_How Not to Do It_
Revolutions are always the outgrowth of deepest wrongs, clearly
defined by long and heated agitation, which inflame the mind of the
people, and divide them into hostile factions. The field of battle is
simply the theater upon which the hostile factions decide by superior
prowess, or numbers, or sagacity, the questions at issue. In these
conflicts, right usually, but not invariably, triumphs, as it should
always do. Revolutions quicken the conscience and intelligence of the
people, and wars purify the morals of the people by weeding out the
surplus and desperate members of the population; just as a
thunderstorm clarifies the atmosphere.
But the problems involved in the agitation which culminated in the War
of the Rebellion are to-day as far from solution as if no shot had
been fired upon Fort Sumter or as if no Lee had laid down traitorous
arms four years thereafter.
The giant form of the slave-master, the tyrant, still rises superior
to law, to awe and oppress the unorganized proletariat--the common
people, the laboring class. Even when slavery was first introduced
into this country, Fate had written upon the walls of the nation that
it "must go," and go it must, as the result of wise statesmanship or
amid the smoke of battle and the awful "diapason of cannonade." No man
can tell whether wisdom will dictate further argument of peaceful, or
there must be found a violent, solution; but all men of passable
intelligence know and feel that justice will prevail. Progress goes
forward ever, backward never.
That human intelligence has reached higher ground within the present
century than it ever before attained, goes without saying. That we
have marvelously improved upon all the mechanism of government is
equally true. But whether we have improved upon the time-honored rules
of dealing with rebels by extending to them general amnesty for all
their sins of commission is seriously to be debated. If we may judge
of the proper treatment of treason by the example which, according to
Milton, High Heaven made of Lucifer, amnesty is a failure; if we may
judge by the almost absolute failure of the results of the war of the
Rebellion, we may emphatically pronounce amnesty to be a noxious weed
which should not be permitted to take too firm a rooting in our
dealing with traitors. Human, it may be, to err, and to forgive
Divine; but for man to extend forgiveness too far is positively fatal.
Examples are not wanting to show the truthfulness of the reasoning.
There is no error which has been productive of more disaster and death
than the stupid plan adopted by the Federal government in what is
known as the "Reconstruction policy." This _policy_, born out of
expediency and nurtured in selfishness, was, in its inception,
instinct with the elements of failure and of death. Perhaps no piece
of legislation, no policy, was ever more fatuous in every detail. How
could it be otherwise? How could the men who devised it expect for it
anything more than a speedy, ignominous collapse? All the past history
of the Southern states unmistakably pointed to the utter failure of
any policy in which the whites were not made the masters; unless,
indeed, they were subjected to that severe governmental control which
their treason merited, until such time as the people were prepared for
self-government by education, the oblivion of issues out of which the
war grew, the passing away by death of the old spirits, and the
complete metamorphosis of the peculiar conditions predicated upon and
fostered by the unnatural state of slavery.
At the close of the Rebellion, in 1865, the United States government
completely transformed the social fabric of the Southern state
governments; and, without resorting to the slow process of educating
the people; without even preparing them by proper warnings; without
taking into consideration the peculiar relations of the subject and
dominant classes--the slave class and the master class--instantly, as
it were, the lamb and the lion were commanded to lie down together.
The master class, fresh from the fields of a bloody war, with his
musket strapped to his shoulder and the sharp thorn of ignominious
defeat penetrating his breast; the master class, educated for two
hundred years to dominate in his home, in the councils of municipal,
state and Federal government; the master class, who had been taught
that slavery was a divine institution and that the black man, the
unfortunate progeny of Ham, was his lawful slave and property; and
the slave class, born to a state of slavery and obedience, educated in
the school of improvidence, mendacity and the lowest vices--these two
classes of people, born to such widely dissimilar stations in life and
educated in the most extreme schools, were declared to be _free, and
equal before the law_, with the right to vote; to testify in courts of
law; to sit upon jury and in the halls of legislation, municipal and
other; to sue and be sued; to buy and to sell; to marry and give in
marriage. In short, these two classes of people were made co-equal
citizens, entitled alike to the protection of the laws and the
benefits of government.
I know of no instance in the various history of mankind which equals
in absurdity the presumption of the originators of our "Reconstruction
policy" that the master class would accept cordially the conditions
forced upon them, or that the enfranchised class would prove equal to
the burden so unceremoniously forced upon them. On the one hand, a
proud and haughty people, who had stubbornly contested the right of
the government to interfere with the extension of slavery, not to say
confiscation of slave property--a people rich in lands, in mental
resources, in courage; on the other, a poor, despised people, without
lands, without money, without mental resources, without moral
character--these peoples _equal_, indeed! These peoples go peaceably
to the ballot-box together to decide upon the destiny of government!
These peoples melt into an harmonious citizenry! These peoples have
and exercise mutual confidence, esteem and appreciation of their
common rights! These peoples _dissolve into one people!_ The bare
statement of the case condemns it as impracticable, illusory, in the
extreme. And, yet, these two peoples, so different in character, in
education and material condition, were turned loose to enjoy the same
benefits in common--to be one! And the _wise men_ of the nation--as,
Tourgee's _Fool_ ironically names them--thought they were legislating
for the best; thought they were doing their duty. And, so, having made
the people free, and equal before the law, and given them the ballot
with which to settle their disputes, the "_wise men_" left the people
to live in peace if they could, and to cut each other's throats if
they could not. That they should have proceeded to cut each other's
throats was as natural as it is for day to follow night.
I do not desire to be understood as inveighing against the manumission
of the slave or the enfranchisement of the new-made free man. To do
so, would be most paradoxical on my part, who was born a slave and
spent the first nine years of my life in that most unnatural
condition. What I do inveigh against, is the unequal manner in which
the colored people were pitted against the white people; the placing
of these helpless people absolutely in the power of this hereditary
foeman--more absolutely in their power, at their mercy, than under the
merciless system of slavery, when sordid interest dictated a modicum
of humanity and care in treatment. And I arraign the "Reconstruction
policy" as one of the hollowest pieces of perfidy ever perpetrated
upon an innocent, helpless people; and in the treatment of the issues
growing out of that policy, I arraign the dominant party of the time
for base ingratitude, subterfuge and hypocrisy to its black partisan
allies. With the whole power of the government at its back, and with a
Constitution so amended as to extend the amplest protection to the
new-made citizen, it left him to the inhuman mercy of men whose
uncurbed passions, whose deeds of lawlessness and defiance, pale into
virtues the ferocity of Cossack warfare. And, for this treachery, for
leaving this people alone and single-handed, to fight an enemy born in
the lap of self-confidence, and rocked in the cradle of arrogance and
cruelty, the "party of great moral ideas" must go down to history amid
the hisses and the execrations of honest men in spite of its good
deeds. There is not one extenuating circumstance to temper the
indignation of him who believes in justice and humanity.
As I stand before the thirteen bulky volumes, comprising the "Ku Klux
Conspiracy," being the report of the "Joint Select Committee, to
inquire into the condition of affairs in the late Insurrectionary
States," on the part of the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States, reported February 19, 1872, my blood runs cold at the
merciless chronicle of murder and outrage, of defiance, inhumanity and
barbarity on the one hand, and usurpation and tyranny on the other.
If the shot upon Fort Sumter was treason, what shall we call the
bloody conflict which the white men of the South have waged against
the Constitutional amendments from 1866 to the murder of innocent
citizens at Danville, Virginia, in 1883--even unto the present time?
If the shot upon Fort Sumter drew down upon the South the indignation
and the vengeance of the Federal government, putting father against
son, and brother against brother, what shall we say the Federal
Government should have done to put a period to the usurpation and the
murders of these leagues of horror?
The entire adult male population of the South, though no longer in
armed "Rebellion," appeared to be in league against the government of
the United States. The arm of State authority was paralyzed, the
operation of courts of justice was suspended, lawlessness and
individual license walked abroad, and anarchy, pure and simple,
prevailed. Under the name of the "Ku Klux Klan," the South was bound
by the following oath, ironclad, paradoxical and enigmatical as it is:
I, [name] before the great immaculate Judge of heaven and
earth, and upon the Holy Evangelists of Almighty God, do, of
my own free will and accord, subscribe to the following
sacred, binding obligation:
I. I am on the side of justice and humanity and
constitutional liberty, as bequeathed to us by our
forefathers in its original purity.
II. I reject and oppose the principles of the radical
party.
III. I pledge aid to a brother of the Ku-Klux Klan in
sickness, distress, or pecuniary embarrassments. Females,
friends, widows, and their households shall be the special
object of my care and protection.
IV. Should I ever divulge, or cause to be divulged, any of
the secrets of this order, or any of the foregoing
obligations, I must meet with the fearful punishment of
death and traitor's doom, which is death, death, death, at
the hands of the brethren.
Murderers, incendiaries, midnight raiders on the "side of justice,
humanity and Constitutional liberty"! Let us see what kind of
"justice, humanity and Constitutional liberty" is meant. In Volume I,
page 21, I find the following:
Taking these statements from official sources, showing the
prevalence of this organization in every one of the late
insurrectionary States and in Kentucky, it is difficult now,
with the light that has recently been thrown upon its
history, to realize that even its existence has been for so
long a mooted question in the public mind. Especially is
this remarkable in view of the effects that are disclosed by
some of this documentary evidence to have been produced by
it. That it was used as a means of intimidating and
murdering negro voters during the presidential election of
1868, the testimony in the Louisiana and other
contested-election cases already referred to clearly
establishes.
Taking the results in Louisiana alone as an instance, the
purpose of the organization at that time, whatever it may
have been at its origin, could hardly be doubted.
A member of the committee which took that testimony thus
sums it up:
The testimony shows that over 2,000 persons were killed,
wounded, and otherwise injured in that State within a few
weeks prior to the presidential election; that half the
State was overrun by violence; midnight raids, secret
murders, and open riot kept the people in constant terror
until the Republicans surrendered all claims, and then the
election was carried by the Democracy. The parish of Orleans
contained 29,910 voters, 15,020 black. In the spring of 1868
that parish gave 13,973 republican votes. In the fall of
1868 it gave Grant 1,178, a falling off of 12,795 votes.
Riots prevailed for weeks, sweeping the city of New Orleans,
and filling it with scenes of blood, and Ku-Klux notices
were scattered through the city warning the colored men not
to vote. In Caddo there were 2,987 Republicans. In the
spring of 1868 they carried the parish. In the fall they
gave Grant one vote. Here also there were bloody riots.
But the most remarkable case is that of St. Landry, a
planting parish on the River Teche. Here the Republicans had
a registered majority of 1,071 votes. In the spring of 1868
they carried the parish by 678. In the fall they gave Grant
no vote, not one; while the democrats cast 4,787, the full
vote of the parish, for Seymour and Blair.
Here occurred one of the bloodiest riots on record, in
which the Ku-Klux killed and wounded over two hundred
Republicans, hunting and chasing them for two days and
nights through fields and swamps. Thirteen captives were
taken from the jail and shot. A pile of twenty-five dead
bodies was found half buried in the woods. Having conquered
the Republicans, killed and driven off the white leaders,
the Ku-Klux captured the masses, marked them with badges of
red flannel, enrolled them in clubs, led them to the polls,
made them vote the Democratic ticket, and then gave them
certificates of the fact.
It is not my purpose to weary the reader with tedious citations from
the cumbersome reports of the "Ku Klux conspiracy." Those reports are
accessible to the reading public. They tell the bloody story of the
terrible miscarriage of the "Reconstruction policy;" they show how
cruel men can be under conditions favorable to unbridled license,
undeterred by the strong arm of constituted authority; they show how
helpless the freed people were; how ignorant, how easily led by
unscrupulous adventurers _pretending to be friends_ and how easily
murdered and overawed by veterans inured to the dangers and the toils
of war; and, lastly, they show how powerless was the national
government to protect its citizens' rights, specifically defined by
the Federal constitution. _Was_, do I say? It is as powerless to day!
In this brief review, then, of the history and present political
condition of the American Negro I cannot omit, though I shall not
detail, the horrors of the Ku Klux period. They are a link in the
chain: and though today's links are different in form and guise, _the
chain is the same_. Let the reader, then, be a little patient at being
reminded of things which he has perhaps forgotten.