RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD.
SURRENDER OF LEE.--On the ninth day of April 1865 at Apomattox Virginia
General Lee surrendered to General Grant, after four years struggle
in perhaps the most awful war of modern times. Only a remnant of the
once powerful and vigorous army was left to share in the humiliation.
A large proportion of the gallant soldiers of the army over which the
immortal Lee was the commander had fallen to rise no more, and the few
remaining were broken down by the continued hardships of the four years
struggle. Being overpowered they humbly submitted to the inevitable and
in good faith accepted the terms given by their conquerors and returned
to their homes, thousands of which were broken up, and thousands more
in mourning for loved ones who had perished in the war.
RIGHT TO SECEDE.--The question as to whether a State had a right to
secede from the General Government could not be settled by arbitration
or legislation, and had been submitted to the arbitrament of the sword
and decided in the negative. The Federal government through its civil
representatives and military hosts claimed and proclaimed a State had
no right to secede. An overwhelming majority of the people north of
Mason and Dixon’s line embraced this theory. Southern people embraced
the opinion that States had the inalienable right to rebel against the
government, if the rights vouchsafed to said states by the constitution
were infringed upon. After four years of civil war unparalleled for
its severity and extent of loss of life and property, the issue was
settled in favor of the Northern idea, and Southern soldiers accepted
their parole, took the oath of allegiance to the government of the
United States in good faith, and returned home to take up life again as
peaceable, loyal citizens.
SHERMAN’S MARCH TO THE SEA.--A few days previous and subsequent to
the surrender of Lee, Johnson with his army was retreating towards
North Carolina, with Sherman in hot pursuit, on his famous march to
the sea. General Sherman, talented, as he was, holding a key to the
situation, must have known that the end of the so called rebellion was
near at hand, but leading his Vandal hosts with pine torch in hand,
careless with fire, seemed to take a fiendish pleasure listening to
the crackling conflagrations and witnessing the lurid sheets of flame
as it swallowed up barns full of feed and stock and palaces, cottages
and all kinds of residences with the accumulation of the lifetime of
the occupants, and the inmates themselves, helpless women and children
driven out of doors, groping their way through the dense smoke and
darkness, hurried on with agonizing fear and dread of personal harm
that was terrible beyond description. A man of intelligence raised in
a land of Bibles under christian influence that could gloat over such
orgies is more in need of missionary influence than the inhabitants of
Greenland’s icy mountain or India’s coral strand.
HOME COMING OF SOLDIERS.--For several weeks after the surrender of
Lee and Johnson, the soldiers continued to return to their homes and
returning divested themselves of their army clothes worn, dirty and
sometimes infested with vermin sad reminders of camp and prison life.
The old clothes were burned and the soldiers dressed in citizens
clothes that had been laid aside four years before, or in new clothes
that thoughtful mothers, sisters or wives had prepared in anticipation
of their home coming. The soldiers were welcomed home by their people
who rejoiced to see them return. On some occasions they were met by
mothers, sisters or wives who had passed through four years of great
tribulation, and sometimes by hungry, ragged children, made more than
orphans by the war. To welcome the return of the soldiers. Nature
seemed to smile in extravagant luxuriance. Flowers were blooming,
growing crops were springing up in a prolific growth, promising a
bountiful harvest. The soldiers became citizens and relieved women and
children of burdens of farm work that their forced absence had put upon
them, and under the changed condition of affairs everything was in a
fair way to resume normal conditions.
ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN.--Very soon after the surrender of Lee,
Abraham Lincoln, president of the United States, was assassinated and
Southern people deplored the sad event. Although the leaders and common
people of the South had nothing to do with the awful crime, it had a
tendency to intensify the already bitter feeling of the radical element
North, and this element began to clamor for revenge, demanding the
punishment of innocent people of the South for a crime for which they
were in no way responsible but entirely innocent. If Lincoln had not
have been removed by death from the presidency and could have exerted
an influence that the promptings of his really generous nature would
have caused him to endeavor to use, it would have been a boon to the
downtrodden people of the Southland. The average soldier was disposed
to get to work and really did get to work with an honest endeavor to
repair the damage done, and to build up the waste places.
FEDERAL OFFICERS.--The rulers or representatives of the general
government could have immortalize themselves and their names would have
gone down in history as benefactors, but instead they took a different
view of the situation and apparently actuated by a revengeful spirit
heaped up burdens that made the suffering people cry out in agony “How
long will this state of affairs exist.”
CONDUCT OF YANKEE SOLDIERS.--Early in the Spring of 1865 the war was
rapidly coming to a close and the Yankee soldiers were invading every
nook and corner. Some of them acted very gentlemanly and did what they
could to protect private property, but others committed depredations,
terrified the people and stole or impressed, as they called it, the
most of the good horses, sometimes leaving worn out old scrubby plugs
for farmers to make their crops with, and then other gangs would come
along and take these leaving farmers without horses. In the Summer the
army horses were corralled at different places, sold at auction to the
highest bidder and brought from one to fifty dollars a piece. In this
way they got about all the money the citizens had managed to get hold
of.
LOOTERS FOLLOW YANKEE ARMY.--In the rear of the Yankee army there
followed a motley gang of looters that were ignorant, vicious and
some of them penitentiary convicts. This despicable class, that would
not have been invited into the homes of respectable people where they
lived, set themselves up as leaders to plunder, steal and overawe the
good citizens of the desolated country.
PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT.--The Southern people soon learned to their
sorrow that if a state did not have a right to secede that the states
which were in rebellion were not considered in the union. Provisional
Governments were forced upon the Southern States and in North Carolina
W. W. Holden, who perhaps had done more to bring about, foster and
encourage the secession of the state than any other man within her
borders, was made governor of the state, and a reign of terror, misrule
and tyranny began. A governor with a retinue of ignorant, vicious,
dishonest followers, willing and anxious to humiliate and punish the
leading and best citizens of the state, caused a distressing state of
affairs to exist.
THE NEGRO ENFRANCHISED.--To still further humiliate the Southern
people an amendment was added to the constitution which placed the
ballot in the hands of every negro man in the South twenty-one
years old, and not satisfied with this leading citizens of the South
were disfranchised. Thousands of the most prominent and influential
citizens of the State of North Carolina were disfranchised. An election
was ordered and held but everything was one way, and many of the
poll holders were big “buck niggers” that would not have known the
Constitution of the United States from the Ten Commandments.
CARPETBAGGERS.--The carpetbaggers and low down thieves, thugs and
bums that were tacked on to the tail end of the Yankee army and left
to torture, torment and terrorize the peaceable, law-abiding citizens
of the South were now busy with their fiendish work. They had already
done effective preparatory work by visiting and mingling freely with
an element congenial to their degraded and vitiated tastes. They had
frequented negro cabins which were thickly scattered over the country.
These ignorant, confiding negroes were easily prevailed upon to meet in
old fields, woods, or old houses located in obscure places where they
organized and instructed them.
THE NEGRO POLITICIANS.--The negro politician loomed up and these
self-constituted bosses pictured to them in glowing colors the beauty
and grandeur of a position they would occupy where their former
owners and other leading white citizens would have to bow the knee
and acknowledge their royal authority. They were informed that the
lands owned by Southern white people would be confiscated and divided
out among them. Some of them in obedience to instructions went so far
as to stake off forty acres of land where they wanted it, with the
assurance that it would be given them. They were also promised with the
forty acres of land and a mule, and were happy in anticipation in the
near future of being in possession of immense wealth. Their political
aspirations were if possible more extravagant. Offices not wanted by
these designing political robbers were parcelled out to negroes that
they could use to do their bidding.
ELECTION A FARCE.--An election was held that was worse than a farce.
The negroes marched up to the polls like droves of sheep and deposited
a piece of paper in a box that they could not have told by looking
at it whether it was a ballot or ticket for passage on a railroad or
admission into a theatre. In North Carolina the ballot boxes were sent
to Charleston, S. C., for the ballots to be counted by a military
commander. To the legislature were elected a few good citizens and a
host of carpetbaggers, scalawags, and negroes, the last three named
having overwhelming majorities.
LEGISLATURE.--The legislature met composed of this motley crew to
enact laws for the government of the people of our loved State. In
the legislature were a few representative members mixed in with the
disreputable carpetbaggers, scalawags and ignorant negroes, and an
organization effected by a few sharp unprincipled alien adventurers
who at once began to plan a system of robbery bold, insolent and
disgraceful, and their corrupt ignorant tools were ready to do anything
dictated by them. The legislature remained in session an entire year,
the members voting themselves seven dollars per day, and some of them
computing their mileage over a roundabout way to give them an excuse to
augment their mileage accounts. The public school fund that had been
sacredly preserved through the four years vicissitudes of war was taken
to pay the per diem of the members of the mob that had convened under
the name of legislature. State bonds were voted and issued for millions
of dollars ostensibly to build railroads, but the proceeds of the bonds
were gobbled up by money sharks and no railroads built. Many of these
bonds were later repudiated by the state as fraudulent. A system of
state, county and municipal government prevailed that was oppressive,
and the good people of the state were humiliated and felt outraged
without having any chance to remedy the evil existing.
COUNTY OFFICERS.--In the legislature were several negroes and in some
counties were negro sheriffs, registers of deeds, county commissioners,
magistrates and school committees. While such a state of affairs
was humiliating, perhaps the carpetbaggers and some of the homemade
scalawags who forgetting and forsaking their race and color, acting
with them were, if possible, a worse curse to the state than the negro
himself. White people were arrested upon warrants issued by negro
magistrates who tried their cases and gloated over an opportunity
to punish them. Extortionate taxes were levied and collected and in
some counties claims were held by officers and people were obliged
to sell them at a tremendous discount and the officers and their pet
partners would buy them in and pay themselves full value from the
county fund. Their outrageous extravagance disgusted all decent white
people and their methods were universally condemned. The negro as a
politician became aggressive and the bosses were obliged to put their
names on the ticket because in many places they furnished the voting
population. Negroes became offensive and entirely ignored their former
owners and other white friends who were disposed to treat them fairly,
and accepted as their advisers these low down carpetbaggers and if
possible lower scalawags. The negro depended almost entirely for his
living upon the better class of white people and notwithstanding all
his prejudice and bitterness, acknowledged this fact, but a dirty thief
or a dirty, no account white man of the class used to do their dirty
work would tell them if they voted with the old secession crowd, as
they called them, they would be put back in slavery, but if they voted
as they suggested they would surely get the forty acres of land and a
mule, and what was still more pleasing to them would place themselves
in a position to wreak revenge on this now despised class. Some of the
hireling serfs were willing to sell their birthright for less than
a miserable mess of potage, and went so far as to advise the poor,
ignorant, confiding negro, in case he was refused work by this class
of white people, to steal such as he needed from the corn cribs, wheat
houses, smoke houses and if that would not suffice to burn their barns
or to burn them out of house and home.
CRIMES COMMITTED.--Under this wicked teaching or training crimes galore
were committed and men were unsafe and women insecure to go along the
streets or highways. Instead of law and order anarchy reigned supreme
and crime stalked boldly in the land heretofore noted for peace,
happiness and prosperity.
NEGROES OFFENSIVE.--Young negroes became offensive as a result of the
false training of this vicious class of men and some women, pretended
religious enthusiasts, who knew nothing of the class of people to whom
they were teaching a doctrine of direct or indirect social equality.
Ambitious notions took possession of the bestial natures of some of the
worst element of the race and results revolting to think of blackened
the page of history of this fearful period.
W. W. Holden was then governor of North Carolina, and could have used
his fine talent, directed in a proper channel, to have been a blessing
instead of a curse to the people of the State whom it was his sworn
duty to protect instead of persecuting. The Executive and Judicial
powers of the State were silent as the grave and by their silence put
their seal of approval upon the disgraceful transactions, thus staining
their administration with crime and the approval of crime and becoming
a party seeking and wreaking revenge.
KU KLUX KLAN.--The ferocious wretches became so bold in the commission
of their outrages that in defense of life and property the good
people of the country organized a society called by different names
in different places but known every where as the “Ku Klux Klan.” The
object of the organization was to secure protection that the pretended
officers of the law failed to give to the oppressed people.
HOLDEN AND KIRK.--Governor Holden prevailed with his gang of blind
partizans in the legislature to pass a law authorizing him to declare
martial law in any part of the state. This he proceeded to do in a few
counties and had some citizens of the highest character, accused of
committing heinous crimes. Federal troops were sent to these counties,
not troops made up in the state, but a gang of cut-throats from
Tennessee, commanded by an acknowledged vicious wretch by the name of
Kirk.
Governor Holden was not satisfied with the scope of power given him,
but wrote to the president asking for Federal authority allowing
arrests to be made and parties tried before a military tribunal hoping
to have some of the best citizens of the state shot at the stake.
Congress refused to confer on the president the power to declare
martial law. The governor and his crowd had to depend on such state
authority as they had managed to usurp. Col. Kirk with his gang had
invaded the state under the direction of the governor and more than one
hundred citizens were arrested and imprisoned by Kirk and his minions.
JUDICIARY EXHAUSTED.--Chief Justice Pearson had until this time been
regarded as a just judge, and application was made to him for a writ of
habeas corpus that men in prison might know why they were imprisoned.
Judge Pearson granted the writ but when an attempt was made to serve it
on Kirk he ignored it under the plea that he was acting under orders
from Governor Holden. Counsel of the prisoners asked for further
process to punish Kirk but the Chief Justice held that his power was
exhausted and that the Judiciary could not contend with the Executive.
The highest judges in the state claimed to be powerless and the Holden
Kirk conspirators, although panting to get recognition from the
Federal Government, began to make preparations to form a Drumhead court
to consist of thirteen members--seven to be appointed by the governor
and six by Colonel Kirk. The Chief Executive of the state expecting to
preside over this court and try cases with the Judiciary in sight and
hearing, declaring itself helpless.
JUDGE BROOKS.--The right will usually prevail and Judge Brooks a
Federal Judge listened to the cry of the distressed and oppressed
and gave them relief. Governor Holden and Colonel Kirk could not
intimidate him with their scarecrow cries of war and bloodshed. He
gave Kirk peremptory orders to allow his prisoners to come before him
at Salisbury within ten days. Governor Holden asked the president to
interfere and he promptly informed him that Judge Brook’s order must be
obeyed. Nothing was against the prisoners and they were released, and
the state was soon relieved of the presence of the Kirk mob. Governor
Holden was impeached, convicted and expelled from his high office. The
people rose in their might and partially redeemed the state, but it
took years to accomplish the desired effect.
One hundred thousand ignorant negroes were enfranchised and their
proportional numerical strength of the voting population enabled them
to exert a baneful influence which very much afflicted the counsels of
our state.
NEGRO PROBLEM.--This brings to the surface the negro problem,
which will not be discussed here, but the different phases of negro
life at different periods of time will be noticed. The negro was
brought to this country from a heathen land centuries ago and it was
soon discovered that a Southern climate was suitable to his health
and growth and as a commercial commodity in the South he would be
profitable. The negro living as a servant of the white families
developed many commendable traits of character. Under the influence
of an acknowledged superior race he became partially civilized and
became very much attached as a servant to his master and mistress as he
was pleased to call them. He brought with him from the dark continent
some traits of character that were inherent and hard to eradicate. As
a slave he was faithful and the great mass of them were happy, and
growing up with white children loved and respected them without once
thinking himself their social equal. Before the war and during the war
it was a very rare case to hear of an outrage being committed. The
negro was happy in his surroundings, having no cares for the future,
knowing he would be provided for even in sickness and old age. During
the war he cared for and as far as he was capable protected the white
women and children at home while their fathers, brothers and husbands
were in the army.
THE OLD TIME DARKEY.--
The old time darkey is in the evening of his life,
After the passing of the last one with the race there will be strife,
He is a colored gentleman in company or at home
And when asked to do a favor always will come.
If his people are suffering with hunger or in distress
He will divide his last slice of bacon or last crumb of bread;
If at any time employed in the field at work
He does not have to be watched for he will not shirk.
He is polite in company, at home, on the road, or street
And will pull of his hat to anyone he may meet;
He is proud of his freedom, and glad he is not a slave
But remembers his early training and knows how to behave,
He has bought his acre of land that he claims as his own
Has built a rude cabin and lives at home,
When a slave he worked through the week and on Saturday night
Danced to the tune of the banjo till broad daylight
Then on Sunday all through the day
Courted his dusky damsel in the old time way.
If asked how he liked roasted potatoes, opossum or chicken to eat
With a broad grin he answers “Dem things is sweet.”
He said poor nigger got tired of bacon and corn bread,
And relished good eating before he went to bed.
He owns he was fond of nice good picking
And thought it was no harm for mister’s niggers to eat master’s chickens,
His mouth still waters and he sighs for the luxury so fine
When he feasted on watermelons in the good old Summer time.
During the war he was industrious, polite and genteel
And took care of women and children while the men were in the field.
He was loyal to the South as any Southern son
And his conduct should be classed with Southern victory won.
The old black mamma that stayed around the home
And took care of the children the same as her own,
The children remember her kindness and care
Though now growing old they are children to her,
The old time darkeys are well meaning and try to check
The young generation that are losing self respect.
THE EMANCIPATED NEGRO.--To do the negro race justice, there is no
doubt if they had been let alone to follow their own inclinations and
judgment they would have been largely influenced in their conduct after
being emancipated by their former owners and the better class of white
people of the South who were then and are now their best friends,
because having grown up with them in an entirely different social scale
are better calculated to advise them for their good. Two classes of
people accepted by them as their advisers are responsible for present
conditions. A low class of avaricious, ignorant, known enemies of the
South who have used them to advance their own selfish interests, and
another equally objectionable class of Northern religious fanatics,
whose training lead them to believe that the Southern people treated
them inhumanly. By mingling with them socially and teaching them that
they were entitled to recognition in the social circle of the whites,
caused them to have aspirations and ambitions to which they can never
attain.
The Southern people at once acknowledged their freedom, and were ready
to help them in their struggle for a more prosperous career, and were
willing to give them their rights before the law but not willing to
place the ballot in their hands or give them a place in the counsels
of the government. Negroes who have followed the advice of their real
friends are now doing well, accumulating property and are in possession
of homes of their own and their children are being educated, but those
who have gone astray under the teaching and advice of aliens who know
nothing about them and care less have become vagrants and criminals and
are a menace to the communities in which they live. The negro problem
will be solved by Southern people who know the characteristics of the
race and will treat them in such a way as to enable them to build up
as a race. If listened to their condition will be bettered and the two
races will live in the Southland together harmoniously, but if the
advice of their only true friends is ignored it will be a survival
of the fittest and like the Indians they will by the management
of Southern people be provided with a home elsewhere and live to
themselves and enjoy the fullness of their freedom.
The sun may be darkened and the moon stream in blood
But the voice of the Anglo Saxons in our counsels will be heard,
The stars may fall and the earth with fervent heat melt,
But the influence of an inferior race in our counsels will not be felt.
They may come from Greenland’s icy mountain or India’s coral strand,
From the black continent of Africa or other heathen lands:
We will humanely treat the savage, and give them their rights before the law,
But before they undertake to rule they had better quietly withdraw.
In our own Sunny South we will give them a home
And teach them civilization and to no longer roam,
We have a knotty problem to solve in our own Sunny Southland,
But will resist any interference from any alien band.
THE COMING SOUTH.--For forty years the oppressed South has been under
a cloud groping its way in the wilderness, a part of the time without
even a feint hope of reaching the promised land, but the clouds are
breaking and through the dense darkness can be traced at least the
outline of a silver lining. To the most obscure vision a light appears,
and the dullest prophet can forecast the sunshine soon to burst forth
in magnificent splendor. Neither heights, lengths, breadths, depths,
principalities nor all the powers that be can stop the onward march
of education, industrial development and universal wave of prosperity
destined erelong to place the people of this, by nature favored land,
in possession of their own. In the scientific, religious, industrial
and political world, the South is forging its way to the front rank,
and our grand old state of North Carolina with its variety of soil,
climate, minerals, timbers and its progressive people is coming. From
the foundation of the government till the sixties the native born
talent of the South shaped and managed the affairs of the nation,
and now she is coming, after passing through a fiery ordeal, to again
resume a place that other sections of the country will be compelled to
concede to her.
We no longer hear the bellowing cannon or clash of arms,
Or the tramp of soldiers marching raising alarm.
But instead the busy hum of machinery and tramp of children to school on their way,
And the blessings of peace and prosperity making triumphant strides in their day.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.