For the Disciplinarians they were not encouraging. Military government was received not as discipline but as bullying. The spirit which reconstruction was designed to quell was only embittered; for to those who entertained it reconstruction was not the chastening of the nation, but the domineering of a political party, which it was hoped and believed would soon lose its ascendency.[126]
For the Humanitarians reconstruction had produced written laws regarding equality of civil and political rights, which were deemed a subject of congratulation. Outside the laws they would have found less encouragement. The kindness of the white people toward the negroes had been changed to apprehension by the events of 1865. When the advent of negro suffrage brought the carpet-baggers to the South to marshal the negro voters for their own benefit, and when these men began to disturb the negroes by organizing them into mysterious Union Leagues and giving them indigestible ideas of their rights, apprehension became alarm. Negroes seized property of all kinds—including even plantations—by violence, supposing this to be one of their new rights. Already they had raised a new terror by crimes against white women, hitherto unknown. Some thoughtful men believed that the best defence against the dangers apprehended from the disturbed black population was kindness and friendly influence.[127] That opinion was not heard after the arrival of the carpet-baggers; its methods were then seen to be inadequate. Secret organizations were formed by white men for protection against the negroes. These organizations, which sowed the seed of a subsequent harvest of crime, at first included men of the best character and of the highest standing.[128] Thus reconstruction, together with its written laws, had produced conditions which made the net Humanitarian results doubtful, at least for the moment.
For the Republican Politicians reconstruction did not produce in Georgia all that was to be desired. When the enterprise was first launched some of the white men, though offended, favored accepting the inevitable and endeavoring to elect good men to the constitutional convention and to the new state government.[129] Others, carried further by their anger, determined to take no part in elevating the negroes and debasing their heroes. Prominent among these, as we have said, was Governor Jenkins. These men stayed at home on October 29, 1867, contemptuously ignoring the “bogus concern called an election,” which occurred on that day.[130] Many of these latter, by the time the “motley crew assembled at Atlanta” had finished its labors, decided to follow the example of the former. A convention met at Macon on December 5, 1867, formed a party, the Georgia Conservatives, named a ticket, with John B. Gordon at the head, and began a powerful campaign for the defeat of negroes and adventurers at the April election.[131] To make an active fight was recognized as a better course than to stand in ineffectual scorn.[132] As a result the sweeping victory expected by the Republican Politicians did not occur in Georgia. A Republican governor was elected; but in the state senate the seats were equally divided between the Republicans and the Conservatives, in the state house of representatives the Conservatives obtained a large majority, and of the seven Congressmen elected three were Conservatives.[133]
CHAPTER V
THE SUPPOSED RESTORATION OF 1868
The passage of the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 determined the course of reconstruction, but did not stop discussion. When Congress met in December, 1867, the acts passed continued to be attacked and defended and new bills to be introduced and dropped. But the plan as adopted remained untouched, with one exception.
One of the reasons given by the joint committee on reconstruction for abolishing the Johnson governments was that the Johnson constitutions had not been ratified by popular vote, and therefore did not rest upon the consent of a majority of the people. To avoid a like defect in the new governments the act of March 23 had provided that the new constitutions should be regarded as adopted only if a majority of the registered voters took part in the vote on the question of adoption. At its next session Congress repented of this provision; it was now seen to involve the risk that the opponents of reconstruction in the southern states would defeat the new constitutions by the plan of inaction. This risk should be avoided, since the adoption of a state constitution probably meant the election of a Republican state government, and hence of Republican Senators, as well as Republican Congressional Representatives and Republican Presidential Electors in November, 1868. These advantages would be lost if the new constitutions were defeated. Therefore, by an act which became law on March 11, 1868, the reconstruction legislation was amended so as to provide that elections held under that legislation should be decided by a majority of the votes cast. This act also adopted as part of the general scheme two expedients already employed by Pope in the Third District. That is to say, it provided that any registered voter might vote in any election district in his state, provided he had lived there ten days, and that the elections should be “continued from day to day.”[134]
Aside from these alterations, Congress allowed reconstruction to complete its course according to the first plan. Within the first six months of 1868 North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana and Florida, besides Georgia, had adopted new constitutions. According to the Act of March 2, 1867, two more steps would complete the process for these states; namely, the ratification by their legislatures of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the declaration “by law” (provided Congress approved the constitutions) that they were entitled to representation in Congress.[135] Congress now decided, instead of waiting for the ratification of the amendment, to pass the declaratory law at once, which should operate as soon as the ratification should have occurred. By this method one act would suffice for all the states which had adopted constitutions.