UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
RECONSTRUCTION IN LOUISIANA
AFTER 1868
BY
ELLA LONN
A THESIS
PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN
PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR
THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1918
COPYRIGHT, 1918
BY
ELLA LONN
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
Reconstruction in Louisiana
CHAPTER I
A Brief Resumé of Reconstruction in Louisiana before 1869
By January 1, 1869, Louisiana had suffered the throes of reconstruction
for seven weary years, but the hostile fates had decreed for her
more than another seven before she should be able to wrench herself
free from the grasp of her colored and carpet-bag despots. The first
uncertain attempts at reconstruction were made at the close of 1862 by
Governor Shepley with the consent of Lincoln. The President’s policy
was based upon the belief that there existed in every Southern State
a loyal element which might be made to prove the germ of a civil
government owning allegiance to Washington. In the course of that
year, as the North gained a foothold, he had appointed General Shepley
military governor, whose duty it was to resurrect the loyal element
among the people. Thanks to the vigorous grip over New Orleans of
Generals Butler and Banks, a considerable body, stronger in numbers
than social prestige, became firmly wedded to the Union cause. The old
Douglas men sprang into evidence at Butler’s arrival on the scene;
members of the Irish Unionists came out strongly; while still others
were won by the favors distributed with an eye to political gain.
General Shepley ordered an election on December 3 for two Congressmen.
The successful candidates proved to be B. F. Flanders and Michael
Hahn, both of whom were allowed to take their seats in the National
legislature.
There appeared a certain group of men eager to push on the work of
reorganization, either for the plums of office, or, on the part of the
old slave-holders, for the sake of saving a portion of their slaves,
or for the sake of casting off martial law. This group, the Free State
Party, working through the Union Clubs, urged on in 1863 a registration
and convention to frame a new constitution. But it made such slow
progress that Lincoln developed his famous “Ten Per Cent” plan by
his proclamation of December 8, 1863, which offered pardon and the
restoration of property to all who would take a prescribed oath; and
declared that the President would recognize as the true government of
any of the seceded States, except Virginia, the organizations set up by
loyal citizens, provided that they constituted one-tenth of the voting
population of 1860.[1]
General Banks, in accordance with this plan, ordered an election
of State officers for February 22, 1864. Hahn, the successful
administration candidate, was inaugurated on March 4. About ten days
later he was invested with the “powers exercised before by the military
governor.” It is of importance to note that as early as this campaign
the issue in the radical party was the treatment of the negroes
after emancipation. Delegates to a constitutional convention were
subsequently chosen and April 6, ninety-four[2] of the men elected
met in New Orleans, a fair set of men, but already showing a tendency
toward that extravagance which was later to be such a blot upon
reconstruction. The convention abolished slavery,[3] but restricted
suffrage to white males, although it empowered the legislature to
confer it on “such persons, citizens of the United States, as by
military service, by taxation to support the government, or by
intellectual fitness may be deemed entitled thereto.”[4] A constitution
was adopted and submitted to the people, but only 8402 votes were cast
in ratification as compared with 11,411[5] in the election of Hahn. The
new legislature provided for met October 3, elected two Senators, and
adopted the Thirteenth Amendment unanimously. Although this government
was duly recognized by the President and its ratification of the
Amendment gladly counted to help embody it in the organic law, its
authority was restricted to a very narrow limit--that actually within
the Union military lines[6]--and neither branch of Congress admitted
the members chosen by the new government, while the Presidential vote
of 1865 was rejected.
The legislature of 1865, fully representative of the State, and
just as fully Democratic, met in extra session to elect two new
Senators in case the two elected previously be rejected as not
truly representative. With these two Senators, Henry Clay Warmoth
presented himself at Washington as territorial delegate of the radical
Republicans of the State,[7] his expenses defrayed by his negro
constituents, who joyfully deposited their half-dollars with their
first ballots to pay the expenses of their impecunious delegate.[8]
Some thirty or more of the members of the convention of 1864 were so
angered at seeing the offices of the State passing to the ex-rebels
that, with the consent of the governor and a judge of the Supreme
Court, they began to meet and plan how they could evict them. Before
adjourning, the convention of 1864 had decreed that it might be
reconvoked at the call of the President “for any cause, or in case the
constitution should not be ratified, for the purpose of taking such
measures as may be necessary for the formation of a civil government
for the State of Louisiana.” This resolution, however, had not been
incorporated in the constitution and had never been passed upon by the
people.[9]
The opponents of negro suffrage denied the right of the convention to
resume its functions and the controversy over the matter became very
fierce. July 30, 1866, the delegates who favored reassembling proceeded
to do so, according to call in New Orleans. A street procession of
negroes, on their way to the hall, became involved in a serious fight
with the police and crowds of white spectators. The number killed
and injured amounted to about two hundred and the fact stood out
conspicuously that of this number only about a dozen were policemen
or their white allies. The North and, more especially, Congress was
forced by this episode, together with the rejection of the Fourteenth
Amendment[10] and the passage throughout the South of the “Black
Codes,” to the conclusion that the colored people were not safe in the
hands of their former masters.
Hence, the Congressional plan of reconstruction, long brewing,[11] was
forced on the South in the Acts of March 2, 1867, which reëstablished
military rule and provided an entire new organization of government
through a convention, elected by negro as well as white vote, and
a new constitution, which should be acceptable to Congress[12]; in
the Supplementary Act of March 23 which placed the initiative in the
hands of the military instead of the State[13]; and the additional
Act of July 19 which substituted for the liberal interpretation
of the earlier acts by civil officials the most rigorous possible
and stripped the Executive of the power of determining removals by
explicitly conferring certain powers of appointment and removal on the
general of the army.[14] Louisiana and Texas constituted one military
department, placed first under the direction of General Sheridan,
and in August under General Hancock. Under these two commanders
registration was pushed on so as to record as many blacks and as few
whites as possible. In September a convention of ninety-eight members
was elected, consisting by previous agreement of blacks and whites in
equal numbers, all but two, Republicans. The body sat in daily session
from November 23 to March 9, ostensibly to frame the new constitution,
but, because of the lack of a revenue, constituting itself also a
legislative body. The constitution framed by it was the most severe in
its disfranchising clauses of any in the South.
It was quietly ratified April 16 and 17, 1868, and State officers
chosen. H. C. Warmoth was elected governor and the mulatto, O. J.
Dunn, lieutenant-governor. The military governor was removed and the
governor-elect placed in power at once although his formal inauguration
did not occur until July 13, 1868. The first legislature of the new
régime, in which a sweeping radical victory against the unorganized,
disheartened conservatives had seated a strong Republican majority,
was in session from June 29 to October 20. The ratification of the
Fourteenth Amendment by this body opened the door of re-admission to
the Union so that by the act of June 25, 1868, Louisiana was once more
empowered to send W. P. Kellogg and J. B. Harris to occupy the seats
in the Senate vacated defiantly seven years before by John Slidell and
J. P. Benjamin. By July 18, five Representatives had been seated in
the House, including the first colored person to present himself for
admission to Congress; and reconstruction would seem to be a matter of
history.[15]
But the military was not withdrawn, for Louisiana and Arkansas were
created into the Department of Louisiana under General Rousseau. Troops
were so stationed at different points throughout these States that
they could be called upon to coöperate with the State authorities to
preserve the peace and to sustain the new governments.
The Presidential election of the fall of that year once more centered
attention on the State by an undesired and wholly unexpected victory
for Seymour and Blair, and still more by the disorders and outrages
on the negroes.[16] Congress was not allowed to forget that it had a
right to a directing influence in the matter through committees of
investigation and decisions on disputed elections to its own body.[17]
At the beginning of the year 1869 carpet-bag government was in full
swing and the picture of the situation in the State is not a bright one.
The political condition might well have caused an aristocratic
Louisianian to withdraw himself from the contamination of politics
with a shudder of despair: a carpet-bagger the recipient of the first
honor in the gift of the State, and a negro house-painter of the
second. Warmoth, young, handsome, and magnetic,[18] was a native of
Illinois, who had entered the army from Missouri. He had had trouble
with General Grant after the battle of Vicksburg; was charged with
circulating exaggerated reports of the Union losses while on parole
North, was dismissed from the service by Grant, but restored to his
command by Lincoln, evidence having shown his dismissal to be unjust.
He retired from the army in 1865, went to Texas, where he was indicted
for embezzlement and for appropriating government cotton. But when
the case was called, no prosecutor appeared and the prosecution was
abandoned. He returned to Louisiana and before reconstruction was sent
as a delegate to Congress as narrated above. He was at this time only
twenty-six years old, apparently at the height of his powers, social
and political, for even his foes admitted the dignity of his appearance
and the charm of his manners and conversation.
The balance of parties in 1868 stood twenty Republicans to sixteen
Democrats in the Senate, fifty-six to forty-five in the House.[19]
White members had been almost entirely supervisors of registration.
Warmoth had selected for this office in the parishes a large number of
men left in New Orleans as flotsam after the war. They had so impressed
the negroes that they were returned to the legislature or were
mysteriously counted in by the returning-board.[20] Almost one-half
of the House were negroes, while there were at least seven sable-hued
Senators.[21] The lower State and parish offices were given over
largely to negroes and scalawags, not always chosen by the governor
with wisdom.[22]
The comment of one of the New Orleans papers is suggestive of the
sentiment of the people toward their legislature. Speaking of the
revenue bill of 1869 it said:
It was the work of the lowest and most corrupt body of men ever
assembled in the South. It was the work of ignorant negroes[23]
coöperating with a gang of white adventurers, strangers to our
interests and our sentiments. It was originated by carpet-baggers and
was carried through by such arguments as are printed on green-backed
paper. It was one of the long catalogs of schemes of corruption which
makes up the whole history of that iniquitous Radical Conclave.[24]
Or note the _Crescent_: “The troupe which is now playing a sixty-day
engagement at the corner of Royal and Conti streets,[25] which appears
daily in the farce of ‘How to be a Legislature,’ a day or two since
introduced among themselves a bill...”[26] And that paper printed later
daily the following unique “ad,” “Go at once to the St. Louis Rotunda
to see the astounding curiosity &.”
No less important to the State than its own political condition was
the attitude of the National government. The defeat of the Republican
party in the South in the fall election was like a dash of cold water.
To an indifference or even a desire to be rid of the whole subject of
reconstruction, which had characterized Congress in the fall of 1868,
succeeded a resolute purpose to take advantage of every opportunity
to gain an effective and permanent control for the Republican party.
Even the law passed during the session of 1868-9, which provided that
equal eligibility to office should inhere in those who had had their
disabilities removed by Congress and had taken the oath to support the
constitution in the act of July 11, 1868, was only a party measure to
win more firmly the scalawags,[27] as the list of pardons reveals the
fact that most had become Republicans.[28] Grant’s attitude was of
importance to a degree that Johnson’s was not, for he came into office
early in 1869, a popular and trusted executive, who would be free, to a
large extent, to direct the policy of the government in the South. But,
unfortunately for Louisiana, a brother-in-law, J. F. Casey, was soon
put in charge of the port there and so completely won Grant’s ear that
the latter approached Louisiana problems with a bias. Friction between
the State and National authorities was bound to come, for already at
the opening of 1869 the radicals had lost the respect of the army, and
recrimination was passing back and forth between the military commander
and the executive of the State.[29]
Socially, the problem was largely a race question, though the
bitterness of feeling toward her conquerors and contempt of
carpet-bagger and scalawag enter to complicate the matter. The
intensity of her bitterness toward the North found expression in such
paragraphs as the following:
The black and bloody chapter of American subjugation reads so much
like the scenes of the Netherlands and the Palatinate that it cannot
claim even the vile merit of distinguished infamy. Let it be blotted
out and closed. Let the American government publish and execute this
amnesty in good faith. Let them seek new fields of glory and cease to
promote men merely because they have distinguished themselves by the
slaughter of Americans or by laying waste the regions that Americans
have planted.[30]
In moments of calmness appeals to the better sentiment of the North
are heard, coupled with promises that a spirit of conciliation would
be seconded by the masses of the South, which were prepared to accept
all necessary and reasonable conditions imposed by the result of the
war.[31]
Their particular spleen was vented now vindictively, now humorously,
on the carpet-baggers: “Only call off the carpet-baggers and you
are welcome to substitute an army of hand-organists in their stead.
No sounds can punish our nerves, our patience, and our tympanums so
much as the ‘base bawl’ of carpet-baggers.”[32] The host of traders,
capitalists, and adventurers, who had come down during and just after
the war to seek a new field for investment in the conquered country,
were, naturally, regarded more or less as harpies. The number was
formidable, for already by the fall of 1866, between five and ten
thousand Union soldiers had settled in the State.[33] The exasperating
feature was that they immediately undertook to run the government for
the natives, securing office through negro votes.[34] Capital, energy,
and talents were desired, but not men to tend to their politics.[35]
Two great facts are to be remembered in the negro question in
Louisiana. In the first place the negroes were in a slight majority.
After the war the Southerner saw his former slaves avoiding him,
careless, insolent, acquiring habits of vagrancy, manifesting little
fear in indulging their propensity for theft, believing that under the
guidance of disinterested councillors, they would soon become landed
proprietors without labor, scholars without study, and the social
equals of their former masters. For so many years the fear of a servile
insurrection had hung over him that he instinctively tried to erect a
defense against it. The officials of the Freedmen’s Bureau had also
helped to complicate the situation. For the most part, indiscreet army
officers, often bent on their own fortunes, the directors managed
the work in such an inefficient manner that the planters found it an
intolerable nuisance. In the general demoralization of labor, the
Southerner turned in despair to the legislature for relief and its
impolitic response was the so-called “Black Codes,” which subjected
the negro to oppressive restrictions not imposed upon the whites and
smacked strongly of the slave codes. But it is to be remembered that
the extremely rigorous code of this State was passed before the dreaded
holidays of 1865-6 when the negroes were confidently expecting Uncle
Sam’s gift of “forty acres and a mule.”[36] In the second place, the
Gulf States had an element of especially vicious negroes, due to the
fact that before the war criminals for offenses less than murder were
traditionally sold “South.” There were also more free colored persons
in Louisiana than in all the other Southern States, negroes who were
likely to have developed some leadership and initiative,[37] but were
on the average less intelligent than in most of the former slave
States.[38]
Every effort was made by the radicals to encourage the negro to claim
full equality with the whites, political and social, until by 1868
they were demanding not only the franchise, but mixed schools, a share
in public affairs and even social rights. The Southerner, as has been
said so many times, did not hate the negro, but he did not believe
that he could rise in the scale of civilization. He felt that most of
the negroes had not sufficient intelligence to desire the franchise,
and hence that it was superimposed upon him. Nordhoff declares that
“without whites to organize the colored vote--which means to mass it,
to excite it, to gather the voters at barbacues, to carry them up
with a hurra to the polls, to make ‘bolting’ terrible, to appeal to
the fears of the ignorant and the cupidity of the shrewd; without all
this the negro will not vote.” And it was a well-known fact that the
“organizers”[39] were Federal officers with little else to do. And,
in addition, the campaigns did interfere with the work rendered. The
following passage from Nordhoff, the words of the bitterest Democrat he
met in the State, shows how direct this was: “And they work just about
as well (as in slavery), except when some accursed politician comes
up from New Orleans with a brass band, and sends word, as was done
last fall, that General Butler had ordered them all to turn out to a
political meeting.”[40]
Nowhere, perhaps, is this sentiment more accurately reflected than in
a speech of Senator Ogden’s in the State Assembly: “Do you not know
as well as I that all the disgust, all the anger and bitterness that
arose between these different political factions was engendered by the
ill voices of certain politicians, who haranguing the ignorant and
superstitious, in private and in public, poured into their ears voices
as poisonous as nightshade.”[41]
Negro suffrage was the burning question, and they were not reconciled,
even after it had become a fact, even when they consented, as they
did in the fall of 1868, to use the negro vote. But valiantly did the
Democratic party in that election turn to win them; helped them to form
clubs, promised protection, and offered to give Democratic negroes the
preference in employment, enlisted negro orators; and often had them
speak from the same platform as white Democrats. Yet all this was but
for the purpose of securing white ascendency, for it was in this very
year that the Knights of the White Camelia became perfected into a
Federal organization, pledged to secure white supremacy, and to prevent
political power from passing to the negro. The negro franchise might be
a fact, but, if organized effort could prevent it, negro office-holding
should not.[42] The Southerner felt that the last scourge of defeat,
Congressional reconstruction, was founded on falsehood and malice.
He declared that the reports concerning outrages on negroes had been
distorted and exaggerated. The only purpose he could see in the zeal
to put the ballot in the hands of men too ignorant to use it without
direction was to prolong party power.
This hostility to the negro vote led to ingenious modes of reasoning
to evade the results of the polls. On the eve of the assembling of the
legislature of 1869 one of the city papers suggested that a certain
negro Senator had been rendered ineligible by the adoption of a new
registry law. As his ballot had been the casting vote which seated
another negro, the latter held his seat illegally, and the article
closes with the pertinent query whether laws made by such legislators
would have any validity.[43]
Another factor in the social problem, unique to the South, was not
absent from Louisiana--the numerous “poor whites” in the northern part
of the State. Living close to the subsistence line on the thin soil
of the pine hills back of the bottom lands, without schools, with
but few churches, given to rude sports and crude methods of farming,
their ignorance and prejudice bred in them after the emancipation of
the negro a dread of sinking to the social level of the blacks. The
dread, in turn, bred hatred, and it was from this class, instigated
very probably by the class above them, that the Colfax and Coushatta
murders[44] took their unfortunate rise.
And still one other element, mischievous in the extreme, must be added
to the social complex--men who pursued no occupation, but preyed on
black and white alike, as gamblers and tenth-rate politicians, drinking
and swaggering at the bar, always armed with knife and revolver,
shooting negroes now and then for excitement. This class was recruited,
largely, from the descendants of the old overseer and negro-trader of
ante-bellum days. With just enough education to enable them to dazzle
the negro by a political harangue, they were both disliked and feared
by the decent white people. According to the testimony of a Northern
observer,[45] the first duty of the Republican leaders in Louisiana
was “to hang them by the dozen.” And it was just because they were not
crushed out, except so far as the respectable conservative could combat
them, that Louisiana had to endure such a drawn-out purgatory before
she was reconstructed.
Economically the State presented no better view. Louisiana had
suffered particularly from the war, as a part of her soil had been
held by Federal troops through a great part of the conflict, and the
plantations had been drained, in consequence, of a large part of
their labor. Taxable property had been reduced almost two-thirds. The
returning rebel found his plantation in the worst possible state of
repair, or his title subject to dispute under the confiscation laws,
while much had been seized by treasury agents or dishonest speculators.
He turned, in the absence of capital, labor, currency, to the one thing
he knew--the raising of cotton. Even here he had to adjust himself to a
complete change of system from fixed, forced labor to payments at set
times or planting on shares where he was at the mercy of his planter.
It cannot be charged, on the whole, that the planter drove unjust
bargains.[46] If the negro suffered, it was at the hands of the poor,
small farmers, as ignorant as the negro himself. But a blighted crop in
1866 was followed the next year by an almost complete failure, while
the Mississippi exacted the penalty of neglected, broken levees by a
devastating flood. Only in 1868 did the planters obtain an average crop
in the great staples. Grinding necessity, as well as the remorseless
political ostracism, drove the better class into indifference to public
concerns and engrossment in their private affairs. Moreover, ignorant,
unprincipled legislation bred a certain temporary apathy even to their
own interests.
Already the finances of the State were in a sad condition. Back taxes
were in arrears, possibly, as was charged, because the property owners
were organized in opposition to the existing government,[47] but more
probably because they were unable to pay. It did not help the situation
that few filling State positions were tax-payers.[48] By January 19,
1869, only about one-tenth of the amount of the city taxes for the
preceding year had been collected.[49]
Inability to get in the taxes, resulted, naturally, in inability on the
part of the State to meet its obligations. It had been found necessary
in September, 1868, to levy a special one per cent tax to provide
for the payment of the past due coupons on the bonds of the State,
outstanding warrants, certificates of indebtedness, and convention
warrants.[50] It was not even able to pay the interest on current debts
and so it was necessary for the legislature early in 1869 to empower
the governor and treasurer to negotiate a loan to meet such approaching
obligations.[51] Of course, credit had suffered in consequence until by
October, 1868, bonds were selling in the market at forty-seven cents on
the dollar. Certain levee bonds had sunk so low at one time as to be
sold for thirty and even twenty-five cents.[52] A motion offered in the
House in the session of 1869 that not less than fifty cents be accepted
is sufficiently illuminating.[53] Many State officials were paid by
warrants and suffered, except where the Assembly favored the recipient,
as in the case of the executive and its own members, the loss of the
difference between their face value and the market value.
Loans were negotiated only with the greatest difficulty and on
exceedingly hard terms. On November 1, 1868, the interest on
$2,000,000 of levee bonds was to fall due without means to meet it.
Hence, a new loan of $100,000 was necessary, but it was secured
only for the short period of ninety days at seven per cent with the
privilege of the purchase of one hundred of these bonds at sixty
cents by the loaner. At about the same time a commission was sent to
New York to sell 1300 State bonds. They found a general distrust of
all Southern securities, but especially of those of Louisiana. Its
bonds were not quoted on the stock exchange, and the only offer on
the street was of a lot at fifty-two cents which found no buyers. The
commission at last had to accept fifty-one and one quarter cents and,
as a preliminary condition, had to agree that provision should be made
for the payment of interest on all bonds due in January and February of
1869.[54] Naturally, such loans were secured only at great additional
expense. The ninety-day loan cost over $3700, while the sale of the
3100 bonds mounted up to $2213, $1000 of which went to pay the cost of
the trip of the three commissioners.[55] The necessity of paying by
warrant involved a loss to the State not only directly,[56] but in the
depression of State credit.
An attitude of extravagance and corruption was already becoming
apparent in the State administration. The Senate at the close of its
session in 1868 authorized twelve committees to sit between sessions.
Practically every Senator sat on some committee and each member drew
pay for twenty-six days, amounting to $34,620.40 besides $15,000 for
clerks.[57] One committee alone drew between $16,000 and $17,000. Money
was doubly squandered by one committee, which drew pay for its time and
pay for witnesses who were never examined.[58] And one clerk is quoted
as having had time to serve on three committees and drawing warrants
for four.[59] But this corruption did not come to light until the
Assembly had entered upon its labors of 1869.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Richardson, _Messages and Papers of the Presidents_, VI.,
214.
[2] Ficklen’s _History of Reconstruction in Louisiana_, states
that the highest number on the roll at any time was ninety-eight, 68.
[3] By a vote of 72:13. Ficklen, 70.
[4] Lincoln’s plan. See letter of March 13, 1864, to Hahn,
Nicolay-Hay, VIII., 434.
[5] Rhodes and Ficklen differ slightly in their numbers.
Rhodes depends upon Sen. Exe. Doc., 38 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 91, 4.
[6] Within the Union lines was about one-third the area of
the State, according to the census of 1860, and two-thirds of the
population.
[7] Already Thaddeus Stevens had devised and won followers
for his territorial scheme of reconstruction. For a full statement see
Rhodes, United States, V., 551.
[8] Ficklen regards this story as well-substantiated (113),
though Warmoth himself stated that he received the money to defray his
expenses from the Executive Committee. House Misc. Doc., 42 Cong., 2
Sess., No. 211, 350. The writer has not regarded this as within her
investigation.
[9] Debates of the Convention, 1864, 623. Illegal also was
the effort of the mayor to suppress the convention. See Cox, _Three
Decades_, 430-2.
[10] Blaine regarded this as the “original mistake” of the
South. Suffrage would have then followed as a necessity and boon to the
South. Blaine, _Twenty Years_, II., 474-5.
[11] The Congressional Committee reported the plan as early as
April 30, 1866. _Globe_, 39 Cong., 1 Sess., 2286.
[12] Statutes at Large, XIV., 428. The essential sections, 3
and 4, were later held unconstitutional. Cases of U. S. _vs._ Reese, 92
U. S., 214, and U. S. _vs._ Cruikshank, 92 U. S., 554.
[13] United States Statutes at Large, XV., 2.
[14] _Ibid._, 14. This act was drafted by Stanton. Gorham,
_Stanton_, II., 373.
[15] _Globe_, 40 Cong., 2 Sess., 4216.
[16] For a full account of the early period of reconstruction
in this State see Ficklen, _History of Reconstruction in Louisiana_.
As evidence that election disorders were not wholly a result of
reconstruction, it might not be amiss to call attention to the
governor’s valedictory message of 1856. Society in Louisiana before
the war, while polite and even more--brilliant, had been far from
law-abiding with its frequent encounters under the duelling oaks, the
Plaquemines frauds of 1844, and the riot of 1855. See Gayarré, IV.,
679.
[17] For an account of the conflicting testimony on these
outrages see House Misc., Doc., 41 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 13.
[18] Based on House Repts., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 92, 24-5.
See also _National Cyclopedia of American Biography_. Carpenter’s
sketch of him to the Senate may be quoted: “There is in Louisiana a
very remarkable young man, dignified in mien, of elegant presence,
and agreeable conversation; a man full of resources, political and
social,--gallant, daring, and with a genius for politics; such a man
as would rise to power in any great civil disturbance, embodying in
himself the elements of revolution, and delighting in the exercise of
his natural gifts in the midst of political excitement.” _Globe_, 42
Cong., 3 Sess., Appendix, 200.
[19] _Annual Cyclopedia_, 1868, 434.
[20] Nordhoff tells of the rise of a young New Yorker who
returned from acting as supervisor in an up-country parish to present
returns which proved him the unanimous choice of that parish. Though
not the nominee, two years later, his name appeared, strangely enough,
on the tickets and, although not elected, the returning-board seated
him. Nordhoff, _The Cotton States_, 48.
[21] The writer has been unable to get exact figures. The
_Commercial Bulletin_ of Feb. 22, 1869, enumerates seven Senators;
while a negro in debate stated that there were forty-two of his
brethren in the House. House Deb., 1870, 281.
[22] A negro Justice of the Peace issued a warrant which is a
rare curiosity for bad spelling and grammar: “This is to cite, fy that
i. the underseind, Justis. of. the. Peace O Pint. and in Pour. John. A.
Stars. to. A-rest the Body. of Henre Evens and Bring. Hit, be four, me
John Fields.” Copied from _St. Mary’s Banner_, a parish paper.
[23] It was not uncommon for a legislator to sign his name
with a mark.--_Crescent_, Jan. 13, 1869.
[24] New Orleans, _Commercial Bulletin_, Nov. 17, 1869.
[25] At this time the legislature was convening in the Banque
de la Louisiane.
[26] Jan. 13, 1869.
[27] The scalawag was the war-time Unionist or reconstructed
rebel who had ceased opposing Congress. A negro preacher defines
the difference between a carpet-bagger and scalawag as follows: “A
carpet-bagger came down here from some place and stole enough to
fill his carpet-bag, but the scalawag was a man who knew the woods
and swamps better than the carpet-bagger did, and he stole the
carpet-bagger’s carpet-bag and ran off with it.” House Misc. Doc., 42
Congress, 2 Sess., No. 211, 478.
[28] The writer did not find this especially true of
Louisiana, but of the South generally.
[29] “Apparently the Radical authorities have lost the
confidence and respect of the army. We do not think that writing to
Washington letters of complaint is exactly the way to regain it.”--New
Orleans, _Commercial Bulletin_, Jan. 21, 1869.
[30] New Orleans _Commercial Bulletin_, Jan. 6, 1869. For a
similar expression of feeling, _Times_, May 9, 1875.
[31] New Orleans _Commercial Bulletin_, Jan. 14, 1869. “Wise
liberality on the part of the northern people and of the government
that ought to represent them would certainly be followed by strict and
willing acquiescence.... We ought to prove by our demeanor toward those
who come among us to buy our vacant lands ... that they are welcome and
that liberal legislation will not be wasted upon us.”
[32] _Ibid._, Sept. 25, 1869.
[33] Ficklen gives this number, _History of Reconstruction in
Louisiana_, 176.
[34] It might be noted that the following officers who figure
conspicuously in the pages of this account were carpet-baggers:
Warmoth, Kellogg, ‘, McMillan, Dewees, Jacques, who will figure in the
frauds of ’72, Speaker Carr, Campbell, Packard, Dibble; 3-5000 settled
in New Orleans, proportionally less in the parishes.
[35] See _Times_, May 9, 1875. From the evidence I have met,
I do not believe the feeling against them was so hostile as it became
a little later when the South was determined to drive them out. Blaine
makes a real point when he says, “Northern men recalled in an offensive
manner the power that had overcome and, as they thought, humiliated
them,--recalled it before time had made them familiar with the new
order of things.” Blaine, II., 472.
[36] Nordhoff tells of a negro in St. Mary’s parish who still
in 1875 was retaining a mule halter he had purchased in anticipation of
Uncle Sam’s gift, 49.
[37] It does not seem to me that Vice-President Wilson’s
argument that the experiment of negro self-government would therefore
have the greatest chance of success (_Times_, Aug. 21, 1876) here is
necessarily true. It would rather turn upon whether the leadership they
would assert were vicious or not.
[38] Due partly to the fact that they came from the large
plantations where the civilizing contact with the white race was
reduced to a minimum.
[39] A person sent into country parishes some months before
election to gather up the colored vote; to hold meetings, to instruct
the local leaders, mostly preachers and teachers, and to organize the
party. Nordhoff, 67. As late as Dec., 1874, a leading negro replied to
the query concerning his vote, that “they had not got the word yet.”
House Rpts., 43 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 101, 89. Pinchback understood such
organization and that gave him his strength. _Ibid._, 67.
[40] Nordhoff, 56.
[41] Sen. Deb., 1870, 218.
[42] Note the frank reply of a lawyer to a negro politician:
“I stand ready, as far as in me lies, to protect them in their rights
as citizens. Here my friendship stops; I am not their friend when
it comes to official life. The colored man has just been redeemed
from slavery, and in his new character he is unfit for office. It
is an insult and outrage to place him over the white people as an
office-holder.” Granting that slavery was wrong, that did not prove
“that you should be put into office to run the government before your
people have learned anything about the laws.” Sen. Rpts., 44 Cong., 2
Sess., No. 701, xxxv.
[43] _Commercial Bulletin_, Jan. 4, 1869.
[44] See, this volume, Chapters XI. and XII.
[45] Nordhoff, 18.
[46] It was Nordhoff’s opinion in 1875 that few laborers as
ignorant as the average plantation hand could do as well anywhere else
in the world, 21. Nordhoff was a young German immigrant who visited
Louisiana as reporter for the New York _Herald_, and published his
impressions after an investigation which bears every mark of care and
fairness. One can scarcely accuse him of Southern bias when one reads:
“I have been opposed to slavery ever since I sat on my father’s knee
and was taught by him that slavery was the greatest possible wrong,”
49.
[47] Such a charge was made by a member in the House.
[48] Herbert says that ten paid taxes, _Why the Solid South_,
401.
[49] _Commercial Bulletin_, Jan. 19, 1869.
[50] Laws of Louisiana, 1868, No. 114.
[51] _Ibid._, 1869, No. 48.
[52] House Deb., 1869, 393.
[53] _Ibid._, 287.
[54] House Deb., 1869, 43-4. The lack of faith in Southern
bonds was partly due to the unsettled condition, but also to the fact
that just before the war many Southern States had repudiated their
debts--an action later to be repeated.
[55] _Ibid._
[56] One member asserted that $75,000 was thrown away in 1869
by the sale of the warrants on the streets to pay members. _Ibid._,
1870, 15.
[57] Sen. Journal, 1870, 12.
[58] Lowell testifies: “I can show that the greatest fraud
ever perpetrated was the action of the Senate Committee on Election,
whose clerk went out on the streets and coaxed men to come into the
committee-room to act as witnesses in order that he might get half the
fees. I state further that witness after witness has been paid by the
Senate Election Committee who never gave one hour’s testimony.” House
Deb., 1869, 12-13.
[59] _Ibid._, 50.