_________________________________________
Before delving further into the blow by blow evolution that would
lead to the ratification of Mississippi’s “reconstruction” constitution and the
election of James Alcorn as the state’s first Republican governor, I want to
inform the reader of events in Georgia and Tennessee that would impact the re-entry into the Union
of Virginia, Texas, and Mississippi.
It’s my personal belief that a detailed history of the carpetbag-scalawag dichotomy in every state undergoing “Reconstruction” during this period and some that, technically speaking, were not (Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, and even Maryland) would make a compelling study in tandem with the struggle between the so-called conservative and regular (the euphemistic term the Radicals used to describe themselves) Republicans at the national level. The issues would be somewhat skewed depending on region, of course, just as the interests between the political parties had been skewed in the decades leading up to the war.
The Republican Party was a regional party—a Northern Party, the demon child of Northern Whigs spawned from the disintegration of the Whig party artfully (or not so artfully) orchestrated by the Democrats’ Stephen Douglas (Illinois) with his tactfully masterminding the nullification of the Missouri Compromise fracturing the already strained union of Northern and Southern Whigs over the expansion of slavery. The Whig party had strong enclaves in the South. In Mississippi, her legislature was never more than a third Whig, but North Carolina’s assembly was roughly split 50-50 between Whigs and Democrats in the years leading up to the war, and Georgia was a predominantly Whig state. Perhaps that helps explain the number of “Southern-minded” Republicans that ended up in Georgia’s Republican Party. Certainly the platform for those men would have been more palatable to that of the hated Democratic Party, but as in days of old, when the Whig Party ruled the roost, interests took on a decidedly pro-Southern flavor, Northerners neither desired nor in many instances even required. When allied with the Democrats, the conservative Republicans were in a position to neutralize the “superior Northerner” who had come south to teach Southerners how states should be governed and ensure their proper place vis-a-vis the national authority. The Republican conservatives could also ally with those same Carpetbag “colleagues” should the conservative stance veer greatly from the Democrats. No matter what, they weren’t under Radical control and that was problematic.
It’s my personal belief that a detailed history of the carpetbag-scalawag dichotomy in every state undergoing “Reconstruction” during this period and some that, technically speaking, were not (Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, and even Maryland) would make a compelling study in tandem with the struggle between the so-called conservative and regular (the euphemistic term the Radicals used to describe themselves) Republicans at the national level. The issues would be somewhat skewed depending on region, of course, just as the interests between the political parties had been skewed in the decades leading up to the war.
The Republican Party was a regional party—a Northern Party, the demon child of Northern Whigs spawned from the disintegration of the Whig party artfully (or not so artfully) orchestrated by the Democrats’ Stephen Douglas (Illinois) with his tactfully masterminding the nullification of the Missouri Compromise fracturing the already strained union of Northern and Southern Whigs over the expansion of slavery. The Whig party had strong enclaves in the South. In Mississippi, her legislature was never more than a third Whig, but North Carolina’s assembly was roughly split 50-50 between Whigs and Democrats in the years leading up to the war, and Georgia was a predominantly Whig state. Perhaps that helps explain the number of “Southern-minded” Republicans that ended up in Georgia’s Republican Party. Certainly the platform for those men would have been more palatable to that of the hated Democratic Party, but as in days of old, when the Whig Party ruled the roost, interests took on a decidedly pro-Southern flavor, Northerners neither desired nor in many instances even required. When allied with the Democrats, the conservative Republicans were in a position to neutralize the “superior Northerner” who had come south to teach Southerners how states should be governed and ensure their proper place vis-a-vis the national authority. The Republican conservatives could also ally with those same Carpetbag “colleagues” should the conservative stance veer greatly from the Democrats. No matter what, they weren’t under Radical control and that was problematic.
By April 1868, Georgia had ratified a new “progressive”
reconstruction constitution and elected a bare majority Republican assembly headed
by a Radical governor, Rufus B. Bullock, a man who had moved from New York to
Augusta, Georgia in the late fifties, served the Confederacy, and found profit in
Republican politics in the years immediately following the war. That new legislature subsequently ratified
the Fourteenth Amendment. As a result, Georgia met the requirements for
readmission to the Union under the Reconstruction Acts. Problems existed with
that election, however, that did not escape the attention of either
governor-elect Bullock or Congress. Georgia had elected a slate of Democratic
electors—meaning Grant wasn’t going to carry her in the fall—and four of the
five representatives she’d elected to the U. S. House were Democrats. Then
there was still the matter of her assembly. Though the Republicans had what
appeared to be a commanding advantage in the Georgia senate, 37 to only 17 Democrats,
10 of those Republicans were conservative Scalawags who did not like Bullock.
The Democrats had a slight majority in the house, 88-84, but of those 84
Republicans, nine were conservative Republicans and their vote could go
either way.
The threat this legislature posed to Bullock’s (and
therefore Congress’) Radical agenda came to a head in July when a combined vote
of Democrats and conservative Republicans elected Unionist Joshua Hill to
represent Georgia in the U. S. Senate over Bullock’s choice of Joseph E. Brown. Brown had served as
Georgia’s Democrat war governor. He had invoked a state-rights doctrine, routinely defied Jeff Davis’ efforts to consolidate Southern assets in prosecuting the war, then appeared to play grab-ass with everyone else who
violated the state in the wake of the Confederacy’s defeat. Brown had started
political life as a Whig, became a fire-eating secessionist Democrat, then
found profitable solace in the Republican Party during Reconstruction. The
Democrats hated him, plenty of the old-line Georgia Whigs hated him, and a good
chunk of the Georgia population hated him. The anti-secessionist Joshua Hill
had been a Georgia representative in the U. S. House when the state seceded.
He’d quietly resigned his position and come home, but he had run against Brown
for governor in 1863 on a Union ticket. The Democrats despised him as a
traitor, but he was no Radical and preferable to Brown whose defeat had the
added perk of thwarting Bullock. Yep, the Radicals had a problem in Georgia.
Giving lip-service to “republican” governments guided by “progressive” constitutions
only worked in reality if said governments countenanced the Radical agenda. The
“promise” that had been Georgia in the spring, by the summer of 1868, was
highly suspect and Bullock had to take steps to rekindle that “promise.”
When General John Pope, first commander of the Third
Military District (Georgia, Florida, and Alabama) registered the electorate
back in ’67, he did not impose (or not strictly enforce) the test oath required under the Reconstruction
Acts, a point Bullock pointed out to Pope’s relief, General George Meade. Meade
resolved the problem by turning over eligibility determination to the
respective house members, a traditional prerogative in every state and the
national government since the birth of the nation. Given the makeup of the
assembly and the determination committees derived there from, both houses
eventually reported to Meade that all legislators were eligible to take their
seats. I do not know what wheeling and dealing and subsequent compromises took
place, but without a doubt they occurred. There were 29 Negroes in the house
and three in the senate, many illiterate (which could effect their
determination, if challenged), countered by a significant portion of ex-Confederates who
couldn’t meet the test oath. They dickered, no doubt in my mind—and that is
simply my opinion—and Bullock fumed. The conservative alliance that thwarted
Brown for the U.S. Senate proved Bullock’s breaking point and his allies in the
assembly broached the subject of the test oath. The gloves were off.
Milton A. Chandler, the Democratic leader in the Senate pointed
out that Joseph E. Brown himself had campaigned (probably to ensure its
passage) that Georgia’s new “reconstruction” constitution disqualified the
Negro from public office, and there were more than enough conservative
Republicans in the assembly to back up the sentiment.
Opponents fired those first salvos in July 1868, and though
nothing more appeared to happen regarding the Negro legislators for another two
months (not counting the 13 August expulsion of A. Alpeoria Bradley for a
felony conviction in New York), it’s my opinion plenty was happening behind the
scenes. Given the ratio of Democrats/conservative Republicans to the Radicals,
the removal of the ex-Confederate Democrats under the Fourteenth Amendment was
the Radicals’ only chance for reducing opposition numbers and replacing them with
their own, thus enabling them to enforce their “progressive” agenda on the
Georgia taxpayer. The reverse was also true. The only real option the Democrats
had to secure their seats was unseating the vulnerable Negro and replacing him
with a Democrat. The reader should be reading between the lines at this
point—what we see here is what was being played out across the South at the
time: The conflict is less about Negro suffrage than it is about Negro suffrage
plus disfranchising white Confederate
taxpayers.
In September the Democrats and conservative Republicans
expelled all remaining Negroes from the legislature based on race declaring
them ineligible for office according to the new constitution and the laws of
Georgia—and according to the
Constitution and the laws of the United States. I can’t quite get my arms
around that last one, given the Fourteenth Amendment had been declared ratified on 9 July, and the
Georgia legislature itself, albeit under duress as a requirement for re-entry
to the Union, had ratified it on 21 July 1868—with some Democratic votes. [Of course, the nasty thing was never legally ratified and perhaps that was what the Georgia Democrats/conservatives were banking their argument on.]
Democrats in Georgia were operating on borrowed time, damned
if they did and damned if they didn’t. As of January 1869,
Congress had yet to seat Georgia’s elected representatives. [This is the same time Mississippi’s committees were showing up in town. See my 13 September 2015 post.] Bullock took the
issue of the expelled Negroes, along with the standard tales of intimidation and violence,
before the Reconstruction Committee in Congress. In the end it was
Georgia’s refusal to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment—an ex-post facto requirement to the Reconstruction Acts as
a prerequisite for entry in the case of those states still “out”—that did Georgia in.
And shock of shocks: It was Bullock’s Radical surrogates in the Georgia senate who orchestrated the thing’s rejection.
If Georgia re-entered the Union with the legislature elected in April 1868,
Bullock was done for. With the states’ rejection of the Fifteenth Amendment,
Congress acted, remitting Georgia to “under construction” [my words] on 22
December 1869. In January 1870, the new commanding general of the Third
District, Alfred H. Terry, with the treacherous Bullock in attendance,
reassembled the April 1868 legislature, reseated the 29 Negro delegates and
administered the test oath to all those Democrats—22 of whom he ended up
removing and replacing with their
runners-up, Republicans.
I’ll make short shrift of what happened
next for those readers who don’t know, but are curious. With the re-imposition
of martial law in his state, it was Bullock now operating on borrowed time.
He’d gotten rid of the recalcitrant Democrats, but there wasn’t much he could
do about the Scalawags but outvote them, and there were too many of them. In order to continue his antics, he had to
maintain military rule. He found an ally in the new chairman of the Reconstruction
Committee in Washington, Benjamin “Beast” Butler (who came in with the new Congress in March 1869). By the summer of
1870, however, conservative Republicans (and Democrats) in Congress had grown weary of the
delay in readmitting Georgia. Those men teamed up against Butler and seated Georgia’s elected representatives
and the two senators elected before
the Negroes were expelled (that meant Hill vice Brown). Civil law once again functioning in Georgia, the Democrats swept the December
1870 legislative election (the gubernatorial election was not scheduled until
’73). The new legislature would not meet until 1 November 1871
giving Bullock a year to complete his plunder, then face certain impeachment.
On 23 October 1871, his time almost up, he secretly tendered his resignation and fled the state. On
30 October his Radical cohort, senate president B. F. Conley, was sworn in as
governor. The Radicals had planned to hold the executive seat until ’73,
however, the new legislature drew up a bill calling for a special gubernatorial election
in December. Conley vetoed it. The legislature promptly overrode the veto, and
in January 1872 James M. Smith, an anti-secessionist who had nevertheless stuck
by his state and served gallantly as a Confederate officer through a number of
major battles, was sworn in as Georgia’s 33rd governor, ending Reconstruction
in Georgia.
Tennessee, for those of you unfamiliar with the history of
this period, was the home state of Vice President/later President Andrew
Johnson. By virtue of that unfortunate connection and the state’s early
occupation by too many Yankees, the central government foisted a provisional Republican
government upon her, under William G. Brownlow, before the war ended. Brownlow’s
government ratified the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866 and as its reward,
Tennessee was exempted from the Reconstruction Acts of 1867. Tennessee was the
first state to return to the Union with all her rights, those being to present
the “right” representatives to Congress, where they would be blessed with their
seats and proceed to vote the Republican agenda. So, the same dark year the
rest of the South had the Reconstruction Acts forced upon it, Tennessee had the
dubious honor of “electing” the Radical administration under “Parson” Brownlow,
validating that puppet government’s right to exploit its taxpaying
citizens and waste their money on liberal programs the people did not sanction. At
the same time, the Radicals in Congress, across the North, and infesting the
South were patting themselves on the back for the “success” of their program in
Tennessee.
The Tennessee government under Brownlow is the one that Nathan Bedford Forrest allegedly donned ghostly habit to fight in the dead of
night. In early 1869, Tennessee’s Radical legislature elected Brownlow to the
U. S. Senate, and DeWitt C. Senter succeeded him as governor. In August of 1869,
the Republican Party’s conservative rivals—note this, dear reader—Republican Party’s conservative rivals
captured the legislature and repealed much of the onerous legislation enacted
under five years of “Brownlowism.” Subsequently, the legislature called for a
new constitutional convention, which met in January 1870 and framed a new state
constitution in less than six weeks. In August of 1870, Republican
conservatives and ex-Confederates won the judicial elections and three months
later (November) won the gubernatorial and legislative elections, putting former
Confederate general John Calvin Brown in Tennessee’s executive mansion. Thus
ended the Reconstruction era in Tennessee.
So, at the time Mississippi’s committee of sixteen was
stalking Congress in search of redress, Congressional Radicals had
one eye on events on-going in Georgia and Tennessee. Clearly they needed to
apply caution to their decisions regarding the yet-to-be “reconstructed” states
of Virginia, Texas, and Mississippi, and they needed to apply it prior to the states’ being deemed
“reconstructed.”
Next time I’ll briefly look at the impact of “public
education” on the course of Reconstruction—and Congress’ new requirements
toward the “unreconstructed” states.
Thanks for reading,
Charlsie
