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 in1865, two matters had been settled beyond further dispute: the Negro wasto be free, and the Union was to be perpetuated. But, though slaveryand state sovereignty were no longer at issue, there were still manyproblems which pressed for solution. The huge task of reconstructionmust be faced. The nature of the situation required that the measures ofreconstruction be first formulated in Washington by the victors and thenworked out in the conquered South. Since the success of these policieswould depend in a large measure upon their acceptability to bothsections of the country, it was expected that the North would beinfluenced to some extent by the attitude of the Southern people, whichin 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 takesits beginning. 

The surviving Confederate soldiers came straggling back to communities, which were now far from being satisfactory dwelling places for civilizedpeople. Everywhere they found missing many of the best of their formerneighbors. They found property destroyed, the labor system disorganized, and the inhabitants in many places suffering from want. They found thewhite people demoralized and sometimes divided among themselves and theNegroes free, bewildered, and disorderly, for organized government hadlapsed with the surrender of the Confederate armies. 

Beneath a disorganized society lay a devastated land. The destruction ofproperty affected all classes of the population. The accumulated capitalof the South had disappeared in worthless Confederate stocks, bonds, and currency. The banks had failed early in the war. Two billion dollarsinvested in slaves had been wiped out. Factories, which had been runningbefore the war or were developed after 1861 in order to supply theblockaded country, had been destroyed by Federal raiders or seizedand sold or dismantled because they had furnished supplies to theConfederacy. Mining industries were paralyzed. Public buildings whichhad been used for war purposes were destroyed or confiscated for theuses of the army or for the new freedmen's schools. It was months beforecourthouses, state capitols, school and college buildings were againmade available for normal uses. The military school buildings had beendestroyed by the Federal forces. Among the schools which sufferedwere the Virginia Military Institute, the University of Alabama, theLouisiana State Seminary, and many smaller institutions. Nearly allthese had been used in some way for war purposes and were thereforesubject to destruction or confiscation. 

The farmers and planters found themselves "land poor. " The soilremained, but there was a prevalent lack of labor, of agriculturalequipment, of farm stock, of seeds, and of money with which to make goodthe deficiency. As a result, a man with hundreds of acres might be aspoor as a Negro refugee. The desolation is thus described by a Virginiafarmer:

"From Harper's Ferry to New Market, which is about eighty miles. . . Thecountry was almost a desert. . . . We had no cattle, hogs, sheep, or horseor anything else. The fences were all gone. Some of the orchards werevery much injured, but the fruit trees had not been destroyed. The barnswere all burned; chimneys standing without houses, and houses standingwithout roof, or door, or window. "

Much land was thrown on the market at low prices--three to five dollarsan acre for land worth fifty dollars. The poorer lands could not be soldat all, and thousands of farms were deserted by their owners. Everywhererecovery from this agricultural depression was slow. Five years afterthe war Robert Somers, an English traveler, said of the TennesseeValley:

"It consists for the most part of plantations in a state of semi-ruinand plantations of which the ruin is for the present total andcomplete. . . . The trail of war is visible throughout the valley inburnt-up gin-houses, ruined bridges, mills, and factories. . . And inlarge tracts of once cultivated land stripped of every vestige offencing. The roads, long neglected, are in disorder, and having in manyplaces become impassable, new tracks have been made through the woodsand fields without much respect to boundaries. "

Similar conditions existed wherever the armies had passed, and notin the country districts alone. Many of the cities, such as Richmond, Charleston, Columbia, Jackson, Atlanta, and Mobile had suffered fromfire 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 ofSouthern merchants that they were cautious about extending credit again. Long before 1865 all coin had been sent out in contraband trade throughthe blockade. That there was a great need of supplies from the outsideworld is shown by the following statement of General Boynton:

"Window-glass has given way to thin boards, in railway coaches and inthe cities. Furniture is marred and broken, and none has been replacedfor four years. Dishes are cemented in various styles, and half thepitchers have tin handles. A complete set of crockery is never seen, andin very few families is there enough to set a table. . . . A set of forkswith whole tines is a curiosity. Clocks and watches have nearly allstopped. . . . Hairbrushes and toothbrushes have all worn out; combs arebroken. . . . Pins, needles, and thread, and a thousand such articles, which seem indispensable to housekeeping, are very scarce. Even inweaving on the looms, corncobs have been substituted for spindles. Few have pocketknives. In fact, everything that has heretofore been anarticle of sale in the South is wanting now. At the tables of thosewho were once esteemed luxurious providers you will find neither tea, coffee, sugar, nor spices of any kind. Even candles, in some cases, havebeen replaced by a cup of grease in which a piece of cloth is plungedfor a wick. "

This poverty was prolonged and rendered more acute by the lack oftransportation. Horses, mules, wagons, and carriages were scarce, thecountry roads were nearly impassable, and bridges were in bad repair orhad been burned or washed away. Steamboats had almost disappeared fromthe rivers. Those which had escaped capture as blockade runners had beensubsequently destroyed or were worn out. . Postal facilities, which hadbeen poor enough during the last year of the Confederacy, were entirelylacking for several months after the surrender. 

The railways were in a state of physical dilapidation little removedfrom destruction, save for those that had been captured and kept inpartial repair by the Federal troops. The rolling stock had been lostby capture, by destruction to prevent capture, in wrecks, which werefrequent, or had been worn out. The railroad companies possessed largesums 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 railwaylines and in some cases effected a temporary reorganization which couldnot have been accomplished by the bankrupt companies. During the summerand fall of 1865, "loyal" boards of directors were appointed for mostof the railroads, and the army withdrew its control. But repairsand reconstruction were accomplished with difficulty because of thedemoralization of labor and the lack of funds or credit. Freight wasscarce and, had it not been for government shipments, some of therailroads would have been abandoned. Not many people were able totravel. It is recorded that on one trip from Montgomery to Mobileand return, a distance of 360 miles, the railroad which is now theLouisville 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 hereand there were to be found public and private stores of cotton, tobacco, rice, and other farm products, all of which were bringing high pricesin the market. But for several months the operation of wartime lawsand regulations hindered the distribution of even these scanty stores. Property upon which the Confederate Government had a claim was, ofcourse, subject to Confiscation, and private property offered for sale, even that of Unionists, was subject to a 25 percent tax on sales, ashipping tax, and a revenue tax. The revenue tax on cotton, ranging fromtwo to three cents a pound during the three years after the war, broughtin over $68, 000, 000. This tax, with other Federal revenues, yielded muchmore than the entire expenses of reconstruction from 1865 to 1868 andof all relief measures for the South, both public and private. AfterMay 1865, the 25 percent tax was imposed only upon the produce of slavelabor. None of the war taxes, except that on cotton, was levied upon thecrops of 1866, but while these taxes lasted, they seriously impeded theresumption of trade. 

Even these restrictions, however, might have been borne if only theyhad been honestly applied. Unfortunately, some of the most spectacularfrauds ever perpetrated were carried through in connection with theattempt of the United States Treasury Department to collect and sell theconfiscable property in the South. The property to be sold consistedof what had been captured and seized by the army and the navy, of"abandoned" property, as such was called whose owner was absent inthe Confederate service, and of property subject to seizure under theconfiscation acts of Congress. No captures were made after the generalsurrender, and no further seizures of "abandoned" property were madeafter 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 intodistricts, each under the supervision of an agent of the TreasuryDepartment, who received a commission of about 25 percent. Cotton, regarded as the root of the slavery evil, was singled out as theprincipal object of confiscation. It was known that the ConfederateGovernment had owned in 1865 about 150, 000 bales, but the records weredefective and much of it, with no clear indication of ownership, stillremained with the producers. Secretary Chase, foreseeing the difficultyof effecting a just settlement, counseled against seizure, but hisjudgment was overruled. Secretary McCulloch said of his agents: "I amsure I sent some honest cotton agents South; but it sometimes seemsdoubtful whether any of them remained honest very long. " Some ofthe 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 tookpossession of cotton and delivered it under contracts as captured orabandoned, when in fact it was not such, and they had no right to touchit. . . . Residents and others in the districts where these peculationswere going on took advantage of the unsettled condition of the country, and representing themselves as agents of this department, wentabout robbing under such pretended authority, and thus added to thedifficulties of the situation by causing unjust opprobrium and suspicionto rest upon officers engaged in the faithful discharge of their duties. Agents, . . . Frequently received or collected property, and sent itforward which the law did not authorize them to take. . . . Lawless men, singly and in organized bands, engaged in general plunder; every speciesof intrigue and peculation and theft were resorted to. "

These agents turned over to the United States about $34, 000, 000. About40, 000 claimants were subsequently indemnified on the ground that theproperty taken from them did not belong to the Confederate Government, but many thousands of other claimants have been unable to prove thattheir property was seized by government agents and hence have receivednothing. It is probable that the actual Confederate property was nearlyall stolen by the agents. One agent in Alabama sold an appointment asassistant for $25, 000, and a few months later both the assistant and theagent were tried by a military court for stealing and were fined $90, 000and $250, 000 respectively in addition to being imprisoned. 

Other property, including horses, mules, wagons, tobacco, rice, andsugar which the natives claimed as their own, was seized. In some placesthe agents even collected delinquent Confederate taxes. Much of theconfiscable property was not sold but was turned over to theFreedmen's Bureau* for its support. The total amount seized cannot besatisfactorily ascertained. The Ku Klux minority report assertedthat 3, 000, 000 bales of cotton were taken, of which the United Statesreceived only 114, 000. It is certain that, owing to the deliberatedestruction of cotton by fire in 1864-65, this estimate was toohigh, but all the testimony points to the fact that the frauds werestupendous. As a result the United States Government did not succeedin obtaining the Confederate property to which it had a claim, and thecountry itself was stripped of necessities to a degree that left itnot only destitute but outraged and embittered. "Such practices, " saidTrowbridge, "had a pernicious effect, engendering a contempt for theGovernment and a murderous ill will which too commonly vented itselfupon soldiers and Negroes. "

 * See pp. 89 et seq. 

The South faced the work of reconstruction not only with a shortage ofmaterial and greatly hampered in the employment even of that but stillmore with a shortage of men. The losses among the whites are usuallyestimated at about half the military population, but since accuraterecords are lacking, the exact numbers cannot be ascertained. The bestof the civil leaders, as well as the prominent military leaders, had socommitted themselves to the support of the Confederacy as to be excludedfrom participation in any reconstruction that might be attempted. The business of reconstruction, therefore, fell of necessity to theConfederate private soldiers, the lower officers, nonparticipants, andlukewarm individuals who had not greatly compromised themselves. Thesepolitically and physically uninjured survivors included also all the"slackers" of the Confederacy. But though there were such physical andmoral 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 peoplewho had been tried by the discipline of war. 

The greatest weakness of both races was their extreme poverty. The cropsof 1865 turned out badly, for most of the soldiers reached home too latefor successful planting, and the Negro labor was not dependable. Thesale of such cotton and farm products as had escaped the treasury agentswas of some help, but curiously enough much of the good money thusobtained was spent extravagantly by a people used to Confederate ragmoney and for four years deprived of the luxuries of life. The poorerwhites who had lost all were close to starvation. In the white countieswhich had sent so large a proportion of men to the army, the destitutionwas most acute. In many families the breadwinner had been killed inwar. After 1862, relief systems had been organized in nearly all theConfederate States for the purpose of aiding the poor whites, but theseorganizations were disbanded in 1865. A Freedmen's Bureau officialtraveling through the desolate back country furnishes a descriptionwhich 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 womenand children, most of whom were formerly in good circumstances, beggingfor bread from door to door. Meat of any kind has been a stranger tomany of their mouths for months. The drought cut off what little cropsthey hoped to save, and they must have immediate help or perish. By farthe greater suffering exists among the whites. Their scanty supplieshave been exhausted, and now they look to the Government alone forsupport. 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 Unionlines or into the interior of the Confederacy. Now, along with thedisbanded Confederate soldiers, they came straggling back to theirwar-swept homes. It was estimated, in December 1865, that in the statesof Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia, there were five hundred thousandwhite people who were without the necessaries of life; numbers died fromlack of food. Within a few months, relief agencies were at work. Inthe North, especially in the border states and in New York, charitableorganizations collected and forwarded great quantities of supplies tothe Negroes and to the whites in the hill and mountain counties. Thereorganized state and local governments sent food from the unravagedportions of the Black Belt to the nearest white counties, and thearmy commanders gave some aid. As soon as the Freedmen's Bureau wasorganized, it fed to the limit of its supplies the needy whites as wellas the blacks. 

The extent of the relief afforded by the charity of the North and bythe agencies of the United States Government is not now generallyremembered, probably on account of the later objectionable activitiesof 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 tosee a Government which was lately fighting us with fire and sword andshell, now generously feeding our poor and distressed. In the immensecrowds which throng the distributing house, I notice the mothers andfathers, widows and orphans of our soldiers. . . . Again, the Confederatesoldier, with one leg or one arm, the crippled, maimed, and broken, andthe worn and destitute men, who fought bravely their enemies then, theirbenefactors now, have their sacks filled and are fed. "

Acute distress continued until 1867; after that year there was nofurther danger of starvation. Some of the poor whites, especially in theremote districts, never again reached a comfortable standard of living;some were demoralized by too much assistance; others were discouragedand left the South for the West or the North. But the mass of the peopleaccepted the discipline of poverty and made the best of their situation. 

The difficulties, however, that beset even the courageous and thecompetent were enormous. The general paralysis of industry, the breakingup of society, and poverty on all sides bore especially hard on thosewho had not previously been manual laborers. Physicians could getpractice enough but no fees; lawyers who had supported the Confederacyfound it difficult to get back into the reorganized courts because ofthe test oaths and the competition of "loyal" attorneys; and forthe teachers there were few schools. We read of officers high in theConfederate service selling to Federal soldiers the pies and cakescooked by their wives, of others selling fish and oysters which theythemselves had caught, and of men and women hitching themselves to plowswhen they had no horse or mule. 

Such incidents must, from their nature, have been infrequent, but theyshow to what straits some at least were reduced. Six years after thewar, James S. Pike, then in South Carolina, mentions cases which mightbe duplicated in nearly every old Southern community: "In the vicinity, "he says, "lived a gentleman whose income when the war broke out wasrated at $150, 000 a year. Not a vestige of his whole vast estate remainstoday. Not far distant were the estates of a large proprietor and awell-known family, rich and distinguished for generations. The slaveswere gone. The family is gone. A single scion of the house remains, andhe peddles tea by the pound and molasses by the quart, on a corner ofthe old homestead, to the former slaves of the family and thereby earnshis livelihood. "

General Lee's good example influenced many. Commercial enterprises werewilling to pay for the use of his name and reputation, but he wishedto farm and could get no opportunity. "They are offering my fathereverything, " his daughter said, "except the only thing he will accept, a place to earn honest bread while engaged in some useful work. " Thisremark led to an offer of the presidency of Washington College, nowWashington and Lee University, which he accepted. "I have a self-imposedtask which I must accomplish, " he said, "I have led the young men ofthe 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 inlife. "

The condition of honest folk was still further troubled by a generalspirit of lawlessness in many regions. Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana recognized the "Union" state government, but the coming ofpeace brought legal anarchy to the other states of the Confederacy. TheConfederate state and local governments were abolished as the armies ofoccupation spread over the South, and for a period of four or six monthsthere was no government except that exercised by the commanders of themilitary garrisons left behind when the armies marched away. Even beforethe surrender, the local governments were unable to make their authorityrespected, and soon after the war ended, parts of the country becameinfested with outlaws, pretend treasury agents, horse thieves, cattlethieves, and deserters. Away from the military posts only lynch lawcould cope with these elements of disorder. 

With the aid of the army in the more settled regions, and by extra-legalmeans elsewhere, the outlaws, thieves, cotton burners, and house burnerswere brought somewhat under control even before the state governmentswere reorganized, though the embers of lawlessness continued to smolder. 

The relations between the Federal soldiers stationed in the principaltowns and the native white population were not, on the whole, so bad asmight have been expected. If the commanding officer were well disposed, there was little danger of friction, though sometimes his troops got outof 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 problemof social relations between the conquerors and the conquered wastroublesome. The men might get along well together, but the women wouldhave nothing do with the "Yankees, " and ill feeling arose because oftheir antipathy. Carl Schurz reported that "the soldier of the Union islooked upon as a stranger, an intruder, as the 'Yankee, ' the 'enemy. '. . . The existence and intensity of this aversion is too well known to thosewho have served or are serving in the South to require proof. "

In retaliation the soldiers developed ingenious ways of annoying thewhites. Women, forced for any reason to go to headquarters, were made totake the oath of allegiance or the "ironclad" oath before their requestswere granted; flags were fastened over doors, gates, or sidewalksin 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 oflegitimate rebels. "

The wearing of Confederate uniforms was forbidden by military order, butby May 1865, few soldiers possessed regulation uniforms. In Tennesseethe State also imposed fines upon *wear wearers of the uniform. Inthe vicinity of military posts, buttons and marks of rank were usuallyordered removed and the gray clothes dyed with some other color. GeneralLee, for example, had the buttons on his coat covered with cloth. Butfrequently the Federal commander, after issuing the orders, paid no moreattention to the matter and such conflicts as arose on account of theuniform were usually caused by officious enlisted men and the Negrotroops. Whitelaw Reid relates the following incident:

"Nothing was more touching, in all that I saw in Savannah, than thealmost painful effort of the rebels, from generals down to privates, to conduct themselves so as to evince respect for our soldiers, and tobring no severer punishment upon the city than it had already received. There was a brutal scene at the hotel, where a drunken sergeant, witha pair of tailor's shears, insisted on cutting the buttons from theuniform of an elegant gray-headed old brigadier, who had just come infrom Johnston's army; but he bore himself modestly and very handsomelythrough 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 notime to procure others, but they avoided disturbances and submitted towhat they might, with some propriety, and with the general approval ofour officers, have resented. "

The Negro troops, even at their best, were everywhere consideredoffensive by the native whites. General Grant, indeed, urged that onlywhite 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 conflictswere frequent. A New Orleans newspaper thus states the Southern pointof view: "Our citizens who had been accustomed to meet and treat theNegroes only as respectful servants, were mortified, pained, and shockedto encounter them. . . Wearing Federal uniforms and bearing bright musketsand gleaming bayonets. . . . They are jostled from the sidewalks by duskyguards, marching four abreast. They were halted, in rude and sullentones, by Negro sentinels. "

The task of the Federal forces was not easy. The garrisons were notlarge enough nor numerous enough to keep order in the absence of civilgovernment. The commanders in the South asked in vain for cavalryto police the rural districts. Much of the disorder, violence, andincendiarism attributed at the time to lawless soldiers appeared laterto be due to discharged soldiers and others pretending to be soldiers inorder to carry out schemes of robbery. The whites complained vigorouslyof the garrisons, and petitions were sent to Washington from massmeetings and from state legislatures asking for their removal. Thehigher commanders, however, bore themselves well, and in a few fortunatecases Southern whites were on most amicable terms with the garrisoncommanders. The correspondence of responsible military officers in theSouth shows how earnestly and considerately each, as a rule, triedto work out his task. The good sense of most of the Federal officersappeared when, after the murder of Lincoln, even General Grant fora brief space lost his head and ordered the arrest of paroledConfederates. 

The church organizations were as much involved in the war and in thereconstruction as were secular institutions. Before the war everyreligious organization having members North and South, except theCatholic Church and the Jews, had separated into independent Northernand Southern bodies. In each section church feeling ran high, and whenthe war came, the churches supported the armies. As the Federal armiesoccupied Southern territory, the church buildings of each denominationwere turned over to the corresponding Northern body, and Southernministers were permitted to remain only upon agreeing to conduct "loyalservices, pray for the President of the United States and for Federalvictories" and to foster "loyal sentiment. " The Protestant Episcopalchurches in Alabama were closed from September to December 1865, andsome congregations were dispersed by the soldiers because Bishop Wilmerhad directed his clergy to omit the prayer for President Davis but hadsubstituted no other. The ministers of non-liturgical churches were notso easily controlled. A Georgia Methodist preacher directed by a Federalofficer to pray for the President said afterwards: "I prayed for thePresident that the Lord would take out of him and his allies the heartsof beasts and put into them the hearts of men or remove the cusses fromoffice. " Sometimes members of a congregation showed their resentmentat the "loyal" prayers by leaving the church. But in spite of manyirritations, both sides frequently managed to get some amusement outof the "loyal" services. The church situation was, however, a seriousmatter during and after the reconstruction, and some of its later phaseswill 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, theyfound themselves, upon their return from a harsh exile, the victimsof ostracism or open hostility. One of them, William H. Smith, laterGovernor of Alabama, testified that the Southern people "manifest themost perfect contempt for a man who is known to be an unequivocal Unionman; they call him a 'galvanized Yankee' and apply other terms andepithets to him. " General George H. Thomas, speaking of a region moredivided in sentiment than Alabama, remarked that "Middle Tennesseeis disturbed by animosities and hatreds, much more than it is by thedisloyalty of persons towards the Government of the United States. Those personal animosities would break out and overawe the civilauthorities, but for the presence there of the troops of the UnitedStates. . . . They are more unfriendly to Union men, natives of the Stateof Tennessee, or of the South, who have been in the Union army, thanthey are to men of Northern birth. "

In the border states, society was sharply divided, and feeling wasbitter. In eastern Tennessee, eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, and partsof Arkansas and Missouri, returning Confederates met harsher treatmentthan did the Unionists in the lower South. Trowbridge says of eastTennessee: "Returning rebels were robbed; and if one had stolen unawaresto his home, it was not safe for him to remain there. I saw in Virginiaone of these exiles, who told me how homesickly he pined for the hillsand meadows of east Tennessee, which he thought the most delightfulregion in the world. But, there was a rope hanging from a tree for himthere, and he dared not go back. 'The bottom rails are on top, ' saidhe, 'that is the trouble. ' The Union element, and the worst part of theUnion element, was uppermost. " Confederates and Confederate sympathizersin Maryland, West Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, were disfranchised. In West Virginia, Tennessee, and Missouri, "war trespass" suits werebrought against returning Confederates for military acts done inwar time. In Missouri and West Virginia, strict test oaths excludedConfederates from office, from the polls, and from the professions ofteaching, preaching, and law. On the other hand in central and westernKentucky, the predominant Unionist population, themselves sufferingthrough the abolition of slavery, and by the objectionable operationsof the Freedmen's Bureau and the unwise military administration, showed more sympathy for the Confederates, welcomed them home, and soonrelieved them of all restrictions. 

Still another element of discord was added by the Northerners who cameto exploit the South. Many mustered-out soldiers proposed to stay. Speculators of all kinds followed the withdrawing Confederate lines andwith the conclusion of peace spread through the country, but theywere not cordially received. With the better class, the Southerners, especially the soldiers, associated freely if seldom intimately. But theconduct of a few of their number who considered that the war had openedall doors to them, who very freely expressed their views, gave advice, condemned old customs, and were generally offensive, did much to bringall Northerners into disrepute. Tactlessly critical letters published inNorthern papers did not add to their popularity. The few Northern womenfelt the ostracism more keenly than did the men. Benjamin C. Truman, anagent of President Johnson, thus summed up the situation: "There is aprevalent disposition not to associate too freely with Northern menor to receive them into the circles of society; but it is far fromunsurmountable. Over Southern society, as over every other, woman reignssupreme, and they are more embittered against those whom they deemthe authors of all their calamities than are their brothers, sons, and husbands. " But, of the thousands of Northern men who overcame thereluctance of the Southerners to social intercourse, little was heard. Many a Southern planter secured a Northern partner or sold him half hisplantation to get money to run the other half. For the irritations of1865, each party must take its share of responsibility. 

Had the South assisted in a skillful and adequate publicity, muchdisastrous misunderstanding might have been avoided. The North knew aslittle of the South as the South did of the North, but the North waseager for news. Able newspaper correspondents like Sidney Andrews ofthe Boston Advertiser and the Chicago Tribune, who opposed PresidentJohnson's policies, Thomas W. Knox of the New York Herald, who had givenGeneral Sherman so much trouble in Tennessee, Whitelaw Reid, who wrotefor several papers and tried cotton planting in Louisiana, and JohnT. Trowbridge, New England author and journalist, were dispatchedsouthwards. Chief of the President's investigators was General CarlSchurz, German revolutionist, Federal soldier, and soon to be radicalRepublican, who held harsh views of the Southern people; and there werebesides Harvey M. Watterson, Kentucky Democrat and Unionist, thefather of "Marse" Henry; Benjamin C. Truman, New England journalist andsoldier, whose long report was perhaps the best of all; Chief JusticeChase, who was thinking mainly of "How soon can the Negro vote?"; andGeneral Grant, who made a report so brief that, notwithstanding itsvalue, it attracted little attention. In addition a constant stream ofinformation 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 realizedthe importance of supplying the North with correct information aboutactual conditions. The letters and reports, they thought, humiliatedthem; inquiry was felt to be prying and gloating. "Correspondents haveadded a new pang to surrender, " it was said. The South was proud andrefused to be catechized. From the Northern point of view, the South, a new and strange region with strange customs and principles, was ofcourse, not to be considered as quite normal and American, but therewas on the part of many correspondents a determined attempt to describethings as they were. And yet the North persisted in its unsympatheticqueries when it seemed to have a sufficient answer in the reports ofGrant, Schurz, and Truman. 

Grant's opinion was short and direct: "I am satisfied that the mass ofthinking men of the South accept the present situation of affairs ingood faith. . . . The citizens of the Southern States are anxious to returnto self-government within the Union as soon as possible. " Truman came tothe conclusion that "the rank and file of the disbanded Southern army. . . Are the backbone and sinew of the South. . . . To the disbanded regimentsof the rebel army, both officers and men, I look with great confidenceas the best and altogether the most hopeful element of the South, thereal 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 inthe South, but it is an entire mistake to apply these terms to a wholepeople. I would as soon travel alone, unarmed, through the South asthrough the North. The South I left is not at all the South I hear andread about in the North. From the sentiment I hear in the North, I wouldscarcely recognize the people I saw, and, except their politics, I likedso well. I have entire faith that the better classes are friendly to theNegroes. "

Carl Schurz on the other hand was not so favorably impressed. "Theloyalty of the masses and most of the leaders of the southern people, "he said, "consists in submission to necessity. There is, except inindividual instances, an entire absence of that national spirit whichforms the basis of true loyalty and patriotism. " Another governmentofficial in Florida was quite doubtful of the Southern whites. "I wouldpin them down at the point of the bayonet, " he declared, "so close thatthey would not have room to wiggle, and allow intelligent colored peopleto go up and vote in preference to them. The only Union element in theSouth proper. . . Is among the colored people. The whites will treat youvery kindly to your face, but they are deceitful. I have often thought, and so expressed myself, that there is so much deception among thepeople of the South since the rebellion, that if an earthquake shouldopen and swallow them up, I was fearful that the devil would bedethroned and some of them take his place. "

The point of view of the Confederate military leaders was exhibited byGeneral Wade Hampton in a letter to President Johnson and by General Leein 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 thetrue and highest sense of the word, she is loyal. By this I mean thatshe intends to abide by the laws of the land honestly, to fulfill allher obligations faithfully and to keep her word sacredly, and I assertthat the North has no right to demand more of her. You have no rightto ask, or expect that she will at once profess unbounded love to thatUnion from which for four years she tried to escape at the cost ofher best blood and all her treasures. " General Lee in order to set anexample applied through General Grant for a pardon under the amnestyproclamation and soon afterwards he wrote to Governor Letcher: "Allshould unite in honest efforts to obliterate the effects of war, and torestore the blessings of peace. They should remain, if possible, in thecountry; 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 thehealing of all dissensions; I have invariably recommended this coursesince the cessation of hostilities, and have endeavored to practice itmyself. "

Southerners of the Confederacy everywhere, then, accepted thedestruction of slavery and the renunciation of state sovereignty; theywelcomed an early restoration of the Union, without any punishment ofleaders of the defeated cause. But they were proud of their Confederaterecords though now legally "loyal" to the United States; they consideredthe Negro as free but inferior, and expected to be permitted to fix hisstatus in the social organization and to solve the problem of free laborin their own way. To embarrass the easy and permanent realization ofthese views there was a society disrupted, economically prostrate, deprived of its natural leaders, subjected to a control not alwayswisely conceived nor effectively exercised, and, finally, containingwithin its own population unassimilated elements which presentedproblems 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 warfought for any other cause, the task of reconstruction would, withouthim, have been comparatively simple. With him, however, reconstructionmeant more than the restoring of shattered resources; it meant the moreor less successful attempt to obtain and secure for the freedman civiland political rights, and to improve his economic and social status. In 1861, the American Negro was everywhere an inferior, and most of hisrace were slaves; in 1865, he was no longer a slave, but whether he wasto be serf, ward, or citizen was an unsettled problem; in 1868, he wasin the South the legal and political equal, frequently the superior, ofthe white; and before the end of the reconstruction period he was madeby the legislation of some states and by Congress the legal equal of thewhite even in certain social matters. 

The race problem which confronted the American people had no parallelin the past. British and Spanish-American emancipation of slaves hadaffected only small numbers or small regions, in which one race greatlyoutnumbered the other. The results of these earlier emancipations of theNegroes and the difficulties of European states in dealing with subjectwhite populations were not such as to afford helpful example to Americanstatesmen. But since it was the actual situation in the Southern Statesrather than the experience of other countries which shaped the policiesadopted during reconstruction, it is important to examine with some carethe conditions in which the Negroes in the South found themselves at theclose of the war. 

The Negroes were not all helpless and without experience "when freedomcried 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 between1862 and 1865, and many thousands of slaves had followed raiding Federalforces to freedom or had escaped through the Confederate lines. Stateemancipation in Missouri, Maryland, West Virginia, and Tennessee, andthe practical application of the Emancipation Proclamation where theUnion armies were in control ended slavery for many thousands more. Wherever the armies marched, slavery ended. This was true even inKentucky, where the institution was not legally abolished until theadoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. Altogether more than a millionNegroes were free and to some extent habituated to freedom before May1865. 

 * A Negro phrase much used in referring to emancipation. 

Most of these war-emancipated Negroes were scattered along the bordersof the Confederacy, in camps, in colonies, in the towns, on refugeefarms, at work with the armies, or serving as soldiers in the ranks. There were large working colonies along the Atlantic coast from Marylandto Florida. The chief centers were near Norfolk, where General Butlerwas the first to establish a "contraband" camp, in North Carolina, andon the Sea Islands of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, which hadbeen seized by the Federal fleet early in the war. To the Sea Islandsalso were sent, in 1865, the hordes of Negroes who had followed GeneralSherman out of Georgia and South Carolina. Through the border statesfrom the Atlantic to the Mississippi and along both sides of theMississippi from Cairo, Illinois, to New Orleans, there were otherrefugee camps, farms, and colonies. For periods varying from one to fouryears these free Negroes had been at work, often amid conditions highlyunfavorable to health, under the supervision of officers of the TreasuryDepartment 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 theyhad been in 1861. Even their years of bondage had done somethingfor them, for they knew how to work and they had adopted in part thelanguage, habits, religion, and morals of the whites. But slavery hadnot made them thrifty, self-reliant, or educated. Frederick Douglasssaid of the Negro at the end of his servitude: "He had none of theconditions of self-preservation or self-protection. He was free from theindividual 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 slaveto 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 freethe Negro thought he must leave his old master, change his name, quitwork for a time, perhaps get a new wife, and hang around the Federalsoldiers in camp or garrison, or go to the towns where the Freedmen'sBureau was in process of organization. To the Negroes who remained athome--and, curiously enough, for a time at least many did so--the newsof freedom was made known somewhat ceremonially by the master or hisrepresentative. The Negroes were summoned to the "big house, " told thatthey were free, and advised to stay on for a share of the crop. Thedescription by Mrs. Clayton, the wife of a Southern general, willserve for many: "My husband said, 'I think it best for me to inform ourNegroes of their freedom. ' So he ordered all the grown slaves to come tohim, and told them they no longer belonged to him as property, but wereall free. 'You are not bound to remain with me any longer, and I have aproposition to make to you. If any of you desire to leave, I propose tofurnish you with a conveyance to move you, and with provisions for thebalance of the year. ' The universal answer was, 'Master, we want to stayright here with you. ' In many instances the slaves were so infatuatedwith the idea of being, as they said, 'free as birds' that they lefttheir homes and consequently suffered; but our slaves were not sofoolish. "*

 * "Black and White under the Old Regime", p. 158, The Negroes, however, had learned of their freedom before their oldmasters returned from the war; they were aware that the issues of thewar involved in some way the question of their freedom or servitude, and through the "grapevine telegraph, " the news brought by the invadingsoldiers, and the talk among the whites, they had long been kept fairlywell informed. What the idea of freedom meant to the Negroes it isdifficult to say. Some thought that there would be no more work and thatall would be cared for by the Government; others believed that educationand opportunity were about to make them the equal of their masters. Themajority of them were too bewildered to appreciate anything except thefact that they were free from enforced labor. 

Conditions were most disturbed in the so-called "Black Belt, " consistingof about two hundred counties in the most fertile parts of the South, where the plantation system was best developed and where by far themajority of the Negroes were segregated. The Negroes in the four hundredmore remote and less fertile "white" counties, which had been lessdisturbed by armies, were not so upset by freedom as those of theBlack Belt, for the garrisons and the larger towns, both centers ofdemoralization, were in or near the Black Belt. But there was a movingto and fro on the part of those who had escaped from the South or hadbeen captured during the war or carried into the interior of the Southto prevent capture. To those who left slavery and home to find freedomwere added those who had found freedom and were now trying to getback home or to get away from the Negro camps and colonies whichwere breaking up. A stream of immigration which began to flow tothe southwest affected Negroes as far as the Atlantic coast. In theconfusion of moving, families were broken up, and children, wife, orhusband were often lost to one another. The very old people and theyoung children were often left behind for the former master to care for. Regiments of Negro soldiers were mustered out in every large town andtheir numbers were added to the disorderly mass. Some of the Federalgarrisons and Bureau stations were almost overwhelmed by the numbers ofblacks who settled down upon them waiting for freedom to bestow its fullmeasure of blessing, and many of the Negroes continued to remain in ademoralized 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 Negropopulation lost as many by disease as the whites had lost in war. Ill-fed, crowded in cabins near the garrisons or entirely withoutshelter, and unaccustomed to caring for their own health, the blacks whowere searching for freedom fell an easy prey to ordinary diseases and toepidemics. Poor health conditions prevailed for several years longer. In1870, Robert Somers remarked that "the health of the whites has greatlyimproved since the war, while the health of the Negroes has declinedtill the mortality of the colored population, greater than the mortalityof the whites was before the war, has now become so markedly greater, that nearly two colored die for every white person out of equal numbersof each. "

Morals and manners also suffered under the new dispensation. In thecrowded and disease-stricken towns and camps, the conditions under whichthe roving Negroes lived were no better for morals than for health, for here there were none of the restraints to which the blacks hadbeen accustomed and which they now despised as being a part of theirservitude. But in spite of all the relief that could be given there wasmuch want. In fact, to restore former conditions the relief agenciesfrequently cut off supplies in order to force the Negroes back to workand to prevent others from leaving the country for the towns. Butthe hungry freedmen turned to the nearest food supply, and "spilin degypshuns" (despoiling the Egyptians, as the Negroes called stealing fromthe whites) became an approved means of support. Thefts of hogs, cattle, poultry, field crops, and vegetables drove almost to desperation thosewhites who lived in the vicinity of the Negro camps. When the ex-slavefelt obliged to go to town, he was likely to take with him a team andwagon and his master's clothes if he could get them. 

The former good manners of the Negro were now replaced by impudence anddistrust. There were advisers among the Negro troops and other agitatorswho assured them that politeness to whites was a mark of servitude. Pushing and crowding in public places, on street cars and on thesidewalks, and impudent speeches everywhere marked generally the limitof rudeness. And the Negroes were, in this respect, perhaps no worsethan those European immigrants who act upon the principle that badmanners are a proof of independence. 

The year following emancipation was one of religious excitement forlarge numbers of the blacks. Before 1865, the Negro church members wereattached to white congregations or were organized into missions, withnearly always a white minister in charge and a black assistant. With thecoming of freedom the races very soon separated in religious matters. For this there were two principal reasons: the Negro preachers couldexercise more influence in independent churches; and new churchorganizations from the North were seeking Negro membership. SometimesNegro members were urged to insist on the right "to sit together" withthe whites. In a Richmond church a Negro from the street pushed his wayto the communion altar and knelt. There was a noticeable pause; thenGeneral Robert E. Lee went forward and knelt beside the Negro; and thecongregation followed his example. But this was a solitary instance. When the race issue was raised by either color, the church membershipusually divided. There was much churchgoing by the Negroes, day andnight, and church festivities and baptisms were common. The blackspreferred immersion and, wanted a new baptism each time they changedto a new church. Baptizings in ponds, creeks, or rivers were greatoccasions and were largely attended. "Shouting" the candidates went intothe 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 wereheavily handicapped by their extreme poverty and their ignorance. Thetotal value of free Negro property ran up into the millions in 1860, but the majority of the Negroes had nothing. There were a few educatedNegroes in the South, and more in the North and in Canada, but the massof the race was too densely ignorant to furnish its own leadership. Thecase, however, was not hopeless; the Negro was able to work and in largeterritories had little competition; wages were high, even though paidin shares of the crop; the cost of living was low; and land was cheap. Thousands seemed thirsty for an education and crowded the schools whichwere available. It was too much, however, to expect the Negro to takeimmediate advantage of his opportunities. What he wanted was a longholiday, a gun and a dog, and plenty of hunting and fishing. He musthave Saturday at least for a trip to town or to a picnic or a circus; hedid not wish to be a servant. When he had any money, swindlers reapeda harvest. They sold him worthless finery, cheap guns, preparations tobleach the skin or straighten the hair, and striped pegs which, when setup on the master's plantation, would entitle the purchaser to "40 acresand a mule. "

The attitude of the Negroes' employers not infrequently complicated thesituation which they sought to better. The old masters were, as a rule, skeptical of the value of free Negro labor. Carl Schurz thought thisattitude boded ill for the future: "A belief, conviction, or prejudice, or whatever you may call it, " he said, "so widely spread and apparentlydeeply rooted as this, that the Negro will not work without physicalcompulsion, is certainly calculated to have a very serious influenceupon the conduct of the people entertaining it. It naturally produced adesire to preserve slavery in its original form as much and as long aspossible. . . Or to introduce into the new system that element of physicalcompulsion which would make the Negro work. " The Negro wished to be freeto leave his job when he pleased, but, as Benjamin C. Truman stated inhis report to President Johnson, a "result of the settled belief in theNegro's inferiority, and in the necessity that he should not be left tohimself without a guardian, is that in some sections he is discouragedfrom leaving his old master. I have known of planters who considered itan offence against neighborhood courtesy for another to hire their oldhands, and in two instances that were reported the disputants came toblows over the breach of etiquette. " The new Freedmen's Bureau insistedupon written contracts, except for day laborers, and this undoubtedlykept many Negroes from working regularly, for they were suspicious ofcontracts. Besides, the agitators and the Negro troops led them tohope for an eventual distribution of property. An Alabama planter thusdescribed the situation in December 1865:

"They will not work for anything but wages, and few are able to paywages. They are penniless but resolute in their demands. They expect tosee all the land divided out equally between them and their old mastersin time to make the next crop. One of the most intelligent black men Iknow told me that in a neighboring village, where several hundredblacks were congregated, he does not think that as many as three madecontracts, although planters are urgent in their solicitations andoffering highest prices for labor they can possibly afford to pay. Thesame man informed me that the impression widely prevails that Congressis about to divide out the lands, and that this impression is givenout by Federal soldiers at the nearest military station. It cannot bedisguised that in spite of the most earnest efforts of their old masterto conciliate and satisfy them, the estrangement between races increasesin its extent and bitterness. Nearly all the Negro men are armed withrepeaters, and many of them carry them openly, day and night. "

The relations between the races were better, however, than conditionsseemed to indicate. The whites of the Black Belt were better disposedtoward the Negroes than were those of the white districts. It was in thetowns and villages that most of the race conflicts occurred. Allwhites agreed that the Negro was inferior, but there were many who weregrateful for his conduct during the war and who wished him well. Butothers, the policemen of the towns, the "loyalists, " those who hadlittle but pride of race and the vote to distinguish them from theblacks, 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 thanthe poor whites, but also better than a majority of the Northern menwho go South to rent plantations. " John T. Trowbridge, the novelist, whorecorded his impressions of the South after a visit in 1865, was of theopinion that the Unionists "do not like niggers. " "For there is, "he said, "more prejudice against color among the middle and poorerclasses--the Union men of the South who owned few or no slaves--thanamong the planters who owned them by scores and hundreds. " The reportsof the Freedmen's Bureau are to the same effect. A Bureau agent inTennessee testified: "An old citizen, a Union man, said to me, saidhe, 'I tell you what, if you take away the military from Tennessee, thebuzzards 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 thedisturbing influences of the black troops, of some officials of theBureau, and of some of the missionary teachers and preachers, caused thewhites to fear insurrections and to take measures for protection. Secretsemi-military organizations were formed which later developed into theKu Klux orders. When, however, New Year's Day 1866 passed without thehoped-for distribution of Property, the Negroes began to settle down. 

At the beginning of the period of reconstruction, it seemed possiblethat the Negro race might speedily fall into distinct economic groups, for there were some who had property and many others who had the abilityand the opportunity to acquire it; but the later drawing of race linesand the political disturbances of reconstruction checked this tendency. It was expected also that the Northern planters who came South in largenumbers in 1865-66 might, by controlling the Negro labor and by theuse of more efficient methods, aid in the economic upbuilding of thecountry. But they were ignorant of agricultural matters and incapable ofwisely controlling the blacks; and they failed because at one time theyplaced too much trust in the Negroes and at another treated them tooharshly and expected too much of them. 

The question of Negro suffrage was not a live issue in the South untilthe 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 PresidentJohnson in 1865 had merely mentioned the subject, though Chief JusticeChase and prominent radical members of Congress, as well as numerousabolitionists, had framed a Negro suffrage platform. But the Southernwhites, considering the matter an impossibility, gave it littleconsideration. There was, however, both North and South, a tendency tosee a connection between the freedom of the Negroes and their politicalrights and thus to confuse civil equality with political and socialprivileges. But the great masses of the whites were solidly opposedto 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 theJoint Committee on Reconstruction: "If you compel us to carry throughuniversal suffrage of colored, men. . . It will prove quite an *incubusupon us in the organization of a national union party of white men;it will furnish our opponents with a very effective weapon of offenseagainst us. "

There were, however, some Southern leaders of ability and standing who, by 1866, were willing to consider Negro suffrage. These men, among themGeneral Wade Hampton of South Carolina and Governor Robert Patton ofAlabama, were of the slaveholding class, and they fully counted on beingable to control the Negro's vote by methods similar to those actuallyput in force a quarter of a century later. The Negroes were not as yetpolitically organized were not even interested in politics, and themaster class might reasonably hope to regain control of them. WhitelawReid published an interview with one of the Hamptons which describes thesituation exactly:

"A brother of General Wade Hampton, the South Carolina Hotspur, was onboard. He saw no great objection to Negro suffrage, so far as the whiteswere concerned; and for himself, South Carolinian and secessionistthough he was, he was quite willing to accept it. He only dreaded itseffect on the blacks themselves. Hitherto they had in the main, beenmodest and respectful, and mere freedom was not likely to spoil them. But the deference to them likely to be shown by partisans eager fortheir votes would have a tendency to uplift them and unbalance them. Beyond this, no harm would be done the South by Negro suffrage. The oldowners would cast the votes of their people almost as absolutely andsecurely as they cast their own. If Northern men expected in this way tobuild up a northern party in the South, they were gravely mistaken. Theywould only be multiplying the power of the old and natural leaders ofSouthern politics by giving every vote to a former slave. Heretoforesuch men had served their masters only in the fields; now they would dono less faithful service at the polls. If the North could stand it, theSouth could. For himself, he should make no special objection to Negrosuffrage as one of the terms of reorganization, and if it came, he didnot think the South would have much cause to regret it. "

To sum up the situation at this time: the Negro population at the closeof the war constituted a tremendous problem for those in authority. Therace was free, but without status, without leaders, without property, and without education. Probably a fourth of them had some experience infreedom before the Confederate armies surrendered, and the servitude ofthe other three millions ended very quickly and without violence. But inthe Black Belt, where the bulk of the black population was to be found, the labor system was broken up, and for several months the bewilderedfreedmen wandered about or remained at home under conditions which werebad for health, morals, and thrift. The Northern Negroes did not furnishthe expected leadership for the race, and the more capable men in theSouth showed a tendency to go North. The unsettled state of the Negroesand their expectation of receiving a part of the property of the whiteskept the latter uneasy and furnished the occasion of frequent conflicts. Not the least of the unsettling influences at work upon the Negropopulation were the colored troops and the agitators furnished by theFreedmen's Bureau, the missions, and the Bureau schools. But at thebeginning of the year 1866, the situation appeared to be clearing, andthe social and economic revolution seemed on the way to a quieter endingthan 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 delicateproblems of readjustment. Were the seceded States in or out of theUnion? If in the Union, what rights had they? If they were not inthe Union, what was their status? What was the status of the SouthernUnionist, of the ex-Confederate? What punishments should be inflictedupon the Southern people? What authority, executive or legislative, should carry out the work of reconstruction? The end of the warbrought with it, in spite of much discussion, no clear answer to theseperplexing questions. 

Unfortunately, American political life, with its controversies overcolonial government, its conflicting interpretations of writtenconstitutions, and its legally trained statesmen, had by the middleof the nineteenth century produced a habit of political thought whichdemanded the settlement of most governmental matters upon a theoreticalbasis. And now in 1865, each prominent leader had his own plan ofreconstruction fundamentally irreconcilable with all the others, becauserigidly theoretical. During the war the powers of the executive hadbeen greatly expanded and a legislative reaction was to be expected. TheConstitution called for fresh interpretation in the light of the CivilWar and its results. 

The first theory of reconstruction may be found in theCrittenden-Johnson resolutions of July 1861, which declared that the warwas being waged to maintain the Union under the Constitution and thatit should cease when these objects were obtained. This would havebeen subscribed to in 1861 by the Union Democrats and by most of theRepublicans, and in 1865 the conquered Southerners would have been gladto reenter the Union upon this basis; but though in 1865 the resolutionstill expressed the views of many Democrats, the majority of Northernpeople had moved away from this position. 

The attitude of Lincoln, which in 1865 met the views of a majority ofthe Northern people though not of the political leaders, was that "noState can upon its mere motion get out of the Union, " that the Statessurvived though there might be some doubt about state governments, andthat "loyal" state organizations might be established by a populationconsisting largely of ex-Confederates who had been pardoned by thePresident and made "loyal" for the future by an oath of allegiance. Reconstruction was, Lincoln thought, a matter for the executive tohandle. But that he was not inflexibly committed to any one plan isindicated by his proclamation after the pocket veto of the Wade-DavisBill and by his last speech, in which he declared that the question ofwhether the seceded States were in the Union or out of it was "merely apernicious abstraction. " In addition, Lincoln said:

"We are all agreed that the seceded States, so called, are out of theirproper practical relation with the Union, and that the sole object ofthe government, civil and military, in regard to those States is toagain get them into that proper practical relation. I believe that itis not only possible, but in fact easier, to do this without deciding oreven considering whether these States have ever been out of the Union, than with it. Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterlyimmaterial whether they had ever been abroad. Let us all join in doingthe acts necessary to restore the proper practical relations betweenthese States and the Union, and each forever after innocently indulgehis own opinion whether in doing the acts he brought the States fromwithout into the Union, or only gave them proper assistance, they neverhaving been out of it. "

President Johnson's position was essentially that of Lincoln, but hisattitude toward the working out of the several problems was different. He maintained that the states survived and that it was the duty of theexecutive to restore them to their proper relations. "The true theory, "said he, "is that all pretended acts of secession were from thebeginning null and void. The States cannot commit treason nor screenindividual citizens who may have committed treason any more than theycan make valid treaties or engage in lawful commerce with any foreignpower. The states attempting to secede placed themselves in a conditionwhere their vitality was impaired, but not extinguished; their functionssuspended, but not destroyed. " Lincoln would have had no severepunishments inflicted even on leaders, but Johnson wanted to destroythe "slavocracy, " root and branch. Confiscation of estates would, hethought, be a proper measure. He said on one occasion: "Traitors shouldtake 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 restoredto citizenship. Treason should be made odious, and traitors must bepunished 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 considerablemodification but to the last he held to the plan of executiverestoration based upon state perdurance. Neither Lincoln nor Johnsonfavored a change of Southern institutions other than the abolition ofslavery, though each recommended a qualified Negro suffrage. 

There were, however, other theories in the field, notably those of theradical Republican leaders. According to the state-suicide theory ofCharles Sumner, "any vote of secession or other act by which any Statemay undertake to put an end to the supremacy of the Constitution withinits territory is inoperative and void against the Constitution, and whensustained by force it becomes a practical ABDICATION by the State ofall rights under the Constitution, while the treason it involves stillfurther works an instant FORFEITURE of all those functions and powersessential to the continued existence of the State as a body politic, so that from that time forward the territory falls under the exclusivejurisdiction of Congress as other territory, and the State, beingaccording to the language of the law felo de se, ceases to exist. "Congress should punish the "rebels" by abolishing slavery, by givingcivil and political rights to Negroes, and by educating them with thewhites. 

Not essentially different, but harsher, was Thaddeus Stevens's plansfor treating the South as a conquered foreign province. Let the victorstreat the seceded States "as conquered provinces and settle them withnew men and exterminate or drive out the present rebels as exiles. "Congress in dealing with these provinces was not bound even by theConstitution, "a bit of worthless parchment, " but might legislate as itpleased in regard to slavery, the ballot, and confiscation. Withregard to the white population, he said: "I have never desired bloodypunishments to any great extent. But there are punishments quite asappalling, and longer remembered, than death. They are more advisable, because they would reach a greater number. Strip a proud nobility oftheir bloated estates; reduce them to a level with plain republicans;send them forth to labor, and teach their children to enter theworkshops or handle a plow, and you will thus humble the proudtraitors. " Stevens and Sumner agreed in reducing the Southern Statesto a territorial status. Sumner would then take the principles of theDeclaration of Independence as a guide for Congress, while Stevens wouldleave Congress absolute. Neither considered the Constitution as of anyvalidity in this crisis. 

As a rule the former abolitionists were in 1865 advocates of votes andlands for the Negro, in whose capacity for self-rule they had completeconfidence. The view of Gerrit Smith may be regarded as typical of theabolitionist position:

"Let the first condition of peace with them be that no people in therebel States shall ever lose or gain civil or political rights by reasonof their race or origin. The next condition of peace be that our blackallies in the South--those saviours of our nation--shall share withtheir poor white neighbors in the subdivisions of the large landedestates of the South. Let the only other condition be that the rebelmasses shall not, for say, a dozen years, be allowed access to theballot-box, or be eligible to office; and that the like restrictions befor life on their political and military leaders. . . . The mass of theSouthern blacks fall, in point of intelligence, but little, ifany, behind the mass of the Southern whites. . . . In reference to thequalifications of the voter, men make too much account of the head andtoo little of the heart. The ballot-box, like God, says: 'Give me yourheart. ' The best-hearted men are the best qualified to vote; and, inthis light, the blacks, with their characteristic gentleness, patience, and affectionateness, are peculiarly entitled to vote. We cannot wonderat Swedenborg's belief that the celestial people will be found in theinterior of Africa; nor hardly can we wonder at the legend that the godscame down every year to sup with their favorite Africans. "

One of the most statesmanlike proposals was made by Governor JohnA. Andrew of Massachusetts. If, forgetting their theories, theconservatives could have united in support of a restoration conceived inhis spirit, the goal might have been speedily achieved. Andrew demandeda reorganization, based upon acceptance of the results of the war, butcarried through with the aid of "those who are by their intelligence andcharacter the natural leaders of their people and who surely will leadthem by and by. These men cannot be kept out forever, " said he, "forthe capacity of leadership is a gift, not a device. They whose courage, talents, and will entitle them to lead, will lead . . . . If we cannotgain their support of the just measures needful for the work of safereorganization, reorganization will be delusive and full of danger. Theyare the most hopeful subjects to deal with. They have the brain and theexperience and the education to enable them to understand. . . The presentsituation. They have the courage as well as the skill to lead the peoplein the direction their judgments point. . . . Is it consistent with reasonand our knowledge of human nature, to believe the masses of Southern menable to face about, to turn their backs on those they have trusted andfollowed, and to adopt the lead of those who have no magnetic hold ontheir hearts or minds? It would be idle to reorganize by the coloredvote. If the popular vote of the white race is not to be had in favor ofthe guarantees justly required, then I am in favor of holding on--justwhere we are now. I am not in favor of a surrender of the presentrights of the Union to a struggle between a white minority aided bythe freedmen on one hand, against the majority of the white race on theother. I would not consent, having rescued those states by arms fromSecession and rebellion, to turn them over to anarchy and chaos. "

The Southerners, Unionists as well as Confederates, had their viewsas well, but at Washington these carried little influence. The formerConfederates would naturally favor the plan which promised best for thewhite South, and their views were most nearly met by those of PresidentLincoln. Although he held that in principle a new Union had arisenout of the war, as a matter of immediate political expediency he wasprepared to build on the assumption that the old Union still existed. The Southern Unionists cared little for theories; they wanted theConfederates punished, themselves promoted to high offices, and theNegro kept from the ballot box. 

Even at the beginning of 1866, it was not too much to hope that themajority 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 disfranchisementof the leading Confederates, and some arrangement which would keep theSouth from profiting by representation based on the non-voting Negropopulation. But amid many conflicting policies, none attained tocontinuous and compelling authority. 

The plan first put to trial was that of President Lincoln. It was adefinite plan designed to meet actual conditions and, had he lived, hemight have been able to carry it through successfully. Not atheorist, but an opportunist of the highest type, sobered by yearsof responsibility in war time, and fully understanding the precarioussituation in 1865, Lincoln was most anxious to secure an earlyrestoration of solidarity with as little friction as possible. Betterthan most Union leaders he appreciated conditions in the South, theproblem of the races, the weakness of the Southern Unionists, and theadvantage of calling in the old Southern leaders. He was generous andconsiderate; he wanted no executions or imprisonments; he wished theleaders to escape; and he was anxious that the mass of Southerners bewelcomed back without loss of rights. "There is, " he declared, "toolittle respect for their rights, " an unwillingness, in short, to treatthem as fellow citizens. 

This executive policy had been applied from the beginning of the waras opportunity offered. The President used the army to hold the BorderStates in the Union, to aid in "reorganizing" Unionist Virginia and inestablishing West Virginia. The army, used to preserve the Union mightbe used also to restore disturbed parts of it to normal condition. Assuming that the "States" still existed, "loyal" state governments werethe first necessity. By his proclamation of December 8, 1863, Lincolnsuggested a method of beginning the reconstruction: he would pardon anyConfederate, except specified classes of leaders, who took an oathof loyalty for the future; if as many as ten percent of the votingpopulation of 1860, thus made loyal, should establish a state governmentthe executive would recognize it. The matter of slavery must, indeed, be left to the laws and proclamations as interpreted by the courts, butother institutions should continue as in 1861. 

This plan was inaugurated in four States which had been in partcontrolled by the Federal army from nearly the beginning of the war:Tennessee (1862), Louisiana (1862), Arkansas (1862), and Virginia afterthe formation of West Virginia (1863). For each state Lincoln appointeda military governor: for Tennessee, Andrew Johnson; for Arkansas, JohnS. Phelps; for Louisiana, General Shepley. In Virginia he recognized the"reorganized" government, which had been transferred to Alexandriawhen the new State of West Virginia was formed. The military governorsundertook the slow and difficult work of reorganization, however, with but slight success owing to the small numbers of Unionists and ofConfederates who would take the oath. But by 1864, "ten percent" stategovernments were established in Arkansas and Louisiana, and progress wasbeing made in Tennessee. 

Congress was impatient of Lincoln's claim to executive precedence in thematter of reconstruction, and in 1864, both Houses passed theWade-Davis Bill, a plan which asserted the right of Congress to controlreconstruction and foreshadowed a radical settlement of the question. Lincoln disposed of the bill by a pocket veto and, in a proclamationdated July 8, 1864, stated that he was unprepared "to be inflexiblycommitted to any single plan of restoration, " or to discourage loyalcitizens by setting aside the governments already established inLouisiana and Arkansas, or to recognize the authority of Congress toabolish slavery. He was ready, however, to cooperate with the peopleof any State who wished to accept the plan prepared by Congress andhe hoped that a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery would beadopted. 

Lincoln early came to the conclusion that slavery must be destroyed, andhe had urgently advocated deportation of the freedmen, for he believedthat the two races could not live in harmony after emancipation. The nearest he came to recommending the vote for the Negro was in acommunication to Governor Hahn of Louisiana in March 1864: "I barelysuggest, for your private consideration, whether some of the coloredpeople may not be let in, as for instance, the very intelligent, andespecially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks. They wouldprobably help, in some trying time to come, to keep the jewel of libertywithin the family of freedom. But this is only a suggestion, not to thepublic, but to you alone. "

Throughout the war President Lincoln assumed that the stateorganizations in the South were illegal because disloyal and that newgovernments must be established. But just at the close of the war, probably carried away by feeling, he all but recognized the VirginiaConfederate Government as competent to bring the state back into theUnion. While in Richmond on April 5, 1865, he gave to Judge Campbell astatement of terms: the national authority to be restored; no recessionon slavery by the executive; hostile forces to disband. The next day henotified General Weitzel, in command at Richmond, that he might permitthe Virginia Legislature to meet and withdraw military and other supportfrom the Confederacy. But these measures met strong opposition inWashington, especially from Secretary Stanton and Senator Wade and othercongressional leaders, and on the 11th of April, Lincoln withdrew hispermission 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 hislast public speech, and Sumner, who was strongly opposed to his policy, remarked that "the President's speech and other things augur confusionand uncertainty in the future, with hot contumacy. " At a cabinet meetingon the 14th of April, Lincoln made his last statement on the subject. It was fortunate, he said, that Congress had adjourned, for "we shallreanimate the States" before Congress meets; there should be no killing, no persecutions; there was too much disposition to treat the Southernpeople "not as fellow citizens. "

The possibility of a conciliatory restoration ended when Lincoln wasassassinated. Moderate, firm, tactful, of great personal influence, nota doctrinaire, and not a Southerner like Johnson, Lincoln might have"prosecuted peace" successfully. His policy was very unlike thatproposed by the radical leaders. They would base the new governmentsupon the loyalty of the past plus the aid of enfranchised slaves; hewould establish the new regime upon the loyalty of the future. LikeGovernor Andrew he thought that restoration must be effected by thewilling efforts of the South. He would aid and guide but not force thepeople. If the latter did not wish restoration, they might remain undermilitary rule. There should be no forced Negro suffrage, no sweepingdisfranchisement of whites, no "carpetbaggism. "

The work of President Johnson demands for its proper understanding someconsideration of the condition of the political parties at the close ofthe war, for politics had much to do with reconstruction. The Democraticparty, divided and defeated in the election of 1860, lost its Southernmembers in 1861 by the secession and remained a minority party duringthe remainder of the war. It retained its organization, however, andin 1864 polled a large vote. Discredited by its policy of opposition toLincoln's administration, its ablest leaders joined the Republicansin support of the war. Until 1869, the party was poorly representedin Congress although, as soon as hostilities ended, the War Democratsshowed a tendency to return to the old party. As to reconstruction, theparty stood on the Crittenden-Johnson resolutions of 1861, though mostDemocrats were now willing to have slavery abolished. 

The Republican party--frankly sectional and going into power on thesingle issue of opposition to the extension of slavery--was forced bythe secession movement to take up the task of preserving the Union bywar. Consequently, the party developed new principles, welcomed the aidof the War Democrats, and found it advisable to drop its name andwith its allies to form the Union or National Union party. It wasthis 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 WarDemocrats. When the war ended, the conservative leaders were anxiousto hold the Union party together in order to be in a better positionto settle the problems of reconstruction, but the movement of the WarDemocrats back to their old party tended to leave in the Union partyonly its Republican members, with the radical leaders dominating. 

In the South the pressure of war so united the people that partydivisions disappeared for a time, but the causes of division continuedto exist, and two parties, at least, would have developed had thepressure been removed. Though all factions supported the war after itbegan, the former Whigs and Douglas Democrats, when it was over, likedto remember that they had been "Union" men in 1860 and expected toorganize in opposition to the extreme Democrats, who were now chargedwith being responsible for the misfortunes of the South. They were ina position to affiliate with the National Union party of the North ifproper inducements were offered, while the regular Democrats were readyto rejoin their old party. But the embittered feelings resulting fromthe murder of Lincoln and the rapid development of the struggle betweenPresident Johnson and Congress caused the radicals "to lump the oldUnion Democrats and Whigs together with the secessionists--and many weredriven where they did not want to go, into temporary affiliation withthe Democratic party. " Thousands went very reluctantly; the old Whigs, indeed, were not firmly committed to the Democrats until radicalreconstruction had actually begun. Still other "loyalists" in theSouth were prepared to join the Northern radicals in advocating thedisfranchisement of Confederates and in opposing the granting ofsuffrage 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 toreunion had few qualifications for the task. Johnson was ill-educated, narrow, and vindictive and was positive that those who did not agreewith him were dishonest. Himself a Southerner, picked up by the NationalUnion Convention of 1864, as Thaddeus Stevens said, from "one of thosedamned 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 intensedislike of the "slavocracy, " as he called the political aristocracy ofthe South. Like many other American leaders he was proud of his humbleorigin, but unlike many others he never sloughed off his backwoodscrudeness. He continually boasted of himself and vilified thearistocrats, who in return treated him badly. His dislike of them wasso marked that Isham G. Harris, a rival politician, remarked that "ifJohnson were a snake, he would lie in the grass to bite the heels ofrich men's children. " His primitive notions of punishment were evidentin 1865 when he advocated imprisonment, execution, and confiscation; butlike other reckless talkers he often said more than he meant. 

When Johnson succeeded to the presidency, the feeling was nearlyuniversal among the radicals, according to Julian, that he would provea godsend to the country, for "aside from Mr. Lincoln's known policy oftenderness to the rebels, which now so jarred upon the feelings of thehour, his well known views on the subject of reconstruction were asdistasteful as possible to radical Republicans. " Senator Wade declaredto the President: "Johnson, we have faith in you. By the gods, therewill be no trouble now in running the Government!" To which Johnsonreplied: "Treason is a crime and crime must be punished. Treason mustbe made infamous and traitors must be impoverished. " These words arean index to the speeches of Johnson during 1863-65. Even his radicalfriends feared that he would be too vindictive. For a few weeks he wasmuch inclined to the radical plans, and some of the leaders certainlyunderstood that he was in favor of Negro suffrage, the supreme testof radicalism. But when the excitement caused by the assassination ofLincoln and the break-up of the Confederacy had moderated somewhat, Johnson saw before him a task so great that his desire for violentmeasures was chilled. He must disband the great armies and bring all warwork to an end; he must restore intercourse with the South, which hadbeen blockaded for years; he must for a time police the country, lookafter the Negroes, and set up a temporary civil government; and finallyhe must work out a restoration of the Union. Sobered by responsibilityand by the influence of moderate advisers, he rather quickly adoptedLincoln's policy. Johnson at first set his face against the movementstoward reconstruction by the state governments already organized andby those people who wished to organize new governments on Lincoln's tenpercent plan. As soon as possible the War Department notified the Unioncommanders to stop all attempts at reconstruction and to pursue andarrest all Confederate governors and other prominent civil leaders. ThePresident was even anxious to arrest the military leaders who had beenparoled but was checked in this desire by General Grant's firm protest. His cabinet advisers supported Johnson in refusing to recognize theSouthern state governments; but three of them--Seward, Welles, andMcCulloch--were influential in moderating his zeal for inflictingpunishments. Nevertheless, he soon had in prison the most prominent ofthe Confederate civilians and several general officers. The soldiers, however, were sent home, trade with the South was permitted, and theFreedmen's Bureau was rapidly extended. 

Previous to this Johnson had brought himself to recognize, early inMay, the Lincoln "ten percent" governments of Louisiana, Tennessee, andArkansas, and the reconstructed Alexandria government of Virginia. Thusonly seven states were left without legal governments, and to bringthose 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 hisAmnesty Proclamation, Johnson made a longer list of exceptions aimedespecially at the once wealthy slave owners. On the same day heproclaimed the restoration of North Carolina. A provisional governor, W. W. Holden, was appointed and directed to reorganize the civil governmentand to call a constitutional convention elected by those who had takenthe amnesty oath. This convention was to make necessary amendmentsto the constitution and to "restore said State to its constitutionalrelations to the Federal Government. " It is to be noted that Johnsonfixed 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 theseveral States composing the Federal Union have rightfully exercisedfrom the origin of the government to the present time. " The Presidentalso directed the various cabinet officers to extend the work of theirdepartments over the Confederate States and ordered the army officersto assist the civil authorities. During the next six weeks, similarmeasures were undertaken for the remaining six states of theConfederacy. 

To set up the new order, army officers were first sent into every countyto administer the amnesty oath and thus to secure a "loyal" electorate. In each state the provisional governor organized out of the remains ofthe Confederate local regime a new civil government. Confederate localofficials who could and would take the amnesty oath were directed toresume office until relieved; the laws of 1861, except those relating toslavery, were declared to be in force; the courts were directed touse special efforts to crush lawlessness; and the old jury lists weredestroyed and new ones were drawn up containing only the names of thosewho had taken the amnesty oath. Since there was no money in any statetreasury, small sums were now raised by license taxes. A full staffof department heads was appointed, and by July 1865, the provisionalgovernments were in fair working order. 

To the constitutional conventions, which met in the fall, it was madeclear, through the governors, that the President would insist upon threeconditions: the formal abolition of slavery, the repudiation of theordinance of secession, and the repudiation of the Confederate war debt. To Governor Holden he telegraphed: "Every dollar of the debt created toaid the rebellion against the United States should be repudiated finallyand forever. The great mass of the people should not be taxed to pay adebt to aid in carrying on a rebellion which they in fact, if left tothemselves, were opposed to. Let those who had given their means for theobligations of the state look to that power they tried to establish inviolation of law, constitution, and will of the people. They must meettheir 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 shouldbe "repealed" or declared "now and always null and void, " and somequibbling as to whether slavery was being destroyed by state action orhad already been destroyed by war. 

In the old state constitutions, very slight changes were made. Ofthese the chief were concerned with the abolition of slavery and thearrangement of representation and direct taxation on the basis of whitepopulation. Little effort was made to settle any of the Negro problems, and in all states the conventions left it to the legislatures to makelaws for the freedmen. There was no discussion of Negro, suffrage in theconventions, but President Johnson sent what was for him a remarkablecommunication to Governor Sharkey of Mississippi:

"If you could extend the elective franchise to all persons of colorwho can read the Constitution of the United States in English and writetheir names, and to all persons of color who own real estate valued atnot less than two hundred and fifty dollars and pay taxes thereon, you would completely disarm the adversary and set an example the otherstates will follow. This you can do with perfect safety, and you wouldthus place Southern States in reference to free persons of colorupon the same basis with the free states. . . . And as a consequence theradicals, who are wild upon Negro franchise, will be completely foiledin their attempts to keep the Southern states from renewingtheir relations to the Union by not accepting their senators andrepresentatives. "

In deciding upon a basis of representation, it was clear that themajority of delegates desired to lessen the influence of the Black Beltand place the control of the government with the "up country. " In theAlabama convention Robert M. Patton, then a delegate and later governor, frankly avowed this object, and in South Carolina, Governor Perry urgedthe convention to give no consideration to Negro suffrage, "because thisis a white man's government, " and if the Negroes should vote they wouldbe controlled by a few whites. A kindly disposition toward the Negroeswas general except on the part of extreme Unionists, who opposed anyfavors to the race. "This is a white man's country" was a doctrine towhich all the conventions subscribed. 

The conventions held brief sessions, completed their work, andadjourned, after directing that elections be held for state and localofficers and for members of Congress. Before December the appointedlocal officials had been succeeded by elected officers; members ofCongress were on their way to Washington; the state legislatures wereassembling or already in session; and the elected governors wereready to take office. It was understood that as soon as enough statelegislatures ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to make it a part of theConstitution, the President would permit the transfer of authority tothe new governors. The legislature of Mississippi alone was recalcitrantabout the amendment, and before January 1866, the elected officials wereeverywhere installed except in Texas, where the work was not completeduntil March. When Congress met in December 1865, the President reportedthat all former Confederate States except Texas were ready to bereadmitted. Congress, however, refused to admit their senators andrepresentatives, and thus began the struggle which ended over a yearlater with the victory of the radicals and the undoing of the work ofthe two Presidents. 

The plan of the Presidents was at best only imperfectly realized. It wasfound impossible to reorganize the Federal Administration in the Southwith men who could subscribe to the "ironclad oath, " for nearly all whowere competent to hold office had favored or aided the Confederacy. It was two years before more than a third of the post offices could beopened. The other Federal departments were in similar difficulties, andat last women and "carpetbaggers" were appointed. The Freedmen'sBureau, which had been established coincidently with the provisionalgovernments, assumed jurisdiction over the Negroes, while the armyauthorities very early took the position that any man who claimed to bea Unionist should not be tried in the local courts but must be given abetter chance in a provost court. Thus a third or more of the populationwas withdrawn from the control of the state government. In severalstates the head of the Bureau made arrangements for local magistratesand officials to act as Bureau officials, and in such cases the twoauthorities acted in cooperation. The army of occupation, too, exertedan authority which not infrequently interfered with the workings of thenew state government. Nearly everywhere there was a lack of certaintyand efficiency due to the concurrent and sometimes conflictingjurisdictions 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 therefusal of Congress to recognize them. Nevertheless, in spite of thisuncertainty they continued to function as states during the year ofcontroversy which followed; the courts were opened and steadily grewin 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 newconditions and enacted new laws for the emancipated blacks. To all thisprogress in reorganization, the action of Congress was a severe blow, since it gave notice that none of the problems of reconstruction wereyet solved. An increasing spirit of irritation and independence wasobserved throughout the states in question, and at the elections theformer Confederates gained more and more offices. The year was markedin the South by the tendency toward the formation of parties, by thedevelopment of the "Southern outrages" issue, by an attempt to frustrateradical action, and finally by a lineup of the great mass of the whitesin opposition to the Fourteenth Amendment and other radical plans ofCongress. 

The Joint Committee on Reconstruction, appointed when Congress refusedto accept the work of President Johnson, proceeded during several monthsto take testimony and to consider measures. The testimony, which wastaken chiefly to support opinions already formed, appeared to prove thatthe Negroes and the Unionists were so badly treated that the Freedmen'sBureau and the army must be kept in the South to protect them; that freeNegro labor was a success but that the whites were hostile to it; thatthe whites were disloyal and would, if given control of the Southerngovernments and admitted to Congress, constitute a danger to the nationand especially to the party in power. 

To convince the voters of the North of the necessity of dealingdrastically with the South a campaign of misrepresentation was begunin the summer of 1865, which became more and more systematic andunscrupulous as the political struggle at Washington grew fiercer. Newspapers regularly ran columns headed "Southern Outrages, " and everyconceivable mistreatment of blacks by whites was represented as takingplace on a large scale. As General Richard Taylor said, it would seemthat about 1866 every white man, woman, and child in the South begankilling and maltreating Negroes. In truth, there was less and lessground for objection to the treatment of the blacks as time went on andas the several agencies of government secured firmer control over thelawless elements. But fortunately for the radicals their contentionseemed to be established by riots on a large scale in Memphis and NewOrleans where Negroes were killed and injured in much greater numberthan whites. 

The rapid development of the radical plans of Congress checked thetendency toward political division in the South. Only a small party ofrabid Unionists would now affiliate with the radicals, while allthe others reluctantly held together, endorsed Johnson's policy, andattempted to affiliate with the disintegrating National Union party. But the defeat of the President's policies in the elections of 1866, theincreasing radicalism of Congress as shown by the Civil Rights Act, theexpansion of the Freedmen's Bureau, the report of the Joint Committeeon Reconstruction, and the proposal of the Fourteenth Amendment ledfarsighted Southerners to see that the President was likely to lose inhis fight with Congress. 

Now began, in the latter half of 1866, with some cooperation in theNorth and probably with the approval of the President, a movement in theSouth to forestall the radicals by means of a settlement which, althoughless severe than the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, might yet beacceptable to Congress. One feature of the settlement was to be someform of Negro suffrage, either by local action or by constitutionalamendment. Those behind this scheme were mainly of the former governingclass. Negro suffrage, they thought, would take the wind out of theradical sails, the Southern whites would soon be able to control theblacks, representation in Congress would be increased, and the BlackBelt would perhaps regain its former political hegemony. It is hardlynecessary to say that the majority of the whites were solidly opposed tosuch a measure. But it was hoped to carry it under pressure throughthe legislature or to bring it about indirectly through rulings of theFreedmen's Bureau. 

Coincident with this scheme of partial Negro suffrage an attemptwas made by the conservative leaders in Washington, working with theSoutherners, to propose a revised Fourteenth Amendment which wouldgive the vote to competent Negroes and not disfranchise the whites. Aconference of Southern governors met in Washington early in 1867 anddrafted such an amendment. But, it was too late. 

Meanwhile the Fourteenth Amendment submitted by Congress had beenbrought before the Southern legislatures, and during the winter of1866-67 it was rejected by all of them. There was strong oppositionto it because it disfranchised the leading whites, but perhaps theprincipal reason for its rejection was that the Southern people were notsure that still more severe conditions might not be imposed later. 

While the President was "restoring" the states which had seceded andstruggling with Congress, the Border States of the South, includingTennessee (which was admitted in 1866 by reason of its radical stategovernment), were also in the throes of reconstruction. Though there wasless military interference in these than in the other states, many ofthe problems were similar. All had the Freedmen's Bureau, the Negrorace, the Unionists, and the Confederates; in every state, exceptKentucky, Confederates were persecuted, the minority was in control, and"ring" rule was the order of the day; but in each state there weresigns of the political revolution which a few years later was to put theradicals out of power. 

The executive plan for the restoration of the Union, begun by Lincolnand adopted by Johnson, was, as we have seen, at first applied in allthe states which had seceded. A military governor was appointed in eachstate by the President by virtue of his authority as commander in chief. This official, aided by a civilian staff of his own choice and supportedby the United States army and other Federal agencies, reorganized thestate administration and after a few months turned the state and localgovernments over to regularly elected officials. Restoration shouldnow have been completed, but Congress refused to admit the senatorsand representatives of these states, and entered upon a fifteenmonths' struggle with the President over details of the methods of thereconstruction. Meanwhile the Southern States, though unrepresentedin Congress, continued their activities, with some interference fromFederal authorities, until Congress in 1867 declared their governmentsnonexistent. 

The work begun by Lincoln and Johnson deserved better success. Theoriginal plan restored to political rights only a small number ofUnionists, the lukewarm Confederates, and the unimportant. But in spiteof the threatening speeches of Johnson, he used his power of pardonuntil none except the most prominent leaders were excluded. Thepersonnel of the Johnson governments was fair. The officials were, in the main, former Douglas Democrats and Whigs, respectable andconservative, but not admired or loved by the people. The conventionsand the legislatures were orderly and dignified and manifested a desireto accept the situation. 

There were no political parties at first, but material for severalexisted. If things had been allowed to take their course, there wouldhave arisen a normal cleavage between former Whigs and Democrats, between the upcountry and the low country, between the slaveholdersand the nonslaveholders. The average white man in these governments waswilling to be fair to the Negro but was not greatly concerned about hisfuture. In the view of most white people, it was the white man who wasemancipated. The white districts had no desire to let the power returnto the Black Belt by giving the Negro the ballot, for the vote of theNegroes, they believed, would be controlled by their former masters. 

Johnson's adoption of Lincoln's plan gave notice to all that theradicals had failed to control him. He and they had little in common;they wished to uproot a civilization, while he wished to punishindividuals; they were not troubled by constitutional scruples, while hewas the strictest of State Rights Democrats; they thought principallyof the Negro and his potentialities, while Johnson was thinking of theemancipated 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 werethey citizens. What was to be done with them and for them? The Southernanswer to this question may be found in the so-called "Black Laws, "which were enacted by the state governments set up by PresidentJohnson. The views of the dominant North may be discerned in part inthe organization and administration of the Freedmen's Bureau. The twosections saw the same problem from different angles, and their proposedsolutions were of necessity opposed in principle and in practice. 

The South desired to fit the emancipated Negro race into the new socialorder by frankly recognizing his inferiority to the whites. In somethings racial separation was unavoidable. New legislation consequentlymust be enacted, because the slave codes were obsolete; because theold laws made for the small free Negro class did not meet presentconditions; and because the emancipated blacks could not be broughtconveniently and at once under laws originally devised for a whitepopulation. The new laws must meet many needs; family life, morals, andconduct must be regulated; the former slave must be given a status incourt in order that he might be protected in person and property; theold, the infirm, and the orphans must be cared for; the white race mustbe protected from lawless blacks and the blacks from unscrupulous andviolent whites; the Negro must have an opportunity for education; andthe roving blacks must be forced to get homes, settle down, and go towork. 

Pending such legislation the affairs of the Negro remained in controlof the unpopular Freedmen's Bureau--a "system of espionage, " as JudgeClayton of Alabama called it, and, according to Governor Humphreys ofMississippi, "a hideous curse" under which white men were persecuted andpillaged. Judge Memminger of South Carolina, in a letter to PresidentJohnson, emphasized the fact that the whites of England and the UnitedStates gained civil and political rights through centuries of slowadvancement and that they were far ahead of the people of Europeanstates. Consequently, it would be a mistake to give the freedmen astatus equal to that of the most advanced whites. Rather, let the UnitedStates profit by the experience of the British in their emancipationpolicies and arrange a system of apprenticeship for a period oftransition. When the Negro should be fit, let him be advanced tocitizenship. 

Most Southern leaders agreed that the removal of the master's protectionwas a real loss to the Negro which must be made good to some extent bygiving the Negro a status in court and by accepting Negro testimony inall cases in which blacks were concerned. The North Carolina committeeon laws for freedmen agreed with objectors that "there are comparativelyfew of the slaves lately freed who are honest" and truthful, butmaintained that the Negroes were capable of improvement. The chiefexecutives of Mississippi and Florida declared that there was no dangerto the whites in admitting the more or less unreliable Negro testimony, for the courts and juries would in every case arrive at a propervaluation of it. Governors Marvin of Florida and Humphreys ofMississippi advocated practical civil equality, while in North Carolinaand several other States there was a disposition to admit Negrotestimony only in cases in which Negroes were concerned. The NorthCarolina committee recommended the abolition of whipping as a punishmentunfit for free people, and most States accepted this principle. Even in1865, 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 thewhites were to be more strictly regulated; in others, the Negroes. 

There was further general agreement that in economic relations bothraces must be protected, each from the other; but it is plain that theleaders believed that the Negro had less at stake than the white. TheNegro was disposed to be indolent; he knew little of the obligationsof 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 itprovided for orphans only. Further, the laws enacted must force theNegroes to settle down, to work, and to hold to contracts. Memmingershowed that, without legislation to enforce contracts and to secureeviction of those who refused to work, the white planter in the Southwas wholly at the mercy of the Negro. The plantations were scattered, the laborers' houses were already occupied, and there was no labormarket to which a planter could go if the laborers deserted his fields. 

What would the Negro become if these leaders of reconstruction wereto have their way? Something better than a serf, something less than acitizen--a second degree citizen, perhaps, with legal rights about equalto those of white women and children. Governor Marvin hoped to make ofthe race a good agricultural peasantry; his successor was anxious thatthe blacks should be preferred to European immigrants; others agreedwith Memminger that after training and education he might be advanced tofull citizenship. 

These opinions are representative of those held by the men who, Memminger excepted, were placed in charge of affairs by PresidentJohnson and who were not especially in sympathy with the Negroes orwith the planters but rather with the average white. All believed thatemancipation was a mistake, but all agreed that "it is not the Negro'sfault" and gave no evidence of a disposition to perpetuate slavery underanother name. 

The legislation finally framed showed in its discriminatory features thecombined influence of the old laws for free Negroes, the vagrancy lawsof North and South for whites, the customs of slavery times, the BritishWest Indies legislation for ex-slaves, and the regulations of the UnitedStates War and Treasury Departments and of the Freedmen's Bureau--allmodified and elaborated by the Southern whites. In only two states, Mississippi and South Carolina, did the legislation bulk large inquantity; in other states discriminating laws were few; in still otherstates none were passed except those defining race and prohibitingintermarriage. 

In all of the state laws there were certain common characteristics, among which were the following: the descendant of a Negro was to beclassed as a Negro through the third generation, * even though one parentin each generation was white; intermarriage of the races was prohibited;existing slave marriages were declared valid and for the future marriagewas generally made easier for the blacks than for the whites. In allstates the Negro was given his day in court, and in cases relating toNegroes his testimony was accepted; in six states he might testifyin any case. When provision was made for schooling, the rule of raceseparation was enforced. In Mississippi the "Jim Crow car, " or separatecar for Negroes, was invented. In several states the Negro had to havea license to carry weapons, to preach, or to engage in trade. InMississippi, a Negro could own land only in town; in other states hecould purchase land only in the country. Why the difference? No oneknows and probably few knew at the time. Some of the legislation wasundoubtedly hasty and ill-considered. 

 * Fourth in Tennessee. 

But the laws relating to apprenticeship, vagrancy, and enforced punitiveemployment turned out to be of greater practical importance. On thesesubjects the legislation of Mississippi and South Carolina was the mostextreme. In Mississippi orphans were to be bound out, preferably to aformer master, if "he or she shall be a suitable person. " The masterwas given the usual control over apprentices and was bound by the usualduties, including that of teaching the apprentice. But the penalties for"enticing away" apprentices were severe. The South Carolina statute wasnot essentially different. The vagrancy laws of these two states were inthe main the same for both races, but in Mississippi the definitionof vagrancy was enlarged to include Negroes not at work, those "foundunlawfully assembling themselves together, " and "all white personsassembling themselves with freedmen. " It is to be noted that nearly allpunishment for petty offenses took the form of hiring out, preferablyto the former master or employer. The principal petty offenses were, itwould seem, vagrancy and "enticing away" laborers or apprentices. TheSouth Carolina statute contains some other interesting provisions. ANegro, man or woman, who had enjoyed the companionship of two or morespouses, must by April 1, 1866, select one of them as a permanentpartner; a farm laborer must "rise at dawn, " feed the animals, care forthe property, be quiet and orderly, and "retire at reasonable hours;"on Sunday the servants must take turns in doing the necessary work, andthey 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" servantsunder eighteen years of age. Other punishments were generally the samefor both races, except the hiring out for petty offenses. 

From the Southern point of view none of this legislation was regardedas a restriction of Negro rights but as a wide extension to the Negro ofrights never before possessed, an adaptation of the white man's lawsto his peculiar case. It is doubtful whether in some of the statesthe authorities believed that there were any discriminatory laws; theyprobably overlooked some of the free Negro legislation already on thestatute books. In Alabama, for example, General Wager Swayne, the headof the Freedmen's Bureau, reported that all such laws had either beendropped by the legislature or had been vetoed by the governor. Yet thestatute books do show some discriminations. There is a marked differencebetween earlier and later legislation. The more stringent laws wereenacted before the end of 1865. After New Year's Day had passed and theNegroes had begun to settle down, the legislatures either passed mildlaws or abandoned all special legislation for the Negroes. Later in1866, several states repealed the legislation of 1865. 

In so far as the "Black Laws" discriminated against the Negro they werenever enforced but were suspended from the beginning by the army and theFreedmen's Bureau. They had, however, a very important effect upon thatsection of Northern opinion which was already suspicious of the goodfaith of the Southerners. They were part of a plan, some believed, toreenslave the Negro or at least to create by law a class of serfs. Thisbelief did much to bring about later radical legislation. 

If the "Black Laws" represented the reaction of the Southernlegislatures to racial conditions, the Freedmen's Bureau was thecorresponding result of the interest taken by the North in the welfareof the Negro. It was established just as the war was closing and aroseout of the various attempts to meet the Negro problems that aroseduring the war. The Bureau had always a dual nature, due in part to itsinheritance of regulations, precedents, and traditions from the variousattempts made during war time to handle the many thousands of Negroeswho came under Federal control, and in part to the humanitarian impulsesof 1865, born of a belief in the capacity of the Negro for freedom anda suspicion that the Southern whites intended to keep as much of slaveryas they could. The officials of the Bureau likewise were of two classes:those in control were for the most part army officers, standing asarbiters between white and black, usually just and seldom the victims oftheir sympathies but the mass of less responsible officials were men ofinferior ability and character, either blind partisans of the Negro orcorrupt and subject to purchase by the whites. 

In view of the fact that the Freedmen's Bureau was considered a newinstitution in 1865, it is rather remarkable how closely it followed inorganization, purpose, and methods the precedents set during the war bythe officers of the army and the Treasury. In Virginia, General Butler, in 1861, declared escaped slaves to be "contraband" and proceeded toorganize them into communities for discipline, work, food, and care. Hissuccessors in Virginia and North Carolina, and others in the Sea Islandsof Georgia and South Carolina, extended his plan and arranged a laborsystem with fixed wages, hours, and methods of work, and everywheremade use of the captured or abandoned property of the Confederates. InTennessee and Arkansas, Chaplain John Eaton of Grant's army employedthousands in a modified free labor system; and further down inMississippi and Louisiana Generals Grant, Butler, and Banks also putlarge numbers of captured slaves to work for themselves and for theGovernment. Everywhere, as the numbers of Negroes increased, the armycommanders divided the occupied Negro regions into districts undersuperintendents and other officials, framed labor laws, cooperatedwith benevolent societies which gave schooling and medical care to theblacks, and developed systems of government for them. 

The United States Treasury Department, attempting to execute theconfiscation laws for the benefit of the Treasury, appears now and thenas an employer of Negro labor on abandoned plantations. Either aloneor in cooperation with the army and charitable associations, it evensupervised Negro colonies, and sometimes it assumed practically completecontrol of the economic welfare of the Negro. This Department introducedin 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 apublic duty and idleness and vagrancy a crime. " All wanted him to work:the Treasury wanted cotton and other crops to sell; the lessees andspeculators wanted to make fortunes by his labor; and the army wantedto be free from the burden of the idle blacks. In spite of all theseministrations, the Negroes suffered much from harsh treatment, neglect, and unsanitary conditions. 

During 1863 and 1864, several influences were urging the establishmentof a national bureau or department to take charge of matters relating tothe African race. Some wished to establish on the borders of the South apaid labor system, which might later be extended over the entireregion, to get more slaves out of the Confederacy into this free laborterritory, 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 theburden of caring for the blacks and to protect the latter from the"northern harpies and bloodhounds" who had fastened upon them the lesseesystem. 

The discussion lasted for two years. The Freedmen's Inquiry Commission, after a survey of the field in 1863, recommended a consolidation of allefforts under an organization which should perpetuate the best featuresof the old system. But there was much opposition to this plan inCongress. The Negroes would be exploited, objected some; the schemegave too much power to the proposed organization, said others; anotherobjection was urged against the employment of a horde of incompetent andunscrupulous officeholders, for "the men who go down there and becomeyour overseers and Negro drivers will be your broken-down politiciansand your dilapidated preachers, that description of men who are too lazyto work and just a little too honest to steal. "

As the war drew to a close, the advocates of a policy of consolidationin Negro affairs prevailed, and on March 3, 1865, an act was approvedcreating in the War Department a Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, andAbandoned Lands. This Bureau was to continue for one year after theclose of the war, and it was to control all matters relating to freedmenand refugees, that is, Unionists who had been driven out of the South. Food, shelter, and clothing were to be given to the needy, and abandonedor confiscated property was to be used for or leased to freedmen. Atthe head of the Bureau was to be a commissioner with an assistantcommissioner for each of the Southern States. These officials and otheremployees must take the "ironclad" oath. 

It was planned that the Bureau should have a brief existence, but theinstitution and its wards became such important factors in politics thaton July 16, 1866, after a struggle with the President, Congress passedan act over his veto amplifying the powers of the Bureau and extendingit for two years longer. This continuation of the Bureau was due to manythings: to a belief that former slaveholders were not to be trusted indealing with the Negroes; to the baneful effect of the "Black Laws"upon Northern public opinion; to the struggle between the Presidentand Congress over reconstruction; and to the foresight of radicalpoliticians who saw in the institution an instrument for the politicalinstruction of the blacks in the proper doctrines. 

The new law was supplementary to the Act of 1865, but its additionalprovisions merely endorsed what the Bureau was already doing. Itauthorized the issue of medical supplies, confirmed certain sales ofland to Negroes, and provided that the promises which Sherman made in1865 to the Sea Island Negroes should be carried out as far as possibleand that no lands occupied by blacks should be restored to the ownersuntil the crops of 1866 were gathered; it directed the Bureau tocooperate with private charitable and benevolent associations, andit authorized the use or sale for school purposes of all confiscatedproperty; and finally it ordered that the civil equality of the Negro beupheld by the Bureau and its courts when state courts refused to acceptthe principle. By later laws the existence of the Bureau was extended toJanuary 1, 1869, in the unreconstructed States, but its educational andfinancial activities were continued until June 20, 1872. 

The chief objections to the Bureau from the conservative Northernpoint of view were summed up in the President's veto messages. The lawscreating it were based, he asserted, on the theory that a state of warstill existed; there was too great a concentration of power in the handsof a few individuals who could not be held responsible; with such alarge number of agents ignorant of the country and often working fortheir own advantage injustice would inevitably result; in spite ofthe fact that the Negro everywhere had a status in court, arbitrarytribunals were established, without jury, without regular procedureor rules of evidence, and without appeal; the provisions in regard toabandoned lands amounted to confiscation without a hearing; the Negro, who must in the end work out his own salvation, and who was protectedby the demand for his labor, would be deluded into thinking his futuresecure without further effort on his part; although nominally under theWar Department, the Bureau was not subject to military control; it waspractically a great political machine; and, finally, the states mostconcerned were not represented in Congress. 

The Bureau was soon organized in all the former slaveholding Statesexcept Delaware, with general headquarters in Washington and stateheadquarters at the various capitals. General O. O. Howard, who wasappointed commissioner, was a good officer, softhearted, honest, pious, and frequently referred to as "the Christian soldier. " Hewas fair-minded and not disposed to irritate the Southern whitesunnecessarily, but he was rather suspicious of their intentionstoward the Negroes, and he was a believer in the righteousness of theFreedmen's Bureau. He was not a good business man; and he was not beyondthe reach of politicians. At one time he was seriously disturbed in hisduties by the buzzing of the presidential bee in his bonnet. The membersof his staff were not of his moral stature, and several of them wereconnected with commercial and political enterprises which left theirmotives open to criticism. 

The assistant commissioners were, as a rule, general officers of thearmy, though a few were colonels and chaplains. * Nearly half of them hadduring the war been associated with the various attempts to handle theNegro problem, and it was these men who shaped the organization of theBureau. While few of them were immediately acceptable to the Southernwhites, only ten of them proved seriously objectionable on accountof personality, character, or politics. Among the most able shouldbe mentioned Generals Schofield, Swayne, Fullerton, Steedman, andFessenden, and Colonel John Eaton. The President had little or nocontrol over the appointment or discipline of the officials and agentsof the Bureau, except possibly by calling some of the higher armyofficers 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 arrangementwhich removed the Bureau from control by the military establishment, the military commander was in a few instances also appointed assistantcommissioner. Each assistant commissioner was aided by a headquartersstaff 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 andcharitable societies. The local agents were recruited from themembers of the Veteran Reserve Corps, the subordinate officers andnon-commissioned officers of the army, mustered-out soldiers, officersof Negro troops, preachers, teachers, and Northern civilians who hadcome South. As a class these agents were not competent persons to guidethe blacks in the ways of liberty or to arbitrate differences betweenthe races. There were many exceptions, but the Southern view asexpressed by General Wade Hampton had only too much foundation: "ThereMAY be, " he said, "an honest man connected with the Bureau. " John MinorBotts, a Virginian who had remained loyal to the Union, asserted thatmany of the agents were good men who did good work but that troubleresulted from the ignorance and fanaticism of others. The minoritymembers 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 fivebranches: relief work for both races; the regulation of Negro labor; theadministration of justice in cases concerning Negroes; the management ofabandoned and confiscated property; and the support of schools for theNegroes. 

The relief work which was carried on for more than four years consistedof caring for sick Negroes who were within reach of the hospitals, furnishing food and sometimes clothing and shelter to destitute blacksand whites, and transporting refugees of both races back to their homes. Nearly a hundred hospitals and clinics were established, and half amillion patients were treated. This work was greatly needed, especiallyfor the old and the infirm, and it was well done. The transportationof refugees did not reach large proportions, and after 1866 it wasentangled in politics. But the issue of supplies in huge quantitiesbrought much needed relief though at the same time a certain amount ofdemoralization. The Bureau claimed little credit, and is usuallygiven none, for keeping alive during the fall and winter of 1865-1866thousands of destitute whites. Yet more than a third of the foodissued was to whites, and without it many would have starved. NumerousConfederate soldiers on the way home after the surrender were fed by theBureau, and in the destitute white districts a great deal of sufferingwas relieved and prevented by its operations. The Negroes, dwelling forthe most part in regions where labor was in demand, needed relief fora shorter time, but they were attracted in numbers to the towns by freefood, and it was difficult to get them back to work. The political valueof the free food issues was not generally recognized until later in 1866and in 1867. 

During the first year of the Bureau an important duty of the agents wasthe supervision of Negro labor and the fixing of wages. Both officialsand planters generally demanded that contracts be written, approved, andfiled in the office of the Bureau. They thought that the Negroes wouldwork better if they were thus bound by contracts. The agents usuallyrequired that the agreements between employer and laborer cover suchpoints as the nature of the work, the hours, food and clothes, medicalattendance, shelter, and wages. To make wages secure, the laborer wasgiven a lien on the crop; to secure the planter from loss, unpaidwages might be forfeited if the laborer failed to keep his part of thecontract. When it dawned upon the Bureau authorities that other systemsof labor had been or might be developed in the South, they permittedarrangements for the various forms of cash and share renting. But itwas everywhere forbidden to place the Negroes under "overseers" or tosubject them to "unwilling apprenticeship" and "compulsory working outof debts. " The written contract system for laborers did not work outsuccessfully. The Negroes at first were expecting quite other fruits offreedom. One Mississippi Negro voiced what was doubtless the opinion ofmany when he declared that he "considered no man free who had to workfor a living. " Few Negroes would contract for more than three months andnone for a period beyond January 1, 1866, when they expected a divisionof lands among the ex-slaves. In spite of the regulations, most workedon oral agreements. In 1866 nearly all employers threw overboard thewritten contract system for labor and permitted oral agreements. Somestates had passed stringent laws for the enforcing of contracts, but inAlabama, Governor Patton vetoed such legislation on the ground that itwas not needed. General Swayne, the Bureau chief for the state, endorsedthe Governor's action and stated that the Negro was protected by hisfreedom to leave when mistreated, and the planter, by the need on thepart of the Negro for food and shelter. Negroes, he said, were afraid ofcontracts and, besides, contracts led to litigation. 

In order to safeguard the civil rights of the Negroes, the Bureau wasgiven authority to establish courts of its own and to supervise theaction of state courts in cases to which freedmen were parties. Themajority of the assistant commissioners made no attempt to let the statecourts handle Negro cases but were accustomed to bring all such casesbefore the Bureau or the provost courts of the army. In Alabama, quiteearly, and later in North Carolina, Mississippi, and Georgia, thewiser assistant commissioners arranged for the state courts to handlefreedmen's cases with the understanding that discriminating laws were tobe suspended. General Swayne in so doing declared that he was "unwillingto establish throughout Alabama courts conducted by persons foreignto her citizenship and strangers to her laws. " The Bureau courts wereinformal affairs, consisting usually of one or two administrativeofficers. There were no jury, no appeal beyond the assistantcommissioner, no rules of procedure, and no accepted body of law. Instate courts accepted by the Bureau, the proceedings in Negro cases wereconducted in the same manner as for the whites. 

The educational work of the Bureau was at first confined to cooperationwith such Northern religious and benevolent societies as were organizingschools and churches for the Negroes. After the first year, the Bureauextended financial aid and undertook a system of supervision over Negroschools. The teachers employed were Northern whites and Negroes in aboutequal numbers. Confiscated Confederate property was devoted to Negroeducation, and in several states the assistant commissioners collectedfees and percentages of the Negroes' wages for the benefit of theschools. In addition the Bureau expended about six million dollars. 

The intense dislike which the Southern whites manifested for theFreedmen's Bureau was due in general to their resentment of outsidecontrol of domestic affairs and in particular to unavoidabledifficulties inherent in the situation. Among the concrete causes ofSouthern hostility was the attitude of some of the higher officials andmany of the lower ones toward the white people. They assumed that thewhites were unwilling to accord fair treatment to the blacks in thematter of wages, schools, and justice. An official in Louisiana declaredthat the whites would exterminate the Negroes if the Bureau wereremoved. A few months later General Fullerton in the same State reportedthat trouble was caused by those agents who noisily demanded specialprivileges for the Negro but who objected to any penalties for hislawlessness and made of the Negroes a pampered class. General Tillsonin Georgia predicted the extinction of the "old time Southerner with hishate, cruelty, and malice. " General Fisk declared that "there are someof the meanest, unsubjugated and unreconstructed rascally revolutionistsin Kentucky that curse the soil of the country. . . A more select numberof vindictive, pro-slavery, rebellious legislators cannot be found thana majority of the Kentucky legislature. " There was a disposition tolecture the whites about their sins in regard to slavery and to pointout to them how far in their general ignorance and backwardness theyfell short of enlightened people. 

The Bureau courts were frequently conducted in an "illegal andoppressive manner, " with "decided partiality for the colored people, without regard to justice. " For this reason they were suspended for atime in Louisiana and Georgia by General Steedman and General Fullerton, and cases were then sent before military courts. Men of the highestcharacter were dragged before the Bureau tribunals upon frivolouscomplaints, were lectured, abused, ridiculed, and arbitrarily fined orotherwise punished. The jurisdiction of the Bureau courts weakened thecivil courts and their frequent interference in trivial matters was notconducive to a return to normal conditions. 

The inferior agents, not sufficiently under the control of theirsuperiors, were responsible for a great deal of this bad feeling. Manyof them held radical opinions as to the relations of the races, andinculcated these views in their courts, in the schools, and in the newNegro churches. Some were charged with even causing strikes and otherdifficulties in order to be bought off by the whites. The tendency oftheir work was to create in the Negroes a pervasive distrust of thewhites. 

The prevalent delusion in regard to an impending division of thelands among the blacks had its origin in the operation of the war-timeconfiscation laws, in some of the Bureau legislation, and in GeneralSherman's Sea Island order, but it was further fostered by the agentsuntil most blacks firmly believed that each head of a family was to get"40 acres and a mule. " This belief seriously interfered with industryand resulted also in widespread swindling by rascals who for years madea practice of selling fraudulent deeds to land with red, white, and bluesticks to mark off the bounds of a chosen spot on the former master'splantation. The assistant commissioners labored hard to disabuse theminds of the Negroes, but their efforts were often neutralized by theunscrupulous attitude of the agents. 

As the contest over reconstruction developed in Washington, theofficials of the Bureau soon recognized the political possibilities oftheir institution. After midyear of 1866, the Bureau became a politicalmachine for the purpose of organizing the blacks into the Union League, where the rank and file were taught that reenslavement would followDemocratic victories. Nearly all of the Bureau agents aided inthe administration of the reconstruction acts in 1867 and in theorganization of the new state and local governments and became officialsunder the new regime. They were the chief agents in capturing the solidNegro vote for the Republican party. 

Neither of the two plans for guiding the freedmen into a place inthe social order--the "Black Laws" and the Freedmen's Bureau--wassuccessful. The former contained a program which was better suited toactual conditions and which might have succeeded if it had been given afair trial. These laws were a measure of the extent to which the averagewhite would then go in "accepting the situation" so far as the blackswere concerned. And on the whole the recognition of Negro rights made inthese laws, and made at a time when the whites believed that they werefree to handle the situation, was remarkably fair. The Negroes latelyreleased from slavery were admitted to the enjoyment of the same rightsas the whites as to legal protection of life, liberty, and property, asto education and as to the family relation, limited only by the clearrecognition of the principles of political inferiority and socialseparation. Unhappily this legislation was not put to the testof practical experience because of the Freedmen's Bureau; it wasnevertheless skillfully used to arouse the dominant Northern party to acourse of action which made impossible any further effort to treat therace problem with due consideration to actual local conditions. 

Much of the work of the Freedmen's Bureau was of only temporary benefitto both races. The results of its more permanent work were not generallygood. The institution was based upon the assumption that the Negrorace must be protected from the white race. In its organization andadministration it was an impossible combination of the practical andthe theoretical, of opportunism and humanitarianism, of common sense andidealism. It failed to exert a permanently wholesome influence becauseits lesser agents were not held to strict accountability by theirsuperiors. Under these agents the alienation of the two races began, andthe ill feelings then aroused were destined to persist into a long andtroubled future. 

CHAPTER V. THE VICTORY OF THE RADICALS

The soldiers who fought through the war to victory or to defeat hadbeen at home nearly two years before the radicals developed sufficientstrength to carry through their plans for a revolutionary reconstructionof the Southern states. At the end of the war, a majority of theNorthern people would have supported a settlement in accordance withLincoln's policy. Eight months later a majority, but a smaller one, would have supported Johnson's work had it been possible to secure apopular decision on it. How then did the radicals gain the victory overthe conservatives? The answer to this question is given by James FordRhodes in terms of personalities: "Three men are responsible for theCongressional policy of Reconstruction: Andrew Johnson, by hisobstinacy and bad behavior; Thaddeus Stevens, by his vindictiveness andparliamentary tyranny; Charles Sumner, by his pertinacity in a misguidedhumanitarianism. " The President stood alone in his responsibility, but his chief opponents were the ablest leaders of a resolute band ofradicals. 

Radicalism did not begin in the Administration of Andrew Johnson. Lincoln had felt its covert opposition throughout the war, but hepossessed the faculty of weakening his opponents, while Johnson'sconduct 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 inthe Proclamation of December 1863. Lincoln's course was distasteful tothem because he did not admit the right of Congress to dictate terms, because of his liberal attitude towards former Confederates, and becausehe was conservative on the Negro question. A schism among the Republicansupporters of the war was with difficulty averted in 1864, when Fremontthreatened to lead the radicals in opposition to the "Union" party ofthe President and his conservative policy. 

The breach was widened by the refusal of Congress to admitrepresentatives from Arkansas and Louisiana in 1864 and to count theelectoral vote of Louisiana and Tennessee in 1865. The passage of theWade-Davis reconstruction bill in July 1864, and the protests of itsauthors after Lincoln's pocket veto called attention to the growingopposition. Severe criticism caused Lincoln to withdraw the propositionswhich he had made in April 1865, with regard to the restoration ofVirginia. In his last public speech, he referred with regret tothe growing spirit of vindictiveness toward the South. Much of theopposition to Lincoln's Southern policy was based not on radicalism, that is, not on any desire for a revolutionary change in the South, butupon a belief that Congress and not the executive should be entrustedwith the work of reorganizing the Union. Many congressional leaders werewilling to have Congress itself carry through the very policies whichLincoln had advocated, and a majority of the Northern people would haveendorsed them without much caring who was to execute them. 

The murder of Lincoln, the failure of the radicals to shape Johnson'spolicy as they had hoped, and the continuing reaction against theexcessive expansion of the executive power added strength to theopposition. But it was a long fight before the radical leaders won. Their victory was due to adroit tactics on their own part and tomistakes, bad judgment, and bad manners on the part of the President. When all hope of controlling Johnson had been given up, Thaddeus Stevensand other leaders of similar views began to contrive means to circumventhim. On December 1, 1865, before Congress met, a caucus of radicals heldin Washington agreed that a joint committee of the two Houses should beselected to which should be referred matters relating to reconstruction. This plan would thwart the more conservative Senate and gain a desirabledelay in which the radicals might develop their campaign. The next dayat a caucus of the Union party the plan went through without arousingthe suspicion of the supporters of the Administration. Next, through theinfluence of Stevens, Edward McPherson, the clerk of the House, omittedfrom the roll call of the House the names of the members from theSouth. The radical program was then adopted and a week later the Senateconcurred in the action of the House as to the appointment of a JointCommittee on Reconstruction. 

On the issues before Congress both Houses were split into rather clearlydefined factions: the extreme radicals with such leaders as Stevens, Sumner, Wade, and Boutwell; the moderate Republicans, chief among whomwere Fessenden and Trumbull; the administration Republicans led byRaymond, Doolittle, Cowan, and Dixon; and the Democrats, of whom theablest were Reverdy Johnson, Guthrie, and Hendricks. All except theextreme radicals were willing to support the President or to come tosome fairly reasonable compromise. But at no time were they given anopportunity to get together. Johnson and the administration leaders didlittle in this direction and the radicals made the most skillful use ofthe divisions among the conservatives. 

Whatever final judgment may be passed upon the radical reconstructionpolicy and its results, there can be no doubt of the political dexterityof 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 ofmaking ridiculous those who opposed him. He advocated confiscation, theproscription or exile of leading whites, the granting of the franchiseand of lands to the Negroes, and in Southern states the establishmentof territorial governments under the control of Congress. These statesshould, he said, "never be recognized as capable of acting in theUnion. . . Until the Constitution shall have been so amended as to makeit what the makers intended, and so as to secure perpetual ascendancy tothe party of the Union. "

Charles Sumner, the leader of the radicals in the Senate, was moved lessthan Stevens by personal hostility toward the whites of the South, buthis sympathy was reserved entirely for the blacks. He was unpractical, theoretical, and not troubled by constitutional scruples. To him theDeclaration of Independence was the supreme law, and it was the duty ofCongress to express its principles in appropriate legislation. UnlikeStevens, who had a genuine liking for the Negro, Sumner's sympathyfor the race was purely intellectual; for the individual Negro he feltrepulsion. 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 necessityof suffrage for all colored persons in the disorganized states. It willnot be enough if you give it to those who read and write; you willnot, in this way, acquire the voting force which you need there for theprotection of unionists, whether white or black. You will not securethe new allies who are essential to the national cause. " A leader of thesecond rank was his colleague Henry Wilson, who was also actuated bya desire for the Negro's welfare and for the perpetuation of theRepublican party, which he said contained in its ranks "more ofmoral and intellectual worth than was ever embodied in any politicalorganization in any land. . . Created by no man or set of men but broughtinto being by Almighty God himself. . . And endowed by the Creator withall political power and every office under Heaven. " Shellabarger of Ohiowas another important figure among the radicals. The following extractfrom one of his speeches gives an indication of his character andtemperament: "They [the Confederates] framed iniquity and universalmurder into law. . . . Their pirates burned your unarmed commerce uponevery sea. They carved the bones of the dead heroes into ornaments, and drank from goblets made out of their skulls. They poisoned yourfountains, put mines under your soldiers' prisons; organized bands whoseleaders were concealed in your homes; and commissions ordered the torchand yellow fever to be carried to your cities and to your women andchildren. They planned one universal bonfire of the North from LakeOntario to the Missouri. "

Among the lesser lights may be mentioned Morton and Wade, both bluff, coarse, and ungenerous, and thoroughly convinced that the Republicanparty had a monopoly of loyalty, wisdom, and virtues, and that by anymeans it must gain and keep control; Boutwell, fanatical and mediocre;and Benjamin Butler, a charlatan and demagogue. As a class the Westernradicals were less troubled by humanitarian ideals than were those ofthe East and sought more practical political results. 

The Joint Committee on Reconstruction which finally decided the fateof the Southern states was composed of eight radicals, four moderateRepublicans, and three Democrats. As James Gillespie Blaine wrotelater, "it was foreseen that in an especial degree the fortunes of theRepublican party would be in the keeping of the fifteen men who mightbe chosen. " This committee was divided into four subcommittees to taketestimony. 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 ofthe testimony was of the kind needed to support the contentions of theradicals that Negroes were badly treated in the South; that the whiteswere disloyal; that, should they be left in control, the Negro, freelabor, the nation, and the Republican party would be in danger; thatthe army and the Freedmen's Bureau must be kept in the South; and thata radical reconstruction was necessary. No serious effort, however, wasmade to ascertain the actual conditions in the South. Slow to formulatea definite plan, the Joint Committee guided public sentiment towardradicalism, converted gradually the Republican Congressmen, and littleby little undermined the power and influence of the President. 

Not until after the new year was it plain that there was to be a fightto the finish between Congress and the President. Congress had refusedin December 1865, to accept the President's program, but there was stillhope for a compromise. Many conservatives had voted for the delay merelyto assert the rights of Congress; but the radicals wanted time to framea program. The Northern Democrats were embarrassingly cordial in theirsupport of Johnson and so also were most Southerners. The moderates werenot far away from the position of the President and the administrationRepublicans. But the radicals skillfully postponed a test of strengthuntil Stevens and Sumner were ready. The latter declared that ageneration must elapse "before the rebel communities have so far beenchanged as to become safe associates in a common government. Time, therefore, we must have. Through time all other guarantees may beobtained; but time itself is a guarantee. "

To the Joint Committee were referred without debate all measuresrelating to reconstruction, but the Committee was purposely makinglittle progress--contented merely to take testimony and to act as aclearing house for the radical "facts" about "Southern outrages" whilewaiting for the tide to turn. The "Black Laws" and the election ofpopular Confederate leaders to office in the South were effectively usedto alarm the friends of the Negroes, and the reports from theBureau agents gave support to those who condemned the Southern stategovernments as totally inadequate and disloyal. 

So apparent was the growth of radicalism that the President, alarmed bythe attitude of Sumner and Stevens and their followers, began to fearfor the Constitution and forced the fight. The passage of a bill onFebruary 6, 1866, extending the life of the Freedmen's Bureau furnishedthe occasion for the beginning of the open struggle. On the 19th ofFebruary, Johnson vetoed the bill, and the next day an effort was madeto pass it over the veto. Not succeeding in this attempt, the Houseof Representatives adopted a concurrent resolution that Senators andRepresentatives from the Southern states should be excluded untilCongress declared them entitled to representation. Ten days later theSenate also adopted the resolution. 

Though it was not yet too late for Johnson to meet the conservativesof Congress on middle ground, he threw away his opportunity by anintemperate and undignified speech on the 22d of February to a crowd atthe White House. As usual when excited, he forgot the proprieties anddenounced the radicals as enemies of the Union and even went so faras to charge Stevens, Sumner, and Wendell Phillips with endeavoringto destroy the fundamental principles of the government. Such conductweakened his supporters and rejoiced his enemies. It was expected thatJohnson would approve the bill to confer civil rights upon the Negroes, but, goaded perhaps by the speeches of Stevens, he vetoed it on the 27thof March. Its patience now exhausted, Congress passed the bill overthe President's veto. To secure the requisite majority in the Senate, Stockton, Democratic Senator from New Jersey, was unseated on technicalgrounds, and Senator Morgan, who was "paired" with a sick colleague, broke his word to vote aye--for which Wade offensively thanked God. Themoderates had now fallen away from the President, and at least for thissession of Congress, his policies were wrecked. On the 16th of July, thesupplementary Freedmen's Bureau Act was passed over the veto, and onthe 24th of July Tennessee was readmitted to representation by a lawthe preamble of which asserted unmistakably that Congress had assumedcontrol of reconstruction. 

Meanwhile the Joint Committee on Reconstruction had made a reportasserting that the Southerners had forfeited all constitutional rights, that their state governments were not in constitutional form, and thatrestoration could be accomplished only when Congress and the Presidentacted together in fixing the terms of readmission. The uncompromisinghostility of the South, the Committee asserted, made necessary adequatesafeguards which should include the disfranchisement of the whiteleaders, either Negro suffrage or a reduction of white representation, and repudiation of the Confederate war debt with recognition of thevalidity of the United States debt. These terms were embodied in theFourteenth Amendment, which was adopted by Congress and sent to theStates on June 13, 1866. 

In the congressional campaign of 1866, reconstruction was almost thesole issue. For success the Administration must gain at least one-thirdof one house, while the radicals were fighting for two-thirds of eachHouse. If the Administration should fail to make the necessary gain, thework accomplished by the Presidents would be destroyed. The campaignwas bitter and extended through the summer and fall. Four nationalconventions were held: the National Union party at Philadelphia made arespectable 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; andanother convention of soldiers and sailors at Pittsburgh endorsed theradical policies. A convention of Confederate soldiers and sailors atMemphis endorsed the President, but the Southern support and that of theNorthern Democrats did not encourage moderate Republicans to vote forthe Administration. Three members of Johnson's Cabinet--Harlan, Speed, and Dennison--resigned because they were unwilling to follow their chieffurther in opposing Congress. 

The radicals had plenty of campaign material in the testimony collectedby the Joint Committee, in the reports of the Freedmen's Bureau, and inthe bloody race riots which had occurred in Memphis and New Orleans. Thegreatest blunder of the Administration was Johnson's speechmaking tourto the West which he called "Swinging Around the Circle. " Every time hemade a speech he was heckled by persons in the crowd, lost his temper, denounced Congress and the radical leaders, and conducted himself in anundignified manner. The election returns showed more than a two-thirdsmajority in each House against the President. The Fortieth Congresswould therefore be safely radical, and in consequence the Thirty-ninthwas encouraged to be more radical during its last session. 

Public interest now for a time turned to the South, where the FourteenthAmendment was before the state legislatures. The radicals, taunted withhaving no plan of reconstruction beyond a desire to keep the SouthernStates out of the Union, professed to see in the ratification of theFourteenth Amendment a good opportunity to readmit the States on a safebasis. The elections of 1866 had pointed to the ratification of theproposed amendment as an essential preliminary to readmission. Butwould additional demands be made upon the South? Sumner, Stevens, andFessenden were sure that Negro suffrage also must come, but Wade, Chase, Garfield, and others believed that nothing beyond the terms of theFourteenth Amendment would be asked. 

In the Southern legislatures there was little disposition to ratify theamendment. The rapid development of the radical policies during 1866 hadconvinced most Southerners that nothing short of a general humiliationand complete revolution in the South would satisfy the dominant party, and there were few who wished to be "parties to our own dishonor. " ThePresident advised the States not to accept the amendment, but severalSouthern leaders favored it, fearing that worse would come if theyshould reject it. Only in the legislatures of Alabama and Florida wasthere any serious disposition to accept the amendment; and in the endall the unreconstructed States voted adversely during the fall andwinter of 1866-67. This unanimity of action was due in part to thebelief that, even if the amendment were ratified, the Southern stateswould still be excluded, and in part to the general dislike of theproscriptive section which would disfranchise all Confederates ofprominence and result in the breaking up of the state governments. The example of unhappy Tennessee, which had ratified the FourteenthAmendment and had been readmitted, was not one to encourage conservativepeople in the other Southern states. 

The rejection of the amendment put the question of reconstructionsquarely before Congress. There was no longer a possibility ofaccomplishing the reconstruction of the Southern states by means ofconstitutional amendments. Some of the Border and Northern states werealready showing signs of uneasiness at the continued exclusion of theSouth. But if the Constitutional Amendment had failed, other meansof reconstruction were at hand, for the radicals now controlled theThirty-ninth Congress, from which the Southern representatives wereexcluded, and would also control the Fortieth Congress. 

Under the lead of Stevens and Sumner, the radicals now perfected theirplans. On January 8, 1867, their first measure, conferring thefranchise upon Negroes in the District of Columbia, was passed over thepresidential veto, though the proposal had been voted down a fewweeks earlier by a vote of 6525 to 35 in Washington and 812 to 1 inGeorgetown. In the next place, by an act of January 31, 1867, thefranchise was extended to Negroes in the territories, and on March 2, 1867, three important measures were enacted: the Tenure of Office Actand a rider to the Army Appropriation Act--both designed to limit thepower of the President--and the first Reconstruction Act. By the Tenureof Office Act, the President was prohibited from removing officeholdersexcept with the consent of the Senate; and by the Army Act he wasforbidden to issue orders except through General Grant or to relieve himof command or to assign him to command away from Washington unless atthe General's own request or with the previous approval of theSenate. The first measure was meant to check the removal of radicalofficeholders by Johnson, and the other, which was secretly drawn upfor Boutwell by Stanton, was designed to prevent the President fromexercising his constitutional command of the army. 

The first Reconstruction Act declared that no legal state governmentexisted in the ten unreconstructed states and that there was no adequateprotection for life and property. The Johnson and Lincoln governmentsin those States were declared to have no legal status and to be subjectwholly to the authority of the United States to modify or abolish. Theten states were divided into five military districts, over each of whicha general officer was to be placed in command. Military tribunals wereto supersede the civil courts where necessary. Stevens was willing torest here, though some of his less radical followers, disliking militaryrule but desiring to force Negro suffrage, inserted a provision inthe law that a State might be readmitted to representation upon thefollowing conditions: a constitutional convention must be held, themembers of which were elected by males of voting age without regardto color, excluding whites who would be disfranchised by the proposedFourteenth Amendment; a constitution including the same rule of suffragemust be framed, ratified by the same electorate, and approved byCongress; and lastly, the legislatures elected under this constitutionmust ratify the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, after which, ifthe Fourteenth Amendment should have become a part of the FederalConstitution, the State should be readmitted to representation. 

In order that the administration of this radical legislation might besupervised by its friends, the Thirty-ninth Congress had passed a lawrequiring the Fortieth Congress to meet on the 4th of March instead ofin December as was customary. According to the Reconstruction Act of the2nd of March, it was left to the state government or to the people of astate to make the first move towards reconstruction. If they preferred, they might remain under military rule. Either by design or bycarelessness no machinery of administration was provided for theexecution of the act. When it became evident that the Southernerspreferred military rule, the new Congress passed a SupplementaryReconstruction Act on the 23d of March designed to force the earlier actinto operation. The five commanding generals were directed to registerthe blacks of voting age and the whites who were not disfranchised, to hold elections for conventions, to call the conventions, to holdelections to ratify or reject the constitutions, and to forward theconstitutions, if ratified, to the President for transmission toCongress. 

In these reconstruction acts the whole doctrine of radicalism was put onthe way to accomplishment. Its spread had been rapid. In December 1865, the majority of Congress would have accepted with little modificationthe work of Lincoln and Johnson. Three months later the Civil Rights Actmeasured the advance. Very soon the new Freedmen's Bureau Act andthe Fourteenth Amendment indicated the rising tide of radicalism. Thecampaign of 1866 and the attitude of the Southern states swept allradicals and most moderate Republicans swiftly into a merciless courseof reconstruction. Moderate reconstruction had nowhere strong support. Congress, touched in its amour propre by presidential disregard, waseager for extremes. Johnson, who regarded himself as defending theConstitution against radical assaults, was stubborn, irascible, andundignified, and with his associates was no match in political strategyfor his radical opponents. 

The average Republican or Unionist in the North, if he had not beenbrought by skillful misrepresentation to believe a new rebellionimpending in the South, was at any rate painfully alive to the fear thatthe Democratic party might regain power. With the freeing of the slaves, the representation of the South in Congress would be increased. At firstit seemed that the South might divide in politics as before the war, butthe longer the delay the more the Southern whites tended to uniteinto one party acting with the Democrats. With their eighty-fiverepresentatives and a slight reaction in the North, they might gaincontrol of the lower House of Congress. The Union-Republican party hada majority of less than one hundred in 1866, and this was lessenedslightly in the Fortieth Congress. The President was for all practicalpurposes a Democrat again. The prospect was too much for the very humanpoliticians to view without distress. Stevens, speaking in support ofthe Military Reconstruction Bill, said:

"There are several good reasons for the passage of this bill. Inthe first place, it is just. I am now confining my argument to Negrosuffrage in the rebel states. Have not loyal blacks quite as good aright to choose rulers and make laws as rebel whites? In the secondplace, it is necessary in order to protect the loyal white men in theseceded states. With them the blacks would act in a body, and it isbelieved that in each of these states, except one, the two united wouldform a majority, control the states, and protect themselves. Now theyare the victims of daily murder. They must suffer constant persecutionor be exiled. Another good reason is that it would insure the ascendancyof the union party. . . . I believe. . . That on the continued ascendancyof that party depends the safety of this great nation. If impartialsuffrage is excluded in the rebel states, then every one of them issure to send a solid rebel electoral vote. They, with their kindredCopperheads of the North, would always elect the President and controlCongress. "

The laws passed on the 2d and the 23d of March were war measures andpresupposed a continuance of war conditions. The Lincoln-Johnson stategovernments were overturned; Congress fixed the qualifications of votersfor that time and for the future; and the President, shorn of much ofhis constitutional power, could exercise but little control overthe military government. Nothing that a state might do would securerestoration until it should ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to theFederal Constitution. The war had been fought upon the theory that theold Union must be preserved; but the basic theory of the reconstructionwas 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'sAdministration, Congress, working the will of the radical majority, wasin supreme control. The army carried out the will of Congress andto that body, not to the President, the commanding general and hissubordinates looked for direction. 

The official opposition of the President to the policy of Congressceased when that policy was enacted into law. He believed thislegislation to be unconstitutional, but he considered it his duty toexecute the laws. He at once set about the appointment of generals tocommand the military districts created in the South, * a task calling forno little discretion, since much depended upon the character of thesemilitary governors, or "satraps, " as they were frequently called by theopposition. The commanding general in a district was charged with manyduties, military, political, and administrative. It was his dutyto carry on a government satisfactory to the radicals and not tooirritating to the Southern whites; at the same time he must execute thereconstruction acts by putting old leaders out of power and Negroesin. Violent opposition to this policy on the part of the South was notlooked for. Notwithstanding the "Southern outrage" campaign, it wasgenerally recognized in government circles that conditions in theseceded states had gradually been growing better since the close ofthe war. There was in many regions, to be sure, a general laxity inenforcing laws, but that had always been characteristic of the newerparts of the South. The Civil Rights Act was generally in force, the "Black Laws" had been suspended, and the Freedmen's Bureau waseverywhere caring for the Negroes. What disorder existed was of recentorigin and in the main was due to the unsettling effects of the debatesin Congress and to the organization of the Negroes for politicalpurposes. 

 * 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 itwas soon found that the reconstruction laws were not sufficiently clearon two points: first, whether there was any limit to the authorityof the five generals over the local and state governments and, if so, whether the limiting authority was in the President; and second, whetherthe disfranchising provisions in the laws were punitive and hence tobe construed strictly. Attorney-General Stanbery, in May and June1867, drew up opinions in which he maintained that the laws were tobe considered punitive and therefore to be construed strictly. Afterdiscussions in cabinet meetings, these opinions received the approval ofall except Stanton, Secretary of War, who had already joined the radicalcamp. The Attorney-General's opinion was sent out to the districtcommanders for their information and guidance. But Congress did notintend to permit the President or his Cabinet to direct the processof reconstruction, and in the Act of July 19, 1867, it gave a radicalinterpretation to the reconstruction legislation, declared itself incontrol, gave full power to General Grant and to the district commanderssubject only to Grant, directed the removal of all local officials whoopposed the reconstruction policies, and warned the civil and militaryofficers of the United States that none of them should "be bound in hisaction by any opinion of any civil officer of the United States. " Thisinterpretive legislation gave a broad basis for the military governmentand resulted in a severe application of the disfranchising provisions ofthe 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 withthe Freedmen's Bureau, had exerted a strong influence in the governmentof the South, but in the regime now inaugurated the military wassupreme. The generals had a superior at Washington, but whether it wasthe President, General Grant, or Congress was not clear until the Act ofJuly 19, 1867 made Congress the source of authority. 

The power of the generals most strikingly appeared in their control ofthe state governments which were continued as provisional organizations. Since no elections were permitted, all appointments and removals weremade from military headquarters, which soon became political beehives, centers of wirepulling and agencies for the distribution of spoils. Atthe outset civil officers were ordered to retain their offices duringgood behavior, subject to military control. But no local official waspermitted to use his influence ever so slightly against reconstruction. Since most of them did not favor the policy of Congress, thousands wereremoved as "obstacles to reconstruction. " The Governors of Georgia, Louisiana, Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas were displaced and othersappointed in their stead. All kinds of subordinate offices rapidlybecame vacant. New appointments were nearly always carpetbaggersand native radicals who could take the "ironclad" oath. The generalscomplained that there were not enough competent native "loyalists"to fill the offices, and frequently an army officer was installed asgovernor, treasurer, secretary of state, auditor, or mayor. In nearlyall towns, the police force was reorganized, and former Federal soldierswere added to the force, while the regular troops were used for generalpolice purposes and for rural constabulary. 

Over the administration of justice the military authorities exercised aclose supervision. Instructions were sent out to court officers coveringthe selection of juries, the suspension of certain laws, and the rulesof evidence and procedure. Courts were often closed, court decrees setaside or modified, prisoners released, and many cases reserved for trialby military commission. Some commanders required juries to admit Negromembers and insisted that all jurors take the "ironclad" test oath. There was some attempt at regulating the Federal courts but without muchsuccess. 

Since the state legislatures were forbidden to meet, much legislationwas enacted through military orders. Stay laws were enacted, the colorline was abolished, new criminal regulations were promulgated, and thepolice power was invoked in some instances to justify sweeping measures, such as the prohibition of whisky manufacture in North Carolina andSouth Carolina. The military governors levied, increased, or decreasedtaxes and made appropriations which the state treasurers were forced topay, but they restrained the radical conventions, all of which wished tospend much money. According to the Act of March 23, 1867, the generalsand their appointees were to be paid by the United States, but inpractice the running expenses of reconstruction were paid by the statetreasurers. 

Any attempt to favor the Confederate soldiers was frowned upon. Lawsproviding wooden legs and free education for crippled Confederates weresuspended. Militia organizations and military schools were forbidden. No uniform might be worn, no parades were permitted, no memorial andhistorical societies were to be organized, and no meeting of anykind could be held without a permit. The attempt to control the pressresulted in what one general called "a horrible uproar. " Editors wereforbidden to express themselves too strongly against reconstruction;public advertising and printing were awarded only to those papersactively supporting reconstruction. Several newspapers were suppressed, a notable example being the "Tuscaloosa Independent Monitor", whoseeditor, Ryland Randolph, was a picturesque figure in Alabama journalismand a leader in the Ku Klux Klan. 

The military administration was thorough and, as a whole, honestand efficient. With fewer than ten thousand soldiers, the generalsmaintained order and carried on the reconstruction of the South. Thewhites made no attempt at resistance, though they were irritatedby military rule and resented the loss of self-government. But mostSoutherners preferred the rule of the army to the alternative reignof the carpetbagger, scalawag, and Negro. The extreme radicals at theNorth, on the other hand, were disgusted at the conservative policy ofthe generals. The apathy of the whites at the beginning of the militaryreconstruction excited surprise on all sides. Not only was there noviolent opposition, but for a few weeks there was no opposition at all. The civil officials were openly unsympathetic, and the newspapers voiceddissent not untouched with disgust; others simply could not take thesituation seriously because it seemed so absurd; many leaders wereindifferent, while others among them, Generals Lee, Beauregard, andLongstreet, and Governor Patton--without approving the policy, advisedthe whites to cooperate with the military authorities and save all theycould out of the situation. General Beauregard, for instance, wrote in1867: "If the suffrage of the Negro is properly handled and directed, we shall defeat our adversaries with their own weapons. The Negro isSouthern born. With education and property qualifications he can be madeto 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 disapprovedof this radical reconstruction saw the danger more clearly thanthe Southerners themselves, who seemed not to appreciate the fullimplication of the situation. In this connection the New York "Herald"remarked:

"We may regard the entire ten unreconstructed Southern States, withpossibly one or two exceptions, as forced by a secret and overwhelmingrevolutionary influence to a common and inevitable fate. They are allbound to be governed by blacks spurred on by worse than blacks--whitewretches who dare not show their faces in respectable society anywhere. This is the most abominable phase barbarism has assumed since the dawnof civilization. It was all right and proper to put down the rebellion. It was all right perhaps to emancipate the slaves. . . . But it is notright to make slaves of white men even though they may have been formermasters of blacks. This is but a change in a system of bondage that isrendered the more odious and intolerable because it has been inauguratedin an enlightened instead of a dark and uncivilized age. "

The political parties rapidly grouped themselves for the comingstruggle. The radical Republican party indeed was in process oforganization in the South even before the passage of the reconstructionacts. Its membership was made up of Negroes, carpetbaggers, or Northernmen who had come in as speculators, officers of the Freedmen's Bureauand of the army, scalawags or Confederate renegades, "Peace Society"men, * and Unionists of Civil War times, with a few old Whigs who couldnot yet bring themselves to affiliate with the Democrats. At first itseemed that a respectable number of whites might be secured for theradical party, but the rapid organization of the Negroes checked theaccession of whites. In the winter and spring of 1866-67, the Negroesnear the towns were well organized by the Union League and theFreedmen's Bureau and then, after the passage of the reconstructionacts, the organizing activities of the radical chieftains shifted tothe rural districts. The Union League was greatly extended; Union Leagueconventions were held to which local whites were not admitted; andthe formation of a black man's party was well on the way before theregistration of the voters was completed. Visiting statesmen from theNorth, among them Henry Wilson of Massachusetts and "Pig Iron" Kelleyof Pennsylvania, toured the South in support of the radical program, andthe 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, werefinally aroused to the necessity of organizing, if they were toinfluence the Negro and have a voice in the conventions. The old partydivisions were still evident. With difficulty a portion of the Whigs wasbrought with the Democrats into one conservative party during the summerand fall of 1867, though many still held aloof. The lack of the oldskilled leadership was severely felt. In places where the white man'sparty was given a name, it was called "Democratic and Conservative, " tospare the feelings of former Whigs who were loath to bear the party nameof their quondam opponents. 

The first step in the military reconstruction was the registration ofvoters. In each State a central board of registrars was appointed by thedistrict commander and a local board for every county and large town. Each board consisted of three members--all radicals--who were requiredto subscribe to the "ironclad" oath. In several states one Negro wasappointed to each local board. The registrars listed Negro voters duringthe day, and at night worked at the organization of a radical Republicanparty. The prospective voters were required to take the oath prescribedin the Reconstruction Act, but the registrars were empowered togo behind the oath and investigate the Confederate record of eachapplicant. This authority was invoked to carry the disfranchisement ofthe whites far beyond the intention of the law in an attempt to destroythe leadership of the whites and to register enough Negroes to outvotethem at the polls. For this purpose the registration was continued untilOctober 1, 1867, and an active campaign of education and organizationcarried on. 

At the close of the registration, 703, 000 black voters were on the rollsand 627, 000 whites. In Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, andMississippi there were black majorities, and in the other States theblacks and the radical whites together formed majorities. The whiteminorities included several thousand who had been rejected by theregistrars but restored by the military commanders. Though largenumbers of blacks were dropped from the revised rolls as fraudulentlyregistered, the registration statistics, nevertheless, bore clearwitness to the political purpose of those who compiled them. 

Next followed a vote on the question of holding a state conventionand the election of delegates to such a convention if held--a doubleelection. The whites, who had been harassed in the registration and whofeared race conflicts at the elections, considered whether they oughtnot to abstain from voting. By staying away from the polls, they mightbring the vote cast in each State below a majority and thus defeat theproposed conventions for, unless a majority of the registered votersactually cast ballots either for or against a convention, no conventioncould be held. Nowhere, however, was this plan of not voting fullycarried out, for, though most whites abstained, enough of them voted(against the conventions, of course) to make the necessary majority ineach State. The effect of the abstention policy upon the personnel ofthe conventions was unfortunate. In every convention there was a radicalmajority with a conservative and all but negligible minority. In SouthCarolina and Louisiana, there were Negro majorities. In every Stateexcept North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia, the Negroes and thecarpetbaggers together were in the majority over native whites. 

The conservative whites were of fair ability; the carpetbaggers andscalawags produced in each convention a few able leaders, but mostof them were conscienceless political soldiers of fortune; the Negromembers were inexperienced, and most of them were quite ignorant, thougha few leaders of ability did appear among them. In Alabama, for example, only two Negro members could write, though half had been taught to signtheir names. They were barbers, field hands, hack drivers, and servants. A Negro chaplain was elected who invoked divine blessings on "unionersand cusses on rebels. " It was a sign of the new era when the conventionspecially invited the "ladies of colored members" to seats in thegallery. 

The work of the conventions was for the most part cut and dried, theabler members having reached a general agreement before they met. Theconstitutions, mosaics of those of other states, were noteworthy onlyfor the provisions made to keep the whites out of power and to regulatethe relations of the races in social matters. The Texas constitutionalone contained no proscriptive clauses beyond those required bythe Fourteenth Amendment. The most thoroughgoing proscription ofConfederates was found in the constitutions of Mississippi, Alabama, andVirginia; and in these states the voter must also purge himself of guiltby agreeing to accept the "civil and political equality of all men" orby supporting reconstruction. Only in South Carolina and Louisiana wererace lines abolished by law. 

The legislative work of the conventions was more interesting than theconstitution making. By ordinance the legality of Negro marriages wasdated from November 1867, or some date later than had been fixed by thewhite 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 proscriptionof whites or social equality; they wanted schools and the vote. Thewhite radicals were more anxious to keep the former Confederates fromholding office than from voting. The generals in command everywhere usedtheir influence to secure moderate action by the conventions, and forthis they were showered with abuse. 

As provided by the reconstruction acts, the new constitutions weresubmitted to the electorate created by those instruments. Unless amajority of the registered voters in a State should take part in theelection, the reconstruction would fail and the State would remain undermilitary rule. The whites now inaugurated a more systematic policy ofabstention and in Alabama, on February 4, 1868, succeeded in holdingthe total vote below a majority. Congress then rushed to the rescue ofradicalism with the act of the 11th of March, which provided that amere majority of those voting in the State was sufficient to inauguratereconstruction. Arkansas had followed the lead of Alabama, but too late;in Mississippi the constitution was defeated by a majority vote; inTexas the convention had made no provision for a vote; and in Virginiathe commanding general, disapproving of the work of the convention, refused to pay the expenses of an election. In the other six States theconstitutions 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. Theyalso were double elections, as the voters cast ballots for state andlocal officials and at the same time for or against the constitution. The radical nominations were made by the Union League and the Freedmen'sBureau, and nearly all radicals who had been members of conventions werenominated and elected to office. The Negroes, expecting now to reap somebenefits 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 FourteenthAmendment. 

It now remained for Congress to approve the work done in the Southand to readmit the reorganized states. The case of Alabama gave sometrouble. Even Stevens, for a time, thought that this state should stayout; but there was danger in delay. The success of the abstentionpolicy in Alabama and Arkansas and the reviving interest of the whitesforeshadowed white majorities in some places; the scalawags beganto forsake the radical party for the conservatives; and there wereDemocratic gains in the North in 1867. Only six states, New York andfive New England States, allowed the Negro to vote, while four states, Minnesota, Michigan, Kansas, and Ohio, voted down Negro suffrage afterthe passage of the reconstruction acts. The ascendancy of the radicalsin Congress was menaced. The radicals needed the support of theirradical brethren in Southern States and they could not afford to waitfor the Fourteenth Amendment to become a part of the Constitution orto tolerate other delay. On the 22d and the 25th of June, actswere therefore passed admitting seven states, Alabama included, torepresentation in Congress upon the "fundamental condition" that "theconstitutions of neither of said States shall ever be so amended orchanged as to deprive any citizens or class of citizens of the UnitedStates of the right to vote in said State, who are entitled to vote bythe constitution thereof herein recognized. "

The generals now turned over the government to the recentlyelected radical officials and retired into the background. Militaryreconstruction 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, Congresswas engaged not only in supervising reconstruction but in subduing theSupreme Court and in "conquering" President Johnson. One must admire theefficiency of the radical machine. When the Southerners showed that theypreferred military rule as permitted by the Act of the 2nd ofMarch, Congress passed the Act of the 23d of March which forced thereconstruction. When the President ventured to assert his power inbehalf 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 abstentionwas no sooner made clear in the case of Alabama than Congress came tothe rescue with the Act of March 11, 1868. 

Had it seemed necessary, Congress would have handled the Supreme Courtas it did the Southerners. The opponents of radical reconstruction wereanxious 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 theconstitutionality of the laws. A series of conservative decisions gavehope to those who looked to the Court for relief. The first decision, inthe case of ex parte Milligan, declared unconstitutional the trials ofcivilians by military commissions when civil courts were open. Afew months later, in the cases of Cummings vs. Missouri and ex parteGarland, the Court declared invalid, because ex post facto, the statelaws designed to punish former Confederates. 

But the first attempts to get the reconstruction acts before the SupremeCourt failed. The State of Mississippi, in April 1867, brought suit torestrain the President from executing the reconstruction acts. The Courtrefused to interfere with the executive. A similar suit was then broughtagainst Secretary Stanton by Georgia with a like result. But in 1868, in the case of ex parte McCardle, it appeared that the question ofthe constitutionality of the reconstruction acts would be passed upon. McCardle, a Mississippi editor arrested for opposition to reconstructionand convicted by military commission, appealed to the Supreme Court, which asserted its jurisdiction. But the radicals in alarm rushedthrough Congress an act (March 27, 1868) which took away from the Courtits jurisdiction in cases arising under the reconstruction acts. Thehighest court was thus silenced. 

The attempt to remove the President from office was the only part ofthe radical program that failed, and this by the narrowest of margins. During the spring and summer of 1866, there was some talk amongpoliticians of impeaching President Johnson, and in December aresolution was introduced by Representative Ashley of Ohio lookingtoward impeachment. Though the committee charged with the investigationof "the official conduct of Andrew Johnson" reported that enoughtestimony had been taken to justify further inquiry, the House took noaction. There were no less than five attempts at impeachment during thenext year. Stevens, Butler, and others were anxious to get the Presidentout of the way, but the majority were as yet unwilling to impeach formerely political reasons. There were some who thought that the radicalshad sufficient majorities to ensure all needed legislation and did notrelish the thought of Ben Wade in the presidency. * Others consideredthat no just grounds for action had been found in the severalinvestigations of Johnson's record. Besides, the President's authorityand influence had been much curtailed by the legislation relating to theFreedmen's Bureau, tenure of office, reconstruction, and command ofthe army, and Congress had also refused to recognize his amnesty andpardoning 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, andvery little was needed to provoke a trial of strength between theradicals and the President. The drift toward impeachment was due inpart to the legislative reaction against the executive, and in partto Johnson's own opposition to reconstruction and to his use of thepatronage against the radicals. Specific grievances were found inhis vetoes of the various reconstruction bills, in his criticisms ofCongress and the radical leaders, and in the fact, as Stevens asserted, that he was a "radical renegade. " Johnson was a Southern man, anold-line State Rights Democrat, somewhat anti-Negro in feeling. He knewno book except the Constitution, and that he loved with all his soul. Sure of the correctness of his position, he was too stubborn to changeor to compromise. He was no more to be moved than Stevens or Sumner. Toovercome Johnson's vetoes required two-thirds of each House of Congress;to impeach and remove him would require only a majority of the House andtwo-thirds of the Senate. 

The desired occasion for impeachment was furnished by Johnson's attemptto get Edwin M. Stanton, the Secretary of War, out of the Cabinet. Stanton held radical views and was at no time sympathetic with or loyalto Johnson, but he loved office too well to resign along with thosecabinet members who could not follow the President in his strugglewith Congress. He was seldom frank and sincere in his dealings withthe President, and kept up an underhand correspondence with theradical leaders, even assisting in framing some of the reconstructionlegislation which was designed to render Johnson powerless. In him theradicals had a representative within the President's Cabinet. 

Wearied of Stanton's disloyalty, Johnson asked him to resign and, upona refusal, suspended him in August 1867, and placed General Grant intemporary charge of the War Department. General Grant, Chief JusticeChase, and Secretary McCulloch, though they all disliked Stanton, advised the President against suspending him. But Johnson wasdetermined. About the same time he exercised his power in removingSheridan and Sickles from their commands in the South and replacedthem with Hancock and Canby. The radicals were furious, but Johnson hadsecured at least the support of a loyal Cabinet. 

The suspension of Stanton was reported to the Senate in December1867, and on January 13, 1868, the Senate voted not to concur in thePresident'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 holdon himself or to make it possible to appoint some one else who wouldhold on until the matter might be brought into the courts. The Presidentby this accusation angered Grant and threw him with his great influenceinto the arms of the radicals. Against the advice of his leadingcounselors, Johnson persisted in his intention to keep Stanton out ofthe Cabinet. Accordingly on the 21st of February he dismissed Stantonfrom office and appointed Lorenzo Thomas, the Adjutant General, asacting Secretary of War. Stanton, advised by the radicals in Congress to"stick, " refused to yield possession to Thomas and had him arrested forviolation of the Tenure of Office Act. The matter now was in the courtswhere Johnson wanted it, but the radical leaders, fearing that thecourts would decide against Stanton and the reconstruction acts, had thecharges against Thomas withdrawn. Thus failed the last attempt to getthe reconstruction laws before the courts. On the 22nd of February, thePresident sent to the Senate the name of Thomas Ewing, General Sherman'sfather-in-law, as Secretary of War, but no attention was paid to thenomination. 

On February 24, 1868, the House voted, 128 to 47, to impeach thePresident "of high crimes and misdemeanors in office. " The Senatewas formally notified the next day, and on the 4th of March the sevenmanagers selected by the House appeared before the Senate with theeleven articles of impeachment. At first it seemed to the public thatthe impeachment proceedings were merely the culmination of a strugglefor the control of the army. There were rumors that Johnson had plans touse the army against Congress and against reconstruction. GeneralGrant, directed by Johnson to accept orders from Stanton only if he weresatisfied that they came from the President, refused to follow theseinstructions. Stanton, professing to fear violence, barricaded himselfin the War Department and was furnished with a guard of soldiersby General Grant, who from this time used his influence in favor ofimpeachment. Excited by the most sensational rumors, some people evenbelieved a new rebellion to be imminent. 

The impeachment was rushed to trial by the House managers and was notended until the decision was taken by the votes of the 16th and 26th ofMay. The eleven articles of impeachment consisted of summaries of allthat had been charged against Johnson, except the charge that he hadbeen an accomplice in the murder of Lincoln. The only one which had anyreal basis was the first, which asserted that he had violated the Tenureof Office Act in trying to remove Stanton. The other articles weremerely expansions of the first or were based upon Johnson's oppositionto reconstruction or upon his speeches in criticism of Congress. Nothingcould be said about his control of the patronage, though this was one ofthe unwritten charges. J. W. Schuckers, in his life of Chase, saysthat the radical leaders "felt the vast importance of the presidentialpatronage; many of them felt, too, that, according to the maxim thatto the victors belong the spoils, the Republican party was rightfullyentitled to the Federal patronage, and they determined to get possessionof it. There was but one method and that was by impeachment and removalof the President. "

The leading House managers were Stevens, Butler, Bingham, and Boutwell, all better known as politicians than as lawyers. The President wasrepresented by an abler legal array: Curtis, Evarts, Stanbery, Nelson, and Groesbeck. Jeremiah Black was at first one of the counsel for thePresident but withdrew under conditions not entirely creditable tohimself. 

The trial was a one-sided affair. The President's counsel were refusedmore than six days for the preparation of the case. Chief Justice Chase, who presided over the trial, insisted upon regarding the Senate as ajudicial and not a political body, and he accordingly ruled that onlylegal evidence should be admitted; but the Senate majority preferredto assume that they were settling a political question. Much evidencefavorable to the President was excluded, but everything else wasadmitted. As the trial went on, the country began to understand that theimpeachment was a mistake. Few people wanted to see Senator Wade madePresident. The partisan attitude of the Senate majority and the weaknessof the case against Johnson had much to do in moderating public opinion, and the timely nomination of General Schofield as Secretary of War afterStanton's resignation reassured those who feared that the army might beplaced under some extreme Democrat. 

As the time drew near for the decision, every possible pressure wasbrought by the radicals to induce senators to vote for conviction. Toconvict the President, thirty-six votes were necessary. There were onlytwelve Democrats in the Senate, but all were known to be in favor ofacquittal. When the test came on the 16th of May, seven Republicansvoted with the Democrats for acquittal on the eleventh article. Anothervote on the 26th of May, on the first and second articles, showed thatconviction was not possible. The radical legislative reaction wasthus checked at its highest point and the presidency as a part ofthe American governmental system was no longer in danger. The sevenRepublicans 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 beforethe impeachment trial began. Both the Democrats and the reorganizedRepublicans were turning with longing toward General Grant as acandidate. Though he had always been a Democrat, Nevertheless, whenJohnson actually called him a liar and a promise breaker, Grant wentover to the radicals and was nominated for President on May 20, 1868, bythe National Union Republican party. Schuyler Colfax was the candidatefor Vice President. The Democrats, who could have won with Grant and whounder good leadership still had a bare chance to win, nominated HoratioSeymour of New York and Francis P. Blair of Missouri. The former hadserved as war governor of New York, while the latter was considered anextreme Democrat who believed that the radical reconstruction of theSouth should be stopped, the troops withdrawn, and the people left toform their own governments. The Democratic platform pronounced itselfopposed to the reconstruction policy, but Blair's opposition was tooextreme for the North. Seymour, more moderate and a skillful campaigner, made headway in the rehabilitation of the Democratic party. TheRepublican party declared for radical reconstruction and Negro suffragein the South but held that each Northern State should be allowed tosettle the suffrage for itself. It was not a courageous platform, butGrant was popular and carried his party through to success. 

The returns showed that in the election Grant had carried twenty-sixStates with 214 electoral votes, while Seymour had carried only eightStates with 80 votes. But an examination of the popular vote, which was3, 000, 000 for Grant and 2, 700, 000 for Seymour, gave the radicals causefor alarm, for it showed that the Democrats had more white votes thanthe Republicans, whose total included nearly 700, 000 blacks. To insurethe continuance of the radicals in power, the Fifteenth Amendment wasframed and sent out to the States on February 26, 1869. This amendmentappeared not only to make safe the Negro majorities in the South butalso gave the ballot to the Negroes in a score of Northern Statesand thus assured, for a time at least, 900, 000 Negro voters for theRepublican party. 

When Johnson's term ended and he gave place to President Grant, fourstates were still unreconstructed--Virginia, Texas, and Mississippi, in which the reconstruction had failed, and Georgia, which, afteraccomplishing reconstruction, had again been placed under military ruleby Congress. In Virginia, which was too near the capital for suchrough work as readmitted Arkansas and Alabama into the Union, the newconstitution was so severe in its provisions for disfranchisement thatthe disgusted district commander would not authorize the expenditurenecessary to have it voted on. In Mississippi a similar constitution hadfailed of adoption, and in Texas the strife of party factions, radicaland moderate Republican, had so delayed the framing of the constitutionthat 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 thedistrict commanders to remove all civil officers who could not takethe "ironclad" oath and to appoint those who could subscribe to it. Anexception, however, was made in favor of the scalawags who had supportedreconstruction and whose disabilities had been removed by Congress. 

President Grant was anxious to complete the reconstruction andrecommended to Congress that the constitutions of Virginia andMississippi be re-submitted to the people with a separate vote on thedisfranchising sections. Congress, now in harmony with the executive, responded by placing the reconstruction of the three states in the handsof the President, but with the proviso that each state must ratify theFifteenth Amendment. Grant thereupon fixed a time for voting in eachstate and directed that in Virginia and Mississippi the disfranchisingclauses be submitted separately. As a result, the constitutions wereratified but proscription was voted down. The radicals secured controlof Mississippi and Texas, but a conservative combination carriedVirginia 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 June1868, Georgia had been readmitted with the first of the reconstructedStates. The state legislature at once expelled the twenty-seven Negromembers, on the ground that the recent legislation and the stateconstitution 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 militarycontrol. In 1869-70, Georgia was again reconstructed after a drasticpurging of the legislature by the military commander, the reseatingof the Negro members, and the ratification of both the Fourteenth andFifteenth Amendments. The state was readmitted to representation in July1870, after the failure of a strong effort to extend for two years thecarpetbag government of the state. 

Upon the last states to pass under the radical yoke, heavier conditionswere imposed than upon the earlier ones. Not only were they requiredto ratify the Fifteenth Amendment, but the "fundamental conditions"embraced, in addition to the prohibition against future change of thesuffrage, a requirement that the Negroes should never be deprived ofschool and office-holding rights. 

The congressional plan of reconstruction had thus been carried throughby able leaders in the face of the opposition of a united white South, nearly half the North, the President, the Supreme Court, and in thebeginning a majority of Congress. This success was due to the poorleadership of the conservatives and to the ability and solidarity of theradicals led by Stevens and Sumner. The radicals had a definite program;the moderates had not. The object of the radicals was to secure thesupremacy in the South by the aid of the Negroes and exclusion ofwhites. Was this policy politically wise? It was at least temporarilysuccessful. The choice offered by the radicals seemed to lie betweenmilitary rule for an indefinite period and Negro suffrage; and sincemost Americans found military rule distasteful, they preferred to tryNegro suffrage. But, after all, Negro suffrage had to be supported bymilitary 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 organizedunder the control of the radical Republican leaders and that theirformer masters had none of the influence over the blacks in politicalmatters which had been feared by some Northern friends of the Negroand had been hoped for by such Southern leaders as Governor Patton andGeneral Hampton. Before 1865 the discipline of slavery, the influence ofthe master's family, and of the Southern church had sufficed to controlthe blacks. But after emancipation they looked to the Federal soldiersand Union officials as the givers of freedom and the guardians of thefuture. 

From the Union soldiers, especially the Negro troops, from the Northernteachers, the missionaries and the organizers of Negro churches, fromthe Northern officials and traveling politicians, the Negroes learnedthat their interests were not those of the whites. The attitude of theaverage white in the South often confirmed this growing estrangement. Itwas difficult even for the white leaders to explain the riots at Memphisand New Orleans. And those who sincerely wished well for the Negro andwho desired to control him for the good of both races could not possiblyassure him that he was fit for the suffrage. For even Patton and Hamptonmust tell him that they knew better than he and that he should followtheir advice. 

The appeal made to freedmen by the Northern leaders was in every waymore forceful, because it bad behind it the prestige of victory in warand for the future it could promise anything. Until 1867, the principalagency in bringing about the separation of the races had been theFreedmen's Bureau which, with its authority, its courts, its rations, clothes, and its "forty acres and a mule, " did effective work inbreaking down the influence of the master. But to understand fully thealmost absolute control exercised over the blacks in 1867-68 by alienadventurers, one must examine the workings of an oath-bound societyknown as the Union or Loyal League. It was this order, dominated by afew radical whites, which organized, disciplined, and controlled theignorant Negro masses and paralyzed the influence of the conservativewhites. 

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 policiesof the Lincoln Administration had alienated those in favor of extrememeasures; the Confederates had won military successes in the field; theDemocrats had made some gains in the elections; the Copperheads* wereactively opposed to the Washington Government; the Knights of the GoldenCircle were organizing to resist the continuance of the war; and theEmancipation 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 Leaguemovement was begun among those who were associated in the work of theUnited States Sanitary Commission. Observing the threatening state ofpublic opinion, members of this organization proposed that "loyalty beorganized, 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, inNovember 1862. The Philadelphia Union League was organized a monthlater, and in January 1863, the New York Union League followed. Themembers were pledged to uncompromising and unconditional loyalty to theUnion, to complete subordination of political views to this loyalty, andto the repudiation of any belief in state rights. The other large citiesfollowed the example of Philadelphia and New York, and soon Leagues, connected in a loose federation, were formed all through the North. Theywere social as well as political in their character and assumed as theirtask the stimulation and direction of loyal Union opinion. 

As the Union armies proceeded to occupy the South, the Union League sentits agents among the disaffected Southern people. Its agents cared forNegro refugees in the contraband camps and in the North. In such workthe League cooperated with the various Freedmen's Aid Societies, theDepartment of Negro Affairs, and later with the Freedmen's Bureau. Partof the work of the League was to distribute campaign literature, andmany of the radical pamphlets on reconstruction and the Negro problembore the Union League imprint. The New York League sent out aboutseventy thousand copies of various publications, while the PhiladelphiaLeague far surpassed this record, circulating within eight years fourmillion five hundred thousand copies of 144 different pamphlets. Theliterature consisted largely of accounts of "Southern outrages" takenfrom the reports of Bureau agents and similar sources. 

With the close of the Civil War the League did not cease its activeinterest in things political. It was one of the first organizations todeclare for Negro suffrage and the disfranchisement of Confederates; itheld steadily to this declaration during the four years following thewar; and it continued as a sort of bureau in the radical Republicanparty for the purpose of controlling the Negro vote in the South. Itsrepresentatives were found in the lobbies of Congress demanding extrememeasures, endorsing the reconstruction policies of Congress, andcondemning the course of the President. After the first year or two ofreconstruction, the Leagues in the larger Northern cities began to growaway from the strictly political Union League of America and tended tobecome mere social clubs for members of the same political belief. Theeminently respectable Philadelphia and New York clubs had little incommon with the leagues of the Southern and Border States except ageneral adherence to the radical program. 

Even before the end of the war the League was extending its organizationinto the parts of the Confederacy held by the Federal forces, admittingto membership the army officers and the leading Unionists, thoughmaintaining for the sake of the latter "a discreet secrecy. " With theclose of the war and the establishment of army posts over the South, the League grew rapidly. The civilians who followed the army, the Bureauagents, the missionaries, and the Northern teachers formed one class ofmembership; and the loyalists of the hill and mountain country, who hadbecome disaffected toward the Confederate administration and had formedsuch orders as the Heroes of America, the Red String Band, and thePeace Society, formed another class. Soon there were added to these thedeserters, a few old line Whigs who intensely disliked the Democrats, and others who decided to cast their lot with the victors. Thedisaffected politicians of the up-country, who wanted to be cared for inthe reconstruction, saw in the organization a means of dislodging frompower the political leaders of the low country. It has been estimatedthat thirty percent of the white men of the hill and mountain countiesof the South joined the Union League in 1865-66. They cared little aboutthe original objects of the order but hoped to make it the nucleus of ananti-Democratic political organization. 

But on the admission of Negroes into the lodges or councils controlledby Northern men the native white members began to withdraw. From thebeginning the Bureau agents, the teachers, and the preachers had beenholding meetings of Negroes, to whom they gave advice about theproblems of freedom. Very early these advisers of the blacks grasped thepossibilities inherent in their control of the schools, the rationingsystem, and the churches. By the spring of 1866, the Negroes were widelyorganized under this leadership, and it needed but slight change toconvert the Negro meetings into local councils of the Union League. * Assoon as it seemed likely that Congress would win in its struggle withthe President the guardians of the Negro planned their campaign for thecontrol of the race. Negro leaders were organized into councils ofthe League or into Union Republican Clubs. Over the South went theorganizers, 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 Negroeswere brought in. Where the blacks were most numerous the desertion ofwhites was general, but in the regions where they were few some ofthe whites remained for several years. The elections of 1868 showed afalling off of the white radical vote from that of 1867, one measure ofthe extent of loss of whites. From this time forward the order consistedmainly of blacks with enough whites for leaders. In the Black Belt themembership of native whites was discouraged by requiring an oath to theeffect that secession was treason. The carpetbagger had found that hecould control the Negro without the help of the scalawag. The Leagueorganization was soon extended and centralized; in every black districtthere was a Council; for the state there was a Grand Council; and forthe United States there was a National Grand Council with headquartersin New York City. 

The influence of the League over the Negro was due in large degree tothe mysterious secrecy of the meetings, the weird initiation ceremonythat made him feel fearfully good from his head to his heels, theimposing ritual, and the songs. The ritual, it is said, was not usedin the North; it was probably adopted for the particular benefit of theAfrican. The would-be Leaguer was informed that the emblems of theorder were the altar, the Bible, the Declaration of Independence, theConstitution of the United States, the flag of the Union, censer, sword, gavel, ballot box, sickle, shuttle, anvil, and other emblems ofindustry. He was told to the accompaniment of clanking chains and groansthat the objects of the order were to preserve liberty, to perpetuatethe Union, to maintain the laws and the Constitution, to secure theascendancy of American institutions, to protect, defend, and strengthenall loyal men and members of the Union League in all rights of personand property, to demand the elevation of labor, to aid in the educationof laboring men, and to teach the duties of American citizenship. This enumeration of the objects of the League sounded well and wasimpressive. At this point the Negro was always willing to take an oathof secrecy, after which he was asked to swear with a solemn oath tosupport the principles of the Declaration of Independence, to pledgehimself to resist all attempts to overthrow the United States, to strivefor the maintenance of liberty, the elevation of labor, the educationof all people in the duties of citizenship, to practice friendship andcharity to all of the order, and to support for election or appointmentto office only such men as were supporters of these principles andmeasures. 

The council then sang "Hail, Columbia!" and "The Star Spangled Banner, "after which an official lectured the candidates, saying that thoughthe designs of traitors had been thwarted, there were yet to be securedlegislative triumphs and the complete ascendancy of the true principlesof popular government, equal liberty, education and elevation of theworkmen, and the overthrow at the ballot box of the old oligarchy ofpolitical 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 wasmade to place one hand on the flag and, with the other raised, swearagain 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 keephis oath, and repeated after the president "the Freedmen's Pledge":"To defend and perpetuate freedom and the Union, I pledge my life, myfortune, and my sacred honor. So help me God!" "John Brown's Body" wasthen sung, the president charged the members in a long speech concerningthe principles of the order, and the marshal instructed the neophytein the signs. To pass one's self as a Leaguer, the "Four L's" had tobe given: (1) with right hand raised to heaven, thumb and third fingertouching ends over palm, pronounce "Liberty"; (2) bring the hand downover the shoulder and say "Lincoln"; (3) drop the hand open at the sideand say "Loyal"; (4) catch the thumb in the vest or in the waistband andpronounce "League. " This ceremony of initiation proved a most effectivemeans of impressing and controlling the Negro through his love and fearof secret, mysterious, and midnight mummery. An oath taken in daylightmight be forgotten before the next day; not so an oath taken in the deadof night under such impressive circumstances. After passing through theordeal, 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 andshotguns, were stationed about the place of meeting in order to keepaway intruders. Members of some councils made it a practice to attendthe meetings armed as if for battle. In these meetings the Negroeslistened to inflammatory speeches by the would-be statesmen of the newregime; here they were drilled in a passionate conviction that theirinterests and those of the Southern whites were eternally at war. 

White men who joined the order before the Negroes were admitted andwho left when the latter became members asserted that the Negroes weretaught in these meetings that the only way to have peace and plenty, toget "the forty acres and a mule, " was to kill some of the leading whitesin each community as a warning to others. In North Carolina twenty-eightbarns were burned in one county by Negroes who believed that GovernorHolden, the head of the State League, had ordered it. The councilin Tuscumbia, Alabama, received advice from Memphis to use the torchbecause the blacks were at war with the white race. The advice wastaken. Three men went in front of the council as an advance guard, threefollowed with coal oil and fire, and others guarded the rear. Theplan was to burn the whole town, but first one Negro and then anotherinsisted on having some white man's house spared because "he is a goodman. " In the end no residences were burned, and a happy compromisewas effected by burning the Female Academy. Three of the leaders wereafterwards lynched. 

The general belief of the whites was that the ultimate object of theorder was to secure political power and thus bring about on a largescale the confiscation of the property of Confederates, and meanwhileto appropriate and destroy the property of their political opponentswherever possible. Chicken houses, pigpens, vegetable gardens, andorchards were visited by members returning from the midnight conclaves. During the presidential campaign of 1868, the North Carolina League sentout circular instructions to the blacks advising them to drill regularlyand to join the militia, for if Grant were not elected the Negroes wouldgo 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 themselveswith guns and dogs as badges of freedom. They carried their guns to theLeague meetings, often marching in military formation, went through thedrill there, marched home again along the roads, shouting, firing, andindulging in boasts and threats against persons whom they disliked. Later, military parades in the daytime were much favored. Severalhundred 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 muchalarmed at times. That outrages were comparatively few was due, notto any sensible teachings of the leaders, but to the fundamental goodnature of the blacks, who were generally content with mere impudence. 

The relations between the races, indeed, continued on the whole tobe friendly until 1867-68. For a while, in some localities before theadvent of the League, and in others where the Bureau was conducted bynative magistrates, the Negroes looked to their old masters for guidanceand advice; and the latter, for the good of both races, were most eagerto retain a moral control over the blacks. They arranged barbecues andpicnics for the Negroes, made speeches, gave good advice, and believedthat everything promised well. Sometimes the Negroes themselves arrangedthe festival and invited prominent whites, for whom a separate tableattended by Negro waiters was reserved; and after dinner there followedspeeches 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 Bureauhad to some extent the same personnel, and it is frequently impossibleto distinguish clearly between the influence of the two. In many waysthe League was simply the political side of the Bureau. The preachingand teaching missionaries were also at work. And apart from theorganized influences at work, the poor whites never laid aside theirhostility towards the blacks, bond or free. 

When the campaigns grew exciting, the discipline of the order was usedto prevent the Negroes from attending Democratic meetings and hearingDemocratic speakers. The leaders even went farther and forbade theattendance of the blacks at political meetings where the speakers werenot endorsed by the League. Almost invariably the scalawag disliked theLeaguer, black or white, and as a political teacher often found himselfproscribed by the League. At a Republican mass meeting in Alabama, awhite Republican who wanted to make a speech was shouted down by theNegroes because he was "opposed to the Loyal League. " He then went toanother place to speak but was followed by the crowd, which refused toallow him to say anything. All Republicans in good standing had to jointhe League and swear that secession was treason--a rather stiff dose forthe scalawag. Judge (later Governor) David P. Lewis, of Alabama, was amember for a short while but he soon became disgusted and publisheda denunciation of the order. Albion W. Tourgee, the author, a radicaljudge, was the first chief of the League in North Carolina and wassucceeded by Governor Holden. In Alabama, Generals Swayne, Spencer, andWarner, all candidates for the United States Senate, hastened to jointhe order. 

As soon as a candidate was nominated by the League, it was the duty ofevery member to support him actively. Failure to do so resulted in afine or other more severe punishment, and members who had been expelledwere still considered under the control of the officials. The Leaguewas, in fact, the machine of the radical party, and all candidates hadto be governed by its edicts. As the Montgomery Council declared, theUnion League was "the right arm of the Union-Republican party in theUnited 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, butblack Democrats were not to be tolerated. It was almost necessary, asa measure of personal safety, for each black to support the radicalprogram. It was possible in some cases for a Negro to refrain fromtaking 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, totry to follow his old master in politics. The whites in many cases wereforced to advise their few faithful black friends to vote the radicalticket in order to escape mistreatment. Those who showed Democraticleanings were proscribed in Negro society and expelled from Negrochurches; the Negro women would not "proshay" (appreciate) a blackDemocrat. Such a one was sure to find that influence was being broughtto bear upon his dusky sweetheart or his wife to cause him to see theerror of his ways, and persistent adherence to the white party wouldresult in his losing her. The women were converted to radicalism beforethe men, and they almost invariably used their influence strongly inbehalf of the League. If moral suasion failed to cause the delinquent tosee the light, other methods were used. Threats were common and usuallysufficed. Fines were levied by the League on recalcitrant members. Incase of the more stubborn, a sound beating was effective to bring abouta change of heart. The offending party was "bucked and gagged, " or hewas tied by the thumbs and thrashed. Usually the sufferer was too afraidto complain of the way he was treated. 

Some of the methods of the Loyal League were similar to those ofthe later Ku Klux Klan. Anonymous warnings were sent to obnoxiousindividuals, houses were burned, notices were posted at night in publicplaces and on the houses of persons who had incurred the hostility ofthe order. In order to destroy the influence of the whites where kindlyrelations still existed, an "exodus order" issued through the Leaguedirected all members to leave their old homes and obtain work elsewhere. Some of the blacks were loath to comply with this order, but toremonstrances from the whites the usual reply was: "De word done sent tode League. We got to go. " For special meetings the Negroes were insome regions called together by signal guns. In this way the call for agathering went out over a county in a few minutes and a few hours laternearly all the members in the county assembled at the appointed place. 

Negroes as organizing agents were inclined to go to extremes and forthat reason were not so much used. In Bullock County, Alabama, a councilof the League was organized under the direction of a Negro emissary, whoproceeded to assume the government of the community. A list of crimesand punishments was adopted, a court with various officials wasestablished, and during the night the Negroes who opposed the newregime were arrested. But the black sheriff and his deputy were inturn arrested by the civil authorities. The Negroes then organized forresistance, flocked into the county seat, and threatened to exterminatethe whites and take possession of the county. Their agents visitedthe plantations and forced the laborers to join them by showing orderspurporting to be from General Swayne, the commander in the state, givingthem the authority to kill all who resisted them. Swayne, however, sentout detachments of troops and arrested fifteen of the ringleaders, andthe League government collapsed. 

After it was seen that existing political institutions were to beoverturned in the process of reconstruction, the white councils of theLeague and, to a certain extent, the Negro councils were converted intotraining schools for the leaders of the new party soon to be formed inthe state by act of Congress. The few whites who were in control wereunwilling to admit more white members to share in the division of thespoils; terms of admission became more stringent, and, especiallyafter the passage of the reconstruction acts in March 1867, many whiteapplicants were rejected. The alien element from the North was incontrol and as a result, where the blacks were numerous, the largestplums fell to the carpetbaggers. The Negro leaders--the politicians, preachers, and teachers--trained in the League acted as subordinatesto the whites and were sent out to drum up the country Negroes whenelections drew near. The Negroes were given minor positions when officeswere more plentiful than carpetbaggers. Later, after some complaint, alarger share of the offices fell to them. The League counted its largestwhite membership in 1865-66, and after that date it steadily decreased. The largest Negro membership was recorded in 1867 and 1868. The totalmembership was never made known. In North Carolina the order claimedfrom seventy-five thousand to one hundred and twenty-five thousandmembers; in states with larger Negro populations the membership wasprobably quite as large. After the election of 1868, only the councilsin the towns remained active, many of them transformed into politicalclubs, loosely organized under local political leaders. The plantationNegro needed less looking after, and except in the largest towns hebecame a kind of visiting member of the council in the town. The Leagueas 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 outsidersto control the Negro by separating the races politically and it hadcompelled the Negroes to vote as radicals for several years, whenwithout its influence they would either not have voted at all or wouldhave voted as Democrats along with their former masters. The order wasnecessary to the existence of the radical party in the Black Belt. Noordinary political organization could have welded the blacks into asolid party. The Freedmen's Bureau, which had much influence over theNegroes, was too weak in numbers to control the Negroes in politics. The League finally absorbed the personnel of the Bureau and turned itsprestige and its organization to political advantage. 

CHAPTER IX. CHURCH AND SCHOOL

Reconstruction in the state was closely related to reconstruction in thechurches and the schools. Here also were to be found the same hostileelements: Negro and white, Unionist and Confederate, victor andvanquished. The church was at that time an important institution in theSouth, more so than in the North, and in both sections more importantthan it is today. It was inevitable, therefore, that ecclesiasticalreconstruction should give rise to bitter feelings. 

Something should be said of conditions in the churches when the Federalarmies occupied the land. The Southern organizations had lost manyministers and many of their members, and frequently their buildingswere used as hospitals or had been destroyed. Their administration wasdisorganized and their treasuries were empty. The Unionists, scatteredhere and there but numerous in the mountain districts, no longer wishedto attend the Southern churches. 

The military censorship in church matters, which continued for a year insome districts, was irritating, especially in the Border States and inthe Union districts where Northern preachers installed by the army wereendeavoring to remain against the will of the people. Mobs sometimesdrove them out; others were left to preach to empty houses or to a fewUnionists and officers, while the congregation withdrew to build a newchurch. The problems of Negro membership in the white churches and ofthe future relations of the Northern and Southern denominations werepressing for settlement. 

All Northern organizations acted in 1865 upon the assumption that areunion of the churches must take place and that the divisions existingbefore the war should not be continued, since slavery, the cause of thedivision, had been destroyed. But they insisted that the reunion musttake place upon terms named by the "loyal" churches, that the Negroesmust also come under "loyal" religious direction, and that tests must beapplied to the Confederate sinners asking for admission, in order thatthe enormity of their crimes should be made plain to them. But thispolicy did not succeed. The Confederates objected to being treated as"rebels and traitors" and to "sitting upon stools of repentance" beforethey should be received again into the fold. 

Only two denominations were reunited--the Methodist Protestant, thenorthern section of which came over to the southern, and the ProtestantEpiscopal, in which moderate counsels prevailed and into whichSoutherners were welcomed back. The Southern Baptists maintained theirseparate existence and reorganized the Southern Baptist Convention, towhich came many of the Baptist associations in the Border States; theCatholics did not divide before 1861 and therefore had no reconstructionproblems to solve; and the smaller denominations maintained theorganizations which they had before 1861. A Unionist preacher testifiedbefore the Joint Committee on Reconstruction that even the SouthernQuakers "are about as decided in regard to the respectability ofsecession as any other class of people. "

Two other great Southern churches, the Presbyterian and the MethodistEpiscopal, grew stronger after the Civil War. The tendency towardreunion of the Presbyterians was checked when one Northern branchdeclared as "a condition precedent to the admission of southernapplicants that these confess as sinful all opinions before held inregard to slavery, nullification, rebellion and slavery, and stigmatizesecession as a crime and the withdrawal of the southern churches as aschism. " Another Northern group declared that southern ministers mustbe placed on probation and must either prove their loyalty or professrepentance for disloyalty and repudiate their former opinions. As aresult several Presbyterian bodies in the South joined in a strongunion, to which also adhered the synods of several Border States. 

The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was confronted with conditionssimilar to those which prevented the reunion of the Presbyterians. TheNorthern church, according to the declaration of its authorities, alsocame down to divide the spoils and to "disintegrate and absorb" the"schismatic" Southern churches. Already many Southern pulpits werefilled with Northern Methodist ministers placed there under militaryprotection; and when they finally realized that reunion was notpossible, these Methodist worthies resolved to occupy the lateConfederacy as a mission field and to organize congregations of blacksand whites who were "not tainted with treason. " Bishops and clergymencharged with this work carried it on vigorously for a few years in closeconnection with political reconstruction. 

The activities of the Northern Methodists stimulated the SouthernMethodists to a quick reorganization. The surviving bishops met inAugust 1865, and bound together their shaken church. In reply tosuggestions of reunion they asserted that the Northern Methodists hadbecome "incurably radical, " were too much involved in politics, and, further, that they had, without right, seized and were still holdingSouthern church buildings. They objected also to the way the Northernchurch referred to the Southerners as "schismatics" and to the Southernchurch as one built on slavery and therefore, now that slavery wasgone, to be reconstructed. The bishops warned their people against themissionary efforts of the Northern brethren and against the attemptsto "disintegrate and absorb" Methodism in the South. Within five yearsafter the war, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was greatlyincreased in numbers by the accession of conferences in Maryland, Kentucky, Virginia, Missouri, and even from above the Ohio, whilethe Northern Methodist Church was able to organize only a few whitecongregations outside of the stronger Unionist districts, but continuedto 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 evengained in numbers and territory, they fought a losing fight to retaintheir black members. It was assumed by Northern ecclesiastics thatwhether a reunion of whites took place or not, the Negroes would receivespiritual 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 whitesrendered them incapable. . . Of doing justice to the people whom theyhad so long persistently wronged. " Further, it was also necessary forpolitical reasons to remove the Negroes from Southern religious control. 

For obvious reasons, however, the Southern churches wanted to hold theirNegro members. They declared themselves in favor of Negro education andof better organized religious work among the blacks, and made everysort of accommodation to hold them. The Baptists organized separatecongregations, with white or black pastors as desired, and associationsof black churches. In 1866 the Methodist General Conference authorizedseparate congregations, quarterly conferences, annual conferences, evena separate jurisdiction, with Negro preachers, presiding elders, andbishops--but all to no avail. Every, Northern political, religious, ormilitary agency in the South worked for separation, and Negro preacherswere not long in seeing the greater advantages which they would have inindependent churches. 

Much of the separate organization was accomplished in mutual goodwill, particularly in the Baptist ranks. The Reverend I. T. Tichenor, aprominent Baptist minister, has described the process as it took placein the First Baptist Church in Montgomery. The church had nine hundredmembers, of whom six hundred were black. The Negroes received a regularorganization of their own under the supervision of the white pastors. When a separation of the two bodies was later deemed desirable, it wasinaugurated by a conference of the Negroes which passed a resolutioncouched in the kindliest terms, suggesting the wisdom of the division, and asking the concurrence of the white church in such action. The whitechurch cordially approved the movement, and the two bodies united inerecting a suitable house of worship for the Negroes. Until the newchurch was completed, both congregations continued to occupy jointly theold house of worship. The new house was paid for in large measure by thewhite members of the church and by individuals in the community. As soonas it was completed, the colored church moved into it with its pastor, board of deacons, committees of all sorts, and the whole machineryof church life went into action without a jar. Similar accommodationsoccurred in all the states of the South. 

The Methodists lost the greater part of their Negro membership totwo organizations which came down from the North in 1865--the AfricanMethodist 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 SouthernMethodists came to the conclusion that the remaining seventy-eightthousand Negroes would be more comfortable in a separate organizationand therefore began in 1866 the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, withbishops, conferences, and all the accompaniments of the parent MethodistChurch, which continued to give friendly aid but exercised no control. For many years the Colored Methodist Church was under fire from theother Negro denominations, who called it the "rebel, " the "Democratic, "the "old slavery" church. 

The Negro members of the Cumberland Presbyterians were similarly set offinto a small African organization. The Southern Presbyterians and theEpiscopalians established separate congregations and missions underwhite supervision but sanctioned no independent Negro organization. Consequently the Negroes soon deserted these churches and went withtheir own kind. 

Resentment at the methods employed by the Northern religiouscarpetbaggers was strong among the Southern whites. "Emissaries ofChrist and the radical party" they were called by one Alabamaleader. Governor Lindsay of the same state asserted that the Northernmissionaries caused race hatred by teaching the Negroes to regard thewhites as their natural enemies, who, if possible, would put them backin slavery. Others were charged with teaching that to be on the safeside, the blacks should get into a Northern church, and that "Christdied for Negroes and Yankees, not for rebels. "

The scalawags, also, developed a dislike of the Northern churchwork among the Negroes, and it was impossible to organize mixedcongregations. Of the Reverend A. S. Lakin, a well-known agent of theNorthern Methodist Church in Alabama, Nicholas Davis, a North AlabamaUnionist and scalawag, said to the Ku Klux Committee: "The character ofhis [Lakin's] speech was this: to teach the Negroes that every man thatwas born and raised in the Southern country was their enemy, that therewas no use trusting them, no matter what they said--if they said theywere for the Union or anything else. 'No use talking, they are yourenemies. ' 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 hellof an old rascal. "

For a time the white churches were annoyed by intrusions of strangeblacks set on by those who were bent on separating the races. Frequentlythere were feuds in white or black congregations over the question ofjoining some Northern body. Disputes over church property also aroseand continued for years. Lakin, referred to above, was charged with"stealing" Negro congregations and uniting them with the CincinnatiConference without their knowledge. The Negroes were urged to demandtitle to all buildings formerly used for Negro worship, and theConstitutional Convention of Alabama in 1867 directed that such propertymust be turned over to them when claimed. 

The agents of the Northern churches were not greatly different fromother carpetbaggers and adventurers taking advantage of the generalconfusion to seize a little power. Many were unscrupulous; others, sincere and honest but narrow, bigoted, and intolerant, filled withdistrust of the Southern whites and with corresponding confidence in theblacks and in themselves. The missionary and church publications werequite as severe on the Southern people as any radical Congressman. Thepublications of the Freedmen's Aid Society furnish illustrations of thefeelings and views of those engaged in the Southern work. They in turnwere made to feel the effects of a merciless social proscription. Forthis some of them cared not at all, while others or their families feltit keenly. One woman missionary wrote that she was delighted when aSouthern white would speak to her. A preacher in Virginia declared that"the females, those especially whose pride has been humbled, are moreintense in their bitterness and endeavor to keep up a social ostracismagainst Union and Northern people. " The Ku Klux raids were directedagainst preachers and congregations whose conduct was disagreeable tothe whites. Lakin asserted that while he was conducting a great revivalmeeting among the hills of northern Alabama, Governor Smith and otherprominent and sinful scalawag politicians were there "under conviction"and about to become converted. But in came the Klan and the congregationscattered. 

Smith and the others were so angry and frightened that their goodfeelings were dissipated, and the devil reentered them, so that Lakinsaid he was never able to "get a hold on them" again. For the souls lostthat night he held the Klan responsible. Lakin told several marvelousstories of his hairbreadth escapes from death by assassination which, iftrue, would be enough to ruin the reputation of northern Alabama men formarksmanship. 

The reconstruction ended with conditions in the churches similar tothose in politics: the races were separated and unfriendly; Northern andSouthern church organizations were divided; and between them, especiallyin the border and mountain districts, there existed factional quarrelsof a political origin, for every Northern Methodist was a Republican andevery 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 whichthe work was begun may be judged from the tone of the addresses made ata meeting of the National Teachers Association in 1865. The president, S. S. Greene, declared that "the old slave States are to be the newmissionary ground for the national school teacher. " Francis Wayland, theformer president of Brown University, remarked that "it has been a warof education and patriotism against ignorance and barbarism. " PresidentHill of Harvard spoke of the "new work of spreading knowledge andintellectual culture over the regions that sat in darkness. " Otherspeakers asserted that the leading Southern whites were as much opposedto free schools as to free governments and "we must treat them aswestern farmers do the stumps in their clearings, work around them andlet them rot out"; that the majority of the whites were more ignorantthan the slaves; and that the Negro must be educated and strengthenedagainst "the wiles, the guile, and hate of his baffled masters and theirminions. " The New England Freedmen's Aid Society considered it necessaryto educate the Negro "as a counteracting influence against the evilcouncils 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; andsecond, to arrange for the education of the Negroes. Education of theNegro slave had been looked upon as dangerous and had been generallyforbidden. A small number of Negroes could read and write, but therewere 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 andby the prevalence in some districts of the Virginia doctrine that freeschools were only for the poor, public schools were nevertheless inexistence in 1861. Academies and colleges, however, were thronged withstudents. When the war ended, the public schools were disorganized, and the private academies and the colleges were closed. Teachers andstudents had been dispersed; buildings had been burned or usedfor hospitals and laboratories; and public libraries had virtuallydisappeared. 

The colleges made efforts to open in the fall of 1865. Only one studentpresented himself at the University of Alabama for matriculation; butbefore June 1866, the stronger colleges were again in operation. Thepublic or semi-public schools for the whites also opened in the fall. In the cities where Federal military authorities had brought aboutthe employment of Northern teachers, there was some friction. InNew Orleans, for example, the teachers required the children to singNorthern songs and patriotic airs. When the Confederates were restoredto 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. Theywished to read the Bible, to be preachers, to be as the old master andnot have to work. Day and night and Sunday they crowded the schools. According to an observer, * "not only are individuals seen at study, andunder the most untoward circumstances, but in very many places I havefound what I will call 'native schools, ' often rude and very imperfect, but there they are, a group, perhaps, of all ages, trying to learn. Someyoung man, some woman, or old preacher, in cellar, or shed, or cornerof a Negro meeting-house, with the alphabet in hand, or a townspelling-book, is their teacher. All are full of enthusiasm with the newknowledge 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 theSouth proposed to give it to them. Neither side was actuated entirely byaltruistic motives. A Hampton Institute teacher in later days remarked:"When the combat was over and the Yankee school-ma'am followed in thetrain of the northern armies, the business of educating the Negroes wasa continuation of hostilities against the vanquished and was so regardedto 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 Negroeducation. Of this movement General Swayne said: "Quite early. . . . Theseveral religious denominations took strong ground in favor of theeducation of the freedmen. The principal argument was an appeal tosectional and sectarian prejudice, lest, the work being inevitable, the influence which must come from it be realized by others; but it isbelieved that this was but the shield and weapon which men of unselfishprinciple found necessary at first. " The newspapers took the attitudethat the Southern whites should teach the Negroes because it was theirduty, because it was good policy, and because if they did not do so someone else would. The "Advertiser" of Montgomery stated that educationwas a danger in slavery times but that under freedom ignorance becamea danger. For a time there were numerous schools taught by crippledConfederates and by Southern women. 

But the education of the Negro, like his religious training, wastaken from the control of the Southern white and was placed under thedirection of the Northern teachers and missionaries who swarmed into thecountry under the fostering care of the Freedmen's Bureau, the Northernchurches, and the various Freedmen's Aid Societies. In three years theBureau spent six million dollars on Negro schools and everywhere itexercised supervision over them. The teachers pursued a policy akinto that of the religious leaders. One Southerner likened them tothe "plagues of Egypt, " another described them as "saints, fools, incendiaries, fakirs, and plain business men and women. " A Southernwoman remarked that "their spirit was often high and noble so far as theblack man's elevation was concerned, but toward the white it was bitter, judicial, and unrelenting. " The Northern teachers were charged withignorance of social conditions, with fraternizing with the blacks, andwith teaching them that the Southerners were traitors, "murderers ofLincoln, " who had been cruel taskmasters and who now wanted to restoreservitude. 

The reaction against Negro education, which began to show itself beforereconstruction was inaugurated, found expression in the view of mostwhites that "schooling ruins a Negro. " A more intelligent opinion wasthat of J. L. M. Curry, a lifelong advocate of Negro education:

"It is not just to condemn the Negro for the education which he receivedin the early years after the war. That was the period of reconstruction, the saturnalia of misgovernment, the greatest possible hindrance to theprogress of the freedmen. . . . The education was unsettling, demoralizing, [and it] pandered to a wild frenzy for schooling as a quick methodof reversing social and political conditions. Nothing could have beenbetter devised for deluding the poor Negro and making him the tool, the slave of corrupt taskmasters. Education is a natural consequenceof citizenship and enfranchisement. . . Of freedom and humanity. But withdeliberate purpose to subject the Southern States to Negro domination, and secure the States permanently for partisan ends, the educationadopted was contrary to commonsense, to human experience, to all noblepurposes. The curriculum was for a people in the highest degree ofcivilization; the aptitude and capabilities and needs of the Negro werewholly disregarded. Especial stress was laid on classics and liberalculture to bring the race per saltum to the same plane with their formermasters, and realize the theory of social and political equality. A racemore highly civilized, with best heredities and environments, couldnot have been coddled with more disregard of all the teachings of humanhistory and the necessities of the race. Colleges and universities, established and conducted by the Freedmen's Bureau and Northern churchesand 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 strangeconditions, 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 thoroughreconstruction, and its general character and aim were determined bythe Northern teachers. Each convention framed a more or less complicatedschool system and undertook to provide for its support. The Negroes inthe conventions were anxious for free schools; the conservatives werewilling; but the carpetbaggers and a few mulatto leaders insisted inseveral States upon mixed schools. Only in Louisiana and South Carolinadid the constitutions actually forbid separate schools; in Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, and Arkansas the question was left open, to theembarrassment of the whites. Generally the blacks showed no desire formixed schools unless urged to it by the carpetbaggers. In the SouthCarolina convention, a mulatto thus argued in favor of mixed schools:"The gentleman from Newberry said he was afraid we were taking a wrongcourse to remove these prejudices. The most natural method to effectthis object would be to allow children when five or six years of age tomingle in schools together and associate generally. Under such training, prejudice must eventually die out; but if we postpone it until theybecome men and women, prejudice will be so established that no mortalcan obliterate it. This, I think, is a sufficient reply to the argumentof the gentleman. "

The state systems were top-heavy with administrative machinery and wereofficered by incompetent and corrupt officials. Such men as Cloud inAlabama, Cardozo in Mississippi, Conway in Louisiana, and Jillson inSouth Carolina are fair samples of them. Much of the personnel was takenover from the Bureau teaching force. The school officials were no betterthan the other officeholders. 

The first result of the attempt to use the schools as an instrumentof reconstruction ended in the ruin of several state universities. The faculties of the Universities of North Carolina, Mississippi, andAlabama were made radical and the institutions thereupon declined tonothing. The Negroes, unable to control the faculty of the Universityof South Carolina, forced Negro students in and thus got possession. In Louisiana the radical legislature cut off all funds because theuniversity would not admit Negroes. The establishment of the land grantcolleges was an occasion for corruption and embezzlement. 

The common schools were used for radical ends. The funds set aside forthem by the state constitutions or appropriated by the legislatures forthese schools seldom reached their destination without being lessenedby embezzlement or by plain stealing. Frequently the auditor, or thetreasurer, or even the legislature diverted the school funds to otherpurposes. Suffice it to say that all of the reconstruction systems brokedown financially after a brief existence. 

The mixed school provisions in Louisiana and South Carolina and theuncertainty of the educational situation in other States caused whitechildren to stay away from the public schools. For several years theNegroes were better provided than the whites, having for themselves bothall the public schools and also those supported by private benevolence. In Mississippi, Louisiana, and South Carolina the whites could get nomoney for schoolhouses, while large sums were spent on Negro schools. The Peabody Board, then recently inaugurated, * refused to cooperatewith school officials in the mixed school states and, when criticized, replied: "It is well known that we are helping the white childrenof Louisiana as being the more destitute from the fact of theirunwillingness 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 schoolofficials, disapproved of the attempts made in the schools to teachthe children radical ideas, and objected to the contents of the historytexts and the "Freedmen's Readers. " A white school board in Mississippi, by advertising for a Democratic teacher for a Negro school, drew thefire of a radical editor who inquired: "What is the motive by which thiscall for a 'competent Democratic teacher' is prompted? The most damningthat has ever moved the heart of man. It is to use the vote and actionof a human being as a means by which to enslave him. The treachery andvillainy of these rebels stands without parallel in the history of men. "

A Negro politician has left this account of a radical recitation in aFlorida Negro school:

After finishing the arithmetic lesson they must next go through thecatechism:

"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 getGovernor Starns out of his seat?" Answer: "They should kill them. ". . . . 

This was done that the patrons, some of whom could not read, would beimpressed by the expressions of their children, and would be readyto put any one to death who would come out into the country and sayanything against Governor Starns. 

The native white teachers soon dropped out of Negro schools, and thosefrom the North met with the same social persecution as the white churchworkers. The White League and Ku Klux Klan drove off obnoxious teachers, whipped some, burned Negro schoolhouses, and in various other waysmanifested the reaction which was rousing the whites against Negroschools. 

The several agencies working for Negro education gave some training tohundreds of thousands of blacks, but the whites asserted that, like thechurch work, it was based on a wrong spirit and resulted in evil aswell as in good. Free schools failed in reconstruction because ofthe dishonesty or incompetence of the authorities and because of theunsettled race question. It was not until the turn of the century thatthe white schools were again as good as they had been before 1861. After the reconstruction native whites as teachers of Negro schools wereimpossible in most places. The hostile feelings of the whites resultedand still result in a limitation of Negro schools. The best thing forNegro schools that came out of reconstruction was Armstrong's HamptonInstitute program, which, however, was quite opposed to the spirit ofreconstruction education. 

CHAPTER X. CARPETBAG AND NEGRO RULE

The Southern States reconstructed by Congress were subject for periodsof varying length to governments designed by radical Northerners andimposed by elements thrown to the surface in the upheaval of Southernsociety. Georgia, Virginia, and North Carolina each had a briefexperience with these governments; other States escaped after fouror five years, while Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida were notdelivered from this domination until 1876. The states which containedlarge numbers of Negroes had, on the whole, the worst experience. Herethe officials were ignorant or corrupt, frauds upon the public were therule, not the exception, and all of the reconstruction governments wereso conducted that they could secure no support from the respectableelements of the electorate. 

The fundamental cause of the failure of these governments was thecharacter of the new ruling class. Every state, except perhaps Virginia, was under the control of a few able leaders from the North generallycalled carpetbaggers and of a few native white radicals contemptuouslydesignated scalawags. These were kept in power by Negro voters, tosome seven hundred thousand of whom the ballot had been given by thereconstruction acts. The adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment in March1870, brought the total in the former slave states to 931, 000, withabout seventy-five thousand more Negroes in the North. The Negro voterswere most numerous, comparatively, in Louisiana, Mississippi, SouthCarolina, Alabama, and Georgia. There were a few thousand carpetbaggersin each State, with, at first, a much larger number of scalawags. Thelatter, 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 newregime became evident, taking with them whatever claims the party had torespectability, education, political experience, and property. 

The conservatives, hopelessly reduced by the operation of disfranchisinglaws, were at first not well organized, nor were they at any time aswell led as in antebellum days. In 1868, about one hundred thousandof them were forbidden to vote and about two hundred thousand weredisqualified from holding office. The abstention policy of 1867-68resulted in an almost complete withdrawal of the influence of theconservatives for the two years, 1868-70. As a class they were regardedby the dominant party in state and nation as dangerous and untrustworthyand were persecuted in such irritating ways that many became indifferentto the appeals of civil duty. They formed a solid but almost despairingopposition in the black districts of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and South Carolina. For the leaders the price of amnesty was conversionto 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, fullpowers of administration, including appointment and removal, wereconcentrated in the hands of the governor. He exercised a wide controlover public funds and had authority to organize and command militia andconstabulary and to call for Federal troops. The numerous administrativeboards worked with the sole object of keeping their party in power. Officers were several times as numerous as under the old regime, and allof them received higher salaries and larger contingent fees. The moralsupport behind the government was that of President Grant and the UnitedStates army, not that of a free and devoted people. 

Of the twenty men who served as governors, eight were scalawags andtwelve were carpetbaggers, men who were abler than the scalawags and whohad much more than an equal share of the spoils. The scalawags, such asBrownlow of Tennessee, Smith of Alabama, and Holden of North Carolina, were usually honest but narrow, vindictive men, filled with fear andhate of the conservative whites. 

Of the carpetbaggers half were personally honest, but all wereunscrupulous in politics. ' Some were flagrantly dishonest. * GovernorMoses of South Carolina was several times bribed and at one time, according to his own statement, received $15, 000 for his vote as speakerof the House of Representatives. Governor Stearns of Florida was chargedwith stealing government supplies from the Negroes; and it was notoriousthat Warmoth and Kellogg of Louisiana, each of whom served only oneterm, retired with large fortunes. Warmoth, indeed, went so far as todeclare: "Corruption is the fashion. I do not pretend to be honest, butonly as honest as anybody in politics. "

The judiciary was no better than the executive. The chief justiceof Louisiana was convicted of fraud. A supreme court judge of SouthCarolina offered his decisions for sale, and Whipper and Moses, both notorious thieves, were elected judges by the South CarolinaLegislature. In Alabama there were many illiterate magistrates, amongthem the city judge of Selma, who in April 1865, was still living asa slave. Governor Chamberlain, a radical, asserted that there were twohundred trial judges in South Carolina who could not read. 

Other officers were of the same stripe. Leslie, a South Carolinacarpetbagger, declared that "South Carolina has no right to be a stateunless she can support her statesmen, " and he proceeded to live up tothis principle. The manager of the state railroad of Georgia, when askedhow he had been able to accumulate twenty or thirty thousand dollars ona two or three thousand dollar salary, replied, "By the exercise of themost rigid economy. " A North Carolina Negro legislator was found on oneoccasion chuckling as he counted some money. "What are you laughing at, Uncle?" he was asked. "Well, boss, I'se been sold 'leben times inmy 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 ofpolitical tricksters and adventurers as ever got together in one place. "This description will fit equally well the white officials of all thereconstructed states. Many of the Negroes who attained public officeshowed themselves apt pupils of their carpetbag masters but were seldompermitted to appropriate a large share of the plunder. In Florida theNegro members of the legislature, thinking that they should have a partof the bribe and loot money which their carpetbag masters were said tobe receiving, went so far as to appoint what was known as a "smellingcommittee" to locate the good things and secure a share. 

From 1868 to 1870, the legislatures of seven states were overwhelminglyradical and in several the radical majority held control for four, six, or eight years. Negroes were most numerous in the legislatures ofLouisiana, South Carolina, and Mississippi, and everywhere the votes ofthese men were for sale. In Alabama and Louisiana, Negro legislators hada fixed price for their votes: for example, six hundred dollars wouldbuy a senator in Louisiana. In South Carolina, Negro government appearedat its worst. A vivid description of the Legislature of this State inwhich 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 ofthe most ignorant democracy that mankind ever saw, invested with thefunctions of government. It is the dregs of the population habilitatedin the robes of their intelligent predecessors, and asserting over themthe rule of ignorance and corruption. . . . It is barbarism overwhelmingcivilization by physical force. It is the slave rioting in the halls ofhis master, and putting that master under his feet. And, though it isdone without malice and without vengeance, it is nevertheless nonethe less completely and absolutely done. . . . We will enter the House ofRepresentatives. Here sit one hundred and twenty-four members. Ofthese, twenty-three are white men, representing the remains of the oldcivilization. These are good-looking, substantial citizens. They are menof weight and standing in the communities they represent. They are allfrom the hill country. The frosts of sixty and seventy winters whitenthe heads of some among them. There they sit, grim and silent. They feelthemselves to be but loose stones, thrown in to partially obstruct acurrent they are powerless to resist. . . . 

"This dense Negro crowd. . . Do the debating, the squabbling, thelawmaking, and create all the clamor and disorder of the body. Thesetwenty-three white men are but the observers, the enforced auditors ofthe dull and clumsy imitation of a deliberative body, whose appearancein their present capacity is at once a wonder and a shame to moderncivilization. . . . The Speaker is black, the Clerk is black, thedoorkeepers are black, the little pages are black, the chairman of theWays and Means is black, and the chaplain is coal black. At some of thedesks sit colored men whose types it would be hard to find outside ofCongo; whose costumes, visages, attitudes, and expression, only befitthe forecastle of a buccaneer. It must be remembered, also, that thesemen, with not more than a half dozen exceptions, have been themselvesslaves, and that their ancestors were slaves for generations. . . 

"But the old stagers admit that the colored brethren have a wonderfulaptness at legislative proceedings. They are 'quick as lightning'at detecting points of order, and they certainly make incessant andextraordinary use of their knowledge. No one is allowed to talk fiveminutes without interruption, and one interruption is a signal foranother and another, until the original speaker is smothered under anavalanche of them. Forty questions of privilege will be raised in aday. At times, nothing goes on but alternating questions of order andof privilege. The inefficient colored friend who sits in the Speaker'schair cannot suppress this extraordinary element of the debate. Some ofthe blackest members exhibit a pertinacity of intrusion in raising thesepoints of order and questions of privilege that few white men canequal. Their struggles to get the floor, their bellowings and physicalcontortions, baffle description. 

"The Speaker's hammer plays a perpetual tattoo to no purpose. Thetalking and the interruptions from all quarters go on with the utmostlicense. Everyone esteems himself as good as his neighbor, and putsin his oar, apparently as often for love of riot and confusion as foranything else. . . . The Speaker orders a member whom he has discovered tobe particularly unruly to take his seat. The member obeys, and with thesame motion that he sits down, throws his feet on to his desk, hidinghimself from the Speaker by the soles of his boots . . . . After a fewexperiences of this sort, the Speaker threatens, in a laugh, to callthe 'gemman' to order. This is considered a capital joke, and a guffawfollows. The laugh goes round and then the peanuts are cracked andmunched faster than ever; one hand being employed in fortifying theinner man with this nutriment of universal use, while the other enforcesthe views of the orator. This laughing propensity of the sable crowd isa great cause of disorder. They laugh as hens cackle--one begins and allfollow. 

"But underneath all this shocking burlesque upon legislativeproceedings, we must not forget that there is something very realto this uncouth and untutored multitude. It is not all sham, nor allburlesque. They have a genuine interest and a genuine earnestness in thebusiness of the assembly which we are bound to recognize and respect. . . . They have an earnest purpose, born of conviction that their position andcondition are not fully assured, which lends a sort of dignity to theirproceedings. The barbarous, animated jargon in which they so oftenindulge is on occasion seen to be so transparently sincere and weightyin their own minds that sympathy supplants disgust. The whole thing is awonderful novelty to them as well as to observers. Seven years ago thesemen were raising corn and cotton under the whip of the overseer. Todaythey are raising points of order and questions of privilege. They findthey can raise one as well as the other. They prefer the latter. Itis easier and better paid. Then, it is the evidence of an accomplishedresult. It means escape and defense from old oppressors. It meansliberty. 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 istheir 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 thereconstructed states and only two Democratic representatives, as againstsixty-four radical senators and representatives. At the end of fouryears, the Democrats numbered fifteen against seventy radicals. A Negrosucceeded Jefferson Davis in the Senate, and in all the race sent twosenators and thirteen representatives to Congress; but though severalwere of high character and fair ability, they exercised practically noinfluence. The Southern delegations had no part in shaping policies butmerely voted as they were told by the radical leaders. 

The effect of dishonest government was soon seen in extravagantexpenditures, heavier taxes, increase of the bonded debt, and depressionof property values. It was to be expected that after the ruin wroughtby war and the admission of the Negro to civil rights, the expenses ofgovernment would be greater. But only lack of honesty will account forthe extraordinary expenses of the reconstruction governments. In Alabamaand Florida, the running expenses of the state government increasedtwo hundred percent, in Louisiana five hundred percent, and in Arkansasfifteen hundred percent--all this in addition to bond issues. In SouthCarolina 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 andby the sale of bonds. Taxes were everywhere multiplied. The state taxrate in Alabama was increased four hundred percent, in Louisianaeight hundred percent, and in Mississippi, which could issue no bonds, fourteen hundred percent. City and county taxes, where carpetbaggerswere in control, increased in the same way. Thousands of smallproprietors could not meet their taxes, and in Mississippi alone theland sold for unpaid taxes amounted to six million acres, an area aslarge as Massachusetts and Rhode Island together. Nordhoff* speaks ofseeing Louisiana newspapers of which three-fourths were taken upby notices of tax sales. In protest against extravagant and corruptexpenditures, taxpayers' conventions were held in every state, butwithout effect. 

 *Charles Nordhoff, "The Cotton States in the Spring and Summer of 1875". 

Even the increased taxation, however, did not produce enough to supportthe new governments, which now had recourse to the sale of state andlocal bonds. In this way Governor Holden's Administration managed in twoyears 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. Thedebt of New Orleans increased twenty-five fold and that of Vicksburga thousandfold. A great deal of the debt was the result of fraudulentissues of bonds or over-issue. For this form of fraud, the statefinancial agents in New York were usually responsible. Southern bondssold far below par, and the time came when they were peddled about atten to twenty-five cents on the dollar. 

Still another disastrous result followed this corrupt financiering. InAlabama there was a sixty-five percent decrease in property values, in Florida forty-five percent, and in Louisiana fifty to seventy-fivepercent. A large part of the best property was mortgaged, andforeclosure sales were frequent. Poorer property could be neithermortgaged nor sold. There was an exodus of whites from the worstgoverned districts in the West and the North. Many towns, among themMobile and Memphis, surrendered their charters and were ruled directlyby the governor; and there were numerous "strangulated" counties whichon account of debt had lost self-government and were ruled by appointeesof the governor. 

A part of the money raised by taxes and by bond sales was used forlegitimate expenses and the rest went to pay forged warrants, excesswarrants, and swollen mileage accounts, and to fill the pockets ofembezzlers and thieves from one end of the South to the other. InArkansas, for example, the auditor's clerk hire, which was $4000 in1866, cost twenty-three times as much in 1873. In Louisiana and SouthCarolina, stealing was elevated into an art and was practiced withoutconcealment. In the latter state, the worthless Hell Hole Swamp wasbought for $26, 000 to be farmed by the Negroes but was charged to thestate at $120, 000. A free restaurant maintained at the Capitol for thelegislators cost $125, 000 for one session. The porter who conducted itsaid that he kept it open sixteen to twenty hours a day and that someonewas always in the room eating and drinking or smoking. When a memberleft, he would fill his pockets with cigars or with bottles of drink. Forty different brands of beverages were paid for by the state for theprivate use of members, and all sorts of food, furniture, and clothingwere sent to the houses of members and were paid for by the state as"legislative supplies. " On the bills appeared such items as importedmushrooms, one side of bacon, one feather bed, bustles, two pairs ofextra long stockings, one pair of garters, one bottle perfume, twelvemonogram cut glasses, one horse, one comb and brush, three gallons ofwhisky, one pair of corsets. During the recess, supplies were sent outto the rural homes of the members. 

The endorsement of railroad securities by the state also furnisheda source of easy money to the dishonest official and the crookedspeculator. After the Civil War, in response to the general desire inthe South for better railroad facilities, the "Johnson" governmentsbegan to underwrite railroad bonds. When the carpetbag and Negrogovernments came in, the policy was continued but without propersafeguards. Bonds were sometimes endorsed before the roads wereconstructed, and even excess issues were authorized. Bonds were endorsedfor some roads of which not a mile was ever built. The White RiverValley and Texas Railroad never came into existence, but it obtaineda grant of $175, 000 from the State of Arkansas. Speaker Carter of theLouisiana Legislature received a financial interest in all railroadendorsement bills which he steered through the House. Negro members wereregularly bribed to vote for the bond steals. A witness swore that inLouisiana it cost him $80, 000 to get a railroad charter passed, but thatthe Governor's signature cost more than the consent of the legislature. 

When the roads defaulted on the payment of interest, as most of themdid, the burden fell upon the state. Not all of the blame for thisperverted legislation should be placed upon the corrupt legislators, however, for the lawyers who saw the bills through were frequentlySouthern Democrats representing supposedly respectable Northerncapitalists. The railroads as well as the taxpayers suffered from thispernicious lobbying, for the companies were loaded with debts and rarelyprofited by the loans. Valuation of railroad property rapidly decreased. The roads of Alabama which were valued in 1871 at $26, 000, 000 haddecreased in 1875 to $9, 500, 000. 

The foundation of radical power in the South lay in the alienation ofthe races which had been accomplished between 1865 and 1868. To maintainthis unhappy distrust, the radical leaders found an effective means inthe Negro militia. Under the constitution of every reconstructed state, a Negro constabulary was possible, but only in South Carolina, NorthCarolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi were the authorities willing torisk the dangers of arming the blacks. No governor dared permit theSouthern whites to organize as militia. In South Carolina the carpetbaggovernor, Robert K. Scott, enrolled ninety-six thousand Negroes asmembers of the militia and organized and armed twenty thousand ofthem. The few white companies were ordered to disband. In Louisiana thegovernor had a standing army of blacks called the Metropolitan Guard. Inseveral states the Negro militia was used as a constabulary and was sentto 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 toa close. The intervening period was filled with the more peacefulactivities of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Camellia. But as thewhites made up their minds to get rid of Negro rule, the clashes camefrequently and always ended in the death of more Negroes than whites. *They would probably have continued with serious consequences if thewhites 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 inpower, gave the radicals ample opportunity to control the Negro vote. The elections were frequently corrupt, though not a great deal of moneywas spent in bribery. It was found less expensive to use other methodsof getting out the vote. The Negroes were generally made to understandthat the Democrats wanted to put them back into slavery, but sometimesthe leaders deemed it wiser to state more concretely that "Jeff Davishad come to Montgomery and is ready to organize the Confederacy again"if the Democrats should win; or to say that "if Carter is elected, hewill not allow your wives and daughters to wear hoopskirts. " In Alabamamany thousand pounds of bacon and hams were sent in to be distributedamong "flood sufferers" in a region which had not been flooded sincethe days of Noah. The Negroes were told that they must vote right andreceive enough bacon for a year, or "lose their rights" if they votedwrongly. Ballot-box stuffing developed into an art, and each Negro wascarefully inspected to see that he had the right kind of ticket beforehe was marched to the polls. 

The inspection and counting of election returns were in the hands ofthe county and state boards, which were controlled by the governor, andwhich had authority to throw out or count in any number of votes. Onthe assumption that the radicals were entitled to all Negro votes, thereturning boards followed the census figures for the black population inorder to arrive at the minimum radical vote. The action of the returningboards was specially flagrant in Louisiana and Florida and in the blackcounties of South Carolina. 

Notwithstanding the fact that the very best arrangements had been madeat Washington and in the states for the running of the radical machine, everywhere there were factional fights from the beginning. Usually thescalawags declared hostilities after they found that the carpetbaggershad control of the Negroes and the inside track on the way to the beststate and federal offices. Later, after the scalawags had for the mostpart left the radicals, there were contests among the carpetbaggersthemselves for the control of the Negro vote and the distribution ofspoils. The defeated faction usually joined the Democrats. In Arkansasa 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 fromwithout. Relations between the Federal Government and the stategovernments in the South were close, and the policy at Washington wasfrequently determined by conditions in the South. President Grant, though at first considerate, was usually consistently radical in hisSouthern policy. This attitude is difficult to explain except by sayingthat Grant fell under the control of radical advisers after his breakwith Johnson, that his military instincts were offended by oppositionin the South which his advisers told him was rebellious, and that he wasimpressed by the need of holding the Southern radical vote againstthe inroads of the Democrats. After about 1869, Grant never reallyunderstood the conditions in the South. He was content to control bymeans of Federal troops and thousands of deputy marshals. For thispolicy the Ku Klux activities gave sufficient excuse for a time, and thecontinued story of "rebel outrages" was always available to justifya call for soldiers or deputies. The enforcement legislation gave thecolor of law to any interference which was deemed necessary. 

Federal troops served other ends than the mere preservation of order andthe support of the radical state governments. They were used on occasionto decide between opposing factions and to oust conservatives who hadforced their way into office. The army officers purged the Legislatureof Georgia in 1870, that of Alabama in 1872, and that of Louisiana in1875. In 1875 the city government of Vicksburg and the state governmentof Louisiana were overturned by the whites, but General Sheridan at onceintervened to put back the Negroes and carpetbaggers. He suggested toPresident Grant that the conservatives be declared "banditti" and hewould make himself responsible for the rest. As soon as a State showedsigns of going over to the Democrats or an important election was lostby the radicals, one House or the other of Congress in many instancessent an investigation committee to ascertain the reasons. The Committeeson the Condition of the South or on the Late Insurrectionary Stateswere nearly always ready with reports to establish the necessity ofintervention. 

Besides the army there was in every state a powerful group of Federalofficials who formed a "ring" for the direction of all good radicals. These marshals, deputies, postmasters, district attorneys, andcustomhouse officials were in close touch with Washington and frequentlydictated nominations and platforms. At New Orleans the officials actedas a committee on credentials and held all the state conventions undertheir control in the customhouse. 

Such was the machinery used to sustain a party which, with the gradualdefection of the whites, became throughout the South almostuniformly black. At first few Negroes asked for offices, but soon thecarpetbaggers found it necessary to divide with the rapidly growingnumber of Negro politicians. No Negro was elected governor, thoughseveral reached the office of lieutenant governor, secretary of state, auditor, superintendent of education, justice of the state supremecourt, and fifteen were elected to Congress. * It would not be correctto say that the Negro race was malicious or on evil bent. Unlessdeliberately stirred up by white leaders, few Negroes showed signsof mean spirit. Few even made exorbitant demands. They wanted"something"--schools and freedom and "something else, " they knew notwhat. Deprived of the leadership of the best whites, they could notpossibly act with the scalawags--their traditional enemies. Nothing wasleft 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 revolutionarysocieties, grew out of a general conviction among the whites that thereconstruction policies were impossible and not to be endured. Somers, an English traveler, says that at this time "nearly every respectablewhite man in the Southern States was not only disfranchised but underfear of arrest or confiscation; the old foundations of authority wereutterly razed before any new ones had yet been laid, and in the dark andbenighted interval the remains of the Confederate armies--swept aftera long and heroic day of fair fight from the field--flitted before theeyes 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 gallingdespotism that broods like a nightmare over these Southern States--afungus growth of military tyranny superinduced by the fostering of LoyalLeagues, the abrogation of our civil laws, the habitual violation of ournational Constitution, and a persistent prostitution of all government, all resources and all powers, to degrade the white man by theestablishment of Negro supremacy. "

The secret orders, regardless of their original purposes, were allfinally to be found opposing radical reconstruction. Everywhere theirobjects were the same: to recover for the white race their formercontrol of society and government, and to destroy the baneful influenceof the alien among the blacks. The people of the South were by lawhelpless to take steps towards setting up any kind of government in aland infested by a vicious element--Federal and Confederate deserters, bushwhackers, outlaws of every description, and Negroes, some of whomproved insolent and violent in their newly found freedom. Nowherewas property or person safe, and for a time many feared a Negroinsurrection. General Hardee said to his neighbors, "I advise you to getready 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 eachcommunity for several months after the Civil War, and in many of themfor months before the end of the war, there were informal vigilancecommittees. Some of these had such names as the Black Cavalry and Men ofJustice in Alabama, the Home Guards in many other places, while theanti Confederate societies of the war, the Heroes of America, the RedStrings, and the Peace Societies, transformed themselves in certainlocalities into regulatory bodies. Later these secret societies numberedscores, perhaps hundreds, varying from small bodies of local police togreat federated bodies which covered almost the entire South and evenhad membership in the North and West. Other important organizations werethe Constitutional Union Guards, the Pale Faces, the White Brotherhood, the Council of Safety, the '76 Association, the Sons of '76, theOrder of the White Rose, and the White Boys. As the fight againstreconstruction became bolder, the orders threw off their disguises andappeared openly as armed whites fighting for the control of society. The White League of Louisiana, the White Line of Mississippi, the WhiteMan's party of Alabama, and the Rifle Clubs of South Carolina, werelater manifestations of the general Ku Klux movement. 

The two largest secret orders, however, were the Ku Klux Klan, fromwhich the movement took its name, and the Knights of the White Camelia. The Ku Klux Klan originated at Pulaski, Tennessee, in the autumn of1865, as a local organization for social purposes. The founders wereyoung Confederates, united for fun and mischief. The name was anaccidental corruption of the Greek word Kuklos, a circle. The officersadopted queer sounding titles and strange disguises. Weird nightridersin ghostly attire thoroughly frightened the superstitious Negroes, who were told that the spirits of dead Confederates were abroad. Thisterrorizing of the blacks successfully provided the amusement which thefounders desired, and there were many applications for admission to thesociety. The Pulaski Club, or Den, was in the habit of parading in fulluniform at social gatherings of the whites at night, much to the delightof the small boys and girls. Pulaski was near the Alabama line, andmany of the young men of Alabama who saw these parades or heard of themorganized similar Dens in the towns of Northern Alabama. Nothing buthorseplay, however, took place at the meetings. In 1867 and 1868, theorder appeared in parade in the towns of the adjoining states and, as weare told, "cut up curious gyrations" on the public squares. 

There was a general belief outside the order that there was a purposebehind all the ceremonial and frolic of the Dens; many joined the orderconvinced that its object was serious; others saw the possibilities ofusing it as a means of terrorizing the Negroes. After men discoveredthe power of the Klan over the Negroes, indeed, they were generallyinclined, owing to the disordered conditions of the time, to act as asort of police patrol and to hold in check the thieving Negroes, theUnion League, and the "loyalists. " In this way, from being merely anumber of social clubs the Dens swiftly became bands of regulators, taking on many new fantastic qualities along with their new seriousnessof purpose. Some of the more ardent spirits led the Dens far in thedirection of violence and outrage. Attempts were made by the parentDen at Pulaski to regulate the conduct of the others, but, owing tothe loose organization, the effort met with little success. Some of theDens, indeed, lost all connection with the original order. 

A general organization of these societies was perfected at a conventionheld in Nashville in May 1867, just as the Reconstruction Acts werebeing put into operation. A constitution called the Prescript wasadopted which provided for a national organization. The former slavestates, except Delaware, constituted the Empire, which was ruled bythe Grand Wizard (then General Forrest) with a staff of ten Genii;each State was a realm under a Grand Dragon and eight Hydras; the nextsubdivision was a Dominion, consisting of several counties, ruled bya Grand Titan and six Furies; the county or Province was governed bya Grand Giant and four Goblins; the unit was the Den or communityorganization, of which there might be several in each county, each undera Grand Cyclops and two Nighthawks. The Genii, Hydras, Furies, Goblins, and Nighthawks were staff officers. The private members were calledGhouls. The order had no name, and at first was designated by two stars(**), later by three (***). Sometimes it was called the Invisible Empireof Ku Klux Klan. 

Any white man over eighteen might be admitted to the Den afternomination by a member and strict investigation by a committee. Theoath demanded obedience and secrecy. The Dens governed themselves by theordinary rules of deliberative bodies. The punishment for betrayal ofsecrecy was "the extreme penalty of the Law. " None of the secrets was tobe written, and there was a "Register" of alarming adjectives, suchas terrible, horrible, furious, doleful, bloody, appalling, frightful, gloomy, which was used as a cipher code in dating the odd Ku Kluxorders. 

The general objects of the order were thus set forth in the revisedPrescript: first, to protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenselessfrom the indignities, wrongs, and outrages of the lawless, the violent, and the brutal; to relieve the injured and oppressed; to succor thesuffering and unfortunate, and especially the widows and orphans ofConfederate soldiers; second, to protect and defend the Constitutionof the United States and all laws passed in conformity thereto, and toprotect the States and people thereof from all invasion from anysource 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 ofthe order. No Republican, no Union Leaguer, and no member of the G. A. R. Might become a member. The members were pledged to oppose Negroequality of any kind, to favor emancipation of the Southern whitesand the restoration of their rights, and to maintain constitutionalgovernment and equitable laws. 

Prominent men testified that the order became popular because the whitesfelt that they were persecuted and that there was no legal protection, no respectable government. General (later Senator) Pettus said thatthrough all the workings of the Federal Government ran the principlethat "we are an inferior, degraded people and not fit to be trusted. "General Clanton of Alabama further explained that "there is not arespectable white woman in the Negro Belt of Alabama who will trustherself outside of her house without some protector. . . . So far as ourState Government is concerned, we are in the hands of camp-followers, horse-holders, cooks, bottle-washers, and thieves. . . . We have passedout from the hands of the brave soldiers who overcame us, and areturned over to the tender mercies of squaws for torture. . . . I see Negropolice--great black fellows--leading white girls around the streets ofMontgomery, and locking them up in jails. "

The Klan first came into general prominence in 1868 with the reportof the Federal commanders in the South concerning its activities. Soonafter that date the order spread through the white counties of theSouth, in many places absorbing the White Brotherhood, the Pale Faces, and some other local organizations which had been formed in the upperpart of the Black Belt. But it was not alone in the field. The orderknown as the Knights of the White Camelia, founded in Louisiana in 1867and formally organized in 1868, spread rapidly over the lower Southuntil it reached the territory occupied by the Ku Klux Klan. It wasmainly a Black Belt order, and on the whole had a more substantial andmore conservative membership than the other large secret bodies. Likethe Ku Klux Klan, it also absorbed several minor local societies. 

The White Camelia had a national organization with headquarters in NewOrleans. Its business was conducted by a Supreme Council of the UnitedStates, with Grand, Central, and Subordinate Councils for each state, county, and community. All communication within the order took place bypasswords and cipher; the organization and the officers were similar tothose 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 wereas perfect as human ingenuity could have made it. " The fundamentalobject of the White Camelia was the "maintenance of the supremacy of thewhite race, " and to this end the members were constrained "to observe amarked distinction between the races" and to restrain the "African raceto that condition of social and political inferiority for which Godhas destined it. " The members were pledged to vote only for whites, to oppose Negro equality in all things, but to respect the legitimaterights of Negroes. 

The smaller orders were similar in purpose and organization to the KuKlux Klan and the White Camelia. Most of them joined or were affiliatedwith the large societies. Probably a majority of the men of the Southwere associated at some time during this period with these revolutionarybodies. As a rule the politicians, though approving, held aloof. Publicopinion generally supported the movement so long as the radicals madeserious attempts to carry out the reconstruction policies. 

The task before the secret orders was to regulate the conduct of theblacks and their leaders in order that honor, life, and property mightbe secure. They planned to accomplish this aim by playing upon thefears, superstitions, and cowardice of the black race--in a word, bycreating a white terror to counteract the black one. To this end theymade use of strange disguises, mysterious and fearful conversation, midnight rides and drills, and silent parades. As long as secrecy andmystery were to be effective in dealing with the Negroes, costume wasan important matter. These disguises varied with the locality and oftenwith the individual. High cardboard hats, covered with white cloth oftendecorated with stars or pictures of animals, white masks with holescut for eyes, nose and mouth bound with red braid to give a horribleappearance, and frequently a long tongue of red flannel so fixed thatit could be moved with the wearer's tongue, and a long white robe--thesemade up a costume which served at the same time as a disguise and as ameans of impressing the impressionable Negro. Horses were covered withsheets or white cloth held on by the saddle and by belts, and sometimesthe animals were even painted. Skulls of sheep and cattle, and even ofhuman beings were often carried on the saddlebows to add another elementof terror. A framework was sometimes made to fit the shoulders of aGhoul which caused him to appear twelve feet high. A skeleton woodenhand at the end of a stick served to greet terrified Negroes atmidnight. For safety every man carried a small whistle and a brace ofpistols. 

The trembling Negro who ran into a gathering of the Ku Klux on hisreturn from a Loyal League meeting was informed that the white-robedfigures he saw were the spirits of the Confederate dead killed atChickamauga or Shiloh, now unable to rest in their graves because ofthe conduct of the Negroes. He was told in a sepulchral voice of thenecessity for his remaining more at home and taking a less active partin predatory excursions abroad. In the middle of the night, a sleepingNegro might wake to find his house surrounded by a ghostly company, orto see several terrifying figures standing by his bedside. They were, they said, the ghosts of men whom he had formerly known. They hadscratched through from Hell to warn the Negroes of the consequences oftheir misconduct. Hell was a dry and thirsty land; and they asked himfor water. Bucket after bucket of water disappeared into a sack ofleather, rawhide, or rubber, concealed within the flowing robe. Thestory is told of one of these night travelers who called at the cabinof a radical Negro in Attakapas County, Louisiana. After drinking threebuckets of water to the great astonishment of the darky, the travelerthanked him and told him that he had traveled nearly a thousand mileswithin twenty-four hours, and that that was the best water he had tastedsince he was killed at the battle of Shiloh. The Negro dropped thebucket, overturned chairs and table in making his escape through thewindow, and was never again seen or heard of by residents of thatcommunity. Another incident is told of a parade in Pulaski, Tennessee:"While the procession was passing a corner on which a Negro man wasstanding, a tall horseman in hideous garb turned aside from the line, dismounted and stretched out his bridle rein toward the Negro, as ifhe desired him to hold his horse. Not daring to refuse, the frightenedAfrican extended his hand to grasp the rein. As he did so, the Ku Kluxtook his own head from his shoulders and offered to place that also inthe 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: 'Hedone it, suah, boss. I seed him do it. '"

It was seldom necessary at this early stage to use violence, forthe black population was in an ecstasy of fear. A silent host ofwhite-sheeted horsemen parading the country roads at night wassufficient to reduce the blacks to good behavior for weeks or months. One silent Ghoul posted near a meeting place of the League would be thecause of the immediate dissolution of that club. Cow bones in a sackwere rattled within earshot of the terrified Negroes. A horriblebeing, fifteen feet tall, walking through the night toward a place ofcongregation, was very likely to find that every one had vacated theplace before he arrived. A few figures wrapped in sheets and sittingon tombstones in a graveyard near which Negroes were accustomed to passwould serve to keep the immediate community quiet for weeks and give thelocality a reputation for "hants" which lasted long. 

To prevent detection on parade, members of the Klan often stayed outof the parade in their own town and were to be seen freely andconspicuously mingling with the spectators. A man who believed that heknew every horse in the vicinity and was sure that he would be able toidentify the riders by their horses was greatly surprised upon liftingthe disguise of the horse nearest him to find the animal upon whichhe himself had ridden into town a short while before. The parades werealways silent and so arranged as to give the impression of very largenumbers. In the regular drills which were held in town and country, themen showed that they had not forgotten their training in the Confederatearmy. There were no commands save in a very low tone or in a mysteriouslanguage, and usually only signs or whistle signals were used. 

Such pacific methods were successful to a considerable degree untilthe carpetbaggers and scalawags were placed in office under theReconstruction Acts. Then more violent methods were necessary. TheMans patrolled disturbed communities, visited, warned, and frightenedobnoxious individuals, whipped some, and even hanged others. Untilforbidden by law or military order, the newspapers were accustomed toprint the mysterious proclamations of the Ku Klux. The following, whichwas circulated in Montgomery, Alabama, in April 1868, is a typicalspecimen:

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--theserpent coils to strike. Action! Action!! Action!!! By midnight and theTomb; by Sword and Torch and the Sacred Oath at Forrester's Altar, Ibid you come! The clansmen of Glen Iran and Alpine will greet you at thenew-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 theactivities and teachings of Northern preachers and teachers, dispersedhostile gatherings of Negroes, and ran out of the community the worst ofthe reconstructionist officials. They kept the Negroes quiet and freedthem to some extent from the influence of evil leaders. The burning ofhouses, gins, mills, and stores ceased; property became more secure;people slept safely at night; women and children walked abroad insecurity; the incendiary agents who had worked among the Negroes leftthe country; agitators, political, educational, and religious, becamemore moderate; "bad niggers" ceased to be bad; labor became lessdisorganized; the carpetbaggers and scalawags ceased to batten on theSouthern communities. It was not so much a revolution as the defeat of arevolution. Society was replaced in the old historic grooves from whichwar and reconstruction had jarred it. 

Successful as was the Ku Klux movement in these respects, it had at thesame time many harmful results. Too often local orders fell under thecontrol of reckless or lawless men and the Klan was then used as a cloakto cover violence and thievery; family and personal feuds were carriedinto the orders and fought out; and anti-Negro feeling in many placesfound expression in activities designed to drive the blacks fromthe country. It was easy for any outlaw to hide himself behind theprotection of a secret order. So numerous did these men become thatafter 1868 there was a general exodus of the leading reputable members, and in 1869 the formal disbanding of the Klan was proclaimed by GeneralForrest, the Grand Wizard. The White Camelia and other orders alsogradually went out of existence. Numerous attempts were made to suppressthe secret movement by the military commanders, the state governments, and finally by Congress, but none of these was entirely successful, forin each community the secret opposition lasted as long as it was needed. The political effects of the orders, however, survived their organizedexistence. Some of the Southern States began to go Democratic in spiteof the Reconstruction Acts and the Amendments, and there was littledoubt that the Ku Klux movement had aided in this change. In order topreserve the achievements of radical reconstruction Congress passed, in 1870 and 1871, the enforcement acts which had been under debate fornearly two years. The first act (May 31, 1870) was designed to protectthe Negro's right to vote and was directed at individuals as well asagainst states. Section six, indeed, was aimed specifically at theKu Klux Klan. This act was a long step in the direction of giving theFederal Government control over state elections. But as North Carolinawent wholly and Alabama partially Democratic in 1870, a SupplementaryAct (February 28, 1871) went further and placed the elections formembers of Congress completely under Federal control, and alsoauthorized the use of thousands of deputy marshals at elections. As thecampaign of 1872 drew near, Grant and his advisers became solicitousto hold all the Southern States which had not been regained by theDemocrats. Accordingly, on March 23, 1871, the President sent a messageto Congress declaring that in some of the states the laws could not beenforced and asked for remedial legislation. Congress responded with anact (April 20, 1871), commonly called the "Ku Klux Act, " which gavethe President despotic military power to uphold the remaining Negrogovernments and authorized him to declare a state of war when heconsidered it necessary. Of this power Grant made use in only oneinstance. In October 1871, he declared nine counties of South Carolinain rebellion and put them under martial law. 

During the ten years following 1870, several thousand arrests were madeunder the enforcement acts and about 1, 250 convictions were secured, principally in Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, andTennessee. Most of these violations of election laws, however, hadnothing to do with the Ku Klux movement, for by 1870 the better class ofmembers had withdrawn from the secret orders. But though the enforcementacts checked these irregularities to a considerable extent, theynevertheless failed to hold the South for the radicals and essentialparts of them were declared unconstitutional a few years later. 

In order to justify the passage of the enforcement acts and to obtaincampaign material for use in 1872, Congress appointed a committee, organized on the very day when the Ku Klux Act was approved, toinvestigate conditions in the Southern States. From June to August1871, the committee took testimony in Washington, and in the fallsubcommittees visited several Southern States. Tennessee, Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas were, however, omitted from theinvestigation. Notwithstanding the partisan purpose and methods ofthe investigation, the report of the committee and the accompanyingtestimony constituted a Democratic rather than a Republican document. It is a veritable mine of information about the South between 1865and 1871. The Democratic minority members made skillful use of theiropportunity to expose conditions in the South. They were less concernedto meet the charges made against the Ku Klux Klan than to show why suchmovements came about. The Republicans, concerned mainly about materialfor the presidential campaign, neglected the broader phases of thesituation. 

Opposition to the effects of reconstruction did not come to an endwith the dissolution of the more famous orders. On the contrary, it nowbecame public and open and resulted in the organization, after 1872, ofthe White League, the Mississippi Shot Gun Plan, the White Man's Partyin Alabama, and the Rifle Clubs in South Carolina. The later movementswere distinctly but cautiously anti-Negro. There was most irritationin the white counties where there were large numbers of Negroes. Negroschools and churches were burned because they served as meeting placesfor Negro political organizations. The color line began to be moreand more sharply drawn. Social and business ostracism continued to beemployed against white radicals, while the Negroes were discharged fromemployment or were driven from their rented farms. 

The Ku Klux movement, it is to be noted in retrospect, originated as aneffort to restore order in the war-stricken Southern States. Thesecrecy of its methods appealed to the imagination and caused itsrapid expansion, and this secrecy was inevitable because opposition toreconstruction was not lawful. As the reconstruction policies were putinto operation, the movement became political and used violence whenappeals to superstitious fears ceased to be effective. The Ku Klux Klancentered, directed, and crystallized public opinion, and united thewhites upon a platform of white supremacy. The Southern politiciansstood aloof from the movement but accepted the results of its work. It frightened the Negroes and bad whites into better conduct, andit encouraged the conservatives and aided them to regain control ofsociety, for without the operations of the Klan the black districtswould never have come again under white control. Towards the end, however, its methods frequently became unnecessarily violent and didgreat harm to Southern society. The Ku Klux system of regulating societyis as old as history; it had often been used before; it may even be usedagain. When a people find themselves persecuted by aliens under legalforms, they will invent some means outside the law for protectingthemselves; and such experiences will inevitably result in a weakeningof 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 throughoutthe late Confederate States. It had been coined by the Negroes in1867 to express their view of the situation, but its aptness had beenrecognized by all. After ten years of social and economic revolution, however, it was not so clear that the phrase of 1867 correctly describedthe new situation. "The white man made free" would have been a moreaccurate epitome, for the white man had been able, in spite of histemporary disabilities, to compete with the Negro in all industries. 

It will be remembered that the Negro districts were least exposed to thedestruction of war. The well-managed plantation, lying near the highwaysof commerce, with its division of labor, nearly or quite self-sufficing, was the bulwark of the Confederacy. When the fighting ended, anindustrial revolution began in these untouched parts of the Black Belt. The problem of free Negro labor now appeared. During the year 1865, nogeneral plan for a labor system was formulated except by the Freedmen'sBureau. That, however, was not a success. There were all sorts ofmakeshifts, such as cash wages, deferred wages, cooperation, evensharing of expense and product, and contracts, either oral or written. 

The employers showed a disposition to treat the Negro family as a unitin making contracts for labor, wages, food, clothes, and care. * Ingeneral these early arrangements were made to transform slavery with itsmutual duties and obligations into a free labor system with wages and"privileges. " The "privileges" of slavery could not be destroyed; infact, they have never yet been destroyed in numerous places. Curiousdemands were made by the Negroes: here, farm bells must not ring; there, overseers or managers must be done away with; in some places plantationcourts were to settle matters of work, rent, and conduct; elsewhere, agreements were made that on Saturday the laborer should be permitted togo to town and, perhaps, ride a mule or horse. In South Carolina theSea Island Negroes demanded that in laying out work the old "tasks"or "stints" of slavery days be retained as the standard. The farmingdistricts at the edge of the Black Belt, where the races were aboutequal in numbers, already had a kind of "share system, " and in thesesections the economic chaos after the war was not so complete. Theformer owners worked in the field with their ex-slaves and thus providedsteady 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 competitionwith the efficiently managed and inexpensive slave labor of the BlackBelt, were affected most disastrously by war and its aftermath. Theywere distant from transportation lines and markets; they employed poorfarming methods; they had no fertilizers; they raised no staple cropson their infertile land; and in addition they now had to face thedestitution that follows fighting. Yet these regions had formerly beenalmost self-supporting, although the farms were small and no elaboratelabor system had been developed. In the planting districts where theowner was land-poor, he made an attempt to bring in Northern capitaland Northern or foreign labor. In the belief that the Negroes wouldwork better for a Northern man, every planter who could do so secureda Northern partner or manager, frequently a soldier. Nevertheless theseimported managers nearly always failed because they did not understandcotton, rice, or sugar planting, and because they were either too severeor too easy upon the blacks. 

No Northern labor was to be had, and the South could not retain even allits own native whites. Union soldiers and others seeking to better theirprospects moved west and northwest to fill the newly opened lands, whilethe Confederates, kept out of the homestead region by the test oath, swarmed into Texas, which owned its own public lands, or went Northto other occupations. Nor could the desperate planters hire foreignimmigrants. Several states, among them South Carolina, Alabama, andLouisiana, advertised for laborers and established labor bureaus, butwithout avail. The Negro politicians in 1867 declared themselves opposedto all movements to foster immigration. So in the Black Belt the Negrohad, for forty years, a monopoly of farm labor. 

The share system of tenantry, with its attendant evils of credit andcrop lien, was soon established in the Southern States, mainly in theBlack Belt, but to some extent also in the white districts. The landlordfurnished 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 hehad furnished. The best class of tenants would rent for cash or a fixedrental, the poorest laborers would work for wages only. 

The "privileges" brought over from slavery, which were included in theshare renting, astonished outside observers. To the laborer was usuallygiven 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 Englishtraveler already quoted, pronounced this generous custom "outrageouslyabsurd, " for the Negroes had so many privileges that they refused tomake use of their opportunities. "The soul is often crushed out of laborby penury and oppression, " he said, "but here a soul cannot begin to beinfused into it through the sheer excess of privilege and license withwhich it is surrounded. " The credit system which was developed besidethe share system made a bad condition worse. On the 1st of January, a planter could mortgage his future crop to a merchant or landlord inexchange for subsistence until the harvest. Since, as a rule, neithertenant nor landlord had any surplus funds, the latter would be suppliedby the banker or banker merchant, who would then dictate the crops tobe planted and the time of sale. As a result of these conditions, theplanter or farmer was held to staple crops, high prices for necessities, high interest rate, and frequently unfair bookkeeping. The systemwas excellent for a thrifty, industrious, and intelligent man, for itenabled him to get a start. It worked to the advantage of a bankruptlandlord, who could in this way get banking facilities. But it had amischievous effect upon the average tenant, who had too small a shareof the crop to feel a strong sense of responsibility as well as too many"privileges" and too little supervision to make him anxious to producethe best results. 

The Negroes entered into their freedom with several advantages: theywere trained to labor; they were occupying the most fertile soil andcould purchase land at low prices; the tenant system was most liberal;cotton, sugar, and rice were bringing high prices; and access tomarkets was easy. In the white districts, land was cheap and pricesof commodities were high, but otherwise the Negroes seemed to have thebetter position. Yet as early as 1870, keen observers called attentionto the fact that the hill and mountain whites were thriving as comparedwith their former condition, and that the Negroes were no longer theirserious competitors. In the white districts, better methods were cominginto use, labor was steady, fertilizers were used, and conditions oftransportation were improving. The whites were also encroaching on theBlack Belt; they were opening new lands in the Southwest; and withinthe border of the Black Belt they were bringing Negro labor under somecontrol. In the South Carolina rice lands, crowds of Irish were importedto do the ditching which the Negroes refused to do and were carriedback North when the job was finished. * President Thach of the AlabamaAgricultural 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 consideredbarren have been brought into profitable cultivation, and really afforda more reliable and constant crop than the rich alluvial lands of theold slave plantations. In nearly every agricultural county in the Souththere 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 andruin; 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 countrylife. "

All the systems devised for handling Negro labor proved to be onlypartially successful. The laborer was migratory, wanted easy work, withone or two holidays a week, and the privilege of attending politicalmeetings, camp meetings, and circuses. A thrifty Negro could notmake headway because his fellows stole from him or his less energeticrelations and friends visited him and ate up his substance. One Alabamaplanter declared that he could not raise a turkey, a chicken, a hog, ora cow; and another asserted that "a hog has no more chance to live amongthese thieving Negro farmers than a June bug in a gang of puddle ducks. "Lands were mortgaged to the supply houses in the towns, the whitesgradually deserted the country, and many rice and cotton fields grew upin weeds. Crop stealing at night became a business which no legislationcould ever completely stop. A traveler has left the followingdescription of "a model Negro farm" in 1874. The farmer purchased an oldmule 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 oncredit, and a crop lien was given; a month later, corn and cotton wereplanted on soil that was not well broken up; the Negro "would not payfor no guano" to put on other people's land; by turns the farmer plantedand 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 andsome 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 waspredicted, though sales were frequent and in 1865 enormous amounts ofland were put on the market. After 1867, additional millions of acreswere offered at small prices, and tax and mortgage sales were numerous. The result of these operations, however, was a change of landlordsrather than a breaking up of large plantations. New men, Negroes, merchants, and Jews became landowners. The number of small farmsnaturally increased but so in some instances did the land concentratedinto large holdings. 

It was inevitable that conditions of Negro life should undergo arevolutionary change during the reconstruction. The serious matter oflooking out for himself and his family and of making a living dampenedthe Negro's cheerful spirits. Released from the discipline of slaveryand often misdirected by the worst of teachers, the Negro race naturallyran into excesses of petty criminality. Even under the reconstructiongovernments the proportion of Negro to white criminals was about tento one. Theft was frequent; arson was the accepted means of revenge onwhite people; and murder became common in the brawls of the city Negroquarters. The laxness of the marriage relation worked special hardshipon the women and children in so many cases deserted by the head of thefamily. 

Out of the social anarchy of reconstruction the Negroes emerged withnumerous organizations of their own which may have been imitationsof the Union League, the Lincoln Brotherhood, and the various churchorganizations. These societies were composed entirely of blacks andhave continued with prolific reproduction to the present day. They werecharacterized by high names, gorgeous regalia, and frequent parades. "The Brothers and Sisters of Pleasure and Prosperity" and the "UnitedOrder of African Ladies and Gentlemen" played a large, and on thewhole 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 throughCongress any provision for the social equality of the races, but in thereconstructed states, the equal rights issue was alive throughout theperiod. Legislation giving to the Negro equal rights in hotels, placesof amusements, and common carriers, was first enacted in Louisiana andSouth Carolina. Frequently the carpetbaggers brought up the issue inorder to rid the radical ranks of the scalawags who were opposed toequal rights. In Florida, for example, the carpetbaggers framed acomprehensive Equal Rights Law, passed it, and presented it to GovernorReed, who was known to be opposed to such legislation. He vetoed themeasure and thus lost the Negro support. Intermarriage with whites wasmade legal in Louisiana and South Carolina and by court decision waspermitted in Alabama and Mississippi, but the Georgia Supreme Courtheld it to be illegal. Mixed marriages were few, but these were madeoccasions of exultation over the whites and of consequent ill feeling. 

Charles Sumner was a persistent agitator for equal rights. In 1871 hedeclared in a letter to a South Carolina Negro convention that the racemust insist not only upon equality in hotels and on public carriers butalso in the schools. "It is not enough, " he said, "to provide separateaccommodations for colored citizens even if in all respects as goodas those of other persons. . . . The discrimination is an insult and ahindrance, and a bar, which not only destroys comfort and preventsequality, but weakens all other rights. The right to vote will have newsecurity when your equal right in public conveyances, hotels, and commonschools, is at last established; but here you must insist for yourselvesby speech, petition, and by vote. " The Southern whites began to developthe "Jim Crow" theory of "separate but equal" accommodations. SenatorHill of Georgia, for example, thought that hotels might have separatedivisions for the two races, and he cited the division in the churchesas proof that the Negro wanted separation. 

About 1874, it was plain that the last radical Congress was nearlyready to enact social equality legislation. This fact turned many of theSouthern Unionist class back to the Democratic party, there to remainfor a long time. In 1875, as a sort of memorial to Sumner, Congresspassed the Civil Rights Act, which gave to Negroes equal rights inhotels, places of amusement, on public carriers, and on juries. SomeDemocratic leaders were willing to see such legislation enacted, becausein the first place, it would have little effect except in the Border andNorthern States, where it would turn thousands into the Democratic fold, and in the second place, because they were sure that in time the SupremeCourt 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 werearmed and insolent, and the whites were few and widely scattered. Hereand there outbreaks occurred and individual whites and isolated familiessuffered, but as a rule all such movements were crushed with muchheavier loss to the Negroes than to the better organized whites. Nevertheless everlasting apprehension for the safety of women andchildren kept the white men nervous. General Garnett Andrews remarkedabout the situation in Mississippi:

"I have never suffered such an amount of anguish and alarm in all mylife. I have served through the whole war as a soldier in the army ofNorthern Virginia, and saw all of it; but I never did experience. . . Thefear and alarm and sense of danger which I felt that time. And this wasthe universal feeling among the population, among the white people. Ithink that both sides were alarmed and felt uneasy. It showed itselfupon the countenance of the people; it made many of them sick. Menlooked haggard and pale, after undergoing this sort of thing for sixweeks or a month, and I have felt when I laid [sic] down that neithermyself, nor my wife and children were in safety. I expected, andhonestly anticipated, and thought it highly probable, that I might beassassinated and my house set on fire at any time. "

By the fires of reconstruction the whites were fused into a morehomogeneous society, social as well as political. The formerslaveholding class continued to be more considerate of the Negro thanwere the poor whites; but, as misrule went on, all classes tended tounite against the Negro in politics. They were tired of reconstruction, new amendments, force bills, Federal troops--tired of being ruled asconquered provinces by the incompetent and the dishonest. Every measureaimed at the South seemed to them to mean that they were consideredincorrigible and unworthy of trust, and that they were being made tosuffer for the deeds of irresponsible whites. And, to make mattersworse, strong opposition to proscriptive measures was called freshrebellion. "When the Jacobins say and do low and bitter things, theircharge of want of loyalty in the South because our people grumble backa 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 hithim 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 beforethem and who were growing up with diminished opportunities. SidneyLanier, then an Alabama school teacher, wrote to Bayard Taylor: "Perhapsyou know that with us of the young generation in the South, since thewar, pretty much the whole of life has been merely not dying. " Negro andalien rule was a constant insult to the intelligence of the country. Thetaxpayers were nonparticipants in the affairs of government. Some peoplewithdrew 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, sounpleasant was the news. The good feeling produced by the magnanimity ofGrant at Appomattox was destroyed by the severity of his Southern policywhen he became President. There was no gratitude for any so-calledleniency of the North, no repentance for the war, no desire forhumiliation, for sackcloth and ashes, and no confession of wrong. Theinsistence of the radicals upon obtaining a confession of depravityonly made things much worse. Scarcely a measure of Congress duringreconstruction 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 therace problem. Though their new political leaders were shrewd, narrow, conservative, honest, and parsimonious, the constant fighting of firewith fire scorched all. In the bitter discipline of reconstruction, thepleasantest side of Southern life came to an end. During the war andthe consequent reconstruction there was a marked change in Southerntemperament toward the severe. Hospitality declined; the old Southernlife had never been on a business basis, but the new Southern lifenow adjusted itself to a stricter economy; the old individuality waspartially lost; but class distinctions were less obvious in a morehomogeneous society. The material evils of reconstruction may be onlytemporary; state debts may be paid and wasted resources renewed; butthe moral and intellectual results of the revolution will be the morepermanent. 

CHAPTER XIII. RESTORATION OF HOME RULE

The radical program of reconstruction ended after ten years in failurerather because of a change in public opinion in the North than becauseof the resistance of the Southern whites. The North of 1877, indeed, was not the North of 1867. A more tolerant attitude toward the Southdeveloped as the North passed through its own period of misgovernmentwhen all the large cities were subject to "ring rule" and corruption, as in New York under "Boss" Tweed and in the District of Columbiaunder "Boss" Shepherd. The Federal civil service was discredited by thescandals connected with the Sanborn contracts, the Whisky Ring, and theStar 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 drewattention away from sectional controversies. Settlers poured into theplains beyond the Mississippi and the valleys of the Far West; newindustries sprang up; unsuspected mineral wealth was discovered;railroads were built. Not only bankers but taxpaying voters took aninterest in the financial readjustments of the time. Many thousandpeople followed the discussions over the funding and refunding ofthe national debt, the retirement of the greenbacks, and the proposedlowering of tariff duties. Yet the Black Friday episode of 1869, whenJay Gould and James Fisk cornered the visible supply of gold, and thepanic of 1873 were indications of unsound financial conditions. 

These new developments and the new domestic problems which they involvedall tended to divert public thought from the old political issuesarising out of the war. Foreign relations, too, began to take on a newinterest. The Alabama claims controversy with England continued to holdthe public attention until finally settled by the Geneva Arbitrationin 1872. President Grant, as much of an expansionist as Seward, for twoyears (1869-71) tried to secure Santo Domingo or a part of it for anAmerican naval base in the West Indies. But the United States hadrace problems enough already and the Senate, led by Sumner, refused tosanction the acquisition. Relations with Spain were frequentlystrained on account of American filibustering expeditions to aid Cubaninsurgents. Spain repeatedly charged the United States with laxnesstoward such violations of international law; and President Grant, seeingno other way out, recommended in 1869 and again in 1870 that the Cubaninsurgents be recognized as belligerents, but still the Senate heldback. The climax came in 1873, when the Spanish authorities in Cubacaptured on the high seas the Virginius* with a filibustering expeditionon board and executed fifty-three of the crew and passengers, among themeight Americans. For a time war seemed imminent, but Spain acted quicklyand 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 inreconstruction were not in themselves sufficient to hold the Northsolidly Republican. Toward Negro suffrage, for example, Northern publicopinion was on the whole unfriendly. In 1867, the Negro was permitted tovote only in New York and in New England, except in Connecticut. Before1869, Negro suffrage was rejected in Connecticut, Wisconsin, Kansas, Ohio, Maryland, Missouri, Michigan, and Minnesota. The Republicans intheir national platform of 1868 went only so far as to say that, whileNegro suffrage was to be forced upon the South, it must remain a localquestion in the North. The Border States rapidly lined up with the whiteSouth on matters of race, church, and politics. 

It was not until 1874, however, that the changing opinion was madegenerally effective in the elections. The skillfully managed radicalorganization held large majorities in every Congress from theThirty-ninth to the Forty-third, and the electoral votes in 1868 and1879 seemed to show that the conservative opposition was insignificant. But these figures do not tell the whole story. Even in 1864, whenLincoln won by nearly half a million, the popular vote was as eighteento twenty-two, and four years later Grant, the most popular man inthe United States, had a majority of only three hundred thousand overSeymour, and this majority and more came from the new Negro voters. Four years later with about a million Negro voters available and anopposition not pleased with its own candidate, Grant's majority reachedonly seven hundred thousand. At no one time in elections did the Northpronounce itself in favor of all the reconstruction policies. The break, signs of which were visible as early as 1869, came in 1874 when theRepublicans lost control of the House of Representatives. 

Strength was given to the opposition because of the dissatisfaction withPresident Grant, who knew little about politics and politicians. He feltthat his Cabinet should be made up of personal friends, not of strongadvisers, and that the military ideal of administration was the properone. He was faithful but undiscriminating in his friendships andfrequently chose as his associates men of vulgar tastes and low motives;and he showed a naive love of money and an undisguised admiration forrich men such as Gould and Fisk. His appointees were often incompetentfriends or relatives, and his cynical attitude toward civil servicereform lost him the support of influential men. When forced by partyexigencies to select first-class men for his Cabinet, he still preferredto go for advice to practical politicians. On the Southern question heeasily fell under control of the radicals, who in order to retain theirinfluence had only to convince his military mind that the South wasagain in rebellion, and who found it easy to distract public opinionfrom political corruption by "waving the bloody shirt. " Dissatisfactionwith his Administration, it is true, was confined to the intellectuals, the reformers, and the Democrats, but they were strong enough to defeathim for a second term if they could only be organized. 

The Liberal Republican movement began in the West about 1869 withdemands for amnesty and for reform, particularly in the civil service, and it soon spread rapidly over the North. When it became certain thatthe "machine" would renominate Grant, the liberal movement becamean anti-Grant party. The "New Departure" Democrats gave comfortand prospect of aid to the Liberal Republicans by declaring for aconstructive, forward-looking policy in place of reactionary opposition. The Liberal chiefs were led to believe that the new Democratic leaderswould accept their platform and candidates in order to defeat Grant. Theprincipal candidates for the Liberal Republican nomination were CharlesFrancis Adams, Lyman Trumbull, Gratz Brown, David Davis, and HoraceGreeley. Adams was the strongest candidate but was jockeyed out of placeand the nomination was given to Horace Greeley, able enough as editor ofthe "New York Tribune" but impossible as a candidate for the presidency. The Democratic party accepted him as their candidate also, although hehad been a lifelong opponent of Democratic principles and policies. Butdisgusted Liberals either returned to the Republican ranks or stayedaway from the polls, and many Democrats did likewise. Under thesecircumstances the reelection of Grant was a foregone conclusion. Therewas certainly a potential majority against Grant, but the oppositionhad failed to organize, while the Republican machine was in good workingorder, the Negroes were voting, and the Enforcement Acts proved a greataid to the Republicans in the Southern States. 

One good result of the growing liberal sentiment was the passage ofan Amnesty Act by Congress on May 22, 1872. By statute and by theFourteenth Amendment, Congress had refused to recognize the completevalidity of President Johnson's pardons and amnesty proclamations, and all Confederate leaders who wished to regain political rightshad therefore to appeal to Congress. During the Forty-first Congress(1869-71) more than three thousand Southerners were amnestied in orderthat they might hold office. These, however, were for the most partscalawags; the most respectable whites would not seek an amnesty whichthey could secure only by self-stultification. * It was the pressureof public opinion against white disfranchisement and the necessity formeeting the Liberal Republican arguments which caused the passage ofthe Act of 1872. By this act about 150, 000 whites were reenfranchised, leaving out only about five hundred of the most prominent of the oldregime, 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 beentold and may here be sketched only in outline. The first States regainedfrom radicalism were those in which the Negro population was small andthe black vote large enough to irritate but not to dominate. AlthoughNorthern sentiment, excited by the stories of "Southern outrage, " wasthen unfavorable, the conservatives of the South, by organizing a "whiteman's party" and by the use of Ku Klux methods, made a fight for socialsafety which they won nearly everywhere, and, in addition, they gainedpolitical control of several States--Tennessee in 1869, Virginia in1869-1870, and North Carolina and Georgia in 1870. They almost wonLouisiana in 1868 and Alabama in 1870, but the alarmed radicals cameto the rescue of the situation with the Fifteenth Amendment and theEnforcement Laws of 1870-1871. With more troops and a larger number ofdeputy marshals, it seemed that the radicals might securely hold theremaining states. Arrests of conservatives were numerous, plundering wasat its height, the Federal Government was interested and was friendlyto the new Southern rulers, and the carpetbaggers and scalawags feasted, troubled only by the disposition of their Negro supporters to demand ashare of the spoils. Although the whites made little gain from 1870 to1874, the states already rescued became more firmly conservative; whitecounties here and there in the black states voted out the radicals; afew more representatives of the whites got into Congress; and the BorderStates 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 whichthe Administration was obliged to take notice. Grant now grew moreresponsive to criticism. In 1875 he replied to a request for troops tohold down Mississippi: "The whole public are tired out with these annualautumnal outbreaks in the South and the great majority are ready nowto condemn any interference on the part of the Government. " As soonas conditions in the South were better understood in the North, readysympathy and political aid were offered by many who had hitherto actedwith the radicals. The Ku Klux report as well as the newspaper writingsand the books of J. S. Pike and Charles Nordhoff, both former opponentsof slavery, opened the eyes of many to the evil results of Negrosuffrage. Some who had been considered friends of the Negro, nowbelieving that he had proven to be a political failure, coldly abandonedhim and turned their altruistic interests to other objects more likelyto succeed. Many real friends of the Negro were alarmed at the evils ofthe reconstruction and were anxious to see the corrupt political leadersdeprived of further influence over the race. To others the constantlyrecurring Southern problem was growing stale, and they desired to hearless of it. Within the Republican party in each Southern State, therewere serious divisions over the spoils. First it was carpetbagger andNegro against the scalawag; later, when the black leaders insisted thatthose who furnished the votes must have the larger share of the rewards, the fight became triangular. As a result, by 1874 the Republicanparty in the South was split into factions and was deserted by a largeproportion of its white membership. 

The conservative whites, fiercely resentful after their experiencesunder the enforcement laws and hopeful of Northern sympathy, now planneda supreme effort to regain their former power. Race lines were morestrictly drawn; ostracism of all that was radical became the rule; theRepublican party in the South, it was apparent, was doomed to be onlya Negro party weighed down by the scandal of bad government; the statetreasuries were bankrupt, and there was little further opportunityfor plunder. These considerations had much to do with the return ofscalawags to the "white man's party" and the retirement of carpetbaggersfrom 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 theelections in Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas in 1874, and Mississippiin 1875. Asserting that it was a contest between civilization andbarbarism, and that the whites under the radical regime had noopportunity to carry an election legally, the conservatives openly madeuse of every method of influencing the result that could possibly comewithin the radical law and they even employed many effective methodsthat lay outside the law. Negroes were threatened with discharge fromemployment and whites with tar and feathers if they voted the radicalticket; there were nightriding parties, armed and drilled "whiteleagues, " and mysterious firing of guns and cannon at night; muchplain talk assailed the ears of the radical leaders; and several bloodyoutbreaks occurred, principally in Louisiana and Mississippi. Louisianahad been carried by the Democrats in the fall of 1872, but the radicalreturning board had reversed the election. In 1874 the whites rose inrebellion and turned out Kellogg, the usurping Governor, but PresidentGrant intervened to restore him to office. The "Mississippi" or"shot-gun plan"* was very generally employed, except where the contestwas likely to go in favor of the whites without the use of unduepressure. The white leaders exercised a moderating influence, but theaverage white man had determined to do away with Negro government eventhough the alternative might be a return of military rule. Congressinvestigated the elections in each State which overthrew thereconstructionists, but nothing came of the inquiry and the populationrapidly settled down into good order. After 1875 only three Stateswere left under radical government--Louisiana and Florida, where thereturning boards could throw out any Democratic majority, and SouthCarolina, 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 presidentialcampaign of 1876, because all except these three reconstructed Stateshad escaped from radical control, and there was no hope and little realdesire of regaining them. It was even expected that in this year theradicals would lose Louisiana and Florida to the "white man's party. "The leaders of the best element of the Republicans, both North andSouth, looked upon the reconstruction as one of the prime causes ofthe moral breakdown of their party; they wanted no more of the Southernissue 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 recordunder Grant's Administration, could hardly go before the people with areform program. The only possible thing to do was to revive some CivilWar issue--"wave the bloody shirt" and fan the smoldering embers ofsectional feeling. Blame met with complete success in raising thedesired issue. In January 1876, when an amnesty measure was broughtbefore the House, he moved that Jefferson Davis be excepted on theground that he was responsible for the mistreatment of Union prisonersduring the war. Southern hot-bloods replied, and Blaine skillfully ledthem on until they had foolishly furnished him with ample material forcampaign purposes. The feeling thus aroused was so strong that it evengalvanized into seeming life the dying interest in the wrongs ofthe Negro. The rallying cry "Vote as you shot!" gave the Republicanssomething 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 bothmen of high character and of moderate views. Their nominations hadbeen forced by the better element of each party. Hayes, the Republicancandidate, had been a good soldier, was moderate in his views onSouthern questions, and had a clean political reputation. Tilden, hisopponent, had a good record as a party man and as a reformer, and hisparty needed only to attack the past record of the Republicans. Theprincipal Democratic weakness lay in the fact that the party drew somuch of its strength from the white South and was therefore subjected tocriticism on Civil War issues. 

The campaign was hotly contested and was conducted on a low plane. EvenHayes soon saw that the "bloody shirt" issue was the main vote winner. The whites of the three "unredeemed" Southern States nerved themselvesfor the final struggle. In South Carolina and in some parishes ofLouisiana, there was a considerable amount of violence, in which thewhites had the advantage, and much fraud, which the Republicans, whocontrolled the election machinery, turned to best account. It has beensaid that out of the confusion which the Republicans created they wonthe presidency. 

The first election returns seemed to give Tilden the victory with 184undisputed electoral votes and popular majorities of ninety and oversix thousand respectively in Florida and Louisiana; only 185 votes wereneeded for a choice. Hayes had 166 votes, not counting Oregon, inwhich one vote was in dispute, and South Carolina, which for a time wasclaimed by both parties. Had Louisiana and Florida been NorthernStates, there would have been no controversy, but the Republican generalheadquarters knew that the Democratic majorities in these States had togo through Republican returning boards, which had never yet failed tothrow them out. 

The interest of the nation now centered around the action of the tworeturning boards. At the suggestion of President Grant, prominentRepublicans went South to witness the count. Later prominent Democratswent also. These "visiting statesmen" were to support the frailreturning boards in their duty. It was generally understood that theseboards, certainly the one in Louisiana, were for sale, and there islittle doubt that the Democrats inquired the price. But they were afraidto bid on such uncertain quantities as Governor Wells and T. C. Andersonof Louisiana, both notorious spoilsmen. The members of the boards inboth States soon showed the stiffening effect of the moral support ofthe Federal Administration and of the "visiting statesmen. " Reassured asto their political future, they proceeded to do their duty: in Floridathey threw out votes until the ninety majority for Tilden was changed to925 for Hayes, and in Louisiana, by throwing out about fifteen thousandcarefully selected ballots, they changed Tilden's lowest majority ofsix thousand to a Hayes majority of nearly four thousand. Naturally theDemocrats sent in contesting returns, but the presidency was really wonwhen the Republicans secured in Louisiana and Florida returns which wereregular 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 electoralvotes. The Constitution provides that "the President of the Senateshall, in the presence of the Senate and the House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. " Butthere was no agreement as to where authority lay for deciding disputedvotes. Never before had the presidency turned on a disputed count. From1864 to 1874 the "twenty-second joint rule" had been in force underwhich either House might reject a certificate. The votes of Georgia in1868 and of Louisiana in 1879 had thus been thrown out. But the rulehad not been readopted by the present Congress, and the Republicans verynaturally would not listen to a proposal to readopt it now. 

With the country apparently on the verge of civil war, Congress finallycreated by law an Electoral Commission to which were to be referred alldisputes about the counting of votes and the decision of which was tobe final unless both Houses concurred in rejecting it. The actprovided that the commission should consist of five senators, fiverepresentatives, four designated associate justices of the SupremeCourt, and a fifth associate justice to be chosen by these four. Whilenothing was said in the act about the political affiliations of themembers of the commission, every one understood that the House wouldselect three Democrats and two Republicans, and that the Senate wouldname two Democrats and three Republicans. It was also well known that ofthe four justices designated two were Republicans and two Democrats, andit was tacitly agreed that the fifth would be Justice David Davis, an"independent. " But at the last moment Davis was elected Senator by theIllinois Legislature and declined to serve on the Commission. JusticeBradley, a Republican, was then named as the fifth justice, and in thisway the Republicans obtained a majority on the Commission. 

The Democrats deserve the credit for the Electoral Commission. TheRepublicans did not favor it, even after they were sure of a partymajority on it. They were conscious that they had a weak case, and theywere afraid to trust it to judges of the Supreme Court. Their fears weregroundless, however, since all important questions were decided by an 8to 7 vote, Bradley voting with his fellow Republicans. Every contestedvote was given to Hayes, and with 185 electoral votes he was declaredelected on March 2, 1877. 

Ten years before, Senator Morton of Indiana had said: "I would havebeen in favor of having the colored people of the South wait a fewyears until they were prepared for the suffrage, until they were tosome extent educated, but the necessities of the times forbade that; theconditions of things required that they should be brought to the pollsat once. " Now the condition of things required that some arrangement bemade with the Southern whites which would involve a complete reversalof the situation of 1867. In order to secure the unopposed succession ofHayes, to defeat filibustering which might endanger the decision of theElectoral Commission, politicians who could speak with authority forHayes assured influential Southern politicians, who wanted no more civilwar but who did want home rule, that an arrangement might be made whichwould be satisfactory to both sides. 

So the contest was ended. Hayes was to be President; the South, with theNegro, was to be left to the whites; there would be no further militaryaid to carpetbag governments. In so far as the South was concerned, it was a fortunate settlement better, indeed, than if Tilden had beeninducted into office. The remnants of the reconstruction policy weresurrendered by a Republican President, the troops were soon withdrawn, and the three radical states fell at once under the control of thewhites. Hayes could not see in his election any encouragement to adopta vigorous radical position, and Congress was deadlocked on party issuesfor fifteen years. As a result the radical Republicans had to developother interests, and the North gradually accepted the Southernsituation. 

Although the radical policy of reconstruction came to an end in 1877, some of its results were more lasting. The Southern States were burdenedheavily with debt, much of which had been fraudulently incurred. There now followed a period of adjustment, of refunding, scaling, andrepudiation, which not only injured the credit of the states but leftthem with enormous debts. The Democratic party under the leadership offormer Confederates began its regime of strict economy, race fairness, and inelastic Jeffersonianism. There was a political rest which almostamounted to stagnation and which the leaders were unwilling to disturbby progressive measures lest a developing democracy make trouble withthe settlement of 1877. 

The undoing of reconstruction was not entirely completed with theunderstanding of 1877. There remained a large but somewhat shatteredRepublican party in the South, with control over county and localgovernment in many Negro districts. Little by little the Democratsrooted out these last vestiges of Negro control, using all the oldradical methods and some improvements, * such as tissue ballots, theshuffling of ballot boxes, bribery, force, and redistricting, while someregions were placed entirely under executive control and were ruled byappointed commissions. With the good government which followed thesechanges a deadlocked Congress showed no great desire to interfere. TheSupreme Court came to the aid of the Democrats with decisions in 1875, 1882, and 1883 which drew the teeth from the Enforcement Laws, andCongress 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 theRepublicans rapidly melted away. The party organization existed for theFederal offices only and was interested in keeping down the number ofthose who desired to be rewarded. As a consequence, the leaders couldwork in harmony with those Democratic chiefs who were content with a"solid South" and local home rule. The Negroes of the Black Belt, withless enthusiasm and hope, but with quite the same docility as in 1868, began to vote as the Democratic leaders directed. This practice broughtup in another form the question of "Negro government" and resulted ina demand from the people of the white counties that the Negro be putentirely out of politics. The answer came between 1890 and 1902 in theform of new and complicated election laws or new constitutions which invarious ways shut out the Negro from the polls and left the governmentto the whites. Three times have the Black Belt regions dominated theSouthern States: under slavery, when the master class controlled; underreconstruction, when the leaders of the Negroes had their own way; andafter reconstruction until Negro disfranchisement, when the Democraticdictators of the Negro vote ruled fairly but not always acceptably tothe white counties which are now the source of their political power. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The best general accounts of the reconstruction period are found inJames Ford Rhodes's "History of the United States from the Compromise of1850 to the Restoration of Home Rule at the South in 1877", volumes V, VI, VII (1906); in William A. Dunning's "Reconstruction, Politicaland 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 byF. N. Thorpe. The work of Rhodes is spacious and fair-minded but thereare serious gaps in his narrative; Dunning's briefer account covers theentire field with masterly handling; Hamilton's history throws new lighton all subjects and is particularly useful for an understanding of theSouthern point of view. A valuable discussion of constitutional problemsis contained in William A. Dunning's "Essay on the Civil War andReconstruction and Related Topics" (1904); and a criticism of thereconstruction policies from the point of view of political science andconstitutional law is to be found in J. W. Burgess's "Reconstruction andthe Constitution, 1866-1876" (1902). E. B. Andrews's "The United Statesin our own Time" (1903) gives a popular treatment of the later period. Acollection of brief monographs entitled "Why the Solid South?" by HilaryA. Herbert and others (1890) was written as a campaign document tooffset the drive made by the Republicans in 1889 for new enforcementlaws. 

There are many scholarly monographs on reconstruction in the severalstates. The best of these are: J. W. Garner's "Reconstruction inMississippi" (1901), W. L. Fleming's "Civil War and Reconstructionin Alabama" (1905), J. G. De R. Hamilton's "Reconstruction in NorthCarolina" (1914), W. W. Davis's "The Civil War and Reconstruction inFlorida" (1913), J. S. Reynolds's "Reconstruction in South Carolina", 1865-1877 (1905); C. W. Ramsdell's "Reconstruction in Texas" (1910), andC. 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'sBureau" (1904), D. M. DeWitt's "The Impeachment and Trial of AndrewJohnson" (1903), and Paul L. Haworth's "The Hayes-Tilden DisputedPresidential Election of 1876" (1906), each of which is a thorough studyof its field. J. C. Lester and D. L. Wilson's "Ku Klux Klan" (1905) andM. L. Avary's "Dixie After the War" (1906) contribute much to a fairunderstanding of the feeling of the whites after the Civil War; andGideon Welles, "Diary", 3 vols. (1911), is a mine of information from aconservative 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 areJames A. Woodburn's "The Life of Thaddeus Stevens" (1913), MoorfieldStorey'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 ofthe Democratic and Southern leaders. 

The official documents are found conveniently arranged in WilliamMcDonald's "Select Statutes", 1861-1898 (1903), and also with othermaterial in Walter L. Fleming's "Documentary History of Reconstruction", 2 vols. (1906, 1907). The general reader is usually repelled by thecollections known as "Public Documents". The valuable "Ku Klux Trials"(1872) is, however, separately printed and to be found in most goodlibraries. By a judicious use of the indispensable "Tables and Indexto Public Documents, " one can find much vividly interesting material inconnection with contested election cases and reports of congressionalinvestigations into conditions in the South.