3. Certain provisions for establishing among the negroes the regular relations between husband and wife, parent and child, in place of the irregular relations which had prevailed under slavery.[42]
4. The prohibition of marriage between negroes and white persons.[43]
This last provision, and also the exclusion of the testimony of negroes from cases whereto a colored person was not party, are of social rather than legal importance, since their effect was to separate the two races, but not to deprive the negroes of the equal protection and benefit of the law. They were like the school law, which provided that only “free white inhabitants of the state” were entitled to instruction in the public schools.[44]
The Johnson government thus assigned to the negroes a position of political incapacity, social inferiority, but equality of civil rights. This plan was very remote from that in favor in the North, but it is not thereby condemned. As to the measures of the Johnson government for remedying industrial distress and guarding against social dangers, we search them in vain for the inhuman harshness to the negroes which they were reputed to embody. This legislation of Georgia was more favorable to the negroes than that of the other Johnson governments. But the North looked at the conquered South as a whole, and if the difference of the laws of Georgia from those of other states was noticed, it was quickly forgotten. To northern public opinion the scheme for the treatment of the negroes embodied in the Georgia laws, even if its mildness had been recognized, would have been a cause of indignation. This was the consummate hour of a humanitarian enthusiasm sprung from forty years of anti-slavery agitation, and now intensified by the passions of the war. In such an hour a plan which frankly denied to the negroes political and social equality was looked upon as an offence against justice and humanity. The Georgia law-makers had sought for a plan to meet immediate necessities, not a plan for the elevation of the black race. To demand that Georgia, stricken and menaced as she was, should pass by the needs of the present and enter upon a vague scheme of philanthropy, was unreasonable. It was just as unreasonable to conclude from the course which Georgia took, that the black race in Georgia would be forever held down, or that positive encouragement would be withheld as time went on. Nevertheless the public opinion of the North made this demand and drew these conclusions.
Having stated the attitude of the Johnson government to the emancipated slave, we next come to its attitude toward the fallen Confederacy and toward the federal government. And with reference to this subject the following facts are to be noticed:
1. Almost the first act of the constitutional convention was to vote a memorial to the President in behalf of Jefferson Davis.[45]
2. The convention, instead of declaring that the ordinance of secession was an act of illegality and error, and was null and void, laconically declared it “repealed.”[46]
3. The convention anticipated the function of the legislature in order to provide pensions for the wounded Confederate soldiers and for widows of the dead.[47]
Through the legislature Georgia showed herself equally frank in expressing affection and regret for the lost cause, and equally wanting in an attitude of humility to the federal government—or at least to the dominant party in Congress. On the recommendation of the governor she rejected the Fourteenth Amendment by an almost unanimous vote, largely because of the disabilities it imposed on the leaders of the Confederacy.[48] Instead of remaining a humbly silent spectator of the controversy between the President and Congress, she boldly thanked the President for his “regard for the constitutional rights of states,” and for “the determined will that says to a still hostile faction of her recent foes, ‘Thus far shalt thou go and no farther. Peace, be still.’”[49] She continued to provide for the unfortunate champions of the Confederacy, characterizing this action as “a holy and patriotic duty.”[50] She extended expressions of “sincerest condolence and warmest sympathy” to the illustrious state prisoner, Jefferson Davis, declaring that her “warmest affections cluster[ed] around the fallen chief of a once dear but now abandoned cause.”[51]
These acts and resolutions expressed through the government the spirit which was found among the people by direct observers—a spirit of submission to irresistible force, in some cases sullen, in most cases unrepentant.[52] At that time the absence of that spirit would have been extraordinary. But the public opinion of the North regarded it not as the aftermath of war, which would soon pass, but as a spirit which, if left undisciplined, would break out in another war.