The Sequel of Appomattox
Textbook Edition
∵
Volume 32 of the
Chronicles of America Series
Allen Johnson, Editor
Assistant Editors
Gerhard R. Lomer
Charles W. Jefferys
The Sequel of Appomattox
By Walter Lynwood Fleming
A Chronicle Of the Reunion of the States
New Haven: Yale University Press
Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Co.
London: Humphrey Milford
Oxford University Press
1919
Copyright, 1919
by Yale University Press
Contents.
The Sequel of Appomattox
Chapter Chapter Title Page
I. The Aftermath of War 1
II. When Freedom Cried Out 34
III. The Work of the Presidents 54
IV. The Wards of the Nation 89
V. The Victory of the Radicals 118
VI. The Rule of the Major Generals 140
VII. The Trial of President Johnson 158
VIII. The Union League of America 174
IX. Church and School 196
X. Carpetbag and Negro Rule 221
XI. The Ku Klux Movement 243
XII. The Changing South 265
XIII. Restoration of Home Rule 282
Bibliographical Note 305
Index 309
THE SEQUEL OF APPOMATTOX
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CHAPTER I.
The Aftermath of War
When the armies of the Union and of the Confederacy were disbanded in
1865, two matters had been settled beyond further dispute: the negro was
to be free, and the Union was to be perpetuated. But though slavery and
state sovereignty were no longer at issue, there were still many
problems which pressed for solution. The huge task of reconstruction
must be faced. The nature of the situation required that the measures of
reconstruction be first formulated in Washington by the victors and then
worked out in the conquered South. Since the success of these policies
would depend in a large measure upon their acceptability to both
sections of the country, it was expected that the North would be
influenced to some extent by the attitude of the Southern people, which
in turn would be determined largely by local conditions in the South.
The situation in the South at the close of the Civil War is therefore
the point at which this narrative of the reconstruction naturally takes
its beginning.
The surviving Confederate soldiers came straggling back to communities
which were now far from being satisfactory dwelling places for civilized
people. Everywhere they found missing many of the best of their former
neighbors. They found property destroyed, the labor system disorganized,
and the inhabitants in many places suffering from want. They found the
white people demoralized and sometimes divided among themselves, and the
negroes free, bewildered, and disorderly, for organized government had
lapsed with the surrender of the Confederate armies.
Beneath a disorganized society lay a devastated land. The destruction of
property affected all classes of the population. The accumulated capital
of the South had disappeared in worthless Confederate stocks, bonds, and
currency. The banks had failed early in the war. Two billion dollars
invested in slaves had been wiped out. Factories which had been running
before the war, or were developed after 1861 in order to supply the
blockaded country, had been destroyed by Federal raiders or seized and
sold or dismantled because they had furnished supplies to the
Confederacy. Mining industries were paralyzed. Public buildings which
had been used for war purposes were destroyed or confiscated for the
uses of the army or for the new freedmen's schools. It was months before
courthouses, state capitols, school and college buildings were again
made available for normal uses. The military school buildings had been
destroyed by the Federal forces. Among the schools which suffered were
the Virginia Military Institute, the University of Alabama, the
Louisiana State Seminary, and many smaller institutions. Nearly all
these had been used in some way for war purposes and were therefore
subject to destruction or confiscation.
The farmers and planters found themselves "land poor." The soil
remained, but there was a prevalent lack of labor, of agricultural
equipment, of farm stock, of seeds, and of money with which to make good
the deficiency. As a result, a man with hundreds of acres might be as
poor as a negro refugee. The desolation is thus described by a Virginia
farmer:
From Harper's Ferry to New Market, which is about eighty miles ... the
country was almost a desert.... We had no cattle, hogs, sheep, or horse
or anything else. The fences were all gone. Some of the orchards were
very much injured, but the fruit trees had not been destroyed. The barns
were all burned; chimneys standing without houses, and houses standing
without roof, or door, or window.
Much land was thrown on the market at low prices--three to five dollars
an acre for land worth fifty dollars. The poorer lands could not be sold
at all, and thousands of farms were deserted by their owners. Everywhere
recovery from this agricultural depression was slow. Five years after
the war Robert Somers, an English traveler, said of the Tennessee
Valley:
It consists for the most part of plantations in a state of semi-ruin and
plantations of which the ruin is for the present total and complete....
The trail of war is visible throughout the valley in burnt-up
gin-houses, ruined bridges, mills, and factories ... and in large tracts
of once cultivated land stripped of every vestige of fencing. The roads,
long neglected, are in disorder, and having in many places become
impassable, new tracks have been made through the woods and fields
without much respect to boundaries.
Similar conditions existed wherever the armies had passed, and not in
the country districts alone. Many of the cities, such as Richmond,
Charleston, Columbia, Jackson, Atlanta, and Mobile had suffered from
fire or bombardment.
There were few stocks of merchandise in the South when the war ended,
and Northern creditors had lost so heavily through the failure of
Southern merchants that they were cautious about extending credit again.
Long before 1865 all coin had been sent out in contraband trade through
the blockade. That there was a great need of supplies from the outside
world is shown by the following statement of General Boynton:
Window-glass has given way to thin boards, in railway coaches and in the
cities. Furniture is marred and broken, and none has been replaced for
four years. Dishes are cemented in various styles, and half the pitchers
have tin handles. A complete set of crockery is never seen, and in very
few families is there enough to set a table.... A set of forks with
whole tines is a curiosity. Clocks and watches have nearly all
stopped.... Hair brushes and tooth brushes have all worn out; combs are
broken.... Pins, needles, and thread, and a thousand such articles,
which seem indispensable to housekeeping, are very scarce. Even in
weaving on the looms, corncobs have been substituted for spindles. Few
have pocket knives. In fact, everything that has heretofore been an
article of sale at the South is wanting now. At the tables of those who
were once esteemed luxurious providers you will find neither tea,
coffee, sugar, nor spices of any kind. Even candles, in some cases, have
been replaced by a cup of grease in which a piece of cloth is plunged
for a wick.
This poverty was prolonged and rendered more acute by the lack of
transportation. Horses, mules, wagons, and carriages were scarce, the
country roads were nearly impassable, and bridges were in bad repair or
had been burned or washed away. Steamboats had almost disappeared from
the rivers. Those which had escaped capture as blockade runners had been
subsequently destroyed or were worn out. Postal facilities, which had
been poor enough during the last year of the Confederacy, were entirely
lacking for several months after the surrender.
The railways were in a state of physical dilapidation little removed
from destruction, save for those that had been captured and kept in
partial repair by the Federal troops. The rolling stock had been lost by
capture, by destruction to prevent capture, in wrecks, which were
frequent, or had been worn out. The railroad companies possessed large
sums in Confederate currency and in securities which were now valueless.
About two-thirds of all the lines were hopelessly bankrupt. Fortunately,
the United States War Department took over the control of the railway
lines and in some cases effected a temporary reorganization which could
not have been accomplished by the bankrupt companies. During the summer
and fall of 1865 "loyal" boards of directors were appointed for most of
the roads, and the army withdrew its control. But repairs and
reconstruction were accomplished with difficulty because of the
demoralization of labor and the lack of funds or credit. Freight was
scarce and, had it not been for government shipments, some of the
railroads would have been abandoned. Not many people were able to
travel. It is recorded that on one trip from Montgomery to Mobile and
return, a distance of 360 miles, the railroad which is now the
Louisville and Nashville collected only thirteen dollars in fares.
Had there been unrestricted commercial freedom in the South in 1865-66,
the distress of the people would have been somewhat lessened, for here
and there were to be found public and private stores of cotton, tobacco,
rice, and other farm products, all of which were bringing high prices in
the market. But for several months the operation of wartime laws and
regulations hindered the distribution of even these scanty stores.
Property upon which the Confederate Government had a claim was of course
subject to confiscation, and private property offered for sale, even
that of Unionists, was subject to a 25 per cent tax on sales, a shipping
tax, and a revenue tax. The revenue tax on cotton, ranging from two to
three cents a pound during the three years after the war, brought in
over $68,000,000. This tax, with other Federal revenues, yielded much
more than the entire expenses of reconstruction from 1865 to 1868 and of
all relief measures for the South, both public and private. After May,
1865, the 25 per cent tax was imposed only upon the produce of slave
labor. None of the war taxes, except that on cotton, was levied upon the
crops of 1866, but while these taxes lasted they seriously impeded the
resumption of trade.
Even these restrictions, however, might have been borne if only they had
been honestly applied. Unfortunately, some of the most spectacular
frauds ever perpetrated were carried through in connection with the
attempt of the United States Treasury Department to collect and sell the
confiscable property in the South. The property to be sold consisted of
what had been captured and seized by the army and the navy, of
"abandoned" property, as such was called whose owner was absent in the
Confederate service, and of property subject to seizure under the
confiscation acts of Congress. No captures were made after the general
surrender, and no further seizures of "abandoned" property were made
after Johnson's amnesty proclamation of May 29, 1865. This left only the
"confiscable" property to be collected and sold.
For collection purposes the States of the South were divided into
districts, each under the supervision of an agent of the Treasury
Department, who received a commission of about 25 per cent. Cotton,
regarded as the root of the slavery evil, was singled out as the
principal object of confiscation. It was known that the Confederate
Government had owned in 1865 about 150,000 bales, but the records were
defective and much of it, with no clear indication of ownership, still
remained with the producers. Secretary Chase, foreseeing the difficulty
of effecting a just settlement, counseled against seizure, but his
judgment was overruled. Secretary McCulloch said of his agents: "I am
sure I sent some honest cotton agents South; but it sometimes seems
doubtful whether any of them remained honest very long." Some of the
natives, even, became cotton thieves. In a report made in 1866,
McCulloch describes their methods:
Contractors, anxious for gain, were sometimes guilty of bad faith and
peculation, and frequently took possession of cotton and delivered it
under contracts as captured or abandoned, when in fact it was not such,
and they had no right to touch it.... Residents and others in the
districts where these peculations were going on took advantage of the
unsettled condition of the country, and representing themselves as
agents of this department, went about robbing under such pretended
authority, and thus added to the difficulties of the situation by
causing unjust opprobrium and suspicion to rest upon officers engaged in
the faithful discharge of their duties. Agents, ... frequently received
or collected property, and sent it forward which the law did not
authorize them to take.... Lawless men, singly and in organized bands,
engaged in general plunder; every species of intrigue and peculation and
theft were resorted to.
These agents turned over to the United States about $34,000,000. About
40,000 claimants were subsequently indemnified on the ground that the
property taken from them did not belong to the Confederate Government,
but many thousands of other claimants have been unable to prove that
their property was seized by government agents and hence have received
nothing. It is probable that the actual Confederate property was nearly
all stolen by the agents. One agent in Alabama sold an appointment as
assistant for $25,000, and a few months later both the assistant and the
agent were tried by a military court for stealing and were fined $90,000
and $250,000 respectively in addition to being imprisoned.
Other property, including horses, mules, wagons, tobacco, rice, and
sugar which the natives claimed as their own, was seized. In some places
the agents even collected delinquent Confederate taxes. Much of the
confiscable property was not sold but was turned over to the Freedmen's
Bureau ¹ for its support. The total amount seized cannot be
satisfactorily ascertained. The Ku Klux minority report asserted that
3,000,000 bales of cotton were taken, of which the United States
received only 114,000. It is certain that, owing to the deliberate
destruction of cotton by fire in 1864-65, this estimate was too high,
but all the testimony points to the fact that the frauds were
stupendous. As a result the United States Government did not succeed in
obtaining the Confederate property to which it had a claim, and the
country itself was stripped of necessities to a degree that left it not
only destitute but outraged and embittered. "Such practices," said
Trowbridge, "had a pernicious effect, engendering a contempt for the
Government and a murderous ill-will which too commonly vented itself
upon soldiers and negroes."
¹ See pp. 89 et seq.
The South faced the work of reconstruction not only with a shortage of
material and greatly hampered in the employment even of that but still
more with a shortage of men. The losses among the whites are usually
estimated at about half the military population, but since accurate
records are lacking the exact numbers cannot be ascertained. The best of
the civil leaders, as well as the prominent military leaders, had so
committed themselves to the support of the Confederacy as to be excluded
from participation in any reconstruction that might be attempted. The
business of reconstruction, therefore, fell of necessity to the
Confederate private soldiers, the lower officers, nonparticipants, and
lukewarm individuals who had not greatly compromised themselves. These
politically and physically uninjured survivors included also all the
"slackers" of the Confederacy. But though there were such physical and
moral losses on the part of those to whom fell the direction of affairs
there was also a moral strengthening in the sound element of the people
who had been tried by the discipline of war.
The greatest weakness of both races was their extreme poverty. The crops
of 1865 turned out badly, for most of the soldiers reached home too late
for successful planting and the negro labor was not dependable. The sale
of such cotton and farm products as had escaped the treasury agents was
of some help, but curiously enough much of the good money thus obtained
was spent extravagantly by a people used to Confederate rag money and
for four years deprived of the luxuries of life. The poorer whites who
had lost all were close to starvation. In the white counties which had
sent so large a proportion of men to the army the destitution was most
acute. In many families the breadwinner had been killed in war. After
1862 relief systems had been organized in nearly all the Confederate
States for the purpose of aiding the poor whites, but these
organizations were disbanded in 1865. A Freedmen's Bureau official
traveling through the desolate back country furnishes a description
which might have applied to two hundred counties, a third of the South:
"It is a common, an every-day sight in Randolph County, that of women
and children, most of whom were formerly in good circumstances, begging
for bread from door to door. Meat of any kind has been a stranger to
many of their mouths for months. The drought cut off what little crops
they hoped to save, and they must have immediate help or perish. By far
the greater suffering exists among the whites. Their scanty supplies
have been exhausted, and now they look to the Government alone for
support. Some are without homes of any description."
Where the armies had passed, few of the people, white or black,
remained; most of them had been forced as "refugees" within the Union
lines or into the interior of the Confederacy. Now, along with the
disbanded Confederate soldiers, they came straggling back to their
war-swept homes. It was estimated, in December, 1865 that in the States
of Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia, there were five hundred thousand
white people who were without the necessaries of life; numbers died from
lack of food. Within a few months relief agencies were at work. In the
North, especially in the border States and in New York, charitable
organizations collected and forwarded great quantities of supplies to
the negroes and to the whites in the hill and mountain counties. The
reorganized state and local governments sent food from the unravaged
portions of the Black Belt to the nearest white counties, and the army
commanders gave some aid. As soon as the Freedmen's Bureau was
organized, it fed to the limit of its supplies the needy whites as well
as the blacks.
The extent of the relief afforded by the charity of the North and by the
agencies of the United States Government is not now generally
remembered, probably on account of the later objectionable activities of
the Freedmen's Bureau, but it was at the time properly appreciated. A
Southern journalist, writing of what he saw in Georgia, remarked that
"it must be a matter of gratitude as well as surprise for our people to
see a Government which was lately fighting us with fire and sword and
shell, now generously feeding our poor and distressed. In the immense
crowds which throng the distributing house, I notice the mothers and
fathers, widows and orphans of our soldiers.... Again, the Confederate
soldier, with one leg or one arm, the crippled, maimed, and broken, and
the worn and destitute men, who fought bravely their enemies then, their
benefactors now, have their sacks filled and are fed."
Acute distress continued until 1867; after that year there was no
further danger of starvation. Some of the poor whites, especially in the
remote districts, never again reached a comfortable standard of living;
some were demoralized by too much assistance; others were discouraged
and left the South for the West or the North. But the mass of the people
accepted the discipline of poverty and made the best of their situation.
The difficulties, however, that beset even the courageous and the
competent were enormous. The general paralysis of industry, the breaking
up of society, and poverty on all sides bore especially hard on those
who had not previously been manual laborers. Physicians could get
practice enough but no fees; lawyers who had supported the Confederacy
found it difficult to get back into the reorganized courts because of
the test oaths and the competition of "loyal" attorneys; and for the
teachers there were few schools. We read of officers high in the
Confederate service selling to Federal soldiers the pies and cakes
cooked by their wives, of others selling fish and oysters which they
themselves had caught, and of men and women hitching themselves to plows
when they had no horse or mule.
Such incidents must, from their nature, have been infrequent, but they
show to what straits some at least were reduced. Six years after the
war, James S. Pike, then in South Carolina, mentions cases which might
be duplicated in nearly every old Southern community: "In the vicinity,"
he says, "lived a gentleman whose income when the war broke out was
rated at $150,000 a year. Not a vestige of his whole vast estate remains
today. Not far distant were the estates of a large proprietor and a well
known family, rich and distinguished for generations. The slaves were
gone. The family is gone. A single scion of the house remains, and he
peddles tea by the pound and molasses by the quart, on a corner of the
old homestead, to the former slaves of the family and thereby earns his
livelihood."
General Lee's good example influenced many. Commercial enterprises were
willing to pay for the use of his name and reputation, but he wished to
farm and could get no opportunity. "They are offering my father
everything," his daughter said, "except the only thing he will accept, a
place to earn honest bread while engaged in some useful work." This
remark led to an offer of the presidency of Washington College, now
Washington and Lee University, which he accepted. "I have a self-imposed
task which I must accomplish," he said, "I have led the young men of the
South in battle; I have seen many of them fall under my standard. I
shall devote my life now to training young men to do their duty in
life."
The condition of honest folk was still further troubled by a general
spirit of lawlessness in many regions. Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas,
and Louisiana recognized the "Union" state government, but the coming of
peace brought legal anarchy to the other States of the Confederacy. The
Confederate state and local governments were abolished as the armies of
occupation spread over the South, and for a period of four or six months
there was no government except that exercised by the commanders of the
military garrisons left behind when the armies marched away. Even before
the surrender the local governments were unable to make their authority
respected, and soon after the war ended parts of the country became
infested with outlaws, pretend treasury agents, horse thieves, cattle
thieves, and deserters. Away from the military posts only lynch law
could cope with these elements of disorder. With the aid of the army in
the more settled regions, and by extra-legal means elsewhere, the
outlaws, thieves, cotton burners, and house burners were brought
somewhat under control even before the state governments were
reorganized, though the embers of lawlessness continued to smolder.
The relations between the Federal soldiers stationed in the principal
towns and the native white population were not, on the whole, so bad as
might have been expected. If the commanding officer were well disposed,
there was little danger of friction, though sometimes his troops got out
of hand. The regulars had a better reputation than the volunteers. The
Confederate soldiers were surfeited with fighting, but the
"stay-at-home" element was often a cause of trouble. The problem of
social relations between the conquerors and the conquered was
troublesome. The men might get along well together, but the women would
have nothing do with the "Yankees" and ill feeling arose because of
their antipathy. Carl Schurz reported that "the soldier of the Union is
looked upon as a stranger, an intruder, as the 'Yankee,' the 'enemy.'...
The existence and intensity of this aversion is too well known to those
who have served or are serving in the South to require proof."
In retaliation the soldiers developed ingenious ways of annoying the
whites. Women, forced for any reason to go to headquarters, were made to
take the oath of allegiance or the "ironclad" oath before their requests
were granted; flags were fastened over doors, gates, or sidewalks in
order to irritate the recalcitrant dames and their daughters.
Confederate songs and color combinations were forbidden. In Richmond,
General Halleck ordered that no marriages be performed unless the bride,
the groom, and the officiating clergyman took the oath of allegiance. He
explained this as a measure taken to prevent "the propagation of
legitimate rebels."
The wearing of Confederate uniforms was forbidden by military order, but
by May, 1865, few soldiers possessed regulation uniforms. In Tennessee
the State also imposed fines upon wearers of the uniform. In the
vicinity of military posts buttons and marks of rank were usually
ordered removed and the gray clothes dyed with some other color. General
Lee, for example, had the buttons on his coat covered with cloth. But
frequently the Federal commander, after issuing the orders, paid no more
attention to the matter and such conflicts as arose on account of the
uniform were usually caused by officious enlisted men and the negro
troops. Whitelaw Reid relates the following incident:
Nothing was more touching, in all that I saw in Savannah, than the
almost painful effort of the rebels, from generals down to privates, to
conduct themselves so as to evince respect for our soldiers, and to
bring no severer punishment upon the city than it had already received.
There was a brutal scene at the hotel, where a drunken sergeant, with a
pair of tailor's shears, insisted on cutting the buttons from the
uniform of an elegant gray-headed old brigadier, who had just come in
from Johnston's army; but he bore himself modestly and very handsomely
through it. His staff was composed of fine-looking, stalwart fellows,
evidently gentlemen, who appeared intensely mortified at such treatment.
They had no clothes except their rebel uniforms, and had, as yet, had no
time to procure others, but they avoided disturbances and submitted to
what they might, with some propriety, and with the general approval of
our officers, have resented.
The negro troops, even at their best, were everywhere considered
offensive by the native whites. General Grant, indeed, urged that only
white troops be used to garrison the interior. But the negro soldier,
impudent by reason of his new freedom, his new uniform, and his new gun,
was more than Southern temper could tranquilly bear, and race conflicts
were frequent. A New Orleans newspaper thus states the Southern point of
view: "Our citizens who had been accustomed to meet and treat the
negroes only as respectful servants, were mortified, pained, and shocked
to encounter them ... wearing Federal uniforms and bearing bright
muskets and gleaming bayonets.... They are jostled from the sidewalks by
dusky guards, marching four abreast. They were halted, in rude and
sullen tones, by negro sentinels."
The task of the Federal forces was not easy. The garrisons were not
large enough nor numerous enough to keep order in the absence of civil
government. The commanders in the South asked in vain for cavalry to
police the rural districts. Much of the disorder, violence, and
incendiarism attributed at the time to lawless soldiers appeared later
to be due to discharged soldiers and others pretending to be soldiers in
order to carry out schemes of robbery. The whites complained vigorously
of the garrisons, and petitions were sent to Washington from mass
meetings and from state legislatures asking for their removal. The
higher commanders, however, bore themselves well, and in a few fortunate
cases Southern whites were on most amicable terms with the garrison
commanders. The correspondence of responsible military officers in the
South shows how earnestly and considerately each, as a rule, tried to
work out his task. The good sense of most of the Federal officers
appeared when, after the murder of Lincoln, even General Grant for a
brief space lost his head and ordered the arrest of paroled
Confederates.
The church organizations were as much involved in the war and in the
reconstruction as were secular institutions. Before the war every
religious organization having members North and South, except the
Catholic Church and the Jews, had separated into independent Northern
and Southern bodies. In each section church feeling ran high, and when
the war came the churches supported the armies. As the Federal armies
occupied Southern territory, the church buildings of each denomination
were turned over to the corresponding Northern body, and Southern
ministers were permitted to remain only upon agreeing to conduct "loyal
services, pray for the President of the United States and for Federal
victories" and to foster "loyal sentiment." The Protestant Episcopal
churches in Alabama were closed from September to December, 1865, and
some congregations were dispersed by the soldiers because Bishop Wilmer
had directed his clergy to omit the prayer for President Davis but had
substituted no other. The ministers of non-liturgical churches were not
so easily controlled. A Georgia Methodist preacher directed by a Federal
officer to pray for the President said afterwards: "I prayed for the
President that the Lord would take out of him and his allies the hearts
of beasts and put into them the hearts of men or remove the cusses from
office." Sometimes members of a congregation showed their resentment at
the "loyal" prayers by leaving the church. But in spite of many
irritations both sides frequently managed to get some amusement out of
the "loyal" services. The church situation was, however, a serious
matter during and after the reconstruction, and some of its later phases
will have to be discussed elsewhere.
The Unionist, or "Tory," of the lower and eastern South found himself,
in 1865, a man without a country. Few in number in any community, they
found themselves upon their return from a harsh exile the victims of
ostracism or open hostility. One of them, William H. Smith, later
Governor of Alabama, testified that the Southern people "manifest the
most perfect contempt for a man who is known to be an unequivocal Union
man; they call him a 'galvanized Yankee' and apply other terms and
epithets to him." General George H. Thomas, speaking of a region more
divided in sentiment than Alabama, remarked that "Middle Tennessee is
disturbed by animosities and hatreds, much more than it is by the
disloyalty of persons towards the Government of the United States. Those
personal animosities would break out and overawe the civil authorities,
but for the presence there of the troops of the United States.... They
are more unfriendly to Union men, natives of the State of Tennessee, or
of the South, who have been in the Union army, than they are to men of
Northern birth."
In the border States society was sharply divided and feeling was bitter.
In eastern Tennessee, eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, and parts of
Arkansas and Missouri returning Confederates met harsher treatment than
did the Unionists in the lower South. Trowbridge says of east Tennessee:
"Returning rebels were robbed; and if one had stolen unawares to his
home, it was not safe for him to remain there. I saw in Virginia one of
these exiles, who told me how homesickly he pined for the hills and
meadows of east Tennessee, which he thought the most delightful region
in the world. But there was a rope hanging from a tree for him there,
and he dared not go back. 'The bottom rails are on top,' said he, 'that
is the trouble.' The Union element, and the worst part of the Union
element, was uppermost." Confederates and Confederate sympathizers in
Maryland, West Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky were disfranchised. In
West Virginia, Tennessee, and Missouri, "war trespass" suits were
brought against returning Confederates for military acts done in war
time. In Missouri and West Virginia strict test oaths excluded
Confederates from office, from the polls, and from the professions of
teaching, preaching, and law. On the other hand in central and western
Kentucky the predominant Unionist population, themselves suffering
through the abolition of slavery, and by the objectionable operations of
the Freedmen's Bureau and the unwise military administration, showed
more sympathy for the Confederates, welcomed them home, and soon
relieved them of all restrictions.
Still another element of discord was added by the Northerners who came
to exploit the South. Many mustered-out soldiers proposed to stay.
Speculators of all kinds followed the withdrawing Confederate lines and
with the conclusion of peace spread through the country; but they were
not cordially received. With the better class, the Southerners,
especially the soldiers, associated freely if seldom intimately. But the
conduct of a few of their number who considered that the war had opened
all doors to them, who very freely expressed their views, gave advice,
condemned old customs, and were generally offensive, did much to bring
all Northerners into disrepute. Tactlessly critical letters published in
Northern papers did not add to their popularity. The few Northern women
felt the ostracism more keenly than did the men. Benjamin C. Truman, an
agent of President Johnson, thus summed up the situation: "There is a
prevalent disposition not to associate too freely with Northern men or
to receive them into the circles of society; but it is far from
unsurmountable. Over Southern society, as over every other, woman reigns
supreme, and they are more embittered against those whom they deem the
authors of all their calamities than are their brothers, sons, and
husbands." But of the thousands of Northern men who overcame the
reluctance of the Southerners to social intercourse little was heard.
Many a Southern planter secured a Northern partner, or sold him half his
plantation to get money to run the other half. For the irritations of
1865 each party must take its share of responsibility.
Had the South assisted in a skillful and adequate publicity, much
disastrous misunderstanding might have been avoided. The North knew as
little of the South as the South did of the North, but the North was
eager for news. Able newspaper correspondents like Sidney Andrews of the
Boston Advertiser and the Chicago Tribune, who opposed President
Johnson's policies, Thomas W. Knox of the New York Herald, who had given
General Sherman so much trouble in Tennessee, Whitelaw Reid, who wrote
for several papers and tried cotton planting in Louisiana, and John T.
Trowbridge, New England author and journalist, were dispatched
southwards. Chief of the President's investigators was General Carl
Schurz, German revolutionist, Federal soldier, and soon to be radical
Republican, who held harsh views of the Southern people; and there were
besides Harvey M. Watterson, Kentucky Democrat and Unionist, the father
of "Marse" Henry; Benjamin C. Truman, New England journalist and
soldier, whose long report was perhaps the best of all; Chief Justice
Chase, who was thinking mainly of "How soon can the negro vote?"; and
General Grant, who made a report so brief that, notwithstanding its
value, it attracted little attention. In addition, a constant stream of
information and misinformation was going northward from treasury agents,
officers of the army, the Freedmen's Bureau, teachers, and missionaries.
Among foreigners who described the conquered land were Robert Somers,
Henry Latham, and William Hepworth Dixon. But few in the South realized
the importance of supplying the North with correct information about
actual conditions. The letters and reports, they thought, humiliated
them; inquiry was felt to be prying and gloating. "Correspondents have
added a new pang to surrender," it was said. The South was proud and
refused to be catechized. From the Northern point of view the South, a
new and strange region, with strange customs and principles, was of
course not to be considered as quite normal and American, but there was
on the part of many correspondents a determined attempt to describe
things as they were. And yet the North persisted in its unsympathetic
queries when it seemed to have a sufficient answer in the reports of
Grant, Schurz, and Truman.
Grant's opinion was short and direct: "I am satisfied that the mass of
thinking men of the South accept the present situation of affairs in
good faith.... The citizens of the Southern States are anxious to return
to self-government within the Union as soon as possible." Truman came to
the conclusion that "the rank and file of the disbanded Southern army
... are the backbone and sinew of the South.... To the disbanded
regiments of the rebel army, both officers and men, I look with great
confidence as the best and altogether the most hopeful element of the
South, the real basis of reconstruction and the material of worthy
citizenship." General John Tarbell, before the Joint Committee on
Reconstruction, testified that "there are, no doubt, disloyal and
disorderly persons in the South, but it is an entire mistake to apply
these terms to a whole people. I would as soon travel alone, unarmed,
through the South as through the North. The South I left is not at all
the South I hear and read about in the North. From the sentiment I hear
in the North, I would scarcely recognize the people I saw, and, except
their politics, I liked so well. I have entire faith that the better
classes are friendly to the negroes."
Carl Schurz on the other hand was not so favorably impressed. "The
loyalty of the masses and most of the leaders of the southern people,"
he said, "consists in submission to necessity. There is, except in
individual instances, an entire absence of that national spirit which
forms the basis of true loyalty and patriotism." Another government
official in Florida was quite doubtful of the Southern whites. "I would
pin them down at the point of the bayonet," he declared, "so close that
they would not have room to wiggle, and allow intelligent colored people
to go up and vote in preference to them. The only Union element in the
South proper ... is among the colored people. The whites will treat you
very kindly to your face, but they are deceitful. I have often thought,
and so expressed myself, that there is so much deception among the
people of the South since the rebellion, that if an earthquake should
open and swallow them up, I was fearful that the devil would be
dethroned and some of them take his place."
The point of view of the Confederate military leaders was exhibited by
General Wade Hampton in a letter to President Johnson and by General Lee
in his advice to Governor Letcher of Virginia. General Hampton wrote:
"The South unequivocally 'accepts the situation' in which she is placed.
Everything that she has done has been done in perfect faith, and in the
true and highest sense of the word, she is loyal. By this I mean that
she intends to abide by the laws of the land honestly, to fulfill all
her obligations faithfully and to keep her word sacredly, and I assert
that the North has no right to demand more of her. You have no right to
ask, or expect that she will at once profess unbounded love to that
Union from which for four years she tried to escape at the cost of her
best blood and all her treasures." General Lee in order to set an
example applied through General Grant for a pardon under the amnesty
proclamation and soon afterwards he wrote to Governor Letcher: "All
should unite in honest efforts to obliterate the effects of war, and to
restore the blessings of peace. They should remain, if possible, in the
country; promote harmony and good-feeling; qualify themselves to vote;
and elect to the State and general legislatures wise and patriotic men,
who will devote their abilities to the interests of the country and the
healing of all dissensions; I have invariably recommended this course
since the cessation of hostilities, and have endeavored to practice it
myself."
Southerners of the Confederacy everywhere, then, accepted the
destruction of slavery and the renunciation of state sovereignty; they
welcomed an early restoration of the Union, without any punishment of
leaders of the defeated cause. But they were proud of their Confederate
records though now legally "loyal" to the United States; they considered
the negro as free but inferior, and expected to be permitted to fix his
status in the social organization and to solve the problem of free labor
in their own way. To embarrass the easy and permanent realization of
these views there was a society disrupted, economically prostrate,
deprived of its natural leaders, subjected to a control not always
wisely conceived nor effectively exercised, and, finally, containing
within its own population unassimilated elements which presented
problems fraught with difficulty and danger.