Opposition to the effects of reconstruction did not come to an end with the dissolution of the more famous orders. On the contrary, it now became public and open and resulted in the organization, after 1872, of the White League, the Mississippi Shot Gun Plan, the White Man's Party in Alabama, and the Rifle Clubs in South Carolina. The later movements were distinctly but cautiously anti-negro. There was most irritation in the white counties where there were large numbers of negroes. Negro schools and churches were burned because they served as meeting places for negro political organizations. The color line began to be more and more sharply drawn. Social and business ostracism continued to be employed against white radicals, while the negroes were discharged from employment or were driven from their rented farms.
The Ku Klux movement, it is to be noted in retrospect, originated as an effort to restore order in the war-stricken Southern States. The secrecy of its methods appealed to the imagination and caused its rapid expansion, and this secrecy was inevitable because opposition to reconstruction was not lawful. As the reconstruction policies were put into operation, the movement became political and used violence when appeals to superstitious fears ceased to be effective. The Ku Klux Klan centered, directed, and crystallized public opinion, and united the whites upon a platform of white supremacy. The Southern politicians stood aloof from the movement but accepted the results of its work. It frightened the negroes and bad whites into better conduct, and it encouraged the conservatives and aided them to regain control of society, for without the operations of the Klan the black districts would never have come again under white control. Towards the end, however, its methods frequently became unnecessarily violent and did great harm to Southern society. The Ku Klux system of regulating society is as old as history; it had often been used before; it may even be used again. When a people find themselves persecuted by aliens under legal forms, they will invent some means outside the law for protecting themselves; and such experiences will inevitably result in a weakening of respect for law and in a return to more primitive methods of justice.
[CHAPTER XII.]
The Changing South
"The bottom rail is on top" was a phrase which had flashed throughout the late Confederate States. It had been coined by the negroes in 1867 to express their view of the situation, but its aptness had been recognized by all. After ten years of social and economic revolution, however, it was not so clear that the phrase of 1867 correctly described the new situation. "The white man made free" would have been a more accurate epitome, for the white man had been able, in spite of his temporary disabilities, to compete with the negro in all industries.
It will be remembered that the negro districts were least exposed to the destruction of war. The well-managed plantation, lying near the highways of commerce, with its division of labor, nearly or quite self-sufficing, was the bulwark of the Confederacy. When the fighting ended, an industrial revolution began in these untouched parts of the Black Belt. The problem of free negro labor now appeared. During the year 1865 no general plan for a labor system was formulated except by the Freedmen's Bureau. That, however, was not a success. There were all sorts of makeshifts, such as cash wages, deferred wages, coöperation, even sharing of expense and product, and contracts, either oral or written.
The employers showed a disposition to treat the negro family as a unit in making contracts for labor, wages, food, clothes, and care. ¹ In general these early arrangements were made to transform slavery with its mutual duties and obligations into a free labor system with wages and "privileges." The "privileges" of slavery could not be destroyed; in fact, they have never yet been destroyed in numerous places. Curious demands were made by the negroes: here, farm bells must not ring; there, overseers or managers must be done away with; in some places plantation courts were to settle matters of work, rent, and conduct; elsewhere, agreements were made that on Saturday the laborer should be permitted to go to town and, perhaps, ride a mule or horse. In South Carolina the Sea Island negroes demanded that in laying out work the old "tasks" or "stints" of slavery days be retained as the standard. The farming districts at the edge of the Black Belt, where the races were about equal in numbers, already had a kind of "share system," and in these sections the economic chaos after the war was not so complete. The former owners worked in the field with their ex-slaves and thus provided steady employment for many. Farms were rented for a fixed sum of money, or for a part of the crop, or on "shares."
¹ J. D. B. De Bow, the economist, testified before the Joint Committee on Reconstruction that, if the negro would work, free labor would be better for the planters than slave labor. He called attention to the fact, however, that negro women showed a desire to avoid field labor, and there is also evidence to show that they objected to domestic service and other menial work.