So, what was that effort in July 1868 really for?

This post is number thirty-five 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, 14 December, 27 December 2015, 18 January, 1 February, and 20 February 2016.
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Here I wrap up the known workings, with some opinions regarding the “unknown” workings, in Washington that would lead to the subsequent ratification of the progressive, Republican Constitution already rejected by the Mississippi taxpayer in tandem with the relatively brief, but calamitous period of Radical Republican rule in Mississippi.

Justification for the Butler Bill having been effectively rebuked by James Beck of Kentucky (see my 20 February post), John F. Farnsworth, a representative from Illinois and member of the Reconstruction Committee, offered that the commanding general should resubmit the constitution to a vote with the objectionable clauses (proscription of Confederates) separate and if said clauses were defeated, then remove them from the constitution. Halbert Paine of Wisconsin offered another change to the bill—that being to first offer the constitution as a whole, then with the obnoxious clauses removed. This revised version passed 125-25 and Butler’s bill was sent to the Senate.

 

Mr. Farnsworth’s version also suggested that judges and chancellors at the voting booths should be elected by the people. (Though I do appreciate the sentiment, wouldn’t that mean another election before the election—neither of which the state could afford?) And a bigger question is why? The people of Mississippi had already rejected the constitution and everyone knew the proscription clauses were one of the primary reasons. This was not a secret.  

[Want my very opinionated opinion? Regardless, I’ll share it. The Radicals had to have another election to get the lion’s share of that awful progressive constitution passed and in force and the state back in the Union under Republican control. This took priority over their minions’ extreme proscription clauses, which were more important to the minions at the state level than the Radicals at the national level, the latter satisfied with the tyranny inherent in the Fourteenth Amendment. Mississippi under martial law, which the people had already said they preferred to that progressive constitution, was not an option for the Radicals—nor apparently for the Democratic leadership/conservative Republicans, who perceived some value in being back in the Union and under the “protection of the Constitution.” Yeah, I don’t know what the Democrats were basing that on, because most everything worth protecting had already been lost, and what wasn’t they were willing to sacrifice in return for the elimination of those proscriptive clauses and—this is a very important and—bringing Mississippi back into the Union—hence, agreeing to another election.

Let me emphasize, these Democrats were the men who had seized the reigns of the Democratic Party in the wake of defeat—the bulk of the old leadership impotent. Though many names were not new, those now in power were those who were willing to make some effort to adjust to the new order. They did not necessarily appreciate the stubborn will of the people they thought they represented and, as time progressed, proved a little too accepting of the “new order” for their constituents’ tastes. But as of the spring of 1869, the impact of their acquiescence has yet to be recognized by the majority outside the old leadership. On the other side, the Radicals in Washington, eager for a second go at ratification and a Republican victory in Mississippi, cast their minions in theater under the carriage wheels on the proscription issue. But here are two important points worth noting. Though the powers that be appear to have sold out the Radicals in Mississippi on the proscription clauses and refused to support them in their November 1868 goon-like declaration that the progressive constitution had been ratified and the Republican ticket elected, the national Republican leadership was hard at work securing both. They got rid of the old commander of the Fourth Military District, General Gillem, who repeatedly thwarted the schemes proposed by the Radicals in Mississippi under the Reconstruction Acts, and replaced him with Ben Butler's son-in-law, Adelbert Ames. Then Congress called for the vacating of all civil positions in the state (recall this was one of the Mississippi Republican’s biggest demands—they wanted those govenment jobs and all the blessings of malfeasance that came with them).

As the district military commander (not to mention he was still the provisional governor at that time), Ames had full authority to choose the registrars for the upcoming election, which would once again decide the fate of the Republican ticket and the already rejected constitution. In other words, Mississippi’s taxpayers (many of whom subsequently would not be allowed to vote) would be forced to hold election after election until the Radical Congress in Washington got the results it wanted, and James Lusk Alcorn was part of the committee of sixteen orchestrating all this with Congress behind the scenes. The objective was to nullify the Democratic victory in July 1868—under seemingly legal conditions.  The failure of the national Repubican leadership to honor the Mississippi Radicals in their November 1868 delaration of victory was mere lip service. Such tyranny needed to be handled with a bit more finesse (covertly)—especially in the face of so much wrong doing exposed by James Beck. As will be seen, the Radicals achieved it.] 

In the Senate, Oliver Hazard Perry Throck Morton, tyrannical ex-war governor from Indiana who emulated Lincoln in his abuse of executive authority—in his case against Indiana’s Democratic legislature—and blessed Indiana with a war it should have never fought—tied the readmission of the then three remaining, unreconstructed states (Texas, Virginia, and Mississippi) to their ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment. Lyman Trumbull, senator from Illinois and chairman of the senate judiciary committee, argued the requirement was a breech of faith at this point. Trumbull was, in my opinion, a breech of faith in and of himself, but I really don’t see what difference it would have made. Perhaps there was a fear at this time that the moderate Republicans (nominally supported by the Democrats), vice the “regular” Republicans (Radicals) would win the day. Did Morton think the nation might fail to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment as suggested by Butler’s earlier warning about failure to pass the Fifteenth Amendment in conjunction with the loss of six Northern states? Maybe so. The Democrats might be leaning toward the more conservative candidates as a place to cast their ballots, but the only way for the Democrats to thwart the state’s ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment would be to win the election, which, of course, they’d already done, effectively torpedoing the Radicals’ hopes for the Fifteenth Amendment, but leaving Mississippi outside the Union, problematic for the conservative Republicans and Democratic leadership in Mississippi (and the South). But this “spirit of capitulation/acceptance” will raise its ugly head again in future posts. No matter, the requirement regarding ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment passed the Senate 30-20.  

Eventually, the revised Butler bill, modeled on the amended Farnsworth substitute, with the Fifteenth Amendment tacked on, authorized President Grant to submit the proposed reconstruction constitutions for Mississippi, Virginia, and Texas to their people and at the same time submit for separate vote such provisions as he might choose (again, that refers to the proscription clauses in Mississippi and Virginia). An adjunct to the revised Butler bill was that the commanding general was empowered to suspend all laws that he might deem unjust and oppressive—with the President’s concurrence. In the case of Mississippi, that is a reference to the poll tax established in support of the indigent and other debt collection laws, which the Republicans deemed unjust. Hmmm, wonder if Ames gave any thought to reviewing the convention’s taxation scheme promulgated to pay for the Black and Tan Convention?

Whatever. Mississippi’s fate was now, nominally, in the hands of her people and the President, and the Fourth Military District in the hands of Adelbert Ames. I’ll begin my next post with an overview of Ames’ military rule, much of which—again I’m forcing my unsolicited opinion on you to accept or reject as you will—was carried out to ensure a Republican victory in Mississippi the second time around, a victory which the Radicals further believed would prove more palatable to the people by having Mississippi’s own James Lusk Alcorn on the ticket for governor.

Thanks for reading,

Charlsie

James Burnie Beck: Prelude to Countering the Butler Bill

This post is number thirty-three 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, and 18 January 2016.
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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.

 

Behind the Scenes and Butler’s Bill

This post is number thirty-one 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 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, and 14 December 1015.

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This post continues discussion on the bill Benjamin Butler, chairman of the House Committee on Reconstruction, introduced in the spring of 1869 to bring Mississippi back into the loving arms of the Union (yes, that is sarcasm you hear in my words). Butler’s bill authorized the Mississippi constitutional convention to be reassembled upon the call of the president of the convention. If the president hadn’t called the convention back into session within thirty days, the commanding general (that would be Adelbert Ames, Butler’s son-in-law) would do so. At the time this bill was sent to the House, the president of Mississippi’s constitutional convention (Alston Maggot—oh, I do apologize, I’m letting my true feelings show again—that should read Alston Mygatt) was in town lobbying to have the rejected constitution declared in force and would have been only too happy to reconvene the convention. Under the Butler Bill, the reassembled convention was to have the power to appoint a provisional governor and remove and appoint registrars and judges of the election.

 

Excuse me? Where did those powers—once exclusive to the commanding general—come from? Mine is a rhetorical question, and I will here share my educated guess. On the surface it would appear they originated the previous summer with Bingham’s bill, but these are the very powers the constitutional convention presumed to usurp from General Gillem during the winter/spring of 1868 while framing the constitution. The change wouldn’t have made much difference with Ames, the Radical’s man, now the commanding general, as well as the provisional governor, but it is telling. 

And why the devil did Grant give Ames command of the Fourth Military District to begin with? You are not going to convince me it was an independent decision on his part. This takes us back to Ames’ appointment as provisional governor by General McDowell during the latter’s one-month tenure as commander of the Fourth District.  

Succinctly put, Butler’s Bill meant turning over control of Mississippi to the Black and Tan Convention, and that’s where control would remain, even if the people of Mississippi defeated the constitution again and again and again. And if they ratified the constitution—power would still be with that same group. Passage of the Butler Bill meant no way out. Butler’s heavy-handed prejudice in deferring to the convention hierarchy is indicative of overt tyranny that, it would seem, the man didn’t believe he needed to disguise. The other thing that’s interesting to note here is that when the 40th Congress closed on 4 March 1869, Ben Butler was not on the House Committee for Reconstruction. Two weeks later, he’s not only on the committee, he’s chairing it. The Massachusetts contingent had been switched out. The proof is in the pudding, folks. Butler had been part of that wheeling and dealing that winter meant to resolve the reentry of Mississippi, Virginia, and Texas on terms favorable to the Radicals. 

Henry L. Dawes, Butler’s colleague in the House and also from Massachusetts, is on record for saying he’d as soon leave the choice of the warden of the state prison at Charlestown to the convicts as to leave the choice of provisional governor of Mississippi to the Mississippi Reconstruction Convention. (It was the constitutional convention, but players were pretty much one and the same, so why split hairs?) Dawes was a conservative Republican, not a Radical. Not only that, but in Butler’s bill, the same constitution—irrespective of the proscriptive clauses—was to be presented to the people. This meant that the Mississippi constitutional convention of 1868 would have full control of all registrars—no other input required—and Butler’s son-in-law would be the commanding general should military support be required (or desired) during the election. As said earlier, the election was to be repeated exactly as before, only this time the scenario would be “orchestrated” to ensure the constitutional convention achieved the results it desired. 

James B. Beck, the Democratic Representative from Kentucky referenced above, took the floor and argued that President Grant appoint the provisional governor for Mississippi. It is at this juncture that Butler takes the time, apparently for the benefit of his fellow Republicans, like the skeptical Dawes, because the Democrats surely already had it figured out, to explain his rational for bestowing so much power in the constitutional convention: He said, and I paraphrase, that the president of the Mississippi Reconstruction convention (Eggleston), who had been the Republican candidate for governor in Mississippi, would now appoint himself governor. As he’d taken the surrender of Atlanta, so he’d accept the surrender of Mississippi. Butler called the act merely good politics to accept the radical schemes. If you don’t reconstruct Mississippi, he continued, you can’t get the loyal legislature and consequently two “loyal” senators. Without those two “loyal” senators you can’t pass the Fifteenth Amendment and you lose six Northern states. Okay, Dawes probably had it figured out, too, but he wouldn’t have been particularly in favor of radical schemes. 

This is all so telling and dovetails nicely with my thoughts on the Radicals being in trouble in the North and determined to maintain control in the South (and hence overall). The other thing is Butler—what the devil was his motivation? Greed would be my guess. He’d been a Democrat during the course of his political life. Now he was a Republican working hand in hand with the Radicals, but from his reference to the Radicals in the paragraph above, he clearly didn’t consider himself a Radical. There were rumors at the time discussed in my narrative he would return to the Democratic Party, so one must surmise it wasn’t ideology driving the man. I have little doubt that his son-in-law’s being the commanding general of the Fourth Military District as well as the provisional governor of Mississippi piqued his interest regarding events in Mississippi—or maybe the reverse is true, and he got Adelbert the job in order to further a preexisting interest. His subsequently finagling his way into the chair of the reconstruction committee testifies to his power, influence, and the corruption of all. 

Representative Beck countered that the President in his appointment of the provisional governor would ensure a free and fair election, and that the Mississippi constitutional convention would permit neither.

I’d like to elaborate further on the Butler Bill and James Beck’s rebuttal on the House floor next time. In lieu of Butler’s frank reasoning (or arrogant dearth of discretion, if you’d rather), the debate is particularly enlightening and does much to explain the insurmountable (and unsubstantiated) allegations of fraud, persecution, and sundry atrocities that continue to be attributed to the white Southerner over the past century and a half regarding electioneering in the post-war South. 

Thanks for reading, 

Charlsie

 

Detailing the “Black and Tan” Convention of 1868 Part 1—Republican Interlopers and Mississippi’s Taxpayers’ Money

This post is number nineteen in a historical series dealing with Mississippi’s Whig/Republican governor and senator, James Alcorn, following the War Between the States and is the first in a subset discussing the Mississippi Constitutional Convention of 1868, known derisively as the “Black and Tan” Convention.
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As of my last post, the Mississippi taxpayer had defeated not only the “progressive” state constitution resulting from the “Black and Tan” Convention but also the Republican ticket, which would have seized control of the civil government. In the wake of their stunning defeat, the Radicals counterattacked by sending a “committee of sixteen” to Washington to compel Congress to vacate the Democratic victory and declare the Republican agenda approved. Alcorn was a member of this “committee of sixteen”. 

I skimmed over the convention that created the detested progressive constitution because James L. Alcorn did not participate in it. In retrospect, I made a mistake. The actions of the majority of delegates comprising the Mississippi Constitutional Convention of 1868 speak volumes about the dubious quality of men determined to gain control of Mississippi and in so doing clarify not only the gamble Alcorn took in aligning himself with them but also how egregious was Alcorn’s betrayal of Mississippi’s taxpayer. Before the “committee of sixteen”, there was the “committee of five”. This “committee of five” derives directly from the Constitutional Convention of 1868. Over the next several posts, I will discuss in some detail this convention’s antics and abuses in conjunction with framing Mississippi’s “new” constitution.  

To quickly rehash: The reconstruction/constitutional convention demanded under Congress’s Reconstruction Acts of 1867 was approved by a majority of registered voters in a November 1867 referendum. In the Reconstruction Acts, Congress stipulated that a “majority” of the registered voters had to agree to the convention. Failure of the measure would leave Mississippi under martial law. White Democrats strove to defeat the measure by ensuring a majority of registered voters not take part. The risk in boycotting the election lay in the winners’ determining representation at the convention. The Democrats lost their initiative by 151 votes, which assured a new constitution would be drafted primarily by Republican Radicals. (See my 9 March 2015 post below). 

The convention convened 9 January 1868 by authority of General Ord, who was, per his request, in receipt of orders to the command of the Department of California. Nevertheless, it was Ord who apportioned the convention’s 100 seats among the delegates to give the “reconstructionists” a large majority. Thirty-two of the state’s sixty one counties had Negro majorities. That’s a majority of 52 percent. However, delegates representing the Republican Party received 70 percent of the seats. I offer as evidence: At the time the apportionment was made, the state had 106,000 registered voters, which computes to one delegate for every 1100 voters. General Ord apportioned two delegates to Tippah County with 901 voters; Panola County two delegates for 1233 voters; Holmes County two delegates for 877 voters; Washington County three delegates for 2231 voters. These counties had Negro majorities. Tishomingo County (primarily white) had only two delegates for 3273 voters. 

This is the first political body in Mississippi in which the Negro participated. There were 17 black delegates (Representative James Beck from Kentucky, a token Democrat on the Congressional Reconstruction Committee and a crusader for the Southern states, later stated there were 25 Negroes at the convention), eight of whom were educated ministers, the most prominent being J. Aaron Moore of Meridian, Lauderdale County; C. W. Fitzhugh representing Wilkinson County; and T. W. Stringer, a Northerner who had come south with the Freedman’s Bureau and represented Warren County. The other black delegates were uneducated. None had held public office. 

The remaining 83 delegates were, of course, white. Roughly 20 of these delegates composed the “carpetbag” element of whom nearly all had served in the Union army during the war. Twenty-nine native Republicans composed the “scalawag” element, and there were four Northern-born Republicans who had lived in the South before the war, two of whom had served in the Confederate army. That left thirty Democrats. 

Among the more prominent ex-Union soldiers were General Beroth B. Eggleston (Ohio); Colonel A. T. Morgan (Second Wisconsin Volunteers); General H. W. Barry (Commanded a Negro regiment raised in Kentucky); General George C. McKee (an attorney from Centralia, Illinois); Major W. H. Gibbs (15th Illinois Infantry); Judge W. B. Cunningham (Pennsylvania); Captain E. J. Castello (Seventh Missouri Infantry); and Thad P. Sears. For regular readers of my blog, you will recognize the most prominent names of white Republican delegates from the Republican ticket for the summer 1868 election (see my 31 March post below). These men would remain prominent in state politics until the election of 1875 sent them scrambling back to their Northern dens. 

An individual’s never having held public office might not be considered the end of the world, but individuals partaking in a matter as important as drafting a state constitution should bring some civil experience/historical and legal knowledge to the table, and one must consider (and the agenda followed by the convention would validate) the illiterate lacked such qualifications. In regards to the ex-Union soldiers, they were not, for the most part, career army. These men had been part of militia units formed in their locales to support the war effort. They had lives before the war—some were lawyers, and we know Cunningham had been a judge. Those men would have been familiar with law, which certainly would qualify them to broach the creation of written constitutions—preferably back wherever it was they came from. And as regards the framing of constitutions, this aside should interest some: 

In anticipation of Mississippi’s drafting a new “progressive” constitution, thereby making the state “fit” for re-incorporation in the Union, the Executive Committee of the Union Republican Party (think of them as “establishment” Republicans) presented the convention with a copy of the New York Constitutional Manual, containing the constitutions of the 37 states of the Union then “constituted.” In 31 of those states, the word “white” appeared as a qualification as an elector, and of the remaining six, three had educational and property qualifications for the franchise. So let’s do a little math here. Thirty-seven states in the Union—that includes the thirteen (I’m counting Kentucky and Missouri here) that briefly made it out and were, in 1868, perceived by the North as determined to deny the Negro his vote. Shoot let’s even throw in Maryland, which didn’t make it out, but truly is a Southern state, and say the number is 14 recalcitrant “disloyal” states incapable of percieving what this nation stands for. From that, subtract the three totally democratic states with no voting restrictions at all and that leaves 20 self-righteous “loyalists” constitutions disfranchising the Negro, the poor, and the uneducated compared to 14 of the bad guys.

Upon review of the manual, the Mississippi convention resolved to set an example for the other 34 states restricting the franchise. Well, folks, as you will see, this group of dogs wrote the proverbial book on disfranchisment, but of course, what they were referring to here was the liberal enfranchising of the Negro, whose vote would keep them in power. So I ask, if they really wanted  “enlightened” constitutions in a brave, new Union, why didn’t they haul their butts back  “to wherever it was they came from” and amend their own states’ constitutions? Let me take a stab at that—how about those slots for malfeasance were already taken and the Negro vote wasn’t significant enough in those places to dislodge the incumbents. In other words, they didn’t have a prayer of grasping power back home, but with a corrupt Congress hell bent on centralization, backed by a military drunk on victory, they could have their way with Mississippi. 

In addition to the dearth of qualifications residing in the group, the majority of delegates did not own property in Mississippi and did not pay taxes, and for those of you not already aware—and the present state of the United States is all the evidence one really needs—upcoming posts will show why the fate of any city, state, or nation should not be placed in the hands of people determined to live off a system they do not pay in to.

 

Finally, the vast majority of delegates were ignorant of history—and my focus here is federalism, once the soul of our Republic. The latter alone would disqualify not only the illiterate black delegates, but the majority of white Republicans making up that “august” body, who were less ignorant of the federal system than they were opposed to it—if they considered it at all beyond their quest for power and remuneration. 

Subsequent actions indicate this group of delegates considered itself the ruling legislature of Mississippi then constituted, despite General Gillem’s repeated cautioning them that they were not. Remember, Mississippi was technically under martial law, though civil government did continue to function under General Ord’s heavy hand and later under General Gillem. This misconstrued self-perception of it’s authority under the Reconstruction Acts probably explains, in part, the convention’s abuse of its charter. Over the next 115 days, these delegates far exceeded the bounds of legislative frugality and good taste—even by that of the legislatures back in the dark lands from which they hailed. The price of their ignorance and excess was paid by an unrepresented taxpayer, already struggling to survive, much less recover, in a land laid waste by some of the very men now demanding tribute.  

Lots more coming on the “Black and Tan” Convention, thanks for reading.

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For earlier posts on Alcorn, (best read in sequence from oldest to most recent), start with  17 February 2014, 24 March, 16 April, 17 July, 24 July, 18 September, 9 October, 18 October, 5 November, 22 November, 15 December, 29 December 2014, 13 January, 24 January, 9 February, 24 February, 9 March, and 31 March 2015, all below.