Category: Republican Party

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)

 

Intruders Within States

It is essential to understand that the word “union” was merely a convenient word to describe the agreement between 13 independent States (as referred to by the 1783 Treaty of Paris and the Articles of Confederation), who in 1789 agreed to a newer governing covenant between them. Of course, this in no way transferred a State’s population and territory into what was referred to as “the Union.” Below, the word “conquered” below reveals all. Hamilton noted in his 1789 Federalist opinion that a war between member States would mean the Constitution was at an end.

Rev. Orestes Brownson (1803-1876) was a Vermont-born preacher who “inclined to the view of his friend, John C. Calhoun, holding that the united States are a confederation of sovereign or independent States,” which was in line with the 1783 Treaty of Paris as England listed each former colony as an independent State.

Intruders Within States

“It was apparent on this theory – that no State could secede – that Lincoln built his executive plan for reorganizing the rebellious States as States in the Union in December 1863.

Brownson objected to the plan primarily as it was a distinctly executive plan [but] in no case, he maintained, did it come within the jurisdiction of the President to institute either military of civil governments in the conquered States or territories. [He] looked upon Lincoln’s plan or reorganization as a dangerous and revolutionary assumption of power contrary to our Constitution and republican form of government. He exposed sharply the equally discrediting alternatives in volved in Lincoln’s plan:

“If the States are still in the Union, the President violates their constitutions, and wars against the essential principle of every State constitution [no right to interfere]; if they are not States in the Union, but, as we maintain, population and territory belonging to the Union, then he transcends his province as executive of the government and attempt to do on executive authority what only Congress can do.”

If the States are still in the Union, as the administration claims, by what right, Brownson wanted to know, had Lincoln appointed Andrew Johnson as governor of Tennessee; Col Hamilton governor of Texas; Mr. Phelps governor of Arkansas; Eli Thayer as governor of Florida; Edward Stanly as governor of North Carolina; and Col. Shepley as governor of Louisiana. If these respective territories are States in the Union, then these so-called governors are intruders, without any constitutional authority, for under the American Constitution the right to choose its own officers is reserved to the State, “and there is no authority in the President or Congress to appoint a single State officer, not even a constable.” The error of the Lincoln administration, is denying that a State can secede.”

(Orestes A. Brownson: A Definitive Biography. Thomas R. Ryan. Our Sunday Visitor, 1976, p. 635)

A War Far, Far Away

The following reminds us of Robert E. Lee’s mid-December 1866 letter to Britain’s Lord Acton, noting that the new highly centralized US government had become despotic at home as well as aggressive abroad.”

The colonial French stronghold of Deinbienphu surrendered to North Vietnamese forces on May 7,1954, leading to the partition of Vietnam into North and South. The latter would be protected by inclusion into the new SEATO defense treaty, which in hindsight was a gross mistake. The author below noted that Eisenhower did “Americanize” the region and commit US prestige to defend a government, which to use Dulles’s phrase, “would lose the support of the people.” It had been Eisenhower himself who predicted the consequences. It would be Eisenhower’s successors who would have to face them.”

A War Far, Far Away

“Still, neither Dulles nor Eisenhower were willing to throw in the towel [in late-April]. They quickly devised an alternative plan by which a United Action coalition could be arranged among France, the ANZUS countries, and the Associated States. Dienbienphu would be lost, but the French could withdraw into defensible enclaves where they could be supported by American air and sea power. The British could join the coalition later. Eisenhower sounded out the Republican leaders.

“There are plenty of people in Asia,” he explained, “and we can train them to fight well. I don’t see any reason for American ground troops to be committed in Indochina, don’t think we need it, but we can train their forces and it may be necessary for us eventually to use some of our planes or aircraft off the coast and some of our fighting craft we have in that area for support.” The essential point was, Eisenhower concluded, “Where in the hell can you let the Communists chip away anymore [sic]. We just can’t stand it.”

“[During a National Security Council meeting on April 29, Eisenhower noted that] the position of the US as the leader of the free world necessitated associates. Without allies “the leader is just an adventurer like Genghis Kahn.” Further, “We would in the eyes of many Asiatic peoples merely replace French colonialism with American colonialism . . . [and] be everywhere accused of imperialistic ambitions. A unilateral intervention would mean a general war with China and perhaps the USSR, which the US would have to prosecute separated from its allies.”

(Reevaluating Eisenhower: American Foreign Policy in the Fifties. R. Melanson; D. Mayers, editors. University of Illinois Press. 1989, pp. 142-143)

 

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)

Florida’s Reconstruction

By order of the Sixth District’s Federal military occupation commander, Major-General John Pope, the election of Florida’s constitutional convention members was to be held on November 14, 15 and 16, 1867. Those chosen to register voter names were noted as “pronounced and bitter Republican partisans,” and holding positions as election officers and poll judges.

The struggles over Reconstruction issues in Florida noted below would revive the State’s prewar Democratic party, as conservative citizens became aware of the Republican scheme to form a “ring” to monopolize the State’s railways with New York funding.

Florida’s Reconstruction

“The native whites were not exhibiting interest in registering [under Reconstruction rule]. From Walton County, West Florida, came the report: “I fear this class (negroes, carpetbaggers and scalawags) will control the county unless a greater interest can be awakened.” What is true of Walton is true of most of the counties in the State,” announced the Floridian.

The mass of the whites had refrained from voting, with only 1,220 white votes cast, of which 203 were against assembling the convention. The Conservative party [of native whites] had succeeded neither in making Conservative voters of the negroes nor in preventing them from voting the Republican ticket.

Forty-six delegates were actually returned in this election: eighteen were negroes, and three of the latter were citizens of other States. Of the twenty-seven whites, one or two were Conservatives, fifteen or sixteen were Radical carpetbaggers from the North, and ten or twelve Southern loyalist or “scalawags.”

What were the obvious characteristics of these delegates chosen by the newly enfranchised? Several of the negro members were unlettered – unable to read or write. Two or three of the blacks had evil reputations and would have done better in jail than in legislative halls. Of the whites, the native Union or loyalist element was made up of men of no particular reputation – good or bad – and of mediocre enlightenment.

The carpetbag or Northern element – composing about one-third of the delegates – contained some men of considerable intelligence and passable education. The most cultured member of the convention, probably, was Jonathan Gibbs, a tall and slightly- built man of color indicating mulatto origin. Born in Philadelphia, educated at Dartmouth College and Princeton Theological Seminary, he was a fairly successful type of an intelligent black subjected to New England culture.

Sent into Florida for philanthropic work among the negroes. He soon entered politics and was ere long in rubbing shoulders with cantankerous and thieving ignorance. He died before the end of Republican rule, ostensibly from eating too heavy a dinner. It was rumored that he was poisoned by fellow Republicans.”

(The Civil War & Reconstruction in Florida, William Watson Davis, Columbia University, 1913, pp. 491-495)

 

The Deadliest War

The author cited below wrote: “Perhaps it was cold comfort to dismembered Mexico, but the “Mexican Cession” led in the next two decades to the death of a million gringos, as well as to sectional hatreds that persist to the present.” The Compromise of 1850 led to the political rise of Lincoln, John Brown’s violence, the formation of the Republican party, the election of Lincoln, the withdrawal of Southern States and war.

The Deadliest War

“The Deadliest war in American history, in terms of total deaths per thousand who served per year, at last was over. Of the 100,182 soldiers, sailors, marines who participated, only 1548 were killed in action, but 10,970 died from disease and exposure. Thus, the mortality rate was 110 per 1000 per annum (as compared with a Civil War rate of 65; a Spanish-American War rate of 27.79; and a World War I rate of 16. In World War II the death rate was about 3 percent of the total strength of the armed forces.

And the death rate was appallingly high in relation to the length of actual combat, for the conflict with Mexico lasted just twenty-two months (with only seventeen months of actual combat) . . . [and American soldiers] would continue to succumb to diseases contracted in Mexico for the next several decades. J.J. Oswandel, a veteran of the war, wrote in 1885, “After the close of the war we returned home with impaired health . . . with a disease contracted in a strange climate, which, in a few years after the war had taken from their homes more than half of those who returned.”

(North America Divided: The Mexican War, 1846-1848. S. Connor & O. Faulk. Oxford University Press, 1971, pp.170-171)

Hoosier Col. Benjamin Harrison

A fervent prewar Republican, Benjamin Harrison was first elected in 1860 as reporter for the Indiana Supreme Court. In 1862, he gained appointed as an officer and served under Sherman in the Atlanta campaign.

In the early postwar, Harrison warned Indiana audiences that “the Southern foe remained just as wily, mean and impudent as ever, and politics would be the new battleground against ex-rebels.” Though he didn’t advocate immediate enfranchisement for former slaves,” he insisted that “should white Southerners remained recalcitrant, the adoption of black suffrage offered the only way to produce truly loyal governments in the South.” The key to a successful peace was to keep the rebels and “their northern allies out of power. If you don’t,” Harrison warned, “they will steal away, in the halls of Congress, the fruits won from them at the glistening point of the bayonet.”

As the Republican national standard bearer in 1888 against Grover Cleveland, Harrison lost the popular vote but lavish Republican campaign spending in crucial swing States bought him victory in the Electoral College. A lasting blot on his presidency was the American-led coup of Hawaiian Queen Liliuokalani in 1893.

Hoosier Col. Benjamin Harrison

“Atlanta fell to Sherman in early September 1864 and ten days later Harrison headed home under orders to report to Governor Morton for “special duty.” That duty included recruitment of news soldiers and more important, campaigning for the Republican ticket in the fall election.

After Harrison entered the army in 1862, Hoosier Democrats had secured a court order declaring the supreme court reporter office vacant, and in a special election, Democrat Michael Kerr had defeated an ineffectual Republican candidate. In 1864 the Republicans nominated Harrison again for the position. He stumped the State vigorously, adjuring voters to stand by the Republicans and the war effort, while accusing Democrats of halfhearted resistance to, if not outright sympathy for, the rebellion.” Further, he condemned the Democrats’ notion of State sovereignty as a “deadly poison to national life.”

Moreover, defying the widespread Negrophobia within Indiana, Harrison fervently defended the Emancipation Proclamation and extolled the courageous service of blacks in the effort to suppress the rebellion. Harrison and the entire State ticket triumphed, and Lincoln carried Indiana.

Immediately after the election, Harrison headed for Georgia to rejoin his men [but] received orders to take command of a brigade forming in Tennessee to block a Confederate counteroffensive. He found the brigade a mongrel outfit with many men “quite unfit for duty in the field” – some hardly recovered from wounds, others just back from sick leave, and a large number of raw recruits, including many European immigrants unable to speak English.”

(Benjamin Harrison. Charles W. Calhoun. Henry Holt and Company. 2005, pp. 24-25)

To Sustain the Right of Self-Government

In his “Rise and Fall,” President Jefferson Davis described the object of the American South’s struggle “was to sustain a principle – the broad principle of constitutional liberty, the right of self-government.”

To Sustain the Right of Self-Government

“The notice received, that an armed expedition had sailed for operations against the State of South Carolina in the harbor of Charleston, induced the Confederate States Government to meet, as best it might, this assault, in the discharge of its obligation to defend each State of the Confederacy. To this end the bombardment of the formidable work, Fort Sumter, was commenced, in anticipation of the [Northern] reinforcement which was then moving to unite with its garrison for hostilities against South Carolina.

The bloodless bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter occurred on April 13, 1861. The garrison was generously permitted to retire with the honors of war. The evacuation of the fort, commanding the entrance to the harbor of Charleston, which, if in hostile hands, was destructive of its commerce, had been claimed as the right of South Carolina. The voluntary withdrawal of garrison by the United States government had been considered, and those best qualified to judge believed it had been promised.

Yet, instead of the fulfillment of just expectations, instead of the withdrawal of its garrison, a hostile expedition was organized and sent forward, the urgency of the case required its reduction before it should be reinforced. Had there been delay, the more serious conflict between larger forces, land and naval, would scarcely have been bloodless, as the bombardment fortunately was.

The event, however, was seized upon to inflame the mind of the Northern people, and the disguise which had been worn in the communications with the Confederate States Commissioners was now thrown off, and it was cunningly attempted to show that the South, which had been pleading for peace and still stood on the defensive, had by this bombardment inaugurated a war against the United States.

But it should be stated that the threats implied in the declarations that the Union could not exist part slave and part free, and that the Union should be preserved, and the denial of the right of a State peaceably to withdraw, were virtually a declaration of war, and the sending of an army and navy to attack was the result to have been anticipated as the consequence of such declaration of war.”

(Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Jefferson Davis, Volume I, D. Appleton and Co., 1881, pp. 296-297)

A New Swarm of Carpetbaggers

In the early 1940s the Republican party in Virginia, and nationally, was largely moribund. But due to the increasing communist-infiltration of FDR’s administration and organized labor, Republican power increased as did open fissures in the Democratic party. In the mid-1940s, FDR courted support from Sidney Hillman’s communist-dominated Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) which delivered Democratic votes.

A Virginia Democrat openly-hostile to organized labor and who denounced public employee unions was William Tuck, who served as governor 1946 -1950. When Virginia Electric & Power employees threatened a strike in early 1946, Tuck responded with a state of emergency, mobilized State militia and threatened to induct 1600 of the utility’s employees. The following year he secured passage of a law outlawing compulsory union membership and establishing Virginia as a “right to work” State. Tuck also voiced support for Virginia’s defiance of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board ruling of 1954, fearing that his State’s schools would become like the District of Columbia’s “blackboard jungles” of juvenile crime, drugs and pregnancies.

A New Swarm of Carpetbaggers

“Virginia’s Eight District Congressman Howard W. Smith, comprising Alexandria, Arlington and Falls Church, assailed the CIO’s Political Action Committee as a “new swarm of carpetbaggers who are invading the Southern States [and] are impregnated with communism.”

Like most of his Southern colleagues, Virginia Senator Robert Byrd initially greeted Truman’s ascension to the Presidency in 1945 with favor. After all, Truman was the son of a Confederate soldier, and his Missouri accent fueled the feeling among Southerners that one of their own finally was in charge. In fact, Truman owed his spot on the national ticket in 1944 to Southern Democrat leaders who had insisted that Roosevelt jettison liberal Vice President Henry Wallace as the price for continued support. Though Byrd and his colleagues expected Truman’s leadership to move their party back to center, they did not get it.

Instead, Truman presented Congress with “civil rights” initiatives and home rule for the District of Columbia, which received a sharp and swift denunciation from Virginia’s senior senator. “Taken in their entirety,” declared Byrd, “[the Truman civil rights proposals] constitute a mass invasion of State’s rights never before even suggested, much less recommended, by any previous President.”

At the Democratic National Convention, Truman was re-nominated, and Virginia’s votes went in protest to conservative Senator Richard Russell of Georgia. A few days later, Southern Democrats met in Birmingham, Alabama, and under a “State’s Rights Party” banner nominated their own ticket headed by then-Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Though Virginia’s Democratic leadership did not attend the event in Birmingham, Governor Tuck unmistakably signaled his preference for the South Carolina governor and introduced him at a Richmond rally.

The black-owned Norfolk Journal and Guide aired its distrust of Truman. “When and if it becomes expedient,” the newspaper commented, “Mr. Truman could just as ruthlessly trade away the interests of the Negro for the support of some other group which he felt more important.” Though Truman probably garnered a slim majority of the black vote in the State, many black Virginians backed Republican nominee Thomas E. Dewey, whose moderate record as New York’s governor appealed to them.”

(The Dynamic Dominion: Realignment and Rise of Virginia’s Republican Party Since 1945. Frank B. Atkinson. George Mason University Press. 1992, pp. 20-22; 24-25)

 

Lincoln Chooses War

 

“The interval of eighty days between [Sumter] and the assembling of Congress gave Lincoln a virtual monopoly on emergency powers. Between his attempt to reinforce and resupply Fort Sumter – the latter odd since its garrison obtained food from Charleston markets – and the meeting of Congress in July, Lincoln had a virtual monopoly on assuming claimed “emergency powers.” After several States solemnly withdrew from the 1789 Constitution, Lincoln declared an “insurrection” to exist in seven States and called forth 75,000 militia to suppress this claim. On April 19, 1861, Lincoln proclaimed a naval blockade – an act of war – of all States bordering the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, including North Carolina which remained within the Union at that time. In his July 1861 message to Congress, Lincoln explained his clearly unconstitutional actions while asserting that “this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man the question whether a constitutional republic or democracy . . . can . . . maintain its territory against its own domestic foes.” It is clear that he was not familiar with Article III, Section 3 of the United States Constitution, for “waging war against Them [the States] or aiding and abetting their enemies.”

Lincoln Chooses War

“. . . the South considered secession a peaceable act, while according to the [Northern] point of view such secession was null and required a defensive attitude on the part of the federal government with a readiness to strike in retaliation for any act of resistance to the national authority. This drifting policy, accompanied by conditions in the social mind which can only be described as pathological, had led to the Sumter crisis; and war was upon the country with each side protesting that its actions were purely defensive, and that the opponent was the aggressor.

Lincoln took many other war measures. He issued two proclamations of blockade . . . He decreed an expansion of the regular army on his own authority [with] a further call on May 3rd for recruits to the regular army beyond the total authorized by law. Increasing the regular army is a congressional function, with Sen. John Sherman stating that “I never met anyone who claimed that the President could, by proclamation, increase the regular army.”

Lincoln’s message to Congress on July 4th, 1861, stated: “These measures, whether strictly legal or not, were ventured upon, under what appeared to be a popular demand and public necessity; trusting . . . that Congress would readily ratify them.” In a word, the whole machinery of war was set in motion by Lincoln, with all that this meant in terms of federal effort, departmental activity, State action and private enterprise.”

(The Civil War and Reconstruction. James G. Randall. D.C. Heath & Company. 1937, pp. 360-366)