CHAPTER THREE
Military Government
March 2, 1867, after two years of peace, Congress passed over President Johnson’s veto a bill relegating the southern states to the condition of conquered provinces. A military commander was appointed and authorized to supersede civil and judicial tribunals by military courts of his own creation, with power to inflict usual punishments, excepting only death.
This act was supplemented with another, of July 13, forbidding state authorities to interfere with the military commander, who was given the additional power to displace any official and appoint his successor. This act provided that military rule should cease within a state when a convention of the people thereof should frame, and the voters adopt, a constitution ratifying the amendment to the federal Constitution which conferred the suffrage on negroes, and being otherwise acceptable to Congress, and when the legislature also should ratify that amendment.
The new constitution was to be framed by delegates to be chosen by votes of all male citizens of legal age, excepting those disfranchised by the fourteenth amendment; and it was to be ratified by an affirmative vote of a majority of voters registered under the supervision of the military commander and his subalterns.
Under the reconstruction acts of 1867, in April of that year, Alabama became a part of the department comprising, with itself, the states of Georgia and Florida. The military commander called a convention to frame a constitution. At the election for delegates the polls were kept open for five days. The whites held aloof from it. The gathering of delegates thus elected was stigmatized as “the carpetbaggers’ convention.” The men who composed it and framed the constitution were in many cases grossly corrupt and ignorant.
As an illustration of the character of the men sent to the convention, Samuel Hale, a brother of United States Senator Hale, one of the few Union men and later Republicans resident in Sumter county, wrote Senator Wilson in January, 1868, a letter protesting against recognition by Congress of radicals in the south, in which he said that the men who sat in the convention and framed the constitution were, “so far as I am acquainted with them, worthless vagabonds, homeless, houseless, drunken knaves”; that the Sumter delegates were a negro and two whites—Yordy and Rolfe. Rolfe, he said, left his family in New York and had not seen them for four years, during which period he had led an immoral life with negroes; that he was known as the “Hero of Two Shirts,” having left at a hotel in Selma, as security for an unpaid hotel bill, his carpetbag containing only two shirts: that his name was not signed to the constitution which he helped to frame because he was too drunk to write it. These men and Hays and Price, all strangers, were the only white men in Sumter county who took part in the election for delegates. As an early indication of future leadership, at that election Price ordered the negroes to secure their arms and prevent expulsion from the booth of one of their members who was vauntingly flourishing a gun. Only intervention by cool-headed whites prevented trouble. Mr. Hale, in the letter quoted from, stigmatized the election thus: “As shameless a fraud as was ever perpetrated upon the face of the earth.”
Rolfe and Hays were wheelwrights, but their talents found employment in more lucrative occupations. Rolfe’s first “get-rich-quick” scheme was the selling to negroes of badges, which he said he was engaged in by order of General Grant.
While agent of the Freedmen’s Bureau Hays defrauded negroes of a thousand dollars derived from sales of cotton with which they had entrusted him. That was his disappearing act.
That convention deprived of the right to vote all men who were proscribed by the fourteenth amendment from holding office.
The constitution framed called for an election in February, 1868, to which it was to be submitted for ratification, and at which time officers were to be elected. It was submitted under a solemn congressional provision that if it should not receive in its favor the ballots of a majority of the registered voters, it was to be considered as rejected.
The Democratic convention of 1865 entrusted to the party’s state executive committee, of which General James H. Clanton was chairman, all matters of policy. When the military order for the convention issued, General Clanton called into council with the executive committee one hundred of the leading men of the state. After deliberation, they concluded that the wisest course for the party to pursue would be to go to the polls and endeavor to defeat the constitution, but, in view of the possibility of failure in this, to place candidates in the field, to be voted for under it. Having agreed on this policy, the council was about to adjourn, when the chairman received from ex-Governor Parsons, who was the accredited agent in Washington of the Democratic party, a dispatch, saying:
“I am on my way to Montgomery; will be there to-night. Don’t adjourn your convention; don’t act till I get there.”
The council waited, and the former governor arrived and delivered a speech, in which he uttered the memorable sentence:
“So far as the reconstruction measures are concerned, and this constitution, touch not, taste not, handle not the unclean thing.”
He said that this was in accordance with the advice of President Johnson. Messrs. Samuel Rice and Alexander White supported the ex-governor, and the council was persuaded to reverse its decision and advise the voters to refrain from taking any part in the election. Mr. White prepared the address to the voters.
Accordingly, the Democratic voters abstained from voting, and only one Democratic state senator was elected, and he was not endorsed. Negroes in battalions, armed with muskets and stepping to the beat of drums, marched to the polls, stacked arms, placed guards about them, and cast their ballots for the constitution and their candidates.
The registration of voters for the election of 1868 was under military supervision and regulation. Registration was kept open at polling places up to and including time of election. The registers of voters and election officers were appointed by military officers, and nearly every register was a candidate for office. He was given power to reject any applicant for registration. Soldiers were present at all polling places to enforce the regulations, which forbade the challenging of illegal voters: citizens were forbidden under severe penalties to warn election judges or expose the fact even if they should see a non-resident or minor or repeater offer to deposit a ballot. Voters were permitted to cast their ballots at any precinct in the county. Negroes were eligible to all offices.
The returns of the election disclosed the fact that the majority of the registered voters had abstained from participation in the election, and hence the constitution was not adopted by the people—according to the declaration of the military authorities, lacking 8,000 of the requisite number of votes. In view of this authoritative declaration, the radical candidates did not claim the offices to which they had aspired, and the incumbents for the time being were not disturbed. But, to the amazement of the people and its own dishonor, Congress in June, 1868, accepted the constitution as ratified by the people, and recognized the candidates as elected officers, and in July they were installed by military power, the former officers retiring under protest.
In order that the reader may understand the situation and how poorly prepared were the people for such a reign, we must go back to the beginning and note other occurrences which had a direct bearing on that situation.