The Union League of America
The elections of 1867-68 showed that the negroes were well organized
under the control of the radical Republican leaders and that their
former masters had none of the influence over the blacks in political
matters which had been feared by some Northern friends of the negro and
had been hoped for by such Southern leaders as Governor Patton and
General Hampton. Before 1865 the discipline of slavery, the influence of
the master's family, and of the Southern church, had sufficed to control
the blacks. But after emancipation they looked to the Federal soldiers
and Union officials as the givers of freedom and the guardians of the
future.
From the Union soldiers, especially the negro troops, from the Northern
teachers, the missionaries and the organizers of negro churches, from
the Northern officials and traveling politicians, the negroes learned
that their interests were not those of the whites. The attitude of the
average white in the South often confirmed this growing estrangement. It
was difficult even for the white leaders to explain the riots at Memphis
and New Orleans. And those who sincerely wished well for the negro and
who desired to control him for the good of both races could not possibly
assure him that he was fit for the suffrage. For even Patton and Hampton
must tell him that they knew better than he and that he should follow
their advice.
The appeal made to freedmen by the Northern leaders was in every way
more forceful, because it had behind it the prestige of victory in war
and for the future it could promise anything. Until 1867 the principal
agency in bringing about the separation of the races had been the
Freedmen's Bureau which, with its authority, its courts, its rations,
clothes, and its "forty acres and a mule," did effective work in
breaking down the influence of the master. But to understand fully the
almost absolute control exercised over the blacks in 1867-68 by alien
adventurers one must examine the workings of an oath-bound society known
as the Union or Loyal League. It was this order, dominated by a few
radical whites, which organized, disciplined, and controlled the
ignorant negro masses and paralyzed the influence of the conservative
whites.
The Union League of America had its origin in Ohio in the fall of 1862,
when the outlook for the Union cause was gloomy. The moderate policies
of the Lincoln Administration had alienated those in favor of extreme
measures; the Confederates had won military successes in the field; the
Democrats had made some gains in the elections; the Copperheads ¹ were
actively opposed to the Washington Government; the Knights of the Golden
Circle were organizing to resist the continuance of the war; and the
Emancipation Proclamation had chilled the loyalty of many Union men,
which was everywhere at a low ebb, especially in the Northern cities. It
was to counteract these depressing influences that the Union League
movement was begun among those who were associated in the work of the
United States Sanitary Commission. Observing the threatening state of
public opinion, members of this organization proposed that "loyalty be
organized, consolidated and made effective."
¹ See Abraham Lincoln and the Union, by Nathaniel W. Stephenson (in The
Chronicles of America), pp. 156-7, 234-5
The first organization was made by eleven men in Cleveland, Ohio, in
November, 1862. The Philadelphia Union League was organized a month
later, and in January, 1863, the New York Union League followed. The
members were pledged to uncompromising and unconditional loyalty to the
Union, to complete subordination of political views to this loyalty, and
to the repudiation of any belief in state rights. The other large cities
followed the example of Philadelphia and New York, and soon Leagues,
connected in a loose federation, were formed all through the North. They
were social as well as political in their character and assumed as their
task the stimulation and direction of loyal Union opinion.
As the Union armies proceeded to occupy the South, the Union League sent
its agents among the disaffected Southern people. Its agents cared for
negro refugees in the contraband camps and in the North. In such work
the League coöperated with the various Freedmen's Aid Societies, the
Department of Negro Affairs, and later with the Freedmen's Bureau. Part
of the work of the League was to distribute campaign literature, and
many of the radical pamphlets on reconstruction and the negro problem
bore the Union League imprint. The New York League sent out about
seventy thousand copies of various publications, while the Philadelphia
League far surpassed this record, circulating within eight years four
million five hundred thousand copies of 144 different pamphlets. The
literature consisted largely of accounts of "Southern outrages" taken
from the reports of Bureau agents and similar sources.
With the close of the Civil War the League did not cease its active
interest in things political. It was one of the first organizations to
declare for negro suffrage and the disfranchisement of Confederates; it
held steadily to this declaration during the four years following the
war; and it continued as a sort of bureau in the radical Republican
party for the purpose of controlling the negro vote in the South. Its
representatives were found in the lobbies of Congress demanding extreme
measures, endorsing the reconstruction policies of Congress, and
condemning the course of the President. After the first year or two of
reconstruction the Leagues in the larger Northern cities began to grow
away from the strictly political Union League of America and tended to
become mere social clubs for members of the same political belief. The
eminently respectable Philadelphia and New York clubs had little in
common with the leagues of the Southern and Border States except a
general adherence to the radical program.
Even before the end of the war the League was extending its organization
into the parts of the Confederacy held by the Federal forces, admitting
to membership the army officers and the leading Unionists, though
maintaining for the sake of the latter "a discreet secrecy." With the
close of the war and the establishment of army posts over the South the
League grew rapidly. The civilians who followed the army, the Bureau
agents, the missionaries, and the Northern teachers formed one class of
membership; and the loyalists of the hill and mountain country, who had
become disaffected toward the Confederate administration and had formed
such orders as the Heroes of America, the Red String Band, and the Peace
Society, formed another class. Soon there were added to these the
deserters, a few old line Whigs who intensely disliked the Democrats,
and others who decided to cast their lot with the victors. The
disaffected politicians of the up-country, who wanted to be cared for in
the reconstruction, saw in the organization a means of dislodging from
power the political leaders of the low country. It has been estimated
that thirty per cent of the white men of the hill and mountain counties
of the South joined the Union League in 1865-66. They cared little about
the original objects of the order but hoped to make it the nucleus of an
anti-Democratic political organization.
But on the admission of negroes into the lodges or councils controlled
by Northern men the native white members began to withdraw. From the
beginning the Bureau agents, the teachers, and the preachers had been
holding meetings of negroes, to whom they gave advice about the problems
of freedom. Very early these advisers of the blacks grasped the
possibilities inherent in their control of the schools, the rationing
system, and the churches. By the spring of 1866 the negroes were widely
organized under this leadership, and it needed but slight change to
convert the negro meetings into local councils of the Union League. ¹ As
soon as it seemed likely that Congress would win in its struggle with
the President the guardians of the negro planned their campaign for the
control of the race. Negro leaders were organized into councils of the
League or into Union Republican Clubs. Over the South went the
organizers, until by 1868 the last negroes were gathered into the fold.
¹ Of these teachers of the local blacks, E. L. Godkin, editor of the New
York Nation, who had supported the reconstruction acts, said: "Worse
instructors for men emerging from slavery and coming for the first time
face to face with the problems of free life than the radical agitators
who have undertaken the political guidance of the blacks it would be
hard to meet with."
The native whites did not all desert the Union League when the negroes
were brought in. Where the blacks were most numerous the desertion of
whites was general, but in the regions where they were few some of the
whites remained for several years. The elections of 1868 showed a
falling off of the white radical vote from that of 1867, one measure of
the extent of loss of whites. From this time forward the order consisted
mainly of blacks with enough whites for leaders. In the Black Belt the
membership of native whites was discouraged by requiring an oath to the
effect that secession was treason. The carpetbagger had found that he
could control the negro without the help of the scalawag. The League
organization was soon extended and centralized; in every black district
there was a Council; for the State there was a Grand Council; and for
the United States there was a National Grand Council with headquarters
in New York City.
The influence of the League over the negro was due in large degree to
the mysterious secrecy of the meetings, the weird initiation ceremony
that made him feel fearfully good from his head to his heels, the
imposing ritual, and the songs. The ritual, it is said, was not used in
the North; it was probably adopted for the particular benefit of the
African. The would-be Leaguer was informed that the emblems of the order
were the altar, the Bible, the Declaration of Independence, the
Constitution of the United States, the flag of the Union, censer, sword,
gavel, ballot box, sickle, shuttle, anvil, and other emblems of
industry. He was told to the accompaniment of clanking chains and groans
that the objects of the order were to preserve liberty, to perpetuate
the Union, to maintain the laws and the Constitution, to secure the
ascendancy of American institutions, to protect, defend, and strengthen
all loyal men and members of the Union League in all rights of person
and property, to demand the elevation of labor, to aid in the education
of laboring men, and to teach the duties of American citizenship. This
enumeration of the objects of the League sounded well and was
impressive. At this point the negro was always willing to take an oath
of secrecy, after which he was asked to swear with a solemn oath to
support the principles of the Declaration of Independence, to pledge
himself to resist all attempts to overthrow the United States, to strive
for the maintenance of liberty, the elevation of labor, the education of
all people in the duties of citizenship, to practice friendship and
charity to all of the order, and to support for election or appointment
to office only such men as were supporters of these principles and
measures.
The council then sang Hail, Columbia! and The Star Spangled Banner,
after which an official lectured the candidates, saying that though the
designs of traitors had been thwarted, there were yet to be secured
legislative triumphs and the complete ascendancy of the true principles
of popular government, equal liberty, education and elevation of the
workmen, and the overthrow at the ballot box of the old oligarchy of
political leaders. After prayer by the chaplain, the room was darkened,
alcohol on salt flared up with a ghastly light as the "fire of liberty,"
and the members joined hands in a circle around the candidate, who was
made to place one hand on the flag and, with the other raised, swear
again to support the government and to elect true Union men to office.
Then placing his hand on a Bible, for the third time he swore to keep
his oath, and repeated after the president "the Freedmen's Pledge": "To
defend and perpetuate freedom and the Union, I pledge my life, my
fortune, and my sacred honor. So help me God!" John Brown's Body was
then sung, the president charged the members in a long speech concerning
the principles of the order, and the marshal instructed the neophyte in
the signs. To pass one's self as a Leaguer, the "Four L's" had to be
given: (1) with right hand raised to heaven, thumb and third finger
touching ends over palm, pronounce "Liberty"; (2) bring the hand down
over the shoulder and say "Lincoln"; (3) drop the hand open at the side
and say "Loyal"; (4) catch the thumb in the vest or in the waistband and
pronounce "League." This ceremony of initiation proved a most effective
means of impressing and controlling the negro through his love and fear
of secret, mysterious, and midnight mummery. An oath taken in daylight
might be forgotten before the next day; not so an oath taken in the dead
of night under such impressive circumstances. After passing through the
ordeal, the negro usually remained faithful.
In each populous precinct there was at least one council of the League,
and always one for blacks. In each town or city there were two councils,
one for the whites, and another, with white officers, for the blacks.
The council met once a week, sometimes oftener, nearly always at night,
and in a negro church or schoolhouse. Guards, armed with rifles and
shotguns, were stationed about the place of meeting in order to keep
away intruders. Members of some councils made it a practice to attend
the meetings armed as if for battle. In these meetings the negroes
listened to inflammatory speeches by the would-be statesmen of the new
régime; here they were drilled in a passionate conviction that their
interests and those of the Southern whites were eternally at war.
White men who joined the order before the negroes were admitted and who
left when the latter became members asserted that the negroes were
taught in these meetings that the only way to have peace and plenty, to
get "the forty acres and a mule," was to kill some of the leading whites
in each community as a warning to others. In North Carolina twenty-eight
barns were burned in one county by negroes who believed that Governor
Holden, the head of the State League, had ordered it. The council in
Tuscumbia, Alabama, received advice from Memphis to use the torch
because the blacks were at war with the white race. The advice was
taken. Three men went in front of the council as an advance guard, three
followed with coal oil and fire, and others guarded the rear. The plan
was to burn the whole town, but first one negro and then another
insisted on having some white man's house spared because "he is a good
man." In the end no residences were burned, and a happy compromise was
effected by burning the Female Academy. Three of the leaders were
afterwards lynched.
The general belief of the whites was that the ultimate object of the
order was to secure political power and thus bring about on a large
scale the confiscation of the property of Confederates, and meanwhile to
appropriate and destroy the property of their political opponents
wherever possible. Chicken houses, pigpens, vegetable gardens, and
orchards were visited by members returning from the midnight conclaves.
During the presidential campaign of 1868 the North Carolina League sent
out circular instructions to the blacks advising them to drill regularly
and to join the militia, for if Grant were not elected the negroes would
go back to slavery; if he were elected, the negroes were to have farms,
mules, and offices.
As soon as possible after the war the negroes had supplied themselves
with guns and dogs as badges of freedom. They carried their guns to the
League meetings, often marching in military formation, went through the
drill there, marched home again along the roads, shouting, firing, and
indulging in boasts and threats against persons whom they disliked.
Later, military parades in the daytime were much favored. Several
hundred negroes would march up and down the streets, abusing whites, and
shoving them off the sidewalk or out of the road. But on the whole,
there was very little actual violence, though the whites were much
alarmed at times. That outrages were comparatively few was due, not to
any sensible teachings of the leaders, but to the fundamental good
nature of the blacks, who were generally content with mere impudence.
The relations between the races, indeed, continued on the whole to be
friendly until 1867-68. For a while, in some localities before the
advent of the League, and in others where the Bureau was conducted by
native magistrates, the negroes looked to their old masters for guidance
and advice; and the latter, for the good of both races, were most eager
to retain a moral control over the blacks. They arranged barbecues and
picnics for the negroes, made speeches, gave good advice, and believed
that everything promised well. Sometimes the negroes themselves arranged
the festival and invited prominent whites, for whom a separate table
attended by negro waiters was reserved; and after dinner there followed
speeches by both whites and blacks.
With the organization of the League, the negroes grew more reserved, and
finally became openly unfriendly to the whites. The League alone,
however, was not responsible for this change. The League and the Bureau
had to some extent the same personnel, and it is frequently impossible
to distinguish clearly between the influence of the two. In many ways
the League was simply the political side of the Bureau. The preaching
and teaching missionaries were also at work. And apart from the
organized influences at work, the poor whites never laid aside their
hostility towards the blacks, bond or free.
When the campaigns grew exciting, the discipline of the order was used
to prevent the negroes from attending Democratic meetings and hearing
Democratic speakers. The leaders even went farther and forbade the
attendance of the blacks at political meetings where the speakers were
not endorsed by the League. Almost invariably the scalawag disliked the
Leaguer, black or white, and as a political teacher often found himself
proscribed by the League. At a Republican mass meeting in Alabama a
white Republican who wanted to make a speech was shouted down by the
negroes because he was "opposed to the Loyal League." He then went to
another place to speak but was followed by the crowd, which refused to
allow him to say anything. All Republicans in good standing had to join
the League and swear that secession was treason--a rather stiff dose for
the scalawag. Judge (later Governor) David P. Lewis, of Alabama, was a
member for a short while but he soon became disgusted and published a
denunciation of the order. Albion W. Tourgée, the author, a radical
judge, was the first chief of the League in North Carolina and was
succeeded by Governor Holden. In Alabama, Generals Swayne, Spencer, and
Warner, all candidates for the United States Senate, hastened to join
the order.
As soon as a candidate was nominated by the League, it was the duty of
every member to support him actively. Failure to do so resulted in a
fine or other more severe punishment, and members who had been expelled
were still considered under the control of the officials. The League
was, in fact, the machine of the radical party, and all candidates had
to be governed by its edicts. As the Montgomery Council declared, the
Union League was "the right arm of the Union-Republican party in the
United States."
Every negro was ex colore a member or under the control of the League.
In the opinion of the League, white Democrats were bad enough, but black
Democrats were not to be tolerated. It was almost necessary, as a
measure of personal safety, for each black to support the radical
program. It was possible in some cases for a negro to refrain from
taking an active part in political affairs. He might even fail to vote.
But it was actually dangerous for a black to be a Democrat; that is, to
try to follow his old master in politics. The whites in many cases were
forced to advise their few faithful black friends to vote the radical
ticket in order to escape mistreatment. Those who showed Democratic
leanings were proscribed in negro society and expelled from negro
churches; the negro women would not "proshay" (appreciate) a black
Democrat. Such a one was sure to find that influence was being brought
to bear upon his dusky sweetheart or his wife to cause him to see the
error of his ways, and persistent adherence to the white party would
result in his losing her. The women were converted to radicalism before
the men, and they almost invariably used their influence strongly in
behalf of the League. If moral suasion failed to cause the delinquent to
see the light, other methods were used. Threats were common and usually
sufficed. Fines were levied by the League on recalcitrant members. In
case of the more stubborn, a sound beating was effective to bring about
a change of heart. The offending party was "bucked and gagged," or he
was tied by the thumbs and thrashed. Usually the sufferer was too afraid
to complain of the way he was treated.
Some of the methods of the Loyal League were similar to those of the
later Ku Klux Klan. Anonymous warnings were sent to obnoxious
individuals, houses were burned, notices were posted at night in public
places and on the houses of persons who had incurred the hostility of
the order. In order to destroy the influence of the whites where kindly
relations still existed, an "exodus order" issued through the League
directed all members to leave their old homes and obtain work elsewhere.
Some of the blacks were loath to comply with this order, but to
remonstrances from the whites the usual reply was: "De word done sent to
de League. We got to go." For special meetings the negroes were in some
regions called together by signal guns. In this way the call for a
gathering went out over a county in a few minutes and a few hours later
nearly all the members in the county assembled at the appointed place.
Negroes as organizing agents were inclined to go to extremes and for
that reason were not so much used. In Bullock County, Alabama, a council
of the League was organized under the direction of a negro emissary, who
proceeded to assume the government of the community. A list of crimes
and punishments was adopted, a court with various officials was
established, and during the night the negroes who opposed the new régime
were arrested. But the black sheriff and his deputy were in turn
arrested by the civil authorities. The negroes then organized for
resistance, flocked into the county seat, and threatened to exterminate
the whites and take possession of the county. Their agents visited the
plantations and forced the laborers to join them by showing orders
purporting to be from General Swayne, the commander in the State, giving
them the authority to kill all who resisted them. Swayne, however, sent
out detachments of troops and arrested fifteen of the ringleaders, and
the League government collapsed.
After it was seen that existing political institutions were to be
overturned in the process of reconstruction, the white councils of the
League and, to a certain extent, the negro councils were converted into
training schools for the leaders of the new party soon to be formed in
the State by act of Congress. The few whites who were in control were
unwilling to admit more white members to share in the division of the
spoils; terms of admission became more stringent, and, especially after
the passage of the reconstruction acts in March, 1867, many white
applicants were rejected. The alien element from the North was in
control and as a result, where the blacks were numerous, the largest
plums fell to the carpetbaggers. The negro leaders--the politicians,
preachers, and teachers--trained in the League acted as subordinates to
the whites and were sent out to drum up the country negroes when
elections drew near. The negroes were given minor positions when offices
were more plentiful than carpetbaggers. Later, after some complaint, a
larger share of the offices fell to them.
The League counted its largest white membership in 1865-66, and after
that date it steadily decreased. The largest negro membership was
recorded in 1867 and 1868. The total membership was never made known. In
North Carolina the order claimed from seventy-five thousand to one
hundred and twenty-five thousand members; in States with larger negro
populations the membership was probably quite as large. After the
election of 1868 only the councils in the towns remained active, many of
them transformed into political clubs, loosely organized under local
political leaders. The plantation negro needed less looking after, and
except in the largest towns he became a kind of visiting member of the
council in the town. The League as a political organization gradually
died out by 1870. ¹
¹ The Ku Klux Klan had much to do with the decline of the organization.
The League as the ally and successor of the Freedmen's Bureau was one of
the causes of the Ku Klux movement, because it helped to create the
conditions which made such a movement inevitable. As early as 1870 the
radical leaders missed the support formerly given by the League, and an
urgent appeal was sent out all over the South from headquarters in New
York advocating its reëstablishment to assist in carrying the elections
of 1870.
The League had served its purpose. It had enabled a few outsiders to
control the negro by separating the races politically and it had
compelled the negroes to vote as radicals for several years, when
without its influence they would either not have voted at all or would
have voted as Democrats along with their former masters. The order was
necessary to the existence of the radical party in the Black Belt. No
ordinary political organization could have welded the blacks into a
solid party. The Freedmen's Bureau, which had much influence over the
negroes, was too weak in numbers to control the negroes in politics. The
League finally absorbed the personnel of the Bureau and turned its
prestige and its organization to political advantage.