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The Reconstruction

The Reconstruction

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY
OF THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR;

1865-1877

Edited with an Introduction by

JAMES P. SHE NT ON

Capricorn Books New York

COPYRIGHT 1963 BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, must

not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Published simultaneously in the Dominion of Canada

by Longmans Canada Limited, Toronto.

CAPRICORN BOOKS EDITION, 1963

Library of Congress Catalog
Card Number: 63-8220

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

SECTION I.

THE THE

page 9

All things indicate that the days of the Confederate States arc numbered
(13) Have we suffered all have our brave men fought so desperately
and died so nobly for this? (17) People held their breath, indulging in
the wildest apprehensions as to what was now to come (19) -/ am
satisfied that the mass of thinking men of the South accept the present
situation . . . in good faith (25) // is my opinion that with the exception
of a small minority, the people . . . are disloyal in their sentiments . . .
(27) No Yankee stops in this house! (29) When Eternal Justice
decrees the punishment of a people, it sends not War alone, but also its
sister terrors, Famine, Pestilence, and Fire (41) ... There are men in
the back districts who will not yet believe that the war is over, and slavery
at an end! (42) In our hearts we thought more of the Stars and Stripes
than we did of the old rag we were fighting under. (44) Broken and
blackened walls, impassable streets deluged with debris . . . (46) The
Charleston and Savannah Railroad was a mere wreck; every bridge and
trestle destroyed . . . nearly the whole track torn up. (48) . . . All the
shovels, spades, and other farming implements have been carried off or
destroyed. (51) At the end of the war . . . the number of helpless and
destitute children . . . was appalling. (53) So much mourning, or so
deep, I had never seen in a church on any ordinary occasion, or should
wish to see again, (55) The trail of war is visible throughout the valley
in burnt-up gin-houses, ruined bridges, mills, and factories . . . (56)

SECTION II.

THE

page 71

. . . The loyal states, indeed, come out of war separated from the dis-
loyal . . . by a great sea of blood. (76) No Chinese Wall can now be
tolerated. (77) , . . A right . . . of participating in that government
which they had . . . been fighting to overthrow. (78) // they repent . . .
then we will joyfully bury the hatchet . . . (85) ... The subjects of
whites who have just purged themselves from the guilt of treason. (104)
Has the past war merely laid the foundation of another? (109) . . . /
have survived hope as well as youth, and now toil on doggedly, with no
brighter impulse than the sense of duty! (114) No one can realize the
severe ordeal the Southern people were required to pass through during

the process of Reconstruction but those of us who experienced it. (117)
. . . The Reconstruction Acts were necessary to the proper administration
of justice . . . (720) United States soldiers were said to be . . . the scum
of the earth. (128) There is absolute freedom of speech in very few
localities of Texas, (129) The main object . . . was the restoration of
African slavery, in the modified form of peonage. (132) , . . It would
be much better for all parties that the Negroes should be free, and work
for wages . . . (135) ... For the first time since the war ended, Rich-
mond people showed hospitalities to the Yankees. (138) It is true we
will starve at our present wages. (141) We know that the Negroes are
not qualified to exercise the elective franchise . . . (142) Just so long
as there are Negroes in the South, whether bond or free, just so long will
there be "a poor white trash." (145) . . . We have decided to burn more
than your gin-house, and will kill you if you don't break up your infamous
nigger-camps. (151) ... Great numbers of colored citizens, who were
entitled, by law, to vote . . . were visited by the Klan, and whipped, and
many of them murdered. (153) We have ascertained that thirty-eight
Negroes were shot and hung. (164) We were thankful when the
wretched week was over . . . (168) This incident virtually ended mili-
tary reconstruction in "old Monroe." (170) I'm jammed on to a hun-
dred, and dis is my fust chance to git a start. (172) The acceptance of
the Negro as the social equal of the white in our country . . . we may
consider it as never to be. (174) The result of carpet-bag rule . . . more
harassing, humiliating, and destructive than people beyond our borders
can conceive. (181) All immigrants to South Carolina from our north-
ern states in the late 1860*s and the early 1870's were carpetbaggers . . .
(184) / have a suspicion that some of the white radicals are getting
sick of their black allies. (209) The South will never admit that she was
wrong in the issues that led to the war, or that her conquest was right . . ,
(213)

SECTION III.

THE LEGACY

page 223

When I had left Jacksonville, Florida, in March, 1864, the town was in
flames . . . (224) ... Seeing no mode of legally or equitably depriving
the Negro of his suffrage . . . (231) ... The common-school system
has become a part of Southern life, is everywhere accepted as necessity
. . . (287) It all had to be, . . . , and so it must be there is a Providence
in it; it must be for the best in some way. (290) Slavery as a formal
state of society was at end: as a force, a power, a moral element, it was
just as active as before. (314)

Introduction

THE resort to arms in April of 1861 placed the fate of the Union
in serious doubt. As the dimensions of war grew, the Federal
government realized that nothing less than a massive reorganization
of the old Union could secure it against a revival of the disagreements
that had led to division. With the occupation of New Orleans in
April 1862, Lincoln began to formulate his policy of restoration.
Since he had never accepted the reality of secession, insisting instead
that the South was in a state of rebellion, Lincoln believed re-
establishment of normal relations between the Southern States and the
Federal government to be a presidential responsibility. He refused
to formulate a comprehensive arrangement at the outset; he preferred
to allow circumstance rather than policy to dictate the early stages of
reconstruction.

With the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation on January
1, 1863, it became apparent that the Federal government was
committed to a drastic overhaul of Southern life. To minimize the
resulting dislocations, Lincoln issued on December 8, 1863, a
Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction. It offered to pardon
all Confederates who agreed to take an oath to support the Con-
stitution. Specifically excepted from this privilege were Confederate
officers above the rank of army colonel and navy lieutenant; former
United States officers who had resigned their commissions and sup-
ported the rebellion; former Federal officers who had left their posts
to aid the rebellion; members of the Confederate government; and
anyone guilty of mistreating members of the Federal armed forces.
Lincoln agreed to recognize any Southern State government formed
by one-tenth of the electorate who had cast votes in 1860, provided
they took the requisite oath of loyalty. Since Negroes had generally
not participated in the election of 1860, governments so formed
would naturally consist of whites only. Within Congress, strong
doubts quickly developed concerning the President's intentions. Far
from accepting Lincoln's right to formulate plans for Southern

2 THE RECONSTRUCTION

restoration, Congress approved a plan of reconstruction sponsored
by Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio and Representative Henry
Winter Davis of Maryland. The Wade-Davis Bill, passed in My,
1864, provided that a constitutional convention could be called to
restore a state government only after a majority of the registered
white male voters in the state had taken an oath of allegiance.
Participation in these conventions was restricted to men who had
never voluntarily carried arms against the United States or given
aid to the Confederacy. Anyone above the rank of major who
continued in the service of the Confederacy, after July 1864, was
deprived of his citizenship. The supporters of this congressional
version of reconstruction left little doubt that they intended to treat
the defeated Confederates as conquered enemies,

Lincoln pocket-vetoed the Wade-Davis Bill and explained his
action in a proclamation issued on July 8, 1864. In it Lincoln in-
sisted that he would not be "inflexibly committed to any single plan
of restoration," but was prepared to entertain the congressional plan
"as one very proper plan for the loyal people of any State choosing
to adopt it." Wade and Davis reciprocated by publishing a manifesto
in which they flatly demanded that Lincoln "leave political re-
organization to Congress." Even as the presidential-congressional
dispute continued, Lincoln, deeply impressed at the extensive role
Negroes were playing in the Federal armies, contemplated a modifica-
tion of his reconstruction policy which would extend civil and
political equality to at least some Negroes. As early as March 13,
1864, he proposed to Michael Hahn, the newly elected governor of
a presidentially restored Louisiana, that the constitutional convention
of that state include qualified Negroes who had helped "keep the
jewel of liberty within the family of freedom." The proposal was
never considered.

When Lincoln applied his restoration program in Louisiana,
Arkansas, and Tennessee, Congress refused to permit its newly
elected Congressmen to take their seats. Reluctantly, Lincoln acceded
to Congress' demand that the restored Southern States be excluded
from the electoral count of 1865. But he continued his program of
granting presidential pardons to those Southerners excluded from
amnesty by the Proclamation of December 8, 1863. Until Lincoln's
death, however, the question of ultimate authority for reconstruction
remained unsettled. Lincoln was careful to keep the channels of
negotiation with Congress open by conceding "that no exclusive,
and inflexible plan can safely be prescribed as to details and

THE RECONSTRUCTION 3

collaterals." With the accession of Andrew Johnson to the Presidency
the dispute took a new direction.

Andrew Johnson, with his unhesitating assertions that treason and
traitors must be punished, seemed at first to represent a policy of
severe retribution toward the South. But what Johnson actually
meant was that this punishment should be inflicted on a small handful
of Southern oligarchs. His passionate attachment to egalitarian
doctrine had as its inevitable corollary a consuming hatred for the
pretensions of the planter class. An old-time Democrat, he supported
the principles of States' rights, and, though ready to accept the final
destruction of slavery, was as unwilling as most white Southerners
to concede equality to the Negro. Committed from the outset to
Lincoln's policy of a generous reconstruction, he converted that
policy from one of multiple alternatives to one of uncompromising
dogma. His stubborn attachment to presidential reconstruction hard-
ened until he found himself openly warring with Congress.

Despite pleas that he await the reconvening of Congress before
taking further action on reconstruction, Johnson recognized a
restored government of Virginia on May 9, 1865. He renewed Lin-
coln's policy of amnesty, but added to the list of excepted classes
persons with property in excess of $20,000. Having insured the
humiliation of the planter class, he extended to them the program
of granting easy pardons. On May 29, 1865, Johnson extended to
North Carolina the right to re-enter the Union when its loyal folk
had drawn up a constitution; within sk weeks thereafter he granted
similar terms of restoration to the remaining sk states of the defeated
Confederacy Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Missis-
sippi, and Texas. By December 1865, when Congress reconvened, the
South had been given virtual carte blanche by Johnson to restore
normal relations with the Federal government. Left to their own
discretion, Southern legislators set about minimizing the scope of
their war-inflicted disaster. Johnson insisted, however, that the
restored states repudiate the Confederate debt, repeal their ordinances
of secession, and abolish slavery. Some Southerners sought to obtain
compensation for lost slave property, and despite presidential urgings,
Southerners refused either to grant token enfranchisement to qualified
Negroes or to elect only known Southern Unionists to office; but
by and large Johnson's conditions were met. In the subsequent
elections, Alexander E. Stephens, former Vice-President of the
Confederacy, 4 Confederate generals, 5 Confederate colonels, 6
Confederate Cabinet officers, and 58 Confederate Congressmen were

4 THE RECONSTRUCTION

elected to the 39th Congress from the South. The prevalence of recent
rebels in state and local governments was no less emphatic.

To meet the problems raised by the termination of slavery, the
newly organized Southern legislatures formulated "black codes."
Under these laws, Negroes were permitted to hold property, to
marry legally, and to sue and be sued. Intermarriage with a white
was treated as a felony, and Negroes were permitted to give testi-
mony only in cases involving Negroes. Rigid contracts were
authorized to govern the employment of black laborers by whites.
In these, the Negro workingman was threatened with severe punish-
ment if he tried to break his contract, and any efforts at improving
his conditions through organized action were subject to fine and
imprisonment. The "black codes" further compelled all Negro
workers to be under contract. In several states most notoriously
in Mississippi Negroes not gainfully employed were classified as
vagrants, liable to arrest, and if unable to pay their fines upon convic-
tion, compelled to labor for anyone who did pay. Apprentice laws
allowed former slaveholders to hire colored minors whose parents
were not providing for them. Negroes were forbidden the use of
firearms and possession of alcoholic beverages; and many municipali-
ties made it an offense for Negroes to enter their boundaries without
permission of their employers. Although the various restored legisla-
tures made provision for public education, it was uniformly restricted
to whites. The cumulative impact of these developments was to
convince Northerners, especially Republicans, that the former Con-
federates were seeking to undo the surrender at Appomattox by
peaceful means.

When Congress reconvened in December 1865, it flatly refused
to seat the elected representatives of the South. A Joint Committee
of Fifteen, consisting of 6 senators and 15 representatives, met to
investigate conditions in the South. A parade of 144 witnesses testi-
fied to outrages against Negroes, abuse of Southern Unionists, and
contempt for Federal authority. The continued presence in the
South of the army and the Freedmen's Bureau (the relief agency
established by the government to assist former slaves in the transi-
tion from slavery to freedom) was consequently deemed imperative
by Congress. When Johnson, in February 1866, successfully vetoed
efforts to renew the Freedmen's Bureau, his radical opponents in
Congress pushed through a civil rights bill granting full citizenship
to former slaves. By April 1866, a coalescing congressional opposi-
tion overrode Johnson's veto of the civil rights bill. Three months

THE RECONSTRUCTION 5

later, again over presidential opposition, Congress restored the
Freedmen's Bureau.

On April 30, 1866, the Joint Committee introduced into Congress
the Fourteenth Amendment. Ratification of this amendment, designed
to guarantee Negro citizenship and to penalize both discrimination
against Negroes and former service to the Confederacy, became the
congressional price for restoration of normal relations between the
South and the Federal government. Savage rioting in Memphis,
Tennessee, between April 30 and May 2, 1866, in which at least
46 Negroes were killed, strengthened Congress's conviction that
tighter restrictions were necessary. An equally brutal riot in New
Orleans on July 30, 1866, resulting in the death of 34 Negroes and
the injury of hundreds more, alienated virtually the whole of Northern
opinion. Congressional demands for Federal action commanded an
ever larger support. In the off-year elections of 1866, the radical
faction, after campaigning on a "punish the South" platform, gained
effective control of Congress. The refusal of the restored Southern
States to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment during the autumn of
1866 and winter of 1867 set the stage for drastic congressional
action. The newly elected 40th Congress convened in March rather
than in December of 1867, and on March 2 passed an act dividing
the old Confederacy, with the exception of Tennessee, into five
military districts. Conventions were to be held in each district in
order to redraw the various state constitutions; and the district
military commanders were directed to supervise the election of
delegates. White adult males who had held high office under the
Confederacy were disqualified from voting, but all adult Negro males
were enfranchised. Readmission of the states to the Union was made
conditional upon the enfranchisement of both black and white males
(except for the whites officially disqualified) ; ratification of the new
Constitution by a majority of the electorate; and ratification of the
Fourteenth Amendment. This was the First Reconstruction Act; and
despite Johnson's angry veto, it was upheld by Congress. A second
reconstruction act was passed on March 23, filling in minor details
of the program. Southern efforts at obstruction resulted in a third
act on July 19, 1867, which permitted registration boards to withhold
the franchise from those who, in their opinion, were not taking the
"ironclad oath" of allegiance in good faith. When Alabamians de-
feated their new Constitution by registering and subsequently failing
to vote, a fourth reconstruction act was passed in March 1868, which
permitted a simple majority of the votes cast to ratify a constitution.

6 THE RECONSTRUCTION

Appeals to the Supreme Court to find military reconstruction un-
constitutional were turned aside.

The radical leadership of Congress, determined to restrict Johnson,
passed the Tenure of Office Act and the Command of the Army Act
on March 2, 1867 (the day of the First Reconstruction Act). The
former prevented the President from removing Cabinet officers with-
out congressional approval, while the latter drastically curtailed
presidential control of the military. When, in the elections of 1867,
the Democrats picked up strength in the crucial states of Ohio,
Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey, Johnson
resumed his denunciations of congressional reconstruction. In August
1867 he suspended Stanton from the War Department, and complying
with the Tenure of Office Act, gave his reasons to Congress when it
reconvened in December. The Senate rejected his explanation on
January 13, 1868, and Acting Secretary of War Ulysses S. Grant
once again surrendered the office of Stanton whom Johnson, eager
to force a court test of the Tenure Act's constitutionality, promptly
dismissed. On February 24, 1868, Thaddeus Stevens, the unyielding
spirit of congressional radicalism, presented an eleven-part act of
impeachment against Johnson. In the ensuing trial the Senate, on
May 16, 1868, failed by a single vote to obtain the necessary two-
thirds vote for conviction. Though acquitted, Johnson had been
effectively checked; he could do no more than sorrowfully watch the
fulfillment of military reconstruction.

The election of Grant in 1868 secured Republican control of
both the executive and legislative branches of government. Congress
hastened to complete its reforms. In January 1869 it formulated the
Fifteenth Amendment, which enfranchised the Negro, and on March
30, 1870, the amendment was ratified. As Republican control was
strengthened, the South ended its opposition. By the end of 1868,
the two Carolinas, Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, and Louisiana,
having ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, were readmitted to the
Union. Two years later Texas, Virginia, Mississippi, and Georgia
made their peace and were readmitted. When extensive intimidations
of Negroes at the polls and elsewhere was resumed, Congress passed
three enforcement acts: one of May 31, 1870; another on February
28, 1871; and the final one on April 20, 1871. These authorized the
protection of Negro rights through Federal authority, and with the
suspension of the writ of habeas corpus if necessary. The last of
these acts, better known as the Ku-Klux Act, opened extensive legal
prosecutions of suspected Ku-Kluxers in the Carolinas and Mississippi.

THE RECONSTRUCTION 7

Some convictions were obtained (especially in South Carolina), but
the worsening economic crisis in the nation as a whole gradually
diverted congressional attention from the South. When no effort
was made to renew the Ku-Klux Act, congressional efforts to
reconstruct the South ended.

From 1872 onward, conservative governments committed to white
supremacy supplanted radical governments throughout the South. As
the election of 1876 approached, radicals retained control of only
South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida. In all three states violence
accompanied the presidential campaign. When the returns of
November 7, 1876, indicated that Samuel Tilden, the Democrat,
had a substantial popular majority, Republican leaders, aware that
Tilden still lacked one electoral vote to secure his election, challenged
the returns from their three remaining Southern strongholds. Most
historians have since concluded that Tilden carried Louisiana and
Florida, thereby winning, but the Republican Boards of Election in
each of the states turned aside Democratic claims and approved
Republican electors. The resulting dispute was carried to Congress,
where the South settled the issue by trading the Presidency for: (1)
final withdrawal of Federal troops from the three disputed states;
(2) a promise of financial aid in the construction of the Texas and
Pacific Railroad; (3) the appointment of a Southerner as Postmaster
General; (4) the assurance of Federal subsidies to aid Southern
rehabilitation; and (5) a tacit admission that the South alone should
resolve its racial problem. Thus Reconstruction ended on a note of
irony: an event begun by Southern rebellion against the legitimate
election of Lincoln ended with the Southern surrender of a legitimate
mandate for Tilden.

SECTION I

THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR

THE surrender of Lee's army on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox
Court House, marked the beginning of the end for the Con-
federacy, Although Jefferson Davis called for guerilla warfare, the
remaining Southern land forces followed Lee's lead. Joseph E.
Johnston's army turned in its arms to Sherman near Durham, North
Carolina, on April 18; General Richard Taylor, son of Zachary
Taylor, surrendered at Citronelle, Alabama, on May 4; Kirby Smith's
army of the trans-Mississippi West furled its flags on June 2, 1865.
With Smith's action all land resistance ceased. The capture of
Jefferson Davis at Irwinsville, Georgia, on May 10, ended even the
shadow of a Confederate government. Until November 6, 1865, the
Southern cruiser Shenandoah continued to prowl the ocean; with its
surrender at Liverpool, England, the Confederacy passed into the
ranks of lost causes.

As Confederate veterans wended their many ways home they
passed through a land scarred with war but dotted also with many
enclaves on which the recent struggle had left few marks. Even
where the fighting had been bitterest, nature was reclaiming the raw
scars. As wagons carted the wounded of Appomattox to field hospi-
tals, spring flowers blossomed on the deserted entrenchments of
Petersburg and Spotsylvania. In the fortunate rear areas that had
been spared the destruction of battle, the sign of conflict was not
so much on the land as on human faces lined and worn by four
years of unrequited toil, sacrifice, and suffering.

Since the South was a predominantly agricultural society, physical
damage did not vitally affect its basic wealth: the soil. Though much
of it was overgrown with weeds and maintenance had been sadly
neglected, Southern farms and plantations required only the applica-
tion of hard work for the restoration of their fertility. Most Southern
veterans could expect to achieve at least a subsistence living. Where
homes and farm buildings had been destroyed the usual rude habita-
tions that the average Southerner was accustomed to were easily

10 THE RECONSTRUCTION

restored. Within a comparatively short time the simple comfort
of Southern life was regained. Less easily restored was the complex
processing of the Southern staples: cotton, tobacco, rice, and sugar.

Confederate policy had deliberately fostered the reduction of
cotton growing in the hope that the world's dependence on this staple
would force foreign intervention. This proved a serious miscalcula-
tion, since British antipathy to slavery effectively checked any impulse
the British had toward intervention. And by 1863 numerous alterna-
tive sources of cotton had been found, particularly in Egypt and
India. After the war, Southern cotton found itself faced with
substantial competition.

The disruption of the Southern labor system proved even more
serious. The end of slavery had sent hundreds of thousands of
Negroes pouring off the plantations. Unless they could be persuaded
to return to tend the new cotton crop, it was unlikely that the
South could restore even a shadow of its former production. Though
some historians have described slavery simply as an ancient form
of labor, it was also, in the South, a social system. It had secured
Southern agriculture its labor force and had settled the racial
problem. Its destruction left the South with the task of reconstructing
a workable system -within which the necessities of both labor and
society could be met. The conflict between North and South after
the war was substantially over whether this task of reconstruction
would be achieved through an appeal to the Jeffersonian dictum that
the local solution is the most feasible, or to a national effort. And the
primary dispute between the sections concerned the racial problem,
and whether it was a national or a Southern question.

A further disability which enfeebled the Southern economy was
the absence of capital. The Confederate war effort had consumed
most of the region's liquid assets. Even where physical damage was
small, as in the city of New Orleans, the bank vaults were empty of
bullion, most of it having been loaned to the defunct Richmond
government. The bonds that remained were nagging reminders of a
lost wealth and of the futility of the Southern sacrifice. Merchants
throughout the South had their plight compounded when obligations
contracted before the war were presented for payment by Northern
creditors. And they knew that no effective relief existed unless the
agricultural prop of the Southern economy could be restored. What-
ever measures of recovery were contemplated, Southerners had to
face the grim reality of almost total bankruptcy. Everywhere the
problem was one of creating something "almost out of nothing";
of obtaining revenue "where the taxable property of the State is

THE RECONSTRUCTION H

reduced almost two-thirds." Few thoughtful observers doubted that
the South was "a broken-down country."

The effort needed to restore agriculture alone was staggering, but
the South' s total catalogue of woes was enough to put Job to shame.
Her industrial plant, miniscule at the war's outset, had been expanded
through the Herculean efforts of the beleagured Confederacy. But
as the war endured and grew, the Northern armies singled out
factories for particular attention. Atlanta, the arsenal of the South,
was put to the torch before Sherman abandoned it. In the final days
of the war Major General James Wilson lead a Union cavalry raid
into Alabama that culminated in the destruction of the Selma
foundries and arsenal. The Richmond industrial district was put to
the torch by the retreating Confederates. By war's end the bulk of
Southern industry lay in ruins. A large potential market for manu-
factured goods remained; vast undeveloped natural resources were
known to exist; but the South lacked the capital with which to
exploit either resource.

Even had the industrial and agricultural plants remained intact,
the South faced the giant task of restoring the region's transportation
system. Most of the fighting had occured along railroad rights-of-way
and on the banks of the South's navigable rivers. Destruction and
neglect had combined to devastate rail and water communications.
The Southern rail system had been incomplete when war came, but
the Confederate government had effectively used it, and it was
only in the last days of the war that rail transportation came practi-
cally to a standstill. Yet efforts to restore even a semblance of normal
service after the war amounted to acts of faith. The rolling stock
which remained was at best dilapidated and often amounted to little
more than a collection of rolling wrecks. Miles of trackage had been
torn up, with rails twisted into a jumble of useless shapes and ties
burned. Bridges on both railroads and post roads were down, and
most depots and marshaling yards were ghostly ruins. More than
half of the 10,000-mile Southern rail system had ceased to operate.
Fully five years after Appomattox, the important line between
Savannah and Charleston was still inoperative. Southern travelers
accepted a Spartan service with long delays as a normal condition.

Water transportation also suffered from the deterioration and
destruction of equipment. But the major difficulty affecting the water-
ways resulted from the wartime neglect of restraining levees and
dikes. Southern rivers were notorious for their sudden shifts of course,
and only constant maintenance of the massive earth walls could keep
them in check. In addition, thousands of fertile bottom-land acres

12 THE RECONSTRUCTION

had been reclaimed from the rivers. By the end of the war, untold
hundreds of miles of levees and dikes had disappeared into the rivers,
transforming thousands of reclaimed acres back into marshland.
Often whole towns like De Soto, the Louisiana suburb of Vicksburg,
were swept away by the unrestrained floods. Southern harbors were
no less neglected, numbers of them being silted up and cluttered with
the hulks of sunken craft. Since these harbors had frequently been
the target of military attack, such vital facilities as docks, piers,
and warehouses were in shambles. For boats to travel safely on
Southern streams and in Southern harbors, a widespread rechartering
of their courses was required.

Dray horses were in short supply. Most Southern States did not
regain their prewar numbers of horses until the 1880's. Livestock
generally was reduced by war needs, though in Texas the herds had
grown so vast that a head of cattle commanded scarcely any value.
Only the great cattle drives conducted after 1866 permitted Texans
to convert their bounty into cash.

One item of immediate value remained in the defeated Con-
federacy. Something in the neighborhood of 5,000,000 bales of
cotton, worth from 600 to $1.20 a pound, probably remained in
Southern warehouses. The high prices reflected the commodity's
scarcity; its worth would plummet downward as normal supplies re-
appeared on the market, but for the moment many Southerners hoped
to obtain enough capital to restore at least some of their losses. They
had not anticipated the appearance in the South of numerous
Treasury agents authorized to seize all abandoned property for the
Federal government. Many agents took advantage of their position
to either seize for their own accounts or force sale to themselves at
low prices of private cotton. In the absence of traditional authority,
Southerners had little choice but to accept wholesale robbery as
another woe of war. Federal tax agents also enforced collection of
the Southern share of a $20,000,000 direct tax levied at the beginning
of the war. Without the means to pay these taxes, former Con-
federates were compelled to sell real property at rates far below its
true value. Though Congress subseqeuntly voted to compensate
Southerners for these losses, the immediate impact was to sharpen
the region's acute poverty.

Most shattering of all were the problems resulting from the
destitution of widows and orphans, and of maimed Confederate
veterans. The Federal government left this burden to the states. Since
almost a third of the South's estimated 140,000 wounded had
suffered the loss of a limb, every state was bound to supply artificial

THE RECONSTRUCTION 13

arms and legs. Veterans endured further indignities from occuping
Federal troops and visiting Northerners who viewed their continued
wearing of butternut and gray uniforms not as a mark of poverty,
but as a sign of covert hostility.

The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the defeated South
was in desperate need of large-scale assistance. As the first victims
of modem total war, the region had probably lost half its real
property. "Our fields everywhere lie untilled. Naked chimneys, and
charred ruins all over the land mark the spots where happy homes,
the seats of refinement and elegance once stood. Their former in-
habitants wander in poverty and exile, wherever chance or charity
affords them shelter or food. Childless old age, widows, and helpless
orphans beggared and hopeless, are everywhere." These were the
laments of thfc day. Nothing short of an equivalent Marshall Plan
could have swiftly redeemed the South from its despair.

But such aid was not forthcoming. The generation that fought the
war still thought in terms of a government of limited powers. Embued
with laissez-faire doctrine, they saw the task of physical reconstruc-
tion as an individual or local responsibility. And the psychological
scars had burned too deeply; reunion had been forced at the cannon
mouth, but memory intervened to remind both North and South of
their travail. Peace had been restored, but with it came neither pity
nor pardon.

When the conflict was over, the South appeared to the North
and the world as a strange, an unprecedented land. After four years
of civil strife, Northerners no longer believed that they understood
their Southern brethren. An insatiable curiosity to visit and see the
Southland sprang up. Northerners, both official and unofficial, and
numerous foreigners, journeyed through the ruins. Their reports
provide a portrait of the South in the wake of disaster. Some part of
what they recorded follows; it confirms the scope of the Southern
tragedy. It explains why John H. Kennaway, an English traveler,
could journey from Chattanooga to Atlanta without seeing a single
smiling face.

ALL THINGS INDICATE THAT THE DAYS OF
THE CONFEDERATE STATES ARE NUMBERED . . .

April 6 All things indicate that the days of the Confederate States
are numbered. . . .
Friday, April 14 We heard last night from an authentic source

14 THE RECONSTRUCTION

that General Lee had certainly surrendered himself with his army. . . .
O'Ferrall is still operating in the lower Valley. The Federal com-
mander in that quarter notified him that he was violating the terms
of Lee's surrender, and O'Ferrall has sent to Staunton for information.
. . . Pierpoint, the Governor of Virginia, recognized by the Federal
government, has been in Richmond. He was elected by a few votes
in Alexandria, Norfolk, and possibly some other places occupied by
Federal troops during the war. Another State, called West Virginia,
is presided over by Governor Bowman or Boreman. Nothing remains
for us but submission.

Sunday night, April 16 Authentic intelligence to-day that two
persons have arrived in Charlottesville from Richmond, sent by
Lincoln in search of Governor Smith, to invite him to return. At last
accounts the Governor was flying from Richmond, on the tow path
of the James river canal.

Monday night, April 17 Four years ago this day, the two military
companies started from Staunton, and the war began. Now the war is
virtually over, and we are what shall I say? . . .

April 19 No rumors to-day of any consequence. Yesterday there
was a report that Lincoln had been assassinated.

April 20 The report of Lincoln's assassination was renewed this
evening. . . . There is general regret in our community. . . . We are
now in a condition of anarchy. Bands of soldiers are roaming about
and taking off all cattle, sheep, horses, etc., they suppose to be public
property. . . .

Friday night, April 21 I hear that a lady arrived this evening
from Washington with a newspaper giving an account of Lincoln's
assassination. Steward was assailed in his chamber at the same time
and wounded. . . .

April 25 We have no mails, no newspapers, and no regular
communication with the world. Occasionally some person arrives
with a Baltimore or Richmond paper. . . . There were many exciting
rumors to-day. Among them that Andrew Johnson had been killed,
and that Washington, Philadelphia and New York were in flames.
Also, reported by some one who came up the valley that Grant
had been killed, and that fighting was going on in Washington city.
. . . Trouble, suspense, anxiety a time when we have no government,
and know not what will be on the morrow. . . .

Saturday, Apirl 29 Several companies of the Twenty-second New
York cavalry, under Colonel Reid, arrived to-day from Winchester.
They came in very cautiously, having scouts on the hills before they
entered. They evidently feared an ambuscade! Their camp is near the

THE RECONSTRUCTION IS

cemetery. ... It was a curious spectacle this afternoon to see
Federals and Confederates mingling on the streets. Everybody seemed
to be at ease. . . .

Sunday night, April 30 The day passed off quietly. Many Yankees
were riding and walking about unarmed. Four officers and two other
soldiers attended the Presbyterian church in the forenoon. The
Episcopal church was not open, because Mr. Latane was apprehen-
sive of trouble if he omitted to pray for the President of the United
States. Surely these are evil times when churches are subject to
military control. . . . Our town police arrested a drunken Yankee
soldier last night and put him in jail.

Monday night, May 1 Negroes are flocking to the Yankee camp,
some of them having come from home on horseback. . . . The
Yankees gave up stolen horses to their owners when called for. . , .
The officers have told everybody that they did not wish the negroes
to go off with them, and would furnish to them neither transportation
nor rations, but they were not at liberty to send them home. This
afternoon, however, the soldiers began a system of treatment which
must have been discouraging to "American citizens of African
descent." A number of tents had been taken from the military hospital
to the Yankee camp, and some of them were spread upon the ground
and used as blankets thrown up at the risk of cracking skulls or
breaking necks. One woman having been tossed up several times
fell on her head, and at last accounts was lying insensible. . . . This
evening a Confederate and Yankee had a fist-fight in the street. The
former got the better of his opponent, but both were put in jail.
Tuesday, May 2 The Federal troops started early this morning
down the Valley. Many negroes, men, women and children, ac-
companied them. The negroes can't realize that freedom is possible
in their old homes. One old man started, but soon returned, saying it
was too far! ...

Tuesday night, May 9 The Federal troops entered town this
morning. First came three or four scouts, next the cavalry (three
regiments), and then three regiments of infantry. Brigadier-General
Duval commands. Their principal camp is on the Parkersburg road,
near town. The headquarters are at the Virginia hotel. They have
about 150 wagons, and supplies for thirty days. As the first infantry
regiment marched in the band played "Hail Columbia." The private
soldiers seem good-natured enough, but they are a low order of
people, much inferior to our men, who have always whipped them
when not outnumbered more than three to one. The officers are a
spruce, dapper-looking set. . . .

l6 THE RECONSTRUCTION

Friday night, May 12 We are tasting the bitterness of a conquered
people. The Yankees are evidently trying to worry us because they
are not taken into society. No disrespect is shown to them, but cold
politeness. The officers ride and walk about, decked off in shining
coats, and evidently desire to attract the attention of the ladies.
General Duval is not satisfied with the temper of the people "they
are still defiant." He has therefore resorted to various petty
annoyances. . . . Yesterday he alleged that several persons had been
murdered within four miles of Staunton "Union people," who
had recently come back. Nobody else had heard of it, and the
statement is utterly false. . . . Citizens are not allowed to be on the
streets after 10 o'clock at night. . . . This morning a Yankee soldier
was found dead near town, but, strange to say, the "Rebels" are not
charged with having killed him. Yesterday a body of four or five
hundred cavalry came in from Charlottesville to open an office for
paroling, not knowing that any troops were here. They returned this
morning. We hear that the Yankees at Winchester have the negro
men, who lately went off from this place, working on the streets,
guarded by soldiers, and that the women are begging from door to
door.

May 15 A sentinel has been promenading to-day before N. K.
Trout's residence, because, the Yankee allege, the girls "made
mouths," or hissed at the band as they entered town a week ago.
The girls deny the charge. But what if they did?

May 16 Many persons in town have been making what money
they could out of the Yankee soldiers. Betty, a colored servant girl
at 's thought she would try her hand, although her mistress is
suspected of being a secret partner in the venture. At any rate, Betty
went out to the camp with a lot of fresh pies to sell on reasonable
terms. In due time she returned, greatly elated with her success she
had a handful of notes. But, alas! the rascality of the Yankees, and,
alas! Betty's ignorance of United States currency. Upon examination,
it turned out that the papers for which she had exchanged her pies
were bottle labels, advertising cards, etc., without a cent of money
among them. Betty probably told very freely where she lived, and
during the day some Yankees called at the house and inquired if they
could get any pies there. . . .

Monday night, May 22 Pierpoint is recognized by the Washington
authorities as the legitimate Governor of Virginia. We are apprehen-
sive that no one will be allowed to vote or hold office unless he purges
himself by oath of all sympathy with the "rebellion," and thus nearly
the whole people will be excluded. No doubt some will swear they

THE RECONSTRUCTION 17

never did sympathize. The applicants for office upon the restoration
of the monarchy in the person of Charles II were not more debased
than some people now-a-days.

Monday night, May 29 Yesterday evening United States flags
were hung out at several street corners, so that persons going to the
Episcopal church should have to pass under them, and a small paper
flag was suspended over the church gate. This morning a small flag
was found pasted to the portico of A. F. Kinney's house, and Ned
Kinney, who first discovered it, took it down. For this act of treason
he was arrested and threatened with banishment to a Northern prison.
A large flag was then put at Kinney's gate.

Tuesday night, May 30 The Pierpoinf s Constitution of Virginia,
framed at Alexandria during the war by sixteen men, and never
voted for by anyone else, is to be imposed upon us by Federal
bayonets. It wipes out slavery now and forever, &c., &c, . . ,

Friday night, June 2 The "last agony" from Washington appeared
this morning President Johnson's proclamation of pardon to rebels
on certain conditions. There are so many proclamations and oaths
of one sort and another that it is hard to keep the run of them. All
military officers above the rank of lieutenant, all civil officers of
the "pretended," or "so-called," Confederate States, and all persons
worth more than $20,000 are excluded from the benifits of lie oath
last prescribed by the president. Persons belonging to these classes
must file petitions to his excellency for pardon, and he promises
to be liberal. Why persons worth over $20,000 are specially guilty is
hard to see. Many a flagrant "rebel" is not worth a dollar in ready
money. . . .

Joseph A. Waddell, Annals of Augusta County, Virginia, pp.
329, 330, 335, 336, 337, 338, 339, 340.

HAVE WE SUFFERED ALL HAVE OUR BRAVE

MEN FOUGHT SO DESPERATELY AND

DIED SO NOBLY FOR THIS!

Diary of Emma Le Conte

April 20, 1865 ... the Grand Army of Virginia which has
heretofore never known defeat, but has stood like some great rock
against which the huge waves of our enemies have dashed them-
selves in vain, is now melted away. All that is left is Johnston's small
army, cooped up between Grant's hordes on the one hand and

l8^ THE RECONSTRUCTION

&P

Sherman's on the other. Wiser heads than mine say it must surrender,
and then the waves will roll over us.

The South lies prostrate their foot is on us there is no help.
During this short time we breathe, but oh, who could have believed
who has watched this four years' struggle that it could have ended
like this! They say right always triumphs, but what cause could have
been more just than ours? Have we suffered all have our brave
men fought so desperately and died so nobly for this! For four years
there has been throughout this broad land little else than the anguish
of anxiety the misery of sorrow over dear ones sacrificed for
nothingl Is all this blood spilled in vain will it not cry from the
ground on the day we yield to these Yankees! We give up to the
Yankees] How can it be? How can they talk about it? Why does not
the President call out the women if there are not enough men? We
would go and fight, too we would better all die together. Let us
suffer still more, give up yet more anything, anything that will help
the cause, anything that will give us freedom and not force us to live
with such people to be ruled by such horrible and contemptible
creatures to submit to them when we hate them so bitterly.

It is cruel it is unjust. (I used to dream about peace, to pray for
., but this is worse than wafX What is such peace to us? What
orrible fate has been pursuing us the last six months? Not much
urther back than that we had every reason to hope for success.
VTiat is the cause of this sudden crushing collapse? I cannot under-
tand it. I never loved my country as I do now. I feel I could sacrifice
verything to it, and when I think of the future oh God! It is too
Lorrible. What I most fear is a conciliatory policy from the North,
hat they will offer to let us come back as before. Oh, no, no! I would
ather we were held as a conquered province, rather sullenly submit
ad bide our time. Let them oppress and tyrannize, but let us take
LO favors of them. Let them send us away out of the country
mywhere away from them and their hateful presence.

April 22, 1865 Hurrah! Old Abe Lincoln has been assassinated!
t may be abstractly wrong to be so jubilant, but I just can't help
t. After all the heaviness and gloom . . . this blow to our enemies
omes like a gleam of light. We have suffered till we feel savage. . . .
Our spirits had been so low that the least good news elevated them
wonderfully and this was so utterly unlooked for, took us so com-
pletely by surprise. I actually flew home. ... As soon as I reached
the head of the stairs, they all cried, "What do you think of the
news?" "Isn't it splendid," etc If it is only true! The first feeling

THE RECONSTRUCTION 19

I had when the news was announced was simply gratified revenge.
The man we hated has met Ms proper fate . . . Andy Johnson will
succeed him the rail-splitter will be succeeded by the drunken ass.

May 17, 1865 The troops are coming home. One meets long-
absent, familiar faces on the streets, and congregations once almost
strictly feminine are now mingled with returned soldiers. Our boys
Cousin Johnny and Julian have come home, too. It was pleasant
to see them again, but the meeting was more sad than glad. We would
have waited many years if only we could have received them back
triumphant. . . .Cousin Johnny came first and about a week later
Julian. ... It was a lovely moonlight night and we both households
had agreed to walk together over the town and view the ruins by
the full moon. We had not gone more than two or three blocks when
we met a rough soldier with knapsack and blanket roll on his back.
. . . After much embracing, kissing, chattering and some tears Julian,
who was too tired to go with us, went on home to his mother
accompanied by Uncle John and Johnny, while the rest of us pursued
our walk. Cousin Johnny came home quite broken down, but Jule
seems very well except that his feet are blistered so that he can
hardly walk. . . .

I must say something of that walk among the ruins. It was very
beautiful and melancholy. I wish I had a picture of that scene.
Everything was still as death. The only sounds that broke the silence
were our footsteps among the rubbish, and sometimes the low voices
of our party. There was little talking the weird scene seemed to
cast a spell upon us. As far as the eye could reach only spectre-like
chimneys and the shattered walls, all flooded over by the rich
moonlight which gave them a mysterious but mellow softness, and
quite took from them the ghastly air which they wear in the sunlight.
They only lacked moss and lichens and tangled vines to make us
believe we stood in some ruined city of antiquity.

PEOPLE HELD THEIR BREATH, INDULGING
IN THE WILDEST APPREHENSIONS AS TO

WHAT WAS NOW TO COME.

Conditions Of Things Immediately After The Close Of The War

In the development of the popular spirit in the south since the
close of the war two well-marked periods can be distinguished. The
first commences with the sudden collapse of the confederacy and

20 THE RECONSTRUCTION

the dispersion of its armies, and the second with the first proclamation
indicating the "reconstruction policy" of the government. Of the
first period I can state the characteristic features only from the
accounts I received, partly from Unionists who were then living in
the south, partly from persons that had participated in the rebellion.
When the news of Lee's and Johnston's surrenders burst upon the
southern country the general consternation was extreme. People
held their breath, indulging in the wildest apprehensions as to what
was now to come. Men who had occupied positions under the con-
federate government, or were otherwise compromised in the re-
bellion, ran before the federal columns as they advanced and spread
out to occupy the country, from village to village, from plantation
to plantation, hardly knowing whether they wanted to escape
or not. Others remained at their homes yielding themselves up to
their fate. Prominent Unionists told me that persons who for four
years had scorned to recognize them on the street approached them
with smiling faces and both hands extended. Men of standing in the
political world expressed serious doubts as to whether the rebel
States would ever again occupy their position as States in the Union,
or be governed as conquered provinces. The public mind was so
despondent that if readmission at some future time under whatever
conditions had been promised, it would then have been looked upon
as a favor. The most uncompromising rebels prepared for leaving
the country. The masses remained in a state of fearful expectancy.

This applies especially to those parts of the country which were
within immediate reach of our armies or had previously been touched
by the war. Where Union soldiers had never been seen and none were
near, people were at first hardly aware of the magnitude of the
catastrophe, and strove to continue in their old ways of living. . . .

Returning Loyalty

. . . Upon the ground of these declarations, and other evidence
gathered in the course of my observations, I may group the southern
people into four classes, each of which exercises an influence upon
the development of things in that section:

1. Those who, although having yielded submission to the national
government only when obliged to do so, have a clear perception of
the irreversible changes produced by the war, and honestly endeavor
to accommodate themselves to the new order of things. Many of
them are not free from traditional prejudice but open to conviction,
and may be expected to act in good faith whatever they do. This

THE RECONSTRUCTION 21

class Is composed, in its majority, of persons of mature age planters,
merchants, and professional men; some of them are active in the
reconstruction movement, but boldness and energy are, with a few
individual exceptions, not among their distinguishing qualities.

2. Those whose principal object is to have the States without delay
restored to their position and influence in the Union and the people
of the States to the absolute control of their home concerns. They
are ready, in order to attain that object, to make any ostensible
concession that will not prevent them from arranging things to suit
their taste as soon as that object is attained. This class comprises a
considerable number, probably a large majority, of the professional
politicians who are extremely active in the reconstruction movement.
They are loud in their praise of the President's reconstruction policy,
and clamorous for the withdrawal of the federal troops and the
abolition of the Freedmen's Bureau.

3.^ The incorrigibles, who still indulge in the swagger which was
so customary before and during the war, and still hope for a time
when the southern confederacy will achieve its independence. This
class consists mostly of young men, and comprises the loiterers of
the towns and the idlers of the country. They persecute Union men
and negroes whenever they can do so with impunity, insist clamor-
ously upon their "rights," and are extremely impatient of the presence
of the federal soldiers. A good many of them have taken the oaths
of allegiance and amnesty, and associated themselves with the second
class in their political operations. This element is by no means un-
important; it is strong in numbers, deals in brave talk, addresses
itself directly and incessantly to the passions and prejudices of the
masses, and commands the admiration of the women.

4. The multitude of people who have no definite ideas about the
circumstances under which they live and about the course they have
to follow; whose intellects are weak, but whose prejudices and
impulses are strong, and who are apt to be carried along by those
who know how to appeal to the latter. . . .

Feeling Toward The Soldiers And The People Of The North

A more substantial evidence of "returning loyalty" would be a
favorable change of feeling with regard to the government's friends
and agents, and the people of the loyal States generally. I mentioned
above that all organized attacks upon our military forces stationed

22 THE RECONSTRUCTION"

in the south have ceased; but there are still localities where it is
unsafe for a man wearing the federal uniform or known as an
officer of the government to be abroad outside of the immediate reach
of our garrisons. The shooting of single soldiers and government
couriers was not unfrequently reported while I was in the south, and
even as late as the middle of September, Major Miller, assistant
adjutant general of the commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau in
Alabama, while on an inspecting tour in the southern counties of
that State, found it difficult to prevent a collision between the
menacing populace and his escort. His wagon-master was brutally
murdered while remaining but a short distance behind the command.
The murders of agents of the Freedmen's Bureau have been noticed
in the public papers. These, and similar occurrences, however, may
be looked upon as isolated cases, and ought to be charged, perhaps,
only to the account of the lawless persons who committed them.

But no instance has come to my notice in which the people of a
city or a rural district cordially fraternized with the army. Here and
there the soldiers were welcomed as protectors against apprehended
dangers; but general exhibitions of cordiality on the part of the
population I have not heard of. There are, indeed, honorable in-
dividual exceptions to this rule. Many persons, mostly belonging to
the first of the four classes above enumerated, are honestly striving
to soften down the bitter feelings and traditional antipathies of
their neighbors; others, who are acting more upon motives of policy
than inclination, maintain pleasant relations with the officers of the
government. But, upon the whole, the soldier of the Union is still
looked upon as a stranger, an intruder as the "Yankee," the
"enemy." It would be superfluous to enumerate instances of insult
offered to our soldiers, and even to officers high in command; the
existence and intensity of this aversion is too well known to those
who have served or are now serving in the south to require proof. . . .

What Has Been Accomplished

... the rapid return to power and influence of so many of those
who but recently were engaged in a bitter war against the Union,
has had one effect which was certainly not originally contemplated
by the government. Treason does, under existing circumstances, not
appear odious in the south. The people are not impressed with any
sense of its criminality. And secondly, there is, as yet, among the
southern people an utter absence of national feeling. I made it a
business, while in the south, to watch the symptoms of "returning

THE RECONSTRUCTION 23

loyalty" as they appeared not only in private conversation, but in the
public press and in the speeches delivered and the resolutions passed
at Union meetings. Hardly ever was there an expression of hearty
attachment to the great republic, or an appeal to the impulses of
patriotism; but whenever submission to the national authority was
declared and advocated, it was almost uniformly placed upon two
principal grounds: That under present circumstances, the southern
people could "do no better"; and then that submission was the only
means by which they could rid themselves of the federal soldiers and
obtain once more control of their own affairs. . . .

The Negro Question First Aspects

The principal cause of that want of national spirit which has
existed in the south so long, and at last gave birth to the rebellion,
was, that the southern people cherished, cultivated, idolized their
peculiar interests and institutions in preference to those which they
had in common with the rest of the American people. Hence the
importance of the negro question as an integral part of reconstruction.

When the war came to a close, the labor system of the south was
already much disturbed. During the progress of military operations
large numbers of slaves had left their masters and followed the
columns of our armies; others had taken refuge in our camps; many
thousands had enlisted in the service of the national government.
Extensive settlements of negroes had been formed along the seaboard
and the banks of the Mississippi, under the supervision of army
officers and treasury agents, and the government was feeding the
colored refugees, who could not be advantageously employed, in the
so-called contraband camps. Many slaves had also been removed by
their masters, as our armies penetrated the country, either to Texas or
to the interior of Georgia and Alabama. Thus a considerable portion
of the laboring force had been withdrawn from its former employ-
ments. But a majority of the slaves remained on the plantations
to which they belonged, especially in those parts of the country
which were not touched by the war, and where, consequently, the
emancipation proclamation was not enforced by the military power.
Although not ignorant of the stake they had in the result of the
contest, the patient bondmen waited quietly for the development of
things. But as soon as the struggle was finally decided, and our forces
were scattered about in detachments to occupy the country, the so
far unmoved masses began to stir. The report went among them that
their liberation was no longer a mere contigency, but a fixed fact.

#4 THE RECONSTRUCTION

Large numbers of colored people left the plantations; many flocked
to our military posts and camps to obtain the certainty of their
freedom, and others walked away merely for the purpose of leaving
the places on which they had been held in slavery, and because they
could now go with impunity. Still others, and their number was by
no means inconsiderable, remained with their former masters and
continued their work on the field, but under new as yet unsettled
conditions, and under the agitating influence of a feeling of restless-
ness. In some localities, however, where our troops had not yet
penetrated and where no military post was within reach, planters
endeavored and partially succeeded in maintaining between them-
selves and the negroes the relation of master and slave, partly by
concealing from them the great changes that had taken place, and
partly by terrorizing them into submission to their behests. But
aside from these exceptions, the country found itself thrown into
that confusion which is naturally inseparable from a change so great
and so sudden. The white people were afraid of the negroes, and
the negroes did not trust the white people; the military power of the
national government stood there, and was looked up to, as the
protector of both. . . .

Insolence And Insubordination

The new spirit which emancipation has awakened in the colored
people has undoubtedly developed itself in some individuals, espe-
cially young men, to an offensive degree. Hence cases of insolence
on the part of freedmen occur. But such occurrences are compara-
tively rare. On the whole, the conduct of the colored people is far
more submissive than anybody had a right to expect. The acts of
violence perpetrated by freedmen against white persons do not stand
in any proportion to those committed by whites against negroes.
Every such occurence is sure to be noticed in the southern papers
and we have heard of but very few.

When Southern people speak of the insolence of the negro, they
generally mean something which persons who never lived under
the system of slavery are not apt to appreciate. It is but very rarely
what would be called insolence among equals. But, as an old planter
said to me, "Our people cannot realize yet that the negro is free."
A negro is called insolent whenever his conduct varies in any
manner from what a southern man was accustomed to when slavery
existed.

The complaints made about the insubordination of the negro

THE RECONSTRUCTION 25

laborers on plantations have to be taken with the same allowance.
There have been, no doubt, many cases in which freedmen showed
a refractory spirit, where orders were disobeyed, and instructions
disregarded. There have been some instances of positive resistance.
But when inquiring into particulars, I found not unfrequently that
the employer had adhered too strictly to his old way of doing tilings.
I hardly heard any such complaints from Northern men. I have heard
planters complain very earnestly of the insubordinate spirit of their
colored laborers because they remonstrated against the practice of
corporal punishment. This was looked upon as a symptom of an
impending insurrection. A great many things are regarded in the old
slave States as acts of insubordination on the part of the laborer
which, in the free States, would be taken as perfectly natural and
harmless. The fact is, a good many planters are at present more
nervously jealous of their authority than before, while the freedmen
are not always inclined to forget that they are free men. . . .

Pamphlets On Reconstruction, "Report Of Carl Schurz On The
States Of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and

Louisiana."

I AM SATISFIED THAT THE MASS OF THINKING

MEN OF THE SOUTH ACCEPT THE PRESENT

SITUATION ... IN GOOD FAITH.

Letter Of General Grant Concerning Affairs At The South

HEADQUARTERS ARMIES OF THE UNITED STATES,
WASHINGTON, D. C. December 18, 1865

I am satisfied that the mass of thinking men of the south accept
the present situation of affairs in good faith. The questions which have
heretofore divided the sentiment of the people of the two sections
slavery and States' rights, or the right of a State to secede from the
Union they regard as having been settled forever by the highest
tribunal arms that men can resort to. I was pleased to learn from
the leading men whom I met that they not only accepted the decision
arrived at as final, but, now that the smoke of battle has cleared away
and time has been given for reflection, that this decision has been
a fortunate one for the whole country, they receiving like benefits
from it with those who opposed them in the field and in council.

26 THE RECONSTRUCTION

Four years of war, during which law was executed only at the
point of the bayonet throughout the States in rebellion, have left the
people possibly in a condition not to yield that ready obedience to
civil authority the American people have generally been in the habit
of yielding. This would render the presence of small garrisons
throughout those States necessary until such time as labor returns
to Its proper channel, and civil authority is fully established. I did
not meet any one, either those holding places under the government
or citizens of the southern States, who think it practicable to withdraw
the military from the south at present. The white and the black
mutually require the protection of the general government.

There is such universal acquiescence in the authority of the general
government throughout the portions of country visited by me, that
the mere presence of a military force, without regard to numbers, is
sufficient to maintain order. The good of the country, and economy,
require that the force kept in the interior, where there are many
freedmen (elsewhere in the southern States than at forts upon the
seacoast no force is necessary), should all be white troops. The
reasons for this are obvious without mentioning many of them. The
presence of black-troops, lately slaves, demoralizes labor, both by
their advice and by furnishing in their camps a resort for the freedmen
for long distances around. White troops generally excite no opposi-
tion, and therefore a small number of them can maintain order in
a given district. Colored troops must be kept in bodies sufficient to
defend themselves. It is not the thinking men who would use violence
towards any class of troops sent among them by the general govern-
ment, but the ignorant in some places might; and the late slave seems
to be imbued with the idea that the property of his late master should,
by right, belong to him, or at least should have no protection from
the colored soldier. There is danger of collisions being brought on by
such causes.

My observations lead me to the conclusion that the citizens of
the southern States are anxious to return to self-government, within
the Union, as soon as possible; that whilst reconstructing they want
and require protection from the government; that they are in earnest
in wishing to do what they think is required by the government, not
humiliating to them as citizens, and that if such a course were pointed
out they would pursue it in good faith. It is to be regretted that there
cannot be a greater commingling, at this time, between the citizens
of the two sections, and particularly of those intrusted with the law-
making power.

THE RECONSTRUCTION 27

IT IS MY OPINION THAT WITH THE EXCEPTION

OF A SMALL MINORITY, THE PEOPLE . . . ARE

DISLOYAL IN THEIR SENTIMENTS . . .

Statement Of General Thomas Kilby Smith

New Orleans, September 14, 1865

It is my opinion that with the exception of a small minority, the
people of Mobile and southern Alabama are disloyal in their senti-
ments and hostile to what they call the United States, and that a great
many of them are still inspired with a hope that at some future time
the "confederacy," as they style it, will be restored to independence.

In corroboration of this assertion, I might state that in conversa-
tion with me Bishop Wilmer, of the diocese of Alabama (Episcopal),
stated that to be his belief; that when I urged upon him the propriety
of restoring to the litany of his church that prayer which includes
the prayer for the President of the United States, the whole of which
he had ordered his rectors to expunge, he refused, first, upon the
ground that he could not pray for a continuance of martial law; and
secondly, that he would stultify himself in the event of Alabama and
the southern confederacy regaining their independence. This was
on the 17th of June. This man exercises a widespread influence in
the State, and his sentiments are those of a large proportion of what
is called the better class of people, and particularly the women. Hence
the representatives of the United States flag are barely tolerated. They
are not welcome among the people in any classes of society. There
is always a smothered hatred of the uniform and the flag. Nor is
this confined to the military, but extends to all classes who, repre-
senting northern interests, seek advancement in trade, commerce, and
the liberal professions, or who, coming from the North, propose to
locate in the South.

On the 4th of July I permitted in Mobile a procession of the
freedmen, the only class of people in Mobile who craved of me the
privilege of celebrating the anniversary of the Declaration of In-
dependence. Six thousand well-dressed and orderly colored people,
escorted by two regiments of colored troops, paraded the streets,
assembled in the public squares, and were addressed in patriotic
speeches by orators of their own race and color. These orators
counselled them to labor and to wait. This procession and these
orations were the signal for a storm of abuse upon the military and

28 THE RECONSTRUCTION

the freedmen and their friends, fulminated from the street corners
by the then mayor of the city and his common council and in the
daily newspapers, and was the signal for the hirelings of the former
slave power to hound down, persecute, and destroy the industrious
and inoffensive negro. These men were found for the most part in
the police of the city, acting under the direction of the mayor, R. H.
Hough, since removed. The enormities committed by these police-
men were fearful. Within my own knowledge colored girls seized
upon had to take their choice between submitting to outrage
on the part of the policemen or incarceration in the guard-house.
These men, having mostly been negro drivers and professional negro
whippers, were fitting tools for the work in hand. Threats of and
attempts at assassination were made against myself. Threats were
made to destroy all school-houses in which colored children were
taught, and in two instances they were fired. The same threats were
made against all churches in which colored people assembled to
worship, and one of them burned. Continued threats of assassination
were made against the colored preachers, and one of them is now
under special guard by order of Major General Wood. . . .

. . . one of the most intelligent and high-bred ladies of Mobile,
having had silver plate stolen from her more than two years ago,
and having, upon affidavit, secured the incarceration of two of her
former slaves whom she suspected of the theft, came to me in my
official capacity, and asked my order to have them whipped and
tortured into a confession of the crime charged and the participants
in it. This lady was surprised when I informed her that the days of
the rack and the thumbscrew were passed, and, though pious,
well bred, and a member of the church, thought it a hardship that
a negro might not be whipped or tortured till he would confess what
he might know about the robbery, although not even a prima-facie
case existed against him, or that sort of evidence that would induce
a grand jury to indict, I offer this as an instance of the feeling that
exists in all classes against the negro, and their inability to realize
that he is a free man and entitled to the rights of citizenship. With
regard to municipal law in the State of Alabama, its administration is
a farce. The ministers of the law themselves are too often desperadoes
and engaged in the perpetration of the very crime they are sent forth
to prohibit or to punish. Without the aid of the bayonets of the
United States, Alabama is an anarchy. The best men of Alabama
have either shed their blood in the late war, emigrated, or become
wholly incapacitated by their former action from now taking part

THE RECONSTRUCTION 29

in the government of the State. The most sensible portion of the
people tremble at the idea of the military force being eliminated for,
whatever may be their hatred of the United States soldier, in him
they find their safety. . . .

NO YANKEE STOPS IN THIS HOUSE!
Three Months Among The Reconstmctionists

I spent the months of September, October, and November, 1865,
in the States of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. I
travelled over more than half the stage and railway routes therein,
visited a considerable number of towns and cities in each State,
attended the so-called reconstruction conventions at Raleigh, Colum-
bia, and Milledgeville, and had much conversation with many
individuals of nearly all classes.

I.

I was generally treated with civility, and occasionally with courte-
ous cordiality. I judge, from the stories told me by various persons,
that my reception was, on the whole, something better than that
accorded to the majority of Northern men travelling in that section.
Yet at one town in South Carolina, when I sought accommodations
for two or three days at a boarding-house, I was asked by the woman
in charge, "Are you a Yankee or a Southerner?" and when I
answered, "Oh, a Yankee, of course," she responded, "No Yankee
stops in this house!" and turned her back upon me and walked off.
In another town in the same State I learned that I was the first
Yankee who had been allowed to stop at the hotel since the close
of the war. In one of the principal towns of Western North Carolina,
the landlord of the hotel said to a customer, while he was settling
his bill, that he would be glad to have him say a good word for the
house to any of his friends; "But," added he, "you may tell all d d
Yankees I can git long jest as well, if they keep clar o' me"; and
when I asked if the Yankees were poor pay or made him extra
trouble, he answered, "I don't want 'em 'round, I ha'n't got no use
for 'em nohow." In another town in the same State, a landlord said
to me, when I paid my two-days bill, that "no d n Yankee" could
have bed in his house. In Georgia, I several times heard the people
of my hotel expressing the hope that the passenger-train wouldn't

30 THE RECONSTRUCTION

bring any Yankees; and I have good reason for believing that I was
quite often compelled to pay an extra price for accommodations be-
cause I was known to be from the North. In one town, several of us,
passengers by an evening train, were solicited to go to a certain
hotel; but the clerk declined to give me a room, when he learned
that I was from Massachusetts, thought I secured one after a time
through the favor of a travelling acquaintance, who sharply rebuked
the landlord.

It cannot be said that freedom of speech has been fully secured
in either of these three States. Personally, I have very little cause
of complaint, for my role was rather that of a listener than of a
talker; but I met many persons who kindly cautioned me, that at
such and such places, and in such and such company, it would be
advisable to refrain from conversation on certain topics. Among
the better class of people, resident in the cities and large towns, I
found a fair degree of liberality of sentiment and courtesy of speech;
but in travelling off the main railway-lines, and among the average of
the population, any man of Northern opinions must use much circum-
spection of language; while, in many counties of South Carolina
and Georgia, the life of an avowed Northern radical would hardly be
worth a straw but for the presence of the military. In Barnwell and
Anderson districts, South Carolina, official records show the murder
of over a dozen Union men in the months of August and September;
and at Atlanta, a man told me, with a quiet chuckle, that in Carroll
County, Georgia, there were "four d n Yankees shot in the month
of October." Any Union man, travelling in either of these two States,
must expect to hear many very insulting words; and any Northern
man is sure to find his principles despised, his people contemned,
and himself subjected to much disagreeable contumely. There is
everywhere extreme sensitiveness concerning the negro and his
relations; and I neither found nor learned of any village, town, or
city in which it would be safe for a man to express freely what are
here, in the North, called very moderate views on that subject. Of
course the war has not taught its full lesson, till even Mr. Wendell
Phillips can go into Georgia and proclaim "The North Victorious."

n.

I often had occasion to notice, both in Georgia and the Carolinas,
the wide and pitiful difference between the residents of the cities
and large towns and the residents of the country. There is no
homogeneity, but everywhere a rigid spirit of caste. The longings

THE RECONSTRUCTION 31

of South Carolina are essentially monarchical rather than republican;
even the common people have become so debauched in loyalty, that
very many of them would readily accept the creation of orders of
nobility. In Georgia there is something less of this spirit; but the
upper classes continually assert their right to rule, and the middle and
lower classes have no ability to free themselves. The whole structure
of society is full of separating walls; and it will sadden the heart of
any Northern man, who travels in either of these three States, to see
how poor, and meagre, and narrow a thing life is to all the country
people. Even with the best class of townsfolk it lacks very much of
the depth and breadth and fruitfulness of our Northern life, while
with these others it is hardly less materialistic than that of their
own mules and horses. Thus, Charleston has much intelligence, and
considerable genuine culture; but go twenty miles away, and you
are in the land of the barbarians. So, Raleigh is a city in which there
is love of beauty, and interest in education; but the common people
of the county are at least forty years behind the same class of people
in Vermont. Moreover, in Macon are many fine residences, and the
city may boast of its gentility and its respect for the nourishing
elegancies of life; but a dozen miles out are large neighborhoods not
yet half-civilized. The contrast between the inhabitants of the cities
and those of the country is hardly less striking than that between
the various classes constituting the body of the common people.
Going from one county into another is frequently going into- a
foreign country. Travel continually brings novelty, but with that
always comes pain. Till all these hateful walls of caste are thrown
down, we can have neither intelligent love of liberty, decent respect
for justice, nor enlightened devotion to the idea of national unity.
"Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?"

It has been the purpose of the ruling class, apparently, to build
new barriers between themselves and the common people, rather
than tear away any of those already existing. I think no one can
understand the actual condition of the mass of whites in Georgia and
the Carolinas, except by some daily contact with them. The injustice
done to three-fourths of them was hardly less than that done to all
the blacks. There were two kinds of slavery, and negro slavery was
only more wicked and debasing than white slavery. Nine of every
ten white men in South Carolina had almost as little to do with even
State affairs as the negroes had. Men talk of plans of reconstruction;
that is the best plan which proposes to do most for the common
people. Till civilization has been carried down into the homes and
hearts of all classes, we shall have neither regard for humanity nor

32 THE RECONSTRUCTION

respect for the rights of the citizen. In many sections of all these
States human life is quite as cheap as animal life. What a mental
and moral condition does this indicate! Any plan of reconstruction
is wrong that does not assure toleration of opinion, and the elevation
of the common people to the consciousness that ours is a republican
form of government. Whether they are technically in the Union or
out of the Union, it is the national duty to deal with these States in
such manner as will most surely exalt the lower and middle classes
of their inhabitants. The nation must teach them a knowledge of
their own rights, while it also teaches them respect for its rights and
the rights of man as man.

Stopping for two or three days in some back county, I was always
seeming to have drifted away from the world which held Illinois and
Ohio and Massachusetts. The difficulty in keeping connection with
our civilization did not so much lie in the fact that the whole
structure of daily life is unlike ours, nor in the other fact that I was
forced to hear the Union and all loyal men reviled, as in the greater
fact that the people are utterly without knowledge. There is every-
where a lack of intellectual activity. Schools, books, newspapers
why, one may almost say there are none outside the cities and towns.
The situation is horrible enough, when the full force of this fact
is comprehended; yet there is a still lower deep there is small
desire, even feeble longing, for schools and books and newspapers.
The chief end of man seems to have been "to own a nigger." In the
important town of Charlotte, North Carolina, I found a white man
who owned the comfortable house in which he lived, who had a wife
and three half-grown children, and yet had never taken a newspaper
in his life. He thought they were handy for wrapping purposes, but he
couldn't see why anybody wanted to bother with the reading of
them. He knew some folks spent money for them, but he also
knew a-many houses where none had ever been seen. In that State
I found several persons whites, and not of the "clayeater" class,
either who never had been inside a school-house, and who didn't
mean to 'low their children to go inside one. In the upper part of
South Carolina, I stopped one night at the house of a moderately
well-to-do farmer who never had owned any book but a Testament,
and that was given to him. When I expressed some surprise at this
fact, he assured me that he was as well off as some other people
thereabouts. Between Augusta and Milledgeville I rode in a stage-
coach in which were two delegates of the Georgia Convention. When
I said that I hoped the day would soon come in which school-houses
would be as numerous in Georgia as in Massachusetts, one of them

THE RECONSTRUCTION 33

answered; "Well I hope it'll never come popular education is all
a d n humbug in my judgement"; whereunto the other responded,
"That's my opinion, too." These are exceptional cases, I am aware,
but they truly index the situation of thousands of persons. It is this
general ignorance, and the general indifference to knowledge, that
make a Southern trip such wearisome work. You can touch the
masses with few of the appeals by which we move our own people.
There is very little aspiration for larger life; and more than that,
there is almost no opportunity for its attainment. That education is
the stairway to a nobler existence is a fact which they either fail to
comprehened or to which they are wholly indifferent.

Where there is such a spirit of caste, where the ruling class has
a personal interest in fostering prejudice, where the masses are in
such an inert condition, where ignorance so generally prevails, where
there is so little ambition for improvement, where life is so hard
and material in its tone, it is not strange to find much hatred and
contempt. Ignorance is generally cruel, and frequently brutal. The
political leaders of this people have apparently indoctrinated them
with the notion that they are superior to any other class in the
country. Hence there is usually very little effort to conceal the
prevalent scorn of the Yankee and this term being applied to the
citizen of any Northern State. Any plan of reconstruction is wrong
that tends to leave these old leaders in power. A few of them give
fruitful evidence of a change of heart by some means save these
for the sore and troubled future; but for the others, the men who
not only brought on the war, but ruined the mental and moral
force of their people before unfurling the banner of rebellion
for these there should never any more be place or countenance among
honest and humane and patriotic people. When the nation gives them
life, and a chance for its continuance, it shows all the magnanimity
that humanity in such case can afford.

III.

In North Carolina there is a great deal of something that calls
itself Unionism; but I know nothing more like the apples of Sodom
than most of this North Carolina Unionism. It is a cheat, a Will-o'-
the-wisp; and any man who trusts it will meet with overthrow. Its
quality is shown in a hundred ways. An old farmer came into
Raleigh to sell a little corn. I had some talk with Mm. He claimed
that he had been a Union man from the beginning of the war, but
he refused to take "greenback money" for his corn. In a town in the

34 THE RECONSTRUCTION

western part of the State I found a merchant who prided himself on
the fact that he had always prophesied the downfall of the so-called
Confederacy and had always desired the success of the Union arms;
yet when I asked him why he did not vote in the election for delegates
to the Convention, he answered, sneeringly, "I shall not vote till
you take away the military." The State Convention declared by a
vote of ninety-four to nineteen that the Secession ordinance had
always been null and void; and then faced squarely about, and,
before the Presidential instructions were received, impliedly de-
clared, by a vote of fifty-seven to fifty-three, in favor of paying the
war debt incurred in supporting that ordinance! This action on these
two points exactly exemplifies the quality of North Carolina Union-
ism. There may be in it the seed of loyalty, but woe to him who
mistakes the germ for the ripened fruit! In all sections of the State
I found abundant hatred of some leading or local Secessionist; but
how full of promise for the new era of national life is the Unionism
which rests only on this foundation?

In South Carolina there is very little pretence of loyalty, I believe
I found less than fifty men who admitted any love for the Union.
There is everywhere a passionate devotion of the State, and the
common sentiment holds that man guilty of treason who prefers
the United States to South Carolina. There is no occasion to wonder
at the admiration of the people for Wade Hampton, for he is the
very exemplar of their spirit of their proud and narrow and
domineering spirit. "It is our duty," he says, in his letter of last
November, "it is our duty to support the President of the United
States so long as he manifests a disposition to restore all our rights
as a sovereign State." That sentence will forever stand as a model of
cool arrogance, and yet it is in full accord with the spirit of the
South-Carolinians. He continues: "Above all, let us stand by our
State all the sacred ties that bind us to her are intensified by her
suffering and desolation. ... It only remains for me, in bidding you
farewell, to say, that, whenever the State needs my services, she has
only to command and I shall obey." The war has taught this people
only that the physical force of the nation cannot be resisted. They will
be obedient to the letter of the law, perhaps, but the whole current
of their lives flows in direct antagonism to its spirit.

In Georgia there is something worse than sham Unionism or cold
acquiescence in the issue of battle: it is the universally prevalent
doctrine of the supremacy of the State. Even in South Carolina a
few men stood up against the storm, and now claim credit for faith
in dark days. In Georgia that man is hopelessly dead who doubted

THE RECONSTRUCTION 35

or faltered. The common sense of all classes pushes the necessity
of allegiance to the State into the domain of morals as well as
into that of politics; and he who did not "go with the State" in the
Rebellion is held to have committed the unpardonable sin. At Macon
I met a man who was one of the leading Unionists in the winter of
1860-61. He told me how he suffered then for his hostility to
Secession, and yet he added, "I should have considered myself
forever disgraced, if I hadn't heartily gone with the State, when
she decided to fight." And Ben Hill, than whom there are but few
more influential men in the State, advises the people after this
fashion: "I would vote for no man who could take the Congressional
test-oath, because it is the highest evidence of infidelity to the
people of the State." I believe it is the concurrent testimony of all
careful travellers in Georgia, that there is everywhere only cold
toleration for the idea of national sovereignty, very little hope for
the future of the State as a member of the Federal Union, and
scarcely any pride in the strength and glory and renown of the
United States of America.

Much is said of the hypocrisy of the South. I found but little of
it anywhere. The North-Carolinian calls himself a Unionist, but he
makes no special pretence of love for the Union. He desires many
favors, but he asks them generally on the ground that he hated the
Secessionists. He expects the nation to recognize rare virtue in that
hatred, and hopes it may win for his State the restoration of her
political rights; but he wears his mask of nationality so lightly that
there is no difficulty in removing it. The South-Carolinian demands
only something less than he did in days before the war, but he
offers no plea of Unionism as a guaranty for the future. He rests
his case on the assumption that he has fully acquiesced in the results
of the war, and he honestly believes that he has so acquiesced. His
confidence in South Carolina is so supreme that he fails to see how
much the conflict meant. He walks by such light as he has, and
cannot yet believe that Destiny has decreed his State a secondary
place in the Union. The Georgian began by believing that rebellion
in the interest of Slavery was honorable, and the result of the war has
not changed his opinion. He is anxious for readmission to fellowship
with New York and Pennsylvania and Connecticut, but he supports
his application by no claim of community of interest with other States.
His spirit is hard and uncompromising; he demands rights, but does
not ask favors; and he is confident that Georgia is fully as important
to the United States as they are to Georgia.

Complaint is made that the Southern people have recently elected

36 THE RECONSTRUCTION

military men to most of their local State offices. We do ourselves
a wrong in making this complaint. I found it almost everwhere true
in Georgia and the Carolinas that the best citizens of to-day are the
Confederate soldiers of yesterday. Of course, in many individual
cases they are bitter and malignant; but in general the good of the
Union, no less than the hope of the South, lies in the bearing of the
men who were privates and minor officers in the armies of Lee and
Johnston. It may not be pleasant to us to recognize this fact; but I am
confident that we shall make sure progress toward securing domestic
tranquillity and general welfare, just in proportion as we act upon it.
It should be kept in mind that comparatively few of those who won
renown on the field were promoters of rebellion or secession. The
original malcontents ah! where are they? Some of them at least
are beyond interference in earthly affairs; others are in hopeless
poverty and chilling neglect; others are struggling to mount once
more the wave of popular favor. A few of these last have been
successful to see that no more of them are so is a national duty.
I count it an omen of good, when I find that one who bore himself
gallantly as a soldier has received preferment. We cannot afford to
quarrel on this ground; for, though their courage was for our
wounding, their valor was the valor of Americans.

The really bad feature of the situation with respect to the
relations of these States to the General Government is, that there
is not only very little loyalty in their people, but a great deal of
stubborn antagonism, and some deliberate defiance. Further war in
the field I do not deem among the possibilities. Be the leaders never
so bloodthirsty, the common people have had enough of fighting.
The bastard Unionism of North Carolina, the haughty and self-
complacent State pride of South Carolina, the arrogant dogmatism
and insolent assumption of Georgia how shall we build nationality
on such foundations? That is the true plan of reconstruction which
makes haste very slowly. It does not comport with the character of
our Government to exact pledges of any State which are not exacted
of all. The one sole needful condition is, that each State establish a
republican form of government, whereby all civil rights at least shall
be assured in their fullest extent to every citizen. The Union is no
Union, unless there is equality of privileges among the States. When
Georgia and the Carolinas establish this republican form of govern-
ment, they will have brought' themselves into harmony with the
national will, and may justly demand readmission to their former
political relations in the Union. Each State has some citizens, who,
wiser than the great majority, comprehend the meaning of Southern

THE RECONSTRUCTION 37

defeat with praiseworthy insight. Seeing only individuals of this
small class, a traveller might honestly conclude that the States were
ready for self-government. Let not the nation commit the terrible
mistake of acting on this conclusion. These men are the little leaven
in the gross body politic of Southern communities. It is no time for
passion or bitterness, and it does not become our manhood to do
anything for revenge. Let us have peace and kindly feeling; yet, that
our peace may be no sham or shallow affair, it is painfully essential
that we keep these States awhile within national control, in order
to aid the few wise and just men therein who are fighting the great
fight with stubborn prejudice and hidebound custom. Any plan of
reconstruction is wrong which accepts forced submission as genuine
loyalty, or even as cheerful acquiescence in the national desire and
purpose,

IV.

Before the war, we heard continually of the love of the master for
his slave, and the love of the slave for his master. There was also
much talk to the effect that the negro lived in the midst of pleasant
surroundings, and had no desire to change his situation. It was
asserted that he delighted in a state of dependence, and throve on the
universal favor of the whites. Some of this language we conjectured
might be extravagant; but to the single fact that there was universal
good-will between the two classes every Southern white person bore
evidence. So, too, in my late visit to Georgia and the Carolinas, they
generally seemed anxious to convince me that the blacks had behaved
well during the war had kept at their old tasks, had labored cheer-
fully and faithfully, had shown no disposition to lawlessness, and
had rarely been guilty of acts of violence, even in sections where there
were many women and children, and but few white men.

Yet I found everywhere now the most direct antagonism between
the two classes. The whites charge generally that the negro is idle,
and at the bottom of all local disturbances, and credit him with most
of the vices and very few of the virtues of humanity. The negroes
charge that the whites are revengeful, and intend to cheat the laboring
class at every opportunity, and credit them with neither good
purposes nor kindly hearts. This present and positive hostility of
each class to the other is a fact that will sorely perplex any Northern
man travelling in either of these States. One would say, that, if there
had formerly been such pleasant relations between them, there ought
now to be mutual sympathy and forbearance, instead of mutual
distrust and antagonism. One would say, too, that self-interest, the

38 THE RECONSTRUCTION

common interest of capital and labor, ought to keep them in harmony;
while the fact is, that this very interest appears to put them in an
attitude of partial defiance toward each other. I believe the most
charitable traveller must come to the conclusion, that the professed
love of the whites for the blacks was mostly a monstrous sham or a
downright false pretence. For myself, I judge that it was nothing less
than an arrant humbug.

The negro is no model of virtue or manliness. He loves idleness,
he has little conception of right and wrong, and he is improvident
to the last degree of childishness. He is a creature as some of our
own people will do well to keep carefully in mind he is a creature
just forcibly released from slavery. The havoc of war has filled his
heart with confused longings, and his ears with confused sounds of
rights and privileges: it must be the nation's duty, for it cannot be
left wholly to his late master, to help him to a clear understanding
of these rights and privileges, and also to lay upon him a knowledge
of his responsibilities. He is anxious to learn, and is very tractable in
respect to minor matters; but we shall need almost infinite patience
with him, for he comes very slowly to moral comprehensions.

Going into the States where I went and perhaps the fact is true
also of the other Southern states going into Georgia and the
Carolinas, and not keeping in mind the facts of yesterday, any man
would almost be justified in concluding that the end and purpose
in respect to this poor negro was his extermination. ... It is pro-
claimed everywhere that he will not work, that he cannot take care
of himself, that he is a nuisance to society, that he lives by stealing,
and that he is sure to die in a few months; and, truth to tell, the
great body of the people, though one must not say intentionally, are
doing all they well can to make these assertions true. If it is not said
that any considerable number wantonly abuse and outrage him, it
must be said that they manifest a barbarous indifference to his fate,
which just as surely drives him on to destruction as open cruelty
would.

There are some men and a few women and perhaps the number
of these is greater than we of the North generally suppose who
really desire that the negro should now have his full rights as a
human being. With the same proportion of this class of persons in
a community of Northern constitution, it might be justly concluded
that the whole community would soon join or acquiesce in the effort
to secure for him at least a fair share of those rights. . . . Unfortun-
ately, however, in these Southern communities the opinion of such
persons cannot have such weight as it would in ours. The spirit of

THE RECONSTRUCTION

39

the caste, of which I have already spoken, is an element figuring
largely against them in any contest involving principle an element
of whose practical workings we here know very little. The walls
between individuals and classes are so high and broad, that the men
and women who recognize the negro's rights and privileges as a free-
man are almost as far from the masses as we of the North are. More-
ever, that any opinion savors of the "Yankee" in other words, is
new to the South is a fact that even prevents its consideration by
the great body of the people. Their inherent antagonism to everything
from the North an antagonism fostered and cunningly cultivated for
half a century by the politicians in the interest of Slavery is
something that no traveller can photograph, that no Northern man
can understand, till he sees it with his own eyes, hears it with his own
ears, and feels it by his own consciousness. That the full freedom of
the negroes would be acknowledged at once is something we had no
warrant for expecting. The old masters grant them nothing, except
at the requirement of the nation as a military and political necessity;
and any plan for reconstruction is wrong which proposes at once or in
the immediate future to substitute free-will for this necessity.

Three fourths of the people assume that the negro will not labor,
except on compulsion; and the whole struggle between the whites on
the one hand and the blacks on the other hand is a struggle for and
against compulsion. The negro insists, very blindly perhaps, that he
shall be free to come and go as he pleases; the white insists that he
shall come and go only at the pleasure of his employer. The whites
seem wholly unable to comprehend that freedom for the negro means
the same thing as freedom for them. They readily enough admit that
the Government has made him free, but appear to believe that they
still have the right to exercise over him the old control. It is partly
their misfortune, and not wholly their fault, that they cannot under-
stand the national intent, as expressed in the Emancipation Proclama-
tion and the Constitutional Amendment. I did not anywhere find a
man who could see that laws should be applicable to all persons
alike; and hence even the best men hold that each State must have
a negro code. They acknowledge the overthrow of the special
servitude of man to man, but seek through these codes to establish
the general servitude of man to the commonwealth. I had much talk
with intelligent gentlemen in various sections, and particularly with
such as I met during the conventions at Columbia and Milledgeville,
upon this subject, and found such a state of feeling as warrants litfle
hope that the present generation of negroes will see the day in which
their race shall be amenable only to such laws as apply to the whites.

40 THE RECONSTRUCTION

I think the freedmen divide themselves into four classes: one
fourth recognizing, very clearly, the necessity of work, and going
about it with cheerful diligence and wise forethought; one fourth
comprehending that there must be labor, but needing considerable
encouragement to follow it steadily; one fourth preferring idleness,
but not specially averse to doing some job-work about the towns and
cities; and one fourth avoiding work as much as possible, and living
by voluntary charity, persistent begging, or systematic pilfering. It is
true, that thousands of the aggregate body of this people appear to
have hoped, and perhaps believed, that freedom meant idleness; true,
too, that thousands are drifting about the country or loafing about
the centres of population in a state of vagabondage. Yet of the
hundreds with whom I talked, I found less than a score who seemed
beyond hope of reformation. It is a cruel slander to say that the race
will not work, except on compulsion. I made much inquiry, wherever
I went, of great numbers of planters and other employers, and found
but very few cases in which it appeared that they had refused to labor
reasonably well, when fairly treated and justly paid. Grudgingly
admitted to any of the natural rights of man, despised alike by
Unionists and Secessionists, wantonly outraged by many and meanly
cheated by more of the old planters, receiving a hundred cuffs for
one helping hand and a thousand curses for one kindly word they
bear themselves toward their former masters very much as white men
and women would under the same circumstances. True, by such
deportment they unquestionably harm themselves; but consider of
how little value life is from their stand-point. They grope in the
darkness of this transition period, and rarely find any sure stay for
the weary arm and the fainting heart. Their souls are filled with a
great, but vague longing for freedom; they battle blindly with fate
and circumstance for the unseen and uncomprehended, and seem to
find every man's hand raised against them. What wonder that they fill
the land with restlessness!

However unfavorable this exhibit of the negroes in respect to labor
may appear, it is quite as good as can be made for the whites: I every-
where found a condition of affairs in this regard that astounded me.
Idleness, not occupation, seemed the normal state. It is the boast of
men and women alike, that they have never done an hour's work.
The public mind is thoroughly debauched, and the general conscience
is lifeless as the grave. I met hundreds of hale and vigorous young
men who unblushingly owned to me that they had not earned a
penny since the war closed. Nine-tenths of the people must be taught
that labor is even not debasing. It was pitiful enough to find so much

THE RECONSTRUCTION 41

idleness, but It was more pitiful to observe that it was likely to
continue indefinitely. The war will not have borne proper fruit, if
our peace does not speedily bring respect for labor, as well as respect
for man. When we have secured one of these things, we shall have
gone far toward securing the other; and when we have secured both,
then indeed shall we have noble cause for glorying in our country
true warrant for exulting that our flag floats over no slave.
Meantime while we patiently and hopefully wait for the day in which

All men's good shall

Be each man's rule and Universal Peace

Lie like a shaft of light across the land.

There are at least five things for the nation to do: make haste slowly
in the work of reconstruction; temper justice with mercy, but see
to it that justice is not overborne; keep military control of these lately
rebellious States, till they guaranty a republican form of government;
scrutinize carefully the personal fitness of the men chosen therefrom
as representatives in the Congress of the United States; and sustain
therein some agency that shall stand between the whites and the
blacks, and aid each class in coming to a proper understanding of its
privileges and responsibilities.

The Atlantic Monthly 1866 Jan.- June, pp. 237-245.

WHEN ETERNAL JUSTICE DECREES THE PUNISH-
MENT OF A PEOPLE, IT SENDS NOT WAR
ALONE, BUT ALSO ITS SISTER TERRORS,
FAMINE, PESTILENCE, AND FIRE.

Charleston And The War

When Eternal Justice decrees the punishment of a people, it
sends not War alone, but also its sister terrors, Famine, Pestilence,
and Fire.

The ruins of Charleston are the most picturesque of any I saw
in the South. The gardens and broken walls of many of its fine
residences remain to attest their former elegance. Broad, semicircular
flights of marble steps, leading up once to proud doorways, now
conduct you, over their cracked and calcined slabs, to the level of

42 THE RECONSTRUCTION

high foundations swept of every-thing but the crashed fragments of
their former superstructures, with here and there a broken pillar,
and here and there a windowless wall. Above the monotonous gloom
of the ordinary ruins rise the churches the stone tower and roof-
less walls of the Catholic Cathedral, deserted and solitary, a roost
for buzzards; the burnt-out shell of the Circular Church, interesting
by moonlight, with its dismantled columns still standing, like those
of an antique temple; and others scarcely less noticeable.

There are additional ruins scattered throughout the lower part
of the city, a legacy of the Federal bombardment. The Scotch Church,
a large structure, with two towers and a row of front pillars, was
rendered untenantable by ugly breaches in its roof and walls, that
have not yet been repaired. The old Custom-House and Post-Office
building stands in an exceedingly dilapidated condition, full of holes.
Many other public and private buildings suffered no less. Some were
quite demolished; while others have been patched up. ...

The South John Townsend Trowbridge, p. 514.

. . . THERE ARE MEN IN THE BACK DISTRICTS

WHO WILL NOT YET BELIEVE THAT THE

WAR IS OVER, AND SLAVERY AT AN END!

Spotsylvania Court-House

We rode on to the Court-House: a goodly brick building, with
heavy pillars in front, one of which had been broken off by a shell,
leaving a corner of the portico hanging in the air. There were but
six other buildings of any importance in the place one jail, one
tavern (no school-house), one private dwelling, and three churches;
all of brick, and all more or less battered by artillery.

Entering the Court-House amid heaps of rubbish which littered
the yard about the doors, I had the good fortune to find the county
clerk at his desk. He received me politely, and offered to show me
about the building. It had been well riddled by shot and shell; but
masons and carpenters were at work repairing damages; so that
there was a prospect of the county, in a few months, having a court-
house again.

"What is most to be regretted," the clerk said, "is the destruction
of documents which can't be restored. All the records and papers

THE RECONSTRUCTION

43

of the courts were destroyed by the Union soldiers after they got
possession." And he showed me a room heaped with the fragments.
It looked like a room in a rag-man's warehouse.

Returning to his office, he invited me to sit down, and commenced
talking freely of the condition and prospects of the country. The
area of corn-land planted was small; but the soil had been resting
two or three years, the season had been favorable, and the result
was an excellent crop. "We shall probably have a surplus to dispose
of for other necessaries." The county had not one third the number
of horses, nor one tenth the amount of stock, it had before the war.
Many families were utterly destitute. They had nothing whatever to
live upon until the corn-harvest; and many would have nothing then.
The government had been feeding as many as fifteen hundred persons
at one time.

"How many of these were blacks?"

"Perhaps one fifth."

"How large a proportion of the population of the county are
blacks?"

"Not quite one half."

"The colored population required proportionally less assistance,
then, than the white?" He admitted the fact. "How happens it?"
I inquired; for he had previously told me the old hackneyed tale,
that the negroes would not work, and that in consequence they were
destined to perish like the Indians.

"They'll steal," said he; and he made use of this expression, which
he said was proverbial: "An honest nigger is as rare as a lock of hair
on the palm of my hand."

"But," I objected, "it seems hardly possible for one class of
people to live by stealing in a country you describe as so destitute."

"A nigger will live on almost nothing," he replied. "It isn't to be
denied, however, but that some of them work."

He criticised severely the government's system of feeding the
destitute. "Hundreds are obtaining assistance who are not entitled to
any. They have only to go to the overseers of the poor appointed
by government, put up a poor mug, and ask for a certificate in a
weak voice; they get it, and come and draw their rations. Some
draw rations both here and at Fredericksburg, thus obtaining a
double support, while they are well able to work and earn their
living, if left to themselves. The system encourages idleness, and
does more harm than good. All these evils could be remedied, and
more than half the expense saved the government, if it would intrust
the entire management of the matter in the hands of citizens."

44 THE RECONSTRUCTION

"Is it the whites, or the blacks, who abuse the government's
bounty?"

"The whites."

"It appears, then, that they have the same faults you ascribe to the
blacks: they are not over-honest, and they will not work unless
obliged to."

"Yes, there are shiftless whites to be sure. There's a place eight
miles west from here, known as Texas, inhabited by a class of poor
whites steeped in vice, ignorance, and crime of every description.
They have no comforts, and no energy to work and obtain them.
They have no books, no morality, no religion; they go clothed like
savages, half sheltered, and half fed except that government is now
supporting them."

"Do the whites we are feeding come mostly from that region?"

"O, no; they come from all over the county. Some walk as far
as twenty miles to draw their fortnight's or three weeks' rations.
Some were in good circumstances before the war; and some are
tolerably well off now. A general impression prevails that this support
comes from a tax on the county; so every man, whether he needs
it or not, rushes in for a share. It is impossible to convince the
country people that it is the United States government that is
feeding them. Why, sir, there are men in the back districts who
will not yet believe that the war is over, and slavery at an end!"

The South Trowbridge, pp. 133-136.

IN OUR HEARTS WE THOUGHT MORE

OF THE STARS AND STRIPES THAN WE DID

OF THE OLD RAG WE WERE FIGHTING UNDER.

By Railroad To Corinth

On the road to Tuscumbia I made the acquaintance of a young
South Carolinian, whose character enlisted my sympathy, and whose
candid conversation offers some points worth heeding.

"I think it was in the decrees of God Almighty that slavery was
to be abolished in this way; and I don't murmur. We have lost our
property, and we have been subjugated, but we brought it all on
ourselves. Nobody that hasn't experienced it knows anything about
our suffering. We are discouraged: we have nothing left to begin new

THE RECONSTRUCTION 45

with. I never did a day's work in my life, and don't know how to
begin. Yon see me in these clothes; well, I never wore coarse clothes
in my life before the war."

Speaking of the negroes: "We can't feel towards them as you
do; I suppose we ought to, but 'tisn't possible for us. They've always
been our owned servants, and we've been used to having them mind
us without a word of objection, and we're to be pitied sooner than
blamed, for it's something we can't help. I was always kind to my
slaves. I never whipped but two boys in my life, and one of them I
whipped three weeks ago."

"When he was a free man?"

"Yes; for I tell you that makes no difference in our feelings
towards them. I sent a boy across the country for some goods. He
came back with half the goods he ought to have got for the money.
I may as well be frank it was a gallon of whiskey. There were five
gentlemen at the house, and I wanted the whiskey for them. I told
Bob he stole it. Afterwards he came into the room and stood by the
d oor a big, strong fellow, twenty-three years old. I said, 'Bob,
what do you want?' He said, 1 want satisfaction about the whiskey.'
He told me afterwards, he meant that he wasn't satisfied I should
think he had stolen it, and wanted to come to a good understanding
about it. But I thought he wanted satisfaction gentlemen's fashion.
I rushed for my gun. I'd have shot him dead on the spot if my
friends hadn't held me. They said I'd best not kill him, but that he
ought to be whipped. I sent to the stable for a trace, and gave him a
hundred and thirty with it, hard as I could lay on. I confess I did
whip him unmercifully."

"Did he make no resistance?"

"Oh, he knew better than that; my friends stood by to see me
through. I was wrong, I know, but I was in a passion. That's the
way we treat our servants, and shall treat them, until we can get used
to the new order of things if we ever can."

"In the meanwhile, according to your own showing, it would seem
that some restraint is necessary for you, and some protection for
the negroes. On the whole, the Freedmen's Bureau is a good thing,
isn't it?"

He smiled. "Maybe it is; yes, if the nigger is to be free, I reckon
it is; but it's a mighty bitter thing for us."

Then speaking of secession: "I had never thought much about
politics, though I believed our State was right when she went out.
But when the bells were ringing, and everybody was rejoicing that
she had seceded, a solemn feeling came over me, like I had never had

46 THE RECONSTRUCTION

in my life, and I couldn't help feeling there was something wrong.
I went through the war; there were thousands like me. In our hearts
we thought more of the Stars and Stripes than we did of the old rag
we were fighting under."

He was going to Mississippi to look after some property left there
before the war. But what he wished to do was to go North: "only
I know I wouldn't be tolerated I know a man couldn't succeed
in business there, who was pointed out as a Rebel."

The same wish, qualified by the same apprehensions, was fre-
quently expressed to me by the better class of young Southern men;
and I always took pains to convince them that they would be
welcomed and encouraged by all enlightened communities in the
Northern States. . . .

The South Trowbridge, pp. 291-293.

BROKEN AND BLACKENED WALLS, IMPASSABLE
STREETS DELUGED WITH DEBRIS . . .

The Burnt District

All up and down, as far as the eye could reach, the business portion
of the city bordering on the river lay in ruins. Beds of cinders, cellars
half filled with bricks and rubbish, broken and blackened walls,
impassable streets deluged with debris, here a granite front still
standing, and there the iron fragments of crushed machinery such
was the scene which extended over thirty entire squares and parts
of other squares.

. . . here was ruin on a more tremendous scale . . . tall blocks,
great factories, flour-mills, rolling mills, foundries, machine-shops,
warehouses, banks, railroad, freight, and engine houses, two railroad
bridges, and one other bridge spanning on high piers the broad river,
were destroyed by the desperate Rebel leaders on the morning of
the evacuation.

"They meant to burn us all out of our homes," said a citizen
whom I met on the butment of the Petersburg railroad bridge. "It
was the wickedest thing that ever was done in this world! You are a
stranger; you don't know; but the people of Richmond know, if they
will only speak their minds."

"But," said I, "what was their object in burning their own city,
the city of their friends?"

THE RECONSTRUCTION 47

"The devil only knows, for he set 'em on to do it! It was spite,
I reckon. If they couldn't hold the city, they determined nobody
else should. They kept us here four years under the worst tyranny
under the sun; then when they found they couldn't keep us any
longer, they just meant to burn us up. That's the principle they went
on from the beginning."

I had already conversed with other citizens on the subject of
the fire, some of whom maintained that it was never the design of
the Confederate leaders to burn anything but the railroad bridges and
public stores. But this man laughed at the idea.

"That's what they pretend; but I know better. What was the water
stopped from the reservoirs for? So that we should have none to put
out the fire with!"

"But they say the water was shut off in order to make repairs."

"It's all a lie! I tell ye, stranger, it was the intention to burn
Richmond, and it's a miracle that any part of it was saved. As luck
would have it, there was no wind to spread the fire; then the Federals
came in, let on the water, and went to work with the engines, and
put it out."

"Why didn't the citizens do that?"

"I don't know. Everybody was paralyzed. It was a perfect panic.
The Yankees coming! The city bunrkg! Our army on a retreat!
You've no idea of what it was. Nobody seemed to know what to do.
God save us from another such time! It was bad enough Sunday.
If the world had been coming to an end, there couldn't have been
more fright and confusion. I was watchman on this railroad bridge
when there was a bridge here. I was off duty at midnight, and I went
home and went to bed. But along towards morning my daughter woke
me. 'Father,' said she, 'the city's afire!' I knew right away what was
the matter. The night was all lit up, and I could hear the roar of
something besides the river. I run out and started for the bridge, but
I'd got quite near enough, when the ammunition in the tobacco-
warehouses begun to go off. Crack! Crack! crack, crack, crack!
One piece of shell whirred past my head like a pa'tridge. I didn't
want to hear another. I put home and went to getting my truck
together, such as I could tote, ready to leave if my house went."

. . . The work of rebuilding the burnt district had commenced,
and was progressing in places quite vigorously. Here I had the
satisfaction of seeing the negroes, who "would not work," actually
at their tasks. Here, as everywhere else in Richmond, and indeed in
every part of Virginia I visited, colored laborers were largely in the
majority. They drove the teams, made the mortar, carried the hods,

48 THE RECONSTRUCTION

excavated the old cellars or dug new ones, and, sitting down amid
the ruins, broke the mortar from the old bricks and put them up in
neat piles ready for use. There were also colored masons and
carpenters employed on the new buildings. I could not see but that
these people worked just as industriously as the white laborers. And
yet, with this scene before our very eyes, I was once more informed
by a cynical citizen that the negro, now that he was free, would rob,
steal, or starve, before he would work.

The South Trowbridge, pp. 147, 148, 150.

THE CHARLESTON AND SAVANNAH RAILROAD

WAS A MERE WRECK; EVERY BRIDGE AND

TRESTLE DESTROYED. . . . NEARLY

THE WHOLE TRACK TORN UP.

"The Land And Water Connections Of Charleston"

To obtain any correct idea of the progress which Charleston has
made since the war in building up her railroad and marine com-
munications, it is necessary to review her situation at the close of
the war, and compare it with the present condition of affairs.

At the close of the war, there were nominally three railroads
terminating in Charleston: the South Carolina Railroad, which was
the great trunk line of communication with the interior; the North-
eastern Railroad, the most direct route for Northern travel; and the
Charleston and Savannah Railroad, connecting the two cities, and
affording access to the seaboard between them.

The condition of these roads was as follows: On the Augusta
branch of the South Carolina Railroad, forty-nine miles of the track,
together with the bridge across Edisto river, all the culverts, depots,
water-tanks, wood-stations, and carpenter houses, had been utterly
destroyed. About fourteen miles of the Columbia branch were in the
same condition, while ten miles more were more or less injured, in-
cluding the long and costly bridge across the Congaree river, which
was destroyed. The remainder of this road was in tolerable order.
On the Northeastern Railroad, the bridge across the Santee and
Black rivers, and Lynch's Creek had been burned, and also the
principal trestles along the road. The track had not been injured by

THE RECONSTRUCTION 49

either army, but it was well-worn and the road-way was in bad
condition. The depots in the city were also burned. The Charleston
and Savannah Railroad was a mere wreck; every bridge and trestle,
destroyed, including the magnificent and costly bridges over the
Ashley, Edisto, and Savannah rivers; the depot in Charleston burned
as well as the depots and buildings at all the way stations, and nearly
the whole track torn up.

Not only were the three roads in the miserable condition thus
described, but the amount of rolling stock was ridiculously small, and
that in bad condition, while the facilities for increasing it were very
limited indeed. On the South Carolina Railroad, on the 19th of June,

1865, when the company obtained possession of their road from
the military authorities, there were found available only four
locomotives, five passengers and baggage cars, and thirty-six freight
cars. The Northeastern Railroad resumed work with eight serviceable
locomotives, nine passenger and baggage cars, and fifty-seven freight
cars, of which only nineteen were in good order. On the Charleston
and Savannah Railroad, as late as Februray 1, 1867, when the
Savannah and Charleston Railroad Company obtained possession of
the road, there were only two serviceable locomotives, two passenger
cars, and one baggage car in good order, while all the other cars,
passenger, freight, and platform, numbering less than one hundred,
were about one-half in bad order and the other half requiring repairs.
On the South Carolina Railroad, the shops at Columbia had been
destroyed and the only dependence for building and repairing loco-
motives and cars were the shops in Charleston, and these were but
inadequately supplied with tools. The Northeastern Railroad still
had their shops at Florence. The Charleston and Savannah Railroad
had no shops worth mentioning. Nevertheless, the work of rebuilding
and equipment was, at once commenced, and the result was that on
January 16, 1866, the South Carolina Railroad completed its con-
nection with Columbia, and on the fifth of the following April, with
Augusta. On the Northeastern Railroad, tri-weekly communication
with Florence was opened July 10, 1865, the Santee being crossed
in flats, and the bridge across the river was completed March 20,

1866. On the Savannah and Charleston Railroad, the progress was
necessarily slower, and complete communication with Savannah was
not established until March 11, 1870. The progress on the various
roads since those dates has been slow, but steady. There has been
a gradual accumulation of rolling stock; improvement of the roadway;
and a general increase of facilities for the transaction of business;
while business itself has also greatly increased.

50 THE RECONSTRUCTION

The South Carolina Railroad is in first class order, comparing
favorably with any Southern railroad. At the date of the last report,
,the number of locomotives had increased to thirty-six in good order,
three in ordinary condition, and one or two being rebuilt. The car
power had increased to forty-six passenger and mail, and four
hundred and eighty-six freight cars.

On the Northeastern Railroad, the roadway is in good condition,
and the rolling stock has increased to thirteen locomotives, seventeen
passenger and mail cars, and one hundred and forty-six freight cars.

On the Savannah and Charleston Railroad, there are ten locomo-
tives, sixteen passenger and baggage, and eighty-nine freight cars,
and the road is in fair order. . . .

Not only has Charleston resuscitated her old railroad connections,
but she has stretched out her hands for a wider grasp of the trade of
the South and West, and for the stream of travel between the North
and South. The South Carolina Railroad now controls the Greenville
and Columbia Railroad, thus securing to Charleston the trade of some
of the wealthiest districts of the up-country. The same road also
controls the Macon and Augusta Railroad, and by its connections
with other lines, turns vast quantities of freight in this direction,
which otherwise would go directly North by rail. We shall also
have the Port Royal Railroad, which, by its connection with the
Savannah and Charleston Railroad, should become an important
feeder to Charleston.

The Northeastern Railroad and Savannah and Charleston Railroad,
form important links in the shortest line between New York and
Florida, and in the seaboard line from New York to New Orleans, all
the parts of which are nearly completed.

At the close of the War between the States, Charleston was in
almost as sorrowful a plight in regard to facilities for traffic and travel
by water, as by land. The superior steamship lines which, before the
war, connected her with New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston,
and Havana, no longer existed. Some of the vessels had, at the
outset of the war, been seized by the Northern government, while
the remainder, having no longer any work to do for their owners,
were hired or bought by the Confederate government, to be used
as vessels of war or transports; or, at a later date, were employed in
blockade running. The lines of smaller steamers that plied between
Charleston and Florida and Savannah, Beaufort, Georgetown, and
the landings on the various rivers, shared the same fate.

At first, only two of the old steamers could be had to run between
Charleston and New York, and the demand for their service was so

THE RECONSTRUCTION 51

great that for a while passage from Charleston to New York was as
high as $50 and even $60, and freights ranged from thirty to forty
and fifty cents per cubic foot. But this could not and did not last
long, liie reopening of the old railroad lines put an end to the
monopoly of the passage business, while the completion of new and
shorter routes, introduced a very sharp competition. The great success
of the first line of steamers to New York, had also soon induced the
establishment of another; and so, between them all, they reduced
cabin passage to New York, at one time, to fifteen dollars, and on
one line to ten dollars.

The establishment of two or three lines of packet schooners, in
addition to railroad and steamship routes, had also marked effect on
freight. The result of the completion in the freight business was that
new and improved steamships were added to the old lines, and other
lines established of steam vessels, built expressly with a view to
their freight accommodations. So successful has the effort been to
carry large cargoes at cheap rates by steam that, whereas, formerly,
only such articles were carried by steam as required great dispatch,
and could stand a high freight; now, only such articles are carried by
sail as are not much affected by the changes of the market, and can
stand only a very low charge for freight.

The re-establishment of the steam lines to New York was soon
followed by a line to Philadelphia, and another to Baltimore, and
recently a line has been established to Boston. The lines to Florida,
Savannah, Beaufort, Georgetown, and minor points, have also
gradually resumed, until the steamship and steamboat connections of
Charleston are now what they were at the breaking out of the war
in 1860

History of Politics, pp. 36, 37, 38, 39, 40.

. . . ALL THE SHOVELS, SPADES, AND OTHER

FARMING IMPLEMENTS HAVE BEEN CARRIED
OFF OR DESTROYED.

The Burning Of Columbia

I talked with some good Columbians who expressed the most
violent hatred of the Yankees, for the ruin of their homes. Others
took a more philosophical view of the subject. This difference was

52 THE RECONSTRUCTION

thus explained to me by Governor Orr's private secretary, an intel-
ligent young man, who had been an officer in the Confederate service:

"People who were not in the war cannot understand or forgive
these things. But those who have been in the army know what armies
are; they know that, under the same circumstances, they would have
done the same things." 1

I also observed that those whose losses were greatest were seldom
those who complained the most. Mayor Gibbes lost more cotton than
any other individual in the Confederacy. Sherman burned for him
two thousand and seven hundred bales, besides mills and other
property. Yet he spoke of these results of the war without a murmur.

He censured Sherman severely, however, for the destitution in
which he left the people of Columbia. "I called on him to relieve the
starving inhabitants he had burned out of their homes. He gave us
four hundred head of refuse cattle, but he gave us nothing to feed
them, and a hundred and sixty of them died of starvation before they
could be killed. For five weeks afterwards, twenty-five hundred people
around Columbia lived upon nothing but loose grain picked up about
the camps, where the Federal horses had been fed. "A stranger," he
added, "cannot be made to understand the continued destitution and
poverty of the people of this district. If a tax should now be assessed
upon them of three dollars per head, there would not be money
enough in the district to pay it. Ordinarily, our annual taxes in this
city have been forty thousand dollars. This year they have dropped
down to eighteen hundred dollars."

South Carolina College is a striking illustration of the effect the
war has had upon the institutions of learning in the South. Formerly
it had about two hundred and fifty students; it has now but eighteen.
The State appropriated annually sixty-five thousand dollars for its
benefit; this year a nominal appropriation of eight thousand dollars
was made, to pay the salaries of the professors, but when I was in
Columbia they had not been able to get that. One, a gentleman of
distinguished learning, said he had not had ten dollars in his posses-
sion since Sherman visited them.

1 "The grass will grow in the Northern cities, where the pavements have
been worn off by the tread of commerce. We will carry war where it is easy
to advance where food for the sword and torch await our armies in the
densely populated cities; and though they [the enemy] may come in and spoil
our crops, we can raise them as before, while they cannot rear the cities
which took years of industry and millions of money to build." Jeff Davis in
1861 Speech at Stevenson, Ala.

THE RECONSTRUCTION 53

Of the desolation and horrors our army left behind it, no descrip-
tion can be given. Here is a single instance. At a factory on the
Congaree, just out of Columbia, there remained, for six weeks, a pile
of sixty-five dead horses and mules, shot by Sherman's men. It was
impossible to bury them, all the shovels, spades, and other farming
implements of the kind having been carried off or destroyed.

Columbia must have been a beautiful city, judged by its ruins.
The streets were broad and well shaded. Many fine residences still
remain on the outskirts, but the entire heart of the city, within their
circuit, is a wilderness of crumbling walls, naked chimneys, and trees
killed by the flames. The fountains of the desolated gardens are dry,
the basins cracked; the pillars of the houses are dismantled, or over-
thrown; the marble steps are broken; but all these attest the wealth
and elegance which one night of fire and orgies sufficed to destroy.
Fortunately the unfinished new State House, one of the handsomest
public edifices in the whole country, received but trifling injury.

Not much was doing to rebuild any but the business portion of the
city. Only on Main Street were there many stores or shanties going up.

The South Trowbridge, pp. 563-564.

AT THE END OF THE WAR . . . THE NUMBER OF

HELPLESS AND DESTITUTE CHILDREN . . .

WAS APPALLING.

"The Confederate Orphans' Home Of Mississippi'' By Miss
Mary J. Welsh

The Confederate Orphans' Home of Mississippi was established,
as its name indicates, expressly to take care of the destitute orphans
of Confederate soldiers. At the end of the War between the States the
number of helpless and destitute children in the South was appalling.
It was felt that something must be promptly done for their relief,
but how to help them most effectively was perhaps the hardest and
most serious problem that confronted the Southern people in the
impoverished condition of the country. . . .

. . . Though the movement had been on foot only a short time, the
country was in a state of expectancy and it was not necessary to
announce that the Home was ready for the reception of children.

54 THE RECONSTRUCTION

They came and continued to come in such large numbers and, in a
majority of cases, in such a forlorn plight as to prove beyond question
the crying need of such an institution. None were turned away. The
institution was established, fostered and controlled by the Mississippi
Baptist State Convention, but applicants were received irrespective of
religious creed, or no creed, of the parents. They came without
warning. Their application was made at the gate or at Lauderdale
station at the farthest. Before Christmas there were at least fifty on
the roll; and in less than two years two hundred. The number of
children in the Home varied from time to time, as mothers or relatives
became able to provide for their children. Once it was sadly depleted
by sickness. The vacancies were soon filled, however, by new arrivals.
The age limit was from six years to about sixteen, subject to the
discretion of the management. Children under six were debarred
because the home was not able to meet the requirements of infancy.
Girls and boys of sixteen, or thereabouts, were not only destitute but
helpless, since in the impoverished condition of the country they could
get no employment. But they were a great help to the home. With a
little direction and help in each department they did all the work,
thus obviating the necessity of employing servants.

The Children

The question was sometimes asked then and has been since, "What
kind of children were these for whom all this provision was made?"
It is a natural question and this is a good place to answer it. Briefly,
they were children in every respect. Compared with the same number
of children elsewhere, they averaged pretty well. Their educational
advantages had been very limited during the preceding years. In
natural endowments they ranged from the fairly bright to the very
ordinary, and from a natural refinement of feeling and manner down
to rudeness and stolid indifference. They proved to be tractable and
in disposition affectionate. Having previously known no will but
their own, they were pretty fair specimens of "Young Americans."
All of them needed training in every respect. The first year was an
especially trying time on the faculty. The children came in so rapidly
that before one consignment had been reduced to order another was
on hand; then another, and another, following in such quick succes-
sion that it required wise judgment and a firm hand to hold the
situation. . . .

Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, Vol. Vffl.

THE RECONSTRUCTION 55

SO MUCH MOURNING, OR SO DEEP, I HAD

NEVER SEEN IN A CHURCH ON ANY

ORDINARY OCCASION, OR SHOULD

WISH TO SEE AGAIN.

There was little of interest to be seen in the city beyond a large
park of artillery, which had been given up by General Johnston at
his final capitulation. Some of the houses were handsome, and
churches seemed plentiful, but the streets were badly paved, and the
dust was ankle-deep. We attended the service at the Episcopal church
in the afternoon, where we formed part of a congregation, to many of
whom the prayer "for the fatherless and the widow," "the desolate"
I can hardly add, the oppressed was painfully appropriate. So much
mourning, or so deep, I had never seen in a church on any ordinary
occasion, or should wish to see again. In the evening we came in
rather late, to a service held in a fine church for ladies and gentlemen
of colour, where a large and devout congregation was assembled. Our
entrance attracted some observation, as we were the only whites; but
the attention was on the whole fully given to the preacher a
coloured man of course whose sermon was not at all devoid of
power; but the amount of repetition was very wearisome, though not
apparently too much for his audience, who were continually murmur-
ing their assent "Oh, Yes! oh, yes!" to all the sentiments and aspira-
tions. We could hardly repress a smile when a day of meeting was
announced in the week for the "Ladies Literary Association," in
connexion with the church.

It only occurred to us on our departure the risk we had run of
catching small pox, which had been carrying off the freedmen here by
hundreds; but happily, we escaped any consequences of our impru-
dence.

The bureau here was in full operation, more than a thousand
refugees were drawing rations from the Government; but the number
issued was monthly diminishing, though the winter was expected to
bring it up again. There was great demand for labour, if the blacks
cared to work.

Efforts were being made for their education by teachers sent
down by the New York Missionary Society; but the whole white
community are totally opposed to nigger schools; nor is that to be
wondered at if we consider how few of the poor Southern whites
have themselves tasted the benefits of education, and would naturally
grudge the negro's enjoyment of advantages which they do not them-
selves possess. In a history of the State which I happened upon at

56 THE RECONSTRUCTION

Wilmington, the educational statistics of Carolina were put amongst
others, in juxtaposition with those of Connecticut. In the latter State
the proportion of those who could neither read nor write was, to the
rest of the population, I in 267, in Carolina 1 in 7. Nor was there
any reason to doubt the accuracy of these figures, or to disbelieve
the stories which were told us of how few of the Confederate soldiers
could read or write. This ignorance was not confined to the poor
whites. A well-dressed lady, of considerable pretensions, came last
autumn into the Bureau at Nashville, and asked for the restitution
of her lands. She was told she had only to fill up a form of applica-
tion, and they would be restored. After some hesitation she asked if
that was absolutely necessary, and was told it could be done for her
by an attorney, if she preferred it.

" 'Can't it be done for me here?' I felt a little wicked," said
General Fisk, who related the story, "as she had been giving herself
such airs; and pointing to a negro as black as a coal, who was sitting
upon a bench in the room, I said, That gentleman, I am sure, will
be happy to help you.' 'What! that nigger!' she said, in unfeigned
horror. 'Oh, we have no niggers now, madam!' Well, she had to
make the best of it, and accepted the offer, and the old man sat down
so kindly, and took such pains to understand the case. The form was
filled up, and as she took off her gloves to sign, the jewels flashed
upon her hand, but when I came to examine the paper I found
only her mark." Refinement and education in the South must have
been the property of a small minority; and not a few of those, I
fancy, who used to make themselves notorious for their extravagance
in the summer watering-places, would have little cause to boast
themselves over this poor lady.

On Sherman's Track John H. Kennaway, pp. 189-192.

THE TRAIL OF WAR IS VISIBLE THROUGHOUT

THE VALLEY IN BURNT-UP GINHOUSES,

RUINED BRIDGES, MILLS, AND

FACTORIES . . .

"The Tennessee Valley State Of Alabama"

The trail of war is visible throughout the valley in burnt-up gin-
houses, ruined bridges, mills, and factories, of which latter the gable
walls only are left standing, and in large tracts of once cultivated land
stripped of every vestige of fencing. The roads, long neglected, are in

THE RECONSTRUCTION 57

disorder, and having in many places become impassable, new tracks
have been made through the woods and fields without much respect
to boundaries. Borne down by losses, debts, and accumulating taxes,
many who were once the richest among their fellows have dis-
appeared from the scene, and few have yet risen to take their places.
But generally the old homesteads and the old families continue to be
the centres of reviving industry and cultivation, and many valiant
efforts have been made since the war to stay the advancing tide of
barrenness and ruin. Fences have been rebuilt round not a few of the
plantations, and the negro and the mule been once more set to work
in growing corn and cotton. Yet in the best examples of this kind the
restoration is incomplete, and a plantation, however firmly held and
actively cultivated, has seldom more than one-third of its good arable
soil in crop or grass, the balance being abandoned to broomsedge
a tall, grassy weed, which waves at this season in whitey rankness over
immense sweeps of this fertile valley. Want of labour, and want of
means of deep, rapid, and effective ploughing, are the chief immediate
causes of this wide-spreading inutility of soil. When the Federal
armies passed through the valley, many of the young and able-bodied
negroes followed them to the wars, and few lived through the toils and
sickness of the camps to come back. When the war ended, and the
bond of slavery was dissolved, other swarms went off to seek new
masters in the field of free labour, and after a season of trials, often
bitter, are only returning by degrees to their old homes. There is a
marked deficiency of labour in the valley for the cultivation and
improvements which the planters would otherwise be willing and
prepared to under-take. The patches of cultivation, under such a
laborious crop as cotton, must follow slowly and patiently year after
year the number of hands available. The general tendency of circum-
stances is to break up the large possessions of former times, since
every proprietor feels that he has more land than he can profitably
handle. Many of the planters would sell a portion of their estates were
there any buyers; but I have been able to discover few new settlers or
investments of fresh capital in land. . . .

. . . One sometimes falls upon a great proprietor who came to the
valley a working man, and made money, and added plantation to
plantation, till he was richer than all the older planters or their des-
cendants, and who now sits amidst his wilderness of lands without
labourers, not knowing what to do with them, or at what figure to
estimate his worth in the world. In such cases, as well as others in
which farms have fallen into Chancery, the soil, for some nominal
tribute or share of the cotton crop, enough to pay the taxes, has been

$8 THE RECONSTRUCTION

literally abandoned to the field hands, who still under emancipation
retain much of the nature of ascripti glebae, and cling for better or
for worse to the soil on which they were reared. I have seen more
than one great plantation absolutely deserted, and as void of fence or
labour as it was at the end of the war. . . .

The Southern States Since the War, 1870-1, Robert Somers,

pp. 114, 115, 116.

"Jonesboro State Of Alabama''

. . . The emancipation of the slaves is accepted with remarkable
equanimity when one considers the overturn of personal fortune, and
all the bitterness of the war with which it was associated; and an ex-
pression of gladness to have now done with slavery, and to have
touched some common ground of civilization, is often heard. But
what the planters are disposed to complain of is that, while they have
lost their slaves, they have not got free labourers in any sense com-
mon either in the Northern States or in Europe; and looking round
here at Jonesboro', after a calm and wide survey, one cannot but
think that the New England farmer must be equally astonished at a
recital of the relations of land, capital, and labour as they exist on
the cotton plantations of the Southern States. The wages of the ne-
groes, if such a term can be applied to a mode of remuneration so
unusual and anomalous, consist, as I have often indicated, of one
half the crop of corn and cotton, the only crops in reality produced.
This system of share and share alike is so generally used that any
other form of contract is but the exception. The negro, on the
semi-communistic basis thus established, finds his own rations;
but as these are supplied to him by the planter, or by the planter's
notes of credit on the merchants in Jonesboro', and as much
more sometimes as he thinks he needs by the merchants on his
own credit, from the 1st of January onward through the year, in
anticipation of crops which are not marketable till the end of
December, he can lose nothing by the failure or deficient out-
come of the crops which he produces and is always sure of
his subsistence. As a permanent economic relation this would be
startling anywhere betwixt any classes of men brought together in
the business of life. Applied to agriculture in any other part of the
world, it would be deemed outrageously absurd. But this is only a
part of the "privileges" (a much more accurate term than "wages")
of the negro field-hand. In addition to half of the crops, he has a
free cottage of the kind he seems to like, and the windows of which

THERECONSTRUCTION 59

he or his wife persistently nail up; he has abundance of wood from
the planter's estate for fuel and for building his corn cribs and other
outhouses, with teams to draw it from the forest; he is allowed to
keep hogs, and milch cows, and young cattle, which roam and feed
with the same right of pasture as the hogs and cattle" of the planter,
free of all charge; he has the same right of hunting and shboting, with
quite as many facilities for exercising the right as anybody else
and has his dogs and guns, though as far as I have discovered, he
provides himself with these by purchases or some other form of con-
quest. Though entitled to one-half the crops, yet he is not required
to contribute any portion of the seed, nor is he called upon to pay
any part of the taxes on the plantation. The only direct tax on the
negro is a poll-tax, which is wholly set apart for the education of his
children, and which I find to be everywhere in arrear, and in some
places in a hopeless chaos of non-payment. Yet, while thus freed
from the burden of taxation, the negro has, up to this period of
"reconstruction," enjoyed a monopoly of representation, and has had
all legislative and executive power moulded to his will by Governors,
Senators, and Deputies, who have either been his tools, or of whom
he himself has been the dupe. For five years past, the negroes have
been King, Lords, and Commons, and something more, in the
Southern States. . . .

pp. 128-129.

"Florence State Of Alabama"

. . . Behind Florence, which is situated on the edge of a fertile up-
land country, flows the Cypress Creek, a stream of spring-like purity
and coolness, through winding ravines of great depth, and, while of
almost enchanting natural beauty, affording the grandest water-
power probably ever seen in the same space of territory. Here, before
the war, three cotton factories, of 23,000 spindles, and supporting
a white population of 800 souls, were established by a prosperous
firm, which made money, and never was more thriving than when
the great thunderbolt of civil strife burst over the United States. The
Federal troops burned down all three factories, leaving only portions
of the brick walls standing, and scattering the twisted machinery
about as a common prey. Heaps of iron rods are still lying on the
ground, and little bits of fine and curious mechanism are seen in the
courtyards of the plantations, and in all the negro cabins of the
neighbourhood. One reason for the prevailing desire in the Southern
States to set up cotton factories is probably the unsparing hostility

60 THE RECONSTRUCTION

displayed by the Northern armies to this branch of industry. They
destroyed instantly and without remorse every cotton factory within
their reach, and one can hardly harmonize the pure anti-slavery
professions of the war party in the North with depredations so sys-
tematically directed against establishments employing only free labour.
One of the three ruined factories has now been rebuilt, and the busi-
ness resumed with laudable energy by the sons of one of the former
partners, who have furnished the factory with Tatham's self-acting
mules and other English machinery. . . .

pp. 136-137.

"Okolona State Of Mississippi"

. . . The population in and around Corinth is only a few thousands.
There is a Confederate Orphan Asylum in the county, in which there
are 300 orphans the children mostly of soldiers killed in the war,
many of whom as they grow up, it is supposed, would make good
factory operatives. This institution derives its revenue from voluntary
subscriptions, and appears to have been most laudably and liberally
supported, though some of the little inmates are taken round the
country to sing at concerts as a means of eking out the funds. . . .

Okolona was all but totally destroyed in the war. Only two or
three houses and a few gable-ends were left standing. The whole
place might have been bought for $5,000 on the surrender of the
Confederate forces, but no one believed that Okolona could be Oko-
lona any more. It is now a well-built town of two or three thousand
inhabitants, with a long street of brick stores, and many offshoots on
the east, towards the railway depot, and a long avenue westward,
with planked sideways and elegant frame buildings, in which those
who aspire to live respectably . . . know so well . . . how to re-
concile taste and comfort with the actual situation. Large courtyards
behind several stores are filled with cotton bales, and the space set
apart for hitching nags and mules is like a horse-fair on any market-
day in Okolona. One must take a few canters hereabouts in order
to know something of the richness of the prairie land of Mississippi. . .

pp. 143-144.

"Meridian State Of Mississippi"

. . . One of the Meridian newspapers has announced that the Federal
Government has sent detective officers into Mississippi to watch
the proceedings of the "Ku-Klux-Klan," and endeavour to bring some
of its members to justice. A secret organization under this name

THE RECONSTRUCTION 6l

spread with amazing rapidity over the South soon after the close of
the war, and for some time, by moving in considerable bodies at
night in a particular costume and executing a "wild justice," spread
alarm both among Federal soldiers and negroes. For some time the
"Ku-Klux" enjoyed the respect, if not the confidence of the "con-
quered population;" but nearly all trace of this mysterious league has
now happily disappeared from the country, or, where still extant in
any form, its role has been taken up by mere marauders, betwixt
whom and the white people there is no manner of sympathy. One
day lately three rough men sat round the stove of a lager-beer saloon
in one of the towns of East Tennessee. By and by a man came in
dressed in fine broadcloth, and with an air of great briskness about
him. He was a member of the legal profession, and his talk with the
three rough men, while most familiar and cordial, was all about the
extent to which, in certain crisis, he would serve a client. It appeared
that the legal gentleman was prepared to be very loyal in getting off
a thief, and his views of professional honour gave general satisfac-
tion, "But what of the Ku-Klux-Klan?" asked one of the trio. "The
Ku-Klux," said the man of law, "are the three K's of Greece," from
which profound explanation the inquirer did not seem to derive
much edification, and he asked again, "What are they? Who are
they?" The lawyer, dropping his voice into a whisper, replied, "They
are Confederate soldiers killed in the war who cannot rest in their
graves!" The secret society was, in point of fact, a kind of ghost
of the Confederate armies. Its uniform, made of black calico, was a
"shroud." The stuff was sent round to private houses with a re-
quest that it should be made into a garment, and fair fingers sewed
it up and had it ready for the secret messenger when he returned and
gave his tap at the door. The women and young girls had faith in
the honour of the Klan, and on its will and ability to protect them.
The Ku-Klux, when out on their missions, also wore long tapering
hats; and black veils over the faces completed their disguise. The
secret of the membership was kept with remarkable fidelity. In no
instance, I believe has a member of the Ku-Klux, been successfully
arraigned or punished, though their acts often flew in the face of the
"reconstructed authorities," and were not in any sense legal. When
they had a long ride at night, they made requisitions for horses at the
farmhouses, and the horses were often supplied under a prevailing
feeling of assurance that they would be returned on a night following,
without injury. If a company of Federal soldiers stationed in a small
town vapoured as to what they would do with the Ku-Klux, the men
in shrouds paraded in the evening before the guard-house in numbers

62 THE RECONSTRUCTION

so overwhelming as at once reduced the little garrison to silence. The
overt acts of the Ku-Klux consisted for the most part in the dis-
arming of dangerous negroes, and infliction of "lynch-law" on no-
torious offenders, and, above all, in the creation of one feeling of
terror as a counterpoise to another. The white people in the South
at the close of the war were alarmed, not so much by the threatened
confiscation of their property by the Federal Government, as by the
smaller but more present dangers of life and property, virtue and
honour, arising from the social anarchy around them. The negroes,
after the Confederate surrender, were disorderly. Many of them
would not settle down to labour on any terms, but roamed about with
arms in their hands and hunger in their bellies; and the governing
power, with the usual blind determination of a victorious party, was
thinking only all the while of every device of suffrage and recon-
struction by which "the freedmen" might be strengthened, and made,
under Northern dictation, the ruling power in the country. Agitators
of the loosest fibre came down among the towns and plantations,
and organizing a Union league, held midnight meetings with the
negroes in the woods, and went about uttering sentiments which,
to say the least, in all the circumstances were anti-social and destruc-
tive. Crimes and outrages increased. The law, which must be always
more or less weak in all thinly populated countries, was all but power-
less; and the new Governments in the South, supposing them to have
been most willing, were certainly unable to suppress disorder, or to
spread a general sense of security throughout the community. A real
terror reigned for a time among the white people; and in this situa-
tion the Ku-Klux started into being. It was one of those secret organi-
zations which spring up in disordered states of society, when the
bonds of law and government are all but dissolved, and when no con-
fidence is felt in the regular public administration of justice. But
the power with which the Ku-Klux moved in many parts of the South,
the knowledge it displayed of all that was going on, the fidelity with
which its secret was kept, and the complacency with which it was
regarded by the general community, gave this mysterious body a
prominence and importance seldom attained by such illegal and
deplorable associations. Nearly every respectable man in the Southern
States was not only disfranchised, but under fear of arrest or con-
fiscation; the old foundations of authority were utterly razed before
any new ones had yet been laid, and in the dark and benighted inter-
val the remains of the Confederate armies swept, after a long and
heroic day of fair fight, from the field flitted before the eyes of
the people in this weird and midnight shape of a Ku-Klux-Klan. The

THE RECONSTRUCTION 63

negroes were "scared" by the apparition, and many of the "carpet-
bag" agitators were run out of the country. Warnings were given,
visitations were made in force, criminals taken in flagrante delicto
were torn out of the hands of the sheriff and shot or maimed, and
more moderate punishments were inflicted which, whether deserved
or not, could only be considered outrages. One reign of terror began
to rise out of another. But six years of peace have greatly changed
all the state of things. The negroes are quiet and orderly, and com-
paratively industrious; and the white people, more sure of their posi-
tion under the Federal laws of reconstruction, are beginning to resume
their right of voting, and of controlling the administration of affairs
through the ordinary legal channels. Scarcely a trace of the original
Ku-Klux organization remains, or, if it still exists, it is very seldom
brought into action. With the exception of Robeson's county in North
Carolina, where the midnight raiders are known by name and charac-
ter to be a mere band of ruffians without any political complexion,
crimes and acts of violence in the South have this winter been few
and far between certainly not more numerous than in any very
large northern or European city. 1 In this State of Mississippi there
has been an ordinary crop of murders arising out of private quarrels,
and in one or two instances criminals have been rescued out of the
too feeble hands of the sheriff. But the only cases of outrage passing
under my observation, in which a trace of Ku-Klux origin is recog-
nizable, are not more than two or three in number. When crossing
Williamson's Creek, on my way to Macon in Georgia, the place was
under much excitement on account of a barbarous murder, or rather
murders, perpetrated a few nights before. A band of men, said to be
in Ku-Klux mask, came to the store of Allan Creich, a grocer, when
the inmates were in bed, and, on being answered by the shopman,
said it was Creich himself they wanted. Creich at length came down,
and was immediately seized, dragged some distance, dispatched, and
thrown into the creek, where his body was found. The assassins then
proceeded to the house of Allan's brother, where they found only
the man's wife and a little boy or girl. The wife declared that her
husband was not in the house, but refused to say where he was. The
inquisitors then interrogated the child, who was finally induced to
tell them where he [Allan's brother] had been drinking, and forth-

1 Since this was written, very serious disturbances have occurred in a
county of South Carolina, the excited political feeling in which State, and
its causes, I have indicated in passing.

64 THE RECONSTRUCTION

with dealt with him as they had dealt with his brother Allan. Such
were the accounts given of this atrocious transaction. It appears that
Allan had long been blamed for reselling goods and produce stolen by
the negroes, and had been often warned to desist, without avail. The
stealings of the negroes are a subject of prevailing and almost wild
complaint in many parts of the South; and soon after the war some
of the Radical-Negro Legislatures passed laws prohibiting the pur-
chase of produce by storemen after dark. The Legislature of Georgia
had, in its last session, repealed this enactment, believing probably
that the necessity for it had passed away. About the same period, a
party of men in masks came to a farmhouse twenty miles from Chat-
tanooga, where a robust negro man lived, who was in the custom
of going about with a loaded gun, and saying he would shoot any
white man who quarrelled with him. They waked him up in his
cabin, .made him deliver his gun, and broke it into pieces, but de-
parted without doing him any bodily harm. Some nights afterwards a
more numerous body came to the same farmhouse and demanded
horses. The farmer, a Pennsylvania man, was not at home; his wife
refused in his absence to comply with the order; and through the
intervention of a guest in the house, the tall-hatted men in shrouds
were induced to go away, somewhat dissatisfied and undecided.
These are the only Ku-Klux traces I have found. The institution is
dying fast, if not already dead; but it is the deep vice of all such
secret leagues to survive, in a more degenerate form, the circum-
stances which could give even a colourable justification to their exis-
tence, and to pass finally into the hands of utter scoudrels, with no
good motive, and with foul passions of revenge, or plunder, or lust
of dread and mysterious power, alone in their hearts. There is a
tendency in the Northern press to make too much of "Southern
crimes and outrages," and by exaggeration and perversion to keep
alive the very disloyalty they denounce. It would be matter of deep
regret were the Federal Government, by any new schemes of repres-
sion or reconstruction, to rekindle distrusts and animosities which are
rapidly dying out. The great object is to secure a more efficient ad-
ministration of justice, without respect to party or colour. The popu-
lar and partisan election of Judges, more especially in the present
state of Election Law in the South, is a gross abuse, and tends more
than anything else to countenance and support every form of taking
the law into their own hands, much too prevalent among the people
in most parts of the United States. . . .

pp. 152-155

THE RECONSTRUCTION 6$

"Selma State Of Alabama"

. . . The administration of the free school system is the subject of
loud exclamations in Selma, as in many other parts of Alabama. At
the close of the present fiscal year the finances of the town will show
a deficit of $40,000, and the school expenditure gets the blame of
most of it. There was a common school system, free to all white
children in the South before the war, but the addition of the negro
children has necessarily demanded more school buildings, more
teachers, larger staffs of administrators, and a much larger expendi-
ture of every kind. The difficulty of finding qualified teachers, more
especially for negro schools, the doubt whether any good is being
done commensurate with the expenditure of money, and the linger-
ing unbelief of slavery times as to the capacity of the negro for literary
instruction, combine with the impatience of taxation to render the
free school system less popular than one would desire to find it. The
system of administration seems also very faulty, if not corrupt. The
late State Superintendent of Education embezzled or misappropriated
the funds; and a county superintendent in North Alabama, following
so good an example, ran away with several thousand dollars entrusted
to him for the payment of the teachers. The schools in that county
are being carried on in the interim on fees prepaid by the parents,
but many of the children have left off attendance. The school assess-
ment is also partially levied, as well as singularly distributed. A
poll-tax payable by every male inhabitant over twenty-one and under
forty-five years of age, together with some small duties on insurance
premiums, have been set apart for the support of the free schools
as a supplement to old school funds and trust endowments which ap-
pear to have been mismanaged, but for the annual interest of which
the State continues religiously to charge itself. The poll-tax, as as-
sessed on the various counties, amounted for the past year to $162,-
819, the duties on insurance premiums to $13,327 in all, $176,146.
But the total collection of this special assessment for schools is not
expected to be more than, if as much as, $100,000. Nearly half the
poll-tax is uncollected. The money thus levied in the counties is
sent into the State Treasury, and thence remitted to all the counties
in sums proportioned to the number of children of school age in
each; so that defaulting counties, and counties that have many chil-
dren of school age but do not teach them, get largely of funds which
they do not contribute, and very probably abuse and squander; while
counties that most honour the tax-collector get greatly less than they
pay, and than they need and wish to apply to school purposes. The

66 THE RECONSTRUCTION

new Government of Alabama will doubtless proceed without delay
to correct abuses and anomalies which are subjecting the cause of
education to an unnecessary strain of public dissatisfaction. One of
the most obvious means of alleviating the financial difficulty of pro-
viding at once for the education of all the negro children was to
exact rigorous payment of the school tax from able-bodied negro
men, whose labour is in urgent demand at high wages. The slave-
holders paid taxes to the State for them as slaves, and when this
fiscal resource was cut away by emancipation, it became, on general
grounds of finance, all the more necessary that they should pay for
themselves as free labourers. But when the poll-tax the only tax
to which the negro labourer is liable was wholly devoted to the
education of his own children, the obligation upon him to pay became
sacred. Yet, in point of fact, the negroes cannot be got to pay this
poll-tax for schools, or the collectors hitherto employed are unwilling
to exact it from them. In one instance where a planter, when paying
his own taxes, offered to pay the State dues of the negroes in his em-
ployment, the money was refused, because payment by substitute
was a relic of the slave system, or on some equally frivolous ground,
and payment has never since been asked of the coloured people in
question in any more direct form. When qualified teachers, who are
scarce, have to pass a board of examiners, composed wholly or in
part of negroes who may not know the alphabet themselves, the
education question here, with all its solemn sanctions and ennobling
associations, seems to receive the last touch of ridicule, and common
sense itself is struck completely dumb. . . .

pp. 169-171.

"New Orleans State Of Louisiana"

This city of the South is large and lively enough to present the
most varied objects of interest to a traveller. If his object be informa-
tion, there are a hundred branches of inquiry in which the knowledge
to be obtained is alike new and valuable; if he seek amusement, he
can be well amused; and if any one would write a history of New
Orleans, social, political, and commercial, he must make up his mind
to stay a long time, and produce a large volume. But almost the
first question put to a stranger is whether he has seen "the Negro
Legislature?" and the Legislative Assembly of the State, as at present
constituted, seems to be regarded much in the light of a joke by most
of the citizens.

I went to see the Legislature of Louisiana. There were a few car-

THE RECONSTRUCTION 67

riages, and some knots of people round the door of the Mechanics
Hall, in which the Legislative Body sits. The lobbies were crowded
with negro men and lads "from the country" with a sprinkling of
more white and sharp-visaged townsmen; and negro women were
selling cakes, oranges, and lollipops up to the door of the Chamber
of Representatives. Within the Chamber itself were seated in semi-
circle round the Speaker's chair, with little feed desks and drawers
full of paper before them, a body of men as sedate and civilized in
appearance as a convention of miners' delegates in Scotland or the
North of England. On close inspection, a few Africans were visible,
but yellow men seemed to predominate. The Senate differed little in
general aspect or composition, but was presided over by Lieutenant-
Governor Dunn, a really black man as far as could be seen in the
shadow, and was being addressed by an honourable white Senator of
an intellectual cast of head and face, who appears to have gained
more notoriety than all the rest by marrying a black woman. There
is no supreme law of taste, and negro suffrage and love together
combine to produce occasional startling effects. But having seen a
few coloured men sitting among a great majority of whites in the
House of Representatives, and two gentlemen of decided African
blood in the Senate of Virginia, with no want of cordiality and honest
political intent, I am not disposed to attach radical importance to
the "incompatibilities of colour" in legislation, albeit the spectacle
of a majority of coloured and negro-worshipping and negro-marrying
legislators in Louisiana and South Carolina be matter of passing
amazement and regret. It is strange, abnormal, and unfit that a
Negro Legislature should deal, as the Legislature of Louisiana has
been dealing, with the gravest commercial and financial interests,
dispensing not only the State taxes and patronage, but the levees
of the Mississippi, and the sugar sheds, warehousing, and cattle
marketing of New Orleans to private companies, with unlimited
powers of compulsion and taxation over the community of merchants,
planters, and white people of business and industry, who, though a
numerical majority of the population, have as little power in the
government as if they were inhabitants of another sphere, and are
forced to speak of it only as a grim jest, or as a playful though melan-
choly jibe. This state of things is not any advancement of the negro.
It is only his exultation, through the exigencies of Federal politics
since the war, into a delirium of folly and corruption, which under
the action of parties at Washington, will assuredly soon be reduced
by two inevitable amendments, nowise inconsistent in principle with
the "Fifteenth," viz. the restoration of proscribed people in the

68 THE RECONSTRUCTION

South to their equal rights under the Declaration of Independence
and the Constitution, and the limitation of the suffrage to citizens,
white and black, who have a local habitation and pay their taxes.
It is not so much universal suffrage that misgoverns the United States
as a loose misconception and strong-handed abuse, wherever prac-
ticable, of what universal suffrage, even on the broadest theory of
representative democracy, really is. The poll-tax the only tax levied
on the negro masses seems still worse paid in Louisiana than in
other Southern States. "At present," says Mr. Graham, the Auditor,
in his report for the session of 1871, "it is paid by a comparatively
small number of those who are subject to no other State tax. Except
in comparatively rare cases, it is paid only by property holders."
And the expenses of collection, he shows, exceed by a hundred and
forty per cent, the net proceeds of the poll-tax paid into the Treasury.
The poll-tax is set apart to the support of free schools, chiefly, though
not wholly, for the negro children. The tens of thousands of negroes
who fail to pay the poll-tax, vote not only once, but occasionally
several times over in the same election, and no one seems to think that
the exercise of political right over the life, liberty, and property of the
whole community has anything to do with the discharge of political
duty to the community, in the direct line even of absolute personal
and parental responsibility. While this is the state of the poll-tax on
negroes for schools, what is the action in the state of the Education
Department? The State Superintendent, said to be a Northern Bap-
tist minister, is enforcing a rule, that has received some sanction from
the Legislature, for what he calls "mixed education," and the sitting
of white and black children on the same school benches, and being
taught in the same classes. The rule is as little desired by the
coloured people as by the white; it is open to the gravest technical
difficulty and objection in respect of the mere art of school instruc-
tion; and even though it were sacred in principle and morality, yet
it is not within a thousand miles of the legitimate sphere of com-
pulsory legislation. The rule, of course, cannot be enforced practically
save as a mere disturbing wedge; but the savour of it destroys con-
fidence, and New Orleans, which before the war had a munif-
icent free school system for its white children is drifting back
into private schools in connection with the various Churches Pres-
byterian, Episcopalian, and Roman Catholic maintained by the
subscription and fees of those who have to pay the whole, their own
and the negroes' shares included, of the free school taxation. This
source of public discontent paying for one's black neighbour and
for oneself twice over, and spoiling a noble national work in the

THE RECONSTRUCTION 69

process is kept full steam up by reign of Federal misrule, which
can only be of the most temporary character. The American people
must be acute enough to perceive that, in this and various ways in the
South, they are not only imperilling the unity and indivisibility of
the Republic, but putting the fool's cap on Republican principle.

The Governor of Louisiana, Warmoth, is a young man of spirit
and ability, who came down to New Orleans at the close of the war,
and by dexterously "fugling" the negro vote, got himself advanced
to his high position, in which he seems to be growing wiser if richer,
and is tacking about, not without skill, in the present calm. The out-
cry against him has been loud and deep; but all that can be said is,
that whereas he was once poor, he is now very rich, and that his
wealth, if the wages of corruption, has been so deftly acquired that
no one can lay his finger on the foul spot. It is not uncommon to
hear in New Orleans that Dunn, the negro Lieutenant-Governor, is
a more trustworthy man than his superior in office; and while there
is no doubt that the fair Desdemona of the State has been fouly
wronged, it seems a puzzle whether Othello or lago be the more to
blame. . . .

The Southern States Since the War, 1870-1, Robert Somere,
pp. 114-116, 128-129, 136-137, 143-144, 152-155, 169-171,
226-228.

SECTION II

THE SOUTHERN CATASTROPHE

THE South had fought for its independence, the North to preserve
the Union. Only one of the two antagonists could secure its
goal, and so long as these two goals remained the polar stars of the
conflict, there existed no ground upon which to negotiate a settle-
ment. Since neither side was prepared to qualify its war aims, nothing
short of a total defeat for one or the other of the two belligerents
could terminate the struggle. The Southern task had been to exhaust
Northern resolve, that of the Northerner to conquer and subjugate
the Southerner. The result was a war that grew until it was total in
its dimensions. An inexorable war of attrition resulted in the whole-
sale destruction of Southern property and a blood bath in which the
North held an insurmountable advantage. Northern armies could be
replenished, but the Richmond government lived with the realization
that as its casualty lists lengthened its armies disintegrated. By April
1865, its will to resist sapped, catastrophe evident on all sides, the
South capitulated to Northern conquest.

Few Southerners understood the dimensions of their defeat. Their
society shattered; a whole generation of vigorous manhood wiped
out or maimed; nearly 4,000,000 black, near black, and almost white
slaves emancipated; untold billions in capital forever consumed
the South possessed a shattering legacy. And all its sacrifices had
been for naught. Much of the tragedy subsequently associated with
Reconstruction grew out of the pathetic effort of the Southerners to
salvage something from the debacle; above all, out of their need
to reconcile the belief that justice had been on their side with the
overwhelming fact of defeat. A triumphant North had victory as its
justification, but the South had only ruin as its reward. The ruins
could be restored, but the ghosts of the numberless dead remained
to haunt those who lived. It had been the all-pervasive sense of
death that finally shook Confederate resolve, provoking from Mary
Chesnut, the genteel diarist, a searing question: "Is anything worth
it this fearful sacrifice; this awful penalty we pay for war?" When

71

72 THE RECONSTRUCTION

peace was finally restored, the South dwelt with its corpses the
awful realization that its dead had died in vain and between North
and South there ran "a zone of bloody graves."

The exact dimensions of Southern losses are concealed by in-
adequate and inaccurate statistics. No less than 258,000 soldiers
had died from wounds or disease in an army that totaled, through-
out the war, scarcely 850,000. Approximately one out of every four
Southern males between the ages of seventeen and forty-five had
perished; an equivalent number had sustained wounds. One of the
largest appropriations in the postwar budgets of the Southern States
covered the cost of maintaining their disabled veterans and the
widows and orphans of their dead soldiers. Since similar care for
Northern veterans and the survivors of Northern dead was provided
by the Federal government, Southerners were compelled to subsidize
these payments in part through their Federal taxes. No less de-
moralizing was the absence from the defeated Confederacy of a
whole generation of its natural leadership. After the war, when
Southerners returned to Congress such confederate leaders as Alex-
ander E. Stephens, Joseph Brown, and Lucius Q. C. Lamar, the
North viewed it as evidence of continued rebel arrogance, but it
reflected the absence of an alternative leadership to which the South
could turn.

Capitulation left the South seemingly at the mercy of the con-
quering Union armies, and Southerners anticipated the worst. The
wounded of Lee's army thought, after their surrender at Appomattox,
that they would be executed. But they and other Confederate veterans
soon learned that Federal veterans were more concerned with
demobilization and a swift return to peacetime pursuits. Within a
year following the close of hostilities, fewer than 65,000 regular
and volunteer troops remained in the Federal service. Of these,
barely 25,000 were stationed in the conquered Confederacy, and
the number was steadily reduced. By 1869 only 716 officers and
men remained in Mississippi; the 4,612 troops stationed in Texas
were largely occupied in protecting Texans from Indian depredations;
and in roost instances Federal forces were stationed only in regular
Federal establishments and in the occasional larger towns. Vast
stretches of the rural South were practically free of the Federal
presence. Subsequent Southern recollections of the occupation
stemmed from the psychological humiliation that military recon-
struction had inflicted, rather than from the actual results of military
intervention.

Southerners also showed a tendency, in the aftermath of recon-

THE RECONSTRUCTION 73

stniction, to equate the militia organized by the Reconstruction state
governments with Federal forces. But these militias were an index of
the paucity rather than the strength of Federal power. They also
reflected the conviction of the newly organized radical governments
that, without means of defense, they would be quickly overthrown.
Since these governments relied upon Negro votes for their existence,
it is hardly surprising that, in the absence of whites willing to serve
in the militias, Negroes should have provided a goodly portion of
their manpower. The use of Negro militia in numerous Southern
states to maintain order added to the southern white conviction that
the had been subjected to a black-dominated military suppression.

The emergence of the Negro as a participant in Southern political
and social life triggered the Southern white's post-reconsguction
belief that the South had been cruelly exploited.f5oif3iy mattered
that the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands
better known as the Freedmen's Bureau had provided more assist-
ance to destitute whites than to Negroes; in the Southern mind it
became an agency which had exploited white men for the benefit of
Negroes. In a society unaccustomed to the idea of black equality,
efforts to insure that equality were translated into acts of tyranny.
Nor did the fact that Negroes, except in South Carolina and
Louisiana, played a minority role in the formation of new state
constitutions, prevent Southerners from viewing them as the instru-
ments of black depravity. The legislatures erected by these con-
stitutions were characterized by James S. Pike, an influential Northern
journalist, as consisting of "men who belong in the penitentiary.'*
From his description of South Carolina there emerged a picture of
white and black rascality founded on the ignorant veniality of the
former slave. Such treatments of Southern political conditions ignored
the fact that Negroes never dominated a state government, even in
South Carolina, where they were a majority of the total population,
they controlled only the lower house of the legislature. The exception
was made the rule; even in states like North Carolina and Alabama,
where Negro participation in government was minimal, Southerners
subsequently invoked images of a degrading black reconstruction.

The principal evidence used to demonstrate the incompetence
and corruption of Reconstruction governments is the sharp increase
in expenditures which prevailed throughout the South after the war.
In practically every state, bonded indebtedness increased many fold,
a good part of the funds so obtained being drained off in payments
to corrupt officials. It is worth noting, however, that the extent of
corruption in the South, though painful, was picayune by compari-

74

THE RECONSTRUCTION

son with the depredations of the Tweed Ring in New York, and that
when state governments passed under the control of Southern whites
the extent of corruption was not substantially reduced though the
beneficiaries were now native white Southerners. Corruption did
drain off considerable sums, but most of the increased indebtedness
was contracted in order to repair war damage. Public buildings,
bridges, roads, and railroads were rebuilt with public funds. Illicit
profit was often obtained in the letting of these contracts to private
entrepreneurs, but this was less an evidence of black corruption
than the inescapable consequence of a free-enterprise system. A
nation that had witnessed the spectacular involvement of white
legislators in the Credit Mobilier could not justly consider the Negro
as inherently more corrupt than whites; yet this was precisely the
attitude that prevailed. Today, an even-handed assessment of radical
government in the South, and the corruption it entailed, would have
to conclude that if the black man demonstrated his incapacity for
self-government, then the white man was fully his equal in this
respect.

The most lasting monument to Reconstruction government was,
in many ways, the efforts it made to establish a public-school system
in the South. Though conventions dominated by Southern whites had
provided, immediately after the war, for the development of educa-
tional facilities for white children, the radical constitutions drawn up
during military reconstruction provided for the free education of
both white and colored children. The pathetic desire of the freedmen
for education made this a major objective of their legislators. Aware
of white prejudice, Negroes reluctantly accepted the need for a
segregated school system. Though efforts to integrate schools were
made in South Carolina and Louisiana, only in New Orleans
between 1870 and 1875 was there extensive integration. But the
poverty of the South prevented the development of a public-school
system that provided an equal physical plant for both races. It is
possible that, had the South been willing to accept a single system
for all children, the necessary funds might have been found, but its
insistence on two systems complicated the task immensely. Once
segregation had become an established principle, a situation which
prevailed in education throughout the South after 1875, the public-
school system provided for white children steadily improved, while
Negro children generally had to make do with an inferior system
supported by left-over funds.

Whatever the achievement of the Reconstruction governments,
Southerners were in no mood to judge them objectively. To accept

THE RECONSTRUCTION 75

the legitimacy of black suffrage and equality posed an insuperable
problem for the Southern white: such acceptance would have been
tantamount to admitting the massive injustice perpetrated against
the Negro under slavery. Even more damaging, it would have cast
doubt on the desperate struggle of the South to maintain its old
way of life during the Civil War. Though the end of slavery was
acknowledged Southerners still accepted as a fixed fact the basic
inferiority of the black man. Slavery had provided a solution not
only for the southern labor problem, but also for a massive social
problem. Now Southerners set out to find a new solution, one that
would formalize the end of slavery while consigning the Negro to an
inferior caste. In the face of this threat nothing short of a willingness
on the part of the Federal government to remain in occupation of
the South for a full generation could have insured the Negro his
rights. But the Southerner was not alone in his assumptions concern-
ing black inferiority; most Northerners shared the same view, and
had confirmed it before the war with a system of "Jim Crow" laws
that seriously circumscribed the rights of Northern Negroes. And
once the Southern States had regained admission to the Union, a
concerted Southern effort was launched to establish in the South
patterns of Northern segregation of the Negro.

Associating the elevation of the Negro with the intervention of
Northern whites, Southerners launched attacks upon such organiza-
tions as the Union Leagues (which had encouraged the Negro to
exercise his suffrage rights). Negro schools were put to the torch and
Negro militias were disbanded. As early as 1868, Southerners or-
ganized into terroristic movements to intimidate the Negro and those
whites sympathetic to Negro aspirations. The Ku-Klux-Klan was
designed to play on the superstitions of the black man, and if this
proved inadequate, to resort to corporal punishment or murder in
order to force its black and white targets into submission. In many
ways the Klan resembled modern terror organizations which seek
to intimidate potential opponents through indiscriminate attacks,
demonstrating thus the inability of established authority to check their
excesses, until the targets submit to extra-legal authority in despair
of an effective response by regular officials. In addition, the anonym-
ity of the Klan complicated efforts at its repression; few people
would hazard charges against suspected members when an officer
of the law, or anyone within hearing distance, might himself have
been a Klansman. By its willingness to commit murder, the Klan
established itself as an agency not to be dismissed lightly. When the
Federal government responded in 1870 and 1871 with repressive

76 THE RECONSTRUCTION

laws directed against the Klan, the subsequent arrests, trials, and
hangings of suspected Klansmen added to the weight of Southern
grievance and swung support behind the organization. The crucial
point for the Southerner was that the Klan fought to protect Southern
rights; its losses were Southern losses; its gains were Southern gains;
its crimes were Southern crimes. By 1870, in the aftermath of war,
defeat and occupation, Southern thinking was increasingly shaped
by a conviction that the South had been unjustly used, and that
harsh measures designed to restore Southern white domination were
justified in consequence.

As each Southern State grudgingly ratified the Thirteenth, Four-
teenth, and Fifteenth amendments, they were readmitted to the
Union. Upon his return to Congress, the Southerner set to work
constructing a political opposition that converted parliamentary
procedure into political subversion. Determined to secure white
dominance and black exclusion, the South translated the facts of
reconstruction into a myth of Southern agony. As the North would
be called, for more than a generation, to rally around the "bloody
flag," so the South appealed to "Black Reconstruction" to justify
the consignment of the black man from slavery to Jim Crow. Subse-
quent to 1877, the nation would be restored, but its unity disguised
a profound paradox: a Civil War that had brought death to no
less than 600,000 young men had been justified, since it ended
slavery; but everyone knew that the black American still was not
free. With such a result it was hardly surprising that some sensitive
observers have since doubted the worth of the sacrifice.

. . . THE LOYAL STATES, INDEED, COME OUT

OF WAR SEPARATED FROM THE DISLOYAL

... BY A GREAT SEA OF BLOOD.

The President and Congress

The loyal states, indeed, come out of the war separated from the
disloyal, not by such thin partitions as the President so cavalierly
breaks through, but by a great sea of blood. It is across that
that we must survey their rights and duties; it is with that view we
must settle the terms of their readmission. It is idle to apply to 1866
the word-twisting of 1860. The Rebel communities which began the
war are not the same communities which were recognized as States
in the Union before the war occurred. No sophistry that perplexes
the brain of the people can prevent this fact being felt in their hearts.

THE RECONSTRUCTION 77

The proposition that States can plunge into rebellion, and, after
waging against the government a war which is put down only at the
expense of enormous sacrifices of treasure and blood, can, when
defeated, return of right to form a part of the government they have
labored to subvert, is a proposition so repugnant to common sense
that its acceptance by the people would send them down a step in
the zoological scale. Have we been fighting in order to compel the
South to resume its reluctant role of governing us? Are we to be
told that the States which have sent mourning into every loyal family
in the land, and which have loaded every loyal laborer's back with
a new and unexampled burden of taxation, have the same right to
seats in the Senate and the House of Representatives which New
York and Illinois can claim? The question is not whether the vic-
torious party shall exercise magnanimity and mercy, whether it shall
attempt to heal wounds rather than open them afresh, but whether
its legal representatives, constituting, as it was supposed, the legis-
lative department of the United States government, shall have any-
thing to do with the matter at all.

The Atlantic Monthly 1866, Jan.-June, pp. 502-503.

NO CHINESE WALL CAN NOW BE TOLERATED.

The people are less concerned about these than the grand end
to be attained. They demand such a reconstruction as shall put an
end to the present anarchical state of things in the late rebellious
States where frightful murders and wholesale massacres are per-
petrated in the very presence of Federal soldiers. This horrible
business they require shall cease. They want a reconstruction such
as will protect loyal men, black and white, in their persons and
property; such a one as will cause Northern industry, Northern capi-
tal, and Northern civilization to flow into the South, and make a man
from New England as much at home in Carolina as elsewhere in
the Republic. No Chinese wall can now be tolerated. The South must
be opened to the light of law and liberty, and this session of Congress
is relied upon to accomplish this important work.

The plain, common-sense way of doing this work, as intimated
at the beginning, is simply to establish in the South one law, one
government, one administration of justice, one condition to the ex-
ercise of the elective franchise, for men of all races and colors alike.
This great measure is sought as earnestly by loyal white men as by

78 THE RECONSTRUCTION

loyal blacks, and is needed alike by both. Let sound political pres-
cience but take the place of an unreasoning prejudice, and this will
be done.

Men denounce the negro for his prominence in this discussion;
but it is no fault of his that in peace as in war, that in conquering
Rebel armies as in reconstructing the rebellious States, the right of
the negro is the true solution of our national troubles. The stern
logic of events, which goes directly to the point, disdaining all con-
cern for the color or features of men, has determined the interests
of the country as identical with and inseparable from those of the
negro.

The policy that emancipated and armed the negro now seen to
have been wise and proper by the dullest was not certainly more
sternly demanded than is now the policy of enfranchisement. If with
the negro was success in war, and without him failure, so in peace
it will be found that the nation must fall or flourish with the negro.

Fortunately, the Constitution of the United States knows no dis-
tinction between citizens on account of color. Neither does it know
any difference between a citizen of a State and a citizen of the United
States. Citizenship evidently includes all the rights of citizens, whether
State or national. If the Constitution knows none, it is clearly no
part of the duty of a Republican Congress now to institute one. The
mistake of the last session was the attempt to do this very thing, by
a renunciation of its power to secure political rights to any class of
citizens, with the obvious purpose to allow the rebellious States to
disfranchise, if they should see fit, their colored citizens. This un-
fortunate blunder must now be retrieved, and the emasculated citi-
zenship given to the negro supplanted by that contemplated in the
Constitution of the United States, which declares that the citizens of
each State shall enjoy all the rights and immunities of citizens of
several States so that a legal voter in any State shall be a legal
voter in all the States.

The Atlantic Monthly 1866, July-Dec., pp. 764-765.

... A RIGHT ... OF PARTICIPATING IN THAT

GOVERNMENT WHICH THEY HAD . . . BEEN

FIGHTING TO OVERTHROW.

As to the South's condition at the close of the rebellion, the evidence
is open to all, and admits of no dispute. They were in the state of utter
exhaustion. Having protracted their struggle against federal authority

THE RECONSTRUCTION 79

until all hope of successful resistance had ceased, and laid down
their arms only because there was no longer any power to use them,
the people of those States were left bankrupt in their public finances,
and shorn of the private wealth which had before given them power
and influence. They were also necessarily in a state of complete
anarchy, without governments, and without the power to frame gov-
ernments, except by the permission of those who had been success-
ful in the war. The President of the United States, in the proclama-
tions under which he appointed Provisional Governors, and in his
various communications to them, has, in exact terms, recognized
the fact, that the people of those States were, when the rebellion was
crushed, "deprived of all civil government, and must proceed anew."
In his conversation with Mr. Stearns, of Massachusetts, certified by
himself, President Johnson said: "The State Institutions are pros-
trated, laid out on the ground, and they must be taken up and
adapted to the progress of events."

Finding the Southern States in this condition, and Congress having
failed to provide for the contingency, his duty was obvious. As Presi-
dent of the United States, he had no power, except to execute the
laws of the land as Chief Magistrate. These laws gave him no au-
thority over the subject of reorganization; but by the Constitution, he
was Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.
These Confederate States embraced a portion of the people of the
Union, who had been in a state of revolt, but had been reduced to
obedience by force of arms. They were in an abnormal condition,
under civil government, without commercial connections, without
national or international relations, and subject only to martial law.
By withdrawing their representatives in Congress, by renouncing the
privilege of representation, by organizing a separate government, and
by levying war against the United States, they destroyed their State
Constitutions in respect to the vital principle which connected their
respective States with the Union, and secured their Federal relations;
and nothing of those constitutions was left, of which the United States
were bound to take notice. For four years, they had a de-facto gov-
ernment, but it was usurped and illegal. They chose the tribunal of
arms, wherein to decide whether or not it should be legalized, and
they were defeated. At the close of the rebellion, therefore, the people
of the rebellious States were found, as the President expresses it,
deprived of all civil government.

pp. 2-3.

. . . When Congress assembled in December last, the people of most

g THE RECONSTRUCTION

of the States lately in rebellion had, under the advice of the Presi-
dent, organized local governments, and some of them had acceded
to the terms proposed by him. In his annual message he stated in
general terms what had to be done, but he did not see fit to communi-
cate the details for the information of Congress. While in this and in
a subsequent message the President urged the speedy restoration of
these States, and expressed the opinion that their condition was such
as to justify their restoration, yet it is quite obvious that Congress
must either have acted blindly on that opinion of the President, or
proceeded to obtain the information requisite for intelligent action on
the subject. The impropriety of proceeding wholly on the judgment of
any one man, however exalted his station, in a matter involving the
welfare of the Republic in all future time, or of adopting any plan,
coming from any source, without fully understanding all its bearings
and comprehending its full effect, was apparent. The first step, there-
fore, was to obtain the required information. A call was accordingly
made on the President for the information in his possession as to
what had been done, in order that Congress might judge for itself
as to the grounds of the belief expressed by him in the fitness of
States recently in rebellion to participate fully in the conduct of na-
tional affairs. This information was not immediately communicated.
When the response was finally made, some six weeks after your
committee had been in actual session, it was found that the evidence
upon which the President seemed to have based his suggestions was
incomplete and unsatisfactory. Authenticated copies of the new con-
stitutions and ordinances adopted by the conventions in three of the
States had been submitted; extracts from newspapers furnished
scanty information as to the action of one other State, and nothing
appears to have been communicated as to the remainder. There was
no evidence of the loyalty of those who had participated in these con-
ventions, and in one State alone was any proposition made to submit
the action of the conventions to the final judgment of the people.

Failing to obtain the desired information, and left to grope for
light wherever it might be found, your committee did not deem it
either advisable or safe to adopt, without further examination, the sug-
gestions of the President, more especially as he had not deemed it
expedient to remove the military force, to suspend martial law, or
restore the writ of habeas corpus, but still thought it necessary to
exercise over the people of the rebellious States his military power
and jurisdiction. This conclusion derived still greater force from the
fact, undisputed, that in all these States except Tennessee, and per-
haps Arkansas, the elections which were held for State offices and

THE RECONSTRUCTION 8l

members of Congress had resulted almost universally in the defeat of
candidates who had been true to the Union, and in the election of
notorious and unpardonable rebels men who could not take the
prescribed oath of office, and who made no secret of their hostility
to the Government and the people of the United States.

pp. 4-5.

. . rlt must not be forgotten that the people of these States, without
justification or excuse, rose in insurrection against the United States.
They deliberately abolished their State Governments, so far as the
same connected them politically with the Union as members thereof
under the Constitution. They deliberately renounced their allegiance
to the Federal Government, and proceeded to establish an inde-
pendent government for themselves. In the prosecution of their en-
terprise they seized the national forts, arsenals, dock-yards, and other
public property within their borders, drove out from among them-
selves those who remained true to the Union, and heaped every imag-
inable insult and injury upon the United States and its citizens.
-Finally they opened hostilities and levied war against the Govern-
ment. They continued this war for four years with the most de-
termined and malignant spirit, killing in battle and otherwise large
numbers of loyal people, destroying the property of loyal citizens
on the sea and on the land, and entailing on the Government an
enormous debt, incurred to sustain its rightful authority. Whether
legally and constitutionally or not, they did in fact withdraw from
the Union, and made themselves subjects of another government of
their own creation; and they only yielded when, after a long, bloody,
and wasting war, they were compelled by utter exhaustion to lay
down their arms; and this they did, not willingly, but declaring that
they yielded because they could no longer resist, affording no evi-
dence whatever of repentance for their crime, and expressing no
regret except that they had no longer the power to continue the
desperate struggle.

It cannot, we think, be denied by any one having a tolerable ac-
quaintance with public law, that the war thus waged was a civil war
of the greatest magnitude. The people waging it were necessarily
subject to all the rules which, by the law of nations, control a contest
of that character, and to all tie legitimate consequences following
it. One of those consequences was, that within the limits prescribed
by humanity, the conquered rebels were at the mercy of the con-
querors. That a government thus outraged had a most perfect right
to exact indemnity for the injuries done, and security against the

g 2 THE RECONSTRUCTION

recurrence of such outrages in the future, would seem too clear
for dispute. What the nature of that security should be, what proof
should be required of a return to allegiance, what time should
elapse before a people thus demoralized should be restored in full
to the enjoyment of political rights and privileges, are questions for
the law-making power to decide, and that decision must depend on
grave considerations of the public safety and the general welfare.
It is moreover contended, and with apparent gravity, that from
the peculiar nature and character of our Government, no such right
on the part of the conqueror can exist; that from the moment when
rebellion lays down its arms and actual hostilities cease, all political
rights of rebellious communities are at once restored; that because
the people of a State of the Union were once an organized com-
munity within the Union they necessarily so remain, and their right
to be represented in Congress at any and all times, and to partici-
pate in the government of the country under all circumstances, admits
of neither question nor dispute. If this is indeed true, then is the
Government of the United States powerless for its own protection,
and flagrant rebellion carried to the extreme of civil war is a pastime,
which any State may play at, not only certain that it can lose noth-
ing, in any event, but may even be the gainer by defeat. If rebellion
succeeds, it accomplishes its purpose and destroys the government.
If it fails, the war has been barren of results, and the battle may be
fought out in the legislative halls of the country. Treason defeated in
the field has only to take possession of Congress and the Cabinet.

pp. 6-7.

. . ". Let us look at the facts shown by the evidence taken by the
committee. Hardly is the war closed before the people of these in-
surrectionary States come forward and haughtily claim as a right
the privilege of participating at once in that Government which they
had for four years been fighting to overthrow.

Allowed and encouraged by the Executive to organize State gov-
ernments, they at once place in power leading rebels, unrepentant
and unpardoned, excluding with contempt those who had manifested
an attachment to the Union, and preferring in many instances those
who had manifested an attachment to the Union, and those who
had rendered themselves the most obnoxious. In the face of the
law requiring an oath which would necessarily exclude all such men
from Federal office, they elect with very few exceptions, as Senators
and Representatives in Congress, men who had actively participated
in the rebellion, insultingly denouncing the law as unconstitutional.

THE RECONSTRUCTION 83

It is only necessary to instance the election to the Senate of the
late Vice-President of the Confederacy a man who, against his
own declared convictions, had lent all the weight of his acknowledged
ability, and of his influence as a most prominent public man, to the
cause of the rebellion, and who, unpardoned rebel as he is, with that
oath staring him in the face, had the assurance to lay his credentials
on the table of the Senate. Other rebels of scarcely less note or
notoriety were selected from other quarters. Professing no repentance;
glorying, apparently in the crime they had committed; avowing still,
as tie uncontradicted testimony of Mr. Stephens and many others
proves, an adherence to the pernicious doctrine of secession, and
declaring that they yielded only to necessity, they insist with unani-
mous voice upon their rights as States, and proclaim that they will
submit to no conditions whatever as preliminary to their resumption
of power under that Constitution which they still claim the right to
repudiate.

Examining the evidence taken by your committee still further,
in connection with facts too notorious to be disputed, it appears that
the Southern press, with few exceptions, and those mostly of news-
papers recently established by Northern men, abounds with weekly
and daily abuse of the institutions and people of the loyal States;
defends the men who led and the principles which incited the re-
bellion; denounces the reviled Southern men who adhered to the
Union, and strives constantly and unscrupulously, by every means
in its power, to keep alive the fire of hate and discord between the
sections, calling upon the President to violate his oath of office, over-
turn the Government by force of arms, and drive the representatives
of the people from their seats in Congress. The national banner is
openly insulted and the national airs scoffed at, not only by an ig-
norant populace, but at public meetings, and once, among other
notable instances, at a dinner given in honor of a notorious rebel
who had violated his oath and abandoned his flag. The same in-
dividual is elected to an important office in the leading city of his
State, although an unpardoned rebel, and so offensive that the Presi-
dent refuses to allow him to enter upon his official duties. In another
State the leading general of the rebel armies is openly nominated for
Governor by the Speaker of the House of Delegates, and the nomina-
tion is hailed by the people with shouts of satisfaction, and openly
endorsed by the press.

Looking still further at the evidence taken by your committee, it
is found to be clearly shown by witnesses of the highest character,
and having the best means of observation, that the Freedmen's Bu-

84 THE RECONSTRUCTION

reau, instituted for the relief and protection of freedinen and refugees,
is almost universally opposed by the mass of the population, and
exists in an efficient condition only under military protection, while
the Union men in the South are earnest in its defence, declaring, with
one voice, that without its protection the colored people would not
be permitted to labor at fair prices, and could hardly live in safety.

They also testify that, without the protection of United States
troops, Union men, whether of Northern or Southern origin, would
be obliged to abandon their homes. The feeling in many portions of
the country toward emancipated slaves, especially among the un-
educated and ignorant, is one of vindictive and malicious hatred.
This deep-seated prejudice against color is assiduously cultivated by
the public journals, and leads to acts of cruelty, oppression and
murder, which the local authorities are at no pains to prevent or
punish.

There is no general disposition to place the colored race, con-
stituting at least two-fifths of the population, upon terms even of
civil equality. While many instances may be found where large
planters and men of the better class accept the situation and honestly
strive to bring about a better order of things, by employing the
freedmen at fair wages and treating them kindly, the general feeling
and disposition among all classes are yet totally averse to the tolera-
tion of any class of people friendly to the Union, be they white or
black, and this aversion is not infrequently manifested in an insulting
and offensive manner.

The witnesses examined as to the willingness of the people of the
South to contribute, under existing laws, to the payment of the na-
tional debt, prove that the taxes levied by the United States will be
paid only on compulsion, and with great reluctance, while there pre-
vails to a considerable extent an expectation that compensation will
be made for slaves emancipated and property destroyed during the
war. The testimony on this point comes from officers of the Union
army, officers of the late rebel army, Union men of the Southern
States and avowed secessionists, almost all of whom state that, in
their opinion, the people of the rebellious States would, if they should
see a prospect of success, repudiate the national debt. While there is
any hope or desire among the leading men to renew the attempt at
secession, at any future time, there is still, according to a large num-
ber of witnesses including Alexander H. Stephens, who may be
regarded as good authority on that point a generally prevailing
opinion which defends the legal right of secession, and upholds the
doctrine that the first allegiance of the people is due to the States,

THE RECONSTRUCTION 85

and not to the United States. This belief evidently prevails among
leading and prominent men, as well as among the masses every-
where, except in some of the northern counties of Alabama and
eastern counties of Tennessee. The evidence of an intense hostility
to the Federal Union, and an equally intense love of the late Con-
federacy, nurtured by the war, is decisive. . . .

Final Report Of The Congressional Committee Upon The
Question of Reconstruction, pp. 2-7, 14-16. W. P. Fessenden,
James W. Grimes, Ira Harris, J. M. Howard, George H.
Williams, Thaddeus Stevens, Justin L. Morrill, John A. Bing-
ham, Roscoe Conkling, George S. Boutwell.

IF THEY REPENT . . . THEN WE WILL JOYFULLY
BURY THE HATCHET . . .

"Is the South Ready for Reconstruction"

Board of Publications of the Union League of Philadelphia,
pp. 1-20.

In considering this momentous question, it is idle to speculate on
the various theories as to the exact legal status of the States lately in
revolt. Whether they are still in the Union as States, or whether they
have ever been out, or whether they are reduced to the condition of
territories, may be an interesting subject of debate for constitutional
lawyers, but is of little practical importance. Mr. Lincoln, with his
rare natural sagacity, wisely brushed all such cobwebs aside when
he pronounced that they were out of their practical relations to the
Union, and that the problem was how to get them back with due
regard to the common safety.

In considering this, the sole question should be whether those
States are in a temper to permit them to exercise, for the whole
country, the enormous power which the state of parties would place
in their hands. No feelings of emnity provoked by a causeless re-
bellion should be allowed to sway our judgment. They are our
brethren; fate has indissolubiy united our destinies by planting us
in a territory which admits of no natural division. For good or for
evil we must dwell together, and he who would wantonly create
or maintain ill-feelings towards those who have been so fearfully
punished for the crime of 1861, is an enemy to his race. If they
repent; if they turn for forgiveness to the Government whose rain
they madly sought; if they abjure the heresies which precipitated such

86 THE RECONSTRUCTION

miseries upon us all; if they frankly accept the situation, burn their
false idols and resolve to be as energetic and persistent in upholding
as they were in destroying; if they transfer their allegiance from
the narrow boundaries of particular States to the wider claims of
a glorious nationality; if they admit past errors; if they are willing to
cultivate the kindly and fraternal feelings for us which are so con-
fidently claimed of us for them then we will joyfully bury the
hatchet, welcome them back to their places in the capital of the
nation, and allow no memory of the past to sully the bright prospect
of the future.

This is then the point on which hinges everything else. The Presi-
dent, the Democracy and the leaders of the late Confederacy affirm
vehemently that the lately rebel states are in that fraternal and loyal
frame of mind that renders longer exclusion both unjust and im-
polite. Congress, which has laboriously examined the subject, feels
much less confident. Let us endeavor to ascertain from Southern
organs of opinion which is most nearly right.

Tennessee

If we can conceive President Johnson to be familiar with the
condition of any portion of the South, it must be with that of his
own State, which he ruled as military governor for two years; and
if there is any portion of the South which can be trusted, it is
Tennessee, where unionism never ceased to struggle against treason,
and where long possession by the Federal forces apparently gave
time to stamp out the embers of rebellion. . . .

To deprive ourselves of the cooperation of such a community
would surely seem to be wrong, and yet when we hear of the au-
thorities of Memphis siding with a bloodthirsty mob in the indis-
criminate slaughter of unarmed negroes, and the conflagration of
schoolhouses and churches, we begin to doubt whether the people
of Tennessee are yet in a frame of mind to govern themselves or to
take part in governing us. These doubts are not lessened on finding
that Governor Brownlow, but a few weeks before Mr. Johnson
penned his veto message, remarked in a speech at Nashville, on the
occasion of opening a colored school there:

I advise the teachers, male and female, to be exceedingly prudent and
cautious, and do nothing offensive to the predominant party here.

You may think it a little strange that I give such counsel. I do it
because if Genl. Thomas were to take away his soldiers, and pull up
stakes and leave here, you would not be allowed to occupy this school-

THE RECONSTRUCTION 8/

room a week; not a week! and if Gen. Thomas and his military forces
were to go away and leave us, this Legislature, at the head of which I
am placed, would be broken up by a mob in forty-eight hours.

Our high civil and military functionaries may travel through the South
hurriedly and otherwise, and go back to Washington and report that all
is well and reconstructed; and those of you who are green enough to
believe it, can believe it, but pardon me when I tell you that I don't
believe a word of it.

Had a man been placed here of less prudence, less goodness of temper,
less sense,, and less sense of justice than Gen. Fisk, this institution and
this Bureau would have failed; and he may console himself to-day, that
if our blessed Savior were to come to Davidson County, with shoulder-
straps on, and three or four stars on his shoulders, and bring with him
a military staff of the old apostles, he could not give satisfaction to the
rebels of Davidson County.

Possibly, Governor Brownlow's rugged unionism may be too un-
compromising. Let us then see what are the opinions of the Hon.
B. W. Stokes, one of the Tennessee members elect, the unconstitu-
tional denial of whose seats is so deplored by Mr. Johnson and
the Democracy. In a speech made during the Connecticut canvass,
after stating that at one time Congress had been on the point of ad-
mitting Tennessee, he proceeded:

Then one branch of the Legislature was disorganized, and the rebel
element, not being willing to submit to the rule of the majority, sought
to break up and destroy the Government. They left the house without
a quorum, and it is still without a quorum. And I say that while the
Government was in that condition, there is not a man of you who would
think that State should be recognized. We therefore do not complain of
the delay. We know that admission now would destroy the Union element
of those States. Congress is doing right in holding them back. When the
rebel armies first surrendered, there was everywhere a disposition toward
loyalty, but I stand here to-night to say there is now a feeling as deep
and bitter toward the Union men of the South, as there ever was in
1860 or 1861. And the facts have proved that Congress, in its cool and
deliberate treatment of the matter, deserves the thanks of all Union men
in giving opportunity for these rebels to show their hands. Time will
show that Congress was right. But all these things will be settled wisely
and safely; and when loyal men get control of these governments, there
will then be no difficulty, and all those questions will be satisfactorily
settled.

If this, then, is the condition of Tennessee, what must be that
of States which were defiantly rebellious to the last? . . .

88 THE RECONSTRUCTION

Repentance

Among the few South Carolinians who called themselves
Union men, the Hon. B. F. Perry was conspicuous, and Mr. Johnson
could find none so trustworthy to carry out his reconstruction policy,
when he appointed him Provisional Governor of South Carolina. Mr.
Perry, under date of April 15th, has printed a letter to Horace
Greeley, in which he pleads the cause of his section. Let us see
what view he takes of the secession which he condemned from the
first, and we can then judge how it is regarded by those who hailed it
as the most promising of blessings:

And what great unpardonable crime have the Secessionists themselves
been guilty of? They believed in that sacred principle set forth in our
Declaration of Independence, that every people have the right of self-
government, and the right to change and alter their form of government
as they may see proper. This was the head and front of their offending,
nothing more. They expressed their purpose of living separately from
the Northern States! That was all! They did not seek to invade the
North or govern the North. It was not their purpose to wage war against
the Northern States, but to live quietly and peaceably by them as neighbors
and friends. They had been taught by their greatest statesmen for half a
century past that they had the right to peaceably secede from the Federal
Government. And they attempted to exercise this right. That is all!
For this attempt they have been conquered and subdued, their property
taken from them, and their country desolated? Is this not punishment
enough for a simple error of judgment?

Neither Congress nor the loyal people of the North desire the
further punishment of the South, but it is for us a simple matter of
prudence to consider the safety of lodging a controlling political
power with those whose "Union" men deem secession "a simple
error of judgment."

If, however, we want to know what are the views still held by
original secessionists, we may find them in the Jackson (Miss.)
Clarion, which, in an article commending President Johnson and
his policy to the support of the South, remarks:

We do not repent of the course which, four years ago, we entered upon;
we leave it to posterity to say that we did right. Why Providence denied
us success we know not now, but we shall know hereafter; and even
now we watch with interest, from day to day, the unfolding of the
divine purposes concerning the country which he has decreed shall be
one, though many wise and good men thought different. How singular
the turn that affairs have taken, and how completely providential! The

THE RECONSTRUCTION 89

good-natured buffoon whom the good people of the North chose to place
In the chair of Washington and Jackson, was removed when his mission
was accomplished, and the hearts of Southern men, already depressed
by the great misfortune that was fresh upon them, sank deeper at the
thought that a ruler was then set over them, whose little finger would
be thicker than his predecessor's loins ... If Southern men do not
admire and applaud such a man as this, it is because the God that made
them has reconstructed them in a manner hitherto unheard of taking
away their old heart, and giving them instead a heart of dirt. They are
not the people to give a half-hearted approval, nor if they were, are
these the times for it, nor is Andrew Johnson the man to whom it is due.

. . . Mr. Stephens was no original secessionist, and Georgia
thought, perhaps, that therefore she was earning restoration in elect-
ing him to represent her in the United States Senate. Yet Mr. Stephens
could not refrain, in his speech of Feb. 22nd, before the Legislature
of his State, from asserting that the South had been consistently loyal
to the Constitution of the United States, and that having failed in
establishing by arms their interpretation of it, there only remained
to continue the effort in the halls of legislation:

Whatever may be said of the loyalty or disloyalty of any in the late
most lamentable conflict of arms, I think I may venture safely to say
that there was, on the part of the great mass of the people of Georgia,
and of the entire South, no disloyalty to the principles of the Constitution
of the United States . . . With us, it was simply a question of where our
allegiance was due in the maintenance of those principles; which
authority was paramount in the last resort, State or Federal . . . Our
only alternative now is to give up all hopes of constitutional liberty, or
retrace our steps and look for its vindication and maintenance in the
forums of reason and justice, instead of on the arena of arms; in the
courts and halls of legislation, instead of on the fields of battle. I am
frank and candid in setting you right here. Our surest hopes, in my
judgment, of these ends are in the restoration policy of the President
of the United States.

The ideas, rather cautiously insinuated than openly expressed by
Mr. Stephens, are more boldly enunciated by the Galveston (Texas)

News:

We are not ashamed to confess that we expected the doctrine of
peaceable secession to be admitted on the basis of professions which we
publish elsewhere in this issue; that we believed the age of conquest to
have passed away. Mistaken as we were, it yet remains to be determined

go

THE RECONSTRUCTION

whether the South has not suffered for having fallen behind the times,
and whether the parties on the other side, both actors and interested
spectators, will not finally be compelled to reach through many throes
the political idea involved in the course of the seceding States. The time
will come when political issues as fundamental as those raised by the
South must be decided without war, and the worst judgment then passed
upon her will embody nothing more than the charge of having been
premature.

Thus, the Mobile (Ala.) Register declares:

The South will not purchase political privileges, to which it is en-
titled by the Constitution of the country, at the price of dishonor. Indeed,
the South has made all the concessions it means to make to restoration.
First, because it has done enough; and second, because faith has not
been- kept with it in what it has done. We were promised amnesty for
the past and cordial political brotherhood for the future, if we would
submit to certain conditions, which were hard, because they were
opposed to traditional habits and instincts. We kept our part of the
bargain, but it has been broken to the hope and insult paid down instead
in the other. We have no other bargains to make.

And the Richmond (Va.) Enquirer of May 4th:

If the powers that be are resolved to visit outrage upon us, let it, at
least, be without our further sanction. Let us stand in our tracks, and
upon our rights, and throw upon those who may deny them all the odium
and infamy. Such, we believe is the temper of the Southern people at
this time. We have followed the ignus fatuus of reconstruction until we
are weary of floundering in morass and mire. The representation which
would be accorded us, even by those who would allow us representation at
all, is really no representation. The test oath makes of it a mere mockery;
nay, worse, for it makes it misrepresentation. Think of Botts or Under-
wood as a representative of Virginia! Infinitely do we prefer none to
such as they. Then surely we have no need further to prostrate ourselves
in the dust in tedious and doubtful pursuit of a privilege like that.

So the Augusta (Ga.) Constitutionalist, in ridiculing Senator
Stewart's plan of reconstruction:

We have said this was Esau's bargain. It is hardly so much. For his
birthright the Ishmaelite got at least a mess of pottage, and we are to have
not even that Out upon the hackneyed swindle. We have been promised
and been promised. We have done this and done that, and we are no
nearer Congress to-day than when we began. The resolutions do not

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offer us, even in exchange for negro suffrage, congressional representa-
tion. Nothing but amnesty, an amnesty if there be one particle of
dependence to be placed in the heretofore pledged word of the Federal
Government that not one man in ten thousand of us requires.

But enough for the present, for we write in haste. The trick is so
shallow that it strikes us with fully as much amazement as wrath. Sumner
approves it, and so does Wilson; but the one is a timid ass, and the other
a hustings statesman. We do not wonder at them; but there are men of
real and genuine ability in the Radical ranks, and that they should permit
it is proof they are playing the stake of the gambler when he puts his all
upon the throw.

Shoulder to shoulder, men of the South, and no following after Esau.
If these men can force this thing upon us, God help us. If they cannot,
don't let us do it ourselves.

The Goldsborough, (N. C.) Daily News:

As a people, we have done all that a noble adversary would have re-
quired of us, even if we have not gone beyond, and we are not prepared
to yield more than we have done. The Congress of the United States
ask more; the President does not, and, therefore, the entire South, with
rare exceptions, favor the President, and are opposed to the schemes of
Congress, which are clearly intended, not for the good of the country,
North or South, but to perpetuate their own political power. //, then,
we are rapidly drifting into the vortex of another bloody revolution, as
many suppose, let us do such little steering as we are permitted, in such
manner as to avoid, if possible, impending evil.

And the Charlottesville (Va.) Chronicle:

It has been suggested that it would be politic for the South to make a
compromise with the Radicals by consenting to accord to the negroes a
qualified right of suffrage. This is in reality accepting the bill of Senator
Stewart. It is urged that we might as well yield the point as to have it
forced upon us, and perhaps in a worse form.

For ourselves we have nothing more to yield, and nothing further to
offer. We do not see what more the South can do than has been done.
There is a determination to quarrel with us, and our observation is that
when it is seen that a person is determined to quarrel, it is unwise to
attempt to conciliate him.

We would not make one additional overture to Congress. We are
opposed to the South's adding one word to what has been said. We would
not yield the negro suffrage in any form. Let us stay out of Congress,
and make the best of it.

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. . . Governor Perry, in his letter quoted above, thus assumes to
argue the point:

There is no more injustice in counting them, although they are not
voters, than there is in counting the children and women and foreigners
not allowed to vote in New York. They may contribute as much to the
defense and prosperity of the United States as any other class of non-
voters . . . [Whether] we shall be allowed to exercise the right of suffrage,
has been, very properly, left for each State to determine for herself, as it
is to make her own laws, and regulate her judiciary and police.

And Alexander H. Stephens, in his testimony before the Recon-
struction Committee, April llth, thus arrogantly expresses the de-
termination of Georgia:

Q. If a proposition were made to amend the Constitution so as to have
the representation in Congress based upon voters, substantially, would
Georgia ratify such a proposed amendment if it were made a condition
precedent to the restoration of the State to political power in the Govern-
ment?

A. I do not think they would. The people of Georgia, in my judgment,
as far as I can reflect or represent their opinions, feel that they are
entitled, under the Constitution of the United States, to representation
without any further condition precedent. They would not object to
entertain, discuss, and exchange views in the common councils of the
country, with the other States upon such a proposition, or any proposition
to amend the Constitution or change it in any of its features, and they
would abide by any change if made as the Constitution provides; but
they feel that they are constitutionally entitled to be heard by their
Senators and members in the House of Congress, upon this or any other
proposed amendment. I do not, therefore, think that they would ratify
that amendment suggested as a condition precedent to her being admitted
to representation in Congress. Such, at least, is my opinion.

The Test Oath

The Test Oath is not to the taste of these gentlemen; they will
not even agree to its modification, and will listen to nothing but its
repeal. Thus the Augusta (Ga.) Transcript:

We say it must be repealed*, for the modification proposed by the
Postmaster General, the insertion of the word "voluntarily" before the
word "sought" in the oath, would not make it less odious. People who
nave been engaged in the war, or held any office under the Confederacy,
cannot honestly take any oath of the sort, and cannot therefore retain

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any social respect if they do so. The only course that would serve the
purpose of the Government is the abrogation of the oath.

Agitation

It is keenly remembered how all the energies of the Southern
press were exerted to "fire the Southern heart" and to persuade the
most independent communities on earth that they were the victims
of a crashing and remorseless despotism that could only be escaped
by disunion and war. We looked on blindly at the time, with languid
curiosity and astonishment, little dreaming of the settled purpose
and untiring agencies at work to effect a predetermined result. The
same process may now be observed, with what object we may not
divine, but we can safely assure ourselves that the temper which is
being so carefully fanned into flames is not that which we would
select for association in our common government.

Thus, the Richmond (Va.) Times:

The Radical carnival at Washington, during the past week, was
marked by acts of lawless and utterly unscrupulous wickedness which
brand the dominant party as open, avowed and shameless revolutionists.
They outraged individual rights with the fierce audacity with which the
sans-culottes of Paris once hurried their victims to the scaffold without the
formality of arraignment or trial. They trampled upon Constitution with
the glee with which the Japanese are said to defile the Holy Scriptures.

The Charlottesville (Va.) Chronicle thus characterizes the Civil
Rights Bill:

Under the guise of protecting the negro, they have come in and seized
our Legislatures and our Courts of Justice. The Civil Rights Bill is a
ring in the nose of every white man at the South with the string in the
hand of any unprincipled Yankee who chooses to puH it.

And the New Bern (N.C.) Commercial:

Friday, April 6, 1866, will be a memorable day in history. On that
day the Senate of the United States, at Washington, perpetrated an
outrage, in its broadest sense, upon the people of eleven of the States of
the Union, in the passage of the "Civil Rights" bill over the veto of
President Johnson.

In fact, reconstructed rebels, with loyal blood scarcely dry upon.
their swords, are openly hinting that all legislation by the present

04 THE RECONSTRUCTION

Congress Is unconstitutional and of no legal validity, whence the
corollary is drawn that resistance to it is lawful. Thus the Richmond
(Va.) Whig;

Are the bodies now sitting in Washington, claiming to be a Senate
and House of Representatives, composed of two Senators "from each
State/' and members chosen by the people of "the several States?"
Certainly not!

It follows, with irresistible force and undeniable certainly, that the
Congress into which they are denied admission, is not the Congress
created by the Constitution and endowed with the power of legislation.
Such a body is clearly without authority, and its acts must be held to be
of no binding force.

And the Richmond (Va.) Dispatch:

When the resolution for communicating to the Executive Department
the Civil Rights bill as passed by the two Houses of Congress over the
veto, was pending in the Senate, Mr. McDougall suggested that the bill
was not legally passed, because all the States were not represented in
Congress. He was not replied to; but the resolution was passed.

"The question was very pertinent. It was not settled by passing the
resolution. It is still open, and will ring again to unwilling ears, in times
to come"

And what aH this is meant to bring about may perhaps be guessed
from a remark of the Petersburg (Va.) Index:

The present Radical Congress has done more to satisfy the Southern
mind of the abstract right and the political propriety of secession, than
all the fanatics that ever made a speech or edited a newspaper in the
South since the foundation of the Government.

While it is vaguely indicated in a recent speech of Ex-Governor

Wise.

You call the cause lost; it is not lost. If it is lost, the cause of civil
liberty is doomed, for it too, is lost. There was a Paradise lost and a
Paradise regained, and there will be a Paradise regained in this country.
The blood that has been spilled is too precious. I should not believe in
God if I did not believe that a special providence would yet give victory
to and secure the triumph of civil liberty in this country . . . But I tell
you, Old Virginia is not at home. She will come back some of these days,
and then the devil take the hindmost. I am watching, and will tell her,
when she comes, what has been done in her absence. I'll say, "Mamma,
your children did not do that. It was done by imposters and pretenders."

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Again, I say, there is but one Virginia. They have taken and are wielding
her powers. If I am a traitor, let them make the most of it. If I am a
traitor, why don't they try and hang me? I have lost my lands and
property, but I would clean boots on your streets sooner than bow to
usurpation. // / had triumphed, I should have favored stripping them
naked. [Laughter.] Pardon! They might have appealed for pardon but
1 would have seen them damned before I would have granted it. For
myself, the boot being on the other leg, I take no oaths! I ask no pardons!
[Prolonged cheers.]

Thus, the Danville ( Va.) Times:

It was telegraphed here last Saturday that the President had ordered
to Washington 10,000 troops, to put the Rump Congress under arrest,
and see that Southern members took their seats. But it all proved false.
We think he ought to put the radicals under arrest as traitors, and order
the Southern delegates to take their seats with the conservative men of the
North. The radicals are a faction, keeping eleven States out of Congress
that have as much right In it as they have. Shall these corrupt wretches
be permitted to keep the South out forever?

The radicals in and out of Congress, 'who deserve a calf rope for their
treason, are talking about impeaching the President. HE ought to impeach
them by hanging them.

The Richmond (Va.) Whig:

Long before we saw it hinted or heard it whispered that the misunder-
standings between Congress and the President would find their probable
culmination in armed collision, we had, in our minds, followed it out by
ratiocination to that logical sequence. We saw, or thought we saw, by the
continued divergence between the President and Congress, by the
contumacious refusal of the latter to admit to their seats the competent
and legitimate representatives elect from eleven States, and from an
obstinate and defiant persistence in unconstitutional measures, it might
become the bounden duty of the Executive to interpose. We saw, or
thought we saw, how a mere party in Congress, unlawfully constituting
itself Congress, by excluding the representatives of a whole section of
the Union in a body, who, if present and voting, would, by the union
with them of Northern Conservatives, constitute a majority, and throw
the present dominant party in Congress into a minority we say we saw,
or thought we saw, how such party usurpation might well be regarded
by the President in the light of a conspiracy against the Government, the
Constitution and public liberty; and how, with his old-fashioned fidelity
to the Constitution, he might feel it to be his duty to deny that body,
thus self-constituted, the Executive recognition as the Congress of the
United States. We saw, or thought we saw, how that body, still persisting

96 THE RECONSTRUCTION

in its sessions, claiming the Capitol, and legislating for a whole country,
when only half was represented in it, should by its violence and usurpa-
tions, impose upon the President the necessity of doing what the great Lord
Protector of England did. We almost fancied that we heard a deep hoarse
voice exclaiming, "For shame get you gone. Give place to honester
men to those who will more faithfully discharge their trust. You are
no longer a Congress. Take away that bauble."

All this occurring, we could very naturally look for the President to
call together a Congress composed of members elect from all the States
of the Union, as well those of the South as those of the North; and
that if the radical members should refuse to attend that he would recognize
the Northern conservative members and the Southern members, as the
lawful Congress to sit in the Capitol and to legislate for the country. Nor
did we see how all this would happen peacefully. We supposed that the
radical and sectional Congress would continue its sessions, appeal to the
people and proceed to muster an army, if the United States army should
not side with it. We also supposed that the President would be prepared
to meet force with force.

The Richmond (Va.) Enquirer:

It is evident indeed, that a violent collision between the Congress and
the President is inevitable, and is imminent, if the true spirit and intent
of the Constitution shall remain despised, and its forms abused for the
usurpation of power. In this issue the President has thus far been alto-
gether in the right, and has evinced all the moderation. The Congress
has been wholly in the wrong, and has displayed a corresponding violence.
That the public peace is yet unbroken, is due to the President. It depends
on Congress whether it can be permanently maintained; for we take it
for granted that the President will not yield himself an unresisting victim
to revolutionary violence, whatever garb it may wear, or allow the
Constitution, to defend which the sword has been given him, to be
overturned and destroyed. A Congress coup d'etat can be met by a
Presidential coup d'etat, and in the collision the hardest must fend off.

The Charleston (S.C.) News:

One obvious step to the more firm establishment of his Government
would be in the call of a Congress, to be composed of the members of the
Southern States and such members of the present Congress as are ready
to sustain his policy. In such a Congress there would be as large a Senate
and nearly as large a House, while with such a body to sustain him, he
can even more justly represent the Government, and throw the Radicals
who shall accept the issue into the defensive attitude of an adversary
faction.

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The Richmond (Va.) Enquirer, referring more particularly to the
Hon. Thaddeus Stevens:

The Satanic puddler of the national foundry grins as he sees the sparks
fly off from the mass of metal, that he is manipulating with devilish glee
in his fiery furnace. He knows that they will fall cold and lifeless, mere
flakes of inert iron. But, Mr. Stevens, God helping us, we do not intend
to pass through your rolling: and the day may not be distant when the
fires of your forge will be put out by a thunderbolt from the red right
hand of Caesar.

The Macon (Ga.) Telegraph:

The ballot box is too slow a process as a remedy for existing grievances
Let the President put down the rebellion in Congress and appeal to the
ballot box to sustain that.

And the same journal, on another occasion, says of the Southern
applicants for seats:

If refused admittance, a regiment of United States troops should be
sent to put the Southern members in their places over them; though a
small minority, radicalism combined could not put them out.

The Atlanta (Ga.) Intelligencer:

May not a majority of the Senators or Representatives duly elected by
the people, and who have their certificates of election from the Governors
of their respective States, meet at the Capitol, and, under the provisions
of the Constitution, organize themselves into a legislative body? In other
words, may not the Senators now denied their seats, and the Senators who
desire that the Southern members should have their seats, meet, organize,
and proceed to business as the "Senate of the United States?" They would
have the majority, the President the power to enforce the possession of
the Capitol, and the people, we have no doubt, would sustain the measure,
desperate though it might at first seem.

True, this would be a bold measure, but Andrew Johnson is a bold
man; and if noted for one thing more than another, it is his great tenacity
of purpose. He well knows that the people of the United States are with
him in this controversy, and that they will sustain him in his efforts to
restore constitutional government. Sectional monopolies must be put down,
else the President's policy of restoration is a failure, and the dissolution of
the Union an accomplished fact.

gg THE RECONSTRUCTION

And the Augusta (Ga.) Constitutionalist'.

Cold steel has been evoked before by legislative bodies, and the saints
are well enough read to remember how Pride's pikemen purged the Parlia-
ment House as they would winnow the Capitol how the Commons set up
a scaffold at Whitehall as they would erect a gibbet in Pennsylvania
Avenue how the National Assembly worked the guillotine and robbed
the rich as they, too, would play Jack Ketch at the gallows and Captain
Macheath with each honest man's purse. Patience has its limits, and these
gentry had better beware.

Loyalty

The sentiment of loyalty which is encouraged throughout the
South may perhaps be estimated by the following regular toasts at
the anniversary celebration of the "Richmond Blues," as recently
as May 10, 1866.

1. The 10th of May, 1793: The natal day of the R.L.I. Blues; we
hail its return with the social greeting of old and active members.

2. The brave who have fallen in a cause they believed to be just:
While their bodies are committed to the grave and their spirits to God,
we will enshrine them in our hearts.

3. Virginia: Right or wrong.

4. General Robert E. Lee: Soldier, patriot, citizen, Christian.

5. Stonewall Jackson: The only unconquered general the Christian
hero whom even his enemies revere.

6. The Lost Cause. [Drunk standing and in silence.]

7. The Conquered Banner: Fold it up tenderly.

8. The illustrious prisoner now bearing in his own person the imputed
crimes of his people: Every true Southern heart would suffer in his
stead. The God of Truth and Justice judge him.

9. The Old Captains: Dear are the living; dearer the dead.

10. Henry A. Wise, Prisoner of War: Unforgiven, unforgotten.

Sharing the Burdens

... In what spirit the South may be expected to assume its share
of the common burden may be guessed by the exhortations of the
Augusta Constitutionalist advising the planters of Georgia to plow up
their fields because Congress proposes to levy a tax on cotton, just
as everything else that we eat and drink and wear is taxed to meet
the obligations piled upon us by the madness of these "sons of
gallant Oglethorpe."

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To the extent of full three hundred millions of greenback dollars has
the cotton we had at the close of the war helped the federal credit and
sorely did it need it. That same sum this year would be a further god-
send; but are you willing to bolster up a government which, as per
estimate, only leaves you for all extra-crop expenses but one twenty-third
part of your gross receipts? If so, planters of Georgia, you are indeed fit
to be ridden, boot and spur. But if, like the true sons of gallant Oglethorpe,
you declare you are no bondmen Hebrews to make bricks without straw;
if you say by act and deed you will not give time, labor and money only
that the full profit of all shall go, half to the negroes of whom you were
robbed, and half to the debt incurred for the balls that killed your kins-
men, you will bring about such an earthquake in Wall Street and in
Lowell, in the national bank system and the credit of federal bonds, as
win speedily work tyranny's downfall. The great mass of the North are
willing to let you prosper if you can, but they are blind to the devilment
plotted against you, and need an earthquake to open their eyes. Once
wake them, and the Five Cent Tax will sleep with Hector. They will
learn that first lesson in political economy that tyranny don't pay, and
will demand politically what we again and again financially advise, be-
seech, adjure LET COTTON ALONE.

Reconciliation

President Johnson and the Democrats assure us so earnestly that
the South is brimming over with kindly feeling towards us, that we
would seem to be more or less than men to eye with continued sus-
picion those who are so fondly asking for reconciliation, and oblivion
of mutual injuries. When, however, we turn to facts, we find them to
hardly correspond with the roseate pictures seen through the John-
sonian-Democratic spectacles. It would seem as though those who
are clamoring for the restoration of their forfeited constitutional
rights should begin by setting the example of according to their con-
querors the plain constitutional right which guarantees to a citizen
of Pennsylvania or Ohio all the privileges in Virginia or Mississippi
which he enjoys in his native state. Simple justice and good faith, to
say nothing of policy and common sense, demand this, and yet the
uniform testimony of almost every man who has visited the South,
since the inauguration of Mr. Johnson's process of reconstruction,
tells the same tale of warning to those who might think of settling
there, and of bringing their strong arms and intelligent industry to
aid in rebuilding her shattered fortunes. What treatment a Northern
man. may expect, who will not abdicate his right to Ms own opinions,
may be gathered from the Memphis Avalanche, which thus holds

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up to public execration the "Yankee Merchants," who dared to
think favorably of the Civil Rights Bill.

We warn our friends and our people against them. Buy nothing of
them. Sell nothing to them. They would disfranchise the very people
among whom, they hope to flourish. Their association is contamination;
their presence but moral leprosy and death. Let them feel this, and feel
it now and forever. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. They
would disfranchise, insult and degrade us. Let us cause them to feel that
we cannot patronize the hand raised to chastise us. If any planter or any
one else would like to know the names of these radical one-horse Yankees,
who rejoice every time the South has an insult heaped upon her, let them
call at the Avalanche office. They will be given at once. So long as we
can wield a pen, such haters of the land and people where they reside
shall not insult us with impunity. They are nuisances, and we shall report
them as such on all occasions. We intend they shall have an infamous
notoriety, which will stick to them as the shirt of Nessus.

In a recent letter, John Minor Botts informs us how much fraterni-
zation we may expect hi Virginia:

Now, if this feeling does exist, why is it that every Union man is
sacrificed and everyone who was in the Rebel service taken care of? Why
is it that if young ladies, who modestly and instinctively shrink from the
appearance of their names in the public prints, and who attend a social
party given by United States officers, find their attendance on the occasion
referred to, in the next day's papers in such terms as to bring odium
upon them among their former Mends?

Thus is an allusion to a case which occurred in Richmond. Some
"Yankee" officers, in a praiseworthy effort at reconciliation, gave a
ball, which was attended by some Virginia ladies. To associate
with Northern gentlemen was unpardonable, and even the chivalrous
instincts of Virginians could not prevent the public punishment of
those ladies by the publication of their names in the Richmond
Examiner, whose editor remarked, in vouching for the accuracy of
his information:

It is enough for us to know that we obtained it accurately, and that,
too, without getting our foot within the circle where any Southern man,
however weak his antecedents, should blush scarlet to be found, no matter
how Yankeeized and galvanized he be now.

For this base invasion of the sanctities of social life, the Examiner
received the thanks "of a large majority of the ladies of Richmond,"

THE RECONSTRUCTION 101

and the ladles whom It had held up to obloquy were insulted and
persecuted. General Terry, believing that such acts were not cal-
culated to promote a restoration of harmony and fraternal feeling,
suppressed the Examiner. An application for its resumption was
referred to General Grant, who returned it with the endorsement:

REPLY TO APPLICATION OF H. RIVES POLLARD, PRAYING A REVOCATION
OF THE ORDER SUPPRESSING THE RICHMOND EXAMINER The course of
the Examiner in every number which I have seen has been such as to
foster and Increase the ill feelings towards the Government of the United
States by the discontented portion of the Southern people. I believe it to
be for the best interests of the whole people, North and South, to suppress
such utterances wherever the power exists to do so. The power certainly
does exist where martial law prevails, and will be exercised. Reluctant as
I was to pursue this course, I have felt it my duty to pursue it in this
instance; and as much as I dislike to interfere with the interests of
individuals, I would deem it improper and mischievous in tendency to
revoke the order for the suppression of the Richmond Examiner at this
time.

[SIGNED] U. S. GRANT, LIEUT. GEN.

In spite of the Lieutenant General, however, the order was revoked
by President Johnson, on Mr. Pollard signing the following pledge:

If the publication of the Examiner shall be permitted, I solemnly pledge
my honor that it shall be devoted to the support of the Union, the Con-
stitution and the laws, and that journal will CONTINUE heartily to
support the President's policy.

Thus the era of good feeling and fraternity does not yet seem
to have dawned among our Sounthem brethren.

When Mississippi elected as her first reconstructed Governor,
General Humphreys, of the rebel army, who had to have a pardon
telegraphed to him before he could take the oaths of office; when
South Carolina came within a few hundred votes of conferring the
same important position upon Wade Hampton, in spite of Ms per-
sistent refusal to be a candidate; when New Orleans chose Munroe,
her most violent secessionist, as Mayor; when Mobile selects the
pirate Semmes as her Probate Judge, we have evidence which the
blindest cannot overlook as to the character of those who, for the
future, are to be the leaders of Southern opinion,, the moulders of
Southern policy and the mediums of Southern demands. This purpose
is frankly avowed. As the Columbia South Carolinian says:

102 THE RECONSTRUCTION

We vote for the late confederate soldiers because they represent the
valor, honor and intelligence of the people.

And the Macon (Ga.) Journal:

We have a right to elect our military heroes to office. Ought we to
give up our cherished notions of policy to swallow a plum?

The New Orleans correspondent of the New York World, May 21,
1866, boasts of this and shows us how the old alliance between
rebellion and Democracy is rapidly becoming again cemented:

The election on Monday resulted in the success of the National
Democratic Ticket. All of the Democratic candidates were elected,
except a justice of the peace, a constable, and the clerk of the Second
District Court. This latter office is supposed to be, next to that of sheriff,
the most valuable in the parish. The successful candidate is Captain
O'Rourke, who had been defeated in the Democratic convention by one
of the stay-at-home gentry. Captain O'Rourke had been a gallant officer
in the Confederate army, and had lost an arm in the service. These cir-
cumstances made him invincible. All the other candidates on the general
ticket of National Democracy are elected; and all of them had been in the
Confederate service, in one army or another. I suppose that this will be
taken as conclusive evidence of "disloyalty," especially as their vote Is
about two to one over that of their opponents, except where ex-Confed-
erates ran against them.

We, however, view it differently. We vote for the men who sym-
pathized with us, and were of us, in the bitter struggle of the past, and
we organize ourselves as the Democratic party, because we find in that
party the only support of justice, of liberty and of true Democracy. The
fact, that the old Confederate sentiment which is the people of the
South allies itself willingly and spontaneously with a great national
organization, shows conclusively that a national feeling is restored, or is,
at least, in the way of restoration.

In what temper these men would exercise their controlling in-
fluence when once admitted is not left to conjecture. Senator Garrett
Davis, of Kentucky, and Senator Saulsbury, of Delaware, are "con-
servative" Democrats, enthusiastic for the "President's policy," and
have never gone the length of openly justifying rebellion or joining
in armed resistance to the Government. Yet, in the debate in the
Senate on the Civil Rights Bill, April 5, 1866, Mr. Davis declared
that, in the event of the passage of that measure:

RECONSTRUCTION 3.03

I am henceforth the enemy of your Government, and will devote the
feeble remnants of my life in efforts to overthrow it.

Mr. Saulsbury was not to be outdone, and openly prophesied and
threatened resistance:

I will rise to say, sir, that in my judgment the passage of this bill is
an inauguration of revolution. It is well, sir, that the American people
should take warning and set their house in order, for it is impossible that
the people will patiently submit to it. Heaven knows we have had enough
of bloodshed, enough of mourning in every household. There are too
many newly made graves for anyone to wish to see more. Attempt to
execute this law within the limits of any State of this Union, and in my
judgment this country will again be plunged into all the horrors of civil
war. In my own State an humble State in point of numbers, but a
State of gallant sons your law will never be observed by the judiciary.

Thus, like the Bourbons, the South has learned nothing and for-
gotten nothing. Unabashed, unhumiliated, unrepentant, it comes up
to us with its old swagger, yielding nothing and demanding every-
thing, listening to no reason and threatening revolution and con-
fusion. It acknowledges only the empire of force. While we exerted
our power, it respected us. When we laid aside our weapons and
prepared to welcome it, it mistook humanity and good feeling for
fear, and it at once resumes its old attitude and its old policy, which
the Democratic alliance had always rendered so successful. The
Democracy hungering for the spoils of place and power, is eager to
renew that alliance and to sell the country for its miserable mess of
pottage. It rests with the people to say whether these schemes shall
be baffled, or whether we shall supinely permit the renewal of an
agitation which will convulse the country for a generation.

On the one hand are the President and the Democratic party,
clamoring for the immediate restoration of the South. On the other
is Congress, patiently investigating the temper of the South, and
planning to obtain guarantees that may protect our institutions and
our interests from the evil consequences that would ensue if the
Southern members should be disposed to abuse their power. Both
parties appeal to the people to sustain these widely divergent lines
of policy. Perhaps the evidence adduced above may aid the people
in rendering their judgment on this most momentous question.

"Is the South Ready for Reconstruction?" Board of Publica-
tions of the Union League of Philadelphia (1866), pp. 1-20.

104 THE RECONSTRUCTION

. . . THE SUBJECTS OF WHITES WHO HAVE JUST

PURGED THEMSELVES FROM GUILT

OF TREASON.

E. P. Whipple, "Reconstruction and Negro Suffrage"

It is often said, that, although the Federal government may have
the right and power to decide who shall be considered "the people"
of the Rebel States, in so important a matter as the conversion of
them into States of the Federal Union, it is still politic and just to
make the qualifications of voters as nearly as possible what they were
before the Rebellion. Conceding this, we still have to face the fact,
that a large body of men, held before the war as slaves, have been
emancipated, and added to the body of the people. They are now
as free as the white men. The old constitutions of the Slave States
could have no application to the new condition of affairs. The
change in the circumstances, by which four years have done the
ordinary work of a century, demands a corresponding change in the
application of old rules, even admitting that we should take them as
a guide. Having converted the loyal blacks from slaves into the
condition of citizens of the United States, there can be no reason or
justice or policy in allowing them to be made, in localities recently
Rebel, the subjects of whites who have but just purged themselves
from the guilt of treason.

The question of negro suffrage being thus reduced to a question of
expediency, to be decided on its own merits, the first argument
brought against it is based on the proposition that it is inexpedient to
give the privilege of voting to the ignorant and unintelligent. This
sounds well; but a moment's reflection shows us that the objection is
directed simply against deficiencies of education and intelligence
which happen to be accompanied with a black skin. Three-fifths or
three-fourths of the poor whites of the South cannot read or write;
and they are cruelly belied, if they do not add to their ignorance that
more important disqualification for good citizenship indisposition
or incapacity for work. In general, the American system proceeds on
the idea that the best way of qualifying men to vote is voting, as
the best way of teaching boys to swim is to let them go into the
water. "Our national experience," says Chief Justice Chase, in a
letter to the New Orleans freedmen, "has demonstrated that public
order reposes most securely on the broad base of Universal Suffrage.
It has also proved that universal suffrage is the surest guaranty and
most powerful stimulus of individual, social, and political progress."

THE RECONSTRUCTION IO$

But even if we take the ground that education and suffrage, though
not actually, should properly be, Identical, the argument would not
apply to the case of the freedmen. What we need primarily in the
South is loyal citizens of the United States, and treason there is in
inverse proportion to ignorance. If, in reconstructing the Rebel
communities, we make suffrage depend on education, we inevitably
put the local governments into the hands of a small minority of
prominent Confederates whom we have recently defeated; of men
physically subdued, but morally rebellious; of men who have used
their education simply to destroy the prosperity created by the
industry of the ignorant and enslaved, and who, however skillful they
may be as "architects of ruin," have shown no capacity for the
nobler art which repairs and rebuilds. If, on the other hand, we make
suffrage depend on color, we disfranchise the only portion of the
population on whose allegiance we can thoroughly rely, and give
the States over to white ignorance and idleness led by white intrigue
and disloyalty. We are placed by events in that strange condition
in which the safety of that "republican form of government" we
desire, to insure the Southern States, has more safeguards in the
instincts of the ignorant than in the intelligence of the educated. The
right of the freedmen, not merely to the common privileges of
citizens, but to own themselves, depends on the connection of the
States in which they live with the United States being preserved.
They must know that Secession and State Independence mean their
re-enslavement. Saulsbury of Delaware, and WiHey of West Virginia,
declared in the Senate, in 1862, that the Rebel States, when they
came back into the Union, would have the legal power to re-enslave
any blacks whom the National government might emancipate; and
it is only the plighted faith of the United States to the freedmen,
which such a proceeding would violate, which can prevent the crime
from being perpetrated. It is as citizens of the United States, not
as inhabitants of North Carolina or Mississippi that their freedom
is secure. Their instincts, their interests, and their position will
thus be their teachers in the duties of citizenship. They are as sure
to vote in accordance with the most advanced ideas of the time as
most of the embittered aristocracy are to vote for the most retro-
grade. They will, though at first ignorant, necessarily be in political
sympathy with the most educated voters of New York, Ohio, and
Massachusetts; if they were as low in the scale of being as their
bitterest revilers assert, they would still be forced by their instincts
into intuitions of their interests; and their interests are identical with
those of civilization and progress. We suppose that those who think

106 THE RECONSTRUCTION

them most degraded would be willing to concede to them the posses-
sion of a little selfish cunning; and a little selfish cunning is enough
to bring them into harmony with the purposes, if not the spirit, of
the largest-minded philanthropy and statesmanship of the North.

It is claimed, we know, by some of the hardiest dealers in
assertion, that the freedmen will vote as their former masters shall
direct; but as this argument is generally put forward by those whose
sympathies are with the former masters rather than with the eman-
cipated bondmen, one finds it difficult to understand why they should
object to a policy which will increase the power of those whom they
wish to be dominant. The circumstances, however, under which
credulous ignorance becomes the prey of unscrupulous intelligence,
are familiar to all who have observed our elections. An ignorant
Irish Catholic may be the victim of a pro-slavery demagogue, because
the latter flatters his prejudices; but can he be deceived by a
bigoted Know-Nothing, who is the object of them? The only dema-
gogue who could control the negro would be an abolition demagogue,
and he could control him to his harm only when the negro was
deprived of his rights. The slave-masters were wont to pay consider-
able attention to zoology not because they were interested in science,
but because in that science they thought they could obtain arguments
for expelling blacks from the human species. In their zoological
studies, did they ever learn that mice instinctively seek the protection
of the cat, or that the deer speeds to, instead of from, the hunter?
The persons whose votes the late masters would be most likely
to control would palpably be those whose votes they always have
controlled, namely, the poor whites; for, in the late Slave States,
white aristocrat is still bound to white democrat by the strong tie of
a common contempt of "the nigger." Meanwhile it is not difficult
to believe that, among four millions of black people, there are enough
plantation Hampdens and Adamses to give political organization to
their brethren, and make their votes efficient for the protection of
their interests.

We think, then, it may be taken for granted that, while ignorant,
the freedmen will vote right by the force of their instincts, and that
the education they require will be the result of their possessing the
political power to demand it. Free schools are not the creations of
private benevolence, but of public taxation; it is useless to expect
a system of universal education in a community which does not
rest on universal suffrage; and the children of the poor freeman
are educated at the public expense, not so much by the pleading
of the children's needs as by the power of the father's ballot. To take

THE RECONSTRUCTION 10/

the ground that the "superior" race will educate the "inferior" race
it has but just held in bondage, that it will humanely set to work
to prepare and qualify the "niggers" to be voters, only escapes from
being considered the artifice of the knave by charitably referring
it to the credulity of the simpleton. We do not send, as Mr. Sumner
has happily said, "the child be nursed by the wolf. . . ."

. . . If the negroes do not get the power of political self-protection
in the conventions of the people which are now to be called, it is
not reasonable to expect they will ever get it by the consent of the
whites. Legal State conventions are called by previous law. There
is no previous State law applicable to the Rebel communities, be-
cause, revolutionized by rebellion, the very persons who are qualified
by the old State laws to call conventions are disqualified by the laws of
the United States. The result is that the people are an unorganized
mass, to be reorganized under the lead of the Federal government; and
of this mass of people literally, in this case "the masses" *the
free blacks are as much a part as the free whites. As soon, however,
as the machinery of State governments is set in motion by these
conventions as soon as these governments are recognized by the
President and Congress no conventions to alter the constitutions
agreed upon can be called, except by previous State laws. If negro
suffrage is not granted in the election of members to the present
conventions, the power will pass permanently into the hands of the
whites, and the only opportunity for a peaceful settlement of the
question will be lost. At the very time when, abstractly, no party has
legal rights, and only one party has claims, we propose to deliberately
sacrifice the party that has claims to the party which will soon
acquire legal rights to oppress the claimants. For, disguise it as we
may, the United States government really holds and exercises the
power which gives vitality to the preliminaries of reconstruction, and
it is therefore responsible for all evils in the future which shall spring
from its neglect or injustice in the present.

The addition, too, of four millions of persons to the people of the
South, without any corresponding addition of voters, will increase
the political power of the ruling whites to an alarming extent, while
it will remove all checks on its mischievous exercise. The constitution
declares that "representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned
among the several States, which may be included in this Union,
according to their respected numbers, which shall be determined by
adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound
to service for a terms of years, and excluding Indians not taxed,
three-fifths of all other persons." The unanswerable argument pre-

108 THE RECONSTRUCTION

seated at the time against the clause relating to the slaves did not
prevent its adoption. "If," it was said, "the negroes are property,
why is other property not represented? If men, why three-fifths?"
Still the South has always enjoyed the double privilege of treating
the negro as an article of merchandise and of using three-fifths of
him as political capital. He has thus added to the power by which
he was enslaved, and has been represented in Congress by persons
who regarded him either as a beast or as "a descendant of Ham."
In 1860, when the ratio of representation was about one hundred
and twenty-seven thousand the South had, by the three-fifths rule,
the right to eighteen more representatives in Congress, and eighteen
more electoral votes, than it would have had, if only free persons
had been counted. The emancipation of the slaves will give it twelve
more; for the blacks will now no longer be constitutional fractions
but constitutional units. The three : fifths arrangement was a mon-
strous anomaly; but the three-fifths will be worse, if negro suffrage
be denied. Four millions of free people will, by the mere fact of
being inhabitants of Southern territory, confer a political power
equal to thirty members of Congress, and yet have no voice in their
election. It has been computed by the Hon. Robert Dale Owen, in a
paper on the subject, published in the New York Tribune, that
in some States, where the blacks and whites are about equal in
number, and where two-thirds of the whites shall "qualify" as voters,
this new condition of things will give the Southern white voter, in a
Presidential or Congressional election, three times as much political
influence as a Northern voter. And on whom shall we, in many
localities, confer this immense privilege? Here is Mr. Owen's de-
scription of a specimen of the class of Southern "poor whites" we
propose thus to exalt:

I have often encountered this class. I saw many of them last year,
while visiting, as a member of a Government commission, some of the
Southern States. Labor degraded before their eyes has extinguished within
them all respect for industry, all ambition, all honorable exertion to
improve their condition. When last I had the pleasure of seeing you at
Nashville, I met there, in the office of a gentleman charged with the duty
of issuing transportation and rations to indigent persons, black and
white, a notable example of this strange class. He was a Rebel deserter
a rough, dirty, uncouth specimen of humanity tall, stout, and wiry-
looking, rude and abrupt in speech and bearing, and clothed in tattered
homespun. In no civil tone, he demanded rations. When informed that
all rations applicable to such a purpose were exhausted, he broke forth,

"What am I to do, then? How am I to get home?"

THE RECONSTRUCTION 10Q

"You can have no difficulty," was the reply. "It is but fifteen or
eighteen hours down the river [the Cumberland] by steamboat to where
you live. I furnished you transportation; you can work your way,"

"Work my way! [with a scowl of angry contempt] I never did a stroke
of work since I was born; and I never expect to till my dying day."

The agent replied, quietly,

"They wiH give you all you want to eat on board, if you help them to
carry wood."

"Carry wood!" he retorted, with an oath. "Whenever they ask me to
carry wood, 111 tell them they may set me on shore; I'd rather starve for
a week than work for an hour; I don't want to live in a world that I can't
make a living out of without work."

Is it for men like that, ignorant, illiterate, vicious, fit for no decent
employment on earth except manual labor, and spurning all labor as
degradation is it in favor of such insolent swaggerers that we are to
disfranchise the humble, quiet, hard-working negro? Are the votes of
such men as Stanton or Seward, Sumner or Garrison, Grant or Sherman,
to be neutralized by the ballot of one such worthless barbarian? . . .

The Atlantic Monthly August, 1865, pp. 242, 243, 244, 245.

HAS THE PAST WAR MERELY LAID THE
FOUNDATION OF ANOTHER!

Edward A. Pollard, "Parties In The South"

An intelligent foreigner, making Ms observations at Washington
at this time, would be puzzled to determine whether the Americans
had a Government, or not. There are the names: The Executive,
the Congress, the Judiciary; but what is the executive question, what
the congressional question, what the judicial question, it appears im-
possible to decide. It is a remarkable fact that at Washington to-day,
there is not a single well-defined department of political power!
There are the paraphernalia and decorations of a government; an
elaborate anarchy; but the well-defined distribution of power and the
order necessary to administer public affairs appear to have been
wholly lost, the charter of the government almost obliterated,
and the Constitution overlaid with amendments, which, carried
into effect, would hardly leave a vestige of the old instrument or
a feature in which could be recognized the work of our forefathers,
and the ancient creation of 1789. The controversy thus engendered

110 THE RECONSTRUCTION

is something more than a mere question of parties where there are
points of coincidence between the contestants sufficient to confine
opposition, and where both argue from the common premises of a
written constitution. It is something more than the temporary rack
and excitement of those partisan difficulties in which the American
people have had so much experience of exaggerated dangers and
foolish alarms that they are likely to give them attention no longer,
but as ephemeral sensations. It is something vastly more than the
usual vapours of the political cauldron. When a Congress, repre-
senting not much more than a moiety of the American States, and,
therefore, in the condition of an unconstitutional authority and
factious party, undertakes to absorb the power of the government;
to determine Executive questions by its close "Committee of Re-
construction'*; to put down the judiciary of the Southern States and
by a Freedmen's Bureau, and other devices, erect an imperium in
imperio in one part of the Union, it is obvious that the controversy
is no narrow one of party, that it involves the traditions and spirit
of the government, and goes to the ultimate contest of constitutional
liberty in America. Regarding these issues, the question comes fear-
fully to the mind: Has the past war merely laid the foundation of
another! The pregnant lesson of human experience is that few
nations have had their first civil war without having their second;
and that the only guaranty against the repetition is to be found in
the policy of wise and liberal concessions gracefully made by the
successful party. And such reconciliations have been rarest in the
republican form of government; for, while generosity often resides
in the breast of individual rulers, the history of mankind unhappily
shows that it is a rare quality of political parties, where men act in
feverish masses and under the dominion of peculiar passions.

To the division of parties in the North Radicals and Conserva-
tives there has grown up to some extent a correspondent difference
of opinions among the Southern people as to the consequences of
the war. But only to a certain extent; for the party in the South that,
corresponding to the theory of the Northern Radicals, account them-
selves entirely at the mercy of a conquering power and taking every-
thing ex gratia, is only tie detestable faction of time-servers and
the servile coterie that attends all great changes in history, and courts
the new authority, whatever it may be.

There is a better judgment already read by the Southern people
of what the war has decided as against themselves. The last
memorable remark of Ex-President Davis, when a fugitive, and be-
fore the doors of a prison closed upon him, was: "The principle

THE RECONSTRUCTION 111

for which we contended is bound to reassert itself, though it may be
at another time and in another form." It was a wise and noble
utterance, to be placed to the credit of an unfortunate ruler. And
so, too, the man, marked above all others as the orator of the South
Henry A. Wise, of Virginia, standing before Ms countrymen, with
his gray hairs and luminous eyes, has recently proclaimed with
trumpet-voice that all is not lost, that a great struggle of con-
stitutional liberty yet remains, and that there are still missions of
duty and glory for the South.

The people of the South have surrendered in the war what the
war has conquered; but they cannot be expected to give up what
was not involved in the war, and voluntarily abandon their political
schools for the dogma of Consolidation. That dogma, the result has
not properly imposed upon them; it has not "conquered ideas." The
issues of the war were practical: the restoration of the Union and
the abolition of slavery; and only so far as political formulas were
necessarily involved in these have they been affected by the conclu-
sion: The doctrine of secession was extinguished; and yet there is
something left more than the shadow of State Rights, if we may
believe President Johnson, who has recently and officially used these
terms, and affirmed in them at least some substantial significance.
Even if the States are to be firmly held in the Union; even if the
authority of the Union is to be held supreme in that respect, it does
not follow that it is to be supreme in all other respects; it does
not follow that it is to legislate for the States; it does not follow
that it is "a national Government over the States and people alike."
It is for the South to preserve every remnant of her rights and even,
though parting with the doctrine of secession, to beware of the
extremity of surrendering State Rights in gross, and consenting to a
"National Government," with an unlimited power of legislation that
will consider the States as divided only by imaginary lines of
geography, and see in its subjects only "the one people of all the
States."

But it is urged that the South should come to this understanding,
so as to consolidate the peace of the country, and provide against
a "war of ideas." Now a "war of ideas" is what the South wants
and insists upon perpetrating. It may be a formidable phrase "the
war of ideas" but after all, it is a harmless figure of rhetoric, and
means only that we shall have parties in the country. We would not
live in a country unless there were parties in it; for where there
is no such combat, there is no liberty, no animation, no topics, no
interest of the twenty-four hours, no theatres of intellectual activity,

112 THE RECONSTRUCTION

no objects of ambition. We do not desire the vacant unanimity of
despotism. All that is left the South is "the war of ideas." She
has thrown down the sword to take up the weapons of argument,
not indeed under any banner of fanaticism, or to enforce a dogma,
but simply to make the honourable conquest of reason and justice.
In such a war there are noble victories to be won, memorable services
to be performed, and grand results to be achieved. The Southern
people stand by their principles. There is no occasion for dogmatic
assertion, or fanatical declamation, or inflammatory discourse as long
as they have a text on which they can make a sober exposition of
their rights, and claim the verdict of the intelligent.

Outside the domain of party politics, the war has left another
consideration for the people of the South. It is a remarkable fact
that States reduced by war are apt to experience the extinction
of their literature, the decay of mind, and the loss of their distinctive
forms of thought. Nor is such a condition inconsistent with a gross
material prosperity that often grows upon the bloody crust of war.
When Greece fell under the Roman yoke, she experienced a prosper-
ity she had never known before. It was an era rank with wealth and
material improvement. But her literature became extinct or emas-
culated; the distinctive forms of her art disappeared; and her mind,
once the peerless light of the world, waned into an obscurity from
which it never emerged,

It is to be feared that in the present condition of the Southern
States, losses will be experienced greater than the immediate in-
flictions of fire and sword. The danger is that they will lose their
literature, their former habits of thought, their intellectual self-
assertion, while they are too intent upon recovering the mere
material prosperity, ravaged and impaired by the war. There are
certain coarse advisers who tell the Southern people that the great
ends of their lives now are to repair their stock of national wealth;
to bring in Northern capital and labour; to build mills and factories
and hotels and gilded caravansaries; and to make themselves rivals
in the clattering and garish enterprise of the North. This advice has
its proper place. But there are higher objects than the Yankee magna
bona of money and display, and loftier aspirations than the civiliza-
tion of material things. In the life of nations, as in that of the
individual, there is something better than pelf, and the coarse
prosperity of dollars and cents. The lacerated, but proud ambitious
heart of the South will scarcely respond to the mean aspiration of
the recusant Governor of South Carolina Mr. Orr: "I am tired of

THE RECONSTRUCTION 113

South Carolina as she was. I count for her the material prosperity
of New England. I would have her acres teem with life and vigour
and intelligence, as do those of Massachusetts."

There are time-servers in every cause; there are men who fill their
bellies with husks, and turn on their faces and die; but there are
others who, in the midst of public calamities, and in their own
scanty personal fortune, leave behind them the memory of noble
deeds, and a deathless heritage of glory.

Defeat has not made "all our sacred things profane." The war
has left the South its own memories, its own heroes, its own tears,
its own dead. Under these traditions, sons will grow to manhood, and
lessons sink deep that are learned from the lips of widowed mothers.

It would be immeasurably the worst consequence of defeat in
this war that the South should lose its moral and intellectual
distinctiveness as a people, and cease to assert its well-known supe-
riority in civilization, in political scholarship, and in all standards
of individual character over the people of the North. That supe-
riority has been recognized by every foreign observer, and by the
intelligent everywhere; for it is the South that in the past produced
four-fifths of the political literature of America, and presented in its
public men that list of American names best known in the Christian
world. That superiority the war has not conquered or lowered; and
the South will do right to claim and to cherish it.

The war has not swallowed up everything. There are great interests
which stand out of the pale of the contest, which it is for the South
still to cultivate and maintain. She must submit and truthfully to
what the war has properly decided. But the war properly decided
only what was put in issue: the restoration of the Union and the
excision of slavery; and to these two conditions the South submits.
But the war did not decide negro equality; it did not decide negro
suffrage; it did not decide State Rights, although it might have
exploded their abuse; it did not decide the orthodoxy of the
Democratic party; it did not decide the right of a people to show
dignity in misfortune, and to maintain self-respect in the face of
adversity. And these things which the war did not decide, the
Southern people will still cling to, still claim, and still assert in them
their rights and views.

The Lost Cause, pp. 748-752.

114 THE RECONSTRUCTION

... I HAVE SURVIVED HOPE AS WELL AS

YOUTH, AND NOW TOIL ON DOGGEDLY,

WITH NO BRIGHTER IMPULSE THAN

THE SENSE OF DUTY!

Simms Letters

To WILLIAM HAWKINS FERRIS, Charleston, Feb. 12, 1867.

I trust you & yours are well. I am not. My head aches while I
write, and my heart is not free from its aches also. Everything is
dark here before us. We are all dreadfully anxious about our future
not about the political but the physical condition of the country.
Nobody but our politicians cares a straw about reconstruction. The
terror before our people is physical misery, privation, want, hunger,
starvation. We expect Mrs. Rowe and the baby down today. Her
husband has himself taken to the plough! the graduate of a college!

W. GILMORE SIMMS.

To JOHN JACOB BOCKEE, March 20, 1867.

But no language can describe the suffering which prevails, espe-
cially among that class, accustomed to better days, whose pride
compels them to starve in silence. There are hundreds, in this city,
as I learn from good authority, who are daily making sale of such
remnants of plate, crockery, furniture, etc., as have been left them,
to provide the daily bread. And there are very few of us who do
not require the exertion and labor of every hour, far into the nigjit,
to keep above the water. You know already that I am finding bread
for my children only out of my brains, and you can readily guess
how pitiable is the results. One of my literary friends, of fine capacity,
is literally dying by inches, of poverty and disease together; having
wife, and widowed sister, and several nephews and nieces in the same
condition of distress from poverty. But the subject is too terrible,
and I gladly turn from it. ... Fortunately my daughters have all
been taught to do their own work, fit their own dresses, and they go
to work cheerfully, and sing merrily while they toil; and their
elasticity helps to encourage and strengthen me in my labor. The
picture of Irving, etc. will help to cover the bombshell holes still in
our walls. The room in which I sleep is still excoriated with those

THE RECONSTRUCTION 11$

missiles. Please advise me, whatever is sent me, of the names
addresses of the parties to whom I should be grateful. . . . For the
last three nights I have written till two in the morning. Does not
this look like suicide?

To EVERT AUGUSTUS DUYCKINCK, Charleston, March 21, 1867.

. . . Everything in the social atmosphere here is miserable. The
people are hopeless in despair surrounded by Ruin & threatened,
in addition to the loss of their liberties, by the immediate pressure
of Famine. The whole South is in this condition, and is doomed to
be the Ireland of the Union a perpetual incubus.

To ROBERT BARNWELL RHETT, JR., Midway, Barnwell District

May 6, 1867.

As far as I can see there is no possible escape from general famine,
in which all will suffer, many perish. In a precinct of fifty miles in
this district, there is no more than one planter in fifty who has com
enough to last him a single month; not more than one in two
hundred who has enough for two months; none that have any that
can last three months; and of these there is hardly more than five
in the hundred who will be able to supply themselves with provisions
of any sort, unless by borrowing money on mortgage, not only of
the growing crop, but of the lands, and at such a rate of interest that
no crop they can make can possibly save them from rain. A great
many will almost or quite starve, unless they can get help from some
other resources than their own. Briefly, the famine which now
threatens the land is all over the land, and no one region can help the
other. The mules and horses, especially when owned by the negroes,
and upon which the hope for next year's crop must greatly depend,
are dying of work without food. They literally drop down in the
harness, and much the same sort of picture may be drawn of the
humans, white and black. Life is prolonged solely by spasmodic
efforts and all sorts of expedients, day by day, the parties not regard-
ing any sacrifice which will yield the means of daily subsistence to
their families. Unless the charities of the outer world are more
prompt and more bountiful, I do not see what is to avert the fate
of thousands to whom the peck or bushel of com, which suffices for
a week, must simply prolong the agony of a death by inches.

Ii6 THE RECONSTRUCTION*

To CHARLES ETIENNE ARTHUR GAYARRE, Charleston, 13 March
1868.

... I fear, my dear friend, that we delude ourselves with the hope
that anything can be made from Literature in this country. The whole
country is rotten. The Southern people never was a reading people.
No agricultural people ever are. And the North is given up to a
mental as well as moral debauchery, which requires that the author
shall prostitute his mind, his art, his whole nature, if he would
secure their patronage. Were I a young man I should go to Europe.
But old at 62, forced to begin life de novo, with six children, most
of whom I have to support, I am fettered to the soil. I have courage
energy, endurance, and feel as yet no diminution of the capacity or
the will for good work. But I have survived hope as well as youth,
and now toil on doggedly, with no brighter impulse than the sense
of duty! . . .

To JOHN ESTEN COOKE, Charleston, 9th May 1868.

. . . our people, every where are too dreadfully poor for any
thing, and Books & literature are not thought of in the general lack
of bread & bacon. I do not see that it will avail either of us to talk
of politics. Enough that Radicalism is a moral epidemic & like
other epidemics must run its course. Any effort to resist its headlong
tendencies now only add fuel to the flame. One thing, however, I hold
that there is but one solution for the problem. We have to make the
passage of the Red Sea. The negro emerging from the control of his
master, becomes first a vagabond. His next step makes him a
larcener. The progress is rapid from petty to audacious thieving, and
his next advance is to felony. He becomes a burglar; commits arson,
murder & highway robbery; and, soon thereafter, he bands with
numbers, & begins the war of race, by plundering & burning towns &
villages. Seven millions of whites will not rest long under the rule of
3 millions of negroes; or if they do, the natural question will be, as
it has long been with me "Is our race worth saving?" Brood over
it; organize promptly in every precinct; get good weapons, establish
places of rendezvous, provide signal & pass words; seek your places
of rendezvous through the woods & not by the highways, & keep
your powder dry. In the cities, every square should have its whisht
club, consisting of the trusty whites of the square itself. These should
send delegates to the general club of the city & country, in every
country. In the event of alarm in the city, let each square club have

THE RECONSTRUCTION 117

a house of rendezvous within the square, and seek it, not by
emerging into the streets, but by rear passages over fences &c. In-
dividuals leaving their houses by the front will be very apt to be
butchered. The members of the square club, emerging in numbers
from 15 to 50, more or less constitute organized companies; &
these uniting with the clubs of the ward, become regiments &
brigades, equal to the danger. The evil with our Southern people
which was at the bottom of all our mischief, is that we are always
caught napping. We are slow in everything, particularly slow at
organization, for which our stem individuality of character, denying
flexibility, specially unfits us. We have no organization here which is
worth a copper, and few minds capable to counsel or to lead. Enow!

NO ONE CAN REALIZE THE SEVERE ORDEAL

THE SOUTHERN PEOPLE WERE REQUIRED

TO PASS THROUGH DURING THE PROCESS

OF RECONSTRUCTION BUT THOSE OF

US WHO EXPERIENCED IT.

There is a class of our population clothed with certain rights and
privileges which they did not possess until recently; and in dealing with
which you may experience some embarrassment. I, of course, allude to

the negroes. Among the terms upon which the Confederate State termi-
nated their heroic struggle for a separate and independent nationality,
was one which granted freedom to this race. Although we deplore that
result, as alike injurious to the country and fatal to the negroes, the law
has been placed upon our statute books in solemn form by us through
our delegates. The laws for their government, as slaves, have been re-
pealed and others substituted adapted to their new condition. We are in
honor bound to observe these laws. For myself I do not hesitate to say in
private and public, officially and unofficially, that after doing all I could
to avert it, when I took off my sword in surrender I determined to
observe the terms of that surrender with the same earnestness and fidelity
with which I first shouldered my musket. True manhood requires no de-
ception, but that as we say with our lips we shall feel with our hearts, and
do with our hands.

There is nothing in the history of the past of which we need be
ashamed. Whilst we cherish its glorious memories, and that of our
martyred dead, we pause here and there to drop a tear over their
consecrated ashes, but remember there is still work for the living, and set
ourselves about the task of re-establishing society and rebuilding our

Il8 THE RECONSTRUCTION

ruined homes. Others, unwilling to submit to this condition of things,
may seek their homes abroad. You and I are bound to this soil for life,
for better or for worse, and it must at last cover our remains.

What then is our duty? To repine at our lot? That is not the part of
manliness; but to rise up, going forward, performing our highest missions
as men. "He who does the best his circumstances allow, does well acts
nobly; angels could do no more." Is it not enough that the blood of the
best and bravest has been shed in every battle throughout the land? Is it
not enough that the bones of our fathers and brothers and sons lie
whitening on every hill top? Is it not enough that the voice of lamenta-
tion has been heard at every fireside? Is it not enough that the wailings of
the widows and orphans still sound in our ears? Have we not suffered
enough? Have we not done all that was in the power of human nature?
In our bosoms let us wear this consciousness as a jewel above price.

Now let us deal with the facts before us as they are. The negro has
been made free. It is no work of his. He did not seek freedom, and
nominally free as he is, he is, beyond expression, helpless by his want
of habits of self-reliance; helpless by his want of comprehension to
understand and appreciate his condition. From the very nature of his
surroundings, so far as promoting his welfare and adapting him to this
new relation to society are concerned, all agencies from abroad must
prove inadequate. They may restrain in individual instances, but we are
the only people in the world who understand his character, and hence,
the only people in the world capable of managing him.

To remedy the evils growing out of the abolition of slavery, it seems
two things are necessary; First, a recognition of the freedom of the race
as a fact, the enactment of just and humane laws, and the willing en-
forcement of them, Secondly, by treating them with perfect fairness and
justice in our contracts, and in every way in which we may be brought
in contact with them.

By the first, we convince the world of our good faith, and get rid
of the system of espionage, by removing the pretext of its necessity;
and by the second, we secure the services of the negroes, teach them
their place, and how to keep them, and convince them at last that we
are Indeed their best friends. When we do this let us hope that society
will revive from its present shock, and our land be crowned with
abundant harvests. We need the labor of the negro all over the country,
and it is worth the effort to secure it. If it would not be extending this
charge beyond what I conceive to be a proper limit of time for its
delivery, I might enlarge upon this subject by showing the depressing
effect upon the country which would be produced by the sudden removal
of so much of its productive labor. Its effect would be the decreased
agricultural products, decreased revenue to the State and country, arising
from these sources, with their thousand attendant results.

Besides all this, which appeals to our interests, gentlemen, do we owe

THE RECONSTRUCTION 119

the negro any grudge? What has he himself done to provoke our hostility?
Shall we be angry with him because freedom has been forced upon him?
Shall it excite our animosity because he has been suddenly and without
any effort on his part, torn loose from the protection of a kind master?
He is proud to call you Master yet. In the name of humanity let him
do so. He may have been the companion of your boyhood. He may be
older than you, and perhaps carried you in his arms when an infant.
You may be bound to him by a thousand ties which only a Southern
man knows, and which he alone can feel in all its force. It may be that
when, only a few years ago, you girded on your cartridge-box and
shouldered your trusty rifle, to go to meet the invaders of your country,
you committed to his care your home and your loved ones; and when you
were far away upon the weary march, upon the dreadful battle-field, in
the trenches, and on the picket line, many and many a time you thought
of that faithful old negro, and your heart warmed towards him.

This charge to the Grand Jury of Pike County shows somewhat
the condition into which the country had been plunged by the
termination of the war. "The brutalities of progress are called revolu-
tions, but when they are ended the fact is recognized; the human race
has been chastised, but it has moved onwards."

No one can realize the severe ordeal the Southern people were
required to pass through during the process of Reconstruction but
those of us who experienced it. Thousands of negroes, uneducated,
unfitted for anything except to obey and to do their duty each day
as directed by a superior, were given in one day their freedom; and
not only that, but all the privileges of citizenship. Their conduct in
this trying time should prove to the world the love, fear, and high
regard which they entertained for their former masters. There is
nothing I think in the records of the history of the world like their
docility and willingness to be law-abiding citizens under these extra-
ordinary circumstances. It would seem natural that so great and
sudden a change in their condition would have proven too much for
them, and that they would have become intoxicated, as it were. As
it was, we could have managed them splendidly and without dis-
satisfaction or distrust on their part, had the so-called "carpet-
baggers" kept out of our midst. They, in many instances, used the
negro for their own advancement by getting his vote, and procuring
the offices of the State which should have been filled by our own
reliable men.

We were not only subjected to these political troubles, but we
were bereft of our property without any compensation. The experi-
ence of my husband and myself was the experience of thousands. We

120 THE RECONSTRUCTION

were married early in life, and had applied ourselves closely to duty,
and consequently saved some money each year. This money was
invested to the best advantage the time afforded and in a way then
legally sanctioned; viz., in slaves. From 1850 to 1865 we labored
with the view of securing the wherewithal to educate our children
(and God blessed us with a goodly number), and have something
ready for the winter of old age. In 1 865 we had all our earning swept
away; nothing remained except the consciousness of having done our
duty "in that state of life unto which it had pleased God to call us."
I believe now, that Slavery is a detriment to any country, and if
I could by any act of mine re-establish it here and get back my slaves,
I would not do it. But the government of the United States has the
credit of giving the black man his freedom, while it was at the
expense of the Southern people, and we feel the loss.

White and Black Under the Old Regime, (1899), Victoria V.
Clayton, pp. 158-168.

. . . THE RECONSTRUCTION ACTS WERE NECESSARY
TO THE PROPER ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE . . .

"Reconstruction In Wilkinson County," J. H. Jones

It must be confessed that the Mississippi Legislature of 1865,
assembled under President Johnson's plan of reconstruction, afforded
good reasons for the belief in the minds of the ignorant negroes
that their old masters were secretly conspiring against their newly
acquired freedom, and only waited for an opportunity to put their
plans into effect. Looking back upon the methods by which that
Legislature undertook to deal with the negro problem, one is amazed
at such stupidity; at such a display of monumental folly committed
by men of ordinary intelligence. Its members seem to have been
asleep, like Rip Van Winkle, during the war, and when awakened
from their long nap, they began to legislate in relation to negroes
just where the Code of 1857 left off.

They began to amend the slave code by conferring "additional
rights on freedmen, free negroes and mulattoes." Among the "addi-
tional rights" conferred was the privilege of marrying in the same

THE RECONSTRUCTION 121

manner as white persons. That Is, they were graciously permitted
to live in holy matrimony, after God's own ordinance, and were to
be no longer compelled to live in legal adultery as required under
the slave code. Allow me to say in this connection that I was never
able to understand either the wisdom or the necessity of this require-
ment. As to the slaves, the seventh commandment was deliberately
repealed by Mississippi Legislature, and a large class of human
beings required, by law, to disregard the marriage relation and live
in a state of legal immorality. I use the words "legal immorality"
because the slaves themselves had a marriage rite of their own in
which "Old Master," or a white minister usually read the marriage
service at their weddings whereby they sought to fulfill their moral
duties.

Are we free from responsibility for the almost total indifference
to the obligations of marriage which characterizes the negroes to-day?

Another "additional right" conferred, or rather requirement, was
that all freedmen, "free negroes and mulattoes," must have permanent
employment on or before the first day of January of each year, and
have a written evidence of such employment, otherwise they were
liable to arrest, and to be dealt with as vagrants. This law was
neither particularly good nor particularly bad, but the motive which
inspired it, and which is quite obvious, does no credit to the
Legislature which enacted it.

Still another "additional right" was the right to engage in "job
work," but the jobber was required to get a license from the mayor
of a town, or from a member of the board of police. This sapient
enactment was evidently borrowed from that of the slave code, or
custom requiring all negroes to have "passes" when absent from
home. If any "Freedman, Free Negro or Mulatto" abandoned his
contract, he was liable to criminal prosecution as well as civil
penalties; and any officer or law-abiding citizen in executing this law,
was allowed five dollars and mileage for apprehending a "deserter,"
to be paid by the culprit. Any person who fed or clothed or gave
shelter to the wicked "deserter" was subject to criminal prosecution.

Still another act was passed for the benefit of "Freedmen, Free
Negroes and Mulattoes" that deserves mention. It is noted for its
benevolent and kindly desire to protect and care for the orphans of
the "Freedman, Free Negroes and Mulattoes," and to provide good
homes for these unfortunates, and for the unhappy children of
indigent parents who were unable to support them!

All civil officers were required "to beat up" their particular
bailiwicks twice a year, in January and July, and corral all the little

122 THE RECONSTRUCTION

orphan "darkies , . . under the age of twenty-one, if male, and
eighteen, if female," and deliver them to the proper authorities to be
"apprenticed" to some suitable person. In case children were found
whose parents were unable to support them, or in case any one
would make affidavit to that effect, they too were to be gathered into
the loving arms of the law to be cared for by some loving person who
needed a servant!

I am not writing a book, and will not therefore make any further
citations from that "Book of Wisdom," the acts of the Legislature of
1865 and 1866. Neither is it necessary to comment on these laws.
They explain themselves. Suffice it to say that whether intended or
not, they established a system of slavery, or peonage, more ob-
jectionable than that of the slave code. Under slavery the owner
had more interest in caring for his slave, than for his mule, because
he cost more money. Under this act he had less interest in the welfare
of his legal bondsman than in his mule, for the mule cost him money;
while the bondsman (he was little else) cost nothing and could easily
be replaced.

When I read these laws of our Legislature of 1865 and 1866,
persumably enacted by the best intelligence of the State, I was not
at all surprised that bitter Abolitionists like Thad Stevens, himself a
miscegenationist, should have believed that the reconstruction acts
were necessary to the proper administration of justice in the
South. . . .

. . . The negroes were crazed and drunken with their new sense
of power, which was carefully impressed upon them. Simple,
credulous, ignorant and more or less vicious by reason of the
inflammatory victory teachings of their self-constituted masters, they
acted like madmen from the first. "The bottom rail was on top," as
they pithily and vigorously expressed it; and they used the license
which they substituted for liberty, with reckless disregard of the
rights of others.

The foolish creatures contented themselves mainly with Loyal
Leagues and a few minor offices, which paid only small salaries,
and processions with gaudy flags and banners on which were dis-
played inscriptions that appealed to their passions and which were
designed to humiliate the white people.

Woodville is built around a plaza, after the Spanish fashion, with
the courthouse in the center, and it was not uncommon to see a
thousand negroes on foot and on horseback, marching around the
public square, and yelling like madmen. On such occasions the
business houses would be closed, and white people would keep off

THE RECONSTRUCTION 123

the streets. Most of the negroes would be drunk with some vile
imitation of whiskey. On such occasions, to the credit of their
leader, be it said, he used his authority as sheriff to disarm them
before admitting them to the town, and thus no doubt, prevented
serious riots between the races.

Another cause that contributed to the exemption of Wilkinson
county from actual bloodshed was this: While the white citizens
submitted to outrage and oppression because they were backed by the
moral, and if necessary the physical, power of the United States,
which they had so recently and so fatally felt, still there were many
veterans in the county, with manly sons, who were ready to try
conclusions with the negroes and their white leaders should excuse
offer; and this was well understood by all parties.

It is remarkable that during all that period of wild excitement, of
bitter antagonism, of deep wrong on one side, inflicted through the
agency of the servile race upon one of the bravest and proudest
people on earth, there should have been so little violence and blood-
shed, as was the case in Wilkinson county. Of course, the causes
are already understood. The white Republicans wanted money, not
blood, and it was to their interest to keep the peace. Like the
vampire, they preferred to fan the victim and keep him quiet while
they sucked his blood.

Another cause of the small amount of bloodshed was the fact that
the negroes had not lost their fear and reverence for the men who had
so lately owned them, and were loath to provoke their wrath to the
point of action. And still another cause was the noble forbearance
of the white people, under a most humiliating persecution.

But the negro was not so peaceful in his bearing towards men of
his own race who dared to think and act for themselves in political
matters. For one of them to vote for a Democrat was almost a
challenge to gain certain death, unless prompt protection was given
by the white people. So great was the terror inspired by the persecu-
tion of the Democratic negroes that few if any withstood it.

I well remember an exciting scene, in which I was an actor, that
illustrates this condition. At a certain election, the courthouse yard
and square were crowded with negroes, as was the case at all
elections. There was some show of contest, as the Democrats voted
to preserve their organizations, and a gentleman of standing induced
an old negro, whose confidence he enjoyed, to vote the Democratic
ticket. The fact was noted and the alarm given by some negro at
the poles, and instantly the entire body of negroes rushed towards
the old man with shouts of "Kill him! Kill him!" They acted more

124 THE RECONSTRUCTION

like a pack of hungry wolves than like human beings. The old
fellow's white friend stood by him, beating the black devils off, and
dragging him to the shelter of a store across the square; which they
reached with the mob at their heels, and were locked in. A few
citizens saw the situation and ranged themselves with drawn pistols
(in those days pistols were a necessary part of a gentleman's dress)
along the sidewalk and quietly told the leaders of the surging mob
that the first person to touch the sidewalk would die. This had a very
perceptible effect on those in front, no one person being quite ready
to offer himself as a sacrifice for "de party," and it was really
amusing to note the desperate efforts of those in the front rank to
back against their comrades in the rear who were pushing them on the
muzzles of "forty-fours at full cock." One of the white bosses threw
himself in front of the mob and between the pistols and the mob,
and urged and pushed them back. One of the picket line said to
him, by way of encouragement, "You had better keep them back,
for I will kill you first, if a negro touches the sidewalk." As the
peacemaker was within three feet of the line of six shooters in Ms
rear and confronted with an impenetrable wall of crazy negroes, he
knew that the treat was not an idle one and so promptly redoubled
his efforts. Fortunately the negroes abated their wrath, as they are
apt to do under like circumstances, and what promised at one time
to be a bloody affair ended peacefully.

At a subsequent election there was again a narrow escape from
a serious riot. It happened this way. The town, having a majority
of white voters, elected Democratic officers, and among others a
recklessly brave man as marshal. At the election referred to the
conditions were as usual. In the early days of his citizenship the
negro delighted in the exercise of his privilege as a voter, and cele-
brated the occasion in the usual lawless manner. A drunken negro
violated some town ordinance and the marshal undertook to arrest
him in the midst of his fellows assembled in the courthouse yard to
the number of at least five hundred. The offender resisted arrest,
and the marshal promptly reduced him to order by shooting him in
the leg. At once pandemonium reigned. The negroes surrounded the
marshal, yelling and displaying pistols, and attempting to rescue
the prisoner. He took refuge on a box placed against the wall of
the courthouse, used as a sort of auction block. Placing his back
to the wall, he covered his front with an impressive pistol, and so
stood off the mob until rescued by some white friends. The gallant
fellow held onto his prisoner through it all and carried him in
triumph to the jail. Here again a murderous race-war was avoided

THE RECONSTRUCTION 1^5

by the courage and forbearance of the white people under very trying
conditions, and by the cowardice of the negroes. Every white man
in the town was armed and they were thoroughly organized. Loaded
guns were deposited in the various stores and buildings around the
square, and had a pistol been fired by the blacks a bloody vengeance
would have been wreaked upon them by the infuriated white
people. , . .

. . . While the negroes, as a rule, were peaceably inclined after
being deprived of their power, they were restless and dissatisfied.
They were like children whose toys had been taken from them. They
mourned the loss of the little offices they had filled; of the enjoyment
of their political parades; of the beloved Loyal Leagues; of the
inestimable privilege of getting drank on mean whiskey without
fear of arrest; and they were particularly disgusted to find that
a big majority of Republican votes could not longer elect a Re-
publican to office! All this was different from the unrestricted
exercise of power they had so lately enjoyed, and so outrageously
abused. Very naturally they were discontented at the change, and
were fit subjects for designing and more daring men. There were a
number of vicious and insolent negro leaders who had survived the
overthrow of the party ? and whose easy occupations were gone.
These men began at once to foment trouble between the races; and
to incite the negroes to insurrection. This was easy to do, for reasons
already given. The average negro's range of knowledge was very
limited, and they were made to believe that the numerical majority
they possessed in Wilkinson county existed throughout the State.
Consequently they were easily persuaded that the white people could
be readily overpowered by proper methods.

I well remember the startled exclamation of one old "darky' as a
column of about three hundred horsemen rode by. "Lordee! I
nebber knowd dere was dat many white men in all de country"; and
he expressed the views of most of his race.

The discontent thus excited culminated in May, 1876, in a riot.
It was reported at the time that there existed among the negroes
a preconcerted plan for their simultaneous uprising, at a given time,
for the murder of the white people. Whether this was true or not
has never been positively known. That there was some concert of
action among them is certain from the extraordinary rapidity with
which they took up arms throughout the county, upon the premature
explosion of their conspiracy.

Several of the leaders were preachers. It is a fact, demonstrated
by experience, that the combination, in one negro, of preacher and

12 6 THE RECONSTRUCTION

politician, is always dangerous to the peace of a community. Such
a combination existed in one who was also an ex-Federal soldier,
and so he must organize and drill a military company in secret. This
pot-valiant hero was thirsting for gore, and fortunately for the whites,
could not be restrained. He made a gallant night attack upon the
store of a country merchant, killed him, wounded Ms negro clerk,
and of course robbed the store. This outbreak was said to have been
just one week before the time fixed for the "rising."

Next day a smaE sheriff's posse attempted to arrest some of
the rioters, but they were organized and fired upon the posse. This
affair set the county ablaze. Anticipating some such trouble, the
white people had arranged a system of signals over the county, by
means of anvils and powder, and the alarm was promptly given.
About sixty white men, well armed, were soon assembled and this
body of rioters was attacked and routed, and two of their leaders,
including the fighting preacher, were captured and speedily hanged.

A body of about two hundred an fifty men were promptly
mustered, and at once marched into the "black district," where we
found the negroes generally in arms, and waiting for us. The county
was well adapted to guerrilla warfare, being hilly and covered with
cane, and trouble was anticipated in quelling the riot, as there were
between two and three thousand negroes under arms. This fear
proved entirely groundless. The poor, deluded creatures could not
stand before whites. We came upon a line of battle in an old field,
which had been formed by some of the negro ex-soldiers, and
promptly charged them in columns of four, never stopping to deploy,
which would have been an excedingly dangerous maneuver against
braver men. Some of our men dropped out of the ranks and picked
off a few of them at long range, when they scattered like a covey of
birds, and escaped without further harm.

A column of whites from Amite county and under Colonel Jack-
son, and another from Louisiana under Colonel Powers, numbering
about two hundred and fifty men each, were also operating in the
western part of the county. Colonel Jackson met and attacked
another party of negroes and killed fourteen of them, when the rest
fled and concealed themselves in the cane thickets.

Two of the white commands, that from Wilkinson, and the one
from Amite, met at Fort Adams, a town on the Mississippi river, for
the purpose of a combined attack on a large body of rioters reported
as assembled on "Old River." This is an old bed of the river left be
a "cut off," as such changes in the Mississippi river are called, and
is about twenty miles long and bordered on each side by large

THE RECONSTRUCTION 127

plantations. At this time the overflow from the Mississippi had
reached a stage which converted these plantations into narrow islands.
We could plainly hear the sound of the drams of the foolish negroes
beating their defiance to their white foes.

The plan of attack agreed upon was to push through the swamp
in boats along the flooded roads, and effect a landing, and attack
them in the rear. It was thought a hundred men would be sufficient
for the purpose.

While we were making preparations for this attack the steamer
Natchez landed at Fort Adams, and Captain Tom Leathers, her
commander, promptly offered to transport our entire force, horses
included, on his boat to the scene of action. This would have
simplified matters, and a council of war was called to consider it.

It was desired by the whites only to supress the insurrection
with as little loss of life as possible. Their resentment was mainly
against the leaders, and none of them were spared when caught; but
only pity was felt for their ignorant dupes. To have accepted Captain
Leather's offer and to land five hundred men among these trapped
negroes would have resulted in their total extermination, and so it was
declined. Messengers, one a negro, and one a white man, whom they
trusted, were sent to warn them to disperse; and to advise them of
the force ready to attack them, and they promptly scattered. Thus the
forbearance of the whites saved the deluded wretches from a most
horrible massacre.

I will give another instance of the great forbearance displayed
against those crazy creatures by the men they had so recently helped
to rob and humiliate. A hundred or more of them had mustered at
a little settlement called Pinckneyviile, and spent the day in vapor-
ings, and in marching up and down the public road, breathing out
mutterings and slaughter against the white people, for whom they
loudly professed to be waiting. Most fortunately for them they left
a few minutes before a column of whites did arrive under command
of the writer. They were promptly pursued, and we came in sight
of them at the "negro quarter" on a large plantation, making a
display of their valor before an admiring crowd of women and
children. It was nearly dark, and we were still unseen by the foolish
creatures. It was difficult to restrain the men from charging them.
The owner of the plantation, a gentleman universally respected an
old Confederate soldier Gen. W. L. Brandon, appealed to us not
to attack them; as a melee in a crowded "negro quarter" at that
hour must result in the death of many innocent women and children;
and he promised to bring them to our camp next morning, which

128 THE RECONSTRUCTION

he did. A more cowed and frightened set of fools was never before
assembled. They were released in peace and cautioned to "go and
sin no more."

Two of the most vicious and turbulent political leaders, the chief
instigators of the riot, had been captured tie day before. They were
given a hearing, and their active agency in inciting the riot being
clearly established, were hanged.

The backbone of the riot was now broken, and there were no
further armed conflicts between the races after this. Not one white
man was killed or wounded in this affair, and only about twenty-
five negroes. This small loss of life where so many persons were in
arms was very remarkable.

This was entirely owning r as I have said, to lack of courage in
the blacks and to the generous forbearance in the whites. . . .

Publications of Mississippi Historical Society, Vol. VIII, pp.
155-161, 170-174.

UNITED STATES SOLDIERS WERE SAID TO
BE ... THE SCUM OF THE EARTH.

. . . Ch. 123, p. 125 Sets apart one acre for a United States
Military Cemetery.

An inexcusable and ill-timed display of animosity toward the
dead of those whose patriotism, courage and endurance maintained
our national cause by victories in the field. In the convention of
1866, United States soldiers were said to be, when living, "the scum
of the earth," and their remains, after they were dead, were spoken
of as "vile dust," which might, by a too close proximity, contaminate
the remains of the rebel dead. Hence, this acre was set apart for
them by the Legislature. It is to be noted that the men who used
the brutal epithets cited are described by the Supreme Court of the
United States as being "none the less enemies, because they are
traitors." (2 Black's Reps., p. 674.)

THE RECONSTRUCTION 129

IS ABSOLUTE FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN
VERY FEW LOCALITIES OF TEXAS.

COMMITTEE ROOM
Austin, June 30, 1868.

SIR: The Committee on Lawlessness and Violence respectfully
submit the following report:

During the last three years, according to the reports consulted,
three hundred and seventy-three freedmen have been killed by whites,
whilst only ten whites have been killed by freedmen. Now, it cannot
be that all these colored people, or any considerable number of
them, were murdered for their money. Their extreme poverty for-
bids the supposition. Neither can it be that many of them were slain
in personal altercation with whites; for, in that event, there should
have been as many whites killed by freedmen, as freedmen by
whites the freedmen being, it is said, generally as well armed as
the whites. This great disparity between the numbers of the two
races killed, the one by the other, shows conclusively that "the war
of races" is all on the part of the whites against the blacks. The
evidence in our possession also shows that a very large portion of
the whites murdered were Union men, and that tie criminals, with
remarkably few exceptions, were and are disloyal to the Government.

We are, hence, directed to the hostility of feeling entertained by
ex-rebels against loyal men of both races for the discovery of the
cause of a large proportion of these outrages. Men naturally hate
those whom they have wronged; and we are authorized by facts to
affirm that multitudes who participated in the Rebellion, disappointed
and maddened by their defeat, are now intensely embittered against
the freedmen on account of their emancipation and enfranchisement,
and on account of their devotion to the Republican party; and against
the loyal whites for their persistent adhesion to the Union, that they
are determined to resist by every means promising success, the estab-
lishment of a free Republican State government; that it is their pur-
pose, even by desperate measures, to create such a state of alarm and
terror among Union men and freedmen, as to compel them to aban-
the advocacy of impartial suffrage or fly from the State; and that
this feeling of animosity prompts and inspires them to many of these
murders, unrestrained, as it is, by any fear of retribution.

There is absolute freedom of speech in very few localities of Texas.

130 THE RECONSTRUCTION'

Union men dare not generally avow their political convictions. In
many places they can hold public meetings only when supported by
troops or armed men; and in many others they dare not hold them
at all. In several instances their assemblies have been broken up and
fired upon, and their speakers ordered to desist. The dominant rebel
element will not tolerate free discussion.

We have been challenged to produce cases of Union men and
freedmen being persecuted for their loyalty. We now do so: Judge
Black was a Republican; he was murdered in 1867, in Uvaldi county,
by a rebel. Milton Biggs was a Union man, and had been ap-
pointed County Judge of Blanco county; he was murdered, in 1867,
while plowing in his field, before he could qualify. Judge Christian,
a loyal man, of Bell county, was pursued into Missouri, and mur-
dered by a party of rebels. Mr. Wade and seven other gentlemen
were killed in Lamar county, last year, for their Unionism. Four
men were recently murdered in the county of Hunt, and six in Bell
county, for their loyalty. Within the present month, the County Judge
and the District Clerk of Hunt county have been driven from their
homes, and compelled to fly their lives, because of their unyielding
attachment to the Government. Hundreds of loyal men, to our knowl-
edge, are, at this time, forsaking their homes in Texas, fleeing from
the assassin forced away by rebel intolerance. And we here put it
to record, that Honorable members of this Convention are to-day
exiles from their friends, and dare not return to their families, for the
only reason that they will not forswear their principles.

Now, whilst it remains true that the Union men of Texas consti-
tute a very small proportion of the white population, and whilst
it is true that they are being killed by the rebels, it is impossible to
escape the conclusion that they are killed for their Unionism. In
other words if they were rebels they would not be killed.

And when we come to examine the persecutions suffered by the
freed people, the mass of testimony is so overwhelming that no man
of candor can for a moment question the statement that- they are,
in very many parts of the State, wantonly maltreated and slain,
simply because they are free, and claim to exercise the rights of
freedmen. Some months ago, in Panola county, a party of whites
rode up to a cabin wherein some freed people were dancing, and
deliberately fired upon them, killing four, one woman, and seriously
wounding several others. In 1867, in DeWitt county, a white man
met a freedman riding, and asked him what he was going to do with
the whip he had in his hand, and on being answered, "Nothing,"
shot the freedman, killing him instantly. In the county of Fort Bend,

THE RECONSTRUCTION 131

last year, a white man was riding through town, and seeing a negro
man standing on the steps of the office of the Freedman's Bureau, he
drew his revolver and shot him dead. The criminal had never seen
or spoken to the freedman before. In Newton county, 1867, a white
man met a colored man driving a team; the former made the freed-
man get out of his wagon, and then shot him seven times in cold
blood. In Fort Bend county, same year, the freed people were hold-
ing a fair to procure funds to finish their church, and while they were
singing a hymn two white men rode by and fired their pistols into
the church. In October, 1867, a white man was traveling in Grayson
county and met a freedman; after passing him a few yards, he turned
and fired upon him, hitting him in the back. The freedman died in a
few hours; he had not spoken a word to the murderer; had never
seen him before. But a few days ago a party of white men assaulted
the family of an unoffending freedman in Falls county, killing one
and dangerously wounding another freedman. In the same county, a
few weeks ago, two armed white men, in open day, went to the
house of a colored man, and without any provocation murdered him.
Soon after this a white man, in the same neighborhood, rode up to
two freedmen, and, without any known cause, shot one of them dead
and fired at the other. Last week the colored Registrar in Burleson
county was found murdered; and in January last the colored Regis-
trar of Milam county was called to his door at night and shot. And so
the bloody story runs.

We mention some minor outrages. In April last, a party of white
men visited the cabins of two quiet industrious freedmen in Free-
stone county, captured one of them and took him to the woods to
murder him; he, however, escaped, being fired at several times and
receiving one wound. In that and adjoining counties the whites are
driving the freedmen from their homes and from their crops, some
of whom are in this city to-day, fugitives from rebel violence. In the
county of Marion bands of armed whites are traversing the county,
forcibly robbing the freedmen of their arms, and commiting other
outrages upon them. Last week a colored woman was whipped in
Parker county by a white man; and some time ago, in another county,
a white man cut off the ears of a freedwoman. It is openly pro-
claimed by many of the perpetrators of these wrongs that their object
is to compel the negroes to give up loyal leagues, and to get satis-
faction out of them for supporting Yankees. . . .

132 THE RECONSTRUCTION

THE MAIN OBJECT . . . WAS THE RESTORA-
TION OF AFRICAN SLAVERY, IN THE
MODIFIED FORM OF PEONAGE.

The foundation of what are termed the Laws of Texas of 1866
is the rejected Constitution of 1866. If it is null and void, because
incompatible with and hostile to the supreme law of the land, the
Constitution and laws of the United States, all that has been built
up upon it must be null and void also. By referring to art. 3 sees. 1, 5
and 10; to art. 4, sec. 16; to art. 8; to art. 10, sec. 2; and to ordinance
No. 11; the incompatibility of the rejected constitutions of 1866 and
its hostility to the Constitution of the United States may be clearly
perceived.

The main object kept in view by those who made that instrument,
and of those who devised the pretended laws based upon it, was
the restoration of African slavery, in the modified form of peonage.
This object is very distinctly foreshadowed by the peculiar phrase-
ology of art. 8, which sets out by declaring that "African slavery,
as it heretofore existed" (only) is regarded as having been abolished,
not by the people of Texas, but "by the government of the United
States, by force of arms." That such was the intent and purpose alike
of the unauthorized Convention and Legislature of 1866 will be
more fully apparent on reference to the following of the pretended
laws and joint resolutions of 1866, made to carry that constitution
into effect.

Ch. 80, p. 76 the so-called labor law: It provides expressly for a
system of peonage, though without using that term, in many respects
similar to the peon system abolished by the Liberals of Mexico a few
years since, which Maximilian was unable to restore. It is directly
opposed to the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United
States, and of the Civil Rights Act.

Ch. 82, p. 80 Against persuading, enticing and tampering with
laborers. This in furtherance of the above, and is subject to the same
objections.

Ch. 73, p. 70 Defines "persons of color." The sole object of this law
was to defeat equality before the law justice; to discriminate on account
of race. This is subject to the same objections.

Ch. 59, p. 59 Restricts the right of persons of color to testify in
certain cases. Subject to the same objections.

Ch. 128, p. 131 Defines the rights of persons of color. Subject to the
same objections. It is restrictive, giving them no more rights than free

THE RECONSTRUCTION 133

persons of color had during the existence of African slavery. It taies
special care not to declare them to be "citizens."

Ch. 135, p. 160 Exempting from sale under execution a certain
amount of the property of every "citizen." A very ingenious thrust at
the freedmen. Subject to the same objections.

Ch. 92, p. 90 Makes the carrying of fire-arms on enclosed lands
without consent of the land-owner, an offense. It was meant to operate
against freedmen alone, and hence is subject to the same objections.

Ch. 146, p. 170 As to public schools for whites (only). Subject to
the same objections.

Ch. 154, p. 195 Providing for indigent white children (only). Subject
to the same objections.

Ch. 164, p. 203 Donates land to white settlers (only). Subject to
the same objections.

Ch. 180, p. 225 Jury law for whites only. Subject to the same ob-
jections. This pretended law has been obviated by the jury order of
Brevet Major General Griffin.

Ch. 53, p. 43 Organizes a new county court system. This onerous
act was devised chiefly in order that rebels might be able to get at the
freedmen without waiting for the semi-annual terms of the district
courts. It is subject to the same objections.

Ch. 63, p. 61 The apprentice law. It provides for "moderate corporeal
chastisement." This act seems to have been framed in ignorance of sec.
990 of Oldham & White's Digest, which it should either have amended
or repealed. It is subject to the same objections.

Ch. 102, p. 97 Provides for special cars on railroads for freedmen.
Subject to the same objections, and hence obviated by an order of Brevet
Major General Griffin.

Ch. Ill, p. 102 The vagrant act The latter part of sec. 1 of this
act is insidiously leveled against the freedmen, who are not even men-
tioned as such in it. Subject to the same objections that lie to the whole
of the system of which it forms a part.

Ch. 120, p. 119 Provides for employment of convicts for petty
offenses. Intended for the freedmen, and subject to the same objections.

Ch. 125, p. 126 The "stay law," delaying the collection of debts. It
prevents freedmen dependent upon their immediate earnings from col-
lecting their wages. Subject to the same objections that lie to the whole
system.

Ch. 64, p. 64 Gives a lien on crops. An ingenious device, whereby
a man who rents land and hires laborers to cultivate it may be enabled
to avoid paying the laborers. Subject to the same objections. Believed to
have been obviated by an order of General Kiddoo.

Ch. 132, p. 134 For the assessment and collection of taxes. Said to
be substantially the "Confederate Act" re-enacted. It is cumbrous in its
machinery, complicated and unjust. Under it more than double the tax

134 THE RECONSTRUCTION

due is frequently collected from freedmen who cannot read the notices,
and against whom mileage is charged and received in consequence. By
military circular No. 15, current taxes are made payable under the act,
the circular being the law.

Ch. 153, p. 192 For employing convict lahor on railroads. A very
ingenious feature of the peon system. It does not mention the freedmen,
but was devised with an especial reference to them. Subject to the same
objections.

Ch. 178, p. 221 To amend the rebel Sunday law of December 16,
1863. Said to be modeled on one of the blue laws of Connecticut, only
it ingeniously provides that laborers not hired specially to work seven
days in the week may, on sugar plantations, &c., be made to work on
Sunday in certain cases. Subject to the same objections that lie to the
rest of the system.

Ch. 186, p. 236 Militia law. It makes the militia to consist of "able-
bodied free white male" inhabitants. Subject to the same objections.

Joint Resolution No. 4, p. 260 For removal of the United States
troops. Their presence being the chief protection afforded the freedmen,
the attempt to remove them is a part of the system stated, and is subject
to the same objections.

Joint Resolution No. 13, p. 266 The refusal to ratify the fourteenth
proposed amendment to the Constitution of the United States. As the
first section of this amendment guarantees freedmen their civil rights as
citizens of the United States and of the States in which they reside, the
rejection of the amendment is not only subject to the same objections,
but is subject to the further objection of being a rejection of a condition
precedent, since imposed by the military reconstruction act. By that
act an acceptance of the Fourteenth Amendment is made indispensable.

Query Is not Ch. 177, p. 221 (the dog tax law) aimed at the
freedmen also?

It is to be observed that all of the foregoing general acts and
joint resolutions (twenty-four in number) were approved by Ex-
Governor Throckmorton, who also signed the constitution and
ordinances of 1866, on which they are based. He was probably
removed from office on account of his sustaining and executing the
same, together with some forty odd other pretended general laws,
and a larger number of pretended special laws, hostile in their
character to the United States Government and its loyal citizens,
white and colored.

"Pretended Laws of 1866 Against The Freedmen," Recon-
struction Journal, Austin, Texas, June 1, 1868, pp. 953-959.

THE RECONSTRUCTION 135

... IT WOULD BE MUCH BETTER FOR ALL

PARTIES THAT THE NEGROES SHOULD

BE FREE, AND WORK FOR WAGES . . .

Jan. 16, '67, Wednesday.

By rail to Petersburg, twenty-two miles . . . The capture of this
town was in fact the conclusion of the war; it held out for nine
months, defended by Lee and beseiged by Grant; and when Gen-
eral Lee was at length compelled to quit, and marched out westward
without supplies or provisions, he surrendered a very few days after
at Appomattox Court-house; and the Southern cause was lost.

p. 103.

. . . The earthworks are still, after two years, in sufficient repair to
be instructive as to the arts of war employed. You can still trace
winding trenches going down to the picket trenches (the outworks
in advance of the main lines). The embrasures for the guns, made
with gabions (circular hurdles filled with soil), are still in repair.
There are the ragged remains of the sand-bags with which the para-
pets were made, and between which the riflemen fired. The negroes
are now living in Bombproofs (huts of strong timber, sunk in the
ground and covered with three or four feet of sand, in which the
soldiers in the trenches were sheltered from shot and shell). There
are remains of the abatis (rows of sharp pointed rails, sloping for-
wards, planted like pikes in the ground, to check the approach of the
enemy under fire, and prevent surprises) ; and there are still one or
two chevaux-de-frise (beams covered with spikes and hung on
chains) for the same purpose as the abatis. But the negroes are using
abatis to fence in their seed-plots, and chevawc-de-jrise for firewood.
The entrenchments are all scored and furrowed like an old rabbit-
warren, buy their diggings for bullets. Some notion of the ammunition
expended here may be got from our negro driver's statement, that
when they first began digging after the siege, they often got two and
three dollars a day by gathering bullets and cannon shot; selling the
old lead at from five and a half to six and a half cents a pound.
Bullets are risen in value now. I bought three of a little nigger for five

136 THE RECONSTRUCTION

cents; one was genuine, the other two had been expressly cast for
sale by the little nigger's father.

We visited the "Crater," where a mine was driven by General
Bumside, under one of the forts in the Confederate lines. . . .

p. 105-106.

The "Crater" and the mine are now partly surrounded by a fence;
and are shown at twenty-five cents a head, by one Griffiths, who
farmed the land before tie siege, and now makes a living as show-
man. Take the showman for what he is worth. He said, "Twice dur-
ing the siege I have seen my farm nearly covered with dead men. It
is calculated that upon the forty acres just round the "Crater" 48,000
men were killed. . . ."

p. 107.

At Norfolk we took steamer for Fortress Monroe, on the other side
of the mouth of the James River; about an hour voyage, on a beauti-
ful moonlight night.

Jan. 17, '67, Thursday.

Before the war there was a huge hotel here; and Fortress Monroe
strove to be a fashionable watering-place. But the hotel was demol-
ished because it was in the way of the guns of the fortress; and the
Secretary of War objects to its being now rebuilt. The Hygeia Hotel,
at which we put up, has wooden wails, and a tin roof, close under
which we slept; so you may imagine the noise made by a big hailstorm,
in the middle of a stormy night. The wind appeared to rejoice in
three practical jokes; first, to press against the comer of the wooden
house in which we were trying to sleep, and howl, and shake the
whole house; then to lift up the eaves of the tin roof, and blow in
under them; and lastly, to make a tremendous noise by every now and
then rattling and rumpling the sheets of tin overhead, as if a load
of firewood had been emptied on to the top.

At 10 A.M., having got a pass without difficulty, and sent in our
letter of introduction to Mrs. Jefferson Davis, we were admitted to
see Mr. Davis. We found him in comfortable rooms, which might be
described as good officers' quarters in barracks, supplied with books
and newspapers, and able to produce the cake and wine of hos-
pitality. Mrs. Davis and a niece were living with him. Three tasteful
garlands of leaves and flowers were hung over the chimneypiece;

THE RECONSTRUCTION 137

and under them the illuminated text, painted on cardboard, WITH
GOD ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE. Mr. Davis was, I think, glad to see
strangers; and we stayed more than an hour with him. Very few
visitors find their way to this out-of-the-way place, and especially
at this time of year. . . .

pp. 110-111

. . . Speaking of the past and future of the negro, Mr. Davis said, "It
is a gross misrepresentation on the part of the Abolitionists, that
the marriage-tie and religion were not observed upon the plantations.
It was simply a matter of interest with every planter that they should
be regarded. Negroes were never prevented from learning to read;
and some of them could write. They are a very imitative race, and
quick to learn; there will be no difficulty teaching them to do any-
thing they see white men doing. But as regards their power of taking
care of themselves, they are mere children. Our negroes were not
living as the Abolitionists say, but were steady and happy and tol-
erably moral. Do you suppose that could have been a very bad
mode of life for them, which has raised them to a position to which
they have never anywhere been able to attain in Africa, by their
own unaided efforts? The civilisation of the white man is the result
of many centuries of training. You must give the negro time also;
they are hardly fit for the franchise yet. I had an old negro servant,
who had bought his freedom; and some one was advising him to go
back to Africa, to Liberia. He said, 6 No, I am not so foolish as to
trust my life and property in a country that is governed by black
men.' All the thinking men in the South recognised the fact, that
as an economical question, it would be much better for all parties
that the negroes should be free, and work for wages: but there was
another important question behind that; namely, if they were free,
would they work; and if they would not work, what would become
of them? I, for one, thought they would not work, and I think so
still. Of course you can find a certain number of exceptions; excep-
tions prove the rule. They are thoughtless, careless fellows; if left to
themselves, they will work until they get wages enough to enjoy
themselves, and then no more work. If the negroes will not work,
then all the rice plantations in the South, which cannot be cultivated
by white men, must be abandoned, as they are at this present
moment. ..."

Black and White (1867), Henry Latham, pp. 103-113.

igg THE RECONSTRUCTION

. . . FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE THE WAR ENDED,

RICHMOND PEOPLE SHOWED HOSPITALITIES

TO THE YANKEES.

Unpublished Letter Of Burton N. Harrison, James Elliott
Walmsley

NEW YORK, May 18, 1867.
DEAR MOTHER:

I have been in such a rush and whirl for the last few weeks as to
have been utterly unable to keep still long enough to write a respect-
able letter. The newspapers, however, have told you what I have
been about, and I presume that you have seen my name mentioned.
You know, of course, that we have achieved our great labor and
that the chief has been released on bail, at last!

On Monday afternoon (two weeks ago) Mr. O'Conner sent for
me and told me I must start off immediately on the great journey.
I set out at daybreak next day spent an hour in Philadelphia with
Mr. Reed pushed on to Richmond and reached that town before
dawn, in a furious rainstorm on Wednesday. It reminded me (the
rain) of the storm thro' which we all went to Richmond last year
and seemed a bad omen. But fortunately things have changed since
then, and this time our enterprise proved an entire success. I had
with me the original writ of "habeas corpus" for Mr. Davis, about
which so much has been said, and had to have it signed, etc., etc.,
by the Clerk of the Court. We attended to that on Wednesday. Thurs-
day Col Ould (formerly our commissioner for the exchange of
prisoners) set off for the Fortress in company with the marshal to
serve the writ on Gen'l Burton, commanding the fort. I remained
in Richmond until next day to receive further instructions from Mr.
O'Conner by telegraph. On Friday I went down the James River to
Norfolk, then to Fortress Monroe. It was the second anniversary of
our capture and I was glad to be able to spend it with them in their
dungeon and believe that it was to be the last night of their imprison-
ment.

Next day we took the boat for Richmond. Gen'l Burton is a
gentleman and has been exceedingly kind to Mr. Davis during all
the time he has been in command. He was as considerate and at-
tentive on the boat as possible. Had no guards or sentinels, exacted
no parole of any kind, gave us all possible freedom, and anyone
looking on would have supposed that he was merely our fellow pas-
senger and very polite to us. At all the landings up the river there

THE RECONSTRUCTION 1 39

were little clusters of people to see Mr. Davis. At Brandon 3 they
had seen me as I went down the river and had learned that the chief
was coming up next day. They were ready to receive us, therefore,
and such a reception one can hardly expect anywhere else in the
world. The ladies came on the boat, embracing and kissing him,
weeping, praying and asking God's blessing on him, until we were
all overcome with the scene. Reaching Richmond we found a crowd
of thousands of people on the wharves mainly negroes, some of
whom had been instructed by the vicious Yankee emissaries who
are among them, to show their insolence to us. The presence of some
soldiers, however, served to keep them in order and nothing dis-
agreeable happened. Mr. James Lyons (a conspicuous citizen of
Richmond), took Mrs. Davis in his carriage. Gen'l Burton and Sur-
geon Cooper marched off the boat, followed by Mr. Davis, who held
my arm. We four got into an open carriage and drove rapidly to the
Spotsweed Hotel, where the proprietors had prepared for Mr. Davis,
the very rooms which he had occupied in 1861 when he came from
Montgomery to be president of the C.S. All along the street men
stood with uncovered heads and the women waved handkerchiefs
from the windows.

At the hotel, there was no guard or constraint upon him. He had
his private parlor and received visits from hundreds of friends who
called.

Next day, Sunday, he spent indoors, receiving visitors particu-
larly just after the congregations came from church. The parlor was
crowded with pretty women he kissed every one of them and I
observed that he took delight in kissing the prettiest when they went
out as well as when they came in.

Monday morning the feeling throughout the community was at
fever heat. The Judge, Underwood, is the "bete noir" of Richmond,
everybody regarded him with horror and disgust because of that
villainous discourse to his grand jury of negroes, which he called his
"charge" everybody felt certain that he would shut Mr. Davis up
in the town jail as soon as he could get control of him. We of the
counsel felt more hopeful we had received every assurance from
the Attorney Genl and others that all would go well with us and
yet even we could not count on what Underwood might do and were
afraid that he would seize the occasion as an opportunity to indulge
his malignant passions.

However, the first steps had been taken and there was no backing

3 The Harrison home on the James River

140 THE RECONSTRUCTION

out. The women, all over town, were praying, and the men wore the
most anxious faces even those streets had ever seen. The people kept
their excitement under control, however, because everybody felt that
an outburst would only compromise Mr. Davis. As to what happened
in the court room the papers will tell you. The officials seem to have
caught the spirit of the crowd and every one of them did his utmost
to be polite. I went in with Mr. O'Conner. Mr. Davis appeared,
preceded by Genl Burton in full uniform, and followed by the
marshal. He was conducted to the prisoner's dock and looked some-
what flushed with nervous excitement. The marshal came across
the room looking for me, and invited me to come and sit beside Mr.
Davis, that he might feel he had a friend near him and not suffer from
a disagreeable consciousness of proximity to constables and turn-
keys. It was a delicate consideration for the feelings of a man like
Mr. Davis, which one would expect from a gentleman but coming
from that fellow I confess it surprised me. I thanked him with effusive
gratitude and taking my seat next "the accused" felt as exalted as
if I were enthroned beside a king. In a moment the courtesy was
extended by conducting Mr. Davis within the bar to a seat beside
his counsel. I stood beside him thro' it all, and was the first person to
congratulate him on the result.

Everything went according to our hopes. It had been agreed upon
that there should be no "speeches," and the remarks which had to
be made were of the most meagre. When it came to the Judge's turn
to speak and he announced that the case was "bailable" and that he
would admit the prisoner to bail, the effect was electrical. Every-
body's face brightened and when it was all over, everybody rushed
forward to congratulate Mr. Davis. The court room, which had been
as still almost as a death chamber, resounded with shouts. He asked
me to get him out as soon as possible, and taking his arm I pushed
through the crowd to a carriage, which was in waiting.

As long as I live I shall never forget the joyful excitement of the
crowd outside, as they rushed to the carriage to shake his hand, and
pursued us with cheers and "God's blessings." At the hotel there was
a great company but everybody held back with instinctive delicacy
as he entered the room where his wife was. After a moment I fol-
lowed with Dr. Minnegerode, his pastor the door was locked and
we all knelt around the table in thankful prayer for the deliverance
which God had brought us. We were all sobbing, with tears of joyful
emotion. When the door was opened and the happy multitude of
friends came in with their tears and smiles of welcome, I escaped
from the room.

THE RECONSTRUCTION 141

You never saw a community in such a glee of good humor,
everybody shaking hands, embracing, weeping and drinking toasts.
The animosities of the war were forgotten for the moment, and for
the first time since the war ended, Richmond people showed hos-
pitalities to the Yankees.

Gen'l Burton and Dr. Cooper were feasted day and night as a
mark of gratitude for their long continued kindness to Mr. Davis at
the Fortress. We thought it best to take Mr. Davis at once from a
scene of such excitement, and so they took passage for New York
on the steamer immediately. He is on his way to Canada to see Ms
children. He remains in New York a day or two to get rested. Last
night he had become so exhausted with the excitement and the con-
stant string of visitors who insisted upon seeing him at the New York
Hotel, that I took bodily possession of him and (despite his half-
expressed unwillingness) drove him out in a carriage to Mr. O'Con-
ner's house at Fort Washington, on the Hudson, and I left him there
to get a good sleep in the country and to enjoy a day or two of quiet,
before he continues his journey.

He is looking very thin and haggard and has very little muscular
strength. But his spirits are good, and he has improved in appearance
very greatly since he left his dungeon, and I think he will be in very
good condition as soon as he gets rested. Both he and Mrs. Davis
have inquired about you.

Your affectionate son,
BURTON N. HARRISON.

Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, Vol. VHI,
pp. 83-85.

IT IS TRUE WE WILL STARVE AT OUR PRESENT

WAGES.

1. After my visit to the tobacco factories, the following state-
ment, drawn up for the colored workmen by one of their number,
was placed in my hands by a gentleman who vouched for its truth-
fulness. I print it verbatim:

Richmond September 18, 1865. DEAR Sms: We the tobacco
mechanicks of this city and Manchester is worked to great disadvantage.
In 1858 and 1859 our masters hired us to the Tobacconist at a prices
ranging from $150 to 180. The Tobacconist furnished us lodging and

142 THE RECONSTRUCTION

food & clothing. They gave us tasks to performe. aU we made over
this task they payed us for. We worked faithful and they paid us faithful.
They Then gave us $2 to 2.50 cts, and we made double the amount we
now make. The Tobacconist held a meeting, and resolved not give
more than $1.50 cts per hundred, which is about one days work in a
week we may make 600 Ibs apece with a sterner. The weeks work then
at $1.50 amounts to $9 the stemers wage is from $4 to $4.50 cts
which leaves from $5 to 4-50 cts per week about one half what we
made when slaves. Now to Rent two small rooms we have to pay from
$18 to 20. We see $4.50 cts or $5 will not more than pay Rent say
nothing about food Clothing medicin Doctor Bills. Tax and Co. They
say we will starve through laziness that is not so. But it is true we will
starve at our present wages. They say we will steal we can say for
ourselves we had rather work for our living, give us a Chance. We are
Compeled to work for them at low wages and pay high Rents and make
$5 per week and sometimes les. And paying $18 or 20 per month Rent.
It is impossible to feed ouselves and family starvation is Cirten unles
a change is brought about

TOBACCO FACTORY MECHANICKS OF RICHMOND AND MANCHESTER

The South Trowbridge, pp. 230-231.

WE KNOW THAT THE NEGROES ARE NOT QUALI-
FIED TO EXERCISE THE ELECTIVE FRAN-
CHISE . . .

A Narrative By Alex H. H. Stuart, "Restoration Of Virginia
To The Union 9 '

To THE EDITORS OF THE DISPATCH:

The present unhappy condition of Virginia, and the gloomy pros-
pects which seem to lie before us, naturally fill every thoughtful mind
with painful apprehension. Should the Constitution recommended
by the convention be ratified, or be reported to Congress as ratified
by the popular vote, the condition of the Commonwealth will be
simply intolerable. Almost every man worthy of public trust will be
disfranchised, not only as to office, but in regards to suffrage; and the
political power of the State will pass into the hands of strangers and
adventurers. The property of the country will be at the mercy of
those who pay little or no portion of the taxes, and we shall be
plundered at die will of those who come among us to obtain office
and gratify their greed for spoils.

THE RECONSTRUCTION 143

It requires much prudence on the part of the people of Virginia,
and the sacrifices of many cherished opinions, to avert these direful
calamities. The question is now forced upon us to decide, not what
we would desire not what we are willing to take but what we
shall be allowed to retain.

We have already made many and painful sacrifices. We have
sanctioned by our votes the constitutional amendment which abol-
ished slavery, and have shaped our legislation so as to accord with
the provisions of that amendment.

These measures were exceedingly distasteful to most of our people,
and many thought at the time they would be fatal to the prosperity of
the State. But in large portions of the Commonwealth, if not through-
out its whole extent, it has been found that the results have been
so disastrous as was anticipated. In some districts, in which there was
not an over proportion of blacks, the change has proved beneficial;
and the writer of this paper has heard many who had been slave-
holders say that they would be unwilling to restore slavery if it
were in their power to do so. As immigration flows into the State,
this opinion will become more general, and when our political troubles
are finally settled, it will prove to be almost universal.

But the point to which I now wish to draw public attention is
what further sacrifices of opinions and prejudices are necessary to
render those which we have already made productive of good fruit,
and to secure to ourselves and our families exemption from the evils
to which I have adverted? As matters now stand, we have great rea-
son to apprehend that the ballot-boxes will be so manipulated at the
coming election as to fasten the proposed Constitution, with all its
odious features of disfranchisement and burdensome taxation, upon
us. We are naturally led then, to inquire, how can this bitter cup be
turned away from our lips?

There is one point on which Northern sentiment, or, as the poli-
ticians and the press of the North are pleased to call it, "the national
will," seems to be fixed and irreversible; and that is, that universal
suffrage, without distinction of race or color, shall be forced on us.
They maintain that negro suffrage is a legitimate, "if not necessary
sequence" of negro emancipation. Judge Chase and the more con-
servative Republicans hold this opinion, and urge us to adopt it as
a means of avoiding greater evils. This proposition is exceedingly
unpalatable to the people of the South. We know that the negroes
are not qualified to exercise the elective franchise, and that they
would be unsafe depositaries of political power. But how are we to
help ourselves? We are powerless to resist by arms, and the recent

144 THE RECONSTRUCTION

national elections have shown that we are equally powerless at the
ballot-box.

There is an old adage that "half a loaf is better than no bread,"
and I would respectfully ask, is not ours a case for the application of
that proposition? Is it not better to surrender half than lose all? Is
it not better to take universal suffrage, with an exemption from dis-
franchisement and the other evils to which I have alluded, than to
have them all forced upon us? After grievous travail of spirit, I have
come to the conclusion that such is the dictate of prudence and com-
mon sense.

The Southern mind is naturally sensitive in regard to everything
like negro equality. We cannot forget that they were recently our
slaves, nor can we dismiss from our minds the conviction that they
are uneducated and ignorant of the first principles of government.
Every step, therefore, in the direction of that equality has been taken
reluctantly and with many misgivings. When it was proposed to in-
troduce negroes as witnesses, the public mind of Virginia was not
prepared for proposition. At first, their admissibility was limited by
law to cases in which a negro was a party. Afterwards the restriction
was removed, and they became lawful, competent witnesses in all
cases, and, as far as I have heard, no mischief has resulted. Their
testimony is received and weighed like that of other men. But com-
petency does not necessarily imply credibility. Their testimony is be-
lieved or disbelieved in proportion to the character of the witness
and the intrinsic probability of his evidence.

We now look with extreme aversion on negro suffrage. It is nat-
ural we should do so for reasons already stated. But may we not find
upon actual experiment, as in the case of negro testimony, that it
is not such bad thing as we have been accustomed to believe?

The inherent inferiority of the race, and their want of education
and property, will necessarily place them in a position of subordi-
nation to the superior race. This has been found to be the case in
Mississippi, Georgia and Louisiana. Knowledge is power. Property is
power. Would it not, therefore, be strange if the superior intelligence
and accumulated property of the superior race should not exercise a
controlling influence over the ignorance and penury of the inferior?
It seems to me a contrary apprehension must be ill-founded, because
it is opposed to reason and human experience.

Will it not, therefore, be wise for people of Virginia to make up
their minds to come up at once to the proposition of Judge Chase and
the New York Tribune "Universal suffrage and universal amnesty"?
Better that than "universal suffrage and universal disjranchisement"

THE RECONSTRUCTION 145

Matters may not work altogether smoothly for a time. We may
have some troubles In portions of the State, but it will be temporary.
The influx of whites from abroad, and the efflux of blacks from the
State, will soon establish Caucasian preponderance on a firm basis.

What we want is peace. We want these troublesome questions
settled, so that the tide of immigration may flow into Virginia. As
long as we are in our present abnormal condition, immigrants will
not come among us, because they do not know what to expect in the
future. Let these questions be settled it matters not how and the
population and capital will flow in an unbroken stream into all parts
of our State, building up our cities, opening our mines, buying and
improving our land, constructing new railways and canals, and giving
vigor and activity to our industrial interests.

Thousands are now anxiously awaiting this settlement. Let us
throw no further obstacles in the way. Let us say to the conservative
Republicans, we accede to your proposition. Let us respond to Gen-
eral Grant's demand for peace. When peace is restored, and the
Southern States are again represented in Congress by men who will
truly reflect their sentiments, we can have a word to say in regard to
the future policy of the country. It seems to me obvious that by this
course we must gain something, and cannot lose anything. . . .

SENEX

JUST SO LONG AS THERE ARE NEGROES IN THE

SOUTH, WHETHER BOND OR FREE, JUST SO LONG

WILL THERE BE "A POOR WHITE TRASH."

Stephen Powers, "Afoot And Alone"

. . . Charleston was a city, first, of idle ragged negroes, who, with
no visible means of support nevertheless sent an astonishing multi-
tude of children to school; second, of small dealers, laborers, and
German artisans, starving on the rebel custom; third, of widows and
children of planters, keeping respectable boarding-houses, or pining
in hopeless and unspeakable penury; fourth, of young men loafing
in the saloons, and living on the profits of their mothers' boarding
houses; fifth, of Jews and Massachusetts merchants, doing well
on the semiloyal and negro custom; sixth, of utterly worthless and
accursed political adventurers from the North, Bureau leeches, and
promiscuous knaves, all fattening on the humiliation of the South
and the credulity of the freedmen.

146 THERECONSTRUCTION

Let us, in fancy, ascend in a shallop the Edisto or the Pacatalico. . .

It shall be in the spring, before the swamp malaria . . . has ban-
ished the whites to the uplands; and while there are plenty of lilies
waltzing and winking above the waves.

In the foreground of the lagoon the green lush waves of the rice
chase each other in languid softness, and white-clad laborers bow
themselves to their toil between the rows, or punt and paddle their
clumsy bateaux along the ditches. The idiotic brutishness which
sits on the faces of these poor rice-eaters, and their grunting, gutteral,
sea-island patois, might make you believe yourself on the deadly
shores of the Senegal. Far across the rice-field, where it swells like
a long Atlantic wave to meet the upland, the planter's mansion towers
white above its groves of tender green, now sprinkled over with a
mellow orange snow of blossoms. Beyond the higher up the grand
old pines hold up their arms toward the soft blue sky, and swear by
the beautiful sun that no evil shall ever befall this earthly Paradise.

We disembark. The mansion is girt about on three sides with a
deep and breezy veranda, "rose-wreathed, vine-encircled," through
whose leafy trellises sleepily sift all day, into open windows, odors
of a mellow and languishing sweetness, and at night the coolness of
the briny sea. Ten thousand butterflies and humming-birds, tricked
in their brilliant gauds, and house-keeping bees, more plain in attire,
flutter endlessly over the painted flowers, every one of which is
pumped a hundred times a day.

We stroll down curving alleys, between the dainty privet hedges,
which are here allowed to shoot into a graceful cone, and there to
arch above a gateway which invites us to enter. We wander on and
on, through another and another, by many a luring pathway, among
acres of roses, and shady bowers, and unnamed geometric tricks of:

Damask-work, and deep inlay
Of braided blooms,

gay with brilliant lily-like amaryllis, and white and orange wood-
bines, and pittosporum, with its soft-green, honey-edged leaves. Here,
the columnar palmetto shakes its sword-tipped vanes in the breeze
with a cool whispering rustle; there, the golden lotus its crest with
a dreamy murmur; yonder, the banana its giant leaves with many a
lazy unwieldy flap. Hard by, the century-plant heaves its huge club-
leaves, gray with the lapse of forgotten winters an ancient anchorite,
living on its austere and monkish life fourscore years among all these
trooping and splendid generations, which come and go as the dews

THE RECONSTRUCTION 147

of the morning. The orange, like a true daughter of the South, weaves
a little tender embroidery for its last year's gown, and thinks, what
with its ornaments of native gold, it will do for another year. A bevy
of golden-haired wood-nymphs roll the plate, or play at the mystic
Draidical game of the South Honon, Cronon, Thealogos beneath
the ancestral live-oaks, which wag their old gray beards of moss with
pleasant laughter at the gay sports below.

Merry suithe it is in the halle,

When the beards waveth alle.

What is that picture now?

The magnificent avenue of live-oaks, if the ruthless tomahawk
of the war has sparred so much, with their hoary beards, like Bar-
barossa's in the cave, sweeping and swaying in the mournful breeze,
conduct through a rank and noxious jungle of weeds to a heap of
ashes. The two blackened chimneys, like lonely unpropitiated ghosts
of this once happy home, stand bleakly alone near the cabins of the
blacks, as if to summon them to vengeance. But they summon all in
vain, whether the freedmen to vengeance, or the master to return.
Far off beside the Rapidan or James he slumbers in his forgotten
grave, which many a summer's sun has covered over with grassy
thatch, and his dull ear is not more insensible to the wail of his
houseless orphans than is the happy freedman to solicitations for
his revenge. . . .

The hedges are wrenched and wrung into hideous shapelessness,
and all the pride and the glory of the gardens is eaten by hungry
mules. The waters of the swamps flap and swash unhindered through
the broken mains, while loathsome sirens and turtles crawl among
the rasping sedges and the slimy pools. Acres upon acres of aban-
doned rice-swamps are dun with weeds, or black with rotting and
reeking lilies, and dark with pestilence and death.

The widow and her orphans ah, where are they?

Happy for them if they, too, sleep in the quiet grave, where the
brutal pillaging and rage of contending armies terrify no more.

In the grocery it is you must look for the rising statesmen. You
shall find them in a circles, with their long lank hair, unsunned faces,
and easy, flippant, laughing manner, comparing notes on the doings
of their respective thieving, lying freedmen, and narrating histories
of their regiments.

The typical man of the State is the great rice or cotton planter,
like him I talked with in Marion. Haughty, irascible, but prodigally

148 THE RECONSTRUCTION

hospitable and sunny to his friends, lie has a type close at hand in
his cotton-bolls, which, when they are touched by frost, straight-
way so swell with rage that they burst their garments.

Yet there is a strange sombreness in the South Carolinian mind.
Let the reader recall the Biblical studies of Allston, the grim and
ruthless logic of Calhoun, and the absence of humor in the novels
of Simms. They were the Puritans of the South. In their very re-
finement there was an alkalinity which withered the nonconformists.
We cannot forget that Puritan and Cavalier were both Englishmen,
and that, if one used a fanaticism of religion, the other used a fanati-
cism of gentility.

But, alas for South Carolina, the current generation of this close-
bred, martial, alkaline race is almost extinct. Choleric old rice-
planters, with cottony polls, I saw; classically molded, pale, saddened,
but heroic women, and exquisitely beautiful girls, I saw in Charles-
ton, all in mourning weeds; but the youths, who would continue in
the intense but erring vigor of South Carolina in another generation
where were they?

Never can I forget that miserable walk from Charleston to Sa-
vannah; drenched with ceaseless rains; wading in endless swamps;
twisting myself in the most unseemly monkey-jumps, to keep on the
foot-logs; scared at night by the awful thunders, which cracked right
overhead in the vast and lonely forest, and the lightnings splitting in
the swash of the rain. But the ghastly ruin, and the silence of death
were more terrible than all beside. Between the two cities there were
only two planter's houses, both built after the war. . . .

pp. 83-85.

Between Jackson and Vicksburg I staid in a grotesque hut, built
of fragments, in which paintings of a most gorgeous and sensuous
beauty embellished a room like a sty, and the piano shone in absurd
grandeur between the dresser and the pot-rack. A very little man,
of extreme and dainty culture, leaned away back in his rocking-chair,
with an air of utter listlessness and disgust, and kept his delicate
hand constantly in motion before his face, and as if he were brushing
away cob-webs, while he rocked and delivered a monologue on
Reconstruction about half an hour in length.

"O, we brush this altogether to one side, sir. Let them fight it out
among themselves. We have nothing to do with it, sir; nothing what-
ever to do with it. They have subjugated us, sir; and we have laid
down our arms, and have nothing more to do with these things, and

THE RECONSTRUCTION 149

now why don't they just settle everthing to suit themselves, and
not trouble us to put our hands in the disgusting business?"
And then he quoted Byron:

And if we do but watch the hour,
There never yet was human power

Which could evade if unforgiven,
The patient search and vigil long
Of him who treasures up a wrong.

All through the woods, from the Big Black onward there were
crowds of graves or trenches, digged in haste at midnight, by the
flicker of the yellow torch, or the uncertain flash of the cannonade.
There the unreturning dead of that sad, sad war slept side by side,
Unionist with rebel one with his name on "Fame's eternal bead-
roll," the other consigned to obloquy or sweet oblivion. I was tread-
ing already on ground more sacred than Trojan dust.

Mother Earth herself, like Minerva with the Greeks, in that mem-
orable battle-summer, made auxiliary war on yon haughty strong-
hold. All along these yellow earth-billows which she hurled against
it are the sodden breakers of battle; and there, where human wave
met wave, and the spray of bayonets fiercely flashed, the early grass
grows greener from its bloody watering.

And here, half-way down this slope, sat two men once, and broke
a celebrated backbone; and here the long cannon stands silently up,
erect upon the pedestal, and stares, like Cyclops, with its grim eye
toward heaven.

And here are the caves in the steep, yellow walls, almost as un-
decaying as rock. Crouching here in terror, the people counted
through weary nights the slow heart-beats of the cannonade, or
listened breathless to its awful tumult by day. They heard the stu-
pendous how-w-w-w of the sixty pounder; the keen ping-g-g-g of the
rifle ball; and that most fiendish and blood-freezing sound of battle,
the diabolical yell of bursted bombs whew-zz-zu-whfsh-e-ye-woopl
Vicksburg shudders yet at these hideous memories; nay, it is itself one
great ghastly shudder of hills, a perennial geologic death-rigor. . . .

"God, pity the white poor man in a land where labor is black, and
the black man in a land where weakness is a crime!"

p. 100.

Did Grant and Lee terminate the "irrepressible conflict" at Appo-
mattox, the thoughtful patriot, who travels in the South, will often

150

THE RECONSTRUCTION

ask himself. Doubtless there will never be another general appeal to
arms; but can we hope that the ground-swell of bitter rancors, follow-
ing the mighty storm, will subside as soon as it did in England, as
soon even as in Rome?

Can there ever be fraternal concord and ardent devotion to a
common government in a country, of which one half is democratic
and the other radically aristocratic? . . .

But I hear the Northern objector say, now that the negroes are
free, the South will gradually become democratic. . . .

Just so long as there are negroes numerous in the South, with
their admitted and incurable inferiority, whether bond or free, just
so long will the few put their hands on their shoulders, and lift
themselves up, and tread down the many. Just so long as there are
negroes in the South, whether bond or free, just so long will there
be a "poor white trash."

Then consider the effect on the negroes themselves of this most
unhappy mingling of races. Everybody who has been much in the
South has doubtless often heard one call another "you nigger," or
"you black nigger." Would they do this in Africa? Why not? Be-
cause there are no white men there. They would not do it here, if
it did not sting. How can a negro reach the highest things which are
possible to Mm, when both white and black are ever ready with this
brand to scorch the wings of Ms ambition?

I think I can claim, without egotism, that I sought out the poor
whites in their homes more faithfully than most travelers in the
South have done. I have seen and felt, as few have cared to, the
saddening ignorance and apathy of that class, and the unspeakable
mischiefs and miseries that grow up from the juxtaposition of the
races.

And yet there is a remnant of good blood in these men, good
fighting blood. It was these same stolidly apathetic and ignorant
men who fought the battles of the rebellion. And who of us can for-
get the keen and bitter anguish with which we beheld that despised
rabble break our noble legions in the day of battle, when the mis-
erable bungling on the Potomac turned their magnificent valor into
shame.

It was some small consolation, and yet a most saddening reflec-
tion, that these were Americans all, and not foreigners. As I have
wandered at midnight over the bloody and shot-torn sward about
Atlanta, where thirteen times beneath a summer's sun these intrepid
fellows, though guiltless of the wicked rebellion, had charged the
very intrenchments of Death, and where the placid moon and the

THE RECONSTRUCTION 101

stars looked down upon the pale cold faces of the fallen brother
slain by brother 1 have cried, "Ah! my beloved country, how many
bloody tears hast thou poured for that criminal primal sin of bring-
ing to thy shores a race of bondmen!"

Then came the surrender, and these haggard and wasted regiments,
after serving all too well their wicked deceivers, crept back to an
estate which was worst than death.

Some of them had had their eyes partly disenchanted. They had
sometimes seen the sword brandished over them with the old inso-
lence of the cotton-lord; they had seen it swim in its airy circles with
the trained flourish of the lash. They saw dimly the source of their
calamities, and when disbanded, many of them wreaked blindly on
lord and freedman, the guilty agent and the innocent cause, their
^discriminating vengeance.

But the saddest tMng of all that sad war was its termination. The
conqueror went back to an anvil or a loom on which lay only the
softened malediction of the Almighty; but the conquered returned
to a plough on which the negro had riveted the degradation of the
curse" of Canaan. The one returned to ovations, to pensions, to a
happy home; the other, to humiliation, to unspeakable poverty and
despair. It is cruel and heartless falsehood to say that the degrada-
tion of the Southern poor is of their own making. As well accuse the
poor of England of being oppressed by their own volition, or a starv-
ing man of dying willfully. For my part, I have more tears for these
unhappy people than plaudits for the triumph of any man who finds
it in Ms heart to make this accusation. It were easier to break
through the columns of Sherman than through the black and Canaan-
itish curse which rests upon the poor in the South.

pp. 104-107.
pp. 43-47.

... WE HAVE DECIDED TO BURN MORE THAN

YOUR GIN-HOUSE, AND WILL KILL YOU IF

YOU DON'T BREAK UP YOUR INFAMOUS

NIGGER-CAMPS.

Mob Law

Many Yankees, who came down South at the conclusion of the
war intending to settle, have been frightened away by the state of
things they found prevailing.

152 THE RECONSTRUCTION

The following letter is vouched for by the correspondent of the
Nation, as having been sent on the 19th of January last to a Mr.
Rider, an Englishman who has lived for the last thirty-five years in
Louisiana:

We have been informed that you are 'lowing niggers to squat about
on your land; or, in other words, you are renting niggers' land. One of
our committee told you that you would be burnt out, but you would not
pay any attention to him. Now, sir, your gin-house is burnt for renting
niggers' land. If this is not sufficient warning, we will burn everything
on your place. If that don't break it up, we will shoot the niggers.
Beware, sir, before it is too late, or you will be waited on by A
COMMITTEE.

The niggers are not to be blamed. You are the villain. C.

[In pencil] Since writing the above we have decided to burn more
than your gin-house, and will kill you if you don't break up your in-
famous nigger-camps. COMMITTEE.

Mr. Rider is a gentleman of wealth and respectability, who it is
believed, has never given his neighbours other grounds of complaint,
than they find in this endeavour to introduce upon his estate a sys-
tem of labour resembling the English tenant system. It was not his
gin-house that was burned, but a corn-house with four hundred
bushels of corn. The fire at the gin-house was put out by the negroes.

. . . Meanwhile the state of things is sufficiently depressing, and will
be better understood after a perusal of the following letter, written
in December last from South Carolina, which gives some idea of a
grief which is far beyond the cognizance of ordinary travellers:

I doubt if you have any idea of the poverty of the people. The land
may be restored, but where can its ruined owner procure money to pay
taxes, erect buildings, and hire freedmen? Our young men are gone to
work in earnest. We are proud to see them engaged in teaching, plough-
ing, waggoning, keeping grocery-stores; in short, doing anything, and
doing it cheerfully. Ours is a poverty of which no one is ashamed, and of
which very few complain. We are willing to bear it, and its universality
makes it more tolerable. When I know that the most refined and in-
telligent women in the State, deserted by their deluded servants, are doing
all kinds of housework sweeping, dusting, making beds, and even in
some cases cooking and washing it is much easier for me to iron the
towels my little son has washed, while I turn occasionally a laughing
eye towards the fire-place, where an invalid gentleman (son of a former
Governor) is engaged in churning! I must confess that his attempt

THE RECONSTRUCTION 153

furnished us with more amusement than butter. For, believing this state
of things to be only temporary, we make merry over it, compare notes
with our friends, and boast of our success in these untried fields.

Many refugee ladies feed their families by exchanging the contents of
their wardrobes for articles of food. "How are your sisters?" said I last
summer to a young man who had left home to become a tutor. "Their
complexions look badly," was the reply, "but that is not surprising, when
you consider how long they have been eating old frocks." "Have they
any lights?" was my next query. With perfect gravity he replied, "No;
when the moon does not shine, they go to bed by lightning" But matters
are mending. In this very family, light -wood has superseded "lightning"
in the chambers, and in the parlour a small petroleum lamp (price one
dollar) diffuses light and happiness around.

But there are cases over which no one can laugh. I know of a family
whose property was counted by hundreds of thousands, who have not
tasted meat for months. A gentleman of high scientific attainments,
formerly professor in a college, is literally trying to keep the wolf from
the door by teaching a few scholars, one of whom, a girl of sixteen, pays
a quart of milk per diem for her tuition! Innumerable widows, orphans,
and single women, whose property was in Confederate bonds, are pen-
niless, and are seeking employment of some kind for bread.

On the whole, our people are bearing their trials bravely and cheer-
fully; but so wide-spread is the ruin, that, even if the new system works
well, it will take at least half a century to put us where we were. Georgia
will recover much sooner.

On Sherman's Track Kennaway, pp. 127-129, 129-131.

. . . GREAT NUMBERS OF COLORED CITIZENS, WHO

WERE ENTITLED, BY LAW, TO VOTE . . . WERE

VISITED BY THE KLAN, AND WHIPPED,

AND MANY OF THEM MURDERED.

Proceedings In The Ku Klux Trials At Columbia, S. C. In The
United States Circuit Court, November Term, 1871

Mr. Corbin. May it please the Court and gentlemen of the jury,
the case now to be presented to you is one of an unusual importance.
It is one of a somewhat startling character in this country. The de-
fendant who is now called before you is charged with having entered
into a conspiracy for the purpose of preventing and restraining
divers male citizens of the United States, of African descent, and
qualified to vote, from exercising the right of voting.

154 THE RECONSTRUCTION

We shall first show you that he entered into a general conspiracy,
existing in the County of York, for the purpose of preventing colored
voters of that County from exercising die right to vote.

We shall prove the existence of an organization, perfect in all its
details, armed and disguised; that this organization was bound to-
gether by a terrible oath, the penalty for breaking of which was de-
clared to be the doom of a traitor Death! Death! Death! ! ! We
shall show that this organization had a constitution and by-laws, regu-
lating, in detail, all the duties of its members; that it pervaded the
whole County, or a large portion of it; that it was inaugurated in
1868; that its active operations were somewhat suspended during
the years '69 and '70, but that in '71, particularly, it became very
active; that great numbers of colored citizens, who were entitled, by
law, to vote in that County, were visited by the Klan, and whipped,
and many of them murdered. In this case, we shall show to you that
this organization deliberately planned and executed the murder of
Jim Williams, whose name you will find in this indictment, in pur-
suance of the purpose of the organization. We shall prove to you,
gentlemen, that the defendant was present, aided and assisted in
carrying out the purpose of the organization.

The details will all come out in proof. The raid as it was called
in that County that killed Jim Williams, consisted of some forty,
fifty or sixty persons. It met at what is called, in the County of York,
the "Briar Patch," an old "muster" field, armed, disguised and
mounted; that, under the command of a leader, J. W. Avery, this
organization proceeded to the house of Jim Williams, broke in his
door, took him out, fastened a rope about his neck, took him to
the woods near by, and hung him till he was dead. That they left a
card upon him, which was found on the morning following the execu-
tion, containing the words JIM WILLIAMS ON HIS BIG MUSTER. That,
on the same night, they visited divers other houses of colored people,
threatened them, took them out, robbed them of their arms, and
informed them that, if they should vote again, they would be
killed. . . .

pp. 163-164

OBLIGATION.

I [name] before the immaculate Judge of Heaven and Earth, and
upon the Holy Evangelists of Almighty God, do, of my own free
will and accord, subscribe to the following sacredly binding obliga-
tion:

THE RECONSTRUCTION 155

1. We are on the side of justice, humanity and constitutional liberty,
as bequeathed to us in its purity by our forefathers.

2. We oppose and reject the principles of the Radical party.

3. We pledge mutual aid to each other in sickness, distress and
pecuniary embarrassment.

4. Female friends, widows and their households shaU ever be special
objects of our regard and protection.

Any member divulging, or causing to be divulged, any of the fore-
going obligation, shall meet the fearful penalty and traitor's doom, which

is Death! Death! Death!

CONSTITUTION.

Article 1. This organization shall be known as the Order, No. ,
of the Ku Klux Klan, of the State of South Carolina.

Article 2. The officers shall consist of a Cyclops and Scribe, both of
whom shall be elected by a majority vote of the order, and to hold their
office during good behavior.

Article 3. It shall be the duty of the C. to preside in the order, enforce
a due observance of the constitution and by-laws, and an exact com-
pliance to the rules and usages of the order; to see that all the members
perform their respective duties; appoint all committees before the order;
inspect the arms and dress of each member on special occasions; to call
meetings when necessary; draw upon members for all sums needed to
carry on the order.

Sec. 2. The S. shall keep a record of the proceedings of the order,
write communications, notify other Klans when their assistance is
needed, give notice when any member has to suffer the penalty for
violating his oath, see that all books, papers or other property, belonging
to his office, are placed beyond the reach of any but members of the
order. He shall perform such other duties as may be required of him
by the C.

Article 4. Sec. 1. No person shall be initiated into this order under
eighteen years of age.

Sec. 2. No person of color shall be admitted into this order.

Sec. 3. No person shall be admitted into this order who does not
sustain a good moral character, or who is in any way incapacitated to
discharge the duties of a Ku Klux.

Sec. 4. The name of a person offered for membership must be proposed
by the Committee appointed by the Chief, verbally, stating age, residence
and occupation; state if he was a soldier in the late war; his rank;
whether he was in the Federal or Confederate service, and his command.

156 THE RECONSTRUCTION

Article 5. Sec. L Any member who shall offend against these articles,
or the by-laws, shall be subject to be fined, and reprimanded by the C.
as two-thirds of the members present at any regular meeting may
determine.

Sec. 2. Every member shall be entitled to a fair trial for any offense
involving reprimand or criminal punishment.

Article 6. Sec. 1. Any member who shall betray or divulge any of the
matters of the order, shaU suffer death.

Article 7. Sec. 1. The following shall be the rules of order. Any matter
herein not provided for shall be managed in strict accordance with the
Ku Klux rules:

Sec. 2. When the Chief takes his position on the right, the Scribe,
with the members, forming a half circle around them, and, at the sound
of the signal instrument, there shall be profound silence.

Sec. 3. Before proceeding to business, the S. shall call the roll and
note the absentees.

Sec. 4. Business shall be taken up in the following order:

1. Reading the minutes.

2. Excuse of members at preceding meeting.

3. Report of Committee of candidates for membership.

4. Collection of dues.

5. Are any of the order sick or suffering?

6. Report of Committees.

7. New business.

BY-LAWS.

Article L Sec. 1 This order shall meet at .

Sec. 2. Five (5) members shall constitute a quorum, provided the C.
or S. be present.

Sec. 3. The C. shall have power to appoint such members of the order
to attend the sick, the needy, and those distressed, and those suffering
from Radical misrule, as the case may require.

Sec. 4. No person shall be appointed on a Committee unless the person
is present at the time of appointment. Members of Committees neglecting
to report shall be fined thirty cents.

Article 2. Sec. L Every member, on being admitted, shall sign the
constitution and by-laws, and pay the initiation fee.

Sec. 2. A brother of the Klan, wishing to become a member of this
order, shall present his application, with the proper papers of transfer
from the order of which he was a member formerly; shall be admitted
to the order only by a unanimous vote of the members present.

Article 3. Sec. L The initiation fee shall be .

Article 4. Sec. L Every member who shall refuse or neglect to pay
Ms fines or dues, shall be dealt with as the Chief thinks proper.

THE RECONSTRUCTION 157

Sec. 3. Sickness, or absence from the County, or being engaged in any
important business, shall be valid excuses for any neglect of duty.

Article 5. Sec. 1. Each member shall provide himself with a pistol, Ku
Klux gown, and signal instrument.

Sec. 2. When charges have been preferred against a member in a
proper manner, or any matters of grievance between brother Klux are
brought before the order, they shall be referred to a Special Committee
of three or more members, who shall examine the parties and determine
the matters in question, reporting their decision to the order. If the
parties interested desire, two-thirds of the members present voting in
favor of the report, it shall be carried.

Article 6. Sec. 1. It is the duty of every member who has evidence
that another has violated Article 2, to prefer the charge and specify the
offense to the order.

Sec. 2. The charge for violating Article 2 shall be referred to a Com-
mittee of five or more members, who shall, as soon as practicable, sum-
mon the parties and investigate the matter.

Sec. 3. If the Committee agree that the charges are sustained, that
the member on trial has intentionally violated his oath, or Article 2, they
shall report the fact to the order.

Sec. 4. If the Committee agree that the charges are not sustained, that
the member is not guilty of violating the oath, or Article 2, they shall
report to that effect to the order, and the charges will be dismissed.

Sec. 5. When the Committee report that the charges are sustained, and
the unanimous vote of the members is given in favor thereof, the offend-
ing person shall be sentenced to death by the Chief.

Sec. 6. The prisoner, through the Cyclops of the order of which he is
a member, can make application for pardon to the Great Grand Cyclops
of Nashville, Tennessee, in which case execution of the sentence can be
stayed until pardoning power is heard from . . .

pp. 175-178.

Mr. Stanberry . . . My objection to this is, that they have produced
the written agreement by which these men were bound together,
sustained and supported by an oath to sustain and preserve this

agreement. I see nothing criminal in it; the agreement must speak
for itself; the Court must construe it, not the witness. It is a written
paper, to be construed by your Honors. It is a paper that, apparently,
is innocent that contains no criminal agreement. Is he to be made
a criminal because somebody else puts a criminal interpretation
upon it? The question is, whether the paper itself is susceptible of a
criminal interpretation? I have belonged to societies myself, in college;
I have signed written constitutions, with a great many agreements
in them about not divulging, and many other rules very much

Ig8 THE RECONSTRUCTION

like those rules. Well, now, the constitution and agreement of
those societies were perfectly innocent, entirely so, so that any
man might sign them without committing a* crime; might enter
into such an agreement without being made a criminal. Take, for
instance, myself, signing such constitutions of such societies, can I
be made a criminal because some other member in that society had
a criminal intent, or put a criminal interpretation upon the paper
itself? Is there such a rule as that, that a man, who does understand
a thing as it is to be understood, puts a right interpretation upon it,
so far as the paper shows, shall be bound by a criminal interpretation
put on it by someone else? My objection, therefore, is to giving a
character and construction of this paper by the construction and
interpretation put upon it by others. It is quite a different question,
when you come to fulfill any purpose of this paper. What did they
do? that is a very different question.

Mr. Corbin, The Court, Mr. Stanbery, the difficulty is this: They
present a paper to the jury, which starts with a preamble and provi-
sion, which would indicate a society similar to a charitable association;
and then there is a clause which punishes anybody with death who
shall disclose any of its purposes; and, in order to execute these chari-
table objects, men are required to go in disguise. It does not look
much like a charitable association, and the question asks this witness
to explain the meaning of that paper as his Klan understood it, so far
as he knows, and we think it is competent. [To the witness] What
was understood in the meeting at which you were when you took
that obligation, and what was the meaning of that paper? You were
to put down Radicalism, and go in disguise, and suffer death if you
divulged. Now, state how you were to do it?

A. The understanding was, they never were to go in disguise only of
a night; show no signs in the day time. Towards the last of the Ku
Kluxing there was no man allowed to give any signs.

Q. What was the purpose of the order?

A. The purpose of the order?

Q. Yes. What did you understand to be the general purpose of the
order?

Mr. Stanbery: Does the Court allow that question?

The Court: We want to get what was the understanding of the persons
who signed that paper.

g. Well, tell us what was the understanding of the persons who signed
this paper?

A. It was not to divulge any secrets; to attend all meetings; to go on

THE RECONSTRUCTION 159

all raids that was ordered. They were to be fined a certain fee, whatever
the Elan pleased to put on them, if they did not.

Q. What were the raids for?

A. To put down Radicalism, the raids were for.

Q. In what way were they to put down Radicalism?

A. It was to whip them and make them change their politics.

Q. Is that your understanding?

A. Yes, sir. That was my understanding about the matter.

pp. 202-203.

Q. How many raids have you been upon by order of the Chief?

A. Two, sir.

Q. Now, will you state to the jury what was done on those raids?

A. Yes, sir. We were ordered to meet at Howell's Ferry, and went and
whipped five colored men. Presley Holmes was the first they whipped, and
then went on and whipped Jerry Thompson; went then and whipped
Charley Good, James Leach, and Amos Howell.

Q. How many men were on these raids?

A. I think there was twenty in number.

Q. How were they armed and uniformed?

A. They had red gowns, and had white covers over their horses. Some
had pistols and some had guns.

Q. What did they wear on their heads?

A. Something over their heads came down. Some of them had horns
on.

Q. Disguise dropped down over their face?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. How many men were on that raid?

A. I think it was twenty in number.

Q. What was the object in whipping those five men you have named?

A. The object was, in whipping Presley Thompson, about some threats
he had made about him going to be buried in Salem graveyard.

Q. What was the first to occur?

A. Well, sir, this man Webber he was leading the Klan from the
other side of the river ran into the yard and kicked down the door,
and dragged him out, and led him off about two hundred yards, and
stripped his shirt and whipped him.

Q. How many lashes did they give him?

A. I cannot tell you how many.

Q. Did they whip him severely or not?

A. I heard Mr. Smith say that he was sorry enough for him to cry;
that his shirt was stuck to his back.

Q. What occurred at the next place?

A They whipped Jerry Thompson at the next place. They whipped him
about some threats he had made about an old soldier. He said he would
kick the old soldier's hind parts.

l6o THE RECONSTRUCTION

Q. That was the special cause?

A. Yes, sir; and he was also a member of the League.

g. Was anything said about that when they whipped him?

A. I think there was; told him never to go to any more meetings; to
stay at home and attend to his own business.

Q. What was done at the next place?

A. They went there and whipped Charley Good; he was supposed to
be an officer in the League. He had been seen with his stripes on. They
whipped him very severe; they beat him with a pole and kicked him
down on the ground.

Q. What did they tell him?

A. To let Radicalism alone; not to go to any more League meetings;
if he did, his doom would be fatal.

Q. The next place what did they do?

A. They went then to James Leach's, at Matthew Smarr's house. I
didn't go into the yard there, I stood out in the road. They whipped
him, though.

Q. Did they break down his door?

A. I think they did.

Q. Hear anything they said to him?

A. I heard it, but could not tell what it was.

Q. That is the first raid you were on?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Now tell us about the second raid.

A. The second raid, we were ordered to meet in an old field, below
Dr. Whiteside's. I don't know what the purpose of that meeting was.

Q. How many men of the Klan did you meet there?

A. There were some seventeen or eighteen, I think.

Q. In disguise?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Tell us all about it. Who was in command?

A. Julius Howe was leading the Klan that night.

Q. Tell us where they went first.

A. The first place they stopped was at Mrs. Watson's; called for a
nigger there, but he was sick and they didn't disturb him; went on then
to Mr. Moore's quarter, and there they got a double-barrelled shot-gun;
didn't whip anybody though; went on then down to Theo. Byers'; they
didn't do anything there; and then they went to Chancellor Chambers*
and got a gun there.

Q. From whom?

A. I don't know who they got it from.

Q. Colored or white man?

A. Colored man.

Q. Get it from his house?

A. Took it out of his house. I think it was an Enfield rule, which had

THERECONSTRUCTION l6l

been cut in two. Went on then down to Ed. Byers' or Theo. Byers'
place, I don't know which; they whipped a couple of niggers down
there; one pretty severe; he was named Adolphus Moore.

pp. 204-206.

Q, When you went upon these raids were you under perfect discipline
and control?

A. Yes, sir; pretty much.

Q. That is, you obeyed the orders of your chief?

A. I tried to do it, sir.

g. You have been a soldier?

A. I was a soldier for four years.

Q. Most of the members of the Klan had been soldiers?

A. I think so. Some of them were young boys; they had never been
soldiers.

Q. Had the chief of the Klan been a soldier?

A. Captain Mitchell; yes, sir. He was a captain in the war, I think.

Q. During the last war?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Well, then, he carried out military discipline while on the march &c.?

A. No, sir; he never. I never was with him only one time, and then
Weber led the raid that night.

Q. Was there any other Klan joined you that night?

A. Yes, sir. We went as far as Ed. Byers', and there we met I don't
recollect I don't remember the number of men but we met some more
men there, said to be the Rattlesnake Klan, from Sharon.

Q. Who was in command of that Klan?

A. They said Will Johnson.

Q. Did you go on together after that?

A. Yes, sir; went by Mr. Stenson's, and then down to Wilson Wilson's,
and they whipped him.

Q. Tell us about that.

A. The whole party stopped in his yard, and, after Mitchell's Klan
went on, the Rattlesnakes went back and whipped him, and like to have
killed him so one of the men told me after he came back.

Q. [by Mr. Stanbery] Do you know anything about it, yourself?

A. I suppose I do; if I did not I wouldn't be telling it.

Q. How far were you away from where this whipping was done?

A. Well, sir, we started and went on down towards Bill Williams', and
they overtaken us just before we got to Billy Wilson's.

Q. Did they tell you about what they had done?

A. Yes, sir. Hugh Kell told me. He said they whipped him, and it was
all they could do to keep Will Johnson from killing him.

Q. What did you do next?

A. They went down, they said, after a black man by the name of

162 THE RECONSTRUCTION

John Thompson, who was accused, I think, and they got down there
and found that Mr. Wilson was in his house, and went and called him out.

Q. Is he a white man?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. What did you go for him for?

A. They said they were going down to talk to him.

Q. What did you do at his house?

A. They called him out and talked to him, and it was all they could
do to keep the others from going into the house to Mrs. Wilson. She had
been confined in the afternoon, at 4 o'clock, and me and another young
man kept them out. I knew the circumstances. He came out on the steps,
and they talked to him.

Q. What was he accused of?

A. He was called a Radical in the neighborhood; he had taught a
nigger school and voted the Radical ticket.

Q. Was that the reason of your visiting him? Tell us what they said.

A. They called him out and told him to let Radicalism alone. . . .

pp. 206-208.

Testimony of Andy Tims.

Andy Tims, witness for the prosecution, being duly sworn, testi-
fied as follows:

[Direct Examination by Mr. Corbin.]

Q. Where do you live?

A. About nine miles from York, sir; Brattonsville, in York County.

Q. How long have you lived there?

A. I have been living in York County now for about seven or eight
years, sir.

Q. Do you know Jim Williams?

A. Yes, sir; I knew him before he died; had been knowing him for
some fifteen or twenty years.

Q. Was Jim Williams a resident and voter in York County?

A. Yes, sir; he was.

Q. Did he vote there at the last election?

A. Yes, sir, he did.

Q. Were you present at the polls?

A. Yes, sir; I was Manager at the polls.

Q. Did you see him vote?

A. He handed me the ticket and I put it in the box.

2. What ticket did he vote?

A. He voted a Republican ticket; he was a Republican.

Q. What sort of a man was Williams?

A. I did not know anything about him; he was dead last he was hung.

Q. Tell us the story in your own way; how about it?

THE RECONSTRUCTION 163

A. It was the way I first found him he was hanging up by the neck
by a rope.

Q. Tell all the particulars you know about it; what occurred that night
that he was hung; and what about him, as far as you know?

A. That night, sir, I think it was something after 2 o'clock, there were
three disguised men came to my house, came up cussing and swearing
a great deal.

Q. Tell what they said.

A. They said, "Here we come we are the Ku Klux. Here we come,
right from hell," and two rode up on one side of my house, and one to
the other. They commenced with their guns and beat at the doors, and
hollering "G d d n you, open, open the doors." I told them I would,
and jumped out of bed, and before I got to the door they bursted the
latch off, and two came in, and one got me by the arms and says, "We
want your guns." I told them I didn't have any guns; there was one there,
but not mine. It was turned over by some of the company. They got the
gun, and asked for the accoutrements belonging to the gun, and I got
them for them; and after they got these things they asked for a pistol;
I told them I didn't have any pistol at that time; and then they asked
if I knew where Captain Williams lived; I told them about two miles,
I think; says he, "We want to see your captain to-night; we don't want
any more of you to-night." Upon this they got on their horses; asked
me if I knew any of them; I told them I did not know them; but they
got on their horses and bid me good night; when about between fifty
and one hundred yards from my house they stopped, talking very lowly
to each other; I didn't know but what they were going to come back;
I jumped out and made well, I started down across to the other house,
and met up with Henry Haynes and Andrew Bratton; they heard them
and left their houses.

Q. Were they colored men?

A. Yes, sir; then we went down to Captain Williams' that night; when
when we got there Mrs. Williams was sitting in the door; I asked her
I called before I got to the house for Williams, and she said

Mr. Stanbery. Never mind what she said.

Mr. Corbin. Go on and tell what she said.

Q. Go on and tell what you found.

A. Williams was not there.

Q. What occurred there?

A. Then we went from there around and passed where Mr. Williams'
company were, and got them and went back to John S. Bratton's, and
there found a good portion of the company there.

Q. What company?

A. Of Williams' company the militia; we then followed the course
which the Ku Klux had went; we tracked them then, by bayonets and
accoutrements, &c., they had dropped along the road, until they came

164 THE RECONSTRUCTION

to Mr. Robert Lindsay's; then we noticed a great many tracks left the
road; we went on from there past Mr. Ed. Crawford's, and on past Mr.
Mendinhall's; the company thought they saw horse tracks a horse and
a mule track that led into Mr. Mendinhall's lot, but Mr. Mendinhall's
stables were locked; we went from there, on several tracks, to Mr.
Garwin's and there we found a mule which was muddy and sweating,
with saddle; very fresh tracks, which we did think had come from the
road, which we tracked out from the road; they tracked directly into
the black jacks, and concluded to hunt for Williams; we went across
the country to Williams', and before we got to the house we saw the
tracks, where they had come out of the field; we pursued on until we came
to where the horses were hitched, which I thought was about one
hundred yards; we saw Williams hanging on a tree.

Q. Was he dead?

A. When I found him he was dead, sir.

Q. What time in the morning was that that you found him?

A. Sir, I think between nine and ten o'clock, sir.

Q. What paper did you find on him, if any?

A. There was a paper on his breast; the foreman of the jury said it
said: "Jim Williams on his big muster."

Q. How high was he hanging from the ground?

A. His toes were just touching the pine leaves.

Q. Was he cold?

A. I didn't put my hands on him at that time.

Q. How long did he hang there?

A. He hung there till I don't think the sun was more than half an
hour high that evening, when he was cut down; I went from there to
York, after the Coroner; he hung there till we came back, and the jury
all met.

WE HAVE ASCERTAINED THAT THIRTY-EIGHT
NEGROES WERE SHOT AND HUNG.

From Smith-Brady Papers, unpublished mss.

NOXUBA Co, Miss.

28 Oct. 1875

The writers of this note are men of firmness and prudence, they mean
no more than what they say, but intend to execute what they do say if
so necessary. And on the third day of November next if you are not
away from this county or no seeker for office you may hold your eyes

THE RECONSTRUCTION l6$

open, for we the writers are determined not to be ruled by a dam
Carpet Bagger as you are

SIGNED BY A COMMITTEE OF (13) THIRTEEN

The grave is not dug but can

be easily done as it will not

take much of a hole for you Received by Amos Sanders

PARISH OF WEST FELICIANA
TAX COLLECTOR'S OFFICE
St Francisville La. May 18, 1876
SENATOR O. P. MORTON

Washington, D. C.
SIR:

The telegraph has no doubt informed you of the wholesale slaughter
of negroes on the line of Louisiana and Mississippi. We have ascertained
that thirty-eight negroes were shot and hung. The lives of the few white
Republicans now left are in eminent danger. Will the country stand by
with folded arms and see us murdered without cause? Is there no remedy?
Would it not be proper to investigate this last series of outrages in con-
nection with the late election in Mississippi?

If the details of our troubles would be of any use to you, I will furnish
same at once.

I write this with the understanding that my name shall not be made
public, as it would cause my death if it was known that I was instrumental
in bringing guilty parties before justice.

Very Respectfully
D. ALLEBER
Collector

E. Stafford Republican in Greenville Mississippi writes on June
5, 1876 to the Honorable George S. Boutwell at Jackson, Mississippi:

[Excerpt] Very few from this county will go voluntarily before your
committee, for two important reasons. First they have no money to pay
expenses that is such as would be able to give the committee the proof
you seek. Secondly, they believe and not without reason that it would
not be safe to return, if they do go. A large majority have concluded to
take the advice of Bruce, and make the best terms they can with the
Democracy, and if the Committee got much information out of them
you will have to come after it. Abandoned by the Administration, and
those whom we have fought the battles of the party to elevate to position
and influence, this "conclusion" has its advantages we may at least
save our scalps, which are worth more to us and our families than the
broken faith of a pack of ingrates. I have been brickbatted, kicklassed,
struck by lightning in the service of reconstruction in this state, and still

j.66 THE RECONSTRUCTION

live to see my bitter political enemies walk off with the rewards. I want
no "committee" in mine.

Yours truly,
E. STAFFORD

VlCKSBURG

June 12, 1876

It would be well to find out from H. C. Carter how he was elected
to the Legislature and not being a candidate prior to election day, as we
are Satisfied he did not receive but a respectable minority vote in Warran
County.

T. M. BRADWATERS

HORN LAKES MISSISSIPPI

June 29, 1876

HON. GEORGE W. BOUTWELL
DEAR SIR:

Fore God Sake.? do not forget the county of De Soto: I canvass this
county for the Republicans last-fall. The Black and dirty work the
Democrats done in this county is to honorable for an Honest man to
believe. Mr. Senator I ask to be summon before your committee. It is a
hard matter to get Republican from this county to com befor that
committee and tell the truth, for fir of being kell on their return: the
Democrats brought two boxes of Guns. I saw the Guns when they came
to Hernando: I ask the White People what they was going to do wit
the Guns: they told me: We will kill you Dam Black Radicles if we
voted the Republicans ticket they also brought a boat load men and
Guns from Memphis the night before the election and landed them at
Star Landing this county. I can not write you half of the Black Acts
I know on them: I know the name of the boat and some of the men
that came on her: thay shot in colored men houses also in some of the
churches: in publick Houses where colored men ware wont to visit.
The Democrats told the colored voters if they went to the Polls on
election day thay would be kill they inteneded to carry this election with
Powder and Shot, and that thay would kill every Republican Speaker
in the county if it did not go Democratic. I was a Slave in this county
before the war. 1 was Deputy Sheriff and tax collector last year.
Let this county have justice before the Committee: and we will tell
enough to make the Democratic North Sick if they have any Shame:
The Chairman of our county committee write to you hi a few day. he
was shot in the last canvass.
Sir, Hoping to hear from you soon

Yours Truly,

E. M. ALBRETTON
HORN LAKE DESOTO COUNTY MISSISSIPPI

THE RECONSTRUCTION 167

WEST POINT CLAY Co. Mis.

July 9, 1876

HON. GEO. S. BOUTWELL, MEMBER U. S. SENATE, WASHINGTON D. C.
DEAR SIR: I having been summon before your investigation in Aberdeen
Miss on 26 of June 1876 to give a sworn testimony in regard to late
election which I did. And I told nothing but the truth. Yesterday I was
met by an armed mob in the streets of West Point and compelled me to
say that I swore to a god damm lie or leave the city or die. The excite-
ment grew so intense that I was compel! to take back what I said before
the committee. I was also met by another mob at Muldrun the same day
that I was before the committee and compelled to do the same before
I got home. I would not be surprised if I were not mob before you receive
this letter unless I stop teaching school and leave the county. If you
read this letter where senator Bayar can hear it he will write down here
and let these democrats know it and I will be murdered as soon as I
appear on the. streets. Therefore it will be best fore me fore you to keep
this to yourself and other republicans

Respectfully
Yours

J. L. EDWARDS
WEST POINT CLAY Co. Miss.

Excerpts from letter to James Redpath from Macon, Miss. Aug.
22, 1876:

We are helpless and unable to organize dare not attempt to canvass
or make public speeches & the threats are made publicly that if troops
are sent here, they will hang all the leading White Republicans.

There is no safety, only in abject submission. Even now whilst writing
the Boom of the Cannon is heard as the signal for the weekly meeting
of the "young mens Democratic Club." The same rallying cry is heard
as was vociferated lust, full o'er this Land & "we must and will carry
this election . . /' "Down with Republicans."

We are fast hastening to anarchy & ruin. Can the General Govern-
ment give us no aid?

JAMES CLAVETE
Oxford Miss.
SIR:

I would most respf. submit to you that I was cognizant, by rumor
and personal knowledge of many of the devices resorted to, by the
"white-liners" during the late "Electoral force" to carry the election by
intimidating the colored people. I canvassed the "3rd Cong Dist," was
present at the Louisville [Winston Co.] riot, where the Democrats fired
into a Republican procession, without the shadow of a provocation. I
procured and distributed the Republican tickets of Colfax (now Clay

l68 THE RECONSTRUCTION

county) and can testify that the Republicans were totally demoralized
and intimidated by the ostentatious warlike display of the Dem. Party
prior to the election and also of the issuance of counterfeit tickets
which, however, were never used though they found their way in the
ballot boxes, whole precincts will testify almost to a man, that they
voted the ticket I gave them which was scratched in the middle, with
red ink and the Dem ticket was intact, without a mark. Should my
testimony be necessary, address

Your most . . . servant
WM. H. REYNOLDS.

AKKABUTTA TATE Co. Miss.

April 10, 1876
HON. O. P. MORTON
SIR:

Knowing you to be the poor man's friend and the laborers champion,
has prompted me to take the liberty of writing a short letter, hoping
you will not be offended. I came from Jackson Co. Mich, about six
years ago, and have been used like a dog, and in fact a slave part of
the time a laboring man (white or black) has no rights here, have kept
a faithful journal all the time, but they will not print it here, or anything
that clashes with the old slave-holders here, who actually hold the
laboring classes in bondage, in more respects than one. Oh if I could
only see you, or some one, to pour out my wrongs too, so that the world
would know the deadly prejudice these men have against a northern
man. I did not come here for office, but to get a living by my labor. I
have been to Andersonville, and have seen men eat the excrement from
other prisoners, but that is an old tale I would rather be at Andersonville
than here have no rich reccommends only the pleadings of a bleeding
heart, would be more explicit, but am afraid this may never reach you
please answer this from your humble servant

WILLIAM C. PITT

ARKABUTTA TATE Co.

Miss.
Excuse and forgive me, for intruding on your presence

W. C. PITT

WE WERE THANKFUL WHEN THE WRETCHED
WEEK WAS OVER . . .

Susan Dabney Smedes, "The Crowning Blessing"

... In the fall of 1869 Thomas met with a serious pecuniary loss.
A Negro riot took place in the height of the cotton-picking season,

THE RECONSTRUCTION 169

and among other unhappy consequences the negroes abandoned the
fields until the cotton had been spoiled by the wind and rain. Nearly
the whole crop was lost. The seat of the trouble was eighteen miles
from Burleigh, but it was chosen by the negroes as their rendezvous.
We knew nothing of the trouble. But the white men of the neighbor-
hood heard that they were preparing for a fight, and about fifty of
them marched to the plantation to meet the negroes. Wild rumors
were afloat, among others, that not a "white face" was to be spared.
Our first intimation of the riot was to hear about one hundred rifles
go off in the park, followed by loud cries and yells and battle orders.
And presently a riderless horse or two, one shot through the body
and dying, rushed past the gate. This was all. After that one volley
the negroes fled. The carpet-bagger who had urged them to this riot
had gotten to a place of safety before the fight came off. Four negroes
were killed and two white men wounded. About fifty negroes had
been in the engagement.

Our cook clung to me as I went in the kitchen. "Oh, they have
killed Robert! Oh, he say all de time dat he warn't gonf to hurt Ms
white people! He say all de time dat he b'long to you."

The negro men on the plantation disappeared, as has been said,
and did not come back for weeks. The women came to the house;
the hall was quite full of them, and we could not persuade them to
go home all that day. Mammy Maria got under the chair on which
one of "her white children" sat, and embraces and pattings on the
back and all the affectionate words that could be thought of were
needed to get her up from the floor, where she was crying bitterly.
All this had taken place just as we were about to go in to breakfast,
on a lovely morning in October. In a short time a body of one hun-
dred and fifty men from Crystal Springs rode up .They had ridden
from there, a distance of sixteen miles, under whip and spur, and
were so covered with dust as to be almost unrecognizable.

Our cook had gone to her dying husband, and these men had
had no breakfast. Thomas opened the store-room to them; several
of the more experienced were soon engaged in cooking for the
company. For a week the country was in a state of apprehension, and
patrols were out and guards set day and night. The younger men
were needed for patrol service, and only our father and a delicate
young visitor were left to guard the Burleigh house. Papa called
us all up, and asked if we were willing to shoot if there were need.
He found but one coward among his daughters, the writer of these
memorials. The others were willing to receive the pistols and guns
which he handed them. There were not enough for all. Sarah kept

170 THE RECONSTRUCTION

a pot of water boiling as her means of defence. But the negroes were
scattered in every direction and not thinking of another outbreak.

Papa went to see Robert, and was disarmed by the poor fellow's
sufferings and affectionate greeting. He assured "marster" that he had
not meant to hurt him or his family. He only wanted to kill the "poor
white trash" who insulted his race. "I had to be true to my color,
marster." His old master gave him such comfort as he could, telling
his wife how to allay his sufferings, and promising protection. He
died in a few days. Robert's wife related an incident that took place
on the preceding night, at the drill, before the battle. A negro from
a distance proposed that the work of destruction should begin by
burning the Burleigh house. Two brothers, old family servants,
stepped from the ranks and said that would have to be done over
their dead bodies, if at all.

On the night before the fight a strange negro had begged to be
allowed to stay all night, and offered to work Lelia's flowers if she
would let him stay. He seemed nervous and miserable, and Edward,
to whom she had appealed for advice, felt sorry for the man and
gave the desired consent. When the Crystal Springs troops arrived,
they informed the family that the chief agitator among the negroes
had been harbored by them. He was running from a riot that he had
gotten up under the direction of the carpet-baggers, and in which
the negroes had been worsted, of course, when he took refuge with
us. He wished to be found among us when the impending fight in
the park should take place. The Crystal Springs men were for making
an example of him. But Edward and Lelia, to whom the poor mis-
guided fellow clung, saw that he was quite conquered. They inter-
ceded for him and he was not molested. We were thankful when that
wretched week was over. . . .

Memorials of a Southern Planter, pp. 248-251.

THIS INCIDENT VIRTUALLY ENDED MILITARY
RECONSTRUCTION IN "OLD MONROE."

"Effects Of Military Reconstruction In Monroe County, Missis-
sippi" R. C. Beckett

The northern politicians who settled in the South did not under-
stand the negroes, and were both incompetent and unwilling to con-
trol them for good. This state of affairs led to the formation of the
celebrated Ku-Klux Klan, of which I had the honor to .

THE RECONSTRUCTION 1/1

It was not intended to resist Federal authority or to be inimical to
the North, but was intended to protect the families of the white
people, who had absolutely no other protection, from the threatened
and rising arrogance of the negroes. Sometimes the acts of the Elan
seemed cruel in proportion to the provacation, but they were justi-
fied by the fact that every little insolence, if left unnoticed, would
be bragged about by its perpetrator and fellow observers to the
other negroes. The news would spread with great rapidity, and there
was no telling where it would end. . . . Hence it became necessary
to deal with it in its inception. So when a leading negro would
make himself particularly obnoxious, one who ought to know better,
and was considered dangerous, he was selected as an example.

While it was not intended originally to interfere with the white
men, still when they would stir up negroes and take their part against
the whites, they would naturally become persona non grata, and at
a meeting of the Ku-Klux Klan of the vicinage the matter would be
discussed and a decision reached as to what it would be best to do.

Major Huggins in his rounds of the schoolhouses and negro
churches of the country got to impressing on them that they were
as good as the whites, and ought to assert themselves. It began to
make them very restless and intractable, and it became necessary to
take action. Therefore, the next time he came across the river, Ms
movements having been watched, the Klan swooped down on him,
and took him to a secluded place and told him that he must leave
the country. He was pretty gritty, and refused. He was then whipped
with a stirrup strap, but took it like a little man, and declined to
make any promise. Matters then got serious, and it began to look as
if he would have to be killed; for, of course, the incident could not
end there. Finally a tall "six footer" walked up and said to hand
him the strap. He deliberately turned the buckle end, and, with a
terrific swing, he brought it down across the shoulders of Huggins.
This seemed cruel, but it was this or death. After a few such strokes,
Huggins said he couldn't stand it, and would leave. He did leave, but
after a time came back again. When he got an intimation that he was
guilty of breach of faith, I understood he denied it, and said he had
promised to leave and had kept his word, but that he had not
promised not to come back again. It is nevertheless a fact that after
he came back, he became much more conservative; and as he, from
that time, took the side of the white people against the more radically
disposed negroes and white republicans, he gave very little cause for
further complaint. . . .

. . . The next man to whom our attention was directed was the

172 THE RECONSTRUCTION

mayor of Aberdeen, Mr. Lacey. A secret society called "Robinson,"
which was an offshoot of the Ku-Klux and affiliated with it, was
holding a meeting one night in a room across the street from the
mayor's office. Lacey slept in the back room of the mayor's office,
and when McCluskey walked over, Lacey asked him what that was
going on over there. McCluskey told him in very sepulchral tones
that it was the Ku-Klux, and that they had decided to kill him that
very night. He gravely informed Lacey that he was his friend, and
had come over to save him, but that if it was known "it would be as
much as his life was worth." Lacey became very much excited, and
wanted to know what was best to be done. McCluskey told him
there was but one chance and that was to leave the country at once,
to which Lacey quickly assented. Thereupon McCluskey went to
the livery stable for a hack, cautioning Lacey with great warmth and
earnestness to get ready immediately, and saying that at the great
risk of his own life he would accompany him to the railroad station
at Egypt, as the Ku-Klux were watching the depot at Aberdeen, and
it would not do for them to attempt to leave that way. When Mc-
Cluskey came back with the hack, they both got into it, and in order
to go completely incognito, dismissed the driver, "Me." undertaking
to drive. In order to scare him as much as possible, and keep him
uneasy and excited, McCluskey drove at a furious rate, although it
was pitch dark and raining in torrents. Before they got to Egypt
about twelve miles away, the hack broke down. They got out, and
mounted the two horses bareback and rode posthaste to Egypt.
McCluskey then hid Lacey out while he sent back for his trunk,
and when it came he persuaded Lacey that it was dangerous to wait
for a passenger train, and got him aboard the first freight train that
came along, shutting him up in a box car, and he "also ran." This
incident virtually ended military reconstruction in "Old Monroe."

Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, Vol. VIII,
pp. 178-180, 185

I'M JAMMED ON TO A HUNDRED, AND DIS IS MY
FUST CHANCE TO GIT A START.

"Freedmen's Schools"

By a census taken in June, 1865, there were shown to be 16,509
freedmen in Memphis. Of this number 220 were indigent persons,
maintained, not by the city or the Bureau, but by the freed people
themselves. During the past three years, colored benevolent societies

THE RECONSTRUCTION 173

In Memphis had contributed five thousand dollars towards the sup-
port of their own poor.

There were three thousand pupils in the freedmen's schools. The
teachers for these were furnished, here as elsewhere, chiefly by
benevolent societies in the North. Such of the citizens as did not
oppose the education of the bla'cks, were generally silent about it.
Nobody said of it, "That is freedom! That is what the Yankees are
doing for them!"

Visiting these schools in nearly all the Southern States, I did not
hear of the white people taking any interest in them. With the ex-
ception of here and there a man or woman inspired by Northern
principles, I never saw or heard of a Southern citizen, male or female,
entering one of those humble school-rooms. How often, thinking of
this indifference, and watching the earnest, Christian labors of that
little band of refined and sensitive men and women and girls, who
had left cheerful homes in the North and voluntarily exposed them-
selves to privation and opprobrium, devoting their noblest energies
to the work of educating and elevating the despised race how often
the stereotyped phrase occurred to me, "The Southern people were
always their best friends!"

The wonder with me was, how these "best friends" could be so
utterly careless of the intellectual and moral interest of the freedmen.
For my own part, I could never enter one of these schools without
emotion. They were often held in old buildings and sheds good for
little else. There was not a school-room in Tennessee furnished with
appropriate seats and desks. I found a similar condition of things in
all the States. The pews of colored churches, or plain benches in the
vestries, or old chairs with boards laid across them in some loft over
a shop, or out-of-doors on the grass in summer such was the usual
scene of the freedmen's schools.

In the branches taught, and in the average progress made, these
do not differ much from ordinary white schools in the North. In
those studies which appeal to the imagination and memory, the
colored pupil excels. In those which exercises the reflective and
reasoning faculties, he is less proficient.

But it is in the contrasts of age and of personal appearance which
they present, that the colored schools differ from all others. I never
visited one of any size in which there were not two or three or half
a dozen children so nearly white that no one would have suspected
the negro taint. From these, the complexions range through all the
indiscribable mixed hues, to the shining iron black of a few pure-
blooded Africans, perhaps not more in number than the seemingly

174 THE RECONSTRUCTION

pure-blooded whites. The younger the generation, the lighter the
average skin; by which curious fact one perceives how fast the race
was bleaching under the "peculiar system of slavery. 4

The contrast of features is no less than that of complexions. Here
you see the rosy child, whose countenance shows a perfect Caucasian
contour, shaded perhaps by light brown curls, reciting in the same
class with thick-lipped girls and woolly-headed boys.

The difference in ages is even more striking. Six years and sixty
may be seen, side by side, learning to read from the same chart or
book. Perhaps a bright little negro boy or girl is teaching a white-
haired old man, or bent old woman in spectacles, their letters. There
are few more affecting sights than these aged people beginning the
child's task so late in life, often after their eyesight has failed. Said
a very old man to a teacher who asked him his age, "I'm jammed
on to a hundred, and dis is my fust chance to git a start."

The South Trowbridge, pp. 336-338.

THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE NEGRO AS THE SOCIAL

EQUAL OF THE WHITE IN OUR COUNTRY

... WE MAY CONSIDER IT AS NEVER TO BE.

John W. De Forest, "A Union Officer In The Reconstruction"

TRANSPORTATION

For nothing were the Negroes more eager than for transportation.
They had a passion, not so much for wandering, as for getting to-
gether; and every mother's son among them seemed to be in search
of Ms mother; every mother in search of her children. In their eyes
the work of emancipation was incomplete until the families which
had been dispersed by slavery were reunited. One woman wanted
to rejoin her husband in Memphis, and another to be forwarded to
hers at Baltimore. The Negroes who had been brought to the up-
country during the war by white families were crazy to get back to
their native flats of ague and country fever. Highland darkies who
had drifted down to the seashore were sending urgent requests to

4 At Vicksburg, Miss., in one school of 89 children, only three were of
unmixed African blood. In another, there were two black and 68 mixed. In a
school for adults, there were 41 black to 50 mixed. In a school of children
on a Mississippi plantation, there were 30 black and 7 mixed. These figures
illustrate not only the rapid bleaching of the race but also the differences in
color between town and country.

THE RECONSTRUCTION 175

be "fetched home again." One aunty brought me her daughter, who
suffered with fits, and begged me to give them "a ticket" to Ander-
son so that they might consult a certain famous "fit doctor" there
resident. Others desired me to find out where their relatives lived,
and send for them.

In short, transportation was a nuisance. I believed in it less than
I believed in the distribution of rations, and in modes of charity
generally. It seemed to me that if the Negroes wanted to travel, they
should not Insist on doing It at the expense of the nation, but should
earn money and pay their own fare, like white people. I learned to
be discouragingly surly with applicants for transportation papers and
to give them out as charily as if the cost came from my own pocket.
I claim that in so doing I acted the part of a wise and faithful public
servant.

From the class properly known as refugees that is, Unionists
who had been driven from their homes during the war by the Rebels
I had no requests for transportation. Not that they were few in
number; the mountains near by Greenville were swarming with them;
but they had the Anglo-Saxon faculty for getting about the world
unassisted. The mean whites, those same "low-down" creatures who
bored me to death for corn and clothing, were equally independent
of aid in changing their habitations. The "high-toned" families which
had fled to the up-country from the cannon of Dupon and Gillmore
also made shift to return to their houses in Charleston or their plan-
tations on the sea islands, without any noticeable worrying of gov-
ernment officials. The Negroes alone were ravenous after transpor-
tation.

I soon found that many of my would-be tourists were chiefly
anxious to enjoy that luxury, so dear to the freedman's heart, "going
a- visiting." A woman would obtain transportation of me on the plea
that she wanted to rejoin a child in Charleston whom she had not
seen for ten years and who was suffering for her care; then, having
enjoyed a sufficient amount of family gossip in the city, she would
apply to the Bureau officer there to save her from starvation by re-
turning her to Greenville. I became wickedly clever in fathoming
this deceit and used to ask in a friendly way, "When do you want to
come back?'

"Well, Mars'r, I doesn't want to stop mo'n a fo'tnight," would
perhaps be the answer.

"Ah! If that is all," I would lecture, "you had better wait till you
want to stay for good, or till you have money enough to pay for
your own pleasure excursions."

xyS THE RECONSTRUCTION

It was necessary, I thought, to convince the Negroes of the fact
that the object of the government was not to do them favors, but
justice; and of the still greater fact that there is very little to get in
this world without work.

Planters who were about to remove to more fertile regions some-
times asked transportation for their Negroes, on the ground that these
would be benefited by the change of locality and that it could not
be effected without government assistance. Of course this seemed
rational; and I understood that aid of this sort was freely rendered
by some Bureau officers; but I rejected all such applications. Grant
one, grant a thousand; and the government would be bankrupt. At
last a general order from the Commissioner sanctioned transporta-
tion for this purpose; but the planter's application must be approved
by the Assistant Commissioner of the state where he resided and by
the Assistant Commissioner of the state to which he proposed to
emigrate; he must give satisfactory security that he would feed and
pay his hands; he must then get the approval of the Commissioner.
What with postal and official delays these preliminaries generally
consumed at least a month; and as the planting season passed, this
complicated circumlocution was usually abandoned before it was
completed, the applicant either giving up his migration or conduct-
ing it at his own expense. Whether the result were intended or not,
it was a good one. In so vast and fertile a region as the South the
industry which can not succeed alone rarely deserves success. Charity
is either an absolute necessity or an absolute evil. . . .

pp. 36-38.

IMPOVERISHED GENTRY

Besides the white trash and the old Negroes, there were suffering
people of the better class, though not many. My district was an
upland region, a country of corn rather than of cotton, cultivated
by small fanners and middling planters. Containing few slaves com-
pared with the lowlands, only a moderate proportion of its capital
had been destroyed by emancipation. Sherman's bummers had never
crossed its borders. Its poverty arose from the leanness of the soil,
the imperfection of agriculture, the loss of hundreds of young men
in battle, the exhaustion of stock and capital during the war, the lack
of intelligent and zealous labor, and the thriftless habits incident on
slavery. There were few families of landed gentry so reduced as to
need rations, and those few were chiefly refugees who had fled
from the seacoast during the Rebellion.

THE RECONSTRUCTION 177

The condition of these persons was pitiable. A mulatto once came
to me and said: "I do wish, sir, you could do something for Mr.
Jackson's family. They's mighty bad off. He's in bed, sick ha'n't been
able to git about this six weeks and his chU'n's begging food of
my chil'n. They used to own three or four thous'n acres; they was
great folks befo' the war. It's no use tellin' them kind to work; they
don't know how to work, and can't work; somebody's got to help
'em, sir. I used to belong to one branch of that family, and so I
takes an interest in 'em. I can't bear to see such folks come down so.
It hurts my feelings, sir."

Another claimant was a lady who had formerly owned six hun-
dred and fifty acres on one of the richest of the sea islands. When
Du Pont took Port Royal she had fled, carried away by the deluge
of panic. Her house was burned, no one knows how or by whose
act. In 1862 her estate was sold for delinquent taxes, one plantation
falling into the hands of private purchasers, the other becoming a
part of the city of Port Royal. Long before the war ended, this lady,
seventy years old, was an object of charity, supported by friends
nearly as impoverished as herself, and frequently carrying her bag,
like a poor-white, to beg corn of the miller. While I was in Green-
ville she lived in a little ruinous house, furnished her rent-free by
a relative, himself ill able to support even so small a sacrifice. Her
bed was a mattress spread on the floor, as far as possible from the
broken window. She did her own cooking; it was not much to do. I
have seen her trudging slowly up a long hill, at the foot of which
was a spring, reeling under the weight of a pail of water.

This woman has already tasted greater bitterness than there is
in death. Two sons she could not have restrained them, if she
could have done that she could not have sheltered them joined the
Southern army and fell. A daughter, an educated lady, worked for
eight dollars a month at service little less than menial. A beautiful
granddaughter, the heiress herself of a confiscated plantation, was
surrendered at the age of seven to the adoption of strangers and was
parted from her by the breadth of the Atlantic.

pp. 65-66.

CALLS FOR CORN

And now the public talk was of com. The crop of 1866, both of
cereals and other productions, had been a short one for various
reasons. Capital, working stock, and even seed had been scarce; a
new system of labor had operated, of course, bunglingly; finally,

178

THE RECONSTRUCTION

there had been a severe drought. During the autumn and early winter
I was called upon to arrange a hundred or two of disputes between
planters and their hands as to the division of the pittance which na-
ture had returned them for their outlay and industry. The white,
feeling that he ought to have a living out of his land and fearing
lest he should not get enough "to go upon" until the next harvest,
held firmly to the terms of Ms contract and demanded severe justice

In some cases more than justice. The Negro could not understand

how the advances which had been made to him during the summer
should swallow up his half or third of the "crap."

Honesty bids me declare that, in my opinion, no more advantage
was taken of the freedmen than a similarly ignorant class would be
subjected to in any other region where poverty should be pinching
and the danger of starvation imminent. So far as my observation goes,
the Southerner was not hostile toward the Negro as a Negro, but
only as a possible office-holder, as a juror, as a voter, as a political
and social equal. He might cuff him as he would his dog, into what
he calls "his place"; but he was not vindicative toward him for being
free, and he was willing to give him a chance in life.

On the other hand, the black was not the vicious and totally
irrational creature described in reactionary journals. He was very
ignorant, somewhat improvident, not yet aware of the necessity
of persistent industry, and in short a grown-up child. I venture these
statements after fifteen months of intercourse with the most unfair
and discontented of both parties. The great majority of planters
and laborers either did not dispute over their harvest of poverty or
came to an arrangement about it without appealing to me.

The ignorance of the freedmen was sometimes amusing and some-
times provoking. When Captain Britton, of the Sixth Infantry, acted
as Bureau officer in a South Carolina district, a farmer and Negro
came before him to settle the terms of their contract, the former
offering one-third of the crop, and the latter demanding one-sixth.
It was only by the aid of six bits of paper, added and subtracted
upon a table, that the captain succeeded in shaking the faith of
the darky in his calculation.

"Well, Boss," he answered doubtfully, "ef you say one-third is the
most, I reckon it's so. But I allowed one-sixth was the most."

I passed nearly an entire forenoon in vainly endeavoring to
convince an old freedman that his employer had not cheated him. I
read to him, out of the planter's admirably kept books, every item
of debit and credit: so much meal, bacon, and tobacco furnished,
with the dates of each delivery of the same; so many bushels of com

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and peas and bunches of "fodder" harvested. He admitted every
Item, admitted the price affixed; and then, puzzled, incredulous,
stubborn, denied the totals. His fat old wife, trembling with indignant
suspicion, looked on grimly or broke out in fits of passion.

"Don' you give down to it, Peter," she exhorted. "It ain't no how
ris'ible that we should 'a' worked all the year and git nothin' to go
upon."

The trouble with this man was that he had several small grand-
children to support, and that he had undertaken to do it upon a worn-
out plantation. I could only assure him that he had "nothing coming"
and advise him to throw himself upon the generosity of his employer.
As the latter was himself woefully poor, and as it was my duty to
set even-handed justice on its legs, any exaction in favor of the
laborer beyond the terms of the contract was out of the question.

There were hundreds of cases like this; and there were the old,
the widows, and the orphans. Although my district was a grain
country, corn rose to two dollars a bushel, and bacon to forty cents
a pound. In the lowlands of South Carolina and destitution was
still more pinching and prices still higher. Governor Orr published
a moving appeal for aid, composed mainly of letters showing a
widespread want nearly approaching starvation. Evidently the hour
was coming upon me when I should be obliged to make an issue
of provisions.

pp. 73-75.

DESIRE FOR EDUCATION

The most hopeful sign in the Negro was his anxiety to have his
children educated. The two or three hundred boys and girls whom I
used to see around the Bureau schoolhouse attired with a decency
which had strained to the utmost the slender parental purse, ill spared
from the hard labor necessary to support their families, gleeful and
noisy over their luncheons of cold roasted sweet potato were proofs
that the race has a chance in the future. Many a sorely pinched
woman, a widow or deserted by her husband, would not let her boy
go out to service, "Bekase I want him to have some schoolin'."

One of the elder girls, a remarkably handsome octoroon with
Grecian features and chestnut hair, attended recitations in the morn-
ing and worked at her trade of dressmaking in the afternoon. There
were some grown men who came in the evening to wrestle, rather
hopelessly than otherwise, with the depravities of our English spell-
ing. One of them, a gray-headed person in circular spectacles, bent
on qualifying himself for the ministry, was very amusing with Ms

l8o THERECONSTRUCTION

stereotyped remark, when corrected of a mistake, "I specs likely you
may be right, mum."

It is a mooted point whether colored children are as quick at
learning as white children. I should say not; certainly those whom
I saw could not compare with the Caucasian youngster of ten or
twelve, who is "tackling" French, German, and Latin; they were
inferior to him, not only in knowledge, but in the facility of ac-
quisition. In their favor it must be remembered that they lacked
the forcing elements of highly educated competition and of a refined
home influence. A white lad gets much bookishness and many
advanced ideas from the daily converse of his family. Moreover,
ancestral intelligence, trained through generations of study, must
tell, even though the rival thinking machines may be naturally of
the same calibre. I am convinced that the Negrc as he is, no matter
how educated, is not the mental equal of the European. Whether
he is not a man, but merely, as "Ariel" and Dr. Cartwright would
have us believe, "a living creature," is quite another question and of
so little practical importance that no wonder Governor Perry wrote
a political letter about it. Human or not, there he is in our midst,
millions strong; and if he is not educated mentally and morally, he
will make us trouble.

pp. 116-117.

. . . Not for generations will the repectable whites of the South,
any more than those of the North, accept the Negroes as their social
equals. That pride of race which has marked all distinguished
peoples, which caused the Greeks to style even the wealthy Persian
and Egyptian barbarians, which made the Romans refuse for ages
the boon of citizenship to othr Italians, which lead the Semetic Jew
to scorn the Hamitic Canaanite, and leads the Aryan to scorn the
Jew that sentiment which more than anything else has created
nationality and patriotism has among us retreated to the family,
but it guards this last stronghold with jealous care. Whether the
applicant for admission be the Chinaman of California or the African
of Carolina, he will for long be repulsed. The acceptance of the
Negro as the social equal of the white in our country dates so far
into the future that, practically speaking, we may consider it as
never to be, and so cease concerning ourselves about it. Barring the
dregs of our population, as, for instance, the poor-white trash of
the South, the question interests no one now alive. . . .

p. 122

THE RECONSTRUCTION l8l

THE RESULT OF CARPET-BAG RULE . . . MORE

HARASSING, HUMILIATING, AND DESTRUCTIVE

THAN PEOPLE BEYOND OUR BORDERS

CAN CONCEIVE.

Susan Dabney Smedes, "Life At Burleigh"

T. S. D. TO HIS SON-IN-LAW B. H. GREENE

BURLEIGH, 29th August 1875

We are having lively times in the political way. I have seen nothing
like it since 1840 those days of "hard cider," "log cabins," "coon
skins," and what-not, by means of which the Whigs gave Van Buren
and the Democrats so signal an overthrow I believe the impulse under
which the outraged white race of the South are now being urged on
will be equally irresistible. At a mass-meeting held in Raymond on the
18th instant, falling in with T. J. Wharton, I remarked to him that such
an uprising was wonderful! "Uprising?" replied he. "It is no uprising.
It is an insurrection!" To give you some notion of the enthusiasm of
the people, I only have to say that they do not straggle in to such
meetings, but go in clubs, each club with its band of music, flags, and
regalia, and a cannon in many instances, and these cannon they make
roar from every hill-top on the road. The procession of cavalry from
Edwards Depot (some other clubs having joined the Edwards Club)
reached from the court-house far beyond John Shelton's house the
length of the column being two miles, as one of the number told me.
That from Utica, taking in my club and one other, was a great deal
longer. The thing to be appreciated had to be seen. The "carpet-baggers"
and negroes are evidently staggered. We have been carrying on this thing
for a month without their having moved a peg. They do not know
where to begin. I suppose something will be hatched up in Washington
after a while, and the cue be given to the faithful, and then "we shall
see what we shall see."

Among the anomalies of the canvass upon which we have just
entered, not the least significant is that -we have not a single candidate
in the field who, for himself, sought office; whereas every "carpet-bagger"
and a large percentage of the negroes are clamorous for some place
or other. All of our candidates have been brought out by nominating
conventions; many of these against their wish for these conventions
pick out our best men. For example we are running John Shelton for
supervisor, A. R. Johnston for the State senate, Daniel Williams for
magistrate at Dry Grove, etc. None of these desire the positions pro-
posed for them, but it would be considered in very bad taste in either
to refuse.

182 THE RECONSTRUCTION

The upshot of the whole is that I am kept on the "pad," being
president of the Dry Grove Club, that has to march, or be marched to,
at every whip-stitch. We held two club meetings last week, and I have
ordered one for this week. Next week, on the llth of September, we
go in a body to Edwards Depot, where preparations will be made for
ten thousand people. I suppose Jackson will respond, as I know other
places will, and so many barbecues will be given by the clubs, to each
of which the others must march in a body, and in military order, that
I will esteem myself lucky if I get through alive. But I expect to be
lucky to that extent, as my whole soul is in it.

It was early in 1875 that the citizens of Mississippi, believing
that it was unmanly and stupid to submit longer without protest
against ruinous misrule of "carpet-baggers," backed by negro voters,
determined to lay aside all minor interests and make an organized
effort to throw off the incubus which was rapidly involving the whole
State in financial bankruptcy and social degradation and misery.
Hence the formation of Democratic clubs.

From 1865 to 1875 ten long, weary years tenfold harder
to endure than the four years immediately preceding 1865, the
State had been under military rule, our last governor from Washing-
ton being Adelbert Ames (a man honest and brave, but narrow
and puritanical), who seems to have hated the Aryan race of the
South. In proof of this I merely cite the fact that he was impeached
by the State Legislature for fermenting race strife, but, by advice
of counsel, he wisely or unwisely evaded the issue of trial, and fled
away to his own.

During the years 1870-74 the taxes imposed by aliens and the
misguided African element, in many cases exceeded the incomes
derived from the plantations; and it was then that men, nerved with
a courage born of despair, cast about them for suitable leaders
(men of unquestioned integrity, cool judgment, and dauntless re-
solution) under whose guidance relief might be attempted. In-
tuitively all eyes were turned to Thomas Dabney, and he was
chosen president of the Democratic Club of his neighborhood.

T. S. D. TO HIS SON THOMAS

... I will have my house as full as it can hold tomorrow night, as
Utica, Raymond, Clinton, Boltons will perceive that a great many will
have come long distances. I must take as many as I can accommodate
reasonably, having already invited a number. It will put your sisters to

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much trouble, but as it is unavoidable, they undertake it with great

cheerfulness.

The daughters worked by day and night on the uniforms for
Thomas and his friends. Some of the negroes joined the club, and
uniforms must be made for them too, and it was the patriotic thing
for the ladies in the house to make these also. Besides, an immense
United States flag was called for by the club, and was made by us
in those hot July days and nights.

Thomas was as ready to extend the simple hospitality of Ms house
in helping on this movement as he had been in former times to
render more extensive aid. His life-long friend, Mr. John Shelton,
in writing of this side of his character, says:

We were- both Henry Clay men while he lived, and Whigs of the
straitest and strictest type. ... A most zealous Whig before the civil
war, the leaders and candidates of that party were often the recipients
of his unbounded and princely hospitality, and, as a zealous party
man, he took a great interest in whatever elections were pending, and
shared his means with an unsparing and free hand for the advancement
of party needs.

T. S. D. TO HIS DAUGHTER EMMY

BURLEIGH, 20th October, 1875

. . . We are in a very hot political contest just now, and with a good
prospect of turning out the carpet-bag thieves by whom we have been
robbed for the past six to ten years. They commenced at Clinton on their
old game of getting up riots and then calling on Grant for troops to
suppress them these troops to be used afterwards to control elections.
They succeeded in getting up their riot, which was put down by our
own people after so sanguinary a fashion as to strike them with terror
not easily described.

T. S. D. TO HIS DAUGHTER EMMY

BURLEIGH, 15th October, 1875.
... I am in a laughing humor to-day, as I have just sent E_

to pay my taxes, and had to fork over only three hundred and seventy-
five dollars for that purpose a very different affair from the operations
of many years back. Last year it took over eight hundred dollars, and
the year before more than that.

184 THE RECONSTRUCTION

In 1873 the taxes on the plantation (Burleigh) amounted to
over nine hundred dollars, and the income was less than eight
hundred dollars. This state of affairs was the result of carpet-bag
rule a rule more harassing, humiliating, and destructive than people
beyond our borders can conceive. . . .

Memorials of a Southern Planter, pp. 258-262.

ALL IMMIGRANTS TO SOUTH CAROLINA FROM

OUR NORTHERN STATES IN THE LATE

1860'S AND THE EARLY 1870'S

WERE CARPETBAGGERS . . .

"A 'Carpetbagger' In South Carolina"

I. PRELIMINARY EXPLANATIONS

Ten years after the secession of South Carolina and less than six
after the close of the consequent Civil War between the States, I
became a South Carolina "carpetbagger." That is, I migrated from
our "Empire" to our "Palmetto" State. Five years before, I had
migrated from New Jersey, my native State, to New York; twenty-
five years after that from New York to Ohio, and two years later
from Ohio to Illinois all without being called a "carpetbagger."
But I was called a "carpetbagger" in South Carolina when in 1870
I migrated to that State from New York. . . .

All immigrants to South Carolina from our Northern States in the
late 1860's and the early 1870's were called "carpetbaggers," if while
there they got a living more or less of it, and whether by honest
earnings or dishonest graft in connection with the public service.
Those also who got their living in private employment, but who
associated with the office-holding class, were called "carpetbaggers";
and those who pursued unofficial callings and had few official asso-
ciates or none became "carpetbaggers" upon going into politics. This
if they were from any of our Northern States. If natives of South
Carolina, they became "scallawags," regardless of any previous con-
dition of honor or respectability. . . .

I did not go to South Carolina as a "carpetbagger." I did not
intend to be one. My expectations were to become a South Caro-
linian, precisely as I should have expected to become a Californian,
an Oregonian, or an Ohioan had my migration been to any of those

THE RECONSTRUCTION 185

parts of our common country. But when I realized the circumstances,
I meekly accepted the term of reproach and retracted my steps to
New York, the State of my first adoption, where I could feel that I
was one of the household even if I had not been bom in the house.

H. A JOURNEY SOUTH IN 1 870

. . . My route from Washington ran by way of Gordonsville through
Manassas Junction to Richmond, and thence through Wilmington,
North Carolina, to Columbia, South Carolina. Ghosts of historic
scenes stared at me whichever way I looked. Although most of the
physical indications of marching and fighting armies had been oblit-
erated, there were still signs enough to identify the region as the
seat of a recent war. Grass-grown earthworks were frequent through
Virginia. Richmond was a sorrowful-looking city, suggestive of chiv-
alrous romance rudely shattered by a conquering foe. To my northern
mind that old capital of the fallen Confederacy was chiefly interesting
for her Libby Prison, which then bore upon its entrance what half
a dozen years before would have been the welcome notice of "No
Admittance."

At Columbia, sadder signs of recent war were abundant. Sher-
man's march to the sea had left blackened ruins in its wake, and
round about in the capital city of South Carolina they were still
conspicuous. In the State House yard, delicately chiseled Italian
marble for the unfinished capitol building lay scattered in weather-
worn fragments. At the rear of the building a metallic palmetto tree
with its records of South Carolina troops in the Mexican War was
badly battered, and the capitol itself bore traces of military van-
dalism. Main Street, a vista of ruins, had been but half rebuilt, mostly
after the shack models of a frontier town. Of the old bridge over the
Congaree only naked piers remained, and crossing was effected on
a flat boat propelled either way by the current through the shortening
and lengthening of guy ropes attached to a trolley. Defensive earth-
works, unmanned and grass grown, still guarded the Lexington road
over which Sherman's troops had approached Columbia; and four
miles from the city stood six plaster columns, all that remained, save
broken and blackened bricks, of Wade Hampton's once hospitably
spacious mansion. As the city and its environs then appeared, Colum-
bia needed no voice to proclaim her a conquered place. The evi-
dence was even more startling within the capitol building than
without.

A large unfurnished, unfinished, untidy space in the center of this

188 THE RECONSTRUCTION

building on the second floor, resounding with echoes at every foot-
fall, separated one legislative chamber from the other, each hand-
somely furnished yet less handsomely than expensively. In the Senate
Chamber sat Major Corbin, whom I had been called South to serve.
A captain of Vermont troops, badly wounded in the war and for a
time in Libby prison, he had remained in military service until the
end and was then ordered to Charleston in charge of the Freedinen's
Bureau. Here he resigned from the army in order to practice law,
and upon the adoption of the reconstruction State constitution he
was elected to the State Senate. At the time of my coming he held
the chairmanship of two committees judiciary and elections and
of one other, as I indistinctly remember. By legislative appointment
he also worked as chairman of a commission for codifying and
modernizing the laws of the State. With all the rest, he was, as I
have already stated, United States Attorney for the District of South
Carolina.

in. A "CARPETBAG," "SCALLAWAG" AND

NEGRO LEGISLATURE

In the same body with Major Corbin sat Robert Small, who while
still a slave had won national fame as a pilot by running the Planter
out of Charleston harbor to the Federal fleet. Some of the local
black folk said that he did this in fear and trembling at the mouth
of a loaded pistol leveled by a braver and more determined slave,
one who never shared in the fame of the Planter exploit and was big
enough not to care to. It was of Small that a story was told in those
"carpetbag" days about an aged Negro admirer whose fulsome praises
were rebuked by a young Negro doubter. "Small aint God!" objected
the doubter, as the story ran. "That's true! that's true!" replied the
dusky apologist for Small. "That's true; Small aint God, but Small's
young yet." The story is probably centuries older than Senator Small
could ever have hoped to be, but when I heard it first it was told
of him.

Another of those South Carolina Senators was Beverly Nash.
Black as charcoal, handsome of face and commanding of figure,
well born, keen minded and well trained, he was a perfect type of
the antebellum ideal of a "white gentleman's colored gentleman." I
recall his shrewd reply in a Senate debate upon an appeal of his in
behalf of some poor man's claim for lost property. There was objec-
tion by Senator Small that a lawsuit should have been brought. "It
is easy to make that objection," replied Senator Nash, "but the

THE RECONSTRUCTION 187

Senator should understand that a lawsuit Is like a sawmill, no matter
which way the saw goes, down must come the dust."

Besides those three more distinguished Senators, there was Leslie,
once a member of the New York legislature, shrewd, crooked and
cynical. And there was Whittemore, who had got national notoriety
while in Congress by selling a West Point cadetship for money in-
stead of the customary price which was influence. There was also a
large-bodied, even-tempered, intelligent and honest white South Caro-
linian of the small farmer class, whose name I have forgotten, unless
it was Joel Foster, but whose attractive presence and lovable per-
sonality I shall never forget. Nominally he was a Democrat, and
although he probably had the traditional prejudices of his place and
race, I like to make allowances for all that and remember Mm as
the democratic Democrat he believed himself to be.

For the rest, the Senate floor was occupied by whites and blacks,
more of the former than of the latter, some native South Carolinians
of both races and some of both races from other States, South and
North. But there was nobody of the old romantic type of South
Carolina aristocrat. At the president's desk sat a Negro, Lieutenant-
Govemor A. J. Ransier, who presided with dignity, and of whom
the last news I ever heard had a touch of pathos in it. A year or two
before he died and while working as a street cleaner in Columbia,
so this account of him came to me, he picked up from the gutter an
old daily paper the first words in which that caught his eye were
the opening sentence of a report of Senate proceedings in the heyday
of his citizenship. They included his own name as "Lieutenant-
Govemor in the Chair." Hardly can it be supposed that he was
without emotion as he crumpled that vagrant sheet, and tossing it
into the dust cart, went on humbly with his street-cleaning task.

In the chamber at the other end of the capitol building across that
great echoing cave of an unkempt lobby, Frank J. Moses, Jr. (of
unsavory but pathetic memory) sat in the Speaker's chair when I
first saw him. He had acquired notoriety as early as 1861 by raising
the Confederate flag over Fort Sumter when Major Anderson capitu-
lated, young Moses being at that time private secretary to Governor
Pickens. Son of the Chief Justice, an old-time Jewish aristocrat of
the South Carolina species, Speaker Moses was the only relic of
South Carolina romanticism in either house of the legislature. But
he had joined the vandals by accepting office. And so of his father
as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the State. Since neither
could be called a "carpetbagger," both were called "scalawags."

Before Speaker Moses, at desks that had cost their weight in

l88 THE RECONSTRUCTION

almost any precious metal you please, were a great body of mem-
bers mostly Negroes. Some of those Negroes were self-sacrificingly
honest, many were above the average level of legislative intelligence,
some were men of education, not a few were deliberately and brazenly
dishonest, and most of them bore testimony in their color to the
natural possibility of miscegenation. The body as a whole was in a
legislative atmosphere so saturated with corruption that the honest
and honorable members of either race had no more influence in it
than an orchid might have in mustard patch. Years afterward I met
a Negro steward of a Chicago club who had come from South Caro-
lina. Although only a boy in my day there, he knew men I had
known and we began to swap personal recollections. "Did you know
So-and-So?" or other; my steward friend replied, "Well, he's dead;
died rich." "Indeed," I remarked, "and how did he get rich?" With-
out hesitation and with great simplicity, nor with the slightest appear-
ance of intending to reflect upon what Mark Twain would have called
the "deceased," my dusky friend replied, "Oh, legislatinV It was a
snapshot at South Carolina politics as I had seen it in the early
seventies.

Some notion of the educational as well as moral ideals of that
remarkable lower House of the South Carolina legislature may be
derived from an experience of my own. During the remainder of the
session of 1870-71, I served as clerk for three Senate committees,
getting a certificate at the rate of six dollars a day for one of the
three. Who got certificates for the other two, if anybody did, I don't
believe I ever knew, and if I knew I have forgotten unless it may
have been, as to one of them, and this impression comes to me
indistinctly now, that it was a white governess of the Negro-Lieu-
tenant-Governor's children. All, however, that I positively know as
to those committees is that I did the committee clerk's work for all
three and got the pay for only one the judiciary committee and
that most of this came to me reduced by a fat discount for cash.
That discount is what gives illustrative value to the personal experi-
ence I am about to relate.

Going to the State Treasurer's office to cash my first pay certificate,
I was informed that no funds were left in the appropriation against
which that certificate was drawn. A Senator whom I then consulted
told me that the Secretary of the Senate, Josephus Woodruff, was a
good-natured fellow who might help me. I applied to Woodruff. He
did help me. He was disinterested, too, for he got nothing from me.
I thought him disinterested at any rate, but possibly I was mistaken.
Yet it may have been that he really did serve me with no desire for

THE RECONSTRUCTION log

reward, and that it was my unsophistication, in some way making it
impossible for him to serve me similarly again, that compelled me
to submit to a discount upon all my subsequent certificates. Mr.
Woodruff tried to help rne the second time, and with the same good
humor as before; but this time he failed, although he looked when
he handed the certificate back to me as if he had been working like
a day laborer or a lawyer with a stubborn jury or judge. I was so
young in politics, even though weE past the voting age, that I never
so much as wondered why he failed not until years afterward. But
as he did fail, I hunted up a broker.

Governor Scott's brother-in-law was suggested to me by Woodruff,
but the Governor's brother-in-law offered only 80 per cent, and as
I had honestly earned the certificate, I wanted nearer par than that.
Finally I found a broker, a native South Carolinian, who offered
me 90 per cent. I did not understand how he could afford to offer
so much. He did not seem to have any connection with the looting
crowd. Possibly he shrewdly "reckoned" that if Governor Scott's
brother-in-law were paying 80 per cent there would be appropria-
tions for par-payments not far in the future. But at the time I wasn't
very curious. So long as he was willing to insure me against total
loss for 10 per cent, I thought the bargain reasonable. Perhaps I
wasn't very bright about it all, either; I know I wasn't bright in a
good many ways. However this may be, I sold my certificate to that
broker. Then we talked.

A native of South Carolina and white, finding in me a "carpet-
bagger" who had at least gone through the form of earning my
plunder, he talked rather freely, as I thought, although he may have
sensed my unsophistication and taken that way of going in quest of
my confidence. It seems that he had been accustomed to cashing
Lower House pay certificates, both for members and for committee
clerks; and in testimony of the recklessness of comrnittee-clerk ap-
pointments, he told me that there were at least 400 such clerks on
the payroll of the House, many of whom were totally lacking in
qualifications for their duties. To illustrate, he said that frequently
those who sold their pay certificates to him were obliged from sheer
illiteracy to endorse the certificates with a cross instead of a signa-
ture. . . .

v. THE "BLACK CODE"

The "black code" of South Carolina . . . was from first to last a

"master" and "servant" regulation of Negro relationships, borrowed

jgo THE RECONSTRUCTION

wholly in spirit and not a little in detail from the slavery laws that
had lost their force at Appomattox.

In any racial dispute, the Negro was relegated to a Negro court
instituted by "masters" and presided over by judges of the "master"
class, where in the "master" class also furnished the jurors. Verbally,
the Negro had contractual and property rights; verbally he was
guaranteed person protection; verbally there was an air of fairness
about it all the fairness which a self-conscious master class may
have for a servant class. But in fact, the contractual rights thus
secured the Negro led his race into abject servitude; and all their
rights contractual, property, and personal were subjected to^a
special jursdiction controlled exclusively and absolutely by white
men. Adjudication was relegated to courts created in distinct recog-
nition of an impassable line between the personal rights and the
property interests as well as the civic concerns of the Negro and the
white, the latter a class that had always despised and luxuriously
lived upon the Negro and now despised and feared him. Saxon ceorls
under the heel of Norman conquerors were mediaeval prototypes of
the Negro race under this white man's "black code."

Making all reasonable allowance for the fears, whether well
founded or ill-founded, of a master class of one race in the midst
of an enormously larger servile class of another, each accustomed
from infancy to the former's rule of might, the fact is still evident
that the "black code" of South Carolina was essentially a slave code,
and that it was intended so to be. Its adaptation of the old terms,
"master" and "servant," to white employer and Negro freedman
under contract, terms having only slavery connotations in the thought
of both races, would alone go far to stamp it as reactionary. But
when its minute provisions for maintaining the power of the "master"
class are considered, along with its equally minute provisions for
holding the "servant" class and their descendants with less than
seven drops in eight of Caucasian blood perpetually down to the
levels of serfdom, its pro-slavery character in spirit and letter is
unmistakable. Add the fact that it was made by masters for freed-
men; add the further fact that in all their mutual relations it was to
be interpreted and enforced by masters for freedmen; add again that
in all controversies, civil and criminal, between freedmen and freed-
men and or between freedmen and masters, a little group of the local
master class was to decide put those circumstances together, and
what reasonable person uninfluenced by prejudice or tradition can
deny that the South Carolina "black code" was an attempt to re-
establish, under slightly new forms but in all essentials, the very

THE RECONSTRUCTION igi

Institution which had caused the Civil War and which the Civil War
had abolished? Such an attempt it surely was; and a wretched one
it turned out to be.

That the South Carolina "black code" was repealed before it got
fully under way was due to no good will nor yet to any prudence
of the class that framed it. Having tried to secede and been con-
quered, the "Palmetto" State had not yet been securely restored to
Federal relations when that code was sanctioned by her law-makers
whom President Johnson had trusted to be sensible, even if he feared
they could not be democratic. By putting it into the statues they
gave Johnson's political enemies an argument wherewith to demolish
his pacific policy, and that argument was quickly used. Instantly
upon the adoption of the South Carolina "black code," the Federal
military intervened, and by military order the courts were forbidden
to exercise jurisdiction under it. Governor Orr was constrained, there-
fore, to call a special session of the legislature at which, and at the
following regular session, the "black code" was so amended as to
abolish the "black code" courts and to establish tribunals for the
trial of civil and criminal causes without reference to race or
color. . . .

In South Carolina the Republican party was immediately organ-
ized as the Union Republican party of that State. Meeting in conven-
tion at Charleston in May, 1867, it adjomed without other than
formal action to meet at Columbia in July. A large proportion of the
delegates 45 in a total of 69 were Southern Negroes. Yet the
platform might well have been taken as a lesson in democracy by the
white aristocrats of South Carolina who so absurdly boasted of being
democrats. It declared for universal suffrage and for elections by the
people. It proposed liberal provision by the State for the poor, whom
it described as "those aged and infirm people, houseless and homeless
and past labor, who have none to care for them." It declared also for
ad-valorem taxes. An early note for the exemption of labor products
from taxation was its demand for repeal of the cotton tax; and In
harmony with this sound fiscal principle there was a plank on the
land question so radical as to provoke the withdrawal from the con-
vention of at least one native white man. That particular plank of
this truly democratic platform, this composed mostly of Negroes and
held away back in 1867, declared that "large land monopolies tend
only to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, and are ruinous to
the agricultural, commercial and social interests of the State." Be-
cause of that tendency, the platform demanded that "the legislative
offer every practicable inducement for the division and sale of un-

1Q2 THE RECONSTRUCTION

occupied lands among the poorer classes, and as an encouragement
for immigrants to settle." An echo there, I take it, from the grave of
Gerritt Smith. While this declaration was crude in the method it pro-
posed, its essential truth has since become the vision of great masses
of white men. The whole world is coining to see what those despised
South Carolina Negroes saw so long ago. Will not that political plat-
form, put forth by a convention composed for the most part of black
freedmen but recently released from generations of servile bondage,
that platform of the first convention dominated by Negroes ever held
in South Carolina will it not compare favorably, as civilization ad-
vances, with the "black code" which the superior race of the same
State had tried twelve months before to impose upon those very
Negroes? By forty odd years those Negroes forestalled Lloyd George
with his proposal for old-age pensions; by nearly four they preceded
Henry George in apprehending the deadly import of land monopoly.

Nor did these newly enfranchised South Carolina Negroes try to
protect themselves with anything like the severity toward the whites
that the whites had so recently adopted with reference to Negroes.
All they asked in the way of burdens upon the whites was that the
"rights to traitors" be restored cautiously and that the reconstruction
acts of Congress be enforced. The expenses of their convention, it is
interesting to know, were only $36.25. The collections were $46.

Such a convention must have had good material in it. Its influen-
tial delegates must have had wholesome training in democracy. . . .

That ... the South Carolina whites had undergone no essential
change since slavery times was pretty well shown by the official ad-
dress of a white convention in South Carolina which followed by
some months the Negro convention already mentioned and was pre-
sided over by James Chesnut, one of the distinguished South Caro-
linians of the Civil War period. This address protested not only
against the JMranchisement of whites, but also against the enfran-
chisement of Negroes. It did indeed claim for the whites of South
Carolina that they were the best friends of the Negro, and that as
to property, life and person they were willing that black and white
should stand together upon the same platform and be shielded by the
same equal laws; but it is difficult to see why those whites should
have expected Negroes to believe this profession, or how they could
very profoundly have believed it themselves. That very address is a
fine example of the kind of appeal to upper-class groups that upper-
class leaders always make in derogation of political rights for what
they are usually pleased to call lower-class mobs.

When in October, 1867, the registration of voters under the Con-

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gressional reconstruction acts had been completed, there was a voting
roll of 46,346 whites and 78,982 Negroes; and at the election in
November the Constitutional convention was ordered by 69,000 to
2,800. As aristocratic reactionaries like Wade Hampton had urged
the whites to vote against the convention as cast by white voters only
130 all told.

Under the call of Gen. Canby of the United States army, the dele-
gates assembled at Charleston in January, 1868. Of the 124 elected,
48 were whites and 76 Negroes. Of the whites, 23 were native South
Carolinians, 4 were from other Southern States, 15 were from North-
ern States, 5 were from foreign countries, and the nativity of I was
unknown; while the Negroes numbered 59 as natives of South Caro-
lina, 4 from other Southern States, 6 from Northern States and 1
from a foreign country, the nativity of 6 being unknown. Among the
more distinguished of both races that I afterwards knew were Daniel
H. Chamberlain, Timothy Hurley, W. J. Whipper, Robert Smalls,
J. J. Wright, C. P. Leslie, A. C. Mackey, E. W. M. Mackey, C. C.
Bowen, F. L. Cardozo, R. H. Cain, A. J. Ransier, B. F. Whittemore,
W. Beverly Nash, Robert B. Elliott, Joseph H. Rainey, and Franklin
J. Moses, Jr. Much has been made of the fact that many of those
delegates were either not taxpayers or only small taxpayers. But this
distinction ought not to count for much certainly not in disparage-
ment of the so-called "non-taxpayer." Indirect taxation imposes upon
so-called "non-taxpayers" heavy taxes with secrecy and subtlety.
Some of those Negro delegates who were classed as non-taxpayers
steadily paid heavier taxes, without knowing it, than many a critic of
theirs who called himself a taxpayer but, also without knowing it,
was not so very much of one. . . .

This second Constitutional convention of South Carolina follow-
ing the Civil War adjourned March 18, 1868. It had framed a Con-
stitution providing for permanent allegiance of the State to the
United States; making truth a defense in libel (the jury being judge
of the law and the facts); abolishing imprisonment for debt; creating
homestead exemptions of $1,000 in lands and $500 in personalty,
basing representation upon population; conferring voting rights upon
every male citizen 21 years of age without distinction of race, color
or former condition; abolishing property qualifications for office, re-
quiring Presidential Electors to be chosen by popular vote instead of
the legislature; establishing common schools to be free and open to
all the children of the State without regard to race or color; and en-
dowing women with separate rights to their own property.

... the first legislature of South Carolina under the new Constitu-

194 THE RECONSTRUCTION

tion assembled at Columbia in July of that year. On the 24th of July,
Gen. Canby, the military commander, remitted all authority to the
State government, and the first legislature of South Carolina under
the new regime assembled and organized. The Senate consisted of 21
white men of whom 6 were Democrats, and of 10 Negroes; the
House of 46 white men of whom 14 were Democrats, and of 78
Negroes. Among the Senators was my subsequent employer, David
T. Corbin, who was chosen president pro tern; among the Represen-
tatives was Franklin J. Moses, Jr., already described, who was chosen
Speaker, his defeated adversary being W. J. Whipper, a Northern-
born Negro. As soon as the legislature had organized, it ratified the
Fourteenth Amendment, the Democratic members voting in the nega-
tive; and before it adjourned it had with like opposition ratified the
Fifteenth Amendment. Thomas J. Robertson was elected to the
United States Senate by 130 to 21, and Frederick A. Sawyer as Ms
colleague by 76 to 73. Both were white men. The former was a
native of South Carolina, the latter a native of Massachusetts who
had settled in Charleston before the Civil War as an educator and
won pre-war distinction there in his profession. I may quote Senator
Sawyer in illustration of what I believe the fact to be, that the
Negroes in office in South Carolina were honest men until white men
seduced them. He repeated in my hearing a remark of Senator
Robertson's that whereas the latter's first election to the United States
Senate cost him only $500, his second cost him $30,000. The Negro
legislators had learned in the interval what white legislators seem
also to have learned, that United States Senatorships are valuable
enough to buy. It may also be noted by way of tribute to that first
legislature that its expenses at the 1869-1870 session, covering a
period of 83 working days, were $125,000 an average of only
about $10 per member per day. Later legislatures were not famous
for any such economy.

Yet the fact must not be blinked that even in the first legislature
"grafty" measures were pushed through, pulled through and bribed
through. Corruption set in even at that early day, and as time went
on it thickened. When I got there you could almost cut it with a
knife. The capitol atmosphere seemed to produce a peculiar intoxi-
cating effect. Just to breathe it made one feel like going out and
picking a pocket. Nor was this effect confined to the Negroes and the
"carpetbaggers," nor even within the outlying region of "scallawag-
ism." There were also South Carolina aristocrats who, though fright-
fully shocked at "nigger equality," were not immune to the furacious
infections and contagions. . . .

THE RECONSTRUCTION 195

At the close of the session Major Corbin took me down to
Charleston, where at his home and in Ms office the work was also
routine. It consisted for the most part of the ordinary duties of law
office, with such variations as came from assisting Senator Corbin
in his work on the codification of the statutes. The atmosphere of
corruption was as thick in spots at Charleston as it had been in layers
at Columbia; but if Senator Corbin or William Stone, his partner,
were in any way participants at either place, I did not know it and I
do not believe they were. In all their relations, both of them appeared
to me to be honest men of the stem New England type. They were
persone nan grates to the corrupt elements of their own party, which
was a significant circumstance in favor of their honesty; and to
natives of the opposition they were taboo as "carpetbaggers," a cir-
cumstance of no value whatever in estimating personal character.

An experience with that "taboo" which concerned me closely may
be worth the telling for its illustrative value. In my summer vacation
I had married in the North and after the honeymoon had brought
my bride to Charleston. Hardly were we settled when an epidemic
of yellow fever set in and we hurried to the higher land of Columbia,
where we remained through the remainder of the summer of 1871
and until March, 1872. We lived at the Nickerson House, once a
seminary for young ladies but then turned into a hotel. In early
autumn, while we were still the only Northern guests at this hotel,
South Carolinians from low-lying plantations about Columbia, who
were there in considerable numbers as summer boarders, made us
realize that we were undesirables. In the dining room we were demon-
strably shunned, without any advances on our own part to provoke it;
and on one occasion, as my wife went up a stairway she met two
South Carolina ladies coming down. They drew close to the wall lest
gown touch gown across the wide space from wall to bannister. At
another time a Baltimore lady who came from far enough North to
be friendly with us and from far enough South to escape the "taboo"
fell in an upper hallway in a faint. One of the South Carolina ladies
went to her assistance, but abandoned her instantly when my wife
joined her with like intent. I criticize none of the contemptuous con-
duct of which these are but instances; for we of the North would
probably have acted in the same way had all conditions been re-
versed. I merely mention the fact for the picture it helps to give of
the place and the time. One must consider, too, that this local feeling
was really not against Northerners as Northerners; tourists from the
North were uniformly treated with courtesy. The contemptuous treat-

1Q6 THE RECONSTRUCTION

ment was for "carpetbaggers" for Northerners who stopped awhile
and got Into politics or public station. . . .

IX. THE OLD KUKLUX KLAN OF SOUTH CAROLINA

It was out of this widespread hate and contempt in South Carolina
that the Kuklux terror burst forth. Before going there I had ques-
tioned the truth of newspaper reports about the Kuklux Klan. Indeed
most of those reports were so fashioned as to inspire doubts of their
seriousness. Their flavor was of mardi gras comedy rather than racial
tragedy. I think that the general disposition at that time in the North
was to assign the K.K.K. to the category of horse play. Certainly
caricature K.K.K.'s appeared in Fourth of July parades at the North
as late as 1871, and with no purpose whatever of making sport of
murder. But after I had been in South Carolina a few weeks, Kuklux
terrorism seemed real enough. While Negroes were as safe as any-
body in the region of Columbia and Charleston, blood-curdling news
from districts at a distance thrilled us now and again like tales of
nearby Indian massacres.

The first of these stories to reach me, vital with detail, was of a
piece with all that followed. At the previous holiday time five Negro
militiamen, one of them a captain, who were in jail charged with
murdering a white man, had been lynched by 500 armed and masked
horsemen. As this story came to us these prisoners were seized,
placed in line abreast, and while they stood there with their backs to
the masked men, one of the latter called out: "Captain Smith, twelve
paces to the front." The Negro militia captain obeyed, and was in-
stantly riddled with bullets. Similar orders were given to the other
prisoners; but they, warned by the fate of their captain, did not stop
at twelve paces but ran for their lives. Two were killed and the other
two badly wounded. A month later eight more of the same militia
company were reported as having been arrested and soon afterward
lynched. The bodies of five, with bullet holes in the head, were found
on a morning lying under a tree near the jail in which they had been
confined, and two were hanging from the tree by the neck. The
eighth was missing. Although reports of this character, official and
unofficial, all attributing the murders to the Kuklux Klan, trickled
into Charleston from time to time, it was not until late in the fall of
1871 that I found myself face to face with the terrible reality.

Major Lewis Merrill of the Seventh United States Cavalry came
to Columbia about that time, and Senator Corbin asked me to fetch
him to the capitol where we were at work upon the codification of

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the laws. I hunted up the bluff Major and brought him in. Pretty
soon I knew that "something was doing." President Grant had sus-
pended the writ of habeas corpus in those counties of South Carolina
where the Kuklux terrorism was at its height, and one of these was
York County, at the seat of which, Yorkville, Major Merrill had his
headquarters as commandant of a detachment of his regiment. Here
he had turned an old sugar house into a temporary jail and filled It
with prisoners, arrested without warrant or specific accusations and
held without habeas-corpus rights, presumably as members of the
murderous Klan. To my surprise and great gratification I was soon
afterwards directed by Senator Corbin to go to Yorkville and put
myself at the service of Major Merrill.

It was a beautiful South Carolina day in October, that on which
I left Columbia for the heart of the Kuklux region. My route lay
through Chester, where I had to change from the comfortable cars of
the through road North to a twenty-mile side-line, woefully old-
fashioned, which connected Chester with Yorkville. To learn when
the Yorkville train would start, I had no little difficulty. At military
headquarters they couldn't tell me, nor at the hotel where I was to
have dinner, nor in the stores, and time tables there were none. But
on the street I found a man who pointed out the conductor at a dis-
tance, saying that possibly he might tell me. Approaching the person
indicated, I inquired of him if he truly were the conductor, and got
his own assurance; whereupon I asked when his train would leave
for Yorkville. "About two o'clock," he replied. Fearing I might have
misinterpreted his qualifying word, having never known of dilatory
trains being quite so candidly scheduled, I asked if it would be
exactly at two, and he replied: "Aboot; a little befo*, o 5 a little aftuh.
You goin' to Yo'kville?" I told Mm I was, and asked if I would
surely have time for dinner. "Take yo' time," he assured me; a th'
train'll wait fo' you." Although he was serious in manner and charm-
ingly friendly, I feared he might be jibing me. It would have been
jibing at the North. But I didn't know my South Carolina yet. They
do not jibe there or did not in those days. Interrupted by the dinner
bell, I went into the dining room where I laid my troubles before a
Negro waiter, along with a quarter. He tried to convince me that I
really could take my time, that the train would truly wait, but as I
was still nervous, he told me he would go out and arrange the
matter. Upon his return he assured me, with a good helping from
the kitchen, that he would be responsible for getting me aboard in
time; so I took it easy until he advised me to go, which was at nearly
half past two.

ig8 THE RECONSTRUCTION

Walking leisurely down the street, I saw at a little distance a rail-
way car, and on the rear platform was my friendly conductor beck-
oning to me. As he helped me up to the platform, he welcomed me
cordially. "We waitin' fo' yo j ," he said. And sure enough, as I settled
into a seat the train began to move. It consisted of a locomotive, a
freight car and a passenger car. There was a partition across the
middle of the latter primarily to divide white smokers from other
whites and incidentally to prevent racial promiscuity. Its wheels
rolled on strap rails, but not very fast, for they were more than two
hours in rolling us over the twenty miles from Chester to York-
ville

X. KUKLUX CONFESSIONS

Those Kuklux confessions, "pukes" as they were called by the
sturdier voyagers upon that stormy sea of Yankee conquest with
which the chivalry of South Carolina were battling in those "carpet-
bag" times, were produced by President Grant's suspension of the
writ of habeas corpus. Major Merrill had spent the summer collect-
ing evidence against members of the Kuklux Klan, and as soon as
the writ of habeas corpus was suspended by the President he made
cavalry raids in all directions, arresting suspects by the score. For a
time the prisoners were silent. But as hope of release died out and
fears of hanging grew stronger, the weaker ones sought permission to
tell Major Merrill what they knew. This developed evidence on which
to make further arrests, and confessions became quite the fashion as
arrests multiplied. The prisoners "bagged" of a night were thrust
into the sugar-house jail with the "catch" of previous nights and left
there to think. Their plight was hopeless. Although held by no grand-
jury indictment nor even a magistrate's warrant, they were beyond
the reach of any court or judge; for under the President's proclama-
tion Major Merrill would have been bound, if he needed coercion,
which he did not, to ignore the courts had they intervened. Often
there were confessions enough to keep us busy through the livelong
day, and every day had its grist of one or more. On the occasion of
those penitential visits, Major Merrill and I together would be
closeted with a solitary prisoner, he examining and I recording. By
this means he gathered an accumulating mass of testimony, each day
bringing forth further clues for further arrests.

But it was by no means all easy sailing, and the military authori-
ties were victimized by more tricks than they suspected, as I know
now. The victim of one of them was Captain Hale, as fine a fellow as

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ever straddled a cavalry horse and one of the officers who fell by
the side of Custer. I recall Captain Hale's early morning indignation
at that trick. On a rounding-up expedition with a squad of cavalry
the night before, the objects of which were ten or fifteen miles away,
he had impressed a native to guide him and his squad, and the native
did it, "to the Queen's taste," as Captain Hale reported him. All
night long he guided them through many a path and byway, but
without once guiding them more than a mile or two from head-
quarters. Of course there was not a single catch that night. Captain
Hale was furious, but as it was not wartime the guide could not be
shot offhand and I suppose he was "sugar-housed" in lieu of the
Kukluxer Major Merrill had sent for.

Major Merrill himself suffered keener disappointment in another
case, and not from any trick. There was pathos in the incident.
There was a lesson in it too, a lesson in that peculiar chivalry of the
Southerner of which I had heard much but believed little.

One raw November or December night already more than half
gone, Major Merrill and I were alone in the business office at mili-
tary headquarters when a slip of paper was handed in by the orderly
at the door. The major read the message it bore, thought a moment
with an expression of triumph he tried hard to conceal but could
not, and then gave the command: "Bring him here at once!" Alone
with me again, he explained the message. It was from the sugar-
house jail, of course, but from one of the "higher ups," as we should
say now. Major Merrill used the slang of the time and place. "At
last," he said, "one of the big ones wants to puke." The message was
a request for an interview from one of the principal prisoners. I have
forgotten his name, but he had worn shoulder straps in the Con-
federate service and was accounted a leading citizen in that part of
the State. Through the high office the confessions of others indicated
that he held in the county Klan, we supposed Mm able to incriminate
officers of the State Klan, if not men who were still higher up in the
murderous order. Thus far every similar request had been the fore-
runner of a confession, and neither Major Merrill nor I doubted that
exciting work was before us which might continue till daylight. At
the big table I sharpened my pencils, while the Major walked up
and down the room sharpening his wits.

In fifteen or twenty minutes or half an hour there was a knock at
the office door. Major Merrill opened it himself, admitting the
prisoner and excluding the orderly. The prisoner saluted with dignity
and grace, considering the awkwardness of the situation; for it is not
easy, I take it, to give a military salute to an officer who has opened

200 THE RECONSTRUCTION

a door for you while lie is closing it behind you, especially if he
happens to be your jailor. Mr. Merrill was too much excited to
acknowledge the salute even awkwardly. He returned to the table,
looked his prisoner sternly in the eye, and waited for the expected
offer of a confession. His mute inquiry got a quick response.
"Major," said the prisoner, without a quiver in his voice, yet with
unmistakable feeling in his curt phrases, "my little boy is sick; he is
dying; my wife sends me word; I want to see him; may I go home on
parole? I give you my honor to come back."

Major Merrill was speechless. His expected confession from
"higher up" had gone a-glimmering. Not only that, but he faced a
dilemma. The inhumanity of denying this helpless prisoner's pathetic
request, with all the power to do so in his own hands, made battle
in his mind. Fear of losing the prisoner and being court-martialed
struggled for mastery over more brotherly instincts. The battle within
him must have raged fiercely. But the man beneath the officer con-
quered. In nicely modulated tones, angelic it seemed to me from one
so rough in manner as I had sometimes seen him, Major Merrill
asked: "How old is your boy?" "Fo'teen," was the reply, with that
soft Southern enunciation which cannot be reproduced in print but is
indescribably charming to the ear. "How ill is he?" "My wife don't
think he'll live till mo'n'n." "Are you sure he is dying?" "That is the
word my wife sends me; I am sure; he may not live till I get there."
"How far is it?" "Fo'teen miles." "How will you get there?" "Afoot."
"When will you return?" "Day after tomorrow sundown." There was
another pause. The Major continued looking his prisoner steadily in
the eye, then dropped his own eyes to the floor, raised them again
with another glance at the prisoner, and the battle between the mili-
tary officer and the human man within him was over. The human man
had won. Without changing expression of face, but gently of voice,
Major Merrill said: "You may go."

The prisoner was off in an instant. With a swing of the arm in-
tended for a parting salute, and a turn upon his heel, swiftly yet with
military erectness and precision he passed out of our room, through
the large hall, by the orderly whom Major Merrill had barely time to
instruct, across the porch and down the steps into the thick darkness
and the chill November rain.

Now that the Kuklux excitement is long past and we know that
the worst punishment any of the prisoners got was a short period of
confinement the worst they could have got indeed from the Federal
courts that midnight incident at Major Merrill's headquarters seems
to belong rather to the bouffe order of theatricals than to the truly

THE RECONSTRUCTION 201

dramatic. But it was dramatic enough at the time to both actors in it.
The prisoner stood charged with several brutal murders. That these
murders had been committed there was no room for question; and
their commission had been traced to the secret organization of which
he was a member. Major Merrill must have had no doubt of his
prisoner's guilt. The prisoner himself, when he considered his plight
held by what was to him a foreign soldiery, threatened with indict-
ment and prosecution for a capital offense by what he regarded as
a star chamber grand jury and a packed panel of petit jurors acting
under the orders of a bitterly partisan judge must have felt, no
matter how conscious of innocence he may have been, nor how well
advised of the limitations of the law, that his imprisonment at the
time was the prelude to certain death on the gallows. For similar
reasons Major Merrill had cause enough for a troubled mind as his
paroled prisoner's footsteps echoed down the walk; and troubled he
evidently was. He tried to reassure himself that there would be no
escape and therefore no court-martial, by repeatedly assuring me be-
fore I went to the hotel that night that the prisoner would certainly
return. "The word of honor of these men," he said, "is better than a
bail bond."

Major Merrill didn't forget the incident over night, however, as I
did. The possibility of his having made a mistake must have worried
him all the next day, which was a Thursday, and all the next. Late
in the afternoon of the Friday he invited me to a stroll with him
about the camp. Supposing it for exercise, I accepted the invitation,
but absorbed in other things, I paid no heed to the significance of
his restless fussing with odds and ends in the tents we entered, nor
to his frequent glances toward the west. But just as the sun's lower
edge touched the western horizon, the waning warmth of its rays
piercing the cool air over an exposed hillock on which we stood,
Major Merrill startled my memory into activity by exclaiming:
"There he comes! I knew he would!" The exclamation was expres-
sive rather of happy disappointment than of that consciousness of re-
warded confidence which the words implied. And sure enough, off
in the distance down the main street of Yorkville, headed directly
for that hillock where Major Merrill's figure was conspicuous, the
paroled prisoner strode, prompt to the minute.

As he neared us he halted and saluted, stiff as a private on
parade. "Major," he said, "my little boy is still living, but the
doctor says he will die before morning. I want to go back." There
was no hesitation this time. All the Major's suppressed fears of an
escape were gone. "When will you return?" as asked. "Tomorrow

202 THE RECONSTRUCTION

sundown." "You may go." The prisoner wheeled and was off; and
when Major Merrill casually inquired of his orderly late the next
night, it was to be informed that his prisoner had returned directly
to the old sugar-house about four o'clock in the afternoon. The little
boy had died meanwhile, and the father had helped to bury him
before walking back to jail.

To appreciate the profound impression which this incident made
upon me, one must believe that both those men supposed, as I did,
that the prisoner had come back to be hanged. Major Merrill might
have augmented this courageous generosity, I have often thought,
with the loan of a horse for that sad double journey of his chivalrous
prisoner. It would have made the story better. But maybe it
wouldn't have been in good military form; or, possibly the Major did
not wish to provide a comedy element at his own expense in case
his confidence were abused. Nevertheless over all these years I have
thought as warmly of the courageous generosity Major Merrill dis-
closed in that incident as I have of the fidelity of the bereaved
prisoner whom he so rashly trusted.

Apart from Major Merrill's shattered expectation that the prisoner
of that story would make a Kuklux confession, there were no
"higher up" incidents, except arrests on suspicion and an empty
confession by the scribe of a county Klan. But there were scores of
confessions of minor Klansmen, and many a Negro found his way
into Major Merrill's office with a gruesome story. No one who heard
all this testimony as I did could doubt the existence of the Kuklux
Klan in South Carolina, nor that it had been organized to intimidate
Negro citizens. That it contemplated murder by way of horrifying
example is not so certain, although within the probabilities, but if
not a murderous conspiracy in its inception, the Kuklux Klan became
an engine of murder before it collapsed. Some of its murders within
Major Merrill's military territory were hideous and cruel. Yet it must
be admitted that with only a few notable exceptions, they were all
open to the inference of having been "whitecap" murders in contra-
distinction to race murders. Much of the appearance of an anti-
Negro motive may be plausibly explained by the theory that inasmuch
as the population was largely of the Negro race the crimes that
usually in those days provoked "whitecap" lynchings of white persons
in States like Indiana provoked similar lynchings of Negroes in South
Carolina. But after making full allowance for that explanation, the
fact remains that the Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina was distinctly
designed and indisputably used for the suppression of Negro citizen-
ship. Based upon the confessions and the other evidence I recorded

THE RECONSTRUCTION 203

at Yorkville, and later at the Kuklux trials in Columbia, together
with the general circumstances, my best guess is that in its inception
the Kuklux Klan was political but not murderous; that local klans
got to wreaking private vengeance without orders from above, to
redressing local grievances and to enforcing local regulations aH
in the name of the Kuklux Klan and that in this way a non-
murderous organization got involved in grossly murderous activities.
I am not unmindful, in that guess, of the fact that capital crimes
were responsibly committed, and for the purpose for which this
terrorizing order was organized intimidation of Negro voters. But
I am inclined to the belief that these were logical results of a
grotesque form of organization which, though well adapted to
furthering secret murders of public-spirited Negroes, was originally
intended only to frighten them and their followers. A conspiracy
intended to intimidate might very easily in those time and places have
got beyond control and into homicidal practices.

pp. 63, 64, 67, 68, 75-79.

... I lean strongly to the opinion that the South Carolina Kuklux

outrages were of the nature of mob-panics. They seem to me to have
been excited by ungrounded fears, inherited from the traditions of
slavery, that armed freedmen are dangerous to a master class. Not

murder but terrorism through a show of power and through exciting
superstitious awe among the Negroes was the probable purpose of
the Kuklux Klan before it drifted into actual lynchings. It is probably
true that it was swept into this savagely criminal crusade by fears
of a militia made up almost exclusively of Negroes, That few but
Negroes were in the militia is chargeable, however, to the whites.
They refused to join the militia, but organized among themselves
irresponsible and unlawful rifle clubs instead.

An example of attempted terrorism by appeal to superstitions was
told by an old "uncle" with beautiful contrasts of white hair and
black features who found his way to Major Merrill's headquarters
one day while I was there. He said he had gone out early in the
morning following the assassination of Capt. Williams, and seeing
dimly in the dawn a masked cavalcade up the road had prudently
hidden himself in a hedge. Some of the masked and gowned horsemen
probably detected him, for as they came opposite Ms hiding place
one asked another the time, loud enough for the old Negro to hear.
The other replied, "About five o'clock." Then the first one said,
"Is it as late as that? Well, we must hurry on, for we've got to be
back in hell for breakfast."

204

THE RECONSTRUCTION

The old man was frightened badly enough; but not superstitiously,
It is a mistake, I believe, to suppose that the South Carolina freedman
was as simple as he often let on to be. The notion of the white
South Carolinian that the white man of the South "knows the nigger"
seems to me to have less foundation in fact than in the Southern
white man's imagination. As an enslaved race the Negroes had
learned the "might of make believe," that defense of the defenseless
always and everywhere, and this fact the Southerner is prone to
ignore. Whenever I am assured that only the Southerner "knows
the nigger," which may be recognized both in substance and form
as a familiar remark in connection with discussions of the Negro
"problem," my own experience with Negroes in South Carolina came
back to me and I say, or if I do not say it I think it: "My dear good
friend of the Southland, the Southerner may know the Negro as a
slave, but he does not know him as a man" Superstitious, for in-
stance, the Southern Negro may be. So is the Southern white man.
For the matter of that, so are most white men. But the Southern
Negro is not superstitious in the precise way, nor to the extent, nor
in the connections in which he prudently permits the master class
to think him so. Whoever would understand the Negro must learn
about him as we learn about other men by neighborly association.
It cannot be done otherwise. No master class has ever yet under-
stood a slave, except as a slave.

... In the winter of 1871-72 the trials of some of Major Merrill's
prisoners came off at Columbia. Judge Bond of the Federal Circuit
Court and Judge Bryan of the Federal District Court occupied the
bench together. David T. Corbin as United States Attorney, and
Daniel H. Chamberlain (the State Attorney General) as special
counsel, were the lawyers for the prosecution. Reverdy Johnson of
Baltimore and Henry Stansbery of Cincinnati, with local associates,
were the lawyers for the defense. Benn Pitman and I shorthanded
the trials. . . .

Several trials followed, all very much alike. The number of
Klansmen sentenced was 55, only 5 of whom had been tried. The
rest were sentenced upon their pleas of guilty. Many who pleaded
guilty were really about such persons as Mr. Reynolds describes
them, "young men of little or no education" who "had joined the
Klan just to be joining it and had done some raiding." That this
raiding by them was, as Mr. Reynolds further says, "a result of their
indignation at the insolence of some of the Negro politicians, the
incendiary talk of others, and the misconduct of the Negro militia,"

THE RECONSTRUCTION 205

may be conceded in fairness to South Carolinian point of view
regarding Negro insolence, incendiarism and misconduct; but Mr.
Reynold's further statement that the young men who confessed to
Kuklux raiding gave "no sign of any animosity to the Negro on
account of his race or color," and "had no consciousness of any
purpose to conspire against the Negro's rights as secured by the
Fourteenth or Fifteenth amendment," is reasonably questionable. In-
deed any palliation of those Kuklux murders is explicable to me
only by the antique ethics of a conquered people whose conquerors
had given political rights and powers to a class whom the conquered
were accustomed to regard as natural born slaves. You may find
parallels wherever and whenever there have been freedmen in large
numbers of any color or race. Independent spirit on the part of the
natural-born slave class of South Carolina was regarded as "in-
solence," suggestive of an incendiary purpose and significant of
such danger to the master class as to necessitate extreme measures in
defense of "self and fireside."

The fact that juries in the Kuklux trials were composed largely
of Negroes is dwelt upon by Mr. Reynolds; and it is a fact. That
race-feeling among Negro jurors assured convictions regardless of
guilt may also be true, as Mr. Reynolds implies. Yet the rights of
white men charged with Kukluxing were certainly as secure with
Negro jurors as were the rights of Negroes at any time with white
jurors. I do not mean by this to condemn the whites for their race
bias any more than I mean to condemn the Negroes for theirs,
although the Negro's bias against white men was a bagatelle in
comparison with the white man's bias against Negroes. I acknowledge
the provocation to the whites, from their own point of view, and am
only stating a manifest fact when I say that white men were safer
with Negro juries than Negroes with white juries; and in this
connection let me state the further fact that if race bias did dictate
those verdicts by Negro jurors against whites on trial for Kukluxing,
the verdicts were nevertheless justified. While I dare not say that the
results would have been different with Negro juries if the convicted
defendants had been innocent, I do say that upon the evidence,
verdicts of guilty would have been found by unbiased juries of white
men. Native white juries might have acquitted; but this would have
been not because the crimes charged were unproven, but because
under the political and social circumstances native white jurors, like
the defendants themselves, would have looked upon those crimes
as justifiable or excusable for race reasons.

206 THE RECONSTRUCTION

When President Johnson undertook the restoration of the
Southern States to the Union by conciliatory methods, following what
he doubtless regarded as Lincoln's own plans, those aristocratic
elements of South Carolina, playing upon the race passions and
narrow patriotism of the poorer and despised whites, the same
aristocratic elements that had plunged South Carolina into secession
and by similar methods had drawn other Southern States with them
into the vortex of the Civil War those elements took advantage of
President Johnson's friendly statesmanship to impress the North with
their disposition to achieve in politics what they had lost in war.

The "black codes" did it. One of the first enactments of the
aristocratic elements of South Carolina upon her restoration to civil
authority, this set of race regulations helped make the North believe
that slavery problem, which they supposed the Civil War had settled
on the side of liberty, would be as baffling and dangerous in national
politics as ever, if President Johnson's reconstruction policy were
pursued. "Unrepentant rebels" was the phrase which, ringing through
the North, sounded the doom of the Lincoln- Johnson policy. Every-
where it carried conviction that the South could not be trusted with
its old political power unchecked by Constitutional amendments.
The Lincoln- Johnson policy of reconstruction was sent to the scrap
heap, and the drastic policy of Congress took its place. For the
aristocratic whites of South Carolina (as of the other seceding States)
there had been a locus poenitentiae between President Johnson's
proclamation and Congressional action, and they had ignored the
opportunity.

There was a second locus poenitentiae for those aristocratic whites
when Congress enfranchised the Negro with a self-protecting ballot.
Fearing and despising the poor-white class, South Carolina Negroes
nevertheless loved the aristocrats and were disposed to trust them
The reason is plain to any student of Southern slavery. Indeed it is
only a phase of a natural tendency of any depressed class the
tendency to look up to the highest. Was it ever Englishmen alone,
for instance, who "dearly loved a lord"? Easy, then, would it have
been for the aristocratic elements of South Carolina even with the
"black code" to their discredit, for the Negro had hardly felt its
severity before Congressional reconstruction knocked it out easy
enough, one might suppose, for the old aristocrats to take possession
of South Carolina politically under the reconstruction plans of Con-
gress. Nothing was necessary but to foster in the Negro the tendency
of the Negro to trust them; and this could have been done by
graciously complying with the conditions imposed by Congress

THE RECONSTRUCTION 2O/

impossible conditions before Appomattox, doubtless, but not after.
This second opportunity, also, the whites of South Carolina rejected,
still under the leadership of their aristocratic parasites. By the advice
of such men as Wade Hampton, they stood out against the Con-
gressional plans of reconstruction when these were no longer avoid-
able. Not only that. They also encouraged contempt for everyone
of their class who, disagreeing with them, did participate. Meanwhile,
they left nothing undone to convince the Negroes that their old
masters held in store for them nothing but servitude. The result
was natural and inevitable, Negroes dazed with a new sense of
freedom, and whites despised by their neighbors, were left to re-
construct the State together as best they might. It may have been
magnificent as tomfoolery; as patriotism and statesmanship it was
contemptible.

Those were -the circumstances that drew such "carpetbaggers" as
Corbin and Chamberlain and Stone and Tomlinson into politics,
along with a bare sprinkling of honest and able "scallawags" and
many honest Negroes were here and there a capable one. And here
was a third locus poenitentiae for the aristocratic whites. In spite
of the bloody folly of their secession in 1860, in spite of the race
folly of their "black code" in 1867, in spite of their childish sulks
in 1868, the way was now open for them to help the people of their
State of all races, nativities and classes, to distinguish individuals
in politics, the capable from the incapable, the honest from the
dishonest. But the same aristocratic leadership ignored this third
opportunity for a genuinely patriotic policy, as fatuously as it had
ignored the other two. Had an archangel come to South Carolina
and gone into politics at that time, he would have been classed as
"nigger," "carpetbagger" or "scallawag," with therefore as an in-
stinctive thief. The capable and honest and self-respecting were under
those circumstances soon outinfluenced at the polls and outnumbered
in public office by the incapable, the dishonest and the cynical
aristocratic parasitism which had deliberately cast aside another
opportunity to save South Carolina from the parasitism of ignorance
steeped in poverty.

With the human material at their command almost for the asking,
those aristocratic leaders might have erected upon the rains of this
old State a splendid democratic commonwealth. There were the three
distinct opportunities noted above. But they could not tolerate the
Jeffersonian principle of equal rights which they professed. To them
South Carolina would not have been South Carolina with a Negro
citizenship. ". . . even had the Negro government been administered

208 THE RECONSTRUCTION

honestly, effectively and economically, the white people would not
have acquiesced.'*

An amazing epitaph, truly! And epitaph indeed it has become.
For the great slaveholding aristocrats of South Carolina who led the
South into the Civil War when defeated at the national polls, and
away from the generous Lincoln-Johnson plan of reconstruction
when defeated at arms, are at the present day displaced in political
power in South Carolina by a regime which, though nominally of
their own race and party, would have been as intolerable to the
Hamptons and their class as the blackest of Negro governments.

Stone, Corbin, Chamberlain, Tomlinson, Nash and others like
them were men with whom the best blood of South Carolina could
have fraternized with as much honor to either side as to the other,
and with great civic usefulness. They did not thrust themselves as
conquerors or as political adventurers into local affairs of the con-
quered. They were drawn into those affairs as citizens who had
made South Carolina their home and workshop, and whose abilities
were needed in public affairs at a crisis in which the abilities of
leading white South Carolinians of native birth were either rejected
by Federal military authority or withdrawn by the leaders themselves.
Corbin had married a cousin of Bayard Taylor; Stone had married
her younger sister. Those girls came from Chester, Pa., to South
Carolina as teachers as "nigger teachers," for I now recall that
South Carolina epithets in those days were not limited to "nigger,"
"scallawag" and "carpetbagger." The Northern white woman, how-
ever respectable her antecedents and reputable her character, how-
ever generous and able her devotion to education, was despised as
a "nigger teacher" if she came into South Carolina to educate Negro
children. In this category there were of my acquaintance as a
"carpetbagger" several besides Mrs. Corbin and Mrs. Stone. Alice
E. Johnson, originally of Boston or thereabouts, who died at Port-
chester, N.Y., taught in the Shaw Memorial School for Negro
children at Charleston. Martha Scofield of Pennsylvania had until
recently a school in South Carolina for Negro children at which she
taught when I was a South Carolina "carpetbagger." There were
others of the same group whose names I do not remember. All
together, these were in every way as fine as group of women as
ever trained a human mind. When pious persons who saved their own
souls habitually by contributing to missionary work in heathen lands
called such women "nigger teachers" in derision, their epithet had
some of the richer qualities of unconscious self-satire.

Yet I must renew my expressions of confidence that all this

THE RECONSTRUCTION 20g

contempt for "carpetbaggers," "niggers," "scalawags" and "nigger
teachers" was not South Carolina nature but human nature. Put your-
self into the South Carolinian's place and think it over. Certain
determining facts must never be let go in considering South Carolina
in those times. Her white natives felt themselves a conquered people
under the military heel of the conqueror. They beheld a servile
race arbitrarily lifted out of slavery and into political power by a
triumphant and blindly ungenerous foe. They saw in immigrants
from the conquerors' distant seat of power only a camp-follower
class of low lineage and sordid ambitions. Whether this feeling was
just or not makes no difference. To some extent it was just, though
not wholly so. But it was excusable. A sense of outraged loyalty to
country or class cares little for such "abstractions" as simple justice.
Even the lofty wellsprings of generosity dry up when race lines and
class lines are drawn.

So I tell of those conditions in South Carolina only as facts;
and in the cooler season of half a century afterward, I try to comment
upon them calmly even if frankly. I know now that if conditions
had been reversed, with my own native New Jersey playing in the
unhappy role of South Carolina, New Jersey would probably have
done as South Carolina did. Although I myself might in those cir-
cumstances have been just and generous to immigrants from the
Southland, and have democratically offered a welcome into citizen-
ship to our uplifted "lower classes" which is by no means certain,
let me make haste to confess yet if I had really risen to those demo-
cratic heights as I trust I might, 1 am sure that my neighbors of the
humiliated "better classes" would have been less likely to send me to
the legislature than to ride me on a rail.

Louis F. Post, Journal of Negro History, pp. 10-19, 24-32,
34.35, 37-38, 40-50, 63-64, 67-68, 75-79.

I HAVE A SUSPICION THAT SOME OF THE

WHITE RADICALS ARE GETTING SICK

OF THEIR BLACK ALLIES.

Joseph A. Waddell, "Annals Of Augusta County, Virginia 9 '

Of the members in attendance (104), twenty-five are colored men,
varying in complexion from the bright mulatto to the blackest AM-

210 THE RECONSTRUCTION

can. Among these classed as colored men, Is one who is said to be
an Indian of almost pure blood. This is "Mr. Morgan," of Peters-
burg, whose person is quite imposing, and whose deportment so far
has been eminently respectable. Indeed, I must, in justice, say that
most of this class conduct themselves in a manner which shows they
were well brought up that is, they are polite and unobtrusive. Of
course they are uneducated and ignorant, and the idea of their
undertaking to frame a State Constitution would be too ridiculous
to be credited, if the spectacle were not presented to us daily in the
capitol of Virginia. But some five or six of the negroes aspire to
statesmanship and oratory, and discuss the most difficult question
with all the self-complacency that Daniel Webster would exhibit.
White men unaccustomed to speak in public usually betray some
embarrassment in addressing an audience not so these negroes. The
most practiced speakers are not more composed and self-satisfied
than they. The official reporter is giving an utterly false version of
the debates, as far, at least, as the negro orators are concerned. A
speech delivered by one of them several weeks ago was entirely with-
out meaning, a mere string of words having no connection or sense,
but the stenographer has put forth in its place quite an elegant
effusion.

The white Radicals are a motley crew. Some of them have appar-
ently little more intelligence than the negroes, and have doubtless
come from the lowest ranks of the people. The leaders, with three
or four exceptions, are Northern men who came to this State with
the Federal army in the capacity of petty officers, chaplains, com-
missaries, clerks, sutlers, &c. Others were probably employees of the
Freedmen's Bureau, and when that institution dispensed with theii
services were left here stranded like frogs in a dried-up mill-pond.
Having no other resource, they plunged into politics. They are now
jubilant in the receipt of eight dollars a day from the treasury of the
State, and happy in anticipation of the fat offices they are to get by
means of the same voters who sent them to the Convention. In re-
gard to the latter particular, however, they may be disappointed.
The negroes have their eyes on the same places for themselves, and
will probably claim them. "Dr. Bayne" would not hesitate to take a
seat on the bench of the Court of Appeals.

The Conservative members of the Convention number about
thirty-four. They are generally men of intelligence, but only a few
of them have any experience or skill in legislative business. The
opinion is often expressed here that there is too much speaking on
their side of the house. The impulsiveness and imprudence of some

THE RECONSTRUCTION 211

of these gentlemen, it Is thought, injure the cause they seek to
maintain.

The president of the Convention is, apparently, a gentleman of
great amiability. When I observed the other day the suavity of his
deportment in the chair, and thought of the shocking harangues he
was lately wont to deliver to his grand juries, I was reminded of
Byron's description of one of Ms heroes "as mild-mannered man
as ever scuttled ship," &c.

A conservative looker-on is filled with indignation, disgust, and
amusement all at one moment. I have seen several gentlemen from
the North who have visited the Convention, and they seemed aghast
at the spectacle. . . .

Since the date of my last letter, the farce of "High Life Below
Stairs" has been performed daily in the capitol before an admiring
crowd of idle blacks who fill the galleries of the hall. At twelve
o'clock precisely, the president, having already since sunrise under-
gone the labors of Hercules in his court-room, takes the chair, and
in the blandest tones calls the Convention to order. The burly and
apparently good-natured secretary is safely ensconced behind Ms
desk. The chaplain, who is exceedingly meek and sleek in appear-
ance, goes through his part of the performance, occasionally remem-
bering in his petitions the "ex-Confederates." The assistant secretary
next proceeds to read the journal of the previous day, getting over
printed matter quite readily, but stumbling sadly over manuscript. All
this being done, a hundred resolutions, more or less, are forthwith
precipitated upon the chair. A score of members, white and black,
shout "Mr. President!" all at once, and at the top of their voices.
A dozen more, led on by the white member from Norfolk, "rise to
pints of order." The sergeant-at-arms raps vigorously with his mallet,
and calls, "Order, gentlemen!" "Order, gentlemen!" looking very
fierce, and making more disorder than everybody else. By this time
the president is grievously perplexed. He tries to decide the various
points of order. Sometimes "the chair is in doubt," and asks to be
advised. At another time he announces his decision, or at least "the
chair is inclined to think so." Forthwith one dozen copies of Jeffer-
son's Manual are drawn upon him. The chair begins to hesitate
he "believes the gentleman is right," takes back his decision, retracts
incontinently and looks as humble as Uriah Heep. Thus the busi-
ness begins, and proceeds day after day.

At this moment the subject of taxation is under consideration,
and gives rise to much debate. This subject, as you are aware, has
occupied the attention of the ablest political economists and states-

212 THE RECONSTRUCTION

men for many centuries, and I congratulate the world that its true
principles are about to be settled at last by a competent tribunal. Dr.
Bayne (whether M.D., D.D., LL.D., this deponent sayeth not) has
recently enlightened us on the subject. The question presented no
difficulties to his clear and vigorous intellect. He spoke for a good
hour, shedding a flood of light upon a great variety of subjects. He
told us about the "bears and panters" in the Dismal Swamp near
Norfolk, where the Doctor lives, and declared his determination to
have free schools established there.

Another topic upon which the Doctor enlightened us during his
speech on taxation, was the mode of constructing pig-pens and
chicken-coops in Massachusetts. He had rusticated for a time in
the Bay State. Taking up a printed document which was lying be-
fore him, he bent it into the shape of a model, the original of which
was no doubt brought over by the Pilgrim Fathers in the Mayflower,
along with all other useful institutions. I am satisfied that our new
Constitution should provide for the introduction of the Massachusetts
pig-pen and chicken-coop into this State without delay. Dr. Bayne
informed us that in the Bay State one little boy fed all the pigs, while
here it took four men and five women, and "old master" to boot.

And now Mr. Frank Moss, of Buckingham county, gets the floor
on the same subject. White Radical: "Will the gentleman allow me
a minute?" Mr. Moss: "No; I ain't gwine to low you nary minit."
The very black gentleman proceeds to say that he "has sot here hern
em talk about taxation," &c. He goes for laying the burden on land.
So do all the colored members, and some of the whites, avowedly
expecting by this means to force the owners to sell or give away a
part of their lands. If I understood Dr. Bayne, however, taxing the
lands heavily will cause pigs to grow much faster and larger.

Another member and a white man this time advocates a capita-
tion tax, but is entirely opposed to a poll-tax! A mischievous Con-
servative politely asks the speaker to explain the difference, and we
are told that " a capitation tax is on the head," and "a poll-tax is
for roads that's the way I understand it, sar!" These are our Con-
stitution-makers!

I have a suspicion that some of the white Radicals are getting
sick of their black allies. The white leaders expected the blacks to
be a very tractable set of voters, so excessively in love with "the
old flag," and so thoroughly "loyal," as to give all the good fat
places to the pale faces. But genius wiU assert itself the star of
Africa is in the ascendant, and the light of its civilization is dawn-
ing upon us. The new era, beginning with "equality before the law,"

THE RECONSTRUCTION 213

has now reached the stage of "manhood suffrage," and the consum-
mation of no distinction anywhere "on account of race or color" is
hastening on. No, not exactly that there is to be distinction, for the
blacks seem to claim the honors and emoluments without bearing
the burdens of government. The black speakers scold and hector
their white associates, whom they suspect of an indisposition to toe
the mark. Some of the latter cower and cajole, and do everything
possible to conciliate. Others of the whites, however, are evidently
restive. They have caught a Tartar. . . .

pp. 349, 350, 351, 352.

THE SOUTH WILL NEVER ADMIT THAT SHE

WAS WRONG IN THE ISSUES THAT LED

TO THE WAR, OR THAT HER

CONQUEST WAS RIGHT . . .

"The Result In South Carolina"

During the canvass of 1876 the democrats openly announced that
they purposed to carry the election, peaceably if possible but forcibly
if necessary. They threatened that if Chamberlain should win, they
would refuse to pay taxes to his government. When it was ascer-
tained that the votes actually cast gave Hampton about eleven hun-
dred majority, their indignation at the idea of going behind the
returns was exceeded only by their indignation that the electoral
returns at Washington were not subjected to the process; they
unanimously declared that they would have Hampton or a military
government. Their deliberate design all along was to achieve a party
victory if they could, and a revolution if they could not. Their
arming, their martial organization, their violent proceedings during
the campaign, and the responsive excesses of the negroes when
aroused, have become matters of history. When President Hayes
was inaugurated, the State was in anarchy. Within a month after
the election the garrisons which had been stationed by Grant and
Chamberlain in nearly every populated place in the State had been
withdrawn from all points except Columbia, Charleston, and Green-
ville, where garrisons ordinarily are posted. After their withdrawal
the hostile races confronted each other. The violent passions of the
campaign not only did not cool, but became inflamed by the estab-

214 THE RECONSTRUCTION

lisfament of rival state governments, headed respectively by Chamber-
lain and Hampton, had each Its set of officials in every county and
in every town. Nothing but the fear of resistance in each particular
case kept the blacks from lawlessness towards the whites. Nothing
but dread of the torch, solicitude for their families, and party policy,
the wish to do themselves and Tilden no harm in the North., re-
strained the whites from ruthlessly putting down the blacks. Wherever
immunity seemed possible the negroes were burning the buildings of
whites, 5 stealing their property, and assembling as militia or in mobs
to assail whites and terrorize communities by riot and tumult; while
murders of whites during arsons, burglaries, highway robberies, and
riots became frequent. Every white family in the country kept watch
at night, or slept in dread, with dogs turned loose in the yard and
the gun at the bedside. Every village and town was patrolled by relays
of white citizens from dark till daylight. The moment a crime was
reported, the mounted rifle clubs assembled from all parts and
scoured the country, to the terror of the blacks, arresting suspected
criminals, conveying them to jail, or inflicting summary vengeance.
They were sometimes resisted by the colored militia, and regular
battles occurred. Individual members of the races were constantly
quarreling and fighting. The courts, though recognized by both par-
ties, vainly tried to execute justice. Blacks on the juries would con-
sent to no conviction of one of their own race prosecuted by a
white man. White jurymen acted similarly in the cases of whites
indicted for violence towards blacks.

... A reign of terror existed. Trade was paralyzed.

The merchants' stocks grew small and were not replenished. Men
with money were afraid to lend or invest. The farmers delayed their
operations. Such was the ordeal to which the whites subjected them-
selves rather than submit. They swore they could be overcome only
when twenty thousand federal troops should be sent to the State,
and kept there; when they should be relentlessly crushed by the
bayonet, disarmed, their prominent men punished, and every deputy
of a Chamberlain sheriff supported by a posse of blue coats when-
ever he went to arrest a white man, or sell property for taxes.

This state of things continued till April But the negroes were
gradually yielding. The long-hoped-for recognition from Washington
did not come. The depression of the times began to affect them. They

5 A thousand buildings, including a dozen towns or portions of towns,
worth a million dollars, were burnt by incendiaries within the year preceding
last April.

THE RECONSTRUCTION

had spent the earnings of the previous year, and they had stolen all

the property they dared. Hundreds were being thrown in jail to await
trial at the courts, which meet but once in four months. Starvation
was at their doors. The spring was coming on, and they could secure
no advances from the merchants to plant their crops; while the white
fanners feared to enter into arrangements with laborers till they
could see ahead. The Hampton government, also, with admirable
management, gradually pushed the opposition to the wall. The courts
and the tax payers were on its side: the former recognized its legiti-
macy, and the latter voluntarily contributed funds for its expenses;
while the Chamberlain government was adjudged illegal, and could
raise no supplies. At length the whole machinery of the government
was in the possession of the democracy. Its authority was, indeed,
denied by more than half the citizens, but its processes were every-
where enforced; while the authority of the other faction obtained
nowhere but within the granite walls of the state-house, which in-
closed a garrison of twenty-two soldiers of the United States.

. . . During March the despondency of the whites was inexpres-
sible. They became willing to agree to almost any terms which would
rid them of Chamberlain and negro rule, and give them "Hampton
and home government." It gradually dawned on them that relief was
coming from the president, whom they had expected to prolong their
troubles. When the final announcement came, their joy was bewilder-
ing. Grand demonstrations, the firing of cannon, the ringing of bels,
greeted Hampton on his return along the roads, at Columbia, and
at Charleston. A sense of relief at once pervaded the community.
Trade forth-with revived. The lean shelves of the merchants were
soon filled with goods. Securities rose in price. Credit was re-estab-
lished. The farmers, white and colored, secured advances for the
year, and went heartily to work. Thousands of colored men, long
idle, obtained employment. Race conflicts ceased, and the decrease
of crime was tremendous. The negroes had been losing hope, were
starving and exhausted, and, glad to have the suspense terminated
in whatever way, submitted quietly. Hampton's tact contributed to
the result. He gave a public reception in the city hall to the colored
citizens of Charleston, shook several thousand by the hand, made
them a stirring speech, promising that their rights as citizens should
be maintained, and called on them and the whites alike to drop
enmity, resume amicable relations, and go to work to build up pri-
vate and public welfare. The colored militia officers waited oa Mm,
were recognized as officers, and promised that their organization
should be respected and continued. . . .

2l6 THE RECONSTRUCTION

Republicanism is dead, and the old intolerance has revived. No
overt violence has been offered to any one on account of his re-
publican sentiments since Hampton's triumph, though there has been
plenty of hooting and gibing. But it is because the republicans have
kept very quiet. There is no federal support now, and they know
from the experience of the autumn what would follow if a vigorous
party course were adopted, calculated to consolidate the negro vote
and win: that is, violence and starvation. Furthermore, the demo-
crats have shown themselves willing to use the election machinery,
now in their hands, to achieve victory, and did so as flagrantly in the
first elections under Hampton as the republicans in their prime. The
latter see that it would be of no use to gain votes. Negroes, too, de-
pendent on whites, and consequently the majority, are now made to
understand that to cast a republican ticket means discharge, proscrip-
tion, and starvation. Therefore, perceiving in what corner the wind
sits, perhaps a third of the colored men now profess democracy, and
vote in accordance, to the great joy and satisfaction of their em-
ployers or patrons. You can see advertisements before the shops of
negroes, like this: "Patronize So and So, the only colored democratic
barber [or shoemaker] in town." These converts would have been
summarily bulldozed by their stable brethren up to this year, but
the whites now delight in protecting and petting them. Since Cham-
berlain's retirement there have been fifteen or twenty elections in a
single county at different times, to fill vacancies in the legislature,
etc. On such occasions great numbers of young white men, largely
from adjacent counties, ride to and remain about the polls, "to see
fair play," they explain. These have not attempted openly to molest,
but they have certainly frightened the republican negroes. Accord-
ingly, every election has gone democratic. The republicans put up
tickets only two or three times at first, but never think of it now.
Even Charleston, Darlington, and Orangeburg, the old strongholds
of radicalism, have gone democratic with no opposition, except in
the last. The republicans meet in few places now; their organization
has fallen to pieces. But the democrats preserve strict party disci-
pline. Some candidates, defeated before their conventions, have
threatened to bolt, and the republicans have offered to vote for
such; but thereupon such a cry was raised, not only in the county
but all over the State, that no such bolt has happened yet, or is
likely to.

The republicans have furthermore lost their leaders. Their whites
regard the negro as an inferior animal, admirably adapted to work
and to wait, and look on Mm, "in his proper place," with a curious

THE RECONSTRUCTION

mixture of amusement, contempt, and affection. It is when he aspires
to participate in politics or otherwise claim privileges that their
hatred becomes intense. They knew that the main body of blacks
were ignorant and by themselves harmless; that they had been fol-
lowing politicians, and would readily resume work and give no more
trouble. Consequently, there was little desire to persecute them after
the settlement. Not so with the leaders, however. There has been a
relentless determination to purge the offices of republicans, to get
rid of every vestige of the hateful carpet-bag regime, and to bring
its upholders to a heavy reckoning. Nor have there been wanting
reasons or plausible pretexts. The republican representatives elect
from Charleston County, seventeen in number, were refused seats
in the lower house, the election being annulled on the ground of
fraud, and a new one ordered. This would have been proper enough
had not the delegates from Edgefield been seated and lionized. The
colored justice of the supreme court has been impeached for drunken-
ness. A circuit judge, still too republican, was unseated by a tech-
nical objection to the way in which he had qualified the year be-
fore; and the legislature took some steps, and will probably com-
plete them this winter, to declare vacant the seats of all circuit
judges, most of whom, despite their eminent services last fall, were
once, in some way, mixed with republicanism, on account of a
slight informality in the method of their election by the legislature
in 1875. It was with difficulty, and only after bitter quarreling in
caucus, that Hampton could induce the legislature to elect the facile
white associate justice of the supreme court to the place of Chief-
Justice Moses, on the latter's decease, in reward for indispensable
services during the dual imbroglio. I have referred to the treatment
of the state treasurer, etc. A republican state attorney has been
ousted, for being a congressman at the same time. Half the re-
publicans elected to county offices last November (1876) were
unable to get bondsmen, so strong was the feeling; and many who
did get them have since had them withdraw. So, new elections have
been held and democrats put in.

But the most potent instrument for both purging and revenge has
been prosecution for official misconduct. A legislative investigating
committee has been sitting in Columbia since June, taking testimony
and overhauling the state archives. In most of the counties, too, the
grand juries have been examining witnesses and searching the records
in the court-houses. Indictments and presentments without number
have followed; and starting with two congressmen (a senator and a
representative), passing by two ex-governors, several lieutenant-gov-

2i8 THE RECONSTRUCTION

emors, and speakers of the house, two ex-treasurers, two ex-comp-
troller-generals, and over half the republican members and ex-mem-
bers of the legislature, with the ex-clerks, and coming down to
numberless state attorneys and ex-state attorneys, county officers
and ex-county officers treasurers, auditors, county commissioners,
school commissioners, sheriffs, clerks of court, trial justices, school
trustees, and teachers we find that nearly all the republicans in
the State who have ever held office are under indictment, are already
convicted and punished, or have fled from justice. So palable is their
guilt, generally, that even the most radical negroes on the juries are
compelled to find true bills of verdicts of guilty. . . .

. . . Members of former legislatures, some still sitting, are indicted
for taking bribes. A United States senator, individuals and members
of rings and corporations, are indicted for bribing them. It has been
discovered that a clerk of the senate issued thousands upon thou-
sands of dollars in pay certificates to merchants, which although
recorded as paid for stationery, were really given for fine wines,
liquors, cigars, furniture, novels, etc., for the private use of himself
and certain senators. The managers of a colored state orphan asylum
in Columbia, where were kept fifty poorly cherished children, are
found to have been ordering for their wards, if the books may be
trusted, hundreds of dollars' worth of assorted candies, whiskey,
water-melons, and carpets. A voucher was found in the comptroller-
general's office for $4,320 in figures. Being traced back it is seen
that the original bill was for $320, and that the prefixing of the
figure four has netted the forger as many thousand dollars. Another
bill for $1,100 in figures is metamorphosed by two neat additions to
the ones into $4,400. There are charges of frauds in issuing state
bonds and funding coupons; for diverting the taxes to objects for
which they had not been appropriated, etc. In the counties there are
indictments for issuing and paying innumerable fraudulent claims on
the county treasury, for defalcations and other crimes too numerous
to mention. . . .

.... But prosecution is not confined to official malfeasance. In
one county twenty or thirty prominent republicans are charged with
perjury. The county went republican, but the officers elect could
get no democrats to go on their bonds. No republicans were worth
enough to stand, as the state laws require sureties to swear before
a notary (false swearing being made perjury by statute) that they
are worth the amounts they stand for over and above their home-
stead ($1,500) and debts; and yet the culprits in question took the
required oaths and went on their friends' bonds, to be discovered

THE RECONSTRUCTION 2ig

and presented by a grand jury this spring. A colored legislator is
among them. Another colored legislator has been sent to the peni-
tentiary for bigamy. Others are in straits about fraudulent branches
of private trusts. When the legislature comes together again in De-
cember, it is possible that not a dozen republicans will be left in it.
But not only has there been a crusade against the politicians; there
has been a relentless effort to bring to retribution and get out of the
way all those negroes who, without holding office, made themselves
obnoxious or dangerous, through vindictiveness or crime, to the
whites. And this movement has been more formidable, or at least
it has aroused far more excitement in the State, than the former.
No whites have been prosecuted in the state courts for the violent
crimes of the campaigns; and when the Ellenton rioters were tried
before the United States circuit court at Charleston, in June, the
chief-justice presiding, the whites on the jury obstinately declined to
find a verdict against them, and a mistrial was ordered. But hundreds
upon hundreds of negroes, accused of participation in the arsons,
the burglaries, the larcenies, the riots, and the murders of the re-
publican rule, and especially of the last canvass and the dual months,
have been and are now being prosecuted in the state courts, by the
instigation of either grand juries or individuals. Civil business is
rarely reached, so crowded is the criminal side of the courts; and
even on the criminal side the docket is rarely cleared or a jail de-
livery made. The jails have been overcrowded all the year. A small
one in the country, I have had occasion to notice, used to contain
on an average about fifteen prisoners; there are now fifty-one in it,
and it has the odor of a wild beast's cage in a menagerie. The num-
ber of convicts in the penitentiary has increased from three hundred
and fifty during the last year to nearly six hundred. Imprisonment is
for longer terms, and as many as two and three negroes are fre-
quently hung at a time, once (in May, I think) even five. The state
constabulary, an oppressive instrument of republican invention de-
signed for use against the Ku-Klux-Klan especially but the whites
generally, has been turned against its inventors. These constables are
appointed by a chief constable, who is named by the governor and
senate. They exercise all the common law powers of constables and
sheriffs, but are besides invested with detective duties, and have
powei to arrest without a warrant. In some counties, Darlington
especially, where there was considerable lawlessness, the colored
people have lived in terror of these officers. They have searched
the houses of negroes freely, arrested right and left, often on sus-
picion, and acted with stringency in binding, knocking down, and

220 THE RECONSTRUCTION

even shooting stubborn prisoners. When they "go scouting," as they
call it, they usually summon a posse of fifteen or twenty mounted
white riflemen, and with them go scouring through the country,
which has at times, from the frequency of such scenes, presented
quite a military appearance. These posses are generally requisite,
as the criminals have been numerous and desperate, resisting arrest,
and sometimes inducing the negro populations to aid them.

The guilt of most of the negroes prosecuted as described is so
apparent on trial that it is impossible for a juror mindful of his
oath to say otherwise than guilty. Yet there is a political aspect to
the prosecutions, the crimes having been mostly the outgrowths of
political disturbance, of which both whites and blacks are conscious.
I should add, too, that there was much distress during the dual
months, owing to the discharge and proscription of colored republi-
can voters, many of whom were compelled by want to resort to
crime, or to change their localities in order to get work. The odium,
too, against a "loud-mouth" or villainous negro is so great that
white juries are in the habit of convicting him even when his inno-
cence is clearly established, excusing themselves by saying that if
not guilty in that instance, he has done other and worse things, is a
bad egg, anyhow, and ought to be got rid of while the chance offers.
This spirit has tempted many base whites to carry very worthy and
blameless colored men into court on flimsy charges, and convictions
are generally certain. But a good negro, quiet and hard-working,
usually has white friends who, if he be maliciously indicted, will take
up his quarrel, lending him money and influence, and testifying to
his good character. Such negroes obtain very fair trials; and if con-
victed on some old, raked-up charge, and there be any ground, a
petition is drawn up, influential signatures are secured, and a light
sentence or pardon is often obtained. . . .

. . . The whites were long so engrossed with home troubles as to
care little for national affairs. In the ascendent again at home, they
are now looking with no little interest at federal politics. They have
returned to power like the Bourbons in having forgotten nothing,
but unlike them in having learned something. They have not for-
gotten the old issues and the struggle with the North. Nor have they
ceased to think that this is a white man's government, and that the
negro should keep his place. But they have learned that separation
from the Union is a thing attended with difficulty and danger of
such magnitude that nothing hereafter, except the absolute certainty
of success at small cost and unattended by risk of invasion, could
induce a secession. Consequently, separation is rarely spoken of,

THE RECONSTRUCTION 221

and when spoken of is dismissed with a sigh or a laugh as some-
thing which, however desirable once, is now out of the question.

Nevertheless, Southerners look upon their connection with the
Union as somewhat resembling the connection of Ireland with Eng-
land; 6 as a thing forced and inevitable, and possibly not unbearable
if they are allowed to rale at home; but at the bottom a distasteful
subjection of one nation that has a right to be independent to another
nation that has proved itsel stronger in war. The expression of Mr.
Key, "erring brethren," was promptly taken up and indignantly re-
pudiated by every paper in the South. The South will never admit
that she was wrong in the issues that led to the war, or that her
conquest was right

The Atlantic Monthly January, 1878, pp. I, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7,
8, 9.

6 1 have seen this comparison used by Southern papers so often that I am
almost ashamed to repeat it.

SECTION III

THE

RECONSTRUCTION in the formal sense ended in 1877. Its
consequences, though often muted, endured. The sheer dimen-
sions of the Civil War left the nation a legacy of suspicion, fear,
and hatred. There existed also the inescapable fact that a fifth of
the nation had been compelled, despite bitter resistance, to return
to a Union they had sought to destroy. For better or for worse, the
conqueror and the conquered were destined to live as a single peo-
ple. Perhaps a more tolerant and humane guidance, such as that of a
Lincoln, might have made the reconciliation less bitter and the
resolution of the major problem the fate of the American black
man less painful. Lincoln had understood as few men of his gen-
eration had that the situation facing the country was revolutionary.
As early as December 1, 1862, he had warned that "the dogmas
of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present." And he
had added that only men prepared to think anew and act anew could
avoid bequeathing the strife that had riven the Civil War genera-
tion "to the passing generations of men." But war and its aftermath
had exhausted a generation's ability to innovate. By 1877 white
Americans wished only to forget; as a result, black Americans were
left suspended between slavery and citizenship.

Segregation crept into Southern life. In the twenty-five years fol-
lowing Appomattox the Negro retained his right of suffrage, but did
not exercise it, while he moved in a society in which separation of
the races was understood rather than implemented under law. Be-
tween 1877 and 1890 de facto segregation was established; in the
eighteen years that followed, the South confirmed the reality with
de jure segregation. The North could scarcely complain, for as
George W. Cable, the Southern writer who had suffered expulsion
from the South for his denunciations of the maltreatment of black
men, noted: "Nowhere in the United States is there a whole com-
munity from which the black man, after his physical, mental, and
moral character have been duly weighed, if they be weighed at all,

223

224 THE RECONSTRUCTION

is not liable to suffer an unexplained discount for mere color and
race. . . ." The South, by emulating Northern racial practices, made
a wicked thrust into the vitals of American democracy, for it could
claim that by segregating its black men it was conforming to the
national practice.

By 1880 a visitor to the South found small evidence of the
physical destruction that had marred the Southern land a decade and
a half earlier. Southern agriculture flourished as production reached
or exceeded prewar levels and as a system of sharecropping and
crop liens stabilized the labor supply needed to farm the expanding
plantations. And numerous Southern publicists heralded the birth
Of a New South, eager to share in the rapid industrialization of the
North. In the aftermath of its travail, the South had regained control
of its own fate, on terms that enabled Henry Grady, a leading prophet
of the New South, to declare before a Northern audience: "The
South has nothing to take back."

So ended an era and so began the modern American dilemma:
within the American democracy there dwelt a black minority which
had been freed but still was not free, and only a white majority could
make them free. But the white man wanted peace, and he forgot.

WHEN I HAD LEFT JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA, IN
MARCH, 1864, THE TOWN WAS IN FLAMES . . .

T. W. Higginson, "Some War Scenes Revisited"

When I had last left Jacksonville, Florida, in March, 1864, the
town was in flames; the streets were full of tongues of fire creeping
from house to house; the air was dense with lurid smoke. Our
steamers dropped rapidly down the river, laden to the gunwales with
the goods of the escaping inhabitants. The black soldiers, guiltless
of all share in the flames, were yet excited by the occasion, recalled
their favorite imagery of the Judgment Day, and sang and shouted
without ceasing. I never saw a wilder scene. Fourteen years after, the
steamboat came up to the same wharf, and I stepped quietly ashore
into what seemed a summer watering-place: the roses were in bloom,
the hotel verandas were full of guests, there were gay shops in the
streets, the wharves were covered with merchandise and with people.
The delicious air was the same, the trees were the same; all else
was changed. The earth-works we had built were leveled and over-

THE RECONSTRUCTION

grown; there was a bridge at the ford we used to picket; the church
in whose steeple we built a lookout was still there, but it had a new
tower, planned for peaceful purposes only. The very railroad along
which we skirmished almost daily was now torn up, and a new track
entered the town at a different point. I could not find even the wall
which one of our men clambered over, loading and firing, with a
captured goose between his legs. Only the blue sky and the soft air,
the lovely atmosphere of Florida, remained; the distant line of
woods had the same outlook, and when the noon guns began to be
fired for Washington's birthday I could hardly convince myself that
the roar was not that of our gunboats, still shelling the woods as they
had done so many years before. Then the guns ceased; the past with-
drew into yet deeper remoteness. It seemed as if I were the only
man left on earth to recall it. An hour later, the warm grasp of some
of my old soldiers dispelled the dream of oblivion. ... I rarely met
an ex-soldier who did not own his house and ground, the inclosures
varying from five to two hundred acres; and I found one man on
the St. John's who had been offered $3,000 for his real estate. In
many cases these homesteads had been bought within a few years,
showing a steady progress in self-elevation.

I do not think the world could show a finer example of self-
respecting peasant life than a colored woman, with whom. I canie
down the St. John's River to Jacksonville, from one of the little
settlements along that magnificent stream. She was a freed slave,
the wife of a former soldier, and was going to market, basket in
hand, with her little boy by her side. She had the tall erect figure,
clear black skin, thin features, fine teeth, and intelligent bearing that
marked so many of my Florida soldiers. She was dressed very plainly,
but with scrupulous cleanliness: a rather faded gingham dress, well-
worn tweed sack, shoes and stockings, straw hat with plain black
ribbon, and neat white collar and cuffs. She told me that she and
her husband owned one hundred and sixty acres of land, bought
and paid for by their own earnings, at $1.25 per acre; they had a
log house, and were going to build a frame house; they raised for
themselves all the food they needed, except meat and flour, which
they bought in Jacksonville. They had a church within reach
(Baptist); a school house of forty pupils, taught by a colored
teacher; her husband belonged to the Good Templars, as did all the
men in their neighborhood. For miles along the St. John's, a little
back from the river, such settlements are scattered; the men cultivat-
ing their own plots of ground, or working on the steamboats, or
fishing, or lumbering. What more could be expected of any race,

226 THE RECONSTRUCTION

after fifteen years of freedom? Are the Irish voters of New York
their superiors in condition, or the factory operatives of Fall River?

I met perhaps a hundred men, in different places, who had been
under my command, and whose statements I could trust. Only one
of these complained of poverty; and he, as I found, earned good
wages, had neither wife nor child to support, and was given to
whiskey. There were some singular instances of prosperity among
these men. I was told in Jacksonville that I should find Corporal
McGill "de most populous man in Beaufort." When I got there, I
found him the proprietor of a livery stable populous with horses at
any rate; he was worth $3,000 or $4,000 and was cordial and
hospitable to the last degree. At parting, he drove me to the station
with his best carriage and horses; and I regret to add that while he
was refusing all compensation his young steeds ran away, and as the
train whirled off I saw my "populous" corporal double-quick down
the shell-road, to recapture his equipage. I found Sergeant Hodges a
master carpenter at Jacksonville; Corporal Hicks was a preacher
there, highly respected; and I heard of Corporal Sutton as a traveling
minister farther up the river. Sergeant Shemeltella, a fine-looking
half-Spaniard from St. Augustine, now patrols, with gun in hand, the
woods which we once picketed at Port Royal Ferry, and supplies
game to the markets of Charleston and Savannah. And without
extending the list I may add that some of these men, before attaining
prosperity, had to secure, by the severest experience, the necessary
judgment in business affairs. It will hardly be believed that the men
of my regiment alone sunk $30,000 in an impracticable building
association, and in the purchase of a steamboat which was lost
uninsured. One of the shrewdest among them, after taking his share
of this, resolved to be prudent, put $750 in the Freedmen's Bank, and
lost that too. Their present prosperity must be judged in the light of
such formidable calamities as these. . . .

... It is certain that there is, in the States I visited, a condition
of outward peace and no conspicuous outrages; and that this has
now been the case for many months. All will admit that this state
of things must be a blessing, unless there lies beneath it some covert
plan for crushing or re-enslaving the colored race. I know that a
few good men at the North honestly believe in the existence of
some such plan; I can only say that I thoroughly disbelieve in it.
Taking the nature of the Southern whites as these very men describe
it impulsive and ungoverned it is utterly inconceivable that such
a plan, if formed, should not show itself in some personal ill usage
of the blacks, in the withdrawal of privileges, in legislation en-

THE RECONSTRUCTION 227

dangering their rights. I can assert that, carrying with me the eyes of
a tolerably suspicious abolitionist, I saw none of these indications.
During the war, I could hardly go anywhere within the Union lines
for twenty-four hours without being annoyed by some sign of race
hostility, or being obliged to interfere for the protection of some
abused man or woman. During this trip, I had absolutely no occa-
sion for any such attitude. The change certainly has not resulted from
any cringing demeanor on the part of the blacks, for they show
much more manhood than they once did. I am satisfied that it
results from the changed feeling created towards a race of freedmen
and voters. How can we ask more of the States formerly in rebellion
than that they should be abreast of New England in granting rights
and privileges to the colored race? Yet this is now the case in the
three States I name; or at least if they fall behind at some points,
they lead at some points. Let us look at a few instances.

The republican legislature of Connecticut has just refused to
incorporate a colored military company; but the colored militia regi-
ment of Charleston was reviewed by General Hampton and Ms staff
just before my visit. One of the colored officers told me that there
was absolutely no difference in the treatment accorded his regiment
and that shown toward the white militia, who were reviewed the day
before; and Messrs. Whipper and Jones, the only dissatisfied re-
publican leaders whom I saw, admitted that there was no opposition
whatever to this arming of the blacks. I may add that while I was in
Virginia a bill was reported favorably in the legislature for the
creation of a colored militia company, called the State Guard, under
control of their own officers, and reporting directly to the adjutant-
general.

I do not know a Northern city which enrolls colored citizens in
its police, though this may here and there have happened. I saw
colored policemen in Charleston, Beaufort, and Jacksonville, though
the former city is under democratic control; and I was told by a
leading colored man that the number had lately been increased in
Charleston, and that one lieutenant of police was of that race. The
republican legislature of Rhode Island has just refused once more
to repeal the bill prohibiting intermarriages, while the legislature of
South Carolina has refused to pass such a bill. ... I can remember
when Frederick Douglas was ejected from the railway cars in
Massachusetts, because of his complexion; and it is not many years
since one of the most cultivated and lady-like colored teachers in
the nation was ejected from a streetcar in Philadelphia, her birth-
place, for the same reason. But I rode with colored people in first-

228 THE RECONSTRUCTION

class cars throughout Virginia and South Carolina, and in streetcars
in Richmond and Charleston. I am told that this last is the case also
in Savannah and New Orleans, but can testify only to what I have
seen. In Georgia, I was told, the colored people were not allowed in
first-class cars; but they had always a decent second-class car,
opening from the smoking car, with the door usually closed between.

All these tilings may be true, and still a great deal may remain
to be done; but it is idle to declare that the sun has not risen because
we do not yet see it in the zenith. Even the most extreme Southern
newspapers constantly contain paragraphs that amaze us, not only
in contrast to slavery times, but in contrast to the times immediately
following the war. While I was in South Carolina the Charleston
News and Courier published, with commendation, the report of a bill,
passed by the Maryland legislature, admitting colored lawyers to
practice, after the court of appeals had excluded them; and it copied
with implied approval the remark of the Baltimore Gazette: "Raise
the educational test, the rigidity of the examinations for admission,
or the moral test as high as you please, but let us have done with the
color test."

It is certain that every republican politician whom I saw in South
Carolina, black or white, spoke well of Governor Hampton, with
two exceptions Mr. W. J. Whipper, whom Governor Chamberlain
refused to commission as judge, and Mr. Jones, who was a clerk
at the house of delegates through its most corrupt period. I give
their dissent for what it is worth, but the opinion of others was as I
have said. "We have no complaint to make of Governor Hampton,
he has kept his pledges," was the general remark. For instance, a bill
passed both houses by a party vote, requiring able-bodied male
prisoners, under sentence in county jails, to work on the public
roads and streets. The colored people remonstrated strongly, regard-
ing it as aimed at them. Governor Hampton vetoed the bill, and the
House, on reflection, sustained the veto by a vote of one hundred and
two to ten. But he is not always so strong in influence; there is a
minority of "fire-eaters" who resist him; he is denounced by the
"up-country people people" as an aristocrat; and I was told that he
might yet need the colored vote to sustain him against his own party.
Grant that this assumes him to be governed by self-interest, that
strengthens the value of this evidence. We do not expect that saints
will have the monopoly of government at South or North; what we
need is to know that the colored vote in South Carolina makes itself
felt as a power, and secures its rightful ends.

. . . And it is moreover true that this state of things left bad blood

THE RECONSTRUCTION

behind It, which will long last. It has left jealousies which confound
the innocent with the guilty. Judging the future by the past, the
white South Carolinian finds it almost impossible to believe that a
republican state administration can be decently honest. This is a
feeling quite apart from any national attitude, and quite consistent
with a fair degree of loyalty. Nor does it take the form of resistance
to colored voters as such. The Southern whites accept them pre-
cisely as Northern men in cities accept the ignorant Irish vote not
cheerfully, but with acquiescence in the inevitable; and when the
strict color-line is once broken they are just as ready to conciliate
the negro as the Northern politician to flatter the Irishman. Any
powerful body of voters may be cajoled to-day and intimidated to-
morrow and hated always, but it can never be left out of sight. At
the South, politics are an absorbing interest; people are impetuous;
they divide and subdivide on all local issues, and each faction needs
votes. Two men are up for mayor or sheriff, or what not: each
conciliates every voter he can reach; and each finds it for his in-
terest to stand by those who help him. This has been long predicted
by shrewd observers, and is beginning to happen all over the South.
I heard of a dozen instances of it. Indeed, the vote of thanks passed
by the Mississippi legislature to its colored senator, Mr. Bruce, for
his vote on the silver bill was only the same thing on a larger scale.
To praise him was to censure Mr. Lamar.

It may be said, "Ah, but the real test is, will the black voters be
allowed to vote for the republican party?" To assert this crowning
right will undoubtedly demand a good deal of these voters; it will
require courage, organization intelligence, honesty, and leaders.
Without these, any party, in any State, will sooner or later go to the
wall. As to South Carolina, I can only say that one of the ablest re-
publican lawyers in the State, a white man, unsuspected of corrup-
tion, said to me, "This is a republican State, and to prove it such
we need only to bring out our voters. For this we do not need troops,
but that half a dozen well-known Northern republicans should can-
vass the State, just as if it were a Northern State. The colored voters
need to know that the party at the North has not, as they have been
told, deserted them. With this and a perfectly clean list of nominees,
we can carry the legislature, making no nominations against Hamp-
ton." "But," I asked, "would not these meetings be broken up?"
"Not one of them," he said. "They will break up our local meetings,
but not those held by speakers from other States. It would ruin them
with the nation." And this remark was afterwards indorsed by others,
whites and black. When I asked one of the few educated colored

230 THE RECONSTRUCTION

leaders In the State, "Do you regret the withdrawal of the troops by
President Hayes?" "No," he said; "the only misfortune was that they
were not withdrawn two years earlier. That would have put us on our
good behavior, obliged us to command respect, and made it easier to
save the republican party. But it can still be saved."

There is no teacher so wholesome as personal necessity. In South
Carolina a few men and many women cling absolutely to the past,
learning nothing, forgetting nothing. But the bulk of thinking men
see that the old Southern society is as absolutely annihilated as the
feudal system, and there is no other form of society now possible ex-
cept such as prevails at the North and West. "The purse-proud
Southerner," said Rev. Dr. Pinckney, in his address at Charleston,
"is an institution which no longer exists. The race has passed away
as completely as the Saurian tribes, whose bones we are now digging
from the fossil beds of the Ashley." "The Yankees ought to be satis-
fied," said one gentleman to me. "Every live man at the South is try-
ing with all his might to be a Yankee." Business, money, financial
prosperity these now form the absorbing Southern question. At the
Exchange Hotel in Richmond, where I spent a Sunday, the members
of the Assembly were talking all day about the debt how to escape
bankruptcy. I did not overhear the slightest allusion to the negro or
the North. It is likely enough that this may lead to claims on the
national treasury, but it tends to nothing worse. The dream of re-
enslaving the negro, if it ever existed, is like the negro's dream, if he
ever had it, of five acres and a mule from the government. Both races
have long since come down to the stern reality of self-support. No
sane Southerner would now take back as slaves, were they offered,
a race of men who have been for a dozen years freemen and voters.

. . . The first essential to social progress at the South is that each
State should possess local self-government. The States have been re-
admitted as States, and can no more be treated as Territories than
you can replace a bird in the egg. They must now work out their
own salvation, just as much as Connecticut and New Jersey. If any
abuses exist, the remedy is not to be found in federal interference,
except in case of actual insurrection, but in the voting power of the
blacks, so far as they have strength or skill to assert it; and where
that fails, in their power of locomotion. They must leave those
counties or States which ill-use them for others which treat them
better. If a man is dissatisfied with the laws of Massachusetts, and
cannot get them mended, he can at least remove into Rhode Island
or Connecticut, and the loss of valuable citizens will soon make itself
felt.

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This Is the precise remedy possessed by the colored people at the
South, with the great advantage that they have the monopoly of aE
the leading industries, and do not need the whites more, on the
whole, than the whites need them. They have reached the point
where civilized methods begin to prevail When they have once en-
listed the laws of political economy on their side, this silent ally will
be worth more than an army with banners.

The Atlantic Monthly, July, 1878

OUGHT THE NEGRO TO BE DISENFRANCHISED?
OUGHT HE TO HAVE BEEN ENFRANCHISED?

The Contributors:

JAMES G. BLAINE: Republican Senator from Maine.

L. Q. C. LAMAR: Democratic Senator from Mississippi.

WADE HAMPTON: Democratic Governor of South Carolina.

JAMES A. GARFIELD: Republican Congressman from Ohio.

ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS: Former Confederate Vice-
President.

WENDELL PHILLIPS: Leading Abolitionist.

MONTGOMERY BLAIR: Maryland Democrat; Lincoln's Post-
master General.

THOMAS A. HENDRICKS: Democratic Senator from Indiana.

Mr. Elaine:

These questions have been lately asked by many who have been
distinguished as the special champions of the negro's rights; by many
who have devoted their lives to redressing the negro's wrongs. The
questions owe their origin not to any cooling of philanthropic in-
terests, not to any novel or radical views about universal suffrage,
but to the fact that, in the judgment of many of those hitherto ac-
counted wisest, negro suffrage has failed to attain the ends hoped for
when the franchise was conferred; failed as a means of more com-
pletely securing the negro's civil rights; failed to bring him the con-
sideration which generally attaches to power; failed, indeed, to
achieve anything except to increase the political weight and influence
of those against whom, and in spite of whom, his enfranchisement
was secured.

232

THE RECONSTRUCTION

Those who have reached this conclusion, and those who are tend-
ing toward it, argue that the important franchise was prematurely
bestowed on the negro; that its possession necessarily places him in
inharmonious relations with the white race; that the excitement inci-
dent to its free enjoyment hinders him from progress in the rudi-
mentary and essential branches of education; that his advance in
material wealth is thus delayed and obstructed; and that obstacles,
which would not otherwise exist, are continually accumulating in his
path rendering his progress impossible and his oppression inevi-
table. In other words, that suffrage in the hands of the negro is a
challenge to the white race for a contest in which he is sure to be
overmatched; and that the withdrawal of the franchise would remove
all conflict, restore kindly feelings between the races, place the whites
on their proper and honorable responsibility, and assure to each race
the largest prosperity attainable under a Government where both are
compelled to live.

The class of men whose views are thus hastily summarized do not
contemplate the withdrawal of the suffrage from the negro without a
corresponding reduction in the representation in Congress of the
States where the negro is a large factor in the apportionment. And
yet it is quite probable that they have not given thought to the diffi-
culty, or rather the impossibility, of compassing that end. Under the
Constitution, as it is now construed, the diminution of representative
strength could only result from the States passing such laws as would
disfranchise the negro by some educational or property test, as it is
forbidden by the Fifteenth Amendment to disfranchise him on ac-
count of his race. But no Southern State will do this, and for two
reasons: first, they will in no event consent to a reduction of repre-
sentative strength; and, second, they could not make any disfran-
chisement of the negro that would not at the same time disfranchise
an immense number of whites.

Quite another class mostly resident in the South, but with
numerous sympathizers in the North would be glad to have the
negro disfranchised on totally different grounds. Born and reared
with the belief that the negro is inferior to the white man in every-
thing, it is hard for the class who were masters at the South to en-
dure any phase or form of equality on the part of the Negro. Instinct
governs reason, and with the mass of Southern people the aversion to
equality is instinctive and ineradicable. The general conclusion with
this class would be to deprive the negro of voting if it could be done
without impairing the representation of their States, but not to make
any move in that direction so long as diminished power in Congress

THE RECONSTRUCTION 233

is the constitutional and logical result of a denial or abridgment of
suffrage. In the meanwhile, seeing no mode of legally or equitably
depriving the negro of his suffrage except with unwelcome penalty to
themselves, the Southern States as a whole differing in degree but
the same in effect have striven to achieve by indirect and unlawful
means what they cannot achieve directly and lawfully. They have so
far as possible made negro suffrage of no effect. They have done this
against law and against justice.

Having stated the position of both classes on this question, I ven-
ture now to give my own views in a series of statements in which I
shall endeavor to embody both argument and conclusion:

First. The two classes I have named, contemplating the possible
or desirable disfranchisement of the negro from entirely different
standpoints, and with entirely different aims, are both and equally in
the wrong. The first is radically in error in supposing that a disfran-
chisement of the negro would put him in the way of any development
or progress that would in time fit him for the suffrage. He would
instead grow more and more unfit for it every day from the time the
first backward step should be taken, and he would relapse, if not into
actual chattel slavery, yet into such a dependent and defenseless con-
dition as would result in only another form of servitude. For the
ballot to-day, imperfectly enjoyed as it is by the negro, its freedom
unjustly and illegally curtailed, its independence ruthlessly marred,
its purity defiled, is withal and after all the strong shield the race has
against a form of servitude which would have all the cruelty and none
of the alleviations of the old slave system, whose destruction carried
with it the shedding of so much innocent blood.

The second class is wrong in anticipating even the remote possi-
bility of securing the legal disfranchisement of the negro without a
reduction of representation. Both sides have fenced for position on
this question. But for the clause regulating representation in the
Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, we should to-day have
the South wholly under the control, and legally under the control, of
those who rebelled against the Union and sought to erect the Con-
federate Government enjoying full representation by reason of the
negroes being counted in the apportionment without a pretense of
suffrage being conceded to the race. The Fourteenth Amendment was
designed to prevent this, and, if it does not succeed in preventing it,
it is because of evasion and violation of its express provisions and of
its clear intent. Those who erected the Confederate Government may
be in exclusive possession of power throughout the South, but they

234 THE RECONSTRUCTION

are not so fairly and legally; and they will not be permitted to con-
tinue in the enjoyment of political power unjustly seized and seized
in derogation and in defiance of the rights not merely of the negro
but of the whites in all other sections of the country. Injustice cannot
stand before exposure and argument and the force of public opinion;
and no more severe weapons of defense will be required against the
wrong which now afflicts the South and is a scandal to the whole
country.

Second. But, while discussing the question of the disfranchisement
of the negro, and settling its justice or expediency according to our
discretion, it may be worth while to look at its impracticability, or,
to state it still more strongly, its impossibility. Logicians attach
weight to arguments drawn ab inconvenienti. Arguments must be
still more cogent, and conclusions still more decisive, when drawn
ab impossibili. The negro is secure against disfranchisement by two
constitutional amendments, and he cannot be remanded to the non-
voting class until both these amendments are annulled. And these
amendments can not be annulled until two thirds of the Senate and
two thirds of the House of Representatives of the United States shall
propose, and a majority in the Legislatures or conventions of twenty-
nine States shall by affirmative vote approve the annulment. In
other words, the negro can not be disfranchised so long as one vote
more than one-third in the United States Senate, or one vote more
than one-third in the House of Representatives, shall be recorded
against it; and if these securities and safeguards should be over-
ridden, these rights are secure so long as a majority in one branch
in the Legislature of only ten States should refuse to assent to
it, and refuse to assent to a convention to which it might be
referred. No human right on this continent is more completely
guaranteed than the right against disfranchisement on account of
race, color, or previous condition of servitude, as embodied in the
Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Third. In enforcement and elucidation of my second point, it is of
interest to observe the rapid advance and development of popular
sentiment in regard to the rights of the negro as expressed in the
last three amendments to the Constitution of the United States. In
1865 Congress submitted the Thirteenth Amendment, which merely
gave the negro freedom, without suffrage, civil rights, or citizenship.
In 1866 the Fourteenth Amendment was submitted, declaring the
negro to be a citizen, but not forbidding the States to withhold suf-

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frage from him yet inducing them to grant it by the provision that
representation in Congress should be reduced in proportion to the
exclusion of male citizens twenty-one years of age from the right to
vote, except for rebellion or other crime. In 1869 the decisive step
was taken of declaring that "the right of citizens of the United States
to vote shall not be abridged by the United States or by any State on
account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." A most
important provision in this amendment is the inhibition upon "United
States" as well as upon "any State"; for it would not be among the
impossible results of a great political revolution, resting on prejudice
and grasping for power, that, in the absence of this express negation,
the United State might assume or usurp the right to deprive the negro
of suffrage, and then the States would not be subjected to the for-
feiture of representation provided in the Fourteenth Amendment as
the result of the denial or abridgment of suffrage by State authority.
In this stately progression of organic enactments the will of a great
people is embodied, and its reversal would be one of those revolu-
tions which would convulse social order and endanger the authority
of law. There will be no step backward, but under the provision
which specifically confers on Congress the power to enforce each
amendment by "appropriate legislation" there will be applied, from
time to time, fitfully perhaps and yet certainly, the restraining and
correcting edicts of national authority.

Fourth. As I have already hinted, there will be no attempt made
in the Southern States to disfranchise the negro by any of those meth-
ods which would still be within the power of the State. There is no
Southern State that would dare venture on an educational qualifica-
tion, because by the last census there were more than one million
white persons over fifteen years of age, in the States lately slave-
holding, who could not read a word, and a still larger number who
could not write their names. There was, of course, a still greater
number of negroes of the same ages who could not read or write;
but, in the nine years that have intervened since the census was taken,
there has been a much greater advance in the education of the ne-
groes than in the education of the poor whites of the South; and to-
day on an educational qualification it is quite probable that, while the
proportion would be in favor of the whites, the absolute exclusion of
the whites in some of the States would be nearly as great as that of
the negroes. Nor would a property test operate with any greater
advantage to the whites. The slave States always had a large class
of very poor and entirely uneducated whites, and any qualification

236 THE RECONSTRUCTION

of property that would seriously diminish the negro vote would also
cut off a very large number of whites from the suffrage.

Thus far I have directed my argument to the first question pro-
pounded, "Ought the negro to be disfranchised?" The second inter-
rogatory, "Ought he to have been enfranchised?" is not practical but
speculative; and yet, unless it can be answered with confidence in
the affirmative, the moral tenure of his suffrage is weakened, and, as
a consequence, his legal right to enjoy it is impaired. For myself I
answer the second question in the affirmative with as little hesitation
as I answered the first in the negative. And, if the question were again
submitted to the judgment of Congress, I would vote for suffrage in
the light of experience with more confidence than I voted for it in
the light of an experiment. Had the franchise not been bestowed upon
the negro as his shield and weapon of defense, the demand upon the
General Government to interfere for his protection would have been
constant and irritating and embarrassing. Great complaint has been
made for years past of the Government's interference, simply to
secure to the colored citizen his plainest constitutional right. But this
intervention has been trifling compared to that which would have
been required if we had not given suffrage to the negro. In the Re-
construction experiments under President Johnson's plan, before
the negro was enfranchised, it was clearly foreshadowed that he was
to be dealt with as one having no rights except such as the whites
should choose to grant. The negro was to work according to labor
laws; freedom of movement and transit was to be denied him by
the operation of vagrant laws; liberty to sell his time and his skill
at their market value was to be restrained by apprentice laws, and
the slavery that was abolished by the Constitution of a nation was
to be revived by the enactment of a State. To counteract these and
all like efforts at re-enslavement, the national authority would have
been constantly invoked; interference in the most positive and
peremptory manner would have been demanded, and angry conflict
and possibly resistance to law would have resulted. The one sure
mode to remand the States that rebelled against the Union to their
autonomy was to give suffrage to the negro; and that autonomy will
be complete, absolute and unquestioned wherever the rights that are
guaranteed by the Constitution of the Republic shall be enjoyed in
every State as the administration of justice was assured in Magna
Charta "promptly and without delay; freely and without sale; com-
pletely and without denial"

THE RECONSTRUCTION #37

Mr. Lamar:

The precision with which Mr. Elaine states his premises and the
unimpassioned spirit in which he draws Ms conclusions render the
discussion which he proposes both possible and profitable. His state-
ment itself deprives the issue of nearly all its difficulty and danger.
He lays down with force and clearness his propositions:

1. That the disfranchisement of the negro is a political impos-
sibility under any circumstances short of revolution.

2. That the ballot in the hands of the negro, however its exercise
may have been embarrassed and diminished by what he considers,
erroneously, a general Southern policy, has been to that race a means
of defense and an element of progress.

I agree to both propositions. In all my experience of Southern
opinion I know no Southern man of influence or consideration who
believes that the disfranchisement of the negro on account of race,
color, or former condition of servitude, is a political possibility. I am
not now discussing the propriety or wisdom of universal suffrage, or
whether in the interests of wise, safe, and orderly government all
suffrage ought not to be qualified. What I mean to say is, that uni-
versal suffrage being given as the condition of our political life, the
negro once made a citizen cannot be placed under any other condi-
tion. And in this connection it may surprise some of the readers of
this discussion to learn that in 1869 the white people of Mississippi
unanimously voted at the polls in favor of ratifying the enfranchise-
ing amendment for which Mr. Elaine voted in Congress believing, as
they did, that when once a negro was made a free man, a property-
holder, and a taxpayer, he could not be excluded from the remaining
privilege and duty of a citizen, the right and obligation to vote. And I
think I can safely say for that people what Mr. Blaine says for him-
self, that, if the question were again submitted to their judgment, they
"would vote for negro suffrage in the light of experience with more
confidence than they voted for it in the light of an experiment."

I concur also in the second proposition, that the ballot has been
in the hands of the negro both a defense and an education; and I
am glad to find this important truth recognized so fully by Mr.
Blaine. We might possibly differ as to the extent to which the de-
fense was needed, or as to the progress which has been made in the
education. But enough would remain for substantial agreement.
There can be no doubt that in the unaccustomed relation into which
the white and colored people of the South were suddenly forced, there
would have been a natural tendency on the part of the former masters,

238 THE RECONSTRUCTION

still in possession of the land and of the intelligence of the country,
and of its legislative power, to use an almost absolute authority and
to develop the new freedman according to their own idea of what
was good for him. This would have resulted in a race distinction,
with such incidents of the old system as would have discontented the
negro and dissatisfied the general opinion and sentiment of the coun-
try. If slavery was to be abolished, it must, I think, be admitted that
there could be nothing short of complete abolition, free from any
of the affinities of slavery; and this would not have been effected
so long as there existed any inequality before the law. The ballot was,
therefore, a protection of the negro against any such condition, and
enabled him to force his interests upon the legislative consideration of
the South.

What I do not think Mr. Elaine fully realizes, or makes due allow-
ance for, is that this sudden transformation, social and political,
would necessarily produce some jar in its practical operation, and
that its successful working could be effected only by experienced and
conscientious men acting on both sides with good sense and good
temper. Conquest on either side only complicated the problem. Its
only solution was a sagacious and kindly cooperation of all the social
forces. The vote in the hands of the negro should have been genuinely
"a defense," not a weapon of attack.

The proper use of this defensive power, and its growth into a
means of wholesome and positive influence upon the character and
interests of the country, could only be attained by the education of
the negro. And I agree fully with Mr. Elaine that his practical use
of the ballot was an important part of that education. I am willing
to accept the present condition of the South as the result of that
practical education. Will he? I say that the negro has been using this
defense for ten years, that in this time hundreds of thousands of ne-
groes, born free, have grown to manhood under the experience of a
political life as open to them as to the old, white governing race;
and Mr. Elaine himself asserts that education has been more generally
diffused among the youth of the colored race than among the poorer
classes of the whites whether truly or erroneously we will not here
discuss and the result is, that throughout the South the races vote
together; that they have learned where their mutual interest lies; and
that, whom God has joined, all the politicians have failed to keep
asunder.

I have his essay before me. He denies that this is a legitimate re-
sult. He insists that the facts prove that the negro vote has been
cheated by fraud or defeated by force, and that the present condition

THE RECONSTRUCTION 239

of Southern politics is an unnatural result. I am willing to meet this
issue on Ms own principles. I will indulge in neither invective nor
denunciation. I will simply take the late government of South Caro-
lina or of Louisiana, or of other States under similar rale, and
describe it in language that Mr. Blaine may himself select. When he
has told its history I will ask him whether he would willingly, as a
patriotic American, desire to see his own State, or any other of the
free States, reduced to such a level? I am not afraid of his answer, or
that of any man who has been bred under the traditions of a virtuous
civilization.

Then I will say to him: This, it is true, is a painful result; but,
when you put the ballot in the hands of an ignorant negro majority
as a means of education and progress, you must be patient while they
learn their lesson. We of the South have borne all this, because we
knew that the reaction must come. It has come. The results which
you see to be so bad the negro has seen also. He has come back to
us with the same blind impulse with which a few years ago he fled
from us. He may be as ignorant a Democrat as he was an ignorant
Republican, but years must yet pass before the ballot will have edu-
cated him fully into self-reliant, temperate citizenship; and what we
of the South have borne, our friends of the North must bear with us,
until the negro has become what we both want to make him. This is
part of his education. By a system, not one whit less a system of
force or of fraud than that alleged to exist now, he was taken away
from his natural leaders at the South, and held to a compact Repub-
lican vote. Granting which I do not grant that the present methods
are as bad as those then applied, the fault lies in the character of
the vote. It is not educated to free action, and we must educate it
to what it ought to be. Take the history of the race, as stated by
Mr. Blaine himself, and is there not progress, astonishing progress,
when the material with which we are dealing is considered? Force and
fraud have been freely charged. Suppose it granted. Could any one
expect, did any one expect, that such a tremendous political and
social change the sudden clothing of four million slaves with suffrage
and with overruling political power could be made without violent
disturbance and disorder? Had any such change ever been made in
any free State without convulsion? Was it to be expected that, when
the capital and character of a State were placed at the mercy of a
numerical majority of ignorant and poverty-stricken voters, it would
present a model of peace and order?

But all this while the ballot has been educating the negro. He has
learned that he was a power between Republican and Democrat,

240

THE RECONSTRUCTION

He Is now learning rapidly that at the South he Is a power between
Democrat and Democrat, and in the late election he made that power
felt in the result. I would have preferred a much less costly tuition;
but, such as It is, it has been paid for, and, if Mr. Elaine will patiently
trust his own theory, he will find the ballot in the hands of the negro
the best defense and the best educator. But, as the South has been
patient, so must he be patient. As the South has chafed ineffectually
when that vote was all against her white people, so will he chafe in-
effectually when it is now largely for them.

In his perplexity over the sudden change in the vote of the negro,
Mr. Elaine has forgotten that, at this stage of its progress, the negro
vote can not intelligently direct itself. It must and will follow some
leader. Now, up to 1876 the Republican party, armed with all the
authority of the Federal Government, supplied those leaders. They
were strangers in the States they governed. The moment that the
compact vote upon which their power rested was divided, they
abandoned their places, and In almost every case left the State in
which they had ruled. The great mass of colored voters was left
without guides. In many of the largest counties, where their majority
was absolute, they were not only not organized, but there was not
interest enough to print a Republican ticket. The weapon of de-
fense which had been given to the negro was thrown away by his
leaders in their flight, and Mr. Elaine can scarcely complain if it
was picked up by the Democrats. In saying this I do not wish to
provoke or renew useless and irritating controversies; but Mr. Elaine's
position is, that not only the negro ought not to be disfranchised,
but that such a question could never have suggested itself but for an
illegal control of the negro vote by Southern Democrats. My view
is that, while the enfranchisement of the negro was a political neces-
sity, it could not be effected without subjecting the country to such
dangerous political aberrations as we have experienced; that a wise
man would have foreseen them; and that, in fact, they have been
less than could reasonably have been anticipated; that the ballot In
the hands of the negro has been a protection and an educator;
that with it he has been stronger and safer in all his rights than the
Chinese have been in California without it; and that the problems
it raised are steadily and without danger solving themselves through
the process of local self-government.

When Mr. Elaine admits that disfranchisement is impossible and
that the ballot has been, in spite of all drawbacks, a benefit to the
negro, he really proves that there is no organic question affecting
great national interests, but simply the subordinate question, How

THE RECONSTRUCTION 241

rapidly Is the ballot fitting the negro for the full enjoyment of his
citizenship? and what influence does his vote exercise upon the
supremacy of one party or the other in national politics? This latter
may be an interesting question, but not one which should disturb
either a sound national sentiment or great national interests. I do
not propose to discuss it. I am of the opinion that to make the negro
a free citizen it was necessary first to take him from his master. Then
it became necessary to take him from the party which claimed his
vote as absolutely as his master had claimed his labor. The next step
will be to take him as a class from either party and allow him to differ
and divide just as white men do. The difficulty so far has been that
the Republican party desires to retain the negro not as a voter, but
as a Republican voter. Party politics have been directed to- keep him
at the South in antagonism to the white race, with whom all Ms
material interests are identified. Whenever and the time is not dis-
tant whenever political issues arise which divide the white men of
the South, the negro will divide too. The time will then have come
when "he can not act against the white race as a body or with the
white race as a body. He will have to choose for himself; and the
white race, divided politically, will want him to divide. The use of
his vote will then be the exercise of his individual intelligence, and
he will find friends on all sides willing and anxious to enlighten and
influence him, and to sustain him in his decisions.

The whole country has passed through a very painful experience in
the solution of this question, and no one can adequately describe the
bitterness of the trial of the South; but she has borne it, and it seems
to me that a statesman who loves this great country of which we are
all citizens should feel that the time has come when a kindly judg-
ment of each other's difficulties would bring us nearer to that unanim-
ity of action which can alone aid the solution of a grave social and
political problem. I was born and bred a slaveholder, born and bred
among slaveholders; I have known slavery in its kindest and most
beneficent aspect. My associations with the past of men and things
are full of love and reverence. In all history never has a heavy duty
been discharged more faithfully, more conscientiously, more success-
fully, than by the slaveholders of the South. But, if I know myself and
those whom I represent, we have accepted the change in the same
spirit. No citizen of this republic more than the Southerner can or
does desire to see the negro improved, elevated, civilized, made a
useful and worthy element in our political life. None more than they
deplore and condemn all violence or other means tending to hinder
the enjoyment of his elective franchise. The South took him, as he

242 THE RECONSTRUCTION

was sent to her, a wild and godless barbarian, and made Mm such
that the North has been able to give him citizenship without the
destruction of our institutions. The progress which he made with
us as a slave will not be arrested now that he is a freedman unless
party passion and personal ambition insist upon using him as an in-
strument for selfish ends. And I have joined in this discussion because
I regard it an honest effort to remove this question from the heated
atmosphere of political debate, and to ask the conscientious attention
of thinking men to a problem the wise and peaceful solution of which
will be one of the noblest achievements of democratic civilization.

Mr. Blaine assumes that the Southern States as a whole differing
in degree but the same in effect have through force and fraud
so suppressed the negro vote as to make negro suffrage as far as
possible of no effect. The statistics of election will show that the
negro vote throughout the South has not been suppressed. That
there have been instances of fraud and force I admit and deplore, but
they have been exceptional. Take them all in the recent election
and average them among a population of twelve millions of people,
and to what do they amount? The President, in reviewing the whole
subject after these elections, did allege, and could only allege, that
in all these States but seven Congressional districts exhibited results
which were altered by either fraud or force. When we consider the
fact that since the formation of the Government there have been but
few Congresses, if any, in which there have not been elections from
all parts of the Union contested on these very grounds, and then bear
in mind that at no time in our history, and in no other part of our
country, has there ever been so keen and searching a scrutiny into
the facts of election as that which the South has been subjected, these
exaggerated statements of force and fraud must be reduced to their
real proportions.

But suppose the allegation which Mr. Blaine puts as the argument
of those who advocate disfranchisement be true, viz. that the present
political condition of the South is practically the rule, not of a
numerical majority of the whole people black and white, but of the
whites as one unanimous class; and let it be conceded fully that such
a political condition, if it actually exists, is an evil, what is the pre-
cise nature and extent of that evil? In the first place, it is not pre-
tended that any of these civil rights of person and property that negro
suffrage was intended to protect have been invaded or endangered.
Indeed, this seems to be impliedly admitted, though not explicitly
stated in Mr. Elaine's article. The object of the Fifteenth Amendment
is fully disclosed by contemporaneous debates. It was to protect and

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establish free labor in the South, in all its new relations of rights and
interests, by giving to the emancipated laborer the political means
of maintaining those rights and interests. Now, will any one deny
that this purpose has not achieved its fullest consummation under
existing conditions? Is free labor anywhere on earth more firmly
established, more fully developed, or more absolute in its demands
(even for exaggerated remuneration), and more secure and unre-
stricted in the enjoyment of its gains, than in the South? In all re-
spects, negro freedom and negro equality before the law, security of
person and property, are ample and complete. To protect these,
should they be invaded, he has the franchise with which a freedman
can maintain his rights. He may no longer allow it to be used as a
tool for the rapacity of political adventurers; but he is perfectly
conscious of the fact which Mr. Elaine states, that his right to vote
is to himself and his race a shield and sword of defense.

The question, then, recurs conceding, for the sake of argument,
that in the South political rale represents not the will of mere num-
bers, but the intellectual culture, the moral strength, the material
interests, the skilled labor, the useful capital of that entire section, as
well as its political experience is not this result exactly what the in-
telligence, character, and property of the country are striving to
effect in every Congressional district in the Union, and is it not a per-
fectly legitimate result of placing the ballot in the hands of a popu-
lation unfamiliar with its use, and who are peculiarly susceptible to
the influences which property and brains have always exerted in
popular government?

I anticipate the answer; it is, that the property and intelligence
of the other sections seek to control the votes of the masses by
methods that are legitimate and peaceful, while the Southern whites
have achieved their power by means which are unlawful and unjust
So far I have to some extent, for the sake of argument, conceded the
assumption that the negro vote has been subjected to the forcible
control of the white race, but that I deny. Reference has been made
to the great change which the election returns show in the negro
vote throughout the South. The phenomenon is easily explained.
Let any intelligent Northern man review the history of the State
governments of the South for the last ten years under Republican
rule their gross and shameless dishonesty, their exorbitant taxation,
their reckless expenditure, their oppression of all native interests, the
social agonies through which they have forced all that was good
and pure to pass as through a fiery furnace; the character of the
men many of them they have placed in power; and then say if

244 THE RECONSTRUCTION

such a state of things In a Northern or Western State would not have
been a sure and natural precursor of a Republican defeat, so abso-
lute and complete that the very name of the party would have become
in that State a name of scorn and reproach. Then why should not
that result have occurred in the South? Are we to assume that the
black race have neither instinct nor reason have no sense, no in-
telligence, no conscience, no independence; that In every Southern
State the thralldom of the negro vote to party leaders, even when
abandoned by them, is so unquestioning and abject that no amount
of misrule can cut him loose from them or teach him the advantage
of a more natural and wholesome political alliance? To reason thus
is simply to say that the negro is unfit for suffrage, and to surrender
the argument to those who hold that he ought to be disfranchised.

But this is not true. There are many honest, intelligent, and in-
dependent men among the negroes in every Southern State. There
are thousands of them who own property, who cultivate their own
lands, who have taxes to pay, and who appreciate their vital interests
in good government. This change in his political relations which has
been the subject of so much incredulous comment is the legitimate
result of the experience through which he has gone.

So far from proving his weak subordination to a hostile influence,
it demonstrates what Mr. Blaine says, that the ballot-box indeed
educated him to understand his own interest, and that he has learned
to use it as an instrument to protect his own rights. To interfere with
such a result because it does not square with the necessities or the
ambitions of this or that party, seems to me to be In direct contra-
diction to what has been suggested by Mr. Blaine himself. He says,
"The one sure mode to remand the States that rebelled against the
Union to their autonomy was to give suffrage to the negro," leaving
(I venture to add) to self-government the evolution of the proper
remedies for whatever of evil or error may attend the working out
of this grave and critical experiment.

Mr. Hampton:

In discussing the questions upon which my views are asked, the
limits prescribed me in the invitation prevent anything more than
a mere statement of opinion. Even were this otherwise, my present
condition forbids me to enter into any extended or elaborate argu-
ment. Mine must be, therefore, simply a presentation in crude form
of the views I entertain, and have entertained for some years, upon
the grave questions submitted for consideration. I shall endeavor

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to write in a spirit free from all partisanship or sectionalism, with
the sole purpose of promoting the cause of truth and the welfare of
the whole country.

The first question is, "Should the negro be disfranchised?" There
has been much agitation of this subject recently chiefly at the
North and many who have hitherto been the most earnest advo-
cates of negro suffrage begin to think that the bestowal of this privi-
lege upon Mm has resulted in failure. Those who thus think suppose
that the withdrawal of the right of suffrage would at once restore
the ancient and normal condition of things in the country; would
re-establish friendly relations between the races of the South; and
in so far as it would diminish representation would lessen the in-
fluence of that section in national affairs. This latter argument, I
regret to see, has had most weight with a large class, though it is
inconsistent with a true and catholic patriotism which looks to the
good of the whole republic, and not of a limited section.

But, whatever may be the motives of those who desire the dis-
franchisement of the negro, the accomplishment of such a result
has been rendered impossible by the action of the national and State
governments. Great and startling as have been the political muta-
tions of the last few years, the disfranchisement of the negro at this or
any subsequent period would be more surprising than any political
event in our past history. The question, therefore, does not belong
to practical politics, and is a mere speculative one. Considering it in
the latter aspect, I do not hesitate to answer in the negative. What-
ever may have been the policy of conferring the right of voting upon
the negro, ignorant and incompetent as he was to comprehend the
high responsibility thrust upon him, and whatever may have been
the reasons which dictated this dangerous experiment, the deed has
been done and it is irrevocable. It is now the part of true statesman-
ship to give it as far as possible that direction which will be most
beneficial or least hurtful to the body politic.

How is this to be accomplished?

My answer would be, by educating the negro until he compre-
hends the duties and responsibilities of citizenship. By "education"
I do not mean the mere acquisition of learning, but I apply the term
in the broadest sense. The possession of the rudiments of education
the mere mental training that this implies so far from being always
beneficial to its possessor, if often harmful. Many of our lately en-
franchised citizens make the first use of their newly acquired ability
to read and write by committing forgery, and here, at least, they
have manifested a wonderful aptitude. By educating them I mean that

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their moral nature should be cultivated, pan passu, with their intel-
lect. This moral education is of far greater importance than an intel-
lectual one. A man is not necessarily a better citizen because he can
read and write, nor does the possession of these acquirements make
him, as a matter of course, more competent to understand and dis-
charge the duties of citizenship. I doubt whether the citizens of that
State which makes its boast that more of its people can read and
write than in any other government, are equal in art, in culture, and
in statesmanship, to the Athenians in their palmiest days, who
were without these accomplishments the most intelligent and critical
of political constituencies.

As the stability of our institutions depends on the intelligence and
virtue of our citizens, it is the duty of every patriot to promote the
cause of true education. Especially is this the case with regard to
that unfortunate people who, after centuries of servitude, were
suddenly called to exercise the highest duties of freedmen. They
came to the discharge of these duties utterly ignorant, with the preju-
dices, the habits, and the evils inculcated by a life of slavery merely
children of a larger growth, and, like all children, full of credulity.
It is not to be wondered at, then, that they were easily misled by
the wicked and designing men who flocked to the South when she
was prostrate. But, in spite of the evil advice they have so constantly
received, they have on the whole behaved better than any other peo-
ple similarly situated would have done, and the whites of the South
have no reason to cherish any ill will toward the blacks. Nor do
they; and the time is rapidly approaching when the colored people
will find their best friends among the thoughtful and considerate
whites of the South a class by no means small at present, and which
is growing larger and stronger every hour. But this discussion of the
question under consideration; and my purpose, as declared at the
outset, was only to state my opinions, not to enter into argument to
establish them.

From the remarks already made, my answer to the first question
submitted is easily anticipated; it would be almost impossible to
disfranchise the negro, and, if possible, it would not be carried into
effect. The South does not desire to see this done, and without her
aid it can never be accomplished. The negro contributes not only
to the wealth of the South, but to her political power, and she is
indisposed to deprive herself of any of her advantages.

As the negro becomes more intelligent, he naturally allies himself
with the most conservative of the whites, for his observation and

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experience both show him that his interests are identified with those
of the white race here.

This is the inevitable tendency of things as they now stand at the
South, and no extraneous pressure can change a result which is as
sure and fixed as any other natural law.

The opinions which are announced above have not been hastily
formed or only recently entertained. They are the result of very
earnest and long reflection, and as an evidence of this it may not be
improper, even at the risk of appearing to touch too closely on per-
sonal matters, to state the position that I have occupied in regard
to these questions since the close of the war. In 1865, even before
I had received my parole, I spoke, and was the first man at the
South who did so, to a large audience of negroes upon the changed
relations between the two races, and I gave to them the same ad-
vice that I have given from that day to this. In 1867, in the city
of Columbia, at the earnest invitation of the colored people them-
selves, I spoke to them again, and upon that occasion advocated
qualified suffrage. It must be borne in mind that at the time this was
done some of the most prominent leaders of the Republican party
had taken decided ground against giving the right off suffrage to the
negro. It is unnecessary to give all the reasons that induced me to
take this course. It is sufficient to say that I fully realized that when
a man had been made a citizen of the United States he could not be
debarred the right of voting on account of his color. Such exclusion
would be opposed to the entire theory of republican institutions, and
I foresaw that, unless the States, while they had the right of regu-
lating the elective franchise, prescribed the qualifications of their
voters, the national Government would intervene, and we should
have universal suffrage forced upon us. My object, then, was, by
fixing an educational qualification as a prerequisite for voting, to al-
low the most intelligent of the colored people to vote at once, and
this would have been an inducement to the rest of the race to en-
deavor to qualify themselves for the attainment and exercise of this
privilege by securing the necessary education. The admission of the
limited number who would thus have been allowed to vote at first
would have produced no confusion in the machinery of the State
governments, and the relations between the two races would have
been friendly and harmonious; but the course that I recommended
was not adopted, and we of the South have been subjected to all
the humiliation and crime brought about by reconstruction. As the
negro is now acquiring education and property, he is becoming more

248 THE RECONSTRUCTION

conservative, and naturally desires to assist in the establishment and
maintenance of good government and home rale. I have endeavored

and I think not without success to teach him here how to use

the vote for his own good, and the benefit of the political society in
which he lives and with which his future prosperity is identified.
The result has been shown in the last two general elections in this
State, where thousands of negroes voted with their white friends;
and if any doubt is entertained of the sincerity of these voters, and
any impartial visitor from the North will take the pains to inquire
throughout the State, I will venture the assertion that in every locality
he will find as earnest, as active, and as consistent Democrats among
the colored people as among the whites, and these colored Demo-
crats are generally among the more intelligent of their race.

Under these circumstances, as the negro is endeavoring very gen-
erally to qualify himself for the duties of citizenship, the wrong of
disfranchising him would be as great as that inflicted upon us in
the first instance, when universal suffrage was given to him while
he was yet utterly unprepared to exercise it.

The second question to which my attention has been invited is,
"Ought the negro to have been enfranchised?" It may seem incon-
sistent with the views I have expressed in the first part of this article
to say I do not think he should have been enfranchised at the time
and in the manner in which it was done. My first objection is, that
the mode that was pursued, if not directly unconstitutional, was
certainly extra-constitutional, and I am utterly opposed to any viola-
tion, direct or indirect, of that instrument. Whenever a political party
thinks it is necessary, in order to secure its supremacy, to act outside
of the Constitution, and this is permitted by the people without re-
buke, we may be sure that we have entered upon that downward
plane which every previous republic has traveled to destruction. The
only hope of maintaining our institutions in their integrity is by a
strict observance of the Constitution, and no party should be al-
lowed to remain a moment in power which countenances in any
manner any violation of its sacred provisions.

My next objection to conferring suffrage on the negro, immedi-
ately upon his emancipation, was that he was totally incompetent to
exercise or even to understand the rights conferred upon him. The
injection of such a mass of ignorant and untrained voters into the
body politic was the most perilous strain to which our institutions
have ever been subjected, and the danger arising from this experi-

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ment has not yet passed. It was a crime against the whites of the
South to disfranchise them in large part while enfranchising the
negro, and thus practically placing all the rights of the former at
the mercy of the newly emancipated slaves. All these difficulties
might have been avoided had partial suffrage been adopted in the
first instance, and the relations between the two 1 races been allowed
to adjust themselves by the unimpeded action of natural laws. This
course would have been infinitely better for the negro himself, as it
would gradually have trained him in the exercise of the rights of
freedmen, and would have prevented that antagonism between the
two races which has resulted, in so many instances, to the injury
of the negro.

Those who assert that the negro should have been enfranchised
have not hesitated to declare that the Indian, the native freeman
of America, and the Chinese, who have sought our shores in such
numbers, should be debarred that right. There seems to be some in-
consistency in these views, and the advocates of negro enfranchise-
ment should be called on to show why the privilege should be granted
to him, the newly emancipated slave, and yet denied to men who
have always been free and who possess more intelligence.

When the negro was made a citizen, it followed as a logical con-
sequence, under the theory of our institutions, that he must become
a voter. My objection to his enfranchisement, therefore, is confined
to the time when and the mode in which this privilege was conferred
upon Mm.

I have answered these questions with entire frankness, in the hope
that such a discussion, free from political acrimony and partisan
misconceptions, would encourage the calm and conscientious con-
sideration of the whole subject.

Mr. Garfield:

The editor of The Review has asked my opinion on the two ques-
tions discussed by Mr. Elaine. Were these questions proposed to the
two Houses of Congress, I have no doubt that it would be declared,
with hardly a dissenting vote, that the negro ought not to be dis-
franchised. On the second question, the formal vote might not be
unanimous; but I have no doubt that a large majority would declare
that the negro ought to have been enfranchised.

If it shall appear on a new roll call in 1879 that none are in favor
of disfranchising the negro, and few are ready to declare that he

250 THE RECONSTRUCTION

ought not to have been enfranchised, we may reasonably conclude
that these measures are gaining strength, and that their wisdom will
finally be fully vindicated by the popular judgment.

But a vote on these questions at this time, by "ayes and noes," is
misleading, for it does not disclose the real difference of opinion
which prevail among the people; nor does it reach the marrow of
the controversy out of which the questions themselves arise. In fact,
both of the great parties are influenced by the strongest political
motives to maintain at least a profession of friendship for the negro.
Political interest will therefore prevent a direct assault upon the
constitutional amendments. It is practically impossible to rescind
them; and I believe it is an historical fact that no government, based
on the national will, has ever withdrawn the right of suffrage when
once granted.

But below the formal questions which head this article, lies this
deeper one: Will enfranchisement finally prove a blessing or a curse
to the negro, and an element of weakness or strength to our in-
stitutions?

Not long since, a citizen of great ability and national prominence
said to me: "Your party has ruined the Government of our fathers.
In carrying up the walls of our national temple you have used un-
tempered mortar; and your work will crumble and fall, involving in
ruin the whole structure. The negro belongs to an inferior race; is
without intellectual stamina and without any strong, enduring quali-
ties of mind. Though he has been on our continent but a few gen-
erations, he has wholly forgotten the religion, the language, and
even the traditions of his native country. He has no permanent in-
dividuality of character. Like the chameleon, he takes the color of
his surroundings; and as a voter he will forever be a source of weak-
ness and danger to our institutions."

This is perhaps the most powerful arraignment of the policy of
enfranchisement which has been made. In reply it should be said, in
the outset, that those who denounce the enfranchisement of the
negro as unwise and dangerous are bound to show a better adjust-
ment of his status. Even the defenders of the old system will hardly
deny that the continued existence of chattel slavery was impossible.
It was the sum of all injustice to the negro himself and a standing
declaration of war against the public peace. Its destruction did not
arise from mere meddlesomeness on the part of the North; the feeling
against slavery was world-wide, and we were among the last modem
nations to realize its infamy and remove it from our system.

Between slavery and full citizenship, there was no safe middle

THE RECONSTRUCTION 2$1

ground. To strike the shackles from the negro's limbs, to declare
by law that he should not be bought or soid, scourged or branded at
the will of his master, and then to leave him with no means of de-
fending his rights before the courts and juries of the country to
arm him with no legal or political weapons of defense would have
been an injustice hardly less cruel to him, and a policy even more
dangerous to the public peace, then slavery itself. To leave the de-
fense of all the rights of person and property of the manumitted
slave to those who had just voted unanimously against his freedom,
would have been alike dishonorable and cruel Indeed, this experi-
ment was attempted soon after the close of the war. While the se-
ceding States were under military control, the white people of the
South were invited to aid in solving the difficulties of the negro
problem by electing their own Legislatures and establishing pro-
visional governments. The result was that in 1865, 1866, and a
portion of 1867, their Legislatures, notably those of Mississippi and
Louisiana, restricted the personal liberty of the negro, prohibited him
from owning real estate, and enacted vagrant and peonage laws,
whereby negroes were sold at auction for the payment of taxes or
fines, and were virtually reduced to a slavery as real as that which
existed before the war.

Congress was, therefore, compelled to choose between a policy
which would have made the negro the permanent ward of the nation,
and by constant interference with the local laws of the States would
protect his personal and property rights, or to place in his own hands
the legal and political means of self-defense. It was a choice between
perpetual interference with the autonomy of the States a policy at
war with the fundamental principles of our Government, and intol-
erable to the white population of the South and the risk of admitting
to the suffrage four millions of people who were, as yet, in a large
measure unfitted for its wise and intelligent exercise. In reviewing
the situation as it existed from 1867 to 1869, I can not conceive
on what grounds the wisdom of the choice then made can be denied.
Possibly a plan of granting suffrage gradually as the negro became
more intelligent would have been wiser; but the practical difficulties
of such a plan would have been very great, and its discussion at this
time can have no practical value.

The ballot was given to the negro not so much to enable him, to
govern others as to prevent others from misgoverning him. Suffrage is
the sword and shield of our law, the best armament that liberty
offers to the citizen.

It would be strange indeed if the negro should always use this

252

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weapon with wisdom and honesty. That he would sometimes be in-
fluenced by corrupt leaders was inevitable; but that, in spite of all
drawbacks, the suffrage has done and is doing much for his pro-
tection and elevation, is evident from the anxiety shown by all politi-
cal parties to prove themselves his friend.

His progress under liberty may have disappointed some of Ms
over-sanguine friends; but, in a still more marked way, it has dis-
appointed the expectations of those who opposed his freedom. Dull-
ness of intellect, a low state of morals, a want of thrift and foresight
all these were the inevitable results of generations of slavery, which
afforded no incentive to the development of those qualities that make
citizens independent, intelligent, and self-reliant. If the negroes had
lost the passion for acquiring property, if they had shown themselves
unwilling to work, neither liberty nor suffrage could have saved them.
They would finally disappear, as the Indians are disappearing, and
for the same reasons. But the evidences are increasing on every hand
that they are successfully solving the problem of their own future,
by a commendable degree of industry, and by very earnest efforts to
educate their children. In these efforts they are outstripping the class
known in the days of slavery as u the poor whites." While they and
their political friends had the control of legislation in the Southern
States, vigorous measures were adopted to establish and maintain
public schools; and, though these efforts have been greatly discour-
aged by recent State legislation, their thirst for knowledge has not
been quenched. There is every indication that in the next generation
they will show a marked advance in intelligence.

They are acquiring property far more rapidly than their white
neighbors expected. In the Freedman's Savings Bank alone, the
failure of which was so calamitous, they had deposited surplus earn-
ings to the amount of three millions of dollars. They are gradually
becoming owners of real estate and of comfortable homes. In one
county of South Carolina they are now paying $300,000 of taxes
per annum; and this is neither an isolated nor an exaggerated ex-
ample. In short, they are gradually gaining those two elements of
power, "intelligence and wealth," which Senator Thurman says will
in the long run control the politics of a community.

As an example of what the negro can do under more favorable
circumstances than those which have existed in the South, I refer to
the settlement of the Virginia Military Reserve in Ohio, between the
Scioto and Miami Rivers. Late in the last and early in the present
century, many Virginia soldiers of the War of Independence removed
to their lands in Ohio. Most of them were antislavery men by con-

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viction, and brought their slaves with them for the purpose of manu-
mission. These negroes settled near their late masters, enjoyed their
friendship and counsel, and did not encounter the prejudices of
race and color which they might have met among men of Northern
birth. Under such conditions they have lived for two or three gener-
ations. There has been scarcely any admixture of blood and no serious
collisions of interests; and to-day, in central and southern Ohio,
their descendants, to the number of several thousand families, rank
fairly with other Intelligent, respectable, and well-to-do citizens of
the State; and are, in all respects, greatly superior to their Virginia
ancestors.

Much as the negroes of the South have accomplished since emanci-
pation, their most unfriendly critics will hardly venture to assert that
they have had a fair chance to test the influence of freedom and
citizenship. Our theory of government is based upon the belief that
the suffrage carries with it individual responsibility, stimulates the
activity and promotes the intelligence and self-respect of the voters.
To accomplish these results the voter must be allowed to exercise
his rights freely and without restraint.

Doubtless the mere property rights of the Southern negroes are
every year being more and more fully recognized by their white
neighbors; but in many parts of the South, it is the merest mockery
to pretend that the suffrage has been free. The spirit of domination
which slavery engendered has led a large portion of the white popu-
lation to consider the effort of the negro to cast his ballot in his
own way as an act of intolerable impertinence. Open violence, con-
cealed fraud, and threatened loss of employment, in many parts of
the South, have virtually destroyed the suffrage and deprived the
negro of all the benefits which it was intended to confer.

Hitherto, these outrages have been justified or excused on the
ground that they were provoked by the interference of the national
authorities with local self-government in the South. But during the
past two years, there has been no ground even for this poor excuse.
And now we have a new ground of justification. A leading poli-
tician of Louisiana, testifying before the Teller Committee a few
days ago, declared that the murders and other acts of violence which
attended the late election in that State were provoked by "incendiary
speeches" of Republican leaders. In his cross-examination, this wit-
ness favored us with his definition of political incendiarism. When
asked to give examples, he cited the fact that a certain campaign
orator "had referred to the old days of slavery, saying that old men
who had been slaveholders, and whose ideas were fixed in the past,

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would not be as likely to respect the rights and advance the Interests
of the blacks as younger men who had grown up under the new con-
dition of affairs." Also, in discussing the industrial relation of the
negroes to their employers, the incendiary orator told the negroes
that "they were paying too high rent for land, often as much each
year as the land would sell for." Such discussion the witness consid-
ered so dangerous as to justify the wrath and violence of the white
population against the Republican party.

Until there is one acknowledged law of liberty for white and black
men alike, it is idle to claim that the amendments of the Constitution
are obeyed either in spirit or letter, or that enfranchisement has had
a fair trial.

The plea of "incendiary speeches" will not be accepted by a
liberty-loving nation as a justification of murder, violence, or any
invasion of the rights of citizens, however humble, however black.
The wisdom of enfranchisement cannot be impeached by prophesy-
ing in advance that it will prove a disastrous failure, and then en-
deavoring per fas aut nefas to make it a failure.

If the Democratic party does not disclaim and effectively resist
such outrages and Invasions of constitutional rights, we shall again
witness the deplorable spectacle of parties divided by geographical
lines, a solid South and a united North arrayed in political opposi-
tion.

Such a conflict will not only retard the advancement of the negro
and delay the restoration of national harmony, but it will inflict im-
measurable injury upon the social and business property of the South
itself. Emigration follows the path of liberty. Free and independent
Americans will not voluntarily become citizens of a State in which
full liberty of debate and of the ballot is not assured.

Since the war, it is probable that more emigrants from the North
and from Europe have settled in Texas than in all the other Gulf
States combined. And this is because the traditions and sentiments
of the Texan people have been regarded as more favorable to free-
dom of personal opinion and political action than those of the people
of neighboring Southern States.

If the policy of repression and exclusion, which unhappily pre-
vails in most of the late slaveholding States, shall be maintained,
each new census will disclose such a relative loss of population and
wealth as will prove every way disastrous to their political influence
and commercial prosperity. But parties will not always divide on
the color line. I have not doubt that enlightened self-interest will ere
long lead the people of the South to seek prosperity by making the

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suffrage in fact, as it already is in law, free and safe to all on whom
the Constitution has conferred it. When that day comes, we shall en-
joy a national unity which slavery would have made for ever im-
possible; and the wisdom of enfranchisement will be fully vindicated.
Beneficent as its results have already been, they are destined to be
still more fruitful of good in the future.

In conclusion, I answer these questions by saying that on every
ground of private right, of public justice, and national safety, the
negro ought to have been enfranchised. For the same reasons,
strengthened and confirmed by our experience, he ought not to be
disfranchised. Reviewing the elements of the larger problem, I do
not doubt that enfranchisement will, in the long run, greatly promote
the intellectual, moral, and industrial welfare of the negro race in
America; and instead of imperiling the safety of our institutions, will
remove from them the greatest danger which has ever threatened
them.

Mr. Stephens'.

The questions submitted for inquiry and consideration in the paper
now presented involve problems of the gravest and most interesting
character that ever engaged the attention of philanthropists or states-
men.

It is not the purpose of the undersigned, in taking part in the dis-
cussion or in connecting himself with it, to enter at this time into a
consideration of the merits in the abstract of either of these ques-
tions.

The great problem involved in the first is now in a state of solu-
tion, and it does not seem to be at all practicable or advisable, in
the midst of this process, to be mooting or answering the reasons
which led originally to the policy on which it was founded, or the
propriety of its adoption.

The matter, according to Mr. Elaine's own assumption, has been
settled beyond the power of even constitutional remedy. No argu-
ments drawn ab inconvenienti are allowable; they are precluded by
conclusions drawn ab impossibili. This is the announcement. Then
why agitate or disturb it? Should it not, rather, be the object of all
good citizens, of all parties, and all friends of humanity, whether
originally favoring that policy or not, to give it a fair trial, with an
earnest and hopeful effort for its success, leaving the future in this
matter, as in other like problems, to take care of itself?

The discussion of these questions now, therefore, seems to be
quite as irrelevant as impracticable. The undersigned, however, will

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avail himself of the occasion thus presented to make a few general
observations upon the paper submitted:

1, Mr. Elaine, after thus setting forth the perfect inviolability of
the right of suffrage, constitutionally secured to the colored man,
uses these very notable words:

In the mean while, seeing no mode of legally or equitably depriving
the negro of his suffrage, except with unwelcome penalties to themselves,
the Southern States as a whole differing in degree, but the same in
effect have striven to achieve, by indirect and unlawful means, what
they can not achieve directly and lawfully. They have, so far as possible,
made negro suffrage of no effect. They have done this against law
and against justice.

These are grave assertions. Where is the evidence to support them?
On them issue is directly joined.

The charge in substance is, that the Southern States as a whole,
with common design, have striven to deprive the colored man of his
right to vote, by indirect and unlawful means. Wherein have "the
Southern States as a whole," or a single one of them, done, or at-
tempted to do, any such thing? States act by their legislatures, Courts,
and executives. Has it been by legislative acts, or executive acts, or
judicial decisions? If so, the production of these highhanded usurpa-
tions is invoked.

The undersigned speaks mainly of his own State, Georgia. That
wrongs, and great wrongs, have been committed by individuals at
the polls in that State and in many of the Southern States, or per-
haps all of them, he does not question wrongs to whites as well as
blacks; but he does question if greater wrongs have been perpetrated
in the Southern States, in this respect, than in the Northern States.
"The world is a school of wrong," and skilled proficients "swarm
about" everywhere. But, that the Southern States, in whole or in
part, in any way in which States can act, have ever arrayed them-
selves against their own constitutions and laws, to say nothing of
Federal obligations, in an effort to deprive the colored man of the
right to vote, is utterly denied. It is true, in Georgia, and perhaps in
other States, the constitutional requirements of a poll-tax of a dollar
for school purposes does practically keep several thousand colored
voters from the polls; but it is a provision wise and just in its objects,
and applies equally to white and black. The constitutional provisions,
also, making conviction of felony a forfeiture of the franchise, is likely

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in Its workings to exclude a much larger number of colored voters
from the polls than whites; but no one questions the justice of such ex-
clusions either of whites or blacks.

The Constitution of Georgia, before the Fifteenth Amendment
was even proposed, secured the right of suffrage to colored and white
alike; and it has been the object of the State government in all its
branches to maintain this franchise, in its purity and integrity, from
that day to this. It was but yesterday the undersigned saw in the
Augusta Evening News the charge of Judge Snead, of that judicial
circuit, upon this very subject, an extract from which may not be
deemed impertinent or irrelevant in this connection. It shows to what
full, free, and even abusive extent the right of suffrage is carried in
that State by the colored people. Here is the extract:

After treating of general subjects prescribed by law, the Judge gave
the following strong points in reference to the freedom of the ballot at
the recent elections. He said: Outside of all these, I desire to direct your
attention to one section of the penal code, which was intended to guard
the freedom of the elective franchise and the purity of the ballot-box. It
is section 4,569, and is in these words: "If any person shall hereafter buy
or sell, or offer to buy or sell, or be concerned in buying or selling a
vote, or shall unlawfully vote at any election which may be held in any
county of this State, such person shall be indicted for misdemeanor, and,
on conviction, shall be punished by imprisonment and labor in the
penitentiary for a term of not less than one nor more than four years."

In this connection I read for your consideration extracts from our city
papers, which profess to portray certain scenes at the last municipal
election in Augusta: "Money was freely exhibited and offered for votes,
and as freely and as openly taken. The price of a vote ranged from ten
cents to five dollars, according to the desire of the purchaser to obtain
the vote and the estimate put by the seller upon the value of the franchise.
Hundreds of votes were thus openly disposed of in plain view of every-
body. In some instances the voter held the ballot at arm's-length with
one hand and held out the other for the money which was to pay for his
vote" Chronicle and Constitutionalist. "The election-day has passed,
and with it a day has gone to record that will stand as a foul stain upon
the fair name and reputation of a city grown old in honor, and up to
yesterday unsullied by the bold hand of bare-faced bribery and open
corruption. Votes were openly bought and sold with money and whiskey
as a price one hand holding the vote and the other stretched out for the
reward." Evening News.

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I know not whether this Is true, but it has been published as a part of
the history of this our day and generation. It could not have escaped the
observation, and must have excited the solicitude, of many good citizens.
If true, it is a sad commentary upon the corruption of the times, when
the purity of the ballot-box is thus violated in the broad light of day;
when the elective franchise is made a purchasable commodity, and voters
are bought and sold as so many herds of cattle. The whole theory of our
Government is in the opposite direction. It rests upon the free consent of
the governed. This, at least, should be the practice in every department,
from the Federal head at Washington, through the various ramifications
in the States, down to the humblest municipality. The liberty of the
citizen, the security of the property ay, the whole fabric of society rests
for its base upon the free, unbought suffrage of the people. . . . Present
all parties implicated, whether high or low. . . . Let your investigation be
strictly impartial not confined to one, but extended to all sides and if
your sword, like that which flamed at Eden's gate, turns a double edge,
let the great blow fall.

This record of one of our judges truly exhibits the tone of the
judiciary throughout the State of Georgia. It is needless to add, per-
haps, that the votes which were so openly sold in the market were
chiefly, if not entirely, those of the lowest class of the colored race.
The same is true of the elections held near the same time in Atlanta,
Macon, and other parts of the State, according to newspaper ac-
counts.

2. Mr, Blaine clearly intimates his own belief, as well as that of
other original advocates of the enfranchisement of the colored race,
that "negro suffrage has failed to attain the ends hoped for when
the franchise was confirmed . . . failed to achieve anything except
to increase the political weight and influence of those against whom,
and in spite of whom, his enfranchisement was secured."

Pray, what were the ends thus hoped for? Without extended com-
ment on these sentences, as to the character of the motives actuating
some, at least, of the original advocates of "negro suffrage," which
are very apparent from the entire passage, it may be pardonable to
say that perhaps the present gravamen with them is that the colored
man does not vote as they expected him to vote; perhaps they may
also see from the exhibitions referred to in Augusta, Atlanta, Macon,
and in other places, that their votes are much more easily controlled
by money than they supposed they would be. If this be intimidation,

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and depriving the colored people of the inestimable right of voting,
then it must be admitted that it is carried to a lamentable extent in
Georgia, if not in other States, and can only be prevented by such
enforcement of our State laws as Judge Snead invokes. It cannot
be remedied, as far as the undersigned sees, by any proper action of
Congress.

3. Mr. Elaine says:

The Fourteenth Amendment was designed to prevent this [that is,
the increased representation of the Southern States in Congress, on the
emancipation of those at the South who previously owed service for life],
and, if it does not succeed in preventing it, it is because of evasion and
violation of its clear provisions and of its plain intent. Those who erected
the Confederate Government may be in exclusive possession of power
throughout the South; but they are not so fairly and legally; and they
will not be permitted to continue in the enjoyment of political power
unjustly seized and seized in derogation and in defiance of the rights
not merely of the negro, but of the whites in all other sections of the
country.

What is really meant here by the reference to the intent of the
Fourteenth Amendment, and the enjoyment of "political power un-
justly seized seized in derogation and defiance of the rights not
merely of the negro but of the whites, in all other sections of the
country," by no means clearly appears. Explanation is wanted.

When and where has any Southern State unjustly seized any power
or exercised any which is not clearly reserved to it in the Constitu-
tion? The real trouble seems to be this:

After all the clamor against the slave power, so called, under the
Constitution, before the war, growing out of the three-fifths basis of
representation, it was found that, on the adoption of the Thirteenth
Amendment abolishing slavery, thirty-five representatives were
thereby added to the South in Congress; and that, so far from the
three-fifths feature of the Constitution being an augmentation of the
political power of the South, it was actually a diminution of the
power to the extent of two-fifths of their colored population. It
was then that an attempt was made, by the Fourteenth Amendment,
to deprive the Southern States of this increase of political power,
which they by no means seized or attempted to seize, but which came
to them rightfully under the Constitution. This attempt, as has been
stated, failed of its object by the Southern States, putting suffrage
upon an equal footing between the blacks and whites.

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Mr. Elaine says that the clear intent and express provisions of the
Fourteenth Amendment have been evaded and violated by the
Southern States.

Where is the proof to sustain this assertion? Is not the constitu-
tional right of voting secured as amply to the colored people in the
Southern States as in the Northern? If not, let proofs to the contrary
be adduced. The question is not as to the wisdom of such policy, but
as to the existence of the fact.

The public mind seems to be somewhat in a cloud upon this sub-
ject of representation, and the grounds upon which the colored popu-
lation were rated in the Federal basis, as five blacks to three whites,
or what is known as the three-fifths basis.

Before the war the idea seemed to be industriously inculcated in
certain sections of the country that it was a grant to the South of
property representation in their slaves. No greater error ever existed
in the popular mind. This three-fifths principle was first agreed on
in Congress under the old Articles of Union of the States, known as
the first Constitution, in 1783. The history of it is this: There was not
any power under the Constitution as it then existed to collect
taxes by impost, or by any direct means; and the quota of each of the
States was apportioned first upon land valuation in the respective
States. This was found to work unjustly; and it was afterward de-
termined that the best basis of taxation was population. But it was
insisted that the black population was not so efficient in the produc-
tion of wealth, which should be the criterion in taxation, as the white;
and it would be unjust to make the basis of the quota of each State
upon its population, without considering the character of its popu-
lation. Some maintained that one white man's labor was more produc-
tive than that of four blacks; some three; some two. It was eventually
agreed, on the motion of Mr. Madison, that three-fifths should be the
ratio, thus cutting off two-fifths of the black population. This feature,
thus originating in the Congress under the old Constitution, was incor-
porated into the new one, formed in 1787. It was then thought that
the revenue would continue to be chiefly derived from direct taxa-
tion, as it had been under the old organization. This feature was thus
retained at that time upon the principle that taxation and representa-
tion should go together. Very soon, however, the revenues were
chiefly raised from imposts, and hence the Southern States for all
practical purposes lost that power in legislation to which they would
have been justly entitled upon the principle of representation in ac-
cordance with population.

After emancipation, in 1865, the two-fifths restriction ceased to

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exist, as a necessary result. The entire population of the Southern
States then entered into the count for apportionment, as well as the
entire population of the North. The Southern States, therefore, came
into the enjoyment of this increased political power not by seizure,
but by constitutional right; and they can not be deprived of it except
by a wrong not less atrocious than the most wanton and illegal
seizure could be.

4. Mr. Elaine seems to maintain that it was the main object of
the Fifteenth Amendment to secure the right of suffrage to the colored
race.

To a great extent this may be granted as true; and yet, not to
the extent which he would seem to argue. That amendment conferred
no right of any kind. It was only intended to restrain the States and
the United States from denying or abridging the right of suffrage
on account of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." The
words are: "The rights of citizens of the United States to vote shall
not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on
account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." This is
but an additional covenant between the States, imposing restraints
and obligations upon themselves, and of course takes its place along-
side other similar constitutional provisions, restraining the power of
the States. No State, under this provision of the Constitution, can
make any discrimination as. to the right of suffrage within its limits,
"on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude"; nor
has any State, South or North, within the knowledge of the under-
signed, made any such discrimination.

If there have been violations of the right of suffrage on the part of
individuals by intimidation, force, violence, or bribery (which is by
no means denied), the remedy under the Constitution is a plain
one; and the undersigned believes that the remedy through the courts
would be as strongly enforced in the South as in the North. In elec-
tions to Congress each House is the sole judge of the elections and
returns of its own members.

If a State were to pass a law making a discrimination, the State
courts as well as the Federal courts would of course hold such a law
to be unconstitutional. This prohibition against discrimination by
any State in the matter of suffrage is analogous to the prohibitions
against any State passing ex-post-iacto laws or laws impairing the
obligation of contracts, etc.

The remedy in all such cases is through the courts. The position of
Mr. Elaine, that Congress, under its power of "appropriate legisla-

262 THE RECONSTRUCTION

tion" to carry out all the provisions of the Constitution, can take
jurisdiction of this clause of the Constitution in any way different
from what is proper in the other prohibitions against the States, can
not be successfully maintained. The true remedy for all these evils,
wherever they exist, North or South, is in the courts, under such laws
as Congress may find it necessary to pass for the protection of rights,
within its limited jurisdiction and specified powers.

Mr. Phillips:

Negro suffrage has not been a failure. Only the merest surface
judgment would so consider it. Though his voting has been crippled
and curtailed throughout a large part of the South during half the
time he has been entitled to vote, the negro has given the best evi-
dence of his fitness for suffrage by valuing it at its full worth. Every
investigation of Southern fraud has shown him less purchasable than
the white man. He has wielded his vote with as much honor and
honesty to claim the very least as any class of Southern whites;
even of those intellectually his superiors. For nine fearful years he
has clung to the Republican party (which at least promised to pro-
tect him) as no white class, North or South, would have done. Want
and starvation he has manfully defied, and asserted his rights till
shot down in their very exercise. Where today is the Northern white
class that would have clung to a party or a principle in such peril
or at such sacrifice? If any man knows of such, let him testify. I have
known Northern politics reasonably well for forty years, and my
experience has shown me no such Northern politicians.

In law-making the negro has nothing to fear when compared with
the whites. Taking away the laws which white cunning and hate
have foisted into the statute-book, the legislation of the South since
the rebellion may challenge comparison with that of any previous
period. This is all due to the negro. The educated white Southerner
skulked his responsibility. Either the negro himself devised those
laws, or he was wise enough to seek and take the good advice of
his friends. When some one told Sully that Elizabeth was not able,
but only chose able advisors, "Is not that proof of the greatest
wisdom?" said the sagacious minister of Henry IV. They say negro
Legislatures doubled the taxes. Well, there were double the number
of children to be educated, and double the number of men (one
half of them previously things') to be governed and cared for.

The South owes to negro labor and to legislation under negro
rule all the prosperity- she now enjoys prosperity secured in spite

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of white ignorance and hate. The negro is to-day less ignorant, super-
stitious, and helpless than the same class of Southern white men;
yes, than a class of whites supposed to be immeasurably his superior.

The South would not have disfranchised the negro if his suffrage
had been a failure. Its success is what she fears and hates. When law-
less and violent men attack any element of law and civilization, and
can only succeed by destroying it, does not that very assault prove
the value and efficiency of that obstacle to their lawless purpose?

Negro suffrage gave the helm to the Republican party when it
represented a principle that was intelligent. It stood firmer against
bribery than other Southerners that was honest. It vindicated the
negro's fitness for legislation that scattered the fogs about negro
inferiority. It educated the negro more and more every day, and was
fast bringing him to a level with the whites of the best class that was
death to Southern dreams of future rale and treason.

In those States where either circumstances or the nation have se-
cured the negro anything like fair play, his suffrage has been a
marked success.

If negro suffrage has been in any particular or respect a failure,
it has not been the negro's fault, nor in consequence of any want or
lack in him. If it has failed to secure all the good it might have pro-
duced, this has been because of cowardice, selfishness, and want of
statesmanship on the part of the Government of the United States.
While squabbling over the loaves and fishes of office, we have allowed
our only friends and allies to face the fearful dangers of their situ-
ation into which we called them in order to save the Union with-
out the protection of public opinion, or of the arm of the Government
itself. We have believed every lie against them; fraternized with
unrepentant rebels; and on the Senate floor clasped hands dripping
with the negro's blood blood shed because, without sympathy or
support from us, the negro wielded his vote so bravely and intelli-
gently as to make the enemies of the Union tremble. Does any man
imagine that Senator Hamburg Butler shoots negro voters because
he fears they will not rule South Carolina intelligently!

Negro suffrage has not, therefore, been a failure, even in any
trivial degree, from any lack of courage, intelligence, or honesty on
his part. And let it be remembered how early the Ku-Klux assaulted
him; how incessant have been the attacks upon him all these years;
how brave and unquailing has been his resistance. Let it be kept in
mind also that, meanwhile, one half of the journals of these forty
States have been against him; and seven-tenths of the Federal officers
and the whole organized power of the white South. All this while the

264

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negro has accumulated property, risen in position, advanced marve-
lously in education, outrunning the white man in this race. He has
proved himself equal to any post he has gained. On the floor of
Congress the Southern white has more than once quailed before
negro logic, sarcasm, and power of retort. Nothing has checked Ms
progress or put him down but a hundred lawless armed men as-
sailing, at midnight, single men unarmed and at disadvantage. And
let it be also kept in mind that this same lawlessness has shut up
courts, silenced white Republicans, scattered their conventions, sup-
pressed journals, and driven merchants from Southern cities; so that
yielding to it argues no cowardice in the negro, since the white of
every profession, class, and grade shares in the same humiliation.

Does any man advise the disfranchisement of the white Repub-
lican because his voting is (to quote Mr. Elaine's picture) "a chal-
lenge to the Democrats in which he is sure to be overmatched, and
his disfranchisement would remove all conflict and restore kindly
relations between the two political parties"!

These considerations show the negro's fitness for the vote, and
therefore that he ought to have been enfranchised.

Every consideration of policy and statesmanship demanded his
enfranchisement, the negro being the nation's only ally in an enemy's
country. Everything, therefore, that helps him strengthens the Union.
Equality of condition breeds self-respect. Responsibility is God's
method of educating men, making them sagacious, prudent, calm,
and brave. Power insures consideration to its possessor. When a
vote in the House of Commons added half a million to the number
of British voters, Lord John Russell sprang to his feet and exclaimed,
"JV0w the first anxiety of every Englishman is to educate the masses!"
It was their having the vote, and so endangering the state, which
awakened that anxiety.

Then, again, while the negro remained without the suffrage, it
was a logical inconsistency under our Constitution. The popular
mind frets at any such inconsistency. It was such intellectual and
moral fretting against a logical inconsistency slavery that provoked
the antislavery movement and gave it strength. To have prolonged
such a state of things after the war ended would have been sure to
have stirred angry debate. It was therefore wise and necessary to
avoid this danger. Finally, the exercise of suffrage is the only sufficient
preparation for it. You might as well postpone going into water until
one has learned to swim, as to put off granting suffrage until all the
world agrees that man is fit for it.

When the North, therefore, gave the negro the vote, it did all law

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could do to close the war between two civilizations, the barbarism of
the South and the industrial and equal civil polity of the North. Of
course this was the highest wisdom as well as simple justice.

After the negro has used his vote as honestly and intelligently as
the average Northerner, and more bravely, shall we withdraw it be-
cause the caste prejudice that hates him and dreads it, lives "un-
harmoniously" in its sight? And surely it would be absurd and a
foul disgrace to' take it from him for the single reason that this pres-
ent Administration of our Government can not protect him in its
exercise! Would you break up a good locomotive merely because
one raw and blundering engineer proved himself incapable of run-
ning it?

Every man sees now what very few saw ten years ago (and I am
glad I was one of those few, ridiculed as we then were), that to en-
franchise the negro, without doing all the nation could to insure his
independence, was a wrong to him and disastrous to us.

Treason would have been punished by confiscating its landed
property. We all see now that magnanimity went as far as it safely
could when it granted the traitor his life. His land should have been
taken from him; and, before Andrew Johnson's treachery, every
traitor would have been only too glad to have been let off so easily:
that land should have been divided among the negroes, forty acres to
each family, and tools poor pay for the unpaid toil of six genera-
tions on that very soil. Mere emancipation without any compensa-
tion to the victim was pitiful atonement for ages of wrong. Planted
on his own land, sure of bread instead of being merely a wages-
slave the negro's suffrage would have been a very different experi-
ment.

Then, again, those States should have been held as Territories
(which United States authority could enter and rule directly, and
without troublesome questions) until a different mood of mind
among the whites, and the immigration of Northern men, wealth, and
ideas, made it safe to trust that section with State governments. In
his last years, the late Vice-President, Henry Wilson, confessed to
me that this was the great mistake in that national settlement. His
only excuse was, that the Republican party did not dare to risk any
other course in the face of Democratic opposition which only means
that the nation was not ready for the statesmanship the times de-
manded. But this surely was not the negro's fault, and he should
neither be blamed, nor visted with disfranchisement, because we were
unready, cowardly, and incompetent.

But there is no need even now of bating one jot of hope. The

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United States Government is amply able to protect its own citizens.
Put a man into the Executive chair, and there will be peace at the
South not, as now, the despot's peace, when "order reigns in War-
saw" but quiet homes, streets free from bloodshed, and each man
safe and unmolested while he exercises all a citizen's rights.

Mr. Elaine has made it clear that no right in this country is more
completely guaranteed than the negro's right to vote. It is hard to
imagine any eclipse of public honor so dark as to make his disfran-
chisement possible. But men who have seen the Dred Scott decision
and slave-hunts in Northern cities defended and welcomed by
journals and pulpits who have seen Webster bow his majestic fame,
and Clay try to barter his early good record for infamous success
may well hesitate to say that any baseness or sycophancy, in a matter
touching the negro, is impossible. The South will probably never, by
law, disfranchise the negro while she remains in the Union. But the
South does not (practically) disfranchise him now from petty spite.
It is a well-matured plan. She purposes to -rule this nation or break
it. In her present mood, union between her and the North is as
impossible as between Germany and France, or Austria and Italy.
Until Northern men, capital, and ideas, permeate the South, that
mood will perpetuate itself.

But right is stronger than wrong. Barbarism melts and crumbles
before civilization. The South can build no wall high enough, she
can enact no law bitter enough, to bar out the nineteenth century.
Even isolated Cuba has no tariff rigid enough to keep out justice.
The Indian, with right on his side, and so alert that he makes it cost
the United States one million dollars to kill an Indian in war, can
not resist the wave of civilization. Equally impotent is the South.
Whether under our flag, or outside of it, she will, in time, recognize
the laws of industrial civilization, and accept justice as a good bar-
gain, long before she is virtuous enough to see its righteousness.

Mr. Blair:

The negro ought to have been given the franchise if capable by
nature of exercising it. If not, it ought not to have been conferred,
and ought to be withdrawn. Hence the two questions presented are
but one in substance. It ought to surprise no one that this question is
likely to occupy the public attention again. The subject of the aboli-
tion of slavery occupied the public mind during many years, and was
thoroughly discussed before it was acted upon; and no one now denies
the wisdom of the decision made upon it. But the question of negro
suffrage was discussed very little before the people prior to its de-

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cision; and neither the Congress which proposed nor the Legisla-
ture which adopted the amendment were elected with reference to
the question. And this is equally true of the Congress which passed
the Reconstruction Act, by which negro suffrage was imposed upon
the Confederate States, and by which the adoption of both the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments was secured.

It is certainly proper for the people to reconsider a measure
adopted so precipitately for the purpose of enabling one section of
the country to hold the other in subjection, in violation of the Con-
stitution and of the fundamental principle of local self-government,
and which has never had the sanction even of the Northern people
in any form (for the power to accomplish it was obtained from them
by denying that any such action was contemplated).

Having been accomplished according to the forms of law, it is the
Constitution, and can only be revoked by observing the same forms;
but if negro suffrage is pernicious to the public welfare, degrades
suffrage, fosters corruption, defeats responsibility, strengthens the
money power, and endangers the liberty of the race which established
representative government, and so far alone has shown capacity to
maintain it, that capacity itself gives absolute assurance that it will
be revoked.

Nor will it be long before the subject may be properly considered.
The escape of the Southern States from the thralldom which negro
suffrage was devised to impose upon them has defeated the object
for which it was devised, and its authors now find that, instead of
being an instrument to perpetuate their power, it serves only to in-
crease that of their adversaries. They still clamor about outrages
upon it; but this is only to arouse the jealousy of the North to con-
solidate it against the power they have strengthened at the South.
If defeated in this, the sectional issue will be eliminated from our
politics, and the subject of negro suffrage will cease to have any re-
lation to sectional power and national politics, and will probably be
allowed to be considered upon its merits by the communities affected
by it. In that event, the only advocates of negro suffrage will be the
representatives of the planters and other possessors of wealth, who
will control their labor and their votes. They alone will have any
political interest to promote by maintaining it.

Our fathers, North and South, were all emancipationists, and re-
fuse to put the word "slave" in the Constitution, not wishing a trace
of it to appear in that instrument; but not a man among them con-
templated making the negro a voter. Mr. Jefferson, who predicted
that slavery would go out in blood unless provision was made for

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emancipation, saw also that the races could not live together as
equals. "Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate," he
said, "than that these people are to be free; nor is it less certain that
the two races, equally free, can not live in the same government.
Nature, habit, opinion, have drawn indelible lines of distinction be-
tween them. It is still in our power to direct the process of emanci-
pation and deportation, and in such slow degree as that the evil will
wear off insensibly, and their place be filled up, pan passu, by free
white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human
nature must shudder at the prospect held up." Prior to the war,
Jefferson was the recognized exponent of the true principles of our
Government, in theory and practice. He had extinguished the op-
posing party, and every succeeding Administration professed to be
guided by his principles. And his counsel would have been followed
with respect to slavery, as it had been upon other important subjects,
but that a new prophet arose in the South, who-, by firing the hearts
of its politicians with a fatal ambition in connection with it, so
changed the morale of Jefferson's party as to make slavery its most
powerful element, and his teachings on the subject to be pronounced
"folly and delusion"; and slavery, instead of being "a moral and
political evil," as he taught, and as hitherto universally held at the
South, became "the most safe and stable basis for free government
in the world." We know the result.

Is there any better reason for accepting the new revelation, de-
claring it to be "folly and delusion" to say that Nature has drawn
such indelible lines of distinction between the black and white races
that they can not live as equals in the same government, if that gov-
ernment is to be a free government? It was inspired by the lust of
sectional power, and relies for success upon the triumph of military
over civil institutions. It was established in violation of the Constitu-
tion. More than half the white people were disfranchised, and all
their leading men, and the blacks, numbering 4,000,000, were given
more votes than the whites, numbering about 8,000,000 the official
returns of registration in nine of the States giving the blacks 631,746
votes, and the whites 585,769. General Grant, under whose direction
the work was done, reported that the combined negro vote was indis-
pensable; that the negroes were incapable of making that combination
of themselves; and that the whites sent there from the North to di-
rect that combination could not remain there for that purpose unless
supported by the army. The military became the governing power.
The part of the negro was that of "dummy" in the game. They were

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beaten at all points without regard to numbers, except where the
military and United States deputy-marshals took charge and voted
them. Negro suffrage has, in fact, never existed. It has been only
an expensive process of registering and supervision by the military
to have pieces of paper put in their hands and deposited as directed
by the white men sent down to combine and lead them.

These were, necessarily, persons of the worst class; and the result
was the most disgraceful chapter in our history. The votes of the
blacks, which made the Republican candidate President, installed
these harpies in the government of the States; they loaded the States
with $200,000,000 of debt, while exacting the most exorbitant taxes
from the impoverished people, and gave entire immunity to crime.
The demoralization thus infused into our system infected the Federal
Government. The enormous expenditure during Grant's two terms
being, exclusive of all payments growing out of the war, greater than
the expenditure from 1789 to 1861, including that on account of the
war of 1812, the Algerian war, the Mexican war, all our Indian
wars, and the purchase money of Louisiana and Florida is trace-
able to the irresponsible government thus established. And so is the
corruption which has pervaded the Government, not yet fully ex-
posed, but which the whisky ring, the Indian ring, and the multi-
tude of similar blotches accidentally brought to the surface show
to have permeated all departments.

The British Government learned from the American Revolution
what, in their eagerness for power, our Republican politicians lost
sight of that it was "neither possible nor desirable" to govern the
English-speaking race against their will. And hence, instead of sup-
pressing representative government in Canada after the rebellion, as
our rulers did in the South, Earl Grey, in his instructions to Lord
Elgin, the Governor-General, said that "it could not be too distinctly
understood that it is neither possible nor desirable to carry on the
government of any of the British Provinces in North America in op-
position to the opinion of its inhabitants." To shame the great Re-
public and to foment discord in it, the blacks in Jamaica were also
enfranchised to elect a Parliament, while all the workingmen in Eng-
land were denied that privilege; but the incapacity of the negro for
that function was so fully demonstrated that it had to be withdrawn.
This fact ought to silence those among us who, for mere party ob-
jects, have lately echoed the ruling class in England in attributing the
universal repugnance of our people, North and South, before the
war, to mere pride of race. Having tried the experiment themselves

270 THE RECONSTRUCTION

where there was no race conflict, and found it a lamentable failure,
they have themselves vindicated the wisdom of our fathers and the
good sense of our people.

Many honest and true men have been persuaded that it was neces-
sary to give the ballot to the negro to secure him his freedom. They
assumed that he could acquire the knowledge and character which
qualified him to use it. Knowledge sufficient he might acquire, but
not the independence and the self-reliance. It was for want of these
qualities that he was for centuries an hereditary bondman in America,
and did not himself strike the blow which made him free. Indeed,
aE the acts passed to make him a voter, from the Reconstruction to
the Enforcement Act, and all the speeches of their advocates, rec-
ognize his want of every essential quality of a voter by treating him
as not fit to be the master but only to be the ward of the Government.
On this theory the Freedman's Bureau was established to remove
him from the influence of the white race, General Grant empowered
to sustain the men sent to mass them against the white people, and
for this reason it is assumed that the Republicans can not be legally
beaten where the negroes are in the majority. The Republicans knew
that the race which takes so largely the direction of public affairs of
this continent would control the negro unless the Government inter-
posed to prevent it. And the recovery of political power in all the
Southern States, in spite of this interposition, shows that he is more
feeble than he was accounted.

And the fact that Wade Hampton had five thousand blacks, uni-
formed with red shirts, marching in procession during his canvass
for Governor in 1876, received all the votes for that office in 1878,
and all but two for Senator in 1879, will satisfy any mind open to
the truth that this is not due to intimidation.

Hampton is the type of a class to whom the negro naturally gives
fealty; and enfranchisement will, for a time at least, be a grant of vast
political power to them when the Northern politicians shall dis-
continue the attempt to use him as the instrument of their power,
and make it possible for the local politicians to avail themselves of
his aid. Hampton, the boldest of this class, long ago avowed his
pleasure at the grant, and has availed himself of it. Others will soon
follow his example.

As it is manifested that, as followers of this class, the negro can
be better protected than as the instrument of Northern dominion over
the people of the South, it ought to be the policy of all who have
any true feeling for him to discountenance the new crusade which the
Northern politicians are preparing to preach in 1880. But while

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under the guidance of a class of leaders who are responsible to public
opinion, they could be trained, if it were possible to train them all, to
the exercise of government, no such result can be expected. It would
be as reasonable to expect them to develop wings by training. The
negro is not a self-governing nature. He is of the tropics, where, as
Montesquieu observes, despotism has prevailed in all ages. His nature,
of which this form of Government is the outgrowth, is not changed
by transplanting, more than that of the orange or the banana. Hence
to incorporate him in our system is to subvert it. His nominal en-
franchisement is but a mode of disfranchising the white man, and
makes them equals indeed, but only as the subjects of irresponsible
power. For this reason Mr. Jefferson believed it would not be sub-
mitted to. We have seen that he understood the American people
better than Mr. Calhoun. It remains to be seen whether lie knew them
better than Mr. Thaddeus Stevens.

Mr. Hendricks:

The editor of The North American Review has asked me to ex-
press some views upon Mr. Elaine's article on the questions, "Ought
the Negro to be disfranchised? Ought he to have been enfranchised?"
and also my views upon the questions themselves. It is almost im-
possible for me to comply with this request. I am in Washington for
a few days only, and my engagements will not allow me to attempt a
review of Mr. Elaine's article. Upon the two questions I can only ex-
press my opinions, without much argument or illustration.

It is not yet ten years since the right to vote was conferred upon
the negro by constitutional provision. That period is too short to
allow such test of the wisdom of the measure as would justify its
abrogation. The constitutional amendment is suppose to have been
the deliberate and well-considered act of the people. It must not be
regarded as an ordinary legislative measure, to be repealed or modi-
fied "for light and transient cause." To make such a change of the
Constitution because an election in one section of the country has not
resulted as some might have desired or expected, is to treat the most
solemn act of the people with contempt, and to weaken the force and
impair the authority of the Constitution itself. Opposition to negro
enfranchisement ten years ago does not now require an effort to strike
the Fifteenth Amendment from the Constitution. Any provision of the
Constitution should be regarded as fixed and permanent, and not to
be disturbed, except upon the test of such experience as would justify
a change of Government itself, because of great and permanent evils.
It was not reasonable to suppose that the two races would at once

272 THE RECONSTRUCTION

and without discord adjust themselves to the new relations prescribed
and fixed by the constitutional amendments. In the establishment of
civil and political changes so radical and extended, strife and dis-
cord for a time were inevitable.

The experiment by which the negro is now Being judged has not
been a fair one. When enfranchised, he was made to feel that he
owed servitude to a party; through the agency of United States
officials and of the Freedmen's Bureau, and by means of secret
leagues, the entire negro vote was consolidated into a party inspired
by a distrust of, if not hostility to, the white race. The color line was
distinctly drawn. They were taught to distrust every suggestion made
lay their former masters for their political welfare, and to give their
utmost confidence and support to a class of men who most un-
scrupulously used the power so acquired to promote their own
selfish ends. The result was the introduction in many Southern States
of the most objectionable practices. Bribery and corruption fastened
themselves upon the public service. The State governments became
the worst possible. The increases of State indebtedness was frightful.
Taxation threatened to swallow up not only the earnings but also
the accumulations of the people. Men contemplated approaching
ruin with horror. Judged by these results, negro enfranchisement was
worse than a failure, it was a gigantic evil.

In that condition of the country, excesses and abuses did un-
questionably occur. No foresight, no patience, no policy could have
averted them. The fierceness of the struggle for better government
was necessarily proportioned to the enormities that were practiced
upon the people. The efforts of the people to promote their own
welfare soon passed from personal conflict, and neighborhood strug-
gle, to the adoption of measures and policies of safety and reform.
The colored people were appealed to. They were told that their own
welfare, as well as that of the white race, required economy and
reform; that the value of the products of their labor depended upon
measures that would reduce taxation. These appeals were heard and
heeded. In great numbers, by their influence and their votes, they
contributed to the changes in men and measures that experience has
shown were essential to the welfare of all classes, especially of pro-
ducers.

Perhaps in this connection it is proper to refer to the State of
South Carolina as an illustration. Next to that of Louisiana, her gov-
ernment was the worst, and the condition of her people the most
intolerable. Her present able Chief Executive, in his canvass for the
office, addressed the colored voters in the language of argument and

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of political appeal. [Hampton's] cause proved stronger than party
control. They came to his support. They contributed to his election.
Without their help, no change could have occurred. The reform that
followed was complete. The men who had ruled and ruined the
State, and who had oppressed all her industries, met their just pun-
ishment in prison, or sought safety in flight. Honesty took the place
of fraud, and economy displaced profligate expenditure. Judged by
such results, negro enfranchisement is not altogether a failure. The
results in Georgia are equally instructive. The evil influences that
controlled the negro vote in other localities were never so strong in
that State; and at an earlier day legitimate and good authority pre-
vailed. A beautiful illustration of the harmony that has come to exist
between the races occurred in one of the cities of that State but a
week since. The negro vote had contributed to the election of an
able Representative in Congress. He died, and, when his remains
were taken home for interment, they who had helped to elect helped
also to bury him. They appeared in the funeral procession in or-
ganized companies of the militia, in full uniform, and carrying the
arms of the State. At the polls and at the grave the races united in
the expression of confidence, and in tributes of respect toward one
whose family was connected with the history of the State. It is a
pleasing reflection that when thus restored to its proper condition
society has become relieved, in a great degree, of the strife and
bloodshed that attended the government of the people of the States
by outside power.

It is but recently that we have heard the demand for the with-
drawal of the right to vote from the negro, and for a reduction of
the representation allowed to the Southern States. The demand comes
only from those who relied upon their power to control him as a
political machine. It can not be said that his late independent action
in harmony with that of the white people is wrong. Beyond dispute,
it was well for all the people of South Carolina, both white and black,
and for the people of the whole country, that Governor Hampton
was successful, and that the corrupt power was overthrown. Peace
is assured. Labor is secure and encouraged. Calmly, quietly, and in-
telligently a large body of the negroes have joined the whites to
correct intolerable evils. This was fully and well stated by a late
colored United States Senator from Mississippi, in a letter written
to the President shortly after the bad government had been over-
thrown in that State. The "Solid South" is the result of the union
and harmony of the races, and of their united effort for economy
and reform.

274 THE RECONSTRUCTION

I am not able to see why the subject of negro suffrage should
be discussed. It must be known to all that the late amendments will
not be, can not be, repealed. There is but the duty upon all to make
the political power now held by the enfranchised race the cause
of the least evil, and of the greatest possible good, to the country.
The negro is now free, and is the equal of the white man in respect
to his civil and political rights. He must now make his own contest
for position and power. By Ms own conduct and success he will be
judged. It will be unfortunate for him If he shall rely upon political
sympathy for position, rather than upon duties well and Intelligently
discharged. Everywhere the white race should help him, but his re-
liance must mainly be upon himself.

Conclusion Mr. Elaine:

At the instance of the Editor of The North American Review,
and not by request or desire of mine, the brief article which I wrote
in regard to negro suffrage was submitted to the gentlemen who have
replied to it, and in turn their articles have been submitted to me. I
have now the privilege of rejoinder, and the whole series of papers
thus assumes the phase of a connected discussion.

With the exception of Mr. Wendell Phillips and General Garfield,
the replies are from gentlemen identified with the Democratic party,
and distinguished and influential in its councils. General Garfield is
a Republican, and has taken prominent and honorable part in all
the legislation respecting negro suffrage. His views are so in harmony
with my own that nothing is left me but to commend his admirable
statement of the case. Mr. Phillips is neither a Republican nor a
Democrat, but reserves to himself the right a right most freely
exercised to criticise and condemn either party with unsparing
severity, generally bestowing his most caustic denunciation upon
the party to which he most inclines. It is by this sign that we feel
occasionally comforted with the reflection that Mr. Phillips still has
sympathies with the Republican party, and still indulges aspirations
for its ultimate success.

The arraignment of the Republicans at this late day by Mr.
Phillips, because they did not reduce the Confederate States to Ter-
ritories and govern them by direct exercise of Federal power, is
causeless and unjust; and it can not certainly influence the judgment
of any man whose memory goes back to 1866-67. For I assume that
if anything, not capable of demonstration, is yet an absolute cer-
tainty, it is that such an attempt by the Republican party would have
led to its utter overthrow at the initial point of reconstruction policy.

THE RECONSTRUCTION #75

The overthrow of the Republican party at that time would have re-
stored the Confederate States to full power IB the Union without the
imposition of a single condition, without the exaction of a single
guarantee. All the inestimable provisions of the Fourteenth Amend-
ment would have been lost: its broad and comprehensive basis of
citizenship; its clauses regulating representation in Congress and
coercing the States into granting suffrage to the negro; its guarantee
of the validity of the war debt of the Union and of pensions to its
soldiers and their widows and orphans; its inhibition of any tax by
General or State Governments for debts incurred in aid of the re-
bellion or for the emancipation of any slave! These great achieve-
ments for liberty, in addition to the Fifteenth Amendment, would
have been put to hazard and probably lost, could Mr. Phillips have
had Ms way, in a vain struggle to reduce eleven States four of them
belonging to the original thirteen to the condition of Territories;
thus committing the General Government to a policy as arbitrary and
as sure to lead to corruption and tyranny as the proconsular system
of Rome.

And as if the territorial policy were not enough to have destroyed
the Republican party at that time, Mr. Phillips would have plunged
us into the wild, visionary, and unconstitutional scheme of confiscat-
ing the land of the rebels and giving it to the freedmen. Confisca-
tions laws were passed by Congress during the hottest period of the
war; but even then, when passions were at the highest, no enactment
was proposed which did not recognize the express limitation of the
Constitution that in punishing treason there should be no "forfeiture
except during the life of the person attainted." The Republican party
has been flippantly accused by its opponents of disregarding the
constitution, but I venture to say that there is no parallel in the
world to so strict an observance of written law during a critical
and mighty war as was shown by the Republicans throughout the
protracted and bloody struggle that involved the fate of free govern-
ment on this continent. It is impossible, therefore, that the Re-
publican party could have adopted the policy which Mr. Phillips
commends; and impossible that it could have succeeded if the attempt
had been made.

Of the replies made by the other gentlemen, identified as they
have been and are with the Democratic party, it is noteworthy that,
with the exception of Mr. Blair, they agree that the negro ought not
to be disfranchised. As all of these gentlemen were hostile to the
enfranchisement of the race, their present position must be taken
as a great step forward, and as an attestation of the wisdom and

276 THE RECONSTRUCTION

courage of the Republican party at the time they were violently
opposing its measures. This general expression leaves Mr. Blair to
be treated as an exception, and for many of his averments the best
answer is to be found in the suggestions and concessions of Ms
Democratic associates. I need not make an elaborate reply to Mr.
Blair, when he is answered with such significance and such point by
those of his own political household. It is one of the curious
developments of political history that a man who sat in the cabinet
of Abraham Lincoln and was present when Emancipation was
decreed should live to write a paper against the enfranchisement
of the negro, when the Vice-President of the Rebel Confederacy and
two of its most distinguished officers, are taking the other side!

Of Governor Hampton's paper it is fair to say that it seems to
have been written to cover a case, its theory and application being
adapted to the latitude of South Carolina, and to his own political
course. Mr. Hampton is a man of strong parts, possessing courage
and executive force, but he has been in the thick of the fight, and
has had personal ambitions to gratify which may not place him in
history as an impartial witness. His personality protrudes at every
point, and his conception of what should be done and what should be
undone at the South is precisely what is included in his own career.
When Mirabeau was describing all the great qualities that should
distinguish a popular leader, the keenest of French wits said he "had
forgotten to add that he should be pockmarked."

Mr. Lamar offers a contrast to Governor Hampton. He generalizes
and philosophizes with great ability, and presents the strange com-
bination of a "refined speculatist," and a trustful optimist em-
bodying some of the characteristics of Mr. Calhoun whom he
devoutly followed, and of Mr. Seward, whom he always opposed. Mr.
Lamar is the only man in public life who can be praised in New
England for a warm eulogy of Charles Sumner, and immediately
afterward elected to the Senate as the representative of the white-line
Democrats of Mississippi. And yet, inconsistent as these positions
are, it is the dream of Mr. Lamar's life to reconcile them. He
is intensely devoted to the South; he has generous aspiration for
the Union of the States; he is shackled with the narrowing dogma of
State rights, and yet withal has boundless hopes for an imperial
republic whose power shall lead and direct the civilization of the
world. Hedged in by opposing theories, embarrassed by forces that
seem irreconcilable, Mr. Lamar, probably more than any other man
of the Democratic party, gives anxious and inquiring thought to the
future.

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Of Mr. Stephens and Mr. Hendricks it may be said that in their
treatment of the question, one aims to vindicate the course of Ms
native Georgia; the other to gain some advantage for the Democratic
party of the nation. Mr. Stephens has the mind of a metaphysician,
led astray sometimes in his logic and sometimes in his facts, but
aiming always to promote the interest of the State to which he is
devoted. Mr. Hendricks is an accomplished political leader, with
large experience, possessed of tact and address, and instinctively
viewing every public question from its relation to the fate and
fortune of Ms party. Mr. Stephens argues from the standpoint of
Georgia; Mr. Hendricks has in view the Democracy of the nation.

These Democratic leaders unite in upholding the suffrage of the
negro under existing circumstances, but each with an obvious feeling
that some contradiction is to be reconciled, some record to be
amended, some consistency to be vindicated. They all unite, however,
on the common ground of denouncing the men who controlled the
negro vote at the outset in the interest of the Republican party; and
the underlying conclusion, not expressed but implied, is that if the
military force had been absent and the persuasion of the Freedmen's
Bureau had not been applied, the negroes would have flocked, as
doves to their windows, to the outstretched and protecting arms of the
Democratic party. TMs seems to me to be sheer recklessness of
assumption; the very bravado of arguement Why should the negro
have been disposed to vote with the Democratic party? Mr. Hendricks
says he was made to feel that "he owed servitude to a party through
the agency of the United States officials and the Freedmen's Bureau."
But can Mr. Hendricks give any possible reason why the negro should
have voted with the Democratic party at that time? Does not the
record of Mr. Hendricks himself as the leader of the Democratic
party in the Senate show the most conclusive reasons why the negro
should have voted with the Republicans?

Mr. Hendricks argued and voted in the Senate against emanci-
pating the negro from helpless slavery; when made free, Mr.
Hendricks argued and voted against making him a citizen; citizensMp
conferred, Mr. Hendricks argued and voted against bestowing suf-
frage; and he argued and voted against conferring upon the negro
the most ordinary civil rights, even inveighing in the Senate against
giving to colored men who were eligible to seats in Congress the
simple privilege of a seat in the horse-cars of Washington in common
with white men. Conceding to the negro the ordinary instincts and
prejudices of human nature, it must have required the combined and
energetic action of the United States army, die Federal officers, and

278 THE RECONSTRUCTION

the Freedmen's Bureau, to hold him back from his impulsive and
irrepressible desire to vote with Mr. Hendricks and the Democratic
party!

I do not use this argumentum ad hominem in any personal or
offensive sense toward Mr. Hendricks. His position was not differ-
ent from his associates and his followers in the Democratic party
on all the questions where I have referred to his votes and his
speeches. Mr. Lamar occupied the same ground practically, and so
did Mr. Stephens and Governor Hampton. Indeed, the entire Demo-
cratic party opposed legislation for the amelioration of the negro's
condition at every step, and opposed it not with the mere registry
of negative votes, but with an energetic hostility that too often
assumed the phase of anger and acrimony. Emancipation from
slavery, grant of citizenship and civil rights, conferring of suffrage,
were all carried for the negro by the Republicans against a protesting
and resisting Democracy. Democratic Senators and Representatives
in Congress fought all these measures with unflagging zeal. In State
Legislatures, on the stump, in the partisan press, through all the
agencies that influence and direct public opinion, the Democrats
showed implacable hostility to each and every step that was taken
toward elevating the negro to a better condition. So that it was
inevitable that the negro who had sense enough to feel that he was
free, who had perception enough to know that he was a citizen,
who had pride enough to realize that he was a voter, felt and knew
and realized that these great enfranchisements had been conferred
upon him by the persistent energy of the Republican party, and in
spite of the efforts of an embittered and united Democracy. Is
further statement necessary to explain why the negro should have cast
his vote for the Republican party when a free ballot was in his hands?
It can be readily understood why he may now cast a vote for the
Democratic party when he is no longer allowed freedom of choice,
when he is no longer master of his own ballot.

It must be borne in mind that the Republicans were urged and
hastened to measures of amelioration for the negro by very dangerous
developments in the Southern States looking to his re-enslavement,
in fact if not in form. The year that followed the accession of
Andrew Johnson to the Presidency was full of anxiety and of warning
to all the lovers of justice, to all who hoped for "a more perfect
Union" of the States. In nearly every one of the Confederate States
the white inhabitants assumed that they were to be restored to the
Union with their State governments precisely as they were when they
seceded in 1861, and that the organic change created by the

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Thirteenth Amendment might be practically set aside by State legisla-
tion. In this belief they exhibited their policy toward the negro.
Considering all the circumstances, it would be hard to find in history
a more causeless and cruel oppression of a whole race than was
embodied in the legislation of those revived and unreconstructed
State governments. Their membership was composed wholly of the
"ruling class," as they termed it, and in no small degree of
Confederate officers below the rank of brigadier-general, who sat in
the Legislature in the very uniforms which had distinguished them as
enemies of the Union upon the battle-field. Limited space forbids
my transcribing the black code wherewith they loaded their statute-
books. In Mr. Lamar's State the negroes were forbidden, under very
severe penalties, "to keep firearms of any kind"; they were appren-
ticed, if minors, to labor; preference being given by the statute to
their "former owners." Grown men and women were compelled to
let their labor by contract, the decision of whose terms was wholly
in the hands of the whites; and those who failed to contract were
to be seized as "vagrants," heavily fined, and their labor sold by the
sheriff at public outcry to the highest bidder. The terms "master"
and "mistress" continually recur in the statutes, and the slavery that
was thus instituted was a far more degrading, merciless, and
mercenary type than that which was blotted out by the Thirteenth
Amendment.

South Carolina, whose moderation and justice are so Mghly
praised by Governor Hampton, enacted a code still more cruel than
that I have quoted from Mississippi. Firearms were forbidden to
the negro, and any violation of the statute was punished by "a fine
equal to twice the value of the weapon so unlawfully kept," and,
"if that be not immediately paid, by corporeal punishment." It was
further provided that "no person of color shall pursue or practice
the art, trade, or business of an artisan, mechanic, or shopkeeper,
or any other trade or employment (besides that of husbandry or that
of a servant under contract for labor) until he shall have obtained
a license from the Judge of the District Court, which license shall
be good for one year only." If the license was granted to the negro
to be a shopkeeper or peddler, he was compelled to pay one
hundred dollars per annum for it, and if he pursued the rudest
mechanical calling he could do so only by the payment of a license
fee of ten dollars per annum. No such fees were exacted of the
whites, and no such fee of free blacks during the era of slavery.
The negro was thus hedged in on all sides; he was down and he
was to be kept down, and the chivalric race that denied him a fair

280 THE RECONSTRUCTION

and honest competition in the humblest mechanical pursuits were
loud In their assertions of his inferiority and his incompetency.

But it was reserved for Louisiana to outdo both South Carolina
and Mississippi in this horrible legislation. In that State all agricul-
tural laborers were compelled to make labor contracts during the
first ten days of January, for the next year. The contract once made,
the laborer was not to be allowed to leave his place of employment
during the year except upon conditions not likely to happen and
easily prevented. The master was allowed to make deductions of the
servants' wages for "injuries done to animals and agricultural imple-
ments committed to Ms care," thus making the negroes responsible for
wear and tear. Deductions were to be made for "bad or negligent
work," the master being the judge. For every act of "disobedience"
a fine of one dollar was imposed on the offender; disobedience being
a technical term made to include, besides "neglect of duty," and
"leaving home without permission," such fearful offenses as "im-
pudence," or "swearing," or "indecent language in the presence of
the employer, his family, or agent," or "quarreling or fighting with,
one another." The master or his agent might assail every ear with
profaneness aimed at the negro men, and outrage every sentiment
of decency in the foul language addressed to the negro women; but
if one of the helpless creatures, goaded to resistance and crazed under
tyranny, should answer back with impudence, or should relieve his
mind with an oath, or retort indecency upon indecency, he did so
at the cost to himself of one dollar for every outburst. The "agent"
referred to in the statute is the well-known overseer of the cotton
region, and the care with which the law-makers of Louisiana pro-
vided that his delicate ears and sensitive nerves should not be
offended with an oath or an indecent word from a negro will be
appreciated by all who have heard the crack of the whip on a
Southern plantation.

It is impossible to quote all the hideous provisions of these
statutes, under whose operation the negro would have relapsed
gradually and surely into actual and admitted slavery. Kindred
legislation was attempted in a large majority of the Confederate
States, and it is not uncharitable or illogical to assume that the
ultimate re-enslavement of the race was the fixed design of those
who framed the laws, and of those who attempted to enforce them.

I am not speculating as to what would have been done or might
have been done to the Southern States if the National Government
had not intervened. I have quoted what actually was done by
Legislatures under the control of Southern Democrats, and I am

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only recalling history when I say that those outrages against human
nature were upheld by the Democratic party of the country. All
the Democrats whose articles I am reviewing were in various de-
grees, active or passive, principal or endorser, parties to this legisla-
tion; and the fixed determination of the Republican party to thwart
it and destroy it called down upon its head all the anathemas of
Democratic wrath. But it was just at that point in our history when
the Republican party was compelled to decide whether the emanci-
pated slave should be protected by national power or handed over
to Ms late master to be dealt with in the spirit of the enactments I
have quoted.

To restore the Union on a safe foundation, to re-establish law
and promote order, to insure justice and equal rights to all, the
Republican party was forced to its Reconstruction policy. To hesi-
tate in its adoption was to invite and confirm the statutes of wrong
and cruelty to which I have referred. The first step taken was to
submit the Fourteenth Amendment, giving citizenship and civil
rights to the negro, and forbidding that he be counted in the basis
of representation unless he should be reckoned among the voters.
The Southern States could have been readily readmitted to all their
powers and privileges in the Union by accepting the Fourteenth
Amendment, the negro suffrage would not have been forced upon
them. The gradual and conservative method of training the negroes
for franchise, as suggested and approved by Governor Hampton,
had many advocates among Republicans in the North; and, though
in my judgment it would have proved delusive and impracticable,
it was quite within the power of the South to secure its adoption or
at least its trial.

But the States lately in insurrection rejected the Fourteenth
Amendment with apparent scorn and defiance. In the Legislatures
of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida, it did not receive a single
vote; in South Carolina only one vote; in Virginia only one; in Texas
five votes; in Arkansas two votes; in Alabama ten; in North Carolina
eleven; and in Georgia, where Mr. Stephens boasts that they gave
the negro suffrage in advance of the Fifteenth Amendment, only two
votes could be found in favor of making the negro even a citizen.
It would have been more candid in Mr. Stephens if he had stated
that it was the Legislature assembled under the Reconstruction Act
that gave suffrage to the negro in Georgia and that the unrecon-
structed Legislature, which had his endorsement and sympathies,
and which elected him to the United States Senate, not only refused
suffrage to the negro, but loaded him with grievous disabilities, and

282 THE RECONSTRUCTION

passed a criminal code of barbarous severity for Ms punishment.

It is necessary to a clear apprehension of the needful facts in
this discussion to remember events in the proper order of time.
The Fourteenth Amendment was submitted to the States June 13,
1866. In the autumn of that year, or very early in 1867, the
Legislatures of all the insurrectionary States except Tennessee had
rejected it. Thus and then the question was forced upon us, whether
the Congress of the United States, composed wholly of men who had
been loyal to the Government, or the Legislatures of the Rebel States,
composed wholly of men who had been disloyal to the Government,
should determine the basis on which their relations to the Union
should be resumed. In such a crisis the Republican party could not
hesitate: to halt, indeed, would have been an abandonment of the
principles on which the war had been fought; to surrender to the
rebel Legislatures would have been cowardly desertion of its loyal
friends, and a base betrayal of the Union cause.

And thus, in March, 1867, after and because of the rejection
of the Fourteenth Amendment by Southern Legislatures, Congress
passed the Reconstruction Act. This was the origin of negro suffrage.
The Southern whites knowingly and willfully brought it upon them-
selves. The Reconstruction Act would never have been demanded had
the Southern States accepted the Fourteenth Amendment in good
faith. But that amendment contained so many provisions demanded
by considerations of great national policy, that its adoption became
an absolute necessity. Those who controlled the Federal Government
would have been recreant to their plainest duty, had they permitted
the power of these States to be wielded by disloyal hands against
the measures deemed essential to the security of the Union. To have
destroyed the rebellion on the battle-field, and then permit it to
seize the power of eleven States and cry check on all changes in
the organic law necessary to prevent future rebellions, would have
been a weak and wicked conclusion to the grandest contest ever
waged for human rights and for constitutional liberty.

Negro suffrage being thus made a necessity by the obduracy of
those who were in control of the South, it became a subsequent
necessity to adopt the Fifteenth Amendment. Nothing could have
been more despicable than to use the negroes to secure the adoption
of the Fourteenth Amendment, and then leave them exposed to the
hazard of losing suffrage whenever those who had attempted to re-
enslave them should regain political power in their States. Hence
the Fifteenth Amendment which never pretended to guarantee
universal suffrage, but simply forbade that any man should lose his

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vote because he had once been a slave, or because his face might be
black, or because his remote ancestors came from Africa.

It is matter of sincere congratulation that, after all the contests
of the past thirteen years, four eminent leaders of the Democratic
party should unit in approving negro suffrage. I will not venture
to suggest that this Democratic harmony on the Republican side of
a long contest has been developed just at the time when many causes
have conspired to render negro suffrage in the South powerless
against the Democratic party. Even in districts where the negro vote
is four to one, compared with the whites, the Democrats readily elect
the Representatives to Congress. I do not recall any warm approval
of negro suffrage by a Democratic leader so long as the negro was
able to elect one of his own race or a white Republican. But when
his numbers have been overborne by violence, when Ms white friends
have been driven into exile, when murder has been just frequent
enough to intimidate the voting majority, and when negro suffrage
as a political power has been destroyed, we find leading minds in
the Democratic party applauding and upholding it. So lately as
February 19, 1872, years after negro suffrage was adopted and while
it was still a power in the Southern States, such influential and
prominent Democrats as Mr. Bayard, of Delaware, and Mr. Beck,
of Kentucky, united in an official report to Congress, wherein they
declared, regarding negro suffrage, that "there can be no permanent
partition of power nor any peaceable joint exercise of power among
such discordant bodies of men. One or the other must have all or
none. . . . "Pseudo-philanthropists," continued Mr. Bayard and Mr.
Beck, "may talk ever so loudly about 'equality before the law,'
where equality is not found in the great natural law of race
ordained by the Creator." Mr. Beck and Mr. Bayard made this
report when fresh from protracted intercourse with Southern Demo-
cratic leaders, and it will not be denied that in their expressions they
fully represented the opinions of their party at that time. Will it be
offensive, if I again ask, what has changed the views of Democrats
except the overthrow of free suffrage? So long as the negro can
furnish thirty-five Representatives and thirty-five Electors to the
South, his suffrage will be upheld in name, and so long as the Demo-
cratic party is dominant it will be destroyed in fact.

Mr. Hendricks is a conspicuous convert. The negro is washed
and made white in his eyes as soon as he votes the Democratic ticket.
He is greatly affected by the fact that negroes "helped to bury a
Democratic Congressman whom they had helped to elect." In this
simple incident Mr. Hendricks finds great evidence of restored

284 THE RECONSTRUCTION

kindliness between the races. Was there ever a time when the colored
people refused to show respect to the whites, living or dead? The
evidence would have been stronger if an instance had been quoted
of white men paying respect to a deceased negro. But, unhappily,
if funeral incidents are to be cited, Mr. Hendricks will find more
than he cares to quote. Almost at the moment of his writing,
testimony was given before a Senate Committee in Louisiana not
only of the murder of two negroes for the sin of being Republicans,
but of their being left without sepulture, and actually devoured by
hogs on the highway! Their remains the phrase is doubly significant
in this case were finally covered with earth by some negro women,
the negro men having all fled from their white persecutors.

Mr. Hendrick's high praise of the government of South Carolina
and Louisiana, since they fell under Democratic control, is not justi-
fied by the facts. Where he speaks of Republicans connected with
the government of South Carolina "meeting their punishment in
prison and seeking their safety in flight," he provokes an easy
retort. One of these men, an ex-Congressman, was sent to prison
on disgracefully insufficient evidence, the Judge delivering a bitter
partisan harangue when he charged the jury to convict. Governor
Hampton, to his credit be it said, pardoned him, and it would have
been still more to his credit had he pardoned him more promptly.
In another case the Executive of a great Commonwealth refused
Governor Hampton's requisition, on the ground that the man was
not wanted for the cause and the crime alleged. These criminal
charges have in many cases borne the appearance of mere political
persecutions, in which the victims are not the persons most dis-
honored.

On the other hand, when South Carolinians by the hundred were
indicted for interfering with the freedom of elections in killing
negroes by the score, it was found impossible to convict one of
them. Against the clearest and most overwhelming evidence, these
murderers were allowed to go free, and the prosecutions were aban-
doned. South Carolina courts appear to be "organized to convict"
when a Republican is on trial, and South Carolina juries impaneled
to acquit when Democrats are charged with crime.

In the opinion of Mr. Hendricks, Louisiana under Republican
control was the very worst of all the Southern governments. A
change was made in April, 1877, and since then the Democratic
party has held undisputed power in that State. When the Republicans
surrendered the State there was a surplus of $300,000 in its treasury;
taxes were collected, credit maintained, and interest on its public

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securities promptly and faithfully paid. To-day, after twenty-one
months of Democratic government, according to public and undented
report, the State is bankrupt; its taxes uncollected; its treasury empty;
nearly half a million overdrawn on its fiscal agent; the interest
on its public debt unpaid, and its most sacred obligations protested
and dishonored. Had such decadence happened in a State under
Republican rule succeeding a prosperous Democratic administra-
tion the denunciations of Mr. Hendricks might have been fittingly
applied.

My conclusions on the topic under discussion are:

First. Slavery having been constitutionally abolished by the adop-
tion of the Thirteenth Amendment, the question of suffrage was
unsettled. But it may be safely affirmed that the Republicans had
no original design of interfering with the control which the States
had always exercised on that question.

Second. The loyal men who had conducted the war to a victorious
end were not willing that those who had rebelled against the Union
should come back with political power vastly increased beyond that
which they had wielded in the days of pro-slavery domination; and
hence they proposed the Fourteenth Amendment, practically basing
representation in Congress upon the voting population the same
for North and South.

Third. Instead of accepting the Fourteenth Amendment, the in-
surrectionary States scornfully rejected it, and claimed the right to
settle for themselves the terms on which they would resume rela-
tions with the Union. And they forthwith proceeded to nullify the
Thirteenth Amendment by adopting a series of black laws which
remanded the negro to a worse servitude than that from which he had
been emancipated.

Fourth. When the Government, administered by loyal hands,
found it impossible to secure the necessary guarantees for future
safety from the "ruling" or rebel class of the South, they demanded
and enforced a Reconstruction in which loyalty should assert its
rights. Hence the negro was admitted to suffrage.

Fifth. The negro having aided by loyal votes in securing the
great guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Republicans

286 THE RECONSTRUCTION

declared that lie should not afterward be deprived of suffrage on
account of race or color. Hence the Fifteenth Amendment.

Sixth. So long as the negro vote was effective in the South in
defeating the Democracy, the leaders of that party denounced and
opposed it. They withdraw their opposition just at the moment
when, by fraud, intimidation, violence, and murder, free suffrage
on the part of the negro in the South is fatally impaired; by which
I mean that the negro is not allowed to vote freely where his vote
can defeat and elect. As a majority voter in Democratic districts he
is not disturbed.

Seventh. The answer so often made, that, compared with the
whole number of Congressional districts in the South, only a small
number are disturbed, is not apposite, and does not convey the truth.
For it is only in the districts where the negroes make a strong and
united effort that violence is needed, and there it is generally found.
Thus it is said that only in a comparatively few parishes of Louisiana
was there any disturbance at the late election. But the Democrats
contrived to have a disturbance at the points where it was necessary
to overcome a large Republican vote, and of course had none where
there was no resistance. It will generally be found that the violence
occurs in the districts where the Republicans have a rightful majority.

Eighth. As the matter stands, all violence in the South inures to
the benefit of one political party. And that party is counting upon
its accession to power and its rule over the country for a series of
years by reason of the great number of electoral votes which it wrong-
fully gains. Financial credit, commercial enterprises, manufacturing
industries, may all possibly pass under the control of the Democratic
party by reason of its unlawful seizure of political power in the South.
Our institutions have been tried by the fiery test of war, and have
survived. It remains to be seen whether the attempt to govern the
country by the power of a "Solid South," unlawfully consolidated,
can be successful.

No thoughtful man can consider these questions without deep
concern. The mighty power of a republic of fifty millions of people
with a continent for their possession can only be wielded per-
manently by being wielded honestly. In a fair and generous struggle
for partisan power let us not forget those issues and those ends
which are above party. Organized wrong will ultimately be met
by organized resistance. The sensitive and dangerous point is ir
the casting and the counting of free ballots. Impartial suffrage

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our theory. It must become our practice. Any party of American
citizens can bear to be defeated. No party of American citizens
can bear to be defrauded. The men who are interested in a dishonest
count are units. The men who are interested in an honest count
are -millions. I wish to speak for the millions of aE political parties,
and in their name declare that the Republic must be strong enough,
and shall be strong enough to protect the weakest of its citizens
in all their rights. To this simple and sublime principle let us, in the
lofty language of Burke, ". . . attest the retiring generations, let us
attest the advancing generations, between which, as a link in the great
chain of eternal order, we stand!"

North American Review, Vol. CXXVIII, pp. 225-283.

. . . THE COMMON-SCHOOL SYSTEM HAS BECOME

A PART OF SOUTHERN LIFE, IS EVERYWHERE

ACCEPTED AS A NECESSITY. . .

Charles Dudley Warner, "The South Revisited"

There has been a great change in the aspect of the South and in
its sentiment within two years; or perhaps it would be more correct
to say that the change maturing for fifteen years is more apparent in
a period of comparative rest from race or sectional agitation. The
educational development is not more marvellous than the industrial,
and both are unparalleled in history. Let us begin by an illustration.

I stood one day before an assembly of four hundred pupils of a
colored college, but with a necessary preparatory department
children and well grown young women and men. The buildings are
fine, spacious, not inferior to the best modern educational buildings
either in architectural appearance or in interior furnishing, with
scientific apparatus, a library, the appliances approved by recent ex-
perience in teaching, with admirable methods and discipline, and an
accomplished corps of instructors. The scholars were neat, orderly,
intelligent in appearance. As I stood for a moment or two looking at

2 g8 THE RECONSTRUCTION

their bright expectant faces the profound significance of the spectacle
and the situation came over me, and I said: "I wonder if you know
what you are doing, if you realize what this .means. Here you are in
a school the equal of any of its grade in the land, with better methods
of instruction than prevailed anywhere when I was a boy, with the
gates of all knowledge opened as freely to you as to any youth in the
land here, in this State, where only about twenty years ago it was
a misdemeanor punishable with fine and imprisonment, to teach a
colored person to read and write. And I am brought here to see this
fine school, as one of the best things he can show me in the city, by
a Confederate colonel. Not in all history is there any instance of a
change like this in a quarter of a century, no, not in one nor in two
hundred years. It seems incredible."

This is one of the schools instituted and sustained by Northern
friends of the South; but while it exhibits the capacity of the colored
people for education, it is not so significant in the view we are now
taking of the New South as the public schools. Indeed, next to the
amazing industrial change in the South, nothing is so striking as the
interest and progress in the matter of public schools. In all the cities
we visited, the people were enthusiastic about their common schools.
It was a common remark, "I suppose we have one of the best school
systems in the country." There is a wholesome rivalry to have the
best. We found everywhere the graded system and the newest
methods of teaching in vogue. In many of the primary rooms in both
white and colored schools, when I asked if these little children knew
the alphabet when they came to school, the reply was "Not generally.
We prefer they should not; we use the new method of teaching
words." In many schools the youngest pupils were taught to read
music by sight, and to understand its notation by exercises on the
blackboard. In the higher classes generally, the instruction in arith-
metic, in reading, in geography, in history, and in literature was
wholly in the modem method. In some of the geography classes and
in the language classes I was reminded of the drill in the German
schools. In all the cities, as far as I could learn, the public money
was equally distributed to the colored and to the white schools, and
the number of schools bore a just proportion to the number of the
two races. When the town was equally divided in population, the
number of pupils in the colored schools were about the same as the
number in the white schools. There was this exception: though pro-
vision was made for a high-school to terminate the graded for both
colors, the number in the colored high-school department was usually
very small; and the reason given by colored and white teachers was

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that the colored children had not yet worked up to it. The colored
people prefer teachers of their own race, and they are quite generally
employed, but many of the colored schools have white teachers, and
generally, I think, with better results, although I saw many thor-
oughly good colored teachers, and one or two colored classes under
them that compared favorably with any white classes of the same
grade.

The great fact, however, is that the common-school system has be-
come a part of Southern life, is everywhere accepted as a necessity,
and usually money is freely voted to sustain it. But practically, as an
efficient factor in civilization, the system is yet undeveloped in the
country districts. I can only speak from personal observation of the
cities, but the universal testimony was that the common schools in
the country for both whites and blacks are poor. Three months'
schooling in the year is about the rule, and that of a slack and in-
ferior sort, under incompetent teachers. In some places the colored
people complain that ignorant teachers are put over them, who are
chosen simply on political considerations. More than one respectable
colored man told me that he would not send his children to such
schools, but combined with a few others to get them private instruc-
tion. The colored people are more dependent on public schools than
the whites, for while there are vast masses of colored people in city
and country who have neither the money nor the disposition to sustain
schools, in all the large places the whites are able to have excellent
private schools, and do have them. Scarcely anywhere can the col-
ored people as yet have a private school without white aid from
somewhere. At the present rate of progress, and even of the increase
of tax-paying ability, it must be a long time before the ignorant
masses, white and black, in the country districts, scattered over a
wide area, can have public schools at all efficient. The necessity is
great. The danger to the State of ignorance is more and more appre-
hended. And it is upon this that many of the best men of the South
base their urgent appeal for temporary aid from the Federal govern-
ment for public schools. It is seen that a state cannot soundly prosper
unless its laborers are to some degree intelligent. This opinion is
shown in little things. One of the great planters of the Yazoo Delta
told me that he used to have no end of trouble in settling with his
hands. But now that numbers of them can read and cipher, and ex-
plain the accounts to the others, he never has the least trouble. . . .

Harper's Magazine Dec., 1886, pp. 636-638.

2gt> THE RECONSTRUCTION

IT ALL HAD TO BE, ... , AND SO IT MUST BE

THERE IS A PROVIDENCE IN IT; IT MUST

BE FOR THE BEST IN SOME WAY.

INCIDENTS AND SKETCHES

Many of the negro schools are maintained under great disadvan-
tages and inconveniences, such as would be regarded as most dis-
couraging by white teachers in a Northern town. Here is an instance:
I saw two colored men at work in one room with a school in which
the average daily attendance for the winter was one hundred and
twenty-six. They had to conduct recitations at the same time in
opposite corners of the room. The house was open and very cold.
The teachers were obliged to furnish fuel, and to provide desks,
brooms, blackboards, and all other appliances at their own expense.
The school was free to the pupils, the salaries of the teachers being
paid for out of the public-school fund. The house in which the
school was maintained was owned by some Northern missionary or
aid society, and was held by colored trustees, living in the town
in which it was situated. They were too poor to repair or improve
the building, and the (white) public school officers would not
(perhaps could not under the law) appropriate anything for repairs
of the house, unless the colored people would surrender their title
to the property, which they declined to do. I think it would be well
for Northern missionary and freedman's-aid societies to continue
their interest in the colored teachers whom they have formerly aided
or employed in the Southern States.

It is very interesting to listen to the singing in the colored schools.
I several times heard many hundred children singing together the
old plantation and revival melodies, and other songs of their race.
Some of these are very peculiar and wonderful One hears every-
where a few rich and powerful voices, and the negro churches in
the larger towns have fine choirs. But the old negro music will soon
disappear. All the educated negro ministers discourage or forbid the
use of it among their people, and the strange, wild songs, whether
religious or not, are coming to be regarded as relics and badges of
the old conditions of slavery and heathenism, and the young men
and women are ashamed to sing them. Some of these pieces should
be carefully written out both words and music before they are
irrecoverably lost. They would always have interest and value as
characteristic expressions of the life of an era which has closed,

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the products of the native genius of a race of people under condi-
tions which can never be repeated.

The Atlantic Monthly July-December, 1882, pp. 478-479.

THE FORTUNES OF BLACK DEMOCRATS

In the "black counties" I often asked the principal negroes, "Are
any of your people democrats? Do they ever vote the democratic
ticket?" "Yes, sometimes, boss; a few of 'um, boss." "Well, how
do you like that?" "We don' like it boss." "But you can't do any-
thing about it?" "Can't do nothin' about it? Humph!" "Well, what
do you do?" "Hup 'um, boss." "Whip them! Who whips them?
White men?" "Oh, no. We 'tends to our own affairs." "But I thought
this was a free country now, and so every man had a right to vote
as he pleased." "We think our people has no right to vote agin
theirselves. If a man's sich a fool as to vote agin hisself, he ought
to be teached to have moah sense." "Then why not teach him, argue
with him, and explain things to him?" "Humph! Dey don' know
nothin' 'bout argimunce, and 'splainin' things. On'y way to teach a
nigger's wif a whip." Then often followed what was to me, at first,
a most extraordinary and surprising appeal to experience. Again and
again, in such conversations, negroes said to me, "When I was a
slave, boss, dat's 'e way I Famed to behave myself. Dey hupp'd
me, 'n 'it done me a heap o' good. 'Pears like I wouldn't think o'
nothin' 'less I's hupp'd sometimes. Den a man '11 'member." I con-
fess I did not quite know what to say to this, and as I had not gone
to the South to instruct anybody, but to hear what all kinds of
people would say, I made no reply.

In one of the larger towns I saw an energetic colored man, who,
soon after the war "de second yea' o' de surrender," to use Ms
own phrase had taken up the business of city expressman. He
soon had a good team, and carried trunks and parcels for all the
best families. To the astonishment of everybody, he at once became
a democrat. The negroes were furious. They determined to "run
him out," and one after another engaged in the same business, in
opposition. But he was a shrewd fellow. He knew the old-style peo-
ple at a glance, and would always take off his hat to them, and
call them "Mas'r" and "Mistis." When the cars came in, and ladies
got out, there he stood, in exactly the old plantation attitude. "Hyah

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I Is, Mistis," he would say, "jes' a-waitin' for yo' trunks." His rivals

had to yield the field, but they despised him as a renegade and a
traitor, because he "voted agin his own people." One day, as the
mayor of the town was escorting a distinguished Northern general
about the place, they happened to meet the negro expressman, and
the mayor said, "This fellow's a democrat, they say. Here, Jim, ex-
plain to the general your political views." Jim understood, and,
turning to the mayor, he replied, "You knows my political views
very well, mas'r. Has niggers got any trunks?"

The Atlantic Monthly July-December, 1882, pp. 480-481.

CIVIL RIGHTS

On most of the railroads in the South, the negroes were expected
and told to take a particular car in each train, and they usually did
so; but the rule did not appear to be strictly enforced. (Indeed, I
could not see that anything was done strictly in the South.) Well-
dressed negroes sometimes traveled in the same car with "first-class"
white people, ladies and gentlemen; and there were usually some
white people, poor whites or working folk, in the negro car. In
Norfolk, Virginia, the colored people were directed to a particular
gallery or part of the house at all lectures or public entertainments,
but I do not think they had been, of late forcibly prevented from
taking seats in the body of the house. In Richmond, Virginia, at
the time of my visit to that city, two young colored men bought
tickets for a public lecture, and attempted to enter the main audi-
ence room. The usher very courteously suggested that they would
find seats in the gallery. They objected, and asked, "Do you forbid
us to go into the best part of the hall?" "Not at all, gentlemen," he
replied. "On the contrary, I call every one present to witness that
I do not forbid you to go there. At the same time, I think you would
better go into the gallery." Just then the manager of the lecture
course came in, and the usher appealed to him. He smiled, and
passed the negroes into the principal auditorium, and they took
seats at one side and in the rear, where there would be nobody
near them.

If there had been a crowd, the manager would not have authorized

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them to go in; and if the negroes had insisted on seating themselves
among the white people, every body in that part of the hall would
have left it. Similar conditions and feelings appeared to prevail
everywhere in the South in regard to these matters. There was a
universal disposition on the part of the white people to avoid diffi-
culty and conflict with the colored people respecting their civil rights,
and the negroes were, in general, not disposed to contend for them.
But a few colored men are inclined to insist upon enjoying whatever
rightly belongs to them under the law, because they believe that any
concessions on the part of the black people, or surrender of their
legal rights, would invite and produce new injuries and oppressions.
It is likely that some degree of irritation will often result from the
attitude of the two races regarding this matter of the civil righs of
the negroes.

AMONG THE PEOPLE

I rode out on horseback, over the mountains from Huntsville,
Alabama, a dozen miles or more to see a cotton mill. At one point
I saw, near the road, a negro digging a post-hole, while two tall
white men directed his operations. I had been told that the negro
required supervision, and had thought that something might be said
in favor of the theory, but this seemed to be a somewhat extreme
application of it. A little farther on a young negro, perhaps twenty
years old, crossed the road just in advance of me, with books and
slate under his arm, evidently on his way to school. I called to him,
and asked Mm two or three questions designed to educe whatever
knowledge he might possess on points of interest to me. He answered
briefly, and then added, "But I hain't got much time fer to stand."
I was astounded, and could scarcely believe that I had heard aright.
Everybody that I had seen in the South before had seemed to have
unlimited time "fer to stan'," and this fellow's utterance had an
explosive and revolutionary sound. If I should hear of anything
noticeable being done in that region, I should suspect this boy of
having a hand in it. As I rode away, and looked at his energetic
movement across the fields, it occurred to me that if I should ever
write a book about the destiny of the colored race in this country I
should like to dedicate it to the negro who "hain't got much time
fer to stan'."

In various parts of the South I found a few negroes who own and
cultivate large farms, employing many laborers of their own race.
Men of this class are rarely hopeful about their people; they say

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they "know too much about them to expect any great things." They
always employ an overseer, paying him more than the other hands
receive. The negroes "will do no good," all such men say, without
somebody to oversee them and keep them at work. The overseer is
responsible for the amount and character of the work accomplished,
and if there is any failure, something is deducted from his pay. The
employer either furnishes all supplies for the maintenance of Ms
hands during the season, keeping an account and charging them with
whatever they obtain (or "take up," as the phrase is), or he au-
thorizes a merchant in the town to supply them, becoming respon-
sible to the extent of the wages of his men. Then, as I learned every-
where, the laborers try to obtain credit for "all that is coming to
them," and a little more. I looked at many of the account books
kept by these farmers, the records of their dealings with their work-
men. Many of the charges were for things which were for the negroes
to buy costly articles of dress for the women and luxuries for the
table. I often asked such employers why they did not give their
hands some advice about economy, and the use of their best judg-
ment regarding the selection of things most necessary and useful for
them when expending their money; but they always said it would
do no good. "Humph! Dey hain't got no judgments." I was in a coun-
try store one morning, when a negro woman came in and asked
for a dollar's worth of sugar. The merchant dipped out brown
sugar, but the woman objected and wanted white. The man remon-
strated with her for her extravagance, saying that he could not him-
self afford to use such things as she bought. She was greatly offended,
and retorted that such things might "do fuh free niggahs an' low-
down white folks. I 'lows my money jes' as good 's Gunnel Gah-
shom's money." The merchant remarked that she would probably
never come to his store again.

The negro farmers said that their hands nearly always "tuck up"
their wages faster than they earned them, and they often added such
observations as these. "A nigger will buy anything. You could sell
any man on my place a steamboat, or an elephant, or a circus band
wagon anything in the world if he had the money." One man,
who had a family, and was working for ten dollars per month "took
up" three dollars and eighty cents in a month for whiskey. Such
extravagance and lack of judgment as to what a laborer's family
needs or can afford to buy are very general among the negro laborers.

The Atlantic Monthly July-December, 1882, pp. 626-628.

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THE NEGRO VOTE TO BE QUIETLY NEUTRALIZED

The best and least objectionable method of counteracting these
evils, and of warding off the perils which thus threatened to engulf
the South in financial, social, and moral ruin, has seemed to South-
em men to be the obstruction or "management" for the time being
of the right of suffrage in the hands of the negroes. So the blacks
are in various ways hindered from voting the republican ticket, or
their vote is in some way, neutralized after it has been cast. This
may not be done at every election, but it has been done recently in
several parts of the South, and it is likely to be done again. What-
ever may have been true in former times, all the leading citizens of
the States I have named, democrats, and actors in the management
of the political power of the negroes, now appear to be sincerely
desirous of accomplishing this object the neutralization of the
negro vote without violence or bloodshed. I gave special attention
everywhere to this subject of political outrages, and I was unable
to find any evidence or indication whatever of such disturbances
having occurred during recent years, or of violence in connection
with politics in which white men were actors.

I investigated as thoroughly as possible several accounts of im-
portant outrages, which, during the last few years, had excited our
indignation in the North, and I found that the occurrences upon
which these accounts were based had taken place many years before,
in that almost mythical period of the first few years after the war,
about which it is now safe to say almost anything; that the story of
these events had been brought down to later times; and that, in some
instances, a single disturbance had been utilized as the basis of
stories of three or four separate outrages, located in different States.
About all these matters I learned something which interested me
much, and which I could not have understood so well by any other
means as by visiting the scene of the outrages, and talking with the
people of all classes about them.

Of course I cannot speak from direct observation or with positive
knowledge, and say that no disturbances or outrages had occurred
recently in connection with politics in the regions which I visited
last year. I mean merely that after talking with the people of all
parties and political sentiments and opinions, and especially with
the negroes everywhere the impression made upon my mind was
very strong that little or nothing of the kind had taken place for

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several years. What may have happened in out-of-the-way corners
or portions of the South I do not pretend to say, but I explored all
the great black districts.

THEIR REASONS

The feeling of the leading citizens of these Southern States, who
thus suppress the negro republican vote, and their reason for doing
it, appear to be simply that it is necessary; that it is the only means
known to them or available for preserving the life of the State. They
say, and seem to believe sincerely enough, that while the negro
vote is controlled by the unscrupulous politicians, who are now, for
the most part, the local leaders and managers of the republican
party in the States spoken of, if this vote were not in some way
suppressed or neutralized these States would pass at once under
the control of an organized system of brigandage, of theft under
the forms of law, which would soon almost entirely destroy the
whole property or wealth of the people. They say that dishonest
appropriations and excessive taxation would soon be carried to such
an extent that not only would all enterprise and industry be para-
lyzed, but the State debt would soon exceed the value of all the
taxable property in the State. They say that they have nothing against
the negro, nor against his enjoyment of the right of suffrage, although
they think there are difficulties connected with this matter of negro
suffrage which would be regarded as grave and trying by any North-
ern State. They have no wish to oppress anybody, and they feel that
the methods which I am describing are objectionable. They do not
like to employ them, and if anybody can suggest ways or means by
which honest government can be maintained, and the difficulties con-
nected with negro suffrage overcome, without interference with the
negro's voting, they would be glad to adopt them.

"OLD WHIGS" WHO HATE THE NAME OF DEMOCRAT

These men say further, everywhere, that they do not care at all
for the democratic party; that they do not care what party controls
the South, if these difficulties can be overcome, and property and
industry can be made secure; that anybody is welcome to hold the
offices and govern their States who will do so honestly. "We simply
want such state governments as you usually have in the North."
This was said to me many times in the States of which I am now
writing. I was somewhat surprised to find large numbers of men

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who are leaders in the democratic party in the South who said, as
they said to me repeatedly, "We are no democrats." In meeting
men of this class I constantly heard such utterances as this: "I am
no democrat. For my part, my political education was that of a
whig. My father was a whig, and I grew up with his ideas and senti-
ments regarding political matters. I despise the very name of demo-
crat. There is not a principle or a tradition belonging to the organi-
zation which I approve. I wish to God we might have an administra-
tion party, a republican party, in our State, that a gentleman could
belong to without the sacrifice of all honesty and self-respect. What
in the name of Heaven is the reason that the republican party in the
South is left in the hands of such men as its local managers usually
are?"

DO NOT WISH TO BE "SOLID"

They go on to say, as in Alabama, in Mississippi, and in Louisiana
many of them said to me, that it is a misfortune to the South, and
to the nation to have the South solid; that the South does not wish
to be solid, but that it really seems to be the interest or the wish of
most of the local republican politicians in the Southern States to
keep the South solid as long as possible. I was told of several cases
in which democrats had offered to support honest republicans for
office if the republican managers would allow them to be nominated,
but the proposition was rejected with scorn. Some of the republican
leaders spoke to me of these offers from the democrats, and said
that such propositions were equivalent to saying that if the republi-
can party in that county or district would "abandon its organization,"
the democrats would abandon theirs. "But," said the republicans,
"we shall never relinquish our organization, nor sacrifice our prin-
ciples, till the democratic party is entirely broken up."

LONGING FOR CHANGE

There appeared to be but little partisan feeling among the demo-
cratic leaders. I could not help observing everywhere that they
seemed tired of the long antagonism over the peculiar elements in
Southern politics, and I think many of them would welcome any
change which should not involve dishonor, or the sacrifice of what
is essential to the maintenance of society and civilization. I could
discover no evidence of evil feelings or designs among these men,
or of the peculiar depravity which has so often been attributed to

2g8 THE RECONSTRUCTION

them by Northern politicians and journalists. They are such men as,
in Massachusetts and Ohio, we expect to find in the highest places in
the republican party. But there is a great deal of the feeling among
them that almost anything would be justifiable if it were the neces-
sary or only means of keeping their States out of the control of the
present local managers of the republican party in the South; this
feeling arising from their conviction that such control would result,
wherever it might be established, in the complete prostration and
ruin of all the interests and institutions of civilized society.

THE NEGROES

In the towns and near them, and wherever the white people greatly
outnumber the negroes, there are some colored men who are as
intelligent in regard to political matters as the average of the opera-
tives in a New England factory town; but even in such places most
of the negro voters are entirely incapable of forming opinions or
judgments of their own in regard to political principles, doctrines,
or activities. I met in various places a few negroes who are men of
much intelligence, and who are probably not inferior, in any respect,
to average members of our national legislature. There is a consider-
able number of colored men engaged in teaching in the Southern
States, who are excellent and thoroughly competent workers in their
important profession, and many of the clergymen of their race are
making earnest and laborious efforts for self-improvement and the
elevation of their people. I find myself dwelling lingeringly on every
particular feature and fact of the favorable side of this subject the
condition of the colored people.

THE SAD TRUTH

But I must come to the depressing truth of the general, almost
the universal, condition and character of the negroes in the black
districts. They have made some improvement in regard to industry
or labor. A very few in these regions have an increasing desire for
the acquisition of property, and are beginning to save their earnings,
or at least to expend them less recklessly than formerly. But as to
any knowledge, intelligence, or judgment, such as should equip a
man, even in the lowest degree, for the exercise of the right or
power of suffrage, I cannot see that they know anything about it,
or possess it any more than sheep do. If by a vote we mean, accord-
ing to the definition long ago enunciated by Horace Greeley, "that

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by which the will, preference, or opinion of a person is expressed";
if we mean anything which is the voluntary and purposed act of a
man, with the object of announcing a decision, choice, or judgment
which he has formed or arrived at, then these negroes are not able
to vote. They have the "right" to vote under the law, but they have
no real power or ability to vote. They do not and cannot choose;
they have no knowledge of what is involved on one side or the
other. They have no materials for an opinion or judgment, nor any
ability to form a preference or decision regarding political matters.
They know nothing of the position, doctrines, history, traditions, or
aims of either party, and they have no idea or notion whatever of
their respective merits or principles. They simply vote as they are
told to vote by the local republican managers, and that is the whole
matter. So far as I can learn, it seems probable that they would
vote for anything or any man bearing the republican name. They
attribute whatever is good or desirable in their present condition to
the influence and agency of the republican party, and hope for
impossible things from the same source in the future.

The Atlantic Monthly -July-December, 1882, pp. 108-110.

MIXED SCHOOLS FOR THE TWO RACES

There is one important feature or division of the subject of edu-
cation in the Southern States which I have not yet brought forward
in these studies; that is, the question of separate or mixed schools
for the two races. The sentiment, feeling, and judgment of the South-
ern people are at present strongly and almost universally opposed to
the idea of educating white and black children, or young people,
in the same schools. But a change in this matter is already in prog-
ress. After attentively studying the subject everywhere, I am con-
vinced that there will soon be mixed schools, for white and colored
children, in many parts of the South. There are already a few such
schools, and the effect of considerations of convenience, cheapness,
and practical efficiency are likely, I think, to cause a rapid increase
in their number. I look for a decided revolution in Southern thought
and feeling within twenty years in regard to this subject. A few of
the most intelligent and far-seeing among Southern leaders some
of the foremost "Bourbons" say that mixed schools are "sure to
come," and they are not disturbed by the prospect.

300 THE RECONSTRUCTION

I insert here a letter received a few weeks ago from the presi-
dent of an important Southern institution of learning, to whom I
had addressed some inquiries relating to this question. It will serve
to show what has already been done in one instance, in the associa-
tion of the two races in the same school. The strongest tendencies
of the time appear to confirm the judgment thus expressed by a
distinguished teacher, regarding the probable course of development
of the relations between the white people and the negroes in edu-
cation.

, March 15, 1882

DEAR SIR, Our school before the war was a white school for both sexes,
and sometimes numbered a hundred pupils. It was an antislavery school,
and, after John Brown's raid, was broken up by a committee of sixty-five
men, sent by a county convention,

The school was revived soon after the war, and for several months
the students were all white. Three or four colored youth then asked
admission, and were admitted, and half the white students left the same
day. Other colored students came in and filled the vacancy. Those who
had left nearly all returned within two years.

For over fifteen years we have had both sexes and both races meeting
without distinction in church, chapel, classes, dining-room, choir, band,
literary societies, reading rooms, Young Men's and Young Women's
Christian Association, and other places.

It took a little time to get everything adjusted, and there was a little
friction at first, but no serious difficulty has ever occurred; and none
whatever during the last eight years.

The ratio of white to colored students has been, for the whole time,
about two to three. A few times there have been as many whites as
colored students.

They often meet in social gatherings of from one to three hundred,
white and colored, without friction and without embarrassment. Some
of our brightest and most interesting students are colored.

There has never been an engagement of marriage between two of
different colors. Occasionally, a white young man escorts a bright-
colored young lady to a lecture. We have absolutely no knowledge of
color in our school regulations.

Mixed schools will come, but slowly, and will commence in country
places, where there are few colored children. In the cities the higher
schools will first mix. The change cannot come suddenly, and it is not
desirable that it should.

One district in an adjoining county, not being allowed by law to
admit colored children, built a new school house, and all went there
together.

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Columbus, Ohio, has within a year abandoned its last colored school
The Constitution and laws of the United States will settle the matter soon
enough. I am yours respectfully.

INTELLECTUAL POWERS OF THE BLACKS

The question of the capacity of the colored people to receive
education is one of great interest. It is of course still uncertain
whether many of them will be found capable of acquiring a high
degree of intellectual culture, and considerable time will be required
for the solution of this problem. It does not appear to me probable
that the race in general will prove to be possessed of sufficient intel-
lectual fibre and tenacity to enable them to endure the labor and
discipline upon which a varied and complex culture depends. It will
be very strange, considering their antecedents and their present
environment, if the colored people do not show themselves mani-
festly inferior to the whites. I think that the sanguine friends of the
black people may be disappointed by the results of their education,
because, as it seems to me, they expect too much of a generation
which has no intellectual past behind it. But it is possible that the
disappointment really awaits those who are less hopeful. The negro
has not failed where he has had a fair trial. He was successful as a
slave. The race was developed and benefited by slavery in this coun-
try, instead of being corrupted and ruined by it, and this may indi-
cate the possession of qualities which will render it capable of a
high degree of civilization; but it is more probable that its most
important characteristics are such as fit it for a subordinate position.
In such a relation to a stronger race, the black people would be
likely to evince great tenacity and power of endurance under condi-
tions of depression and misfortune. But it is a question whether the
race is possessed of qualities which will render it in a high degree
vital and efficient in its relations to the actual environment here in
America.

Negroes have greater imitative ability than the whites, and they
acquire the rudiments of knowledge with a readiness which is often
wonderful; but I doubt their possessing capacity for sustained and
complex intellectual exertion. Yet they have more of sentiment, fire,
and passion in their natuure than the white people, and these ele-
ments may greatly increase the vigor and efficiency of their intel-
lectual endowment.

It appears to be certain that they have a superior equipment for

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oratory. It is said of many of their public speakers in the Southern
States, politicians and preachers, that they will attempt to speak on
any subject and upon any occasion, without preparation or previous
acquaintance with the matter in hand; and that even with such odds
against them they often succeed in saying something effectively in
persuading or strongly influencing their auditors by fluency, pathos,
humor, and beauty of expression. Eloquence seems to be natural
for many of them, and I heard several colored men described as
among the best public speakers in the South by cultivated white
antagonists. But I do not think this aptness for oratory on the part
of the negroes is likely to be of much value to them or to the coun-
try. Popular oratory and eloquence have not been highly serviceable
during recent years as aids to progress in intelligence or morality in
the Northern States of this country. They have been used in the
interest of flippancy and coarseness, and in a manner rather to pre-
vent than to promote serious thought. Oratory has its uses when
great issues are clearly made and understood when men are to be
roused from apathy to enthusiasm in a great cause. But at present
there is no "great cause." The people of the country need light. We
want wisdom, direction, that we may deal successfully with the prob-
lems of the times, and thoughtfulness and serious discussion are
more desirable for us than enthusiasm and eloquent oratory. It
might be better for the country if our pepole cared less for elo-
quence; and if we were entirely destitute of orators for a few years,
it would probably not be a great misfortune to the nation. It seems
not unlikely that the South may again become distinguished for
oratory, and that it may develop new power in poetry and other
forms of art; and it is possible that the black race may be repre-
sented in this Renaissance.

The opportunities of education and development should of course
be equally accessible to all races and classes in our country. There
should be no proscription, no favoritism. But the question of what
education should be for the working people of America is a very
important one. So far from its having been decided, it has not yet
been seriously entertained. That which they now receive in our
public schools is mischievously inadequate. One of its defects is that
it does not have in view in any definite manner the essential condi-
tions or specific requirements of the life of the men who labor with
their hands. The negroes of the South should have something better.

The Atlantic Monthly July-December, 1882, pp. 359-361.

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. . . There was evidently a kind of "blood-madness" in parts of
the South for some time after the war a rage for killing. Of course
it did not affect everybody, but it was an important psychological
phenomenon, marked and frequent enough to affect Southern society,
and to exert some influence on national life and thought.

MEMORIES OF THE WAR

In the Southwest, the people still talk with indignation of the
measure exempting from military duty in the service of the Con-
federacy all owners of large numbers of slaves. "The people said
then that this was the rich man's war, and the poor man's fight."
As soon as its adoption became known to the rank and file, they
began to desert by hundreds and thousands. I explored a region of
"the Great Pine Woods," in Southern Mississippi, which was held,
so the people said, during the last year of the war, by large bodies
of deserters from the Confederate army, who kept their arms and
equipment, maintained their military organization, and successfully
defied the officers and forces sent to arrest and return them to service
in the field. I was shown a tree on which several deserters were
hanged because they persisted in their refusal to return to the army,
and declared that they preferred death to any further experience of
a soldier's life. Many of these were, so their neighbors say, taken
at their word, and swung up at once. One man, who was about to
be hanged on this tree, asked for water, as he stood with the rope
around his neck, and just as the order was about to hoist him
away. The water was brought him in a gourd, and he then begged
that, as his last privilege, his hands, which were pinioned behind
him, might be loosed, and that he might thus be able to drink once
more holding the cup in his own hands. His request was granted;
but as he drank he suddenly clutched at the noose, threw it from
his shoulders, and bounded away through the woods "like a 'good
fellow," as my informant expressed it, effecting his escape.

There is no end to the stories of the war, and of the first five or
six years after its close, which are told everywhere in the South,
but there must be an end to my writing of them. There is a rich
field here for writers who will not invent their narratives, but will
truthfully record what they hear; valuing the simple facts for their
own sake, and not as a basis or skeleton for stupid love stories. A

304

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vast amount of rich material for history and for the illustration of
history will soon perish and be lost forever, unless somebody has
the patience to live and talk with the common people of the South,
and transcribe their accounts of what they have seen and known.
The impartial study of the war, and of the conditions and activities
of the decade after its close, from the point of view and experience
of the "poor whites" of the South and of the black people, would
open great stores of interesting and valuable information, which can
never be made accessible in any other way. Our national history for
that time can never be truthfully or adequately written without it.
The classes mentioned are inarticulate, as they have always been.
None of their number will ever make any record of what they saw
and thought and felt during those pregnant years; but if the story
could be written out for them, while that is still possible, it would
be worth far more than the special pleading of the leader who has
been "the head of many a felon plot, but never yet the arm," and
whom the common people of the South obeyed, but never trusted.

The Atlantic Monthly July-December, 1882, p. 633.

POLITICAL ABUSES

... I shall now describe particularly "the political condition of
the South" as I saw it last year. I did not visit that portion of
our country in the interest of any party, or of any theory of things.
The journey was undertaken with the sole purpose of seeing as much
as possible of the Southern people, of all classes and both races,
and of reporting with colorless accuracy whatever I might observe,
as it appeared to me; and with the conviction that a just and truthful
account of the condition of the South would be far more important
and useful than any partisan presentation could be.

I have not seen an election in the South though I should like
to be an observer on such an occasion in some regions which I
visited and I can therefore only report what I heard, from men of
all classes and opinions, regarding the methods of action which are
pursued during "political campaigns" and in the management of

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THE NEGROES KEPT FROM THE POLLS

In Mississippi, in Southern Alabama, and in Louisiana, the
negroes are not permitted to vote without illegal interference; or,
if they are allowed to vote, their vote is not fully registered and
returned. They are hindered from voting; and in making records
and returns their vote is to a considerable and effectual extent
neutralized or excluded. I do not say that this is done everywhere,
or at every election, in the States I have just named, but it has
been done widely, frequently, and recently. I conclude that the
negro vote is thus restricted or interfered with in those regions,
because the leading citizens there, democrats, themselves told me
that it was done that they themselves did and managed the work;
and they have again and again, in conversation with me, described
the methods by which it was accomplished.

CHALLENGING A NEGRO VOTER

In Southern Alabama, prominent leaders in democratic politics
said that in the "black districts" it was common to have, at each
place of holding elections, two ballot-boxes, one for white voters,
and the other for the negroes. The approach to each ballot-box is
by a long, narrow passage or "gangway," inclosed by a railing on
each side. If the blacks are present, and likely to vote in such
numbers as to "threatent the overthrow of society," or give cause
of alarm to the leading white citizens, the offered vote of some
ignorant negro is challenged. The gangway is filled behind him by
a long line of negroes, pressing forward in single file, and impatient
to vote. The negro selected to be challenged is always one who lives
in a distant part of the township or district. Somebody is dispatched
to summon witnesses from his neighborhood, or some other cause
of delay is discovered. Everything is conducted with judicial quiet-
ness, dignity, and deliberateness. Of course the other negroes cannot
vote until this case is decided. It comes to an end by and by, and the
conclusion which is at last reached is, usually, that the challenged
negro has the right to vote, and his ballot is accepted. It is not
according to the plan of action to refuse the right or opportunity of
voting to any individual negro. That would irritate the men of his
race, and would cause "the guardians of society" to appear at a
disadvantage. The challenged negro's vote is taken, and the voting
goes on quietly and peaceably, until it is necessary to repeat the

3 o6 THE RECONSTRUCTION

performance described above. When the hour for the closing of
the polls arrives there has not been sufficient time for the negro
republican vote to be polled, and the counting of the ballot shows
that there is an adequate democratic majority, and that the intel-
ligence of the country has again been successful in the effort to
prevent the overthrow of society by ignorance and incapacity.

"But," I often inquired, "what if the negroes should become tired
of this enforced waiting, and, understanding its purpose, should push
forward, and demand that their votes shall be received?"

"Then," answered my informants, significantly, "there is a colli-
sion. The negroes are the attacking party, and of course they will
be worsted."

FALSE ELECTION RETURNS

In some parts of Mississippi the methods employed to prevent
the overthrow of society were described by the principal actors,
in talking to me, as being similar, in essential features, to those
used in Alabama, though the particular arrangements by which the
object is accomplished are varied to suit the circumstances. Some-
times the negroes are permitted to vote without hindrance or
restriction of any kind, and society is saved by judicious elimination
and substitution in making up the returns of the election. This is
the method now most commonly followed in Louisiana, or in
important portions of that State, as I was informed by prominent
citizens and business men, democrats.

All other classes of citizens say that these accounts are true;
that these are the methods which have been for some time employed
for suppressing or neutralizing the negro republican vote. All agree,
too, that for some years past there has been a very general desire
on the part of democratic managers and citizens, nearly everywhere
in the South, to avoid collisions and disturbances at elections and
political meetings; it being thought best to depend upon more quiet
and less objectionable methods for managing or neutralizing the
political power of the negro republicans, where they are in a majority.

WHAT IS THE GOOD OF LYING?

In Southern Alabama and in Mississippi influential and prominent
democrats said to me, "Some of our people, some editors especially,
deny that the negroes are hindered from voting; but what is the good

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of lying? They are interfered with, and we are obliged to do it, and we
may as well tell the truth."

As it is my purpose to be altogether fair and accurate, I shall
now allow these gentlemen to state their own case, to present the
grounds and reason of their course of action in dealing with the
negro in politics, as they everywhere did this in frank and kindly
conversation with me. In speaking of this subject, the relation of
the negroes to the politics of the Southern States, intelligent men in
the South always begin with emphatic praise of the remarkable
loyalty and kindly faithfulness of the slaves during the great civil
war. Almost throughout the South the whole able-bodied white
population was in army. The homes, the property, the women and
children, of the Southerners were all in the power of the negroes and
at their mercy. Had they been disposed to evil or injury they could
have filled in the country with horrors not surpassed in history. But
they worked diligently, and affectionately guarded, almost without
exception, the homes and interests left to their care. Southern men
everywhere say they feel lovingly grateful for all this, and with good
reason. (Many Northern people were surprised when it was found
that the slaves were not aroused to insurrection by the progress of
the conflict which was to liberate them from oppression. An examina-
tion of this feature of the struggle might throw some light on the
relations between the two races in connection with slavery and the
organization of society in the South before the war, as well as upon
the character of the Southern people, both white and black.)

DRUNK WITH FREEDOM

When the war ended, and slavery was abolished, there was a rash
of events and crowding changes. The negroes were generally greatly
excited, and felt uncertain about the reality and security of their
new freedom. Many of them moved about in troops, expecting some
great dramatic or spectacular intervention of the Yankees or of
Providence, for their benefit. But many soon went to work, and things
connected with the condition of the negroes were becoming settled
and orderly in some portions of the country; while in others the
intoxication of the emancipated people, caused by their first taste
of liberty and the absence of all means of restraint, inflamed by incite-
ments from base white men in some cases, led to the commission of
horrible and indescribable outrages. I have been assured by many of
the best people of the Southern States, men and women, and by both

308 THE RECONSTRUCTION

whites and blacks, that in many cases women were subjected to
public insult and outrage, and the most dreadful excesses and
enormities were committed. The negroes everywhere say that these
accounts are true. There was almost everywhere more or less of
crime and disorder among white men, which often made property
and life in whole districts insecure. There was then no law; there
were no courts, no officers. Society had been in great measure dis-
solved, and the functions of civil government suspended. In this time
of peril and powerlessness the Confederate officers in many places
requested the Union officers who were still in command in the South
to aid them in maintaining order, until the machinery of government
could be developed or created and put in operation. In many cases
the reply was "Organize a company of good men, or retain your
military organization, and the Union officers will supply you with
needed arms and ammunition. Try criminals and punish them, or
expel them from your communities, and you will be sustained by
the military and civil authorities of the nation." I have seen some
of these letters from Union commanders, authorizing such action
on the part of prominent Southerners, who had just laid down their
arms.

THE KU-KLUX KLAN IS BORN

Just here was the birth of the famous Ku-Klux Klan. What
melodramatic fool first suggested the machinery of disguise, the
masks, the silly emblems and pretenses, and whence he derived this
grotesque idiocy, it is now too late to inquire. It seems to me
there is a weakness of this kind in the character of many Southern
men. They are too fond of posing. Even the leaders of the Con-
federacy sometimes attitudinized, for an awe-stricken world to
see, more than thoroughly serious men ever do. Probably the
inventor of these fripperies was some young editor, who had never
seen service as a soldier. At any rate the idea of disguise was a
cowardly one, and its practical working proved in every way un-
fortunate. The testimony is universal in the South that what came
to be called the Ku-Klux Klan was at first meant for good, and not
for evil; for the suppression, and not the commission, of crimes of
violence; for the protection, and not the injury and destruction, of
the weak and helpless. But here the fatal folly and mischief of the
element of disguise becomes apparent. The opportunity which this
masked movement and method afforded for the unrecognized and
secure gratification of private personal spite and malice was too

THE RECONSTRUCTION 309

obvious and tempting not to be used and enjoyed. Old quarrels and
grudges were revived, and new feuds arose out of sEght reasons,
because it was now so convenient and apparently so safe to- quarrel.
Masks were worn on both sides in such petty, miserable struggles,
and the "Ku-Klukers," as the negroes call them, killed each other
off in contests in which neither side had any real claim upon the
sympathy of good men.

THE HUNTING OF MEN

For some time there was no political element, nor even any race
element, in these outrages and retaliations. But acts of violence and
bloodshed inflame those who commit them to a kind of insanity. The
spirit of the chase was aroused by and by in large numbers of white
men, of the lowest and worst class of those who had survived the war.
Nothing else so exactly represents the feeling which was now de-
veloped in some regions of the South judging from the accounts
of this period which are given by all classes of those who were
directly concerned as the hunter's excitement in the pursuit and
capture or destruction of his game. The negroes became its chief
objects, not, as it appears to me, so much because anybody hated
the negro as because the negroes were the weakest, most helpless
class the class that could most safely be hunted. "The hunt was up,"
and the effects of the flood-fury of the chase came mostly upon the
negroes in many cases. I do not mean that this represents or de-
scribes a state of things which existed generally or throughout the
South. It seems to be certain that the history of the "Ku-Klux
outrages," as usually told and believed at the North, abounds in
enormous exaggerations, as might be reasonably expected in any
similar conditions of society.

There was enough there was much of horrible wrong and out-
rage of the helpless and innocent. I could find nobody in the South
who seemed to have the least disposition to deny, conceal, or excuse
these outrages, or this part of the work of the Kian. It is generally
admitted, and never defended. But everybody says alike, and intelli-
gent negroes most emphatically of all, that the published stories
and the general Northern idea of the Klan outrages were distorted
and exaggerated; and it is plain that no statistics of these occurrences,
or estimates of the number of victims of violence or murder, can
be set forth with any serious claim to even approximate truth. No
materials exist for statistics or estimates of this nature.

After some time the method of the Klan came to be used in

310 THE RECONSTRUCTION

connection with politics and elections. It was a method of electioneer-
ing by terrorizing the voters of the opposition party. But it had
some awkward features. Everywhere the hunted negroes gradually
learned self-defense, and in many instances even retaliation; and, as
a negro told me in Alabama, "it made the Ku-Klukers feel sorter
solemn when the niggers tuck to Ku-EQukin' them." The disorder
and violence in some regions became intolerable to the leading
citizens, and democratic judges and juries and sheriffs used their
power to break up the Klan, and to forbid its further activity.

THE SOUTHERN PLEA

Now, to carry the analysis of the work of the Klan in politics
a little farther and deeper, what are Southerners able to say for
themselves in regard to it? What was the object which they sought
when they encouraged, or permitted, or committed assaults upon
negroes, for the purpose of diminishing the republican vote, and why
did they choose and employ such means, so unworthy of civilized
people, for its accomplishment? The nation can afford to hear
patiently the Southern account of the matter; can afford, at this late
period, and as there is now no general political excitement, to
allow the Southern people to speak for themselves. Intelligent
Southern men say that it was a life-and-death struggle for the
destruction or preservation of civil government and of civilized
society in the Southern States, and that the "carpet-baggers"
corrupt and unprincipled Northern men using the negroes as tools,
were the aggressors. The negroes were in many places persuaded by
these adventures that the land now belonged to the freedmen; that
their former masters would be compelled to serve them, and that the
white women of the country were to belong to the negroes. It is
plainly to be seen to-day that there was, some years ago, a genuine
"scare," or panic, throughout the South, on account of the peril
which was believed to threaten the Southern women, and there is
abundant evidence that the intense and desperate feeling which was
thus aroused was not without adequate reason.

A DARK PERIOD

In many cases the negroes, as they themselves now say, attempted
to put in practice the teaching of their "Northern friends" regarding
this matter of the social relations between the two races. Southern
men say that the South was in a hard place during "the reconstruction

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period"; that the carpet-baggers were not all, but very generally
such men as would not be trusted or respected in any Northern
community; that they had, by means of their power over the negroes
and the support of the Federal government, almost absolute sway
in important and extensive regions of the South; and that they
committed with impunity the most monstrous crimes, and loaded
peaceable and inoffensive individuals and communities with continual
insult and intolerable injuries. They point to the enormous systems
of theft, fraud, and corruption that flourished in the States which
came completely under the joint dominion of the carpet-bagger and
the negro, and they say that any people on earth would have resisted,
and that the people of the North would not have borne a tithe of
the indignities and wrongs which were heaped upon the people of
the Southern States. They always lay special stress on the peril of
the subversion of the social and family life of the white race in the
South, and of the degradation of the white women under the power
of the negroes. . . .

The Atlantic Monthly July-December, 1882, pp. 102-107.

_, LA., January 5, 1882

DEAR SIR, The books which you sent reached us safely, and I wish
to express, in some small measure, our grateful thanks for your kindness,
and for the assistance which your generous friends have given us.

My sister, Miss G. (whom you saw when here), and I make equal use

of the books among our people here and in her neighborhood on

Bayou. You ask me to tell you something of what you kindly call our
work, and of its beginning. We have talked it over, and at first we
thought we could not tell how it began. In fact, it began in the "slavery
days," long before the war. When we were little girls, our mother always
went around to the cabins of the old and sick negroes on the plantation
every Saturday, and she often took us with her in the carriage. We
learned a little about nursing. Our place was destroyed in 1863, and our
dear mother died soon after. Our father, though an old man, was killed
in battle, as was one brother. The other died in a prison camp at Elmira,
New York.

I was married as soon as the war closed, and my husband and I came
back to the desolate plantation. The negroes had been scattered, but
soon returned. We were broken-hearted, and my sister and I began to go

312 THE RECONSTRUCTION

about among the negroes; at first to try to escape from our distraction,
and then to see if we could find any women or girls to help us in the
house. Our greatest difficulty was that the old ways of living had been
broken up, and none of us knew exactly how to adapt ourselves to the
new state of things, which was not yet fully developed.

Finally, my sister said the negroes must be taught. It seemed like
trying to make a new world, but she said we might as well begin, and
we did. My husband laughed at us, but helped us all he could. Most of
the negroes about here can read now, and many can write, and we have
sent two young men and one girl to the normal school to be teachers.
We drill and scold and punish them, old and young, and help them to
have picnics and settle their quarrels, and do everything.

I am afraid this is very vague. But really, what we do is so vague
that it is hard to see what it is; yet I suppose it has changed the negroes
a good deal. They behave better and they know more than in the old
times. But they are not so happy. They are not so free from care. The
new knowledge often seems to be a weight and a trouble to them. But
of course we must go on, though we often feel that we do not know
just what or how much it is best to teach them. . . .

The Atlantic Monthly July-December, 1882, pp. 356-357.

THE OLD TIMES

In various parts of Louisiana I found many people who had lived
on some of the great plantations before the war, and heard their
accounts of the peculiar life of the inhabitants of some of these rich,
retired regions in the interior of the State. The planters had con-
siderable wealth, for that time, and they and their families lived a
life of "elegant, refined leisure," with little business or care except
pleasure and happiness. All supplies for the plantations came from
New Orleans merchants. Once a year the young ladies had bonnets,
and sometimes gowns, from Paris. Visits and parties and balls were
the events of life. The young people had a good education; many
of them were sent to Northern Schools, but the South had good
schools and colleges in those days. I do not doubt that it seemed to
the people living it a pure and innocent life, happy and wholesome,
and so natural and stable that it was likely to go on forever.

"We did not know it was wrong," said an accomplished woman
to me, one day. "No one had ever told us it was all wrong or that
we were going on gaily toward an awful destruction. We knew no

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world but our own. We thought we were very happy, and we meant
to be good. We were much attached to our people the negroes, I
mean and they were happy, too, then. We heard sometimes of low,
miserable wretches who abused their negroes, and how we despised
them!"

"Would you rather have it all back, that old time and that beauti-
ful life, if you could?" I asked,

"Oh, no; I think it is just like one of the great changes, revolu-
tions, that we read about in history. It all had to be, I should think,
and so it must be there is a Providence in it; it must be for the best,
in some way."

After a pause, she went on: "I disposed of the war in that way,
you see, and then I could be reconciled to it. We had our losses,
too. My only brother there is his portrait." And she pointed to a
life-sized likeness of a handsome, boyish-looking young fellow in an
officer's uniform. "He died in prison, at Elmira, New York. We
were up there afterward, but we could not find his grave. Excuse
me," she said, as her voice broke a little. "I did not blame anybody
about the war; did not hate anybody for it. I thought I understood
the war well, in a way. You know, perhaps, what I mean. It was
too large, too awful a thing to hate anybody for.

"Now," said she, "you were on the other side, and I am talking
to you almost as if you were on ours, or as if the war were away
back in history." I bowed, and she immediately resumed. "But what
happened after the war some of it I could not understand. I did
not know where to put it, or how to classify it. It seemed like some-
thing which could not be, and yet was. Did you did the North
wish us " and she became pale with agitation. "Did the North
wish us to regard black men as we regard white men as our com-
panions and friends?"

"No, my dear madam; I assure you, we never wished that."

She looked at me keenly, with a troubled expression on her face,
and exclaimed, "But let us not talk of that!"

This lady is the wife of a merchant in one of the smaller towns
on Bayou Teche. The plantation which was her home before the
war is but four miles away. We rode out and looked over it. It had
passed out of the possession of her family, and was owned by a
young man from Pennsylvania, who had erected a smart, Northern-
looking frame house, with narrow verandas a mistake in that cli-
mate. He and his wife received us cordially, but, I thought, with a
little embarrassment. As we drove away from the house, the South-
ern lady my hostess in the village said, "I wished you to see the

314 THE RECONSTRUCTION

place. I do not like to come here, because that young man and Ms
wife are sorry for me, I think. It was awkward, at first, and one
day the young woman cried, and said she felt as if I ought to be
the lady of the house. But I laughed at her, and told her not to feel
so, as I did not grudge her the place."

The two families go to the same church, and both the women are
interested in regard to the morals of the young negroes around them.
I thought this a good instance of a practical kind of reconstruction.

The Atlantic Monthly July-December, 1882, pp-. 102-110,
359-361, 478-479, 633, 754-755.

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