Most of the soldiers had no love for the negroes, carpet-baggers, and scalawags, and at a Radical meeting in Montgomery, the soldiers on duty at the capitol gave three groans for Grant, and three cheers for McClellan and Johnson. For this conduct they were strongly censured by Major Hartz and General Shepherd, their commanders.[1359]
The soldiers sent to Hale County knocked a carpet-bag Bureau agent on the head, ducked a white teacher of a negro school in the creek, and cuffed the negroes about generally.[1360]
From Martial Law to Carpet-bag Rule
The act providing for the admission of Alabama in spite of the defeat of the constitution was passed June 25, 1868.[1361] Three days later Grant ordered Meade to appoint as provisional governor and lieutenant-governor those voted for[1362] in the February elections, and to remove the present incumbents.[1363] So Smith and Applegate were appointed as governor and lieutenant-governor, their appointments to take effect on July 13, 1868, on which date the legislature said to have been elected in February was ordered to meet.[1364]
Until the state should comply with the requirements of the Reconstruction Acts all government and all officials were to be considered as provisional only. The governor was ordered to organize both houses of the legislature, and before proceeding to business beyond organization each house was required to purge itself of any members who were disqualified by the Fourteenth Amendment.[1365]
A few days later, Congress having admitted the state to representation, Meade ordered all civil officials holding under the provisional civil government to yield to their duly elected successors. The military commander in Alabama was directed to transfer all property and papers pertaining to the government of the state to the proper civil authorities and for the future to abstain from any interference or control over civil affairs. Prisoners held for offences against the civil law were ordered to be delivered to state officials.[1366] This was, in theory, the end of military government in Alabama, though, in fact, the army retired into the background, to remain for six years longer the support and mainstay of the so-called civil government.[1367]
The rule of the army had been intensely galling to the people, but it was infinitely preferable to the régime which followed, and there was general regret when the army gave way to the carpet-bag government. In January, 1868, a day of fasting and prayer was observed for the deliverance of the state from the rule of the negro and the alien.