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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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