THE EX-SLAVE AS MASTER.
The Civil War ended in 1865, and the Confederacy lay crushed and dead.
With it died slavery in the United States. The Slavery Question was, of
course, the _fons et origo_ of the war, but it was by no means the sole,
or even the ostensible, point at issue between North and South. Nor was
anything beyond the mere manumission of the slave ever involved in the
slavery question. The North did not fight that the manumitted slave
might be placed on terms of perfect equality with the white man, or even
that he might obtain the franchise. It fought, so far as slavery was
concerned, for manumission, and for nothing else; and it gained its
point. The point is expressed in the Amendment XIII. to the
Constitution, which declares that “neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall
have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any
place subject to their jurisdiction.”
And it may be said at once that there is now nowhere in the United
States any party which regrets that slavery has been abolished, or which
would restore it to-morrow, even if it were able to do so by a stroke of
the pen. Yet there is, and always has been, not merely in the South, but
also in the North and West, a very powerful party which is of opinion
that the manumitted slave and the uneducated negro and coloured man
ought not to be placed on terms of perfect equality with the white man,
and ought not to be permitted to exercise the franchise. Indeed, the
slave’s emancipation, as well as his citizenship, was effected as a
tribute to military and political, rather than to moral, exigencies.
Writing to W. S. Speer, on October 23rd, 1860, Mr. Lincoln said:—
“I appreciate your motive when you suggest the propriety of my writing
for the public something disclaiming all intention to interfere with
slaves or slavery in the States; but in my judgment it would do no
good. I have already done this many, many times, and it is in print
and open to all who will read.”
And, writing to Mr. Lincoln on December 26th following, Mr. Seward
said:—
“I met on Monday my Republican associates on the Committee of
Thirteen, and afterwards the whole Committee. With the unanimous
consent of our section, I offered three propositions which seemed to
me to cover the ground of the suggestion made by you through Mr. Weed,
as I understood it. First, that the Constitution should never be
altered so as to authorise Congress to abolish or interfere with
slavery in the States. This was accepted.”
This attitude of the Republican leaders changed as the war went on; but
even then the giving to the negro of full political rights and perfect
equality was not contemplated. Amendment XIII. says nothing on that
head, and Mr. Lincoln, in his last days, expressed himself as opposed to
such a wholesale measure. But, the South having been conquered, means
had to be devised for keeping it for a time under political subjection,
and no means were more obvious or ready to hand than, firstly, a
military occupation, with all that such occupation entails; and,
secondly, the extension of the suffrage and of the full rights of
citizenship to the people who, up to the time of the war, had been
slaves. These people, not two or three per cent. of whom possessed the
simplest rudiments of education, naturally looked upon the North as a
Heavensent deliverer, and were in consequence anxious, when they
obtained the suffrage, to support their Northern friends. Thus they were
Republicans almost to a man. The Southern whites were, and still are,
with nearly equal unanimity, Democrats. In the North, so far as my
observation enables me to judge, the Republican party enfolds the
majority of the brains and ability of the population. In the South,
beyond all doubt, the Democratic party is the party of knowledge and
mental power. And in the South, moreover, so far as educated white men
are concerned, it is practically the only party. There are Southern
Republicans; but they are, almost without exception, negroes, coloured
people, or the lowest and most ignorant class of whites.
At first, the process of “reconstructing” the ex-Confederate States was
not made to involve the employment of the liberated slave as an agent
for the subjection of his former master; but as time went on the black
man’s obvious utility was perceived. The following sketch will show how
the eight old Slave States in which there was, and still is, the largest
negro and coloured element, passed from the condition in which they
found themselves at the end of the war to the condition in which they
are at the present moment. The particulars concerning Alabama are mainly
summarised from a paper by Mr. Hilary A. Herbert, member of Congress for
that State; those concerning North Carolina from a paper by Mr. Zebulon
B. Vance, United States Senator for that State; those concerning South
Carolina from a paper by Mr. John J. Hemphill, member of Congress for
that State; those concerning Georgia from a paper by Mr. Henry G.
Turner, member of Congress for that State; those concerning Florida from
a paper by Mr. Samuel Pasco, United States Senator for that State; those
concerning Virginia from a paper by Mr. Robert Stiles, a distinguished
Virginian; those concerning Mississippi from a paper by Mr. Ethelbert
Barksdale, ex-member of Congress for that State; and those concerning
Louisiana from a paper by Mr. B. J. Sage. These papers, with others,
were collected and published during the past year by Mr. Hilary A.
Herbert at Baltimore, under the general title of “Why the Solid
South?”[3] and they form, I think, the most instructive key that has yet
been fitted to the great question, “Why are the United States
practically two nations?” I have had the honour of meeting several of
the writers, and I believe them to be all men of uprightness and
fairness. I have added numerous illustrative details which have been
supplied to me from other trustworthy sources, which, however, I need
not here catalogue.
Footnote 3:
“Why the Solid South? or, Reconstruction and its Results.” Baltimore:
R. H. Woodward and Co. 1899.
After the close of the war, each of the vanquished States received from
the President a provisional governor, who had authority to call a
convention to frame a constitution of government. The States soon
recognised the new situation. Under the new order of things the suffrage
was still confined to white men, and senators and representatives were
duly elected, and awaited permission to act. They were almost all
Democrats. This fact had its effect upon the Republicans, and when the
Thirty-ninth Congress opened in December, 1865, Mr. Thad. Stevens, who
thenceforth took the lead in the matter, said:—“According to my
judgment, they” (the insurrectionary States) “ought never to be
recognised as capable of acting in the Union, or of being counted as
valid States, until the Constitution shall have been so amended as to
make it what its makers intended, and so as to secure perpetual
ascendency to the party of the Union.”
Mr. Stevens’ plans were two—to reduce the representation to which the
late slave-holding States were entitled under the Constitution, and to
enfranchise blacks and disenfranchise whites. But even so late as 1865–6
the North was not prepared to grant negro suffrage. Pennsylvania, Ohio,
Connecticut, and other States, would have none of it. It was agreed,
however, in February, 1866, that neither House should admit any member
from the late Insurrectionary States until the report of a joint
committee which had been appointed to consider the question of
reconstruction should be received.
This was a declaration of war upon President Johnson’s plan of
pacification, but President Johnson did not give way. He vetoed a Bill
to confer many rights—not including suffrage—upon the freedmen, because,
in his opinion, it was unconstitutional. Then followed the struggle over
the proposed Amendment XIV. to the Constitution, an amendment which
apportioned representatives in Congress upon the basis of the voting
population, and which provided that no person should hold office under
the United States who, having taken an oath as a Federal or State
officer to support the Constitution, had subsequently engaged in war
against the Union. This struggle led to much bad blood, in spite of the
fact that the amendment in its original form did not pass.
Still worse feeling was stirred up by the action of the Freedmen’s
Bureau agents in the South. The Freedmen’s Bureau had been established
in 1865 to act as the guardian of freedmen, with power to make their
contracts, settle their disputes with employers, and care for them
generally. Many of the agents of this Bureau traded upon their position,
and, with a view to furthering their own political aspirations,
deliberately fomented race hatreds. They widely disseminated among the
freedmen a belief that the lands of their former owners were, at least
to some extent, to be divided among the ex-slaves; and, said General
Grant, “the effect of the belief in the division of lands is idleness
and accumulation in camps, towns, and cities.” A more salutary lesson
would have been that in the sweat of his face must a man earn his bread;
but this the agents, as a mass, did not teach. On the contrary, they
demoralised the labour situation in the South, and, later, nearly all of
them took advantage of, and reaped profit from, the demoralisation which
they had created. Their ranks supplied an enormous number of candidates
for office.
In the meanwhile the joint committee on reconstruction was at work. It
consisted of twelve Republicans and only three Democrats; and on the
sub-committee, which collected evidence respecting the condition of
Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi,
and Arkansas, there was no Democrat at all.
The situation in those and the other Southern States was confessedly not
good. The ex-Confederate soldiers had returned home demoralised by
defeat, and found four millions of slaves demoralised by sudden
manumission and by the action of the Freedmen’s Bureau agents; and,
naturally, there was much friction between the races. But the
committee’s report of the nature and amount of that friction was greatly
exaggerated. As to the State of Alabama, only five witnesses were
examined, all of them being Republican politicians of notoriously
partisan character. These witnesses had everything to gain and nothing
to lose by “reconstruction”; and, as a matter of fact, when
“reconstruction” followed, one of them became Governor of his State, a
second a Senator in Congress, a third a permanent official at
Washington, a fourth a Circuit Judge in Alabama, and the fifth a Judge
of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia. It may not have been
_propter hoc_, but it was certainly _post hoc_, and the coincidence is
suspicious.
Upon the strength of the report the ex-Confederate States were held to
be out of the Union. Their exact _status_ remained to be determined by
the voice of the North, as expressed at the polls. The elections were
held in due course; and on the first Monday in December, 1866, the
Republicans came back to the last session of the Thirty-ninth Congress
flushed with victory. They had a majority of thirty-one in the Senate
and of ninety-four in the House.
But President Johnson, with his vetoes, still stood firm; and “for the
purpose of securing the fruits of the victories gained” the impeachment
of the President was determined upon. I need not go into the
circumstances of that impeachment, the ultimate excuse for which was the
dismissal of Mr. Stanton from the Secretaryship of War. Suffice it to
say that Congress took steps for “the extension of the suffrage to the
coloured race in the district of Columbia, both as a right and as an
example.”
Mr. Buckalew, of Pennsylvania, discussing the Bill, said, fairly enough,
“Our ancestors placed suffrage on the broad common-sense principle that
it should be lodged in, and exercised by, those who could use it most
wisely, and most safely, and most efficiently to serve the ends for
which Government was instituted,” and “not upon any abstract or
transcendental notion of human rights which ignored the existing facts
of social life. I shall not vote to degrade suffrage. I shall not vote
to pollute and corrupt the foundations of political power, either in my
own State or in any other.” On the other hand, Senator Sumner declared,
“Now, to my mind, nothing is clearer than the absolute necessity of
suffrage for all coloured persons in the disorganised States.” (This was
in reference to an informal understanding that the late Confederate
States were to share the fate of the district of Columbia.) “It will
not,” he continued, “be enough if you give it to those who read and
write. You will not in this way acquire the voting force which you need
there for the protection of Unionists, whether white or black. You will
not secure the new allies who are essential to the national cause.”
The Bill, thus cynically supported, passed; but on January 7th, 1867,
was vetoed by the President. The Republican majority, however, was not
to be balked. In spite of the facts that all resistance to Federal
authority in the South had long since ceased, and that, according to a
decision of Mr. Justice Nelson, of the Supreme Court, States in which
the civil government had been restored under the pacific Presidential
plan were entitled to all the rights of States in the Union—in spite of
these facts Congress solemnly decided that the war was not over; and in
March, 1867, it passed the celebrated Reconstruction Acts, in face of
the President’s veto. These Acts annulled the State Governments then in
operation; divided the States into military districts, and placed them
under martial law; enfranchised the negroes; disenfranchised all,
whether pardoned or not, who had participated in the war against the
Union, if they had previously held any executive, legislative, or
judicial office under the State or general Government; and provided for
the calling of conventions, the framing and adopting of State
constitutions, and the election of State officials. In the interim the
military commanders were given absolute power, death sentences only
being subject to the approval of the President.
This action of the Republicans was far from being in accordance with the
just and statesmanlike principles of Lincoln, who, writing in 1862 to
Governor Shepley, in Louisiana, said that only respectable citizens of
Louisiana, voted for by other respectable citizens, were wanted as
representatives in Washington. “To send,” he continued, “a parcel of
Northern men here, elected, as would be understood, and perhaps justly
so, at the point of the bayonet, would be disgraceful and outrageous.”
In less than five years party spirit had blinded even great Republicans
to these dictates of generosity and far-seeing patriotism. Garfield so
far forgot his usually chivalrous character as to say exultingly, “This
Bill sets out by laying its hands on the rebel governments and taking
the very breath of life out of them; in the next place it puts the
bayonet at the breast of every rebel in the South; in the next place it
leaves in the hands of Congress, utterly and absolutely, the work of
reconstruction.”
Now, indeed, the ex-Confederate States were about to pay dearly for
their faults in the past. They had fought, and had poured forth blood
and treasure; they had been beaten, and they had submitted, but they
were not forgiven. They had enslaved the black. Henceforth, for a
season, the black, ignorant, unscrupulous, dissolute, and corrupt, was
to enslave them.
What I have written so far applies equally to all the Southern States.
The miserable fortunes of each individual State from the time of the
passing of the Reconstruction Acts have next to be followed. I will
endeavour to be brief, but no study of the negro question in the United
States can, as has been said, be perfect, or even comprehensible,
without some allusion to the terrible penalty that was exacted from a
brave but vanquished people in and after 1867. The States were one and
all Democratic. By June, 1868, eight out of the eleven were represented
in both branches of Congress. Of the representatives, all but two were
Republicans; of the Senators, not one was a Democrat; and one-half of
the whole were Northerners, who had been elected by means such as Mr.
Lincoln, in 1862, had declared to be disgraceful and outrageous. In
1871, when all the States had been reconstructed, the South was
represented at Washington by seventy Republicans and only fifteen
Democrats.
RECONSTRUCTION IN ALABAMA.
In Alabama, as elsewhere, a working and fairly satisfactory Government
had been summarily overthrown by the Reconstruction Acts. It now made
way for a Republican Government dominated by negroes, most of whom could
neither read nor express an intelligent opinion on any current topic.
The negroes almost to a man were Republican, and so violent was
unreasoning party feeling among them that a few blacks who were
Democrats were expelled from their churches. There was a negro majority
in the Convention which was elected in 1867 to frame a new Constitution;
and, although it was required that for the ratification of the
Constitution a majority of the registered electors of the State should
vote, the new Constitution was ratified by Congress, in defiance of the
fact that the necessary majority had not voted. Under the new
Constitution began an era of Republican control of an avowedly
Democratic State, with twenty-six negroes in the House and one in the
Senate. During this period legislators, as one of their number is
reported to have said, “sold their votes for prices that would have
disgraced a negro in the time of slavery.” Money was obtained for public
works, but never legitimately expended, and the only people to profit
were the Northern “carpet-baggers” and the Southern negroes, many of
whom were not even taxpayers. A state of strife and ill-feeling was
sedulously kept up between the races, and jobbery and corruption were
universal and unveiled. After the elections of 1872, so outrageous were
the frauds on the part of the managers that both Democrats and
Republicans claimed the victory, and for a season there were rival
Legislatures in existence. The Democrats, however, submitted, in
presence of United States’ troops.
All kinds of most incompetent men were appointed to judicial positions.
For example, the first judge of the criminal court at Selma was one
Corbin, an old Virginian, who had never practised law. Its first clerk
was Roderick Thomas, a coloured man, who until after his manumission was
wholly without education. When Corbin left the Bench, Thomas succeeded
him, and another coloured man, as ignorant as Thomas, succeeded to the
position of clerk. Here is an extract, illustrative of the character of
Corbin, from that eccentric judge’s charge to the grand jury on July
27th, 1874:—
“Time was, and not very distantly, gentlemen, when this charge was
done up and delivered in grand old style: when grand old judges, robed
in costly black silk gowns and coiffured with huge old periwigs,
swelling out their august personages, were escorted into the
Court-rooms by obsequious sheriffs, bearing high before them and with
stately step their blazoned insignia of offices.... Fair ladies and
courtly old dames of pinguid proportions, in rich and rustling silk
brocades, flocked to grace the Court-room with their enchanting
presence and to hear the august, gowned, and periwigged old judges
ventilate their classic literature and their cultivated oratory in the
grandiloquent old charge.”
Corbin quarrelled with his party, which got rid of him. His
characteristic comment was that the Republicans were “a parcel of pigs;
as soon as one got an ear of corn the others took after him to get it
away.”
Such appointments as his were some of the fruits of ignorant negro
dominion in Alabama. They exasperated the Democrats, who, in spite of
much that is not creditable to them, are, and ever since the war have
been, the most respectable party in the State. In less than seven years
this negro domination rendered the State bankrupt and the population
furious. The elections of 1874 were, in consequence, attended by much
regretable fraud and violence, and, by some means, a Democratic majority
was obtained. It has kept itself in office ever since; it has remodelled
the Constitution; it has brought back economy and, I believe, honesty in
the administration of the public funds; it has largely reduced the State
indebtedness, and it has wholly restored the public credit. It may have
gained and preserved its object by discreditable means, but it has not
abused its power, and to-day, save for the black shadow of the Race
Question, Alabama flourishes.
RECONSTRUCTION IN NORTH CAROLINA.
North Carolina fared much as did Alabama. Under the Reconstruction Acts
and Amendment XIV. her most intelligent voters were proscribed, and
power fell into the hands of plunderers and adventurers. The result of
the voting for the Constitutional Convention in 1867 was that one
hundred and ten Republicans and only ten Democrats were returned by a
notoriously Democratic State; and the new Constitution of 1868
introduced an era of despotism and fraud. The negroes were permitted to
vote before they were legally entitled to the suffrage, and in the new
Senate there were thirty-eight Republicans and twelve Democrats, while
in the House there were eighty Republicans and forty Democrats. Several
of the negro members of the Legislature were unable to read. At every
opportunity these men robbed the State and trifled with its credit.
There was open corruption and universal bribery. There was formed a
political “ring,” which demanded, and generally received, 10 per cent.
on all appropriations passed by the Legislature. Lavish entertainments
were given and paid for out of public money. “A regular bar was
established in the Capitol, and it was said that, with somewhat less
publicity, some of its rooms were devoted to the purposes of
prostitution. Decency fled abashed; the spectacle of coarse, ignorant
negroes sitting at table, drinking champagne and smoking Havannah
cigars, was not uncommon.
“I cannot refrain,” continues Mr. Vance, “from telling a story which I
have heard of one, old ‘Cuffy,’ who was a member of that body, and a
shining light in the movement of progress—one who, in the language of
Mr. Hoar, had his ‘face turned towards the morning light.’ A friend,
going to see him one night at his rooms, found him sitting at a table,
by the dim light of a tallow dip, laboriously counting a pile of money,
and chuckling to himself. ‘Why,’ said his visitor, ‘what amuses you so,
Uncle Cuffy?’ ‘Well, boss,’ he replied, grinning from ear to ear, ‘I’se
been sold in my life ’leven times, an’, fo’ de Lord, dis is de fust time
I eber got de money.’”
The boldness of the robbers of the State was extraordinary. On one
occasion they obtained authority for an issue of bonds to the amount of
nearly £3,000,000 sterling, for the construction of a railway. These
bonds were all issued, but not so much as a single yard of the line was
ever laid down. Yet the people submitted patiently, until what was known
as the Schoffner Act was passed. This, under the pretence of suppressing
internal disorders, authorised the Governor, at his discretion, to
declare any county in a state of insurrection, to proclaim martial law,
and to try accused persons by drumhead court-martial. It also authorised
the raising of two regiments of troops, one of which was composed of
negroes, and the other of which was made up of white desperadoes, under
the command of the infamous Kirk. The proceedings under this Act were of
such a terrorising nature that the whole country took alarm. Many
Republicans, black and white, joined the Democrats; at the elections of
1870, after a shorter reconstruction period than fell to the lot of many
other States, the Democrats successfully reasserted themselves, and
North Carolina was redeemed. She has not since recovered her financial
position, but she bids fair to do so.
RECONSTRUCTION IN SOUTH CAROLINA.
So cruelly did South Carolina suffer during the era of reconstruction,
and so completely was she abased, that before the period of her
sufferings ended she became known as the “Prostrate State.” Her best
white citizens being disfranchised, she could not make her real voice
heard, and, in 1867, the election of delegates to the Convention for the
framing of a new constitution for her resulted in the return of
sixty-three negroes or coloured people and but thirty-four whites. The
latter were, almost without exception, either Northern adventurers or
Southern renegades; the former were, as a body, as ignorant as it is
possible to conceive. In 1868 the constitution which had been drawn up
by this strange Convention was adopted, chiefly upon the strength of the
votes of the negroes who were not then legally enfranchised, but who,
nevertheless, were encouraged by the Republican managers to go to the
polls.
Under the new constitution a General Assembly was elected. It included
seventy-two whites and eighty-five coloured men or negroes, and of the
total number one hundred and thirty-six were Republicans and only
twenty-one Democrats. All this happened in spite of the fact that
Amendment XV. to the United States Constitution, the amendment which
conferred the franchise upon the negro, was not ratified until March 30,
1870. General R. K. Scott, of Ohio, an ex-officer of the Freedmen’s
Bureau, was chosen Governor, and, almost immediately, the black
majority, assisted by the white Republican carpet-baggers, began to
tyrannise over the white Democrats, and to exploit the State in their
own private interests.
An Act passed in 1869 abolished the long-established rule of evidence
that all men shall be considered innocent until proved guilty, and
expressly directed that if the person whose rights under the Act were
alleged to have been denied happened to be coloured, then the burden of
proof would be on the defendant; so that any person or corporation named
in the Act, if simply accused by a person of colour, was thereby to be
presumed to be guilty, and was liable to be subjected to heavy penalties
upon this mere accusation, without a particle of proof by the plaintiff
or any other witness.
As for the extravagance of the new rulers, it was unlimited. When they
first met in legislative assembly, in 1868, they used the same building
which the whites had occupied before them, and they furnished it
inexpensively. But as soon as they realised their power, they exhibited
their luxurious tastes, and furnished anew the legislative halls in the
State House. For clocks that had cost 8s. 6d. they substituted clocks
that cost £120; for spittoons that had cost 1s. 8d. they substituted
spittoons that cost £1 14s.; for benches that had cost 16s. 6d. they
substituted crimson sofas that cost £40; for chairs that had cost 4s.
2d. they substituted crimson plush gothic chairs that cost £12; for
desks that had cost £2 they substituted desks that cost £35; and for
looking-glasses that had cost 16s. 6d. they substituted mirrors that
cost £120. The furnishing of the hall of the House of Representatives of
this impoverished State cost £19,000. The same hall has recently been
very nicely refurnished for £612. At least forty bed-rooms were
furnished at the public expense, some of them three times over. A
restaurant was also maintained in one of the committee rooms of the
Capitol at Columbia, and there officials and their friends and relatives
helped themselves, without stint, to food, liquors, and cigars, at the
cost of the taxpayer. For six years this restaurant was kept open every
day from eight o’clock on one morning until three o’clock on the next.
In a single session the restaurant swallowed up £25,000.
Nor was this by any means all. In 1873 Mr. J. S. Pike, late United
States Minister to Holland, a Republican, and originally a staunch
Abolitionist, wrote a little book[4] on the situation in South Carolina.
His testimony cannot be challenged. He, at least, was no Southern
Democrat, full of hatred to “niggers,” and to all the works of the
North; and the picture that he painted is one which shows corruption,
extravagance, and legislative wickedness such as never prevailed even in
Hayti in its worst days. Describing “A Black Parliament,” he says:—
Footnote 4:
“The Prostrate State.”
“Here, then, is the outcome, the ripe, perfected fruit of the boasted
civilisation of the South after 200 years of experience. A white
community that had gradually risen from small beginnings till it grew
into wealth, culture, and refinement, and became accomplished in all
the arts of civilisation; that successfully asserted its resistance to
a foreign tyranny by deeds of conspicuous valour; that achieved
liberty and independence through the fire and tempest of civil war,
and illustrated itself in the councils of the nation by orators and
statesmen worthy of any age or nation—such a community is then reduced
to this. It lies prostrate in the dust, ruled over by this strange
conglomerate, gathered from the ranks of its own servile
population.... In the place of this old aristocratic society stands
the rude form of the most ignorant democracy that mankind ever saw
invested with the functions of government. It is the dregs of the
population habited in the robes of their intelligent predecessors, and
asserting over them the rule of ignorance and corruption through the
inexorable machinery of a majority of numbers. It is barbarism
overwhelming civilisation by physical force.... We will enter the
House of Representatives. Here sit 124 members; of these twenty-three
are white men, representing the remains of the old civilisation....
These twenty-three white men are but the observers, the enforced
auditors, of the dull and clumsy imitation of a deliberative body,
whose appearance in their present capacity is at once a wonder and a
shame to modern civilisation.... The Speaker is black, the clerk is
black, the door-keepers are black, the little pages are black, the
Chairman of the Ways and Means is black, and the chaplain is
coal-black. At some of the desks sit coloured men whose types it would
be hard to find outside of Congo; whose costumes, visages, attitudes,
and expressions only befit the forecastle of a buccaneer.”
Such were the rulers of a State that then contained over 300,000 white
men and women.
In 1869 an exclusively coloured militia was organised, and, by the end
of 1870, 96,000 men were enrolled in it. To fourteen regiments of these
men arms and ammunition were issued before the re-election of General
Scott in 1870; they officially attended political meetings and were paid
for their services there, and they were confessedly enrolled and used
for political purposes. An armed constabulary was maintained for the
same objects. On June 25, 1870, J. W. Anderson, a deputy-constable,
reported to his chief:— “We can carry the county (York) if we get
constables enough, by encouraging the militia, and frightening the poor
white men. I am going into the campaign for Scott.” And on July 8, 1870,
Joseph Crews, a deputy-constable, reported from Laurens county:—“We are
going to have a hard campaign up here, and we must have more constables.
I will carry the election here with the militia if the constables will
work with me. I am giving out ammunition all the time. Tell Scott he is
all right here now.” Again, testifying before a legislative committee in
1877, J. B. Hubbard, the Chief Constable, said:—
“It was understood that by arming the coloured militia and keeping
some of the most influential officers under pay, a full vote would be
brought out for the Republicans, and the Democracy, or many of the
weak-kneed Democrats, intimidated. At the time the militia was
organised, there was, comparatively speaking, but little lawlessness.
The militia, being organised and armed, caused an increase of crime
and bloodshed in most of the counties, in proportion to their numbers
and the number of arms and amount of ammunition furnished them.”
Governor Scott spent £75,000 of public money in the advancement of his
candidature, and his majority of 30,000 votes was due entirely to
terrorism and bribery. In 1871 it was discovered that the Financial
Board had illegally issued several millions of State bonds, and there
was a movement for the impeachment of Scott, who was a member of the
Board. To save himself Scott issued three warrants upon the Armed Force
Fund, leaving the amounts blank, and gave them to two of his political
associates. The warrants were afterwards filled up for £9,729, and the
money was used to bribe members of the Legislature, the result being
that the Governor escaped. In the meantime, so outrageous was the waste
of public money, and so unabashed the general corruption, that several
outbreaks occurred. These were suppressed by a suspension in certain
counties of the writ of _habeas corpus_; but there is no doubt that they
represented chiefly the efforts of honest citizens to protect themselves
when they found that the Government did not protect them.
Mr. Franklin J. Moses, jun., succeeded General Scott as Governor, in
1872; and under him corruption grew more rampant than ever. Writing soon
after that person had assumed office, Mr. J. S. Pike said:—
“The whole of the late Administration ... was a morass of rottenness,
and the present Administration was born of the corruptions of that....
There seems to be no hope, therefore, that the villainies of the past
will be speedily uncovered. The present Governor was Speaker of the
last House, and he is credited with having issued during his term of
office over $400,000 (£80,000) of pay certificates, which are still
unredeemed and for which there is no appropriation, but which must be
saddled on the taxpayers sooner or later.... Taxation is not in the
least diminished; and nearly $2,000,000 per annum are raised for State
expenses where $400,000 formerly sufficed.... The new Governor has the
reputation of spending $30,000 to $40,000 a year on a salary of
$3,500; but his financial operations are taken as a matter of course,
and only referred to with a slight shrug of the shoulders.... The
total amount of the stationery bill of the House for the twenty years
preceding 1861 averaged $400 (£80) per annum. Last year it was $16,000
(£3,200).... It is bad enough to have the decency and intelligence and
property of the State subjected to the domination of its ignorant
black pauper multitude, but it becomes unendurable when to that
ignorance the worst vices are superadded.”
Moses’s rule was far worse than Scott’s. There was more waste, more
corruption, and more lawlessness. In 1874 a committee was appointed to
represent the state of affairs to the President; but Moses and his
fellows learnt betimes of this intention, and, having misappropriated
£500 of public money for the purpose, were able to checkmate the move.
It is impossible here to go into details of the various legislative and
political scandals of the period. So venal was Moses, and so notoriously
did he sell his power, that, more than once, judges announced from the
bench their unwillingness to put the people to the expense and trouble
of convicting criminals for the Governor to pardon.
Governor D. H. Chamberlain, a well-meaning and honest Republican,
succeeded this miscreant in 1874; yet he proved too weak to control his
party. Owing to the action of a remnant of Scott’s negro militia, a
bloody riot occurred in Edgefield county in January, 1875; and in his
treatment of this event, as well as in his attempts to lessen the public
expenditure, Mr. Chamberlain showed that he was animated by the best
desires; but in 1875 his efforts to ensure the purity and integrity of
the Bench were circumvented by a conspiracy among his followers; and
among the judges then chosen was the infamous ex-Governor Moses. Mr.
Chamberlain refused to commission him, and the man never served. The
circumstances of his choice, however, aroused the country, and
determined the people to oust the Republicans. At the elections of 1876
they chose as their Governor General Wade Hampton, and put Democrats and
white men into all official and representative positions. In this
election there were fraud and violence on both sides; but, while the
Democrats were fighting for their liberty, and almost for their lives,
the Republicans were fighting mainly for office alone. And the victors
have not, upon the whole, abused their victory. They have introduced
administrative economy; they have restored the credit of their State;
they have cared for education and general progress; and they have
brought back a fair measure of peace and a large one of prosperity.
And here I should add one word more concerning Moses. After his fall
from power he became a criminal of the vulgarest character. In 1881 he
was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for fraud to the amount of
$25; in 1884 he was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment for
swindling; in 1885 he was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for
fraud to the amount of $34; and in the same year he was sent to prison
for three years for five other fraudulent transactions. After his
release he was arrested for stealing overcoats from the hall of a New
York house. He was apparently an incorrigible scoundrel first and last.
In 1877 a committee was appointed by the Legislature of South Carolina
to inquire into and report upon the scandals of the period from 1867 to
1876. I cannot resist the temptation of making a few extracts from the
report:—
“If the simple statement was made that Senators and Members of the
House were furnished with everything they desired, from swaddling
clothes and cradle to the coffin of the undertaker, from brogans to
chignons, from finest extracts to best wines and liquors, and that all
was paid for by the State, it would create a smile of doubt and
derision; but when we make the statement, and prove it by several
witnesses and by vouchers found in the offices of the Clerks of the
Senate and House, all must, with sorrow, admit the truthfulness of the
report.
“A. O. Jones, Clerk of the House, testifies that supplies were
furnished under the head of ‘legislative expenses,’ ‘sundries,’ and
‘stationery,’ and included refreshments for committee rooms,
groceries, clocks, horses, carriages, dry goods, furniture of every
description, and miscellaneous articles of merchandise for the
personal use of the members.
“It is shown that on March 4, 1872, Solomon furnished the Senate with
$1,631 worth of wines and liquors, and on the 7th day of the same
month with $1,852 75c. worth.
“Whilst fraud, bribery, and corruption were rife in every department
of the State Government, nothing equalled the infamy attending the
management of public printing.... From 1868 to 1876 the sums paid for
public printing amounted to $1,326,589 (£265,318)—a sum largely in
excess of the cost of public printing from the establishment of the
State Government up to 1868.... The public printing in this State cost
$450,000 (£90,000) in one year, and exceeded the cost of like work in
Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, and New York by $122,932
(£24,588).”
The Committee gives a list of the names of twenty-two Senators and
Representatives who received sums varying from £10 to £1,000 under what
was called the “division and silence arrangement,” and it also gives a
list of those who were bribed to vote for these enormous appropriations.
Governor Moses received £4,000, Mr. Cardozo (treasurer) received £2,500,
and so on. It is not surprising that under so iniquitous a system the
State printing bill, which, during the seventy-eight years ending 1868
had been but £121,800, mounted up in the eight years (1868–76) to
£265,318. During the negro-Republican era of reconstruction South
Carolina’s monthly printing bill averaged £11,133; during General Wade
Hampton’s administration it averaged £103.
RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA.
In Georgia the reconstruction period was likewise full of fraud and
corruption. In one short session the pay and mileage allowances of
members and officers of the General Assembly amounted to $979,055, or
£195,811, and there were no fewer than one hundred and four clerks, or
nearly one clerk to every two members. Between 1868 and 1870 the State
debt increased from $5,827,000 to $18,183,000, and the State bonds
became almost unmarketable, while all public works either fell to ruin
or were “run” by, and mainly for the benefit of, unscrupulous
adventurers of the worst type. During his term of three years Governor
Bullock, the Reconstruction Governor, pardoned three hundred and
forty-six offenders against the law, some of whom actually received
pardon before trial. Indeed, seven pardons before trial were granted to
one man, who pleaded them to seven separate indictments. The elections
of December, 1870, put an end to this. The Democratic victory was
overwhelming, and, before the Deputies of the people could confront him,
Bullock had resigned office and fled the State. Since that moment
prosperity has revived.
RECONSTRUCTION IN FLORIDA.
In Florida, the first Reconstruction Governor, Harrison Reed, very
nearly doubled the State expenditure during his four years of office.
Railway and legislative scandals were common. From Governor downwards
every official seemed to be equally corrupt and equally devoid of
patriotism. On one occasion an Act of the Legislature was forged; and,
armed with it, the Governor claimed, but failed to obtain, some
agricultural land scrip that was in the hands of the Treasury at
Washington. The ballot-boxes were tampered with, and the election
returns falsified. In the meantime the State Treasury was often so empty
that even telegraph charges could not be paid. The second Reconstruction
Governor, O. B. Hart, who assumed office in 1873, realised the
deplorable condition of affairs, but proved powerless to effect reforms.
People were kidnapped, really that they might be unable to vote, but
professedly in order that they might appear as witnesses in distant
courts of justice. A similar process was, on at least one occasion,
applied to members of the State Senate, two of whom were arrested and
carried to Jacksonville, in order that they might not imperil by their
votes the nefarious schemes of their Republican colleagues. The
elections of 1876 placed the Democrats in power and introduced a new and
more reputable era.
RECONSTRUCTION IN VIRGINIA.
During the reconstruction period Virginia’s sufferings were less painful
and considerably briefer than were those of most of the other old slave
States with which I am dealing. Such misfortunes as she experienced were
attributable, nevertheless, to causes exactly the same as those which
brought South Carolina to the lowest depths of misery and degradation.
In Virginia, as elsewhere, the reconstruction laws disfranchised the
majority of the best native whites and handed over the country to the
tender mercies of ignorant blacks, prompted by unscrupulous
carpet-baggers. Yet in Virginia the process known as reconstruction
seems to have been singularly uncalled for save as a purely party
measure. It was not needed for the protection of the negroes. Professor
Alexander Johnston, in the “Cyclopædia of Political Science,” calls
attention to the conspicuous equity of the Virginia statute, made after
the war but before reconstruction, for the regulation of contracts
between blacks and whites. Reconstruction was needed only for the
preservation of Republican power. It ended in 1870, but while it lasted
it had a very bad effect upon all the institutions of the State, and
especially upon the judiciary. Says Mr. Robert Stiles:—“The writer has
appeared in a circuit court of Virginia before a bench upon which sat a
so-called Judge, who had the day before been a clerk in a village
grocery store, and who was not better fitted for the dignity and duty
devolved upon him than the average grocery clerk would be.”
RECONSTRUCTION IN MISSISSIPPI.
In Mississippi the period was much longer and much more severe and
stormy. It was Mr. John Q. Adams, of Massachusetts, who, describing the
treatment during this time of the vanquished and resigned Southerners,
said that the Northerners scorned the protests of the ex-Confederates,
“repelled their aid, insulted their misery, and inflicted on them an
abasement which they felt to be intolerable in posting over them their
slaves of yesterday to secure their pledge of submission to the
Constitution of the United States.” The South, therefore, was by no
means alone in feeling that she was aggrieved.
In Mississippi, as in other States, a Convention met after the passing
of the Reconstruction Acts to draw up a new State Constitution. The
Convention was of the usual “black and tan” complexion, and in the
qualities of ignorance, corruption, and depravity was almost all that
the imagination can conceive. “It was,” says Mr. Ethelbert Barksdale, “a
fool’s paradise for the negroes, who undertook to perform what they were
incapable of doing; and, as to their mercenary white leaders, the stream
of purpose which ran through all their actions was plunder and revenge.
Not one of the authors and abettors of the plan was actuated by a higher
motive than party success. Not one of them believed that it would
promote the restoration of the Union to substitute the rule of knaves
and negroes for the State Governments which they had overthrown. They
knew the depravity of the white renegades whom they had commissioned to
do this work, and they knew, to employ the language of a Northern
statesman and Union soldier, that ‘in the whole historic period of the
world the negro race had never established or maintained a Government
for themselves.’”
The Convention was very deliberate in its action. Its members lived in a
state of luxury unknown to their previous habits. They voted themselves
$10 (£2) a day, and paid their innumerable hangers-on correspondingly
high wages; and, although the body cost about £100,000 sterling while it
sat, it would have cost far more but for the inexorable attitude of the
commanding general, who, in the interregnum, was practically dictator.
The Constitution which the Convention drew up was promptly rejected at
the polls, and was only ratified in a modified form upon the holding of
a second election in 1869. As originally devised it would have excluded
half the intelligent white population from all offices, and would even
have actually and permanently disfranchised anyone who during the war
had charitably contributed to the relief of sick and suffering
Confederate soldiers.
The first election under the Amended Constitution returned a Legislature
four-fifths composed of negroes and carpet-baggers, and the negroes had
a majority. The immediate consequences were that corruption began to
regulate every public and legislative transaction, and that the State
started on a career which led it with daily accelerating speed in the
direction of ruin. Within six years 6,400,000 acres of land were
adjudged forfeited for non-payment of the taxes which were necessary to
support the extravagance and folly of the ruling clique. Thenceforward,
until, at least, these lands were redeemed, taxation fell with
correspondingly increased weight upon the rest of the unfortunate State.
And so matters went from bad to worse until, after years of tyranny,
waste, and extravagance on the part of their governors, the whites could
submit no longer.
From a taxpayers’ petition addressed to the Legislature on January 4th,
1875, I extract the following:—
“To show the extraordinary and rapid increase of taxation imposed on
this impoverished people, these particulars are cited:—In 1869 the
State levy was 10 cents on the hundred dollars of assessed value of
lands. For the year 1871 it was four times as great. For 1872 it was
four times as great. For the year 1873 it was eight and a half times
as great. For the year 1874 it was fourteen times as great.... In many
counties the increase in the county levies has been still greater.”
At this crisis Mr. George E. Harris, a Republican ex-Attorney-General
and member of Congress, wrote:—“The people are in a state of
exasperation, and in their poverty and desperation they are in arms
against the burden of taxes levied and collected on their property.” But
the petition was laughed at by those who were profiting by the misery of
the citizens. The people, therefore, roused themselves, and, partially,
it may be, by violence and fraud, but wholly in self-defence, rescued
the State at the elections of 1875 from its abasement. Since then there
has been no important break in the steady financial, agricultural,
educational, and industrial improvement of Mississippi.
RECONSTRUCTION IN LOUISIANA.
Louisiana, alas, fared much worse than Mississippi—worse, in fact, than
any of the old slave States; for even in South Carolina the agony was
not so bloody.
The Constitutional Convention of 1867 was elected on a registration list
which had been so manipulated as to show only 45,218 white voters to
84,436 black ones; and at the legislative elections of 1868 the
successful candidates were chiefly negroes. Indeed, in the Senate there
were but about half a dozen whites.
To the summit of this mass of ignorance and corruption a creature named
Henry C. Warmoth at once climbed. By arts which can best be compared
with those of the political schemer in a burlesque, he had already
ingratiated himself with the negroes; and he had little difficulty in
inducing his _protégés_ to make him the first Reconstruction Governor of
Louisiana.
Warmoth originally went to Louisiana in the Federal Army, from which he
is said to have been dismissed for good cause. He should appear in
history as one of the very worst of the carpet-baggers; yet he was a man
of, in some respects, a remarkable character. From his earliest
assumption of power he took measures not merely to render himself
supreme, but also to render himself irremovable. He was “inaugurated” in
July, 1868. Democratic members of the Legislature were, with very few
exceptions, excluded by the operation of a test oath imposed by the
majority; all election machinery and the disposal of nearly all
important offices were entrusted to the hands and sole will of the
Governor; and a Board of Registration was appointed, the object of which
was to ensure that elections should result favourably to the party in
power. Warmoth, whenever he made a considerable appointment, adopted the
precaution of simultaneously obtaining from the appointee a resignation
in blank; so that rebellious or troublesome officials could always be
summarily got rid of by the simple act on the part of the Governor of
filling up the blank forms. So complete in time became Warmoth’s system
that, says Mr. B. J. Sage, “a practically unanimous people could not
have driven the Republicans out, save by a popular uprising.”
Of the members of the Legislature only ten among the dominant party were
taxpayers; and, consequently, the House was not in the slightest degree
of sympathy with the people, who soon began to be burdened with a
taxation such as had before been undreamt of. Corruption and bribery
reigned supreme, “and the knaves, to avoid any possible danger, refused
to pass any bribery law, so that it was no crime to bribe a public
official.” To assist himself and his fellows in controlling elections,
Warmoth raised what was in fact, though not in name, a standing army,
and subsequently a small fleet; and he caused the establishment in all
parishes of Republican newspaper organs, to the conductors of which was
given a monopoly of printing the laws and public advertisements. The
State expenditure rose to five times its normal level; the cost of the
short session of 1871 amounted to £1,230 sterling per legislator; and
the State debt, of course, increased rapidly and alarmingly, until
proportionately to the population it became, within only a year and a
half, very much larger than that of any State in the Union. Bonds were
issued for all kinds of fraudulent objects—many at a rate as high as 8
per cent.; and all sorts of valuable privileges and franchises were
given away to the favourites of the men in power. In fact, the State was
plundered wholesale and in every direction. It is calculated that
Louisiana was the loser in these years of the equivalent of about
£24,000,000 sterling, or of more than half the total estimated wealth of
the State.
Warmoth’s own share of the spoils was large, but its exact amount can
never be ascertained. Up to the time of his accession the average
printing expenses of the State had been about $37,000 (£7,400 a year).
During the first two years and a half of Warmoth’s rule the New Orleans
_Republican_, in which he was the principal shareholder, received
$1,140,881 (£228,170) for public printing. Warmoth also took upon
himself the appointment of the judges—from whom he exacted the usual
blank resignations; and thus with an army, a navy, a press, a bench, a
legislature, and election managers all securely, as he believed,
tethered to his chariot, he was absolute dictator.
He found his justification in the elections of 1870, which went exactly
as he willed them to go. Not even Lopez in Paraguay was more powerful
than Warmoth in Louisiana. “But,” says Mr. Sage, “over the spoils arose
the inevitable quarrel, and the two factions that formed went heartily
into their only good work, which was to acquaint Louisiana and the world
with their rascalities and infamy, and make manifest the gross wrong of
Congressional reconstruction.” For over two years the Warmothites and
the anti-Warmothites fought, often in arms, frequently with much
bloodshed; and in 1872–73 the State was in a condition of disgraceful
anarchy, which was in nowise ended by the substitution of Pinchback, the
Lieutenant Governor, for Warmoth, and by the impeachment of the latter;
for by that time another Governor, who claimed to have been properly
elected, was in the field in the person of Mr. W. P. Kellogg. Kellogg
was sustained by United States troops; but, although there were many
riots and much bloodshed on his behalf, he was never popularly
recognised. In one riot alone sixty-three persons were killed.
Kellogg was worse even than Warmoth had been. In 1874 the whites
organised themselves for their protection under the style of the White
League. Their attempt to arm themselves led to a bloody battle at New
Orleans, in which forty people were killed and 100 wounded. Immediately
afterwards Kellogg was overthrown; but he was re-seated by the Federal
forces. At the 1874 elections the Democratic whites again swept the
State; but Warmoth’s cunningly devised Returning Board, which still
existed, neutralised the results by summarily rejecting nearly half the
successful opposition candidates, and by thus manufacturing another
Republican Legislature. Indeed, a number of Democratic members of the
House were actually arrested by Federal troops. A Congressional
Committee, it is true, afterwards recognised the illegality of these
acts, and reinstated a majority of the Democrats, but the policy of the
committee did not reconcile the State with Kellogg and with his numerous
other enormities. For example, the Governor illegally arrested between
500 and 600 persons at various times, generally on blank warrants; and
in every instance in which any of these cases were investigated in Court
the charges were dismissed.
The struggle of 1874 had not satisfied Kellogg that there was a point
beyond which he should not go in his requests for Federal assistance. He
determined to make further requests, with a view to securely intrenching
his party during the elections of 1876. Once more, however, and in spite
of wholesale bribery on the other side, the Democrats swept the State;
and again the results were neutralised by the operations of the old
infamous Returning Board. Renewed anarchy, with two Governors and two
Governments, followed. One Government—that of Packard, the Republican
leader—was unable, nevertheless, to exercise even a vestige of authority
outside the State House, which, crowded with people, lay in a state of
siege, in spite of the fact that small-pox had broken out there. Packard
waited for the active Federal support which had never been refused to
Kellogg, but he waited in vain; and when, after months of hesitation,
the President withdrew the National troops, Packard and his Government
collapsed. Governor Nicholls, a Democrat, then assumed full authority;
and from that day Louisiana has formed part of the “solid” Democratic
South.
And here let it not be forgotten that public gambling and public
lotteries owed their establishment in Louisiana to Warmoth. The gambling
has since been abolished; the Louisiana lottery, owing to its having
been granted a twenty-five years’ charter, still exists to remind the
world of the evil methods of the period of reconstruction. Warmoth
himself said of the Legislature which he had caused to be elected in
1870:—“There is but one honest man in it,” and to a delegation he
cynically remarked, “Corruption is the fashion; I do not pretend to be
honest, but only as honest as anybody in politics.”
I might also trace the history of reconstruction in Tennessee, in West
Virginia, in Missouri, and in Arkansas; but I am chiefly confining my
attention to those Southern States which constitute the “Black Belt”—the
district, that is, throughout which blacks and whites are nearly evenly
balanced, and in which there are particular commonwealths containing
more blacks than whites. Moreover, on this branch of the subject I have
written enough, I believe, to show reason, if not to show excuse, for
the political feeling which occupies the first place in the heart of
every Southern white man.
That feeling is, by itself, a political creed stronger than the creed of
Republican or of Democrat; and it may be thus formulated. You have freed
our slaves, and, far from regretting, we rejoice in what you have done.
Without properly consulting us, you have given those ex-slaves the
suffrage and civil rights. There, we think, you have greatly erred.
While we will admit that some negroes and coloured people are fit to
exercise the suffrage, we are of opinion that the vast majority of them,
owing as well to natural lack of mental ballast as to ignorance, are
incapable of exercising the suffrage to their own best welfare, to the
benefit of the white people among whom they live, and to the general
advantage of the nation. Apart from this opinion of ours, and quite
regardless of the question whether that opinion be sound or not, we are
steadfastly determined never again to submit to any form, direct or
indirect, of negro government. We have experienced a form of such
government during the Reconstruction Era. In those days the chief
sufferers were ourselves, and the chief gainers were, not the negroes,
who, like machines, registered the desires of their patrons, but the
unscrupulous whites who exploited the negroes. We intend, therefore, to
risk no more of that kind of thing. Here and there the negroes may be
more numerous than we whites. It must make no difference. The white must
rule, no matter at what cost. You shall never again, while we exist,
compel us to relinquish that determination. Our view does not, it may
be, accord with the principles of your Amendment XV., but it accords
with our ideas of the _minimum_ of social comfort and security, and we
intend steadfastly to adhere to it, even if adherence should cost us
blood and treasure and much more that we hold dear. You Northerners have
never known any form of negro domination, and have never been in danger
of it. Indeed, you know little about the negro. We have to live with
him, and we are familiar with his failings as well as with his virtues.
Our knowledge tells us that it would be suicidal folly to entrust
ourselves, our families, and our fortunes to his political discretion.
You think otherwise; but do not, we pray you, ever attempt to make us
practise in all their fulness your very humane theories. We would rather
die at once. Congress, we know, once passed a Civil Rights Bill, which
directed “that all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States
should be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the
accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public
conveyances on land or water, theatres, and other places of amusement,
subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law, and
applicable alike to citizens of every race and colour, regardless of any
previous condition of servitude.” That was very well in theory, but the
Act has been held by the United States Supreme Court to be
unconstitutional, and, in any case, you must never ask us to accept it.
There are occasions when we cannot admit that whites and blacks are
equal.
The above position is one upon which the whites of the South are, as I
convinced myself during my stay and inquiries here, practically
unanimous. It is a position of danger, for it is a position of covert,
if not open, hostility to the spirit of laws of the Union. A strict and
rigid enforcement of those laws, supposing that it could be attempted,
would, there is no doubt, create an exceedingly grave crisis. On the
other hand, there is, or may be, danger in the fact that the negro as a
citizen does not get all that to which he is legally entitled. How he is
deprived of very much that the law affects to give him will be the
subject of the next chapter.