The dominant party entertained the belief that the slaves would politically always belong to the party that "confiscated"[48] them; and confounding natural rights with civil rights, they forced the Southern States to pass the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution, which made them citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside.
As vultures sail in long lines from their roost (countless in numbers) to where the carcass is, so came the harpies and political adventurers to the carcass (the South) to embrace the colored citizens; and, hand in hand, cheek by jowl, they entered the political arena, and filled the capitols of the South. Every officer in the State from governor to coroner was dismissed, and new appointments made. The Legislatures became bacchanalian feasts to divide the spoils of office and increase the debts of the States by selling State bonds to the amount of countless millions. They subsidized everything they could; in short, they ate up or took possession of all that was left after the war ceased; and at last departed with stolen wealth, and the execrations of all the honest people. Negroes were appointed or elected to such offices as Senator, Governor, members of Congress,[49] and the judiciary of the States and county officers.
June 13, 1865, William A. Sharkey was appointed provisional governor of the State of Mississippi, and he ordered an election of delegates to the convention, and here is the way the members were elected:
On the appointed day the new-made citizens went to the precincts to vote. When they came home I asked my servant Levi, who had been with me through the war, how many persons were at the polls, and he said "about two hundred, that only two white men were there, and they were inside the house." When asked who he voted for, he replied "he voted for that thing, you know, called invention," and the way they voted was this: "You remember the paper we had [registration]; I handed it to two white men inside the room, through a window; they looked at it, handed it back to me, and said open your hand; I did so, and one of the men then put a little folded paper in my hand, then took it out and put it in a box and said, 'Move on.'" This was a Republican free election, peaceful, quiet, and decisive, based on ignorance. The complexion of the convention was dark, of course. This ungenerous revenge taken against a conquered people will ever remain a dark shadow over the generosity and Christian spirit of the Northern people. It, however, must be attributed to uncultured minds and want of knowledge of history. The masses did not know that New England's ablest statesmen always claimed their right of secession, as the debates in Congress show. Besides, they were unmindful that opinion at the North was about equally divided on this question.
When the revolutionary war was ended, and the cry for persecution, and confiscation of property of the Tories was raised, our Minister to France, Ben Franklin, put that as a trump card in his pocket to win against England; and Gens. Alexander Hamilton and Nathanael Greene and other liberal gentlemen declared it would be "an outrage to punish them for holding the same opinion that we all held only a few years ago, before the war commenced." What a contrast between the age of honor and the age thirsting for gold!
Perhaps in all the wide world never again will be seen such malignant legislation, and maladministration of law, such trials in the courts, speeches in legislative halls, preaching by illiterate negroes, mode of getting religion, idleness of the laborers, immorality taught by men from the slums of Northern cities, thirst for money, howling for office, insolence in office, with upheaval of society, creating constant anxiety of mind as to what a day might bring forth.
Add to these the formation of loyal league societies of negroes, by politicians swearing them to obedience to orders, bands of brothers and sisters, composed of blacks under white villains, to burn our towns, and murder the whites; the Kuklux Klan of the whites for protection, and other kindred vexations and trials that made the South the home of the spirits of pandemonium; so one could truly exclaim with Ariel,
"Hell is empty and all the devils are here."[50]
As I have said, they came like vultures to the carcass to devour the substance of the helpless South, and they were unblushingly successful. Under the Freedmen's Bureau and the military governors, those who could not take the ironclad oath were helpless.
The agent of the Freedmen's Bureau in our county (Washington, Miss.) who came first was desirous to aid the planters and freedmen to make a crop; and as this required reliable labor, the planters in the neighborhood agreed to give him cotton to the value of $5,000 if he would visit the plantations, when necessary or convenient, to encourage the hands to work faithfully, under the contracts that he had approved, and I will most cheerfully say that without this aid and influence the negroes would have been unprofitable producers.