Category: Freedmen and Liberty

Seward Insists Upon Servile War

Lincoln’s Secretary of State William Seward promised the cotton-dependent British an early end to war with “Northern victories releasing the raw cotton” of the South to England. Seward’s claim that New Orleans would soon be under his control was quickly dashed, and all were aware that Southern plantation owners would sooner burn their cotton bales than allow them to fall into enemy hands.  A desperate Seward then followed Virginia’s Royal Governor’s (Lord Dunmore) November 1775 edict to incite race war in the South, threatening both Britain and France that any aid to the American Confederacy would unleash a bloody slave uprising there. This would not only destroy Europe’s cotton source but also repeat the Haitian massacres of the early 1790’s which saw the slaughter of 4,000 white men, women and children. In retaliation, some 15,000 Africans were killed by the French.

Seward Insists Upon Servile War

“Fearing the growth in England, especially, of an intention to intervene, Seward threatened a Northern appeal to the slaves, thinking of the threat not so much in terms of an uncivilized and horrible war as in terms of the material interests of England. In brief, considering foreign attitude and action in relation to Northern advantage – to the winning of the war – he would use emancipation as a threat of servile insurrection, but he did not desire emancipation itself for fear it would cause that very intervention which it was his object to prevent.

On May 28, 1862, Seward wrote to US diplomat Charles Francis Adams, emphasizing two points: first, US diplomats abroad were now authorized to state that the war was, in part at least, intended for the suppression of slavery, and secondly, that the North if interfered with by foreign nations would be forced to unleash servile war in the South.

Such a war, Seward argued, would be “completely destructive of all European interests” and a copy of this was given to Britain’s Lord Russell on June 20th . . . and that any attempts a European mediation of the conflict would result in servile war unleashed upon the South. On July 13, Lincoln told Seward and [Gideon] Welles of the planned [gradual and compensated] emancipation proclamation and that this was his first mention of it to anyone.

On July 28, after Lord Russell reviewed Seward’s arguments, commented on the fast- increasing bitterness of the American conflict which was disturbing and unsettling to European governments, and wrote: “The approach of servile war, so much insisted upon by Mr. Seward in his dispatch, only forewarns us that another element of destruction may be added to the slaughter, loss of property, and waste of industry, which already afflict a country so lately prosperous and tranquil.”

(Great Britain and the American Civil War. Ephraim Douglas Adams. Alpha Editions, 2018 (original manuscript 1924), pg. 388-390)

Democrat Dilemma in 1868

The Republican party’s 1861-1865 war not only subjugated the American South, but the North as well. By virtue of this and contrary to the assertion below in 1868, the US Constitution had become a dead letter when a President ordered the invasion and overthrow of States in 1861, and Congress acquiesced.

For their 1868 presidential candidate, the Radicals selected Gen. Grant. Of the latter, the National Intelligencer of 9 June, 1868 wrote:

“General Grant is . . . nothing but a convenient instrument in the hands of Radical wirepullers. He knows nothing of civil affairs, the political history of the country, and cares nothing for either one or the other. He is a fortunate soldier, and no more, with limited capacity, and an absence of all training for the administration of government.”

“To support Grant, Radical leaders formed “Loyal Leagues” in the South who drilled members to vote Republican. They catered to the fancy of the Negro voter by promises of land and mules, elaborate initiation ceremonies, and the use of rituals and passwords in their secret meetings. Organizations of such a nature in the ranks of the white and Negro populace of the South were bound to result in riots and disorder in the campaign. This would be to the advantage of the Radical Republicans as they could say to Northern the voters that their plan f reconstruction was necessary in the South”.

Below is a letter from vice-presidential nominee General Francis Blair on June 30, 1868, to Col. James O. Brodhead of Missouri.

Democrat Dilemma in 1868

The reconstruction policy of the [Republican] Radicals will be complete before the next election; the [Southern] States so long excluded will have been admitted, Negro suffrage established, and the carpetbaggers installed in their seats in both branches of Congress.

There is no possibility of changing the political character of the Senate, even if the Democrats should elect their presidential candidate and hold a majority of the popular branch of Congress. We cannot, therefore, undo the Radical plan of reconstruction by congressional action; the Senate will continue to bar its repeal.

Must we submit to it? How can it be overthrown?

It can only be overthrown by the authority of the Executive, who is sworn to maintain the Constitution, and will fail to do his duty if he allows the Constitution to perish under a series of congressional enactments which are in palpable violation of its fundamental principles.

There is but one way to restore the government and the Constitution, and it is for the President-elect to declare these Reconstruction acts null and void, compel the US Army to undo its usurpations at the South, disperse the carpetbag State governments, allow the white people to re-organize their own governments, and elect Senators and Representatives. The House of Representative will contain a majority of Democrats from the North, and they will admit the Representatives elected by the white people of the South, and with the cooperation of the President, it will not be difficult to compel the Senate to submit once more to the obligations of the Constitution.

What can a Democratic president do if Congress is controlled by carpetbaggers and their allies? He will be powerless to stop the supplies by which the Negroes are organized into political clubs – by which an army is maintained to protect these vagabonds in their outrages upon the ballot. We must have a president who will execute the will of the people by trampling into dust the usurpations of Congress known as the reconstruction acts.

Your friend, Frank P. Blair.”

(Political Campaign and Election of General Grant in 1868. George A. Olson. Master’s Thesis excerpt, pp. 44-46; 56. University of Kansas, 1928)

 

Why Annihilate State Rights?

Marylander Montgomery Blair’s loyalty to the President and ambition for another post beyond Postmaster General remained undimmed. He unsuccessfully sought Mr. Lincoln’s nomination as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. On December 6, 1864, Blair wrote Lincoln his views on the progress of reconstruction and Radical Republican policies.

Why Annihilate State Rights?

“In compliance with your request I commit to writing the views to which I referred in a recent conversation. The gradual suppression of the rebellion renders necessary now a persistence in the policy announced in your amnesty proclamation, with such additional provisions as experiment may have suggested – or its repudiation and the adoption of some other policy. For my part I recognize the plan already initiated by you as consonant with the constitution – well calculated to accomplish the end proposed, and as tending to win over the affections of a portion of the disaffected citizens to unite with all the loyal to aid the work of the military power wielded by you. You have repeatedly driven out the rebel power, enabling the loyal people of the State to restore and reinvigorate their constitutional authority without the intervention of Congress.

The military force of the United States has expelled rebel armies and their allies within the South. Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana are embracing the amnesty proclamation, stepping into the Union under its provisions. They come recognizing the validity of your proclamation – slavery being discarded and so it is manifest, that just as soon as the military power of the Rebellion is driven out, the reign of the US Constitution will resume. The whole country hails your fundamental proclamation of freedom made universal by the vote of three-fourths of the States confirming it by constitutional amendment to secure forever the freedom of the slaves.

What then is the motive for annihilating State rights? It is certainly unnecessary to maintain Mr. Sumner’s “doctrine of State suicide” “State forfeiture State abdication” – the doctrine “that the whole rebel region is tabula rasa, or a clean slate, where Congress under the Constitution may write laws” in order to secure the extirpation of slavery.

Yet Mr. Sumner seems to confine his purpose of reducing States to territories to the object of bringing slavery within the grasp of Congress, and argues, “Slavery is impossible within the exclusive jurisdiction of the National Government.” For many years I’ve had this conviction and have constantly maintained it. I am glad to believe that it is implied in the Chicago platform. Mr. Chase is known to accept it sincerely. Then if slavery in the Territories is unconstitutional and under the exclusive jurisdiction of the national government, then slavery would be impossible there.

It follows that if slavery is no longer in question, why are the States to be disfranchised and denied their municipal right? What then is the purpose of Mr. Chase’s idea of disfranchising the States, turning them into territories and giving to Congress the power of making their local laws. This would be depriving States of their former unquestioned right of regulating suffrage. The States have heretofore made laws denying the suffrage to underage citizens, females, Negroes, Indians, unnaturalized aliens and others incapacitated by moral or physical defects.

If the States resume their places in the Union under your proclamation and the loyal votes of the people accepted, certainly they may assert the political sovereignty as it stood before the war.

The plan of throwing those States out of the Union grows out of the ambition of a class of usurpers to seize the occasion of depriving the States of their indubitable municipal rights . . . The object is undoubtedly to disfranchise the white race who had created the State governments of the South, and who contributed their full share in asserting national independence and creating the government of the United States. This is to be accomplished by the imposition of conditions by Congress on the readmission of those States into the Union which forfeits those municipal rights heretofore exerted by all States in their internal government.

An object now avowed is to enable Congress to constitute a State government by exacting conditions on admission which shall put blacks and whites on equality in the political control of a government originally created by the white race for themselves.

This is not merely manumission from masters, but it may turn out that those who have been held in servitude may become themselves the masters of the government created by another race. This revolutionary scheme looks to the establishment of a new control over the municipal rights of the State governments in the South, which has you well know been a favorite one of the late Secretary. You will remember that Mr. Chase suggested the modification of your amnesty and reconstruction proclamation, so as to allow all loyal citizens to vote, which included all the freedmen while excluding all the whites who had been engaged in the Rebellion. This would probably have thrown the governments of those states into the hands of the African race, as constituting the majority who had not borne arms against the government.”

(Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress. Transcribed and Annotated by the Lincoln Studies Center, Knox College. Galesburg, Illinois. (Letter from Montgomery Blair to Abraham Lincoln, December 6, 1864).

That Was the Problem We Inherited

Below, John Randolph Tucker reviews the constitutional issues which brought war 1861-1865, and poses the question:

“Was slavery so bad that the Constitution which shielded it, was violated in order to destroy it? That is the question which has been answered by the roar of artillery in the affirmative. But can that answer by force be justified in the forum of morals? If a solemn compact can be violated in order to destroy that which the compact guaranteed, what value is there in a written Constitution? It only awaits a new fanatical sentiment to justify a new crusade upon its integrity.” 

That Was the Problem We Inherited

“The [North’s] crusade not only destroyed slavery but entailed upon the South a social condition for which the crusaders suggest no relief, and a condition which seems to be without the hope of peaceful solution. Those who had no interest in the relation [of black and white] have inoculated the South with a social and political disease for which their statesmen have provide no remedy and can find no panacea. These were the issues upon which the Southern States seceded, and defended their imperiled rights with a valor, constancy and fortitude which has made them immortal.

We cannot be placed in the false position of having fought to hold men in slavery. The American South never made a free man a slave and never took from Africa one human being to shackle him with servitude. The South inherited the institution which had been put upon us by the cupidity of European and New England slave traders against the protests of our colonial fathers. That was the problem we inherited.

Shall they remain slaves and how long? Or be at once emancipated and then be put into possession of equal power with the white man to direct a common destiny?

Shall our constitutional power, our inherent natural right to regulate this special interest, be wrested from us and vested in aliens to that interest, to be exercised by them to create social and political relations never known in the history of civilized man, and for the right regulation of which no prophecy could forecast a law, and our sad experience has been unable to devise a remedy? To put it forensically, the South did not plead to the issue of slavery or no slavery, but to the proper jurisdiction. To create the jurisdiction was to, by force, give up self-government.

Let no censorious criticism suggest a doubt of our faithful devotion to the Constitution and Union of today because we honor and revere the patriotism of those who died for the lost cause of political independence. The heroic purpose failed; our Confederacy sank beneath the political horizon in clouds which could not blacken history.  The sun of the Confederacy illuminated them of its own transcendent glory. The fame of its American heroes, of their genius for leadership, of their fortitude, marital prowess and devotion to duty, all Americans will one day claim to be the common heritage of the Union.”

(Address of John Randolph Tucker, Vanderbilt University, June 1893, (excerpt). Confederate Veteran, August 1893, pg. 238)

 

The Negro Must Be Enfranchised

In the immediate postwar the North’s Radical Republicans consolidated their victory over both the Constitution and the South and set their eyes on victory in the 1868 presidential election. They saw their path as disenfranchising those in the South who fought for independence, and giving the vote to the former slave. Some 500,000 of the latter voted for Republican U.S. Grant in 1868, which provided the thin 300,000 vote margin of victory over New York’s Governor Horatio Seymour.

The Negro Must Be Enfranchised

“Many Northerners were perfectly frank about the matter. The Negro must be enfranchised, they said, to counteract Southern white votes which would most certainly be given to Democrat party candidates. If this were not done, wrote a friend of abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner, it would produce evils “fearful to contemplate’ – ‘a great reduction of the Tariff doing away with its protective features [for Northern industry] – perhaps Free Trade to culminate with Repudiation, – for neither Southerners nor Northern Democrats have any bonds or many Greenbacks.”

The abolitionist-founded Nation opposed “the speedy re-admission of the Southern States” because of the effect it would have on government securities, and the New York Tribune was equally uncertain that “the cotton-planters,” educated by Calhoun “to the policy of keeping the Yankees from manufacturing,” would “vote solid to destroy the wealth-producing industry of the Loyal States.”

No wonder Governor Horatio Seymour of New York insisted that the radical talk of making the South over into the likeness of New England simply meant an acceptance of its “ideas of business, industry, money-making, spindles and looms.”

(The Price of Union, Avery Craven. The Pursuit of Southern History, George Brown Tindall, ed., LSU Press, pg. 272)

 

“We Are Now an Occupied Territory”

“We Are Now an Occupied Territory”

Gov. Orval Faubus’ Message to Arkansas:

“On Tuesday, September 24, 1957 . . . the cleverly conceived plans of the US Justice Department under Republican Herbert Brownell, were placed in execution. One thousand two hundred troops of the 101st Airborne Division were flown in from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to occupy Little Rock’s Central High School.

At the same time, the entire Arkansas National Guard and Air guard were federalized and are now a part of the US Army and Air Force. We are now an occupied territory.

Evidence of the naked force of the federal government is here apparent in the unsheathed bayonets in the backs of schoolgirls – in the backs of students – and in the bloody face of a railroad worker, who was bayoneted and then felled by the butt of a rifle in the hands of a sergeant of the 101st Airborne Division. This man, on private property, as a guest in a home two blocks from the school, has been hospitalized. Others have suffered bayonet wounds from the hands of the US Army soldiers. Your New York newspapers also show the scenes.

Up until the time the injunction was issued against me by the imported federal judge, the peace had been kept in Little Rock by as few as 30 National Guardsmen. Not a blow was struck, no injury inflicted on any person, and no property damage sustained. I wish to point out that no violence broke out in the city until after the injunction was issued by the imported federal judge, and the National Guardsmen were withdrawn. And I might add here, all we have ever asked for is a little time, patience and understanding, as so often expressed by President Eisenhower himself, in solving this problem.

In the name of God, whom we all revere, in the name of liberty we hold so dear, in the name of decency, which we all cherish – what is happening in America? Is every right in the United States Constitution now lost? Does the will of the people, that basic precept of our republic, no longer matter? Must the will of the majority now yield, under federal force, to the will of the minority, regardless of the consequences?

If the answers to these questions are in the affirmative . . . we no longer have a union of States under a republican form of government. If this be true, then the States are mere subdivisions of an all-powerful federal government, these subdivisions being nothing more than districts for the operation of federal agents and federal military forces – forces which operate without any regard for the rights of a sovereign State or its elected officials, and without due regard for personal and property rights.

The imported federal comes from a State a thousand miles away with no understanding whatsoever of the difficulties of our problems in the field of race relations.”

(Another Tragic Era: Gov. Faubus Gives His Side of the Arkansas Story. US News & World Report, October 4, 1957, pp. 66-67)

Gen. Hardee’s View – Spring 1865

Gen. Hardee’s View – Spring 1865

“A correspondent for the New York Herald, Theodore C. Wilson, had been at General Kilpatrick’s headquarters in Durham Station, awaiting an opportunity to get into the Confederate camp. General Joseph E. Johnston had agreed that he might come if he could find means of transportation. Early the next morning . . . Wilson somehow managed to secure a seat in the car with [General William J.] Hardee and [aide-de-camp Thomas B.] Roy and now headed off to Greensboro with them.

Exploiting his opportunity, probably as Hardee breakfasted, Wilson asked him for an interview, which Hardee granted, receiving him “in a very cordial, generous, unreserved manner.” In reply to a general question about the war and slavery, Hardee said:

. . . “I accept this war as the providence of God. He intended that the slave should be free, and now he is free. Slavery was never a paying institution . . . For instance, my wife owned about one hundred negroes; forty of the hundred were useless for work, yet she had to feed [clothe and maintain the health of] these forty to get in order to get the work of the other sixty. The negro will be worse off for this war. Will any of your abolitionists . . . feed and clothe half-a-dozen little children, in order to get the work of a man and woman?

Sir, our people can pay the working negroes a fair compensation for their services, and let them take care of their own families, and then have as much left at the end of the year as we had under the old system.”

(General William J. Hardee: Old Reliable. Nathaniel C. Hughes, Jr. LSU Stat University Press. 1965, pg. 297)

Monument to a War Hero Politician

A bronze equestrian monument of Maj. Gen. John F. Hartranft stands majestically outside the capitol building at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. This memorial still stands today despite Hartranft waging war against Americans in the South who fought for political independence as did their ancestors in 1776. Under the Constitution Hartranft swore fealty to, Article III, Section 3 is clear regarding treason as waging war against a State.

After the death of Lincoln, Hartranft served as a special provost marshal during the show trial and predictable convictions, including that of Mary Surratt. He afterward personally led these Americans to the gallows in early July 1865.  In 1872 he became governor of Pennsylvania governor and won a second term in 1876 despite being accused of bribing leaders of the Molly Maguires to induce members to vote for him.

Monument to a War Hero Politician

Just prior to the battle of First Manassas in July 1861, the enlistment period of then-Col. Hartranft’s Pennsylvania regiment had expired, and they returned home. Assigned as an aide to another command during the battle, he was unsuccessful in his attempt to stem the wholesale retreat of Northern soldiers. For this latter action Hartranft was to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1886.

In April 1862, Hartranft was colonel of the 51st PA regiment during Gen. Burnside’s invasion of North Carolina’s Outer Banks. The resulting occupation of the islands and afterward New Bern was marked by the wholesale looting and pillaging of businesses and civilians.

In May 1863, Hartranft’s 51st Pennsylvania Regiment was near Jackson, Mississippi as Grant approached Vicksburg. At that time, the Lieber Code which would govern the conduct of northern armies in the field was being promulgated – it forbade the waging of war against innocent civilians.

At Jackson, one of Hartranft’s officers later wrote in 1866 of the 51st Pennsylvania troops who “broke ranks and ransacked the town of Jackson for tobacco, whiskey and valuables . . . Grocery, dry goods, hat, shoe, millinery and drug stores were broken open and “cleaned out” of every vestige of their contents: private dwellings entered and plundered of money, jewelry and all else of any value were carried off; crockery, chinaware, pianos, furniture, etc., were smashed to atoms; hogsheads of sugar rolled into the street and heads knocked in and contents spilled . . . and soon some very splendid buildings were reduced to ashes.”

The writer continues: “As the 51st Pennsylvania Regiment was marching out [of town] it made quite a ludicrous appearance, for the men were clad in female attire, some with hats having crowns a foot high, some with masks on, shawls, frock skirts, with crinoline all over instead of underneath . . . marching with bonnet and bandboxes in their hands.

They were followed by the colored females, screaming with delight and begging the “Yankees” to “gib us dat bonnit,” and “Massa, do please gib me dat frock.” By the time they reached their destination the colored ladies were in possession of nearly every particle of female wear which the men had stolen.”

(History of the Fifty-first Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers. Thomas H. Parker, King & Baird, Printers, 1869, pp. 85; 363-365).

 

A Worthy Institution for Negroes

A Worthy Institution for Negroes

“There is an industrial college for Negroes at Conroe, Texas, known as the Conroe-Porter Industrial College, which ought to become a great institution. The property consists of eight acres of land paid for, one four story building with twenty-three rooms, two more buildings, and enough lumber on the ground to erect another commodious building. The college currently has about 40 boarders and 100 other students.

The object of the school is to teach young Negroes three lessons: 1. The science and art of politeness; 2. how to obey the law, and respect for public sentiment; 3. how to resist temptation and be virtuous; 4. that idleness is sin and all labor is virtuous; 5. that good character is the greatest wealth; 6. that the white people of the South are the Negro’s best friend; and 7. That Christianity means love and service.

The Houston Post says: “An institution like this deserves encouragement nor only for the great good which will accrue to the Negroes who learn these important truths, but for the welfare of the white people among whom the Negroes have to live. A Negro who is polite, law-abiding, virtuous, honest and industrious will never lack for friends in the South, and if the Southern people could have their way, all the Negroes would live up to the standard of this school at Conroe.

There is no problem in which the self-respecting, honest and industrious Negroes are concerned, and there will not be. The problem comes of the presence of a constantly growing number of idle, lawless and vicious Negroes, many of whom are continually clamoring for social equality and treatment that is not even extended to white people who are similarly idle and vicious.

In commending this institution, the integrity of the management is presumed through the indorsement of the Houston Post. If this industrial school, or college, is conducted on the lines indicated, our white people should give it hearty encouragement. Let its maintenance be by our own people, entirely free from Northern missionaries. An institution properly conducted on these lines would rapidly prove a blessing to both races.”

(Worthy Institution for Negroes. Confederate Veteran Magazine, Volume XIII, No. 5, May 1905, S.A. Cunningham, pg 210.

Democracy and King Numbers

Democracy and King Numbers

“Thwarted by the aristocratic minority in calling legitimate conventions, the democratic majority in the old States now threatened to take the matter into their own hands and call extra-legal conventions. Mass meetings were held in Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland; pools were conducted in various counties, all of which voted overwhelmingly for calling conventions; grand jury presentments called attention to the need for reform and recommended direct action if the legislatures failed to act; the voters in many counties instructed their representatives in the legislature to support a bill calling a constitutional convention; and hundreds of petitions went to the legislatures demanding relief.

Typical of the sentiment for calling extra-legal conventions is the statement of a North Carolinian that if the legislature failed “to comply with the wishes of a great majority of the State,” the “a convention will be assembled in the west and the constitution amended without the concurrence of the east; and this being the act of a majority, and the legal act will consequently be obligatory on the whole State. The constitution will be amended.  

The North Carolina legislature capitulated and called a convention to meet at the same time and place as that called extra-legally. In like manner the legislatures of Virginia, Mississippi and Tennessee, at the demand of the people, called conventions to revise their constitutions. This was one of the most signal victories for majority or popular rule in American history. Democracy had won a victory over aristocracy.

John C. Calhoun, Abel P. Upshur and other aristocratic leaders of the South openly denied the Jeffersonian ideal of equality of all men and bitterly condemned majority rule as the tyranny of king numbers; and they had their supporters in the north among such men as James Kent, Joseph Story and Orestes Brownson. The less famous and little- known leaders of democracy just as boldly proclaimed the doctrine of political equality.

For the first time the people had been consulted as to the revision and amendment to their constitutions. In the issue of Negro suffrage, Virginia and North Carolina joined Maryland and Kentucky in taking from the free Negro the ballot he had heretofore possessed. In like manner all new States of the period, North as well as South, denied suffrage to free Negroes. And New York in 1821 limited Negro suffrage by requiring that he possess a freehold valued at 250 dollars over and above all indebtedness.

In actual practice, the American people had decided by their constitutional provisions that Negroes were not included in the political people.”

(Democracy in the Old South. Fletcher M. Green. Journal of Southern History, Vol. XII, No. 1, February 1946, pp -16.