State Rights was About Federalism, not Slavery

I just finished reading From Founding Fathers to Fire-Eaters by James Rutledge Roesch. It’s a new book (2018) on an old subject, but it’s an excellent, entertaining, and both an enjoyable and easy read considering the complexity of the subject and the brilliant minds of the Southern political theorists whose works Mr. Roesch has compiled and edited into a succinct outline of the state rights doctrine of the Old South. [Take that in conjunction with Alcorn’s comment in his 1870 inaugural speech about how Southerners should quit political theorizing and jump in and wallow in the trough with the Yankees.]

The doctrine did not begin with the abolitionists or the Missouri Compromise or even the Constitutional Convention, and it was never about slavery. As Mr. Roesch shows to any reasonably intelligent person with only a modicum of knowledge regarding this nation’s history, the doctrine was there at the beginning, inherent in the colonial charters, the oldest of which was Virginia’s. I highly recommend anyone interested in truth regarding the state rights doctrine vis-a-vis the post-republic egalitarian/centralization doctrine get the book, devour it, and share it.

The nationalists (centralizers) have been part of our government from the start, much like the serpent was integral to the Garden of Eden. They were the Tories who reluctantly joined the Patriot cause after the short-sighted British Parliament refused to stop interfering with home rule, undermining their influence at home. [This is me talking here. Mr. Roesch is kinder to all the founders.] Embracing the cause of independence, these self-aggrandizers embarked on the quest to build a new economic empire. To realize their goal, they needed a supreme, centralized government and a national “democracy,” served by said government.

Patriots to the republic managed to forestall them for the bulk of the next century, first with the Articles of Confederation, then with federalism, hallmarked by the state rights doctrine woven into the Constitution. Nevertheless, with the ratification of said Constitution, the states had sown the seeds of their demise. The destruction of the Southern Confederacy ended the federal republic and gave the ghosts of those old Tories their long-coveted crown. Hopefully they celebrated their victory in…, well, never mind where.

Today, some neo-cons still give lip service to the republic, or the Lincolnites’ perverse take on it, but with the Left picking up their banner of egalitarianism/pure democracy and exploding it, the neo-cons should be rethinking their position [Lincoln’s on the chopping block, too, and it’s not us Southerners putting him there]. Instead, they appease. Truth is the nationalists and the Left are both statists. Both need all references to state rights (true federalism) gone.

The nationalists have hidden behind the holy crusade to end slavery to justify their egregious violations of the Constitution since halfway through the “Civil War.” [They had other unifying causes before the abolitionists gave them slavery]. The farther time moves from those long-ago events, the more clouded the historical memory of everyday folk, and lack of education on the subject of both that War and the founding of the republic hastens the encroaching shadows. That is by design. There is no difference in the goal of modern Democrats and Republicans in regards to the republic.

Today’s attacks on the South not only go unchallenged by “so-called” conservatives, who by default the South supports, but are actually echoed by these same people, who mollify their treachery by stating something to the effect that we need to keep the history, but annotate it to remember our mistakes (sins). Pittance, I guess, is what these curs are trying to foster. Problem is slavery isn’t the operative mistake here, and what really needs to be remembered is being buried deeper and deeper beneath their obfuscation. The gutless wonders fear the PC crowd and believe they are protecting themselves from the Left’s onslaught by tossing such bones. Believers in the republic, or perhaps those who simply respect its memory, whether Southern or not, have no champion. Granted the republic is dead. The majority of Americans rejected it long ago. Today most don’t even know what it was, its having been perverted by self-aggrandizing politicians into something it wasn’t. But we Southerners being told to piss on our ancestors’ graves, all too often now by other Southerners, in order to further the ambitions of one statist group over those of another, is going too far.

One can pinpoint a number of places in our antebellum history highlighting the states’ and the peoples’ rejection of our federal republic. The states’ failure to support Kentucky's and Virginia's resolutions against Adams’ Alien and Sedition Acts and later South Carolina during the Nullification Crisis; the application of the Constitution to the states by the Supreme court under Marshall; and the Northern states’ answering Lincoln’s call for troops to invade the South. The Missouri Crisis was a biggie. That’s when the South should have left the Union. It was clear then that sectional interests were simply too conflicting.

Reconstruction itself abounds with violations, but those violations may not have been so pervasive had the Northern populace not given Congress to the Radicals in the fall of 1866. But what did it matter at that point? The South was in shambles, and Northerners as a block had already shown how little they cared about our founders’ republic. They had, in fact, rejected it. They wanted a centralized Union, and they created one by force of arms. Today the old republic is only a memory being twisted into something evil, the final step before the statists feel comfortable in eradicating it altogether.

We need to keep that history untarnished, y’all. It’s what our Confederate ancestors fought for. In another time and another place, Patriots will need a foundation on which to build again. 

Thanks for reading,

Charlsie

Southern Whiggery and Southern States

This is post number eight in a series detailing Southern Whiggery. See the sidebar for earlier posts.
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In my last post, I made reference to a 1954 American Historical Review article by Charles Grier Sellers titled “Who Were the Southern Whigs”. In the article, Mr. Sellers argued against Southern Whiggery being the result of state-rights sentiment, but rather the result of adverse reaction to Jackson’s Bank War. In that same post, I countered that had Whiggery been simply National Republicans in drag the Southern state righters would have never been involved at all. Taking that one step further, Clay would not have gained control of the Senate committees in December 1833, and the term Whig would have remained where it belonged with the patriots of ’76, John C. Calhoun, and the Southern Nullifiers/state righters who opposed the central government’s overreach (protective tariff/military coercion against a sovereign state). No matter what Southern Whiggery became, or Whiggery period for that matter, its roots are South Carolina’s nullifiers and the grudging support Calhoun’s principles found among the likes of John Tyler of Virginia, Wylie P. Mangum of North Carolina, and Dixon Lewis of Alabama. It is this core that Henry Clay locked his sights on and into which he moved the National Republicans lock, stock, and barrel, leaving the Old Jeffersonian Party to the Jacksonians. In so doing, Clay struck out anew, freed of the overt “nominal” baggage of the defunct Federalists who had found their way into National Republican ranks. Covert or not, those men followed Clay out of the Jeffersonian Party and shortly after identified as Whigs (Northern Whigs).

Add to that the Southern National Republicans, who were already sitting in good political stead when Clay consolidated his new party. These men remained nationalists in the “National Republican” scheme of things. Oh, they wanted the South to have her rights within the nation, but with the choice between nationalism (Union/centralization) and state-rights, nationalism held sway. For those of that stripe, Southern Whiggery evolved, and Southern sectionalism evolved along with it.

For those of you who have been following my series on Alcorn, think back on his criticism of Jefferson Davis’ execution of the War Between the States. James Alcorn was a Southern nationalist...and a centralizer. That is a characteristic of Southern Whiggery passed down from the National Republicans.

Another failure in the study of Southern Whiggery that Charles Sellers points to is the missing, according to him, application of geographical sectionalism within the states themselves—the division between upcountry and low country, hill country and black belt. Sellers suggests the study of that aspect of Southern Whiggery has been omitted due to the focus on national sectionalism and state rights and that the Southern Whigs’ opposition to the nationalistic leg of the party has been over emphasized. Well, maybe it had dropped out of the narrative by 1954, but Arthur Cole certainly mentioned it in Whig Party of the South published in 1914. Perhaps in the not so distant past (sixty years ago) there was a tendency to focus on the party after attacks on slavery had caused Southerners to close ranks, obscuring the look back at the social, economic, and ideological lines that originally crisscrossed within each state—Sellers did make reference to the “modern” scholar of the subject, but Sellers specific references to Cole’s shortcomings in his article mitigates against that. I’ve not noted that omission myself. I’ve always known that the Whigs represented business and banking interests and in the South included the wealthiest cotton planters.

Sellers goes on to imply that recent studies (circa 1954) fail to recognize that when the Whig party formed, the antebellum South had a vigorous two-party system, and the individual voter was focused on his party and its place and success within the section of the state he resided. The banding together of Southern Whigs (and Democrats) against a common, anti-Southern foe didn’t evolve until the late 1840s. Now, I do believe the study of Southern Whiggery is lacking...or lost. Where I disagree with Sellers is where...well... the point made when I started this post—Sellers’ argument that the formation of the party in the South was over the Bank, not state-rights. I believe it was both. I think there was a big dichotomy in Southern Whiggery—strict construction/loose construction, republicanism/nationalism, state rights/Union, and constitutionality/tyranny. I say this because I can see the dual nature of Southern Whiggery in my study of Reconstruction. Both strains bled through to the end.

Let’s look first at the 1824 election that sent John Quincy Adams to the White House and the more popular Andrew Jackson back to Tennessee and how it panned out in Dixie: Andrew Jackson carried Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana (except the extreme southeast, where the sugar barons resided—they went for Adams), both North and South Carolina, and most of Maryland. Missouri and Kentucky went for Clay. Georgia went for William Crawford (a native son) as did Virginia and extreme western Maryland. 

[It’s sometimes hard to align the politicians of this era primarily because party principles/platforms hadn’t solidified. The term National Republican doesn’t appear until 1830, and since we know that some National Republicans had started calling themselves Whigs by the spring of 1834, the term wasn’t around long (though you wouldn’t know it by the way it pops up in history). Nevertheless, though the life of the name was brief during its day, the principles of National Republicanism within the Democratic-Republican ranks went back to the presidency of James Madison who promoted a kinder, gentler form of government interference...oops, excuse me..., I meant to say, promotion of the national economy manifested by Henry Clay’s American System. In applying terms to the Adams’ administration, these men are often called anti-Jacksonians; however, that term is used well into the Jacksonian period and it does not follow (at least, in my mind) that all anti-Jacksonians were National Republicans in the “Madisonian”sense of the term.]

Now let’s look at the Southern state legislative elections following the formation of the Whig Party in the winter/spring of 1833-1834. And before I continue, this is how I plan to frame this series on the Southern Whigs—reviewing politics within each Southern state vis-à-vis what’s happening with the national party and the Whig delegations in Congress.

This information on the 1834 and 1835 state elections is culled primarily from Michael Holt’s Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party.

In Maryland, Kentucky, and Louisiana the National Republicans already had a hold. Here the National Republicans carried on under their new name and the conversion was pretty much seamless. Maryland always having been a predominantly National Republican state, the Whigs won 5 of 8 congressional seats in 1835, and in Clay’s Kentucky during the summer/fall of 1835, Whigs won 8 of 13 congressional seats, up 5 seats from the previous Congress (Kentucky also gained a seat that year).

Much farther south, Louisiana’s Whigs won the governorship in July of 1834. An overly optimistic Clay attributed the victory (along with gubernatorial wins in Indiana and Illinois) as a referendum against Jackson. In Louisiana, however, the Whig victory dealt more with the popularity of the candidates and factional rivalries than national issues. Though Louisiana’s Whig legislators denounced removal of the deposits in the spring, it was ethnic rivalries between French Creoles in Southern Louisiana and native Americans in the northern part of the state (I think Holt here refers to white folks who had moved in vs the French-mix, who had been in Southeastern Louisiana since the early 18th century) had long shaped state politics. The Creoles had maintained power through suffrage restrictions, gubernatorial patronage, and over representation in the legislature. When the Democratic nominee suggested changing the situation in 1834, the Creoles rallied behind the Whig candidate, who just happened to be a Creole, and the Whigs prevailed.*

In Virginia, nationalists in the west (National Republicans representing the region’s mining interests) who’d backed Clay in the 1832 presidential contest merged with the more numerous eastern state-rights advocates to condemn Jackson’s removal of the deposits . This coalition adopted the Whig name and took the Virginia legislature in 1834. The legislature then forced the resignation of Jacksonian William C. Rives from the Senate by instructing him to vote for restoration of the deposits (which he refused to do). In his stead, it elected prominent state righter Benjamin Watkins Leigh to replace Rives. John Tyler, another state righter, was Virginia’s senior senator. State righter Littleton W. Tazewell was elected governor. In Virginia, the struggle was one between liberty and power, rather than bank or no bank.

In North Carolina, Calhounites led by John Branch, state-rights followers of the influential Senator Willie P. Mangum, and a tiny group of National Republicans joined forces to protest Jackson’s removal of the deposits and to contest the August legislative election. By the summer of 1834, they were using the name Whig to identify themselves even though North Carolina Whigs didn’t hold their first state convention until December 1835. As it turned out, the national issue of the bank deposits didn’t make the cut in North Carolina. The Whigs needed state issues with which to confront the Democrats, because taking on Jackson with only a national issue didn’t engage the voting populace.* The Democrats defeated the Whigs in August and immediately tried to push Mangum out (but he held on until November 1836). By the summer/fall of 1835 the Whigs held only six of thirteen Congressional seats. Still, that’s more than the three seats held the year Jackson won reelection.

Georgia’s congressional election of 1834 and the 1835 gubernatorial race was between a pro-Jackson Union party and an anti-Jackson state-rights party led by John M. Berrien. The state-rights party denounced the removal of the deposits as tyranny and economically pernicious, but its main platform was support of state rights and hostility to Jackson’s Proclamation to the people of South Carolina and the Force Bill. But again, Holt points out that state issues* were missing and what the Georgia “Whigs” had in their arsenal were national issues. The Georgia pro-Jackson Democrats swept the congressional and legislative elections. In 1835, the Democrats elected both the governor and four congressmen.

In Mississippi, a state-rights association formed in the spring of 1834 in protest of the Force Bill, and in December, a Whig convention met denouncing the removal of the deposits and Jackson’s tyranny. This group then arranged a ticket, designed to gain state-rights support for the gubernatorial and congressional elections scheduled for November. The plan was to fuse the two major anti-Jacksonian groups in the state. In 1835, the Whigs won the governorship, but lost both congressional seats and the legislature by more than a two to one margin.

Missouri gave up no congressional seats to the Whigs in 1835; however, John Bull, a National Republican (and prior Jackson elector) was the first occupant of a newly created congressional seat in 1833 (Missouri’s second). That says something to me. He was replaced by a Jacksonian Democrat, Albert Harrison in 1835—well, that says something, too, doesn’t it?

By the end of 1834, Alabama was one of only three Southern states that had not formed an anti-Democratic party that might align with the Whigs. The other two were Tennessee and South Carolina. In 1835 Whigs held two of Alabama’s five Congressional seats.

In the spring and fall of 1835, Tennessee Whigs won 8 of 13 congressional seats, a major shift from the one seat National Republicans had traditionally held in that state in the years leading up to the Twenty-fourth Congress. The Whigs also won the gubernatorial contest over three-time incumbent Democrat William Carroll, but that victory had less to do with national issues and more to do with both state issues and Hugh White’s nomination as the Whig candidate for president to run against Van Buren. White’s candidacy, in fact, was the impetus for the formation of the Whig Party in Tennessee (1835). The Whig candidate for governor, Newton Cannon, won based on the huge vote from east Tennessee where Cannon’s advocacy for state-financed internal improvements found favor. The voter turnout in the 1835 gubernatorial contest was huge, even greater than that in the presidential race a year later (not unusual, except that Hugh White was a native son). Nevertheless, it was the gubernatorial race, not White’s candidacy, that solidified the Whig Party in Tennessee.

I have omitted South Carolina from the study, for she never formally participated in Clay’s altered Whiggery.

*Professor Holt makes this observation in discussing the state elections: Where the Whig Party campaigned almost exclusively against Jackson, one on one—especially where the only issues were national ones, the Jacksonians won. So for the Whigs, the glow of the spring of ’34 was dimming by the fall and had grown dismal as of 1835 (well, except in Tennessee where Whiggery was apparently booming). The improving economic situation resulting from an infusion of European capital and Biddle’s easing up on contraction had relieved the brief resentment against Democratic banking policies and prevented the Whigs from exploiting Jackson’s new anti-banking initiatives: specifically, his hard money initiative undermining circulatability of private banknotes and his Species Circular prohibiting the purchase of public land with paper money, an act that alienated Democratic businessmen. In time these practices would provide ammunition for Whig campaigners, but the three year boom starting in 1834 nullified Whig gains to date.

The election of 1836, Van Buren, the sub-treasury...and their effects on Whiggery in Dixie yet to come.

Thanks for reading,

Charlsie

Identifying Those Earliest Southern Whigs and Where That Has Led Me

This is post number seven in a series detailing Southern Whiggery. See the sidebar for earlier posts.

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The proof is in the pudding, and by that I mean the “truth” is in the pudding—in the taste, not in the pretty picture on the box. Calhoun and his fellow nullifiers from South Carolina were the Whigs and the original anti-Jackson “party” as opposed to a mere “faction” of the Old Jeffersonians. If the Whig Party had looked at the beginning like what it evolved into (over a relatively short period) there would have been no reason to involve the Southern state righters. The National Republican faction (which already contained Southerners) would have simply broken with the Jacksonian Democrats (which had a lot more Southerners) and life would have continued pretty much as it eventually did anyway. Ah, but Henry Clay would have had no more Southern support in 1836, 1840, or whenever, looking into the then unforeseeable future, than he’d had in 1832 when Andrew Jackson smashed him in his second win of the presidency. Southern Whiggery, at its inception, was not an endorsement of Clay’s policies, but was anti-Jacksonian in its own right. The National Republicans and the state righters making up the new “Whig Party” were allies operating on opposite ends of the spectrum regarding Constitutional interpretation and were personified in the beings of Clay and Calhoun.

From the very beginning, there were Americans in the young Republic, in then much less polarized sections, who fought liberal interpretation of the Constitution. But with the end of the War of 1812, a spirit of nationalism swept the country and found a home in the hearts of many Southerners, Calhoun among them. Recall that Federalist New England had opposed the war because, simply put, blockades and embargoes declared necessary by the central government hurt her interests. As a result, focus was placed on the interests of the nation as a whole, which meant using the powers of the central government for the “general welfare” of all. By the 1830s the “revenue” only tariff had morphed into a high protective tariff benefiting New England (and Midwestern) mercantilists to the detriment of everyone else, in particular the agrarian South. The by now more pragmatic ex-young nationalist John C. Calhoun had stopped second-guessing what had gone wrong and was determined to set things right. Funny thing about setting precedents, once that cat is out of the bag, it’s hard to get him back in. A generation of American leaders had failed to heed what the political theorists of the founding generation had warned against, utilization of a centralized state to promote self-aggrandizing, un-republican values. Folks tend to cite Thomas Jefferson here, and I certainly have no problem with that, but he did support ratification of the Constitution. My favorite is Patrick Henry who warned us not to ratify the thing with its nominally limited central government...the first and biggest precedent of all.

Another, who was still around and kicking at the time, was North Carolina’s Nathaniel Macon, who also opposed ratification, but represented his state in the House and later the Senate almost from the inception of the new government. The focus of his career of thirty-seven years was keeping the central government limited as decreed by its charter. An original opponent of the Federalist Party, Macon never fell under the spell of its brand of economic nationalism, forwarded in turn by Clay and the National Republicans. The fact remained that a central government had been created and what would follow would be generations of self-serving men seeking to control it. Their weapon of choice and, not coincidentally the one most conducive to wheedling power and money from the people in the name of common good, was the general welfare clause.

By the time the nationalistic ardor created by the War of 1812 had cooled and the stark reality of having fallen victim to its passion struck home, dramatic action was called for. President Andrew Jackson, an ardent nationalist of the Jacksonian mold (I’m being facetious, but I can’t think of a better way to say it—he was an anti-New England Unionist) struck against Biddle’s National Bank to the cheers of the common folk in the South and the West and the jeers of the National Republicans regardless of section. Calhoun (and South Carolina) struck against the tariff. Ah, but a strike against the tariff was a strike against the national government, which the nationalist Jackson could not tolerate. Jackson’s counter was to propose a military strike against South Carolina. That was something the Jacksonian-Democrat state righters—even those not in sympathy with Calhoun—could not sit idly by and abide. The nullifiers were limited in number and weak, but Southerners were plentiful, and Jackson was pushing the envelope (and Southerners made up a good chunk of his base).

But the Nullification Crisis didn’t occur in a vacuum. Many wealthy and powerful Southerners (the sugar planters of Louisiana, Kentucky hemp-growers, the mining industries of western Virginia) supported a protective tariff, but also of significance in the abandonment of Jackson by some state righters was the issue of the U.S. National Bank, an entity which had Southern supporters in the aforementioned sugar merchants, miners, and hemp-growers as well as black-belt cotton planters. These men were primarily of the National Republican variety, but the existence of nominal supporters of a national bank among state righters does have purchase. A national bank stabilized the money and banking in general. The problem with Biddle’s bank was its partisanship; it catered to and was supported by, a certain, finite, class of people.

[I believe an argument could be made that support of Biddle’s bank was not necessarily the same as support for a national bank for which, at a number of junctures in our early history, an amendment to the Constitution was suggested to accommodate.]

To rehash, Dr. Michael Holt in the Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party states that at the opening of Congress, December 1833, there were twenty National Republicans and twenty Jacksonians squaring off in the U.S. Senate along with two nullifiers and six Southern state-rights senators who had abandoned the Jackson camp in the wake of Jackson’s overt threat to South Carolina. These eight senators held the balance of power in the Senate. Neither Holt nor Arthur Cole in History of the Whig Party of the South identified precisely who these men were. South Carolina’s nullifiers, of course, are easy to identify: John C. Calhoun and William C. Preston. I’m not absolutely sure who the other six were, but having done a little research, I hereby take a stab at identification: Gabriel Moore of Alabama, John Black and George Poindexter of Mississippi, Willie P. Mangum of North Carolina, John Tyler of Virginia, and Joseph Kent of Maryland.

Originally a Jacksonian, Mangum is on record for warning his fellow Southerners to trust no administration forcing the South to wear the chains of the American System, and in 1833, he broke with Jackson for doing what he perceived as that very thing.

Just for the record, at the same time the anti-Jacksonians seized control of the Senate, the House gained an additional eleven Southern anti-Jacksonians and five additional nullifiers—four of the latter from South Carolina and one from Alabama. Of course, it made no difference in the House, where Jacksonian Democrats had things locked up.

In the course of searching for the identity of those six senators, I came across a 1954 article by Princetonian Charles Grier Sellers in The American Historical Review titled “Who Were the Southern Whigs.” From the title, as you may have guessed, I had hoped for specific identities of those six men, but his article didn’t deal with the U. S. Senate, but rather focused broadly on the House and on state legislatures. Mr. Sellers’ argues it was the Bank War, not state rights, that shaped the Southern Whig Party. He appears to be challenging the prevailing belief 63 years ago that state rights shaped Southern Whiggery. Perhaps this is still the prevailing academic position, particularly among Southerners. I admit that I have trouble seeing the Southern Whigs as state righters, but I have less of a problem seeing them as strict constructionists, and therein might be the problem—using the term “strict constructionist” interchangeably with “state righter”. Swap nullifier and secessionist for strict constructionist and the problem increases. Those latter were definitely strict constructionists, but does it follow that all strict constructionists were secessionists?

[Now, in my mind, if you apply strict construction to the Tenth Amendment, then you believe in the right to secede—how could you not? Whether you’re in favor of secession or not is a different question. But that’s me.]

Throughout their history, Southern Whigs compromised their strict-constructionist stance, condoning violation of the Constitution only in “certain situations.” But who determines what constitutes those “situations”? One cannot simply qualify what is necessary and proper under certain conditions, then proceed with the violation in the name of an arbitrary, so-called good. Not, that is, and remain a strict constructionist. A “so-called good” is relative, all too often, to one’s self-interest, and the basest form of self-interest is greed. This is a classic un-republican concept. Further, one can’t advocate the sanctity of Union, then vote for secession, which is what a lot of them eventually did, indicating the Union wasn’t quite so sacred after all. Pondering that, when push came to shove, sounds like the Southern Whigs’ state-right colors bled through.

I’m gonna close the post at this juncture because the story of Southern Whiggery is as much about what the Southern Whigs were as it is about who they were. Throughout its evolution, the character of Southern Whiggery varied from state to state and was shaped not only by the interests of the individual states, but by the interests of different sections within each state. The story is as rich and varied as everything else about the South and goes hand in hand with what can be detailed about the opposition Southern Democrats. Each state had a healthy, viable two-party system before sectionalism (and nationalism, darn it) clouded the political horizon. I think it’s a story worth telling and is, in my humble opinion, critical to understanding what led to sectionalism, war, discord within the Confederacy, Reconstruction, Redemption, and eventually the solid “Democratic” South.

So, my anticipated “brief” junket into the history of Southern Whiggery has taken on a life of its own. I will continue with who/what were the Southern Whigs next time. At the same time I plan to return to Alcorn and the dark days of Reconstruction, and the two series will parallel each other.

Thanks for reading,

Charlsie

Clay’s Objectives in Settling the Nullification Crisis

This is post number five in a sub-series detailing Southern Whiggery. See the sidebar for earlier posts.

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I give some thought to Henry Clay from time to time, the great compromiser, “America’s greatest senator.” What I see is a man with little or no interest in history and even less understanding of it or, at least, the consequences of ignoring it, who made a career fomenting crises, then jumping in before the shooting started and winning glory for quelling the actions of “mad men”, thus averting the near disasters he was instrumental in creating. 

With the South Carolina Ordnance of Nullification, the Jackson administration had two months to come up with a plan to address the Carolinians’ grievances, either by reforming the tariff or by taking military action against the state. Now, I don’t know if those were the only options, but they were the ones being looked at. Despite the bluster that accompanied Jackson’s threatening Proclamation to the People of South Carolina on 10 December 1832, Jackson did embark on a fix by drawing up a reform tariff that only a Democrat could possibly love (I’m speaking tongue-in-cheek). That task was assigned to Gulian Verplanck a four-term Democratic congressman from New York and a member of Van Buren’s camp. Verplanck was a devoted free-trader and the new chair of the House Ways and Means Committee. What he came up with was a tariff bill designed to rid the treasury of its surplus and return the tariff to the original 1816 level—the post-War-of-1812 tariff passed to protect the young Republic from designs Britain (or any European power for that matter), still had on what now belonged to the United States. Twelve years later, that tariff had mushroomed into the protective Tariff of Abominations behind which Northern industry sat fat and getting fatter while the rest of the nation, in particularly the vocal South, suffered the price. 

Touted as the Administration’s offer, the Verplanck Bill was actually Van Buren’s Bill, and I do believe the verdict is still out as to whether or not Jackson wanted it to pass, but rumor was he didn’t. Given his nationalist leanings that was probably the case. South Carolina’s representative on this matter was her senator, John C. Calhoun, who had personal as well as professional conflicts with both Jackson and Van Buren. Supporters of the American System, of course, spurned the bill. Under it, protection for American industry would have been withdrawn within two years. Leading Southerners such as Littleton Tazewell and John Tyler of Virginia, and Robert Hayne of South Carolina, all opposed to the protective tariff, had for years suggested a gradual reduction in the tariff as a concession to Northern manufacturers (who, it should be remembered, felt the tariff was the patriotic duty of the rest of the nation—and the South dared “offer a concession” in the process of eliminating it? Why the very nerve!). No such option was being offered here. National Republicans feeding off the American System never wanted protection to end and weren’t the least bit interested in sacrificing their interests to appease South Carolina. 

Henry Clay, despondent over his electoral defeat in 1832, initially displayed only fleeting interest in the crisis, but once confronted with the Verplanck Bill, he was faced with the stark reality of saving the Union by sacrificing the American System—that’s really the choice the Verplanck Bill offered. As representatives of the New England/Pennsylvania manufacturers were gearing up to do battle against the Verplanck Bill (early winter of 1833), Clay introduced a compromise tariff bill that called for the gradual reduction in the protective tariff over a period of seven years, at the end of which the tariff would be reduced to revenue only and protection ended. Clay argued that after seven years, businesses should be able to hold their own. Needless to say, Massachusetts’ Daniel Webster and the interests he served were appalled at the thought of ending protection and still more so at Clay’s apparent betrayal of the system he had so strongly supported. They would never willingly abandon protection. Clay countered, apologizing that in reality nothing could bind Congress seven years down the road.

Clay’s excuse speaks volumes. This was why strict construction/limiting the Federal government to its delegated responsibilities was so important. Once the precedent was set, proponents saw no limit to the tariff’s possibilities until South Carolina challenged its constitutionality. Reading Clay’s words, it’s obvious he intended the compromise to be temporary, designed only to meet current exigencies. Once the climate calmed, the National Republicans could again raise the issue of the protective tariff.  

Webster, seeking his own leadership role among the National Republicans, now balked at Clay’s leadership and forsook the compromise, twisting support for the tariff as patriotism and in accordance with the Constitution. For Webster and other radical National Republicans (probably those with Federalist blood flowing through their veins), abandoning protection was tantamount to treason.  

Given Webster and New England’s reaction to the plan, Clay shelved it, and the House began debate on the Verplanck/Van Buren Bill knowing it would not get out of the Senate, even if it did make it out of the House. By now it was January, and the nullifiers in South Carolina were calling for secession if Jackson dared to defy their Ordinance of Nullification. Secession was a more extreme measure than what Calhoun anticipated, his goal being to prove “interposition” a viable recourse for a state when faced with federal overreach. Along the periphery, folks were starting to believe Jackson might take military action against South Carolina, and politically, given Jackson’s nationalism and aggressive stance toward a sovereign state, a growing rift was fracturing the Democratic Party across the South.  

Webster’s ambitions were well-served by the crisis. Within the National Republican Party, Clay had Webster checked, but Webster was not above changing affiliations. At Jackson’s request, Edward Livingston, his secretary of state, approached the Massachusetts Senator for help in framing the Force Bill. Webster complied. Calhoun referred to Webster’s Force Bill as the Revenue Collection Bill, a bill to make war on a sovereign state. For Calhoun, the issue was a theoretical one—what the central government could and could not do under the Constitution. The Senate majority, seriously lacking in theorists, placed little merit on the theoretical. The Force Bill passed. 

Now here’s the question: With the Force Bill passed and the Verplanck Bill on the verge of defeat, why did Henry Clay waltz in again with yet another compromise designed to be acceptable to the administration, to South Carolina and with, at least, a chance of making it through Congress? In The Great Triumvirate Merrill Patterson suggests he acted out of fear for the American System at the hands of the Jackson administration. That, yes, but I think in the wake of his disastrous showing in the 1832 election, Clay realized he needed Southern electoral support. Certainly the Southern Democrats accused him of that course as did the New England manufacturers, so mine is not an original thought. Another point was that Clay suspected South Carolina preferred anyone but Jackson get credit for the compromise; likewise, Webster believed Clay would come up with anything to get credit for the settlement of the crisis. When Clay approached Calhoun, the latter jumped at the hope of resolving the crisis.  

Clay’s new plan was the same basic one he’d offered back in January (it was mid-February by then, and Congress was scheduled to adjourn the first week of March). The current plan took the Tariff of 1832, with major modifications, and tacked on a gradual reduction, down to the revenue level, over a period of nine and a half years (to 1 January 1842) at which time it was to revert to a revenue-only tariff with the understanding the rate could change depending on the needs of the government (not private industry). Proponents of the American System accused Clay of abandoning the economic program he had created. Clay countered that nullification was not the threat to the American System, Jackson was. 

Clay argued, as he had a month earlier, that in nine plus years the manufacturers should be able to stand alone without the aid of government—and hinted again that a lot could happen over almost ten years—how does one hold Congress to an agreement made almost a decade earlier? Clay was merely pushing the issue down the road to relieve the immediate crisis. With the protective tariff, a precedent had been set and would be forever abused. Clay argued that for the next near decade the North would have its protection and the South would faithfully do its duty believing the end of the thing was in sight.

In debate, Clay challenged Webster’s writing the Force Bill to wage a bloody war against the people of South Carolina, yet was now unwilling to offer this compromise to accompany the threat and return the nation to peace and stability? To Webster and his constituents in the Northeast, the compromise tariff neutered the Force Bill and surrendered protection under intimidation. Despite Webster’s protest, the package passed, and the Enforcement Bill and the Compromise Bill went out together.  

Calhoun rushed home to South Carolina where the compromise was considered a victory. [And I guess it was...something gained—a distant light at the end of a long, long tunnel, perhaps? Certainly Calhoun had shown “nullification” could get a reaction, if nothing else. The settlement of the affair puts me in mind of Mao Tse-tung’s adage of “two steps forward (for proponents of the American System) and one step back.”] The South Carolina legislature repealed its Ordinance of Nullification, then a few days later declared the Enforcement Bill null and void. The latter was a matter of necessity. No matter how one cut it, the Force Bill implied the central government could, at its discretion, interfere in sovereign states on matters outside the scope of its limited powers.  

Meanwhile back in Washington, Clay’s hopes for Jackson’s “alienation” again failed to bear fruit, because the state righters who broke with Jackson did not rally to the National Republican cause. (You know, those same National Republicans some members of which had just concocted the Force Bill calling for the invasion of South Carolina by Federal troops? Oh, duh.)  

Still, something significant had occurred. When Congress reconvened in December of 1833, six Southern senators had defected the Jackson camp and now identified themselves as independents. In addition, South Carolina sent two nullifiers. The make-up of the Senate stood at twenty National Republicans, twenty Jacksonians, and those eight independents, who held the balance of power in the U.S. Senate.  

And they all had another executive crisis to deal with. Next time.

Thanks for reading,

Charlsie

The Nullification Crisis: Sowing the Soil That Produced the Whig Party

This is post number four related to Southern Whiggery and constitutes an overview of the Nullification Crisis, an unexpected distraction (contradictory in substance) intricately woven into Jackson’s war on the American System. The Nullification Crisis was intimately related to the ongoing battle between the principles of strict construction and nationalism. See the sidebar for earlier posts.

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What discontent Jackson engendered among adherents to the American System when he vetoed re-charter of the Second National Bank, he soothed by tacitly supporting the protective Tariff of 1832, a modification of the 1828 Tariff of Abominations. The National Bank had friends among Southern planters, too, but the tariff had far fewer. Jackson’s acceptance of a “protective” tariff frustrated predominately strict-constructionist/state rights Southrons weary of carrying the load for what they considered an unconstitutional measure. These had hoped by electing the nominally state-rights Jackson to the presidency that he would do something about the tariff—beyond mere modification of a monstrosity they’d dubbed abominable. Jackson, however, did support a protective tariff to protect “American labor,” and he was actually a Southern nationalist for whom the “Union,” not federalism, was sacrosanct. Such creatures did exist, I guess. His adherence to the state-rights doctrine was “qualified” by (this is me talking) how important the issue was to the Federal government, or in his case, the man leading it. With such a leader, state rights becomes arbitrary—sorta like directing who of what sex can use the other gender’s restrooms and school showers. See the problem?

[Granted, contemporary abuse has become ridiculous, but the point is, and as our current situation proves, one cannot “qualify” such a doctrine, which is why strict constructionists are...well, “strict constructionists” to prevent such foolishness.]

As far as South Carolina was concerned, the protective tariff was unconstitutional, and in November of that year, she challenged the Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 by passing an Ordinance of Nullification—the same tactic Virginia and Kentucky had used in response to President John Adams’ unconstitutional Alien and Sedition Acts back in 1798. South Carolina had put the Federal government (as well as the rest of the nation) on notice that she would not allow collection of the Federal tariff within her boundaries after 1 February 1833. The state’s intermediary with the Jackson Administration was her senator, John C. Calhoun. Man and state were challenging what in less than fifty years into the new Republic had become standard procedure: sovereign states subverting themselves to an overreaching Federal government in support of “private interests.” Jackson considered nullification tantamount to treason against the “Union.” 

Outside the Federal government, the primary benefactors of the protective tariff were the Northeast and its spawn in the Midwest where the measure guarded America’s fledging industries. Well, they had been “fledging” twenty years earlier, but were holding their own by 1832, and the self-serving “protection of American labor” had displaced the euphemistic “protection of fledgling industries.” 

Except for some pockets of protection, a good example being Louisiana’s sugar industry, the protective tariff was unpopular across the South, but not enough so to outweigh Jackson’s popularity. Though lip service was given in support of Calhoun, the South outside of South Carolina wished he’d stand down. He didn’t. Neither did Jackson, and on this matter, Jackson had plenty of support in the Northeast. In December, Jackson issued his Proclamation to the people of South Carolina, menacing in tone and condescending in manner. Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster, whose interests were centered in the protectionist stronghold of New England, applauded the proclamation. His praise did not go unnoticed by the White House. One month later in January 1833, when it became apparent Jackson might require additional powers to subdue the recalcitrant Carolinians and collect his revenues, the president requested Webster’s support in framing the Force Bill which authorized the use of military force against South Carolina.  

The Nullification Crisis was the iconic event that ultimately gave birth to the Whig Party. South Carolina responded to Jackson’s threat of force by denouncing Jackson as King Andrew, and it was the nullifiers and state righters of South Carolina who revived the term Whig, not in reference to the English opposition party, but rather to the Southern Patriots who had assumed the name during the American Revolution, highlighting their opposition to King George and distinguishing themselves from their Tory/Loyalist neighbors. Laying out the crisis’ play-by-play in tandem with the values and principles that drove the state righters from the Jackson camp, one ascertains that the basic principles of the Southern Whig did not falter throughout the remainder of the Party’s twenty-some-odd-years existence as a national entity. That is why during Reconstruction one reads statements by old-line Southern Whigs (by then identified as independents, born-again Democrats, and even treacherous Scalawags) referring to state rights and “constitutionality” when denouncing the tyranny exercised by the Radical Republicans in the North. Such comments, which keep popping up in my research on Reconstruction, are what set me on this Whig junket. To a Southern Whig, state rights and strict construction were the principles that gave birth to the Party. Not so for their Northern counterparts where the future “Whig-Party principles” would focus on the protective tariff, the Bank, protection, and the allocation of the resulting Federal largesse for internal improvements. Those people’s  platform represented nothing more than the original National Republican agenda warmed over. It was Clay, in sore need of Southern support given his disastrous showing in the election of 1832, who (metaphorically speaking) rode in on his white charger and saved the Republic from civil war. But the South had more than electoral support to offer Henry Clay, something he desperately needed: the core of a new party with Southern support already built in.  

Next time I will hit the highpoints driving the compromise that ended the Nullification Crisis.

Thanks for reading,

Charlsie

Smoke and Mirrors and Civil Rights During Reconstruction

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for reading,

Charlsie

 

 

 

Making Mississippi a Real “American” State Like Those in the North, The “Black and Tan Convention”, Part 2

This post is number twenty in a historical series discussing Mississippi’s Whig/Republican governor and senator, James Alcorn, following the War Between the States and is the second in a subset discussing the Mississippi Constitutional Convention of 1868, known derisively as the “Black and Tan” Convention.

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President of Mississippi’s Union League Allston Mygatt opened the Reconstruction constitutional convention on 9 January 1868. According to the 1860 census, Mygatt had been born in New York and was at that time a “preacher” residing in Vicksburg. He also had a nineteen-year-old daughter who had been born in Wisconsin from which one might deduce he moved his family to Vicksburg sometime after 1841. He feebly supported the Confederacy until the fall of Vicksburg (4 July 1863) at which time he apparently became a born-again “Union” man.  

Eighty-three delegates answered to the roll call. A Negro delegate representing Harrison County, Benjamin H. Orr, Esq., was unable to produce evidence of his appointment, however, he was allowed to take his seat and a committee was formed to validate his credentials, which it did—uncovering that Mr. Orr had become a candidate for delegate under General Order #196 issued by General Ord. Subsequent research revealed that back in May 1867, Orr had been appointed one of General Ord’s original registrars in Harrison County, when, under the Reconstruction Acts, General Ord had registered the electorate of “loyal”, oops, excuse me, “qualified” voters. (See my 24 Feb 2015 post below.). Harrison County on the Mississippi Gulf Coast was not one of the counties with a Negro majority.  

Mr. Orr’s use of the title Esq., once exclusive to the English gentry, is interesting. At first blush, it could indicate he was a lawyer (unlikely given the time period and place—that being the United States of America of the 1860’s), since it is primarily that group which still uses the archaic title in the United States. Subsequent research indicates hostellers also used the title. Mr. Orr was very active in the convention and years later, after the Reconstruction period ended, he was shot in Pass Christian (Harrison County). I’ve tried, but so far have been unable to turn up any information regarding the “who” and “why” surrounding his demise.

After the roll call, Mr. Mygatt made his introductory remarks—and I paraphrase here—the long-looked-for hour has come bringing to a close a period of Mississippi history which the disloyal press has long sought to suppress and loyal men now hasten to bring about. He then ticked off the offensive items attributed to the Democratic Party (and the old slave power) that enriches the few at expense of the many, hindered the growth of cities and towns, built large landed aristocracies, discouraged agricultural improvements and mechanic arts, destroyed free schools, and lastly demoralized church and state.  

Now I’m not sure what he meant by demoralized church and state, but him being a preacher, I’m sure he had his opinions. As far as the other points, he’s speaking of the state’s refusal to embrace the progressive Northern agenda. That agenda requires taxes. Taxes feed government, which gets hungrier, then fatter with every initiative it takes to “improve” the lot of its people by controlling, eventually, every aspect of their lives. It was a system that produced large industrialized, filthy, crime-ridden cities seeded with poor immigrants who didn’t have “free” housing or “free” medical provided by employers who paid them just enough to live in squalor and manage to eat, while high tariffs protected Northern industry at the expense, not only of the South, but also Northern workers forced to pay higher prices for goods. The affluent enjoyed the benefits of taxation in the nicer parts of town or in the suburbs—talk about enriching the few at the expense of the many! There’s an argument to be made against the growth of big cities, and I can’t help but wonder why Mygatt left the North and came to Vicksburg when things were so much better back where he came from.

And that part about Southerners discouraging agricultural improvements has always stuck in my craw. This senseless and hateful criticism of the South predates the Republic and is not an original thought on the part of Mygatt. As time crawled forward, it became linked to slavery—the wealth created by slave power allowed the waste. What waste? Southerners cleared and farmed land for more than a century and a half before the Revolution. The story is we moved west after we depleted the land. Well, yes, depletion happened for one crop, but it was replaced with another. Oh wait! Perhaps I’ve been hasty in my rebuttal. That probably explains the deserted seaboards and ghost “cities” of Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia! Of course, what was I thinking?  

Yes, that’s sarcasm you “hear” in my writing. The answer isn’t complicated. The South, by virtue of its agrarian economy was successful. Mother England did so appreciate success in her colonies. Success brought the South influence, which translated to some degree of power, and the colonies to the north didn’t like it. That land didn’t become fallow for pity’s sake. If they in the North were so enlightened when it came to agricultural improvement, what was their reason for moving west? Growth? Why is the term “growth” used for the North while we in the South are depicted as a bunch of locusts? Is it because with our expansion we continued to “deplete” fertile land when we could have been polluting it with industry like our Northern neighbors? The truth is the Puritans crash-landed in Massachusetts and didn’t have much in the way of soil to work with from the git-go. The “friendly” natives blocked rapid expansion west (not to mention the seaboard was their tie to the motherland). They had no choice but to figure out ways to keep their soil producing or they’d have starved. All that is commendable, but petty jealousies of the South’s agricultural success are not. We had the fertile land, and we farmed it; we had cities and ports that met our needs; and we had a society rich in culture and history that reflected it. Those who were unable or unwilling to make a living from the land, turned their pursuits elsewhere. 

I know I’m beating a dead horse here, but what prompted the above diatribe is the insufferable attitude flaunted by men such as Mygatt. What it boiled down to was the kind of government the respective people chose to live under. Southerners wanted little government interference in their lives—safety and defense and managing trade, and most especially a government that left the fruits of folks’ labor in the hands of the folks themselves to make their own damn improvements as they saw fit. Such improvements as the people chose were decided in state legislatures, composed of men chosen by the taxpayers. For this we were denigrated as backwards and ignorant.  

Northerners chose state governments that gave elected officials the power to provide for internal improvements constructed and/or organized and paid for by the “state”. That meant taxation and a cache of “everybody’s money” (and a greater potential for malfeasance that comes with it—I have no delusions regarding such occurrences in Dixie, but the less money available for exploitation by politicians, both legal and illegal, the less the chance of misuse). There’s a price to be paid for all that “progress and enlightenment” and the “backwards and the ignorant” knew it. States were sovereign and their choices were their own, but by 1868, choice had been taken from the South by an unjustified war and a central government, blessed by the Northern voter in the elections of 1866, that regarded the Constitution as putty to be reformed according to its will. 

These points as causes for the violent struggle waged by Southerners to wrest control of their states from the profligate usurpers who pillaged the Southern populace during Reconstruction are, for the most part, missing from the popular dialogue on the subject today, causes being relegated to the denial of civil rights for the freedman. But that denial of civil rights was and is a smokescreen to deny the Constitutional rights once afforded sovereign states.  

Malfeasance and corruption were legion during that time period [like now], but one doesn’t even have to address them—except, perhaps, to point out that corruption (legal and illegal) is one of the consequences of a “progressive” agenda—to see that what was at stake was much greater than pilfering the taxpayer’s money. It was the Republic itself. Even laying that to one side, the holier-than-thou attitude that Northern self-righteousness be foisted upon the Southerner because he was too stupid to know how un-American he was is reason enough, in my opinion, to justify the Southerner’s push back against such self-aggrandizing tyranny. Racism and civil rights are merely watchwords to mask the underlying battle between a strong central government and state rights, the now decaying cement of our lost Republic. These are the truths advocates for a strong central government want forgotten, thus the emphasis on racism/civil rights to the near total omission of state sovereignty, constitutionality, and federalism. 

On a less opinionated note, I’d like to make another comment regarding Mr. Mygatt’s introductory remarks, “...and loyal men now hasten to bring about.” That would be a follow-on reference to the long awaited hour for disposing of the “disloyal” men. The majority of delegates making up that convention were in no hurry to complete their new, progressive constitution. Their focus was on taking over the state’s civil government, and every wasted day of their “elaborate” convention was paid for by struggling taxpayers—the very people they were hell-bent to rule for the good of all.  

Subsequent to Mr. Mygatt’s remarks, General Eggleston, U.S.A., was elected president of the convention, Thad P. Sears, another “ex” of the Grand Army of the Republic, the secretary. The convention’s first order of business was to determine the compensation to these delegates for their role in reconstructing Mississippi into a state worthy to reside in a United States now freed from the onerous Southern pestilence.  

Mr. Field, of Lowndes County, suggested that, “in order to expedite business and quicken consciences,” delegates pay their own expenses. That was tabled. [From perusing more of the journal pages, I’ve deduced that Mr. Field was probably a Democrat or ex-Democrat turned conservative scalawag.  

[The make-up of Mississippi’s Republican “scalawags” between 1867 and 1875 runs the gamut from Radical to ex-Democrats/Union Whigs who, like Alcorn, believed economic recovery could only be achieved through the Republican Party now in control of the national government. Scalawags are, in fact, an interesting group and will make a nice subject for a separate post or two down the road, as well as fodder for fictional tales.]   

At that point a vote was taken to form a committee to fix salaries for the convention delegates. This was eventually fixed at $10.00 a day ($166.67 in today’s money*) for each delegate plus 40¢ per mile for gas (Just kidding. The term used was “mileage” and that 40¢ computes to $6.67, by the way). Some delegates ended up collecting up to $240.00 ($4,000.00 today) for mileage. The average was $160.00 ($2666.67 today). Having some idea as to the distances to the capitol from various points in the state, I’m thinking this payment would have been compensation for one round trip only. 

Less than 12 of the delegates who voted themselves this compensation were landowners (therefore taxpayers) in Mississippi. There were 47 yea votes and 29 nays. If one gives this group the full benefit of 12 taxpayers [I got that figure from James Garner’s Reconstruction in Mississippi. How am I supposed to take ‘less than 12’?] that leaves 35 non-taxpaying delegates deciding how much their services were worth to the tax-payers of the state.  

A quick aside here: I know 47 + 29 does not add up to 100 delegates (the number of delegates allowed by General Ord, see my 8 May 2015 post immediately below), but perusal of the journal indicates attendance averaged seventy-five percent (give or take) daily. 

Compensation for the convention was not the problem, neither was it unprecedented nor unjustified. The problem was its being paid to men who were not representative of the people paying taxes and who displayed a decided lack of frugality in their expenditures and lack of responsiveness in quickly carrying out the duties assigned in their charter. This was pointed out by Dr. W. M. Compton, a Democratic delegate (do recall there were 30 such representatives there) from Marshall County. He resolved: “...in as much as a large and influential class had been disfranchised, and a large class who had never been citizens were enfranchised, a majority of the delegates on the floor were not entitled to their seats, and therefore the assembly was illegal and not entitled to compensation.” His resolution, of course, was voted down amid shouts Dr. Compton be expelled. Undeterred he offered that after 20 days, no delegate should receive more than $5.00 per day per diem. Amid cries of insult to the convention, a counter resolution was offered asking Dr. Compton to withdraw and pay his own expenses. He was then censured and granted a leave of absence of 14 days. With the exposure of such discord in the midst of this “long awaited hour”, a committee was formed by the afflicted “aspirants for the new age” to ascertain if any member was opposed to Reconstruction or who believed the convention unconstitutional.  

Really, they needed a committee for that? The convention pursuant to the actions of Congress that forced it upon the state of Mississippi was unconstitutional, plain and simple. But what did constitutionality have to do with the price of tea in China? The Constitution had not mattered since 1861. Still, there can be little doubt such motions made to counter ones which Democrats believed in excess of the convention’s charter or frugality (and there were plenty of them) were purposefully disruptive. 

In addition to the delegates’ pay, the convention hired thirty employees to “support” the genius behind Mississippi’s new constitution. Here is a partial list of additional employees—and their per day salaries:  

Reporter ($15) ($250.00 today)

Secretary ($15—I’m not sure if this is a “different” type secretary from Mr. Sears or a duty added to his “delegate” status thereby netting him $25 a day—or maybe simply $5 tacked on to his $10 as delegate—I opt for that one)

2 Assistant secretaries ($10 each)

Sergeant at Arms ($10)

2 Assistant Sergeants at Arms ($5 each)

1 Printer ($10)

1 Warrant clerk ($10)

2 Enrolling clerks ($10)

1 Reading clerk ($10)

1 Minutes clerk ($10)

1 Auditor ($10)

1 Treasurer ($10)

1 Auditing clerk ($10)

1 Chaplin (a new feature of the Reconstruction Convention-$10) 

1 Postmaster ($8)

1 Hall porter ($4)

And a number of committee clerks (ranging from $5-$15 per day)  

I thought of adding it all up—for 115 days, the delegates and their “staff”, but I can’t believe all those positions were required for every day of this thing—the “enrolling” clerk, for example, and the committee clerks would have been used only when committees were formed, right? Well, maybe. But to further counter my own argument, there might have been several committees functioning simultaneously over days and days. And no, the convention journal does not clarify this question. 

These were lucrative jobs at the taxpayers’ expense. All of these support positions were given to Northern men or Negroes—“men of known loyalty.” When a native white Republican put forth a resolution that some of the clerkships be given to loyal Southern whites, it was voted down. Anybody other than me get the feeling that Southern Republicans (the scalawags) are regarded with some disdain by the Northern Republicans (carpetbaggers)? [This divide among jackals will grow over the next seven miserable years, and Alcorn will be swept up in it]. 

Before leaving the extravagance of this group behind, I’d like to point out a few other expenses. One was a demand for stationery from the Secretary of State, who promptly informed them he had none and no means to procure any (the Treasury was broke let me reiterate). So, the convention appointed a committee of three to appraise the stationery situation. The committee suggested sending an agent to New Orleans to purchase a supply. The proposal was agreed to, and the agent purchased stationery for a grand total of $1458.80. ($24,313.33 today). 

This purchase included not only paper, but pens, penholders, etc.—yep, they got themselves all tooled up. What’s missing here, and I think would be interesting to know, is from whom in New Orleans the purchase was made. The Northern printing industry made a killing in the South during this time. I know that during the years of carpetbag rule in Mississippi (that’s coming up), the legislature’s routine purchase of printing paraphernalia (presses, type, ink, etc.) along with completed print projects from the North/Northern agents would be part of the fuel stoking the fire of resistance to Republican rule. 

Along that same vein, convention delegates felt an “official” need to be informed, supplying themselves with up to five copies of any daily—primarily newly established Republican papers, but they did pay $1123.53 ($18,725.50 today) for the Clarion, which most certainly was not a Republican paper. It’s just my opinion, but I would think keeping up with the other side’s analysis of what you’re doing is more important than rereading what you’re spewing out. Anyway, regardless of what they “each” did with all those copies, the convention spent $3670 ($61,166.67 today) dollars on newspapers, the majority of which were owned and operated by and for members of the Republican Party in Mississippi. 

Finally, a not inconsiderable sum was spent sending telegrams to Washington and “committees” to various places, but primarily over to Vicksburg to “consult” with General Gillem, who, as you will see, routinely told them to quit mucking in legislation, go back to Jackson, and write a new constitution. More on that next time. 

Thanks for reading,

Charlsie 

*I used Dave Manuel’s “Inflation Calculator” online in order to give the reader some appreciation for how much money these men were actually expending during the course of this convention. I don’t know how “pin-point” accurate it is, but I figure it’s providing a good “ball-park” figure.

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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, 31 March, and 8 May 2015, all provided below.