Saturday, January 24, 2015

Congress Lays the Groundwork for the Reconstruction Acts

This post is number fourteen in a historical review of Mississippi’s J. L. Alcorn, Union Whig/Republican governor and senator during Reconstruction. For earlier posts on Alcorn, best read in sequence from oldest to most recent, see 17 February, 24 March, 16 April, 17 July, 24 July, 18 September, 9 October, 18 October, 5 November, 22 November, 15 December, 29 December 2014 and  13 January 2015 below.
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This post continues to detail the measures the Republican Congress took, starting in 1866, to mold the recalcitrant Southern states into ones supportive of an agenda that was upside down and backwards to everything their taxpayers believed in—state rights and free market. The course was in violation of the Constitution, for the transformation of our Founders’ Federal Republic into that of a democratic republic was absolutely imperative for the triumph of The American System. Not only were the changes proposed to the Constitution unconstitutional, so ultimately was the legislative process by which the egregious Fourteenth Amendment was “declared” part of the Constitution. Being a life-long Whig, Alcorn accepted this perversion of the Founders Republic as the result of military defeat not that of treason enacted by a military supported congressional coup. The result of said defeat would be more palatable to this Southerner if the victors had acknowledged it for what it was, but even today—or even more so today—one has to listen to the glorification of the poetic lines of the Gettysburg address  

...that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. 

as gospel, knowing full well that they did die in vain, at least when it came to that part about government of the people, by the people, for the people. Indeed, the glorified dead Lincoln honored played the most significant role in enabling its demise. Lincoln’s words were more appropriate for the other side. 

Let me now jump off my soapbox and return to the fall of 1866 following the South’s rejection of the Fourteenth Amendment and look at some of the measures Congress took to “correct” Southern obstinacy. 

Before approving the civil governments set up by the rebellious states, President Johnson asked for the input of three individuals who crisscrossed the entire South to ascertain conditions within the occupied states and recommend to him whether the war-torn states were ready to govern themselves. 

General U. S. Grant advised that the people were ready to return to loyalty within the Union and get on with restructuring their daily lives. He advised that white troops needed to be moved into the area since the black troops there encouraged vagrancy by advising the freedman not to go back to the plantation to find work. He further stated that if the North truly desired reconciliation, the Southerner should not be humiliated. 

German-born Brigadier General Carl Schurz reported that the Southern people had reorganized their governments and were yielding to the laws and the Constitution. [The South never...oh, never mind.] They were repairing the devastation from the war, and they were trying to move on with their lives. There was some disorder, but this disappeared with the spread of civil law. 

Mr. Charles Truman, a civilian, presented the most positive picture stating he believed the disbanded Confederate regiments would prove the South’s primary base for recovery and reconstruction. I’m not sure if I should read between the lines here and assume Mr. Truman is implying the South should just write the freedman off, or what. He did say that the freedman was well treated—and I’d maintain that on the whole he not only was, but always had been. Mr. Truman also stated that, contrary to reports, Northerners were not being abused. 

So there was not much ground in President Johnson’s committee report for overturning those civil governments that had been operating effectively for a year or more. But from that point on, Congress no longer needed grounds to interfere in the workings of a state, but it did feel compelled to legitimize its destruction of federalism in the United States. Legitimization lay in the Fourteenth Amendment.  

The South had already provided the likes of Massachusetts representative George S. Boutwell with the Black Code—a vagrancy law intended to gain some kind of control over a vagrant population in excess of 100,000 men, women, and children (see my 29 December post). The Black Code looked too much like the old slave code to satisfy the abolitionists. Actually, I think Mississippi probably copied that Black Code from Illinois, or another of several Northern state codes. [Okay, perhaps I’m being unfair. Those Northern states had probably based their Black Codes on the old slave codes, too, so the source is all the same, and in defense of those Northern states they did repeal theirs when forced to by ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. Still again, the South had a legitimate vagrancy problem, the North’s double standard resulted from a determination it never would.]  

But back to Congress. To get the Fourteenth Amendment passed, it didn’t need Illinois, Indiana, or Michigan per se. It had all it needed right there in the South. All it had to do was replace the recalcitrant legislatures with more amenable ones—much easier there than in the victorious North. That would be accomplished by the Reconstruction Acts spearheaded by the Honorable Mr. Boutwell. Actually, he spearheaded more that that, but that’s for later posts. 

Criticizing the reports provided by President Johnson’s commissioners [He found particular fault with the findings of General Grant—the same man who would shortly make Boutwell his Secretary of the Treasury.], Boutwell set up a national inquest under authority of investigating violations of the Thirteenth Amendment. Boutwell did not give any reasons for rejecting the President’s report, except that he didn’t like it. 

The Congressional committee was composed of five men, only one of whom was a democrat. Boutwell summoned the witnesses he wanted to Washington. No member of the committee visited Mississippi and no member of the Southern party (that would be Democratic, I assume—but not necessarily a Southern democrat) was allowed to cross examine the chosen witnesses. Additionally, no democrats were questioned, and only two citizens of Mississippi were interviewed, ex-provisional governor Sharkey and Judge R. A. Hill from Tishomingo County, a respected jurist and pre-war Whig much on the order of governor Sharkey. Other witnesses included three major generals of the United States army, one brigadier, one captain of colored troops, one Treasury agent, one revenue agent, and one representative of a New England cotton manufacturing company, a Mr. Warren Kelsey. 

The committee stated to the “interviewees” that it was looking for signs of returning loyalty on the part of the people of Mississippi—after all, their rejection of the unconstitutional Fourteenth Amendment certainly was not indicative of what the Radicals, waiting to welcome the South back with open arms, had been expecting. [And please tell me what loyalty had to do with violations of the Thirteenth Amendment?] General Edward Hatch told the committee that except for the northeast part of the state [For all y’all who do not know, that’s where Tishomingo County is.], there was little loyalty to be found and few manifestations of good feeling toward the government. General B.H. Grierson, famous for his raid through Mississippi during the Vicksburg campaign, thought there was an organization in the South planning to renew the rebellion. He based this on the formation of historical societies designed to consolidate everything that could be found documenting the rise and fall of the Confederacy and the service of its soldiers. Grierson's and the committee’s real fault with such societies was that the recording (and remembering) of Yankee depredations in the state was not conducive to “loyalty.” Another of these individuals expressed the belief that “Mississippi was the least loyal of any state in the South.” [Are we to assume he’d visited all the states and was, therefore, qualified to discuss them all?]  

J. H. Matthews and Warren Kelsey stated the freedman was worse off than in the days of slavery. No kidding, Sherlock, and who, given that the South was occupied by the United States army, the vast majority of whom were black, and the freedman refused to find work despite the effort being supervised by the “benevolent” Federal Freedman’s Bureau, was to blame for that? This group also said that Northern men were not well received in the South and surmised if not for the presence of Federal troops they could possibly meet with violence. Well, I could surmise that might be deservedly true, but there’s not much a legislature can do to force a ravaged people to like self-righteous, plunder-seeking interlopers who should have kept their butts at home, nor is that reasonable dislike a violation of the Thirteenth Amendment. 

General Fisk expressed “shock” that the only regrets he’d heard the defeated Confederates confess was that they had, indeed, been defeated, and A. P. Dillingham reported speaking to a rebel general who preferred Jeff Davis to Lincoln. Now that’s  pretty strong dislike of Lincoln, because Davis wasn’t popular at the time—yes, I’m poking fun, but Davis really wasn’t popular at the time, but he hadn’t made a mockery of our Founders’ Constitution to destroy anyone—remember, he just wanted to be left alone.  

The people of the state of Mississippi, who these individuals maligned, had taken the oath to uphold the Constitution which they had, in truth, never violated. That was the real problem—by their rejection of the Fourteenth Amendment, they continued to uphold the Constitution, which the Radicals wished put asunder. But that wasn’t enough. On top of that, they were expected to spit on their flag and the graves of their sons, fathers, and their innocents, dead as a direct result of unwarranted aggression. This was shown in the disdain that Boutwell’s committee displayed for Mississippi’s voters electing Confederate General Humphreys to the governorship. A man who had fought a hateful enemy as opposed to one who had turned his head as the enemy ravaged the state. 

Boutwell’s committee reported that the states lately in secession were in a state of anarchy without government or constitution. In fact, they had both. Even when the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered more than a year earlier, they had a civil government. On top of that, both the new civil governments and their validating constitutions had been blessed by President Johnson just that past December.  

The committee further reported that Congress could not recognize as valid the elections which took place under those conditions. Funny they were recognized well enough when that hot bed of tyranny forwarded the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to them for ratification. [In both cases, passage by the Senate was in clear violation of Article V of the Constitution.] Bet there wouldn’t have been a peep made had the states done what Congress “directed.” 

And lastly, Congress couldn’t recognize the representatives of communities without said communities providing constitutional guarantees of the civil rights of all citizens of the Republic. Really? There was no legislation then in existence defining what a citizen was. The black man was free, but he wasn’t a citizen in the South and most other places. And, in my opinion that is not a determination Congress should ever constitutionally be allowed to make. That right belongs with the states, but even though today Congress has been allowed to get away with that usurpation via the Fourteenth Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment had not been ratified in the summer of 1866, nor could Mississippi and the rest of the South be held punitively liable for it had they passed it that summer in conflict with the new constitutions they’d passed in the fall of 1865—it would have been an ex post facto law—another unconstitutional fact shadowing Boutwell’s “kangaroo” proceedings. 

There was, according to the committee, no protection from claims founded in the rebellion (the Confederate debts had been repudiated) nor had those who’d participated in the rebellion been excluded from positions of public trust—another article in the Fourteenth Amendment, which the Southern legislatures had not ratified and would have been an ex post facto requirement even if they had. 

I will break this post here before delving into the Southern states’ attempts to force a judicial review of what Boutwell’s committee would shortly thereafter instigate as the Reconstruction Acts. This post is getting too long, and I don’t want to lose you. Suffice it to say that Boutwell’s report was accepted by Congress as “an absolutely truthful picture of the Southern states” at the time and proved the basis for Congressional Reconstruction.  

Thanks once again for reading,

Charlsie

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

James Lusk Alcorn and the Dark Dawn of Congressional Reconstruction

This post is number thirteen in a historical review of Mississippi’s J. L. Alcorn, Union Whig/Republican governor and senator during Reconstruction. For earlier posts on Alcorn, best read in sequence from oldest to most recent, see 17 February, 24 March, 16 April, 17 July, 24 July, 18 September, 9 October, 18 October, 5 November, 22 November, 15 December, and 29 December 2014.
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When last we saw Senator Alcorn in December 1865, both he and Senator-elect Sharkey had been denied their seats in Congress as had their fellow representatives in the House. This was true for all the Southern states whose tax-paying electorate had elected representatives to Congress during Presidential Reconstruction. All these civil governments had been approved by President Johnson and tacitly approved by Congress, which had seen fit to forward the Thirteenth Amendment to them for ratification. Aware of the looming contest between the executive and the Congress, the denial of his seat had not surprised Alcorn, and I would wager not one other such representative among the defeated Southern states.  

Alcorn remained in Washington through the rest of December 1865, observing the executive-legislative conflict and the emergence of the Radicals. He did manage to get a post office for Friar’s Point, site of his new plantation home. Additionally, he worked on some claims for his Coahoma County clients and made an indeterminate effort to free Jefferson Davis’ private secretary from prison. On that, one of Mississippi’s brightest stars, L.Q.C. Lamar, is on record for remarking that Alcorn’s energy might prove more effective than Sharkey’s influence. (I was unable to find out what happened with the secretary.) 

Alcorn returned to Mississippi in early 1866 having gathered a clearer understanding of what the South was up against and, probably, weighing his options for righting his world. For whatever its worth, it’s my opinion that Whigs, and the Republicans they excreted, considered the Constitution a hindrance to their program of protectionism (high tariffs), taxation for internal improvements (perversion of the general welfare clause), and mercantilism (at this place and time, classic crony capitalism). All require a strong central government. Anticipating such schemes, the Founders gave us a Constitution defining a central government with supreme, but limited powers, delegated by autonomous states. Our Founders wrote the Constitution specifically to thwart the designs of men like Henry Clay and his protégé, Abraham Lincoln. The rights of the states, the little “fiefdoms” that theoretically held the Federal government in check, stood in the way of the Whig/Republican economic agenda known to history as The American System.  

The Republican-dominated 39th Congress of the United States (March 4, 1865-March 4, 1867) was, at the time Alcorn returned home, putting its plan in play to subordinate the states to the Federal government. Ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment increased representation across the South since the Negro was no longer apportioned as 3/5ths of a man, but as a whole man, and the Republicans needed to get that potential Negro constituency under their control and at the same time nullify the Southern white taxpayer’s vote. Congress was already working on the problem before the soon-to-be-not-seated Southern senators and representatives arrived to assume their rightful place in Congress. Key to Congress’ effort was a bill that would become the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. Had those Southern senators and representatives been seated, that bill would have never made it out of Congress. That’s why they weren’t seated. 

For the past century and a half, this desecration to the Constitution has been used and abused by the Federal government to alter our Founder’s Republic beyond functional recognition. Its most odious feature is that it gives the Federal government supremacy over the states. During Reconstruction, it was critical to the victory of Clay and Lincoln’s American System. To give it its just due would require a separate post (or several), but for my purpose here, the Fourteenth Amendment was unconstitutional in concept and criminal in its passage and is anathema to the Republic our Founders created. The South knew it and abhorred it. The Northern mercantilists/Republicans knew it and approved it.

After much debate and rehashing, Congress passed the proposed Fourteenth Amendment in the summer of 1866 and sent it to the state legislatures for ratification, including (especially) those in the South. This action on the part of Congress makes a point that will come up again in my next post—just remember, Congress sent it to the duly-elected Southern state legislatures for ratification, irrefutable proof of Congress’ recognition of those legislatures.
 
Like the Thirteenth Amendment, the Fourteenth was sent for ratification to states that had not been represented at the time of its passage in Congress. Second, it ceded to Congress rights belonging to the states. Sorry, folks, civil rights, citizenship, disfranchise...these are not rights or powers the Founders would have ever left in the hands of the Congress. Nothing, nothing in the thing fell inside Congress’ bailiwick. Until Congress usurped these powers with the Fourteenth Amendment, such responsibilities were reserved for autonomous states. Not only would giving Congress the responsibility for such matters require an expansive increase in bureaucracy to carry them out, the very thought of giving Congress the power to dictate requirements to the states and their people was patently unconstitutional. Once upon a time—and this was still true in 1866—senators represented states. The House supposedly still represents the people of those states. At the time Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment, eleven states were not even represented in Congress. What you have here, in 1866, is one section of the nation dictating to another section of the nation. Granted, the North had already violated the Constitution with its war of aggression—but everything it did/everything Congress did/everything the president did was illegal, accomplished through military arms, not through the law of the land. Ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment codified such actions as legal for time immemorial. The thing should not have made it out of Congress.   

In Mississippi, Governor Humphreys sent the amendment to his legislature recommending it be rejected. The legislature agreed with his recommendation as did the legislatures in all the other states that supported the “rebellion.” Southerners weren’t the only states that had problems with the thing, but the history of the Fourteenth Amendment is too lengthy to address here. Let’s just say that during the summer of 1866, ratification failed. 

In October of that year, Alcorn attended circuit court in Bolivar County. There, his colleagues, including his Whig friends J. S. Yerger and James Chalmers, asked his opinion of Andrew Johnson’s chances against the Radicals in Congress and inquired his opinion as to whether he (Alcorn) would ever take his senate seat. [Side note here: It’s interesting that Alcorn is considered the font of all knowledge amongst these old Whig lawyers—and it is in keeping with Lamar’s observation regarding Alcorn’s “vigor” in making headway in getting Davis’ secretary released. My take is that Alcorn knew some folks back in Washington; he had contacts.] Anyway, he told his associates the state legislature made a mistake in not ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment and warned it would be forced on the South anyway. It was a natural outcome of emancipation and Federal victory. He did agree in principle that the thing should have been rejected. 

It says much about the character of a Whig/Republican that such an individual would so easily accept an amendment that he knew was unconstitutional, one that would flip-flop the state-federal dynamic. In fact, it was worse than a flip-flop. The Federal government always held sway in the limited matters granted it by the states. With the Fourteenth Amendment, time would prove that any authority nominally remaining with the states could, on a whim, be usurped by the Federal government.  

Of course, Alcorn was right about Congress’ forcing the Fourteenth Amendment on the South. After all, there had to be something wrong with those Southern legislatures to reject the measure. Certainly, theirs was not the response of a people ready to return to a glorious Union promising liberty and justice for all. They knew, of course, there wasn’t one thing wrong with those Southern legislatures, except that they knew the Constitution better than the Northern ones. Anyone (and these men were all lawyers) looking at the Fourteenth Amendment could clearly see that the inevitable result of the measure would be Federal tyranny, not liberty and justice for all.  

Just as the problem lay with those state governments, so did the solution. What Congress did next is so sloppy, goon-like, and tyrannical in both appearance and execution, it boggles my mind that anyone even remotely aware of what happened during Reconstruction cannot see it for what it was, an egregious violation of everything our Founders fought for. But then I have to accept that there are people who truly believe a strong central government is the way to go, and there is a smaller, but increasing, species of such beings that believes the government’s confiscating the taxpayers’ money to support healthcare, economic control, environmental control, crony capitalism, egalitarianism, never-ending war, etc., etc, is actually a good thing.  

What disturbs me most about Alcorn at this juncture is his ready acceptance of the South’s and, by association, the nation’s fate. Just a shrug of the shoulder, as if there were no consequences related to the Federal usurpation of state rights in the Fourteenth Amendment. His attitude seemed to be: Pass it, get back in the Union, get those damn Yankees out of here, and get this mess cleaned up. I do think he was considering the possibilities inherent in Mississippi’s return to the Union. Given the Confederacy’s loss and the emasculation of the Democratic Party across the South, perhaps he might, after decades, have seen a twinkle of light at the end of that long dark tunnel leading to his Whig platform in Mississippi. He might have even thought he’d be able to take his Senate seat and manage to divert some of those Federal subsidies to Mississippi in order to rebuild. So what if state rights had been blown asunder? He’d make the best of it. All he had to do was stumble along that dark corridor, dragging Mississippi behind him, avoiding the clubs of the Radical gauntlet, till he brought the state into the light of a new day—where there would be no obstructing democrats. 

All right, I know that “light of a new day” sounds corny, and even if Alcorn did contemplate the possibility of such potential within the money-crazed/power-hungry Republican Party, I think he was astute enough to realize it might never come about. Fundamentally at odds with the proponents of Henry Clay’s mercantilist economy, the South had been a stonewall standing in the way of the Whig/Republican platform. The South’s role as the tax-milk cow for the Federal government would not change now, and with the threat of free-market Confederate ports eliminated, Northern/Republican interests could relax and enjoy the South as a source of exploitation and plunder. The South was where they wanted her to be, and they had no intention of improving her lot.  

Here I will leave you anticipating what Congress would do about the Fourteenth Amendment and those unpatriotic Southern legislatures and their people, too stupid to appreciate how the wonderful Union and her magnanimous soldiers had saved them from sovereignty and the false promise of their misguided Founder’s nation. Many of you already know, but I’ve uncovered some details that succinctly highlight the despotic joke that called itself the 39th Congress of the United States. Look for my next post in a week to ten days and thanks for reading. 

Charlsie Russell