Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 / From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860

by James Gillespie Blaine

These representations of the prevailing spirit in the South and of the conduct of Southern men were not the loose and exaggerated statements of Northern partisans put forth in influence political opinion in the loyal States. They were the deliberate and conscientious statements of an eminent committee of the two Houses of Congress, of which Senator Fessenden of Maine was chairman. The quotations already made are from the same official report—a report based upon exhaustive testimony and prepared with scrupulous care. In that report, which is to be taken as an absolutely truthful picture of the Southern States at the time, it is averred that "witnesses of the highest character testify that, without the protection of United-States troops, Union men, whether of Northern or Southern origin, would be obliged to abandon their homes. The feeling in many portions of the country toward the emancipated slaves, especially among the ignorant and uneducated, is one of vindictive and malicious hatred. The deep-seated prejudice against color is assiduously cultivated by the public journals and leads to acts of cruelty, oppression, and murder, which the local authorities are at no pains to prevent or punish."

It was further declared by Mr. Fessenden's committee "that the evidence of an intense hostility to the Federal Union, and an equally intense love for the late Confederacy, nurtured by the war, is decisive. While it appears that nearly all are willing to submit, at least for the time being, to the Federal authority, it is equally clear that the ruling motive is a desire to obtain the advantages which will be derived from a representation in Congress." It was also proved before the committee, on the testimony, or rather the admissions, of witnesses who had been prominent in the Rebellion, that "the generally prevailing opinion in the late Confederacy defends the legal right of secession and upholds the doctrine that the first allegiance of the people is due to the States and not to the United States." It was further admitted by the same class of witnesses that "the taxes levied by the United States will be paid only on compulsion and with great reluctance," and that "the people of the rebellious States would, if they could see a prospect of success, repudiate the National debt." It was stated by witnesses from the South, with evident pride, that "officers of the Union Army, on duty in the South, and Northern men who go there to engage in business, are generally detested and proscribed," and that "Southern men who adhered to the Union are bitterly hated and relentlessly persecuted."

Upon the conclusion of the work of the respective conventions, the election of State Legislatures and of senators and representatives in Congress followed as promptly as was practicable in the several States. The Legislatures were all in session before the close of the year 1865, and their proceedings startled the country. If any need existed for proof of the spirit that animated the conventions, or of the ends to which they had directed their work, it was furnished in full by the action of the Legislatures. Indeed, when the latter bodies assembled, they were inspired with a fresh accession of courage and daring, imparted by the example of the former and the apparent acquiescence of the North in their proceedings. The period between the adjournment of the conventions and the assembling of the Legislatures was so short that there was no time for the maturing of public opinion in the North, and still less for bringing it to bear in any way upon Southern action. It is, moreover, doubtful whether any representation, however strong, from the North, would have exerted the slightest influence in holding the South back from its mad course. Emboldened by the support of the National Administration, the Southern leaders believed that they could carry their designs through, and, instead of being restrained by the protest or the advice of Republicans, they chose with apparent gladness the course that would prove most offensive to them. It would indeed, according to their own boasts, add a peculiar gratification to their anticipated triumph if they could feel assured that it would bring chagrin or a sense of humiliation to the Republican masses of the loyal States.

At this critical period it was the ill fortune of the South to be misled by the Democratic press and the Democratic orators of the North, as it had been before on perilous occasions. The South had been induced by the same press and the same orators to believe, in the winter of 1860-61, that efforts at secession would not be resisted by arms. Many Northern Democrats had indeed given the assurance that if any attempt at coercion should be made by the Republican National Administration, they would themselves meet it with force, and that, if war should come, it would be in the free States and not in the slave States. The South, in 1865, had apparently forgotten these baseless assurances; they had forgotten that, in the hour of conflict, the Democrats who did not become loyal, at once became silent, and that the few—scattering exceptions to a general rule—who were demonstrative and loud in their sympathy for the rebels were compelled to flee or accept imprisonment in Fort Lafayette. They seemed again ready and eager to believe all the unsupported assertions which the Northern Democrats, in a spirit of effrontery and not without gasconade, ventured to put forth. It might be difficult to determine which displayed the greater folly—those who made false representations, or those who, warned by previous deception, appeared so ready to be influenced anew by deception equally gross.

The truth was that the Republicans of the North, constituting, as was shown by the elections of 1865, a majority in every State, were deeply concerned as to the fate and fortune of the colored population of the South. Only a minority of Republicans were ready to demand suffrage for those who had been recently emancipated, and who, from the ignorance peculiar to servitude, were presumably unfit to be intrusted with the elective franchise. The minority, however, was composed of very earnest men of the same type as those who originally created and combined the anti-slavery sentiment of the country, and who now espoused the right of the negro to equality before the law. Equality, they believed, could neither be conferred nor maintained unless the negro were invested with the badge of American manhood—the right to vote—a right which they were determined to guarantee as firmly to the colored man as it was already guaranteed to the white man.

The great mass of the Republicans stopped short of the demand for the conferment of suffrage on the negro. That privilege was indeed, still denied him in a majority of the loyal States, and it seemed illogical and unwarrantable to expect a more advanced philanthropy, a higher sense of justice, from the South than had been yet attained by the North. But without raising the question of suffrage, there were rights with which the negro must be endowed before he could essentially better his material condition or advance in knowledge. It was, first of all, required that he should have the full protection of the law of marriage, of which he had always been deprived, and that with the privilege he should be subjected to the honest observance of the obligations which marriage imposes—to the end that good morals should be inculcated, and that every child should have a responsible father. It was, in the second place, in the highest degree necessary that he should have the benefit of such laws as would assure to him the wages of his labor and confer upon him the right to acquire and hold real estate and other property, with the same security and protection enjoyed by the whites. In the third place, it was imperatively demanded that some provision be made for the rudimentary instruction of colored children, in order that they might learn the mechanical arts and have the privilege of working at such callings as were best adapted to them. The list of requirements might be enlarged, but the three which are given represent primary and indisputable necessities, without the concession and free establishment of which the negro, with nominal freedom, would be in a worse condition than if he had been left in slavery.

In view of these facts, the course of the new organized Legislatures was watched with deep and jealous interest. It was in their power to repair, in large degree, the blunders of policy—nay, the crimes against human rights—which the Reconstruction Conventions had abetted if not committed. The membership of the Legislatures in all the States was composed wholly of those who, either in the military or civil service, had aided the Rebellion. If in such an organization a spirit of moderation and justice should be shown, if consideration should be exhibited for the negro, even so far as to assure to him the inherent rights of human nature, a deep impression would be made on the conscience and the public opinion of the North. Such a course in the South might, indeed, open the way for the success of the simple and speedy process of reconstruction, upon which Mr. Seward had staked his reputation as a statesman, and to which Mr. Johnson had pledged the power and committed the fortunes of his Administration.

As soon as the Southern Legislatures assembled, it was made evident that their members disregarded, and even derided, the opinion of those who had conquered the Rebellion and held control of the Congress of the United States. If the Southern men had intended, as their one special and desirable aim, to inflame the public opinion of the North against them, they would have proceeded precisely as they did. They treated the negro, according to a vicious phrase which had at one time wide currency, "as possessing no rights which a white man was bound to respect." Assent to the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution by the Southern States was but a gross deception as long as they accompanied it with legislation which practically deprived the negro of every trace of liberty. That which was no offense in a white man was made a misdemeanor, a heinous crime, if committed by a negro. Both in the civil and criminal code his treatment was different from that to which the white man was subjected. He was compelled to work under a series of labor laws applicable only to his own race. The laws of vagrancy were so changed as, in many of their provisions, to apply only to him, and under their operation all freedom of movement and transit was denied. The liberty to sell his time at a fair market rate was destroyed by the interposition of apprentice laws. Avenues of usefulness and skill in which he might specially excel were closed against him lest he should compete with white men. In short his liberty in all directions was so curtailed that it was a bitter mockery to refer to him in the statutes as a "freedman." The truth was, that his liberty was merely of form and not of fact, and the slavery which was abolished by the organic law of a Nation was now to be revived by the enactments of a State.

Some of these enactments were peculiarly offensive, not to say atrocious. In Alabama, which might indeed serve as an example for the other rebellious States, "stubborn or refractory servants" and "servants who loiter away their time" were declared by law to be "vagrants," and might be brought before a justice of the peace and fined fifty dollars; and in default of payment they might be "hired out," on three days' notice by public outcry, for the period of "six months." No fair man could fail to see that the whole effect, and presumably the direct intent, of this law was to reduce the helpless negro to slavery for half the year—a punishment that could be repeated whenever desired, a punishment sure to be desired for that portion of each recurring year when his labor was specially valuable in connection with the cotton crop, while for the remainder of the time he might shift for himself. By this detestable process the "master" had the labor of the "servant" for a mere pittance; and even that pittance did not go to the servant, but was paid into the treasury of the county, and thus relived the white men from their proper share of taxation. There may have been more cruel laws enacted, but the statute-books of the world might be searched in vain for one of meaner injustice.

The foregoing process for restoring slavery in a modified form was applicable to men or women of any age. But for "minors" a more speedy and more sweeping methods was contrived by the law-makers of Alabama, who had just given their assent to the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. They made it the "duty of all sheriffs, justices of the peace, and other civil officers of the several counties," to report the "names of all minors under the age of eighteen years, whose parents have not the means or who refuse to support said minors," and thereupon it was made the duty of the Court to "apprentice said minor to some suitable person on such terms as the Court may direct." Then follows a suggestive proviso directing that "if said minor be the child of a freedman" (as if any other class were really referred to!) "the former owner of said minor shall have the preference;" and "the judge of probate shall make a record of all the proceedings," for which he should be entitled to a fee of one dollar in each case, to be paid, as this atrocious law directed, by "the master or mistress." To tighten the grasp of ownership on the minor who was now styled an apprentice, it was enacted in almost the precise phrase of the old slave-code that "whoever shall entice said apprentice from his master of mistress, or furnish food or clothing to him or her, without said consent, shall be fined in a sum not exceeding five hundred dollars."