The Negro and the Nation Part 14

Charles Sumner was a high-minded idealist and a scholar, devoted to n.o.ble ends, but not well versed in human nature. He was a lover of Man, but with men he was not much acquainted. His oratory was elaborate and ornate, and he unduly estimated the power of words. Sometimes, says Senator h.o.a.r, he seemed to think the war was to be settled by speech-making, and was impatient of its battles as an interruption--like a fire-engine rumbling past while he was orating. But he had large influence, partly from his thoroughly disinterested character, and partly because beyond any other man in public life he represented the elements of moral enthusiasm among the people. His counterpart was Henry Wilson, his colleague in the Senate. Wilson had risen from the shoe-maker's bench, and knew the common people as a cobbler knows his tools. He was genial in temperament; public-spirited and generous in his aims; a most skilful tactician, and not over-scrupulous. He joined the Know-nothings, with no sympathy for their proscriptive creed, but in the break-up of parties using them for the anti-slavery cause,--and to secure his own election to the United States Senate. He was a good fighter, but without rancor; and he was an admirable interpreter of the real democracy. Senator h.o.a.r, in his autobiography, graphically describes how at some crisis Wilson would travel swiftly over the State, from Boston to Berkshire, visit forty shops and factories in a day, talk with politicians all night, study the main currents and the local eddies; and after a week or two of this--seeming meanwhile to be backing and filling in his own mind--would "strike a blow which had in it not only the vigor of his own arm, but the whole vigor and strength of the public sentiment which he had gathered and which he represented."

Prominent in the Senate was "bluff Ben Wade" of Ohio, an old-time anti-slavery man, radical, vigorous, a stout friend and foe. Another conspicuous radical was Zachariah Chandler of Michigan. He was born in New Hampshire, went West early in life, and was a chief organizer and leader of the Republican party in Michigan. He was a mixture of Yankee shrewdness and Western energy; patriotic, masterful, somewhat coa.r.s.e-grained and materialistic; and, like many of his a.s.sociates, better suited for controversy and war than for conciliation and construction. Of a higher type were three men who stood near the head in the Senate,--John Sherman of Ohio, Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, and William P. Fessenden of Maine. In the qualities for solid work, few men of his time surpa.s.sed Sherman. He was wise in framing legislation, and a good administrator,--an upright, moderate, serviceable man. Trumbull, of Connecticut birth, was well trained in the law and eminent as a const.i.tutional lawyer. He made his serious entrance into public life along with Lincoln, and was his near friend and adviser. He was an able though not a brilliant debater; a man of independent convictions and thorough courage. Fessenden, like Trumbull, was ent.i.tled to rank as a real statesman. Like Trumbull he had no popular arts, and where Trumbull was reticent and withdrawn in manner, Fessenden was austere and sometimes irascible. In private character both were above reproach.

Fessenden had a finely-trained and richly-equipped mind. In an emergency, after Chase's retirement, he accepted the secretaryship of an almost bankrupt treasury, and handled it well. His devotion to duty was unreserved; he was an admirable debater; and he had the high power of framing legislation. His was the most important work of the reconstruction committee, and Trumbull, as chairman of the judiciary committee, had a chief hand in the other leading measures. The Democrats were few and not strong in leadership; their ablest man was Reverdy Johnson of Maryland,---highly educated and large-minded. With these were other senators of repute; and in the House there were abundant men of mark,--Colfax, Blaine, Banks, Boutwell, Dawes, Conkling, Henry J.

Raymond, Randall, Hayes, Garfield, Bingham, Sh.e.l.labarger, Voorhees, Elihu B. Washburn;--s.p.a.ce is wanting to name others, or to individually characterize these.

In estimating the work of reconstruction we must take account of the character of the men who shaped it. Taking these leaders as a body, they fall into groups,--Sumner for the uncompromising idealists; the radicals by temperament, like Stevens, Wade, and Chandler; the men of higher training, minds of the statesman's type, and a certain austerity of temper, such as Fessenden, Trumbull, and Sherman. Among them all there was a deficiency of that blending of large view, close insight, and genial humanity, which marked Lincoln. Small discredit to them that they were not his peers,--but the work in hand demanded just such a combination.

It is to be remembered that all of these, like the ma.s.s of the Northern people, had been for many years contending with all their might for certain ends, and in keenest hostility to the Southern whites. They had fought for the Union and freedom; the South had fought for the Confederacy and slavery. By sheer overpowering physical force the Southern armies had been beaten down, and peace restored, and in name at least the national authority re-established. But by conviction, habit, instinct, these opponents yet hot from the battle-field would scrutinize with jealous care the real success of their principles and the disposition of their late foes.

The President's policy, as laid down in his message, was at once challenged in Congress. Stevens opened the debate in the House, and, without directly a.s.sailing the President, antagonized his theory that the States, like the Union, were indestructible, that secession had only temporarily suspended their relation, and that they now by right recurred at once to their normal position. Against this Stevens maintained that by their rebellion these States had, as organizations, committed suicide, that they now were in the position of conquered territory, and that out of this territory Congress was to create new States on whatever terms it judged most expedient. The President's theory found an able supporter in Henry J. Raymond, who had just exchanged the editorship of the New York _Times_ for a seat in Congress.

But he had only a single ally among his Republican colleagues, and the lonely couple, with four Republican senators, proved to be the only habitual supporters of the President in the party that had elected him.

But the Democrats came to his side with an alacrity that strengthened the Republican opposition. Their party had as a whole leaned toward the South during the war, and they now welcomed the easy terms held out by the President to their old a.s.sociates. The Republican doctrine was best formulated by Sh.e.l.labarger of Ohio, who, without going to the full length of Stevens's theory, maintained the essential right of Congress to lay down the conditions on which the seceded States could resume their old relation with the Federal Government. That seemed the just and inevitable logic of the situation; and it was expressed in as much conformity with the Const.i.tution as was practicable after the rude jostle of a four years' war.

Meantime, Republican leaders in the Senate--Sumner, Wilson and Fessenden--were announcing the same doctrine, and were earnestly declaring that the actual conditions of the South called for stronger remedies than the President had provided. A joint resolution brought before Congress a report which had been made to the President by Carl Schurz, after a tour of several months for which he had been specially commissioned. With this report, the President sent also one from General Grant, whom he had asked, during an official trip of a few days, to observe the general disposition and temper of the Southern people. Grant stated his conclusion to be that "the ma.s.s of thinking men of the South accept the present situation of affairs in good faith"; and that they cordially acquiesce in the restoration of the national sovereignty and the abolition of slavery; and Grant's name carried great weight.

But Mr. Schurz's much longer and more careful study had brought him to very different conclusions. He was a trained observer and thinker; a German refugee after the disturbances of 1848; a leader among the emanc.i.p.ationists in Missouri before the war, a general in the Union army, and a political radical. Mr. Schurz recapitulated his observations and conclusions, as he then reported them, in an article in _McClure's Magazine_ for January, 1904; and they come now with increased weight after a life-time of disinterested and sagacious public service. That he found the Southern whites acquiescing in their defeat only as of necessity, conquered but not convinced--is no matter of surprise; though Mr. Schurz seems somewhat to have shared the Northern expectation that their late foes should take the att.i.tude of repentant sinners. But as to their practical att.i.tude toward the negro, his testimony is important.

He relates that he found the general a.s.sertion to be "You cannot make the negro work without compulsion." This conviction he encountered everywhere; all facts to the contrary were brushed aside, and every instance of idleness or vagabondage was cited as proof positive of the negro's unwillingness to labor. The planter who seriously maintained in Mr. Schurz's presence that one of his negroes was unfit for freedom because he refused to submit to a whipping, went only a little further than his neighbors.

As to actual behavior of the negroes, under this sudden and tremendous change of condition, certain facts were noted; not a single act of vengeance was charged against them; a great part, probably the large majority, remained or soon went back to work for their old employers; but a considerable part began an aimless roaming to enjoy their new liberty, or huddle around the stations where the agents of the Freedmen's Bureau doled out some relief. As to their education, popular opinion was no less unfavorable than as to their labor. The common expressions were "learning will spoil the negro for work," "negro education would be the ruin of the South," and even "the elevation of the blacks would be the degradation of the whites." In practical application of these views, negro schools were frequently broken up and the school-houses burned; and in many places they were only safe under the immediate protection of the Federal troops. After many further particulars, especially as to the oppressive laws pa.s.sed by the new governments, Mr. Schurz sums up: "To recapitulate; the white people of the South were hara.s.sed by pressing necessities, and most of them in a troubled and greatly excited state of mind. The emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves had destroyed the traditional labor system upon which they had depended. Free negro labor was still inconceivable to them. There were exceptions, but, as a rule, their ardent, and in a certain sense not unnatural, desire was to resist its introduction, and to save or restore as much of the slave labor system as possible."

It was the character of the laws and ordinances pa.s.sed under these circ.u.mstances which was to the better sentiment of the North the most concrete and convincing argument against restoring the Southern States by the short and easy road proposed by President Johnson. It is to those laws, and the condition underlying them, that we must ascribe the refusal of Congress--backed by Northern conviction--to confirm the early restoration which at first seemed so promising. So those laws deserve careful consideration, as well as the situation which led to them.

The Southern people, blacks and whites, were in a position of almost unexampled difficulty. To the ravages of war and invasion, of impoverishment and bereavement--and, as it fell out, to two successive seasons of disastrous weather for crops,--was added at the outset a complete disarrangement of the princ.i.p.al supply of labor. The mental overturning was as great as the material. To the negroes "freedom"

brought a vague promise of life without toil or trouble. The hard facts soon undeceived them. But for the indulgent Providence they at first hoped for, some occasional and partial subst.i.tute appeared in the offices of the Freedmen's Bureau. This had been established by Congress, in March, 1865, with the laudable design of helping to adjust the freedmen to their new condition; to make temporary provision for the extreme physical wants of some; to aid them in arrangements for labor and education; and, as was at first contemplated, to lease to them abandoned or confiscated lands, in plots of forty acres, for three years. This land provision was soon abandoned, there being no confiscation to provide the necessary land; but it started the expectation of "forty acres and a mule," which misled many a freedman.

As chief of the Bureau was appointed General O. O. Howard, a distinguished Union commander, of the highest personal character, and entirely devoted to his new work; and under him was a commissioner with a working force in each of the States. The Bureau accomplished considerable good; but its administration on the whole was not of the highest cla.s.s; among its subordinates were some unfit men; and a good deal of offense and irritation attended its operations. At most, it touched only the circ.u.mference of the problem. Three and a half millions of newly enfranchised, ignorant men, women and children! What should provide for the helpless among them, especially for the children, whom the master's care had supported? How should order be maintained in the lower ma.s.s, half-brutalized, whom slavery had at least restrained from vagabondage, rapine, and crime? And how should the whole body be induced to furnish the dynamic, driving power of industry essential to the community's needs? These questions the South essayed to answer in part by a system of laws, of which we may take as a fair specimen the legislation of Mississippi--the only State which had enacted this cla.s.s of laws before Congress met,--as they are summarized in the thorough and impartial book of Professor J. W. Burgess, _Reconstruction and the Const.i.tution_.

The law of apprenticeship ran thus: Negro children under eighteen, orphans or receiving no support from their parents, to be apprenticed, by clerk of probate court, to some suitable person,--by preference the former master or mistress; the court to fix the terms, having the interest of the minor particularly in view; males to be apprenticed till end of twenty-first year, females to end of eighteenth. No other punishment to be permitted than the common law permits to a parent or guardian. If the apprentice runs away, he is to be apprehended and returned, or, if he refuses to return, to be confined or put under bonds till the next term of the court, which shall then decide as to the cause of his desertion, and if it appears groundless compel his return, or if he has been ill-treated fine the master not more than $100 for the benefit of his apprentice. This statute seems not oppressive but beneficent.

The law of vagrancy provided that all freedmen having no lawful employment or business, or who are found unlawfully a.s.sembling, and all white persons so a.s.sembling in company with freedmen, or "usually a.s.sociating with freedmen, free negroes, or mulattoes, on terms of equality," are to be deemed vagrants, and fined, a white man not more than $200, a negro not more than $50, and imprisoned, a white man not more than six months, a negro not more than ten days. If the negro does not pay his fine within five days, he is to be hired out by the sheriff to the person who will pay his fine and costs for the shortest term of service. The same treatment is to be applied to any negro who fails to pay his tax. This statute meant legal servitude for any negro not finding employment, and the same penalty for a white man who merely consorted with negroes on equal terms.

The law of civil rights provided that all negroes are to have the same rights with whites as to personal property, as to suing and being sued, but they must not rent or lease lands or tenements except in incorporated towns and cities, and under the control of the corporate authorities. Provision is made for the intermarriage of negroes, and the legalization of previous connections; but intermarriage between whites and negroes is to be punished with imprisonment for life. Negroes may be witnesses in all civil cases in which negroes are parties, and in criminal cases where the alleged crime is by a white person against a negro. Every negro shall have a lawful home and employment, and hold either a public license to do job-work or a written contract for labor.

If a laborer quits his employment before the time specified in the contract, he is to forfeit his wages for the year up to the time of quitting. Any one enticing a laborer to desert his work, or selling or giving food or raiment or any other thing knowingly to a deserter from contract labor, may be punished by fine or imprisonment. No negro is to carry arms without a public license. Any negro guilty of riot, affray, trespa.s.s, seditious speeches, insulting gestures, language or acts, or committing any other misdemeanor, to be fined and imprisoned, or if the fine is not paid in five days to be hired out to whoever will pay fine and costs. All penal and criminal laws against offenses by slaves or free negroes to continue in force except as specially repealed.

Many of these clauses speak eloquently for themselves, and as to the law in general Professor Burgess, who certainly has no anti-Southern bias, comments: "Almost every act, word or gesture of the negro, not consonant with good taste and good manners as well as good morals, was made a crime or misdemeanor, for which he could first be fined by the magistrates and then be consigned to a condition of almost slavery for an indefinite time, if he could not pay the bill." And Professor Burgess adds, "This is a fair sample of the legislation subsequently pa.s.sed by all the States reconstructed under President Johnson's plan."

The case against this cla.s.s of laws may be left--in the necessary limits of s.p.a.ce--with this careful and moderate statement, though the temptation is strong to quote from Mr. Schurz and other authorities further specimens of the great body of hara.s.sing legislation, both state and local;--the establishment of pillory and whipping-post; the imposition of unjust taxes, with heavy license fees for the practice of mechanic arts; requirements of certified employment under some white man; prohibition of preaching or religious meetings without a special license; sale into indefinite servitude for slight occasion; and so on--a long, grim chapter. Whatever excuses may be pleaded for these laws, under the circ.u.mstances of the South, all have this implication,--that the negro was unfit for freedom. He was to be kept as near to slavery as possible; to be made, "if no longer the slave of an individual master, the slave of society." And further, as to the broad conditions of the time, two things are to be noted. The physical violence was almost wholly practiced by the whites against the negroes.

Bands of armed white men, says Mr. Schurz, patrolled the highways (as in the days of slavery) to drive back wanderers; murder and mutilation of colored men and women were common,--"a number of such cases I had occasion to examine myself." In some districts there was a reign of terror among the freedmen. And finally, the antic.i.p.ation of failure of voluntary labor speedily proved groundless. A law was at work more efficient than any on the statute-books,--Nature's primal law, "Work or starve!" Many, probably a majority of the freedmen, worked on for their old masters, for wages. The others, after some brief experience of idleness and starvation, found work as best they could. No tropical paradise of laziness was open to the Southern negro. The first Christmas holidays, looked forward to with vague hope by the freedmen and vague fear by the whites, pa.s.sed without any visitation of angels or insurrection of fiends. In a word, the most apparent justifications for the reactionary legislation,--danger of rapine and outrage from emanc.i.p.ated barbarians, and a failure of the essential supply of labor--proved alike groundless.

As the facts of the situation became known, not only by Mr. Schurz's report, but by news from the Southern capitals and by various evidence--it was very clear that Congress could not and would not set the seal of national authority on any such settlement as this. Granted, and freely, that no millennium was to be expected, that a long and painful adjustment was necessary,--yet it was out of the question that any political theory or any optimistic hopes should induce acquiescence in the legal establishment of semi-slavery throughout the South. It was not Stevens's rancor, nor Sumner's unpracticability, but the serious conviction of the North, educated and tempered by long debate and bitter sacrifice, which ordained that the work of freedom must not be thrown into ruins.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

RECONSTRUCTION: THE SECOND PLAN

Congress addressed itself, in the first instance, to extending and prolonging that provision for the freedmen which it had already made through the Freedmen's Bureau. A bill was reported, having the weighty sanction of Senator Trumbull and the judiciary committee, greatly increasing the force of officials under the Bureau; putting it under the military administration of the President and so with the direct support of the army; and broadening its functions to include the building of school-houses and asylums for the freedmen, and a wide jurisdiction over all civil and criminal cases in which local laws made an unjust discrimination between the races. The bill pa.s.sed the Senate and House, by the full party majority. It was sent to the President, February 10, 1866, and nine days later he returned it with a veto message, calmly and ably argued. He objected to the bill as a war measure after peace had been proclaimed. He took exception to the intrusion of military authority upon the sphere of the civil courts, and to the extension of Federal authority in behalf of black men beyond what had ever been exercised in behalf of white men. The message was strong enough to win a few of the orthodox Republicans, including ex-Governor Morgan of New York, and the two-thirds vote necessary to carry the bill over the veto could not be gained.

Up to this time there seems reason to believe that while the Republicans in Congress were firm in claiming for that body a decisive voice in reconstruction, yet a majority of them were more favorable to the policy of President Johnson than to that of Sumner and Stevens. But now, upon the necessity of safeguarding the freedmen by exceptional measures in a wholly exceptional time, the preponderance of conviction turned against him in Congress and in the country. His own acts quickly converted that first opposition into hostility and alarm.

Until now President Johnson, whatever dissent he might provoke, had appeared as a dignified statesman. But three days after his veto, on February 22--Washington's birthday--a cheering crowd called the President to the balcony of the White House. They heard a speech,--how different from what Lincoln had spoken in the same place in the previous April. Johnson was exhilarated by his success, forgetful that he still faced a hostile majority in Congress, exasperated by opposition, and roused by the shouts of the crowd,--and his native pa.s.sion and coa.r.s.eness came out. Sumner had been severe in his language; he had likened President Johnson to President Pierce in the Kansas days, and hinted a family resemblance to Pharaoh of Egypt. Wendell Phillips was in his native element of denunciation. Now the President declared to his applauding hearers that he had against him men as much opposed to the fundamental principles of the government, and he believed as much laboring to pervert or destroy them, as had been the leaders of the rebellion,--Davis, Toombs, and their a.s.sociates. To the responsive cheers, and the cry for names, he answered by naming Stevens, Sumner and Phillips. He rehea.r.s.ed his rise from tailor to President, and declared that a ground swell, an earthquake of popular support, was coming to him. His speech brought surprise and dismay to the country. It fanned into hot flame the opposition between President and Congress. In vain did John Sherman,--who had conferred with the President in the summer, and thought highly of his patriotism--now hold out the olive branch in the Senate. A keen observer at Washington, Samuel Bowles,--who had held a friendly att.i.tude toward both the President and the party leaders,--now wrote, February 26, "Distrust, suspicion, the conceit of power, the infirmities of temper on both sides, have brought affairs to the very verge of disorder and ruin." He dissuaded from taking sides in the quarrel; there was too much right and too much wrong on both sides.

He urged, March 3,--and no doubt he represented the best sentiment of the country: "The great point is to secure protection and justice for the freedmen.... For the present the Freedmen's Bureau, military occupancy, and United States courts, must be our reliance.... We want the President firm and resolute on this point, and we want to arouse the better cla.s.s of the Southern people to do their duty in the same regard."

The weakness of the veto message on the Freedmen's Bureau bill had been the absence of any solicitude for the welfare of the freedmen; const.i.tutional theory seemed to wholly supersede the practical necessity of the case. Now Congress again approached the matter in the Civil Rights bill, carefully formulated in the judiciary committee, thoroughly debated and amended, and pa.s.sed by both houses late in March. It affirmed United States citizenship for all persons born in the country and not subject to any foreign power; it declared for all citizens an equal right to make and enforce contracts, sue, give evidence, hold and sell property, etc.; full equality as to security of person and property, as to pains and penalties,--in short, complete civil equality.

Original jurisdiction was given to United States courts, and to these could be transferred any case involving these subjects begun in a State court. The bill empowered the President to use the army for its enforcement. All this was under authority of the Thirteenth Amendment.

This, too, the President vetoed, as unnecessary, as employing the military arm too freely, as extending unwisely the power of the Federal Government, and as especially unwise legislation while eleven States out of thirty-six were unrepresented in Congress. But the President was now going in the face not only of the congressional majority but of the North at large, which was unmistakably opposed to leaving the freedmen with no protection against their old masters. The veto was overridden, and became a law April 9. The Freedmen's Bureau bill, somewhat amended, was again pa.s.sed, this time over a veto, and became a law July 16.

It was after the decisive victory over the President on the Civil Rights bill that Congress took up the comprehensive measure which embodied its own plan of reconstruction as a subst.i.tute for the President's. That measure was the Fourteenth Amendment. It was drawn up by the reconstruction committee, of which Senator Fessenden was chairman, and probably his was the leading part in framing its provisions. The first proposition was only to make the basis of congressional representation dependent on the extension or denial of suffrage to the freedmen. This was proposed January 22, 1866, and after some weeks' discussion pa.s.sed the House but failed in the Senate. It was replaced by a broader measure, which was reported April 30, debated and amended for six weeks, and finally in mid-June took the form in which it now stands in the Const.i.tution, and was approved by Congress. It then went before the States for their action, with a tacit but strong implication that upon its acceptance and adoption the lately seceded States would be fully restored. It was in effect the plan of reconstruction first offered by Congress, as a subst.i.tute for the President's.

The first article of the amendment declares that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States, and of the State wherein they reside; and that all are ent.i.tled to the equal protection of the laws. Another section guarantees the validity of the public debt, and forbids payment of the Confederate debt or payment for the emanc.i.p.ation of slaves. Both these articles appear at this distance of time to be beyond question or criticism. Another article apportions representation in Congress, as heretofore, according to population; but further provides that any State which denies the suffrage to any part of its adult male population, except for rebellion or other crime, shall have its congressional representation reduced in the same proportion. It will be remembered that under the old Const.i.tution the basis of representation was fixed by adding to the total of the free population a number equal to three-fifths of the slaves. Now that the slaves had become freedmen, the representation of the old slave States would to that extent be increased. But it seemed neither just nor expedient to permit such an increase of power, unless the cla.s.s on whose enumeration it was based were made _bona fide_ citizens, and sharers in this power.

If under this amendment the Southern States should choose to give the vote to the freedmen, their total representation in Congress would be raised from sixty-one to seventy. If they did not give it, their representation would fall to forty-five. There was thus offered them a strong inducement to establish impartial suffrage; while yet they were at full liberty to withhold it at the price of some diminution of power compared with communities adopting the broader principle. The reconstruction committee had listened to prominent Southerners as to the probable reception of this provision. Stephens thought his people would consider it less than their due and would not ratify it. But Lee thought that Virginia would accept it, and then decide the question of suffrage according to her preponderating interest; that at present she would prefer the smaller representation, but would hold herself ready to extend the suffrage if at any time the freedmen should show a capacity to vote properly and understandingly.

So far, the Fourteenth Amendment seems now to embody a sound statesmanship. But the remaining article must be judged by itself. It excludes from all State and national offices all those, who, having taken an official oath to support the Const.i.tution, have afterward taken part in insurrection and rebellion. This was ingeniously framed with an appearance of justice, as if debarring from office only those who to rebellion had added perjury. But, as a matter of ethics, the breaking of official oaths is an inevitable incident of every revolution; and just as war is held to suspend in a measure the command "thou shalt not kill," so revolution must be held to cancel the obligation of official oaths. The opposite view would affix the full guilt of perjury to many leaders in the American Revolution, perhaps to Washington himself. It was not really as perjurers that the excluded cla.s.s were debarred from office, but as prominent leaders in the rebellion, so marked by having previously held office. It shut out, and was so intended, a cla.s.s not only very large in numbers but including the best intelligence and social leadership of the South. To exclude these men from all political leadership in the new regime was in flat defiance of that statesmanship, as wise as magnanimous, which Andrew and Beecher had voiced. As one New England observer put the matter, it would help matters greatly if no man favored a government for others that he would not like to live under himself; now how would it work in Ma.s.sachusetts to exclude from the government the whole Republican party? Yet the Democrats in the State have ten times the knowledge, character and ability, that are possessed in the South by the elements free from stain of rebellion.

The disqualification, to be sure, was removable in each case by a two-thirds vote of Congress. But it could not be foreseen how Congress would be disposed; and in fact, the President's pardon, so freely given, had been by Congress expressly deprived of any political value; being held to exempt only from legal pains and penalties. The new exclusion, if adopted, could hardly work other than disastrously. And, being offered, as the entire amendment necessarily was, for acceptance or rejection by all the States, this provision was as well suited to repel the South as if it had been designed for that purpose. It offended that loyalty to their tried leaders in stress and storm which is one of the best traits in a people's character. Compare it with Beecher's saying of a few months earlier, "I think it to be the great need of this nation to save the self-respect of the South." The difference measures the degree of the mistake under which the ma.s.s of the North were still laboring.

They looked upon the rebellion as a moral and personal crime. They had no comprehension of the Southern standpoint; and, sure that their own cause was just, they believed that their opponents were not only mistaken but morally guilty. As it was hardly possible to suppose the 8,000,000 to have all gone wrong out of individual perversity, the current view at the North was that Secession sprang from a conspiracy; that its leaders had secretly plotted, like Aaron Burr, and thus misled their followers. The impulse to inflict death or imprisonment or confiscation on anybody was infrequent or short-lived; the desire for such punishment lingered only in an irrational wish for vengeance on Jefferson Davis. But, if the leading cla.s.s in the society and public life of the South were morally responsible for a great treason and rebellion, it might seem not only just but wise to exclude them from the new political order.

The critics of the reconstruction policy are often challenged by its defenders with the question, "But what better course can you suggest, even now?" And the immense difficulty of the problem, even as calmly viewed to-day by the closet student, may well make us charitable toward the men who, for the most part, did the best they knew under the immediate besetment of measureless perplexities and contradictions. But while we may approve of their work in the rest of the Fourteenth Amendment, with equal emphasis we may say: The mistake was great, in the amendment and later, of shutting out the very men who should have been included. Better by far would it have been to take their counsel and co-operation even beforehand in planning the work of reconstruction.

Even as to that crucial point, the legislation oppressive to the freedmen, and the deeper difficulty underlying it, the ingrained Southern att.i.tude toward the negro as an inferior being,--even as to this, something might have been accomplished had the Southern men, who went to Washington in the vain hope of immediate admission to Congress, been met by a President of Lincoln's or Andrew's calibre. Even as it was, there were signs of promise in Georgia,--so says Rhodes in his excellent _History of the United States_. The newly elected Governor, Judge Jenkins, a man of "universally acknowledged probity and uprightness of character" made in his inaugural address (December 14, 1865) a strong plea for the negroes who had so faithfully cared for the lands and homes and families of the soldiers in the field: "As the governing cla.s.s individually and collectively we owe them unbounded kindness and thorough protection.... Their rights of person and property should be made perfectly secure." To like effect spoke Alexander H. Stephens, revered by all Georgians, February 22, 1866; recalling the fidelity of the slaves during the war and the debt of grat.i.tude it created; the obligation of honor to the poor, untutored, uninformed; asking for the negroes ample and full protection, with equality before the law as to all rights of person, liberty and property. And such equality the Georgia Legislature speedily ordained.

Tennessee did the like. Rhodes expresses confidence that by gentle pressure from the President and Congress, Virginia, North Carolina and Alabama could have been persuaded to similar legislation within a twelve month, and the other States would have followed.

The excluding article in the amendment was probably made as a concession by the moderate Republicans to the radicals. It replaced an article originally reported by the committee, excluding not only from office but from the suffrage all who had taken part in the Rebellion, until July 4, 1870. The article as adopted was disliked by Sherman and Wilson, the latter especially declaring his willingness to remove the disqualifications as soon as possible after a settlement had been made.

In point of fact they were removed piecemeal by Congress almost as freely as President Johnson had done the like, and were ended except for a few hundred by a sweeping amnesty in 1872.

Grant said to A. H. Stephens in April, 1866, "The true policy should be to make friends of enemies." If these men, with a few others of like temper in North and South, could have settled the terms of the new order, a different foundation might have been laid. But in default of any such happy, unlikely conjuncture of the right men in the right place, it is the deep and wide tides of public opinion that largely shape events. The average Southern view of the negro, and the average Northern view of the "rebel," were the Scylla and Charybdis between which the ship of state steered its troubled voyage.

Returning now to the course of events,--Congress made it plain that the acceptance of the Fourteenth Amendment would bring the restoration of the South, not by a formal declaration, but by its action in promptly admitting Tennessee when within a month it ratified the amendment. So before the South and the country were now the two policies,--of Congress and the President,--and the summer and autumn saw a general and eager discussion. The South waited events, hoping for the President's success.

In the North there was at first a marked effort to rally conservative men of both parties to his side. A great convention was held at Philadelphia, promoted by the President, Seward, Weed and Henry J.

Raymond; with delegates from every State; the first day's procession led by Ma.s.sachusetts and South Carolina representatives arm-in-arm; Southern governors and judges heartily a.s.senting to the declaration that not only is slavery dead, but n.o.body wants it revived; and with cordial indors.e.m.e.nt of the President's reconstruction policy.

There was a counter-convention at Pittsburg; there were "soldiers' and sailors' conventions" on both sides. From the Cabinet three members, Speed, Denison and Harlan, resigned because their convictions were with Congress; but Stanton remained as Secretary of War, though he was now a bitter opponent of the President,--a safeguard over the army, as the radical leaders considered him, and by his att.i.tude and natural temper a constant exasperation to his nominal chief. A fierce and b.l.o.o.d.y riot in New Orleans, of which the precise causes were obscure, but in which the negroes were the sufferers, heightened the Northern anxiety as to the general situation.

The popular tide evidently ran with Congress, yet Johnson had the promise of very respectable support until he threw it away. His extempore expressions suggested an overweening view of his own position.

To the committee reporting to him the Philadelphia convention, he said, "We have seen hanging upon the verge of the government, as it were, a body called, or which a.s.sumes to be, the Congress of the United States--but in fact a Congress of only a part of the States." In September he made a tour of the Northern States, taking in his train Secretaries Seward and Welles, with Grant and Farragut;--"swinging round the circle," he called his trip. He made addresses in the princ.i.p.al cities, in which he denounced his opponents, sometimes with vulgar abuse, bragged of his own rise from tailor to President, and bandied words with the mob. He shamed many of the men of character--Beecher among them--who had viewed him with favor. The tide turned overwhelmingly against him. The November election returned a Congress consisting in the House of 143 Republicans to 49 Democrats, with a Senate of 42 Republicans to 11 Democrats.

It was like the hand of Nemesis that the South, led to crushing defeat by its slave-holding aristocracy, should now have its interests sacrificed through the characteristic faults of one of its poor whites,--his virtues overborne by his narrow judgment, uncontrolled temper and coa.r.s.e speech.

Warned by the election, the South might well have accepted the Fourteenth Amendment as the price of its restoration. But it failed to read the handwriting on the wall. It could not yet brook acquiescence in the exclusion of its old leaders, and the alternative of negro suffrage or reduced power in Congress. The pride of race, the unquenched spirit of the "lost cause," prompted it to stand out for better terms. During the autumn and winter of 1866-7 the lately seceded States, except Tennessee, rejected the amendment. So failed the first congressional plan of reconstruction, as the President's earlier plan had failed. And now there was small hesitation or delay in framing and enforcing the final plan.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

RECONSTRUCTION: THE FINAL PLAN