When the roads defaulted on the payment of interest, as most of them did, the burden fell upon the state. Not all of the blame for this perverted legislation should be placed upon the corrupt legislators, however, for the lawyers who saw the bills through were frequently Southern Democrats representing supposedly respectable Northern capitalists. The railroads as well as the taxpayers suffered from this pernicious lobbying, for the companies were loaded with debts and rarely profited by the loans. Valuation of railroad property rapidly decreased. The roads of Alabama which were valued in 1871 at $26,000,000 had decreased in 1875 to $9,500,000.

The foundation of radical power in the South lay in the alienation of the races which had been accomplished between 1865 and 1868. To maintain this unhappy distrust, the radical leaders found an effective means in the Negro militia. Under the constitution of every reconstructed state, a Negro constabulary was possible, but only in South Carolina, North Carolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi were the authorities willing to risk the dangers of arming the blacks. No governor dared permit the Southern whites to organize as militia. In South Carolina the carpetbag governor, Robert K. Scott, enrolled ninety-six thousand Negroes as members of the militia and organized and armed twenty thousand of them. The few white companies were ordered to disband. In Louisiana the governor had a standing army of blacks called the Metropolitan Guard. In several states the Negro militia was used as a constabulary and was sent to any part of the state to make arrests.

In spite of this provocation there were, after the riots of 1866-67, comparatively few race conflicts until reconstruction was drawing to a close. The intervening period was filled with the more peaceful activities of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Camellia. But as the whites made up their minds to get rid of Negro rule, the clashes came frequently and always ended in the death of more Negroes than whites.* They would probably have continued with serious consequences if the whites had not eventually secured control of the government.

* Among the bloodiest conflicts were those in Louisiana at Colfax, Coushatta, and New Orleans in 1873-74, and at Vicksburg and Clinton, Mississippi, in 1874-75.

The lax election laws, framed indeed for the benefit of the party in power, gave the radicals ample opportunity to control the Negro vote. The elections were frequently corrupt, though not a great deal of money was spent in bribery. It was found less expensive to use other methods of getting out the vote. The Negroes were generally made to understand that the Democrats wanted to put them back into slavery, but sometimes the leaders deemed it wiser to state more concretely that "Jeff Davis had come to Montgomery and is ready to organize the Confederacy again" if the Democrats should win; or to say that "if Carter is elected, he will not allow your wives and daughters to wear hoopskirts." In Alabama many thousand pounds of bacon and hams were sent in to be distributed among "flood sufferers" in a region which had not been flooded since the days of Noah. The Negroes were told that they must vote right and receive enough bacon for a year, or "lose their rights" if they voted wrongly. Ballot-box stuffing developed into an art, and each Negro was carefully inspected to see that he had the right kind of ticket before he was marched to the polls.

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

Notwithstanding the fact that the very best arrangements had been made at Washington and in the states for the running of the radical machine, everywhere there were factional fights from the beginning. Usually the scalawags declared hostilities after they found that the carpetbaggers had control of the Negroes and the inside track on the way to the best state and federal offices. Later, after the scalawags had for the most part left the radicals, there were contests among the carpetbaggers themselves for the control of the Negro vote and the distribution of spoils. The defeated faction usually joined the Democrats. In Arkansas a split started in 1869 which by 1872 resulted in two state governments. Alabama in 1872 and Louisiana in 1874-75 each had two rival governments. This factionalism contributed largely to the overthrow of the radicals.

The radical structure, however, was still powerfully supported from without. Relations between the Federal Government and the state governments in the South were close, and the policy at Washington was frequently determined by conditions in the South. President Grant, though at first considerate, was usually consistently radical in his Southern policy. This attitude is difficult to explain except by saying that Grant fell under the control of radical advisers after his break with Johnson, that his military instincts were offended by opposition in the South which his advisers told him was rebellious, and that he was impressed by the need of holding the Southern radical vote against the inroads of the Democrats. After about 1869, Grant never really understood the conditions in the South. He was content to control by means of Federal troops and thousands of deputy marshals. For this policy the Ku Klux activities gave sufficient excuse for a time, and the continued story of "rebel outrages" was always available to justify a call for soldiers or deputies. The enforcement legislation gave the color of law to any interference which was deemed necessary.

Federal troops served other ends than the mere preservation of order and the support of the radical state governments. They were used on occasion to decide between opposing factions and to oust conservatives who had forced their way into office. The army officers purged the Legislature of Georgia in 1870, that of Alabama in 1872, and that of Louisiana in 1875. In 1875 the city government of Vicksburg and the state government of Louisiana were overturned by the whites, but General Sheridan at once intervened to put back the Negroes and carpetbaggers. He suggested to President Grant that the conservatives be declared "banditti" and he would make himself responsible for the rest. As soon as a State showed signs of going over to the Democrats or an important election was lost by the radicals, one House or the other of Congress in many instances sent an investigation committee to ascertain the reasons. The Committees on the Condition of the South or on the Late Insurrectionary States were nearly always ready with reports to establish the necessity of intervention.

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

Such was the machinery used to sustain a party which, with the gradual defection of the whites, became throughout the South almost uniformly black. At first few Negroes asked for offices, but soon the carpetbaggers found it necessary to divide with the rapidly growing number of Negro politicians. No Negro was elected governor, though several reached the office of lieutenant governor, secretary of state, auditor, superintendent of education, justice of the state supreme court, and fifteen were elected to Congress.* It would not be correct to say that the Negro race was malicious or on evil bent. Unless deliberately stirred up by white leaders, few Negroes showed signs of mean spirit. Few even made exorbitant demands. They wanted "something"—schools and freedom and "something else," they knew not what. Deprived of the leadership of the best whites, they could not possibly act with the scalawags—their traditional enemies. Nothing was left for them but to follow the carpetbagger.

* Revels, Lynch, and Bruce represent the better Negro officeholders; Pinchback, Rainey, and Nash, the less respectable ones; and below these were the rascals whose ambition was to equal their white preceptors in corruption.



CHAPTER XI. THE KU KLUX MOVEMENT

The Ku Klux movement, which took the form of secret revolutionary societies, grew out of a general conviction among the whites that the reconstruction policies were impossible and not to be endured. Somers, an English traveler, says that at this time "nearly every respectable white man in the Southern States was not only disfranchised but under fear of arrest or confiscation; the old foundations of authority were utterly razed before any new ones had yet been laid, and in the dark and benighted interval the remains of the Confederate armies—swept after a long and heroic day of fair fight from the field—flitted before the eyes of the people in this weird and midnight shape of a Ku Klux Klan." Ryland Randolph, an Alabama editor who was also an official of the Klan, stated in his paper that "the origin of Ku Klux Klan is in the galling despotism that broods like a nightmare over these Southern States—a fungus growth of military tyranny superinduced by the fostering of Loyal Leagues, the abrogation of our civil laws, the habitual violation of our national Constitution, and a persistent prostitution of all government, all resources and all powers, to degrade the white man by the establishment of Negro supremacy."

The secret orders, regardless of their original purposes, were all finally to be found opposing radical reconstruction. Everywhere their objects were the same: to recover for the white race their former control of society and government, and to destroy the baneful influence of the alien among the blacks. The people of the South were by law helpless to take steps towards setting up any kind of government in a land infested by a vicious element—Federal and Confederate deserters, bushwhackers, outlaws of every description, and Negroes, some of whom proved insolent and violent in their newly found freedom. Nowhere was property or person safe, and for a time many feared a Negro insurrection. General Hardee said to his neighbors, "I advise you to get ready for what may come. We are standing over a sleeping volcano."

To cope with this situation ante-bellum patrols—the "patter-rollers" as the Negroes called them—were often secretly reorganized. In each community for several months after the Civil War, and in many of them for months before the end of the war, there were informal vigilance committees. Some of these had such names as the Black Cavalry and Men of Justice in Alabama, the Home Guards in many other places, while the anti Confederate societies of the war, the Heroes of America, the Red Strings, and the Peace Societies, transformed themselves in certain localities into regulatory bodies. Later these secret societies numbered scores, perhaps hundreds, varying from small bodies of local police to great federated bodies which covered almost the entire South and even had membership in the North and West. Other important organizations were the Constitutional Union Guards, the Pale Faces, the White Brotherhood, the Council of Safety, the '76 Association, the Sons of '76, the Order of the White Rose, and the White Boys. As the fight against reconstruction became bolder, the orders threw off their disguises and appeared openly as armed whites fighting for the control of society. The White League of Louisiana, the White Line of Mississippi, the White Man's party of Alabama, and the Rifle Clubs of South Carolina, were later manifestations of the general Ku Klux movement.

The two largest secret orders, however, were the Ku Klux Klan, from which the movement took its name, and the Knights of the White Camelia. The Ku Klux Klan originated at Pulaski, Tennessee, in the autumn of 1865, as a local organization for social purposes. The founders were young Confederates, united for fun and mischief. The name was an accidental corruption of the Greek word Kuklos, a circle. The officers adopted queer sounding titles and strange disguises. Weird nightriders in ghostly attire thoroughly frightened the superstitious Negroes, who were told that the spirits of dead Confederates were abroad. This terrorizing of the blacks successfully provided the amusement which the founders desired, and there were many applications for admission to the society. The Pulaski Club, or Den, was in the habit of parading in full uniform at social gatherings of the whites at night, much to the delight of the small boys and girls. Pulaski was near the Alabama line, and many of the young men of Alabama who saw these parades or heard of them organized similar Dens in the towns of Northern Alabama. Nothing but horseplay, however, took place at the meetings. In 1867 and 1868, the order appeared in parade in the towns of the adjoining states and, as we are told, "cut up curious gyrations" on the public squares.

There was a general belief outside the order that there was a purpose behind all the ceremonial and frolic of the Dens; many joined the order convinced that its object was serious; others saw the possibilities of using it as a means of terrorizing the Negroes. After men discovered the power of the Klan over the Negroes, indeed, they were generally inclined, owing to the disordered conditions of the time, to act as a sort of police patrol and to hold in check the thieving Negroes, the Union League, and the "loyalists." In this way, from being merely a number of social clubs the Dens swiftly became bands of regulators, taking on many new fantastic qualities along with their new seriousness of purpose. Some of the more ardent spirits led the Dens far in the direction of violence and outrage. Attempts were made by the parent Den at Pulaski to regulate the conduct of the others, but, owing to the loose organization, the effort met with little success. Some of the Dens, indeed, lost all connection with the original order.

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

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

The general objects of the order were thus set forth in the revised Prescript: first, to protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenseless from the indignities, wrongs, and outrages of the lawless, the violent, and the brutal; to relieve the injured and oppressed; to succor the suffering and unfortunate, and especially the widows and orphans of Confederate soldiers; second, to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and all laws passed in conformity thereto, and to protect the States and people thereof from all invasion from any source whatever; third, to aid and assist in the execution of all "constitutional" laws, and to protect the people from unlawful arrest, and from trial except by their peers according to the laws of the land. But the tests for admission gave further indication of the objects of the order. No Republican, no Union Leaguer, and no member of the G. A. R. might become a member. The members were pledged to oppose Negro equality of any kind, to favor emancipation of the Southern whites and the restoration of their rights, and to maintain constitutional government and equitable laws.

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

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

The White Camelia had a national organization with headquarters in New Orleans. Its business was conducted by a Supreme Council of the United States, with Grand, Central, and Subordinate Councils for each state, county, and community. All communication within the order took place by passwords and cipher; the organization and the officers were similar to those of the Ku Klux Klan; and all officers were designated by initials. An ex-member states that "during the three years of its existence here [Perry County, Alabama] I believe its organization and discipline were as perfect as human ingenuity could have made it." The fundamental object of the White Camelia was the "maintenance of the supremacy of the white race," and to this end the members were constrained "to observe a marked distinction between the races" and to restrain the "African race to that condition of social and political inferiority for which God has destined it." The members were pledged to vote only for whites, to oppose Negro equality in all things, but to respect the legitimate rights of Negroes.

The smaller orders were similar in purpose and organization to the Ku Klux Klan and the White Camelia. Most of them joined or were affiliated with the large societies. Probably a majority of the men of the South were associated at some time during this period with these revolutionary bodies. As a rule the politicians, though approving, held aloof. Public opinion generally supported the movement so long as the radicals made serious attempts to carry out the reconstruction policies.

The task before the secret orders was to regulate the conduct of the blacks and their leaders in order that honor, life, and property might be secure. They planned to accomplish this aim by playing upon the fears, superstitions, and cowardice of the black race—in a word, by creating a white terror to counteract the black one. To this end they made use of strange disguises, mysterious and fearful conversation, midnight rides and drills, and silent parades. As long as secrecy and mystery were to be effective in dealing with the Negroes, costume was an important matter. These disguises varied with the locality and often with the individual. High cardboard hats, covered with white cloth often decorated with stars or pictures of animals, white masks with holes cut for eyes, nose and mouth bound with red braid to give a horrible appearance, and frequently a long tongue of red flannel so fixed that it could be moved with the wearer's tongue, and a long white robe—these made up a costume which served at the same time as a disguise and as a means of impressing the impressionable Negro. Horses were covered with sheets or white cloth held on by the saddle and by belts, and sometimes the animals were even painted. Skulls of sheep and cattle, and even of human beings were often carried on the saddlebows to add another element of terror. A framework was sometimes made to fit the shoulders of a Ghoul which caused him to appear twelve feet high. A skeleton wooden hand at the end of a stick served to greet terrified Negroes at midnight. For safety every man carried a small whistle and a brace of pistols.

The trembling Negro who ran into a gathering of the Ku Klux on his return from a Loyal League meeting was informed that the white-robed figures he saw were the spirits of the Confederate dead killed at Chickamauga or Shiloh, now unable to rest in their graves because of the conduct of the Negroes. He was told in a sepulchral voice of the necessity for his remaining more at home and taking a less active part in predatory excursions abroad. In the middle of the night, a sleeping Negro might wake to find his house surrounded by a ghostly company, or to see several terrifying figures standing by his bedside. They were, they said, the ghosts of men whom he had formerly known. They had scratched through from Hell to warn the Negroes of the consequences of their misconduct. Hell was a dry and thirsty land; and they asked him for water. Bucket after bucket of water disappeared into a sack of leather, rawhide, or rubber, concealed within the flowing robe. The story is told of one of these night travelers who called at the cabin of a radical Negro in Attakapas County, Louisiana. After drinking three buckets of water to the great astonishment of the darky, the traveler thanked him and told him that he had traveled nearly a thousand miles within twenty-four hours, and that that was the best water he had tasted since he was killed at the battle of Shiloh. The Negro dropped the bucket, overturned chairs and table in making his escape through the window, and was never again seen or heard of by residents of that community. Another incident is told of a parade in Pulaski, Tennessee: "While the procession was passing a corner on which a Negro man was standing, a tall horseman in hideous garb turned aside from the line, dismounted and stretched out his bridle rein toward the Negro, as if he desired him to hold his horse. Not daring to refuse, the frightened African extended his hand to grasp the rein. As he did so, the Ku Klux took his own head from his shoulders and offered to place that also in the outstretched hand. The Negro stood not upon the order of his going, but departed with a yell of terror. To this day he will tell you: 'He done it, suah, boss. I seed him do it.'"

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

To prevent detection on parade, members of the Klan often stayed out of the parade in their own town and were to be seen freely and conspicuously mingling with the spectators. A man who believed that he knew every horse in the vicinity and was sure that he would be able to identify the riders by their horses was greatly surprised upon lifting the disguise of the horse nearest him to find the animal upon which he himself had ridden into town a short while before. The parades were always silent and so arranged as to give the impression of very large numbers. In the regular drills which were held in town and country, the men showed that they had not forgotten their training in the Confederate army. There were no commands save in a very low tone or in a mysterious language, and usually only signs or whistle signals were used.

Such pacific methods were successful to a considerable degree until the carpetbaggers and scalawags were placed in office under the Reconstruction Acts. Then more violent methods were necessary. The Mans patrolled disturbed communities, visited, warned, and frightened obnoxious individuals, whipped some, and even hanged others. Until forbidden by law or military order, the newspapers were accustomed to print the mysterious proclamations of the Ku Klux. The following, which was circulated in Montgomery, Alabama, in April 1868, is a typical specimen:

K. K. K. Clan of Vega. HDQRS K.K.K. HOSPITALLERS.

Vega Clan, New Moon, 3rd Month, Anno K. K. K. 1.

ORDER No. K. K.

Clansmen—Meet at the Trysting Spot when Orion Kisses the Zenith. The doom of treason is Death. Dies Irae. The wolf is on his walk—the serpent coils to strike. Action! Action!! Action!!! By midnight and the Tomb; by Sword and Torch and the Sacred Oath at Forrester's Altar, I bid you come! The clansmen of Glen Iran and Alpine will greet you at the new-made grave.

Remember the Ides of April.

By command of the Grand D. I. H.

Cheg. V.

The work of the secret orders was successful. As bodies of vigilantes, the Mans and the Councils regulated the conduct of bad Negroes, punished criminals who were not punished by the state, looked after the activities and teachings of Northern preachers and teachers, dispersed hostile gatherings of Negroes, and ran out of the community the worst of the reconstructionist officials. They kept the Negroes quiet and freed them to some extent from the influence of evil leaders. The burning of houses, gins, mills, and stores ceased; property became more secure; people slept safely at night; women and children walked abroad in security; the incendiary agents who had worked among the Negroes left the country; agitators, political, educational, and religious, became more moderate; "bad niggers" ceased to be bad; labor became less disorganized; the carpetbaggers and scalawags ceased to batten on the Southern communities. It was not so much a revolution as the defeat of a revolution. Society was replaced in the old historic grooves from which war and reconstruction had jarred it.

Successful as was the Ku Klux movement in these respects, it had at the same time many harmful results. Too often local orders fell under the control of reckless or lawless men and the Klan was then used as a cloak to cover violence and thievery; family and personal feuds were carried into the orders and fought out; and anti-Negro feeling in many places found expression in activities designed to drive the blacks from the country. It was easy for any outlaw to hide himself behind the protection of a secret order. So numerous did these men become that after 1868 there was a general exodus of the leading reputable members, and in 1869 the formal disbanding of the Klan was proclaimed by General Forrest, the Grand Wizard. The White Camelia and other orders also gradually went out of existence. Numerous attempts were made to suppress the secret movement by the military commanders, the state governments, and finally by Congress, but none of these was entirely successful, for in each community the secret opposition lasted as long as it was needed. The political effects of the orders, however, survived their organized existence. Some of the Southern States began to go Democratic in spite of the Reconstruction Acts and the Amendments, and there was little doubt that the Ku Klux movement had aided in this change. In order to preserve the achievements of radical reconstruction Congress passed, in 1870 and 1871, the enforcement acts which had been under debate for nearly two years. The first act (May 31, 1870) was designed to protect the Negro's right to vote and was directed at individuals as well as against states. Section six, indeed, was aimed specifically at the Ku Klux Klan. This act was a long step in the direction of giving the Federal Government control over state elections. But as North Carolina went wholly and Alabama partially Democratic in 1870, a Supplementary Act (February 28, 1871) went further and placed the elections for members of Congress completely under Federal control, and also authorized the use of thousands of deputy marshals at elections. As the campaign of 1872 drew near, Grant and his advisers became solicitous to hold all the Southern States which had not been regained by the Democrats. Accordingly, on March 23, 1871, the President sent a message to Congress declaring that in some of the states the laws could not be enforced and asked for remedial legislation. Congress responded with an act (April 20, 1871), commonly called the "Ku Klux Act," which gave the President despotic military power to uphold the remaining Negro governments and authorized him to declare a state of war when he considered it necessary. Of this power Grant made use in only one instance. In October 1871, he declared nine counties of South Carolina in rebellion and put them under martial law.

During the ten years following 1870, several thousand arrests were made under the enforcement acts and about 1,250 convictions were secured, principally in Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Most of these violations of election laws, however, had nothing to do with the Ku Klux movement, for by 1870 the better class of members had withdrawn from the secret orders. But though the enforcement acts checked these irregularities to a considerable extent, they nevertheless failed to hold the South for the radicals and essential parts of them were declared unconstitutional a few years later.

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

Opposition to the effects of reconstruction did not come to an end with the dissolution of the more famous orders. On the contrary, it now became public and open and resulted in the organization, after 1872, of the White League, the Mississippi Shot Gun Plan, the White Man's Party in Alabama, and the Rifle Clubs in South Carolina. The later movements were distinctly but cautiously anti-Negro. There was most irritation in the white counties where there were large numbers of Negroes. Negro schools and churches were burned because they served as meeting places for Negro political organizations. The color line began to be more and more sharply drawn. Social and business ostracism continued to be employed against white radicals, while the Negroes were discharged from employment or were driven from their rented farms.

The Ku Klux movement, it is to be noted in retrospect, originated as an effort to restore order in the war-stricken Southern States. The secrecy of its methods appealed to the imagination and caused its rapid expansion, and this secrecy was inevitable because opposition to reconstruction was not lawful. As the reconstruction policies were put into operation, the movement became political and used violence when appeals to superstitious fears ceased to be effective. The Ku Klux Klan centered, directed, and crystallized public opinion, and united the whites upon a platform of white supremacy. The Southern politicians stood aloof from the movement but accepted the results of its work. It frightened the Negroes and bad whites into better conduct, and it encouraged the conservatives and aided them to regain control of society, for without the operations of the Klan the black districts would never have come again under white control. Towards the end, however, its methods frequently became unnecessarily violent and did great harm to Southern society. The Ku Klux system of regulating society is as old as history; it had often been used before; it may even be used again. When a people find themselves persecuted by aliens under legal forms, they will invent some means outside the law for protecting themselves; and such experiences will inevitably result in a weakening of respect for law and in a return to more primitive methods of justice.



CHAPTER XII. THE CHANGING SOUTH

"The bottom rail is on top" was a phrase which had flashed throughout the late Confederate States. It had been coined by the Negroes in 1867 to express their view of the situation, but its aptness had been recognized by all. After ten years of social and economic revolution, however, it was not so clear that the phrase of 1867 correctly described the new situation. "The white man made free" would have been a more accurate epitome, for the white man had been able, in spite of his temporary disabilities, to compete with the Negro in all industries.

It will be remembered that the Negro districts were least exposed to the destruction of war. The well-managed plantation, lying near the highways of commerce, with its division of labor, nearly or quite self-sufficing, was the bulwark of the Confederacy. When the fighting ended, an industrial revolution began in these untouched parts of the Black Belt. The problem of free Negro labor now appeared. During the year 1865, no general plan for a labor system was formulated except by the Freedmen's Bureau. That, however, was not a success. There were all sorts of makeshifts, such as cash wages, deferred wages, cooperation, even sharing of expense and product, and contracts, either oral or written.

The employers showed a disposition to treat the Negro family as a unit in making contracts for labor, wages, food, clothes, and care.* In general these early arrangements were made to transform slavery with its mutual duties and obligations into a free labor system with wages and "privileges." The "privileges" of slavery could not be destroyed; in fact, they have never yet been destroyed in numerous places. Curious demands were made by the Negroes: here, farm bells must not ring; there, overseers or managers must be done away with; in some places plantation courts were to settle matters of work, rent, and conduct; elsewhere, agreements were made that on Saturday the laborer should be permitted to go to town and, perhaps, ride a mule or horse. In South Carolina the Sea Island Negroes demanded that in laying out work the old "tasks" or "stints" of slavery days be retained as the standard. The farming districts at the edge of the Black Belt, where the races were about equal in numbers, already had a kind of "share system," and in these sections the economic chaos after the war was not so complete. The former owners worked in the field with their ex-slaves and thus provided steady employment for many. Farms were rented for a fixed sum of money, or for a part of the crop, or on "shares."

* J. D. B. De Bow, the economist, testified before the Joint Committee on Reconstruction that, if the Negro would work, free labor would be better for the planters than slave labor. He called attention to the fact, however, that Negro women showed a desire to avoid field labor, and there is also evidence to show that they objected to domestic service and other menial work.

The white districts, which had previously fought a losing competition with the efficiently managed and inexpensive slave labor of the Black Belt, were affected most disastrously by war and its aftermath. They were distant from transportation lines and markets; they employed poor farming methods; they had no fertilizers; they raised no staple crops on their infertile land; and in addition they now had to face the destitution that follows fighting. Yet these regions had formerly been almost self-supporting, although the farms were small and no elaborate labor system had been developed. In the planting districts where the owner was land-poor, he made an attempt to bring in Northern capital and Northern or foreign labor. In the belief that the Negroes would work better for a Northern man, every planter who could do so secured a Northern partner or manager, frequently a soldier. Nevertheless these imported managers nearly always failed because they did not understand cotton, rice, or sugar planting, and because they were either too severe or too easy upon the blacks.

No Northern labor was to be had, and the South could not retain even all its own native whites. Union soldiers and others seeking to better their prospects moved west and northwest to fill the newly opened lands, while the Confederates, kept out of the homestead region by the test oath, swarmed into Texas, which owned its own public lands, or went North to other occupations. Nor could the desperate planters hire foreign immigrants. Several states, among them South Carolina, Alabama, and Louisiana, advertised for laborers and established labor bureaus, but without avail. The Negro politicians in 1867 declared themselves opposed to all movements to foster immigration. So in the Black Belt the Negro had, for forty years, a monopoly of farm labor.

The share system of tenantry, with its attendant evils of credit and crop lien, was soon established in the Southern States, mainly in the Black Belt, but to some extent also in the white districts. The landlord furnished land, house, fuel, water, and all or a part of the seed, fertilizer, farm implements, and farm animals. In return he received a "half," or a "third and fourth," his share depending upon how much he had furnished. The best class of tenants would rent for cash or a fixed rental, the poorest laborers would work for wages only.

The "privileges" brought over from slavery, which were included in the share renting, astonished outside observers. To the laborer was usually given a house, a water supply, wood for fuel, pasture for pigs or cows, a "patch" for vegetables and fruit, and the right to hunt and fish. These were all that some needed in order to live. Somers, the English traveler already quoted, pronounced this generous custom "outrageously absurd," for the Negroes had so many privileges that they refused to make use of their opportunities. "The soul is often crushed out of labor by penury and oppression," he said, "but here a soul cannot begin to be infused into it through the sheer excess of privilege and license with which it is surrounded." The credit system which was developed beside the share system made a bad condition worse. On the 1st of January, a planter could mortgage his future crop to a merchant or landlord in exchange for subsistence until the harvest. Since, as a rule, neither tenant nor landlord had any surplus funds, the latter would be supplied by the banker or banker merchant, who would then dictate the crops to be planted and the time of sale. As a result of these conditions, the planter or farmer was held to staple crops, high prices for necessities, high interest rate, and frequently unfair bookkeeping. The system was excellent for a thrifty, industrious, and intelligent man, for it enabled him to get a start. It worked to the advantage of a bankrupt landlord, who could in this way get banking facilities. But it had a mischievous effect upon the average tenant, who had too small a share of the crop to feel a strong sense of responsibility as well as too many "privileges" and too little supervision to make him anxious to produce the best results.

The Negroes entered into their freedom with several advantages: they were trained to labor; they were occupying the most fertile soil and could purchase land at low prices; the tenant system was most liberal; cotton, sugar, and rice were bringing high prices; and access to markets was easy. In the white districts, land was cheap and prices of commodities were high, but otherwise the Negroes seemed to have the better position. Yet as early as 1870, keen observers called attention to the fact that the hill and mountain whites were thriving as compared with their former condition, and that the Negroes were no longer their serious competitors. In the white districts, better methods were coming into use, labor was steady, fertilizers were used, and conditions of transportation were improving. The whites were also encroaching on the Black Belt; they were opening new lands in the Southwest; and within the border of the Black Belt they were bringing Negro labor under some control. In the South Carolina rice lands, crowds of Irish were imported to do the ditching which the Negroes refused to do and were carried back North when the job was finished.* President Thach of the Alabama Agricultural College has thus described the situation:

* The Census of 1880 gave proof of the superiority of the whites in cotton production. For purposes of comparison the cotton area may be divided into three regions: first, the Black Belt, in which the farmers were black, the soil fertile, the plantations large, the credit evil at its worst, and the yield of cotton per acre the least; second, the white districts, where the soil was the poorest, the farms small, the workers nearly all white, and the yield per acre better than on the fertile Black Belt lands; third, the regions in which the races were nearly equal in numbers or where the whites were in a slight majority, with soil of medium fertility, good methods of agriculture, and, owing to better controlled labor, the best yield. In ether words, Negroes, fertile soil, and poor crops went together; and on the other hand the whites got better crops on less fertile soil. The Black Belt has never again reached the level of production it had in 1880. But the white district kept improving slowly.

"By the use of commercial fertilizers, vast regions once considered barren have been brought into profitable cultivation, and really afford a more reliable and constant crop than the rich alluvial lands of the old slave plantations. In nearly every agricultural county in the South there is to be observed, on the one hand, this section of fertile soils, once the heart, of the old civilization, now abandoned by the whites, held in tenantry by a dense Negro population, full of dilapidation and ruin; while on the other hand, there is the region of light, thin soils, occupied by the small white freeholder, filled with schools, churches, and good roads, and all the elements of a happy, enlightened country life."

All the systems devised for handling Negro labor proved to be only partially successful. The laborer was migratory, wanted easy work, with one or two holidays a week, and the privilege of attending political meetings, camp meetings, and circuses. A thrifty Negro could not make headway because his fellows stole from him or his less energetic relations and friends visited him and ate up his substance. One Alabama planter declared that he could not raise a turkey, a chicken, a hog, or a cow; and another asserted that "a hog has no more chance to live among these thieving Negro farmers than a June bug in a gang of puddle ducks." Lands were mortgaged to the supply houses in the towns, the whites gradually deserted the country, and many rice and cotton fields grew up in weeds. Crop stealing at night became a business which no legislation could ever completely stop. A traveler has left the following description of "a model Negro farm" in 1874. The farmer purchased an old mule on credit and rented land on shares or for so many bales of cotton; any old tools were used; corn, bacon, and other supplies were bought on credit, and a crop lien was given; a month later, corn and cotton were planted on soil that was not well broken up; the Negro "would not pay for no guano" to put on other people's land; by turns the farmer planted and fished, plowed and hunted, hoed and frolicked, or went to "meeting." At the end of the year he sold his cotton, paid part of his rent and some of his debt, returned the mule to its owner, and sang:

Nigger work hard all de year, White man tote de money.

The great landholdings did not break up into small farms as was predicted, though sales were frequent and in 1865 enormous amounts of land were put on the market. After 1867, additional millions of acres were offered at small prices, and tax and mortgage sales were numerous. The result of these operations, however, was a change of landlords rather than a breaking up of large plantations. New men, Negroes, merchants, and Jews became landowners. The number of small farms naturally increased but so in some instances did the land concentrated into large holdings.

It was inevitable that conditions of Negro life should undergo a revolutionary change during the reconstruction. The serious matter of looking out for himself and his family and of making a living dampened the Negro's cheerful spirits. Released from the discipline of slavery and often misdirected by the worst of teachers, the Negro race naturally ran into excesses of petty criminality. Even under the reconstruction governments the proportion of Negro to white criminals was about ten to one. Theft was frequent; arson was the accepted means of revenge on white people; and murder became common in the brawls of the city Negro quarters. The laxness of the marriage relation worked special hardship on the women and children in so many cases deserted by the head of the family.

Out of the social anarchy of reconstruction the Negroes emerged with numerous organizations of their own which may have been imitations of the Union League, the Lincoln Brotherhood, and the various church organizations. These societies were composed entirely of blacks and have continued with prolific reproduction to the present day. They were characterized by high names, gorgeous regalia, and frequent parades. "The Brothers and Sisters of Pleasure and Prosperity" and the "United Order of African Ladies and Gentlemen" played a large, and on the whole useful, part in Negro social life, teaching lessons of thrift, insurance, cooperation, and mutual aid.

The reconstructionists were not able in 1867-68 to carry through Congress any provision for the social equality of the races, but in the reconstructed states, the equal rights issue was alive throughout the period. Legislation giving to the Negro equal rights in hotels, places of amusements, and common carriers, was first enacted in Louisiana and South Carolina. Frequently the carpetbaggers brought up the issue in order to rid the radical ranks of the scalawags who were opposed to equal rights. In Florida, for example, the carpetbaggers framed a comprehensive Equal Rights Law, passed it, and presented it to Governor Reed, who was known to be opposed to such legislation. He vetoed the measure and thus lost the Negro support. Intermarriage with whites was made legal in Louisiana and South Carolina and by court decision was permitted in Alabama and Mississippi, but the Georgia Supreme Court held it to be illegal. Mixed marriages were few, but these were made occasions of exultation over the whites and of consequent ill feeling.

Charles Sumner was a persistent agitator for equal rights. In 1871 he declared in a letter to a South Carolina Negro convention that the race must insist not only upon equality in hotels and on public carriers but also in the schools. "It is not enough," he said, "to provide separate accommodations for colored citizens even if in all respects as good as those of other persons.... The discrimination is an insult and a hindrance, and a bar, which not only destroys comfort and prevents equality, but weakens all other rights. The right to vote will have new security when your equal right in public conveyances, hotels, and common schools, is at last established; but here you must insist for yourselves by speech, petition, and by vote." The Southern whites began to develop the "Jim Crow" theory of "separate but equal" accommodations. Senator Hill of Georgia, for example, thought that hotels might have separate divisions for the two races, and he cited the division in the churches as proof that the Negro wanted separation.

About 1874, it was plain that the last radical Congress was nearly ready to enact social equality legislation. This fact turned many of the Southern Unionist class back to the Democratic party, there to remain for a long time. In 1875, as a sort of memorial to Sumner, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, which gave to Negroes equal rights in hotels, places of amusement, on public carriers, and on juries. Some Democratic leaders were willing to see such legislation enacted, because in the first place, it would have little effect except in the Border and Northern States, where it would turn thousands into the Democratic fold, and in the second place, because they were sure that in time the Supreme Court would declare the law unconstitutional. And so it happened.

In regions where the more unprincipled radical leaders were in control, the whites lived at times in fear of Negro uprisings. The Negroes were armed and insolent, and the whites were few and widely scattered. Here and there outbreaks occurred and individual whites and isolated families suffered, but as a rule all such movements were crushed with much heavier loss to the Negroes than to the better organized whites. Nevertheless everlasting apprehension for the safety of women and children kept the white men nervous. General Garnett Andrews remarked about the situation in Mississippi:

"I have never suffered such an amount of anguish and alarm in all my life. I have served through the whole war as a soldier in the army of Northern Virginia, and saw all of it; but I never did experience... the fear and alarm and sense of danger which I felt that time. And this was the universal feeling among the population, among the white people. I think that both sides were alarmed and felt uneasy. It showed itself upon the countenance of the people; it made many of them sick. Men looked haggard and pale, after undergoing this sort of thing for six weeks or a month, and I have felt when I laid [sic] down that neither myself, nor my wife and children were in safety. I expected, and honestly anticipated, and thought it highly probable, that I might be assassinated and my house set on fire at any time."

By the fires of reconstruction the whites were fused into a more homogeneous society, social as well as political. The former slaveholding class continued to be more considerate of the Negro than were the poor whites; but, as misrule went on, all classes tended to unite against the Negro in politics. They were tired of reconstruction, new amendments, force bills, Federal troops—tired of being ruled as conquered provinces by the incompetent and the dishonest. Every measure aimed at the South seemed to them to mean that they were considered incorrigible and unworthy of trust, and that they were being made to suffer for the deeds of irresponsible whites. And, to make matters worse, strong opposition to proscriptive measures was called fresh rebellion. "When the Jacobins say and do low and bitter things, their charge of want of loyalty in the South because our people grumble back a little seems to me as unreasonable as the complaint of the little boy: 'Mamma, make Bob 'have hisself. He makes mouths at me every time I hit him with my stick.'"*

* Usually ascribed to General D. H. Hill of North Carolina, and quoted in "The Land We Love", vol. 1, p. 146.

Probably this burden fell heavier on the young men, who had life before them and who were growing up with diminished opportunities. Sidney Lanier, then an Alabama school teacher, wrote to Bayard Taylor: "Perhaps you know that with us of the young generation in the South, since the war, pretty much the whole of life has been merely not dying." Negro and alien rule was a constant insult to the intelligence of the country. The taxpayers were nonparticipants in the affairs of government. Some people withdrew entirely from public life, went to their farms or plantations, kept away from towns and from speechmaking, waiting for the end to come. There were some who refused for several years to read the newspapers, so unpleasant was the news. The good feeling produced by the magnanimity of Grant at Appomattox was destroyed by the severity of his Southern policy when he became President. There was no gratitude for any so-called leniency of the North, no repentance for the war, no desire for humiliation, for sackcloth and ashes, and no confession of wrong. The insistence of the radicals upon obtaining a confession of depravity only made things much worse. Scarcely a measure of Congress during reconstruction was designed or received in a conciliatory spirit.

The new generation of whites was poor, bitter because of persecution, ill-educated, overworked, without a bright future, and shadowed by the race problem. Though their new political leaders were shrewd, narrow, conservative, honest, and parsimonious, the constant fighting of fire with fire scorched all. In the bitter discipline of reconstruction, the pleasantest side of Southern life came to an end. During the war and the consequent reconstruction there was a marked change in Southern temperament toward the severe. Hospitality declined; the old Southern life had never been on a business basis, but the new Southern life now adjusted itself to a stricter economy; the old individuality was partially lost; but class distinctions were less obvious in a more homogeneous society. The material evils of reconstruction may be only temporary; state debts may be paid and wasted resources renewed; but the moral and intellectual results of the revolution will be the more permanent.



CHAPTER XIII. RESTORATION OF HOME RULE

The radical program of reconstruction ended after ten years in failure rather because of a change in public opinion in the North than because of the resistance of the Southern whites. The North of 1877, indeed, was not the North of 1867. A more tolerant attitude toward the South developed as the North passed through its own period of misgovernment when all the large cities were subject to "ring rule" and corruption, as in New York under "Boss" Tweed and in the District of Columbia under "Boss" Shepherd. The Federal civil service was discredited by the scandals connected with the Sanborn contracts, the Whisky Ring, and the Star Routes, while some leaders in Congress were under a cloud from the "Salary Grab" and Credit Mobilier disclosures.*

* See "The Boss and the Machine", by Samuel P. Orth in "The Chronicles of America".

The marvelous material development of the North and West also drew attention away from sectional controversies. Settlers poured into the plains beyond the Mississippi and the valleys of the Far West; new industries sprang up; unsuspected mineral wealth was discovered; railroads were built. Not only bankers but taxpaying voters took an interest in the financial readjustments of the time. Many thousand people followed the discussions over the funding and refunding of the national debt, the retirement of the greenbacks, and the proposed lowering of tariff duties. Yet the Black Friday episode of 1869, when Jay Gould and James Fisk cornered the visible supply of gold, and the panic of 1873 were indications of unsound financial conditions.

These new developments and the new domestic problems which they involved all tended to divert public thought from the old political issues arising out of the war. Foreign relations, too, began to take on a new interest. The Alabama claims controversy with England continued to hold the public attention until finally settled by the Geneva Arbitration in 1872. President Grant, as much of an expansionist as Seward, for two years (1869-71) tried to secure Santo Domingo or a part of it for an American naval base in the West Indies. But the United States had race problems enough already and the Senate, led by Sumner, refused to sanction the acquisition. Relations with Spain were frequently strained on account of American filibustering expeditions to aid Cuban insurgents. Spain repeatedly charged the United States with laxness toward such violations of international law; and President Grant, seeing no other way out, recommended in 1869 and again in 1870 that the Cuban insurgents be recognized as belligerents, but still the Senate held back. The climax came in 1873, when the Spanish authorities in Cuba captured on the high seas the Virginius* with a filibustering expedition on board and executed fifty-three of the crew and passengers, among them eight Americans. For a time war seemed imminent, but Spain acted quickly and effected a peaceable settlement.

* See "The Path of Empire", by Carl Russell Fish (in "The Chronicles of America"), p. 119.

It became evident soon after 1867 that the issues involved in reconstruction were not in themselves sufficient to hold the North solidly Republican. Toward Negro suffrage, for example, Northern public opinion was on the whole unfriendly. In 1867, the Negro was permitted to vote only in New York and in New England, except in Connecticut. Before 1869, Negro suffrage was rejected in Connecticut, Wisconsin, Kansas, Ohio, Maryland, Missouri, Michigan, and Minnesota. The Republicans in their national platform of 1868 went only so far as to say that, while Negro suffrage was to be forced upon the South, it must remain a local question in the North. The Border States rapidly lined up with the white South on matters of race, church, and politics.

It was not until 1874, however, that the changing opinion was made generally effective in the elections. The skillfully managed radical organization held large majorities in every Congress from the Thirty-ninth to the Forty-third, and the electoral votes in 1868 and 1879 seemed to show that the conservative opposition was insignificant. But these figures do not tell the whole story. Even in 1864, when Lincoln won by nearly half a million, the popular vote was as eighteen to twenty-two, and four years later Grant, the most popular man in the United States, had a majority of only three hundred thousand over Seymour, and this majority and more came from the new Negro voters. Four years later with about a million Negro voters available and an opposition not pleased with its own candidate, Grant's majority reached only seven hundred thousand. At no one time in elections did the North pronounce itself in favor of all the reconstruction policies. The break, signs of which were visible as early as 1869, came in 1874 when the Republicans lost control of the House of Representatives.

Strength was given to the opposition because of the dissatisfaction with President Grant, who knew little about politics and politicians. He felt that his Cabinet should be made up of personal friends, not of strong advisers, and that the military ideal of administration was the proper one. He was faithful but undiscriminating in his friendships and frequently chose as his associates men of vulgar tastes and low motives; and he showed a naive love of money and an undisguised admiration for rich men such as Gould and Fisk. His appointees were often incompetent friends or relatives, and his cynical attitude toward civil service reform lost him the support of influential men. When forced by party exigencies to select first-class men for his Cabinet, he still preferred to go for advice to practical politicians. On the Southern question he easily fell under control of the radicals, who in order to retain their influence had only to convince his military mind that the South was again in rebellion, and who found it easy to distract public opinion from political corruption by "waving the bloody shirt." Dissatisfaction with his Administration, it is true, was confined to the intellectuals, the reformers, and the Democrats, but they were strong enough to defeat him for a second term if they could only be organized.

The Liberal Republican movement began in the West about 1869 with demands for amnesty and for reform, particularly in the civil service, and it soon spread rapidly over the North. When it became certain that the "machine" would renominate Grant, the liberal movement became an anti-Grant party. The "New Departure" Democrats gave comfort and prospect of aid to the Liberal Republicans by declaring for a constructive, forward-looking policy in place of reactionary opposition. The Liberal chiefs were led to believe that the new Democratic leaders would accept their platform and candidates in order to defeat Grant. The principal candidates for the Liberal Republican nomination were Charles Francis Adams, Lyman Trumbull, Gratz Brown, David Davis, and Horace Greeley. Adams was the strongest candidate but was jockeyed out of place and the nomination was given to Horace Greeley, able enough as editor of the "New York Tribune" but impossible as a candidate for the presidency. The Democratic party accepted him as their candidate also, although he had been a lifelong opponent of Democratic principles and policies. But disgusted Liberals either returned to the Republican ranks or stayed away from the polls, and many Democrats did likewise. Under these circumstances the reelection of Grant was a foregone conclusion. There was certainly a potential majority against Grant, but the opposition had failed to organize, while the Republican machine was in good working order, the Negroes were voting, and the Enforcement Acts proved a great aid to the Republicans in the Southern States.

One good result of the growing liberal sentiment was the passage of an Amnesty Act by Congress on May 22, 1872. By statute and by the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress had refused to recognize the complete validity of President Johnson's pardons and amnesty proclamations, and all Confederate leaders who wished to regain political rights had therefore to appeal to Congress. During the Forty-first Congress (1869-71) more than three thousand Southerners were amnestied in order that they might hold office. These, however, were for the most part scalawags; the most respectable whites would not seek an amnesty which they could secure only by self-stultification.* It was the pressure of public opinion against white disfranchisement and the necessity for meeting the Liberal Republican arguments which caused the passage of the Act of 1872. By this act about 150,000 whites were reenfranchised, leaving out only about five hundred of the most prominent of the old regime, most of whom were never restored to citizenship. Both Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis died disfranchised.

* The machinery of government and politics was all in radical hands—the carpetbaggers and scalawags, who were numerous enough to fill practically all the offices. These men were often able leaders and skillful managers, and they did not intend to surrender control; and the black race was obedient and furnished the votes. In 1868, with Virginia, Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas unrepresented, the first radical contingent in Congress from the South numbered 41, of whom 10 out of 12 senators and 26 out of 32 representatives were carpetbaggers. There were two lone conservative Congressmen. A few months later, in 1869, there were 64 radical representatives from the South, 20 senators and 44 members of the House of Representatives. In 1877 this number had dwindled to two senators and four representatives. The difference between these figures measures in some degree the extent of the undoing of reconstruction within the period of Grant's Administration.

How the Southern whites escaped from Negro domination has often been told and may here be sketched only in outline. The first States regained from radicalism were those in which the Negro population was small and the black vote large enough to irritate but not to dominate. Although Northern sentiment, excited by the stories of "Southern outrage," was then unfavorable, the conservatives of the South, by organizing a "white man's party" and by the use of Ku Klux methods, made a fight for social safety which they won nearly everywhere, and, in addition, they gained political control of several States—Tennessee in 1869, Virginia in 1869-1870, and North Carolina and Georgia in 1870. They almost won Louisiana in 1868 and Alabama in 1870, but the alarmed radicals came to the rescue of the situation with the Fifteenth Amendment and the Enforcement Laws of 1870-1871. With more troops and a larger number of deputy marshals, it seemed that the radicals might securely hold the remaining states. Arrests of conservatives were numerous, plundering was at its height, the Federal Government was interested and was friendly to the new Southern rulers, and the carpetbaggers and scalawags feasted, troubled only by the disposition of their Negro supporters to demand a share of the spoils. Although the whites made little gain from 1870 to 1874, the states already rescued became more firmly conservative; white counties here and there in the black states voted out the radicals; a few more representatives of the whites got into Congress; and the Border States ranged themselves more solidly with the conservatives.

But while the Southern whites were becoming desperate under oppression, public opinion in the North was at last beginning to affect politics. The elections of 1874 resulted in a Democratic landslide of which the Administration was obliged to take notice. Grant now grew more responsive to criticism. In 1875 he replied to a request for troops to hold down Mississippi: "The whole public are tired out with these annual autumnal outbreaks in the South and the great majority are ready now to condemn any interference on the part of the Government." As soon as conditions in the South were better understood in the North, ready sympathy and political aid were offered by many who had hitherto acted with the radicals. The Ku Klux report as well as the newspaper writings and the books of J. S. Pike and Charles Nordhoff, both former opponents of slavery, opened the eyes of many to the evil results of Negro suffrage. Some who had been considered friends of the Negro, now believing that he had proven to be a political failure, coldly abandoned him and turned their altruistic interests to other objects more likely to succeed. Many real friends of the Negro were alarmed at the evils of the reconstruction and were anxious to see the corrupt political leaders deprived of further influence over the race. To others the constantly recurring Southern problem was growing stale, and they desired to hear less of it. Within the Republican party in each Southern State, there were serious divisions over the spoils. First it was carpetbagger and Negro against the scalawag; later, when the black leaders insisted that those who furnished the votes must have the larger share of the rewards, the fight became triangular. As a result, by 1874 the Republican party in the South was split into factions and was deserted by a large proportion of its white membership.

The conservative whites, fiercely resentful after their experiences under the enforcement laws and hopeful of Northern sympathy, now planned a supreme effort to regain their former power. Race lines were more strictly drawn; ostracism of all that was radical became the rule; the Republican party in the South, it was apparent, was doomed to be only a Negro party weighed down by the scandal of bad government; the state treasuries were bankrupt, and there was little further opportunity for plunder. These considerations had much to do with the return of scalawags to the "white man's party" and the retirement of carpetbaggers from Southern politics. There was no longer anything in it, they said; let the Negro have it!

It was under these conditions that the "white man's party" carried the elections in Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas in 1874, and Mississippi in 1875. Asserting that it was a contest between civilization and barbarism, and that the whites under the radical regime had no opportunity to carry an election legally, the conservatives openly made use of every method of influencing the result that could possibly come within the radical law and they even employed many effective methods that lay outside the law. Negroes were threatened with discharge from employment and whites with tar and feathers if they voted the radical ticket; there were nightriding parties, armed and drilled "white leagues," and mysterious firing of guns and cannon at night; much plain talk assailed the ears of the radical leaders; and several bloody outbreaks occurred, principally in Louisiana and Mississippi. Louisiana had been carried by the Democrats in the fall of 1872, but the radical returning board had reversed the election. In 1874 the whites rose in rebellion and turned out Kellogg, the usurping Governor, but President Grant intervened to restore him to office. The "Mississippi" or "shot-gun plan"* was very generally employed, except where the contest was likely to go in favor of the whites without the use of undue pressure. The white leaders exercised a moderating influence, but the average white man had determined to do away with Negro government even though the alternative might be a return of military rule. Congress investigated the elections in each State which overthrew the reconstructionists, but nothing came of the inquiry and the population rapidly settled down into good order. After 1875 only three States were left under radical government—Louisiana and Florida, where the returning boards could throw out any Democratic majority, and South Carolina, where the Negroes greatly outnumbered the whites.

* See "The New South", by Holland Thompson (in "The Chronicles of America").

Reconstruction could hardly be a genuine issue in the presidential campaign of 1876, because all except these three reconstructed States had escaped from radical control, and there was no hope and little real desire of regaining them. It was even expected that in this year the radicals would lose Louisiana and Florida to the "white man's party." The leaders of the best element of the Republicans, both North and South, looked upon the reconstruction as one of the prime causes of the moral breakdown of their party; they wanted no more of the Southern issue but planned a forward-looking, constructive reform.

To some of the Republican leaders, however, among whom was James G. Blame, it was clear that the Republican party, with its unsavory record under Grant's Administration, could hardly go before the people with a reform program. The only possible thing to do was to revive some Civil War issue—"wave the bloody shirt" and fan the smoldering embers of sectional feeling. Blame met with complete success in raising the desired issue. In January 1876, when an amnesty measure was brought before the House, he moved that Jefferson Davis be excepted on the ground that he was responsible for the mistreatment of Union prisoners during the war. Southern hot-bloods replied, and Blaine skillfully led them on until they had foolishly furnished him with ample material for campaign purposes. The feeling thus aroused was so strong that it even galvanized into seeming life the dying interest in the wrongs of the Negro. The rallying cry "Vote as you shot!" gave the Republicans something to fight for; the party referred to its war record, claimed credit for preserving the Union, emancipating the Negro, and reconstructing the South, and demanded that the country be not "surrendered to rebel rule."

Hayes and Tilden, the rival candidates for the presidency, were both men of high character and of moderate views. Their nominations had been forced by the better element of each party. Hayes, the Republican candidate, had been a good soldier, was moderate in his views on Southern questions, and had a clean political reputation. Tilden, his opponent, had a good record as a party man and as a reformer, and his party needed only to attack the past record of the Republicans. The principal Democratic weakness lay in the fact that the party drew so much of its strength from the white South and was therefore subjected to criticism on Civil War issues.

The campaign was hotly contested and was conducted on a low plane. Even Hayes soon saw that the "bloody shirt" issue was the main vote winner. The whites of the three "unredeemed" Southern States nerved themselves for the final struggle. In South Carolina and in some parishes of Louisiana, there was a considerable amount of violence, in which the whites had the advantage, and much fraud, which the Republicans, who controlled the election machinery, turned to best account. It has been said that out of the confusion which the Republicans created they won the presidency.

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

The interest of the nation now centered around the action of the two returning boards. At the suggestion of President Grant, prominent Republicans went South to witness the count. Later prominent Democrats went also. These "visiting statesmen" were to support the frail returning boards in their duty. It was generally understood that these boards, certainly the one in Louisiana, were for sale, and there is little doubt that the Democrats inquired the price. But they were afraid to bid on such uncertain quantities as Governor Wells and T. C. Anderson of Louisiana, both notorious spoilsmen. The members of the boards in both States soon showed the stiffening effect of the moral support of the Federal Administration and of the "visiting statesmen." Reassured as to their political future, they proceeded to do their duty: in Florida they threw out votes until the ninety majority for Tilden was changed to 925 for Hayes, and in Louisiana, by throwing out about fifteen thousand carefully selected ballots, they changed Tilden's lowest majority of six thousand to a Hayes majority of nearly four thousand. Naturally the Democrats sent in contesting returns, but the presidency was really won when the Republicans secured in Louisiana and Florida returns which were regular in form. But hoping to force Congress to go behind the returns, the Democrats carried up contests also from Oregon and South Carolina, whose votes properly belonged to Hayes.

The final contest came in Congress over the counting of the electoral votes. The Constitution provides that "the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and the House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted." But there was no agreement as to where authority lay for deciding disputed votes. Never before had the presidency turned on a disputed count. From 1864 to 1874 the "twenty-second joint rule" had been in force under which either House might reject a certificate. The votes of Georgia in 1868 and of Louisiana in 1879 had thus been thrown out. But the rule had not been readopted by the present Congress, and the Republicans very naturally would not listen to a proposal to readopt it now.

With the country apparently on the verge of civil war, Congress finally created by law an Electoral Commission to which were to be referred all disputes about the counting of votes and the decision of which was to be final unless both Houses concurred in rejecting it. The act provided that the commission should consist of five senators, five representatives, four designated associate justices of the Supreme Court, and a fifth associate justice to be chosen by these four. While nothing was said in the act about the political affiliations of the members of the commission, every one understood that the House would select three Democrats and two Republicans, and that the Senate would name two Democrats and three Republicans. It was also well known that of the four justices designated two were Republicans and two Democrats, and it was tacitly agreed that the fifth would be Justice David Davis, an "independent." But at the last moment Davis was elected Senator by the Illinois Legislature and declined to serve on the Commission. Justice Bradley, a Republican, was then named as the fifth justice, and in this way the Republicans obtained a majority on the Commission.

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

Ten years before, Senator Morton of Indiana had said: "I would have been in favor of having the colored people of the South wait a few years until they were prepared for the suffrage, until they were to some extent educated, but the necessities of the times forbade that; the conditions of things required that they should be brought to the polls at once." Now the condition of things required that some arrangement be made with the Southern whites which would involve a complete reversal of the situation of 1867. In order to secure the unopposed succession of Hayes, to defeat filibustering which might endanger the decision of the Electoral Commission, politicians who could speak with authority for Hayes assured influential Southern politicians, who wanted no more civil war but who did want home rule, that an arrangement might be made which would be satisfactory to both sides.

So the contest was ended. Hayes was to be President; the South, with the Negro, was to be left to the whites; there would be no further military aid to carpetbag governments. In so far as the South was concerned, it was a fortunate settlement better, indeed, than if Tilden had been inducted into office. The remnants of the reconstruction policy were surrendered by a Republican President, the troops were soon withdrawn, and the three radical states fell at once under the control of the whites. Hayes could not see in his election any encouragement to adopt a vigorous radical position, and Congress was deadlocked on party issues for fifteen years. As a result the radical Republicans had to develop other interests, and the North gradually accepted the Southern situation.

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

The undoing of reconstruction was not entirely completed with the understanding of 1877. There remained a large but somewhat shattered Republican party in the South, with control over county and local government in many Negro districts. Little by little the Democrats rooted out these last vestiges of Negro control, using all the old radical methods and some improvements,* such as tissue ballots, the shuffling of ballot boxes, bribery, force, and redistricting, while some regions were placed entirely under executive control and were ruled by appointed commissions. With the good government which followed these changes a deadlocked Congress showed no great desire to interfere. The Supreme Court came to the aid of the Democrats with decisions in 1875, 1882, and 1883 which drew the teeth from the Enforcement Laws, and Congress in 1894 repealed what was left of these regulations.

*See "The New South", by Holland Thompson (in "The Chronicles of America").

Under such discouraging conditions the voting strength of the Republicans rapidly melted away. The party organization existed for the Federal offices only and was interested in keeping down the number of those who desired to be rewarded. As a consequence, the leaders could work in harmony with those Democratic chiefs who were content with a "solid South" and local home rule. The Negroes of the Black Belt, with less enthusiasm and hope, but with quite the same docility as in 1868, began to vote as the Democratic leaders directed. This practice brought up in another form the question of "Negro government" and resulted in a demand from the people of the white counties that the Negro be put entirely out of politics. The answer came between 1890 and 1902 in the form of new and complicated election laws or new constitutions which in various ways shut out the Negro from the polls and left the government to the whites. Three times have the Black Belt regions dominated the Southern States: under slavery, when the master class controlled; under reconstruction, when the leaders of the Negroes had their own way; and after reconstruction until Negro disfranchisement, when the Democratic dictators of the Negro vote ruled fairly but not always acceptably to the white counties which are now the source of their political power.



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The best general accounts of the reconstruction period are found in James Ford Rhodes's "History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the Restoration of Home Rule at the South in 1877", volumes V, VI, VII (1906); in William A. Dunning's "Reconstruction, Political and Economic", 1865-1877, in the "American Nation" Series, volume XXII (1907); and in Peter Joseph Hamilton's "The Reconstruction Period" (1905), which is volume XVI of "The History of North America", edited by F. N. Thorpe. The work of Rhodes is spacious and fair-minded but there are serious gaps in his narrative; Dunning's briefer account covers the entire field with masterly handling; Hamilton's history throws new light on all subjects and is particularly useful for an understanding of the Southern point of view. A valuable discussion of constitutional problems is contained in William A. Dunning's "Essay on the Civil War and Reconstruction and Related Topics" (1904); and a criticism of the reconstruction policies from the point of view of political science and constitutional law is to be found in J. W. Burgess's "Reconstruction and the Constitution, 1866-1876" (1902). E. B. Andrews's "The United States in our own Time" (1903) gives a popular treatment of the later period. A collection of brief monographs entitled "Why the Solid South?" by Hilary A. Herbert and others (1890) was written as a campaign document to offset the drive made by the Republicans in 1889 for new enforcement laws.

There are many scholarly monographs on reconstruction in the several states. The best of these are: J. W. Garner's "Reconstruction in Mississippi" (1901), W. L. Fleming's "Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama" (1905), J. G. de R. Hamilton's "Reconstruction in North Carolina" (1914), W. W. Davis's "The Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida" (1913), J. S. Reynolds's "Reconstruction in South Carolina", 1865-1877 (1905); C. W. Ramsdell's "Reconstruction in Texas" (1910), and C. M. Thompson's "Reconstruction in Georgia" (1915).

Books of interest on special phases of reconstruction are not numerous, but among those deserving mention are Paul S. Pierce's "The Freedmen's Bureau" (1904), D. M. DeWitt's "The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson" (1903), and Paul L. Haworth's "The Hayes-Tilden Disputed Presidential Election of 1876" (1906), each of which is a thorough study of its field. J. C. Lester and D. L. Wilson's "Ku Klux Klan" (1905) and M. L. Avary's "Dixie After the War" (1906) contribute much to a fair understanding of the feeling of the whites after the Civil War; and Gideon Welles, "Diary", 3 vols. (1911), is a mine of information from a conservative cabinet officer's point of view.

For the politician's point of view one may go to James G. Blaine's "Twenty Years of Congress", 2 vols. (1884, 1886) and Samuel S. Cox's "Three Decades of Federal Legislation" (1885). Good biographies are James A. Woodburn's "The Life of Thaddeus Stevens" (1913), Moorfield Storey's "Charles Sumner" (1900), C. F. Adams's "Charles Francis Adams" (1900). Less satisfactory because more partisan is Edward Stanwood's "James Gillespie Blaine" (1906). There are no adequate biographies of the Democratic and Southern leaders.

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

THE END