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The Honorable James Burnie Beck was a native of Scotland who came to the United States when he was sixteen. As of age twenty-one (1843), he had made Lexington, Kentucky his home. He studied law and was a law partner of John C. Breckenridge, future U.S. vice president and Confederate General. In the fall of 1866 his neighbors in Kentucky chose Beck to represent them in the 40th Congress (March 1867-March 1869). He was immediately chosen to serve as one of two token Democrats on the House’s reconstruction committee. It is suspected the Radicals considered the junior congressman would give them little opposition on the committee.
Here, recall my imaginary musing on
what Senator Conkling of New York thought of the Radicals in the House? This whole thing with Beck may support that thought. Why would
they assume Beck wouldn’t be a problem? Even today the two houses look at the
background of who they allow to take their seats—I mean, really, they’d made a
premium of such perusal since 1866, so House Republicans had to have been aware
of who Beck had partnered law with? Of course, the other possibility is Beck
ended up on the committee in return for a democratic favor—they still do things
like that today, too. That would imply, of course, that the Democrats knew what
the man was capable of. For whatever reason he ended up where he did, James
Burnie Beck was one of the few bright stars that lit up the Southern sky during
this darkest of nights. He served Kentucky well, too, through four successive
Congresses. In 1876, the Kentucky legislature elected him to the Senate and
then it elected him again—he died in office in 1890. James Beck’s speech on the floor of the U.S. House rebutting the Butler Bill
provides an excellent understanding of what the Radicals in Mississippi were
perpetrating and is the primary source for James Garner’s presentation of these
events in Reconstruction in Mississippi.
I’ll hit the highpoints here. Gee, I love Google, and I love James Burnie Beck.
Now we know there had to be some debate of Butler’s Bill at the
committee level, so Beck’s speech is for the benefit of the entire House, not
Butler, who had already heard Beck’s arguments.
On the House floor, James Beck stated he was resigned
Mississippi’s constitutional convention would be reassembled, though he was
against it. He believed, simply, that the obnoxious clauses should be removed
and the commanding general should resubmit the constitution to the people for
ratification.* Beck then drew Benjamin Butler in with two simple, proposed
amendments to the latter’s bill. Those were that the President of the United
States, that being Grant, be the person responsible for appointing the
provisional governor for the state of Mississippi as well as the registrars and
judges for the election. That was no more than what the other Southern states
readmitted to the Union under the Reconstruction Acts had received, he said,
and Grant, who was a Republican and, therefore, their man, was certainly as
capable of appointing a governor as President Andrew Johnson, who the Radicals
opposed, had been.
Beck went into all the reasons why the
Mississippi Constitutional Convention could not be trusted for the appointment.
I have already elaborated on the convention’s abuses and attempted usurpations
of the commanding general’s authority—Beck’s speech was, in fact, the primary
source, so I’m not going to rehash them here. For a refresher, see my posts of
8 May 2015, 10 June 2015, and 30 June 2015. My primary reason for this particular post is
to counter the accusations of white Southern intimidation and fraud against the
freedmen being the reason the Republicans lost the July 1868 election. Ku Klux Klan
terror and intimidation today are as quickly cited (by rote) as the reason for
the failure of the noble struggle for civil rights during Reconstruction as
slavery is cited as the cause of the war. Reconstruction, in the form of civil
rights, failed because there wasn’t the first damn thing noble about it or the
men perpetrating it. Reconstruction as the bane of our Founder’s Republic, the
destroyer of that concept of limited government and sovereign states, did not
fail. It accomplished exactly what it’s perpetrators wanted it to—the
Reconstruction of the Republic, the skewing of the relationship between the
states and the federal government, and you can bet the men perpetrating that
metamorphosis didn’t care a bit more about civil rights than the Klan did, if
for different reasons.
In response to Butler’s support of the bill, which if you
recall, granted omnipotent authority to the president of the Reconstruction
Convention in the state, Beck pointed out that in July of 1868 there was scarce
doubt on the part of any member of the House Reconstruction Committee that the
proposed constitution and the Republican ticket had been fairly defeated by the
people of Mississippi. What doubts there were (or hopes I should say in
speaking of the Radicals) of fraud and intimidation, General Gillem’s report
quickly dispelled. What Butler was proposing was basically the Bingham Bill of
the past summer, and Beck told the House, as he’d told it eight months earlier,
the Bingham Bill puts the people of Mississippi and her property in the hands
of men who had perpetrated a fraud and a lie, not only at the state level, but
in Congress—before the Reconstruction Committee, no less, because in December
of 1868, when this group first showed up, everyone on the committee knew they
were lying. Beck points out that if Butler had been on the committee in
December, he wouldn’t be standing on the floor, pushing this bill. I think Beck
was being gracious. Butler was in the House when Bingham’s Bill was submitted;
he spoke in favor of it—he didn’t vote one way or the other. Now, here they
are, eight months later, and Butler is pushing a bill which, at least as regards
Mississippi, duplicates the Bingham Bill.
Beck elaborated on the
abuses of the progressive constitution—primarily the proscription clauses, and
he emphasized my pet peeve regarding the proscription. The bulk of the people
disfranchised were the state’s taxpayers. And in regards to proscription, that
constitution went over and beyond the requirements set forth in the 14th
amendment, denying ex-Confederates not only the right to hold office, but also the
vote into perpetuity. It further denied the right of the U.S. Congress to ever
remove the disability (unless of course the Mississippi Radicals requested they
do it, but I would think once the Radicals had control and their constitution
in force, they wouldn’t need Congress to “bless” anyone. Of course, if you had
a democratic administration in ten years, and a democrat wanting his
encumbrances removed, and a Republican legislature/governor in Mississippi,
they could just say “no” and Congress would have no say. This, of course, is all
oxymoronic supposition because that Republican Congress was striving for
complete subordination of the states and wasn’t about to cede that power to
anyone, including its minions in Mississippi. This brings us back around to
Mississippi’s Republican Party being in the hands of “idiots.” Beck’s purpose in all this was pointing
out the fallacy of putting the fate of Mississippi in the hands of such men by
exposing their true character. This he did in tearing apart their allegations
of fraud and intimidation against the Freedmen. Next time.
Thanks for reading,
Charlsie
*I footnoted that point on
proscription, because it highlights an observation that is becoming more and
more obvious as we move through Reconstruction, that being the compromises
being made by the Democratic leadership at the expense of principle. There was
a lot more wrong with Mississippi’s Constitution than the proscription clauses
(i.e. increase in civil offices, increase in executive powers, progressive programs
to be funded at taxpayer expense, taxpayer funding of private initiatives, just to
highlight a few). The rank and file that busted a gut to defeat that
constitution in the summer of 1868 knew that, and they knew a vote against it meant continuation of martial law, which was, I must assume in their mind, preferable to representation in an unconstitutional Union. But now it
begins to appear that the Democratic “leadership” across the South (not just
Mississippi), desperate to return to the Union in hopes of votes in Congress
and the end of military rule, is now willing to cast principle to the wind
(along with the Cause its people sacrificed so much for). I will return to
this thought later, because such concessions by the Democratic Party leadership will come
back to bite them in the butt in a couple of years.
