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The investigation promulgated by the committee of five to
prove fraud in the June/July 1868 election (see my 30 August post) continued its work for four
months. On 3 November its chairman, W. H. Gibbs, ex-major, 15th Illinois
Infantry, issued a proclamation from “the rooms of the committee of five, of
the Mississippi constitutional convention” reiterating the convention’s
processes in framing the rejected constitution under the Reconstruction Acts
and concluding that the constitution submitted to a vote of the people that past
summer had been duly ratified and the Republican ticket elected. Gibbs and
cohorts came up with his “legal” votes cast by throwing out the results of
Copiah, Carroll, Chickasaw, De Soto, Lafayette, Rankin, and Yallobusha Counties
on account of threats, intimidation, fraud, and violence. He even went so far
as to declare five Republican representatives had been elected to the 41st
Congress even though elections for that Congress had not been held. Shoot, if
you’re writing up your own election results, why not go for broke? The report
also declared that a large number of the Democrats elected to the legislature won
their seats through fraud.
The provocative statements were modus operandi of the Radicals across the South. Today they are accepted as gospel. Fraud and intimidation occurred on both sides, but given the skewed population at the time and the overwhelming presence of Federal troops and registrars at the polls (and the countryside where trouble was reported), I believe that much of what the Democrats/Conservatives were accused was fabricated, a prevailing thought often alluded to in the Democratic papers at the time. But no matter what the committee of five attempted to hatch, the rejected constitution left Mississippi under military rule. At home, General Gillem was in charge and the case of the rejected constitution, along with allegations of tyranny and fraud against it, were in the hands of a Radical Congress.
The provocative statements were modus operandi of the Radicals across the South. Today they are accepted as gospel. Fraud and intimidation occurred on both sides, but given the skewed population at the time and the overwhelming presence of Federal troops and registrars at the polls (and the countryside where trouble was reported), I believe that much of what the Democrats/Conservatives were accused was fabricated, a prevailing thought often alluded to in the Democratic papers at the time. But no matter what the committee of five attempted to hatch, the rejected constitution left Mississippi under military rule. At home, General Gillem was in charge and the case of the rejected constitution, along with allegations of tyranny and fraud against it, were in the hands of a Radical Congress.
Emboldened by that partisan Congress, Mississippi’s Radicals called for a
convention in Jackson on 25 November 1868 and drew up a memorial requesting Congress
declare the new constitution ratified, presented causes for the present
“embarrassment” of Republicans within the state, and requested permanent relief
from Congress—that translated to “remove the disloyal citizens from civil
positions and put us in their place.”
To justify this takeover of state government, members asserted that a large class
of Mississippians was in defiance of authority and the wishes of Congress and that class had rejected all terms for restoration to
the Union and assumed the right to dictate the terms under which its members
would agree to reenter the Union—the one we supposedly never left.
In tandem with framing this memorial, the committee of five
appointed a committee of six persons from the state at large and two from each
of the five congressional districts to proceed to Washington and lay the
memorial before Congress and urge readmission of the state. This was the
committee of sixteen:
1. State at large:
R.W. Flourney*
Jonathan Tarbell
Abel Alderson
Alston Mygatt
E. Stafford
F. Hodges
2. Congressional district representatives:
First: U. Ozanne, J.
L. Alcorn**
Second: W. W. Bell, J. G. Lyons
Third: George F.
Brown, G. W. Van Hook
Fourth: T. W.
Stringer, H. W. Barry
Fifth: E. J. Castello, W. H. Gibbs
*Flourney was a Southern secessionist who was, by 1867,
reputed to be the most Radical Republican in the state.
**Yes, the man who started this series long ago is now a “card-carrying” Radical Republican, at least, in the official sense.
**Yes, the man who started this series long ago is now a “card-carrying” Radical Republican, at least, in the official sense.
In the meantime, the Republican Party offices in almost
every county in the state held mass meetings/conventions and drew up
resolutions for the committee of sixteen to set before the Reconstruction
Committee in Washington to support Congressional interdiction. In lieu of
declaring an all-around Republic victory that past July, options offered were
setting up a provisional government in Mississippi (Republicans in charge, of
course) or reconstituting the constitutional convention. All these resolutions
were printed in the state’s (Republican) newspapers and transmitted to the committee of
sixteen in Washington for inclusion with the other material set before the
Reconstruction Committee. Doubtless the Democratic newspapers put the word out, too, with fiesty comments, but doubt they sent them to the Reconstruction Committee—to Democratic Representatives in the “loyal states”, perhaps, who did have their seats?
And with that last comment, it is important to note that events in
Mississippi were not occurring in a vacuum. The tyranny wrought by
Congressional Reconstruction was no longer meeting simple resistance across the
late “insurrectionary states”. Legal recourse for justice to the Southern
taxpayer had been routinely thwarted by the powers now residing in Washington,
and the result was evolving into a backlash. Events in Georgia and Tennessee
had taken such turns that the Radicals in Congress were forced to re-evaluate
the terms for readmitting the last three “unreconstructed” states of Virginia,
Texas, and Mississippi back into the Union and are important for understanding
what happened in Mississippi. Oh what a tangled web casting aside the
Constitution had wrought, and the Radicals had no intention of returning to
“the law of the land” to sort it all out and repair the situation. To them, the
Constitution was a worthless piece of paper to be circumvented and altered (so
they could give public homage to it without allowing it to affect their
agenda). I will continue with this adjunct in my next post.
Thanks for reading,
Charlsie
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