They had called for blood, and got none, save in the case of Wirz, who was given to the mob as a "sop." As they could not indict a whole nation, they arrested President Davis, and, discovering no grounds for conviction, he was released, because a failure to convict would establish legally the right of secession, and thus prove the North to be the aggressor. Failing on this line, the human passions and human prejudices of the people arrayed under the higher law of conscience swayed them like a mob, and, failing to find any lawful means to spill blood, sought vengeance in the enacting of partisan laws for plunder of wealth, and the humiliation of the whites. To this end the Freedmen's Bureau was created, and President Johnson's proclamation was issued disfranchising the whites on fourteen different counts: among them was one that made the possession of twenty thousand dollars' worth of property a crime that disfranchised the owner. Then came the ironclad oath, which debarred all persons from taking it "who had ever borne arms against the United States since they have been citizens thereof, or who have voluntarily given aid, countenance, counsel, or encouragement to persons engaged in armed hostility thereto; that they have never sought, nor accepted, nor attempted to exercise the functions of any office whatsoever under any authority, or pretended authority, in hostility to the United States," etc.
All men above twenty-one years of age who could take this oath could vote, and no others. As there were very few white men who could take this oath, the elections fell, as intended, into the hands of the negroes, carpetbaggers, and the United States troops on duty South.
The enactment of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States was regarded in the North as a magnanimous exhibition of philanthropy toward the untutored slaves, and it was so accepted by nations; but in reality it was an insidious mode of punishing the Southern people.
The white people who owned the land and paid quite nine-tenths of all the taxes were now disfranchised, and the amendment was intended as a punishment by denying them a voice in legislation.
Senator Morton and Thaddeus Stevens, like the Roman augurs, could not look in each other's face without laughing at the success of their machinations.
Two years later (in 1870) the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution was passed. These last three articles placed the Anglo-Saxon people in the South under the rule of their former slaves! This was the Sin that started the race problem. The freedmen, left to themselves, would have settled the labor question, and their social position and the race issue; but for aggrandizement of power and acquisition of wealth he was dragged into the halls of legislation and flattered into the belief that also socially he was on an equality with the whites. From this sprung unmentionable crimes, and daily lynchings followed as a remedy.
What a change! As a slave he was the faithful protector of his mistress and her family; his children the terror now of unprotected women!
And here I will tell you how the voting was done. The negroes had, previously, been required to take the oath. At my home a table was placed on the gallery, and there the registrars were seated. The negroes were called up; as many as could touch the Bible were asked if they "had ever held office under the United States or given aid," etc. Some said "No," some said "Yes," and some were silent. At last they were told to say "No," and registration papers were given them, with the charge not to lose them. There I sat, no more a citizen than if I had been born in China, while my negroes were made eligible to almost any office in the country.
It is now generally acknowledged that all the negro received was by the force of environments; and now he has discovered that he has been grateful to the radical party, and payed them for a debt of love that had no foundation except in hypocrisy. They were told that they were now American citizens, endowed with all their moral and civil rights.
"The natural rights of a solitary individual have no connection whatever with the moral and civil rights of the man who has entered into association with others." (Huxley.)