Contemporary American History, 1877-1913 Part 1

Contemporary American History, 1877-1913.

by Charles A. Beard.

PREFACE

In teaching American government and politics, I constantly meet large numbers of students who have no knowledge of the most elementary facts of American history since the Civil War. When they are taken to task for their neglect, they reply that there is no textbook dealing with the period, and that the smaller histories are sadly deficient in their treatment of our age.

It is to supply the student and general reader with a handy guide to contemporary history that I have undertaken this volume. I have made no attempt to present an "artistically balanced" account of the last thirty-five years, but have sought rather to furnish a background for the leading issues of current politics and to enlist the interest of the student in the history of the most wonderful period in American development. The book is necessarily somewhat "impressionistic" and in part it is based upon materials which have not been adequately sifted and evaluated. Nevertheless, I have endeavored to be accurate and fair, and at the same time to invite on the part of the student some of that free play of the mind which Matthew Arnold has shown to be so helpful in literary criticism.

Although the volume has been designed, in a way, as a textbook, I have thrown aside the methods of the almanac and chronicle, and, at the risk of displeasing the reader who expects a little about everything (including the Sioux war and the San Francisco earthquake), I have omitted with a light heart many of the staples of history in order to treat more fully the matters which seem important from the modern point of view. I have also refused to mar the pages with black type, paragraph numbers, and other "apparatus" which tradition has prescribed for "manuals." Detailed election statistics and the guide to additional reading I have placed in an appendix.

In the preparation of the book, I have made extensive use of the volumes by Professors Dunning, Sparks, Dewey, and Latane, in the American Nation Series, and I wish to acknowledge once for all my deep debt to them. My colleague, Mr. B. B. Kendrick, read all of the proofs and saved me from many an error. Professor R. L. Schuyler gave me the benefit of his criticisms on part of the proof. To Dr. Louis A. Mayers, of the College of the City of New York, I am under special obligations for valuable suggestions as to arrangement and for drafting a large portion of Chapter III. The shortcomings of the book fall to me, but I shall be recompensed for my indiscretions, if this volume is speedily followed by a number of texts, large and small, dealing with American history since the Civil War. It is showing no disrespect to our ancestors to be as much interested in our age as they were in theirs; and the doctrine that we can know more about Andrew Jackson whom we have not seen than about Theodore Roosevelt whom we have seen is a pernicious psychological error.

CHARLES A. BEARD.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, November, 1913.

CHAPTER I

THE RESTORATION OF WHITE DOMINION IN THE SOUTH

When President Hayes was inaugurated on March 4, 1877, the southern whites had almost shaken off the Republican rule which had been set up under the protection of Federal soldiers at the close of the Civil War.

In only two states, Louisiana and South Carolina, were Republican governors nominally in power, and these last "rulers of conquered provinces" had only a weak grip upon their offices, which they could not have maintained for a moment without the aid of Union troops stationed at their capitals. By secret societies, like the Ku Klux Klan, and by open intimidation, the conservative whites had practically recovered from the negroes, whom the Republicans had enfranchised, the political power which had been wrested from the old ruling cla.s.s at the close of the War. In this nullification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Federal Const.i.tution and other measures designed to secure the suffrage for the former bondmen, President Grant had acquiesced, and it was openly rumored that Hayes would put an end to the military regime in Louisiana and South Carolina, leaving the southern people to fight out their own battles.

Nevertheless, the Republicans in the North were apparently loath to accept accomplished facts. In their platform of 1876, upon which Hayes was elected, they recalled with pride their achievement in saving the Union and purging the land of slavery; they pledged themselves to pacify the South and protect the rights of all citizens there; they p.r.o.nounced it to be a solemn obligation upon the Federal government to enforce the Civil War amendments and to secure "to every citizen complete liberty and exact equality in the exercise of all civil, political, and public rights." Moreover, they charged the Democratic party with being "the same in character and spirit as when it sympathized with treason."

But this vehement declaration was only the death cry of the gladiators of the radical Republican school. Stevens and Sumner, who championed the claims of the negroes to full civil and political rights, were gone; and the new leaders, like Conkling and Blaine, although they still waxed eloquent over the wrongs of the freedmen, were more concerned about the forward swing of railway and capitalist enterprises in the North and West than they were about maintaining in the South the rule of a handful of white Republicans supported by negro voters. Only a few of the old-school Republicans who firmly believed in the doctrine of the "natural rights" of the negro, and the officeholders and speculators who were anxious to exploit the South really in their hearts supported a continuance of the military rule in "the conquered provinces."

Moreover, there were special circ.u.mstances which made it improbable that President Hayes would permit the further use of troops in Louisiana and South Carolina. His election had been stoutly disputed and it was only a stroke of good fortune that permitted his inauguration at all. It was openly charged that his managers, during the contest over the results of the election in 1876, had promised the abolition of the military regime in the South in return for aid on the part of certain Democrats in securing a settlement of the dispute in his favor. Hayes himself had, however, maintained consistently that vague att.i.tude so characteristic of practical politicians. In his speech of acceptance, he promised to help the southern states to obtain "the blessings of honest and capable self-government." But he added also that the advancement of the prosperity of those states could be made most effectually by "a hearty and generous recognition of the rights of all by all." Moreover, he approved a statement by one of his supporters to the effect that he would restore all freemen to their rights as citizens and at the same time obliterate sectional lines--a promise obviously impossible to fulfill.

Whether there was any real "bargain" between Hayes and the Democratic managers matters little, for the policy which he adopted was inevitable, sooner or later, because there was no active political support even in the North for a contrary policy. A few weeks after his inauguration Hayes sent a commission of eminent men to Louisiana to investigate the claims of the rival governments there--for there were two legislatures and two governors in that commonwealth contending for power. The commission found that the Republican administration, headed by Governor Packard, was little more than a sham, and advised President Hayes of the fact. Thereupon the President, on April 9, 1877, ordered the withdrawal of the Federal troops from the public buildings, and Louisiana began the restoration of her shattered fortunes under the conservative white leadership. A day later, the President also withdrew the troops from the capitol at Columbia, South Carolina, and the Democratic administration under Governor Wade Hampton, a former Confederate veteran, was duly recognized. Henceforward, the freedmen of the South were to depend upon the generosity of the whites and upon their own collective efforts, aided by their sympathizers, for whatever civil and political rights they were permitted to enjoy.

_The Disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the Negro_

Having secured the abolition of direct Federal military interference with state administrations in the South, the Democrats turned to the abrogation of the Federal election laws that had been pa.s.sed in 1870-1871, as a part of the regular reconstruction policy for protecting the negroes in the exercise of the suffrage. These election laws prescribed penalties for intimidation at the polls, provided for the appointment, by Federal circuit courts, of supervisors charged with the duty of scrutinizing the entire election process, and authorized the employment of United States marshals, deputies, and soldiers to support and protect the supervisors in the discharge of their duties and to keep the peace at the polls.

These laws, the Republican authors urged, were designed to safeguard the purity of the ballot, not only in the South but also in the North, and particularly in New York, where it was claimed that fraud was regularly employed by the Democratic leaders. John Sherman declared that the Democrats in Congress would be a "pitiful minority, if those elected by fraud and bloodshed were debarred," adding that, "in the South one million Republicans are disfranchised." Democrats, on the other hand, replied that these laws were nothing more than a part of a gigantic scheme originated by the Republicans to fasten their rule upon the country forever by systematic interference with elections. Democratic suspicions were strengthened by reports of many scandals--for instance, that the supervisors in Louisiana under the Republican regime had registered "eight thousand more colored voters than there were in the state when the census was taken four years later." Undoubtedly, there were plenty of frauds on both sides, and it is an open question whether Federal interference reduced or increased the amount.

At all events, the Democrats, finding themselves in a majority in the House of Representatives in 1877, determined to secure the repeal of the "force laws," and in their desperation they resorted to the practice of attaching their repeal measures to appropriation bills in the hope of compelling President Hayes to sign them or tying up the wheels of government by a stoppage in finances. Hayes was equal to the occasion, and by a vigorous use of the veto power he defeated the direct a.s.saults of the Democrats on the election laws. At length, however, in June, 1878, he was compelled to accept a "rider" in the form of a proviso to the annual appropriation bill for the army making it impossible for United States marshals to employ federal troops in the execution of the election laws. While this did not satisfy the Democrats by any means, because it still left Federal supervision under the marshals, their deputies and the election supervisors, it took away the main prop of the Republicans in the South--the use of troops at elections.

The effect of this achievement on the part of the Democrats was apparent in the succeeding congressional election, for they were able to carry all of the southern districts except four. This cannot be attributed, however, entirely to the suppression of the negro vote, for there was a general landslide in 1878 which gave the Democrats a substantial majority in both the House and the Senate. Inasmuch as a spirit of toleration was growing up in Congress, the clause of the Fourteenth Amendment excluding from Congress certain persons formerly connected with the Confederacy, was not strictly enforced, and several of the most prominent and active representatives of the old regime found their way into both houses. Under their vigorous leadership a two years' political war was waged between Congress and the President over the repeal of the force bills, but Hayes won the day, because the Democrats could not secure the requisite two-thirds vote to carry their measures against the presidential veto.

However, the Supreme Court had been undermining the "force laws" by nullifying separate sections, although it upheld the general principle of the election laws against a contention that elections were wholly within the control of state authorities. In the case of United States _v._ Reese, the Court, in 1875, declared void two sections of the law of 1870 "because they did not strictly limit Federal jurisdiction for protection of the right to vote to cases where the right was denied _by a state_," but extended it to denials by private parties. In the same year in the case of United States _v._ Cruikshank the Court gave another blow to Federal control, in the South. A number of private citizens in Louisiana had waged war on the blacks at an election riot, and one of them, Cruikshank, was charged with conspiracy to deprive negroes of rights which they enjoyed under the protection of the United States. The Supreme Court, however, held that the Federal government had no authority to protect the citizens of a state _against one another_, but that such protection was, as always, a duty of the state itself. Seven years later the Supreme Court, in the case of United States _v._ Harris, declared null that part of the enforcement laws which penalized conspiracies of two or more citizens to deprive another of his rights, on the same ground as advanced in the Louisiana case.[1]

On the withdrawal of Federal troops and the open abandonment of the policy of military coercion, the whites, seeing that the Federal courts were not inclined to interfere, quickly completed the process of obtaining control over the machinery of state government. That process had been begun shortly after the War, taking the form of intimidation at the polls. It was carried forward another step when the "carpet baggers" and other politicians who had organized and used the negro vote were deprived of Federal support and driven out. When this active outside interference in southern politics was cut off, thousands of negroes stayed away from the polls through sheer indifference, for their interest in politics had been stimulated by artificial forces--bribery and absurd promises. Intimidation and indifference worked a widespread disfranchis.e.m.e.nt before the close of the seventies.

These early stages in the process of disfranchis.e.m.e.nt were described by Senator Tillman in his famous speech of February 26, 1900. "You stood up there and insisted that we give these people a 'free vote and a fair count.' They had it for eight years, as long as the bayonets stood there.... We preferred to have a United States army officer rather than a government of carpet baggers and thieves and scallywags and scoundrels who had stolen everything in sight and mortgaged posterity; who had run their felonious paws into the pockets of posterity by issuing bonds.

When that happened we took the government away. We stuffed the ballot boxes. We shot them. We are not ashamed of it. With that system--force, tissue ballots, etc.--we got tired ourselves. So we had a const.i.tutional convention, and we eliminated, as I said, all of the colored people whom we could under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments." The experience of South Carolina was duplicated in Mississippi. "For a time," said the Hon. Thomas Spight, of that state, in Congress, in 1904, "we were compelled to employ methods that were extremely distasteful and very demoralizing, but now we are accomplishing the same and even better results by strictly const.i.tutional and legal procedure." It should be said, however, that in the states where the negro population was relatively smaller, violence was not necessary to exclude the negroes from the polls.

A peaceful method of disfranchising negroes and poor whites was the imposition of a poll tax on voters. Negroes seldom paid their taxes until the fight over prohibition commenced in the eighties and nineties.

Then the liquor interests began to pay the negroes' poll taxes and by a generous distribution of their commodities were able to carry the day at the polls. Thereupon the prohibitionists determined to find some effective const.i.tutional means of excluding the negroes from voting.

This last stage in the disfranchis.e.m.e.nt process--the disqualification of negroes by ingenious const.i.tutional and statutory provisions--was hastened by the rise during the eighties and nineties of the radical or Populist party in the South, which evenly balanced the Democratic party in many places and threatened for a time to disintegrate the older organization. In this contest between the white factions a small number of active negroes secured an extraordinary influence in holding the balance of power; and both white parties sought to secure predominance by purchasing the venal negro vote which was as large as, or perhaps larger than, the venal white vote in such northern states as Connecticut, Rhode Island, or Indiana. The conservative wing of the white population was happy to take advantage of the prevailing race prejudice to secure the enactment of legislation disfranchising a considerable number of the propertyless whites as well as the negroes; and the radicals grew tired of buying negro voters.

Out of this condition of affairs came a series of const.i.tutional conventions which devised all sorts of restrictions to exclude the negroes and large numbers of the "lower cla.s.ses" from voting altogether, without directly violating the Fifteenth Amendment to the Federal Const.i.tution providing against disfranchis.e.m.e.nt on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

The series of conventions opened in Mississippi in 1890, where the Populistic whites were perhaps numerically fewest. At that time Mississippi was governed under the const.i.tution of 1868, which provided that no property or educational test should be required of voters, at least not before 1885, and also stipulated that no amendment should be made except by legislative proposal ratified by the voters.

Notwithstanding this provision, the legislature in February, 1890, called a convention to amend the const.i.tution "or enact a new const.i.tution." This convention proceeded to "ordain and establish" a new frame of government, without referring it to the voters for ratification; and the courts of the state set judicial sanction on the procedure, saying that popular ratification was not necessary. This const.i.tution provides that every elector shall, in addition to possessing other qualifications, "be able to read any section of the const.i.tution of this state; or he shall be able to understand the same when read to him or to give a reasonable interpretation thereof." Under such a general provision everything depends upon the att.i.tude of the election officials toward the applicants for registration, for it is possible to disfranchise any person, no matter how well educated, by requiring the "interpretation" of some obscure and technical legal point.

Five years later South Carolina followed the example of Mississippi, and by means of a state convention enacted a new const.i.tution disfranchising negroes; and put it into force without submitting it to popular ratification.[2] The next year (1896) the legislature of Louisiana called a convention empowered to frame a new const.i.tution and to put it into effect without popular approval. This movement was opposed by the Populists, one of whom declared in the legislature that it was "a step in the direction of taking the government of this state out of the hands of the ma.s.ses and putting it in the hands of the cla.s.ses." In spite of the opposition, which was rather formidable, the convention was a.s.sembled, and ordained a new frame of government (1898) disfranchising negroes and many whites. The Hon. T. J. Symmes, addressing the convention at the close, frankly stated that their purpose was to establish the supremacy of the Democratic party as the white man's party.

Four princ.i.p.al devices are now employed in the several const.i.tutional provisions disfranchising negroes: (1) a small property qualification, (2) a prerequisite that the voter must be able to read any section of the state const.i.tution or explain it, when read, to the satisfaction of the registering officers, (3) the "grandfather clause," as in Louisiana where any person, who voted on or before 1867 or the son or grandson of such person, may vote, even if he does not possess the other qualifications; and (4) the wide extension of disfranchis.e.m.e.nt for crimes by including such offenses as obtaining money under false pretenses, adultery, wife-beating, pet.i.t larceny, fraudulent breach of trust, among those which work deprivation of the suffrage.

The effect of these limitations on the colored vote has been to reduce it seriously in the far South. If the negro has the amount of taxable property required by the const.i.tution, he is caught by the provision which requires him to explain a section of the state const.i.tution to the satisfaction of the white registering officers. The meanest white, however, can usually get through the net with the aid of his grandfather, or by showing his expertness in const.i.tutional law. Mr. J.

C. Rose has published the election statistics for South Carolina and Mississippi;[3] it appears that in those states there were, in 1900, about 350,796 adult male negroes and that the total Republican vote in both commonwealths in the national election of that year was only 5443.

At a rough guess perhaps 2000 votes of this number were cast by white men, and the conclusion must be that about ninety-nine out of every hundred negroes failed to vote for President in those states. It is fair to state, however, that indifference on the part of the negroes was to some extent responsible for the small vote.

The legal restrictions completed the work which had been begun by intimidation. Under the new const.i.tution of 1890 in Mississippi, only 8615 negroes out of 147,000 of a voting age were registered. In four years, the number registered in Louisiana fell from 127,000 in 1896 to 5300 in 1900. This was the exact result which the advocates of white supremacy desired to attain, and in this they were warmly supported by eminent Democrats in the North. "The white man in the South," said Mr.

Bryan in a speech in New York, in 1908, "has disfranchised the negro in self-protection; and there is not a Republican in the North who would not have done the same thing under the same circ.u.mstances. The white men of the South are determined that the negro will and shall be disfranchised everywhere it is necessary to prevent the recurrence of the horrors of carpet bag rule."

Several attempts have been made to test the const.i.tutionality of these laws in the Supreme Court of the United States, but that tribunal has been able to avoid coming to a direct decision on the merits of the particular measures--and with a convincing display of legal reasoning.

The Const.i.tution of the United States simply states that no citizen shall be deprived of the right to vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, and that the representation of any state in Congress shall be reduced in the proportion to which it deprives adult male citizens of the franchise. The ingenious provisions of the southern const.i.tutions do not deprive the negro of the right to vote on account of his color, but on account of his grandfather, or his inability to expound the const.i.tution, or his poverty. In one of the cases before the Supreme Court, the plaintiff alleged that the Alabama const.i.tution was in fact designed to deprive the negro of the vote, but the Court answered that it could not afford the remedy, that it could not operate the election machinery of the state, and that relief would have to come from the state itself, or from the legislative and political departments of the Federal government.[4]

_Social Discrimination against the Negro_

The whites in the South were even less willing to submit to anything approaching social equality with the negro than they were to accept political equality. Discriminations against the negro in schools, inns, theaters, churches, and other public places had been common in the North both before and after the Civil War, and had received judicial sanction; and it may well be imagined that the southern masters were in no mood, after the War, to be put on the same social plane as their former slaves, and the poor whites were naturally proud of their only possession--a white skin. Knowing full well that this temper prevailed in the South the radical Republicans in Congress had pushed through on March 1, 1875, a second Civil Rights Act designed to establish a certain social equality, so far as that could be done by law.

The spirit of this act was reflected in the preamble: "Whereas it is essential to just government, we recognize the equality of all men before the law, and hold that it is the duty of government in its dealings with the people to mete out equal and exact justice to all, of whatever nativity, race, color, or persuasion, religious or political; and it being the appropriate object of legislation to enact great fundamental principles into law." After this profession of faith, the act proceeds to declare that all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be ent.i.tled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters and other places of amus.e.m.e.nt, subject to limitations applied to all alike, regardless of race or color. The act further provided that in the selection of jurors no discrimination should be made on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude under a penalty of not more than $5,000.

Jurisdiction over offenses was conferred upon the district and circuit courts of the United States, and heavy penalties were imposed upon those who violated the law. This measure was, of course, hotly resisted, and, in fact, nullified everywhere throughout the Union, north and south--except in some of the simple rural regions.

The validity of the act came before the Supreme Court for adjudication in the celebrated Civil Rights Cases in 1883 and a part of the law was declared unconst.i.tutional in an opinion of the Court rendered by Mr.

Justice Bradley. According to his view, the Fourteenth Amendment did not authorize Congress to legislate upon subjects which were in the domain of state legislation--that is to create a code of munic.i.p.al law for the regulation of private rights; but it merely authorized Congress to provide modes of relief against state legislation and the action of state officers, executive or judicial, which were subversive of the fundamental rights specified in the amendment. "Until some state law has been pa.s.sed," he said, "or some state action through its officers or agents has been taken, adverse to the rights of citizens sought to be protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, no legislation of the United States under said Amendment, nor any proceeding under such legislation can be called into activity: for the prohibitions of the Amendment are against state laws and acts done under state authority."

The question as to whether the equal enjoyment of the accommodations in inns, conveyances, and places of amus.e.m.e.nt was an essential right of the citizen which no state could abridge or interfere with, Justice Bradley declined to examine on the ground that it was not necessary to the decision of the case. He did, however, inquire into the proposition as to whether Congress, in enforcing the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude, could secure the social equality contemplated by the act, under the color of sweeping away all the badges and incidents of slavery. And on this point he came to the conclusion that mere discriminations on account of race or color could not be regarded as badges of slavery. "There were," he added, "thousands of free colored people in this country before the abolition of slavery, enjoying all of the essential rights of life, liberty, and property the same as white citizens; and yet no one at that time thought that it was any invasion of his personal status as a freeman because he was not admitted to all of the privileges enjoyed by white citizens, or because he was subjected to discriminations in the enjoyment of accommodations in inns, public conveyances, and places of amus.e.m.e.nt."

Clearly, there was no authority in either the Thirteenth or Fourteenth Amendment for the section of the Civil Rights Act relative to inns, conveyances, and places of amus.e.m.e.nt, at least so far as its operation in the several states was concerned. If, however, any state should see fit to make or authorize unlawful discriminations amenable to the prohibitions of the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress had the power to afford a remedy or the courts in enforcing the Amendment could give judicial relief. Thus, while the Justice did not definitely say that the elements of social equality provided in the Civil Rights Act were not guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, his line of reasoning and his language left little doubt as to what was the view of the Court.

Section four of the Civil Rights Act forbidding, under penalty, discrimination against any person on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude in the selection of jurors had been pa.s.sed upon by the Supreme Court in the case of _Ex parte_ Virginia, decided in 1879, in which the section was held to be const.i.tutional as providing not a code of munic.i.p.al law for the regulation of private rights, but a mode of redress against the operation of state laws. The ground of distinction between the two cases is clear. A section forbidding discrimination in inns and conveyances is in the nature of a code of private law, but a section forbidding discrimination in the selection of jurors under penalty simply provides a mode of redress against violations of the Fourteenth Amendment by state authorities.