Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama Part 37

In spite of the war the system managed to exist until 1864, and some schools were still open in 1865, at the time of surrender. Few of the private schools and colleges survived until that time, and the majority of the school buildings of all kinds were either destroyed during the war, or after its close were placed in the hands of the Freedmen's Bureau or of the army. The State Medical College was used for a negro primary school for three years, and was not given up until the reconstructionists came into power. An attempt in 1865 was made to reopen the University, although the buildings had been burned by the Federals in 1865. The trustees met, elected a president and two professors, but on the day appointed for the opening (in October) only one student appeared.[1710]

During the summer and fall of 1865 and during the next year the various religious denominations of the state and ma.s.s-meetings of citizens declared that the changed civil relations of the races made negro education a necessity. The Freedmen's Bureau was established and antic.i.p.ated much of the work planned by the churches and by southern leaders, but the methods employed by the alien teachers caused many whites to become prejudiced against negro education.[1711]

The provisional government adopted the ante-bellum public school system and put it into operation. The schools were open to both races, from six to twenty years of age, separate schools being provided for the blacks.

The greater part of the expenditure of the provisional government was for schools. Relatively few negroes attended the state schools proper, as every influence was brought to bear to make them attend the Bureau and missionary schools, and the state negro schools soon fell into the hands of the Bureau educators, who drew the state appropriation.

The colleges at Marion, Greensboro, Auburn, Florence, and other places were reopened in 1866-1867. The legislature loaned $70,000 to the University, besides paying the interest on the University fund. For three years the University was being rebuilt, and so well were its finances managed that in 1868, when the carpet-baggers came into power, the buildings were completed and the inst.i.tution out of debt, although it had used only half of the loan from the state.[1712]

The Reconstruction convention of 1867 was much more interested in politics than in education. The negro members demanded free schools and special advantages for the negro, and a few carpet-baggers had much to say about the malign influence of the old regime in keeping so many thousands in the darkness of ignorance. The scalawags demanded separate schools for the races, but pressure was brought to bear and most of them gave way. Sixteen of the native whites refused to sign the const.i.tution and united in a protest against the action of the convention in refusing to provide separate schools.[1713]

The School System of Reconstruction

The new const.i.tution placed all public instruction under the control of a Board of Education consisting of the Superintendent of Public Instruction and two members from each congressional district,[1714] the latter to serve for four years, half of them being elected by the people every two years. Full legislative powers in regard to education were given to the Board. Its acts were to have the force of law, and the governor's veto could be overridden by a two-thirds vote. The legislature might repeal a school law, but otherwise it had no authority over the Board.[1715] This body also acted as a board of regents for the State University. One school, at least, was to be established in every towns.h.i.+p in the state, though some towns.h.i.+ps did not have half a dozen children in them. The school income was fixed by the const.i.tution at one-fifth of all state revenue, in addition to the income from school lands, poll tax, and taxes on railroads, navigation, banks, and insurance.[1716] The legislature added another source of income by chartering several lotteries and exempted them from taxation provided they paid a certain amount to the school fund. On October 10, 1868, the Mutual Aid a.s.sociation was chartered "to distribute books, paintings, works of art, scientific instruments and apparatus, lands, etc., stock and currency, awards, and prizes." For this privilege it was to give $2000 a year to the school fund.[1717] Two months later the Mobile Charitable a.s.sociation was formed, which paid $1000 a year to the school fund,[1718] and a number of other lotteries were chartered soon after.

The school system, as a whole, did not differ greatly from the old, except that it was top-heavy with officials, and in that all private a.s.sistance was discouraged by a regulation forbidding the use of the public money to supplement private payments. The first Board of Education probably contained a collection of as worthless men as could be found in the state.[1719] The elections had gone by default, and since only the most incompetent men had offered themselves for educational offices, the work suffered. Dr. N. B. Cloud, an incapable of ante-bellum days, was chosen Superintendent of Public Instruction. He was a man without character, without education, and entirely without administrative ability. Before the war he was known as a cruel master to his few slaves. In August, 1868, he proceeded to put the system into operation by appointing sixty-four county superintendents, of Radical politics, each of whom in turn appointed three trustees in each towns.h.i.+p. The stream rose no higher than its source, and the school officials were a forlorn lot. One of them signed for his salary by an X mark. Another, J. E. Summerford, the superintendent of Lee County, was a man of bad morals, and so incompetent that, when attempting to examine teachers for licenses, he in turn was contemptuously questioned by them on elementary subjects. In revenge for this expression of contempt, he revoked the license of every teacher in the county. One county superintendent was a preacher who had been expelled from his church for misappropriating charity funds. But Cloud paid no attention to charges made against the integrity of his school officials.

Cloud proceeded with much haste to open the schools. A year later he made a report which is an interesting doc.u.ment. There was little progress to be noted, but much s.p.a.ce was devoted to an appreciation of that "glorious doc.u.ment," the const.i.tution of 1867, the crowning glory of which--the article on education--should "ent.i.tle the members to the rare merit of statemen and sages." This provision for education, he said, was the first blow struck in the South, and especially in Alabama, to clear out the last vestige of ignorance with all its attendant evils; and now, in spite of the burdens imposed by the unwise legislation of the past forty years, the bosoms of the citizens expanded with a n.o.ble pride in the present system of schools.

After this he proceeds to business. He reports that in every county and in almost every towns.h.i.+p in the state his officials met with opposition, not, he confesses, on account of opposition to schools, but on account of the objectionable government and its agents. The reports from the white counties, especially, indicate opposition to the establishment of negro schools, while in the Black Belt this opposition was not so strong.

Everywhere, he states, the opposition died out, more or less, in time.[1720]

Before the new system went into operation, a meeting of the Board was held in Montgomery to clear away the remains of the old system. They voted to themselves a secretary, sergeant-at-arms, pages, etc., like the House of Representatives; all school offices were declared vacated and all school contracts void; separate schools were provided for the races where the parents were unwilling to send to mixed schools; eleven normal schools were provided for, with no distinction of color; and a bill was introduced by G. L. Putnam and pa.s.sed into a law, the object of which was to merge the Mobile schools into the state system and also to make an office for Putnam. A sum of money had been appropriated by the previous legislatures to pay the teachers in the state schools, and now the Board declared that any a.s.sociation, society, or teacher in a school open to the public should have a claim for part of this money.[1721] The country superintendents were made elective after 1870; cooperation with the Freedmen's Bureau was declared desirable, and the Bureau was asked to furnish or to rent houses, or to a.s.sist in building, while the aid societies were asked to send teachers who would be paid by the state, and who would be subject to the same regulations as native teachers. The "Superintendent of Education" of the Bureau was to have supervision over the Bureau schools, but he, in turn, would be under the supervision of Cloud.[1722]

Reconstruction of the State University

The Board then tried to reconstruct the University. After the appearance of the lone student in 1865, the efforts of the trustees had been directed only towards completing the buildings. In 1868, after the const.i.tution of 1867 had failed of adoption, the old trustees met, elected a president and faculty, and ordered the University to be opened in October, 1868. A few weeks later Congress imposed the const.i.tution on the state, and the Board of Education as regents took charge of the University. Their first act was to declare null and void all acts of any pretended body of trustees since the secession of the state. This was done in order to repudiate a debt made by the University with a New York firm in 1861. No suitable candidate for the presidency was presented, and the regents chose for that position Mr. Wyman, the acting president.[1723] He declined, and the position was then sought for and obtained by the Rev. A. S. Lakin, a Northern Methodist preacher, who had been sent to Alabama in 1867 by Bishop Clark of Ohio, to gather the negroes of the Southern Methodist Church into the northern fold.[1724] Lakin, accompanied by Cloud, went to the University to take charge. Wyman, who was then in charge, refused to surrender the keys, and a Tuscaloosa mob, or Ku Klux Klan, serenaded Lakin and threatened to lynch him if he remained in town. It is said that he was saved from the mob by Wyman, who hid him under a bed. The next morning Lakin decided that he did not like the place and left.[1725] He did not resign, however, and three years later still had a claim pending for a full year's salary. On this he collected $800 from the Board of Regents.[1726]

[Ill.u.s.tration:

[From the Independent Monitor, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, September 1, 1868.]

A PROSPECTIVE SCENE IN THE CITY OF OAKS, 4TH OF MARCH, 1869.

"Hang, curs, Hang! * * * * * Their complexion is perfect gallows.

Stand fast, good fate, to _their_ hanging! * * * * * If they be not born to be hanged, our case is miserable."

The above cut represents the fate in store for those great pests of Southern society--the carpet-bagger and scalawag--if found in Dixie's land after the break of day on the 4th of March next.

The _genus_ carpet-bagger is a man with a lank head of dry hair, a lank stomach, and long legs, club knees, and splay feet, dried legs, and lank jaws, with eyes like a fish and mouth like a shark. Add to this a habit of sneaking and dodging about in unknown places, habiting with negroes in dark dens and back streets, a look like a hound, and the smell of a polecat.

Words are wanting to do full justice to the _genus_ scalawag. He is a cur with a contracted head, downward look, slinking and uneasy gait; sleeps in the woods, like old Crossland, at the bare idea of a Ku-Klux raid.

Our scalawag is the local leper of the community. Unlike the carpet-bagger, he is native, which is so much the worse. Once he was respected in his circle, his head was level, and he would look his neighbor in the face. Now, possessed of the itch of office and the salt rheum of radicalism, he is a mangy dog, slinking through the alleys, hunting the governor's office, defiling with tobacco juice the steps of the capitol, stretching his lazy carca.s.s in the sun on the square or the benches of the mayor's court.

He waiteth for the troubling of the political waters, to the end that he may step in and be healed of the itch by the ointment of office. For office he "b.u.ms," as a toper "b.u.ms" for the satisfying dram. For office, yet in prospective, he hath bartered respectability; hath abandoned business and ceased to labor with his hands, but employs his feet kicking out boot-heels against lamp-post and corner-curb while discussing the question of office.

It requires no seer to foretell the inevitable events that are to result from the coming fall election throughout the Southern States.

The unprecedented reaction is moving onward with the swiftness of a velocipede, with the violence of a tornado, and with the crash of an avalanche, sweeping negroism from the face of the earth.

Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of Alabama who have recently become squatter-]

It was in connection with Lakin's short visit that the _Independent Monitor_ published the famous hanging picture of the carpet-bagger (Lakin) and the scalawag (Cloud).[1727]

The next offer of the presidency was made to R. D. Harper, a Northern Methodist Bureau minister, who at one time was the Bureau "Superintendent of Education" for the state, and who organized the Bureau schools and the Northern Methodist churches in north Alabama. He, after some consideration, declined the position, which, to an alien, was one of more danger than honor.[1728]

Difficulty was also experienced in securing a faculty. Some of the faculty elected by the old board of trustees were reelected. Geary of Ohio was given the chair of mathematics, and Goodfellow of Chicago, who had previously been a clerk of the lower house of the legislature, was elected commandant and professor of military science. The latter said that he did not know anything about his work, but that he guessed he could learn.

General John H. Forney, a Confederate and native, was also elected to a chair, the Board, it is said, voting for him under a misapprehension. The native contingent refused to serve under the regents, and the vacancies had again to be filled.[1729] Loomis of Illinois was elected professor of Ancient Languages; J. De F. Richards of Vermont, professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, etc. W. J. Collins, who was elected professor of Oratory and Rhetoric, wrote, "I except the situation." The _Monitor_ said, "We predict an uncomfortable time for the aggregation."[1730] That paper chronicled all the weaknesses, peculiarities, and failings of the faculty.

If one of them drank a little too much and staggered on the street, the _Monitor_ informed the public.[1731] Upon the arrival of an heir in the Collins family, Randolph promptly demanded that he be named for him,--Ryland Randolph Collins,--and the name stuck.

Finally, as it seemed impossible to secure a president, the regents determined to open the University with Richards as acting president.[1732]

On April 1, 1869, the University opened with thirty students, twenty-eight of whom were beneficiaries.[1733] The _Monitor_ said that the members of the faculty were known as Shanghai, c.o.c.keye, Tanglefoot, Old d.i.c.ks, etc.

Another woodcut appeared in the _Monitor_--of Richards, this time.[1734]

Thirty was the highest enrolment reached under the Reconstruction faculty.

The number gradually dwindled away until at the end of the session there were only ten. The next session ended with only three. In October, 1870, there were ten students, four of whom were sons of professors. William R.

Smith[1735] was elected president during this session, but he reported that there was no prospect of success under the present conditions and resigned. By the end of the session not one student remained. The scientific apparatus was scattered and lost, as were also the museum specimens and library books, and the $2000 object-gla.s.s of the telescope had disappeared.[1736]

The people of Alabama did not favor the continuance of the University under the reconstructed faculty, and were glad when the doors were closed.

The Ku Klux Klan took part in the work of breaking down the venture.

Notices were posted on the doors, directed to the students, advising them to leave. One sent to the son of Governor Smith read as follows:--

DAVID SMITH: You have received one notice from us, and this shall be our last. You nor no other d--d son of a d--d radical traitor shall stay at our University. Leave here in less than ten days, for in that time we will visit the place and it will not be well for you to be found out there. The state is ours and so shall our University be.

WRITTEN BY THE SECRETARY BY ORDER OF THE KLAN.

Charles Muncel, son of Joel Muncel, the publisher, of Albany, New York,[1737] received the following notice:--

CHARLES MUNCEL. You had better get back where you came from. We don't want any d--d Yank at our colleges. In less than ten days we will come to see if you obey our warning. If not, look out for h.e.l.l, for d--n you, we will show you that you shall not stay, you nor no one else, in that college. This is your first notice; let it be your last.

THE KLAN BY THE SECRETARY.

The next warning was sent to a lone Democrat:--

HORTON: They say you are of good Democratic family. If you are, leave the University and that quick. We don't intend that the concern shall run any longer. This is the second notice you have received; you will get no other. In less than ten days we intend to clear out the concern. We will have good Southern men there or none.

BY ORDER OF THE K. K. K.[1738]

Before the summer of 1871 the reconstructed faculty had absolutely failed; there never had been any chance for them to succeed. The regents were unfitted to manage educational affairs, and they chose men to the faculty who would have been objectionable anywhere.[1739] The professors and their families were socially ostracized. Even southern men who accepted places in the Radical faculty were made to feel that they were scorned; no one would sit by them at public gatherings or in church. The men might have survived this treatment, but not so the women. In 1871 the Superintendent of Public Instruction and two members of the board of regents were Democrats. The faculty was reorganized for the eighth time since 1865, and a faculty of natives was elected. The effect upon the attendance was marked. In April, 1871, there were three students and in June none, while during the session of 1871-1872, 107 students were enrolled. In 1873 and 1874 the Radicals again had control, but they did not attempt to reconstruct the University.[1740]

When the land grant college, provided for in the Morrill act of 1862, was established in 1872, there was no attempt made to appoint a reconstructed faculty or board of trustees. But there was sharp compet.i.tion among the towns of the state to secure the college. The legislature was to choose the location, and many of the members let it be known that their votes were to be had only in return for material considerations. It was finally located at Auburn, in Lee County. One Auburn lobbyist went out on the floor of one of the houses and there paid a negro solon $50 to talk no more against Auburn. The next day the same negro was again speaking against the location at Auburn. His purchaser went to him and remonstrated. The negro acknowledged that he had accepted the $50 not to speak against Auburn, but said, "Dat was yistiddy, boss." Another Auburn man promised a cooking stove to a negro of more domestic inclinations, and amidst the excitement forgot all about it; but after the vote the negro came up and demanded his stove. He received it. Another was given a sewing-machine.[1741]

There was no attempt to force the entrance of negroes into the State University. Some reformers wanted the test made, but too many scalawags were bitterly opposed to such a step, to say nothing of the Ku Klux Klan.

In December, 1869, the Board of Education asked the legislature to provide a university for the negroes,[1742] and several colored normal schools were established. In 1871, Peyton Finley, the negro member of the Board of Education,[1743] introduced a series of resolutions declaring that the negro had no desire to push any claim to enter the State University, but that they wanted one of their own, and Congress was urged to grant land for that purpose.[1744] But not until December, 1873, was Lincoln school at Marion, Perry County, designated as the colored university and normal school, where a liberal education was to be given the negro.[1745]