The negro: the southerner's problem

by Thomas Nelson Page

“I am satisfied the mass of thinking men in the South accept the present situation of affairs in good faith. The questions which have hitherto divided the sentiment of the people of the two sections—slavery and State-rights, or the right of the State to secede from the Union—they regard as having been settled forever by the highest tribunal, that of arms, that man can resort to.”

Shortly after the assembling of Congress in December, 1865, the President was able to state that the people of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee had reorganized their State governments. The conventions of the seceding States had all repealed or declared null and void the ordinances of secession. The laws were in full operation, and the States were in reality back in the Union, with duly elected representatives, generally men who had been Union men, waiting to be admitted to Congress when it should assemble.[79]

Had Lincoln but been here, how different might have been the story! His wisdom, his sound sense, his catholic spirit, his pride in the restored Union which he had preserved, his patriotism, would have governed. For two years the influence of his views remained too potent to be overcome. Johnson, who had not much love for the South, had caught enough of his liberal and patriotic spirit to attempt the continuance of his pacific, constitutional, and sagacious policy. But he lacked his wisdom, and by the end of two years the dominant will of Thad. Stevens and his lieutenants had sufficiently warped public opinion to bend it to their pleasure and subvert it to their purpose. Thad. Stevens gave the keynote. On the 14th of December, 1865, he said: “According to my judgment they (the insurrectionary States) ought never to be recognized as capable of acting in the Union, or of being counted as valid States, until the Constitution shall have been so amended as to make it what its makers intended, and so as to secure perpetual ascendancy to the party of the Union.”

Charles Sumner was not behind him. He declared in January, 1867, that unless universal suffrage were conferred on all Negroes in the disorganized States, “you will not secure the new allies who are essential to the national cause.”

In pursuance of the scheme of Stevens, in March, 1867, acts were passed by Congress, virtually wiping out the States of Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Florida, and Texas, and dividing the territory into military districts, under military rulers, who were to have absolute power over life, property, and liberty, subject only to the proviso that death sentences should be approved by the President.

When they were again created States, and brought back into the Union, the Whites had been disfranchised, and the Negro had been created a voter, drafted into the Union League, drilled under his carpet-bag officers, and accepted as the new ally through whom was to be secured “the perpetual ascendancy of the party of the Union.”

Lincoln in his wisdom and patriotism had never dreamed of such a thing. His only “suggestion” had been to let in “some of the colored people, ... as, for instance, the very intelligent.”[80]

The history of that period, of the reconstruction period of the South, has never been fully told. It is only beginning to be written.[81] When that history shall be told it will constitute the darkest stain on the record of the American people. The sole excuse which can be pleaded at the bar of posterity, is that the system was inaugurated in a time of excitement which was not short of frenzy.

Ever since the Negro was given the ballot he has, true to his teaching, steadily remained the ally of the party which gave it to him, following its lead with more than the obedience of the slave, and on all issues, in all times, opposing the respectable white element with whom he dwelt with a steadfast habitude which is only explicable on the ground of steadfast purpose. The phenomenon has been too marked to escape observation. The North has drawn from it the not unnatural inference that the Negro is oppressed by the White, and thus at once asserts his independence and attempts to obtain his rights. The South, knowing that he is not oppressed, draws therefrom the juster inference that he naturally, wilfully, and inevitably allies himself against the White simply upon a race line and stands, irrespective of reason, in persistent opposition to all measures which the White advocates.

The North sees in the Negro’s attitude only the proper and laudable aspiration of a citizen and a man; the South detects therein a desire to dominate, a menace to all that the Anglo-American race has effected on this continent, and to the hopes in which that race established this nation.