“As for your niggers, you’ve got ’em on your hands. They won’t work, unless you force them to it, and they’ll steal rather than starve. You even talk about giving them suffrage! There are no words to express the infamy of such a proposition. This is a white man’s government, and must be kept so till the end of time. It’s true, there are a great many ignorant whites voting now; but so much the more need for stopping further addition to the ignorant vote.” There ought to be educational and property qualifications, he thought; but on no account would he permit negroes to avail themselves of these. Educated or ignorant, rich or poor, the niggers must be kept down.
In Richmond, and, as it appeared, throughout the South, there was a general reliance upon the President to secure the immediate admission of their Senators and Representatives. Whether all believed or not, all at any rate claimed, that their Representatives had a perfect right to participate in the organization of the House. The President was to see to it that they were admitted to this right. None of these former sticklers for a strict construction of the Constitution, hesitated for a moment at the suggestion that the President was as powerless in the premises as themselves. “Hasn’t he the army?” they asked. In the better days such a question would have been denounced as treasonable. After their four years of arbitrary rule, it seemed to them the most natural thing in the world.
Richmond was fallen from its high estate, but it was a capital still. The brains, the pluck, and the pride of the rebellion are there, and the Rebel capital still leads the returning Rebel States. The Northern public scarcely appreciated the amount of journalistic talent concentrated there in the interest of the Rebel cause. The newspapers of Richmond, throughout the war, were in many respects the ablest on the continent. Their writing was often turgid, but it was always effective; and it shaped the public sentiment of the whole Confederacy. Mr. Davis himself was not above writing leaders for his organ, and Benjamin is reported to have been a frequent contributor. In the midst of their destitution they managed to keep up double the number of average dailies that we had in Washington, and the editorials of each were generally the productions of educated thinkers, as well as red-hot partisans. Fortunately or unfortunately, a share of the old ability and fervor clings to the revived newspapers of Richmond, and it is curious to see with what avidity the Virginians gulp down the praises of their heroic dead, in which they tend to indulge so freely, since it is no longer so safe to extol the deeds of the pardoned or pardon-seeking survivors.
Yet, with all the fervid zeal of the newspapers, I doubt if the great mass of Virginians cared very much, in November, for any active participation in political movements. At the outset, they were disgusted with their vulgar, drunken Governor. Then their ablest men were all ineligible to office, because steeped in the rebellion; and they had the haughty pride of old families, which revolts against encouraging the aspirations of unknown or odious upstarts. And, besides, while they made a great show of establishing civil government, the galling consciousness remained that, whether they chose it or not, they must walk in a certain path, or be suppressed by the military. As the Enquirer itself said:
“As long as the civil authority is subordinate to the military, there can not and ought not to be any politics or any principles among a people so unhappily situated. A paper that is not as free to censure as to approve, has no virtue in its support, and no importance attaches to its utterances. Approbation is worthless where censure is forbid. The politics of the Enquirer, therefore, must be deferred until the return of those good times when a free press is the bulwark of the State.”
Even the hated “Radicals” would be apt to indorse so lucid a statement of so sound a principle. But they might possibly make the argument prove more than would be pleasing to Richmond. If there “ought not to be any politics among a people so unhappily situated,” neither ought there to be the farce of a form without the substance of State Government.
Though not making exactly this deduction, many Virginians were still ready for almost any political arrangement that would secure them the quiet and established order of civil government, and leave them to the task of repairing their shattered private fortunes. Even yet they had scarcely begun to comprehend the policy of a plot for bringing the men who had just been trying to overturn a government into the complete control of it. Many were still ready to accept, as final, whatever orders the Government might issue, and to make haste to do their part in obeying them.
“I tell you,” said a prominent man, “President Johnson can name his Senators and they will be straightway elected. He can say what he wants, and the Virginia Legislature, so-called, will register his edicts in legislative enactments. What we wish is to get settled, to know where we are and what we can depend upon, and then we want to go to work developing our material resources. We’re all poor; we want to regain our lost money, and we’ve got to let politics alone and go to work to do it.”
Beneath all this lay, of course, never-abandoned hopes of regaining political supremacy, after the social authority that comes of wealth has been restored. But the first want of Virginians was a settlement; something fixed on which capital could rely. They talked foolishly who said Virginia would not stand this, and the proud Virginians would revolt from that. The proud Virginians would stand anything, for the best of reasons. They could not help themselves. Statesmen might decide upon the course of statesmen for such emergencies; and whether it was pleasant or unpleasant, Virginia would submit, make the best of it, and go to work to improve her condition.