The Abolition Crusade and Its Consequences Part 13

President Lincoln's theory was that acts of secession were void, and that when the seceded States came back into the Union those who were ent.i.tled to vote, by the laws existing at the date of the attempted secession, and had been pardoned, should have, and should control, the right of suffrage. Mr. Lincoln had acted on this theory in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Texas, and he further advised Congress, in his message of December, 1863, that this was his plan. Congress, after a long debate, responded in July, 1864, by an act claiming for itself power over Reconstruction. The President answered by a pocket veto, and after that veto Mr. Lincoln was, in November, 1864, re-elected on a platform extolling his "practical wisdom," etc. Congress, during the session that began in December, 1864, did not attempt to rea.s.sert its authority but adjourned, March 4, 1865, in sight of the collapse of the Confederacy, leaving the President an open field for his declared policy.

But unhappily, on the 14th of April, 1865, Mr. Lincoln was a.s.sa.s.sinated, and his death just at this time was the most appalling calamity that ever befell the American people. The blow fell chiefly upon the South, and it was the South the a.s.sa.s.sin had thought to benefit.

Had the great statesman lived he might, and it is fully believed he would, like Was.h.i.+ngton, have achieved a double success. Was.h.i.+ngton, successful in war, was successful in guiding his country through the first eight stormy years of its existence under a new const.i.tution.

Lincoln had guided the country through four years of war, and the Union was now safe. With Lee's surrender the war was practically at an end.

Gideon Welles says that on the 10th of April, 1865, Mr. Lincoln, "while I was with him at the White House, was informed that his fellow-citizens would call to congratulate him on the fall of Richmond and surrender of Lee; but he requested their visit should be delayed that he might have time to put his thoughts on paper, for he desired that his utterances on such an occasion should be deliberate and not liable to misapprehension, misinterpretation, or misconstruction. He therefore addressed the people on the following evening, Tuesday the 11th, in a carefully prepared speech intended to promote harmony and union.

"In this remarkable speech, delivered three days before his a.s.sa.s.sination, he stated he had prepared a plan for the reinauguration of the sectional authority and reconstruction in 1863, which would be acceptable to the executive government, and that every member of the cabinet fully approved the plan," etc.[88]

[88] Gideon Welles in an essay, "Lincoln and Johnson," _The Galaxy_, April, 1872.

In view of his death three days later, this, his last and deliberate public utterance, may be regarded as Abraham Lincoln's will, devising as a legacy to his countrymen his plan of reconstruction. That plan in the hands of his successor was defeated by a partisan and radical Congress.

That it was a wise plan the world now knows.

Senator John Sherman, of Ohio, was one of the most influential of those who succeeded in defeating it, and yet he lived to say, in his book published in 1895,[89] Andrew Johnson "adopted substantially the plan proposed and acted on by Mr. Lincoln. After this long lapse of time I am convinced that Mr. Johnson's scheme of reorganization was wise and judicious. It was unfortunate that it had not the sanction of Congress and that events soon brought the President and Congress into hostility."

[89] "John Sherman's Recollections," vol. I, p. 361.

And the present senator, Shelby Cullom, of Illinois, who as a member of the House of Representatives voted to overthrow the Lincoln-Johnson plan of Reconstruction, has furnished us further testimony. He says in his book, published in 1911:[90]

[90] "Fifty Years of Public Service," Cullom, p. 146.

"To express it in a word, the motive of the opposition to the Johnson plan of Reconstruction was a firm conviction that its success would wreck the Republican party and, by restoring the Democracy to power, bring back Southern supremacy and Northern va.s.salage."

The Republican party, then dominant in Congress, felt when confronting Reconstruction that it was facing a crisis in its existence. The Democratic party, unitedly opposed to negro suffrage, was still in Northern States a power to be reckoned with. Allied with the Southern whites, that old party might again control the government unless, by giving the negro the ballot, the Republicans could gain, as Senator Sumner said, the "allies it needed." But the ma.s.ses at the North were opposed to negro suffrage, and only two or three State const.i.tutions sanctioned it. Indeed, it may be safely said that when Congress convened in December, 1865, a majority of the people of the North were ready to follow Johnson and approve the Lincoln plan of Reconstruction. But the extremists in both branches of the Congress had already determined to defeat the plan and to give the ballot to the ex-slave. To prepare the mind of the Northern people for their programme, they had resolved to rekindle the pa.s.sions of the war, which were now smouldering, and utilize all the machinery, military and civilian, that Congress could make effective.

Andrew Johnson,[91] who as vice-president now succeeded to the presidency, though a man of ability, had little personal influence and none of Lincoln's tact. Johnson retained Lincoln's cabinet, and McCullough, who was Secretary of the Treasury under both presidents, says in his "Men and Measures of Half a Century," p. 378:

[91] The final estimate of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy under both Lincoln and Johnson, is this: "He (Johnson) has been faithful to the Const.i.tution, although his administrative capabilities and management may not equal some of his predecessors. Of measures he was a good judge but not always of men."--"Diary of Gideon Welles," vol. III, p. 556.

"The very same instrument for restoring the national authority over North Carolina and placing her where she stood before her secession, which had been approved by Mr. Lincoln, was, by Mr. Stanton, presented at the first cabinet which was held at the executive mansion after Mr.

Lincoln's death, and, having been carefully considered at two or three meetings, was adopted as the Reconstruction policy of the administration."

Johnson carried out this plan. All the eleven seceding States repealed their ordinances of secession. Their voters, from which cla.s.s many leaders had been excluded by the presidential proclamation, all took the oath of allegiance, and reconstructed their State governments. From most of the reconstructed States, senators and representatives were in Was.h.i.+ngton asking to be seated when Congress convened, December 4, 1865.

The presidential plan of Reconstruction had been promptly accepted by the people of the prostrate States. Almost without exception they had, when permitted, taken the oath and returned to their allegiance.

The wretchedness of these people in the spring of 1865 was indescribable. The labor system on which they depended for most of their money-producing crops was destroyed. Including the disabled, twenty per cent of the whites, who would now have been bread-winners, were gone.

The credit system had been universal, and credit was gone. Banks were bankrupt. Confederate currency and bonds were worthless. Provisions were scarce and money even scarcer. Many landholders had not even plough stock with which to make a crop.

There was some cotton, however, that had escaped the ravages of war, and a large part of this also escaped the rapacious United States agents, who were seizing it as Confederate property. This cotton was a G.o.dsend.

There was another supply of money that came from an unexpected source.

The old anti-slavery controversy had made it seem perfectly clear to many moneyed men, North, that free labor was always superior to slave labor; and now, when cotton was bringing a good price, enterprising men carried their money, altogether some hundreds of thousands of dollars, into the several cotton States, to buy plantations and make cotton with free negro labor. Free negro labor was not a success. Those who had reckoned on it lost their money; but this money went into circulation and was helpful.

Above all else loomed the negro problem. Five millions of whites and three and a half millions of blacks were to live together. Thomas Jefferson had said, "Nothing is more certainly written in the Book of Fate than that these people are to be free; _nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government_.

_Nature, habit, opinion have drawn indelible lines between them._"[92]

And it may truly be said of Jefferson that he was, as quite recently he was declared to be by Dr. Schurman, President of Cornell University, the "apostle of reason, and reason alone."

[92] "Jefferson's Works," vol. I, p. 48.

What system of laws could Southern conventions and legislatures frame, that would enable them to accomplish what Jefferson had declared was impossible? This was the question before these bodies when called together in 1865-66 by Johnson to rehabilitate their States. Two dangers confronted them. One was, armed bands of negroes, headed by returning negro soldiers. Mr. Lincoln had feared this. Early in April of that very year, 1865, he said to General Butler: "I can hardly believe that the South and North can live in peace unless we can get rid of the negroes, whom we have armed and disciplined, and who have fought with us, to the amount, I believe, of one hundred and fifty thousand." Mississippi, and perhaps one other State, to guard against the danger from this source, enacted that negroes were only to bear arms when licensed. This law was to be fiercely attacked.

The other chief danger was that idleness among the negroes would lead to crime. It soon became apparent that the negro idea was that freedom meant freedom from work. They would not work steadily, even for their Northern friends, who were offering ready money for labor in their cotton fields, and mult.i.tudes were loitering in towns and around Freedmen's Bureau offices. Nothing seemed better than the old-time remedies, apprentices.h.i.+p and vagrancy laws, then found in every body of British or American statutes. These laws Southern legislatures copied, with what appeared to be necessary modifications, and these laws were soon a.s.sailed as evidence of an intent to reduce the negro again to slavery. Mr. James G. Blaine, in his "Twenty Years," selected the Alabama statutes for his attack. In the writer's book, "Why the Solid South," pp. 31-36, the Alabama statutes cited by Mr. Blaine are shown to be very similar to and largely copied from the statutes of Vermont, Ma.s.sachusetts, and Rhode Island.

Had Mr. Lincoln been living he would have sympathized with these Southern law-makers in their difficult task. But to the radicals in Congress nothing could have been satisfactory that did not give Mr.

Sumner's party the "allies it needed."

The first important step of the Congress that convened December 4, 1865, was to refuse admission to the congressmen from the States reconstructed under the Lincoln-Johnson plan, and pa.s.s a joint resolution for the appointment of a Committee of Fifteen to inquire into conditions in those States.

The temper of that Congress may be gauged by the following extract from the speech of Mr. Sh.e.l.labarger, of Ohio, on the pa.s.sage of the joint resolution:

"They framed iniquity and universal murder into law.... Their pirates burned your unarmed commerce on the sea. They carved the bones of your dead heroes into ornaments, and drank from goblets made out of their skulls. They poisoned your fountains; put mines under your soldiers'

prisons; organized bands, whose leaders were concealed in your homes; and commissions ordered the torch and yellow fever to be carried to your cities and to your women and children. They planned one universal bonfire of the North from Lake Ontario to the Missouri," etc.

Congress, while refusing admission to senators elected by the legislatures of the reconstructed States, was permitting these very bodies to pa.s.s on amendments to the Federal Const.i.tution; and such votes were counted. Congress now proposed the Fourteenth Amendment, Section III of which provided that no person should hold office under the United States who, having taken an oath, as a Federal or State officer, to support the Const.i.tution, had subsequently engaged in the war against the Union. The Southerners would not vote for a provision that would disfranchise their leaders; they refused to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, and this helped further to inflame the radicals of the North.

After the Committee of Fifteen had been appointed, Congress proceeded to put the reconstructed States under military control. In the debate on the measure, February 18, 1867, James A. Garfield, who was, at a later date, to become generous and conservative, said exultingly: "This bill sets out by laying its hands on the rebel governments and taking the very breath of life out of them; in the next place, it puts the bayonet at the breast of every rebel in the South; in the next place, it leaves in the hands of Congress utterly and absolutely the work of Reconstruction."

And Congress did its work. Lincoln was in his grave, and Johnson, even with his vetoes, was powerless. By the acts of March 2 and March 23, 1867, the reconstructed governments were swept away. Universal suffrage was given to the negro and most of the prominent whites were disfranchised.

The first suffrage bill was for the District of Columbia, during the debate on which Senator Sumner said: "Now, to my mind, nothing is clearer than the absolute necessity of suffrage for all colored persons in the disorganized States. It will not be enough, if you give it to those who can read and write; you will not in this way acquire the voting force you need there for the protection of Unionists, whether white or black. You will not acquire the new allies who are essential to the national cause."

In the forty-first Congress, beginning March 4, 1871, the twelve reconstructed States, including West Virginia, were represented by twenty-two Republicans and two Democrats in the Senate, and forty-eight Republicans and twelve Democrats in the House of Representatives.

Mr. Sumner's "new allies" were ready to answer to the roll-call.

When Congress had convened in December, 1865, its radical leaders were already bent on universal suffrage for the negro, but the Northern mind was not yet prepared for so radical a measure. The "Committee of Fifteen" was the first step in the programme, which was to hold the Southern States out of the Union and make an appeal to the pa.s.sions and prejudices of Northern voters in the congressional elections of November, 1866. Valuable material for the coming campaign was already being furnished by the agents of the Freedmen's Bureau. These "adventurers, broken down preachers, and politicians," as Senator Fessenden, of Maine, called them, were, and had been for some time, reporting "outrages," swearing negroes into midnight leagues, and selecting the offices they hoped to fill.

But the chief source of the material relied upon in the congressional campaign of 1866 to exasperate the North, and prod voters to the point of sanctioning negro suffrage in the South, was the official information from the Committee of Fifteen. Its subcommittee of three, to take testimony as to Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas, were _all Republicans_. The doings of this subcommittee in Alabama ill.u.s.trate their methods. Only five persons, who claimed to be citizens, were examined. These were all Republican politicians. The testimony of each was bitterly partisan. "Under the government of the State as it then existed, no one of these witnesses could hope for official preferment. When this Reconstruction plan had been completed the first of these five witnesses became governor of his State; the second became a senator in Congress; the third secured a life position in one of the departments in Was.h.i.+ngton; the fourth became a circuit judge in Alabama, and the fifth a judge of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia--all as Republicans. There was no Democrat in the subcommittee which examined these gentlemen, to cross-examine them; and not a citizen of Alabama was called before that subcommittee to confute or explain their evidence."[93]

[93] "Why the Solid South," p. 20.

With the material gathered by these means and from these sources, the honest voters of the North were deluded into the election of a Congress that went to Was.h.i.+ngton, in December, 1866, armed with authority to pa.s.s the Reconstruction laws of March, 1867.

Southern counsels were now much divided. Many good men, like Governor Brown, of Georgia; General Longstreet and ex-Senator Albert Gallatin Brown, of Mississippi, advised acquiescence and a.s.sistance, "not because we approve the policy of Reconstruction, but because it is the best we can do." These advisers hoped that good men, well known to the negroes, might control them for the country's good; and zealous efforts were made along this line in every State, but they were futile. The blacks had already, before they got the suffrage, accepted the leaders.h.i.+p of those claiming to be the "men who had freed them." These leaders were not only bureau agents but army camp-followers; and there was still another brood, who espied from afar a political Eden in the prostrate States and forthwith journeyed to it. All these Northern adventurers were called "carpet-baggers"--they carried their worldly goods in their hand-bags. The Southerners who entered into a joint-stock business with them became "scalawags." These people mustered the negroes into leagues, and everywhere whispered it into their ears that the aim of the Southern whites was to reenslave them.

Politics in the South in the days before the war had always been more or less intense, partly because there were so many who had leisure, and partly because the general rule was joint political discussions. The seams that had divided Whigs and Democrats, Secessionists and Union men, had not been entirely closed up, even by the melting fires of the Civil War. Old feuds for a time played their part in Southern politics, even after March, 1867. These old feuds made it difficult for Southern whites to get together as a race; and, in fact, conservative men dreaded the idea. It tended toward an actual race war which, for many years, had been a nightmare; but in every reconstructed State the negro and his allies finally forced the race issue.

The new rulers not only increased taxes and misappropriated the revenues of counties, cities, and States; they bartered away the credit of State after State. Some of the States, after they were redeemed, scaled their debts by compromising with creditors; others have struggled along with their increased burdens.

There were hundreds of negro policemen, constables, justices of the peace, and legislators who could not write their names. Justice was in many localities a farce. Ex-slaves became judges, representatives in Congress, and United States senators. The eleven Confederate States had been divided into military districts. Many of the officers and men who were scattered over the country to uphold negro rule sympathized with the whites and evidenced their sympathy in various ways. Others, either because they were radicals at heart, or to commend themselves to their superiors, who were some of them aspiring to political places, were super-serviceable; and it was not uncommon for a military officer, in a case where a negro was a party, to order a judge to leave the bench and himself take the place. In communities where negro majorities were overwhelming there were usually two factions, and when political campaigns were on agents for these clans often scoured the fields clear of laborers to recruit their marching bands. In cities these bands made night hideous with shouts and the noise of fifes and drums. The negro would tolerate no defection from his ranks to the whites, and negro women were more intolerant than the men. It sometimes happened that a b.l.o.o.d.y clash between the races was imminent when white men sought to protect a negro who had dared to speak in favor of the Democratic and Conservative party. In truth, the civilization of the South was being changed from white to negroid.

The final triumph of good government in all the States was at last accomplished by accepting the race issue, as in Alabama in 1874. The first resolution in the platform of the "Democratic and Conservative party" in that State then was, "The radical and dominant faction of the Republican party in this State persistently, and by fraudulent representations, have inflamed the pa.s.sions and prejudices of the negroes, as a race, against the white people, and have thereby made it necessary for the white people to unite and act together in self-defence and for the preservation of white civilization."

The people of North Carolina recovered the right of self-government in 1870. Other States followed from time to time, the last two being Louisiana and South Carolina in 1877.