Category: Freedmen and Liberty

Preserving Peace and Good Order

Preserving Peace and Good Order

“In 1883 the Supreme Court declared the conspiracy clause of the Congressional Ku Klux Act of 1871 unconstitutional and restricted the application of the law to acts of a State through its officers and not to private citizens. In the same year it declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 as invalid.

The act made it criminal for any person to deny to any citizen on account of race or color the full and equal enjoyment of inns, public conveyances, theaters and other places of amusement. The act finally reached the Supreme Court as a result of a hotel hotel-manager in the South having refused accommodations to Negroes, and the Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment gave Congress the power to laws enforcing the amendment, but not the power to regulate internal domestic affairs.

The decision contained the principle upon which the [Southern States have] rested their right to set up social barriers between themselves and Negroes. The principle was that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited State governments from discriminating between whites and blacks in its general legislation, but that this by no means prevented a hotel keeper from or theater-manager from making such a discrimination, nor did the amendment give to Congress any power to regulate theaters or hotels. This power, the Court insisted, still remained in the control of the States.

The Court opinions thus far reveal that the tribunal considered that the Fourteenth Amendment merely aimed to protect the Negro’s civil and political rights, but that it dii not give him a social status, equal, superior or otherwise. The matter of giving him whatever status he may have, therefore, has been left to the individuals in the States . . .

The Court summed up its whole attitude on the subject in the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896. The State of Louisiana had required that railway companies in the State provide equal but separate accommodations for white and Negro passengers. Plessy was ejected from a white compartment and arrested for violating State law.

He protested and finally got his protest before the Supreme Court, but the Court held that law was constitutional since it did not interfere with the civil or political equality of the races but was intended rather to preserve peace and good order. The law, the Court said, did not stamp the colored race with any badge of inferiority unless the race chose to put that construction upon it, and equal rights could not be secured to the Negro by an enforced comingling of the two races.”

(The Changing South. William J. Robertson. Boni and Liveright Publishers, 1927, pp. 82-84)

Invading North Carolina

The high point of General Burnside’s 1862 invasion of the Outer Banks and culminated with the capture of New Bern. When the 44th Massachusetts Regiment of nine-month men arrived they were treated with disdain by 3-year enlistees who received no favorable enlistment term.

Lincoln’s first proconsul at occupied New Bern, Edward Stanly, noted the ships offloading blue-clad troops returned north loaded with libraries, artwork and furniture liberated from New Bern homes.

Invading North Carolina   

“Abandoned by their owners upon the approach of the Union army, the elegant homes of New Bern’s merchant and professional class were now occupied by Federal officers. Several hundred blacks were employed, if not conscripted, to build fortifications at New Bern and other coastal points. [General] Burnside directed that they be paid eight dollars a month, given one ration a day and clothing.

[The New England soldiers] held many anti-black sentiments. One Maine soldier reflected the anti-black view of many New England troops in eastern North Carolina when he wrote that slavery “is wrong, a curse,” but that he “could not bear” the sight of blacks. Along with others in General [John G.] Foster’s army, this soldier favored emancipation as a wartime measure designed to weaken the Confederacy, and only secondly as an act of humanity for the slaves. Such men did not hesitate to exploit black refugees, forcing them to work as servants for little compensation.

In April [1863] the War Department authorized Col. Edward Wild to raise a brigade of blacks in North Carolina. Wild began recruiting in May [but] had to recruit in eastern Virginia in order to raise some of the troops for the 2nd and 3rd North Carolina Colored Volunteer regiments. Even before the recruitment had been completed, the 55th Massachusetts Colored Regiment joined the three North Carolina regiments to form Col. Wild’s African Brigade.

During the summer Wild’s brigade participated in the unsuccessful Federal campaign against Charleston and later, in an independent action, raided a guerilla stronghold in northeastern North Carolina, [carrying off] 2,500 slaves, seizing arms and provisions, and burning four rebel camps.”

(In the Country of the Enemy. Civil War Reports of a Massachusetts Corporal. William C. Harris, ed., University Press of Florida, 1999, pp. 12-13; 28-29)

Nine-Month Men

Lincoln spent much of 1862 in efforts to colonize the many contrabands coming within advancing Northern lines, using his emancipation edict to solve the question of ownership. Both the Danes and Dutch were interested in taking them for labor on their Caribbean sugar plantations.

But after several bloody defeats in1862, few white northern men stepped forward to enlist. Massachusetts Republican Governor John Andrew, fearful of losing reelection due to an angry electorate, asked Lincoln to allow his regiments to serve nine-month terms and especially in non-lethal regions. Also, Lincoln allowed the counting of black non-residents against his quota which began a rush of agents to the occupied South to credit contrabands to their particular State. This competition led to the formation of US Colored Troops in early 1863.

It is noted below that the Boston Irish were “hostile to blacks” which the author did not clarify. The Irish were among the poorest segment of Massachusetts society who feared contrabands would migrate northward and depress wages.

Nine-Month Men     

“June 6, 1863, the happy day of departure for home, finally came for the nine-month troops of the 44th Massachusetts. General Foster tried to persuade “the boys” to reenlist at New Bern in a new artillery regiment, but most wanted to go home before considering serving again. Of the regiment’s 1,018 original members, 902 returned to civilian life – casualties were eight men who died of actual battle wounds, and twenty-four who succumbed to disease – including the regiment’s surgeon. Three men had deserted.

The 44th Regiment’s service in the State militia continued until the end of the war. Indeed, a month after their return from the South, in mid-July, Governor Andrew called out the 44th regiment, along with other militia units, to prevent violence in Boston and nearby towns at the time of New York City’s Draft Riot. Upon the Governor’s request, Federal troops in nearby garrisons were brought into the city.

As in New York, the enforcement in July of the Federal conscription law, combined with Lincoln’s emancipation policy, inflamed thousands of men and women in the North who opposed the war, particularly Irish Democrats in the eastern cities who opposed the war and [were] hostile to blacks. In Boston, an angry mob of nearly 5,000 citizens, including women, stormed the armory on Cooper Street where a unit of Federal troops awaited them inside the building. The troops fired into the crowd killing eight and wounding many others.”

(In the Country of the Enemy. William C. Harris, editor. University Press of Florida, 1999, pp. 29-31)

 

Reconstruction Days in Washington

On March 2, 1875, President Grant signed the Civil Rights Bill for which Charles Sumner had labored so many years, and which was a tribute to his memory. Southerners and Democrats in Congress had bitterly contested the Bill, which imposed a $500 fine, upon owners of restaurants, theaters and hotels which refused to accommodate all persons regardless of color. The Bill did not apply to churches nor to schools – and in the South, was held to be an unwarrantable interference with the rights of the individual States, and after a number of test cases in the lower courts, this opinion was sustained by the US Supreme Court.

Reconstruction Days in Washington

“During the Reconstruction period the colored people of Washington were able briefly to enjoy some of those advantages and privileges for which they and their Radical friends had so long struggled. The leaders of the Republican party, well-aware that only the solid support of the colored voters of the South had regained the two-thirds majority of their party in Congress and therefore anxious to preserve their loyalty, treated the colored representatives with a healthy respect.

The largest contingent of Negro congressmen had come from South Carolina, which had been under Republican control since the new state constitution of 1869. The white “Scalawag” members who had been returned to the 41st Congress had reflected little credit on their state or their party. One of them, B.F. Whittemore, had resigned after his sale of West Point cadetships was revealed. Another, C.C. Bowen, the representative for the Charleston district, was jailed for bigamy after a long and sensational trial in the District courts. Convicted by a mixed jury, Bowen was freed after two weeks in prison; he was not, however, renominated for his congressional seat.

Joseph H. Rainey was a mulatto native of Georgetown, SC and a barber. His scanty formal education had been improved by travel in the West Indies. In an interview, Rainey stated it was hard to find rooms in Washington and that colored congressmen were charged more than white men. At Falf’s Bar, across from the Post Office, he had been obliged to pay fifty cents for a glass of beer, the water freely admitting that the extra charge was account of his color.”

(The Uncivil War: Washington During the Reconstruction: 1865-1878. James H. Whyte, Twayne Publishers, 1958, pp. 237-238; 242)

Old Men and Boys Defend Marianna

The raid upon the peaceful town of Marianna, Florida in late September 1864 was led by Brig-Gen. Alexander Asboth, a refugee from the failed 1848 Hungarian socialist revolution. Earlier in the Civil War he fought under Fremont in Missouri and Arkansas along with other European revolutionaries, following nomination as brigadier by Abraham Lincoln. In 1863 he commanded the district of West Florida and led raids to suppress armed resistance. During his attack on Marianna, Asboth was severely wounded by two bullets, one shattering his left arm and another lodged under his right cheek.

Old Men and Boys Defend Marianna

“September 18-October 4: General Asboth leaves Barrancas at the head of 700 picked mounted troops- black and white – and several artillery pieces. They cross Pensacola Bay and move the fifty miles to East Pass. Here the raiders take on supplies from their steamer Lizzie Davis and then march rapidly northeast into Washington and Walton counties.

At daybreak on September 23, a surprise attack is made on the town of Eucheanna plundering homes, gathering horses and mules, and taking fifteen citizens as prisoners. The raiding column then moves toward Jackson County while news of their approach quickly reaches the town of Marianna, the county seat. Defense reparations are hastily made there with the few depleted companies of irregular Confederate troops in and about the town. Also, old men and boys are armed with available weapons such as shotguns and squirrel rifles. The defenders erect a barricade where the road forks within the town, and there some 300 men and boys await the enemy’s arrival.

The raiders come up rapidly and sweep aside the barricade with artillery and follow this with a determined charge by the 2nd Maine Cavalry. The defending force is dispersed with some withdrawing to the Chipola River bridge, and many taking refuge in the nearby Episcopal Church and continue firing from its windows. The enemy then sets fire to the church, and its defenders are shot down as they run into the graveyard, falling amid its headstones. Some of the boys are burned to death inside the church. The enemy advance is finally checked at the Chipola Bridge.

In this raid the enemy lost a total of 39 killed and wounded, and before leaving town they plundered stores and homes, taking with them 81 prisoners, 200 horses, 600 Negroes and 400 cattle.”

(The Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida, William Watson Davis. Columbia University, 1913, pp. 311-312)

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)