Carpetbag and Negro Rule
The Southern States reconstructed by Congress were subject for periods
of varying length to governments designed by radical Northerners and
imposed by elements thrown to the surface in the upheaval of Southern
society. Georgia, Virginia, and North Carolina each had a brief
experience with these governments; other States escaped after four or
five years, while Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida were not
delivered from this domination until 1876. The States which contained
large numbers of negroes had, on the whole, the worst experience. Here
the officials were ignorant or corrupt, frauds upon the public were the
rule, not the exception, and all of the reconstruction governments were
so conducted that they could secure no support from the respectable
elements of the electorate.
The fundamental cause of the failure of these governments was the
character of the new ruling class. Every State, except perhaps Virginia,
was under the control of a few able leaders from the North generally
called carpetbaggers and of a few native white radicals contemptuously
designated scalawags. These were kept in power by negro voters, to some
seven hundred thousand of whom the ballot had been given by the
reconstruction acts. The adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment in March,
1870, brought the total in the former slave States to 931,000, with
about seventy-five thousand more negroes in the North. The negro voters
were most numerous, comparatively, in Louisiana, Mississippi, South
Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia. There were a few thousand carpetbaggers
in each State, with, at first, a much larger number of scalawags. The
latter, who were former Unionists, former Whigs, Confederate deserters,
and a few unscrupulous politicians, were most numerous in Virginia,
North Carolina, Texas, Arkansas, and Tennessee. The better class,
however, rapidly left the radical party as the character of the new
régime became evident, taking with them whatever claims the party had to
respectability, education, political experience, and property.
The conservatives, hopelessly reduced by the operation of disfranchising
laws, were at first not well organized, nor were they at any time as
well led as in antebellum days. In 1868 about one hundred thousand of
them were forbidden to vote and about two hundred thousand were
disqualified from holding office. The abstention policy of 1867-68
resulted in an almost complete withdrawal of the influence of the
conservatives for the two years, 1868-70. As a class they were regarded
by the dominant party in State and nation as dangerous and untrustworthy
and were persecuted in such irritating ways that many became indifferent
to the appeals of civil duty. They formed a solid but almost despairing
opposition in the black districts of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama,
and South Carolina. For the leaders the price of amnesty was conversion
to radicalism, but this price few would pay.
The new state governments possessed certain characteristics in common.
Since only a small number of able men were available for office, full
powers of administration, including appointment and removal, were
concentrated in the hands of the governor. He exercised a wide control
over public funds and had authority to organize and command militia and
constabulary and to call for Federal troops. The numerous administrative
boards worked with the sole object of keeping their party in power.
Officers were several times as numerous as under the old régime, and all
of them received higher salaries and larger contingent fees. The moral
support behind the government was that of President Grant and the United
States army, not that of a free and devoted people.
Of the twenty men who served as governors eight were scalawags and
twelve were carpetbaggers--men who were abler than the scalawags and who
had much more than an equal share of the spoils. The scalawags, such as
Brownlow of Tennessee, Smith of Alabama, and Holden of North Carolina,
were usually honest but narrow, vindictive men, filled with fear and
hate of the conservative whites. Of the carpetbaggers half were
personally honest, but all were unscrupulous in politics. Some were
flagrantly dishonest. Governor Moses of South Carolina was several times
bribed and at one time, according to his own statement, received $15,000
for his vote as speaker of the House of Representatives. Governor
Stearns of Florida was charged with stealing government supplies from
the negroes; and it was notorious that Warmoth and Kellogg of Louisiana,
each of whom served only one term, retired with large fortunes. Warmoth,
indeed, went so far as to declare: "Corruption is the fashion. I do not
pretend to be honest, but only as honest as anybody in politics."
The judiciary was no better than the executive. The chief justice of
Louisiana was convicted of fraud. A supreme court judge of South
Carolina offered his decisions for sale, and Whipper and Moses, both
notorious thieves, were elected judges by the South Carolina
Legislature. In Alabama there were many illiterate magistrates, among
them the city judge of Selma, who in April, 1865, was still living as a
slave. Governor Chamberlain, a radical, asserted that there were two
hundred trial judges in South Carolina who could not read.
Other officers were of the same stripe. Leslie, a South Carolina
carpetbagger, declared that "South Carolina has no right to be a State
unless she can support her statesmen," and he proceeded to live up to
this principle. The manager of the state railroad of Georgia, when asked
how he had been able to accumulate twenty or thirty thousand dollars on
a two or three thousand dollar salary, replied, "By the exercise of the
most rigid economy." A North Carolina negro legislator was found on one
occasion chuckling as he counted some money. "What are you laughing at,
Uncle?" he was asked. "Well, boss, I'se been sold 'leben times in my
life and dis is de fust time I eber got de money." Godkin, in the
Nation, said that the Georgia officials were "probably as bad a lot of
political tricksters and adventurers as ever got together in one place."
This description will fit equally well the white officials of all the
reconstructed States. Many of the negroes who attained public office
showed themselves apt pupils of their carpetbag masters but were seldom
permitted to appropriate a large share of the plunder. In Florida the
negro members of the Legislature, thinking that they should have a part
of the bribe and loot money which their carpetbag masters were said to
be receiving, went so far as to appoint what was known as a "smelling
committee" to locate the good things and secure a share.
From 1868 to 1870 the legislatures of seven States were overwhelmingly
radical and in several the radical majority held control for four, six,
or eight years. Negroes were most numerous in the legislatures of
Louisiana, South Carolina, and Mississippi, and everywhere the votes of
these men were for sale. In Alabama and Louisiana negro legislators had
a fixed price for their votes: for example, six hundred dollars would
buy a senator in Louisiana. In South Carolina, negro government appeared
at its worst. A vivid description of the Legislature of this State in
which the negroes largely outnumbered the whites is given by James S.
Pike, a Republican journalist: ¹
¹ Pike, The Prostrate State, pp. 12 ff.
In the place of this old aristocratic society stands the rude form of
the most ignorant democracy that mankind ever saw, invested with the
functions of government. It is the dregs of the population habilitated
in the robes of their intelligent predecessors, and asserting over them
the rule of ignorance and corruption.... It is barbarism overwhelming
civilization by physical force. It is the slave rioting in the halls of
his master, and putting that master under his feet. And, though it is
done without malice and without vengeance, it is nevertheless none the
less completely and absolutely done.... We will enter the House of
Representatives. Here sit one hundred and twenty-four members. Of these,
twenty-three are white men, representing the remains of the old
civilization. These are good-looking, substantial citizens. They are men
of weight and standing in the communities they represent. They are all
from the hill country. The frosts of sixty and seventy winters whiten
the heads of some among them. There they sit, grim and silent. They feel
themselves to be but loose stones, thrown in to partially obstruct a
current they are powerless to resist....
This dense negro crowd ... do the debating, the squabbling, the
lawmaking, and create all the clamor and disorder of the body. These
twenty-three white men are but the observers, the enforced auditors of
the dull and clumsy imitation of a deliberative body, whose appearance
in their present capacity is at once a wonder and a shame to modern
civilization.... The Speaker is black, the Clerk is black, the
doorkeepers are black, the little pages are black, the chairman of the
Ways and Means is black, and the chaplain is coal black. At some of the
desks sit colored men whose types it would be hard to find outside of
Congo; whose costumes, visages, attitudes, and expression, only befit
the forecastle of a buccaneer. It must be remembered, also, that these
men, with not more than a half dozen exceptions, have been themselves
slaves, and that their ancestors were slaves for generations....
But the old stagers admit that the colored brethren have a wonderful
aptness at legislative proceedings. They are "quick as lightning" at
detecting points of order, and they certainly make incessant and
extraordinary use of their knowledge. No one is allowed to talk five
minutes without interruption, and one interruption is a signal for
another and another, until the original speaker is smothered under an
avalanche of them. Forty questions of privilege will be raised in a day.
At times, nothing goes on but alternating questions of order and of
privilege. The inefficient colored friend who sits in the Speaker's
chair cannot suppress this extraordinary element of the debate. Some of
the blackest members exhibit a pertinacity of intrusion in raising these
points of order and questions of privilege that few white men can equal.
Their struggles to get the floor, their bellowings and physical
contortions, baffle description. The Speaker's hammer plays a perpetual
tattoo to no purpose. The talking and the interruptions from all
quarters go on with the utmost license. Everyone esteems himself as good
as his neighbor, and puts in his oar, apparently as often for love of
riot and confusion as for anything else.... The Speaker orders a member
whom he has discovered to be particularly unruly to take his seat. The
member obeys, and with the same motion that he sits down, throws his
feet on to his desk, hiding himself from the Speaker by the soles of his
boots.... After a few experiences of this sort, the Speaker threatens,
in a laugh, to call the "gemman" to order. This is considered a capital
joke, and a guffaw follows. The laugh goes round and then the peanuts
are cracked and munched faster than ever; one hand being employed in
fortifying the inner man with this nutriment of universal use, while the
other enforces the views of the orator. This laughing propensity of the
sable crowd is a great cause of disorder. They laugh as hens cackle--one
begins and all follow.
But underneath all this shocking burlesque upon legislative proceedings,
we must not forget that there is something very real to this uncouth and
untutored multitude. It is not all sham, nor all burlesque. They have a
genuine interest and a genuine earnestness in the business of the
assembly which we are bound to recognize and respect.... They have an
earnest purpose, born of conviction that their position and condition
are not fully assured, which lends a sort of dignity to their
proceedings. The barbarous, animated jargon in which they so often
indulge is on occasion seen to be so transparently sincere and weighty
in their own minds that sympathy supplants disgust. The whole thing is a
wonderful novelty to them as well as to observers. Seven years ago these
men were raising corn and cotton under the whip of the overseer. Today
they are raising points of order and questions of privilege. They find
they can raise one as well as the other. They prefer the latter. It is
easier and better paid. Then, it is the evidence of an accomplished
result. It means escape and defense from old oppressors. It means
liberty. It means the destruction of prison-walls only too real to them.
It is the sunshine of their lives. It is their day of jubilee. It is
their long-promised vision of the Lord God Almighty.
The congressional delegations were as radical as the state governments.
During the first two years there were no Democratic senators from the
reconstructed States and only two Democratic representatives, as against
sixty-four radical senators and representatives. At the end of four
years the Democrats numbered fifteen against seventy radicals. A negro
succeeded Jefferson Davis in the Senate, and in all the race sent two
senators and thirteen representatives to Congress, but though several
were of high character and fair ability, they exercised practically no
influence. The Southern delegations had no part in shaping policies but
merely voted as they were told by the radical leaders.
The effect of dishonest government was soon seen in extravagant
expenditures, heavier taxes, increase of the bonded debt, and depression
of property values. It was to be expected that after the ruin wrought by
war and the admission of the negro to civil rights, the expenses of
government would be greater. But only lack of honesty will account for
the extraordinary expenses of the reconstruction governments. In Alabama
and Florida the running expenses of the state government increased two
hundred per cent, in Louisiana five hundred per cent, and in Arkansas
fifteen hundred per cent--all this in addition to bond issues. In South
Carolina the one item of public printing, which from 1790 to 1868 cost
$609,000, amounted in the years 1868-1876 to $1,326,589.
Corrupt state officials had two ways of getting money--by taxation and
by the sale of bonds. Taxes were everywhere multiplied. The state tax
rate in Alabama was increased four hundred per cent, in Louisiana eight
hundred per cent, and in Mississippi, which could issue no bonds,
fourteen hundred per cent. City and county taxes, where carpetbaggers
were in control, increased in the same way. Thousands of small
proprietors could not meet their taxes, and in Mississippi alone the
land sold for unpaid taxes amounted to six million acres, an area as
large as Massachusetts and Rhode Island together. Nordhoff ¹ speaks of
seeing Louisiana newspapers of which three-fourths were taken up by
notices of tax sales. In protest against extravagant and corrupt
expenditures, taxpayers' conventions were held in every State, but
without effect.
¹ Charles Nordhoff, The Cotton States in the Spring and Summer of 1875.
Even the increased taxation, however, did not produce enough to support
the new governments, which now had recourse to the sale of state and
local bonds. In this way Governor Holden's Administration managed in two
years to increase the public debt of North Carolina from $16,000,000 to
$32,000,000. The state debt of South Carolina rose from $7,000,000 to
$29,000,000 in 1873. In Alabama, by 1874, the debt had mounted from
$7,000,000 to $32,000,000. The public debt of Louisiana rose from
$14,000,000 in 1868 to $48,000,000 in 1871, with a local debt of
$31,000,000. Cities, towns, and counties sold bonds by the bale. The
debt of New Orleans increased twenty-five fold and that of Vicksburg a
thousandfold. A great deal of the debt was the result of fraudulent
issues of bonds or overissues. For this form of fraud the state
financial agents in New York were usually responsible. Southern bonds
sold far below par, and the time came when they were peddled about at
ten to twenty-five cents on the dollar.
Still another disastrous result followed this corrupt financiering. In
Alabama there was a sixty-five per cent decrease in property values, in
Florida forty-five per cent, and in Louisiana fifty to seventy-five per
cent. A large part of the best property was mortgaged, and foreclosure
sales were frequent. Poorer property could be neither mortgaged nor
sold. There was an exodus of whites from the worst governed districts in
the West and the North. Many towns, among them Mobile and Memphis,
surrendered their charters and were ruled directly by the governor; and
there were numerous "strangulated" counties which on account of debt had
lost self-government and were ruled by appointees of the governor.
A part of the money raised by taxes and by bond sales was used for
legitimate expenses and the rest went to pay forged warrants, excess
warrants, and swollen mileage accounts, and to fill the pockets of
embezzlers and thieves from one end of the South to the other. In
Arkansas, for example, the auditor's clerk hire, which was $4000 in
1866, cost twenty-three times as much in 1873. In Louisiana and South
Carolina stealing was elevated into an art and was practiced without
concealment. In the latter State the worthless Hell Hole Swamp was
bought for $26,000 to be farmed by the negroes but was charged to the
state at $120,000. A free restaurant maintained at the Capitol for the
legislators cost $125,000 for one session. The porter who conducted it
said that he kept it open sixteen to twenty hours a day and that someone
was always in the room eating and drinking or smoking. When a member
left he would fill his pockets with cigars or with bottles of drink.
Forty different brands of beverages were paid for by the State for the
private use of members, and all sorts of food, furniture, and clothing
were sent to the houses of members and were paid for by the State as
"legislative supplies." On the bills appeared such items as imported
mushrooms, one side of bacon, one feather bed, bustles, two pairs of
extra long stockings, one pair of garters, one bottle perfume, twelve
monogram cut glasses, one horse, one comb and brush, three gallons of
whisky, one pair of corsets. During the recess, supplies were sent out
to the rural homes of the members.
The endorsement of railroad securities by the State also furnished a
source of easy money to the dishonest official and the crooked
speculator. After the Civil War, in response to the general desire in
the South for better railroad facilities, the "Johnson" governments
began to underwrite railroad bonds. When the carpetbag and negro
governments came in, the policy was continued but without proper
safeguards. Bonds were sometimes endorsed before the roads were
constructed, and even excess issues were authorized. Bonds were endorsed
for some roads of which not a mile was ever built. The White River
Valley and Texas Railroad never came into existence, but it obtained a
grant of $175,000 from the State of Arkansas. Speaker Carter of the
Louisiana Legislature received a financial interest in all railroad
endorsement bills which he steered through the House. Negro members were
regularly bribed to vote for the bond steals. A witness swore that in
Louisiana it cost him $80,000 to get a railroad charter passed, but that
the Governor's signature cost more than the consent of the Legislature.
When the roads defaulted on the payment of interest, as most of them
did, the burden fell upon the State. Not all of the blame for this
perverted legislation should be placed upon the corrupt legislators,
however, for the lawyers who saw the bills through were frequently
Southern Democrats representing supposedly respectable Northern
capitalists. The railroads as well as the taxpayers suffered from this
pernicious lobbying, for the companies were loaded with debts and rarely
profited by the loans. Valuation of railroad property rapidly decreased.
The roads of Alabama which were valued in 1871 at $26,000,000 had
decreased in 1875 to $9,500,000.
The foundation of radical power in the South lay in the alienation of
the races which had been accomplished between 1865 and 1868. To maintain
this unhappy distrust, the radical leaders found an effective means in
the negro militia. Under the constitution of every reconstructed State a
negro constabulary was possible, but only in South Carolina, North
Carolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi were the authorities willing to
risk the dangers of arming the blacks. No governor dared permit the
Southern whites to organize as militia. In South Carolina the carpetbag
governor, Robert K. Scott, enrolled ninety-six thousand negroes as
members of the militia and organized and armed twenty thousand of them.
The few white companies were ordered to disband. In Louisiana the
governor had a standing army of blacks called the Metropolitan Guard. In
several States the negro militia was used as a constabulary and was sent
to any part of the State to make arrests.
In spite of this provocation there were, after the riots of 1866-67,
comparatively few race conflicts until reconstruction was drawing to a
close. The intervening period was filled with the more peaceful
activities of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Camelia. ¹ But as the
whites made up their minds to get rid of negro rule, the clashes came
frequently and always ended in the death of more negroes than whites. ²
They would probably have continued with serious consequences if the
whites had not eventually secured control of the government.
¹ See pages 243-264.
² Among the bloodiest conflicts were those in Louisiana at Colfax,
Coushatta, and New Orleans in 1873-74, and at Vicksburg and Clinton,
Mississippi, in 1874-75.
The lax election laws, framed indeed for the benefit of the party in
power, gave the radicals ample opportunity to control the negro vote.
The elections were frequently corrupt, though not a great deal of money
was spent in bribery. It was found less expensive to use other methods
of getting out the vote. The negroes were generally made to understand
that the Democrats wanted to put them back into slavery, but sometimes
the leaders deemed it wiser to state more concretely that "Jeff Davis
had come to Montgomery and is ready to organize the Confederacy again"
if the Democrats should win; or to say that "if Carter is elected, he
will not allow your wives and daughters to wear hoopskirts." In Alabama
many thousand pounds of bacon and hams were sent in to be distributed
among "flood sufferers" in a region which had not been flooded since the
days of Noah. The negroes were told that they must vote right and
receive enough bacon for a year, or "lose their rights" if they voted
wrongly. Ballot-box stuffing developed into an art, and each negro was
carefully inspected to see that he had the right kind of ticket before
he was marched to the polls.
The inspection and counting of election returns were in the hands of the
county and state boards, which were controlled by the governor, and
which had authority to throw out or count in any number of votes. On the
assumption that the radicals were entitled to all negro votes, the
returning boards followed the census figures for the black population in
order to arrive at the minimum radical vote. The action of the returning
boards was specially flagrant in Louisiana and Florida and in the black
counties of South Carolina.
Notwithstanding the fact that the very best arrangements had been made
at Washington and in the States for the running of the radical machine,
everywhere there were factional fights from the beginning. Usually the
scalawags declared hostilities after they found that the carpetbaggers
had control of the negroes and the inside track on the way to the best
state and federal offices. Later, after the scalawags had for the most
part left the radicals, there were contests among the carpetbaggers
themselves for the control of the negro vote and the distribution of
spoils. The defeated faction usually joined the Democrats. In Arkansas a
split started in 1869 which by 1872 resulted in two state governments.
Alabama in 1872 and Louisiana in 1874-75 each had two rival governments.
This factionalism contributed largely to the overthrow of the radicals.
The radical structure, however, was still powerfully supported from
without. Relations between the Federal Government and the state
governments in the South were close, and the policy at Washington was
frequently determined by conditions in the South. President Grant,
though at first considerate, was usually consistently radical in his
Southern policy. This attitude is difficult to explain except by saying
that Grant fell under the control of radical advisers after his break
with Johnson, that his military instincts were offended by opposition in
the South which his advisers told him was rebellious, and that he was
impressed by the need of holding the Southern radical vote against the
inroads of the Democrats. After about 1869 Grant never really understood
the conditions in the South. He was content to control by means of
Federal troops and thousands of deputy marshals. For this policy the Ku
Klux activities gave sufficient excuse for a time, and the continued
story of "rebel outrages" was always available to justify a call for
soldiers or deputies. The enforcement legislation gave the color of law
to any interference which was deemed necessary.
Federal troops served other ends than the mere preservation of order and
the support of the radical state governments. They were used on occasion
to decide between opposing factions and to oust conservatives who had
forced their way into office. The army officers purged the Legislature
of Georgia in 1870, that of Alabama in 1872, and that of Louisiana in
1875. In 1875 the city government of Vicksburg and the state government
of Louisiana were overturned by the whites, but General Sheridan at once
intervened to put back the negroes and carpetbaggers. He suggested to
President Grant that the conservatives be declared "banditti" and he
would make himself responsible for the rest. As soon as a State showed
signs of going over to the Democrats or an important election was lost
by the radicals, one House or the other of Congress in many instances
sent an investigation committee to ascertain the reasons. The Committees
on the Condition of the South or on the Late Insurrectionary States were
nearly always ready with reports to establish the necessity of
intervention.
Besides the army there was in every State a powerful group of Federal
officials who formed a "ring" for the direction of all good radicals.
These marshals, deputies, postmasters, district attorneys, and
customhouse officials were in close touch with Washington and frequently
dictated nominations and platforms. At New Orleans the officials acted
as a committee on credentials and held all the state conventions under
their control in the customhouse.
Such was the machinery used to sustain a party which, with the gradual
defection of the whites, became throughout the South almost uniformly
black. At first few negroes asked for offices, but soon the
carpetbaggers found it necessary to divide with the rapidly growing
number of negro politicians. No negro was elected governor, though
several reached the office of lieutenant governor, secretary of state,
auditor, superintendent of education, justice of the state supreme
court, and fifteen were elected to Congress. ¹ It would not be correct
to say that the negro race was malicious or on evil bent. Unless
deliberately stirred up by white leaders, few negroes showed signs of
mean spirit. Few even made exorbitant demands. They wanted
"something"--schools and freedom and "something else," they knew not
what. Deprived of the leadership of the best whites, they could not
possibly act with the scalawags--their traditional enemies. Nothing was
left for them but to follow the carpetbagger.
¹ Revels, Lynch, and Bruce represent the better negro officeholders;
Pinchback, Rainey, and Nash, the less respectable ones; and below these
were the rascals whose ambition was to equal their white preceptors in
corruption.