstruction did not come to an end with the
+dissolution of the more famous orders. On the contrary, it now became public
+and open and resulted in the organization, after 1872, of the White League,
+the Mississippi Shot Gun Plan, the White Man's Party in Alabama, and the Rifle
+Clubs in South Carolina. The later movements were distinctly but cautiously
+anti-Negro. There was most irritation in the white counties where there were
+large numbers of Negroes. Negro schools and churches were burned because they
+served as meeting places for Negro political organizations. The color line
+began to be more and more sharply drawn. Social and business ostracism
+continued to be employed against white radicals, while the Negroes were
+discharged from employment or were driven from their rented farms.
+
+The Ku Klux movement, it is to be noted in retrospect, originated as an effort
+to restore order in the war-stricken Southern States. The secrecy of its
+methods appealed to the imagination and caused its rapid expansion, and this
+secrecy was inevitable because opposition to reconstruction was not lawful. As
+the reconstruction policies were put into operation, the movement became
+political and used violence when appeals to superstitious fears ceased to be
+effective. The Ku Klux Klan centered, directed, and crystallized public
+opinion, and united the whites upon a platform of white supremacy. The
+Southern politicians stood aloof from the movement but accepted the results of
+its work. It frightened the Negroes and bad whites into better conduct, and it
+encouraged the conservatives and aided them to regain control of society, for
+without the operations of the Klan the black districts would never have come
+again under white control. Towards the end, however, its methods frequently
+became unnecessarily violent and did great harm to Southern society. The Ku
+Klux system of regulating society is as old as history; it had often been used
+before; it may even be used again. When a people find themselves persecuted by
+aliens under legal forms, they will invent some means outside the law for
+protecting themselves; and such experiences will inevitably result in a
+weakening of respect for law and in a return to more primitive methods of
+justice.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. THE CHANGING SOUTH
+
+"The bottom rail is on top" was a phrase which had flashed throughout the late
+Confederate States. It had been coined by the Negroes in 1867 to express their
+view of the situation, but its aptness had been recognized by all. After ten
+years of social and economic revolution, however, it was not so clear that the
+phrase of 1867 correctly described the new situation. "The white man made
+free" would have been a more accurate epitome, for the white man had been
+able, in spite of his temporary disabilities, to compete with the Negro in all
+industries.
+
+It will be remembered that the Negro districts were least exposed to the
+destruction of war. The well-managed plantation, lying near the highways of
+commerce, with its division of labor, nearly or quite self-sufficing, was the
+bulwark of the Confederacy. When the fighting ended, an industrial revolution
+began in these untouched parts of the Black Belt. The problem of free Negro
+labor now appeared. During the year 1865, no general plan for a labor system
+was formulated except by the Freedmen's Bureau. That, however, was not a
+success. There were all sorts of makeshifts, such as cash wages, deferred
+wages, cooperation, even sharing of expense and product, and contracts, either
+oral or written.
+
+The employers showed a disposition to treat the Negro family as a unit in
+making contracts for labor, wages, food, clothes, and care.* In general these
+early arrangements were made to transform slavery with its mutual duties and
+obligations into a free labor system with wages and "privileges." The
+"privileges" of slavery could not be destroyed; in fact, they have never yet
+been destroyed in numerous places. Curious demands were made by the Negroes:
+here, farm bells must not ring; there, overseers or managers must be done away
+with; in some places plantation courts were to settle matters of work, rent,
+and conduct; elsewhere, agreements were made that on Saturday the laborer
+should be permitted to go to town and, perhaps, ride a mule or horse. In South
+Carolina the Sea Island Negroes demanded that in laying out work the old
+"tasks" or "stints" of slavery days be retained as the standard. The farming
+districts at the edge of the Black Belt, where the races were about equal in
+numbers, already had a kind of "share system," and in these sections the
+economic chaos after the war was not so complete. The former owners worked in
+the field with their ex-slaves and thus provided steady employment for many.
+Farms were rented for a fixed sum of money, or for a part of the crop, or on
+"shares."
+
+* J. D. B. De Bow, the economist, testified before the Joint Committee on
+Reconstruction that, if the Negro would work, free labor would be better for
+the planters than slave labor. He called attention to the fact, however, that
+Negro women showed a desire to avoid field labor, and there is also evidence
+to show that they objected to domestic service and other menial work.
+
+
+The white districts, which had previously fought a losing competition with the
+efficiently managed and inexpensive slave labor of the Black Belt, were
+affected most disastrously by war and its aftermath. They were distant from
+transportation lines and markets; they employed poor farming methods; they had
+no fertilizers; they raised no staple crops on their infertile land; and in
+addition they now had to face the destitution that follows fighting. Yet these
+regions had formerly been almost self-supporting, although the farms were
+small and no elaborate labor system had been developed. In the planting
+districts where the owner was land-poor, he made an attempt to bring in
+Northern capital and Northern or foreign labor. In the belief that the Negroes
+would work better for a Northern man, every planter who could do so secured a
+Northern partner or manager, frequently a soldier. Nevertheless these imported
+managers nearly always failed because they did not understand cotton, rice, or
+sugar planting, and because they were either too severe or too easy upon the
+blacks.
+
+No Northern labor was to be had, and the South could not retain even all its
+own native whites. Union soldiers and others seeking to better their prospects
+moved west and northwest to fill the newly opened lands, while the
+Confederates, kept out of the homestead region by the test oath, swarmed into
+Texas, which owned its own public lands, or went North to other occupations.
+Nor could the desperate planters hire foreign immigrants. Several states,
+among them South Carolina, Alabama, and Louisiana, advertised for laborers and
+established labor bureaus, but without avail. The Negro politicians in 1867
+declared themselves opposed to all movements to foster immigration. So in the
+Black Belt the Negro had, for forty years, a monopoly of farm labor.
+
+The share system of tenantry, with its attendant evils of credit and crop
+lien, was soon established in the Southern States, mainly in the Black Belt,
+but to some extent also in the white districts. The landlord furnished land,
+house, fuel, water, and all or a part of the seed, fertilizer, farm
+implements, and farm animals. In return he received a "half," or a "third and
+fourth," his share depending upon how much he had furnished. The best class of
+tenants would rent for cash or a fixed rental, the poorest laborers would work
+for wages only.
+
+The "privileges" brought over from slavery, which were included in the share
+renting, astonished outside observers. To the laborer was usually given a
+house, a water supply, wood for fuel, pasture for pigs or cows, a "patch" for
+vegetables and fruit, and the right to hunt and fish. These were all that some
+needed in order to live. Somers, the English traveler already quoted,
+pronounced this generous custom "outrageously absurd," for the Negroes had so
+many privileges that they refused to make use of their opportunities. "The
+soul is often crushed out of labor by penury and oppression," he said, "but
+here a soul cannot begin to be infused into it through the sheer excess of
+privilege and license with which it is surrounded." The credit system which
+was developed beside the share system made a bad condition worse. On the 1st
+of January, a planter could mortgage his future crop to a merchant or landlord
+in exchange for subsistence until the harvest. Since, as a rule, neither
+tenant nor landlord had any surplus funds, the latter would be supplied by the
+banker or banker merchant, who would then dictate the crops to be planted and
+the time of sale. As a result of these conditions, the planter or farmer was
+held to staple crops, high prices for necessities, high interest rate, and
+frequently unfair bookkeeping. The system was excellent for a thrifty,
+industrious, and intelligent man, for it enabled him to get a start. It worked
+to the advantage of a bankrupt landlord, who could in this way get banking
+facilities. But it had a mischievous effect upon the average tenant, who had
+too small a share of the crop to feel a strong sense of responsibility as well
+as too many "privileges" and too little supervision to make him anxious to
+produce the best results.
+
+The Negroes entered into their freedom with several advantages: they were
+trained to labor; they were occupying the most fertile soil and could purchase
+land at low prices; the tenant system was most liberal; cotton, sugar, and
+rice were bringing high prices; and access to markets was easy. In the white
+districts, land was cheap and prices of commodities were high, but otherwise
+the Negroes seemed to have the better position. Yet as early as 1870, keen
+observers called attention to the fact that the hill and mountain whites were
+thriving as compared with their former condition, and that the Negroes were no
+longer their serious competitors. In the white districts, better methods were
+coming into use, labor was steady, fertilizers were used, and conditions of
+transportation were improving. The whites were also encroaching on the Black
+Belt; they were opening new lands in the Southwest; and within the border of
+the Black Belt they were bringing Negro labor under some control. In the South
+Carolina rice lands, crowds of Irish were imported to do the ditching which
+the Negroes refused to do and were carried back North when the job was
+finished.* President Thach of the Alabama Agricultural College has thus
+described the situation:
+
+ * The Census of 1880 gave proof of the superiority of the whites in cotton
+production. For purposes of comparison the cotton area may be divided into
+three regions: first, the Black Belt, in which the farmers were black, the
+soil fertile, the plantations large, the credit evil at its worst, and the
+yield of cotton per acre the least; second, the white districts, where the
+soil was the poorest, the farms small, the workers nearly all white, and the
+yield per acre better than on the fertile Black Belt lands; third, the regions
+in which the races were nearly equal in numbers or where the whites were in a
+slight majority, with soil of medium fertility, good methods of agriculture,
+and, owing to better controlled labor, the best yield. In ether words,
+Negroes, fertile soil, and poor crops went together; and on the other hand the
+whites got better crops on less fertile soil. The Black Belt has never again
+reached the level of production it had in 1880. But the white district kept
+improving slowly.
+
+"By the use of commercial fertilizers, vast regions once considered barren
+have been brought into profitable cultivation, and really afford a more
+reliable and constant crop than the rich alluvial lands of the old slave
+plantations. In nearly every agricultural county in the South there is to be
+observed, on the one hand, this section of fertile soils, once the heart, of
+the old civilization, now abandoned by the whites, held in tenantry by a dense
+Negro population, full of dilapidation and ruin; while on the other hand,
+there is the region of light, thin soils, occupied by the small white
+freeholder, filled with schools, churches, and good roads, and all the
+elements of a happy, enlightened country life."
+
+All the systems devised for handling Negro labor proved to be only partially
+successful. The laborer was migratory, wanted easy work, with one or two
+holidays a week, and the privilege of attending political meetings, camp
+meetings, and circuses. A thrifty Negro could not make headway because his
+fellows stole from him or his less energetic relations and friends visited him
+and ate up his substance. One Alabama planter declared that he could not raise
+a turkey, a chicken, a hog, or a cow; and another asserted that "a hog has no
+more chance to live among these thieving Negro farmers than a June bug in a
+gang of puddle ducks." Lands were mortgaged to the supply houses in the towns,
+the whites gradually deserted the country, and many rice and cotton fields
+grew up in weeds. Crop stealing at night became a business which no
+legislation could ever completely stop. A traveler has left the following
+description of "a model Negro farm" in 1874. The farmer purchased an old mule
+on credit and rented land on shares or for so many bales of cotton; any old
+tools were used; corn, bacon, and other supplies were bought on credit, and a
+crop lien was given; a month later, corn and cotton were planted on soil that
+was not well broken up; the Negro "would not pay for no guano" to put on other
+people's land; by turns the farmer planted and fished, plowed and hunted, hoed
+and frolicked, or went to "meeting." At the end of the year he sold his
+cotton, paid part of his rent and some of his debt, returned the mule to its
+owner, and sang:
+
+Nigger work hard all de year, White man tote de money.
+
+The great landholdings did not break up into small farms as was predicted,
+though sales were frequent and in 1865 enormous amounts of land were put on
+the market. After 1867, additional millions of acres were offered at small
+prices, and tax and mortgage sales were numerous. The result of these
+operations, however, was a change of landlords rather than a breaking up of
+large plantations. New men, Negroes, merchants, and Jews became landowners.
+The number of small farms naturally increased but so in some instances did the
+land concentrated into large holdings.
+
+It was inevitable that conditions of Negro life should undergo a revolutionary
+change during the reconstruction. The serious matter of looking out for
+himself and his family and of making a living dampened the Negro's cheerful
+spirits. Released from the discipline of slavery and often misdirected by the
+worst of teachers, the Negro race naturally ran into excesses of petty
+criminality. Even under the reconstruction governments the proportion of Negro
+to white criminals was about ten to one. Theft was frequent; arson was the
+accepted means of revenge on white people; and murder became common in the
+brawls of the city Negro quarters. The laxness of the marriage relation worked
+special hardship on the women and children in so many cases deserted by the
+head of the family.
+
+Out of the social anarchy of reconstruction the Negroes emerged with numerous
+organizations of their own which may have been imitations of the Union League,
+the Lincoln Brotherhood, and the various church organizations. These societies
+were composed entirely of blacks and have continued with prolific reproduction
+to the present day. They were characterized by high names, gorgeous regalia,
+and frequent parades. "The Brothers and Sisters of Pleasure and Prosperity"
+and the "United Order of African Ladies and Gentlemen" played a large, and on
+the whole useful, part in Negro social life, teaching lessons of thrift,
+insurance, cooperation, and mutual aid.
+
+The reconstructionists were not able in 1867-68 to carry through Congress any
+provision for the social equality of the races, but in the reconstructed
+states, the equal rights issue was alive throughout the period. Legislation
+giving to the Negro equal rights in hotels, places of amusements, and common
+carriers, was first enacted in Louisiana and South Carolina. Frequently the
+carpetbaggers brought up the issue in order to rid the radical ranks of the
+scalawags who were opposed to equal rights. In Florida, for example, the
+carpetbaggers framed a comprehensive Equal Rights Law, passed it, and
+presented it to Governor Reed, who was known to be opposed to such
+legislation. He vetoed the measure and thus lost the Negro support.
+Intermarriage with whites was made legal in Louisiana and South Carolina and
+by court decision was permitted in Alabama and Mississippi, but the Georgia
+Supreme Court held it to be illegal. Mixed marriages were few, but these were
+made occasions of exultation over the whites and of consequent ill feeling.
+
+Charles Sumner was a persistent agitator for equal rights. In 1871 he declared
+in a letter to a South Carolina Negro convention that the race must insist not
+only upon equality in hotels and on public carriers but also in the schools.
+"It is not enough, " he said, "to provide separate accommodations for colored
+citizens even if in all respects as good as those of other persons . . . . The
+discrimination is an insult and a hindrance, and a bar, which not only
+destroys comfort and prevents equality, but weakens all other rights. The
+right to vote will have new security when your equal right in public
+conveyances, hotels, and common schools, is at last established; but here you
+must insist for yourselves by speech, petition, and by vote." The Southern
+whites began to develop the "Jim Crow" theory of "separate but equal"
+accommodations. Senator Hill of Georgia, for example, thought that hotels
+might have separate divisions for the two races, and he cited the division in
+the churches as proof that the Negro wanted separation.
+
+About 1874, it was plain that the last radical Congress was nearly ready to
+enact social equality legislation. This fact turned many of the Southern
+Unionist class back to the Democratic party, there to remain for a long time.
+In 1875, as a sort of memorial to Sumner, Congress passed the Civil Rights
+Act, which gave to Negroes equal rights in hotels, places of amusement, on
+public carriers, and on juries. Some Democratic leaders were willing to see
+such legislation enacted, because in the first place, it would have little
+effect except in the Border and Northern States, where it would turn thousands
+into the Democratic fold, and in the second place, because they were sure that
+in time the Supreme Court would declare the law unconstitutional. And so it
+happened.
+
+In regions where the more unprincipled radical leaders were in control, the
+whites lived at times in fear of Negro uprisings. The Negroes were armed and
+insolent, and the whites were few and widely scattered. Here and there
+outbreaks occurred and individual whites and isolated families suffered, but
+as a rule all such movements were crushed with much heavier loss to the
+Negroes than to the better organized whites. Nevertheless everlasting
+apprehension for the safety of women and children kept the white men nervous.
+General Garnett Andrews remarked about the situation in Mississippi:
+
+"I have never suffered such an amount of anguish and alarm in all my life. I
+have served through the whole war as a soldier in the army of Northern
+Virginia, and saw all of it; but I never did experience . . . the fear and
+alarm and sense of danger which I felt that time. And this was the universal
+feeling among the population, among the white people. I think that both sides
+were alarmed and felt uneasy. It showed itself upon the countenance of the
+people; it made many of them sick. Men looked haggard and pale, after
+undergoing this sort of thing for six weeks or a month, and I have felt when I
+laid [sic] down that neither myself, nor my wife and children were in safety.
+I expected, and honestly anticipated, and thought it highly probable, that I
+might be assassinated and my house set on fire at any time."
+
+By the fires of reconstruction the whites were fused into a more homogeneous
+society, social as well as political. The former slaveholding class continued
+to be more considerate of the Negro than were the poor whites; but, as misrule
+went on, all classes tended to unite against the Negro in politics. They were
+tired of reconstruction, new amendments, force bills, Federal troops-- tired
+of being ruled as conquered provinces by the incompetent and the dishonest.
+Every measure aimed at the South seemed to them to mean that they were
+considered incorrigible and unworthy of trust, and that they were being made
+to suffer for the deeds of irresponsible whites. And, to make matters worse,
+strong opposition to proscriptive measures was called fresh rebellion. "When
+the Jacobins say and do low and bitter things, their charge of want of loyalty
+in the South because our people grumble back a little seems to me as
+unreasonable as the complaint of the little boy: 'Mamma, make Bob 'have
+hisself. He makes mouths at me every time I hit him with my stick.'"*
+
+* Usually ascribed to General D. H. Hill of North Carolina, and quoted in "The
+Land We Love", vol. 1, p. 146.
+
+
+Probably this burden fell heavier on the young men, who had life before them
+and who were growing up with diminished opportunities. Sidney Lanier, then an
+Alabama school teacher, wrote to Bayard Taylor: "Perhaps you know that with us
+of the young generation in the South, since the war, pretty much the whole of
+life has been merely not dying." Negro and alien rule was a constant insult to
+the intelligence of the country. The taxpayers were nonparticipants in the
+affairs of government. Some people withdrew entirely from public life, went to
+their farms or plantations, kept away from towns and from speechmaking,
+waiting for the end to come. There were some who refused for several years to
+read the newspapers, so unpleasant was the news. The good feeling produced by
+the magnanimity of Grant at Appomattox was destroyed by the severity of his
+Southern policy when he became President. There was no gratitude for any
+so-called leniency of the North, no repentance for the war, no desire for
+humiliation, for sackcloth and ashes, and no confession of wrong. The
+insistence of the radicals upon obtaining a confession of depravity only made
+things much worse. Scarcely a measure of Congress during reconstruction was
+designed or received in a conciliatory spirit.
+
+The new generation of whites was poor, bitter because of persecution,
+ill-educated, overworked, without a bright future, and shadowed by the race
+problem. Though their new political leaders were shrewd, narrow, conservative,
+honest, and parsimonious, the constant fighting of fire with fire scorched
+all. In the bitter discipline of reconstruction, the pleasantest side of
+Southern life came to an end. During the war and the consequent reconstruction
+there was a marked change in Southern temperament toward the severe.
+Hospitality declined; the old Southern life had never been on a business
+basis, but the new Southern life now adjusted itself to a stricter economy;
+the old individuality was partially lost; but class distinctions were less
+obvious in a more homogeneous society. The material evils of reconstruction
+may be only temporary; state debts may be paid and wasted resources renewed;
+but the moral and intellectual results of the revolution will be the more
+permanent.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. RESTORATION OF HOME RULE
+
+The radical program of reconstruction ended after ten years in failure rather
+because of a change in public opinion in the North than because of the
+resistance of the Southern whites. The North of 1877, indeed, was not the
+North of 1867. A more tolerant attitude toward the South developed as the
+North passed through its own period of misgovernment when all the large cities
+were subject to "ring rule" and corruption, as in New York under "Boss" Tweed
+and in the District of Columbia under "Boss" Shepherd. The Federal civil
+service was discredited by the scandals connected with the Sanborn contracts,
+the Whisky Ring, and the Star Routes, while some leaders in Congress were
+under a cloud from the "Salary Grab" and Credit Mobilier disclosures.*
+
+* See "The Boss and the Machine", by Samuel P. Orth in "The Chronicles of
+America").
+
+
+The marvelous material development of the North and West also drew attention
+away from sectional controversies. Settlers poured into the plains beyond the
+Mississippi and the valleys of the Far West; new industries sprang up;
+unsuspected mineral wealth was discovered; railroads were built. Not only
+bankers but taxpaying voters took an interest in the financial readjustments
+of the time. Many thousand people followed the discussions over the funding
+and refunding of the national debt, the retirement of the greenbacks, and the
+proposed lowering of tariff duties. Yet the Black Friday episode of 1869, when
+Jay Gould and James Fisk cornered the visible supply of gold, and the panic of
+1873 were indications of unsound financial conditions.
+
+These new developments and the new domestic problems which they involved all
+tended to divert public thought from the old political issues arising out of
+the war. Foreign relations, too, began to take on a new interest. The Alabama
+claims controversy with England continued to hold the public attention until
+finally settled by the Geneva Arbitration in 1872. President Grant, as much of
+an expansionist as Seward, for two years (1869-71) tried to secure Santo
+Domingo or a part of it for an American naval base in the West Indies. But the
+United States had race problems enough already and the Senate, led by Sumner,
+refused to sanction the acquisition. Relations with Spain were frequently
+strained on account of American filibustering expeditions to aid Cuban
+insurgents. Spain repeatedly charged the United States with laxness toward
+such violations of international law; and President Grant, seeing no other way
+out, recommended in 1869 and again in 1870 that the Cuban insurgents be
+recognized as belligerents, but still the Senate held back. The climax came in
+1873, when the Spanish authorities in Cuba captured on the high seas the
+Virginius* with a filibustering expedition on board and executed fifty-three
+of the crew and passengers, among them eight Americans. For a time war seemed
+imminent, but Spain acted quickly and effected a peaceable settlement.
+
+* See "The Path of Empire", by Carl Russell Fish (in "The Chronicles of
+America"), p. 119.
+
+
+It became evident soon after 1867 that the issues involved in reconstruction
+were not in themselves sufficient to hold the North solidly Republican. Toward
+Negro suffrage, for example, Northern public opinion was on the whole
+unfriendly. In 1867, the Negro was permitted to vote only in New York and in
+New England, except in Connecticut. Before 1869, Negro suffrage was rejected
+in Connecticut, Wisconsin, Kansas, Ohio, Maryland, Missouri, Michigan, and
+Minnesota. The Republicans in their national platform of 1868 went only so far
+as to say that, while Negro suffrage was to be forced upon the South, it must
+remain a local question in the North. The Border States rapidly lined up with
+the white South on matters of race, church, and politics.
+
+It was not until 1874, however, that the changing opinion was made generally
+effective in the elections. The skillfully managed radical organization held
+large majorities in every Congress from the Thirty-ninth to the Forty-third,
+and the electoral votes in 1868 and 1879 seemed to show that the conservative
+opposition was insignificant. But these figures do not tell the whole story.
+Even in 1864, when Lincoln won by nearly half a million, the popular vote was
+as eighteen to twenty-two, and four years later Grant, the most popular man in
+the United States, had a majority of only three hundred thousand over Seymour,
+and this majority and more came from the new Negro voters. Four years later
+with about a million Negro voters available and an opposition not pleased with
+its own candidate, Grant's majority reached only seven hundred thousand. At no
+one time in elections did the North pronounce itself in favor of all the
+reconstruction policies. The break, signs of which were visible as early as
+1869, came in 1874 when the Republicans lost control of the House of
+Representatives.
+
+Strength was given to the opposition because of the dissatisfaction with
+President Grant, who knew little about politics and politicians. He felt that
+his Cabinet should be made up of personal friends, not of strong advisers, and
+that the military ideal of administration was the proper one. He was faithful
+but undiscriminating in his friendships and frequently chose as his associates
+men of vulgar tastes and low motives; and he showed a naive love of money and
+an undisguised admiration for rich men such as Gould and Fisk. His appointees
+were often incompetent friends or relatives, and his cynical attitude toward
+civil service reform lost him the support of influential men. When forced by
+party exigencies to select first-class men for his Cabinet, he still preferred
+to go for advice to practical politicians. On the Southern question he easily
+fell under control of the radicals, who in order to retain their influence had
+only to convince his military mind that the South was again in rebellion, and
+who found it easy to distract public opinion from political corruption by
+"waving the bloody shirt." Dissatisfaction with his Administration, it is
+true, was confined to the intellectuals, the reformers, and the Democrats, but
+they were strong enough to defeat him for a second term if they could only be
+organized.
+
+The Liberal Republican movement began in the West about 1869 with demands for
+amnesty and for reform, particularly in the civil service, and it soon spread
+rapidly over the North. When it became certain that the "machine" would
+renominate Grant, the liberal movement became an anti-Grant party. The "New
+Departure" Democrats gave comfort and prospect of aid to the Liberal
+Republicans by declaring for a constructive, forward-looking policy in place
+of reactionary opposition. The Liberal chiefs were led to believe that the new
+Democratic leaders would accept their platform and candidates in order to
+defeat Grant. The principal candidates for the Liberal Republican nomination
+were Charles Francis Adams, Lyman Trumbull, Gratz Brown, David Davis, and
+Horace Greeley. Adams was the strongest candidate but was jockeyed out of
+place and the nomination was given to Horace Greeley, able enough as editor of
+the "New York Tribune" but impossible as a candidate for the presidency. The
+Democratic party accepted him as their candidate also, although he had been a
+lifelong opponent of Democratic principles and policies. But disgusted
+Liberals either returned to the Republican ranks or stayed away from the
+polls, and many Democrats did likewise. Under these circumstances the
+reelection of Grant was a foregone conclusion. There was certainly a potential
+majority against Grant, but the opposition had failed to organize, while the
+Republican machine was in good working order, the Negroes were voting, and the
+Enforcement Acts proved a great aid to the Republicans in the Southern States.
+
+One good result of the growing liberal sentiment was the passage of an Amnesty
+Act by Congress on May 22, 1872. By statute and by the Fourteenth Amendment,
+Congress had refused to recognize the complete validity of President Johnson's
+pardons and amnesty proclamations, and all Confederate leaders who wished to
+regain political rights had therefore to appeal to Congress. During the
+Forty-first Congress (1869-71) more than three thousand Southerners were
+amnestied in order that they might hold office. These, however, were for the
+most part scalawags; the most respectable whites would not seek an amnesty
+which they could secure only by self-stultification.* It was the pressure of
+public opinion against white disfranchisement and the necessity for meeting
+the Liberal Republican arguments which caused the passage of the Act of 1872.
+By this act about 150,000 whites were reenfranchised, leaving out only about
+five hundred of the most prominent of the old regime, most of whom were never
+restored to citizenship. Both Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis died
+disfranchised.
+
+* The machinery of government and politics was all in radical hands--the
+carpetbaggers and scalawags, who were numerous enough to fill practically all
+the offices. These men were often able leaders and skillful managers, and they
+did not intend to surrender control; and the black race was obedient and
+furnished the votes. In 1868, with Virginia, Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas
+unrepresented, the first radical contingent in Congress from the South
+numbered 41, of whom 10 out of 12 senators and 26 out of 32 representatives
+were carpetbaggers. There were two lone conservative Congressmen. A few months
+later, in 1869, there were 64 radical representatives from the South, 20
+senators and 44 members of the House of Representatives. In 1877 this number
+had dwindled to two senators and four representatives. The difference between
+these figures measures in some degree the extent of the undoing of
+reconstruction within the period of Grant's Administration.
+
+How the Southern whites escaped from Negro domination has often been told and
+may here be sketched only in outline. The first States regained from
+radicalism were those in which the Negro population was small and the black
+vote large enough to irritate but not to dominate. Although Northern
+sentiment, excited by the stories of "Southern outrage," was then unfavorable,
+the conservatives of the South, by organizing a "white man's party" and by the
+use of Ku Klux methods, made a fight for social safety which they won nearly
+everywhere, and, in addition, they gained political control of several
+States--Tennessee in 1869, Virginia in 1869-1870, and North Carolina and
+Georgia in 1870. They almost won Louisiana in 1868 and Alabama in 1870, but
+the alarmed radicals came to the rescue of the situation with the Fifteenth
+Amendment and the Enforcement Laws of 1870-1871. With more troops and a larger
+number of deputy marshals, it seemed that the radicals might securely hold the
+remaining states. Arrests of conservatives were numerous, plundering was at
+its height, the Federal Government was interested and was friendly to the new
+Southern rulers, and the carpetbaggers and scalawags feasted, troubled only by
+the disposition of their Negro supporters to demand a share of the spoils.
+Although the whites made little gain from 1870 to 1874, the states already
+rescued became more firmly conservative; white counties here and there in the
+black states voted out the radicals; a few more representatives of the whites
+got into Congress; and the Border States ranged themselves more solidly with
+the conservatives.
+
+But while the Southern whites were becoming desperate under oppression, public
+opinion in the North was at last beginning to affect politics. The elections
+of 1874 resulted in a Democratic landslide of which the Administration was
+obliged to take notice. Grant now grew more responsive to criticism. In 1875
+he replied to a request for troops to hold down Mississippi: "The whole public
+are tired out with these annual autumnal outbreaks in the South and the great
+majority are ready now to condemn any interference on the part of the
+Government." As soon as conditions in the South were better understood in the
+North, ready sympathy and political aid were offered by many who had hitherto
+acted with the radicals. The Ku Klux report as well as the newspaper writings
+and the books of J. S. Pike and Charles Nordhoff, both former opponents of
+slavery, opened the eyes of many to the evil results of Negro suffrage. Some
+who had been considered friends of the Negro, now believing that he had proven
+to be a political failure, coldly abandoned him and turned their altruistic
+interests to other objects more likely to succeed. Many real friends of the
+Negro were alarmed at the evils of the reconstruction and were anxious to see
+the corrupt political leaders deprived of further influence over the race. To
+others the constantly recurring Southern problem was growing stale, and they
+desired to hear less of it. Within the Republican party in each Southern
+State, there were serious divisions over the spoils. First it was carpetbagger
+and Negro against the scalawag; later, when the black leaders insisted that
+those who furnished the votes must have the larger share of the rewards, the
+fight became triangular. As a result, by 1874 the Republican party in the
+South was split into factions and was deserted by a large proportion of its
+white membership.
+
+The conservative whites, fiercely resentful after their experiences under the
+enforcement laws and hopeful of Northern sympathy, now planned a supreme
+effort to regain their former power. Race lines were more strictly drawn;
+ostracism of all that was radical became the rule; the Republican party in the
+South, it was apparent, was doomed to be only a Negro party weighed down by
+the scandal of bad government; the state treasuries were bankrupt, and there
+was little further opportunity for plunder. These considerations had much to
+do with the return of scalawags to the "white man's party" and the retirement
+of carpetbaggers from Southern politics. There was no longer anything in it,
+they said; let the Negro have it!
+
+It was under these conditions that the "white man's party" carried the
+elections in Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas in 1874, and Mississippi in 1875.
+Asserting that it was a contest between civilization and barbarism, and that
+the whites under the radical regime had no opportunity to carry an election
+legally, the conservatives openly made use of every method of influencing the
+result that could possibly come within the radical law and they even employed
+many effective methods that lay outside the law. Negroes were threatened with
+discharge from employment and whites with tar and feathers if they voted the
+radical ticket; there were nightriding parties, armed and drilled "white
+leagues," and mysterious firing of guns and cannon at night; much plain talk
+assailed the ears of the radical leaders; and several bloody outbreaks
+occurred, principally in Louisiana and Mississippi. Louisiana had been carried
+by the Democrats in the fall of 1872, but the radical returning board had
+reversed the election. In 1874 the whites rose in rebellion and turned out
+Kellogg, the usurping Governor, but President Grant intervened to restore him
+to office. The "Mississippi" or "shot-gun plan"* was very generally employed,
+except where the contest was likely to go in favor of the whites without the
+use of undue pressure. The white leaders exercised a moderating influence, but
+the average white man had determined to do away with Negro government even
+though the alternative might be a return of military rule. Congress
+investigated the elections in each State which overthrew the
+reconstructionists, but nothing came of the inquiry and the population rapidly
+settled down into good order. After 1875 only three States were left under
+radical government--Louisiana and Florida, where the returning boards could
+throw out any Democratic majority, and South Carolina, where the Negroes
+greatly outnumbered the whites.
+
+* See "The New South", by Holland Thompson (in "The Chronicles of America").
+
+
+Reconstruction could hardly be a genuine issue in the presidential campaign of
+1876, because all except these three reconstructed States had escaped from
+radical control, and there was no hope and little real desire of regaining
+them. It was even expected that in this year the radicals would lose Louisiana
+and Florida to the "white man's party." The leaders of the best element of the
+Republicans, both North and South, looked upon the reconstruction as one of
+the prime causes of the moral breakdown of their party; they wanted no more of
+the Southern issue but planned a forward-looking, constructive reform.
+
+To some of the Republican leaders, however, among whom was James G. Blame, it
+was clear that the Republican party, with its unsavory record under Grant's
+Administration, could hardly go before the people with a reform program. The
+only possible thing to do was to revive some Civil War issue--"wave the bloody
+shirt" and fan the smoldering embers of sectional feeling. Blame met with
+complete success in raising the desired issue. In January 1876, when an
+amnesty measure was brought before the House, he moved that Jefferson Davis be
+excepted on the ground that he was responsible for the mistreatment of Union
+prisoners during the war. Southern hot-bloods replied, and Blaine skillfully
+led them on until they had foolishly furnished him with ample material for
+campaign purposes. The feeling thus aroused was so strong that it even
+galvanized into seeming life the dying interest in the wrongs of the Negro.
+The rallying cry "Vote as you shot!" gave the Republicans something to fight
+for; the party referred to its war record, claimed credit for preserving the
+Union, emancipating the Negro, and reconstructing the South, and demanded that
+the country be not "surrendered to rebel rule."
+
+Hayes and Tilden, the rival candidates for the presidency, were both men of
+high character and of moderate views. Their nominations had been forced by the
+better element of each party. Hayes, the Republican candidate, had been a good
+soldier, was moderate in his views on Southern questions, and had a clean
+political reputation. Tilden, his opponent, had a good record as a party man
+and as a reformer, and his party needed only to attack the past record of the
+Republicans. The principal Democratic weakness lay in the fact that the party
+drew so much of its strength from the white South and was therefore subjected
+to criticism on Civil War issues.
+
+The campaign was hotly contested and was conducted on a low plane. Even Hayes
+soon saw that the "bloody shirt" issue was the main vote winner. The whites of
+the three "unredeemed" Southern States nerved themselves for the final
+struggle. In South Carolina and in some parishes of Louisiana, there was a
+considerable amount of violence, in which the whites had the advantage, and
+much fraud, which the Republicans, who controlled the election machinery,
+turned to best account. It has been said that out of the confusion which the
+Republicans created they won the presidency.
+
+The first election returns seemed to give Tilden the victory with 184
+undisputed electoral votes and popular majorities of ninety and over six
+thousand respectively in Florida and Louisiana; only 185 votes were needed for
+a choice. Hayes had 166 votes, not counting Oregon, in which one vote was in
+dispute, and South Carolina, which for a time was claimed by both parties. Had
+Louisiana and Florida been Northern States, there would have been no
+controversy, but the Republican general headquarters knew that the Democratic
+majorities in these States had to go through Republican returning boards,
+which had never yet failed to throw them out.
+
+The interest of the nation now centered around the action of the two returning
+boards. At the suggestion of President Grant, prominent Republicans went South
+to witness the count. Later prominent Democrats went also. These "visiting
+statesmen" were to support the frail returning boards in their duty. It was
+generally understood that these boards, certainly the one in Louisiana, were
+for sale, and there is little doubt that the Democrats inquired the price. But
+they were afraid to bid on such uncertain quantities as Governor Wells and T.
+C. Anderson of Louisiana, both notorious spoilsmen. The members of the boards
+in both States soon showed the stiffening effect of the moral support of the
+Federal Administration and of the "visiting statesmen." Reassured as to their
+political future, they proceeded to do their duty: in Florida they threw out
+votes until the ninety majority for Tilden was changed to 925 for Hayes, and
+in Louisiana, by throwing out about fifteen thousand carefully selected
+ballots, they changed Tilden's lowest majority of six thousand to a Hayes
+majority of nearly four thousand. Naturally the Democrats sent in contesting
+returns, but the presidency was really won when the Republicans secured in
+Louisiana and Florida returns which were regular in form. But hoping to force
+Congress to go behind the returns, the Democrats carried up contests also from
+Oregon and South Carolina, whose votes properly belonged to Hayes.
+
+The final contest came in Congress over the counting of the electoral votes.
+The Constitution provides that "the President of the Senate shall, in the
+presence of the Senate and the House of Representatives, open all the
+Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted." But there was no agreement
+as to where authority lay for deciding disputed votes. Never before had the
+presidency turned on a disputed count. From 1864 to 1874 the "twenty-second
+joint rule" had been in force under which either House might reject a
+certificate. The votes of Georgia in 1868 and of Louisiana in 1879 had thus
+been thrown out. But the rule had not been readopted by the present Congress,
+and the Republicans very naturally would not listen to a proposal to readopt
+it now.
+
+With the country apparently on the verge of civil war, Congress finally
+created by law an Electoral Commission to which were to be referred all
+disputes about the counting of votes and the decision of which was to be final
+unless both Houses concurred in rejecting it. The act provided that the
+commission should consist of five senators, five representatives, four
+designated associate justices of the Supreme Court, and a fifth associate
+justice to be chosen by these four. While nothing was said in the act about
+the political affiliations of the members of the commission, every one
+understood that the House would select three Democrats and two Republicans,
+and that the Senate would name two Democrats and three Republicans. It was
+also well known that of the four justices designated two were Republicans and
+two Democrats, and it was tacitly agreed that the fifth would be Justice David
+Davis, an "independent." But at the last moment Davis was elected Senator by
+the Illinois Legislature and declined to serve on the Commission. Justice
+Bradley, a Republican, was then named as the fifth justice, and in this way
+the Republicans obtained a majority on the Commission.
+
+The Democrats deserve the credit for the Electoral Commission. The Republicans
+did not favor it, even after they were sure of a party majority on it. They
+were conscious that they had a weak case, and they were afraid to trust it to
+judges of the Supreme Court. Their fears were groundless, however, since all
+important questions were decided by an 8 to 7 vote, Bradley voting with his
+fellow Republicans. Every contested vote was given to Hayes, and with 185
+electoral votes he was declared elected on March 2, 1877.
+
+Ten years before, Senator Morton of Indiana had said: "I would have been in
+favor of having the colored people of the South wait a few years until they
+were prepared for the suffrage, until they were to some extent educated, but
+the necessities of the times forbade that; the conditions of things required
+that they should be brought to the polls at once." Now the condition of things
+required that some arrangement be made with the Southern whites which would
+involve a complete reversal of the situation of 1867. In order to secure the
+unopposed succession of Hayes, to defeat filibustering which might endanger
+the decision of the Electoral Commission, politicians who could speak with
+authority for Hayes assured influential Southern politicians, who wanted no
+more civil war but who did want home rule, that an arrangement might be made
+which would be satisfactory to both sides.
+
+So the contest was ended. Hayes was to be President; the South, with the
+Negro, was to be left to the whites; there would be no further military aid to
+carpetbag governments. In so far as the South was concerned, it was a
+fortunate settlement better, indeed, than if Tilden had been inducted into
+office. The remnants of the reconstruction policy were surrendered by a
+Republican President, the troops were soon withdrawn, and the three radical
+states fell at once under the control of the whites. Hayes could not see in
+his election any encouragement to adopt a vigorous radical position, and
+Congress was deadlocked on party issues for fifteen years. As a result the
+radical Republicans had to develop other interests, and the North gradually
+accepted the Southern situation.
+
+Although the radical policy of reconstruction came to an end in 1877, some of
+its results were more lasting. The Southern States were burdened heavily with
+debt, much of which had been fraudulently incurred. There now followed a
+period of adjustment, of refunding, scaling, and repudiation, which not only
+injured the credit of the states but left them with enormous debts. The
+Democratic party under the leadership of former Confederates began its regime
+of strict economy, race fairness, and inelastic Jeffersonianism. There was a
+political rest which almost amounted to stagnation and which the leaders were
+unwilling to disturb by progressive measures lest a developing democracy make
+trouble with the settlement of 1877.
+
+The undoing of reconstruction was not entirely completed with the
+understanding of 1877. There remained a large but somewhat shattered
+Republican party in the South, with control over county and local government
+in many Negro districts. Little by little the Democrats rooted out these last
+vestiges of Negro control, using all the old radical methods and some
+improvements,* such as tissue ballots, the shuffling of ballot boxes, bribery,
+force, and redistricting, while some regions were placed entirely under
+executive control and were ruled by appointed commissions. With the good
+government which followed these changes a deadlocked Congress showed no great
+desire to interfere. The Supreme Court came to the aid of the Democrats with
+decisions in 1875, 1882, and 1883 which drew the teeth from the Enforcement
+Laws, and Congress in 1894 repealed what was left of these regulations.
+
+*See "The New South", by Holland Thompson (in "The Chronicles of America").
+
+Under such discouraging conditions the voting strength of the Republicans
+rapidly melted away. The party organization existed for the Federal offices
+only and was interested in keeping down the number of those who desired to be
+rewarded. As a consequence, the leaders could work in harmony with those
+Democratic chiefs who were content with a "solid South" and local home rule.
+The Negroes of the Black Belt, with less enthusiasm and hope, but with quite
+the same docility as in 1868, began to vote as the Democratic leaders
+directed. This practice brought up in another form the question of "Negro
+government" and resulted in a demand from the people of the white counties
+that the Negro be put entirely out of politics. The answer came between 1890
+and 1902 in the form of new and complicated election laws or new constitutions
+which in various ways shut out the Negro from the polls and left the
+government to the whites. Three times have the Black Belt regions dominated
+the Southern States: under slavery, when the master class controlled; under
+reconstruction, when the leaders of the Negroes had their own way; and after
+reconstruction until Negro disfranchisement, when the Democratic dictators of
+the Negro vote ruled fairly but not always acceptably to the white counties
+which are now the source of their political power.
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
+
+The best general accounts of the reconstruction period are found in James Ford
+Rhodes's "History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the
+Restoration of Home Rule at the South in 1877", volumes V, VI, VII (1906); in
+William A. Dunning's "Reconstruction, Political and Economic", 1865-1877, in
+the "American Nation" Series, volume XXII (1907); and in Peter Joseph
+Hamilton's "The Reconstruction Period" (1905), which is volume XVI of "The
+History of North America", edited by F. N. Thorpe. The work of Rhodes is
+spacious and fair-minded but there are serious gaps in his narrative;
+Dunning's briefer account covers the entire field with masterly handling;
+Hamilton's history throws new light on all subjects and is particularly useful
+for an understanding of the Southern point of view. A valuable discussion of
+constitutional problems is contained in William A. Dunning's "Essay on the
+Civil War and Reconstruction and Related Topics" (1904); and a criticism of
+the reconstruction policies from the point of view of political science and
+constitutional law is to be found in J. W. Burgess's "Reconstruction and the
+Constitution, 1866-1876" (1902). E. B. Andrews's "The United States in our own
+Time" (1903) gives a popular treatment of the later period. A collection of
+brief monographs entitled "Why the Solid South?" by Hilary A. Herbert and
+others (1890) was written as a campaign document to offset the drive made by
+the Republicans in 1889 for new enforcement laws.
+
+There are many scholarly monographs on reconstruction in the several states.
+The best of these are: J. W. Garner's "Reconstruction in Mississippi" (1901),
+W. L. Fleming's "Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama" (1905), J. G. deR.
+Hamilton's "Reconstruction in North Carolina" (1914), W. W. Davis's "The Civil
+War and Reconstruction in Florida" (1913), J. S. Reynolds's "Reconstruction in
+South Carolina", 1865-1877 (1905); C. W. Ramsdell's "Reconstruction in Texas"
+(1910), and C. M. Thompson's "Reconstruction in Georgia" (1915).
+
+Books of interest on special phases of reconstruction are not numerous, but
+among those deserving mention are Paul S. Pierce's "The Freedmen's Bureau"
+(1904), D. M. DeWitt's "The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson" (1903),
+and Paul L. Haworth's "The Hayes-Tilden Disputed Presidential Election of
+1876" (1906), each of which is a thorough study of its field. J. C. Lester and
+D. L. Wilson's "Ku Klux Klan" (1905) and M. L. Avary's "Dixie After the War"
+(1906) contribute much to a fair understanding of the feeling of the whites
+after the Civil War; and Gideon Welles, "Diary", 3 vols. (1911), is a mine of
+information from a conservative cabinet officer's point of view.
+
+For the politician's point of view one may go to James G. Blaine's "Twenty
+Years of Congress", 2 vols. (1884, 1886) and Samuel S. Cox's "Three Decades of
+Federal Legislation" (1885). Good biographies are James A. Woodburn's "The
+Life of Thaddeus Stevens" (1913), Moorfield Storey's "Charles Sumner" (1900),
+C. F. Adams's "Charles Francis Adams" (1900). Less satisfactory because more
+partisan is Edward Stanwood's "James Gillespie Blaine" (1906). There are no
+adequate biographies of the Democratic and Southern leaders.
+
+The official documents are found conveniently arranged in William McDonald's
+"Select Statutes", 1861-1898 (1903), and also with other material in Walter L.
+Fleming's "Documentary History of Reconstruction", 2 vols. (1906, 1907). The
+general reader is usually repelled by the collections known as "Public
+Documents". The valuable "Ku Klux Trials" (1872) is, however, separately
+printed and to be found in most good libraries. By a judicious use of the
+indispensable "Tables and Index to Public Documents," one can find much
+vividly interesting material in connection with contested election cases and
+reports of congressional investigations into conditions in the South.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Sequel of Appomattox by Walter Lynwood Fleming
+
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