THE WORK OF RESTORATION.
A Year later.—Hopes disappointed.—Position of the Whites of the
South.—Treatment of Southern Unionists, Black and White.—Sections
where the Hostility was most intense.—Honorable and Noble
Exceptions to this State of Feeling.—The most Noisy Supporters of
the Lost Cause.—The Effect of President Johnson’s Course in
stimulating this Hostility.—Review of his Course so far as it
relates to Reconstruction.—Interviews with Southern
Men.—Organization of Provisional Governments.—Specimens of the Men
appointed by him as Governors.—Defiance of Congress in
Advance.—Assurances to South Carolina.—Democratic Conventions
indorsing the President’s Policy.—The Message of December,
1865.—Opposition to Congress.—His “White-washing Message.”—Veto of
the First Freedmen’s Bureau Bill.—The 22d of February Speech.—Veto
of the Civil Rights Bill.—Its Passage over the Veto.—Provisions of
the Bill.—The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.—What it
was.—Veto of the Second Freedmen’s Bureau Bill.—Passage over the
Veto.—Its Provisions.—Admission of Tennessee.—Mr. Johnson signs
the Resolution, but protests.—The Memphis Riot.—The New Orleans
Massacre.—Mr. Johnson responsible for them.—General Sheridan’s
Account of it.—The Philadelphia Convention.—Its Tears.—It proves a
Failure.—Mr. Johnson weeps.—Mr. Johnson’s Speeches.—Reply to the
Philadelphia Committee.—“Congress hanging on the Verge of the
Government.”—“Swinging round the Circle.”—Disgraceful Conduct of
Mr. Johnson.—Billingsgate in his Speeches.—Wearisome
Platitudes.—The Effect they had on the Elections of 1866.
The hopes expressed by the writer in the preceding chapter were not
destined to realize a speedy fruition. The uncertainties arising from
the somewhat sudden change in President Johnson’s policy, and the
hesitancy manifested by Congress in the adoption of a fixed policy of
reconstruction, were already, when that chapter was written, beginning
to bear their legitimate fruit. The Southern whites who had participated
actively or passively in the Rebellion, and who, when the war closed,
were ready to submit without murmuring to such terms as the conquering
party saw fit to prescribe, had already begun to put on the airs of
equals or superiors, and to dictate the terms on which they would come
back into the Union. They scouted the idea that negroes had any rights
which whites were bound to respect, or that they themselves had by their
rebellion forfeited any rights or powers which they had formerly
enjoyed. In short, they insisted upon the _statu quo ante bellum_ as
their rightful position. While maintaining that it was their right and
privilege to honor the graves and memories of the rebel leaders and
soldiers who had fallen during the war, and to glorify the living
generals and other officers, who had fought for what they fondly called
the Lost Cause, they were intolerant of any honors being paid to the
Union dead in the South, or any mention of living Union generals, unless
accompanied with some scurrilous epithet. A Southern man or woman who
had been loyal to the Union during the war, was an object of bitterest
hate. If colored, he was shot down, hung, or beaten to death at the
first opportunity, and there were always enough “lewd fellows of the
baser sort,” ready for this work. If a white man, his cattle were
killed, his horses stolen, his poultry carried off, his barns were
burned, and jokes, about their being struck by lightning on a clear
night, were whispered; his crops were destroyed, and he was warned to
leave the neighborhood. These were common occurrences in the country. In
the towns, it was not quite so bad, except when the mob element was
roused to activity, because the number of loyal Union men there was
larger, and they were able to protect each other, to some extent.
In some sections this bitterness toward Union men was much more intense
than in others. In the interior of Louisiana, in Texas, in Southern
Alabama, in considerable sections of Mississippi, in Southern Georgia,
and along the coast in the vicinity of Charleston, S. C., and in the
neighborhood of Richmond, Petersburg, and Norfolk, Virginia, it was
specially rife. West Tennessee too had its full share of it, and
Kentucky was the most rebellious State in or out of the Union.
It should be remarked, too, that this bitterness did not pervade all
classes, even among those who had formerly participated in the
Rebellion. The men who had fought most bravely for the South were, very
generally, disposed to accept reasonable terms from the victors. They
had fought well, but they had been whipped, and there was nothing left
but submission, and the endeavor to restore to the South its lost
prosperity. In this view of the case, Lieutenant-Generals Longstreet and
Johnston, and Major-Generals Forrest, Jeff. Thompson, and many others,
coincided; and they, as well as some thousands of the former rebel
soldiers, went to work manfully to aid in reconstruction on a fair and
liberal basis.
The most noisy and violent of the supporters of the “Lost Cause,” as
they styled themselves, were men and women who had taken no active part,
except with their tongues, in the Rebellion, often of Northern birth,
but thoroughly southernized in feeling; or, if the men had been
connected with the Southern army or navy, they had been depredators on
unarmed merchant ships, like Raphael Semmes, J. N. Maffit, or Lieutenant
Braine; or bushwhackers, guerrillas, or deserters of the Mosby, Gilmor,
and Clanton style; while the women were the imitators and admirers of
Belle Boyd, Rosa Greenhow, and Sallie Rochester Ford.
Still this class, making up in noise and bluster for what they lacked in
numbers and ability, and possessing a sort of recklessness, dash, and
_abandon_, which has always been attractive to the excitable and
half-educated people of the South, have succeeding in keeping up an
excitement, and an explosive condition of society, very unfavorable to
the restoration of quiet, industry, and good order. Whether
intentionally or not, the course pursued by President Johnson was
admirably calculated to foster just this state of feeling. He commenced
his administration by a very great blunder,—the refusal to call an extra
session of Congress in the summer of 1865. The emergency was one which
demanded the assembling of the national legislature, and the harmonious
and wise co-operation of the executive and legislative branches of the
government in the restoration of law, order, and quiet, throughout the
nation. Nothing save the overweening vanity and conceit of Andrew
Johnson led him to neglect this obvious duty, and to assume to himself
powers which the constitution had never granted to him.
Beginning with this mistake, let us briefly review his subsequent
history so far as it relates to reconstruction, and see how it continued
to be “a tragedy of errors.”
In June, 1865, delegates from the South were first admitted to private
interviews with the President. On the 17th of June, he issued his
proclamation, providing for the restoration of civil government in
Georgia and Alabama, in which he excluded negroes from the category of
loyal citizens entitled to vote. He soon after proceeded to appoint
provisional governors for the Southern States,—an entirely unwarrantable
proceeding. The character of these appointments may be seen in a
sentiment uttered by Governor Perry, one of the number, soon after his
installation. “There is not now in the Southern States,” said he, “any
one who feels more bitterly the humiliation and degradation of going
back into the Union than I do.” He ingratiated himself in the favor of
the President, by assuring the people that the death of Mr. Lincoln was
no loss to the South, while he had every hope that the accession of Mr.
Johnson, an old slave-holding Democrat, would be an advantage.
In Alabama, under the provisional government established by Mr. Johnson,
the Convention prohibited negroes from testifying in the courts.
Throughout the South, the unrepentant rebels began at once to make their
arrangements for taking part in the government. In November, Governor
Perry, of South Carolina, made a public demand, that when Congress met,
the clerk of the House should place on the roll the names of
representatives from the States lately in rebellion.
When South Carolina hesitated to adopt the constitutional amendment
abolishing slavery, President Johnson assured the Governor, that the
clause giving Congress power to enforce it by appropriate legislation,
really limited Congressional control over the negro question. After this
preposterous assurance, South Carolina accepted the constitutional
amendment.
In August and September, 1865, Democratic conventions indorsed the
President’s policy, and Democratic papers (even those which six months
before denounced him as a drunken boor, and demanded his resignation)
began to praise him. The Republican party were yet unwilling to believe
that the man whom they had elected to the Vice-Presidency would so
grossly deceive and betray them, and hoped that after the assembling of
Congress all differences would disappear.
They found very soon, however, that this hope was vain; for when the
Thirty-ninth Congress was organized for business, and the message of the
President was read, it was seen that he placed himself in direct
opposition to the leaders of the Republican party, and utterly at
variance with what he had at first avowed as his own policy. He
professed his inability to concede the elective franchise to the
freedmen in the South, because he must then of necessity have conceded
it also to all colored men in the Northern States. A parity of reasoning
would have required him to appoint provisional governors over all the
Northern States, because he appointed them in the States lately in
rebellion. While Congress was in session, and actually employed in
legislating for the restoration of the rebel States, Mr. Johnson removed
the Provisional Governor of Alabama, and handed the State government
over to the officers elected by the people, thus ignoring the right of
Congress to exercise any control over the subject.
In reply to the demand of the Senate for information respecting the
condition of the rebel States, the President sent a message professing
that they were all in a quiet and peaceful condition, and accompanied it
by the reports of Generals Grant and Carl Schurz, which disproved his
statements. Mr. Sumner denounced this as an attempt to “whitewash” their
actual condition, and he was correct, though at the time severely
denounced for the use of that term.
The Freedmen’s Bureau Bill was passed by a large majority of both houses
of Congress, about the first of February; but was vetoed by the
President on the 19th of February; and on the effort to pass it over the
veto, six senators who had voted for it at first, receded and sustained
the President’s veto. This was Mr. Johnson’s first and last triumph.
Two days later, on the 22d of February (1866), a day most unpropitious
in his subsequent history, Mr. Johnson addressed to a noisy gathering
which had assembled to serenade him, a most disgraceful speech, in which
he denounced Senator Sumner and Representative Thaddeus Stevens by name,
declaring that they were seeking to assassinate him, and indulged in the
use of grossly insulting epithets toward other prominent men. This
speech, for which his friends apologized, on the plea that he was
intoxicated, seriously damaged the President’s cause, while it widened
the breach between him and the party to whom he owed his advancement.
Henceforward Congress moved cautiously but firmly. Every bill relating
to reconstruction was carefully considered and thoroughly matured before
its passage, and when the inevitable veto came, each bill was
triumphantly passed over it.
The first measure to undergo this ordeal was the CIVIL RIGHTS BILL,
passed March 13, 1866; vetoed by the President March 27, 1866; and
passed over his veto, by 33 yeas to 15 nays in the Senate; and 122 yeas
to 41 nays in the House, April 6–9, 1866.
This bill, the first of the permanent measures of reconstruction on the
Congressional plan, provided that all persons born in the United States,
and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed,
should be declared and considered citizens of the United States, and
that such citizens of every race and color, without regard to any
previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a
punishment for crime whereof the party had been duly convicted, should
have the same right in every State and Territory of the United States to
make and enforce contracts; to sue, be parties, and give evidence; to
inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal
property; and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for
the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens,
and be subject to like punishment, pains, and penalties, and to none
other, any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom to the
contrary notwithstanding.
It further provided for the punishment of all infractions of this act,
and for its effectual enforcement, through the district courts of the
United States and their officers; and authorized the President, or any
persons whom he might empower, to prevent the violation of the act, and
if necessary to call the land or naval forces of the United States, or
the militia, to aid in preventing such violation.
The next measure of Congress looking toward reconstruction, was the
passage and submission to the State legislatures of the fourteenth
amendment to the Constitution of the United States. This amendment
passed the Senate June 8, 1866, by a vote of 33 yeas to 11 nays; and the
House, June 13, 1866, by 138 yeas to 36 nays. The following is the joint
resolution and amendment:—
“Joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the
United States.
“_Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States of America in Congress assembled_ (two thirds of both Houses
concurring), That the following article be proposed to the
legislatures of the several States as an amendment to the
Constitution of the United States, which, when ratified by three
fourths of said legislatures, shall be valid as part of the
Constitution, namely:
ARTICLE 14.
“SECTION 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States,
and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United
States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or
enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of
citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any
person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,
nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection
of the laws.
“SECTION 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several
States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole
number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But
when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors
for President and Vice-President of the United States,
representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of
a State, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any
of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of
age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged,
except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of
representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the
number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male
citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
“SECTION 3. No person shall be a senator or representative in
Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any
office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any
State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of
Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of
any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any
State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have
engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid
or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of
two thirds of each house, remove such disability.
“SECTION 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States,
authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions
and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion,
shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State
shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of
insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim
for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts,
obligations, and claims shall be held illegal and void.
“SECTION 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate
legislation, the provisions of this article.”
On the 2d of July, 1866, the Senate, and on the 3d of July, the House,
passed a second Freedmen’s Bureau Bill, continuing in force the original
bill of March 3, 1865, for two years from the passage of this act, and
providing more definitely for its administration, and the bestowment of
its aid upon the freedmen and loyal refugees (the first bill having been
somewhat loose in these particulars). It also prescribed in certain
emergencies for the exercise of military protection, and jurisdiction to
the freedmen, as the wards of the nation, by the commissioner and his
assistants.
This bill Mr. Johnson, after repeated pledges that he would not do so,
vetoed, on the 16th of July, 1866, and it was passed over the veto in
both houses of Congress the same day: in the House by 103 yeas to 33
nays; and in the Senate by 33 yeas to 12 nays. On the 23d of July,
Congress passed the following joint resolution to restore Tennessee to
the Union:—
“Whereas, in the year eighteen hundred and sixty-one, the government
of the State of Tennessee was seized upon and taken possession of by
persons in hostility to the United States, and the inhabitants of
said State, in pursuance of an act of Congress, were declared to be
in a state of insurrection against the United States; and whereas
said State government can only be restored to its former political
relations in the Union by the consent of the lawmaking power of the
United States; and whereas the people of said State did, on the
twenty-second day of February, eighteen hundred and sixty-five, by a
large popular vote, adopt and ratify a constitution of government
whereby slavery was abolished, and all ordinances and laws of
secession, and debts contracted under the same, were declared void;
and whereas a State government has been organized under said
constitution which has ratified the amendment to the Constitution of
the United States abolishing slavery, also the amendment proposed by
the Thirty-ninth Congress, and has done other acts proclaiming and
denoting loyalty; Therefore,
“_Be it resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled_, That the State of
Tennessee is hereby restored to her former proper, practical
relations to the Union, and is again entitled to be represented by
senators and representatives in Congress.”
This joint resolution passed the Senate, 28 yeas to 4 nays; and the
House, 93 yeas to 26 nays. As a joint resolution it did not require the
President’s signature to make it valid, but he addressed a message to
Congress stating that he had signed it, but protesting against what he
professed to regard as its anomalous features. With this act, the
reconstruction measures of the first session of the Thirty-ninth
Congress concluded. They were a good beginning in the work, but were
not, and their authors did not regard them as, a complete system of
reconstruction. The work was to be perfected in subsequent sessions.
Occurrences were transpiring, meanwhile, which were destined to have an
influence on this subject. In May, 1866, a collision took place between
some discharged negro soldiers, and the police of Memphis, Tennessee
(which was composed to a large extent of rebel soldiers and officers,
and of Irishmen, whose hatred of the negro was intense); and this
culminated in a riot which lasted two or three days, and resulted in the
murder of twenty-four negroes, the serious wounding of more than one
hundred, many of whom subsequently died of their wounds, and the
destruction of property to the amount of about $120,000, mostly negro
dwellings, churches, and school-houses. On the side of the police one
white man was wounded, it was alleged by the negroes, but, as was
afterward ascertained, by another policeman. The real question at issue
here was, the right of the freedman to the same privileges and
immunities as the white. For this atrocious massacre of the nation’s
wards, Mr. Johnson had no word of censure. On the 30th of July, at New
Orleans, the Constitutional Convention of 1864, being revived and
reconvened by Governor Wells, commenced its session at the Mechanics’
Institute, when they were set upon by the police (nine tenths of them
unrepentant rebels), under the prompting of Mayor Monroe, the same man
who was mayor in 1862, when New Orleans was captured, and
Attorney-General Herron, another rebel officer. The police first
assaulted a procession of colored men, who were marching to the
Institute, and by firing upon them, compelled them to attempt their own
defence (though not one in ten had any weapons). The police murdered a
number, and drove the rest before them into the Institute, when they
commenced an indiscriminate firing upon the members of the Convention,
who were unarmed, though they raised at once a white flag. Several of
these were killed, and others mortally wounded, among the number, Rev.
J. W. Horton, who had acted as chaplain of the Convention, and Dr. A. P.
Dostie, a prominent Union man. In all, 27 were killed outright, and over
eighty wounded, many of them mortally. Of the policemen, and their
abettors, forty-two were either killed or wounded. General Sheridan, the
commander of the Fifth Military District, was at this time absent in
Texas, having been assured beforehand by Monroe and Herron that there
would be no disturbance and no violence. General Baird, who was in
command at the time, seemed irresolute, and did not attempt any movement
until too late to do any good. General Sheridan, on his return, examined
into the affair, and on the 2d of August reported to General Grant, that
“it was an absolute massacre by the police, which was not excelled in
murderous cruelty by that of Fort Pillow. It was a murder which the
mayor and police of the city perpetrated without the shadow of a
necessity; furthermore, I believe it was premeditated, and every
indication points to this. I recommend the removing of this bad man.”
Monroe and Herron, and their party, insisted that they had the sanction
of the President in all their conduct; and the telegraphic despatches of
the President to Herron, and to General Baird; his permitting, if he did
not direct, the garbling of Sheridan’s despatches; his attempted
justification of Monroe and Herron, and his effort to throw the blame on
Congress, at St. Louis, and subsequently on Secretary Stanton, gave good
reason to believe their statement true.
The attempt to revive this defunct convention may have been injudicious;
some of the men who took part in it, especially Governor Wells and R.
Cutler King, may have been bad men—demagogues; but it was an honest
effort on the part of the great majority of the delegates (whether wise
or not) to reorganize the State on a loyal basis, and in accordance with
the Congressional plan of reconstruction; and this was sufficient to
arouse Mr. Johnson’s hostility to it.
The next act in the drama was the Philadelphia Convention, called, by
those who summoned it, the National Union Convention, which met in that
city, August 14, 1866, responsive to a call signed by Messrs. A. W.
Randall, J. R. Doolittle, O. H. Browning, Edgar Cowan, Charles Knapp,
and Samuel Fowler; as Executive Committee of the National Union Club,
and indorsed by Senators Norton, Nesmith, Dixon, and Hendricks. The
object of this convention was to rally to the support of the President a
considerable portion (a majority it was hoped) of both parties upon a
so-called conservative platform, which should be sufficiently
comprehensive to accommodate the Semi-Republicans, the War-Democrats,
Peace-Democrats, and the half-repentant Rebels. General J. A. Dix was
chosen temporary, and Senator Doolittle, permanent President of the
Convention, and Mr. Henry J. Raymond, of the “New York Times,” was made
Chairman of the Committee on Resolutions.
At the opening of the Convention, General Couch, of Massachusetts, a
former corps commander in the Army of the Potomac, and Ex-Governor Orr,
of South Carolina, came in arm-in-arm, “at which scene,” said the
reporters, “every eye was suffused with tears.” The Convention, however,
proved a failure. The elements were too discordant to mingle readily;
and though Mr. Raymond proposed a very plausible and neatly worded
address and series of resolutions, and Messrs. Doolittle, Cowan, and
others, spoke very eloquently in favor of harmony and union on the
President’s policy, the influence of the affair on the nation was
positively nothing, and the prime movers in it, who had been
Republicans, found themselves read out of their own party, and not
received cordially by the other.
Mr. Johnson had for some months been receiving delegations of all sorts
of men, and expressing his opinions on political questions with great
freedom, though not always with consistency or coherence. On receiving a
committee from the Philadelphia Convention, who, through their chairman,
Hon. Reverdy Johnson, presented their proceedings, he made one of his
characteristic speeches, full of references to himself, his feelings and
emotions, his weeping at the touching scene in the Convention, and
allusions to “the humble individual who was then addressing them,” and
spoke of Congress in these words: “We have seen hanging upon the verge
of the government, as it were, a body called, or which assumes to be,
the Congress of the United States, while in fact it is a Congress of
only a part of the States. We have seen this Congress pretend to be for
the Union, when its every step and act tended to perpetuate disunion,
and make a disruption of the States inevitable. Instead of promoting
reconciliation and harmony, its legislation has partaken of the
character of penalties, retaliation, and revenge. This has been the
course and the policy of one portion of your government.”
Such unwarrantable charges against a coördinate department of the
government, were not only in bad taste, but tended to bring the two into
speedy collision; and it was due rather to the great patience and
forbearance of Congress, than to any circumspection on the part of Mr.
Johnson, that a revolution was not precipitated.
Then came that journey to Chicago, professedly to lay the corner-stone
of the monument to the late Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, but really intended
as a political canvass in behalf of what Mr. Johnson called his
“policy.” This disgraceful expedition, aptly termed, from one of his own
pet expressions, “swinging round the circle,” was to every loyal
American the most humiliating exhibition ever made by any public man in
this country.
Leaving Washington on the 28th of August, he proceeded northward,
accompanied by Secretaries Seward and Welles, Postmaster-General
Randall, General Grant, Admiral Farragut, and others, a part of whom,
however, left the party some time before it reached its destination. At
every point of his progress, which was by way of Philadelphia, New York,
Albany, the New York Central and Lake Shore roads to Chicago, and thence
to St. Louis, Louisville, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati, he seized upon
the opportunity to make a speech, and in many places was speedily
involved in a wordy wrangle with the crowd, in which he invariably
became angry, and exhibited a proficiency in the use of Billingsgate
that might have done credit to a fishwoman, but was simply shameful in
the chief magistrate of the United States. We cannot consent to defile
our pages with specimens of the venom and abuse, which sometimes was
almost blasphemous in its character, with which his twenty or thirty
speeches during this tour were so freely interlarded. They are too fresh
in the minds of the people, and have formed recently one of the counts
in the indictment with which a long-suffering people have visited this
public offender.
Yet the abusive portions of these speeches were the only parts of them
which were readable. The dreary platitudes about “the humble individual
who now addresses you,” the ineffable conceit which on every occasion
rehearsed the fact that “he had filled every station from alderman of a
small country village to his present exalted station,” the gravity with
which he stated at every railway station that he “left the Constitution
of the United States, and the flag with thirty-six stars in their
hands,” became at last so intolerably wearisome, that nobody could wade
through the mass of dullness.
The elections of the autumn of 1866, which immediately succeeded this
tour, proved most conclusively the growing disgust of the people for-the
man who occupied the presidential chair. The Thirty-ninth Congress had
been strongly Republican; the Fortieth was overwhelmingly so; and
wherever Johnson had addressed the public, there the Republican
majorities were unprecedented. The reconstruction measures which
Congress had adopted, were sanctioned by the people, and others of a
more decided character completing the work, were urged upon them.
[Illustration: SWINGING ROUND THE CIRCLE. PRESIDENT JOHNSON ENDEAVORS TO
ENLIGHTEN THE PEOPLE.]
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Footnote 24:
This and the following chapters are furnished by the author of
_Woman’s Work in the Civil War_, _History of the Civil War_, _Men of
Our Day_, etc.