Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama Part 1

Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama.

by Walter L. Fleming.

PREFACE

This work was begun some five years ago as a study of Reconstruction in Alabama. As the field opened it seemed to me that an account of ante-bellum conditions, social, economic, and political, and of the effect of the Civil War upon ante-bellum inst.i.tutions would be indispensable to any just and comprehensive treatment of the later period. Consequently I have endeavored to describe briefly the society and the inst.i.tutions that went down during Civil War and Reconstruction. Internal conditions in Alabama during the war period are discussed at length; they are important, because they influenced seriously the course of Reconstruction. Throughout the work I have sought to emphasize the social and economic problems in the general situation, and accordingly in addition to a sketch of the politics I have dwelt at some length upon the educational, religious, and industrial aspects of the period. One point in particular has been stressed throughout the whole work, viz. the fact of the segregation of the races within the state--the blacks mainly in the central counties, and the whites in the northern and the southern counties. This division of the state into "white" counties and "black" counties has almost from the beginning exercised the strongest influence upon the history of its people. The problems of white and black in the Black Belt are not always the problems of the whites and blacks of the white counties. It is hoped that the maps inserted in the text will a.s.sist in making clear this point.

Perhaps it may be thought that undue s.p.a.ce is devoted to the history of the negro during War and Reconstruction, but after all the negro, whether pa.s.sive or active, was the central figure of the period.

Believing that the political problems of War and Reconstruction are of less permanent importance than the forces which have shaped and are shaping the social and industrial life of the people, I have confined the discussion of politics to certain chapters chronologically arranged, while for the remainder of the book the topical method of presentation has been adopted. In describing the political events of Reconstruction I have in most cases endeavored to show the relation between national affairs and local conditions within the state. To such an extent has this been done that in some parts it may perhaps be called a general history with especial reference to local conditions in Alabama. Never before and never since Reconstruction have there been closer practical relations between the United States and the state, between Washington and Montgomery.

As to the authorities examined in the preparation of the work it may be stated that practically all material now available--whether in print or in ma.n.u.script--has been used. In working with newspapers an effort was made to check up in two or more newspapers each fact used. Most of the references to newspapers--practically all of those to the less reputable papers--are to signed articles. I have had to reject much material as unreliable, and it is not possible that I have been able to sift out all the errors. Whatever remain will prove to be, as I hope and believe, of only minor consequence.

Thanks for a.s.sistance given are due to friends too numerous to mention all of them by name. For special favors I am indebted to Professor L. D.

Miller, Jacksonville, Alabama; Mr. W. O. Scroggs of Harvard University; Professor G. W. Duncan, Auburn, Alabama; Major W. W. Screws of the _Montgomery Advertiser_; Colonel John W. DuBose, Montgomery, Alabama; Mrs.

J. L. Dean, Opelika, Alabama; Major S. A. Cunningham of the _Confederate Veteran_, Nashville, Tennessee; and Major James R. Crowe, of Sheffield, Alabama. I am indebted to Mr. L. S. Boyd, Washington, D.C., for numerous favors, among them, for calling my attention to the sc.r.a.p-book collection of Edward McPherson, then shelved in the Library of Congress along with Fiction. On many points where doc.u.ments were lacking, I was materially a.s.sisted by the written reminiscences of people familiar with conditions of the time, among them my mother and father, the late Professor O. D.

Smith of Auburn, Alabama, and the late Ryland Randolph, Esq., of Birmingham. Many old negroes have related their experiences to me. Hon.

Junius M. Riggs of the Alabama Supreme Court Library, by the loan of doc.u.ments, a.s.sisted me materially in working up the financial history of the Reconstruction; Dr. David Y. Thomas of the University of Florida read and criticised the entire ma.n.u.script; Dr. Thomas M. Owen, Director of the Alabama Department of Archives and History, has given me valuable a.s.sistance from the beginning to the close of the work by reading the ma.n.u.script, by making available to me not only the public archives, but also his large private collection, and by securing ill.u.s.trations. But above all I have been aided by Professor William A. Dunning of Columbia University, at whose instance the work was begun, who gave me many helpful suggestions, read the ma.n.u.script, and saved me from numerous pitfalls, and by my wife, who read and criticised both ma.n.u.script and proof, and made the maps and the index and prepared some of the ill.u.s.trations.

WALTER L. FLEMING.

NEW YORK CITY, August, 1905.

PART I

INTRODUCTION

CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION IN ALABAMA

CHAPTER I

THE PERIOD OF SECTIONAL CONTROVERSY

When Alabama seceded in 1861, it had been in existence as a political organization less than half a century, but in many respects its inst.i.tutions and customs were as old as European America. The white population was almost purely Anglo-American. The early settlements had been made on the coast near Mobile, and from thence had extended up the Alabama, Tombigbee, and Warrior rivers. In the northern part the Tennessee valley was early settled, and later, in the eastern part, the Coosa valley. After the river valleys, the prairie lands in central Alabama were peopled, and finally the poorer lands of the southeast and the hills south of the Tennessee valley. The bulk of the population before 1861 was of Georgian birth or descent, the settlers having come from middle Georgia, which had been peopled from the hills of Virginia. Georgians came into the Tennessee valley early in the nineteenth century. The Creek reservation prevented immigration into eastern Alabama before the thirties, but the Georgians went around and settled southeast Alabama along the line of the old "Federal road." When the Creek Indians consented to migrate, it was found that the Georgians were already in possession of the country,--more than 20,000 strong, and a government was at once erected over the Indian counties. People from Georgia also came down the Coosa valley to central Alabama. The Virginians went to the western Black Belt, to the Tennessee valley, and to central Alabama. North Carolina sent thousands of her citizens down through the Tennessee valley and thence across country to the Tombigbee valley and western Alabama; others came through Georgia and followed the routes of Georgia migration. South Carolinians swarmed into the southern, central, and western counties, and a goodly number settled in the Tennessee valley. Tennessee furnished a large proportion of the settlers to the Tennessee valley, to the hill counties south of the Tennessee, and to the valleys in central and western Alabama. Among the immigrants from Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Tennessee was a large Scotch-Irish element, and with the Tennesseeans came a sprinkling of Kentuckians. In western Alabama were a few thousand Mississippians, and into southeast Alabama a few hundred settlers came from Florida. From the northern states came several thousand, princ.i.p.ally New England business men. The foreign element was insignificant--the Irish being most numerous, with a few hundred each of Germans, English, French, and Scotch. In Mobile and Marengo counties there was a slight admixture of French blood in the population.[1]

[Ill.u.s.tration: POPULATION IN 1860.]

In regard to the character of the settlers it has been said that the Virginians were the least practical and the Georgians the most so, while the North Carolinians were a happy medium. The Georgians were noted for their stubborn persistence, and they usually succeeded in whatever they undertook. The Virginians liked a leisurely planter's life with abundant social pleasures. The Tennesseeans and Kentuckians were hardly distinguishable from the Virginians and Carolinians, to whom they were closely related. The northern professional and business men exercised an influence more than commensurate with their numbers, being, in a way, picked men. Neither the Georgians nor the Virginians were a.s.sertive office-seekers, but the Carolinians liked to hold office, and the politics of the state were moulded by the South Carolinians and Georgians. All were naturally inclined to favor a weak federal administration and a strong state government with much liberty of the individual. The theories of Patrick Henry, Jefferson, and Calhoun, not those of Washington and John Marshall, formed the political creed of the Alabamians.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NATIVITY OF PUBLIC MEN

Each figure represents some person who became prominent before 1865, and indicates his native state. The location of the figure on the map indicates his place of residence. Note the segregation along the rivers and the Black Belt.]

The wealthy people were found in the Tennessee valley, in the Black Belt extending across the centre of the state, and in Mobile, the one large town. They were (except a few of the Mobilians) all slaveholders. The poorer white people went to the less fertile districts of north and southeast Alabama, where land was cheap, preferring to work their own poor farms rather than to work for some one else on better land. But nearly every slave county had its colony of poorer whites, who were invariably settled on the least fertile soils. Among these settlers there was a certain dislike of slavery, because they believed that, were it not for the negro, the whites might themselves live on the fertile lands. Yet they were not in favor of emanc.i.p.ation in any form, unless the negro could be gotten entirely out of the way--a free negro being to them an abomination.

If the negro must stay, then they preferred slavery to continue.

Over the greater part of Alabama there were no cla.s.s distinctions before 1860; the state was too young. In the wilderness cla.s.ses had fused and the successful men were often those never heard of in the older states. A candidate of "the plain people" was always elected, because all were frontier people. This does not mean that in Huntsville, Montgomery, Greensboro, and Mobile there were not the beginnings of an aristocracy based on education, wealth, and family descent. But these were very small spots on the map of Alabama, and there were no heartburnings over social inequalities.[2]

Such was the composition of the white population of Alabama before 1860.

No matter what might be their political affiliations, in practice nearly all were Democrats of the Jeffersonian school, believing in the largest possible liberty for the individual and in local management of all local affairs, and to the frontier Democrat nearly all questions that concerned him were local. The political leaders excepted, the majority of the population knew little and cared less about the Federal government except when it endeavored to restrain or check them in their course of conquest and expansion in the wilderness. The relations of the people of Alabama with the Federal government were such as to confirm and strengthen them in their local attachments and sectional politics. The controversies that arose in regard to the removal of the Indians, and over the public lands, nullification, slavery, and western expansion, prevented the growth of attachment to the Federal government, and tended to develop a southern rather than a "continental" nationality. The state came into the Union when the sections were engaged in angry debate over the Missouri Compromise measures, and its att.i.tude in Federal politics was determined from the beginning. The next most serious controversy with the Federal government and with the North was in regard to the removal of the Indians from the southern states. The southwestern frontiersmen, like all other Anglo-Americans, had no place in their economy for the Indian, and they were determined that he should not stand in their way.

Indians and Nullification

For half a century, throughout the Gulf states, the struggle with the Indian tribes for the possession of the fertile lands continued, and in this struggle the Federal government was always against the settlers.

Before the removal of the Indians, in 1836, the settlers of Alabama were in almost continual dispute with the Washington administration on this subject.[3] The trouble began in Georgia, and thousands of Georgians brought to Alabama a spirit of jealousy and hostility to the United States government, and a growing dislike of New England and the North on account of their stand in regard to the Indians. For when troubles, legal and otherwise, arose with the Indians, their advisers were found to be missionaries and land agents from New England. The United States wanted the Indians to remain as states within states; the Georgia and Alabama settlers felt that the Indians must go. The att.i.tude of the Federal government drove the settlers into extreme a.s.sertions of state rights. In Georgia it came almost to war between the state and United States troops during the administration of John Quincy Adams, a New Englander, who was disliked by the settlers for his support of the Indian cause; and the whole South was made jealous by the decisions of the Supreme Court in the Indian cases. Had Adams been elected to a second term, there would probably have been armed resistance to the policy of the United States.

Jackson, a southern and western man, had the feeling of a frontiersman toward the Indians; and his att.i.tude gained him the support of the frontier southern states in the trouble with South Carolina over nullification.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GAINESWOOD. A Marengo County Plantation Home. Abandoned since the War.]

Immediately after the nullification troubles, the general government attempted to remove the white settlers from the Indian lands in east Alabama. The lands had been ceded by the Indians in 1832, and the legislature of Alabama at once extended the state administration over the territory. Settlers rushed in; some were already there. But by the treaty the Indians were ent.i.tled to remain on their land until they chose to move; and now the United States marshals, supported by the army, were ordered to remove the 30,000 whites who had settled in the nine Indian counties. Governor Gayle, who had been elected as an opponent of nullification, informed the Secretary of War that the proposed action of the central government meant nothing less than the destruction of the state administration, and declared that he would, at all costs, sustain the jurisdiction of the state government. The troops killed a citizen who resisted removal, and the Federal authorities refused to allow the slayers to be tried by state courts. There was great excitement in the state, and public meetings were everywhere held to organize resistance. The legislature authorized the governor to persist in maintaining the state administration in the nine Indian counties. A collision with the United States troops was expected, and offers of volunteers were made to the governor,--even from New York. Finally the United States government yielded, the whites remained on the Indian lands, the state authority was upheld in the Indian counties, the soldiers were tried before state courts, and the Indians were removed to the West. The governor proclaimed a victory for the state, and the 30,000 angry Alabamians rejoiced over what they considered the defeat of the unjust Federal government.[4]

Thus in Alabama nullification of Federal law was successfully carried out.

And it was done by a state administration and a people that a year before had refused to approve the course of South Carolina. But South Carolina was regarded in Alabama, as in the rest of the South, somewhat as an erratic member that ought to be disciplined once in a while. A strong and able minority in Alabama accepted the basis of the nullification doctrine, _i.e._ the sovereignty of the states, and after this time this political element was usually known as the State Rights party. They had no separate organization, but voted with Whigs or Democrats, as best served their purpose. Secession was little talked of, for affairs might yet go well, they thought, within the Union. A majority of the Democrats, for several years after 1832, were probably opposed in theory to nullification and secession when South Carolina was an actor, but in practice they acted as they had done in the Indian disputes which concerned them more closely.

The Slavery Controversy and Political Divisions

It was at the height of the irritation of the Indian controversy that the agitation by the abolitionists of the North began. The question which more than any other alienated the southern people from the Union was that concerning negro slavery. From 1819 to 1860 the majority of the white people of Alabama were not friendly to slavery as an inst.i.tution. This was not from any special liking for the negro or belief that slavery was bad for him, but because it was believed that the presence of the negro, slave or free, was not good for the white race. To most of the people slavery was merely a device for making the best of a bad state of affairs. The const.i.tution of 1819 was liberal in its slavery provisions, and the legislature soon enacted (1827) a law prohibiting the importation, for sale, hire, or barter, of slaves from other states. For a decade there was strong influence at each session of the state legislature in favor of gradual emanc.i.p.ation; agents of the Quakers worked in the state, buying and paying a higher price for cotton that was not produced by slave labor; and in north Alabama, during the twenties and early thirties, there was a number of emanc.i.p.ation societies.[5] An emanc.i.p.ation newspaper, _The Huntsville Democrat_, was published in Huntsville, and edited by James G.

Birney, afterwards a noted abolitionist. The northern section of the state, embracing the strong Democratic white counties, was distinctly unfriendly to slavery, or rather to the negro, and controlled the politics of the state.[6] The effect of the abolition movement in the North was the destruction of the emanc.i.p.ation organizations in the South, and both friends and foes of the inst.i.tution united on the defensive. The non-slaveholders were not deluded followers of the slave owners. After the slavery question became an issue in politics, the non-slaveholders in Alabama were rather more aggressive, and were even more firmly determined to maintain negro slavery than were the slaveholders. To the rich hereditary slaveholders, who were relatively few in number, it was more or less a question of property, and that was enough to fight about at any time. But to the average white man who owned no negroes and who worked for his living at manual labor, the question was a vital social one. The negro slave was bad enough; but he thought that the negro freed by outside interference and turned loose on society was much more to be feared.[7]

The large majorities for extreme measures came from the white counties; the secession vote in 1860 was largely a white county vote. But when secession came, the Whiggish Black Belt which had been opposed to secession was astonished not to receive, in the war that followed, the hearty support of the Democratic white counties.

Before the nullification troubles in 1832 there was no distinct political division among the people of Alabama; all were Democrats. Those of the white counties were of the Jacksonian type, those of the black counties were rather of the Jeffersonian faith; but all were strict constructionists, especially on questions concerning the tariff, the Indians, the central government, and slavery. The question of nullification caused a division in the ranks of the Democratic party--one wing supporting Jackson, the other accepting Calhoun as leader. For several years later, however, the Democratic candidates had no opposition in the elections, though within the party there were contests between the Jacksonians and the growing State Rights (Calhoun) wing. But with the settling of the country, the growth of the power of the Black Belt, and the differentiation of interests within the state, there appeared a second party, the Whigs. Its strength lay among the large planters and slaveholders of the central Black Belt, though it often took its leaders from the black counties of the Tennessee valley. This party was able to elect a governor but once, and then only because of a division in the Democratic ranks. After 1835 it secured one-third of the representation in Congress and the same proportion in the legislature. It was the "broadcloth" party, of the wealthier and more cultivated people. It did not appeal to the "plain people" with much success; but it was always a respectable party, and there was no jealousy of it then, and now "there are no bitter memories against it."[8]

Numerically, the Whigs were about as strong as the anti-nullification wing of the Democratic party, so that the balance of power was held by the constantly increasing State Rights (Calhoun) element. When Van Buren became leader of the national Democracy, the State Rights people in Alabama united with the regular Democrats and voted with them for about ten years. The State Rights men were devoted followers of Calhoun, but in political theories they soon went beyond him. For a while they were believers in nullification as a const.i.tutional right, but soon began to talk of secession as a sovereign right. They were in favor of no compromise where the rights of the South were concerned. They were logical, extreme, doctrinaire; they demanded absolute right, and viewed every action of the central government with suspicion. A single idea firmly held through many years gave to them a power not justified by their numerical strength.

The Whigs did not stand still on political questions; as the Democrats and the State Rights men abandoned one position for another more advanced, the Whigs moved up to the one abandoned. Thus they were always only about one election behind. It was the constant agitation of the slavery question that drove the Whigs along in the wake of the more advanced party. Both parties were in favor of expansion in the Southwest. They were indignant at the New England position on the Texas question, and talked much of disunion if such a policy of obstruction was persisted in. Again, after the Mexican War all parties were furious at the opposition shown to the annexation of the territory from Mexico. It was now the spirit of expansion, the l.u.s.t for territory, that rose in opposition to the obstructive policy of northern leaders; and a new element was added when an attempt was made to shut out southerners from the territory won mainly by the South by forbidding the entrance of slavery.

The number of those in favor of resisting at every point the growing desire of the North to restrict slavery was increasing steadily. The leader of the State Rights men was William L. Yancey. He opposed all compromises, for, as he said, compromise meant that the system was evil and was an acknowledgment of wrong, and no right, however abstract, must be denied to the South. He was a firm believer in slavery as the only method of solving the race question, and saw clearly the dangers that would result from the abolition programme if the North and South remained united. So to prevent worse calamities he was in favor of disunion. He was the greatest orator ever heard in the South. He was in no sense a demagogue; he had none of the arts of the popular politician. Sent to Congress in the heat of the fight between the sections, he resigned because he thought the battle was to be fought elsewhere. For twenty years he stood before the people of Alabama, telling them that slavery could not be preserved within the Union; that before any effective settlement of controversies could be made, Alabama and the other southern states must withdraw and make terms from the outside, or stay out of the Union and have done with agitation and interference. Secession was self-preservation, he told a people who believed that the destruction of slavery meant the destruction of society. For twenty years he and his followers, heralds of the storm, were ostracized by all political parties, which accepted his theories, but denied the necessity for putting them into practice. When at last the people came to follow him, he told them that they had probably waited too late, and that they were seceding on a weaker cause than any of those he had presented for twenty years.

Yancey was a leader of State Rights men but never a leader in the Democratic party. Once, in 1848, when all were angry on account of the opposition on the Mexican question, Yancey was called to the front in the Democratic state convention. He offered resolutions, which were adopted,[9] to the effect (1) that the people of a territory could not prevent the holding of slaves before the formation of a state const.i.tution, and that Congress had no power whatever to restrict slavery in the territories; (2) that those who held the opposite opinion were not Democrats, and that the Democratic party of Alabama would not support for President any candidate who held such views. The delegates to the National Democratic Convention at Baltimore were instructed to withdraw if the Alabama resolutions were rejected. By a vote of two hundred and sixteen to thirty-six they were rejected; yet none of the delegates except Yancey withdrew. Refusing to support Ca.s.s for the presidency because he believed in "squatter sovereignty," Yancey was again ostracized by the Democratic leaders.[10] Now the State Rights men became more aggressive, for they said this was the time to settle the slavery question, before it was too late. The North, it was thought, would not be averse to separation from the South. The Whigs began to advance non-intervention theories, and but for the death of President Taylor, who adhered to the free-soil Whigs, political parties in Alabama would probably have broken up in 1850 and fused into one on the slavery question.

Growth of Secession Sentiment

The compromise measures of 1850 pleased few people in Alabama, and there was talk of resistance and of a.s.sisting Texas by force, if necessary, against the appropriation of her territory by the central government. The moderates condemned the Compromise and said they would not yield again.

The more advanced demanded a repeal of the Compromise or immediate secession. Yancey said there was no hope of a settlement and that it was time to set the house in order. In 1850-1851 there was a widespread movement toward a rejection of the Compromise and a secession of the lower South, but the political leaders were disposed to give the Compromise a trial. To the Nashville convention, held in June, 1850, to discuss measures to secure redress of grievances, the Alabama legislature at an unofficial meeting chose the following delegates: Benjamin Fitzpatrick, William Cooper, John A. Campbell, Thomas J. Judge, John A. Winston, Leroy P. Walker, William M. Murphy, Nicholas Davis, R. C. Shorter, Thomas A.

Walker, Reuben Chapman, James Abercrombie, and William M. Byrd--all Whigs or Conservative Democrats. The resolutions pa.s.sed by the convention were cautious and prudent, and were generally supported by the Whigs and opposed by the Democrats. In Montgomery, upon the return of the Alabama delegation, a public meeting, held to ratify the action of the Nashville convention, condemned it instead, and approved the programme of Yancey who again declared that it was "time to set the house in order." The contest in Alabama was simply between the Compromise, with maintenance of the Union, and rejection of the Compromise to be followed by secession. It was not a campaign between Whig and Democrat, but between Union and Secession. The old party lines were not drawn. a.s.sociations were formed all over the state to oppose the Compromise and to advocate secession. The Unionists drew together, but less heartily. The compact State Rights element lost influence on account of a division that now showed in its ranks. One section, led by William L. Yancey, was for separate and unconditional secession; another, led by J. J. Seibels, favored cooperation of the southern states within the Union and united deliberation before secession.[11] The State Rights Convention met in Montgomery, February 10, 1851, and recommended a southern congress to decide the questions at issue and declared that if any other state would secede, Alabama should go also.[12] The action of the convention pleased few and was repudiated by the "separate secessionist" element. The candidates of the State Rights--now called the "Southern Rights"--party were supported by a majority of the Democrats. They demanded the repeal of the Compromise, and resistance to future encroachments; they demanded southern ministers and southern churches, southern books and papers, and southern pleasure resorts.