When we reflect that the Confederate generals, Wade Hampton, Kershaw and McGowan, as has been shown, all supported the revolt of Delany, Cain and William Hannibal Thomas, against Chamberlain and R. B. Elliott in 1874 in South Carolina, and that in the columns of “The Crisis,” today, Elliott is eulogized as a great representative of the colored race; while no mention has ever appeared of those two Northern Negroes who most conspicuously opposed the evils of Reconstruction, Martin Delany and William Hannibal Thomas, we can only acquit Dr. DuBois of insincerity on the ground of rank carelessness and immovable prejudice.
The summing up of this very interesting defense of Reconstruction and plea for the Negroes as lawmakers is unquestionably an able presentation:
“Reconstruction constitutions practically unaltered were kept in:
Florida, 1868-1885 17 years
Virginia, 1870-1902 32 years
South Carolina, 1868-1895 27 years
Mississippi, 1868-1890 22 years
Even in the case of States like Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and Louisiana, which adopted new constitutions to signify the overthrow of Negro rule, the new constitutions are nearer the model of the Reconstruction document than they are to the previous constitutions. They differ from the Negro Constitution in minor details, but very little in general conception. Besides this there stands on the statute books of the South today law after law passed between 1868 and 1876 and which has been found wise effective and worthy of preservation. Paint the carpet bag governments and Negro rule as black as may be, the fact remains that the essence of the revolution which the overturning of the Negro Governments made was to put these black men and their friends out of power. Outside of the curtailing of expenses and stopping of extravagance, not only did their successors make few changes in the work which these Legislatures and Conventions had done, but they largely carried out their plans, followed their suggestions, and strengthened their institutions. Practically the whole new growth of the South has been accomplished under laws which black men helped to frame thirty years ago. I know of no greater compliment to Negro suffrage.”[344]
It would be idle to deny that these Reconstruction constitutions were other than most effective.
William Hannibal Thomas, who might be fitly described as in charge of the rear guard when the Negro government fell in South Carolina and who has criticised the Black Codes even more severely than Dr. DuBois, states:
“The Constitutions of the Reconstructed States were framed by white men under the direction and with the approval of the best legal intelligence of America.”[345]
They were framed to complete the conquest of the overthrown States, Dr. Dodd puts it thus:
“The cause of the planters had gone down in irretrievable disaster. For forty years they had contended with their rivals of the North, and having staked all on the wager of battle they had lost. Just four years before they had entered with unsurpassed zeal and enthusiasm upon the gigantic task of winning their independence. They had made the greatest fight in history up to that time. Lost the flower of their manhood and wealth untold. They now renewed once and for all time their allegiance to the Union, which had up to that time been an experiment, a government of uncertain powers. More than three hundred thousand lives and not less than four billions of dollars had been sacrificed in the fight of the South. The planter culture, the semi-feudalism of the ‘Old South’ was annihilated, while the industrial and financial system of the East was triumphant. The cost to the North had been six hundred thousand lives and an expense to the governments, State and National, of at least five billion dollars. But the East was the mistress of the United States, and the social and economic ideals of that section were to be stamped permanently upon the country.”[346]