The Duel for Labor Control on Border and Frontier

How in North Carolina and Virginia, in the Border States and on the southwestern frontier, the dominant white worker after the war sealed the fate of his black fellow laborer.

North Carolina presents quite a different situation and method of Reconstruction from the states studied. The war left the state in economic bankruptcy. The repudiation of the Confederate debt closed every bank, and farm property was reduced in value one-third. The male population was greatly reduced and the masses were in distress.

In 1800, North Carolina had 337,764 whites and 140,339 Negroes; in 1840, 484,870 whites and 268,549 Negroes. In 1860 there were 629,942 whites and 361,544 Negroes. There were 30,000 free Negroes in 1860, a class who had in the past received some consideration. Up until 1835 they had had the right to vote and had voted intelligently. In the nineteenth century one of the best schools in the state for children of the white aristocracy was conducted by John Chavis, a Negro, educated at Princeton. Many Negroes had come into the state during the war so that their proportion of the population increased in 1870 and 1880. In general, however, Emancipation was not attended by any great disorders, and the general tide of domestic life flowed on.

The Freedmen’s Bureau issued rations to white people as well as colored, and many were kept from starvation. Large sums of money were received from the North in 1866-1867 and grain and provisions as well.

When President Johnson called North Carolina whites into consultation concerning his proposed plan of Reconstruction, many of them were highly indignant, some even leaving the room. They did not propose to share power even with the President but wanted to put their own legislature back in power.

They finally acquiesced and William W. Holden was appointed Provisional Governor, May 29. He ordered an election for a convention with a white electorate September 21. By June 27, 1,912 pardons had been granted in North Carolina, 510 of which came under the $20,000 exemption. Here, as in other states, there came the preliminary movement of planters to secure control of the Negro vote. Alfred M. Waddel, in July, 1865, editor of the Herald before the war and a colonel in the Confederate army, spoke to the colored people of Wilmington and denounced taxation without representation. He advocated the extension of the suffrage to qualified Negroes. The Sentinel said it was opposed to Negroes’ voting, but would open its pages for discussion. Favorable articles appeared by Victor C. Barringer and David L. Swaint.

The idea was to forestall any attempt of Northern white leaders and capitalists to control the Negro vote. The Negroes, however, had thought and leadership, both from the free Negro class, who had some education, and from colored immigrants from the North, many of whom had been born in North Carolina but had escaped from slavery.

During the year 1865, Negroes circulated petitions asking the President for equal rights. The convention of 1865 met October 2. The Ordinance of Secession was repudiated and slavery abolished but no action at first was taken on the Confederate debt. Johnson interfered and at last the debt was formally repudiated, although the leading papers of the state called the action “humiliating.” The General Assembly met in November, when the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified, but the vote explained that this amendment did not give Congress power to legislate on the civil and political status of the freedmen.

A commission was appointed to report on new legislation for the freedmen. This commission reported in 1866, and the General Assembly passed a bill which defined Negroes and gave them the civil rights that free Negroes had had before the war. An apprenticeship law disposing of young Negroes “preferably to their former masters and mistresses” was passed and Negroes could be witnesses only in cases in which Negroes were involved. In 1867 there were acts to prevent enticing servants, harboring them, breach of contract, and later seditious language and insurrection.

The adjourned session of the convention in May made a significant change in the basis of representation. Formerly, three-fifths of the Negroes had been counted in the representation, but the new constitution changed the basis to the white population alone, and allowed only white persons to vote or hold office.

During the state convention, the Negroes had met in Raleigh and adopted a set of resolutions which “asked in moderate and well-chosen language that the race might have protection and an opportunity for education.”¹ They also asked that discrimination before the law be abolished. They said nothing about the suffrage.

In the fall election of 1866, Worth was chosen Governor. He advocated the rejection of the Fourteenth Amendment. The legislature agreed. Holden, the former Provisional Governor and now leader of the Republicans, changed his attitude toward Negro suffrage, and in December, 1866, openly advocated votes for Negroes.

Holden says:

The people of North Carolina had rejected President Johnson’s plan of Reconstruction on the white basis. They had also rejected the Howard Amendment under which they could have returned to the Union as Tennessee did. Nearly three years from the close of hostilities had elapsed and we were still under provisional forms with the national military paramount. What was to be done? In a conversation which I had with Thaddeus Stevens in December, 1866, he told me he thought it would be best for the South to remain ten years longer under military rule and that during this time we would have territorial Governors and territorial legislatures and the government at Washington would pay our general expenses as territories and educate our children, white and colored. I did not want that state of things in North Carolina. I did not want to run the risk of a practical confiscation of our property to pay the expenses which would have been entailed upon us by these military governments. I did not want North Carolina to cease to exist as a state. I confess I feared confiscation of property to a greater or less extent, especially as President Johnson had said to me in May, 1865: “I intend to confiscate the lands of these rich men whom I have excluded from pardon by my proclamation, and divide the proceeds thereof among the families of the wool hat boys, the Confederate soldiers, whom these men forced into battle to protect their property in slaves.”²

When the Reconstruction Act was under consideration in Congress, the North Carolina Negroes sent a delegation to Washington asking for the removal of Worth, and that Holden be relieved of his disabilities so that he could again be put in office. In September, 1867, after the Reconstruction Act had passed, the Negro leaders called another convention in Raleigh. Among these leaders was James H. Harris, born in North Carolina but educated in Ohio. Even the whites acknowledged that “he had great ability.” Another leader was James Walker Hood, born in Pennsylvania and sent South as a missionary by the African Zion Church. He became eventually a leading official in the organization of the public schools of North Carolina, and finally was elected bishop of his church. Other Negro leaders were: A. H. Galloway, Isham Sweat and J. W. Ward. This Raleigh convention asked for full rights and full protection and the abolition of all discrimination before the law. They especially demanded ample means and opportunity for education. The convention resolved itself into an Equal Rights League and established a newspaper.

The order for general registration was published in May, 1867, and the registration was to begin in July in 170 registration districts. In the appointment of the boards, Governor Worth wanted to avoid the appointment of Negroes but recommended a few. For the general board, G. W. Broody, a colored minister from the North, was selected by General Sickles.

There were 106,721 whites who registered and 72,932 Negroes. Ninety-three thousand and six voted for the constitutional convention, and 32,961, all of them white, voted against the constitution. The constitution was ratified April 21, 1868, by a vote of 93,084 against 74,015.

In the registration, nineteen counties had Negro majorities and in several other counties the white majority was less than 100. Immediately there was an attempt to organize political parties. A people’s convention met March 27 with white and black delegates. It was denounced by the planters as a meeting of “Holden’s Miscegenationists.” The colored delegates took a prominent part and made many speeches, and a Republican Party was organized. On the other hand, an attempt was made in Raleigh to call a colored mass meeting at which Governor Worth and other Conservatives were to speak, the idea evidently being to divide the Negro vote between the parties, but the Conservatives did not respond.

Among the colored people there was growing a strong feeling about the land. Some wanted the land confiscated and given to small farmers. But many of the Northern capitalists opposed this. Harris advocated taxation of large estates so that the land could be sold and opportunity given Negroes to buy. On the other hand, he wanted the disabilities of the planters removed, while most of his followers were opposed to this. The election was held in November, 1867, and resulted in a large majority for the convention, although over fifty thousand people, mostly whites, did not vote.

On January 14, 1868, the constitutional convention on the Congressional plan convened at Raleigh. Of the one hundred and thirty-three members of the body, eighteen were Northern carpetbaggers and fifteen were Negroes. The leading carpetbaggers were: H. L. Grant of Rhode Island and the Rev. S. S. Ashley of Massachusetts, afterwards the Superintendent of Public Instruction. The Rev. James Walker Hood of Pennsylvania was the outstanding Negro delegate. The Rev. Ashley was made Chairman of the Committee of Education and from this position he greatly influenced the educational provisions of the constitution of 1868. The leading Negro members were: James H. Harris, J. W. Ward, J. W. Hood and A. H. Galloway. The next year Hood was made an agent of the Bureau of Education, and there did his life work.

In the convention, the chief matters of discussion were segregation in schools, inter-marriage, and propositions concerning holding of state offices by Negroes.

The records of the proceedings of the convention adhere strictly to parliamentary form. There were no speeches by any of the members of the convention recorded.

The constitution which was adopted had a Bill of Rights in which men were declared equal, slavery prohibited, and the people’s right to education asserted. Property qualifications for office were abolished, and universal suffrage and a system of public schools ordered to be established. There were also provisions for vagrants, a penitentiary, public charities and orphanages.³

The convention wrangled over the question of separate schools for Negroes, and finally refused to make separation of races in schools compulsory. They discussed inter-marriage and universal suffrage. There was a proposition to get loans from Congress for agricultural purposes and buying land and homes. This was declared to be pay for Negroes for their long labor without reward and for their services during the war. Loans from $3,000,000 to $10,000,000 were proposed. The convention passed 75 ordinances and 56 resolutions and sat for 55 days.

The reception of this constitution and the work of the convention was characteristic. The planter press in the state was strong and it insulted the convention in every way possible. The real brunt of the attack, however, fell not on the Negroes but on the Northern capitalists and leaders. The Republican Standard called the convention one of “the ablest, most dignified and most patriotic bodies” that ever assembled in the state. The reactionary Sentinel called it “the so-called” convention of “Ethiopian minstrelsy, Ham radicalism in its glory.” Some said that “the pillars of the capitol should be hung in mourning for the murdered sovereignty of North Carolina.” And Josiah Turner, who has the chief credit for finally overthrowing Reconstruction in North Carolina, said: “In the legislative halls, where once giants sat, are adventurers, manikins, and gibbering Africans.” The North Carolinian, February 11, 1868, said: “The Cowles Museum contains baboons, monkeys, mules, Tourgée, and other jackasses.”⁴

Evidently the state, by a combination of Northern capitalists and Negroes, and by a corresponding refusal of the whites to coöperate, was passing under a new régime. In the convention the carpetbaggers had large influence in the committees, and when the state was organized they undertook to run it upon a larger scale, spending more money, certainly, in part for the reason that the state had more things to do, as, for instance, public education, internal improvements, the extension of the credit of the state and public improvements.

By 1868, the ex-planters in North Carolina had begun to organize themselves as Democrats, although some of them for financial reasons became scalawags and allied themselves with the carpetbaggers.

The Conservatives fought the constitution on the ground that it made the Negro a social equal and while it gave representation to the Negro, it did not give representation to property. In Wilmington, for instance, it was said that Negroes cast the majority of votes; that thirty-nine-fortieths of the real estate belonged to the white people. Property was thus arrayed against labor, while labor was allied with the new carpetbag capital. This new capital was in the hands of persons who had but lately come to the state. In no state was the fight of the planters against carpetbaggers more bitter. Due to the long presence of the army in the state during the war, with the easy communication by water, a large number of Northerners after the war chose North Carolina as a likely home and place for work and investment.

Holden summoned the legislature to meet July 1, 1868. In his inaugural address, he defended the carpetbaggers and stated that in the history of the state most of the leaders had come from the outside. This legislature ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and voted down a provision for separate Negro schools. There were 3 Negro members of the Senate out of a total of 15, and 16 members of the House, out of a total of 120. Two of the Negroes acted as Speakers at various times. Among both Negro and white members there was considerable illiteracy, and among the local officials throughout the state it was said that few of the Negro appointees were competent and many of the white ones were not.

Thus the Reconstruction problem in North Carolina, while it had to deal with ignorance and inefficiency, was only to a very small extent a Negro problem.

The real fight in North Carolina was between the old régime and the white carpetbaggers, with the poor whites as ultimate arbitrators, and Negro labor between, struggling for existence. The brunt of attack was the Northern newcomers. The combination by which the white immigrants gained control of the state with the support of the Negroes had to meet, as in all Southern states, a charge of extravagance if not corruption. During the two years of the government of Holden the debt of North Carolina was increased from $16,000,000 to $32,000,000. It is doubtful, however, if Holden could be held responsible for this, and certainly the Negroes could not.

Most of this debt was to aid railroads. The aid granted to railroads by the convention of 1868, and the legislatures of 1868-1869, “was generally approved and passed by votes of members of both parties.” The object was to extend and complete the general railroad system, and the popular belief was that immigration and consequent development would justify the improvement and secure the State against loss.

These expectations have been disappointed. Immigration was checked and prevented. Part of the bonds were sold as a sacrifice, and the proceeds misapplied by the officers of the companies. Among the men managing the railroads and converting the proceeds were members of both political parties.⁵

The planters who bore the taxation raged with cries of fraud and theft. The Sentinel said:

Rave on, ye Radical plunderers; but your days of iniquity and fraud and corruption are fast coming to an end. The people, insulted and robbed, will not much longer suffer you to pursue your foul practices and elude public justice.⁶

The North Carolina served, loved and honored by Gaston, Hash, Badger, Swain and Ruffin is the same North Carolina no more. She is now the “hog trough” of the Union where Littlefield, Deweese, Laflin, Tourgée, Heaton, Ashley, Brewer and Abbott, and such swine, come to wallow with native hogs like Holden, Victor, and Greasy Sam.⁷

Many things show that in North Carolina land and capital were bidding for the black and white labor vote. Capital with universal suffrage outbid the landed interests. The landholders had one recourse, and that was to draw the color line and convince the native-born white voter that his interests lay with the planter-class and were opposed to those of the Northern interloper and the Negro. The boycott on the part of the planters against Negro labor, unless it voted right, was severe. When the legislature of 1868 adjourned, 88 of the Republican members signed a bitter address to the people, which was militant labor striking back:

Did it ever occur to you, ye gentlemen of property, education, and character—to you, ye men, and especially ye women, who never received anything from these colored people but services, kindness, and protection—did it never occur to you that these same people who are so very bad, will not be willing to sleep in the cold when your houses are denied them, merely because they will not vote as you do; that they may not be willing to starve, while they are willing to work for bread? Did it never occur to you that revenge which is sweet to you, may be sweet to them? Hear us, if nothing else you will hear, did it never occur to you that if you kill their children with hunger they will kill your children with fear? Did it never occur to you that if you good people maliciously determine that they shall have no shelter, they may determine that you shall have no shelter?

And now, be it remembered that in the late election there were more than twenty thousand majority of the freemen of North Carolina who voted in opposition to the Democratic party. Will it be safe for the landholders, householders, and meatholders to attempt to kick into disgrace and starve to death twenty thousand majority of the freemen of this state?⁸

Again, later, as the power of the planters became stronger, the Standard, representing the carpetbaggers, said:

Can there be any remedy under the forms of law? We think so, unquestionably. Of course it is not to be supposed that men and women and children will starve to death while corn is still standing in the fields and while hogs and cattle are not kept under lock and key! But these are matters of minor importance and are to be expected, however much the necessity may be deplored. What we mean is, that there is one efficient remedy for this wholesale crusade of oppression carried on against the colored race to starve him into voting against his choice. The remedy is this:

Whenever the Republicans have control of a county, let a meeting of the commissioners be called at once. Let them make out a list of all the colored stonemasons, bricklayers, plasterers, painters and carpenters. Then let them select a site of sufficient dimensions for a village of from five to fifteen hundred colored paupers, as the case may be. The work itself will give employment to a considerable number of persons, and some time will be required to complete it. Then let the county paupers be moved in and be provided with houses and food at the expense of those who have made them paupers. Let the tax be so laid as to affect only the large landholders. Not one in twenty owns any land at all, and the large landholders are much rarer. This tax will fall lightly upon the great mass of people, while the oppressive landholder will be compelled to throw his broad acres upon the market to raise money to pay the taxes. And in addition to this, let the legislature deprive these exacting tyrants of the benefit of the stay law and compel them to pay their debts, to pass their lands under the sheriff’s hammer and give the poor a chance to buy land.⁹

Governor Holden was accused of being the head of the Union League, which was the organization of white and colored voters, of believing in social equality and of being corrupt. The Ku Klux Klan increased their activities and the Congressional Investigating Committee reported 260 outrages, including 7 murders and the whipping of 72 whites and 141 Negroes.

Holden says:

These combinations were at first purely political in their character, and many good citizens were induced to join them. But gradually under the leadership of ambitious and discontented politicians and under the pretext that society needed to be regulated by some authority outside or above the law, their character was changed, and those secret Klans began to commit murder, to rob, whip, scourge, and mutilate unoffending citizens… . They met in secret, in disguise, and arms, in a dress of a certain kind intended to conceal their persons and their horses, and to terrify those whom they menaced or assaulted. They held their camps, and under leaders they decreed judgment against their peaceable fellow-citizens from mere intimidations to scourgings, mutilations, the burning of churches, schoolhouses, mills, and in many cases to murder. This organization, under different names but cemented by a common purpose, is believed to have embraced not less than 40,000 voters in North Carolina.¹⁰

Governor Holden said in his proclamation of July 19, 1870:

For months past there has been maturing in these localities, under the guidance of bad and disloyal men, a dangerous secret insurrection. I have invoked public opinion to aid me in suppressing this treason! I have issued proclamation after proclamation to the people of the State to break up these unlawful combinations! I have brought to bear every civil power to restore peace and order, but all in vain! The Constitution and the laws of the United States and of this State are set at naught; the civil courts are no longer a protection to life, liberty and property; assassination and outrage go unpunished, and the civil magistrates are intimidated and are afraid to perform their functions.

To the majority of the people of these sections the approach of night is like the entrance into the valley of the shadow of death; the men dare not sleep beneath their roofs at night, but abandoning their wives and little ones, wander in the woods until day.¹¹

The legislature met in 1870 with three Negro Senators and nineteen Negro members of the House. This small proportion of Negroes was continued up until 1876, the number of Senators remaining about the same, but the number of Representatives being reduced to seven. The appropriations for schools and relief were not sufficient and there was continued complaint. A system of public schools had been inaugurated in April, 1869.

The impeachment of Holden was repeatedly demanded. Seventeen colored members of the legislature issued an address in 1870 in which they defended Holden.

The only offense of Governor Holden and that which has brought down the wrath of the dominant party upon him, is that he thwarted the designs of a band of assassins who had prepared to sacrifice this State in the blood of the poor people on the night before the last election on account of their political sentiments and to prevent them from voting. Because he dispersed this murderous host organized by the so-called Conservative party, they proposed to destroy him. First proposed to suspend him, then to go through with a mock trial before the Senate as they have already done before the House, where a true bill has been found without taking testimony.

After impeachment his enemies will not be satisfied until he is hanged, unless happily their own gallows should overtake them. When Governor Holden is disposed of, those whom he protected will be the next victims. For the blood of one man will not satisfy their thirst. They are mad because Reconstruction measures have triumphed and we are permitted to represent you in this body. They are mad because we refuse to bow the knee to them.¹²

The legislature which convened in the capital in the fall of 1870 was made up of a Senate of thirty-six Conservatives, three Negroes, and two carpetbaggers, and a House of seventy-five Conservatives, nineteen Negroes, and two carpetbaggers.

One of the first things which this new legislature did was to take steps leading to the impeachment of the Governor. He was accused of being the head of the Union League in North Carolina, of believing in the social and the political equality of the two races, and of conducting the affairs of the state of North Carolina in a wasteful way. As members of the Union League, it was to be expected that Negroes would give their full support to the only political organization which made any pretense at wanting them among its membership and which they believed to be the one thing standing between them and reënslavement. In a letter to Captain Pride Jones of Hillsboro, Holden said:

Every citizen, no matter of what color, or how poor or humble, has a right to labor for a living without being molested; to express his political opinions without let or hindrance; and to be absolutely at peace in his own house.¹³

But the strategy of North Carolina became increasingly clear: to drive out Northerners who dared to take political leadership of Negroes and to unite all whites against Negroes on a basis of race prejudice and mob law. Thus under “race” they camouflaged a dictatorship of land and capital over black labor and indirectly over white labor.

The Albemarle Register said: “This paper in the future is in favor of drawing the line between whites and blacks regardless of consequences.”

Despite all the charges of fraud, corruption and stealing, Holden when finally impeached was charged not with dishonesty, but with using and paying troops to put down insurrection in the state. He said in defense:

That as regarded the white militia, we all agreed, at least those of us who took part in this discussion, that the Governor would be employing a militia composed of Ku Klux to put down Ku Klux; that as regards the colored militia it was inexpedient and impolitic to use them, owing to the prejudice in regard to race and color. It was then suggested, by whom I do not recollect, that it would be best to organize a regular force.¹⁴

White Northerners added that far from the Ku Klux trying to stamp out corruption,

that to punish or prevent corruption is no part of the object of the Ku Klux, but that they tolerate those who rob the State. This may be because among the robbers are members of both political parties, including some who direct and others who control and might easily suppress the Klan, and if the Ku Klux were to punish corruption impartially they would strike men in sympathy with themselves, even their own members. Another reason for the indulgence of public robbers by Ku Klux is, that the doings of both tend to the same result—the overthrow of the State government. The one assaults while the other undermines.¹⁵

In the ensuing constitutional convention, Tourgée, one of the ablest and most honest of the carpetbaggers, defended the carpetbaggers and said that Columbus, the Pilgrims and even Jesus Christ were carpetbaggers. O’Hara, a Negro delegate, moved to make the cohabitation of a white person and a Negro a felony. This was rejected 59 to 46. Tourgée proposed to make it a misdemeanor. This was rejected 61 to 43.

From 1870 on, North Carolina was in the power of the Democratic Party, so that radical Reconstruction controlled the state for only two years. Wages were low during Reconstruction and probably would have been under any government. In 1860, $110 a year was the wages of a man hired out; in 1867, $104; in 1868 and 1870, $89. The value of the chief crops was $38,000,000 in 1867, $31,000,000 in 1870. In 1860, the value of manufactured products was $9,011,050; in 1870, $19,021,327.

Concerning this whole North Carolina struggle, Tourgée expressed the truth when he said that democratic methods of government were

never indigenous to Southern soil. In truth, it has never become acclimated there, but has remained from the first an exotic. A few thousand of the white people of North Carolina accepted it in 1868, simply as the equivalent of the Unionism which has always held so dear a place in their hearts. A few hundred Adullamites accepted it as the alternative of political bankruptcy and the shibboleth of profitable power; and a few score of earnest natives accepted it with a clear perception of its basic principles, and a bona fide belief in their beneficence and righteousness. A few hundred carpetbaggers received it as the spontaneous product of their native States, the sentiments for which they fought and bled. The African race in bulk received it as the incarnation and sheet anchor of that liberty which they had just tested… . Ignorance, poverty and inexperience were its chief characteristics.¹⁶

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Virginia had something over 300,000 Negroes, of whom 285,369 were slaves and 20,124 free Negroes. By 1860, the slaves had increased to 490,865 and the free Negroes to 58,042.

The western counties of Virginia, beyond the mountains, opposed secession, and at a meeting held in August, 1861, they called themselves the restored government of Virginia, and made F. H. Pierpont Governor. This body gave the consent of Virginia to the forming of a new state of West Virginia.

Governor Pierpont then moved his capital to Alexandria, under the protection of the Federal armies, but actually had only a small part of Virginia under his control. In May, 1864, this restored government adopted a constitution with white suffrage. President Lincoln recognized the government, and President Johnson, May 9, 1865, restored Federal functions in Virginia. A session of the legislature met in June, 1865, passed some black laws, and congratulated itself on escaping Negro suffrage.

The government was moved from Alexandria to Richmond, and immediately there appeared a split between the former Confederates and the Unionists. The freedmen were especially disappointed and held a convention in Alexandria in August, 1865.

The body reviewed “the indignities, brutalities and inhumanities,” to which the Negroes were subjected as slaves. It asserted that a large number of Virginians bore the Negroes an undeserved malice because they were black, and had been freed by the United States Government. As a protection against such people, the freedmen demanded the rights, privileges and immunities common to citizens, including the right to vote. The freedmen declared that they were prepared to exercise the suffrage intelligently; and they pledged their loyalty to the interests of the State and to the United States. They presented a claim to citizenship on the ground that they should not be regarded as a separate class, but granted the considerations prayed as an evidence of the natural equality of all men.¹⁷

In the congressional election of October 12, the reactionaries were completely successful and in January, 1866, passed a stern black code with the usual vagrancy law and contract labor law. Ordinary civil rights were granted the Negro, but he could testify in court only when he was himself involved. Even some of the Confederates thought these laws too drastic and General Terry prohibited their application. The Congressional Committee of Fifteen began an inquiry into affairs in Virginia in January, 1866, and had 49 witnesses of all shades of opinion.

The reactionaries were bitter toward the Negroes and there were several riotous outbreaks. The Unionists called a convention at Alexandria May 17 and took a stand in favor of public schools and Negro suffrage. Late in 1866, Pierpont, recognizing the trend of affairs, recommended modification of the vagrancy law and ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment; but the Legislature at first refused, and then in extra session debated the matter. Before they had come to any final decision, the Reconstruction laws became operative.

The Reconstruction Act of March 2 had been passed when the legislature met again. On March 5, the Negroes had attempted to vote in a municipal election at Alexandria. The mayor and judge asked advice of President Johnson and of the Attorney-General, but received no answer. The Negroes cast 1,400 votes; the white Conservatives, 1,000 votes; and the white Radicals, 72 votes. The Negro votes were not counted; and the military commander forbade further local elections until after registration.

Meantime the considerable immigration of white politicians and officeholders began to organize the Negro vote. Among those who early took leadership was James W. Hunnicutt, a native of South Carolina, who became the Radical leader of the Negroes. John C. Underwood became a more moderate leader, and John Minor Botts, a Conservative leader. At first, Botts was not in favor of Negro suffrage.

Various Republican papers were established which told the Negroes that they were in danger of being reënslaved, and they were given to understand that the plantations would be broken up and every freedman given a forty-acre farm. The reactionaries were strongly against Negro suffrage. They wanted the Negro neither to vote nor hold office, but would grant him some civil and economic rights. They nevertheless insisted that Negroes coöperate with their former masters.

There was a great deal of sickness, poverty and death among Negroes at this time and some crime. There was also much philanthropic effort, fraternal and insurance societies, attempts at theatrical exhibitions, and some inter-marriage between the races. Negro churches and schools were built and burned. A riot took place in Alexandria on Christmas Day, 1865, in which two whites were injured and fourteen Negroes killed.

Yet Whitelaw Reid said:

The Negroes “were everywhere found quiet, respectful and peaceable; they were the only class at work; and in, perhaps, most respects their outward conduct was that of excellent citizens.”¹⁸ With regard to their deportment, the Alexandria Gazette expressed the consensus of press opinion that “the Negroes generally behave themselves respectfully toward the whites.”¹⁹

The economic oppression of the Negro led during 1865-1867 to considerable migration. Perhaps as many as 200,000 left the state, and there were attempts to organize unions and strikes for higher wages, particularly in the tobacco factories. In Richmond there was a stevedores’ strike and another strike on the Richmond and Danville Railroad. In 1875, a state convention of Negroes assembled which organized the Laboring Men’s Mechanic Union Association to protect Negro labor.

The Superintendent of Public Instruction in his report for 1871 said:

The more striking evidences of thrift are, of course, given by comparatively a small proportion of the race, and the general willingness to labor which exists among them is to be partly accounted for by the habit having been formed in slavery. But in the past history of the race in America, there have always been examples of Negro shrewdness and enterprise in every neighborhood… . With the very limited opportunities which a slave had for getting money, it is astonishing how many of them bought themselves and their families, in order to enjoy freedom. And how common it was for them to gain money for themselves by extra work, by little manufactures and other honest means. And it is not to be forgotten that during the late war, the Negroes of Richmond contributed thousands of dollars to sustain the Confederacy, and many stood the test of the battlefield on both sides.²⁰

In 1868, the Negroes of Richmond organized the Virginia Home-Building Fund and Loan Association, and in 1875 there was a Land and Financial Association chartered by the legislature to purchase land in small parcels for Negroes. It is estimated that during the late ‘60’s and the early ‘70’s, Virginia Negroes bought between 80,000 and 100,000 acres of land, and there were many individuals who owned considerable quantities. Schools were started, at Hampton and Norfolk, and were greatly extended by the Freedmen’s Bureau.

Two political factions now appeared: one consisting of the planters and a few Negroes, and the other of the Liberals, Negroes, and Northern and native whites. Hunnicutt became a Radical champion.

At an Emancipation Day celebration held in Richmond, 1867, Hunnicutt spoke:

He urged Negroes to register in order to vote in the fall elections. Where they were organized, he said, they should elect “a loyal Governor and loyal Congressmen.” Negroes were advised not to support white men who had opposed their liberty. Union men also should be tested. Those refusing to sit in a constitutional convention with Negroes should not be supported for office. Negroes who voted for rebels invited the perpetuity of the whipping post, the chain gang, and the vagrant law. Hunnicutt regarded with suspicion the praise of Negroes emanating from journals which formerly abused and ridiculed them. He counseled unity of action among the blacks and expressed the hope that whites and Negroes might live together in harmony.²¹

A Republican state convention was held April 10, 1867. “Some of the Negroes were intelligent looking men and neatly attired.”²² There were 210 delegates, including 160 Negroes. The Negroes took an active part in the convention. Many wanted land confiscation and distribution but some opposed it. Fields Cook, a Negro of Richmond, especially warned the Negroes against any ill-advised measures approving confiscation. The resolutions thanked Congress, advocated public schools and universal suffrage, and made special effort to attract the white laboring class.

Hunnicutt denied that he had given the Negroes advice detrimental to the whites. He asserted that the Negroes were the bone and sinew of the land, but the pay they received was inadequate. This was an imposition that should not be permitted to continue. He opposed a white landed aristocracy. He opposed injustice to the Negroes in the courts. Whites, he said, were not executed for murdering, but Negroes were hanged for killing whites. Hunnicutt opposed the restitution of the State to native white control. He asserted that Pierpont was a political disloyalist and should not be trusted. He flayed the legislature, stating that its sentiment was attested in the passage of the vagrant law, galling alike to poor whites and Negroes. Summing up his contentions, Hunnicutt stated that he did not desire to place Negroes above whites, but he believed that whites and Negroes should be accorded exactly equal rights.²³

The ascendancy of Hunnicutt was feared in the North. The New York Tribune spoke against it, and Senator Wilson of Massachusetts was sent to Virginia to counteract him. On the other hand, the planters began to threaten economic proscription against Negroes, if they did not work and vote with the native whites. But coöperation was made difficult by Negro agitation for civil rights on street cars, and on juries, which incensed the reactionaries. The freedmen arranged a political meeting at Amelia Courthouse where prominent whites and Negroes spoke. Consequently the Republicans became more and more divided. Moderate Republicans tried to organize and leave out the Hunnicutt faction. They held a meeting at Charlottesville in July and elected delegates to a convention in Richmond. Meetings for coöperation among blacks and whites were held throughout the state. The Richmond meeting was held in the African Baptist Church and was completely captured by Hunnicutt. This defeated coöperation.

In the registration 225,933 persons registered, of whom 120,101 were white and 105,832 were Negroes. The whites had majorities in fifty-two counties and the Negroes in fifty counties. The election took place October 18, 19 and 20, 1867. The whites cast 76,084 votes and the Negroes 93,145. The call for a convention was authorized. The planters had thirty-three delegates, the Liberals seventy-two delegates, and among the latter were twenty-five Negroes. Hunnicutt was arrested for inciting the Negroes to insurrection but released on bail.

The reactionary press boldly advocated proscription of Negro labor, and the discharge of workmen who supported the Liberal cause. One hundred and fifty Negroes employed in iron mines were discharged because they voted for the Radical ticket. Lewis Lindsay said to this that “before any of his children should suffer for food, the streets of Richmond should run knee-deep in blood; and he thanked God that the Negroes had learned to use guns, pistols, and ramrods.”

Commenting on this, the editor of the Enquirer deplored that ‘the capitalist was threatened with murder if he dared to discharge men who had declared themselves his implacable enemies. He is to house, feed and cherish the black vipers who meet in midnight conclave, and not content with heaping fould epithets upon him, conspire to defraud him of his property. Undaunted by the presence of the military, the Negroes openly avow sentiments, which deserve death upon the gallows.’²⁴

The Petersburg Index asserted: “The Negroes are the last men who should complain if their white employers were to discharge them and supply their places with white men.” The Lynchburg Virginian said: “They [the native whites] should concert measures without delay to fill the State with white laborers from the North and from Europe. They must crowd the Negro out. They must rid the State of an element that will hinder its prosperity, an element that, under the influence of base white demagogues—themselves without property—would tax the property of others to relieve themselves of obligation to educate their children and care for their paupers.”²⁵

A white man’s convention was held in Richmond, November 11. It appealed to the North not to permit the “disgrace” of Negro suffrage to be inflicted upon the state, and urged the organization of a party to bring the state under a white man’s government.

The constitutional convention with 105 members met in Richmond, December 3, 1867. There were thirty-five Reactionaries and sixty-five Liberals and five doubtful. Among the Liberals were twenty-five Negroes. The native press ridiculed the convention, calling it the convention of “Kangaroos” and the “Black Crook Convention.” The convention began work in January and first took up a Bill of Rights with a statement of the natural equality of men.

When the first section of the preamble was brought up for discussion on January 6, 1868, James W. D. Bland (colored) moved that in place of the word “men” in the clause “that all men are by nature equally free and independent,” as reported from the committee, be substituted the words “mankind, irrespective of race or color.”

Mr. Bland said:

When I recollect that the word “men,” as written in this first section, has been construed to mean white men only in Virginia, and as the word mankind takes in all the men, women and children on earth, I propose that as an amendment, as men upon this earth are of different races and colors and as we are here to propose a Bill of Rights for the people of Virginia which will make no distinction. I think it right and proper that we should state distinctly what we mean by mankind, or what we mean by men.

Mr. Bayne, another Negro, replied:

I rise to state emphatically that when I was elected to the convention, I pledged the good people of my section that I should endeavor to aid in making a constitution that should not have the word black or white anywhere in it. I told them that I wanted a constitution which our children fifteen years hence might read and not see slavery, even as a shadow, remaining in it. I am here to carry out that agreement… .

All that was necessary, in my judgment, for this nation to do to abolish slavery was simply to place men in power that would interpret that constitution as an anti-slavery instrument which I always believed it was. The word ‘slave’ was not found in it, but bad men in the nation and bad men in power placed such wicked constructions upon it that it worked death to the nation, and that is the cause of our being here today.

The convention discussed free public education and held a long debate on the matter of race separation in schools. The Negroes especially insisted upon mixed schools and the final report made no specific reference to whether the schools were to be mixed or segregated.

When the debates over mixed schools were in progress, Bayne proposed an amendment to the committee’s plan so as to place blacks and whites in the same schools. The amendment failed to get the support of enough Radicals to be adopted, in spite of the efforts on the part of the Negro delegates, and the threats of Bayne, Lindsay, Hodges and others, that if it were not supported by the white Radicals, the Negroes would withdraw from the Republican Party.

The suffrage was the paramount question. The liberals stood for universal suffrage, while the reactionaries declared that government was the prerogative of white men. Finally, the enfranchisement of all males twenty-one years of age was adopted.

Mr. Bayne said:

Does the gentleman mean that the black men are not to have any rights in this country? Does he mean to set us free today and in fifty or sixty years to come, then to give us the right of suffrage? I want it distinctly understood that the old slaveholders’ coach moves too slow for us. They design to enslave the blacks again if they can. They design to make him a slave by cutting him off from all opportunities for labor, by starving and oppressing him. Set the Negro free now and let him remain here. No, that is too much for him. He will enjoy it too much. A hundred years to come will be time enough for him to have these rights. In order to carry out their ideas and designs they have commenced just like they did with secession. They are preaching the danger of a war of races in this hall. They are preaching it in Congress, in the cities and over the country, in the streets, and on the seas, on the steamboats, in the cars, in the taverns, and everywhere. This war of races is being preached up constantly, but nobody preaches it up but that side of the House which hates the Republican Party and hates the Federal government… .

Lewis Lindsay, a Negro, said:

We want to give to the poor classes in this state, blacks and whites, every right to which they are entitled, and we will go home satisfied. I want this black race to have every right that is conferred upon every other man.

Mr. Bayne said:

In one breath he tells the convention that this boon is given to us by the blessed Providence of God, and in the next, he says that the Northern fanatics have clothed us with these rights. If the Northern fanatics are the means with which God wishes to confer upon us these rights, I will take the rights whether they or the devil brought them to us. I know that we have them. There is no power on earth or in hell that can deprive the black man of his right to vote… .

The economic problems appear in many guises. One resolution was introduced:

Resolved: That the Committee on Limitations and Guarantees, when appointed, be entrusted to consider and report the propriety or impropriety of incorporating in the proposed constitution a provision clothing the General Assembly with power to declare and punish as a misdemeanor, the discharge of any person employed as a laborer on account of his political opinions.

Mr. Bayne said:

I claim to be an ignorant man, one not wholly acquainted with this kind of work… .

I give this convention notice that unless they settle the question mentioned at this time and in the commencement of the sessions, we ignorant men will settle it ourselves and to satisfy ourselves. If we are to be bound and obligated at this time, let us know it.

Mr. Marye (white) asked:

Why is it that the cry is coming up from the colored men, actually now taking the form of a petition to Congress, that they cannot get employment because the white people hustle them out of it?

Mr. Bayne answered:

Will the gentleman allow me to answer his question? The colored people will not work because the employers do not pay them. Six dollars a month will not pay a man and feed and clothe his wife and children.

Former Confederates were disfranchised by a test oath and for participation in the rebellion as officers. The constitution was adopted by a vote of 51-36, only one Negro voting against it.²⁶

The reactionary members of the convention joined in a statement:

For nearly five months we have patiently sat in this convention listening to the encomiums upon the Negro race, to wholesale denunciations against the whites of the South, to propositions and speeches leveled against property, and addressed to the cupidity of enfranchised slaves suddenly invested with the controlling power in the state.

“It was the subject of remark among us during the progress of the convention,” said they, “that the Negroes grew more and more impracticable. The reported debates of the convention will show how active they gradually became in the proceedings of the body.”²⁷ This constitution was especially opposed because the test oath went further than congressional legislation. It also provided for the reorganization of counties which interfered with the rule of certain families who had dominated various county governments. Income taxes were imposed on incomes over $600, a poll tax on all males, and a homestead exemption. Civil and political rights were guaranteed, and a system of free public schools.

Voting on this constitution was postponed by the military commander, Gen. J. M. Schofield, who was hostile to it, and refused to let money for the election be taken from the state treasury. The election, therefore, could not be held unless Congress made a special appropriation. Political parties, nevertheless, began to prepare for the election and the Republicans nominated H. H. Wells over Hunnicutt. The Conservative Party condemned the “abominable” constitution and nominated Withers, a Confederate colonel. Withers pledged himself to fight against Negro suffrage and said: “I appear before you as the standard-bearer of the white man’s party… . I do not ask the support of the Negroes, nor do I expect it, for I consider them unfit to exercise the right of suffrage.”²⁸

In the meantime, the Republicans appealed to Congress and the House of Representatives passed a bill to hold the election in August, 1868, and then afterward another bill to hold it in May, 1869; but the Senate would not assent. Meantime, more moderate men in Virginia proposed that Negro suffrage be accepted, but that the new constitution be rejected. This led to a convention in December in Richmond which stated that while it did not believe in Negro suffrage it would accept it. A committee went to Washington and also a Republican party committee was sent. They appeared before the Committee of Fifteen.

Finally, the Republicans held a new convention, again nominating Wells, but with him as lieutenant-governor, a Negro, Dr. J. D. Harris. This convention split, and the seceders nominated a white man, Walker, for Governor. President Grant ordered an election to be held July 6, 1869, with a separate vote as to the test oath and disfranchisement of Confederates. The reactionaries supported Walker and the ensuing campaign turned entirely on the Negro. Walker was elected, the whites casting 125,114 votes and the Negroes 97,201 votes. Harris was defeated by a vote of 99,600 to 120,068 for his white opponent. The disfranchisement and test oath clauses were rejected, but the constitution was ratified.

Among the white people there was great rejoicing over the result. The Petersburg Index said: “Virginia has accepted restoration, has rebuked proscription, has vindicated her right to a voice in the control of her affairs, and by a vote unprecedentedly large, places at the head of the government the ticket of peace and equality.” The Danville Register said: “Let us all now go to work, white and colored, looking forward hopefully to a just and liberal system of legislation and an impartial administration for the protection of all alike.” The Lynchburg Virginian said: “The deluded Negroes have been taught a lesson which will bring them to their senses, and we shall have no more trouble with them.” The Norfolk Journal rejoiced that Virginia was “redeemed, regenerated and disenthralled.”²⁹

The colored Conservative Republican group sought to encourage the depressed Negroes and appealed to the whites not to take economic revenge upon the Negroes and drive them away from their jobs because they had voted in accordance with their convictions.

October 5, the General Assembly came together and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. But the Liberal Republicans continued dissatisfied and declared that the election held in July resulted in a Confederate triumph and was achieved by “artifice, intimidation and fraud.” They tried to keep the Federal government from admitting the state, but Grant recommended its admission and Virginia was restored February 8, 1870.

The new constitution was on the whole an excellent instrument. Taylor says that it

gave Virginia the only democratic instrument of government it has ever had. In spite of some of its cumbrous provisions and its imperfect machinery, the Underwood Constitution was as far ahead of that of the old régime or that of the present Virginia caste system as a modern steamship is of an Indian canoe. Such an innovation, of course, struck the reactionaries as a disaster, destructive of all that the gods had ordained as equitable and just.³⁰

An Englishman in 1870 said of the legislature:

“I counted among the delegates,” he said,

three or four colored men, one of whom was a pure Negro, very well attired, and displaying not more jewelry than a gentleman might wear; while another, who seemed to have some white blood in his veins, was a quite masculine-looking person, both physically and mentally. The Senate was presided over by the Lieutenant-Governor of the State, who was altogether like a young member of the British House of Lords, as the Senate itself had a country-gentleman sort of air not perceptible in the Lower House, which more resembled a Town Council or Parochial Board than the House of Commons. There were two colored Senators among the number, quite black, but senatorial enough, and like men who in Africa would probably have been chiefs. In the Lower House the colored delegates mingled freely with the other members, but in the Senate these two sat in a corner by themselves.³¹

Here, then, was a state in which the Negroes never had control, and nevertheless its chief difficulty under white control was the progressive piling up of an enormous debt which in January, 1872, amounted to $43,690,542. Nothing illustrates better than this the fact that there was no necessary connection between debt and Negro control. The subsequent history of Virginia for many years was the question of paying or repudiating this debt. Meantime, gradually, the Negroes were disfranchised by continued economic pressure, by appeals from their white friends and connections, and by force and fraud.

Arkansas had 12,597 whites and only 1,676 Negroes in 1820. In 1860 it had 324,143 whites and 111,259 Negroes. There was a brief military rule in Arkansas under John S. Phelps in 1862, followed by a year of civil war in 1863; then came four years of civil state government under Governor Murphy, 1864-1867. In 1867, the civil government was subordinated to a military régime under brigadier-generals of the United States Army. Then came the Republican government under Powell Clayton, 1868-1871, and four additional years of Republican rule, after which came the revolution in which the Republicans were driven from power by the local Democrats, assisted by Republican influences at Washington.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, the Negroes resided mainly in the lowlands where most of the plantations were located. During the war, the slaves remained with their masters until the Federal military operations of 1863 took place in sections containing the largest numbers of Negroes. All territory along the White River from Pea Ridge to Helena and westward to Little Rock came under Federal control; and the southeastern counties and lower Arkansas also were captured. The Negroes in these sections then began to enter the Federal lines in large numbers.

A group of Union sympathizers determined to reorganize the State and sought Lincoln’s cooperation. He cautiously gave it under his military power, but the group went ahead boldly, held a convention in January, 1864, adopted a constitution and elected Isaac Murphy governor. Two Senators were sent to Washington but Congress called a halt on this summary action and would not admit them. In 1866, the returned Confederates practically took charge of the Murphy government and sent a commission to Washington to confer concerning the condition of the state. The most important change in the constitution during this time was the abolition of slavery and the prohibition of indenture of any Negro except as an apprentice. Some of the leaders preferred permanent despotism to restoration under Negro suffrage. General Albert Pike said Negro suffrage would make “a hell on earth, a hideous, horrid pandemonium filled with all the devils of vice, crime, pauperism, corruption, violence, political debauchery, social anarchy.”³²

Meantime, congressional Reconstruction was begun. Registration began in May, 1867, but progressed slowly. A few whites told the Negroes registration was for the purpose of enrolling them for taxes, but the Freedmen’s Bureau sent out agents to instruct them in the purpose of voting.

The total number of registered voters in Arkansas was 66,805; 41,134 voted at the election, and of these 27,756 voted for and 13,558 against holding a constitutional convention. Upon these figures, General Ord announced the names of delegates elected to the convention.

The Arkansas constitutional convention convened January 7, 1868, in the city of Little Rock, and adjourned February 14, 1868. There were eight Negro delegates to the convention: J. W. Mason, Richard Samuels, William Murphy, Monroe Hawkins, William Grey, James T. White, Henry Rector, and Thomas P. Johnson.

Hempstead County had one Negro out of four delegates; Jefferson, one out of four; Lafayette, one out of two; Phillips and Pulaski each had two out of four. Of the Negro delegates, one was a postmaster, two were farmers, four ministers, and one a planter.

Cypert, leader of the white Conservatives, proposed in the convention of 1868 the adoption of the Constitution of 1864. Cypert claimed to be a friend of the Negro. He had been a Freedmen’s Bureau agent for a while, and “had always been desirous of advancing the interests of this unfortunate race. He knew the Negro in all his attributes; that their people were now being misled. He appealed to the Negro members present.”

Mr. Brooks (white) interrupted, to rise to a point of order. It was disrespectful to style the gentlemen of the convention Negroes.

Mr. Grey (colored), of Phillips County, said

he took no objection to the appellation; his race was closely allied to the race which built the great pyramids of Egypt, where slept the remains of those whose learning had taught Solon and Lycurgus to frame the systems of their laws, and to whom the present ages are indebted for the hints of art and knowledge.

Mr. Cypert (white) said

he was glad that the rebellion had been crushed. He was glad the Negro was free, but while he would have the Negroes protected, as they now are by law, in all their just rights, he could never consent to see them entrusted with the elective franchise, and made the rulers of white men.

Mr. Grey of Phillips replied:

I must confess my surprise at the action of the gentleman from White County (Mr. Cypert). I am here as the representative of a portion of the citizens of Arkansas whose rights are not secured by the ordinance offered by the gentleman from White,—men, sir, who have stood by the government and the old flag in times of trouble, when the republic trembled with the thought of civil war, from center to circumference, from base to cope. From this and other considerations, we are here not to ask charity at the hands of this honorable body, but to receive at the hands of the people of Arkansas in convention assembled, the apportionment of our rights, as assigned by the Reconstruction Acts of Congress.

I am here, sir, to see those rights of citizenship engrafted upon the organic law of this state; the gentleman from White does not seem to recognize the fact that the present Constitution is not in accordance with the Constitution of the United States, guaranteeing to each state a Republican form of government; the gentleman from White says the Negro cannot become a citizen. The fact is patent that we have exercised the rights of citizenship under the Constitution, in all the states except South Carolina; and that we voted for that time-honored instrument—the Federal Constitution—by voting for the men that ratified it

Before the revolution, all native-born free persons were British subjects and hence citizens, as the British government did not base allegiance or citizenship on color or complexion. Hence, we passed from British subjects to American subjects, without changing our relative status as to citizenship. This, I think, disposes of the assertion that we cannot be citizens under the Constitution. But, sir, I claim that it is ours, not only on constitutional grounds, according to the rulings of distinguished American jurists, but ours by right of purchase on the numerous battlefields of our country. It is ours, because from the Revolution down to and through the rebellion, we have stood unswervingly by our country and the flag. We fought for liberty. That liberty cannot be secured to us without the right of suffrage. The government owes the debt, acknowledges it, and apportions it out among the several states. We are here, sir, to receive the amount due us from the State of Arkansas.

The troubles now on the country are the result of the bad exercise of the elective franchise by unintelligent whites, the “poor whites” of the South. I could duplicate every Negro who cannot read and write, whose name is on the list of registered voters, with a white man equally as ignorant.³³

James T. White, a colored man, spoke on social equality:

I cannot think that the extension of the right of suffrage to colored men could be construed as opening the parlors of white people to a forcible entrance of colored men; but, on the contrary, their virtue and pride of race will be a sufficient safeguard to prevent them from anything like social intercourse. Who is to blame for the present state of affairs? When I look around I see an innumerable company of mulattoes, not one of them the heir of a white woman. This is satisfactory evidence of the virtue of white women. In the late bloody war, these gentlemen left their wives and daughters in the care of colored men for four years, and I defy the gentleman to cite me a single instance where they have failed to live up to their integrity. Gentlemen, the shoe pinches on the other foot—the white men of the South have been for years indulging in illicit intercourse with colored women, and in the dark days of slavery this intercourse was largely forced upon the innocent victims, and I think the time has come when such a course should end.³⁴

Mr. William Murphy, a colored man, said February 10:

When the late war resulted in the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln, four millions of our enslaved brethren were called to aid in the establishment of this union of loyalty. For the colored troops have proved their loyalty; they protected the Union flag. So they stood; and white gentlemen have been compelled to surrender the sword, at the same time they will rise here, under the same flag, after they have dropped their swords and their bayonets, and seek to limit our privileges. I would never have spoken, but to say this to the men that have been our masters, men whom we have brought to the very condition they are now in, and have not only fed them, but have clothed them, have tied their shoes, and finally have fought until they are obliged to surrender. Yet now that they have surrendered, they say we have no rights. Has not the man who has conquered upon the battlefield gained any rights? Have we gained none by the sacrifice of our brethren?

Concerning the adoption of the constitution, James P. Johnson, a colored man, said:

I believe this constitution to be the best one that Arkansas ever had. The gentleman from Ashley [Mr. Moore] has undertaken to show us that the class of men of whom he is a representative are our best friends. My God! I hope he will put his hand over his mouth and never speak that word again. We are very much inclined to believe the men who are trying to secure equal rights of voting according to the true Republican doctrine of the equal rights of all men; you do not want us to have any rights, but just let us stay in slavery as we were before the war.

James Mason, another colored delegate, read the following explanation of his vote, which he asked to have spread upon the journal:

I object to the continued disfranchisement of all persons who are now disfranchised by the present Reconstruction Acts of Congress and I believe many are now disfranchised who ought not be; but in the face of the reiterated assertions of gentlemen of the Conservative Party, that they are not to give us the right of suffrage under any circumstances, I am forced to accept this constitution as being good as a whole and as being the best that I can get under the circumstances; and give up my ideas of limited disfranchisement and qualified suffrage.

James White, the colored delegate, added:

Another reason why I shall vote, and why if I had 10,000 votes I would give them all for the constitution, is that I see in it a principle that is intended to elevate our families—the principle of schools—of education. That is the only way that these Southern people can be elevated. Were they properly educated they would not be led from any prejudice to oppress other men. Were they educated they would not hate us because we have been slaves; but like these gentlemen, if they should puzzle their brains and risk their lives upon the battle-field for the Union, they would stand up for our rights. Away with Union men who will not give all men their rights! Talk about friendship! The devil has such friends locked up, and hell is full of them!³⁵

In the course of convention sessions, a Conservative taunted a carpetbagger with the assertion that the Negro vote was his only way to ride into Congress. Thereupon, Negro members said their race was ready both to vote and fight for the whites who would grant them political rights. Brooks, leader of the Radicals, declared:

We, the great Republican Party, hold that they [the Negro] should have the ballot; and we intend that they should have it, and we will sustain the government based upon the principles of universal franchise and universal equality.

On the other hand, Hinkle, a scalawag, exclaimed: “Great God! Is there no help for the widow’s son?” and asserted that “all the devils in hell could not keep him from making himself a record by voting against adoption of the constitution.”³⁶ Despite this, the final vote was 45 to 21 in favor of adoption.

On April 1, it was announced that the constitution had been ratified by a vote of 30,380 to 41. On May 7, a bill for the readmission of Arkansas was presented in Congress by Thaddeus Stevens. It was finally passed in both Houses and over the President’s veto on June 22, 1868. Before the bill was presented to Congress, however, the state legislature had met April 2, 1868, and adopted the Fourteenth Amendment which was one of the prerequisites to her admission.

The constitution of Arkansas, like that of Florida, was a document which centralized power in the state government. The governor appointed nearly all the local officers in counties and townships, and he had the power to fill vacancies even in the few offices he did not originally fill. He appointed judges, collectors, and assessors of taxes, justices of the peace, prosecuting attorneys, registrars of elections who in turn appointed the judges of elections.

In April, 1867, a Union convention at Little Rock nominated a state ticket and succeeded in electing Powell Clayton as Governor. One Negro, John Payton of Pulaski County, was on the Committee of Resolutions; otherwise the Negro was not represented among the officials in this party convention.

During 1868-1873, Clayton ruled Arkansas with an iron hand, while the Ku Klux Klan practically carried on civil war. In 1869 an anti-Ku Klux Klan law of great severity was passed which prevented all secret political organizations, and declared their members public enemies. Even the possession of a Ku Klux Klan costume was a criminal offense. The law was sternly enforced, and the Klan disbanded after a season of martial law. In February, 1873, a severe civil rights law was passed which compelled hotels and places of public amusement to admit colored people and insured them equal school facilities in separate schools. Fines of $200-$1,000, or imprisonment of 3 to 12 months, were provided:

Officers of the law may be prosecuted for failure to enforce it, and prosecuting attorneys, sheriffs, coroners, justices of the peace and even constables, are to institute proceedings, and are obliged to do so. Many of these officers throughout the State are colored men. I was told there had been but a single case under this act, in which a saloon-keeper was fined twenty-five dollars. I noticed that some drinking—saloons had two bars, one for each color; but I also saw in several cases black and white men drinking together. The Negroes have shown no disposition to make the law offensive.³⁷

The rulers of the state constituted a closed ring which had no Negro members, but its power depended on controlling the Negro vote, and on the disfranchisement of about 20,000 of the former Confederates. Those disfranchised were given the right to vote by a constitutional amendment in 1872.

In April, 1874, a civil war broke out in Arkansas between Baxter, the regular Republican, and Brooks, a reform Republican. Each claimed to be Governor. Baxter was recognized by the legislature but Brooks took possession of the state buildings by force. They appealed to President Grant. Grant refused to take part but the Federal forces prevented the two parties from fighting. Grant finally recognized Baxter as Governor because the legislature had, and ordered the Brooks forces to disperse. A constitutional convention was held which cut down the length of the Governor’s term and his power.

Brooks now allied himself with the Democrats and declared that the constitutional convention had not been called according to law and was the result of conspiracy. The Democratic convention nominated Garland; the Republican convention, not recognizing the election as lawful, made no nominations. Garland was therefore elected. Grant came to the conclusion that the constitutional convention was illegal and that Brooks was still Governor. But Congress declared against Federal interference. Finally in 1874, the Democrats secured complete control of the state.

Arkansas thus was a contrast to Louisiana. Law and order conquered, but it conquered not for the purpose of giving the Negro any economic power, or, in fact, anything at all except schools and the civil rights bill. The government dictatorship was frankly capitalistic and for the benefit of capital and the protagonists who represented it.

Texas had, in 1860, 182,921 Negroes and 420,891 whites, thus putting this state among those where the Negro population was a decided minority, and white immigration destined greatly to increase the preponderance of the whites. The division of the planters and poor whites was less distinct in this state than in many others. There was plenty of rich land and the poorest white men could get a start; this increased the demand for labor.

Texas was one of the Southern States that had considerable prosperity during the war. She was outside the area of conflict; excellent crops were raised and slave labor was plentiful. Many slaves were deported to Texas for protection, especially from Louisiana and Arkansas, so that Texas could furnish food and raw material for the Confederate States; and on the other hand, when the blockade was strengthened, Texas became the highway for sending cotton and other goods to Europe by way of Mexico. There were many losses because of the distance, the dishonesty of traders, and lawlessness. Nevertheless, these were offset by the high prices.

When the war neared its end, the Confederate troops in Texas got out of hand and began rebelling and looting. Towns like Houston were burned, and clothes and food and all sorts of goods stolen. The Texas Republican stressed “the ruinous effect of freeing four million of ignorant and helpless blacks,” and said that the people of the North would be glad to witness a return of slavery, because it would raise “larger crops and a richer market for Yankee manufacturers.”

This paper did not think that slavery would be abolished for at least ten years, and that in the meantime compulsory labor would continue. Under the army officials, the compulsory labor did continue, but when the officials of the Freedmen’s Bureau arrived, they began to supervise contracts. There was the usual complaint that Negroes were not keeping their contracts, together with reports that they were working well.

President Johnson appointed A. J. Hamilton as Provisional Governor. He was a native of Alabama but had come to Texas before the war. He had refused to join the seceding states and fled to Louisiana, where he became a brigadier-general in the Federal army. When he arrived in Texas, he found everything in confusion. Money had been stolen from the treasury, the capitol building was without a roof, and there was general anarchy. Hamilton protested to Johnson against the tendency of the farmers to keep the Negroes as slaves. The question of the legal status of the Negroes the Governor left to the courts, and the courts contradicted themselves in their decisions, some of them admitting Negro testimony and others refusing it altogether. There continued the strong feeling that either the Negroes were going to remain in bondage, or compensation was going to be paid for their emancipation. The lawlessness continued, robbery and murder of Unionists and freedmen were common, and outlaws defied arrest. One county reports that “the civil authorities are helpless because the country is full of ruffians and lawless men,” another that the “laws cannot be enforced without the aid of the military.”

The Inspector-General on the staff of General Howard declared, early in 1866,

that Texas was in the worst condition of any state that he had visited; that almost the whole population was hostile in feeling and action to the United States; that there was a mere semblance of government, and that the whites and the Negroes were everywhere ignorant, lawless and starving.

The Assistant Commissioner for Texas under the Freedmen’s Bureau arrived in Texas in September, 1865, and began to appoint local agents in December. He found the freedmen “not only willing but anxious to improve every opportunity offered for their moral and intellectual advancement.”³⁸

In January, 1866, one Black Belt county reports “that two-thirds of the freed population were then at work at good wages and that seven thousand contracts had been filed already and that unemployed freedmen were becoming scarce.”

By the end of January there were twenty-six day and night schools and 1,600 Negro pupils enrolled. There was the usual bitter attack upon the presence of Negro troops, late in 1865 and early in 1866.

After much delay, an election was held January 8, 1866, and a convention was scheduled to meet in Austin in February. There were strong differences of opinion among the delegates. Dalrymple said:

My opponents… each and all, concede something to the Negroes; some more, some less, approximating to equality with the white race. I concede them nothing but the station of “hewers of wood and drawers of water.” . . If a republican form of government is to be sustained, the white race must do it without any Negro alloy. A mongrel Mexico affords no fit example for imitation. I desire the perpetuation of a white man’s government… !

Colonel M. T. Johnson of Tarrant County

declared his opposition to granting the Negro any political rights whatever, and insisted that he should be made to work by uniform laws regulating pauperism, labor and apprenticeship; but at the same time asserted the necessity of treating him with justice and kindness in his helpless condition.

There seems to have been only one candidate, E. Degener, a prominent German of San Antonio, who openly advocated Negro suffrage.

One prominent Texan, John H. Reagan, a prisoner of war at Fort Warren, Massachusetts, wrote a thoughtful letter in August which was published in Texas in October. He pointed out that the South was in the position of a conquered nation, that Texas would not be restored until it did what the North demanded, and that the North demanded protection against secession, the abolition of slavery, and civil rights for the freedmen. Moreover, it was probable that this alone would not satisfy the North and that it would demand Negro suffrage. Reagan, therefore, advised that Negro testimony be admitted in courts, and that an intelligence and, possibly, a property test be set for admission to the right to vote regardless of race or color, provided that no persons previously entitled to vote should be deprived of the right by the new requirements. President Johnson secured a parole for Reagan and it was hoped that he would have influence on the state, but his wise advice raised such opposition that he long refrained from further discussion. “A refusal to accede to these conditions would only result in a prolongation of the time during which you will be deprived of the civil government of your own choice, and will continue subject to military rule.”³⁹

When the convention assembled, the former secessionists were in control. The Governor in his message stressed the necessity of giving full civil rights to the Negro and the possibility of political suffrage. He said:

I do not believe that the great mass of the freedmen in our midst are qualified by their intelligence to exercise the right of suffrage, and I do not desire to see this privilege conferred upon them; [but] if we fail to make political privileges depend upon rules of universal application, we will inevitably be betrayed into legislation under the influence of ancient prejudices and with a view only to the present. I think that human wisdom cannot discern what is to be the future of the African race in this country… . I would not be willing to deprive any man, who is qualified under existing laws to vote, of the exercise of that privilege in the future; but I believe it would be wise to regulate the qualifications of those who are to become voters hereafter by rules of universal application.⁴⁰

The convention dawdled and spent most of its time electioneering for the Senatorships, and entered into a metaphysical discussion as to whether secession was illegal from the beginning or should simply be disavowed at present. Finally, the usual Southern circumlocutions were adopted: African slavery had been terminated by the United States government, and therefore it should be discontinued in Texas. Negroes were to have property rights but could testify only in cases involving Negroes, although the legislature could, when it wished, give them full rights of testimony. The German Degener was alone in his advocacy of Negro suffrage. There was some debate on repudiating the civil debt which had been recklessly increased to nearly $8,500,000.

After a session of eight weeks, the convention adjourned, having failed to take any really advanced step, except the grudging recognition of Emancipation. Immediately preparations were made for the coming elections, and a considerable party wanted to drive out all Union men and nullify the emancipation of Negroes. The planters supported the president of the Convention as Governor and opposed Negro suffrage. Their ticket was elected by a large majority and eventually recognized by the President. Former Confederates, elected as Senators, were unable to take the test oath. They and the Representatives were refused seats in Congress. The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments were presented to the legislature, the first without comment and the second with unqualified disapproval. The Fourteenth Amendment was rejected by a vote of 70-5 in the House, and a large majority in the Senate.

Reagan again called attention to the trend of events, and advocated qualified Negro suffrage and the right of Negroes to testify in the courts. His letter produced only irritation.

The new head of the Freedmen’s Bureau, General Kiddoo, favored the employers as against the Negro laborers and established heavy fines for “enticing” laborers away from employers. A black code gave certain rights to freedmen not prohibited by the Constitution, but forbade inter-marriage, voting, holding public office, serving on juries, or testifying in cases where Negroes were not concerned. Johnson urged that civil rights be extended to the colored people if it had not already been done.

Violence continued in the spring and summer of 1866. The town of Brenham was burned, soldiers broke up a Negro ball, and there was general lawlessness. Gangs of horse thieves and desperadoes were roaming about. Federal officials reported that Union men and Negroes were fleeing for their lives and that murders and outrages on Negroes were on the increase, while criminals were always acquitted.

Kiddoo substituted yearly contracts instead of monthly contracts in the cotton districts, and tried to assure the freedmen of their wages. He repudiated the labor law passed by the legislature, but his successor adopted some of its provisions. March 19, 1867, Sheridan was made commander of the 5th Military District, consisting of Louisiana and Texas. Unable to secure the release of large numbers of Negroes imprisoned on trivial charges, Sheridan issued his jury order excluding from juries persons who were unable to take the test oath. Sheridan declared that one trial of a white man for killing a Negro was a farce.

Meantime, the registration of voters under the new Congressional legislation began. The Negroes were eager to vote. A new state Republican Party was organized, and there was advocacy of free common schools and free homesteads from the public lands to all without discrimination of color. E. M. Pease was appointed Governor by Sheridan July 30, 1867, and Throckmorton removed. Pease was a native of Connecticut but had been in Texas since 1835, and during 1853-1857 had been Governor of the state. He opposed secession. There arose among the Republicans a severe difference of opinion as to how far the former Confederates should be disfranchised.

The President in August removed Sheridan from command and substituted Thomas; ten days later he substituted Hancock for Thomas. Hancock assumed command in November. He was a Democrat, and a follower of Johnson. He reversed Sheridan’s order concerning juries, and declared that the country was “in a state of profound peace.” Pease flatly contradicted this and said there had been one hundred murders during the past year, with only ten arrests and five trials. He declared that, because of Hancock’s order concerning juries, there had been an increase in crime and hostility to the government.

Agitation arose because it was said that Negroes were carrying arms, although it was well known that every white Texan was habitually armed. A Negro meeting which was addressed by a Supreme Court judge was broken up, and the judge complained:

None but a Johnson man could be tolerated here. He must cuss Congress and damn the nigger… . General Hancock is with the President politically and will only execute the letter of the law to escape accountability… . There is not an intelligent rebel in all the land who does not understand him… .⁴¹

During 1867 there was bad feeling between the races. The whites especially resented arms in the hands of the Negro soldiers. And the impossibility of convicting white aggressors upon black men was continually manifest.

A judge declared that it was impossible to convict a white man of any crime on Negro testimony; where the crime was against a Negro, to convict a white man of murder in the first degree was out of question.

Registration of voters had begun early in the summer of 1867 but went on slowly. The Conservatives first proposed not to register, and then afterward changed their minds and registered with the plan of staying away from the election. The election was held in February, 1868, and showed that comparatively few whites had been disfranchised.

Fifty-nine thousand, six hundred and thirty-three, or 14% of the white population, registered in 1867, and 49,497 Negroes, or 27% of the colored population. A majority of the whites voted against the convention but the blacks carried it. The total registration was 109,130, and the white registration was about equal to the total vote in the campaign of 1866.

The election was quiet, and the convention won by an overwhelming vote of 44,689 to 11,440. In the Constitutional Convention, it was characteristic that among the 90 members there were twelve reactionary white members from the Black Belt, elected undoubtedly by all too common methods. There were nine Negroes, and delegates from the black districts bordering on the Brazos and Trinity Rivers. J. T. Ruby came from Galveston. He was an educated Negro and was elected from the white district of Galveston. Ruby was a mulatto from Philadelphia and for fifteen years was the leader of the Negroes. He was rated as an astute politician and a man of unusual ability. He was very popular in Galveston, where his brother held a position in the custom house.

E. J. Davis was a new white leader of the Unionists. He had been an opponent of secession and an officer in the Union army during the war. He was one of the first to defend Negro suffrage. Governor Pease sent in a message in which he declared that from December 1, 1867, to June 1, 1868, in sixty-seven counties out of 127, two hundred and six murders had taken place with few attempts to punish the offenders. He recommended schools and homesteads and the encouragement of immigration. Ralph Long of Limestone, a Negro, was an outstanding leader. It was he who offered the resolution annulling certain court decisions which declared that the Emancipation Proclamation should not take universal effect. His resolution was rejected by a two-thirds vote.

On July 2, the committee on lawlessness and violence reported 509 whites and 486 Negroes killed, 1865-1868. More than 90% of these murders were committed by white men. The report continues:

In other words, according to the lowest calculation, the peace administration of Generals Hancock and Buchanan has to account for twice the number of murders committed under the Sheridan-Throckmorton administration, and three times the number committed under the Sheridan-Pease administration. Moreover, fuller reports show that since the policy of General Hancock was inaugurated, sustained as it is by President Johnson, the homicides in Texas have averaged fifty-five per month; and for the last five months they have averaged sixty per month. It is for the Commander of the Fifth Military District to answer to the public for at least two-thirds of the 330, or more, homicides committed in Texas since the first of December, 1867. Charged by law to keep the peace and afford protection to life and property, and having the army of the United States to assist him in so doing, he has failed. He has persistently refused to try criminals, rejected the prayers of the Executive of the State and of the Commanding General of the District of Texas for adequate tribunals, and turned a deaf ear to the cry of tried and persecuted loyalists. And knowing whereof we affirm, and in the face of the civilized world, we do solemnly lay to his charge the death of hundreds of the loyal citizens of Texas—a responsibility that should load his name with infamy, and hand his very memory to coming years as a curse and an execration.⁴²

Delegates were sent to Congress with this report, while the Houston Telegraph advocated their assassination.

The convention in making the constitution came to the question of the suffrage in August, and then postponed it until after the recess, which took place after ninety-two days of work. The reason for the recess was differences among the Republicans and fear of mob law among the Democrats before the presidential election. Mobs appeared. G. W. Smith, a white New Yorker and leader of the Negroes, was jailed and lynched, together with several of his black followers. Feuds were rife in many of the counties. Bands of Ku Klux roamed about. Negroes were boycotted or given employment as they joined Democratic groups.

In January, when the convention came together again, the question of suffrage was discussed. The Democrats proposed to exclude Negroes, while unrestricted suffrage was defeated by a vote of 34-31. The final proposition allowed Negroes to vote and disqualified only those classes mentioned in the Fourteenth Amendment. This finally passed by a vote of 30-26.

The whole fight on suffrage was not a fight against Negro suffrage, but a question as to how far former Confederates were to be allowed to vote. The measure finally passed admitted the great mass of these. Hamilton, the former Provisional Governor, secured the final triumph of a policy of leniency toward the ex-Confederates. This divided the Republicans into two factions: one which wished to disqualify the Confederates more completely, and the other which was willing to share the practical control with the Confederates. Three Negro members, Ruby, Williams and Newcomb, revolted against the prolonging of the session of the convention and resigned, declaring that the convention was prolonged for the purpose of subsidizing a venal press. Ruby declared

that the present Reconstruction convention has lost, through many of its members, all regard for dignity and honor as a legislative assembly, and that its continued assemblage will only terminate in disgust to the entire country.

The convention never actually adjourned nor was the constitution ever adopted by actual vote. The most meritorious features of the constitution were the abolition of slavery and the liberal provisions for the schools. The constitution established free public schools and decreed that the receipts from public lands should go to the school fund, besides other revenues. A State Superintendent of Public Instruction was appointed. As a final result, Davis became the leader of the radical Republican Party, while Hamilton was the leader of the Conservatives and was backed by Johnson. The result was a contest in which Hamilton could only hope to win by getting a large number of white Democratic votes, while Davis sought the bulk of the Negro votes, because of their fear of disfranchisement at the hands of the ex-Confederates. The election took place in 1869. It was quiet, although there were accusations of fraud in various parts of the state. E. J. Davis, by the efforts of Ruby, who marshaled the Negro votes, was elected Governor by a small plurality.

In the ensuing legislature, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were adopted almost without opposition, and March 30, 1870, the representatives of Texas were admitted to Congress. Thereupon, E. J. Davis became Governor instead of Provisional Governor. In April, Governor Davis complained of the continuance of lawlessness in many parts of the state. Ruby, the colored leader, was still active in Galveston, working for a new charter for the city. Every effort was made to aid the railroads by renewing land grants and making appropriations of $16,000 in state bonds for every mile built. Davis favored railroads but opposed subsidies and vetoed some of the bills. He kept on declaring that a slow civil war was going on in Texas, and pressed for a state police force. Later, a railroad grab involving $6,000,000 subsidy was passed through the legislature and indignantly vetoed by the Governor. “In counting up the charges against Davis’s administration, not a suspicion can rest against his financial honesty, of which this veto message is an enduring monument.”⁴³

There was a small increase of debt. When Davis came into office in 1870, the state was out of debt, and when he left office in 1874, the debt was $4,414,095. The rate for state taxes had risen from 15¢ in 1860 to $2.17½ on $100 valuation in 1866, exclusive of about 60¢ in addition, which was interest on bonds donated to railroads.

There had been an ineffectual effort to establish a free public school system in Texas in 1845. In 1869, provision was made to give to the public school fund the proceeds of the sale of all the public lands, which resulted in a magnificent endowment. The constitution of 1869 authorized the legislature to divide the state into school districts and appoint school directors. Every effort was made to wreck the school system in order to exclude Negroes, but gradually it became solidly established.

As the election of 1873 approached, there was great excitement. Davis’s chief reliance was on the Negro vote, and he strove especially to get out the Negro vote in the Black Belt counties, where it was largely suppressed. The whites were determined to drive him out.

It was in a sense a revolution. There is no shadow of a doubt of fraud and intimidation at this election. “Davis Negroes” were in many communities ordered to keep away from the polling places, while white men under age were voted.⁴⁴

The total vote was surprisingly large, probably because it was fraudulent. Davis was defeated by a vote of 85,549 to 42,663, and the majority of the legislature were Democrats. The State Supreme Court held the election irregular because of the case of a single individual, and Governor Davis attempted to prolong his term; but this meant civil war. Negro militia was on hand to prevent Democrats from taking possession of the capitol, and open hostilities were imminent. Davis telegraphed Grant, but military aid was refused, and finally Davis retired.

The problem in this frontier state never reached its vital economic phases until long after Reconstruction.

During this Reconstruction period many Negroes held office. There was a lack of whites who could take the test or oaths or who were willing to act as supervisors, registrars and clerks. The Negroes were usually on these boards and sometimes were appointed even when whites were available. They became indeed so outstanding as officeholders for a while that the Houston Telegraph sounded a warning that unless the full strength of the whites should be enlisted, there would be large numbers of Negro officeholders, and that they would try to take the land out of the hands of the present owners. There were Negroes in the state militia and on the various police forces, and they formed a military guard when Davis was trying to keep the Democrats from taking forcible possession of the capitol.

In 1872, for the first time, Negroes voted for President. Norris Wright Cuney, a young colored man, born in 1846, became sergeant-at-arms in the Texas legislature, and warmly attached to Governor Davis. In 1871, Cuney became one of the school directors of Galveston County; in 1872 he was Inspector of Customs for the state. Cuney ran for Mayor of Galveston in 1875, and his successful Democratic opponent testified to Cuney’s interest in sound policy and honest government. He continued for many years to be the incorruptible and intelligent leader of the Negroes of Texas.

The border land between slavery and free labor, including the District of Columbia, Delaware and Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee, Missouri and the Indian Territory, was vitally affected by the abolition of slavery. Its history during and after the Civil War is not usually included in Reconstruction, and yet it had analogous problems arising from abolition and enfranchisement.

Unfortunately, however, monographic material upon which a study of the Negro in these states might be based is lacking in many particulars. There is practically nothing about Negroes in Delaware and the Indian Territory; and in the case of the other states, the problems are insistently conceived as being exclusively problems of the white population, so that the development of the Negro is followed with great difficulty. Here remains, therefore, a most interesting and neglected field of historical and economic exploration.

The District of Columbia is of especial interest because it is the seat of the United States government. The status of slavery there not only was of intrinsic importance, but the nation and the world actually saw slavery in Washington and judged the whole system largely from what they saw.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, there were 4,027 Negroes in the District. They increased to 10,425 in 1820, and 13,746 in 1850. At the beginning of the war, the Negro population stood at 14,316. Of this population, there were 783 free Negroes in 1800; 6,152, or a majority of the black population, in 1830; and 11,131 in 1860, when they largely outnumbered the 3,000 slaves.

Immediately after the war, the Negro population greatly increased, reaching 43,404 in 1870 and 59,596 in 1880. During these years, however, the population of Negroes in the total Washington population did not vary greatly. It formed one-third in 1810 and one-third in 1880. It fell to its lowest point, 19%, in 1860.

Because of the prominence of the city, the abolition campaign was early concentrated upon slavery in the District, and gained partial triumph when the slave trade was abolished in 1850. In 1861, a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia was introduced by Senator Wilson, and after much opposition from the Border States, it passed the Senate and the House in April, 1862, and was signed by President Lincoln, April 16. The result of this law made Washington a mecca for free Negroes, and in a single decade, the Negro population increased 200%. These Negroes had begun their own self-supported schools in 1807.

The civil rights of Negroes in the District were fought for continuously by Charles Sumner. He secured the law of April 3, 1865, to make valid Negro testimony in the District courts. He fought segregation on railroad and streetcar lines and the law which prevented Negroes from carrying mail. On his motion, a Negro was admitted to practice before the Supreme Court in 1865, and another in 1867. The right to serve as jurors was not conferred on Negroes until March, 1869.

After the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, there came an agitation to give the Negroes the right to vote. A large mass meeting was held at the Asbury M. E. Church in 1865. A petition signed by Negroes who could read and write was sent to Congress, and after long debate and postponement for a year, the Negro was finally enfranchised in December, 1866; the bill passed over a veto by President Johnson.

In November, 1867, there were 13,294 white voters, and 6,648 Negroes. In 1871, at the election of a delegate to Congress, 17,757 whites and 10,772 Negroes voted.

The economic status of the Negro in the District was made very difficult during and after the war because of the large increase in the Negro population. Nevertheless, Negroes accumulated a good deal of property. When, for instance, it was charged in 1865 that they did not own $40,000 worth of property in the whole city, it was proven that in one square their holdings aggregated $45,592. Yet there were poverty and suffering among the Negroes. In 1867, it was estimated that of 32,000 Negroes in the district, one-half were destitute. Congress appropriated $15,000 on March 16, 1867, to relieve the freedmen.

In February, 1871, an act was passed changing the government of the District of Columbia. The old charters and courts which had been inherited from the Maryland government were discarded and a territorial form of government established with a Governor and legislative assembly composed of a Council and House of Delegates. The Governor and Council were appointed by the President, and the House elected by the people. The powers were similar to those granted to new territories, including the right to borrow money, assess taxes, and carry on the government. Alexander R. Shepherd, a personal friend of President Grant. He ran a plumbing business, and was a native of the District; Grant appointed him Governor. He changed Washington from a poorly paved, badly lighted, unattractive city into a model and beautiful capital. The work was done rapidly and was accompanied by all the current political jobbery. Under any circumstances, the transformation would have cost large sums of money, but with graft and misappropriation of funds, the District was plunged into a debt of many millions of dollars. After sharp agitation, the government was changed again, all the people disfranchised, and the District put under the rule of three commissioners. Naturally, in this case, as in the Southern states, the harm and dishonesty of the Shepherd régime was charged to the colored voter, while the beauty and accomplishment of the re-born city was put to the credit of white civilization. There was about as much sense in one charge as in the other. Disfranchisement in the District came at the demand of overtaxed real estate and of reactionary property interests hiding behind the color bar.

Maryland had at the beginning of the nineteenth century 125,222 Negroes. This number increased gradually to 155,932 in 1830; decreased in 1840; rose in 1850 to 165,091, and in 1860, was estimated at 171,131. The free Negroes in this population numbered 19,587 at the beginning of the century, and increased rapidly and steadily to 83,942 in 1860. Thus, the black population of Maryland was almost evenly divided at the opening of the war between free Negroes and slaves.

Maryland, along with Virginia and the other Border States, had some part in the business of raising slaves for sale further South, but not as large a part as these other states. On the whole, her Negro population were artisans, laborers and servants, and the institution of slavery was insecure because of the ease of escape to Northern states.

The Black Code of Maryland forbade the immigration of free Negroes, although in 1862, the penalty for sale into slavery was abolished. In 1865, immigration was permitted. The Assembly of 1867 repealed many parts of the Black Code, but among other things, did not allow a colored woman to be a competent witness against the white father of her child.

During the war, nothing was done to interfere with the institution of slavery. But the convention of 1864, charged with forming a new Constitution, had a considerable number of delegates in favor of abolition. Finally, a clause for immediate abolition of slavery was passed by a vote of 2-1. When the Constitution went before the people, it was accepted by a narrow margin.

A constitutional convention was held in Annapolis in 1867, and another Constitution adopted by an overwhelming popular vote. It did not declare that men were “created equally free,” and compensation for freed slaves was demanded. This represented a reactionary movement, as compared with the Constitution of 1864.

During the campaign, the Unconditional Union Party, in 1866, pledged itself against Negro suffrage, while the Republican Party Convention, in 1867, had colored men among the 200 delegates from Baltimore and a large number from the counties. A colored clergyman opened this convention.

A colored veteran said there was no need to tell his people how to vote. “We have not,” he said, “the ability among us to occupy high positions of honor; we are like a new-born babe, taking our first steps to political life and strength, supported by the Radical party.” Another prominent leader said, “It is because we are a minority of the voting population of Maryland that the necessity has been forced upon us of casting around to see by what means we can extricate ourselves from our present position”; and another still, “Whenever we can get the suffrage for the colored man, I am satisfied there is no man that can ever betray us again.”⁴⁵

The resolutions of the convention called for the equality of all American citizens in all civil and political rights, and urged the Republican party, as a last resort, should the coming conservative constitution not give impartial suffrage, to appeal to Congress for support.

One colored delegate, a member of the Committee on Resolutions, rejoiced to see a day of real political equality between whites and blacks; another said he was ready, like Simeon of old, to depart in peace, now that he had seen salvation.⁴⁶

In 1866, Governor Swann, the man who wanted to arm his militia with Federal artillery, addressed an open letter to the editors of the Baltimore American in which he said:

I am utterly opposed to universal Negro suffrage and the extreme radicalism of certain men in Congress and in our own State, who have been striving to shape the platform of the Union Party in the interests of Negro suffrage… . I look upon Negro suffrage and the recognition of the power in Congress to control suffrage within the States as the virtual subordination of the Negro in the State of Maryland… . I consider the issue upon this subject… as well made in the fall elections, and the most important that has ever been brought to the attention of the people of the State of Maryland.⁴⁷

Governor Swann was answered in an editorial in the American, a few days later, which read:

. . . At least nine-tenths of the Union men of Maryland have taken position with the Congress of the United States… . The Governor will find, when too late, that he will not be followed by a corporal’s guard of those who placed him in his present position in the course he has taken, and that his future affiliation must be with the disloyal, whilst his antagonists will be the true and loyal men of Maryland… .⁴⁸

Notwithstanding the effort of the Republicans, the Conservative Constitution, without Negro suffrage, was adopted a few months later. Negroes did not get the right to vote until after the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Few colored men have been nominated to elective offices in Maryland. In 1872, a Negro ran for Congress in the 5th District, but withdrew in favor of a white candidate.

Negro labor had a larger chance in Baltimore because of skilled work by the blacks in brickmaking, oyster shucking, work as stevedores; and they practically had a monopoly on ship-caulking. After the Civil War, there came a good deal of competition with foreign labor.

From the testimony of many persons, the colored people of Baltimore appear to have been actively engaged in all manner of business ventures even before the Civil War. These ante-bellum enterprises were carried on generally by individual ownership. But immediately after the Civil War, numerous cooperative movements sprang up among the people all over the city. Coöperative grocery stores, coal yards, beneficial societies and other kinds of business met with marked success for short periods, but each one in its turn finally failed, owing either to lack of capital, or trained business management, or both.⁴⁹

Prior to the war, the colored people of Baltimore had no place, aside from the churches, in which to hold public entertainments. To meet this need, several colored men, John H. Butler, Simon Smith and Walter Sorrell, formed a partnership, and purchased in 1863 a large three-story brick building on Lexington Street, near North, and had it converted into a hall. They named it Douglass Institute, after the grand old man from Maryland. Besides public entertainments of all sorts, the hall was used as a meeting place for fraternal orders.

The Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company, a company owned and controlled by colored men, was organized in the year 1865. The company was capitalized at $40,000. The stock was divided into 8,000 shares at $5 a share. The corporation lived for a period of eighteen years, or from 1865 to 1883, and was for many years very successful.

It finally gave up business in 1883. The organization of the ship company saved the colored caulkers, for they became members of the white caulkers’ union. The failure of the whites to drive out the colored caulkers lessened their efforts to drive colored labor out of other fields. Changing economic conditions ended this company but it was an object lesson to the whites, as well as to the blacks, of the power and capability of the colored people in their industrial development.⁵⁰

Before 1865, the public schools depended on local authorities. Then an educational revolution took place, and the state began to control the schools. The law of 1865 provided that the part of the school taxes paid by colored men should be used for Negro schools. The law of 1868 ordered a 10¢ tax on $100 for state schools, and this was all the colored schools could expect down to 1872, except by donations from philanthropists.

In 1872, the state appropriated $50,000 for the colored schools, in addition to the colored tax; but the white schools received all the regular school tax. In 1878, the sum of $100,000 was appropriated, to be taken from the state school fund at the expense of the white schools. This remained the law until 1888. Baltimore had before the war at least six private schools taught by colored people, and later, Northern philanthropists founded schools for the freedmen.

Kentucky was a state with 41,082 Negroes at the beginning of the century, 170,130 in 1830, and 226,167 in 1860. The Negroes formed a little over one-third of the population. There were comparatively few free Negroes, the number being only 10,684 in 1860. Kentucky was so situated between the two sections that it was in the main current of trade movements. Not only was it vitally interested in the slave trade to the South, but also in the trade in food stuff and manufactured materials from the North. The economic problem, therefore, for Kentucky during the Civil War, was difficult. Her chief interest was to keep the sections from falling apart and thus spoiling her favored economic position. Then, too, she had several important crops, chief of which was tobacco, and next, corn; besides these there were hemp, flax, and live stock. In all these economic, industrial activities, the Negro figured largely. On the other hand, Kentucky was near the border, and the loss of capital through runaway slaves was a constant menace to the system.

No sooner did the war open than this menace was increased by the action of the slave owners themselves.

This practice of putting slaves to work on military projects was first begun with the slaves of Southern sympathizers… . A network of wagon roads had to be constructed over which military supplies should go; fortifications had to be built. Large numbers of slaves were early set to work on a road from central Kentucky to Cumberland Gap; and by the middle of 1863, Boyle was calling for 6,000 slaves to extend the railway from Lebanon to Danville.⁵¹

In 1863, there was a rumor that the slaves would rise in insurrection at Christmas time, and that Northern troops would aid them. This was followed by the policy of enlisting colored troops into Northern armies.

The enlistment of slaves ended the slave system. The cash bounty and offer of freedom brought droves of black volunteers.

The Negroes deserted the fields in the midst of growing crops in many parts of the state, and in western Kentucky where they were under better control, steamboats threatened the rivers and with squads of troops raided the plantations, and forcibly took “hundreds of Negroes from the fields.” In Madison County Negro regiments were used to scour the fields and force the slaves into the army. Ten thousand slaves left the state during the year 1863; slaves enlisted at the rate of a hundred a day, and after the war, were freed at the rate of 500 a day.⁵²

Still the legislature refused to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment. Kentucky regarded the Emancipation Proclamation, issued January 1, 1863, as unwise, unconstitutional and void. Legislation was passed to nullify its execution, and in 1864, slaves were still being sold for $350 to $500 apiece.

The Freedmen’s Bureau set up the first state organization for Negroes at a convention held in Lexington, March 22-23, 1866. It was bitterly opposed because of its attempt to secure colored men justice in the courts. General Fisk announced that Freedmen’s Courts would be established for the protection of the Negroes, and in the following months, these courts found much to do. This activity scared the legislature into granting the Negro partial civil rights, and abolishing the slave code.

During 1867, the Bureau arrested 89 persons charged with crimes against Negroes, and handed them over to the Federal courts for trial.⁵³

The legislature stubbornly refused to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment; after it had been ratified, Kentucky passed a Civil Rights Act, February, 1866, which repealed the old slave code. The bill was passed as the result of a refusal on the part of Congress to remove the Freedmen’s Bureau from that state until Negroes had been granted civil rights. The freedmen were given all the civil rights enjoyed by white persons with the exception of sitting on juries and testifying against whites.⁵⁴

White labor rivalry was widespread. Guerrilla bands spread all over the state following the war. In March, 1865, a band of men stopped a train on the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad by tearing up the track north of the Ohio River; secured $30,000 in United States bonds; robbed the passengers, and fled across into Boone County. A similar crime was committed in 1867, in Simpson County. Some of the members of this gang were arrested. Some of the names these gangs assumed were “Regulators,” “Rownee Band,” and “Skagg’s Men.” In Madison County, which the “Regulators” terrorized for three or four years, a wealthy farmer was hanged; in Mercer County, one was shot and then hanged; another 70 years old was killed; and later, two cousins were also hanged. In western Kentucky, the Negroes were warned to leave the country and landowners threatened with having their homes burned if they rented to them.

In the election of 1864, the two parties were the Conservatives and the Radicals. The Radical Party was the champion of the rights of the Negroes. A great storm of complaint came from the Conservatives: “The military authorities had acted outrageously; they had assumed control of the election, as if it were wholly an affair of the army, and had assumed to decide who should vote, and who should not. Soldiers were stationed around the polls, and at many places, they were Negroes, holding lists of names of people who some Radicals thought should not vote… . None of these were permitted to approach the ballot box… . All were simply people who were opposed to the Thirteenth Amendment.” ⁵⁵

In the meantime, Negroes began their political organization and on Emancipation Day and the Fourth of July held celebrations with parades. The celebration of July 4, 1868, was attended by 15,000 Negroes, from Fayette and surrounding counties. Radicals estimated that there would be over 50,000 Negro votes, and that only through these votes could they overcome the Conservatives.

The proposed Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments encouraged the Radicals to anticipate victory by organizing Negro voters.

It was predicted that there would be 100,000 Negro votes. The Louisville Commercial declared that elections thereafter would not be the “onesided affairs of 1867, 1868 and 1869.” Picnics and celebrations were held on the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, where the Negroes gathered in great numbers, and where the Radicals used their full opportunities to make speeches and to organize and control the new voters. One of the celebrations was held in Paris, Kentucky, and was attended by more than 6,000 Negroes.

The most ambitious move to organize the Negroes was made in a convention in Frankfort in February, 1870, where Negroes from almost every county in the state gathered together. This “First Republican Convention of the Colored Citizens of the State of Kentucky” was refused the legislative halls, but it seems to have lost no prestige by meeting elsewhere, for one of its members boldly declared, “The eye of the world is upon Major Hall,”

where they finally met.

The planters and capitalists made a counter stroke by starting a noisy agitation for Chinese and other foreign labor. Many Negroes were alarmed. Partly as an answer to this, and for other purposes, a Negro convention was held in

Louisville, Kentucky, on July 18, 1869. There were 250 delegates in attendance. The subjects discussed were political and economic as well as educational. They included the abolition of the relics of slavery, equal education, the rights in the courts, equal taxation, the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, and the purchase of real estate.⁵⁶

The Negroes advised the young men and youth of Kentucky to “learn trades and engage in agricultural pursuits as a proper mode of supporting themselves and giving encouragement to mechanics and agriculture, and by all means to procure homes for themselves and families.”

In Fayette County, a meeting of Negroes was held in which they expressed their willingness to work and enter into labor contracts with whites. An Intelligence Office of the ex-soldiers maintained a labor agency. During the first half of 1869, 3,000 Negroes were supplied with jobs through them. On August 20, 1869, the Negroes observed a day of thanksgiving for their success. Evidently, the whites were praised for their cooperation; they contributed ham, beef, flour, and other provisions for the celebration.

The first test of Negro suffrage came in 1870, when county offices were to be filled. The Democrats attempted to arouse the Negroes to demand offices so that the Radicals would be estranged.

The Democrats did not intend to invite Negro support, and they

early saw that it would be dangerous to interpose violent opposition to Negro voting. What then should be their position toward inviting his support? Henry Watterson believed that the Negro suffrage should be accepted as an established fact and that Negro voters should be welcomed as much as others… .

But the whole idea of Negro suffrage was so fearful and repulsive to the Democrats that they plead with the reasonable Radicals, “as sensible men… to halt and think seriously for at least one minute.” . . . They sought to drive out of the party many Radicals by holding up to them the specter of Negro officials. In fact they pushed the logic with great emphasis on every occasion that if the Radicals embraced the Negroes they must give them offices. They hoped to arouse the Negro on this point to demanding offices, and thereby imperil his relations with his allies.⁵⁷

Cheating and fraud were eventually resorted to. Many Negroes were prevented from voting by requiring receipts for taxes which had been assessed on them. There were insufficient facilities for voting, purposely leaving the Negroes waiting until the sun went down. An endless number of irrelevant questions were asked, requiring in one place from twenty to twenty-five minutes for four Negroes to vote, while ten to fifteen whites could vote during that time.

The question of offices became increasingly important for the Negroes. It was not merely a matter of personal ambition, but here, as in the deep South, a question of the administration of the law which they with perfect right feared to trust entirely to the hand of whites. In 1873 a Negro convention declared that since they had voted for the Radicals, they should now have “a reasonable portion of the offices,” and if claims were to be ignored, they would “cease to be indebted to this party any more than to any other.”

In 1867, the Negroes owned $1,000,000 of taxable property on which they paid a tax of $3,661. Most of this wealth consisted in land, which they greatly coveted. By 1871, Negro agricultural fairs were held in many of the counties. The freedmen were encouraged by Bureau agents and by other people to be frugal and begin to save money. The branches of the Freedmen’s Saving and Trust Company, located in Louisville and Lexington, contained $171,000 in savings belonging to Negroes when the crash came.⁵⁸

The economic rebirth of the state went on with Negro help. The number of farms increased in this decade (1860-1870) from 90,000 to 118,000. The last year of the war (1864-1865) tobacco dropped from 127 million pounds to 54 million; wheat from 8 million bushels to 3 million; hemp from 10 million pounds to 2 million; hay from 135,000 tons to 127,000; barley from 161,000 bushels to 137,000. Corn increased from 39 million bushels to 58 million. An increase in crops began in 1867 and attained the pre-war mark by 1871. A comparison of the produce of these two years shows an increase: in tobacco from 54 million to 103 million pounds; hay from 127,000 to 320,000 tons; barley from 161,000 to 243,000 bushels. Corn fell from 58 million to 54 million bushels.

Tennessee was a Border State which formed in many respects an economic complement to Kentucky. The state had at the beginning of the century 3,778 Negroes. They increased rapidly to 146,158 in 1830, chiefly through the development of the Cotton Belt in the western part of the state near the Mississippi. At the opening of the war, Tennessee had 283,019 Negroes. The number of free Negroes was small, being only 7,300 in 1860. During the decade 1850-1860, Shelby County, of which Memphis was the center, gained its great mass of Negro population. From this point the Cotton Kingdom spread West and South. In strong contrast to this, in Nashville and in the middle and eastern part of the state, and in similar parts of Kentucky, there was strong emancipation sentiment in early times, chiefly with the motive of getting rid of the competition of Negro labor. This was manifested by opposition to the custom of slaves’ hiring out at times, which was prevalent in this part of the state.

In the constitutional convention of 1796, there was an attempt to prohibit slavery after 1864, which did not pass, but free Negroes who met the requirements of residence and land holding were allowed to vote. They enjoyed this right until 1834. At the convention of 1834 another attempt to abolish slavery was defeated and the vote was denied free Negroes, with some exceptions.

The slave trade in Tennessee was even more lucrative than in Kentucky, and there was strong trade in both slaves and materials down the Mississippi to New Orleans.

The Confederates seized most of Tennessee at the beginning of the war, but with the retreat of the Confederate army after the surrender of Fort Donelson, in 1862, a territory of 30,000 square miles was opened to Federal occupation, and a population of 1,000,000 souls was left without government and in possible danger of a slave insurrection. To meet the emergency, President Lincoln, March 3, appointed Senator Andrew Johnson, a former Governor of Tennessee, Military Governor, with the rank of brigadier-general.

In 1863, Rosecrans needed every available man for the winter campaign. Lincoln telegraphed September 8, and urged all Union officers to get every man he could, black and white, to guard the roads and bridges and send all the better-trained soldiers forward to Rosecrans. On October 21, Johnson and Stearns of Massachusetts were authorized to raise troops in Tennessee. Six regular Negro regiments, and two garrison and hospital regiments, were thus raised.

Governor Johnson made attempts immediately and at several times thereafter to reorganize the civil government of the state, but all these attempts failed, until the people of East Tennessee undertook the task in the summer of 1864. In November, 1864, the East Tennessee Union Executive Committee called a convention to meet in Nashville in December. Meantime, the Confederates captured Knoxville, and when it was time for the convention to meet, Hood was threatening Nashville. The convention was, therefore, postponed until January 8, 1865. By that time, the Confederates had been driven out, Johnson had been elected Vice President, and Congress had refused to count Tennessee’s scattering presidential vote. The convention met and voted for amendments to the Constitution: 1. Abolishing slavery. 2. Providing that all citizens who had borne arms for the United States should be allowed to vote; color should not disfranchise any person who was a competent witness in the courts.

Johnson favored the amendments and they were put through “with slight modification.” This is the story of Winston, but by consulting Hall, one learns that that slight modification was the dropping of the amendment which allowed Negroes to vote.⁵⁹

The report finally adopted by the convention proposed two amendments to the State Constitution, one to abolish slavery, and another forbidding the Legislature to make any law recognizing it. The report directed that all who voted should take the iron-clad oath and that the convention should nominate a candidate for Governor and a complete legislative ticket.

In the ensuing election, 20% of the vote in 1860 was cast: William G. Brownlow was chosen Governor by 23,352 votes, against 35 scattering ones. Four days after his inauguration, Lee surrendered and the new government was safe.

The constitutional convention had declared in favor of disfranchising all who had fought against the United States. Governor Brownlow was determined to make this declaration into a law. After recommending the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, he reminded the Legislature that the loyal people who had entrusted the qualifications of voters to them wanted them to act decisively in the matter. He asked the Legislature for military force to enforce the law when enacted.⁶⁰

The law provided that white persons of lawful age and residence, who had entertained unconditional Union sentiments from the outbreak of the war, or who had arrived at the age of 21 years since November 4, 1865, or who could prove their loyalty, or had been honorably discharged from the Union Army, or were Union men conscripted into the Confederate Army, or had voted at the elections of 1864-1865, should be entitled to the privileges of the elective franchise.

At the next session of the Legislature, the Governor recommended the amendment of the franchise bill and the colonization of the Negroes in Texas or Mexico, or their admission to full citizenship and suffrage, in case the franchise law restricting the vote of former Confederates should be repealed. The result was that a bill which the first legislature had refused to consider became law on January 21, 1866. This said:

That persons of African and Indian descent are hereby declared to be competent witnesses in all the courts of this state, in as full a manner as such persons are by an act of Congress competent witnesses in all the courts of the United States, and all laws and parts of laws of the State, excluding such persons from competency are hereby repealed: Provided, however, That this act shall not be so construed as to give colored persons the right to vote, hold office, or sit on juries in this State; and that this provision is inserted by virtue of the provision of the 9th Section of the amended Constitution, ratified February 22, 1865.

Race prejudice was strong in East Tennessee, based on the economic rivalry of Negroes and poor whites.

East Tennesseeans, though opposed to slavery and secession, do not like “niggers.” There is at this day more prejudice against color among the middle and poor classes, the “Union” men of the South who owned few or no slaves, than among the planters who owned them by scores and hundreds.⁶¹

On the other hand, the planters had not surrendered their ideas on slavery.

The designs of the great secession majority of Tennessee may have been changed by the events of the war, and so may have been their opinions of their own strength and of the strength of the government, but, unless your memorialists greatly misunderstand them, their sentiments, sympathies, and passions remain unchanged. They welcome peace because they are disabled from making war; they submit because they can no longer resist; they accept results they cannot reject, and profess loyalty because they have a halter around their necks. They recognize the abolition of slavery because they see it before them as a fact; but they say it was accomplished by gross violations of the Constitution, that the Negro is free only in fact, but not in law or of right.⁶²

The attitude of the state toward Negroes was bad.

The predominant feeling of those lately in rebellion is that of deep-seated hatred, amounting in many cases to a spirit of revenge towards the white Unionists of the State, and a haughty contempt for the Negro, whom they cannot treat as a freeman. The hatred for the white loyalist is intensified by the accusation that he deserted the South in her extremity, and is, therefore, a traitor, and by the setting up of a government of the minority. The spirit of revenge is called forth by the attempt to disfranchise them, and by the retaliatory acts of the returned Union soldiers for wrongs done them during the war. The Negro is the Mordecai who constantly reminds them of their defeat, and of what they call a “just, but lost cause.” And the sight of him in the enjoyment of freedom is a constant source of irritation.⁶³

On the first of May, 1866, a riot broke out in Memphis between the whites and blacks, which continued two days and resulted in the death of 24 Negroes and the wounding of 1 white man. As a result of this the Legislature passed the Metropolitan Police Bill, May 14, which provided that the police regulations of the city of Memphis should be in the hands of three commissioners appointed by the Governor, and made it a crime for anyone else to attempt to exercise any control in the city not subordinate to this board. The provisions of this act were also extended to Nashville and Chattanooga.⁶⁴

The Negroes of Tennessee were not content. On Friday, June 23, 1865, they sent out notice of a state convention in August:

Great efforts are being made to oppress (and in our judgment in relation to House Bill, No. 47) and reënslave us. Let us lay our grievances before the General Government. Under the government of the noblest patriot of the country—Andrew Johnson—the friend of humanity and liberty, we feel assured that our cause will succeed. We enter anew upon our duties as men, trusting in God. Come one, come all. Rally to the cause of liberty, and to the rescue.⁶⁵

The convention was in session four days, and

Resolved, That we protest against the Congressional delegation from Tennessee being received into the Congress of the United States, if the Legislature of Tennessee does not grant the petition before it prior to December 1, 1865.⁶⁶

A month before the opening of Congress in December, 1865, the Clerk of the House announced his decision not to put on the official roll the names of any men claiming to be elected from any Southern state. This decision of the Clerk was endorsed by the Republican caucus held at the opening of the session.

Congress assembled at noon, December 4, and when the Clerk, in calling the roll, reached Indiana, Mr. Maynard, from the First District of Tennessee, rose and attempted to speak, but the Clerk would allow no interruption of the roll.

A report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, March 5, 1866, proposed to allow the admission of Tennessee with white suffrage; but it was recommitted. July 20 it reappeared and was amended by the Senate so as to require acceptance of the Fourteenth Amendment. In this form, the resolution was passed July 23, and was approved July 24, although the President denied that Congress had any right to pass laws preliminary to the admission of qualified representatives from any of the states and objected to certain words in the preamble. Tennessee complied by promptly accepting the Fourteenth Amendment, July 11-12, 1866, the vote being 15-6 in the Senate and 43-11 in the House.

Subsequently, February 6, 1867, the House of Representatives of Tennessee passed a bill striking the word “white” from the franchise law of the state by a vote of 38-25. The Senate concurred February 18, by a vote of 14-7. And in March, the Supreme Court of the state upheld the constitutionality of Negro suffrage. The Republican platform in February, 1867, severely attacked Andrew Johnson, as an unprincipled adopted son, but said nothing directly about the Negro. The Conservative platform of April 17 said:

That our colored fellow-citizens, being now citizens of the United States and citizens of the State of Tennessee, and voters of this State, are entitled to all the rights and privileges of citizens under the laws and Constitution of the United States, and of the State of Tennessee.

In a race for Congress in 1872, Johnson made a bid for the Negro vote.

In the western counties crowds of Negroes attended the speaking, some evidently anxious to make good citizens. Addressing these colored people, Andrew Johnson explained his position. “If fit and qualified by character and education, no one should deny you the ballot,” he said. “I have been ridiculed for saying I would be your Moses,” he continued. “Yet I say again, I will be your Moses; and if you have a certificate to vote you should be allowed to vote.”⁶⁷

There were two or three Negroes in the Tennessee legislature during Reconstruction, while others served as state and city officers. Nashville at one time had a third of its city council composed of Negroes.

Missouri was a Western state which became “Southern” because it was on the great national highway to the South and its political weight was needed by the Southern oligarchy. It was thought that if Missouri remained a slave state, Kansas, Colorado and California would follow, and the Southern empire would be safe; but if Missouri was lost, slavery would be restricted, with its whole Western dependence on Texas.

Missouri had few Negroes—3,618 at her first census; 59,814 in 1840; and 118,503, about a tenth of her population, in 1860. Only 3,572 of them were free. Most slaveholding families had only 3 or 4 Negroes. Slavery was not a system—it was a survival, a sentiment, and a matter of common labor and service.

This made a sharp economic division, at the outbreak of the war, between those who said slavery was industrially useless in Missouri, but that the South had a right to it, and those who cared neither for slavery nor for the South. There arose a bitter internecine strife, family against family, and neighbor against neighbor. To the Union went 109,000 troops; to the Confederates, 30,000. There were 244 battles and 2,261 engagements in the state, which devastated the land and killed over 30,000 people. War routed thousands of settlers, and spread robbery and crime, lying and murder, mistreatment of women and children, disease and death.

The legislature of 1860 favored the South, but not secession. The new Governor, Jackson, who sought to force the state into secession, was opposed by F. P. Blair, a leader of the new industrial development. The Civil War came, and Blair was victorious. A constitutional convention in 1865 abolished slavery, without compensation.

The convention which emancipated the Negro drew up a new constitution which provided for the establishment and the maintenance of free public schools for the instruction of all persons in the state who were between the ages of five and twenty-one. Later, the legislature passed a law requiring one or more segregated schools to be set up in cities and villages. This law, like many other laws relating to the Negro, was overlooked. During the period, however, there was a growing sentiment in favor of public schools. The school system grew. Negro troops founded the first school of Negro higher training at Jefferson City—Lincoln Institute.

The Radicals carried the elections of 1866 and 1868, but nevertheless, the state constitutional amendment enfranchising the Negro in Missouri was defeated. The amendment was submitted by the legislature, but was lost by more than 19,000 votes. The opposition came from the Democrats, who voted solidly against it, and from a goodly number of Radicals, also. The question of enfranchising the Negroes had been an important issue in the state ever since they had been freed in 1865, but it was submitted to the people in the form of a constitutional amendment but once.

The Fifteenth Amendment of the United States, conferring suffrage upon the Negro, was ratified and put in force before the amendment to the Constitution of Missouri could be brought up again. This settled the issue without any further contest in the state.

Here, then, is a sketch of the part which Negroes took in the reconstruction of various Southern states, together with some indication of their action along the border. It is incomplete, and for that reason, inconclusive. And yet, no one can read these records, and the documents upon which they are based, without concluding that this was a perfectly normal development, that these black men were ordinary men who, according to their training and experience and particularly according to their economic condition, did extraordinarily well and do not in the slightest degree deserve the contempt and unbridled abuse that has been put upon them. They were not primarily responsible for the exceeding waste and corruption in the South any more than the laboring class was to blame for the greater waste and dishonesty in the North. They were not proven incapable of self-government. On the contrary, they took decisive and encouraging steps toward the widening and strengthening of human democracy. It is only the Blindspot in the eyes of America, and its historians, that can overlook and misread so clear and encouraging a chapter of human struggle and human uplift.

Then speed the day and haste the hour,
Break down the barriers, gain the power
To use the land and sail the sea,
To hold the tools, unchecked and free;
No tribute pay, but service give,
Let each man work that all may live.
Banish all bonds and usury,
Be free! Set free!
Democracy! Democracy!

A. W. Thomas