A Picture of the Desolated States, and the Work of Restoration. 1865-1868

by J. T. Trowbridge

The most noisy and violent of the supporters of the “Lost Cause,” as they styled themselves, were men and women who had taken no active part, except with their tongues, in the Rebellion, often of Northern birth, but thoroughly southernized in feeling; or, if the men had been connected with the Southern army or navy, they had been depredators on unarmed merchant ships, like Raphael Semmes, J. N. Maffit, or Lieutenant Braine; or bushwhackers, guerrillas, or deserters of the Mosby, Gilmor, and Clanton style; while the women were the imitators and admirers of Belle Boyd, Rosa Greenhow, and Sallie Rochester Ford.

Still this class, making up in noise and bluster for what they lacked in numbers and ability, and possessing a sort of recklessness, dash, and abandon, which has always been attractive to the excitable and half-educated people of the South, have succeeding in keeping up an excitement, and an explosive condition of society, very unfavorable to the restoration of quiet, industry, and good order. Whether intentionally or not, the course pursued by President Johnson was admirably calculated to foster just this state of feeling. He commenced his administration by a very great blunder,—the refusal to call an extra session of Congress in the summer of 1865. The emergency was one which demanded the assembling of the national legislature, and the harmonious and wise co-operation of the executive and legislative branches of the government in the restoration of law, order, and quiet, throughout the nation. Nothing save the overweening vanity and conceit of Andrew Johnson led him to neglect this obvious duty, and to assume to himself powers which the constitution had never granted to him.

Beginning with this mistake, let us briefly review his subsequent history so far as it relates to reconstruction, and see how it continued to be “a tragedy of errors.”

In June, 1865, delegates from the South were first admitted to private interviews with the President. On the 17th of June, he issued his proclamation, providing for the restoration of civil government in Georgia and Alabama, in which he excluded negroes from the category of loyal citizens entitled to vote. He soon after proceeded to appoint provisional governors for the Southern States,—an entirely unwarrantable proceeding. The character of these appointments may be seen in a sentiment uttered by Governor Perry, one of the number, soon after his installation. “There is not now in the Southern States,” said he, “any one who feels more bitterly the humiliation and degradation of going back into the Union than I do.” He ingratiated himself in the favor of the President, by assuring the people that the death of Mr. Lincoln was no loss to the South, while he had every hope that the accession of Mr. Johnson, an old slave-holding Democrat, would be an advantage.

In Alabama, under the provisional government established by Mr. Johnson, the Convention prohibited negroes from testifying in the courts. Throughout the South, the unrepentant rebels began at once to make their arrangements for taking part in the government. In November, Governor Perry, of South Carolina, made a public demand, that when Congress met, the clerk of the House should place on the roll the names of representatives from the States lately in rebellion.

When South Carolina hesitated to adopt the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, President Johnson assured the Governor, that the clause giving Congress power to enforce it by appropriate legislation, really limited Congressional control over the negro question. After this preposterous assurance, South Carolina accepted the constitutional amendment.

In August and September, 1865, Democratic conventions indorsed the President’s policy, and Democratic papers (even those which six months before denounced him as a drunken boor, and demanded his resignation) began to praise him. The Republican party were yet unwilling to believe that the man whom they had elected to the Vice-Presidency would so grossly deceive and betray them, and hoped that after the assembling of Congress all differences would disappear.

They found very soon, however, that this hope was vain; for when the Thirty-ninth Congress was organized for business, and the message of the President was read, it was seen that he placed himself in direct opposition to the leaders of the Republican party, and utterly at variance with what he had at first avowed as his own policy. He professed his inability to concede the elective franchise to the freedmen in the South, because he must then of necessity have conceded it also to all colored men in the Northern States. A parity of reasoning would have required him to appoint provisional governors over all the Northern States, because he appointed them in the States lately in rebellion. While Congress was in session, and actually employed in legislating for the restoration of the rebel States, Mr. Johnson removed the Provisional Governor of Alabama, and handed the State government over to the officers elected by the people, thus ignoring the right of Congress to exercise any control over the subject.

In reply to the demand of the Senate for information respecting the condition of the rebel States, the President sent a message professing that they were all in a quiet and peaceful condition, and accompanied it by the reports of Generals Grant and Carl Schurz, which disproved his statements. Mr. Sumner denounced this as an attempt to “whitewash” their actual condition, and he was correct, though at the time severely denounced for the use of that term.

The Freedmen’s Bureau Bill was passed by a large majority of both houses of Congress, about the first of February; but was vetoed by the President on the 19th of February; and on the effort to pass it over the veto, six senators who had voted for it at first, receded and sustained the President’s veto. This was Mr. Johnson’s first and last triumph.