A great opportunity was now given to the South. It was given
especially to the leading men of the South. Only a few weeks before,
they had all been expecting harsh treatment, many, indeed, anticipated
punishment, not a few were dejectedly looking forward to a life of
exile and want. The President's policy, which had been framed for him
by Mr. Seward, charged all this. Confidence took the place of
apprehension, the fear of punishment was removed, those who conscious
of guilt had been dreading expatriation were bidden by the supreme
authority of the Nation to stay in their own homes, and to assist in
building up the waste and desolate places.
Never in the history of the world had so mighty a rebellion been
subdued. Never had any rebellion been followed by treatment so
lenient, forgiving, and generous on the part of the triumphant
Government. The great mass of those who had resisted the National
authority were restored to all their rights of citizenship by the
simple taking of an oath of future loyalty, and those excepted from
immediate re-instatement were promised full forgiveness on the
slightest exhibition of repentance and good works. Mr. Seward
believed, and had induced the President to believe, that frank and
open generosity on the part of the Government would be responded to in
like spirit on the part of those who had just emerged from rebellion.
The Administration, therefore, waited with confidence for its
justification, which could be made complete only by the display of a
manly appreciation and noble course on the part of those who had
participated in the Rebellion.
The desire for a complete restoration of all the States to their normal
position, as pictured so attractively by Mr. Seward, was general and
deep throughout the North. The policy of the President was therefore
essentially aided by the patriotic and ardent love for the Union,--a
love always present with the loyal people of the free States, but
developed in an extraordinary degree by the costly struggle which the
slaveholders' rebellion had precipitated. If the Southern States
should meet the overture of the Administration in the spirit in which
it was made, the probability was decidedly in favor of their
restoration to their old places without condition, without promise,
without sacrifice. Observing men in the loyal States regarded such a
policy not only as weak and maudlin, but as utterly insufficient and
assuredly dangerous to the future safety of the Government. But they
realized at the same time that the most important demands of far-seeing
statesmanship and of true patriotism might be disregarded, and even
contemned, by a wild, unreasoning wish of the people to see the old
Government, in all its parts, promptly and fully re-established. The
popular cry which demanded "the Union as it was, the Constitution as
it is," was echoed by many from emotional love of country, and by many
more from a conviction that the financial interests of the Government
and the commercial interest of the people called for the speediest
settlement of all political questions. The Administration believed,
and with good reason, that the combined influence of sentiment for the
Union and the supposed necessities of trade would overcome all
obstacles, and that the rebellious States would be so promptly and
completely reconstructed that their senators and representatives would
be admitted at the beginning of the next session of Congress.
In forming an estimate of the probably response of the South to the
plan of reconstruction now submitted, the Administration was certainly
justified in believing that its own spirit of liberality and good will
would be met with like spirit by those who, having failed in war, were
specially interested in promptly securing all the conditions of a
magnanimous peace. It could not anticipate that quibbles would be
made by the defeated and lately suppliant parties, that captious
objections would be interposed, that carping criticism would be
indulged, that gross outrages would be perpetrated, that absurd
conditions would be demanded, and that finally a postponement of the
whole procedure would be hazarded, indeed its utter failure secured,
by the lack of tact, by the willfulness, and by the apparent ignorance
of the Southern men who were in control.
The kindness, consideration, gentleness of Mr. Seward's
recommendations, instead of securing a return of like feeling, seemed
rather to inflame the misjudging men of the South with a new sense of
resentment. Instead of calling forth the natural and proper response,
it appeared rather to impress them afresh with that vain imagination
of Northern timidity which had always been the besetting weakness of
the South. It seemed impossible at the time, it seems even more
plainly impossible on a review of the facts after the lapse of years,
that any body of reasonable men could behave with the ineffable folly
that marked the proceedings of the Reconstruction Conventions in the
South, and the still greater folly that governed the succeeding
Legislatures of the lately rebellious States.
In the President's proclamation accompanying the appointment of
provisional governors he had taken the ground that "the Rebellion, in
its revolutionary progress, has deprived the people (of the revolting
States) of all civil Government." It is evident, therefore, that the
President--eager and even impatient as he was for the process of
reconstruction to be completed--expected that a new Government would
be built on the full recognition of the new order of things, casting
behind all that pertained to the old, or had the spirit of the old.
"No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that
which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent
is made worse." This Scripture was exactly applicable to the Southern
Conventions which assembled for reconstruction. They could begin anew
with organic laws adapted to the great revolution which had swept over
them, or they could patch up the old constitutions now become
indissolubly associated with a rebellion which had been fostered and
protected under their provisions. In every State the Southern leaders
chose the latter form of procedure. They assumed that the old
constitutions were still in full force and vigor, and they made only
such amendments to them as would in their judgment promptly insure to
their States the right of representation in Congress. They did not
even stop to submit these changes to the popular vote, but assumed for
their own assemblages of oligarches the full power to modify the
organic laws of their States--an assumption without precedent and
without repetition in the history of State constitutions in this
country, and utterly subversive of the fundamental idea of Republican
Government.
With these incomplete and ill-digested changes in the organic laws of
their respective States, the Reconstruction conventions usurped
legislative power, and hastily proceeded to order the election of
representatives in Congress. The Congressional elections proved to be
little else than partisan assemblages under the dictatorial direction
of rebel authorities--just as the Reconstruction Conventions were, in
their membership and their organization, little else than consulting
bodies of Confederate officers under the rank of brigadier-general,
actually sitting throughout their deliberations in the uniform of the
rebel service, and apparently dictating to the Government of the Union
the grounds on which they would consent to resume representation in the
National Congress. A joint committee of Congress subsequently
commented with appropriate directness upon this offensive phase of the
Southern Conventions. "Hardly is the war closed," said the committee,
"before the people of the insurrectionary States come forward and
haughtily claim, as a right, the privilege of participating at once in
that Government which they have for four years been fighting to
overthrow. Allowed and encouraged by the Executive to organize State
Governments, they at once placed in power leading rebels, unrepentant
and unpardoned, excluding with contempt those who had manifested an
attachment to the Union, and preferring in many instances those who
had rendered themselves peculiarly obnoxious. In the face of the law
requiring an oath that would necessarily exclude all such men from
Federal offices, they have elected, with very few exceptions, as
senators and representatives in Congress, the very men who have
actively participated in the Rebellion, insultingly denouncing the law
as unconstitutional."
The oath referred to in the foregoing extract from the committee's
report is that popularly known as the "Ironclad oath," prescribed by
the Act of July 2, 1862, to be taken by every person elected or
appointed to any office of honor or profit under the Government of the
United States, either in the civil, military, or naval departments of
the public service, the President alone excepted. The officer, before
entering upon his duties or receiving any emolument, was compelled to
swear that he had "never voluntarily borne arms against the United
States;" that he had "voluntarily given no aid, countenance, counsel,
or encouragement to persons engaged in armed hostility to the National
Government;" that he had "neither sought nor accepted nor attempted to
exercise the functions of any office whatever under authority or
pretended authority in hostility to the United States;" that he had
"never yielded a voluntary support to any pretended Government within
the United States, hostile or inimical thereto." Of course the men who
had been waging war against the Government could not take this oath
except by committing perjury and risking its pains and penalties. But
nothing daunted by the existence of this obstacle at the threshold of
public service, the most notorious rebels sought election to the Senate
and House, boasting that they would prove the unconstitutionality of
the Ironclad oath, and demand their seats.
Alexander H. Stephens "had the assurance," as the committee already
quoted declared, "with that oath staring him in the face, to lay his
credentials on the table of the Senate as a senator-elect from
Georgia." When Congress adjourned, March 3, 1865, Mr. Stephens was
acting as the Vice-President of the rebel Confederacy. Six weeks later
the Confederacy was destroyed, and with a political agility
unparalleled, with a degree of presumption unprecedented, Mr. Stephens
secured an election to the Senate, and was in Washington at the
ensuing session of Congress, asking admission to a seat as cooly as if
every living man had forgotten that for four years he had been exerting
his utmost effort to destroy the Constitution under which he now
claimed the full rights of a citizen. In his astounding effrontery Mr.
Stephens even went so far as to insist on interpreting to those loyal
men, who had been conducting the Government of the United States
through all its perils, the Constitution under which they had been
acting, and to point out how they were depriving him of his rights by
demanding an oath of loyalty and good faith as the condition on which
he should be entitled to take part in legislating for the restored
Union. The same committee, worthy at all times to be cited, declared
further, that "Other rebels of scarcely less note and notoriety than
Mr. Stephens were selected from other quarters. Professing no
repentance, glorying apparently in the crime they had committed,
avowing still, as the uncontradicted testimony of Mr. Stephens and
many others proves, an adherence to the pernicious doctrine of
secession, and declaring that they yielded only to necessity, they
insist with unanimous voice upon their rights as States, and proclaim
that they will submit to no conditions whatever as preliminary to their
resumption of power under that Constitution _which they still claim
the right to repudiate_."
Not only were the official acts of the Southern Conventions inspired
by a spirit of apparently irreconcilable hatred of the Union, but the
popular manifestations in the South were for more decided in the same
direction. A sense of official propriety, no doubt, in some degree
governed the conduct and modified the language of the members of the
conventions. It was left to the press and the stump-orators of the
South to give full expression to what they knew to be the ruling
sentiment of the people. The report of the Congressional Committee,
whose members had closely investigated all the facts, stated that
"the Southern press, with few exceptions, abounds with weekly and daily
abuse of the institutions and people of the loyal States; defends the
men who led, and the principles which incited, the Rebellion; denounces
and reviles Southern men who adhered to the Union; and strives
constantly and unscrupulously, by every means in its power, to keep
alive the fire and hate and discord between the sections; calling upon
the President to violate his oath of office, overturn the Government by
force of arms, and drive the representatives of the people from their
seats in Congress. The National banner is openly insulted and the
National airs scoffed at, not only by an ignorant populace, but at
public meetings, and once, among other notorious instances, at a dinner
given in honor of a notorious rebel, who had violated his oath and
abandoned his flag. The same individual is elected to an important
office in the leading city of his State, although an unpardoned rebel,
and so offensive that the President refused to allow him to enter upon
his official duties. In another State the leading general of the
rebel armies in openly nominated for governor by the House of
Delegates, and the nomination is hailed by the people with shouts of
satisfaction and openly indorsed by the press."
These representations of the prevailing spirit in the South and of
the conduct of Southern men were not the loose and exaggerated
statements of Northern partisans put forth in influence political
opinion in the loyal States. They were the deliberate and
conscientious statements of an eminent committee of the two Houses of
Congress, of which Senator Fessenden of Maine was chairman. The
quotations already made are from the same official report--a report
based upon exhaustive testimony and prepared with scrupulous care.
In that report, which is to be taken as an absolutely truthful
picture of the Southern States at the time, it is averred that
"witnesses of the highest character testify that, without the
protection of United-States troops, Union men, whether of Northern or
Southern origin, would be obliged to abandon their homes. The feeling
in many portions of the country toward the emancipated slaves,
especially among the ignorant and uneducated, is one of vindictive
and malicious hatred. The deep-seated prejudice against color is
assiduously cultivated by the public journals and leads to acts of
cruelty, oppression, and murder, which the local authorities are at
no pains to prevent or punish."
It was further declared by Mr. Fessenden's committee "that the evidence
of an intense hostility to the Federal Union, and an equally intense
love for the late Confederacy, nurtured by the war, is decisive. While
it appears that nearly all are willing to submit, at least for the time
being, to the Federal authority, it is equally clear that the ruling
motive is a desire to obtain the advantages which will be derived from
a representation in Congress." It was also proved before the
committee, on the testimony, or rather the admissions, of witnesses
who had been prominent in the Rebellion, that "the generally prevailing
opinion in the late Confederacy defends the legal right of secession
and upholds the doctrine that the first allegiance of the people is due
to the States and not to the United States." It was further admitted
by the same class of witnesses that "the taxes levied by the United
States will be paid only on compulsion and with great reluctance," and
that "the people of the rebellious States would, if they could see a
prospect of success, repudiate the National debt." It was stated by
witnesses from the South, with evident pride, that "officers of the
Union Army, on duty in the South, and Northern men who go there to
engage in business, are generally detested and proscribed," and that
"Southern men who adhered to the Union are bitterly hated and
relentlessly persecuted."
Upon the conclusion of the work of the respective conventions, the
election of State Legislatures and of senators and representatives
in Congress followed as promptly as was practicable in the several
States. The Legislatures were all in session before the close of the
year 1865, and their proceedings startled the country. If any need
existed for proof of the spirit that animated the conventions, or of
the ends to which they had directed their work, it was furnished in
full by the action of the Legislatures. Indeed, when the latter bodies
assembled, they were inspired with a fresh accession of courage and
daring, imparted by the example of the former and the apparent
acquiescence of the North in their proceedings. The period between
the adjournment of the conventions and the assembling of the
Legislatures was so short that there was no time for the maturing of
public opinion in the North, and still less for bringing it to bear in
any way upon Southern action. It is, moreover, doubtful whether any
representation, however strong, from the North, would have exerted the
slightest influence in holding the South back from its mad course.
Emboldened by the support of the National Administration, the Southern
leaders believed that they could carry their designs through, and,
instead of being restrained by the protest or the advice of
Republicans, they chose with apparent gladness the course that would
prove most offensive to them. It would indeed, according to their own
boasts, add a peculiar gratification to their anticipated triumph if
they could feel assured that it would bring chagrin or a sense of
humiliation to the Republican masses of the loyal States.
At this critical period it was the ill fortune of the South to be
misled by the Democratic press and the Democratic orators of the North,
as it had been before on perilous occasions. The South had been
induced by the same press and the same orators to believe, in the
winter of 1860-61, that efforts at secession would not be resisted by
arms. Many Northern Democrats had indeed given the assurance that if
any attempt at coercion should be made by the Republican National
Administration, they would themselves meet it with force, and that, if
war should come, it would be in the free States and not in the slave
States. The South, in 1865, had apparently forgotten these baseless
assurances; they had forgotten that, in the hour of conflict, the
Democrats who did not become loyal, at once became silent, and that
the few--scattering exceptions to a general rule--who were
demonstrative and loud in their sympathy for the rebels were compelled
to flee or accept imprisonment in Fort Lafayette. They seemed again
ready and eager to believe all the unsupported assertions which the
Northern Democrats, in a spirit of effrontery and not without
gasconade, ventured to put forth. It might be difficult to determine
which displayed the greater folly--those who made false
representations, or those who, warned by previous deception, appeared
so ready to be influenced anew by deception equally gross.
The truth was that the Republicans of the North, constituting, as was
shown by the elections of 1865, a majority in every State, were deeply
concerned as to the fate and fortune of the colored population of the
South. Only a minority of Republicans were ready to demand suffrage
for those who had been recently emancipated, and who, from the
ignorance peculiar to servitude, were presumably unfit to be intrusted
with the elective franchise. The minority, however, was composed of
very earnest men of the same type as those who originally created and
combined the anti-slavery sentiment of the country, and who now
espoused the right of the negro to equality before the law. Equality,
they believed, could neither be conferred nor maintained unless the
negro were invested with the badge of American manhood--the right to
vote--a right which they were determined to guarantee as firmly to the
colored man as it was already guaranteed to the white man.
The great mass of the Republicans stopped short of the demand for the
conferment of suffrage on the negro. That privilege was indeed, still
denied him in a majority of the loyal States, and it seemed illogical
and unwarrantable to expect a more advanced philanthropy, a higher
sense of justice, from the South than had been yet attained by the
North. But without raising the question of suffrage, there were rights
with which the negro must be endowed before he could essentially
better his material condition or advance in knowledge. It was, first
of all, required that he should have the full protection of the law of
marriage, of which he had always been deprived, and that with the
privilege he should be subjected to the honest observance of the
obligations which marriage imposes--to the end that good morals should
be inculcated, and that every child should have a responsible father.
It was, in the second place, in the highest degree necessary that he
should have the benefit of such laws as would assure to him the wages
of his labor and confer upon him the right to acquire and hold real
estate and other property, with the same security and protection
enjoyed by the whites. In the third place, it was imperatively
demanded that some provision be made for the rudimentary instruction
of colored children, in order that they might learn the mechanical
arts and have the privilege of working at such callings as were best
adapted to them. The list of requirements might be enlarged, but the
three which are given represent primary and indisputable necessities,
without the concession and free establishment of which the negro, with
nominal freedom, would be in a worse condition than if he had been left
in slavery.
In view of these facts, the course of the new organized Legislatures
was watched with deep and jealous interest. It was in their power to
repair, in large degree, the blunders of policy--nay, the crimes
against human rights--which the Reconstruction Conventions had abetted
if not committed. The membership of the Legislatures in all the States
was composed wholly of those who, either in the military or civil
service, had aided the Rebellion. If in such an organization a spirit
of moderation and justice should be shown, if consideration should be
exhibited for the negro, even so far as to assure to him the inherent
rights of human nature, a deep impression would be made on the
conscience and the public opinion of the North. Such a course in the
South might, indeed, open the way for the success of the simple and
speedy process of reconstruction, upon which Mr. Seward had staked his
reputation as a statesman, and to which Mr. Johnson had pledged the
power and committed the fortunes of his Administration.
As soon as the Southern Legislatures assembled, it was made evident
that their members disregarded, and even derided, the opinion of those
who had conquered the Rebellion and held control of the Congress of the
United States. If the Southern men had intended, as their one special
and desirable aim, to inflame the public opinion of the North against
them, they would have proceeded precisely as they did. They treated
the negro, according to a vicious phrase which had at one time wide
currency, "as possessing no rights which a white man was bound to
respect." Assent to the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution by
the Southern States was but a gross deception as long as they
accompanied it with legislation which practically deprived the negro of
every trace of liberty. That which was no offense in a white man was
made a misdemeanor, a heinous crime, if committed by a negro. Both in
the civil and criminal code his treatment was different from that to
which the white man was subjected. He was compelled to work under a
series of labor laws applicable only to his own race. The laws of
vagrancy were so changed as, in many of their provisions, to apply only
to him, and under their operation all freedom of movement and transit
was denied. The liberty to sell his time at a fair market rate was
destroyed by the interposition of apprentice laws. Avenues of
usefulness and skill in which he might specially excel were closed
against him lest he should compete with white men. In short his
liberty in all directions was so curtailed that it was a bitter mockery
to refer to him in the statutes as a "freedman." The truth was, that
his liberty was merely of form and not of fact, and the slavery which
was abolished by the organic law of a Nation was now to be revived by
the enactments of a State.
Some of these enactments were peculiarly offensive, not to say
atrocious. In Alabama, which might indeed serve as an example for the
other rebellious States, "stubborn or refractory servants" and
"servants who loiter away their time" were declared by law to be
"vagrants," and might be brought before a justice of the peace and
fined fifty dollars; and in default of payment they might be "hired
out," on three days' notice by public outcry, for the period of "six
months." No fair man could fail to see that the whole effect, and
presumably the direct intent, of this law was to reduce the helpless
negro to slavery for half the year--a punishment that could be
repeated whenever desired, a punishment sure to be desired for that
portion of each recurring year when his labor was specially valuable
in connection with the cotton crop, while for the remainder of the
time he might shift for himself. By this detestable process the
"master" had the labor of the "servant" for a mere pittance; and even
that pittance did not go to the servant, but was paid into the treasury
of the county, and thus relived the white men from their proper share
of taxation. There may have been more cruel laws enacted, but the
statute-books of the world might be searched in vain for one of meaner
injustice.
The foregoing process for restoring slavery in a modified form was
applicable to men or women of any age. But for "minors" a more speedy
and more sweeping methods was contrived by the law-makers of Alabama,
who had just given their assent to the Thirteenth Amendment to the
Constitution. They made it the "duty of all sheriffs, justices of the
peace, and other civil officers of the several counties," to report
the "names of all minors under the age of eighteen years, whose parents
have not the means or who refuse to support said minors," and thereupon
it was made the duty of the Court to "apprentice said minor to some
suitable person on such terms as the Court may direct." Then follows
a suggestive _proviso_ directing that "if said minor be the child of a
freedman" (as if any other class were really referred to!) "the _former
owner_ of said minor shall have the preference;" and "the judge of
probate shall make a record of all the proceedings," for which he
should be entitled to a fee of one dollar in each case, to be paid, as
this atrocious law directed, by "the master or mistress." To tighten
the grasp of ownership on the minor who was now styled an apprentice,
it was enacted in almost the precise phrase of the old slave-code that
"whoever shall entice said apprentice from his master of mistress, or
furnish food or clothing to him or her, without said consent, shall be
fined in a sum not exceeding five hundred dollars."
The ingenuity of the Alabama legislators in contriving schemes to
re-enslave the negroes was not exhausted by the odious and
comprehensive statutes already cited. They passed an Act to
incorporate the city of Mobile, substituting a new charter for the old
one. The city had suffered much from the suspension and decay of trade
during the war, and it was in great need of labor to make repairs to
streets, culverts, sewers, wharves, and all other public property. By
the new charter, the mayor, aldermen, and common council were empowered
"to cause all vagrants," . . . "all such as have no visible means of
support," . . . "all who can show no reasonable cause of employment or
business in the city," . . . "all who have no fixed residence or cannot
give a good account of themselves," . . . "or are loitering in or
about tippling-houses," "to give security for their good behavior for
a reasonable time and to indemnify the city against any charge for
their support, and in case of their inability or refusal to give such
security, to cause them to be confined to labor for a limited time, not
exceeding six calendar months, which said labor shall be designated by
the said mayor, aldermen, and common council, for the benefit of said
city."
It will be observed even by the least intelligent that the charge made
in this city ordinance was, in substance, the poverty of the classes
quoted--a poverty which was of course the inevitable result of slavery.
To make the punishment for no crime effective, the city government was
empowered "to appoint a person or persons to take those sentenced to
labor from their place of confinement to the place appointed for their
working, and to watch them while at labor and return them before
sundown to their place of confinement; and, if they shall be found
afterwards offending, such security may again be required, and for want
thereof the like proceeding may again be had from time to time, as
often as may be necessary." The plain meaning of all this was, that
these helpless and ignorant men, having been robbed all their lives of
the fruit of their labor by slavery, and being necessarily and in
consequence poor, must be punished for it by being robbed again of all
they had honestly earned. If they stubbornly continued in their
poverty, the like proceeding (of depriving them of the fruits of their
labor) "may again be had from time to time, as often as may be
necessary." It would, of course, be found "necessary" just as long as
the city of Mobile was in need of their labor without paying for it.
It has been abundantly substantiated, by impartial evidence, that when
these grievous outrages were committed under the forms of law, by the
joint authority of the Alabama Legislature and the city government of
Mobile, the labor of thousands of willing men could be hired for the
low wages of twenty-five cents per day, with an allowance of a peck of
corn-meal and four pounds of bacon for each man per week. It does not
change the character of the crime against these humble laborers, but
it certainly enhances its degree that the law-makers of Alabama
preferred an oppressive fraud to the honest payment of a consideration
so small as to be almost nominal. A man must be in abject poverty when
he is willing to work an entire week for a sum usually accorded in the
Norther States for the labor of one day. But only a community blind to
public justice and to public decency as well, could enact a law that in
effect declares the poverty of the laborer to be a crime, in
consideration of which he shall be deprived of the beggarly mite for
which he is willing to give the sweat of his face.
Apparently fearing that the operations of the law already referred to
would not secure a sufficient number of laborers for the work required
in the city, the law-makers of Alabama authorized the municipal
government of Mobile to "restrain and prohibit the nightly and other
meetings or disorderly assemblies of all persons, and to punish for
such offenses by affixing penalties not exceeding fifty dollars for
any one offense; and in case of the inability of any such person to
pay and satisfy said fine or penalty and the cost thereof, to sentence
such person to labor for said city for such reasonable time, not
exceeding six calendar months, for any one offense, as may be deemed
equivalent to such penalty and costs, which labor shall be such as may
be designated by the mayor, aldermen, and common council of the city."
Power was thus given to consider any evening meeting of colored persons
a disorderly one, and to arrest all who were participating in it.
Nothing was more natural than that the negroes, with their social and
even gregarious habits, should, in their new estate of freedom, be
disposed to assemble for the purpose of considering their own interests
and their future prospects. It is eminently to the discredit of the
State of Alabama and of the city of Mobile that so innocent a purpose
should be thwarted, perverted, made criminal and punished.
The fact will not escape attention that in these enactments the words
"master," "mistress," and "servant" are constantly used, and that under
the operation of the laws a form of servitude was re-established, more
heartless and more cruel than the slavery which had been abolished.
Under the institution of slavery a certain attachment would spring up
between the master and his salve, and with it came a certain protection
to the latter against want and against suffering in his old age. With
all its wrongfulness and its many cruelties, there were ameliorations
in the slave system which softened its asperities and enabled vast
number of people possessing conscience and character to assume the
relation of master. But in the treatment of the colored man, now
proposed, there was absolute heartlessness and rank injustice. It was
proposed to punish him for no crime, to declare the laborer not worthy
of his hire, to leave him friendless and forlorn, without sympathy,
without rights under the law, socially an outcast and industrially a
serf--a serf who had no connection with the land he tilled, and who had
none of the protection which even the Autocracy of Russia extended to
the lowliest creature that acknowledged the sovereignty of the Czar.
These laws were framed with malignant cunning so as not to be limited
in specific form of words to the negro race, but they were exclusively
confined to that race in their execution. It is barely possible that
a white vagrant of exceptional depravity might, now and then, be
arrested; but the negro was arrested by wholesale on a charge of
vagrancy which rested on no foundation except an arbitrary law
specially enacted to fit his case. Loitering around tippling-shops,
one of the offenses enumerated, was in far larger proportions the habit
of white men, but they were left untouched and the negro alone was
arrested and punished. In the entire code this deceptive form, of
apparently including all persons, was a signally dishonest feature.
The makers of the law evidently intended that it should apply to the
negro alone, for it was administered on that basis with rigorous
severity. The general phrasing was to deceive people outside, and,
perhaps, to lull the consciences of some objectors at home, but it made
no difference whatever in the execution of the statutes. White men,
who had no more visible means of support than the negro, were left
undisturbed, while the negro, whose visible means of support were in
his strong arms and his willingness to work, was prevented from using
the resources conferred upon him by nature, and reduced not merely to
the condition of a slave, but subjected to the demoralization of being
adjudged a criminal.
In Florida the laws resembled those of Alabama, but were perhaps more
severe in their penalties. The "vagrant" there might be hired out for
full twelve months, and the money arising from his labor, in case the
man had no wife and children, was directed to be applied for "the
benefit of the orphans and poor of the county," although the negro had
been declared a vagrant because he had no visible means of support, and
was therefore quite as much in need of the avails of his labor as those
to whom the law diverted them. Among the curious enactments of that
State was one to establish and organize a criminal court for each
county, empowered to exercise jurisdiction in the trial of all offenses
where the punishment did not affect the life of the offender. It is
obvious that the law was originated mainly for the punishment of
negroes; and to expedite its work it was enacted that "in the
proceedings of said court, no presentment, indictment, or written
pleading shall be required, but it shall be sufficient to put the party
accused upon his or her trial, that the offense and facts are plainly
set forth with reasonable certainty in the warrant of arrest." It was
further provided that when fines were imposed and the party was unable
to pay them, "the county commissioner may hire out, at public outcry,
the said party to any person who will take him or her for the shortest
time, and pay the fine imposed and the cost of prosecution." The fines
thus paid went in the county treasury for the general expenses of the
county. The law was thus cunningly contrived to hurry the negro into
an odious form of slavery, and to make the earnings which came from his
hard labor pay the public expenses, which were legitimately chargeable
upon the property of the county.
Accompanying the Act establishing this court was a law prescribing
additional penalties for the commission of offenses against the State;
and this, like the former, was framed especially for the negro. Its
first section provided that where punishment of an offense had hitherto
been limited to fine or imprisonment, there should be superadded, as
an alternative, the punishment of standing in the pillory for one hour,
or whipping, not exceeding thirty-nine lashes, on the bare back. The
latter punishment was reserved expressly for the negro. It was
provided further that it "shall not be lawful for any negro, mulatto,
or person of color to own, use, or keep and bowie-knife, dirk, sword,
fire-arms, or ammunition of any kind, unless he first obtain a license
to do so from the judge of probate for the county in which he is a
resident." The judge could issue the license to him only upon
recommendation of two respectable white men. Any negro attempting to
keep arms of any kind was to be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor,
compelled to "forfeit the arms for the use of the informer, stand in
the pillory" (and be pelted by the mob) "for one hour, and then whipped
with thirty-nine lashes on the bare back." The same penalty was
prescribed for any person of color "who shall intrude himself into any
religious or other public assembly of white persons, or into any
railroad-car or other vehicle set apart for the accommodation of
white persons," and with a mock show of impartiality it was provided
that a white man intruding himself into an assembly of negroes, or
into a negro-car, might be subjected to a like punishment. This
restriction upon the negro was far more severe than that imposed in
the days of slavery, when, in many of the Southern States, the gallery
of the church was permitted to be freely occupied by them. A
peculiarly atrocious discrimination against the negro was included in
the sixth section of the law from which these quotations are made. It
was provided therein that "if any person or persons shall assault a
white female with intent to commit rape, or be accessory thereto, he
or they, upon conviction, shall suffer death;" but there was no
prohibition and no penalty prescribed for the same crime against a
negro woman. She was left unprotected by law against the brutal lust
and the violence of white men.
In the laws of South Carolina the oppression and injustice towards the
negro were conspicuously marked. The restriction as to fire-arms,
which was general to all the States, was especially severe. A negro
found with any kind of weapon in his possession was punished by "a fine
equal to twice the value of the weapon so unlawfully kept, and, if that
be not immediately paid, by corporal punishment." Perhaps the most
radically unjust of all the statutes was reserved for this State. The
Legislature enacted that "no person of color shall pursue the practice,
art, trade, or business of an artisan, mechanic, or shopkeeper, or any
other trade or employment besides that of husbandry, or that of a
servant under contract for labor, until he shall have obtained a
license from the judge of the District Court, which license shall be
good for one year only." If the license was granted to the negro to
be a shopkeeper or peddler, he was compelled to pay a hundred dollars
a year for it; and if he wished to pursue the rudest mechanical
calling, he was compelled to pay a license-fee of ten dollars. No such
fees were exacted of white men and no such fees were exacted of the
free black man during the era of slavery. Every avenue for improvement
was closed against him; and in a State which boasted somewhat
indelicately of its chivalric dignity, the negro was mercilessly
excluded from all chances to better his condition individually, or to
improve the character of his race.
Mississippi followed in the general line of penal enactments prescribed
in South Carolina, though her code was possibly somewhat less severe in
the deprivations to which the negro was subjected. It was, however,
bad enough to stir the indignation of every lover of justice. The
Legislature had enacted a law that "if the laborer shall quit the
service of the employer before the expiration of his term of service
without just cause, he shall forfeit his wages for the year up to the
time of quitting." Practically the negro was himself never permitted
to judge whether the cause which drove him to seek employment elsewhere
was just, the white man being the sole arbiter in the premises. It
was provided that "every civil officer shall, and every person may,
arrest and carry back to his or her legal employer any freedman, free
negro or mulatto, who shall have quit the service of his or her
employer before the expiration of his term of service without good
cause, and said officer shall be entitled to receive for arresting and
carrying back every deserting employee aforesaid the sum of five
dollars, and ten cents per mile from the place of arrest to the place
of delivery, and these sums shall be held by the employer as a set-off
for so much against the wages of said deserting employee; _provided_
that said arrested party, after being so returned home, may appeal to
a justice of the peace, or a member of the Board of Police, who shall
summarily try whether said appellant is legally employed by the
alleged employer."
It required little familiarity with Southern administration of justice
between a white man and a negro to know that such appeal was always
worse then fruitless, and that its only effect, if attempted, would be
to secure even harsher treatment than if the appeal had not been made.
The provisions for enticing a negro from his employer, included in this
Act, were in the same spirit and almost in the same language as the
provisions of the slave-code applicable to the negro before the era
of emancipation. The person "giving or selling to any deserting
freedman, free negro or mulatto, any food, raiment, or other things,
shall be guilty of a misdemeanor," and might be punished by a fine of
two hundred dollars and costs, or he might be put in prison, and be
also sued by the employer for damages. For attempting to entice any
freedman or free negro beyond the limits of the State, the person
offending might be fined five hundred dollars; and if not immediately
paid, the court could sentence the delinquent to imprisonment in the
county jail for six months. The entire code of Mississippi for
freedmen was in the spirit of the laws quoted. Justice was defied, and
injustice incorporated as the very spirit of the laws. It was
altogether a shameless proclamation of indecent wrong on the part of
the Legislature of Mississippi.
Louisiana probably attained the worst eminence in this vicious
legislation. At the very moment when the Thirty-ninth Congress was
assembling to consider the condition of the Southern States and the
whole subject of their reconstruction, it was found that a bill was
pending in the Legislature of Louisiana providing that "every adult
freed man or woman _shall furnish themselves with a comfortable home
and visible means of support within twenty days after the passage of
this act,_" and that "any freed man or woman failing to obtain a home
and support as thus provided shall be immediately arrested by any
sheriff or constable in any parish, or by the police officer in any
city or town in said parish where said freedman may be, and by them
delivered to the Recorder of the parish, and by him hired out, by
public advertisement, to some citizen, being the highest bidder, for
the remainder of the year." And in case the laborer should leave his
employer's service without his consent, "he shall be arrested and
assigned to labor on some public works without compensation until
his employer reclaims him." The laborers were not to be allowed to
keep any live-stock, and all time spent from home without leave was
to be charged against them at the rate of two dollars per day, and
worked at that rate. Many more provisions of the same general
character were contained within the bill, the whole character and
scope of which were forcibly set before the Senate by Mr. Wilson of
Massachusetts. It was not only a proof of cruelty enacted into law,
but was such a defiance to the spirit of the Emancipation amendment
that it subjected the Legislature which approved the amendment and
enacted these laws, to a charge of inconsistency so grave as to make
the former act appear in the light of both a legal and moral fraud.
It was declaring the negro to be free by one statute, and immediately
proceeding to re-enslave him by another.
By a previous law Louisiana had provided that all agricultural laborers
should be compelled to "make contracts for labor during the first ten
days of January for the entire year." With a demonstrative show of
justice it was provided that "wages due shall be a lien on the crop,
one-half to be paid at times agreed by the parties, the other half to
be retained until the completion of the contract; but in case of
sickness of the laborer, wages for the time shall be deducted, and
where the sickness is supposed to be feigned for the purpose of
idleness, double the amount shall be deducted; and should the refusal
to work extend beyond three days, the negro shall be forced to labor
on roads, levees, and public works without pay." The master was
permitted to make deduction from the laborer's wages for "injuries done
to animals or agricultural implements committed to his care, or for bad
or negligent work," he, of course, being the judge. "For every act of
disobedience a fine of one dollar shall be imposed upon the laborer;"
and among the cases deemed to be disobedience were "impudence,
swearing, or using indecent language in the presence of the employer,
his family, or his agent, or quarreling or fighting among one another."
It has been truthfully said of this provision that the master or his
agent might assail the ear with profaneness aimed at the negro man, and
outrage every sense of decency in foul language addressed to the negro
woman; but if one of the helpless creatures, goaded to resistance and
crazed under tyranny, should answer back with impudence, or should
relieve his mind with an oath, or retort indecency upon indecency, he
did so at the cost to himself of one dollar for every outburst. The
agent referred to in the statute was the well-known overseer of the
cotton region, who was always coarse and often brutal, sure to be
profane, and scarcely knowing the border-line between ribaldry and
decency. The care with which the law-makers of Louisiana provided that
his delicate ears and sensitive nerves should not be offended with an
oath or with an indelicate word from a negro, will be appreciated by
all who have heard the crack of the whip on a Southern plantation.
The wrongs inflicted under the name of law, thus far recited, were
still further aggravated in a majority of the rebellious States by the
exaction of taxes from the colored man to an amount altogether
disproportionate to their property. Indeed, of property they had none.
Just emerging from a condition of slavery in which their labor had
been constantly exacted without fee or reward of any kind, it was
impossible that they could be the owners of any thing except their own
bodies. Notwithstanding this fact, the negroes, _en masse,_ were held
to be subjects of taxation in the State Governments about to be
re-organized. In Georgia, for example, a State tax of three hundred
and fifty thousand dollars was levied in the first year of peace. The
property of the State, even after all the ruin of the war, exceeded
two hundred and fifty million dollars. This tax, therefore, amounted
to less than one-seventh of one per cent upon the aggregate valuation
of the State,--equal to the imposition of only a dollar and a half upon
each thousand dollars of property. The Legislature of the State
decreed, however, that a large proportion of this small levy should be
raised by a poll-tax of a dollar per head upon every man in the State
between the ages of twenty-one and sixty years. There were in Georgia
at the time from eighty-five thousand to ninety thousand colored men
subject to the tax: perhaps, indeed, the number reached one hundred
thousand. It was thus ordained that the negroes, who had no property
at all, should pay one-third as much as the white men, who had two
hundred and fifty millions of property in possession. This odious and
unjust tax was stringently exacted from the negro. To make sure that
not one should escape, the tax was held as a lien upon his labor, and
the employer was under distraint to pay it. In Alabama they devised
for the same purpose two dollars on every person between the ages of
eighteen and fifty, causing a still larger proportion of the total tax
to fall on the negro than the Georgia law-makers deemed expedient.
Texas followed with a capitation tax of a dollar per head, while
Florida levied upon every inhabitant between the ages of twenty-one
and fifty-five years a capitation tax of three dollars, and upon
failure or refusal to pay the same the tax-collector was "authorized
and required to seize the body of the delinquent, and hire him out,
after five days' public notice before the door of the Court House, to
any person who will pay the said tax and the costs incident to the
proceedings growing out of said arrest, for his services for the
shortest period of time." As the costs as well as the capitation tax
were to be worked out by the negro, it is presumable that, in the
spirit of this tax-law, they were enlarged to the utmost limit that
decency, according to the standard set up by this law, would permit.
It is fair to presume that, in any event, the costs would not be less
than the tax, and might, indeed, be double or treble that amount. As
a negro could not, at that time, be hired out for more than seven
dollars and a half per month, the plain inference is that for the
support of the State of Florida the negro might be compelled to give
one month's labor yearly. Even by the capitation tax alone, without
the incident of the costs, every negro man was compelled to give the
gains and profits of nearly two weeks' labor.
A poll-tax, though not necessarily limited in this manner, has usually
accompanied the right of suffrage in the different States of the Union,
but in the rebellious States it conferred no franchise. It might be
supposed that ordinary generosity would have devoted it to the
education of the ignorant class from which it was forcibly wrung, but
no provision of the kind was even suggested. Indeed, in those States
there was scarcely an attempt made to provide for the education of the
freedmen, and the suggestions made in that direction carried with them
another display of studied wrong. As an example of rank injustice the
course of the Legislature of Florida may be profitably cited. That
body passed an Act concerning schools for freedmen, in which the
governor was authorized to appoint a superintendent of common schools
for freedmen, and in each county the county commissioners were
authorized to appoint assistant superintendents. These officers were
directed to "establish schools for freedmen when the number of colored
children in any county will warrant the same, provided" (and the
proviso is one of great significance) "that the sums hereinafter
authorized shall be sufficient to meet the expenses thereof." The
funds provided for this seemingly philanthropic design were to be
derived exclusively from a tax upon the colored man. The law directed
that all colored men between the ages of twenty-one and fifty-five
years should pay annually a dollar each, to be collected at the same
time and in the same manner as the three-dollar poll-tax, which should
be paid into the treasury of the State for the use of the freedmen, and
should constitute a fund to be denominated "the common-school fund for
the education of freedmen." It was further provided in this law, that
"a tuition-fee shall be collected from each pupil, under such
regulations as the superintendents shall prescribe, and paid into the
treasury as a portion of the common-school fund for freedmen."
The salary of the superintendents of the schools for freedmen was fixed
at a thousand dollars, and of the county superintendents at two
hundred dollars. There were, at that time, about twelve thousand negro
men subject to the capitation tax of three dollars, already referred
to, and under that law they paid thirty-six thousand dollars annually
into the State Treasury of Florida; but the school law forbade that the
salary of superintendents and assistant superintendents should be paid
from the fund derived from the poll-tax. They provided that it should
be chargeable solely to the fund raised for common schools. As there
were thirty-seven counties in Florida at that time, it is a fair
presumption that twenty-five of them had assistant superintendents,
whose aggregate salaries would amount to five thousand dollars. With
the superintendent's salary, which was a thousand dollars, a draft of
six thousand dollars for the salaries of white men was at once made
upon the twelve thousand dollars which were to be collected from
freedmen. Every teacher who was to teach in these schools was required
to pay five dollars for his certificate, which also went into the
school-fund; and the end of the whole matter was, that a bare pittance
was left for the thirty thousand negro children in Florida of the
school age. The whole scheme was a ghastly wrong, one which, if
attempted upon that class of any population in the North which is able
to pay only a poll-tax, would consign the party attempting it to defeat
and disgrace, and, if its enforcement were attempted, would lead to
riot and bloodshed.
These laws, with all their wrong (even a stronger word might be
rightfully employed), were to become, and were, indeed, already an
integral part of the reconstruction scheme which President Johnson had
devised and proclaimed. Whoever assented to the President's plan of
reconstruction assented to these laws, and, beyond that, assented to
the full right of the rebellious States to continue legislation of this
odious type. It was at once seen that if the party which had insisted
upon the emancipation of the slave as a final condition of peace,
should now abandon him to his fate, and turn him over to the anger and
hate of the class from whose ownership he had been freed, it would
countenance and commit an act of far greater wrong than was designed
by the most malignant persecutor of the race in any one of the Southern
States. When the Congress of the United States, acting independently
of the Executive power of the Nation, decreed emancipation by amending
the Constitution, it solemnly pledged itself, with all its power, to
give protection to the emancipated at whatever cost and at whatever
sacrifice. No man could read the laws which have been here briefly
reviewed without seeing and realizing that, if the negro were to be
deprived of the protecting power of the Nation that had set him free,
he had better at once be remanded to slavery, and to that form of
protection which cupidity, if not humanity, would always inspire.
The South had no excuse for its course, and the leaders of its public
opinion at that time will always, and justly, be held to a strict
accountability. Even the paltry pretext, afterwards so often advanced,
that they were irritated and maddened by the interposition of carpet-bag
power, does not avail in the least degree for the outrages in the
era under consideration. When Mr. Johnson issued his proclamation of
reconstruction, the hated carpet-bagger was an unknown element in the
Southern states. What was done during the year immediately following
the surrender of the rebel armies was done at Southern suggestion, done
by Southern men, done under the belief that the President's policy
would protect them in it, done with a fixed and merciless determination
that the gracious act of emancipation should not bring amelioration to
the colored race, and that the pseudo-philanthropy, as they regarded
the anti-slavery feeling in the North, should be brought into contempt
before the world. They deliberately resolved to prove to the public
opinion of mankind that the negro was fit only to be a chattel, and
that in his misery and degradation, sure to follow the iniquitous
enactments for the new form of his subjection, it would be proved that
he had lost and not gained by the conferment of freedom among a
population where it was impossible for him to enjoy it. They resolved
also to prove that slavery was the normal and natural state of the
negro; that the Northern people, in taking any other ground, had been
deceived by a sentiment and had been following a chimera; that the
Southern people alone understood the question, and that interference
with them by war or by law should end in establishing their
justification before the public opinion of the world. The Southern men
believed and boasted that they would subject to general reproach and
expose to open shame that whole class of intermeddlers and fanatics
(as they termed opponents of slavery) who had destroyed so many lives
and wasted so much treasure in attempting the impossible and, even if
possible, the undesirable.
There can be no doubt that the objectionable and cruel legislation of
the Southern States--examples of which might be indefinitely cited in
addition to those already given--exerted a strong influence upon Mr.
Seward's mind. It is well known that, to those who were on intimate
terms with him, he expressed a sorrowful surprise that the South
should respond with so ill a grace to the liberal and magnanimous
tenders of sympathy and friendship from the National Administration.
He could not comprehend why confidence did not beget confidence, why
generosity should not call forth generosity in return. There are
good reasons for believing that Mr. Seward desired some modification
of the President's policy of Reconstruction after he comprehended the
spirit which had been exhibited by the Southern Conventions, and the
still more objectionable spirit shown by the Southern Legislatures.
His philanthropic nature, the record of his public life, his great
achievements in the anti-slavery field, all forbid the conclusion that
he could knowingly and willingly consent to the maltreatment and the
permanent degradation of the freedmen. If he had no higher motives,
the selfish one of preserving his own splendid fame must have inspired
him.
Mr. Seward had reached the age of sixty-five years, and he surely could
not consent to undo the entire work of his mature manhood.
Consistency, it is true, is not the highest trait of statesmanship.
Crises often arise in the conduct of National affairs when cherished
opinions must be sacrificed and new departures taken. But this
necessity can never apply to that class of political questions closely
and inseparably allied with moral obligation. Mr. Seward had himself
taught the nation that conflict on questions involving the rights of
human nature is irrepressible. The slavery against which he had warred
so long and so faithfully had been abolished in vain if another form of
servitude, even more degrading in some of its aspects, was to take its
place. To desert the colored man, and leave him to his fate,
undefended, and defenseless against the wrongs already perpetrated and
the greater wrongs foreshadowed, would do dishonor to the entire spirit
of Mr. Seward's statesmanship, and would certainly be unworthy of his
fame.
He strove no doubt to persuade himself, as Mr. Marcy had done in the
Cabinet of President Pierce, that even if he did not approve the policy
pursued, it was better for him to remain and prevent many evils sure to
follow if he should resign. Mr. Seward felt moreover a certain
embarrassment in deserting the Administration after he had induced the
President to adopt the very policy which was now resulting adversely.
But for his energetic interposition the President would have been
executing an entirely different policy--one of severe and perhaps
sanguinary character. After persuading Mr. Johnson to abandon his
proposed line of action and to adopt that which Mr. Seward had himself
originated, it might well occur to the distinguished Secretary of State
that good faith to the President required him to remain at his post and
aid in working out the best result possible. It would to Mr. Seward's
apprehension be an act of unpardonable selfishness if in such a crisis
to the Republic he should seek to increase his own popularity in the
Northern States by separating from Mr. Johnson who had generously
trusted him and cordially accepted his leadership. By resigning he
could only add to the excitement which he especially desired to allay,
whereas he might by continuing in his place of power be able to hold a
part of the ground which would all be finally lost if he should join
the crusade against the Administration. Under these motives Mr. Seward
retained his portfolio. He staid on and on, continually hoping to do
some act of patriotic service, and steadily losing that great host of
friends who for twenty years had looked to him with unfaltering faith
for counsel and direction.
Many who had been steadfastly devoted to Mr. Seward for the whole
generation in which he had been prominent in public affairs, never
could become reconciled to his course at this period. Some, indeed,
refused to concede to him the benefit of worthy motives. He had, as
they believed and declared, been incurably wounded in his pride, and
disappointed in his ambition, when Mr. Lincoln, then a comparatively
unknown man, was preferred to him by the Republican party as a
candidate for the Presidency in 1860. He had, as they believed, bided
his time for revenge. During the war, the pressure of patriotic duty,
as his new but reluctant enemies alleged, held him steadily to his
old faith; but now, when he could do it without positive danger to the
country, he was bent on administering discipline to the party and its
leaders. They likened him to Mr. Van Buren, revengefully defeating
General Cass in 1848; to Mr. Webster, who on his death-bed gave his
sympathy to the party which had always reviled him; to Mr. Fillmore,
who deserted his anti-slavery professions in the hour of most pressing
responsibility. Comments even more severe were made by many who had
been deeply attached to Mr. Seward, and had deplored his defeat at
Chicago. At such a period of excitement, it was not possible that a
man of Mr. Seward's exalted position could in any degree change his
party relations without great exasperation on the part of old friends,
--an exasperation sure to lead to extravagance of expression and to
personal injustice.
Mr. Seward's course at this period must not be judged harshly by a
standard established from a retrospective view of the circumstances
surrounding him. It is more just to consider the situation as it
appeared to his own observation when his eyes were turned to the
future. He no doubt looked buoyantly forward, according to his
temperament, trusting always to the healing influences of time and to
that re-action in the headlong course of Southern men which he felt
sure would be brought about by the sting of personal reflection and the
power of public opinion. A silver lining to the darkest cloud was
always visible to his eye of faith, and he now brought to the
contemplation of the adverse elements in the political field a full
measure of that confidence which had always sustained him when adverse
elements in the field of war caused many strong hearts to faint and
grow weary.
The course of events developed occasions when Mr. Seward's influence
proved valuable to the country, but it did not serve to recall his
popularity. He was thwarted and defeated at all points by the Southern
leaders whom he had induced the President to forgive and re-instate.
These men had originally established their relations with Mr. Johnson
by reason of Mr. Seward's magnanimous interposition. But once
established they had been able, from motives adverted to in the
previous chapter, to fasten their hold upon Mr. Johnson even to the
exclusion of Mr. Seward. When Mr. Seward was beaten for the
Presidential nomination in a convention composed of anti-slavery men
who had learned their creed from him, Senator Toombs, in a tone full of
exultation but not remarkable for delicacy, declared that "Actæon had
been devoured by his own dogs." The fable would be equally applicable
in describing the manner in which the Southern men, who owed their
forgiveness and their immunity to Mr. Seward, turned upon him with
hatred and with imprecation. They were graciously willing to accept
benefits and favors at his hands so long as he would dispense them, but
they never forgave him for the work of that grand period of his life,
between his election to the Senate and the outbreak of the civil war,
when he wrought most nobly for humanity and established a fame which no
error of later life could blot from the minds of a grateful people.
Mr. Seward could not have been surprised at the treatment he thus
received. He had for nearly half a century been an intelligent
observer of the political field, and he could not recall a single
Northern man who had risked his popularity at home in defense of what
were termed the rights of the South who had not in the supreme crisis
of his public life been deserted by the South. Mr. Webster, General
Cass, William L. Marcy, Mr. Douglas, and President Pierce were among
the most conspicuous of those who had been thus sacrificed. The last
sixty days of Mr. Buchanan's Presidency furnished the most noted of all
the victims of Southern ingratitude. Men of lower rank but similar
experience were to be found in the years preceding the war in nearly
every Norther State--men who had ventured to run counter to the
principles and prejudices of their own constituency to serve those who
always abandoned a political leader when they feared he might have lost
the power to be useful to them. The pro-slavery men of the South, in
following this course, presented a striking contrast to the anti-slavery
men of the North who, under all circumstances and against all
temptation, were faithful to the leaders who proved faithful to their
cause.