I have never suffered such an amount of anguish and alarm in all my life. I have served through the whole war as a soldier in the army of Northern Virginia, and saw all of it; but I never did experience … the fear and alarm and sense of danger which I felt that time. And this was the universal feeling among the population, among the white people. I think that both sides were alarmed and felt uneasy. It showed itself upon the countenance of the people; it made many of them sick. Men looked haggard and pale, after undergoing this sort of thing for six weeks or a month, and I have felt when I laid [sic] down that neither myself, nor my wife and children were in safety. I expected, and honestly anticipated, and thought it highly probable, that I might be assassinated and my house set on fire at any time.
By the fires of reconstruction the whites were fused into a more homogeneous society, social as well as political. The former slaveholding class continued to be more considerate of the negro than were the poor whites; but, as misrule went on, all classes tended to unite against the negro in politics. They were tired of reconstruction, new amendments, force bills, Federal troops—tired of being ruled as conquered provinces by the incompetent and the dishonest. Every measure aimed at the South seemed to them to mean that they were considered incorrigible and unworthy of trust, and that they were being made to suffer for the deeds of irresponsible whites. And, to make matters worse, strong opposition to proscriptive measures was called fresh rebellion. "When the Jacobins say and do low and bitter things, their charge of want of loyalty in the South because our people grumble back a little seems to me as unreasonable as the complaint of the little boy: 'Mamma, make Bob 'have hisself. He makes mouths at me every time I hit him with my stick.'" ¹
¹ Usually ascribed to General D. H. Hill of North Carolina, and quoted in The Land We Love, vol. 1, p. 146.
Probably this burden fell heavier on the young men, who had life before them and who were growing up with diminished opportunities. Sidney Lanier, then an Alabama school-teacher, wrote to Bayard Taylor: "Perhaps you know that with us of the young generation in the South, since the war, pretty much the whole of life has been merely not dying." Negro and alien rule was a constant insult to the intelligence of the country. The taxpayers were nonparticipants in the affairs of government. Some people withdrew entirely from public life, went to their farms or plantations, kept away from towns and from speechmaking, waiting for the end to come. There were some who refused for several years to read the newspapers, so unpleasant was the news. The good feeling produced by the magnanimity of Grant at Appomattox was destroyed by the severity of his Southern policy when he became President. There was no gratitude for any so-called leniency of the North, no repentance for the war, no desire for humiliation, for sackcloth and ashes, and no confession of wrong. The insistence of the radicals upon obtaining a confession of depravity only made things much worse. Scarcely a measure of Congress during reconstruction was designed or received in a conciliatory spirit.
The new generation of whites was poor, bitter because of persecution, ill educated, overworked, without a bright future, and shadowed by the race problem. Though their new political leaders were shrewd, narrow, conservative, honest, and parsimonious, the constant fighting of fire with fire scorched all. In the bitter discipline of reconstruction, the pleasantest side of Southern life came to an end. During the war and the consequent reconstruction there was a marked change in Southern temperament toward the severe. Hospitality declined; the old Southern life had never been on a business basis, but the new Southern life now adjusted itself to a stricter economy; the old individuality was partially lost; but class distinctions were less obvious in a more homogeneous society. The material evils of reconstruction may be only temporary; state debts may be paid and wasted resources renewed; but the moral and intellectual results of the revolution will be the more permanent.
[CHAPTER XIII.]
Restoration of Home Rule
The radical program of reconstruction ended after ten years in failure rather because of a change in public opinion in the North than because of the resistance of the Southern whites. The North of 1877, indeed, was not the North of 1867. A more tolerant attitude toward the South developed as the North passed through its own period of misgovernment when all the large cities were subject to "ring rule" and corruption, as in New York under "Boss" Tweed and in the District of Columbia under "Boss" Shepherd. The Federal civil service was discredited by the scandals connected with the Sanborn contracts, the Whisky Ring, and the Star Routes, while some leaders in Congress were under a cloud from the "Salary Grab" and Credit Mobilier disclosures. ¹
¹ See The Boss and the Machine, by Samuel P. Orth (in The Chronicles of America).