PRESIDENT GRANT AND RECONSTRUCTION
The Situation at the Moment of Grant's Accession to Power--The Georgia
Question--The Attitude of the New President toward Reconstruction--The
Virginia Case--Grant's Message to Congress of April 7th, 1869, and His
Proclamation of May 14th--Ratification of the Virginia Constitution and
Election of "State" Officers under it--The Restoration of Virginia to
Her Federal Relations--Ratification of the Mississippi Constitution and
Election of "State" Officers and Legislative Members under it--The
Restoration of Mississippi to Her Federal Relations--Ratification of
the Texas Constitution and Election of "State" Officers and Legislative
Members under it--Restoration of Texas to Her Federal Relations--Grant
and the Tenure-of-Office Act--Congress and the Tenure-of-Office Act
after Grant's Accession to the Presidency--The Modification of the
Tenure-of-Office Act--The President's Dissatisfaction with the
Measure--The Facts in the Georgia Case--New Conditions Imposed on
Georgia--The Final Restoration of Georgia to Her Federal
Relations--Negro Rule in the South from the Point of View of Political
Science and Ethnical Principle.
[Sidenote: The situation at the moment of Grant's accession to power.]
At the moment of Grant's accession to power, four of the Southern
communities were still denied recognition as "States" upon the floor of
Congress. Three of the four had not yet adopted "State" constitutions,
viz.: Virginia, Mississippi and Texas; and the fourth, Georgia, the
representatives from which to the lower House of Congress had been
admitted in December of 1868, was still unrepresented in the Senate,
for the reason that the legislature of Georgia, after electing United
States Senators, {223} had rejected the negro members-elect of that
body on the ground that negroes were not eligible to legislative seats
in Georgia.
[Sidenote: The Georgia question.]
When the news of this procedure reached Washington, the Senate held
back from admitting the Senators-elect from Georgia to seats and did
not admit them during the last session of the Fortieth Congress; and at
the opening of the Forty-first Congress, on March 4th, 1869, the day of
Grant's inauguration, one of the first acts of the respective Houses
was to refuse admittance to the representatives from Georgia to _either
House_, and to refer their credentials to the Committee of each House
on Elections.
[Sidenote: The attitude of the new President toward Reconstruction.]
In his inaugural Address the new President made no reference to these
questions, but he had hardly been one month in the presidential office
before he recognized the difficulties with which his predecessor had
been beset, and asked and almost demanded of Congress relief from them.
On the 7th day of April he addressed a message to Congress requesting
that body to provide for submitting to the voters of Virginia the
"State" constitution drafted and adopted by a constitutional convention
at Richmond nearly a year before, and recommending that "a separate
vote be taken upon such parts as might be thought expedient," and that
the constitution, "_or such parts thereof as shall have been adopted by
the people,_" should be submitted to Congress on the first Monday of
the following December, and that the officers provided for under the
said constitution should be chosen at the same election.
The President also suggested that the constitution framed by the
convention in Mississippi and rejected by the voters might be
resubmitted in the same way. The events in Mississippi culminating in
the rejection {224} of the proposed State constitution by the voters in
June of 1868 have been already related.
[Sidenote: The Virginia case.]
The case of Virginia, on the other hand, which differed in several
material respects from that of any of the others, has not been as yet
sufficiently stated for a clear understanding of the President's
meaning in his recommendations to Congress of April 7th. It will be
remembered that a loyal government of Virginia, with its seat first at
Wheeling and then at Alexandria, existed during the entire period of
the Civil War, and that from 1861 to 1864 Virginia, under this
government, had been represented in Congress, and that it was this
government which consented to the partition of Virginia recognized by
Congress. On the 23d day of May, 1865, this government transferred
itself from Alexandria to Richmond, having been recognized by President
Johnson on May 9th as the true government of Virginia. The legislative
department of it met in session on the 20th of June following. The
Governor, Mr. Pierpont, recommended, in his message to that body, that
a constitutional amendment should be drafted, and proposed by it to the
voters for ratification, which would enfranchise, and qualify for
office, a much larger proportion of the people than was the case under
the revised constitution of Virginia of 1864, adopted by the loyal
convention at Alexandria. The legislature followed the Governor's
advice and proposed an amendment to the voters which granted suffrage
and eligibility substantially to the old ante-bellum electorate and
eligibles on the condition of future loyalty to the United States. This
proposition was voted on at the elections held on the 12th of October
for the choice of members of the legislature and of the lower House of
Congress, and was ratified by a large majority. The election was held
in every county and the result was fairly {225} representative of the
people. There was lacking but one thing more for the complete
restoration of the "State" to its federal relations, viz., the
admission of the Senators and Representatives from it to seats in
Congress. They presented themselves at the opening of the Congressional
session on the first Monday of December following, and were excluded,
along with the Senators and Representatives from the other "Johnson
States," by the Stevens resolution.
[Sidenote: The Vagrant Act.]
[Sidenote: General Terry's order setting aside the Vagrant Act.]
For more than a year, however, this government continued to act as the
"State" government of Virginia, under the limitations placed upon it by
the presence of the military of the United States, and the interference
of the commanding general in behalf of the freedmen. On January 15th,
1866, the legislature chosen at the October elections of the preceding
year passed the vagrant act, which defined as vagrants "all persons
who, not having wherewith to maintain themselves and their families,
live idly and without employment, and refuse to work for the usual and
common wages given to the laborers in the like work in the place where
they are," and which authorized the condemned vagrant to be hired out,
and his wages applied to his own use or the use of his family, and, in
case of his running away from the hirer, to be apprehended on the
warrant of a justice and returned to the hirer, who should have one
month of service extra, and without wages, for the interruption of the
service contracted for, and other trouble and expense, and should also
have the right, by permission of the justice, to work the returned
vagrant with ball and chain, in order to prevent a repetition of his
flight. On the 24th, just nine days after the passage of the act,
General Terry, the military commander at Richmond, issued an order
setting aside this measure as to the freedmen. He based his order on
the {226} tendency of the statute to influence employers to combine for
the purpose of lowering the wages of the freedmen to a point that would
pauperize them and drive them into vagrancy, and create thus the very
situation which, under the operation of the measure, would lead to a
species of servitude worse than the old domestic slavery. He had no
reliable facts of experience upon which to base his theory. It was a
bit of political and economic prophecy on his part. It was sufficient,
however, to call down maledictions from the Congress at Washington and
the people of the North upon the legislature at Richmond and the people
of Virginia and of the South generally.
[Sidenote: Virginia made a Military District.]
Congress, however, gave this legislature one more opportunity to redeem
itself. The proposed Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the
United States was submitted to it for ratification in June of 1866.
After long deliberation upon it, the legislature rejected it on the 9th
of January, 1867. This act sealed the fate of that legislature.
Virginia was brought, with the other Southern communities which had
rejected or not adopted the proposed Amendment, under the
Reconstruction Acts of March, 1867, and became the first military
district under those Acts, with General Schofield as commander.
Schofield ordered the election for delegates to a constitutional
convention, by the voters designated in the Reconstruction Acts, to be
held in November of 1867, and ordered the delegates so elected to
assemble in Richmond on the 3d of the following December. These orders
were successfully executed under the supervision and control of the
military. Schofield himself appeared in the convention, and urged the
delegates to be moderate in the propositions for the disfranchisement
and disqualification of those who had participated in rebellion. But
the delegates {227} elected under the Reconstruction Acts, and by the
electorate created through them, were not only radical, but bent upon
retaliation. They would not listen to the wise counsel of Schofield,
but drafted and adopted such provisions in regard to suffrage
qualifications and eligibility to office and mandate as would have put
the "State" government, based on such a constitution, in the hands of
negroes, "scalawags" and "carpet-bag" adventurers. The opposition to
these provisions on the part of the commander and the Administration at
Washington was, however, sufficiently effective to delay indefinitely
the submission of the constitution to the voters. Near the end of the
year 1868, a conference of prominent Virginians assembled at Richmond
and appointed a committee, and sent its members to Washington to
petition Congress to allow the disfranchising and disqualifying
clauses, and the clauses in reference to county organization, to be
voted on separately from the other parts of the proposed constitution.
This committee proceeded to Washington in January of 1869, and argued
their case before committees of both of the Houses of Congress, and
also presented the same to the new President-elect, General Grant.
[Sidenote: Grant's message to Congress of April 7th, 1869, and his
proclamation of May 14th.]
It was in consequence of such representations and prayers, that
President Grant sent his message of April 7th to Congress, requesting
authority to accede to the petition of the Virginians, and that
Congress immediately conferred the authority upon him. Armed with this
authority, the President issued a proclamation on the 14th day of May,
1869, commanding the "State" constitution framed for Virginia by the
convention which assembled on December 3d, 1867, at Richmond, to be
submitted to the voters, on July 6th, 1869, for ratification or
rejection, and also commanding that those {228} provisions
disqualifying persons from voting and holding office who had in any way
aided the rebellion against the United States should be separately
submitted.
[Sidenote: Ratification of the Virginia Constitution.]
At the election ordered by the President, the constitution without
these clauses was ratified, and the conservative Republican candidates
for office and legislative membership were elected.
[Sidenote: The restoration of Virginia to her Federal relations.]
At the next session of Congress, in December of 1869, the Senators and
Representatives presented themselves for admission. Their claims were
sustained by the President, who reported to Congress that Virginia had
fulfilled all of the conditions required of her for readmission to her
full privileges as a member of the Union, having among other things
ratified by legislative acts both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, and urged the
admission of the Senators and Representatives from the "State" to
Congress. After a good deal of discussion and some wrangling, the bill
for the accomplishment of this object was passed, and, in the last days
of January of 1870, Virginia was restored to her proper federal
relations, on the conditions that the constitution of the "State"
should never be so amended as to deprive any person enfranchised
therein of the suffrage, or any citizen or class of citizens of the
United States of the educational rights and privileges provided
therein, or any citizen of the United States of the equal right to hold
office, on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude,
or of the school rights provided in the constitution of the "State."
The Congressional Act also undertook to purge the new "State"
legislature by requiring that every member must take an oath that he
was not disqualified by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of
the United States, or that, if he had been, he had also been {229}
relieved by the Congressional Act authorized for the case in the
Amendment.
[Sidenote: Ratification of the Mississippi constitution.]
The Act of Congress of April 10th empowered the President to deal with
the question of Reconstruction in Mississippi in the same manner as in
Virginia. By virtue of this power, the President issued a proclamation,
on the 13th of July, 1869, commanding the resubmission to the voters of
the constitution adopted by the Mississippi convention, on the 15th of
May, 1868, and rejected by the voters as stated on a previous page, and
designating the 30th day of November, 1869, as the date of the
election. As in the case of Virginia, the President ordered a separate
vote to be taken upon the disfranchising and disqualifying clauses of
the constitution which prohibited any person from voting or holding
office who had given any aid or comfort to persons in rebellion.
[Sidenote: The restoration of Mississippi to her Federal relations.]
The result of the vote on the constitution was the same as in Virginia.
The constitution was ratified without these clauses; and on the 23d of
February, 1870, the bill for the restoration of Mississippi and the
admission of the Senators and Representatives from the "State" to
Congress, on the same conditions as those exacted of Virginia, became
law.
[Sidenote: Ratification of the Texas Constitution.]
[Sidenote: Restoration of Texas to her Federal relations.]
The Act of April 10th, 1869, also invested the President with the power
of ordering the submission of the constitution framed and adopted by
the convention at Austin, Texas, in June of 1868, to the voters for
ratification. By virtue of this authority, the President ordered a vote
to be taken upon this instrument on the 30th day of November, 1869.
This proposed constitution did not contain any such disfranchising and
disqualifying clauses as those which rendered the Virginia and
Mississippi instruments {230} obnoxious to the intelligence of these
communities, and the vote was, therefore, ordered to be taken upon the
entire constitution at once. The result was ratification; and on the
30th of March, 1870, the Congressional measure for the complete
restoration of Texas to her proper federal relations, upon the same
fundamental conditions as those required of Virginia and Mississippi,
became law.
Thus while the new President did not, as his predecessor had done,
dispute the power of Congress to direct and control the reconstruction
of the disrupted Southern communities as "States" of the Union, he
appealed to Congress for the authority to relieve some of them still
suffering under military rule from the hard alternative of negro
domination, and when Congress gave him the power requested, he used it
for the amelioration of the situation. This was true statesmanship. If
President Johnson had done this instead of insisting upon his
constitutional power to reconstruct, independently of Congress, these
communities, and repeating continually his unsound, though specious,
arguments in support of his view, it is quite possible that he might
have maintained his influence, in some degree at least, with the
Republican majority, and at the same time, and in consequence thereof,
might have accomplished something in the interest of a true
conservatism in Reconstruction. This is not, however, certain. Johnson
had none of Grant's vast popularity with the people of the North
whereby to overawe Congress, and there is no doubt, deny it as we may
to conscious reflection, that down below consciousness there was a sort
of distrust of a Southern Union man on the part of a large portion of
the people of the North. Mr. Johnson had to suffer under the influence
of this feeling, like all others of his class, and whenever he
suggested any moderate {231} course in the treatment of former rebels,
he fell under the suspicion of masking sympathy with their sentiments
under a pretence of Unionism. He was, thus, rather an object of
Congressional distrust from the first, and could probably never have
done so much as Grant succeeded in doing for conservatism in Virginia
and Mississippi, even though he had recognized the power of Congress in
the work of reconstruction, and had preferred respectful requests,
instead of asserting presidential prerogatives.
[Sidenote: Grant and the Tenure-of-Office Act.]
Likewise the new President found, as soon as he began the work of
administration, that the Tenure-of-Office Act was an unendurable
hindrance to the efficient discharge of his duties. None of Mr.
Johnson's Secretaries, it is true, gave him any trouble by attempting
to hold on to office for the one month allowed them after the
expiration of Mr. Johnson's term. The men nominated by President Grant
for his Cabinet of chiefs and advisers were immediately confirmed, and,
with one exception, inducted into office. These men were E. B.
Washburne, of Illinois, as Secretary of State; A. T. Stewart, of New
York, as Secretary of the Treasury; A. E. Borie, of Pennsylvania, as
Secretary of the Navy; J. D. Cox, of Ohio, as Secretary of the
Interior; E. R. Hoar, of Massachusetts, as Attorney-General; and J. A.
J. Creswell, of Maryland, as Postmaster-General. No immediate
nomination was made for the Secretaryship of War, and General Schofield
remained for a few days at the head of the Department. The President
soon found that Mr. Stewart, being a large importer of foreign goods,
was disqualified by statute from holding the office of Secretary of the
Treasury. He first suggested to the Senate the removal of the
disability by a joint resolution of Congress, and, on objection being
made to the introduction of a {232} bill repealing the disqualifying
statute, he withdrew the suggestion. Mr. Stewart then relieved the
situation by sending in his declination, and the President nominated
Mr. G. S. Boutwell of Massachusetts for the office, which nomination
was immediately confirmed, and Mr. Boutwell took immediate charge of
the Department. Mr. Washburne, the Secretary of State, resigned the
office within a few days, and Mr. Hamilton Fish, of New York, was
nominated and appointed to succeed him. General Schofield next resigned
the War Office, and was succeeded by General John A. Rawlins of
Illinois. Finally, Mr. Borie resigned in June the Secretaryship of the
Navy, and was succeeded by Mr. G. M. Robeson of New Jersey. The Senate
put nothing in the way of these changes. But President Grant made up
his mind in a very few days after his inauguration not to have his
hands tied in regard to any of the officers for whose acts he was
responsible. He gave the Republican leaders in Congress to understand
that he would allow the existing incumbents of the offices to remain in
office, unless they should commit some such offence as would call for
their suspension, so long as the Tenure-of-Office Act should remain on
the statute book. The Republicans were hungry for a new distribution of
the spoils. They called it a righteous desire for the "cleaning of the
Augean stables." Whatever it was, they were thrown into a great state
of trepidation by this covert threat of the President not to clear the
way for their friends.
[Sidenote: Congress and the Tenure-of-Office Act after Grant's
accession to the presidency.]
On the 9th day of March, less than a week after the accession of the
new President to power, a bill was introduced into the House of
Representatives providing for the immediate repeal of the
Tenure-of-Office Act, and was passed, immediately and without debate,
by a vote of 138 to 16. These 16 were naturally Republicans. {233} The
Democrats voted for the repeal on principle. When the bill reached the
Senate it was sent to the Judiciary Committee. This Committee quickly
reported to the Senate a substitute for the bill of the House. This
substitute provided that the Tenure-of-Office Act should be suspended
from operation until the next session of Congress. No more shameless
piece of partisanship was ever advanced on the floor of the Senate than
this. It simply meant, suspend the Act when the Republicans wanted to
get the offices, and keep it in force when they might be in danger of
being put out. The Senate itself could not be brought to vote this
proposition of its Judiciary Committee. It was withdrawn by the
committee, and Mr. Trumbull proposed to supersede the existing law with
a measure which would allow the President to suspend from office
without assigning any cause for the same to the Senate, or even
reporting the suspension to the Senate, and to nominate to the Senate a
person to fill the vacancy, and in case of rejection by the Senate to
nominate another person; and only when the session of the Senate should
come to a close without a ratification should the suspended officer be
restored.
[Sidenote: The modification of the Tenure-of-Office Act.]
It was pretty clear that the President would not find any trouble with
such a measure as this, but it seemed to the House that the Senate was
trying to cling to a certain control over the Executive, and the House
refused concurrence in the bill. The matter was finally referred to a
conference committee, and this committee speedily matured and reported
a measure, which allowed the President, during a recess of the Senate,
to suspend any civil officer appointed by and with the consent of the
Senate, except judges of the United States courts, until the end of the
next session of the Senate, and to designate some other person {234} to
discharge the duties of the vacant office in the meantime, and made it
the duty of the President simply to nominate to the Senate, within
thirty days from the beginning of its next session, some one to succeed
to the office permanently, and in case the Senate should refuse to
ratify the nomination, to nominate another person. Both Houses accepted
the recommendation of the Committee and the bill agreed upon by its
members became law April 5, 1869.
[Sidenote: The President's dissatisfaction with the measure.]
Still the President was not satisfied with it. He thought that any
control whatever of the Senate over dismissal from office was not
warranted by the Constitution, and he regarded the attempt of the
Senate to cling to any shadow of such a power as a personal affront to
himself.
In his first annual Message, that of December 6th, 1869, he earnestly
recommended the total repeal of the Tenure-of-Office Acts, and declared
them both unconstitutional, and inconsistent with "a faithful and
efficient administration of the Government." His recommendation was
probably an effective warning to Congress against any attempt to hamper
him by claiming any power under them to control his dismissals and
suspensions, but they still remained on the statute book for nearly two
decades longer. The glaring inconsistency of a bare and bald repeal of
the Acts was too great even for the partisan Congress. It was willing
to make them practically null and void, but it wanted a shadow with
which to cover its nakedness. At any rate, the position taken by
President Grant toward them was a complete vindication of President
Johnson's views concerning them, and, in no small degree, of his deeds
also.
At the date of this Message all of the Southern communities had
completed the acts required by Congress {235} for their restoration as
"States" of the Union, but the result of the elections held in
Mississippi were not known in Washington. The President simply
expressed the hope that the constitutions submitted in these
communities to the voters would be ratified, and "thus close the work
of Reconstruction." As we have seen, the elections resulted as the
President hoped, and these communities were restored, on the basis of
the "State" constitutions adopted, to their proper federal relations.
[Sidenote: The facts in the Georgia case.]
The case of Georgia still remained, however, unsettled, and the
President suggested that Congress should enact a law authorizing the
Governor of Georgia, Mr. Bullock, "to convene the members originally
elected to the legislature, requiring each member to take the oath
prescribed by the Reconstruction Acts, and none to be admitted who were
ineligible under the third clause of the Fourteenth Amendment." The
situation was briefly as follows: The Senators and Representatives from
Georgia had been refused admission to seats in Congress at the first
session of the Forty-first Congress which convened the 4th of March,
1869, because the legislature of Georgia had expelled the colored men
elected to that body as ineligible, and had rejected the proposed
Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. It is
true that the Senators from Georgia had been elected by the legislature
before the colored members were expelled, and that the Representatives
had been admitted to seats in the House during the last session of the
Fortieth Congress, and that the ostensible reason for not admitting the
members to the lower House of the Forty-first Congress was that they
had not been elected to the Forty-first Congress. However, Georgia had
no representation in either House of Congress at the date of President
Grant's first annual Message in December of 1869. {236} Her "State"
government seems, therefore, to have been considered by Congress as
being still only provisional, despite the fact that by the Act of June
25th, 1868, she had been declared entitled to admission to
representation in Congress upon conditions which she had subsequently
fulfilled.
A bill had been introduced into Congress soon after the opening of the
session beginning March 4th, 1869, dealing with the subject. It was
claimed in the preamble of this bill that the Georgia legislature had
not purged itself of disloyal members as required by the Fourteenth
Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, that it had
violated the constitution of Georgia and the Constitution of the United
States and the fundamental principles of the Reconstruction Acts by
expelling the negro members for ineligibility, and that the civil
authorities in the "State" could not, or did not, protect the loyal
citizens in the enjoyment of their rights and liberties or even in
their persons. The bill proposed to meet these difficulties by
providing that the Governor of Georgia should reconvene the originally
elected members of the legislature, reseat the expelled negro members,
and expel such members as could not swear that they were not
disqualified by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the
United States. It may be remarked here in passing that the Fourteenth
Amendment does not disqualify anybody, in express language, from being
a member of a "State" legislature. It disqualifies all persons who have
engaged in rebellion after having taken an oath, as a member of
Congress or of a "State" legislature, or as a United States or a
"State" officer, to support the Constitution of the United States, from
holding a seat in Congress or from being an officer of the United
States or of a "State," _but not from holding a seat in a "State"
legislature_. The word officer in the public {237} jurisprudence of
this country does not include membership in a legislative body. But to
return to the bill. It provided finally for making United States troops
in Georgia subject to the Governor's call for assistance. This bill was
so seriously opposed by the Democrats and the conservative Republicans
that it did not pass, and during this session Congress did nothing
further for the restoration of Georgia.
[Sidenote: The case of White and Clements.]
On the other hand, the conservatives in Georgia undertook to do
something for themselves. They got up a test case in the Supreme Court
of the "State" to determine the rights of negroes to hold office. The
case was that of White and Clements, and the office involved was a
county court clerkship. Of course the decision was not binding upon the
legislative houses in judging of the eligibility of their members, but
it was thought that it would have an influence upon their views. The
court decided that under the new constitution of Georgia and the code
of Georgia negroes could hold office, since the constitution of 1868
declared that all persons born or naturalized in the United States and
residents in Georgia were citizens of Georgia, and the code declared
that among the rights of citizens was the right to hold office. Of
course the legislature could abolish or amend the code. After the
rendering of this decision the conservative members of the legislature
requested the Governor, Mr. Bullock, who was a radical Republican, and
a New Yorker by birth, to reconvene the legislature for the purpose of
reseating the expelled negro members. The Governor refused, apparently
not desiring to anticipate the action of Congress in the case. The
attempt of the conservatives to help themselves thus came to naught,
and the unhappy community drifted on toward anarchy and violence,
according to the report now made by {238} General Terry to the
President, who declared it to be his opinion that the United States
Government must intervene anew in order to preserve it against that
fate.
[Sidenote: New conditions imposed on Georgia.]
It was then with a good deal of irritation that Congress came to
consider the subject of Reconstruction in Georgia again in the session
of 1869-70, and the determination soon became manifest to impose
additional and harder conditions upon this community than upon the
others. Moreover, as matters appeared at that juncture, the
ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment by the legislature of Georgia
would be necessary to make out the required three-fourths majority. It
was in this temper, and under the pressure of this supposed necessity,
that Congress, acting promptly upon the general suggestion in the
President's Message, passed a bill which provided that the Governor of
Georgia should forthwith summon the persons declared by the
proclamation of General Meade, of the date of June 25th, 1868, to be
members-elect of the legislature, to assemble at Atlanta; that every
such person should take an oath or affirmation that he had never, after
having been a member of Congress or of a "State" legislature, or an
officer of the United States or of a "State" "engaged in insurrection
or rebellion against the United States, or given any aid or comfort to
its enemies, or rendered, except in consequence of direct physical
compulsion, any support or aid to any insurrection, or rebellion
against the United States, or held any office under, or given any
support to, any government of any kind acting in hostility to the
United States, or levying war against the United States," or should
make oath or affirmation that, if he had so acted, he had been relieved
by Congress from any disability attaching to such act in the manner
provided in {239} the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution; that in
case any person claiming to be a member of the legislature should fail
to make such an oath or affirmation he should be excluded from a seat
in the body; that no member-elect should be excluded on account of
race, color or previous condition of servitude; that, on application of
the Governor, the President should employ the military power of the
United States to enforce the provisions of the Act; and that the
legislature of Georgia should ratify the proposed Fifteenth Amendment
to the Constitution of the United States before Senators and
Representatives from Georgia should be admitted to seats in Congress.
This bill was approved by the President on the 22d of December, 1869.
[Sidenote: Resumption of military government in Georgia.]
So great was the opposition to Reconstruction, under these hard
conditions, on the part of the white people in Georgia, that the
Governor was obliged to call for the military of the United States to
aid him, and finally to step aside for General Terry, who by an order
from the President, dated January 4th, 1870, was authorized to resume
the powers in Georgia of the commander of a military district, as
provided under the Reconstruction Act of March 2d, 1867. The General
found a number of members in the legislature recognized by General
Meade's proclamation who could not take either of the oaths or
affirmations prescribed. These he caused to be removed from their seats
in very arbitrary ways. This procedure put the Republicans in the
legislature in majority, and they filled these vacancies by admitting
persons who had received the next highest number of votes to those cast
for the expelled members in the election, and who could take one or the
other of the oaths or affirmations prescribed in the Act of the 22d of
December, 1869.
{240} [Sidenote: Ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment by the Georgia
legislature.]
The legislature as thus reconstructed was approved by the military
authorities, and it now proceeded to fulfil the final condition
required of Georgia, viz., the ratification of the proposed Fifteenth
Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. It also ratified
the Fourteenth Amendment. This was, from a legal point of view,
entirely superfluous, since the Fourteenth Amendment was, at the
moment, already a part of the Constitution, as much so as any other
Article, and in resuming the status of a "State" in the Union, Georgia
was, of course, subject to all parts of the Constitution alike. The
legislature might, with equal reason, have ratified specially any other
part of the Constitution. The idea seems to have been to correct any
possible defects in the ratification of this amendment which the
Georgia legislature had voted on July 21st, 1868.
[Sidenote: Further delay in the admission of representatives from
Georgia.]
This purified legislature now elected United States Senators, both of
them Republicans, of course. All these things were done in the latter
part of January and the early part of February of 1870, and as the
Congress was in session, there was reason to expect that Georgia would
be, at once, fully restored as a "State" of the Union. A bill was
reported in the House of Representatives on the 25th of February from
the Committee on Reconstruction for this purpose. It was nearly
identical in its provisions and language with the Virginia and
Mississippi bills, but it dragged along through nearly five months of
debate and partisan wrangling before it became law. The reason of this
delay was that, on March 4th, General Butler proposed an amendment to
the bill which provided: "That the power granted by the constitution of
Georgia to the general assembly to change the time of holding
elections, and prescribe the {241} day of meeting of the general
assembly, shall not be so exercised as to postpone the election of the
next general assembly beyond the Tuesday after the first Monday in
November in the year 1872, nor shall such power ever be by any future
legislature so exercised as to extend the term of any office beyond the
regular period named in said constitution; and the said general
assembly shall by joint resolution consent to this condition before
this Act shall take effect."
This language was at once taken to mean that Congress would undertake
to empower the legislature of Georgia to extend the terms of the
members of the Georgia legislature and of the Governor, elected in
April of 1868, by two years, on the ground that the "State" government
of Georgia was still provisional, and would so remain until the passage
of this Act, and that these terms would, therefore, not really begin
until the passage of this Act. The conservative Republicans as well as
the Democrats repudiated this interpretation of the powers of Congress
to extend, or to authorize the "State" legislature to extend, the terms
of the members of the legislature and of "State" officers as an
unprecedented usurpation. Some of them repudiated the idea that there
could be a provisional "State" government, and declared that any
further legislation in regard to the reconstruction of Georgia was
unnecessary, since the Act of June 25th, 1868, had restored Georgia to
her position as a "State" of the Union, along with North Carolina,
South Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida, upon certain
conditions, all of which Georgia had fulfilled, just as the others had
done, and since all the others had been admitted to the enjoyment of
all of their rights and privileges as "States" of the Union without any
further legislation than the Act of June 25th, 1868.
{242} There is no doubt that the Butler amendment meant, and was
intended by its author to mean, just what was charged by the
conservatives. General Butler at last acknowledged and avowed it, and
attempted to justify it. But he was unable to rally a majority to
sustain it, and he withdrew it in the face of an amendment offered by
Mr. Bingham on the 7th, which provided that nothing contained in the
bill should be construed either to vacate any of the "State" offices in
Georgia, or to extend the terms of the present holders of them beyond
the time provided in the "State" constitution, or deprive the people of
Georgia of the right under their "State" constitution of electing
members of their legislature in the year 1870.
This amendment was passed on the 8th of March, and the bill as thus
amended was passed by the House of Representatives, and sent to the
Senate on the same day. It was immediately referred to the Judiciary
Committee of that body and on the next day, the 9th, it was reported
back to the Senate by this committee, without amendment. The Senate now
considered it in committee of the whole from this time to April 19th,
and when it was reported to the Senate it had been changed to a bill
which declared the existing government of Georgia to be provisional and
subject to the provisions of the Reconstruction Acts of 1867; ordered
an election in Georgia on the 15th day of November, 1870, for members
of the "State" legislature as provided for in the "State" constitution
of 1868; ordered the assembly of this legislature on the 13th of
December, 1870, and its organization preparatory to the admission of
the "State" to representation in Congress; declared that the powers and
functions of the members of the existing legislature should cease on
the 13th day of December, 1870; and made it the duty of the {243}
President of the United States, in case of domestic violence in any
municipality in the "State," reported to him by the legislature or
Governor of the State, to suppress by military power such domestic
violence, and "to exercise all such powers and inflict such punishments
as may by the laws, or the rules and articles of war be exercised or
inflicted in case of insurrection or invasion." The Senate concurred in
the recommendations of the committee of the whole, and added a
provision repealing that part of the Act of March 2d, 1867, which
prohibited the organizing of any militia force in Georgia.
[Sidenote: The final restoration of Georgia to her Federal relations.]
In this form and with this content the bill was returned to the House.
Here it was again debated, off and on, until June 24th, when it was
finally agreed upon with the following contents: "That the State of
Georgia having complied with the Reconstruction Acts, and the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Articles of Amendment to the Constitution of
the United States having been ratified in good faith by a legal
legislature of said State, it is hereby declared that the State of
Georgia is entitled to representation in the Congress of the United
States. But nothing in this act contained shall be construed to deprive
the people of Georgia of the right to an election for members of the
general assembly of said State, as provided for in the constitution
thereof," and "That so much of the Act of March 2d, 1867, as prohibits
the organization, arming, or calling into service of the militia forces
in the States of Georgia, Mississippi, Texas and Virginia be, and the
same is, hereby repealed."
The Senate disagreed to the bill in this form and with these contents,
and asked for a conference committee. The House agreed and appointed
members. The conference committee agreed upon the bill as {244}
perfected by the House with the addition to the second section of these
words: "And nothing in this or any other Act of Congress shall be
construed to affect the term to which any officer has been appointed or
any member of the general assembly elected, as prescribed by the
constitution of the State of Georgia." Both the Senate and the House
accepted and concurred in the recommendations of the committee, and the
bill, as thus perfected, became law on the 15th day of July, 1870. This
bill terminated the era of Reconstruction legislation by Congress, and
at the next session of Congress, the session of 1870-71, the Senators
and Representatives from Georgia were admitted to their seats, the
Senate admitting those chosen to that body in July of 1868, Messrs.
Hill and Miller. The attempt of Governor Bullock to prolong the terms
of the members of the legislature and of the officers of the "State"
government was decidedly disapproved of by President Grant's
Administration, and an election was held for members and county
officers and for Representatives in Congress in December of 1870. The
white residents of the "State" stood well together, and carried the
election by a large majority against the Republicans. So soon as the
result was known Governor Bullock, whose term had still two more years
to run, abandoned his office and left the "State," and Georgia was thus
early rescued from negro domination, or rather "carpet-bag" domination
through negro suffrage. Her harder experiences during the years from
1868 to 1870 had worked out to her advantage, in that it brought the
respectable and capable portion of her white citizens together earlier
than was the case in the other reconstructed Commonwealths similarly
situated.
[Sidenote: Negro rule in the South from the point of view of political
science and ethnical principle.]
From the point of view of a sound political science the imposition of
universal negro suffrage upon the {245} Southern communities, in some
of which the negroes were in large majority, was one of the
"blunder-crimes" of the century. There is something natural in the
subordination of an inferior race to a superior race, even to the point
of the enslavement of the inferior race, but there is nothing natural
in the opposite. It is entirely unnatural, ruinous, and utterly
demoralizing and barbarizing to both races. It is difficult to believe
that the creation of such a relation between the blacks and whites of
the South was at all within the intentions of the framers of the
Reconstruction Acts. They were irritated because these communities
would not accord civil equality to the freedmen, would not accept the
proposed Fourteenth Amendment, and had passed acts which created a new
species of slavery or quasi-slavery of the blacks. They thought they
were placed between the alternative of continuing military government
in the South indefinitely, or giving the negro the political power with
which to maintain his civil rights.
Opposition to military government in time of peace was an ingrained
principle of the American people, and there was a large part of people
of the North, nearly all adhering to the Republican party, who believed
that manhood suffrage was the true principle of a sound political
science. And it was thought that the only way of creating "States" in
the South which would sustain the Republican party was by giving the
negro the suffrage. It is not surprising, then, that they adopted the
course which they did. There was a third alternative, as has already
been pointed out, viz., the placing of these communities under
Territorial civil government and keeping them there until the spirit of
loyalty to the Nation was established and the principle and practice of
civil equality among all citizens was made thoroughly secure. {246}
But, as has been said, the idea that these communities were "States" of
the Union, notwithstanding their rebellion against the United States
and their attempted secession from the Union, seemed to prohibit the
following of this course, the only true and sound course. And so these
unhappy communities were given over, as sham "States" of the Union, to
the rule of the ignorant and vicious part of their population, to be
sustained therein by the military power of the Nation, under the excuse
that that part alone was loyal.
A period of darkness now settled down upon these unhappy communities
blacker and more hopeless than the worst experiences of the war. The
conduct of the men who now appeared upon the scene as the creators of
the new South was so tyrannic, corrupt, mean and vulgar as to repel the
historian from attempting any detailed account of their doings, and
incline him to the vaguest outline. Moreover it is most difficult to
fix upon reliable facts in this period of confusion and political
night, illuminated only by the lurid gleams of passion and hatred. It
is best for the North, best for the South, best for the whole country,
and best for the world that this terrible mistake of the North and this
terrible degradation of the South should be dealt with briefly and
impersonally, and that lessons of warning should be drawn from these
experiences, instead of multiplying criminations and recriminations in
regard to them.
{247}