Fraud, Intimidation, and Skewed Views on Southern History That Liberal Historians Tell

This post is number thirty-four in a historical series discussing Mississippi’s Whig/Republican governor and senator, James Alcorn, following the War Between the States and continues the “saga” resulting from the Democratic victory over the Republican “reconstruction” constitution framed during the Black & Tan Convention in the winter/spring of 1868. For earlier posts in this Alcorn-driven series, (best read in sequence from oldest to most recent), start with 17 February, 24 March, 16 April, 17 July, 24 July, 18 September, 9 October, 23 October, 5 November, 22 November, 15 December, 29 December 2014, 13 January, 24 January, 9 February, 24 February, 9 March, 31 March, 8 May, 10 June, 30 June, 3 August, 30 August , 13 September, 27 September, 11 October, 25 October 2015, 8 November, 25 November 2015, 14 December, 27 December 2015, 18 January, and 1 February 2016.

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Here, we pick up where we left off—the Honorable James Beck from Kentucky (the man in the white hat) on the House floor countering the machinations of Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts, not only black hatted, but like the majority of his Republican colleagues, black hearted. 

Having failed back in July 1868 with the election schemes to get its progressive constitution ratified and Republican ticket elected; having failed to get General Gillem, Commander of the Fourth Military District, to launch an investigation into what he’d already investigated; having failed to get Bingham’s Bill through the Senate the previous summer; having failed to circumvent General Gillem’s report to the Reconstruction Committee; and having failed to sell the House Select Reconstruction Committee at the beginning of the 40th Congress’ third session on charges of fraud, the representatives of the Mississippi constitutional convention of 1868, trudged on, harping through that congressional session and into the 41st Congress, where we just happen to find Massachusetts’ Benjamin Butler chairing the ever-growing House Select Committee on Reconstruction. Butler had in hand a “new” bill to resolve the reentry problem for Mississippi. The Butler Bill, which by its very design was meant to take martial law out of the hands of the commanding general (remember the state has been under military rule since the spring of 1867) and invest it in the Mississippi constitutional convention along with giving that body full authority over the new election to be held on the civil administration and the constitution, its registrars and its judges, and relegating the commanding general to supporting the convention’s whims. James Beck regarded the individuals comprising the constitutional convention to be “the last body of men upon earth in whose hands the protection of either the lives, the liberty, or the property of that people ought to be intrusted, especially with such arbitrary and despotic powers as this bill proposes to invest them.” 

It’s my opinion that the constitutional convention’s committee of sixteen worked with Benjamin Butler on that bill, just as convention members had agents in place to work with Bingham the summer before in drafting his similar one. Butler’s Bill gave the committee of five of the Mississippi constitutional convention everything it wanted/needed to ensure full tyrannical control over the state of Mississippi, its property, and its taxpayer. 

The charges of fraud and intimidation presented to the House Select Committee on Reconstruction during the 40th Congress’ 3rd Session (December 1868) had been discounted by the committee (this according to Beck, who knew it as fact because he was a member of the committee). 

The biggest lie and the one James Beck fed upon and pounded into the members of the House was the November 1868 declaration from the meeting rooms of the committee of five in Jackson, Mississippi that the people of Mississippi had ratified the proposed constitution and the Republican Party ticket had been elected. Those members announced that in Jackson, then sent the committee of sixteen  to Washington, D.C. and announced it to the House reconstruction committee—and presented their “memorial” testifying to fraud, discrimination, and intimidation (and any other catch-word they could think of) to show their statement was true.  

The committee of five got their numbers, giving themselves the victory, by throwing out the results from the counties of Carroll, Desoto, Chickasaw, Lafayette, Rankin, Copiah, and Yalobusha; however, during that third session of Congress, not only was the committee of sixteen busy working with the likes of Benjamin Butler to concoct that full-proof contract to ensure Radical tyranny of the people of Mississippi, but the more conservative political elements active in the state (the liberal Republicans, also known as scalawags, and the democrats) were conducting some investigating on their own—and apparently did a much more thorough job than did the “Eggleston clique.” Keep in mind as you read this, the officers at the polling booths had been hand-picked/vetted by both General Gillem and the Mississippi constitutional convention—remember that was a power convention members granted themselves during the convention. The judges, registrars, and clerks were at worse neutral (Gillem’s picks) and at best the committee’s own.  

The finding’s of the conservatives showed that when questioned regarding the results of Chickasaw County, every judge, registrar, and clerk testified that the election had been fair—not one person they knew of had hinted at unfairness. In Rankin County only one man swore to any fraud or unfairness, while every judge and registrar swore that the election was fairly conducted. Turns out that the man swearing to fraud was one D.S. Harriman. Beck himself had a military commission report, signed by Brevet Major General Pennypacker [I suspect that’s a misprint for Pennybacker], an honest and respected officer, stating that Harriman, a former officer with the Freedmen’s Bureau, had been removed from office and charged with six counts of dereliction of duty and fraud. He was convicted of five and sentenced to a $50.00 fine and one year in prison. He’d recently disappeared while out on bail.  

In Desoto County, the only white man who swore to anything being unfair was one Theodore Wiseman, who provided long and able affidavits of fraud and intimidation in Desoto County: The Klan had the roads blocked, he said, and he told of violence, intimidation, and murder. Beck focuses his rebuttal on the man’s character and the comments made of him. Also one might glean something from Beck’s reference to “the only white man” indicating there may have been affidavits made by Negroes attesting to fraud. Recall that subsequent to the election, the “committee of five” was overwhelmed by Negroes coming to Jackson [the committee of five had sent for them] and conferring behind closed doors to fraud and intimidation—then signing their prepared statements with an “x.” I do admit to have an interest in seeing those affidavits—did they all read similarly, for instance? Beck, as a member of the reconstruction committee no doubt read them. His point of following up with the case of Harriman and Wiseman and their likes was to ascertain what kind of white men made these statements in contradiction to hand-chosen registrars and judges? I assume members of the committee automatically determined the bulk of the Negro testimony fabricated or indeterminate, and therefore the white testimony the more compelling of the two. On the subject of Wiseman, the sheriff of Desoto County, Joseph Rogers, reported to James Beck that Wiseman was another of those “ex” Freedmen’s Bureau fellas. He’d been cashiered by General Gillem himself for abuse of authority in office—he apparently had been charging fines and pocketing the money. He was working as a commissioner (yeah, you guessed it—one of the “committee of five’s” hand-picked commissioners) at the Desoto County poll, when an individual he’d illegally fined spied him and challenged him with the wrong [and I can’t help but believe the individual pointed out to everyone present this thief was acting as a “commissioner” at a Mississippi polling booth in support, obviously, of Republican interests]. The sheriff stated that the altercation in no way hindered/prevented anyone from voting. Other than that one instance, voting went off without a hitch.

There’s more to the story of Theodore Wiseman. He was, in fact, a card-carrying Radical, who along with the rest of the Republican team in Desoto County was responsible for organizing the “Loyal Leagues” (Negro voters). He ran for office in Desoto County on the Republican ticket in the 1868 election. So what was he doing serving as a voting commissioner? Later in the Reconstruction drama of Desoto County, his life in danger, he billed the Republican hierarchy for services rendered and left town in the dark of night to evade monetary obligations. It was subsequently made known that a week before he requested monetary support from his party, he’d approached the Democracy in that county and offered to burn all the Radical tickets for $500.00. The democrats regarded the price as too steep and declined the offer—guess that’s why he felt the need to tap his “beloved” party, after failing to sabotage it. 

There’s more on the story of Joseph Rogers, too, the sheriff of Desoto County who gave the less than flattering report on Mr. Wiseman. He was a General Ord appointee back in November of 1867, after the enactment of the Reconstruction Acts. Rogers had been a citizen of Iroquois, Illinois when the war broke out. He’d formed up and commanded a company in the 113th Illinois Infantry Volunteers for the duration, serving with Grant from the time the latter was promoted to brigadier-general until he became General of the Army at war’s end (that included the Vicksburg campaign and stomping all over Mississippi). Anyway, with the end of the war, Rogers bought a plantation in Desoto County and subsequently served as one of General Ord’s registrars in compiling the voter rolls under the Reconstruction Acts and during the election for a constitutional convention. According to Rogers, he supported Congressional Reconstruction (his service supports that) and continued to do so. As sheriff, he served under Ord, then Gillem, McDowell, and Gillem again. He voted for Grant, his old commander. He was a good sheriff, the people of Desoto County were content with him, at least. Then, guess what? One month after James Beck referred to his denunciation of Wiseman’s testimony on abuse and intimidation in Desoto County, General Ames removed him from office for, according to Rogers, not working for the interests of the extreme Radical faction. Anyone want to wager Ames’ father-in-law influenced that move? My other thought is how many more honest Northern carpetbaggers, not to mention Southerners, did Ames manage to remove between the time he relieved Gillem and Alcorn went in as governor, and how big a role did those removals make in shaping the outcome of the subsequent election?
 

There was something else I found interesting in Desoto County’s testimony presented before the reconstruction committee—and that was the sworn testimony of a Negro Radical by the name of Jessie Paine, and Negro democrats, Edmund Cox, Thomas W. White, Richard Cobb, Henry Alexander, and William Robertson, who swore that the county’s election was, from what they saw and from their participation, peacefully conducted and the constitution fairly defeated.

 

Beck didn’t elaborate on the other counties cited in the Radical memorial, but he did finish this assessment of claims of abuse and intimidation with a great big smoking gun, sent, no less, to George S. Boutwell back in December 1868 when he was chairman of the reconstruction committee. It was Boutwell himself who laid it before the committee. Lester Williams, Jr., chaplain of the Mississippi constitutional convention, who was himself a native of West Springfield, Massachusetts and had returned home at some point between losing the election and the opening of the 40th Congress’ third session in December 1868. He was intimately involved in the convention, he said (and those dregs did say a prayer every day—I’ve seen the journal). Williams campaigned for the constitution and made a study of all the people of Mississippi and believed he knew the people and the politics—wonder if this self-possessed knowledge included the interlopers, too? (Isn’t it funny, looking back, how the people of Massachusetts felt they were uniquely qualified to assess others? Guess that kept them from having to take a good, long look at themselves.) Williams said, in retrospect, (and probably taking the people’s rejection of the constitution for what it was—a rejection), that to force Mississippi’s restoration in the Union under [that constitution] would be a calamity. He understood the Republicans wanted the state back in the Union—but their project (that constitution) was hollow and visionary, but the past warned against it.

So, the man did understand some things, now if he’d only understood that the vision of the men framing that constitution was not for the good of the people of Mississippi, he might have understood how others manipulate the self-righteousness of New England Yankees. But, my bitter opinions aside, here’s the really good part of the Reverend William’s letter:

“I understood this whole plan, of declaring the constitution carried on the charge of fraud in seven counties, so throwing out the count, as long ago as in July last. But there was the same kind of fraud and intimidation practiced in every county in the State, so that the whole, if investigated, might be pronounced a nullity with equal force as the part. If you will observe the location of these counties thrown out you may perhaps note that they are culled, here and there, with a special purpose in view. There the result of the election was acquiesced in by the great body of the Republicans all over the state, without a loud press, for the space of three or four months. [In other words, fraud and intimidation were endemic throughout the state (by both parties, though the good reverend does not explicitly say so), but to challenge every county would nullify the entire election. I further interpret the reverend to mean the Republicans never had created a sound foothold in those counties, so they could throw out the results and better their numbers. Further—and this jumps right out at me—having  written those counties off/having never made a strong effort, they conducted no fraud of their own during the election, and therefore were safe to challenge, their own dirty laundry buried in those where they concentrated their canvass.]   

This is growing into a long post, and here is as good a place to break as any. My main point with this  post is to put the accusations of “fraud, intimidation, and violence” long attributed to the racist white Southerner during this era (or any era for that matter) in proper perspective and emphasize how much of the truth has been lost to intentional historical deception.

I’ll finish up the Butler Bill next time. 

Thanks for reading,

 

Charlsie

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Smoke and Mirrors and Civil Rights During Reconstruction

This post is number thirty-two in a historical series discussing Mississippi’s Whig/Republican governor and senator, James Alcorn, following the War Between the States and continues the “saga” resulting from the Democratic victory over the Republican “reconstruction” constitution framed during the Black & Tan Convention in the winter/spring of 1868. For earlier posts in this Alcorn-driven series, (best read in sequence from oldest to most recent), start with 17 February, 24 March, 16 April, 17 July, 24 July, 18 September, 9 October, 23 October, 5 November, 22 November, 15 December, 29 December 2014, 13 January, 24 January, 9 February, 24 February, 9 March, 31 March, 8 May, 10 June, 30 June, 3 August, 30 August , 13 September, 27 September, 11 October, 25 October 2015, 8 November, 25 November 2015, 14 December, and 27 December 2015.
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When last we looked at the 41st Congress and the “Mississippi question” before it, Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts and James Burnie Beck of Kentucky were in debate on the House floor over the “Butler Bill” and its proposed methodology for returning Mississippi to the new, revised United States.  

Beck’s argument kept the issue churning for days. The stated reason for Congress’ creation of first the Joint Committee on Reconstruction back in 1865 with the 39th Congress and the House Select Committee on Reconstruction during the next two Congresses was to ascertain the conditions in the former insurrectionary states and to ensure the protection of life and property within them. That was all smoke and mirrors designed to allow a Republican Congress to get control of Reconstruction and leave itself in a position to dictate to the Southern states, to ensure loyal “Republican” administrations within those states, and guarantee the presence of “loyal” representatives in both the U.S. House and Senate which they would use to mold the entire United States into their vision of what it, in their opinion, should be. Certainly the election of such loyal individuals would not happen if the Confederate taxpayer had control of his state, and the easiest, perhaps the only way, to wrest control from those people was to manifest the aforementioned threat to life and property in the region, thereby justifying Federal interference (martial law). 

I will not rehash Southern resistance to using government funds for internal improvements and the high tariffs required to generate those funds (Henry Clay’s American System). I’ve covered them extensively throughout this series. I also won’t elaborate more at this time on the Republican and/or New England Utopian plan to make the conquered South the proving ground for a new, enlightened, United States. That again would be beating a dead horse. Suffice it to say, Southerners resisted both. Social experimentation has never been a Southern thing and when it came to taxpayer funding internal improvements, the South still had a war to recover from and bigger priorities than progressive programs. Yet the Republican interlopers poised to take control of the Southern states were determined both would happen and the Southern taxpayer would fund them. To get control, the Republicans needed the freedman’s vote.  

The elephant in the room was civil rights, which tied directly to Republican votes. Civil rights is not one of the responsibilities the Founders gave to the central government. The former colonies did, however, insist on state rights. Civil rights, in fact, wasn’t even a big issue at the time of the founding, and what issues there were fell under the purview of the states. The states wouldn’t have had it any other way and would not have ratified the Constitution.

 

Moving forward through the decades, one sees the developing misuse/abuse of the general welfare clause in the Constitution’s preamble—and the oblique attack on those resisting that abuse—that being on the South through its slave-based economy. By the eighty year mark, Utopians, who by their own admission believed the Constitution unfit to govern the nation, assumed all citizens should have access to all services and rights including the vote, and those rights (to include the definition of a citizen) should be dictated by the central government over the will of all the states. Teaming up with the zealots were the more pragmatic and greedy who recognized the potential of Republican hegemony in the South (or all over for that matter)—think of Ben Butler as an example. Also, and probably most ruthless of all, were those shady industialists (beneficiaries to the American System) pulling the strings of their political puppets in Washington.

For the Republicans in the South, the right to vote loomed greatest of all, because they planned for the Negro vote to keep them in power. The Radicals had no qualms in denying the Confederate taxpayer his “civil rights,” however, so ask someone like me what she thinks of those expounding on “civil rights” during that period. Those who supported the Confederacy and believed small, local government best identified the needs of those footing the bill had again become ex post facto traitors, continuing their treachery by not embracing this post-Constitutional concept of “civil rights.”  

Southerners knew how things were in the pre-war South and they knew how matters stood in 1868. They’d never had a reason to concern themselves much with “civil rights” because they hadn’t created an environment requiring a need. Now they were faced with not only the excesses of funding internal improvements, but also with managing the baggage that accompanied the unwanted expenditures, and a few white interlopers intended to enforce it—by ensuring heretofore unneeded “civil rights” for a voting block they have just defined as citizens in need of civil rights—all in overt violation of the Constitution.  

One day soon I’m going to start a study on the effects of all this anti-Constitutional civil rights legislation in the Northern legislatures, because it was a problem. But those states were in a better position to fight back—their electors hadn’t been mucked with for one thing—they could still vote the dogs out—hence Butler’s reference to losing six Northern states.

Ah, but let’s not forget that with the Southern legislatures in the hands of puppets, and their illegal Congressional delegations “loyal,” the traitors fomenting this skewed concept of the United States were permanently altering the Constitution, and the Northern states might not have had the numbers to stop it, even if they’d wanted. 

A non-issue for individual states had been made an issue and, as the Radicals tried to sell it, it was an issue to be resolved by a benign [sarcasm intended], yet all-powerful central government, which had proven, by force of arms that the Union was inviolable. That same government would from this point enforce the principles of...what? Oh, yeah, The Declaration of Independence while ignoring the charter that had brought it into existence. It was a government composed of a cabal of men, who cared nothing for the Constitution, who were, in fact, hostile to it, but were willing to twist, manipulate, pervert, and subsequently permanently alter it in order to do lip service to it and keep themselves in power.

The role of the House’s Select Committee on Reconstruction was to justify congressional interference in those recalcitrant states refusing to “move toward the light.” Interference required justification. Fair elections did not justify interference, so, in the wake of the Senate’s tabling the Bingham Bill on 27 July 1868, the committee of five, back home in Mississippi, decided to make that 10 July 1868 conservative victory one which had been achieved by fraud and intimidation of the freedmen.

Now, let’s go back to the summer of 1868 and expound on the voter numbers again. Then I’ll weigh those numbers against charges of fraud and intimidation that no longer just echo through the past century and a half, but for all intents and purposes shout the truth down.

The “progressive” Republican state constitution was rejected, 63,860 votes against, 56,231 votes for. Four of the five members elected to Congress were Democrats. All the Republican nominees had been Northern, and George C. McKee was the only Republican winner. Humphreys defeated Eggleston by 8000 votes and in the state legislature, 66 of the 138 chosen were democrats, and there were 12 Negroes elected, one was a state senator, the Reverend Stringer of Vicksburg.

From the figures given, one surmises that 120,091 votes were cast. As of September 1867, General Ord had registered 106, 803 voters of which the majority, 60,167 were Negro, leaving 46,636 whites. As of November, when the decision for a new constitutional convention was required of the citizens, there were 139, 327 registered voters of which 76,016 actually cast a vote. Of those, 69,739 voted for a convention (and thereby a new constitution). Recall that the democrats sat out that election hoping that the requirement set by the U.S. Congress that the majority of “registered” voters must opt for a convention. This accounts for the large number of votes not cast.

Now in the summer of 1868, 120,091 votes were cast (meaning the Democrats were back in the game) and roughly 17,000 more votes than there were white voters registered as of the past November had voted down the new Constitution (and the Republican ticket). Well, of course it must have been fraud and intimidation—except that the 56,000+ votes for the Constitution would account for all but roughly 4,000 votes from the Negro population. So the brutal Democrats were only able to intimidate seven percent of the registered Negroes. Of course, this is all absurd. Truth is, many of those 56,000 votes were other white voters—many of whom were interlopers who didn’t have a vested interest in Mississippi, but others who did. And many of those near 64,000 votes who rejected the new Constitution were black, they had to have been.

That fraud and intimidation occurred, I would not argue, but fraud and intimidation went both ways. Threats allegedly attributed to the Democrats were: Threats of job loss (Hmmm—labor was in pretty big demand, so even if a man lost his job, a new one would have been available the next county over. Now, if he were working for his old master on the plantation he was born and raised on, he might not want to be put off, but for that very reason—he liked his home and people—he voluntarily voted along with the old master, anyway); visits by the “Klan” (there was the “Klan” and then there was the “Klan” and then there were “threats” made by, and more likely “on behalf” of the Klan by those not Klan); ostracism by the “white” community (that would have worried only those who had a vested interest in the “white” community I would think, and those whites would have been Republican or, again, the old folks with whom they would have voted freely). But, tongue now out-of-cheek, those threats may have swayed a few votes, but the Negro was in the majority and the U.S. army was all over the state in force and under the thumbs of Republican interlopers who were themselves active in every black community. To say that threats of the Klan, job loss, or rejection by whites accounted for the sway of the circumspect 17,000 votes is bullshit. Besides, ostracism and threats of job loss are “boilerplate” when it comes to crying “fraud” in elections.

Additionally, there were threats made by the other side to those considering voting against the proposed “progressive” constitution: For example, if the Negro didn’t vote Republican, the Northern populace would allow the white Southerners to oppress them or even return them to slavery; and the following threat was reported to have come out of the Fourth Military District: The offender would be led to Vicksburg in chains and sold back into slavery in Cuba. Such threats coming out of the Republicans or their Grand Army of the Republic phalanx is evidence that they did not have control over every Negro in Mississippi, some of whom were quite capable of thinking for themselves and others who were still under the influence of former masters—and you know that had to have frosted their Republican “saviors” and colored their approach to the Negro voter. But I maintain that was a lot of folk to be bullied into voting the way either party wished. More than likely, many of those votes were simply bought [quite probably on both sides].

Stage now set for the civil rights boogieman and its application to the House Select Committee on Reconstruction and the Butler Bill, I will, with my next post, return to the House floor in the spring of 1869.

Thanks for reading,

Charlsie

 

 

 

Hold On Says the Senate to the House, Let’s Think About This

This post is number thirty in a historical series discussing Mississippi’s Whig/Republican governor and senator, James Alcorn, following the War Between the States and continues the “saga” resulting from the Democrats’ victory over the Republican “reconstruction” constitution framed during Mississippi’s Black & Tan Convention in the winter/spring of 1868. For earlier posts in this Alcorn-driven series, (best read in sequence from oldest to most recent), start with 17 February, 24 March, 16 April, 17 July, 24 July, 18 September, 9 October, 23 October, 5 November, 22 November, 15 December, 29 December 2014, 13 January, 24 January, 9 February, 24 February, 9 March, 31 March, 8 May, 10 June,30 June, 3 August,30 August , 13 September, 27 September, 11 October, 25 October 2015, 8 November, and 25 November 2015.
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On 24 July 1868, immediately following Mississippi’s defeat of the proposed Republican constitution (10 July), Representative John Bingham (Republican from Ohio and traitor extraordinaire who was the primary author of the Fourteenth Amendment and was a member of the House Select Committee on Reconstruction) introduced a bill from said committee for the “speedy readmission of Mississippi, Virginia, and Texas.” Recall that in the summer of 1868, these were the three “unreconstructed” states still outside the Union and lacking representation in Congress (and until the Radicals were sure they had the kind of representation they wanted the people of those states to have—that being representatives to support the Radicals—they would remain unrepresented). In the case of Mississippi, Bingham’s bill called for the reassembly of the “Black and Tan” convention, giving more power to the convention in carrying out the election and subordinating the commanding general to a support role. Polling booths firmly in Radical hands, the constitution was to be resubmitted to the new voting elite for ratification. Benjamin Butler, representing Massachusetts, spoke in favor of Bingham’s bill on the House floor, but did not record a vote. Nevertheless, plenty of other Republicans (of course, that’s mostly what there was to vote) did. The bill passed by a huge majority and went to the Senate. On 27 July, the Senate tabled it. New York Senator Roscoe Conkling, himself a Radical, said basically that there was too much to consider to pass a hasty bill.

Ah, to have been a fly on the wall back then. Indeed, the Radicals were apparently taking stock. Cracks had started to appear in the foundation of their tyranny. They were being pretty presumptuous, not to mention heavy-handed, with their “centralization/Utopian schemes.” Forcing social and educational “enlightenment” on the defeated South was one thing, but, self-righteous, assuming %@$+@rds that many of them were (the balance being power-hungry thieves), they were pressing the envelope a little too hard north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Less enlightened Northerners, or I should say more practical ones, were paying attention. In tandem with that, the radicalization of Tennessee and Georgia was going to hell in a handbasket, so yes, it had probably dawned on Mr. Conkling that he and his colleagues needed to tread carefully regarding the reentry of Mississippi, Virginia, and Texas. To maintain and grow their powerbase, the Radicals had to have control of those Southern states to offset the Northern ones they could not so easily wield their tyranny over and were actually in jeopardy of losing (not only to the Democrats, but to conservative Republicans who did not see the future with their perverted vision). One more thing, and this is just my opinion, but I suspect that the Radical powers in Washington, unable to recognize mirror images of themselves in the provinces, suspected they had idiots in control of the Radical wings down in Dixie. If they wanted to ensure a Radical Republican Mississippi they had to get the right people in place—not only to increase power, but to keep it, hence Conkling’s caution.

The Senate’s tabling the Bingham Bill was a major setback for the Eggleston clique down in Mississippi. Understand that in the summer of 1868, no one doubted that the proposed progressive constitution and the Republican ticket had been fairly defeated. Only after the failure of Bingham’s effort to simply vote again—after ensuring the Radicals had full control of the voting booths—did schemes surface to vacate the conservative victory based on alleged fraud and intimidation. Hence, the “committee of five’s” subsequent assembling in Jackson for four months and concocting its affidavits of fraud and its premature findings to offset General Gillem’s report (see the Committee of Five Comes Alive). The committee subsequently cast out the votes from select counties, recounted the remaining votes, and declared the new constitution ratified and the Republican ticket elected. I can just imagine General Gillem’s smirk—okay, I actually imagine him saying some things, but what he said publicly was, no, that didn’t happen.

The Radicals’ declaration of victory failing with the general, off they went to Washington, (James Alcorn in company), to see what they could accomplish with Congress. But as we already know, the committee of five (blossomed now into the committee of sixteen) was not the only group from Mississippi that descended on the House Select Committee on Reconstruction that winter. The conservative Republicans and a Democrat contingent did, too.

The 41st Congress assembled on the 19th of March 1869 at which time Benjamin Butler, Representative from Massachusetts and now chairman of the House Select Committee on Reconstruction, introduced a bill in the House for organizing a provisional government for Mississippi. Butler’s bill went to committee, and on the 24th of March, the chairman of said committee (that was Butler) recommended its approval. It was basically the Bingham Bill with which I introduced this post—at least that part of the Bingham Bill dealing with Mississippi.

A brief aside here, if I may, on the history of the House Select Committee on Reconstruction. It started out as the Joint Committee on Reconstruction (also known as the Committee of Fifteen) on 13 December 1865 (39th Congress, March 1865 to March 1867). It was the brain-child of the fanatical Radical Republican representative from Pennsylvania, Thaddeus Stevens, and was the organized beginning by Congress to get President Andrew Johnson under control, or more specifically, get Reconstruction under congressional control. Nine House members sat on the committee along with six senators. Senator William P. Fessenden (Maine), Salmon P. Chase’s brief successor at Treasury, was the committee’s chairman. Twelve Republicans and three Democrats comprised the group. It was this committee that drafted the Fourteenth Amendment and established the requirement that the Southern states ratify that desecration to the Constitution before being readmitted to the Union. Apparently believing it had accomplished its job of summarily destroying the Founders’ Republic, the Senate opted out of further participation and with the 40th Congress (March 1867-March 1869), we see only a House Select Committee on Reconstruction chaired by Thaddeus Stevens, whom the grim reaper collected in August 1868, much too late for the South or for the Republic.

No matter, another Radical in the form of George S. Boutwell from Massachusetts succeeded to the chair. It is Boutwell’s group, meeting during the 40th Congress’ third session (December 1868-March 1869), that the contenders for power in Mississippi descended upon. Nine men, seven Republicans and two Democrats comprised the House committee at that time. The two Democrats were James Brooks of New York and James Beck of Kentucky, who was the only true Southerner on the Committee. Alabama (having been blessed with reentry) also had a representative on the committee—Benjamin W. Norris, a former U. S. Army paymaster from Maine who settled in Mobile, Alabama and continued to work with the Freedmen’s Bureau after the war. He was a puppet carpetbagger, y’all, at the apex of his short-lived political career—representative of Alabama he was not.

By the time Butler had assumed the committee chair during the 41st Congress’ first session (March 1869), membership had grown to thirteen (nine Republicans and four Democrats). Though the presence of more Democrats on the committee implies increased Southern sympathy (Fernando Wood of New York, the Tammany Hall fellow whose cotton interest led him to advocate New York City’s secession back in 1861, was now on the committee), Beck remained the only true Southerner. By the time the second session had rolled around in December 1869—and yes, I know I’m ahead of myself in the historical narrative—committee membership had grown to fifteen, meaning two more bodies had been added, both Republican—both carpetbaggers, one representing Virginia and one representing Mississippi. Their careers’ would be short, too, but not short enough to undo the damage they and others like them did to the Republic. For future reference, that Mississippian was George McKee, the only Republican on the 1868 ticket that won his congressional seat. Of course, he had to win it a second time, but that was later...and easier the second time around, and he wouldn’t be the lone winner in that second round, either. I’ll elaborate more in a future post, and I’ll continue with Butler and his bill in my next post.

Thanks for reading,
Charlsie

Oops! Those Untrustworthy Scalawags

This post is number twenty-five in a historical series discussing Mississippi’s Whig/Republican governor and senator, James Alcorn, following the War Between the States. This post continues with the fate of the progressive constitution framed by the Republican-dominated Constitutional Convention in 1868. It is a direct follow up to my 13 September post below. For earlier posts on Alcorn, (best read in sequence from oldest to most recent), start with 17 February, 24 March, 16 April, 17 July, 24 July, 18 September, 9 October, 23 October, 5 November, 22 November, 15 December, 29 December 2014, 13 January, 24 January, 9 February, 24 February, 9  March, 31 March, 8 May, 10 June, 30 June,  3 August, 30 August, and 13 September 2015.

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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. 

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