Mississippi’s Final Stretch for Reentry into a Union She Supposedly Never Left

This post is number forty-nine 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. That Republican defeat resulted in a second election—Washington’s Radicals were simply not going to take Mississippians’ rejection of their agenda as the answer. For earlier posts in this Alcorn-driven series, see the sidebar.

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Upon ratification of the progressive constitution and election of state officers, Mississippi’s military governor, Adelbert Ames, ordered the new legislature to meet 11 January 1870. This was the first legislature to meet since the inauguration of martial law and Congressional Reconstruction in the spring of 1867. The Radical U.S. Congress made two more demands of the state before considering Mississippi for readmission to the “new nation,” those being ratification of the unconstitutional Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Once the legislature was assembled and organized, Ames, acting in his capacity of provisional governor, requested it consider passage of the two amendments, which forever altered the fundamental relationship between the central government and the states. The legislature not only considered the two amendments, it readily ratified them, but that had been the plan all along.

Much has been said of the abuses of “Negro Rule”during the course of these puppet governments set up during Reconstruction in the South, but as of 11 January 1870, Mississippi was not yet to that point. To be fair to the Negro, Negro Rule is a misnomer, because the people calling the shots were always white politicians aiding and abetting corruption in return for votes, both at election time and in the state house. The more accurate term, and one used routinely for the period, is Carpetbag Rule.

Of the 139 men making up the puppet legislature that passed the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, only thirty-one were Negroes, mostly ex-slaves, many illiterate, and none with legislative experience or understanding of how legislatures operated. Most were ignorant of the history and the intent of the framers of the U. S. Constitution, which is why the Radicals in Congress ensured their citizenship, suffrage, and election to legislative positions. The Negroes’ case was not unlike that of European immigrants in Northern cities who joined Lincoln’s army to fight for “freedom” and democracy which could only be accomplished, by some obtuse reasoning, by a forced marriage between North and South. All were manipulated by a political system determined to pervert what the founders had created in 1787 and create something new.

Within the ranks of those thirty-one Negroes were very capable individuals, primarily black ministers, who were both well-educated and knowledgeable, yet still lacking legislative experience, but in lockstep with those whose goal it was to alter the Republic. Twelve such had been elected to the house, and three of Mississippi’s five Negro senators were ministers. It should be noted that black ministers dominated black leadership across the entire South. The Republican hierarchy reached the black voter through the black ministers.

The legislators representing the wealthiest counties in the state were now ex-slaves: one senator and three representatives from Warren County, the location of Vicksburg; two representatives and one senator from Hinds County, the location of the state capitol Jackson; two representatives and one senator from Adams County, the location of Natchez; two representatives and one senator from Washington County in Mississippi’s Yazoo-Mississippi Delta where Greenville is located; Lowndes County, site of Columbus, sent one senator and one representative; Noxubee County sent three Negro representatives to the state house; Holmes, Panola, and Wilkinson Counties had two Negro representatives each; and seventeen other counties sent one Negro each to Jackson to represent their interests. In addition to the black legislators, there were forty-nine Carpetbaggers, primarily ex-Union soldiers who were recent inhabitants of the state, twenty-five Scalawags composed in large part of ex-Whigs and ex-Confederates and home-grown opportunists who never, or no longer, saw eye-to-eye with the Democrats; four additional Republicans in the house, who I have yet to confirm as Carpetbagger or Scalawag*; and finally there were thirty Democrats made up of both New Departure adherents who had acquiesced to the new order and the Bourbons, the democrats of old (and probably some old-line Whigs) who remained true to the principles of the old republic: the Constitution, state rights, and home rule—you know, liberty. Not some lofty ideal of “freedom” dictated by those who felt qualified to define exactly what that abstract quality is within a controlled state, not “democracy” imposed and manipulated by centralized government, but liberty, a quality achieved only by the absence of as much government as possible and still guarantee the protection of property. A government limited by laws framed and controlled at the local level.  Needless to say, people who thought like the Bourbons were outnumbered in the recreated Southern legislatures, in a nation led by men, both Radical and non-, hell-bent to shape it into Leviathan. Those latter needed government-enforced democracy and the illusion of  “freedom,” and though the Bourbons might have elicited sympathy from their fellow Democrats and even many Scalawags, they garnered little real support among men who, even though they might have disdained Leviathan, were now determined to carry on in an altered state where liberty was now an ephemeral beauty whose time had passed.

[I have yet to narrow down which was which among the Democrats, and I imagine I will find the two groups will polarize significantly during the course of Carpetbag Rule before finally consolidating in the wake of Republican corruption and misrule.]

Doctor Franklin representing Yazoo County, but who was in fact a Carpetbagger from New York, was elected speaker of the Mississippi house. The vote for the Fourteenth Amendment was 24-2 in the senate (twelve Carpetbaggers, five Scalawags, five Negroes, and two Democrats; the two nays were both Democrats. Three Carpetbaggers, one Scalawag, and two Democrats did not cast votes). The house vote for the Fourteenth Amendment was 87-6 (thirty-four Carpetbaggers, thirteen Scalawags, one additional Republican whom I’ve yet to determine if Carpetbagger or Scalawag, twenty-six Negroes, twelve Democrats, and one member who I am unable to determine if he was Republican or Democrat. Five Democrats and one Scalawag opposed the amendment. Six Democrats and seven Republicans did not record a vote. The latter group was composed of six Carpetbaggers and one Negro who were absent, but of the six Democrats who did not cast a vote, only one was absent. The other five simply did not vote. One hundred six legislators sat in the Mississippi house.

The senate vote on the Fifteenth Amendment was 28-0 (twelve Carpetbaggers, six Scalawags, five Negroes, and five Democrats. There were no negative votes, but three Democrats and two Carpetbaggers did not cast votes). The house vote was 92-1 (thirty-four Carpetbaggers, fourteen Scalawags, twenty-six Negroes, and eighteen Democrats).

[The lone nay vote was cast by Democrat J. K. McLeod representing Greene County in south-central Mississippi. Of note, his was one of the six votes against the Fourteenth Amendment. Hmmm...might have our first Bourbon identified here.]

There were 26 Republicans and 7 Democrats in the senate for a total of 33 state senators. Given the number of Democratic votes cast in support of these amendments, readmission to the Union and the end of martial law took precedent over principle. We might also conclude here that in the fall of 1869 the majority of Democrats elected to the legislature were of the New Departure persuasion. The Fourteenth Amendment had been ratified in July of 1868, so was already law, but the Fifteenth wasn’t ratified until 3 February 1870. Mississippi was the twenty-third state to approve (twenty-eight were needed to ratify). Looking at the ratification process for both those amendments, neither would have been ratified without the coercion of the Southern states, which didn’t even have a vote in Congress when those amendments were passed by that tainted assembly.

The state’s ratification of these two egregious changes to the U.S. Constitution fulfilled the demands of Congress and placed the question of Mississippi’s readmission to the new United States in Congress’ hands.

The legislature could not legislate until Congress approved Mississippi’s admission; however, there was one more matter to which it could attend before adjourning. That was the election of Mississippi’s U.S. Senators, one for the full term beginning the following spring (4 March 1871) and two to fill Mississippi’s senatorial seats vacant since Jeff Davis and Albert G. Brown walked away from the U.S. Senate in 1861. Alcorn was elected to fill the full term beginning in March 1871. Of the two unfulfilled terms, one seat had four years remaining on it, the other thirteen months. Adelbert Ames was the predisposed choice to fill the four-year term. He received all the votes in the senate and seventy-two votes in the house, two of which were Democrats. Hmmm...wonder what that bought them? I hope it cost them their next election.

The compromise choice for the shorter-term seat was Adams County senator Hiram Revels, a Negro of mixed blood who had been born free in North Carolina and raised and educated in Indiana. In Reconstruction in Mississippi, James Garner states Revels beat out the favored B. B. Eggleston to fill the term. Y’all remember Eggleston? He was president of the Black and Tan Convention and subsequently headed the Republican ticket defeated by the Democratic-Scalawag coalition led by J. L. Wofford in tandem with the progressive constitution in the summer of 1868. He was the man who accepted the surrender of Atlanta in 1864 and the man from whom Alcorn usurped the Radical party in the state back in the fall of 1869. Eggleston was Butler’s man. Now he was dealt his coup de grace, displaced by a Negro for U. S. senator from Mississippi. The delusion of poetic justice, of course, was (and remains so to this day) at work here, the downtrodden Negro taking Jeff Davis’ seat in the Senate. In fact, Revel’s election to fill the seat is widely regarded as the fulfillment of Davis’ reputed prophecy to Simon Cameron back in 1861 when he supposedly said that in all probability a Negro would be sent to take his place in the Senate. I’ve also heard that it was Cameron who warned Davis of that possibility and not the other way around. There would, in my opinion, be more reason for such sentimentality had an illiterate, ex-slave from Mississippi been elected for the job, but to my mind it is mawkish affectation either way. 

The contemporary Negro representative from Adams County, John Roy Lynch, in The Facts of Reconstruction covertly suggests the powers making up that soon-to-be legislature had already agreed on a Negro filling the short-term seat prior to its opening session on 11 January 1870. Analysis of the house journal, however, suggests the decision that a Negro would fill that seat was one agreed to only by the Negroes and that it was more a determination than a decision. Moreover, when entering the fray, Hiram Revels was not their first choice (nor was he, from what I gather, seeking the job). In fact, the black caucus, shall we say, hadn’t settled on a choice.

On a pragmatic note, what I liked about the subsequent sequence of votes to fill the seat is that the roll-call votes and the manner in which hopefuls were nominated, then supported, has helped me determine who was who among the Republicans in the Mississippi legislature...Carpetbagger or Scalawag.

Hiram Revels next time.

Thanks for reading,

Charlsie

*Though I think I have a good handle on who was a Scalawag and who was a Carpetbagger, there may be a discrepancy here and there. One thing is certain, there were thirty-one Negroes and seventy-eight white Republicans, for a total of 109 Republicans, opposed to thirty Democrats making up the Mississippi legislature in the winter of 1870.

Ah, President Ulysses Simpson Grant’s Feet of Clay

This post is number forty-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 progressive constitution framed during the Black & Tan Convention in the winter/spring of 1868, which resulted in a second election. For earlier posts in this Alcorn-driven series, (best read in sequence from oldest to most recent), see the sidebar at the right.
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The National Union Republican Party of Mississippi was banking on Louis Dent’s close personal relationship with his brother-in-law, President Grant, to carry the election. Grant had been accommodating to the Scalawag/Democratic contingent(s) during their sojourn to Washington the previous winter and spring, then had initially given tacit support to Dent's campaign. But as had been the case with Virginia, where Grant also indicated sympathies for the moderate Republicans, the Radicals were not going to allow it. Remember, readers, this nominally National Union Republican Party ticket in Mississippi was actually a fusion ticket between the Scalawags and “future” New Departure Democrats, and by August 1869, Grant’s support for it had come into doubt. On August 10, the Clarion (Democratic Paper) reported that the president unquestioningly desired the success of the proposed Dent ticket, though “discretion” was required due to his position (meaning he needed to keep the good-will of his Radical handlers). But a few days later, Grant’s letter to Dent, penned August 1, 1869, made it clear the Radicals weren’t going to stand for discretionary silence. Grant had to publicly decide for the Radicals, and he did. 

Dear Judge, I am thoroughly satisfied in my own mind that the success of the so-called Conservative Republican party in Mississippi would result in the defeat of what I believe to be the best interests of the state and country, that I have determined to say so to you (in writing of course). [Of course. The Radicals wanted this made perfectly clear. Since the thing was “published,” I’m assuming copies had been forwarded to the newspapers—in Mississippi and elsewhere, so there would be no doubt as to where Grant stood.] I would regret to see you run for an office and be defeated by my act; but as matters look now, I must throw the weight of my influence in favor of the party opposed to you. I earnestly hope that before the election there will be such concessions on either side in Mississippi as to unite all true supporters of the administration in support of one ticket....  

In other words, those untrustworthy Scalawags were anathema to the “regular” Republicans and I’m now sorry you have involved yourself with them (despite my earlier discreet support that you should do so—okay, those are my words, but reading between the lines is pretty easy here, especially when you add what happened in Virginia). 

Dent’s response, also public, asked the president “if it was reasonable to suppose that people having the free choice of their representatives would elect a class of politicians whose conduct had made them peculiarly obnoxious.” This was the charge, he said, made against the Radicals, not because they were Northerners and ex-Union soldiers (those, he pointed out existed in the conservative party he was to lead), but because of their policy of proscription. He emphasized that the conservative Republicans had been first in the state to advocate equal rights for the freedmen. “To this group of men [the Radicals],” he concluded in his response to Grant, “whom you foiled in their attempt to force upon the people of Mississippi the odious constitution rejected at the ballot box, you now give the hand of fellowship, and spurn the other class, who, accepting the invitation of the Republican party in good faith, came en masse to stand upon its platform and advocate its principles.” 

These are the public communications, the ones meant for the newspapers and the people. Who knows what private correspondence was passing between Grant and Dent. Nevertheless, I find much of interest in Dent’s response to the president. First, it all but confirms, at least for me, my argument that the seeds of Dent’s running for governor in Mississippi had been planted by the conservative group, Dent, and the president back in the winter-spring while the contenders were all in Washington hassling over the fate of the ’68 election. (see my 8 November and 25 November 2015 posts).

Dent also makes note of “the other class” who had come to the conservative party in good faith “to stand upon its platform and advocate its principles.” This is a reference to the coalition with the “enlightened” Democrats who have sold out party principles to return the state to the Union and get out from under martial law no matter the cost. His reference to Grant’s role in protecting the people from the obnoxious “constitution” which they’d rejected the summer before is also interesting, because ratification of that same constitution is on his platform, albeit with the proscription clauses now separate. But as I’ve said before, there was more wrong with that constitution than the proscription clauses. Fourteen months later, the “enlightened” Democrats, in tandem with the conservative Republicans are claiming the only thing wrong with it had been the proscription clauses, which have now been separated from it. Well, lo and behold, if the bulk of taxpayers, who’d be paying for its programs, turned out not to buy that bull. 

Grant’s abandonment pretty much dashed the hopes of the conservative Republicans and their Democratic allies in Mississippi, but the Dent coalition had come too far. The decision had been made, and they stuck with Dent (who wasn’t officially nominated until 8 September). So, there stood the conservatives, saddled with a man whose politics were generally unknown to the people, running on a platform that deviated very little with that of the Radicals and not deviating at all on points of principle (the Fifteenth Amendment and the progressive constitution) with the exception of proscription, and that was on a separate ballot. The executive steering committee now set out to frame a ticket designed to appeal to the conservative Negro voter, but lets face it, it was pretty hard to identify such a creature. The way to do it, of course, was to invite Negro leaders to the convention, advice echoed in the Clarion, and the conservatives followed that advice to an extent. Three Negroes were nominated for Secretary of State and the winner was Thomas Sinclair of Copiah County. He had few qualifications, but he is on record as the first Negro nominated for office in Mississippi. In addition to Dent as governor and Sinclair as secretary of state, the ticket was divided up between Democrats (of the enlightened persuasion) and Republicans. The lieutenant governor slot, auditor, and treasurer went to ex-Union soldiers. Attorney general and secretary of education went to native democrats.
 

On September 11, 1869, the Clarion reported that the ticket would receive its “warmest support, inasmuch as the triumph of the party meant the triumph of peace, justice, and liberty.” 

I’ll start with the Radical state convention next time. Thanks for reading,

 

Charlsie

Alcorn Readies His Campaign to Run for Governor on the Radical Ticket

This post is number thirty-seven 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 progressive constitution framed during the Black & Tan Convention in the winter/spring of 1868. As of my last post the issue of Mississippi’s returning to the Union had been returned, euphemistically speaking, to the people of Mississippi. 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, 20 February,  7 March  and 22 March 2016.

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Despite Congress’ refusal to void Mississippi’s July 1868 election results and declare the Republican ticket elected, its members were hard at work behind the scenes, setting the stage for a Republican victory in the state. There was, at the national level, as well as within the state, the same power struggle on-going between the regular Republicans (Radicals) and the more conservative members of the party. This struggle, as I’ve previously noted, is important for understanding what happened in Mississippi and Virginia during this time and what happened with/to the in-coming president. Ulysses S. Grant had appeared, at the outset, sympathetic to the conservatives in both states. His Radical handlers had yet to “get a handle on him.” They would tighten the leash shortly. 

Just as important to understanding the internal politics of the era is an appreciation for what was at stake. The Radicals needed control of the South in order to counter any threat to its agenda that might emerge from those Northern states paying attention to what was going on. The Radicals were altering the Founders’ Republic into a pure democracy, and in 1869 the next item on their agenda was the suffrage, a right belonging to sovereign states, and one ultimately usurped by the Federal government with the then un-ratified Fifteenth Amendment. The Radicals also looked at the Fifteenth Amendment as a means of maintaining their power into perpetuity. Controlling the South was key. 

So, whatever wheeling and dealing went on between the national leaders of the Republican Party and the “committee of sixteen” during the latter’s stay in Washington in the winter of 1868-1869, it was all framed to ensure a Republican victory in Mississippi. The linchpin for the Radical plan proved to be James Lusk Alcorn. He had, no doubt, been blessed to carry the torch. Eggleston, the carpetbag nominee who had led the ticket to defeat in the summer of 1868, was out. This, of course, was all going on before “Grant’s” decision to resubmit the new progressive constitution to the people separate from the obnoxious proscription clauses. Shoot, this was underway before Grant was even inaugurated, but things were jelling. 

Back at Friar’s Point, Mississippi (Alcorn’s home), the presses of a new paper, The Weekly Delta, started to roll on 9 February 1869. The editor was Robert J. Alcorn, James’ cousin who represented Yalobusha County at the Reconstruction constitutional convention during the winter of 1868. The paper’s original publisher was F. S. Belcher. In March, Belcher sold his interest to a chancery clerk of Coahoma County, George R. Alcorn, another of James’ cousins. That same month, James resigned from his law firm, Alcorn, Stricklin, and Harmon. The Weekly Delta claimed to be independent, but supported both the national Republican Party and Alcorn. It defended both and was unequivocally a Republican paper. 

Alcorn had always been an impressive man in Mississippi and his tossing his hat in with the Radicals was a matter of no small concern to the state’s Democrats. Being a “native son,” so to speak, he posed a subtle threat unlike that of the overtly distasteful Yankee interloper Eggleston, who had been adamantly in favor of the proscription clauses as opposed to Alcorn who had opposed them, but still campaigned for the constitution in the summer of 1868, stating those clauses could be removed later.  

On 2 June 1869, The Weekly Delta expressed hope that James Lusk Alcorn would run for governor on the Republican ticket. Ah, from die-hard Unionist to reluctant secessionist, who at the secession convention in 1861 brought the house down with, “Mr. President, the die is cast; the Rubicon is crossed; I follow the army that goes to Rome; I vote for the ordinance”, now to leadership of the state’s contingent of the foulest group of men who have ever sank their talons into the flesh of this nation. Such are the misfortunes of war and the expedient nature of political principle. 

There were four political entities that played a role in the upcoming events in Mississippi:  

The Radical Republicans or carpetbaggers, which I maintain Alcorn was not, either by place of origin or in principle, but with whom he’d made his bed;  

the conservative Republicans, the scalawags or native Mississippians, where Alcorn properly belonged;  

the more progressive Democrats, the official party, who were trying to figure out where they belonged—turns out they didn’t;  

and the old-line Democrats, known to history as the Bourbons, who at the time didn’t have a place, but waited in the wings and remained true to the basic principles of the old Democratic Party in the South.  

I will elaborate on each during the course of this series. Thanks for reading,

Charlsie

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

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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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

The “Present Legacies” of Reconstruction

I recently read Hodding Carter’s The Angry Scar, an easy-to-read overview of Reconstruction written by a moderate Southerner with a knowledge of history and obviously possessed with an interest in the “whys” of what happened—particularly after Reconstruction—and into the twentieth century. I’ve had the book for several years, but about to delve into the sequel to my most recent novel, Camellia Creek, I finally took time to sit down and read it. One book in THE MAINSTREAM OF AMERICA SERIES published back in the 1950s, the entire set sweeps American history from the discovery of the New World up to, well, the 1950s. I intend to ferret out other books in the series to see if they are as good as this one. Then again, perhaps it is simply Hodding Carter’s writing I like.

An editor of the Greenville Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Mississippi), Carter wrote a slew of books. This particular work comes replete with an extensive bibliography for further reading. Yes, I like older works, written before the revisionist has polluted the record by the mores and values of his present day (and yes, I know that same revisionist would argue the older works are polluted by the heat and passions of times too close to events). But it is the heat and passions and truths, such as the people living during those times perceived them to be, that I’m trying to capture in my insignificant works of escape fiction.

Hodding Carter ends the forward of The Angry Scar thus: “...; and my overriding purposes have been to separate truth from myth and to link significant past events with the present legacies of those events. In attempting to do these things I have become convinced that it has been almost as unfortunate for our nation that the North has remembered so little of Reconstruction as that the South has remembered so much.”

Today, so much of the myth is irrelevant to where the focus of the argument should lie, and spouting it undermines the rightness of the South’s cause. It simply is not needed; substantiated truth more than fulfills that goal. For all the right reasons the South was right, and in my opinion the “present legacies” prove it.

During my pre-teen years, through high-school, college, and even into my early days in the Navy, I was a football fan. One might even say that football was the man in my life. (Bear with me here. I do have a point.) In late summer, I could “smell” football in the air and see it in the changing blue of the sky. Yeah, it was really the approach of fall, but to me it was football. The demands of the Navy interrupted my weekend-long sojourns in front of the television. Then I got married and had a real man in my life, followed by his children. My interest in football, if not the unrequited love, faded away. Occasionally, when talking with my oldest son, I’ll slip and place the Colts in Baltimore. Hell, Johnny U is still the quarterback.

 

Now, to my point:

In the last chapter of The Angry Scar, Carter highlights all the old “myths” I grew up with regarding the South’s fight for independence and the degradation and humiliation of Reconstruction and the justification for all that came after. It’s easy to read between the lines and suspect he’s putting forth those old arguments tongue-in-cheek, as if maybe he doesn’t quite believe them himself, or more likely that he does and they simply don’t matter anymore (the book was published in 1959 at the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement, and he was a Kennedy man). When I read those arguments, as real to me today as when I learned them growing up, I ask myself, “Are you in as big a time warp on this subject as you are in regards to the Baltimore Colts?”

Maybe, but I really do know that the Colts are in Indianapolis and Johnny Unitas is a football legend passed on to Glory. I’ve been out of the Navy and back home now for as long as I was in. I don’t live in a vacuum. I’m very much aware of the party that controls the White House and who or what controls the Congress of the United States; of universal suffrage and an electorate that votes into office corrupt men and women who pilfer the earnings of working Americans to feed their dissolute government handout programs and perpetuate the cycle of non-working recipients voting them back into office; of costs driven so high by the perverse injection of tax-payers’ dollars and federal regulations into private programs such as healthcare and higher education that even younger, working tax-payers are forced to accept government support in order to make ends meet.

I heard it said not long ago that public memory was around five years. So, theoretically, in five years people will struggle under the onerous weight of Obamacare as if it’s always been part of us, just like the huge socialist programs and federal interference enacted by LBJ fifty some odd years ago have “always” been part of us as has the misinterpreted “retirement plan” known as Social Security inacted under FDR and the income tax under Woodrow Wilson. Those programs are all twentieth- and, now, twenty-first-century Constitutional violations attributed to democrats, but the republicans have done nothing to eliminate them. This huge expansion of Federal control links directly to the South’s defeat a century and a half ago. That concept is regarded as a joke these days, yet things just keep getting worser and worser.

This brings me back to Hodding Carter’s forward—the North’s remembering so little, the South’s so much. It’s good to remember for the sake not only of the South but even more so for the Republic. As critical as the delegation of powers between the three branches of the Federal government, so too was the delineation of powers between the federal government, clearly limited by the Constitution, and that of the States—broadly interpreted by the Tenth Amendment and insisted upon by the states upon ratification of the Constitution. No, I do not believe the War was over slavery. I do believe people use such lofty arguments to excuse the things they do, but I do not believe populations kill and sacrifice their lives for philanthropic purposes. Economic self-interest, offensive or defensive, couched as such, yes. I do believe the South seceded to protect its economic interests in the face of a hate-filled section of the nation that enacted repeated threats to Dixie’s interests (not to mention darker, more nefarious threats to her people) for the betterment of its own. And yes, I do believe the South had a right to secede to protect its interests, its way of life, and its people. No, I do not believe the South started the War, despite the provocation at Sumter—Lincoln, not Jefferson Davis, chose war. And yes, I do accept Lincoln prosecuted the War better than did Davis (oh duh).

And finally, yes, I do have lofty dreams, which any of you who know the history of then and of the time since can understand, if not necessarily appreciate. Those are no less than the nullification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the striking of paragraph 2 from the Fifteenth, and repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment. That should put the correct powers back into the states where they belong, end that “anchor baby” bullshit, and cut off the exorbitant capital the Federals require to fund their give-away programs and the corresponding bureaucracy to operate them, while at the same time holding the States hostage for taxpayers’ dollars. Of course, to be on the safe side, the sixteenth amendment should probably be replaced with something else clarifying that income tax is not apportioned—it wasn’t in 1789 and it isn’t today—to keep Congress from continuing to pilfer the working man’s dollars by perverting Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. And just another little point regarding the sixteenth amendment—the controversies regarding the actions of way too many state legislatures reported to have ratified that thing makes it, in my humble opinion, worthy of nullification vice repeal—can states nullify what they passed in violation of their own constitutions? I don't know the answer.

Good luck with all that, right? Tongue-in-cheek aside, I wonder what Hodding Carter would think of the looming power of the Federal government, fueled by a corrupt democracy, today?

 

Yep, those “present legacies” just keep getting worser and worser.