XI. The Black Proletariat in Mississippi and Louisiana (§)
W.E. Burghardt du Bois
How in two other states with black majorities enfranchised labor led by educated men and groups of their own blood sought so to guide the state as to raise the worker to comfort and safety, and failed before land monopoly, the new power of imported capital and organized force and fraud
Mississippi has been called a peculiarly typical state in which to study Reconstruction. But this should be modified. In direct contrast to South Carolina, Mississippi was the place where first and last Negroes were largely deprived of any opportunity for land ownership. The great black belt plantations on the Mississippi had hardly been disturbed by war. The barons ruling there, who had dictated the policy of the state, were to the last degree reactionary because they entirely misconceived the results of the war. They were determined not to recognize even the abolition of slavery, and as for establishing peasant-proprietors on their land or granting even civil rights, they were adamant. To the proposition of political rights for Negroes, they simply would not listen for a moment.
Mississippi was in all respects a curious state. It was the center of a commercialized cotton kingdom. The graciousness and ease of the plantation system had scarcely taken root there. Mississippi plantations were designed to raise a profitable cotton crop and not to entertain visitors. Here and there the more pretentious slave manor flourished, but, on the whole, the level of the state in civilization and culture was distinctly below that of Virginia and South Carolina, and smacked more of the undisciplined frontier.
In this state there were, in 1860, 353,899 white people and 437,404 Negroes, of whom less than 1,000 were free. The population had only been a few thousand at the beginning of the century and small in 1820. Then from 1840 on, the Cotton Kingdom spread over Mississippi, greatly increasing its population. The result was that after the war, there was in this state a group of planters whose great plantations dominated the rich Black Belt. From Memphis to the Gulf were a succession of counties with 60% or more of black population, while on the poor lands of the northeast and southeast were the poor whites.
The planters had always dominated the state in its political and
Mississippi had a bad financial reputation long before the Civil War; Reconstruction actually improved this. In 1839, less than one-tenth of the money collected from fines and forfeitures by the sheriffs and clerks throughout the state ever reached the treasury. In 1840, the Senate Journal had the names of 26 tax collectors who were defaulters to an average amount of $1,000 each. In 1858, the auditor of the state was a defaulter for $54,000. The endowment of Jefferson College, valued at $248,748, disappeared without record, and the college had to be closed. The money realized from the 16th Section Fund donated to schools by the Congress of the United States was lost or embezzled to the amount of $1,500,000. The Mississippi Union Bank sold bonds to the amount of $5,000,000, and later repudiated the debt.
The effect of war on property in the state was marked. The assessed valuation of Mississippi property in 1860 was over $500,000,000. Subtracting $218,000,000 as the value of the slaves, we have $291,472,912. This was reduced in 1870 to $177,278,890. The whole industrial system was upset, and the cotton crop, which was 1,200,000 bales in 1860, was in 1870 only 565,000 bales.
Naturally, these planter-capitalists proposed to protect themselves from further loss by dominating the labor of their former slaves and getting their work as cheaply as possible, with the least outlay of capital, and selling their crops at prevailing high prices.
William L. Sharkey, former Chief Justice of the State, was appointed Provisional Governor, June 15, 1865, and the state held a constitutional convention the same year, the first to be held in the South under the Johnson plan. The Governor complained that there was "an unprecedented amount of lawlessness in the state." The convention consisted of 100 delegates, most of them representing former Whigs, largely opposed to the secession of 1861. This convention recognized slavery as abolished, but did not wish to assume responsibility "for whatever honor there may be in abolishing it." An ordinance, therefore, was passed declaring that slavery had been abolished by the United States, and that hereafter it should not exist in the state. Further concessions to the Negro were fought. The Negroes of the state met October 7
Johnson pointed out that such a grant "would completely disarm the adversary," the Radical Republicans in Congress. The suggestion did not "receive any attention whatever" from the convention. "It is highly probable that the unanimous sentiment of the convention was against the idea of political rights for the Negro in any form." But a whole arsenal of reasons against enfranchisement was already prepared. Most of them started from the assumption of a general Negro franchise, and consequent "Negro domination"; the intelligent freedman was considered but "a drop in the bucket."
It was argued that 'this is a white man's government,' and that in the sight of God and the light of reason a Negro suffrage was impossible.1
The real fight in the convention was on the subsidiary question as to whether Negro testimony would be allowed in court, and it was on this question that the campaign for electing a Governor and legislature turned. It was remarkable that throughout the South, far from envisaging Negro suffrage for a moment, the states fought first to see how few civil rights must be granted Negroes; and this gradually boiled down to the momentous question as to whether a Negro could be allowed to testify against a white man in court.
The election took place October 2, 1865, and Humphreys, a general in the Confederate Army, was elected Governor by the party opposed to letting Negroes testify in court, which also secured a majority of the members of the legislature. This defeated Sharkey's candidacy for the United States Senate. Humphreys had received no pardon from the President when elected but received one afterward.
Sharkey notified the President that a Governor and legislature had been elected, but the President made him retain his powers, and warned him that the legislature must accept the Thirteenth Amendment and a code for the protection of Negroes. There was continued friction betwen the military and civil authorities, and the President allowed the writ of habeas corpus to remain suspended. "Anarchy must in any case be prevented." The presence of Negro troops in the state caused bitter complaint. On January 5, 1866, there were 8,784 Negro troops and 338 Negro officers. The President promised to remove them as soon as possible. Sharkey declared that they encouraged the belief among Negroes that lands were going to be distributed among them. By the 20th of May, 1866, all black troops had been mustered out and removed from Mississippi.
The legislature then proceeded to adopt the celebrated Black Code of 1865 (§), and completed the set of laws by reenacting all the penal and criminal laws applying to slaves, "except so far as the mode and manner and trial of punishment has been ordained by law." The North was incensed, and the Chicago Tribune said that the North would convert Mississippi "into a frog pond before they will allow any such laws to touch one foot of soil in which the bones of our soldiers sleep." Back of this sentiment was the conviction that Mississippi, whose political population for Congressional apportionment was 616,040 in 1860, would now be increased to 900,000, and this new power was going to be arrayed against Northern industry, thrift and power.
The whole reactionary course of Mississippi helped the abolition democracy in the North. General Ord (§) assumed command in Mississippi in March, 1867, and on April 15, he began to register the new electorate, colored and white. Among Ord's appointees was Isaiah T. Montgomery, formerly a slave of Jefferson Davis (§). He was made a Justice of the Peace and was perhaps the first Negro in the state to hold public office. Ord appointed a number of civil officials, and was compelled practically to nullify the Black Code by military order. The result of the registration showed the white people that contrary to their firm and happy belief, the Negro was not becoming extinct; 46,636 white voters registered, and 60,137 Negroes. This showed the political situation plainly.
In 1867, the cotton crop was almost a total failure on account of weather conditions and other reasons. Ord issued an order requiring investigation of charges against landholders of driving off freedmen in order to prevent paying back wages. There was a great deal of theft of cotton and horses. Later, the abundant crop of 1868 induced Mississippi to begin to believe in free labor.
At Christmas, 1867, there had been widespread rumor of a Negro insurrection due to the idea that land was going to be distributed among them. Humphreys, then Governor, issued a proclamation reciting the apprehensions of combinations or conspiracies formed among the blacks to seize the lands, unless Congress should arrange to plan a distribution by January 1. Ord told General Gillem, commander in the sub-district of Mississippi, that Congress was not going to seize the lands of planters, but that the Governor had already plenty of land in Mississippi for freedmen and that they could settle on it when they chose to do so.
The election was set for the first Tuesday in November, 1867. Negroes were given representation among the election officials; this brought bitter protest.
We hoped this shameful humiliation would be spared our people,at least until the freedmen of Mississippi decide whether they will submit to Negro equality at the ballot box or elsewhere. General Ord has heretofore exhibited a wisdom in his administration which has been highly approved by the people, but we doubt not the lovers of peace throughout the country will condemn the order as injudicious, if not insulting, to that race whom God has created superior to the black man, and whom no monarch can make his equal. The general commanding cannot surely have forgotten that the Negro has no political rights conferred on him by the state of Mississippi, although he is given the privilege by a corrupt and fragmentary Congress to cast a ballot in the coming farce dignified by the name of election.2
White Mississippi fought Reconstruction tenaciously at every step. The legislature stubbornly refused to adopt the Thirteenth Amendment, declaring that they had already abolished slavery and that they would not consent to the second section, which gave Congress the right to enforce freedom.
"Shall Mississippi ratify the Thirteenth Amendment? (§)" asked the Vicksburg Herald on November 9. "We answer, no, ten thousand times, no."3
Then came the question as to who might register and who was to decide on the eligibility of a former Confederate. The Commanding General, in accordance with Johnson's instructions, declared that the Board of Registrars had no power; he was overruled by General Grant and by the Act of Congress of July 19.
Immediately, Mississippi tried to bring the matter before the Supreme Court by seeking to enjoin President Johnson from enforcing the Reconstruction Acts. The Supreme Court refused to entertain the case on the ground that it would interfere with a coordinate branch of the government in the performance of its duties. Thereupon, another action was brought by the State of Georgia, which tried to enjoin the Secretary of War, but the court held that it was without jurisdiction. Finally, the celebrated case Ex parte McCardle was started on appeal from a military decision at Vicksburg, but Congress forestalled the case by depriving the court of jurisdiction in this particular case and others of similar character.
There had been a plan for the white people to refrain from voting in 1867, a plan widespread through the other Southern states. The idea was that by refraining from taking any part in this convention, the whole thing might go by default and Reconstruction fail. But that seemed to many too much of a risk, and in its place there came a movement on the part of some of the planters to acquiesce in the situation, and to organize and plan the control of the Negro vote. In other words, certain leaders, like the editor of the Jackson Clarion,
This was no wild scheme. The Negroes were used to subordination to the great planters. If the planters did not form an alliance with the Negroes, the planters would be threatened by the pretensions of the poor whites and possible leadership from Northern white men, ex-soldiers and investors, who were largely represented in the state. It was a matter to consider carefully; in the end Mississippi went further along this line than any other Southern state, and found it easier to do this because of the compulsion and intimidation that could be exercised over the Negro vote on the great plantations of the Black Belt.
The so-called "Black and Tan" convention met at Jackson, January 9, 1868. It was the first political organization in Mississippi with colored representatives. There were in all one hundred delegates, of whom 17 were colored, although 32 counties had Negro majorities. There were 29 native white Republicans, and 20 or more Northern Republicans. This was interesting and characteristic. It showed in the first place that the Negroes were not even trying, much less succeeding in any effort to use their numerical preponderance in order to put themselves in political power. Under strong economic pressure, the Negro voter designated white men to represent him. The large majority of the members of this convention were elected by black voters.
Seven or eight of the colored delegates were ministers. Four of the Northern Republicans had lived in the South before the war, and two had served in the Confederate Army. It characterizes the times to know that five of the members afterward met violent deaths. Members were paid $10 a day in depreciated scrip worth 65¢-70¢ on a dollar, making their pay about equal to the convention of 1865.
During the organization of the convention, it was moved that the word "colored" be added to the name of each Negro delegate. Thereupon, the Reverend James Lynch (§), a colored man, afterward Secretary of State, moved to amend it so that the color of each delegate's hair should be added also.
There was here as in South Carolina the same charge against this convention and against succeeding legislatures, that they did not sufficiently represent wealth; they represented poverty; and the majority
In the convention, the colored people clung to the idea that the government intended to divide the land among them. One of the first acts of the convention was to appoint a committee of five to report what legislation was needed to afford relief and protection to the state and its citizens. This committee reported early in February, and found an alarming amount of destitution among the laboring class. They thought that the number of the destitute was at least 30,000, and perhaps was 40,000. There was distress and suffering, which in some cases bordered on actual starvation.
The Commanding General, who was at the time Gillam of Tennessee, sided with the planting interests, refused to cooperate with the convention in this matter, and declared that the demand for labor exceeded the supply. In other words, labor must work for food or starve. It was reported that the Negroes were still expecting the distribution of land. Suspension of taxes imposed upon freedmen prior to January 1, 1868, was demanded, and the repudiation of all debts, contracts and judgments incurred or made prior to April 28, 1865. The Commanding General was requested to issue an order "directing the restoration of property alleged to have been unlawfully taken from colored persons on the grounds that property accumulated by them in a state of slavery belonged to their masters." This the General declined to do.
The Commanding General was again requested, in a report signed by three colored members, to furnish from the public funds means to return slaves sold into Mississippi to their former homes, and Congress was asked to set aside, through the Freedmen's Bureau (§), one-half of the cotton tax collected in the state. They asked the Governor of the state to let Negroes share in the donations sent him for the relief of the destitute; but the Governor refused, saying that it was a private gift.
After this preliminary discussion, which was afterward criticized as beside the point, when in fact it was the main point, the convention turned toward making a new Constitution, as they had refused to adopt the old. They framed a Constitution under which Mississippi lived for twenty-two years. It did away with property qualifications for office or for suffrage; it forbade slavery; it provided for a mixed public school system; it forbade race distinctions in the possession and inheritance of property; it prohibited the abridgment of civil rights in travel;
A minority tried to disfranchise the mass of ignorant Negroes, and there was considerable quarreling and some fighting. Universal suffrage was adopted by a large majority, and on account of that, 12 of the white delegates resigned. Other ordinances forbade property qualification for office, or educational qualification for suffrage.
The civil government under Reconstruction increased the powers of the Governor and made a more elaborate governmental organization and function for the state. It provided for a Lieutenant-Governor, a State Superintendent of Education, and numerous other officials. Some of the counties were consolidated to form larger legislative districts. Evidently, the success of the planters in controlling the Negro vote alarmed the carpetbaggers (§) and the poor whites, and they determined to suppress the ring-leaders of the rebellion far more drastically than was required by the Reconstruction Acts.
The convention consequently determined to deny the right to vote and hold office to practically all whites who had anything to do with the Rebellion, and thus the proposed Constitution disfranchised perhaps 20,000 or more of the leading white citizens of the state. This has been represented as petty jealousy and desire for vengeance on the part of the carpetbaggers. It was more than this. It was an attempt to end the oligarchy of landlords who still advocated slavery and the rule of wealth.
After sitting 115 days, the Convention adjourned and submitted the Constitution to the people. The proceedings in this convention had undoubtedly been dominated by the wishes of the Northern men and the poor whites, with the support of the Negroes. But instead of cementing the alliance, the Negroes were ignored, and when preparations were made for the campaign, were given little recognition. The chief evidence of this was failure to nominate Negroes for office; the real policy beneath this was ignoring the plight of Negro labor, and making the Republican Party chiefly the mouthpiece of the new Northern capital. The opposition organized as the Democratic White Men's Party of Mississippi and declared that the Republicans were trying to degrade the Caucasian race. The provision for a mixed school system particularly came in for widespread criticism.
Meantime, Humphreys was removed as Governor on account of opposition to the Reconstruction Acts, and General Adelbert Ames appointed Acting Governor (§). Humphreys refused to give up, and was removed by the soldiers. But reaction was not beaten. The vote of the Black Belt was cast largely under the dictation of the land-holders and hirers of black labor. The result of the election was a surprise. Fifty-six
A committee of five from the Convention announced that the election had been carried by fraud and intimidation, accompanied by social proscription and threats to discharge laborers from employment. The Republicans held meetings in various counties, declaring that the late election had been the work of terrorism and fraud.
On the other hand, the result of the election was to show all parties that a more sincere attempt to recognize the Negro and enable him to vote had to be made. Negroes could not be ignored. Their right to vote meant something. If they were intimidated and coerced by force and economic means, the planters would soon be back in power. Moreover, even in this election, certain leading Negroes, like John R. Lynch, had deliberately voted with the planters, and an alliance of planters and Negroes was not impossible. It would have been an alliance based partly on labor control and partly on understandings consummated between black labor leaders and white land-holders. Working out from the old slavery, it might have gradually negotiated an industrial emancipation for the intelligent blacks, while using the solid black vote to keep white labor and Northern capital subordinate. One group of Negroes recommended, therefore, another constitutional convention. They said they wished to cultivate kindly relations with their white friends, and declared that they would support capable and honorable men, even if they were former Confederates.
The 40th Congress adjourned with the question of Mississippi unsettled. Finally, in April, 1869, a bill was agreed upon which directed that Mississippi was to be admitted when she adopted the Fifteenth Amendment (§), and that the President was authorized to submit the Constitution as a whole and also the same Constitution with its provisions disfranchising the bulk of Confederates left out. Gillam was removed, and General Ames, who had been acting Civil Governor, was made Provisional Governor of the state. He reported that certain men, backed by public opinion, were committing murders and outrages. Under direction of Congress, Ames removed a large number of officers, and made appointments of state and local officers, including several Negroes. Among other things, he declared freedmen to be competent jurors. He said of his work at this time:
I found when I was Military Governor of Mississippi, that a black code existed there; that Negroes had no rights, and that they were not permitted to exercise the rights of citizenship. I had given them the protection they were entitled to under the laws, and I believed I could render them great service. I felt that I had a mission to performin their interest, and I hesitatingly consented to represent them and unite my fortune with theirs.4
Ames thus made a counter bid for Negro support, reversing the indifferent stand of the Mississippi Republicans. In July, President Grant issued a proclamation ordering the Constitution to be submitted for ratification November 30. The Radical Republicans held their convention July 2 and attempted a platform of several resolutions. These resolutions declared: "In favor of an impartial and economic administration of the government; the unrestricted right of speech to all men at all times and places; unrestrained freedom of the ballot; a system of free schools; a reform of the 'iniquitous and unequal' system of taxation and assessments which discriminated against labor; declared that all men without regard to race, color or previous condition of servitude were equal before the law; recommended removal of political disabilities as soon as the 'spirit of toleration now dawning upon the state' should be so firmly established as to justify Congress in taking such action; declared in favor of universal amnesty, universal suffrage, and encouragement of immigration."5
Ex-Governor Brown and the Conservatives were in favor of ratifying the Constitution without the proscriptive provisions and of accepting the Fifteenth Amendment. They secured Judge Dent, a brother-in-law of Grant, as their candidate, thinking in that way to secure the good will of Grant: but Grant repudiated the party that nominated Dent. The Dent party nominated Thomas Sinclair, a colored man, for Secretary of State. The Republicans nominated General J. L. Alcorn for Governor, and the Reverend James Lynch, a mulatto preacher, for Secretary of State.
The whole election showed the increasing political importance of the Negroes, and this undoubtedly explains the increased activity of the Ku Klux Klan in 1869. There were some riots in three or four counties. The Constitution was ratified almost unanimously, but the proscriptive sections disfranchising members of the Secession Convention and other active Confederates were defeated. The provision forbidding the loan of state funds was ratified.
The first Reconstruction legislature met at Jackson, January 11, 1870. The legislature elected in 1868 had never been convened because of the defeat of the Constitution. Negro membership in the new legislature was larger than in the convention. There were forty colored members, some of whom had been slaves before the war; but among them were some "very intelligent" men. Particularly, there was considerable representation of ministers. In the Senate, there were five colored members.
Many of the wealthiest counties were represented by ex-slaves. Yet
Total membership, one hundred and fifteen; Republicans, sixty-six; Democrats, forty-nine; colored members, thirty-eight; white members, seventy-seven; white majority, thirty-nine.
Of the sixty-six Republicans, thirty-eight were colored men and twenty-eight, white. There was a slight increase in the colored membership as a result of the election of 1873, but the colored men never at any time had control of the State Government, nor of any branch or department thereof, nor even that of any county or municipality. Out of seventy-two counties in the State at that time, electing on an average twenty-eight officers to a county, it is safe to assert that not over five out of one hundred of such officers were colored men. The State, district, county and municipal governments were not only in control of white men, but white men who were to the manor born, or who were known as old citizens of the state, those who had lived in the state many years before the War of the Rebellion. There was, therefore, never a time when that class of white men, known as Carpetbaggers, had absolute control of state government, or that of any district, county or municipality, or any branch or department thereof. There was never, therefore, any ground for the alleged apprehension of Negro domination as a result of a free, fair, and honest election in any one of the Southern or Reconstructed States.6
At the same time, the Negroes were laborers, and if at any time the white and black labor vote united, property and privilege in Mississippi were bound to suffer. And on the other hand, if property controlled black labor, white labor would be as helpless as before the war. These two fears explain Reconstruction in Mississippi.
Revels came from North Carolina and was educated in Indiana; he was a minister in Baltimore at the opening of the war, and there helped to organize two colored regiments. He came South with the Freedmen's Bureau, and was surprised when selected to represent the state in the Senate. He was a man of intelligence, but the Republican United States debated three days on his credentials. Finally, after one of Sumner's ablest speeches, he was admitted. Even after that, Philadelphia refused the use of her Academy of Music for a meeting at which he was to speak.
Ames now turned over the government to Alcorn and went to the Senate. Alcorn took a firm and advanced stand. In his inaugural speech, he spoke of his attachment for Mississippi. He declared that it was the duty of the government to protect all its citizens, white and black, before the ballot box, the jury box and public office, and to give industrial opportunity to the honest and competent without discrimination of color. He said :
In the face of memories that might have separated them from me, as the wronged from the wronger, they offered me their confidence, offered me the guardianship of their new and precious hopes, with a trustfulness whose very mention stirs my nerves with emotion. In response to that touching radiance, the most profound anxiety with which I enter my office as Governor of this state is that of making the colored man the equal before the law of every other man – the equal, not in dead letter, but in living fact." He had a word to say for the poor whites. "Thousands of our worthy white friends have ever remained to a great extent strangers to the helping hand of the state.7
Unfortunately, Alcorn instead of staying and finishing this job thus well outlined, had the universal Southern ambition of the day to go to the United States Senate. He was, therefore, in office only a little over a year, when he went to Washington to succeed Revels. The legislature, meantime, went to work to set up the government.
The part which the Negro played in this Reconstruction was as extraordinary as it was unexpected. There were far fewer Negroes of education and ability in Mississippi than in South Carolina or Louisiana. But there were a few, perhaps a bare half-dozen, who gave universal and epoch-making service.
The new administration had an important and difficult task before it. A State Government had to be organized from top to bottom; a new judiciary had to be inaugurated, – consisting of three Justices of the State Supreme Court, fifteen Judges of the Circuit Court, and twenty Chancery Court judges, – who had all to be appointed by the Governor, with the consent of the Senate; and, in addition, a new public school system had to be established. There was not a public school building anywhere in the state, except in a few of the larger towns, and they, with possibly a few exceptions, were greatly in need of repairs. To erect the necessary school-houses and to reconstruct and repair those already in existence so as to afford educational facilities for both races was by no means an easy task. It necessitated a very large outlay of cash in the beginning, which resulted in a material increase in the rate of taxation for the time being, but the Constitution called for the establishment of the system, and of course the work had to be done. It was not only done, but it was done creditably and as economically as possible, considering the conditions at that time. That system, though slightly changed, still stands, – a creditable monument to the first Republican state administration that was organized in the State of Mississippi under the Reconstruction Acts of Congress.
It was also necessary to reorganize, reconstruct and, in many instances, rebuild some of the penal and charitable institutions of the State. A new code of laws also had to be adopted to take the place of the old code and thus wipe out the black laws that had been passed by what was known as the Johnson Legislature, and in addition, bring about other changes so as to make the laws and statutes of the state conform with the new order of things. This was no easy task, in view of the fact that a heavy increase in the rate of taxation was thus made necessary for the time being at least. That this important task was splendidly, creditably, and economically done no fair-minded person who is familiar with the facts will question or dispute.
That the state never had before, and has never since had, a finer judiciary than that which was organized under the administration of Governor Alcorn and which continued under the administration of Governor Ames is an indisputable and incontrovertible fact.8
When the Alcorn administration took charge of the state government, the war had just come to a close. Everything was in a prostrate condition. There had been great depreciation in the value of real and personal property. The credit of the state was not very good. The rate of interest for borrowed money was high. To materially increase the bonded debt of the State was not deemed wise, yet somehad to be raised in that way. To raise the balance a higher rate of taxation had to be imposed, since the assessed valuation of the taxable property was so low.9
The legislature of 1871 was in session about six months, and passed 325 acts and resolutions. The increase of citizenship, and the revolution through which the state had passed, called without doubt for more laws. The expenses of the legislative department were large and the session long. Yet it can hardly be said, considering the work done and the depreciated value of currency, that it was an extravagant assembly.10
The legislature of 1872 had John R. Lynch, a Negro, as Speaker of the House. There were 28 white and 38 colored Republicans and 49 Democrats, and it took a trip of Senator Alcorn from Washington to induce enough white Republicans to support Lynch in order to elect him. At the close of the session, however, Lynch was presented with a gold watch and chain. On motion of a prominent white Democrat, a resolution was adopted thanking him "for his dignity, impartiality and courtesy as a presiding officer." The Clarion declared: "His bearing in office had been so proper, and his rulings in such marked contrast to the former conduct of the ignoble whites of his party, who had been aspiring to be leaders of the blacks, that the Conservatives cheerfully joined in the testimonial."11
Civil rights measures constituted a considerable part of the legislation between 1868 and 1876. In his inaugural address, Governor Alcorn "asserted positively that so long as he was governor, all citizens, without respect to color or nativity, should be shielded by the law as with a panoply."12
In 1870, "all laws relative to free Negroes, slaves and mulattoes, as found in the Code of 1857 and the laws constituting the so-called Black Codes," were declared to be forever repealed. It was declared to be the true intent and meaning of the legislature to remove from the records of the state all laws "which in any manner recognized any natural difference or distinction between citizens and inhabitants of the state."13
The legislature elected in 1873 had 37 members of the Senate, of whom nine were colored, and nine white carpetbaggers. In the House over 115 members, of whom 55 were colored and 60 white, including 15 carpetbaggers. This election went further than any toward a fusion of planters and Negroes, and this was only prevented by the rivalry of Alcorn and Ames.
When Alcorn went to the Senate, he was succeeded by a carpetbagger, R. C. Powers. Finally in 1873, Ames, who had been in the United States Senate, was elected Governor over Alcorn, who was
This greatly disappointed Alcorn, who wished to remain in the Senate, and who, therefore, refused to escort Bruce to take the oath. Bruce had been County Assessor, Parish and Tax Collector in Bolivar County, one of the wealthiest counties in the state.14
Davis, the new Lieutenant-Governor, had made a creditable record as member of the legislature, but he was not a strong man. Hill was young, active and aggressive, and above the average colored man in intelligence. Cardozo was capable but not well-known.15
As to the colored men in the Legislature of 1873, Garner says:
Relative to the course of the colored members in this legislature, a prominent Democrat writes me as follows: 'In my opinion, if they had all been native Southern Negroes, there would have been little cause of complaint. They often wanted to vote with Democrats on non-political questions, but could not resist the party lash. The majority of whites in both parties exhibit the same weakness.16
The real meaning of this criticism was that the Negroes wanted to cooperate with the planters, but knew that the planters would disfranchise them at the first opportunity, and only welcomed their alliance now for economic reasons. On the other hand, the Republicans were torn with factions, jealousies and suspicions, and the Negroes did not know how far they could be trusted.
With a few exceptions, the colored members took little part in the work of legislation, although some of the principal chairmanships were held by them. There were few educated men among them, and they watched only for efforts to abridge their privileges as voters and citizens. On the other hand, there were no charges of venality or bribery, and their efforts to learn were intense. They were too willing to take advice and follow leadership, once their confidence had been obtained. The number of prominent planters in Mississippi who entered the Republican party to lead the Negroes was unusually large as compared with other states.
Ames immediately began a program of retrenchment in expenditures, and recommended many reforms. Taxes had been increased from one mill on the dollar in 1869 to fourteen in 1874. The credit of the state was still impaired. He recommended a cut of 25% in appropriations, and especially curtailing the bill for public printing. "The recommendations," says Garner, "do credit to the Governor who
There were the usual charges of extravagance against the Reconstruction government.
It should, however, be said that if the testimony of Governor Ames may be followed relative to the expenses of the state government during the two years in which he was at its head, his was the most economical administration since 1856, with the exception of two years, 1861 and 1869.17
It was charged that the public debt of Mississippi increased from almost nothing to $20,000,000 during the Reconstruction regime, but this was easily disproved by ex-Governor Ames, who had the figures; and the committee of Democratic legislators that sought to impeach him had to acknowledge the truth of what he said.
Thus it will be seen that the actual indebtedness of the state is but little over a half million dollars, and that during the two years of Governor Ames' administration, the state debt had been reduced from $821,292.82 on January first, 1874, to $520,138.33, on January first, 1876; or a reduction of more than three hundred thousand dollars in two years – upwards of one-third of the state debt wiped out in that time. Not only has the debt been reduced as above, but the rate of taxation for general purposes has been reduced from seven mills in 1873 to four mills in 1875.18
It should also be said by way of explanation, that the work of restoration which the government was obliged to undertake, made increased expenses necessary. During the period of the war, and for several years thereafter, public buildings and state institutions were permitted to fall into decay. The state house and grounds, the executive mansion, the penitentiary, the insane asylum, and the buildings for the blind, deaf and dumb, were in a dilapidated condition, and had to be extended and repaired. A new building for the blind was purchased and fitted up. The Reconstructionists established a public school system and spent money to maintain and support it, perhaps too freely, in view of the impoverishment of the people. When they took hold, warrants were worth but sixty or seventy cents on the dollar, a fact which made the price of building materials used in the work of construction correspondingly higher.19
Garner admits there were no great railroad swindles and no charge of excessive debt. The only charge which is perhaps true was that the number of offices and agencies was needlessly increased.
The one center of undoubted graft under Ames was the public printing contracts, which increased from $8,675 a year, 1867-1868, to sums varying from $50,000 to $127,000 in 1870-1875. This seems, however,
Rhodes declares that few Negroes were competent to perform their duties and that one who was sheriff of DeSoto County for four years could neither read nor write and farmed out his office to a white deputy for a share of the revenue. John R. Lynch proves that this statement is absolutely false. The Reverend J. J. Evans, a colored Baptist minister and a Union soldier, who held that position, gave entire satisfaction; he left office with a spotless record, accounted for every cent of the funds, and he had, as he wrote, a letter from Evans before him, which showed that Evans could read and write.
Mr. Lynch goes on to say that of the seventy-two counties of the state, not more than twelve ever had colored sheriffs, and that he knew ten of these; and that "in point of intelligence, capacity and honesty, the colored sheriffs would have favorably compared with the whites." When one considers that over one-half of the electors had been slaves, now for the first time given a voice in government, Reconstruction in Mississippi certainly seems like a success.
The Negro leaders who came to the front were in most cases admirable and honest men; and only a few were corrupt. The advance of the masses of the people was shown in the increase of marriage licenses. In 1865, licenses were issued to whites, 2,708, and to blacks, 564, while in 1870, 2,204 were issued to whites, and 3,427 to blacks. In those two years, churches built increased from 105 to 283.
A curious feud between the Governor and his colored Lieutenant-Governor began in the summer of 1874, when Governor Ames went North on his vacation. The Lieutenant-Governor discharged certain appointees, and appointed several judges. Governor Ames, upon returning, revoked these appointees. Lieutenant-Governor Davis also issued a large number of pardons to persons in jail.
Singularly enough, while one of the accusations in the attempted impeachment of Ames was his dismissal of Davis' judicial appointees, Davis was also removed from office in 1876. It was alleged that he had accepted a bribe for granting a pardon. On the other hand, the Governor's action in revoking Davis' appointments was called by this legislature of 1876 "willful, corrupt and unlawful."
It was the especial grievance of the whites that officials and voters were not taxpayers, and that a comparatively small number of the colored voters owned real estate. The most that was charged was that the number of offices and agencies with high salaries was needlessly multiplied. The break came, however, between labor and capital inside the Democratic party.
Of course a stubborn and bitter fight for control of the Democraticorganization was now on between the antagonistic and conflicting elements among the whites. It was to be a desperate struggle between former aristocrats, on one side, and what was known as 'poor whites' on the other. While the aristocrats had always been the weaker in point of numbers, they had been the stronger in point of wealth, intelligence, ability, skill and experience. As a result of their wide experience, and able and skillful management, the aristocrats were successful in the preliminary struggles, as illustrated in the persons of Stephens, Gordon, Brown and Hill, of Georgia; Daniels and Lee, of Virginia; Hampton and Butler of South Carolina; Lamar and Walthall of Mississippi, and Garland, of Arkansas. But in the course of time and in the natural order of things the poor whites were bound to win. All that was needed was a few years' tutelage, and a few daring and unscrupulous leaders to prey upon their ignorance and magnify their vanity, in order to bring them to a realization of the fact that their former political masters were now completely at their mercy, and subject to their will.20
After the Presidential election of 1872, Southern white men were not only coming into the Republican party in large numbers, but the liberal and progressive element of the democracy was in the ascendency in that organization. That element, therefore, shaped the policy and declared the principles for which that organization stood. This meant the acceptance by all political parties of what was regarded as the settled policy of the National Government. In proof of this assertion, a quotation from a political editorial which appeared about that time in the Jackson, Mississippi, Clarion, – the organ of the Democratic Party, – will not be out of place. In speaking of the colored people and their attitude towards the white, that able and influential paper said:
'While they [the colored people] have been naturally tenacious of their newly acquired privileges, their general conduct will bear them witness that they have shown consideration for the feelings of the whites. The race line in politics would not have been drawn if opposition had not been made to their enjoyment of equal privileges in the government, and under the laws after they were emancipated.'
In other words, the colored people had manifested no disposition to rule or dominate the whites, and the only Color Line which had existed, grew out of the unwise policy which had previously been pursued by the Democratic Party in its efforts to prevent the enjoyment by the newly-emancipated race of the rights and privileges to which they were entitled, under the Constitution and laws of the country. But after the state and congressional elections of 1874, the situation was materially changed. The liberal and conservative elementof the democracy was relegated to the rear and the radical element came to the front and assumed charge.21
Here is a record which is not bad. There was no violent revolution in Mississippi. There was no attack upon civilization and culture. There was increased expense, partly for legitimate objects, partly, without doubt, by injudicious and careless expenditure; possibly in some cases by corrupt expenditure.
In the fall of 1875 just at the time when the whole state rang with assertions of Radical misrule, taxation and robbery, the Author traveled through Mississippi, east and west, north and south, traveled quietly and was personally unknown. At every town and village, at every station on the railroads and every rural neighborhood in the country, he heard Governor Ames and the Republican Party denounced for oppressions, robberies and dishonesty as proved by the fearful rate of taxation. He asked what was the per cent of taxes on the dollar, but never got an answer. One citizen replied: 'Our taxes are enormous.' Another said: 'They are ruinous.' Another: 'They amount to confiscation.' Such were the only replies given. Every form of words that could be used to express excessive taxation was employed. 'Awful,' 'Fearful,' 'Intolerable,' 'Monstrous,' 'Unheard of,' 'Incredible,' but no man answered the question. For the true answer would have been: 'The average taxation since Reconstruction has been a little less than nine mills on the dollar, for all purposes. Of this average of less than nine mills on the dollar almost one-fifth was for public schools so that the total annual taxation for all other purposes has been a little over seven mills on the dollar.' This was the true answer, but every White Leaguer knew better than to answer the question, for one of the originators of that order wrote confidentially to an associate that they must appeal to the world 'as a wretched, downtrodden and impoverished people.'22
On the whole, one cannot escape the impression that what the whites in Mississippi feared was that the experiment of Negro suffrage might succeed. At any rate, they began a revolution known as the "Mississippi plan." Here was no labor dictatorship or dream of one. White labor took up arms to subdue black labor and to make it helpless economically and politically through the power of property.
Senator Revels, of Mississippi, said in the 41st Congress:
Mr. President, I maintain that the past record of my race is a true index of the feelings which today animate them. They bear toward their former masters no revengeful thoughts, no hatred, no animosities. They aim not to elevate themselves by sacrificing one single interest of their white fellow citizens. They ask but the rights which are theirs by God's universal law, and which are the natural outgrowth,the logical sequence of the condition in which the legislative enactments of this nation have placed them. They appeal to you and to me to see that they receive that protection which alone will enable them to pursue their daily avocations with success and enjoy the liberties of citizenship on the same footing with their white neighbors and friends.23
John R. Lynch said, when he was counted out of his election:
You certainly cannot expect them [the Negroes] to resort to mob law and brute force, or to use what may be milder language, inaugurate a revolution. My opinion is that revolution is not the remedy to be applied in such cases. Our system of government is supposed to be one of law and order, resting upon the consent of the governed, as expressed through the peaceful medium of the ballot. In all localities where the local public sentiment is so dishonest, so corrupt, and so demoralized, as to tolerate the commission of election frauds, and shield the perpetrators from justice, such people must be made to understand that there is patriotism enough in this country and sufficient love of justice and fair play in the hearts of the American people to prevent any party from gaining the ascendency in the government that relies upon a fraudulent ballot and a false return as the chief source of its support.
The impartial historian will record the fact that the colored people of the South have contended for their rights with a bravery and a gallantry that is worthy of the highest commendation. Being, unfortunately, in dependent circumstances with the preponderance of the wealth and intelligence against them in some localities, yet they have bravely refused to surrender their honest convictions, even upon the altar of their personal necessities.24
With riot, fraud, boycott and intimidation, Negro rule was overthrown. William L. Hemingway was nominated against Captain George M. Buchanan, an able and well-qualified man. In an honest election, Buchanan would have been given the office, but Hemingway was declared elected. However, he had been in office only a brief time, when the discovery was made that he was a defaulter to the amount of $315,612.19. Thus "Reform" began.25
In the back districts of Mississippi, the world moved on. In May, 1874, at Burleigh a Southern lady writes:
… Last Wednesday, the Bishop, assisted by Mr. Douglass and Heber Crabe, ordained a Mr. Jackson, a Negro as black as any on this land, a deacon in the church. The ceremony was very interesting, and Mr. Jackson preached in the afternoon to as enlightened an audience as ever goes to our church. His sermon was admirable and admirably delivered. I have heard but few who read so well, and fewerwho have so good a manner. He is a well-educated man, having a considerable knowledge of Latin, Greek and Hebrew. He has been living in one of the rectory houses for two years, and is a hard student under Mr. Douglass, and is without reproach.26
Louisiana came into the possession of the United States because Toussaint L'Ouverture and the blacks of Haiti so broke the French colonial power and Napoleon's plans for American empire that he practically gave away French America to the United States and turned his whole attention to Europe.
At the first census after the admission of the state, 1810, there were 34,000 whites and the same number of black slaves, and in addition to this, 7,585 free Negroes. In 1820, when Louisiana entered the Union, the white and black population were about equal, both being under 80,000. In 1860, there were 350,373 Negroes and 357,456 whites. By 1870, the colored population exceeded the whites by nearly 2,000. The great influx came between 1840 and 1860.
Among the Negro population, 18,647 in 1860 were free, and represented mainly descendants of the free Negroes in the territory at the time of the annexation. They were many of them rich and educated, and they formed a most interesting element in the population.
The migration to Louisiana after 1840 was of a distinctly lower grade than before – exploiters of commercial slavery, slave traders and smugglers, gamblers and desperadoes. They made the situation for free Negroes much more difficult. Rich colored folk, even those who were well known, were often arrested and mistreated.
In 1857, Wickliffe "informed the Legislature that the immigration of free Negroes from other states of the Union into Louisiana had been steadily increasing for years; that it was a source of great evil, and demanded legislative action. Public policy dictates, the interest of the people requires, that immediate steps should be taken at this time to remove all free Negroes who are now in the State, when such removal can be effected without violation of law. Their example and associations have a most pernicious effect upon our slave population."
As a result, in 1858, Emile Desdunes acted as agent for emigration to Haiti, then under the rule of Soulouque. Desdunes worked energetically to arrange for the deportation of a large number of colored Louisianians. Unfortunately, a revolution in Haiti stopped the project.
The ante-bellum society of Louisiana, and particularly of New Orleans, was brilliant and lawless; dueling, gambling and murder were widespread, and there were notorious outbreaks in political life, like
Governor Hebart said in 1856 that the riot of 1855, if repeated, would "sink us to the level of the anarchical governments of Spanish America; that before the occurrence of those great public crimes, the hideous enormity of which he could not describe, and which were committed with impunity in mid-daylight and in the presence of hundreds of persons, no one could have admitted even the possibility that a bloodthirsty mob could have contemplated to overawe any portion of the people of this state in the exercise of their most valuable rights; but that which would then have been denied, even as a possibility, is now an historical fact."27
The following year, Governor Wickliffe added:
It is well-known that at the last two general elections many of the streets and approaches to the polls were completely in the hands of organized ruffians, who committed acts of violence on multitudes of our naturalized fellow-citizens, who dared venture to exercise the rights of suffrage. Thus nearly one-third of the registered voters of New Orleans have been deterred from exercising their highest and most sacred prerogative. The suppression of such elections is an open and palpable fraud on the people, and I recommend you to adopt such measures as shall effectually prevent the true will of the majority from being totally silenced.
The New Orleans Delta said, May 6, 1860:
For seven years the world knows that this city, in all its departments, Judicial, Legislative, and Executive, has been at the absolute disposal of the most godless, brutal, ignorant and ruthless ruffianism the world has ever heard of since the days of the great Roman conspirator. By means of a secret organization, emanating from that fecund source of political infamy, New England, and named Know-Nothingism or Sammyism from boasted exclusive devotion of the fraternity to the United States, our city, far from being the abode of decency, of liberality, generosity, and justice, is a sanctum for crime. The ministers of the law, nominees of blood-stained, vulgar, ribald caballeros and licensed murderers, shed innocent blood on the most public thoroughfares with impunity; witnesses of the most atrocious crimes are either spirited away, bought off, or intimidated from testifying; perjured associates are retained to prove alibis, and ready bail is always procurable for the immediate use of those whom it is not immediately prudent to enlarge otherwise. The electoral system is a farce and fraud; the knife, the sling-shot, the brass knuckles determining,while the shame is being enacted, who shall occupy and administer the offices of the municipality and the Commonwealth."
Governor Wells said in 1866:
It is within the knowledge of all citizens resident here before the War, that for years preceding the Rebellion, elections in the Parish of Orleans were a cruel mockery of free government. Bands of organized desperadoes, immediately preceding and during an election, committed every species of outrage upon peaceful and unoffending citizens, to intimidate them from the exercise of the inestimable privilege of free men, the elective franchise. A registry of 14,000 names, in the days alluded to, could scarcely furnish one-fourth of that number of legal votes at the polls, although six or seven thousand votes were usually returned as cast.28
Even the system of slavery in Louisiana differed from the southern South, and many slaveholders frankly made it their policy to work the slaves to death and buy new ones instead of taking care of the old and sick.
Intermixture of races was reduced to a recognized system by the regular importation of handsome colored slave girls for sale from the Border States, and by a carefully regulated system of colored common-law wives. One must add to this, the mulatto free Negro group in most cases descended from white fathers who had taken colored wives and whose children were often educated abroad. The grandchildren became now white, now colored, according to the choice or tint of skin. As a result, to this day it is difficult in Louisiana to draw the line between the races. Not long ago, when a prominent white man of a certain parish was "accused" of Negro blood, the court house, with all its vital records, was burned down that night.
Recently, a small group of colored people in New Orleans, all born since 1880, sat down and compared notes as to people whom they knew personally. They made a list of sixty families of Negro descent, who, in their knowledge and in their time, had gone over to the white race, and whose children had no knowledge of their Negro descent.
The condition of Louisiana after the war was desperate. The Federal Commander said:
The resources of this state are infinitely reduced by the casualties of the war. The commerce, whose innumerable wheels used to vex the turbid current of the Mississippi, has passed away – the result of war. Plantations which used to bloom through your entire land, until the coast of Louisiana was a sort of repetition of the Garden of Eden, are now dismantled and broken down. Trade, commerce, everything, crippled. … You have to make revenues where the taxable property of the state is reduced almost two-thirds. You have to hold the appliancesand surroundings of government, and maintaining and keeping up to a great extent nearly every charity which belongs to the city or state. The levees, on which the life of your country depends, which from local causes cannot be repaired by civil authorities, must be attended to by the United States, and a sum of $160,000 is being laid out now by the United States for the purpose of preventing this delta of the Mississippi from being subject to overflow.29
We have seen in Chapter VII (§) how Banks and Shepley, under Lincoln, had attempted to reconstruct Louisiana in 1864. At the same time, a rival Confederate government at Shreveport recognized the right of all whites to vote; voted $500,000 to pay for slaves lost by death or otherwise, or while impressed for public works of the state; and decreed the death penalty for any slave bearing arms against the Confederate states.
When Hahn was elected to the Senate, Wells became Governor, March 14, 1865. Wells was a native Louisianian, a large planter, and had been an opponent of secession. His ambition was to restore the planters to power and have them recognize the new dispensation. As a result, he was caught between two fires; Sheridan told Stanton that Wells was a political trickster and a dishonest man; while the planters, once they got hands on power, overrode his advice, until he had to take refuge with the radicals.
On April 14, Lincoln was assassinated. President Johnson recognized Wells as Provisional Governor of Louisiana. The Governor at once ordered an election for state and national officers, on the ground that the previous registration of 1864 was fraudulent and that many Negroes were on the list, although Wells refrained from mentioning this fact explicitly. There appeared three political parties : the National Republicans, headed by Durant; the Conservative Union, headed by Wells; and the Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party held a state convention and adopted a platform which declared that Louisiana is "a government of white people, made and to be perpetuated for the exclusive political benefit of the white race, and in accordance with the constant adjudication of the United States Supreme Court, that the people of African descent cannot be considered as citizens of the United States, and that there can in no event nor under any circumstances by any equality between the whites and other races."
The Democratic or Conservative candidates were overwhelmingly elected and the new legislature was composed almost entirely of ex-Confederates. The Republican Party put no candidate in the field. At the first session of the legislature, a resolution was adopted declaring that the Constitution of 1864 was a creation of fraud, violence
The government now proceeded to oppress Negroes and Union men. Thousands were insulted and assaulted. Organized violence was common throughout the state. Negroes were whipped and killed, and no one was punished. Rebel sympathizers were rapidly replacing loyal officials, and the public schools were reconstructed. One hundred and ten of the Northern or loyal teachers were dismissed and their places filled by intolerant Southerners. Union men of business began to give up and move out of the state.
The principal departure of General Hancock, who succeeded Sheridan, from the policy pursued by his predecessors, related to the organization of juries. General Sheridan had issued an order requiring the state authorities to make no distinction as to race or color in the organization of juries. General Hancock superseded this order by one remanding the subject to the state authorities and the civil courts; and in order to avoid the annoyance of frequent applications to him for his intervention in private suits and controversies, he issued an order declaring that "the administration of civil justice appertains to the regular courts."
By decision of the State Supreme Court, there could never be any equality between white and other races. Above all, this legislature passed the Black Codes. Ficklen questions whether all this proposed legislation was actually enacted into law. Certainly, it represented the clear wish of the legislature, and was regarded as law. Afterward, the Reconstruction legislature took especial pains to repeal these enactments.
They were among the worst of the Black Codes, and virtually reenacted slavery. They were supplemented by extraordinary local ordinances like that of the town of Franklin.30
All of these acts of the Legislature and municipal regulations meant the practical reëstablishment of slavery in the State of Louisiana. The acts were passed within the first fifteen days of its first session. This legislation and the various instances of widespread wanton violence and ostracism aroused the Union men of the state and the nation, and they determined to organize for their own protection, and for the protection of the freedmen and the old free Negroes before the War.31
The free Negro group early organized to guide the Negroes. Three colored refugees from San Domingo published and edited an unusually effective organ for the Negroes, called the New Orleans Tribune. One was Dr. J. T. Roudanez, who spent $35,500 to keep this paper going. He was an eminent physician, and his companions were men of intelligence. The paper was published in French and English, from 1864 until sometime in 1869. Most of the time it was published weekly, but it ran as a daily during 1865, and was thus the first Negro daily in America. It attacked the serfdom under Banks; planned for Negro economic cooperation, and opposed the Freedmen's Bureau when it was turned over to Southerners under General Fullerton. It carried on a war against the Johnson legislature, sending copies to every member of Congress, and printing all of the iniquitous labor laws. For a long time its editor was Paul Trevigne, a colored man born in 1825; his father had fought in the War of 1812, and he was well-trained, speaking several languages. At great personal peril and with dauntless courage, he battered his way to Negro freedom.
On January 8, 1865, the Tribune called attention to a convention of colored men of Louisiana, "which will meet tomorrow in this city." It pointed out that "Three principal points, for some time past, have been kept in view, by our leading men, and will unquestionably be brought before the convention. The first is the permanent organization and centralization of our leagues and societies; the second is the foundation upon a solid basis of a Permanent Board, intrusted with the interests of our population; and the third is the particular welfare of the freedmen."
This convention attacked the economic situation directly and with far-sighted prudence. It organized a Bureau of Industry in New Orleans under a superintendent and assistants. It was for the relief of distress, for establishing a Bureau of Information especially for colored soldiers and their relatives, and for buying and selling produce and other necessaries on a cooperative basis. Direct trade with France was planned.
The Tribune, from the first, strongly defended Negro suffrage. January 17, the Tribune said: "At the present time, when our state is entering into a new period of her social career, we must spare no means at our command to bring her under a truly democratic system of labor, glancing at the attempt recently made in Europe to organize a plan of credit for the people, which is worthy of our studies and investigations. We, too, need credit for the laborers; we cannot expect complete and perfect freedom for the working men, as long as they remain the tools of capital, and are deprived of the legitimate product of the sweat of their brow.
We have denied time and again that the right of suffrage was confined – among the whites – to those distinguished by a high degree of civilization. But we assert that the sons and grandsons of the colored men who were recognized French citizens, under the French rule, and whose rights were reserved in the treaty of cession – taken away from them since 1803 – are not savages and uncivilized inhabitants of the wild swamps of Louisiana. We contend that the freedmen, who proved intelligent enough to shed their blood in defense of freedom and the National Flag, are competent to cast their votes into the ballot-box.
April 2, the Tribune said: "The colored man will have to be called to the ballot-box, as he has been called in the ranks. The black man had to fight the battles of Union and Freedom with his musket; he will have to fight them too with the ballot. Loyalty does not dwell in the white population of the South – taken as a mass. But loyalty lives in the hearts of the colored men. Can the United States find friends where they have none or very few? They cannot. But the cause of universal freedom will find friends and defenders in the class of men who are longing for their liberties. …
Louisiana and all the Southern states want an entire renovation of the political element, a renovation of the masses of voters.
This superior understanding places the future into the hands of the Radical party. The game that the 'Free State' party has lost by its incompetency, the Radicals will win by their understanding of the times. They are still in the background; but one day, and one single act of Congress, or a single change of policy in the military ruling of the conquered territory, will bring them into power.
February 22, 1865, the efforts of this group culminated in the formation of a "Freedmen's Aid Association." It was an ambitious cooperative effort, thus described by the Tribune, February 24:
Several plantations were leased to 'gangs' of laborers working for their own account. Seeds, mules, and agricultural implements were distributed among these freedmen – not as a gratuitous gift, but in the character of a loan, leaving to the laborer all his dignity and independence. …
These associations of capital, furnished by small shares to freedmen who possess nothing more than their industry, good faith and courage, are destined not only to become powerful, but they will also enrich the state. They will inaugurate a new regime, and for the first time give a chance to field-laborers to obtain their rightful share in the proceeds of the sweat of their brows. Time will bring up a legislationhave to prepare the ground, under all disadvantages, for this important economical and social reform.
The free Negro group, and the intelligent freedmen, were thus bidding for the economic leadership of the mass of freed slaves, and offering them democratic sharing in the profits. For this role, they had many rivals – the planters, the military commanders and their agents, and the immigrant Northern capitalists.
Of the planters, the Tribune said, March 1:
The planters are no longer needed in the character of masters. But they intend still to be needed as capitalists, and through the necessity of moneyed help, to retain their hold on the unfortunate people they have so long oppressed. It is that hold that every friend of justice and liberty is bound to break. As capital is needed to work the plantations, let the people themselves make up this capital. Our basis for labor must now be put on a democratic footing. There is no more room, in the organization of our society, for an oligarchy of slaveholders, or property holders.
These efforts of the free colored people to lead the freedmen toward economic emancipation soon ran afoul of the military authorities and their plans for using Negro labor. Banks had inaugurated a system of serfdom with schools and many excellent features, but with other provisions which insulted the free Negroes and hindered real emancipation.
Negroes, free and freed, especially objected to the pass system established ostensibly to stop the spread of smallpox, but kept at the demand of the planters in order to hold Negroes on the plantations. The Tribune said, April 30:
The 'smallpox passes' will remain as an instructive feature in the history of abolition in Louisiana. It is one of those marks of servitude which are enforced upon us in view of controlling a population that has been declared free – that has to be let free. It is a deception practiced upon the emancipated slaves, who receive from one hand their liberty, and are deprived by the other hand of one of their most precious privileges – the right of moving at will. It is an outrage upon the old free colored men, who used that right during the darkest and most gloomy years of the slavery régime, and now are deprived of the exercise of their traditional liberties. It is well for the world at large to know how practical liberty is understood in Louisiana.
When in 1865, appeal was made to General Hurlburt for closer cooperation between the Negro leaders and the army, he replied: "If instead of assembling in mass meetings and wasting your time in high sounding resolutions, you would devote yourselves to assisting in the
There has always been a bitterness of feeling among the slaves and the free colored people.
Junius ("not a rich Creole") answered him, March 31:
I am sure it is a well-known fact, and that too, beyond successful controversy, that the old free colored people of this city and state have done and are doing all that is in their power to morally and physically improve the condition of the new freedmen.
Ever since the occupation of this city by the military forces of the United States in April, 1862, the free colored people of this city and state, have night and day been working for and in the interest of the new freedmen. Even under the administration of Major General B. F. Butler, when slavery was recognized by the authorities of the United States government, free public schools were opened under the auspices of the free colored people, and no distinction was made in regard to the former status of the pupils – and numerous other evidences can be produced showing that no sooner was slavery killed and the Black Code destroyed in this state, all who were formerly afraid to do anything in the direction of moral or physical assistance of the former bondsmen, entered into the work vigorously, and have accomplished great good. The work is still going on – increasing from day to day; and more would have been accomplished, but for the poverty of our people, who have been in the midst of war and all its dissolution for over four years – more would have been accomplished but for the 'Policy' of certain intriguers who have ingratiated themselves into our confidence, and have in the end deceived us. …
All that is required by the free colored people of Louisiana is Justice, and without it, they are not free. …
The free people of color own over twenty millions of taxable property acquired honestly under a system of oppression worse than ever existed since the foundation of the world, and but for the 'free labor system' [established by Banks] would now be paying taxes on over double the amount. The Freedmen's Aid Association has now in hand four plantations. They will soon have twenty; every one of these plantations is a death blow to this 'free labor system,' and the cultivation of the plantations by freedmen will show their capacity in their new career.
When Johnson became President, the colored leaders had firm faith in his economic program. "There is, in fact, no true republican government, unless the land, and wealth in general, are distributed among the great mass of the inhabitants. The policy of the new President will be, therefore, of enforcing the laws of confiscation, granting homesteads
To enforce this faith, the Negroes knew it was necessary to be represented in Washington, and in May they communicated with several Southern states on the matter of sending such delegations. The Tribune, May 31, said: "Such a delegation at Washington this winter, from each of the Southern states, would have a great tendency toward answering any objections that might be adduced against a Reconstruction policy that would admit the justness of the black man's right to equality before the law; and most of all, the moral of such delegations will show that the colored people of the South are really awake to their interests. For Messrs. Editors, if civil authority again assumes sway legitimately here, and is acknowledged by the executive and legislative authorities, we may expect and prepare also for mobs of white against colored laborers, and white mechanics against colored mechanics, like the 'Iron Mongers of Cincinnati,' the 'Plug Uglies of Baltimore,' the 'Flat Heads of New York,' the 'Moyamensing Boys of Philadelphia,' and the 'Irish mobs' of Detroit, Chicago, and New York City. But more of mobs hereafter. If we desire to prevent these outrages from being our future inheritance, on account of our active and exerted influence and friendship and love of the Union, send a delegation to Washington, and say to Congress: 'There never will be domestic tranquillity in Louisiana so long as the most truly loyal portion of the people of this state are left at the mercy of the men who have for four years been attempting to destroy the Union!'"
When the campaign was on for the election of 1865, the colored leaders criticized the Conservative address in the Tribune, August 11:
It is signed by ex-Judge Louis Davigneaud and Spencer G. Hamilton. It gives us the astounding news that at the breaking out of the rebellion, Louisiana was governed by 'wholesome and just laws.' Give us your authority for this, gentlemen; point us to the book and page. The fact that you immediately afterward refer us to the 'abundant harvest' with which we used to be blessed, leads us to suppose that in your opinion these 'wholesome and just laws' were found in the infamous Black Code, by virtue of which the life of the poor man was worn out in laboring for the princely planters. The address assures us that before the war, we enjoyed 'Life, Liberty (!) and the pursuit of happiness!' We were plunged into war by 'ambitious men' upon 'supposed and contemplated wrongs.' Why not name the men? It could do no harm to know their names. It labors under great fears from the party, which it admits exists in this state, 'advocating thepernicious doctrine of universal suffrage, with a view of conferring upon the emancipated Negro the right of suffrage.' The address does not, however, say a word in favor of the Negro not 'emancipated,' and who was always free. Why use the word 'emancipated'? Are the men of color who were born free entitled to suffrage in your opinion? If so, why not make the admission.
At the same time, the Tribune, September 14, attested the growing unity of the Negro group.
We no longer hear of classes of colored men – some to claim the electoral franchise because they are rich, some because they are lettered, some because they bore an Uncle Sam's musket. All this was sheer aristocracy, and among those neglected there were men as good, as true, as patriotic and as intelligent, as among the privileged classes. When citizens undertake to claim a right for themselves, they must claim it as a principle, and therefore speak in the name of all who are deprived of the same immunities. As long as they do not consider the question from a high standpoint, as long as they overlook the principle for a mere expediency, they will have no force whatever.
It was this year that the new element of carpetbaggers began to be felt in Louisiana. Hitherto, there had been the planter class, the military authorities, and the free colored people, all striving for leadership of the freedmen. Now came the disbanded Union officers, the new small capitalists of the North, or those who represented them, although themselves without capital. Foremost among these was Henry Clay Warmoth.
Warmoth took up his residence in Louisiana in 1865. He was a young Union officer, then only 23 years of age, and had an astonishing career. He was an unmoral buccaneer, shrewd, likable, and efficient, who for ten years was practical master of the state of Louisiana. He represented those white men, Northern and Southern, currently called carpetbaggers and scalawags, who were either small capitalists or aspired to become rich, and whose business it was to manipulate the labor vote, white and black.
Some of them in many states, we have shown, were men of ability and vision, but most of those in Louisiana who were honest and forthright were early driven out by the turmoil and lawlessness. Types like Warmoth and Carter, who stayed, represented the carpetbagger and scalawag at their worst. A Negro preacher described the types: He said that the carpetbagger came South and stole enough to fill his carpetbag; but that the scalawag, knowing the woods and swamps better, succeeded in stealing the full carpetbag.32
Warmoth was a poor white of Southern extraction, whose great-grandfather was born in Virginia, and whose grandfather moved to Illinois.
His father was in the Mexican War, and Warmoth was born in Illinois in 1842. He declares in his biography, that he had "not a drop of any other than Southern blood in my veins. I think I may say at eighty-seven years of age, that I was never a 'Louisiana Carpetbagger,' though I might, in common parlance, be termed a 'scalawag.'" (§)33
The Republican Party of Louisiana had been organized in 1863. It was composed of twenty-six members, of whom 21 were Union white men, and five free Negroes who had never been slaves and who were all nearly white, men of wealth and education. This committee issued a call for a convention which assembled in New Orleans, September 27, 1865. A state committee was formed which proceeded to organize the Union Republican Party of Louisiana. There were 111 delegates, of whom 19 were free Negroes, and one a freedman. Warmoth was Corresponding Secretary of the State Committee, and some of the free colored men were on the committee. Two of the resolutions said:
Resolved – That the system of slavery heretofore existing in Louisiana, and the laws and ordinances passed from time to time to support it, have ceased to exist; and we protest against any and all attempts to substitute in their place a system of serfdom, or forced labor in any shape.
Resolved – That the necessities of the nation called the colored men into public service in the most honorable of all duties – that of the soldier fighting for the integrity of his country and the security of the constitutional government; this, with his loyalty, patience and prudence, is sufficient to assure Congress of the justice and safety of giving him a vote to protect his liberty.34
This convention conceived the idea of adopting the Congressional theory that Louisiana was a territory, and holding a voluntary election for a delegate to Congress. The colored people, especially, fell in with the idea, and carried it through. The Tribune, September 2, bore testimony to the unity of effort and feeling and the work of two colored men who originated the idea – Crane and Dunn:
Too much praise cannot be given to the Central Executive Committee for their strenuous efforts toward the organization of such a move, without the force of law, and on the basis of voluntary cooperation. It has taken several weeks to complete the preliminary arrangements. All members of the committee have heartily contributed their shares. We must, however, mention in a more particular manner the services of two of these members. When the importance of the move will be fully understood and its consequences developed, their names will remain more particularly connected with that work. It is with Mr. W. R. Crane that the first idea originated. It is the same memberwho prepared the various resolutions bearing on the subject. He advocated his plan with the conviction of its usefulness, and through industry and perseverance, has succeeded in removing all objections, and in carrying it through.
Next to him, Mr. O. J. Dunn has a fair right to our gratitude. With private means only, he organized a machinery covering the whole city of New Orleans, and secured the voluntary and gratuitous concourse of the numerous commissioners and clerks. These two names will ever remain connected with the history of Reconstruction in 1865.
It was the first successful effort of the whole Negro group in political cooperation, and the "disfranchised citizens" expressed their debt of gratitude in the Tribune, November 4, to the "Commissioners and Clerks of Registration, who, during two months, attended with a zeal equal only to their disinterestedness, to the tedious business of registering the names of the political 'pariahs.' This debt will be paid by the just esteem and well-earned respect of their fellow-citizens."
On the crest of this wave of unprecedented effort, rose the figure of Warmoth. Thomas J. Durant, a Southern Unionist who had cooperated with Lincoln in restoring Louisiana, was the nominee by acclamation. He declined the doubtful honor, and Warmoth, handsome, charming and of fine military bearing, was finally substituted, since it was political wisdom to send a white man to Washington, and few others were willing to take the risk. Warmoth was more than willing. He was a born gambler, of unflinching courage in causes good and bad. The election was held just before the Johnson Reconstruction state legislature met, and Warmoth received 19,396 votes in thirteen parishes, or nearly twice as many as the number which Lincoln had recognized as sufficient to admit the state.
Naturally, most of these votes were cast by Negroes. Warmoth was careful, however, to have the Secretary of State affix his seal to a certificate attesting that the election had been held. He then went to Washington and spent several months getting acquainted with the Reconstruction leaders. He was accorded a seat on the floor of the House, while the Senators and Representatives elected by Johnson's legislature had to cool their heels in the galleries.
This election was a shrewd move on the part of the Negroes, and brought the rivalry of Johnson and Congress conspicuously to the fore in Louisiana. Governor Wells found himself soon in an untenable position. He had opposed secession before the war; but as a planter and Southerner, when he came into power, he tried to unite the leading white persons of the state back of his administration, on a platform acceptable to President Johnson. Once in power, his followers broke
Said the Tribune, May 10, 1865:
Were the planters willing to bestow the same amount of money upon the laborers as additional wages, as they pay to runners and waste in dishonest means of compulsion, they would have drawn as many voluntary and faithful laborers as they now obtain reluctant ones. But there are harpies, who, most of them, were in the slave trade, and who persuade planters to use them as brokers to supply the plantations with hands, at the same time using all means to deceive the simple and unsophisticated laborer.
The planters in the legislature elected in 1865, proposed April 7, 1866, a convention for a new Constitution. Wells vetoed the bill. Then a bill passed the House by a two-thirds majority to restore the ante-bellum constitution by legislative enactment. Two members of the House were sent to Washington to confer with Johnson. Johnson was in the midst of his fight with Congress, and he strongly advised against the move.
Governor Wells was desperate. If the planters engineered a new constitutional convention, such a convention would be dominated by reaction and invite the vengeance of Congress. Wells, therefore, determined to reconvene the Constitutional Convention of 1864. He had a more or less shadowy legal right to do this, but the meeting of this convention meant that Negro suffrage would be recognized, at least to some extent. Probably, according to the Lincoln formula, Negroes of intelligence, those who owned a certain amount of property, and former soldiers, would get the right to vote.
If such a convention could have met in Louisiana in 1866, it would have been epoch-making; it would have turned the flank of the Johnson phalanx and anticipated and softened the rigor of the Reconstruction acts. The prospect of such a consummation was too much for the Louisiana Bourbons and they determined to meet it by reopening civil war. Wells was a man of no courage, and instead of placing himself resolutely at the head of this movement, he kept out of the way and induced a member of the convention of 1864 to issue a call summoning a meeting July 30 in the Mechanics' Institute, New Orleans. He followed this by a proclamation ordering special elections in the large number of parishes not represented in 1864.
The excitement was intense. A prominent judge harangued the Grand Jury against the meeting. The Mayor told the general in command of the United States Army that he proposed to prevent the assembly. General Baird doubted the mayor's authority, but did nothing.
Most of the leaders in this movement stayed away from the opening, and in fact, only a small number of members accepted the call; but Monroe, also chief of a secret society known as "The Southern Cross," armed his police and the mob, who wore white handkerchiefs on their necks.
A signal shot was fired, and the mob deployed across the head of Dryades Street, moved upon the State House, and shot down the people who were in the hall.
The Reverend Dr. Horton waving a white handkerchief, cried to the police: 'Gentlemen, I beseech you to stop firing; we are non-combatants. If you want to arrest us, make any arrest you please, we are not prepared to defend ourselves.' Some of the police, it is claimed, replied, 'We don't want any prisoners; you have all got to die.' Dr. Horton was shot and fell, mortally wounded. Dr. Dostie who was an object of special animosity on account of his inflammatory addresses was a marked victim. Shot through the spine, and with a sword thrust through his stomach, he died a few days later. There were about one hundred and fifty persons in the hall, mostly Negroes. Seizing chairs, they beat back the police three times, and barred the doors. But the police returned to the attack, firing their revolvers as they came. Some of the Negroes returned the fire, but most of them leaped from the windows in wild panic. In some cases they were shot as they came down or as they scrambled over the fence at the bottom. The only member of the convention, however, that was killed was a certain John Henderson. Some six or seven hundred shots were fired. Negroes were pursued, and in some cases were killed on the streets. One of them, two miles from the scene, was taken from his shop and wounded in the side, hip, and back. The dead and wounded were piled upon drays and carried off.35
Some say that forty-eight were killed outright, sixty-eight were severely wounded, and ninety-eight slightly wounded in the hall and on the streets. Other reports say that thirty-eight people were killed and 148 wounded; and of the thirty-eight, all but four were colored.
As Sheridan said: "It was no riot. It was an absolute massacre." Too late, General Baird and the Federal soldiers arrived and proclaimed martial law. Mayor Monroe's threat to break up the convention succeeded completely and, but for the appearance of United States troops, "the killing would undoubtedly have been much greater than it was."36
After this, many Union men left the state permanently, and the new rule of organized anarchy ensued. The New Orleans riot was a characteristic gesture of the time and place. Most of the elected white members of the convention kept in the background to see what trouble was brewing. Negroes assembled, most of them as spectators, to
It was against this background of lawlessness and murder, this practical reopening of the Civil War, that Congressional Reconstruction began. Under the National Reconstruction Act in Louisiana, 127,639 registered, of whom 82,907 were blacks.
When Negro suffrage seemed inevitable, some effort was made on the part of the planters to gain the Negroes' support. They began by cajoling the field hands. In a meeting in Rapides Parish, held by the planters, they said they would "hold in high esteem the freedmen among us who range themselves on our side." Duncan F. Kenner, a prominent politician, urged the people to accept Negroes and to try and gain their vote for the South. General P. G. T. Beauregard, who began the fighting at Fort Sumter and wanted to raise the black flag after Emancipation, said: "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 a little education, and a property qualification, he can be made to take an interest in the affairs of the South and in its prosperity. He will fight with the whites."37
On March 18, General Longstreet, a Confederate General, published two open letters advising submission to Congress. "It becomes us to insist that suffrage be extended in all the states and fully tested."38 Other prominent Confederates agreed. Longstreet's wife afterward declared that this was the noblest act of her husband's life.
But these overtures of a few planters were more than neutralized by the bulk of white Southern opinion, which was bitter beyond description. All Republicans were bitterly assailed: "The shameless, heartless, vile, grasping, deceitful, creeping, crawling, wallowing, slimy, slippery, hideous, loathsome, political pirates who, in the name of God and Liberty, rob the South and put the Southern states under a black government."39 "Everything was said that would disparage or discredit the officials. Nothing was said to explain, or justify their acts or their conduct."40
On the 25th of April, seven days after the election of officers under the new Constitution, the Courier of the Teche said: "Fourteen men, having a covering of white skin over their flesh, have voted for the mongrel constitution in the parish of St. Martin. May they be pointed out with the finger of scorn by all honorable men. May they be despised and hated by every living creature. May their wives, if such
The Banner, the leading paper in its congressional district, said on the 20th of June, as the Republican members of the legislature and state government were assembling in New Orleans: "These miserable devils are worse than the itch, smallpox, measles, overflow, draughts and pestilence."
On the other hand, Negroes kept hammering at their economic condition. A meeting was held in the First African Church in May, 1867, to colonize colored laborers on colored homesteads. From this time until the new Constitutional Convention met, the Tribune pled for a high class of delegates to the Convention. "From the President down to the doorkeeper, and from the clerk and the chief reporter down to the printer, the choices should be made so as to convince the people of the State that the supremacy of a privileged class will be no longer fostered, and the time has come when the representatives of the colored race can find favor as well as white men. It is to be demonstrated that long services and unfaltering devotion to the cause of radicalism shall obtain the reward, irrespective of color or race, and to that effect it is important to choose officers from among both populations.
"But there is something more. It is important to show that the oppressed race will not be overlooked; that from this time forward the rights of the neglected race will be recognized to share in all departments of our state government. The Convention will have many things to do to break the spell under which we were laboring. The choice of officers will, therefore, have a political bearing, and cannot be dictated by fitness only.
The Convention will meet under very peculiar circumstances – circumstances of originality and grandeur. It will be the first constitutional assembly, the first official body ever convened in the United States without distinction of race or color. It will be the first mixed assemblage, clothed with a public character. As such this Convention has to take a position in immediate contradiction with the old assemblies of the white man's government. They will have to show that a new order will succeed the former order of things, and that the long-neglected race will, at last, effectually share in the government of the state41
By agreement, the 98 delegates to the Louisiana convention consisted of 49 Negroes and 49 whites. Among the Negroes were many free colored men of intelligence, property, and character. But when it was suggested that subordinate officers be equally divided between the
The Negro members of the constitutional convention took a prominent and effective part. They were largely represented on committees, such as the Committee of 13 on rules and regulations, where they had four members. In several cases, they acted as chairmen of committees, as in the case of the committee on the militia, and the committee on the Bill of Rights.
Their attitude, however, is best seen in the report of the committee to draft a constitution. The five white members of the committee, and the four colored members, differed in certain essential particulars, and sent in respectively a majority and minority report.
The chief points of difference were these: the white men wished to deprive all of the leaders of the Confederacy of the right to vote or hold office, while the colored men would allow them to vote, but restricted their right to hold office. The white men wished to prevent any law being passed regulating labor, or fixing wages. The colored men wished no such restrictions and also demanded that children bound out under the former black laws should be returned to their parents and relatives. The white men made provisions for the education of youth, but the colored men were more specific and demanded at least one free public school in every parish, to be provided for by public taxation, and with no distinction as to race and sex. They also asked for a university with six faculties, and a state lottery for the support of education and charity. While the white men wanted ninety-eight state representatives, the colored men wanted one hundred and two, which probably gave certain colored sections a larger representation.
In the final constitution, a compromise provided that no law should be passed fixing the price of manual labor; that there should be one hundred and one representatives; that Confederate leaders could neither vote nor hold office, and that the colored men's proposal for education, including no separation in schools and a university, should prevail.
The colored men assented to this constitution, but two of them, Pinchback and Blandin, together with two white men, protested against the disfranchisement of former Confederates, "as we are now and ever have been advocates of universal suffrage."42 It is interesting to note that the colored men who published the Daily Tribune were the official printers of the Convention Journal.
The Convention adopted the Constitution, March 19, 1868. This Constitution made the Negroes equal to the whites and provided equal rights and privileges; public schools were thrown open to both races.
All adult male citizens resident in Louisiana for one year could vote, except certain classes of Confederates. The labor laws passed by the Democratic legislature of 1865 were declared null and void.
The planters reviled the Constitution, and called it "the work of the lowest and most corrupt body of men ever assembled in the South. It was the work of ignorant Negroes, cooperating with a gang of white adventurers, strangers to our interests and our sentiments. It was originated by carpetbaggers, and was carried through by such arguments as are printed on greenbacked paper. It was one of the long catalogues of schemes of corruption which make up the whole history of that iniquitous Radical Conclave."43
In the face of this, the laws of Louisiana, as codified on the basis of this Constitution and subsequent legislation, were finally adopted in three main codes, signed by the black Lieutenant Governor of the state, Oscar J. Dunn (§), and remain to this day as the basic law of the state!
The free Negroes had since the war increased in numbers, wealth and intelligence. On the other hand, the mass of the freedmen were ignorant and inexperienced and much lower in status, because of their harsh slavery, than even the Negroes of South Carolina. They had, however, two ever-insistent demands: land to cultivate and public schools. They had almost impoverished themselves under Banks to keep their schools going; and while their demand for land never reached the definite expression that it did elsewhere, it was always the great motivating ideal.
The colored people produced some notable leaders during Reconstruction. Oscar J. Dunn ran away from slavery and finally bought his freedom; he had laid the foundation for a good education before he became free. Dunn "was the only one of the seven colored men who sat in the State Senate in 1868 who had been a slave."44 He was Lieutenant-Governor, 1868-1870, and was a man of courage and firmness. He was admitted by the Democrats to be incorruptible: "In the view of the Caucasian chiefs, the taint of honesty, and of a scrupulous regard for the official proprieties, is a serious drawback and enervating reproach upon the Lieutenant-Governor."45 His sudden death in November, 1871, was a severe loss.
Pinchback, son of a white man, and himself indistinguishable from white in personal appearance, was born in Georgia, educated in Cincinnati, and had been a captain in the army. He was intelligent and capable, but a leader of different caliber from Dunn. He was a practical politician, and played the politician's game. Yet there were limits beyond which he would not go. To all intents and purposes, he was an educated, well-to-do, congenial white man, with but a few drops of Negro blood, which he did not stoop to deny, as so many of his
C. C. Antoine later was also Lieutenant-Governor. The legislature sent J. H. Menard, a colored man, as one of the representatives of the Lower House and Congress, but he was refused his seat.
Antoine Dubuclet was State Treasurer during 1868-1879. He conducted his office for eighteen years without mistake or criticism. Politicians tried to find something wrong with his records; and the Aldiger committee was appointed to examine the archives of the Treasury. They secured three expert accountants to investigate the Treasury for six months. The honesty and efficiency of the Treasurer was confirmed.
There were the following colored officials in Louisiana:46
- Charles E. Nash, Congressman, 1874-76 (44th Congress).
- P. B. S. Pinchback, Governor, 1872, 43 days; Lieutenant-Governor, 1871-72.
- Oscar J. Dunn, Lieutenant-Governor, 1868-71.
- C. C. Antoine, Lieutenant-Governor, 1872-76.
- P. G. Deslonde, Secretary of State, 1872-76.
- Antoine Dubuclet, State Treasurer, 1868-69.
- W. G. Brown, Superintendent of Public Education, 1872-76.
Augustin G. Jones, once chancery clerk of Assumption Parish, was a direct descendant of the hero John Paul Jones of Revolutionary War fame who was captain of the Bonhomme Richard. Several of his daughters are now teachers in the New Orleans public schools.47
In addition there were, between 1868 and 1896, 32 colored state senators and 95 representatives.
These colored leaders had a task of enormous difficulty, much more so than those of South Carolina or Mississippi. They differed in origin and education. Some looked white, some black, some born free and rich, the recipients of good education; some were ex-slaves, with no formal training. They were faced with an intricate social tangle among the whites. Economic and social differences were, in Louisiana, more complicated than in any other American state, and this makes the history of Reconstruction more difficult to follow.
First of all, there were the planters, rich before the war, largely officers and leaders in the Confederate Army, and now returned, embittered and widely impoverished. Then there were "the host of traders, capitalists and adventurers, who had come down during and just after the war to seek a new field for investment in the conquered country, who were, naturally, regarded more or less as harpies. The number was formidable, for already by the fall of 1866, Ficklen says between
Another factor was the numerous poor whites in the northern part of the State. Living close to the subsistence line on the thin soil of the pine hills back of the bottom lands, without schools, with but few churches, given to rude sports and crude methods of farming, their ignorance and prejudice bred in them after the emancipation of the Negro, a dread of sinking to the social level of the blacks. The dread, in turn, bred hatred, and it was from this class, instigated very probably by the class above them, that the Colfax and Conshatta murders took their unfortunate rise.
And still one other element, mischievous in the extreme, must be added to the social complex – men who pursued no occupations, but preyed on black and white alike, as gamblers and tenth-rate politicians, drinking and swaggering at the bar, always armed with knife and revolver, shooting Negroes now and then for excitement. This class, recruited largely from the descendants of the old overseer and Negro-trader of ante-bellum days, had just enough education to enable them to dazzle the Negro by a political harangue. They became demagogic leaders of the Negroes, on the one hand, and murderers and fighters for the planters. It was this element that more than anything else kept up the turmoil in the state.
According to Nordhoff, "the first duty of the Republican leaders in Louisiana was 'to hang them by the dozen.' And it was because they were not crushed out, except so far as the respectable Conservative could combat them, that Louisiana had to endure such a drawn-out purgatory before she was reconstructed."49
The number of Negroes in the legislature of Louisiana is not exactly known, chiefly on account of the great mixture of blood. In the first legislature, there were said to be 42 Negroes, about half of the House, and seven Negro Senators. The election showed the predominant influence of the carpetbaggers over the Negroes, who had good reason to be convinced of the bad faith of the planters.
"There was never a majority of Negroes in either House of the Legislature during my four years of service as Governor. The Legislature elected in 1868, at the same time I was elected Governor, had but six colored men in the Senate out of its thirty-six members; and though the House of Representatives had more colored men in it than did the Senate, they never constituted more than one-third of the membership.
"So it was in the general election of 1870. Only six out of the thirty-sixmembers of the Senate were colored men, and there were fewer Negroes in the House of Representatives than in the House elected in 1868. Whatever legislation may have been worthy of criticism during [this] administration was the work of white men in which the Negro members played but a modest part.50
The real fight that developed in Louisiana was between the planters, on the one hand, and the newcomers, Northern and Southern, on the other. And these two factions fought to dominate both the poor whites and the Negroes, usually by characteristically different methods. The planters resorted to the old method of cajoling the poor whites, giving them some political and social recognition, and using them as thugs and murderers to carry out their ends. The carpetbaggers flattered Negroes, bribed those whom they could and gave them some recognition, but always at some crucial point broke their promises because they knew the Negro had no choice. Especially in Louisiana the question of social equality between whites and mulattoes was an insistent source of bitter feelings.
Two factions soon developed among the Republicans; Warmoth tried to appease the planters and avoid too great dependence on the Negro. But the Tribune, leading the "Pure Radicals," said in 1868:
The Republican Party in Louisiana is headed by men, who for the most part are devoid of honesty and decency, and we think it right that the country should know it. The active portion of the party in Louisiana is composed largely of white adventurers, who strive to be elected to office by black votes. . . . Some of these intend, if elected, to give a share of office to colored men. We admit that, but they will choose only docile tools, not citizens who have manhood.51
When the Republicans came to select their candidate for Governor, the Pure Radicals proposed a wealthy colored man, Major F. E. Dumas. Dumas received 43 votes and Warmoth 45. Dumas refused the position of Lieutenant-Governor and Dunn was nominated. Five white men and two colored men constituted the ticket, the other colored man being Antoine Dubuclet for treasurer. This ticket was elected. "The new legislature met June 29, 1868, and the temporary Speaker was a Negro, R. H. Isbell. He and Dunn tried to enforce the test oath, as they were legally bound to do, to the great anger of the rebels, who asked if they were to be excluded "by a nigger" from the seats to which they were elected.
The legislature spent some time discussing a civil rights bill. This bill went over until the next session, and caused high feeling and long discussion. The Conservatives protested against the colored people forcing themselves in where they were not wanted. Pinchback insisted only on equal accommodation.
I consider myself just as far above coming into company that does not want me, as they are above my coming into an elevation with them. ... I do not believe that any sensible colored man upon this floor would wish to be in a private part of a public place without the consent of the owners of it. It is false; it is wholesale falsehood to say that we wish to force ourselves upon white people.52
The bill passed both houses, but the Governor was almost afraid to sign it, and the newspapers tried to frighten Negroes. " 'Will any Negro, or gang of Negroes, attempt to exercise the privilege it confers?' belligerently asked the Commercial Bulletin. 'If they do, it will be at their peril. . . . He may be able to obtain a ticket of admission, but no New Orleans audience will ever permit him to take his seat except in the places allotted for colored persons.' "
It continued: "Apparently this state of calm does not suit the Radical leaders. Their continual control over the State must depend on the jealousy of the black toward the white people. They feel that the colored race have more confidence in the old citizens of Louisiana than in any newcomers. Hence the effort to revive a strife which would readily quiet itself without much stimulus."53
Warmoth in his inaugural address ventured "to urge immediate measures for the repression of lawlessness and disorder now rife in many parts of the State. From many parishes we have almost daily accounts of violence and outrage – in many cases most brutal and revolting murders – without any effort on the part of the people to prevent or punish them."54
In a special address to the colored people, Warmoth said:
My friends, this is a great day for the colored men of Louisiana. It is full of good for you if my hopes and expectations in your favor are well founded. If you are honest, industrious and peaceable, you will have millions of friends who will stand by you, and see that you are protected in all the political rights which they themselves enjoy. You do not wish to intrude yourselves socially upon those who do not want your society, any more than you want other people to obtrude themselves upon you without your consent. The contest from which we are emerging has not been for social equality, but for civil and political equality. This last you now have, and it will be my duty to see that you are protected in it, and if I am not mistaken in my opinion of your race, it will be cheerfully accorded to you very soon by everybody; and remember that the roads that lead to prosperity for every man, whether white or black, are those of virtue and education, of honesty and sobriety, of industry and obedience to law.55
Unfortunately, the state government, inaugurated in July, was almost immediately confronted by a Presidential election in November,
The whole South was in a blaze of excitement in the 1868 election. Tremendous and frequent meetings were held in every city and parish in Louisiana. Every Confederate sympathizer was encouraged, and had hopes of what would happen to the South as a result of the election. The Republican Party in Louisiana was paralyzed. Secret semi-military organizations were set up, and riots broke up Republican meetings. Clubrooms were raided and destroyed. It was believed that if Seymour and Blair were elected, Reconstruction would be overthrown.
A civil war of secret assassination and open intimidation and murder began and did not end until 1876, and not entirely then. Strong as the hatred of the reactionaries was toward Negroes, it was stronger toward carpetbaggers. The Democratic State Central Committee sent out a letter: "And we would earnestly declare to our fellow-citizens our opinion that even the most implacable and ill-disposed of the Negro population, those who show the worst spirit toward the white people, are not half as much deserving our aversion and non-intercourse with them as the debased Whites who encourage and aid them, and who become through their votes the officeholding oppressors of the people. Whatever resentment you have should be felt toward the latter, and not against the colored men; but in no case should you permit this resentment to go further than to withdraw from them all countenance, association, and patronage, and thwart every effort they may make to maintain a business and social foothold among you."56
Secret Democratic organizations were formed, and all well armed: the Knights of the White Camellia, the Ku Klux Klan, and an Italian organization called "The Innocents." They all paraded nightly. In the election, Seymour and Blair received 88,225 votes, while Grant and Colfax received 34,859. Out of 21,000 Republican voters in New Orleans, only 276 Republican votes were cast. There were in 1870, 726,915 persons in the state. A map of the state showing where violence and intimidation occurred leaves less than a third of the state in peace.57
Because of the experiences in the Presidential election of 1868, the legislature was asked to change the election and registration laws, and approved the law of March 16, 1870, conferring great power upon the Governor. The Governor was authorized to appoint a chief election officer, who should make a registration of voters in each parish, and a board before which the Governor should lay all the election returns.
This Returning Board was composed of three state officers and two state Senators, and it could throw out fraudulent votes or returns secured by violence. This device made government by the mob impossible, but it substituted a possible dictatorship in the hands of an unscrupulous Governor.
Governor Warmoth's attitude toward the finances of the state was characteristic and original. There was need of money, and he raised it. His statement of the needs was unexceptional: "I found the State and the city of New Orleans bankrupt. Interest on the State and City bonds had been in default for years; the assessed property taxable in the State had fallen in value from $470,164,963.00 in 1860, to $250,063,359.63 in 1870; taxes for the years 1860, 1861, 1862, 1863, 1864, 1865, 1866 and 1867 were in arrears. The City and State were flooded with State and City shinplasters (§), which had been issued to meet current expenses. Among the first acts of the new legislature was one to postpone the collection of all back taxes, and later they were postponed indefinitely."58
The public roads were mud trails. There was not a hard surfaced road in the whole state. There was the one canal, and very limited telegraphic facilities. The mails were usually carried on horseback. New Orleans had but four paved streets. The amount of the state and city debt was unknown, and state securities were selling from 22¢ to 25¢ on a dollar. There was no money in either state or city treasury.
New Orleans was a dirty, impoverished, and hopeless city, with a mixed, ignorant, corrupt, and bloodthirsty gang in control. It was flooded with lotteries, gambling dens and licensed brothels. Many of the city officials, as well as the police force, were thugs and murderers. Violence was rampant, and hardly a day passed that someone was not shot, out under the Oaks, in defense of his honor.59
There was a demand by business men for more railroads. The legislature granted charters and voted aid for construction. In the past, every railroad in the state had been built in this way. Ten years later, the Democratic legislature of 1878 granted $2,000,000 in bonds to aid in the building of a road to Shreveport, and the bill was signed by Governor Nichols.
A great deal of state indebtedness was represented by this attempt to promote railroad building, and in this attempt both parties were responsible for making the appropriations. The bill aiding the New Orleans, Mobile and Texas Railroad passed unanimously in a Senate composed of 21 Republicans and 9 Democrats, and in the House were 50 Republicans and 9 Democrats who voted for it, and only three members voted against it.60
In the bill incorporating the New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Vicksburg
The money which Warmoth raised did not go wholly or even perhaps mostly for public objects. He allowed all elements to feed at the public trough. Public debt and taxes mounted. Warmoth, his friends, and many of his enemies, began to get rich in the midst of the surrounding poverty. When he was approached about this, and bitter complaint made at the mounting costs of government, he had a suave and effective series of answers. First, he said that a great many of the members of the legislature were ignorant Negroes, and easily influenced by lobbyists, and that the men of the community ought to assist him in restraining them.
Then he turned around and reminded property holders and capitalists that many of the bills which the legislature was charged with passing corruptly were for the aggrandizement of individuals and corporations representing their "very best people." Their bank presidents and the best people of New Orleans were, he said, "crowding the lobbies of the legislature, continually whispering into these men's ears, bribes."61 How was the state to be defended, he asked, against the interposition of these people who were potent in their influence in the community? It is apparent that Governor Warmoth understood the term "best people" to be synonymous with the term "richest people." He instanced the case of the five-million bond bill (to take up the city notes) which he had vetoed, which had been passed in the House over his veto.
"The bill went to the Senate. I walked into the Senate chamber and saw nearly every prominent broker of the city engaged in lobbying that bill through the Senate, and it was only by exposing the fact that one of their emissaries had come into this very chamber and laid upon the desk of my secretary an order for $50,000, that I was able to defeat it. Mr. Conway, the Mayor of your city, came here and offered me any consideration to induce me to sign this bill."62 He also said that another Senator of New Orleans had offered him a bribe of $50,000, and a share of profits for his signature to the Nicolson Pavement Bill.63
It was not only the fact that unsuccessful jobbers had tried to bribe him, but that successful jobbers and prominent Southern men without reasonable doubt had bribed him and knew it. And their mouths were closely shut when it came to details and special instances of stealing.
Without a doubt many of the colored leaders shared in this graft, but from the very nature of the case it was not a large share. Many
It was a colored man, W. F. Brown, who as State Superintendent of Education called attention in his report of 1873 to the way in which school funds were being stolen. New Orleans, as a legacy from Banks and the Freedmen's Bureau, was one of the few Southern states that had a system of public schools. In 1865, there were 141 schools for the freedmen, and 19,000 pupils. A school law had been passed in 1869, providing a system of public education without distinction of race or color. This system was not being carried out. W. F. Brown reported:
"Stolen in Carroll Parish in 1871, $30,000; in East Baton Rouge, $5,032; in St. Landry, $5,700; in St. Martin, $3,786.80; in Plaquemines, $5,855; besides large amounts in St. Tammany, Concordia, Morehouse and other parishes."65 The entire permanent school funds of many parishes disappeared during this period.
Many colored voters tried to swing their vote so as to stop corruption, save the schools, and improve their economic condition; but if this was difficult in South Carolina and Mississippi, it was almost impossible in Louisiana, because there was so little choice between the parties aspiring to power.
Under these circumstances, it was exceedingly difficult for colored voters to know what to do. There is no question but that if the Negroes had been offered a chance to make their leadership effective in alliance with some party of social uplift, they would have followed it in large and increasing numbers. They would have become an honest and teachable electorate, and rapidly expelled most of their venal, careless, and dishonest fellows. But what could one choose between men like Warmoth, McEnery and Carter – a carpetbagger, a planter and a scalawag; a buccaneer, a slavedriver, and a plain thief?
The expenses of the Warmoth government increased to a total of $26,394,578 in four years and five months. The state debt was $10,099,074 in 1860, and $26,920,499 in 1865. Subtracting the Confederate debt, there was a total debt of $17,347,051 in 1868. This, in 1872, had increased to $29,619,473. Besides this, bonds voted but not yet issued would increase the real and contingent debt to $41,194,473.
The tax rate in 1864 was 3.75 mills; in 1869, 5.25 mills; in 1871, 14.5 mills, and in 1872, 21.5 mills. This expense was based on property valuation of $435,487,265 in 1860, which, with emancipated slaves, sank to $200,000,000 in 1865, and rose to $251,696,017 in 1870.
George W. Carter, the typical Louisiana scalawag, was a discovery of Warmoth, who maneuvered him into the legislature. He came to New Orleans soon after Warmoth was inaugurated. He was a Virginian, but had lived in Texas. He "was an apostatized preacher and ex-Confederate colonel, who [later] turned loyal patriot and anti-Warmoth leader." Carter was a man of education and polish, a good speaker, but an absolutely unscrupulous grafter. He was made Speaker of the House of Representatives in 1871, and became head of a ring proposing to control legislation that offered a chance for blackmail.
The history of Louisiana, from 1870 to 1876, reads like a Chinese puzzle to those who forget the great forces below. Beneath the witch's cauldron of political chicanery, it is difficult to remember the great dumb mass of white and black labor, the overwhelming majority of the citizens of Louisiana, groping for light, and seldom finding expression. Historians quite unanimously forget and ignore them, and chronicle only the amazing game of politicians.
Under the election laws of 1869, Warmoth secured control of Louisiana elections. The Governor, through the Returning Board which he appointed, could at his discretion throw out any votes anywhere in the state on any pretext. It was to no purpose, so far as results were concerned, that voters were intimidated, mobbed and killed. Consequently, the election of 1870 was unusually quiet.
Then, trouble began to brew. The colored men who formed the bulk of Warmoth's following were not willing to be simply his dumb followers. Led by Lieutenant-Governor Dunn, they began a revolt in the Republican convention of August, 1870.
The convention elected Dunn chairman; passed over Warmoth; and especially opposed a Constitutional amendment which would make the Governor eligible for reelection. Warmoth took the stump, adroitly flattered the white, planters, and eventually carried his amendment.
When the new legislature met in January, 1871, he faced a new dilemma. Several hundred colored men joined in a large meeting at the Louisiana Hotel to protest against his despotism. All the best elements of the state were arrayed against him, one wing of his own party and at least a part of the Negro population. In addition, economic conditions were crying for reform. The colored men nominated Pinchback for the term in the United States Senate, after the term of Harris expired March 4, 1871. At the same time, a brother-in-law of President Grant, Controller of Customs at New Orleans, also wanted to be Senator, and the President wanted him. Warmoth allowed a white planter to be elected. The result was that the Republican convention split in August, 1871, with Dunn at the head of one faction, and Warmoth at the head of the other.
While Warmoth was temporarily out of the state, Lieutenant-Governor Dunn discharged the duties of Governor, although Warmoth resented it. Some of the Democratic papers said that they preferred a "nigger" Governor to a carpetbagger. A state convention was called, and Dunn wrote to the leading colored Republicans:
I write to you to ask of you your support and influence in behalf of the colored people. We have a great work before us, and in order to be successful we need the aid and cooperation of every colored man in the State. An effort is being made to sell us out to the Democrats by the Governor, and we must nip it in the bud. …
I ask you to use your influence to elect good, honest men that will look out for the interests of the colored man, and not be duped by the money or the promises of Governor Warmoth, and above all do not elect as a delegate any of his officeholders, who being under obligations to him for position, will be compelled to support his policy.66
Warmoth retaliated by joining with the Democrats in depriving Lieutenant-Governor Dunn of his right to appoint committees in the Senate.
Dunn wrote Horace Greeley (§) in 1871, after Greeley's visit South, and his strictures on carpetbaggers: "There are 90,000 voters in this state, 84,000 of whom are colored. In my judgment, a fair and untrammeled vote being cast, nineteen-twentieths of the Republican Party in the state, including a majority of the elective state officers and all of the Federal officers, with a few exceptions, are opposed to the administration of the present state executive. …
We want for ourselves, and for the people of all parties, better laws on the statute-books, and better men to administer the same, and we are persuaded that neither of these wants will ever be met so long as the present executive exercises any material control over the politics of Louisiana. We are engaged in no strife of factions, but the people gravely and earnestly are fighting for their personal and political rights against the encroachments of impudent and unfaithful public servants. …
Would you be greatly surprised, Mr. Greeley, to be informed that in the judgment of the good people of this state, irrespective of party, the young man who now occupies the executive chair of Louisiana, whose crimes against his party and his people you charitably ignore, and whose championship you so boldly assume, is preeminently the prototype and prince of the tribe of carpetbaggers, who seem to be your pet aversion.67
Just at this point, November 21, 1871, Oscar Dunn died, and the Louisiana Negroes lost an unselfish, incorruptible leader. This was Warmoth's chance, and he secured Pinchback's support, and at the
On the other hand, scalawags like Carter joined the anti-Warmoth Republican faction and urged them to armed revolt. In came the United States troops, and down came a Congressional investigating committee and scored Warmoth.
The result was that in the campaign of 1872, Warmoth took 125 delegates, one-fifth of whom were colored, to the Cincinnati convention; this was the largest delegation that any state sent. This again was a shrewd move, because the Liberal Republicans were attacking graft and theft, both North and South, when this arch-grafter ranged himself on their side. Pinchback, under the advice of Sumner, was disposed to follow Warmoth into the Liberal Republican Party; but he was alienated when he saw that Warmoth, instead of leading a real third party movement, was about to surrender to the planters.
A curious campaign ensued. The reactionary Democrats nominated John McEnery (§), from one of the worst anti-Negro parishes of the state, where Negroes and white Republicans had been murdered by the dozens. No self-respecting colored man or liberal of any stamp could vote for him. On the other hand, there was a Reform Party, led by Beauregard, which displayed at its convention a placard : "Justice to all races, creeds and political opinions."68 J. Sella Martin, the colored labor leader from the North, addressed this convention, and also Warmoth, who was working to have this movement and the Democrats unite with the Liberal Republicans. The Liberal Republicans nominated Penn for Governor, and a colored man, Dumas, for Secretary of State, while the regular Republicans nominated Kellogg (§) and a colored man, Antoine.
Warmoth tried to get the reactionary Democrats and the Liberal Republicans to unite with McEnery and Penn as nominees, a colored man, Armistead, as Secretary of State, and Pinchback as Congressman-at-Large. Such a ticket Warmoth was sure would, with his power over the Returning Board, win, as he said, by thirty thousand majority. But the reactionary planters refused the coalition, and Warmoth capped
It is well-known, as far as I am concerned, that I have no partiality for the Governor of the State; I have not stood at his back as one of the supporters or admirers of that distinguished gentleman. I am not a lover, or worshiper of his.69
If I thought we could secure a Republican government in Louisiana by supporting Mr. Greeley, I would support him; but after a careful observation, I tell you, fellow-citizens, if you wish a Republican government and the success of the Republican Party, you can only secure that under the Grant and Wilson ticket. Everybody knows how bitter I am against the custom-house and its party; but I tell you, my friends, if it is necessary to secure the success of the Republican Party, I will swallow it.70
All parties took great pains to assure the colored people that they would sustain and protect them in all their civil and political rights. The Reform Party, headed by General P. G. T. Beauregard, and other distinguished white men, with the written approval of several thousands of the best white citizens, declared:
1. That henceforth we dedicate ourselves to the unification of our people.
2. That by 'our people' we mean all men, of whatever race, color or religion, who are citizens of Louisiana, who are willing to work for her prosperity.
3. That we shall advocate by speech, pen and deed, the equal and impartial exercise by every citizen of Louisiana of every civil and political right guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States, and by the laws of honor, brotherhood and fair dealing.
4. That we shall maintain and advocate the right of every citizen of Louisiana and of every citizen of the United States to frequent at will all places of public resort, and to travel at will on all vehicles or public conveyances, upon terms of perfect equality with any and every other citizen; and we pledge ourselves, so far as our influence, counsel and example may go, to make this right a live and practical right, and that there may be no misunderstanding of our views on this point:We shall further recommend that hereafter no distinction shall exist among citizens of Louisiana in any of our public schools, or state institutions of education, or in any other public institution supported by the State, City or Parish.
We shall also recommend that the proprietors of all foundries, factories, and other industrial establishments, in employing mechanics or workmen, make no distinction between the two races.71
When the returns came in, Warmoth sought to count in McEnery, and immediately the opposition set up a rival Returning Board, and counted in Kellogg. They also got a United States judge to back them. Again, there was practically civil war, with two returning boards and two governments, until President Grant sent down United States soldiers and backed the Kellogg government.
The Louisiana elections of 1868, 1872, 1874 an d 1876, were of one cloth: intimidation, fraud, open violence and murder, so that there was no real expression of public opinion. Three remedies were evident: first, a dictator working through a returning board; secondly, supervision of elections and repression of mob violence by the Federal government; thirdly, arming of the black militia.
Carpetbaggers were too corrupt and planters too selfish to be successful dictators. The nation recoiled at Federal supervision, not only in the drastic form proposed by Sheridan, but even in the milder form of supervised elections; finally, arms in the hands of the Negro aroused fear both North and South. Not that the Negroes could not and would not fight, for these same blacks, largely under their own officers, had beaten back Louisiana whites at Port Hudson and Milliken's Bend. But it was the silent verdict of all America that Negroes must not be allowed to fight for themselves. They were, therefore, dissuaded from every attempt at self-protection or aggression by their friends as well as their enemies.
Congress hesitated and refused to take action despite the pleas of President Grant. Under the law, he had no alternative but to use Federal troops to enforce the Reconstruction laws. The result was open war. Three times the soldiers restored to power Republican candidates who had been ousted from office by force and fraudulent elections. In retaliation, the planters murdered Negroes and Republicans in cold blood at Colfax, Coushatta and other places, and fought pitched battles in the streets of New Orleans. It was a humiliating and disgraceful situation. Kellogg attempted reforms, and succeeded in reducing the tax rate from 21 to 14 mills. But many parishes refused to pay taxes, and while the New Orleans Board of Trade and leading business men approved Kellogg's policy, his reforms could not go far. In fact, just as in South Carolina, there was nothing that Louisiana wanted less at that time than reform through Negro voters and Republican officeholders.
Evidently, the Negro voter, and even the office-holder, could not be held to blame for the anarchy and turmoil which are the history of Reconstruction in Louisiana. Practically, so-called Reconstruction in Louisiana was a continuation of the Civil War, with the Negro as pawn between the two forces of Northern and Southern capitalists. The
The panic of 1873 and the Democratic House elected to Congress in 1874 settled the matter. The Louisiana Democratic State Convention frankly called itself "we, the white people of Louisiana"; and a committee of Congress sent down to investigate revealed the new temper of the nation. One part of the committee was completely in favor of the planters, while the other part declared the White League an unscrupulous engine of fraud and murder.
The crucial election of 1876 came and with it came anarchy. As John Sherman and his fellows reported: "Organized clubs of masked, armed men, formed as recommended by the central Democratic committee, rode through the country at night, marking their course by the whipping, shooting, wounding, maiming, mutilation, and murder of women, children, and defenceless men, whose houses were forcibly entered while they slept, and, as their inmates fled, the pistol, the rifle, the knife and the rope were employed to do their horrid work. Crimes like these, testified to by scores of witnesses, were the means employed in Louisiana to elect a President of the United States."
The result was two sets of returns for presidential electors and for state offices, two governors and two legislatures. The whole nation waited on the outcome in Louisiana which would settle the presidential contest.
There followed an extraordinary period of negotiation, probably unparalleled in modern government. The white folk of Louisiana with threat of civil war entered into negotiations with the President and President-elect and arranged a filibuster of 116 Congressmen to prevent counting the electoral vote.
The Hayes party promised to work for the "material prosperity" of the South and allay sectional feeling. Nicholls and the legislature gave every assurance. They solemnly agreed not to deprive the Negro of
Hayes became President. An extralegal commission went to Louisiana in April. By means of money furnished by the Louisiana Lottery Company and large business establishments, the Kellogg government was bribed to disband and the Nicholls legislature obtained a nominal quorum. On April 24, the Federal troops withdrew to their barracks and Louisiana was free for a new period of unhampered exploitation of the working classes.
In South Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana, the proportion of Negroes was so large, their leaders of sufficient power, and the Federal control so effective, that for the years 1868-1874 the will of black labor was powerful; and so far as it was intelligently led, and had definite goals, it took perceptible steps toward public education, confiscation of large incomes, betterment of labor conditions, universal suffrage, and in some cases, distribution of land to the peasant.
Ignorant and vicious leadership, white and black, hindered and even stopped this progress, and gradually tended toward a duel between Northern and Southern capitalists to effect control of labor. This succeeded first in Louisiana, then in Mississippi, and finally in South Carolina. In each case, labor control passed into the hands of white Southerners, who combined with white labor to oust Northern capitalists.
––––––––––
O twin of monarchy that lives to rob and kill,
What deviltry here that prostitutes at will,
That keeps a robber gang in kingly rights enthroned,
Then turns their robberies to legal acts condoned?
Is not the blood as pure of him who lives by toil
As he who waxes fat – on idleness and spoil?
notes
- Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, p. 109, in.
- Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, p. 177.
- Vicksburg Herald, Nov. 9, 1867; Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, p. 120.
- Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, p. 277.
- Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, p. 238.
- Lynch, The Facts of Reconstruction, pp. 92-94. (§)
- Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, p. 280 (also footnote).
- Lynch, The Facts of Reconstruction, pp. 33-35. (§)
- Lynch, The Facts of Reconstruction, p. 86. (§)
- Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, p. 286.
- Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, p. 296 (footnote).
- Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, p. 279.
- Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, p. 285.
- Lynch, The Facts of Reconstruction, p. 78. (§)
- Lynch, The Facts of Reconstruction, p. 75. (§)
- Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, p. 295.
- Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, p. 320.
- Lynch, The Facts of Reconstruction, pp. 88-89 (§); Harris, Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, p. 322.
- Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, p. 322. (§)
- Lynch, The Facts of Reconstruction, pp. 123, 124. (§)
- Lynch, The Facts of Reconstruction, pp. 114-115. (§)
- Brewster, Sketches of Southern Mystery, Treason and Murder, pp. 188-189.
- Woodson, Negro Orators and Their Orations, p. 288.
- Woodson, Negro Orators and Their Orations, p. 282.
- Lynch, The Facts of Reconstruction(§), pp. 165-166.
- Smedes, Memorials of a Southern Planter (§), p. 257.
- Warmoth, War, Politics and Reconstruction, Appendix C, p. 272.
- Warmoth, War, Politics and Reconstruction, Appendix B, p. 271.
- Ficklen, History of Reconstruction in Louisiana, pp. 102-103.
- Warmoth, War, Politics and Reconstruction, p. 275.
- Warmoth, War, Politics and Reconstruction, p. 43.
- Lonn, Reconstruction in Louisiana, p. 10 (cf. footnote).
- Warmoth, War, Politics and Reconstruction, p. 270.
- Warmoth, War, Politics and Reconstruction, p. 44.
- Ficklen, History of Reconstruction in Louisiana, p. 168.
- Warmoth, War, Politics and Reconstruction, p. 49.
- Ficklen, History of Reconstruction in Louisiana, p. 185.
- The New Orleans Republican, June 6, 1867.
- Brewster, Sketches of Southern Mystery, Treason and Murder, p. 163.
- Warmoth, War, Politics and Reconstruction, p. vii.
- Warmoth, War, Politics and Reconstruction, pp. 53-54.
- Official Journal of the Proceedings of the Convention for Framing a Constitution for the State of Louisiana, New Orleans, 1867-1868.
- Lonn, Reconstruction in Louisiana, p. 9.
- Perkins, Who's Who in Colored Louisiana, p. 63.
- Lonn, Reconstruction in Louisiana, p. 93.
- Perkins, Who's Who in Colored Louisiana, p. 49.
- Perkins, Who's Who in Colored Louisiana, p. 58.
- Lonn, Reconstruction in Louisiana, pp. 11-12.
- Lonn, Reconstruction in Louisiana, p. 16.
- Warmoth, War, Politics and Reconstruction, p. xii.
- Ficklen, History of Reconstruction in Louisiana, p. 196.
- Lonn, Reconstruction in Louisiana, p. 40.
- Bulletin, February 17, 1869 (in Lonn, Reconstruction in Louisiana, pp. 40-41).
- Warmoth, War, Politics and Reconstruction, p. 61.
- Warmoth, War, Politics and Reconstruction, p. 64.
- Warmoth, War, Politics and Reconstruction, p. 66.
- Lonn, Map No. I.
- Warmoth, War, Politics and Reconstruction, p. 79.
- Warmoth, War, Politics and Reconstruction, p. 80.
- Bragdon, Facts and Figures, New Orleans, 1871.
- 42nd Congress, 2nd Session, House Reports II, No. 22, Part I, p. 202.
- Lonn, Reconstruction in Louisiana, p. 68.
- Cox, Three Decades of Federal Legislation, pp. 553-554.
- Warmoth, War, Politics and Reconstruction, p. 168.
- Herbert, Why the Solid South, p. 406.
- Warmoth, War, Politics and Reconstruction, pp. 113-114.
- Warmoth, War, Politics and Reconstruction, pp. 144-145.
- Warmoth, War, Politics and Reconstruction, p. 180.
- Senate Debates, 1879; Lonn, Reconstruction in Louisiana, p. 147.
- Lonn, Reconstruction in Louisiana, p. 163.
- Warmoth, War, Politics and Reconstruction, pp. 240-241.