A Mississippi View of Race Relations in the South

by Dunbar Rowland

After the negro had been clothed with the right of suffrage the Southern people made an honest effort to give him a fair trial. If he proved to be a worthy citizen the fears of the people would be groundless.

The Confederate States had given up their struggle for an independent nationality upon a basis of freedom for the negro race. While the best and most thoughtful men of the South believed that the experiment of negro suffrage would ruin the country and prove fatal to the negroes they knew that the trial must be made. They felt that they were bound to the soil of the South for life, and they wanted to sleep in its bosom after death. They tried to make that noble sentiment, which a great man has given the world, their guide: "He who does the best his circumstances allow does well, acts nobly; angels could not do more."

The South had suffered through four years of war. The blood of the best and bravest had deluged the land. The whitened bones of her sons lay upon the hilltops of Virginia and were strewn over the fertile valleys of Mississippi. The people thought that they had suffered enough. The bitter and humiliating chalice of negro rule was yet to be pressed to their lips.

At the end of the war there was no ill will against the negro in the hearts of the Southern people. The following extract from the charge of Judge Clayton of Alabama to the grand jury of Pike County, made September 9th, 1866, shows the prevailing statement:

"Gentlemen, do we owe the negro any grudge? What has he himself done to provoke our hostility? Shall we be angry with him because freedom has been forced upon him? Shall it excite our animosity because he has been suddenly and without an effort on his part torn loose from the protection of a kind master? He is proud to call you master yet. In the name of humanity let him do so. He may have been the companion of your boyhood. He may be older than you and perhaps carried you in his arms when an infant. You may be bound to him by a thousand ties which only the Southern man knows, and which he alone can feel in all its force. It may be that when only a few years ago you girded on your cartridge box and shouldered your trusty rifle to go to meet the invaders of your country, you committed to his care your home and your loved ones, and when you were far away upon the weary march, upon the dreadful battle field, in the trenches and on the picket line, many and many a time you thought of that faithful old negro and your heart warmed toward him."

There was at the end of the war and is now a strong and steadfast affection between the old slaves of the South and their former masters. If that feeling of confidence had been allowed to continue without the evil influence of the carpet-bagger all would have been well. The Southern white man is the only man on earth who understands the negro character, and he is the only man who is now fitted to solve the intricate race relations of the future.

The reconstruction period found the negro free. His freedom was not the result of his own efforts, although in most instances it was his desire to be free. By reason of the entire absence of self-reliance, his want of experience and his failure to understand or appreciate his changed condition, the negro after his emancipation was helpless. At this critical time the carpet-bagger invaded the South intent upon nothing but gain. At best the pathway toward better things was blocked by many difficulties. The coming of the carpet-bagger and the evil influence he gained over the negro, by causing him to lose faith in his best friends, was the crowning sorrow and humiliation of the South.

The picture of conditions existing in the South during the period of reconstruction may strike those who know nothing of it as too dark. Some thinking and impartial men of the North are inclined to believe that Southern men overdraw the darkness of the night of reconstruction. At this time—twenty-five years after—in the light of the facts of history the student of that period, whose opinions are not embittered by the trials of the times, stands in astonishment and marvels at the patience and long suffering of a brave and chivalrous people. Therefore the unprejudiced reader will be in sympathy with a brief, impartial account of reconstruction conditions.

Reconstruction was the creation of men who knew nothing of conditions surrounding the negro. Instead of adapting him to his new life the measures of reconstruction made the negro a discontented enemy of good government. The story of the trials of reconstruction is told not with a spirit of bringing reproach on the men who made them possible by unwise legislation, or by way of apology for the people of the South, but from a purely historical standpoint giving the facts minus prejudiced opinion. The debates in Congress pending the passage of reconstruction measures clearly show that the most conservative and self-contained men of the party then in power were opposed to universal manhood suffrage for the negro. That President Lincoln was opposed to manhood suffrage for the negro is now a well established fact of history. The evidence upon which that statement rests, in addition to Mr. Lincoln's own statements, is a letter written by Mr. McCulloch, who was Secretary of the Treasury in the cabinet of President Lincoln and later filled the same office for President Johnson and President Arthur. Secretary McCulloch says: