Mr. Lynch's statement that the failure of Reconstruction was due to unwise judicial interpretation need not be considered. It is anachronistic and does not agree with the views now generally accepted by historical students. But what he says of the infidelity of Waite and Bradley can be refuted directly from the Supreme Court Reports. As to the appointment of these justices, there is no evidence that it was because of any specially strong nationalistic position on their part. Bradley, if chosen for any particular views, got the justiceship because of his attitude on legal tender; and the conditions under which Waite was appointed do not show up any such bias on his part. In U. S. v. Reese the court stood seven to two; and the dissentients were Clifford, a Democrat, and Hunt, appointed by Grant.
In U. S. v. Harris (the Ku Klux decision) Woods delivered the decision. Harlan alone dissented and only on the question of jurisdiction. The bench at that time held two judges appointed by Lincoln, two by Grant, two by Hayes, one by Garfield, and two by Arthur. The Civil Rights Cases decision was delivered by Bradley. Harlan was the only dissenter. These were the three important Reconstruction decisions during the term of Waite and Bradley. All of them were delivered after Reconstruction had failed. On the other hand, Bradley delivered the opinion in Ex parte Siebold, in which the federal election laws were upheld, and Field and Clifford were the only ones who disagreed with it.
In the first place, I frankly confess that what I have written and shall write in defense of the reconstructed governments at the South has been and will be of very little value if it were conceded that the acts accredited to the men to whom I have referred were of a low character. This is the very point upon which the public has been misinformed, misled and deceived. I do not hesitate to assert that the Southern Reconstructed Governments were the best governments those States ever had before or have ever had since, statements and allegations made by Mr. Rhodes and some other historical writers to the contrary notwithstanding. It is not claimed that they were perfect, but they were a decided improvement on those they succeeded and they were superior in every way to those which are representative of what Mr. Rhodes is pleased to term the restoration of home rule. They were the first and only governments in that section that were based upon the consent of the governed. If Mr. Rhodes honestly believed that what he wrote in condemnation and denunciation of those governments was based upon authenticated facts, then the most charitable view that can be taken in his case is that he, like thousands of others, is simply an innocent victim of a gross deception.
In the second place, whether or not I am influenced by racial ties or partisan bias in what I have written and may hereafter write, I am willing to allow the readers to decide. I am sure that they have not failed to see from what I have thus far written, that the controlling purpose with me is to give actual facts, free from racial partiality or partisan bias. If some of the things I have written appear otherwise, it is due to the fact that the misrepresentations I am pointing out and correcting have been in the opposite direction. The idea that I have endeavored to keep in mind is, that what the readers and students of American history desire to know is the unbiased truth about the important events of the period in question and not the judgment and opinions of the person or persons by whom they are recorded.
In the third place, the statement that the value of what I have written is impaired because what is said about the important events of the period in question is based in the main upon my own knowledge and experience, must impress the intelligent reader as being strange and unusual. He discredits what I say too because I do not make reference to source materials. What this expert himself has to say is, like most studies of Reconstruction, based on ex-parte evidence which is in violation of all rules governing modern historical writing. No just judge would rely altogether on the testimony of one's enemies to determine the truth.
With reference to the period under consideration, the difference between what I have written and what has been written by Mr. Rhodes and some other historical writers is what the lawyers would call the difference between primary and secondary evidence. The primary is always considered the best evidence, the secondary to be used only when the primary can not be obtained. And yet what I have written is not based wholly upon memory. It is only so with reference to distinguished persons and important events and tendencies, which are not likely to be inaccurate through the treachery of memory. The statistical information I have given is not from memory, but from the files of the official records which are accessible to the public. But it appears that Mr. Rhodes and some other historical writers used only such parts of the official records as answered the purpose they seemed to have in view, which evidently was to mislead and deceive the public. This is virtually admitted by Mr. Rhodes's expert, in stating that "the point Mr. Lynch makes about the defalcation of Hemingway is an interesting one, and one that is evidently carefully kept in the background by the local writers." Yes, they not only kept that point in the background, but all other points that were not in harmony with the purpose they seemed to have in mind, which was evidently one of deception and misrepresentation.
The reader will not fail to see that Mr. Rhodes's nameless expert passed over in silence a number of important points in my article. Some of those alluded to by him he frankly admitted to be right, as in the case of Treasurer Hemingway. In the case of Mr. Evans, the Negro sheriff of De Soto County, he relies upon a statement written by a Mr. Nichols of that county who was evidently a partisan, who makes an effort to paint Mr. Evans in as unfavorable a light as possible, and yet he fails to confirm the allegation that Mr. Evans could neither read nor write, but concludes his communication with the declaration "that nothing really was wrong." Judging from what is written by Mr. Rhodes's expert I conclude that Garner is the one from whom Mr. Rhodes obtained most of his misinformation. Yet in speaking of the Negro sheriffs in a general way Mr. Rhodes's expert was frank enough to say: "On the whole such first-hand material as I have been able to find does not uphold Garner entirely in his estimate of this class of officials, especially as to his footnote statement about their dishonesty." This bears out the statement made by me that if Mr. Rhodes had desired to be fair and impartial he would have taken all the colored sheriffs into consideration and would have drawn an average, which would have shown that in point of intelligence, capacity and honesty they would have compared favorably with the whites.
The assertion made by me that the Republican party in the State of Mississippi included in its membership many of the best and most substantial white men in that State is disputed because the Republican vote in the State at the Presidential election of 1872 happened to be only a few thousand less than the number of Negroes in the State of voting age, as shown by the census of 1870. It is, therefore, assumed that very few if any white men voted the Republican ticket at that election. To ascertain the voting strength of a political party census figures cannot be relied upon with any degree of certainty, but since Mr. Rhodes's expert seems to think otherwise I am perfectly willing to accept them in this instance for what they may be worth. The number of Negroes of voting age in the State at that time, as shown by the census of 1870, was 88,850; whites 76,909, colored majority, 11,941, and yet the Republican majority in 1872 was 34,887. If the voting strength of the two parties were in proportion to the number of blacks and whites in the State, as this expert would have the public believe, and the percentage of blacks and whites who voted were about the same, which can be safely assumed, the Republican majority in that case could not have been more than 12,000, whereas it was nearly three times that number. Assuming that the Republican and Democratic vote combined comprised the whole number that voted at that election, the total number of votes polled was 129,463, which was 36,296 less than the number of voters in the State. Of the 36,296 that did not vote I estimate that at least 16,000 of them were white men. Subtract the 16,000 from the 76,909 white voters and it will be seen that the number of white men that voted at that election was 60,909, and yet the Democratic vote was 47,288, which was 13,621 less than the number of white men that voted. My own estimate is that of the 82,175 Republican votes, 61,266 were cast by the blacks and 20,909 by the whites. Of the 47,288 Democratic votes, 40,000 were cast by the whites and 7,288 by the blacks.
From the above estimate it will be seen that more than one third of the white men that voted at that election voted the Republican ticket. This estimate is strengthened when the result of the election in the different counties is taken into consideration. The Republicans not only carried every county in which the Negro voters had a majority, but also a number of counties in which the whites were in the majority. The majority by which the State was carried by Alcorn in 1869 was about the same as that by which it was carried by Grant in 1872. Alcorn not only carried a number of white counties, but ten of them elected Republicans to the Legislature, two of them, Lawrence and Marion, elected each a Negro member. The ten counties were Pike, Lawrence, Marion, Jackson, Jasper, Clark, Lee, Leak, Lafayette and Attala. Judge Green C. Chandler, afterwards a judge of the Circuit Court and later U. S. District Attorney, was elected from Clark. Hon. H. W. Warren, who succeeded Judge Franklin as Speaker of the House, was elected from Leak, Judge Jason Niles and Hon. E. Boyd, both able and brilliant lawyers, were elected from Attala. Judge Niles was afterwards appointed a Judge of the Circuit Court and later served as a Republican member of Congress.
In the opinion of this expert Judge Dent, the Democratic candidate for Governor in 1869, was scarcely a typical carpet-bagger because he was born in Missouri and had family connections in Mississippi. Still if he were not a typical carpet-bagger, then we had none in the State, because the designation included all those that settled in the State after the war was over. Judge Dent was one of that number. But I may be able to give Mr. Rhodes what was believed to be the principal reason that influenced the Democrats to support Judge Dent. He was President Grant's brother-in-law. Hence it was hoped and believed that in this case family ties would prove to be stronger than party ties and that the national administration would support Dent instead of Alcorn, the Ex-Confederate. But in this case they were mistaken. Grant had been elected as a Republican, and he could not be induced to throw the weight of his influence against his own party, even in a State election, merely to contribute to the realization of the personal ambition of his wife's brother. It is true that a few men who called themselves Republicans also supported Judge Dent, but the result of the election was conclusive evidence that the so-called split in the party was not at all serious.
Speaking of the three Supreme Court Judges, the expert admits that Peyton and Tarbell were Republicans, but Simrall, he claims, is generally classed as a Democrat. In support of this assertion attention is called to the fact, among others, that he was chairman of the State legislative committee that reported in favor of rejecting the 14th Amendment. But that was before the passage of the Reconstruction Acts and before the Republican party in the State was organized. Judge Simrall joined the Republican party in 1868 or 1869. What I asserted and now repeat is that he was a Republican when he was made a Justice of the State Supreme Court in 1870. Even if he, like thousands of others, rejoined the Democratic party, that would not disprove my assertion that he was a Republican while he was on the bench. But it appears that he was not one of those that rejoined the Democrats, but remained a Republican to the day of his death. In 1884, nine years after the Redemption, he canvassed the State for Blaine and Logan, Republican candidates for President and Vice-President. In 1890 the Democrats of Warren County in selecting suitable persons to represent them in the State Constitutional Convention to be held in the fall of that year were anxious to have the benefit of the knowledge, ability and experience of Judge Simrall. They took the liberty of placing his name on their ticket to which it appears he made no objection, and in that way he was elected a delegate to that convention. But did that make him a Democrat? I am sure both Mr. Rhodes and his expert will allow Judge Sim rail to answer that question for himself and that they will accept his answer as conclusive on that point. For his answer to that question they are respectfully referred to page 704 of the official journal of the Constitutional Convention of 1890. They will see that the members of the convention were politically classified. Each member, of course, furnished the information about his own party affiliations. It will be seen that Judge Sim rail is classified as a "National Republican." Ex-Governor Alcorn was also a member of that convention, having been elected from Coahoma County in the same way. His political classification is that of a "Conservative." So it seems that neither Sim rail nor Alcorn rejoined the Democratic party. Instead, therefore, of Republicans being obliged to utilize Democratic material in the selection of Judges, as erroneously stated by Mr. Rhodes, it seems that the Democrats were obliged to utilize Republican talent, experience and ability to assist them in framing a new constitution. I am sure the assertion can be safely made that Sim rail and Alcorn were not among the "lovers of good government" who rejoiced "at the redemption of Mississippi" through the employment of means that Mr. Rhodes so much regretted.