CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Whites Aroused
The people of the Black Belt had borne with all possible patience the multiplied grievous wrongs recited in the foregoing pages. During the transition from master and slave to the new relations between them there was a strong disposition in both races to live in peace and harmony and make the best of their altered relations; the negroes were civil and confiding, scarcely realizing the change in their status, while the whites appreciated their good behavior during the war, when families of men in the army were unprotected, and were disposed to gratitude for it. But since the establishment of the league friendly intercourse between the races had been growing rarer, and now ceased altogether; the estrangement was complete.
With the imposition of the constitution began the reign of the carpetbagger—“demon of discord and anarchy”—and the negro, and the infliction of “the horrors of reconstruction”; a civil convulsion in which the foundations of society were broken up; “a vast sluice of ignorance and vice was opened; a race which never had evolved anything of its own motion was given the ballot, the highest right of American citizenship,” and never regarded it as more than a personal perquisite, while white men of the highest type were disqualified from voting by the constitution of their state; negroes were made eligible to all offices, while the federal Constitution deprived the people of the wisdom, knowledge and experience in office of former leaders at a time when they were most needed. A comment of the time was, that a proscribed white man could not have been bailiff to his former slave if that former slave was a justice of the peace, as he might well have been, if he was not in fact. Democrats had not opposed negro suffrage in order to oppress the negroes, but to prevent negroes from crushing them; and the situation produced by the imposition of the constitution attested the reasonableness of their fear of the effect of the endowment of the negro with the ballot. They realized that “in popular government where two races exist in mass who are from any cause so different that they cannot mingle in marriage and become one, the exercise of political power must be confined to one or the other of those races if there be a wish for security and peace.”
In the fourth district, the whites were greatly outnumbered by the blacks, and, comparing voting strength, a contest with them at the polls seemed hopeless.
The census of 1870 credited Choctaw county with 5,802 whites and 6,872 blacks; Greene county, 3,858 whites and 14,541 blacks; Hale county, 4,802 whites and 16,990 blacks; Marengo county, 6,090 whites and 20,058 blacks; Sumter county, 5,202 whites and 18,907 blacks; Tuscaloosa county, 10,229 whites and 8,294 blacks.
Thus, excepting the first- and last-named counties, the whites were outnumbered by more than three to one.
All of the towns in the section under review were small, the populations ranging from 1,500 to 2,000. Greensboro in Hale, Eutaw in Greene, Demopolis in Marengo, Butler in Choctaw, Livingston in Sumter, and Tuscaloosa in the county of the same name, were the seats of government of their respective counties, centers of religion, education and sociability. At Tuscaloosa were located the State University and a fine girls’ school; in Marion were the Seminary, the Institute, Judson, and Howard College; in Greensboro, the Methodist Southern University and an advanced girls’ school. These towns had been founded as the home places of wealthy and cultured planter families whose plantations were in the fertile prairies and canebrakes. Office-holding had always been their honorable distinction, gained by highest merit.
An epitome of conditions in the southern states at that period will serve to portray those in Alabama: “Legislatures in some instances composed in part of pardoned felons and penitentiary convicts enacting laws; the judiciary in the hands of charlatans and bribe-takers; every office, from the highest to the lowest, filled with ignorance, vice and unblushing corruption; with the land swarming with libelers and malignant slanderers; the country divided into military districts and garrisoned with troops, whose officers were ever ready, at the slightest bidding, to annoy and oppress an unarmed people.”
But the whites realized that in this section, at least, civilization itself was at stake, and notwithstanding the adverse odds and other disadvantages, resolved to risk all in combat with the forces arrayed against them. They were acquainted with the character of the Union League; aware of its horrible objects and aims; the almost daily crimes of lustful fiends, assassins and incendiaries were regarded as the fruits of its teachings; its responsibility for the existence of courts of law void of decency and recognized authority, and for officials incapable of enforcing law and order, for injury to public credit by prodigal pledges, and waste of public money, was fixed by its foolish and persistent allegiance to false leaders. This league was the institution marked for destruction. An organization pledged to undertake the task relentlessly and unflinchingly was regarded as a necessity. As the mighty Anglo-Saxon race on this continent had ever proved equal to emergencies, so now the men of this race, war-trained in arms and horsemanship, sensible that the great stake of Christianity and civilization lay in the balance, nerved themselves for the conflict.
The rule of the carpetbagger and scalawag and freedman was a “reign of terror,” and thrilling as well as deplorable were the incidents of the struggle to throw off the yoke. The mere recital of them, without comment, would fill volumes. Only those regarded as culminating events in the several counties of the district will be related. And in the relation sworn testimony of the time supports the writer’s statements where personal observation was lacking. They illustrate the sacrifices of the devoted men who were impelled to deeds distasteful but regarded as a necessary choice of evils, and who rescued that garden spot of the state from savage domination and again made it fit abiding place for the race which before had dispossessed the aborigines. These men knew that the negroes were misguided dupes of designing and ruthless leaders, and pitied them, but for the ultimate good of both races sternly resolved that they should be compelled to discard those leaders and submit to the legitimate rulers of the land.