CHAPTER XLIX. THE NEW ERA.
The close of the Rebellion opened to the negro a new era in his history. The chains of slavery had been severed; and although he had not been clothed with all the powers of the citizen, the black man was, nevertheless, sure of all his rights being granted, for revolutions seldom go backward. With the beginning of the work of reconstruction, the right of the negro to the ballot came legitimately before the country, and brought with it all the virus of negro hate that could be thought of. President Andrew Johnson threw the weight of his official influence into the scales against the newly-liberated people, which for a time cast a dark shadow over the cause of justice and freedom. Congress, however, by its Constitutional amendments, settled the question, and clothed the blacks with the powers of citizenship; and with their white fellow-citizens they entered the reconstruction conventions, and commenced the work of bringing their states back into the Union. This was a trying position for the recently enfranchised blacks; for slavery had bequeathed to them nothing but poverty, ignorance, and dependence upon their former owners for employment and the means of sustaining themselves and their families. The transition through which they passed during the war, had imparted to some a smattering of education; and this, with the natural aptitude of the negro for acquiring, made the colored men appear to advantage in whatever position they were called to take part.
The speeches delivered by some of these men in the conventions and state legislatures exhibit a depth of thought, flights of eloquence, and civilized statesmanship, that throw their former masters far in the background.
In the work of reconstruction, the colored men had the advantage of being honest and sincere in what they undertook, and labored industriously for the good of the country.
The riots in various Southern states, following the enfranchising of the men of color, attest the deep-rooted prejudice existing with the men who once so misruled the rebellious states. In Georgia, Tennessee, and Louisiana, these outbursts of ill feeling caused the loss of many lives, and the destruction of much property. No true Union man, white or black, was safe. The Constitutional amendment, which gave the ballot to the black men of the North in common with their brethren of the South, aroused the old pro-slavery feeling in the free states, which made it scarcely safe for the newly enfranchised to venture to the polls on the day of election in some of the Northern cities. The cry that this was a “white man’s government,” was raised from one end of the country to the other by the Democratic press, and the Taney theory that “black men had no rights that white men were bound to respect,” was revived, with all its negro hate.
Military occupation of the South was all that saved the freedmen from destruction. Under it, they were able to take part in the various Constitutional and Legislative elections, and to hold seats in those bodies. As South Carolina had been the most conspicuous in the Rebellion, so she was the first to return to the Union, and to recognize the political equality of the race whom in former days she had bought and sold. Her Senate hall, designed to echo the eloquence of the Calhouns, the McDuffies, the Hammonds, the Hamptons, and the Rhetts, has since resounded with the speeches of men who were once her bond slaves. Ransier, the negro, now fills the chair of President of the Senate, where once sat the proud and haughty Calhoun; while Nash, the tall, gaunt, full-blooded negro, speaks in the plantation dialect from the desk in which Wade Hampton in former days stood. The State is represented in Congress by Elliott, Rainey, and De Large. South Carolina submitted quietly to her destiny.
Not so, however, with Georgia. At the election in November, 1867, for members to the State Convention, thirty thousand white and eighty thousand colored votes were polled, and a number of colored delegates elected. A Constitution was framed and ratified, and a Legislature elected under it was convened. After all this, supposing they had passed beyond Congressional control, the Rebel element in the Legislature asserted itself; and many of those whose disabilities had been removed by the State Convention, which comprised a number of colored members, joined in the declaration which was made by that Legislature, that a man having more than one-eighth of African blood in his veins was ineligible to office.
These very men to whom the Republican party extended all the rights and privileges of citizenship, of which they had deprived themselves, denied political equality to a large majority of their fellow-citizens. Twenty-eight members were expelled on December 22, 1869; an Act of Congress was passed requiring the re-assembling of the persons declared elected by the military commander, the restoration of the expelled members, and the rejection of others, who were disqualified.