The Sequel of Appomattox Part 3

The educational work of the Bureau was at first confined to cooperation with such Northern religious and benevolent societies as were organizing schools and churches for the Negroes. After the first year, the Bureau extended financial aid and undertook a system of supervision over Negro schools. The teachers employed were Northern whites and Negroes in about equal numbers. Confiscated Confederate property was devoted to Negro education, and in several states the a.s.sistant commissioners collected fees and percentages of the Negroes' wages for the benefit of the schools. In addition the Bureau expended about six million dollars.

The intense dislike which the Southern whites manifested for the Freedmen's Bureau was due in general to their resentment of outside control of domestic affairs and in particular to unavoidable difficulties inherent in the situation. Among the concrete causes of Southern hostility was the att.i.tude of some of the higher officials and many of the lower ones toward the white people. They a.s.sumed that the whites were unwilling to accord fair treatment to the blacks in the matter of wages, schools, and justice. An official in Louisiana declared that the whites would exterminate the Negroes if the Bureau were removed. A few months later General Fullerton in the same State reported that trouble was caused by those agents who noisily demanded special privileges for the Negro but who objected to any penalties for his lawlessness and made of the Negroes a pampered cla.s.s. General Tillson in Georgia predicted the extinction of the "old time Southerner with his hate, cruelty, and malice." General Fisk declared that "there are some of the meanest, unsubjugated and unreconstructed rascally revolutionists in Kentucky that curse the soil of the country... a more select number of vindictive, pro-slavery, rebellious legislators cannot be found than a majority of the Kentucky legislature." There was a disposition to lecture the whites about their sins in regard to slavery and to point out to them how far in their general ignorance and backwardness they fell short of enlightened people.

The Bureau courts were frequently conducted in an "illegal and oppressive manner," with "decided partiality for the colored people, without regard to justice." For this reason they were suspended for a time in Louisiana and Georgia by General Steedman and General Fullerton, and cases were then sent before military courts. Men of the highest character were dragged before the Bureau tribunals upon frivolous complaints, were lectured, abused, ridiculed, and arbitrarily fined or otherwise punished. The jurisdiction of the Bureau courts weakened the civil courts and their frequent interference in trivial matters was not conducive to a return to normal conditions.

The inferior agents, not sufficiently under the control of their superiors, were responsible for a great deal of this bad feeling. Many of them held radical opinions as to the relations of the races, and inculcated these views in their courts, in the schools, and in the new Negro churches. Some were charged with even causing strikes and other difficulties in order to be bought off by the whites. The tendency of their work was to create in the Negroes a pervasive distrust of the whites.

The prevalent delusion in regard to an impending division of the lands among the blacks had its origin in the operation of the war-time confiscation laws, in some of the Bureau legislation, and in General Sherman's Sea Island order, but it was further fostered by the agents until most blacks firmly believed that each head of a family was to get "40 acres and a mule." This belief seriously interfered with industry and resulted also in widespread swindling by rascals who for years made a practice of selling fraudulent deeds to land with red, white, and blue sticks to mark off the bounds of a chosen spot on the former master's plantation. The a.s.sistant commissioners labored hard to disabuse the minds of the Negroes, but their efforts were often neutralized by the unscrupulous att.i.tude of the agents.

As the contest over reconstruction developed in Washington, the officials of the Bureau soon recognized the political possibilities of their inst.i.tution. After midyear of 1866, the Bureau became a political machine for the purpose of organizing the blacks into the Union League, where the rank and file were taught that reenslavement would follow Democratic victories. Nearly all of the Bureau agents aided in the administration of the reconstruction acts in 1867 and in the organization of the new state and local governments and became officials under the new regime. They were the chief agents in capturing the solid Negro vote for the Republican party.

Neither of the two plans for guiding the freedmen into a place in the social order-the "Black Laws" and the Freedmen's Bureau-was successful. The former contained a program which was better suited to actual conditions and which might have succeeded if it had been given a fair trial. These laws were a measure of the extent to which the average white would then go in "accepting the situation" so far as the blacks were concerned. And on the whole the recognition of Negro rights made in these laws, and made at a time when the whites believed that they were free to handle the situation, was remarkably fair. The Negroes lately released from slavery were admitted to the enjoyment of the same rights as the whites as to legal protection of life, liberty, and property, as to education and as to the family relation, limited only by the clear recognition of the principles of political inferiority and social separation. Unhappily this legislation was not put to the test of practical experience because of the Freedmen's Bureau; it was nevertheless skillfully used to arouse the dominant Northern party to a course of action which made impossible any further effort to treat the race problem with due consideration to actual local conditions.

Much of the work of the Freedmen's Bureau was of only temporary benefit to both races. The results of its more permanent work were not generally good. The inst.i.tution was based upon the a.s.sumption that the Negro race must be protected from the white race. In its organization and administration it was an impossible combination of the practical and the theoretical, of opportunism and humanitarianism, of common sense and idealism. It failed to exert a permanently wholesome influence because its lesser agents were not held to strict accountability by their superiors. Under these agents the alienation of the two races began, and the ill feelings then aroused were destined to persist into a long and troubled future.

CHAPTER V. THE VICTORY OF THE RADICALS

The soldiers who fought through the war to victory or to defeat had been at home nearly two years before the radicals developed sufficient strength to carry through their plans for a revolutionary reconstruction of the Southern states. At the end of the war, a majority of the Northern people would have supported a settlement in accordance with Lincoln's policy. Eight months later a majority, but a smaller one, would have supported Johnson's work had it been possible to secure a popular decision on it. How then did the radicals gain the victory over the conservatives? The answer to this question is given by James Ford Rhodes in terms of personalities: "Three men are responsible for the Congressional policy of Reconstruction: Andrew Johnson, by his obstinacy and bad behavior; Thaddeus Stevens, by his vindictiveness and parliamentary tyranny; Charles Sumner, by his pertinacity in a misguided humanitarianism." The President stood alone in his responsibility, but his chief opponents were the ablest leaders of a resolute band of radicals.

Radicalism did not begin in the Administration of Andrew Johnson. Lincoln had felt its covert opposition throughout the war, but he possessed the faculty of weakening his opponents, while Johnson's conduct usually multiplied the number and the strength of his enemies. At first the radicals criticized Lincoln's policy in regard to slavery, and after the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation they shifted their attack to his "ten percent" plan for organizing the state governments as outlined in the Proclamation of December 1863. Lincoln's course was distasteful to them because he did not admit the right of Congress to dictate terms, because of his liberal att.i.tude towards former Confederates, and because he was conservative on the Negro question. A schism among the Republican supporters of the war was with difficulty averted in 1864, when Fremont threatened to lead the radicals in opposition to the "Union" party of the President and his conservative policy.

The breach was widened by the refusal of Congress to admit representatives from Arkansas and Louisiana in 1864 and to count the electoral vote of Louisiana and Tennessee in 1865. The pa.s.sage of the Wade-Davis reconstruction bill in July 1864, and the protests of its authors after Lincoln's pocket veto called attention to the growing opposition. Severe criticism caused Lincoln to withdraw the propositions which he had made in April 1865, with regard to the restoration of Virginia. In his last public speech, he referred with regret to the growing spirit of vindictiveness toward the South. Much of the opposition to Lincoln's Southern policy was based not on radicalism, that is, not on any desire for a revolutionary change in the South, but upon a belief that Congress and not the executive should be entrusted with the work of reorganizing the Union. Many congressional leaders were willing to have Congress itself carry through the very policies which Lincoln had advocated, and a majority of the Northern people would have endorsed them without much caring who was to execute them.

The murder of Lincoln, the failure of the radicals to shape Johnson's policy as they had hoped, and the continuing reaction against the excessive expansion of the executive power added strength to the opposition. But it was a long fight before the radical leaders won. Their victory was due to adroit tactics on their own part and to mistakes, bad judgment, and bad manners on the part of the President. When all hope of controlling Johnson had been given up, Thaddeus Stevens and other leaders of similar views began to contrive means to circ.u.mvent him. On December 1, 1865, before Congress met, a caucus of radicals held in Washington agreed that a joint committee of the two Houses should be selected to which should be referred matters relating to reconstruction. This plan would thwart the more conservative Senate and gain a desirable delay in which the radicals might develop their campaign. The next day at a caucus of the Union party the plan went through without arousing the suspicion of the supporters of the Administration. Next, through the influence of Stevens, Edward McPherson, the clerk of the House, omitted from the roll call of the House the names of the members from the South. The radical program was then adopted and a week later the Senate concurred in the action of the House as to the appointment of a Joint Committee on Reconstruction.

On the issues before Congress both Houses were split into rather clearly defined factions: the extreme radicals with such leaders as Stevens, Sumner, Wade, and Boutwell; the moderate Republicans, chief among whom were Fessenden and Trumbull; the administration Republicans led by Raymond, Doolittle, Cowan, and Dixon; and the Democrats, of whom the ablest were Reverdy Johnson, Guthrie, and Hendricks. All except the extreme radicals were willing to support the President or to come to some fairly reasonable compromise. But at no time were they given an opportunity to get together. Johnson and the administration leaders did little in this direction and the radicals made the most skillful use of the divisions among the conservatives.

Whatever final judgment may be pa.s.sed upon the radical reconstruction policy and its results, there can be no doubt of the political dexterity of those who carried it through. Chief among them was Thaddeus Stevens, vindictive and unscrupulous, filled with hatred of the Southern leaders, bitter in speech and possessing to an extreme degree the faculty of making ridiculous those who opposed him. He advocated confiscation, the proscription or exile of leading whites, the granting of the franchise and of lands to the Negroes, and in Southern states the establishment of territorial governments under the control of Congress. These states should, he said, "never be recognized as capable of acting in the Union... until the Const.i.tution shall have been so amended as to make it what the makers intended, and so as to secure perpetual ascendancy to the party of the Union."

Charles Sumner, the leader of the radicals in the Senate, was moved less than Stevens by personal hostility toward the whites of the South, but his sympathy was reserved entirely for the blacks. He was unpractical, theoretical, and not troubled by const.i.tutional scruples. To him the Declaration of Independence was the supreme law, and it was the duty of Congress to express its principles in appropriate legislation. Unlike Stevens, who had a genuine liking for the Negro, Sumner's sympathy for the race was purely intellectual; for the individual Negro he felt repulsion. His views were in effect not different from those of Stevens. And he was practical enough not to overlook the value of the Negro vote. "To my mind," he said, "nothing is clearer than the absolute necessity of suffrage for all colored persons in the disorganized states. It will not be enough if you give it to those who read and write; you will not, in this way, acquire the voting force which you need there for the protection of unionists, whether white or black. You will not secure the new allies who are essential to the national cause." A leader of the second rank was his colleague Henry Wilson, who was also actuated by a desire for the Negro's welfare and for the perpetuation of the Republican party, which he said contained in its ranks "more of moral and intellectual worth than was ever embodied in any political organization in any land... created by no man or set of men but brought into being by Almighty G.o.d himself... and endowed by the Creator with all political power and every office under Heaven." Sh.e.l.labarger of Ohio was another important figure among the radicals. The following extract from one of his speeches gives an indication of his character and temperament: "They [the Confederates] framed iniquity and universal murder into law.... Their pirates burned your unarmed commerce upon every sea. They carved the bones of the dead heroes into ornaments, and drank from goblets made out of their skulls. They poisoned your fountains, put mines under your soldiers' prisons; organized bands whose leaders were concealed in your homes; and commissions ordered the torch and yellow fever to be carried to your cities and to your women and children. They planned one universal bonfire of the North from Lake Ontario to the Missouri."

Among the lesser lights may be mentioned Morton and Wade, both bluff, coa.r.s.e, and ungenerous, and thoroughly convinced that the Republican party had a monopoly of loyalty, wisdom, and virtues, and that by any means it must gain and keep control; Boutwell, fanatical and mediocre; and Benjamin Butler, a charlatan and demagogue. As a cla.s.s the Western radicals were less troubled by humanitarian ideals than were those of the East and sought more practical political results.

The Joint Committee on Reconstruction which finally decided the fate of the Southern states was composed of eight radicals, four moderate Republicans, and three Democrats. As James Gillespie Blaine wrote later, "it was foreseen that in an especial degree the fortunes of the Republican party would be in the keeping of the fifteen men who might be chosen." This committee was divided into four subcommittees to take testimony. The witnesses, all of whom were examined at Washington, included army officers and Bureau agents who had served in the South, Southern Unionists, a few politicians, and several former Confederates, among them General Robert E. Lee and Alexander H. Stephens. Most of the testimony was of the kind needed to support the contentions of the radicals that Negroes were badly treated in the South; that the whites were disloyal; that, should they be left in control, the Negro, free labor, the nation, and the Republican party would be in danger; that the army and the Freedmen's Bureau must be kept in the South; and that a radical reconstruction was necessary. No serious effort, however, was made to ascertain the actual conditions in the South. Slow to formulate a definite plan, the Joint Committee guided public sentiment toward radicalism, converted gradually the Republican Congressmen, and little by little undermined the power and influence of the President.

Not until after the new year was it plain that there was to be a fight to the finish between Congress and the President. Congress had refused in December 1865, to accept the President's program, but there was still hope for a compromise. Many conservatives had voted for the delay merely to a.s.sert the rights of Congress; but the radicals wanted time to frame a program. The Northern Democrats were embarra.s.singly cordial in their support of Johnson and so also were most Southerners. The moderates were not far away from the position of the President and the administration Republicans. But the radicals skillfully postponed a test of strength until Stevens and Sumner were ready. The latter declared that a generation must elapse "before the rebel communities have so far been changed as to become safe a.s.sociates in a common government. Time, therefore, we must have. Through time all other guarantees may be obtained; but time itself is a guarantee."

To the Joint Committee were referred without debate all measures relating to reconstruction, but the Committee was purposely making little progress-contented merely to take testimony and to act as a clearing house for the radical "facts" about "Southern outrages" while waiting for the tide to turn. The "Black Laws" and the election of popular Confederate leaders to office in the South were effectively used to alarm the friends of the Negroes, and the reports from the Bureau agents gave support to those who condemned the Southern state governments as totally inadequate and disloyal.

So apparent was the growth of radicalism that the President, alarmed by the att.i.tude of Sumner and Stevens and their followers, began to fear for the Const.i.tution and forced the fight. The pa.s.sage of a bill on February 6, 1866, extending the life of the Freedmen's Bureau furnished the occasion for the beginning of the open struggle. On the 19th of February, Johnson vetoed the bill, and the next day an effort was made to pa.s.s it over the veto. Not succeeding in this attempt, the House of Representatives adopted a concurrent resolution that Senators and Representatives from the Southern states should be excluded until Congress declared them ent.i.tled to representation. Ten days later the Senate also adopted the resolution.

Though it was not yet too late for Johnson to meet the conservatives of Congress on middle ground, he threw away his opportunity by an intemperate and undignified speech on the 22d of February to a crowd at the White House. As usual when excited, he forgot the proprieties and denounced the radicals as enemies of the Union and even went so far as to charge Stevens, Sumner, and Wendell Phillips with endeavoring to destroy the fundamental principles of the government. Such conduct weakened his supporters and rejoiced his enemies. It was expected that Johnson would approve the bill to confer civil rights upon the Negroes, but, goaded perhaps by the speeches of Stevens, he vetoed it on the 27th of March. Its patience now exhausted, Congress pa.s.sed the bill over the President's veto. To secure the requisite majority in the Senate, Stockton, Democratic Senator from New Jersey, was unseated on technical grounds, and Senator Morgan, who was "paired" with a sick colleague, broke his word to vote aye-for which Wade offensively thanked G.o.d. The moderates had now fallen away from the President, and at least for this session of Congress, his policies were wrecked. On the 16th of July, the supplementary Freedmen's Bureau Act was pa.s.sed over the veto, and on the 24th of July Tennessee was readmitted to representation by a law the preamble of which a.s.serted unmistakably that Congress had a.s.sumed control of reconstruction.

Meanwhile the Joint Committee on Reconstruction had made a report a.s.serting that the Southerners had forfeited all const.i.tutional rights, that their state governments were not in const.i.tutional form, and that restoration could be accomplished only when Congress and the President acted together in fixing the terms of readmission. The uncompromising hostility of the South, the Committee a.s.serted, made necessary adequate safeguards which should include the disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the white leaders, either Negro suffrage or a reduction of white representation, and repudiation of the Confederate war debt with recognition of the validity of the United States debt. These terms were embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment, which was adopted by Congress and sent to the States on June 13, 1866.

In the congressional campaign of 1866, reconstruction was almost the sole issue. For success the Administration must gain at least one-third of one house, while the radicals were fighting for two-thirds of each House. If the Administration should fail to make the necessary gain, the work accomplished by the Presidents would be destroyed. The campaign was bitter and extended through the summer and fall. Four national conventions were held: the National Union party at Philadelphia made a respectable showing in support of the President; the Southern Unionists, guided by the Northern radicals met at the same place; a soldiers' and sailors' convention at Cleveland supported the Administration; and another convention of soldiers and sailors at Pittsburgh endorsed the radical policies. A convention of Confederate soldiers and sailors at Memphis endorsed the President, but the Southern support and that of the Northern Democrats did not encourage moderate Republicans to vote for the Administration. Three members of Johnson's Cabinet-Harlan, Speed, and Dennison-resigned because they were unwilling to follow their chief further in opposing Congress.

The radicals had plenty of campaign material in the testimony collected by the Joint Committee, in the reports of the Freedmen's Bureau, and in the b.l.o.o.d.y race riots which had occurred in Memphis and New Orleans. The greatest blunder of the Administration was Johnson's speechmaking tour to the West which he called "Swinging Around the Circle." Every time he made a speech he was heckled by persons in the crowd, lost his temper, denounced Congress and the radical leaders, and conducted himself in an undignified manner. The election returns showed more than a two-thirds majority in each House against the President. The Fortieth Congress would therefore be safely radical, and in consequence the Thirty-ninth was encouraged to be more radical during its last session.

Public interest now for a time turned to the South, where the Fourteenth Amendment was before the state legislatures. The radicals, taunted with having no plan of reconstruction beyond a desire to keep the Southern States out of the Union, professed to see in the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment a good opportunity to readmit the States on a safe basis. The elections of 1866 had pointed to the ratification of the proposed amendment as an essential preliminary to readmission. But would additional demands be made upon the South? Sumner, Stevens, and Fessenden were sure that Negro suffrage also must come, but Wade, Chase, Garfield, and others believed that nothing beyond the terms of the Fourteenth Amendment would be asked.

In the Southern legislatures there was little disposition to ratify the amendment. The rapid development of the radical policies during 1866 had convinced most Southerners that nothing short of a general humiliation and complete revolution in the South would satisfy the dominant party, and there were few who wished to be "parties to our own dishonor." The President advised the States not to accept the amendment, but several Southern leaders favored it, fearing that worse would come if they should reject it. Only in the legislatures of Alabama and Florida was there any serious disposition to accept the amendment; and in the end all the unreconstructed States voted adversely during the fall and winter of 1866-67. This unanimity of action was due in part to the belief that, even if the amendment were ratified, the Southern states would still be excluded, and in part to the general dislike of the proscriptive section which would disfranchise all Confederates of prominence and result in the breaking up of the state governments. The example of unhappy Tennessee, which had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and had been readmitted, was not one to encourage conservative people in the other Southern states.

The rejection of the amendment put the question of reconstruction squarely before Congress. There was no longer a possibility of accomplishing the reconstruction of the Southern states by means of const.i.tutional amendments. Some of the Border and Northern states were already showing signs of uneasiness at the continued exclusion of the South. But if the Const.i.tutional Amendment had failed, other means of reconstruction were at hand, for the radicals now controlled the Thirty-ninth Congress, from which the Southern representatives were excluded, and would also control the Fortieth Congress.

Under the lead of Stevens and Sumner, the radicals now perfected their plans. On January 8,1867, their first measure, conferring the franchise upon Negroes in the District of Columbia, was pa.s.sed over the presidential veto, though the proposal had been voted down a few weeks earlier by a vote of 6525 to 35 in Washington and 812 to 1 in Georgetown. In the next place, by an act of January 31, 1867, the franchise was extended to Negroes in the territories, and on March 2, 1867, three important measures were enacted: the Tenure of Office Act and a rider to the Army Appropriation Act-both designed to limit the power of the President-and the first Reconstruction Act. By the Tenure of Office Act, the President was prohibited from removing officeholders except with the consent of the Senate; and by the Army Act he was forbidden to issue orders except through General Grant or to relieve him of command or to a.s.sign him to command away from Washington unless at the General's own request or with the previous approval of the Senate. The first measure was meant to check the removal of radical officeholders by Johnson, and the other, which was secretly drawn up for Boutwell by Stanton, was designed to prevent the President from exercising his const.i.tutional command of the army.

The first Reconstruction Act declared that no legal state government existed in the ten unreconstructed states and that there was no adequate protection for life and property. The Johnson and Lincoln governments in those States were declared to have no legal status and to be subject wholly to the authority of the United States to modify or abolish. The ten states were divided into five military districts, over each of which a general officer was to be placed in command. Military tribunals were to supersede the civil courts where necessary. Stevens was willing to rest here, though some of his less radical followers, disliking military rule but desiring to force Negro suffrage, inserted a provision in the law that a State might be readmitted to representation upon the following conditions: a const.i.tutional convention must be held, the members of which were elected by males of voting age without regard to color, excluding whites who would be disfranchised by the proposed Fourteenth Amendment; a const.i.tution including the same rule of suffrage must be framed, ratified by the same electorate, and approved by Congress; and lastly, the legislatures elected under this const.i.tution must ratify the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, after which, if the Fourteenth Amendment should have become a part of the Federal Const.i.tution, the State should be readmitted to representation.

In order that the administration of this radical legislation might be supervised by its friends, the Thirty-ninth Congress had pa.s.sed a law requiring the Fortieth Congress to meet on the 4th of March instead of in December as was customary. According to the Reconstruction Act of the 2nd of March, it was left to the state government or to the people of a state to make the first move towards reconstruction. If they preferred, they might remain under military rule. Either by design or by carelessness no machinery of administration was provided for the execution of the act. When it became evident that the Southerners preferred military rule, the new Congress pa.s.sed a Supplementary Reconstruction Act on the 23d of March designed to force the earlier act into operation. The five commanding generals were directed to register the blacks of voting age and the whites who were not disfranchised, to hold elections for conventions, to call the conventions, to hold elections to ratify or reject the const.i.tutions, and to forward the const.i.tutions, if ratified, to the President for transmission to Congress.

In these reconstruction acts the whole doctrine of radicalism was put on the way to accomplishment. Its spread had been rapid. In December 1865, the majority of Congress would have accepted with little modification the work of Lincoln and Johnson. Three months later the Civil Rights Act measured the advance. Very soon the new Freedmen's Bureau Act and the Fourteenth Amendment indicated the rising tide of radicalism. The campaign of 1866 and the att.i.tude of the Southern states swept all radicals and most moderate Republicans swiftly into a merciless course of reconstruction. Moderate reconstruction had nowhere strong support. Congress, touched in its amour propre by presidential disregard, was eager for extremes. Johnson, who regarded himself as defending the Const.i.tution against radical a.s.saults, was stubborn, irascible, and undignified, and with his a.s.sociates was no match in political strategy for his radical opponents.

The average Republican or Unionist in the North, if he had not been brought by skillful misrepresentation to believe a new rebellion impending in the South, was at any rate painfully alive to the fear that the Democratic party might regain power. With the freeing of the slaves, the representation of the South in Congress would be increased. At first it seemed that the South might divide in politics as before the war, but the longer the delay the more the Southern whites tended to unite into one party acting with the Democrats. With their eighty-five representatives and a slight reaction in the North, they might gain control of the lower House of Congress. The Union-Republican party had a majority of less than one hundred in 1866, and this was lessened slightly in the Fortieth Congress. The President was for all practical purposes a Democrat again. The prospect was too much for the very human politicians to view without distress. Stevens, speaking in support of the Military Reconstruction Bill, said:

"There are several good reasons for the pa.s.sage of this bill. In the first place, it is just. I am now confining my argument to Negro suffrage in the rebel states. Have not loyal blacks quite as good a right to choose rulers and make laws as rebel whites? In the second place, it is necessary in order to protect the loyal white men in the seceded states. With them the blacks would act in a body, and it is believed that in each of these states, except one, the two united would form a majority, control the states, and protect themselves. Now they are the victims of daily murder. They must suffer constant persecution or be exiled. Another good reason is that it would insure the ascendancy of the union party.... I believe... that on the continued ascendancy of that party depends the safety of this great nation. If impartial suffrage is excluded in the rebel states, then every one of them is sure to send a solid rebel electoral vote. They, with their kindred Copperheads of the North, would always elect the President and control Congress."

The laws pa.s.sed on the 2d and the 23d of March were war measures and presupposed a continuance of war conditions. The Lincoln-Johnson state governments were overturned; Congress fixed the qualifications of voters for that time and for the future; and the President, shorn of much of his const.i.tutional power, could exercise but little control over the military government. Nothing that a state might do would secure restoration until it should ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Const.i.tution. The war had been fought upon the theory that the old Union must be preserved; but the basic theory of the reconstruction was that a new Union was to be created.

CHAPTER VI. THE RULE OF THE MAJOR GENERALS

From the pa.s.sage of the reconstruction acts to the close of Johnson's Administration, Congress, working the will of the radical majority, was in supreme control. The army carried out the will of Congress and to that body, not to the President, the commanding general and his subordinates looked for direction.

The official opposition of the President to the policy of Congress ceased when that policy was enacted into law. He believed this legislation to be unconst.i.tutional, but he considered it his duty to execute the laws. He at once set about the appointment of generals to command the military districts created in the South,* a task calling for no little discretion, since much depended upon the character of these military governors, or "satraps," as they were frequently called by the opposition. The commanding general in a district was charged with many duties, military, political, and administrative. It was his duty to carry on a government satisfactory to the radicals and not too irritating to the Southern whites; at the same time he must execute the reconstruction acts by putting old leaders out of power and Negroes in. Violent opposition to this policy on the part of the South was not looked for. Notwithstanding the "Southern outrage" campaign, it was generally recognized in government circles that conditions in the seceded states had gradually been growing better since the close of the war. There was in many regions, to be sure, a general laxity in enforcing laws, but that had always been characteristic of the newer parts of the South. The Civil Rights Act was generally in force, the "Black Laws" had been suspended, and the Freedmen's Bureau was everywhere caring for the Negroes. What disorder existed was of recent origin and in the main was due to the unsettling effects of the debates in Congress and to the organization of the Negroes for political purposes.

* The first five generals appointed were Schofield, Sickles.

Pope, Ord, and Sheridan. None of these remained in his district until reconstruction was completed. To Schofield's command in the first district succeeded in turn Stoneman, Webb, and Canby; Sickles gave way to Canby, and Pope to Meade; Ord in the fourth district was followed by Gillem, McDowell, and Ames; Sheridan, in the fifth, was succeeded by Griffen, Mower, Hanc.o.c.k, Buchanan, Reynolds, and Canby. Some of the generals were radical; others, moderate and tactful.

The most extreme were Sheridan, Pope, and Sickles. Those most acceptable to the whites were Hanc.o.c.k, Schofield, and Meade. General Grant himself became more radical in his actions as he became involved in the fight between Congress and the President.

Military rule was established in the South with slight friction, but it was soon found that the reconstruction laws were not sufficiently clear on two points: first, whether there was any limit to the authority of the five generals over the local and state governments and, if so, whether the limiting authority was in the President; and second, whether the disfranchising provisions in the laws were punitive and hence to be construed strictly. Attorney-General Stanbery, in May and June 1867, drew up opinions in which he maintained that the laws were to be considered punitive and therefore to be construed strictly. After discussions in cabinet meetings, these opinions received the approval of all except Stanton, Secretary of War, who had already joined the radical camp. The Attorney-General's opinion was sent out to the district commanders for their information and guidance. But Congress did not intend to permit the President or his Cabinet to direct the process of reconstruction, and in the Act of July 19, 1867, it gave a radical interpretation to the reconstruction legislation, declared itself in control, gave full power to General Grant and to the district commanders subject only to Grant, directed the removal of all local officials who opposed the reconstruction policies, and warned the civil and military officers of the United States that none of them should "be bound in his action by any opinion of any civil officer of the United States." This interpretive legislation gave a broad basis for the military government and resulted in a severe application of the disfranchising provisions of the laws.

The rule of the five generals lasted in all the States until June 1868, and continued in Mississippi, Texas, Virginia, and Georgia until 1870. There had been, to be sure, some military government in 1865, subject, however, to the President, and from 1865 to 1867 the army, along with the Freedmen's Bureau, had exerted a strong influence in the government of the South, but in the regime now inaugurated the military was supreme. The generals had a superior at Washington, but whether it was the President, General Grant, or Congress was not clear until the Act of July 19, 1867 made Congress the source of authority.

The power of the generals most strikingly appeared in their control of the state governments which were continued as provisional organizations. Since no elections were permitted, all appointments and removals were made from military headquarters, which soon became political beehives, centers of wirepulling and agencies for the distribution of spoils. At the outset civil officers were ordered to retain their offices during good behavior, subject to military control. But no local official was permitted to use his influence ever so slightly against reconstruction. Since most of them did not favor the policy of Congress, thousands were removed as "obstacles to reconstruction." The Governors of Georgia, Louisiana, Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas were displaced and others appointed in their stead. All kinds of subordinate offices rapidly became vacant. New appointments were nearly always carpetbaggers and native radicals who could take the "ironclad" oath. The generals complained that there were not enough competent native "loyalists" to fill the offices, and frequently an army officer was installed as governor, treasurer, secretary of state, auditor, or mayor. In nearly all towns, the police force was reorganized, and former Federal soldiers were added to the force, while the regular troops were used for general police purposes and for rural constabulary.

Over the administration of justice the military authorities exercised a close supervision. Instructions were sent out to court officers covering the selection of juries, the suspension of certain laws, and the rules of evidence and procedure. Courts were often closed, court decrees set aside or modified, prisoners released, and many cases reserved for trial by military commission. Some commanders required juries to admit Negro members and insisted that all jurors take the "ironclad" test oath. There was some attempt at regulating the Federal courts but without much success.

Since the state legislatures were forbidden to meet, much legislation was enacted through military orders. Stay laws were enacted, the color line was abolished, new criminal regulations were promulgated, and the police power was invoked in some instances to justify sweeping measures, such as the prohibition of whisky manufacture in North Carolina and South Carolina. The military governors levied, increased, or decreased taxes and made appropriations which the state treasurers were forced to pay, but they restrained the radical conventions, all of which wished to spend much money. According to the Act of March 23, 1867, the generals and their appointees were to be paid by the United States, but in practice the running expenses of reconstruction were paid by the state treasurers.

Any attempt to favor the Confederate soldiers was frowned upon. Laws providing wooden legs and free education for crippled Confederates were suspended. Militia organizations and military schools were forbidden. No uniform might be worn, no parades were permitted, no memorial and historical societies were to be organized, and no meeting of any kind could be held without a permit. The attempt to control the press resulted in what one general called "a horrible uproar." Editors were forbidden to express themselves too strongly against reconstruction; public advertising and printing were awarded only to those papers actively supporting reconstruction. Several newspapers were suppressed, a notable example being the "Tuscaloosa Independent Monitor", whose editor, Ryland Randolph, was a picturesque figure in Alabama journalism and a leader in the Ku Klux Klan.

The military administration was thorough and, as a whole, honest and efficient. With fewer than ten thousand soldiers, the generals maintained order and carried on the reconstruction of the South. The whites made no attempt at resistance, though they were irritated by military rule and resented the loss of self-government. But most Southerners preferred the rule of the army to the alternative reign of the carpetbagger, scalawag, and Negro. The extreme radicals at the North, on the other hand, were disgusted at the conservative policy of the generals. The apathy of the whites at the beginning of the military reconstruction excited surprise on all sides. Not only was there no violent opposition, but for a few weeks there was no opposition at all. The civil officials were openly unsympathetic, and the newspapers voiced dissent not untouched with disgust; others simply could not take the situation seriously because it seemed so absurd; many leaders were indifferent, while others among them, Generals Lee, Beauregard, and Longstreet, and Governor Patton-without approving the policy, advised the whites to cooperate with the military authorities and save all they could out of the situation. General Beauregard, for instance, wrote in 1867: "If the suffrage of the Negro is properly handled and directed, we shall defeat our adversaries with their own weapons. The Negro is Southern born. With education and property qualifications he can be made to take an interest in the affairs of the South and in its prosperity. He will side with the whites."