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New York
THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY,Agents
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO.,Ltd.
1905

PREFACE

This work was begun some five years ago as a study of Reconstruction inAlabama. As the field opened it seemed to me that an account ofante-bellum conditions, social, economic, and political, and of the effectof the Civil War upon ante-bellum institutions would be indispensable toany just and comprehensive treatment of the later period. Consequently Ihave endeavored to describe briefly the society and the institutions thatwent down during Civil War and Reconstruction. Internal conditions inAlabama during the war period are discussed at length; they are important,because they influenced seriously the course of Reconstruction. Throughoutthe work I have sought to emphasize the social and economic problems inthe general situation, and accordingly in addition to a sketch of thepolitics I have dwelt at some length upon the educational, religious, andindustrial aspects of the period. One point in particular has beenstressed throughout the whole work, viz. the fact of the segregation ofthe races within the state—the blacks mainly in the central counties, andthe whites in the northern and the southern counties. This division of thestate into “white” counties and “black” counties has almost from thebeginning exercised the strongest influence upon the history of itspeople. The problems of white and black in the Black Belt are not alwaysthe problems of the whites and blacks of the white counties. It is hopedthat the maps inserted in the text will assist in making clear this point.Perhaps it may be thought that undue space is devoted to the history ofthe negro during War and Reconstruction, but after all the negro, whetherpassive or active, was the central figure of the period.

Believing that the political problems of War and Reconstruction are ofless permanent importance than the forces which have shaped and areshaping the social and industrial life of the people, I have confined thediscussion of politics to certain chapters chronologically arranged, whilefor the remainder of the book the topical[Pg viii] method of presentation has beenadopted. In describing the political events of Reconstruction I have inmost cases endeavored to show the relation between national affairs andlocal conditions within the state. To such an extent has this been donethat in some parts it may perhaps be called a general history withespecial reference to local conditions in Alabama. Never before and neversince Reconstruction have there been closer practical relations betweenthe United States and the state, between Washington and Montgomery.

As to the authorities examined in the preparation of the work it may bestated that practically all material now available—whether in print or inmanuscript—has been used. In working with newspapers an effort was madeto check up in two or more newspapers each fact used. Most of thereferences to newspapers—practically all of those to the less reputablepapers—are to signed articles. I have had to reject much material asunreliable, and it is not possible that I have been able to sift out allthe errors. Whatever remain will prove to be, as I hope and believe, ofonly minor consequence.

Thanks for assistance given are due to friends too numerous to mention allof them by name. For special favors I am indebted to Professor L. D.Miller, Jacksonville, Alabama; Mr. W. O. Scroggs of Harvard University;Professor G. W. Duncan, Auburn, Alabama; Major W. W. Screws of theMontgomery Advertiser; Colonel John W. DuBose, Montgomery, Alabama; Mrs.J. L. Dean, Opelika, Alabama; Major S. A. Cunningham of theConfederateVeteran, Nashville, Tennessee; and Major James R. Crowe, of Sheffield,Alabama. I am indebted to Mr. L. S. Boyd, Washington, D.C., for numerousfavors, among them, for calling my attention to the scrap-book collectionof Edward McPherson, then shelved in the Library of Congress along withFiction. On many points where documents were lacking, I was materiallyassisted by the written reminiscences of people familiar with conditionsof the time, among them my mother and father, the late Professor O. D.Smith of Auburn, Alabama, and the late Ryland Randolph, Esq., ofBirmingham. Many old negroes have related their experiences to me. Hon.Junius M. Riggs of the Alabama Supreme Court Library, by the loan ofdocuments, assisted me materially in working up the financial history ofthe Reconstruction;[Pg ix] Dr. David Y. Thomas of the University of Florida readand criticised the entire manuscript; Dr. Thomas M. Owen, Director of theAlabama Department of Archives and History, has given me valuableassistance from the beginning to the close of the work by reading themanuscript, by making available to me not only the public archives, butalso his large private collection, and by securing illustrations. Butabove all I have been aided by Professor William A. Dunning of ColumbiaUniversity, at whose instance the work was begun, who gave me many helpfulsuggestions, read the manuscript, and saved me from numerous pitfalls, andby my wife, who read and criticised both manuscript and proof, and madethe maps and the index and prepared some of the illustrations.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

LIST OF MAPS

PART I
INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I

When Alabama seceded in 1861, it had been in existence as a politicalorganization less than half a century, but in many respects itsinstitutions and customs were as old as European America. The whitepopulation was almost purely Anglo-American. The early settlements hadbeen made on the coast near Mobile, and from thence had extended up theAlabama, Tombigbee, and Warrior rivers. In the northern part the Tennesseevalley was early settled, and later, in the eastern part, the Coosavalley. After the river valleys, the prairie lands in central Alabama werepeopled, and finally the poorer lands of the southeast and the hills southof the Tennessee valley. The bulk of the population before 1861 was ofGeorgian birth or descent, the settlers having come from middle Georgia,which had been peopled from the hills of Virginia. Georgians came into theTennessee valley early in the nineteenth century. The Creek reservationprevented immigration into eastern Alabama before the thirties, but theGeorgians went around and settled southeast Alabama along the line of theold “Federal road.” When the Creek Indians consented to migrate, it wasfound that the Georgians were already in possession of the country,—morethan 20,000 strong, and a government was at once erected over the Indiancounties. People from Georgia also came down the Coosa valley to centralAlabama. The Virginians went to the western Black Belt, to the Tennesseevalley, and to central Alabama. North Carolina sent thousands of hercitizens down through the Tennessee valley and thence across country tothe Tombigbee valley and western Alabama; others came through Georgia andfollowed the routes of Georgia migration.[Pg 4] South Carolinians swarmed intothe southern, central, and western counties, and a goodly number settledin the Tennessee valley. Tennessee furnished a large proportion of thesettlers to the Tennessee valley, to the hill counties south of theTennessee, and to the valleys in central and western Alabama. Among theimmigrants from Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Tennessee was alarge Scotch-Irish element, and with the Tennesseeans came a sprinkling ofKentuckians. In western Alabama were a few thousand Mississippians, andinto southeast Alabama a few hundred settlers came from Florida. From thenorthern states came several thousand, principally New England businessmen. The foreign element was insignificant—the Irish being most numerous,with a few hundred each of Germans, English, French, and Scotch. In Mobileand[Pg 5] Marengo counties there was a slight admixture of French blood in thepopulation.[1]

In regard to the character of the settlers it has been said that theVirginians were the least practical and the Georgians the most so, whilethe North Carolinians were a happy medium. The Georgians were noted fortheir stubborn persistence, and they usually succeeded in whatever theyundertook. The Virginians liked a leisurely planter’s life with abundantsocial pleasures. The Tennesseeans and Kentuckians were hardlydistinguishable from the Virginians and Carolinians, to whom they wereclosely related. The northern professional and business men exercised aninfluence more than commensurate with their numbers, being, in a way,picked men. Neither the Georgians nor the Virginians were assertiveoffice-seekers, but the Carolinians liked to hold office, and the politicsof the state were moulded by the South Carolinians and Georgians. All werenaturally inclined to favor a weak federal administration and a strongstate government with much liberty of the individual. The theories[Pg 6] ofPatrick Henry, Jefferson, and Calhoun, not those of Washington and JohnMarshall, formed the political creed of the Alabamians.

Each figure represents some person who became prominent before 1865, andindicates his native state. The location of the figure on the mapindicates his place of residence. Note the segregation along the riversand the Black Belt.

The wealthy people were found in the Tennessee valley, in the Black Beltextending across the centre of the state, and in Mobile, the one largetown. They were (except a few of the Mobilians) all slaveholders. Thepoorer white people went to the less fertile districts of north andsoutheast Alabama, where land was cheap, preferring to work their own poorfarms rather than to work for some one else on better land. But nearlyevery slave county had its colony of poorer whites, who were invariablysettled on the least fertile soils. Among these settlers there was acertain dislike of slavery, because they believed that, were it not forthe negro, the whites might themselves live on the fertile lands. Yet theywere not in favor of emancipation in any form, unless the negro could begotten entirely out of the way—a free negro being to them an abomination.If the negro must stay, then they preferred slavery to continue.

Over the greater part of Alabama there were no class distinctions before1860; the state was too young. In the wilderness classes had fused and thesuccessful men were often those never heard of in the[Pg 7] older states. Acandidate of “the plain people” was always elected, because all werefrontier people. This does not mean that in Huntsville, Montgomery,Greensboro, and Mobile there were not the beginnings of an aristocracybased on education, wealth, and family descent. But these were very smallspots on the map of Alabama, and there were no heartburnings over socialinequalities.[2]

Such was the composition of the white population of Alabama before 1860.No matter what might be their political affiliations, in practice nearlyall were Democrats of the Jeffersonian school, believing in the largestpossible liberty for the individual and in local management of all localaffairs, and to the frontier Democrat nearly all questions that concernedhim were local. The political leaders excepted, the majority of thepopulation knew little and cared less about the Federal government exceptwhen it endeavored to restrain or check them in their course of conquestand expansion in the wilderness. The relations of the people of Alabamawith the Federal government were such as to confirm and strengthen them intheir local attachments and sectional politics. The controversies thatarose in regard to the removal of the Indians, and over the public lands,nullification, slavery, and western expansion, prevented the growth ofattachment to the Federal government, and tended to develop a southernrather than a “continental” nationality. The state came into the Unionwhen the sections were engaged in angry debate over the MissouriCompromise measures, and its attitude in Federal politics was determinedfrom the beginning. The next most serious controversy with the Federalgovernment and with the North was in regard to the removal of the Indiansfrom the southern states. The southwestern frontiersmen, like all otherAnglo-Americans, had no place in their economy for the Indian, and theywere determined that he should not stand in their way.

For half a century, throughout the Gulf states, the struggle with theIndian tribes for the possession of the fertile lands continued, and inthis struggle the Federal government was always against the settlers.Before the removal of the Indians, in 1836, the settlers of Alabama werein almost continual dispute with the Washington administration on thissubject.[3] The trouble began in Georgia, and thousands of Georgiansbrought to Alabama a spirit of jealousy and hostility to the United Statesgovernment, and a growing dislike of New England and the North on accountof their stand in regard to the Indians. For when troubles, legal andotherwise, arose with the Indians, their advisers were found to bemissionaries and land agents from New England. The United States wantedthe Indians to remain as states within states; the Georgia and Alabamasettlers felt that the Indians must go. The attitude of the Federalgovernment drove the settlers into extreme assertions of state rights. InGeorgia it came almost to war between the state and United States troopsduring the administration of John Quincy Adams, a New Englander, who wasdisliked by the settlers for his support of the Indian cause; and thewhole South was made jealous by the decisions of the Supreme Court in theIndian cases. Had Adams been elected to a second term, there wouldprobably have been armed resistance to the policy of the United States.Jackson, a southern and western man, had the feeling of a frontiersmantoward the Indians; and his attitude gained him the support of thefrontier southern states in the trouble with South Carolina overnullification.

Immediately after the nullification troubles, the general governmentattempted to remove the white settlers from the Indian lands in eastAlabama. The lands had been ceded by the Indians in 1832, and thelegislature of Alabama at once extended the state administration over theterritory. Settlers rushed in; some were already there. But by the treatythe Indians were entitled to remain on their land until they chose tomove; and now the United States marshals, supported by the army, wereordered to remove the 30,000 whites[Pg 9] who had settled in the nine Indiancounties. Governor Gayle, who had been elected as an opponent ofnullification, informed the Secretary of War that the proposed action ofthe central government meant nothing less than the destruction of thestate administration, and declared that he would, at all costs, sustainthe jurisdiction of the state government. The troops killed a citizen whoresisted removal, and the Federal authorities refused to allow the slayersto be tried by state courts. There was great excitement in the state, andpublic meetings were everywhere held to organize resistance. Thelegislature authorized the governor to persist in maintaining the stateadministration in the nine Indian counties. A collision with the UnitedStates troops was expected, and offers of volunteers were made to thegovernor,—even from New York. Finally the United States governmentyielded, the whites remained on the Indian lands, the state authority wasupheld in the Indian counties, the soldiers were tried before statecourts, and the Indians were removed to the West. The governor proclaimeda victory for the state, and the 30,000 angry Alabamians rejoiced overwhat they considered the defeat of the unjust Federal government.[4]

Thus in Alabama nullification of Federal law was successfully carried out.And it was done by a state administration and a people that a year beforehad refused to approve the course of South Carolina. But South Carolinawas regarded in Alabama, as in the rest of the South, somewhat as anerratic member that ought to be disciplined once in a while. A strong andable minority in Alabama accepted the basis of the nullification doctrine,i.e. the sovereignty of the states, and after this time this politicalelement was usually known as the State Rights party. They had no separateorganization, but voted with Whigs or Democrats, as best served theirpurpose. Secession was little talked of, for affairs might yet go well,they thought, within the Union. A majority of the Democrats, for severalyears after 1832, were probably opposed in theory to nullification andsecession when South Carolina was an actor, but in practice they acted asthey had done in the Indian disputes which concerned them more closely.

It was at the height of the irritation of the Indian controversy that theagitation by the abolitionists of the North began. The question which morethan any other alienated the southern people from the Union was thatconcerning negro slavery. From 1819 to 1860 the majority of the whitepeople of Alabama were not friendly to slavery as an institution. This wasnot from any special liking for the negro or belief that slavery was badfor him, but because it was believed that the presence of the negro, slaveor free, was not good for the white race. To most of the people slaverywas merely a device for making the best of a bad state of affairs. Theconstitution of 1819 was liberal in its slavery provisions, and thelegislature soon enacted (1827) a law prohibiting the importation, forsale, hire, or barter, of slaves from other states. For a decade there wasstrong influence at each session of the state legislature in favor ofgradual emancipation; agents of the Quakers worked in the state, buyingand paying a higher price for cotton that was not produced by slave labor;and in north Alabama, during the twenties and early thirties, there was anumber of emancipation societies.[5] An emancipation newspaper,TheHuntsville Democrat, was published in Huntsville, and edited by James G.Birney, afterwards a noted abolitionist. The northern section of thestate, embracing the strong Democratic white counties, was distinctlyunfriendly to slavery, or rather to the negro, and controlled the politicsof the state.[6] The effect of the abolition movement in the North was thedestruction of the emancipation organizations in the South, and bothfriends and foes of the institution united on the defensive. Thenon-slaveholders were not deluded followers of the slave owners. After theslavery question became an issue in politics, the non-slaveholders inAlabama were rather more aggressive, and were even more firmly determinedto maintain negro slavery than were the slaveholders. To the rich[Pg 11]hereditary slaveholders, who were relatively few in number, it was more orless a question of property, and that was enough to fight about at anytime. But to the average white man who owned no negroes and who worked forhis living at manual labor, the question was a vital social one. The negroslave was bad enough; but he thought that the negro freed by outsideinterference and turned loose on society was much more to be feared.[7]The large majorities for extreme measures came from the white counties;the secession vote in 1860 was largely a white county vote. But whensecession came, the Whiggish Black Belt which had been opposed tosecession was astonished not to receive, in the war that followed, thehearty support of the Democratic white counties.

Before the nullification troubles in 1832 there was no distinct politicaldivision among the people of Alabama; all were Democrats. Those of thewhite counties were of the Jacksonian type, those of the black countieswere rather of the Jeffersonian faith; but all were strictconstructionists, especially on questions concerning the tariff, theIndians, the central government, and slavery. The question ofnullification caused a division in the ranks of the Democratic party—onewing supporting Jackson, the other accepting Calhoun as leader. Forseveral years later, however, the Democratic candidates had no oppositionin the elections, though within the party there were contests between theJacksonians and the growing State Rights (Calhoun) wing. But with thesettling of the country, the growth of the power of the Black Belt, andthe differentiation of interests within the state, there appeared a secondparty, the Whigs. Its strength lay among the large planters andslaveholders of the central Black Belt, though it often took its leadersfrom the black counties of the Tennessee valley. This party was able toelect a governor but once, and then only because of a division in theDemocratic ranks. After 1835 it secured one-third of the representation inCongress and the same proportion in the legislature. It was the“broadcloth” party, of the wealthier and more cultivated people. It didnot appeal to the “plain people” with much success; but it was always arespectable party, and there was no jealousy of it then, and now “thereare no bitter memories against it.”[8]

[Pg 12]Numerically, the Whigs were about as strong as the anti-nullification wingof the Democratic party, so that the balance of power was held by theconstantly increasing State Rights (Calhoun) element. When Van Burenbecame leader of the national Democracy, the State Rights people inAlabama united with the regular Democrats and voted with them for aboutten years. The State Rights men were devoted followers of Calhoun, but inpolitical theories they soon went beyond him. For a while they werebelievers in nullification as a constitutional right, but soon began totalk of secession as a sovereign right. They were in favor of nocompromise where the rights of the South were concerned. They werelogical, extreme, doctrinaire; they demanded absolute right, and viewedevery action of the central government with suspicion. A single ideafirmly held through many years gave to them a power not justified by theirnumerical strength.

The Whigs did not stand still on political questions; as the Democrats andthe State Rights men abandoned one position for another more advanced, theWhigs moved up to the one abandoned. Thus they were always only about oneelection behind. It was the constant agitation of the slavery questionthat drove the Whigs along in the wake of the more advanced party. Bothparties were in favor of expansion in the Southwest. They were indignantat the New England position on the Texas question, and talked much ofdisunion if such a policy of obstruction was persisted in. Again, afterthe Mexican War all parties were furious at the opposition shown to theannexation of the territory from Mexico. It was now the spirit ofexpansion, the lust for territory, that rose in opposition to theobstructive policy of northern leaders; and a new element was added whenan attempt was made to shut out southerners from the territory won mainlyby the South by forbidding the entrance of slavery.

The number of those in favor of resisting at every point the growingdesire of the North to restrict slavery was increasing steadily. Theleader of the State Rights men was William L. Yancey. He opposed allcompromises, for, as he said, compromise meant that the system was eviland was an acknowledgment of wrong, and no right, however abstract, mustbe denied to the South. He was a firm believer in slavery as the onlymethod of solving the race[Pg 13]question, and saw clearly the dangers thatwould result from the abolition programme if the North and South remainedunited. So to prevent worse calamities he was in favor of disunion. He wasthe greatest orator ever heard in the South. He was in no sense ademagogue; he had none of the arts of the popular politician. Sent toCongress in the heat of the fight between the sections, he resignedbecause he thought the battle was to be fought elsewhere. For twenty yearshe stood before the people of Alabama, telling them that slavery could notbe preserved within the Union; that before any effective settlement ofcontroversies could be made, Alabama and the other southern states mustwithdraw and make terms from the outside, or stay out of the Union andhave done with agitation and interference. Secession wasself-preservation, he told a people who believed that the destruction ofslavery meant the destruction of society. For twenty years he and hisfollowers, heralds of the storm, were ostracized by all political parties,which accepted his theories, but denied the necessity for putting theminto practice. When at last the people came to follow him, he told themthat they had probably waited too late, and that they were seceding on aweaker cause than any of those he had presented for twenty years.

Yancey was a leader of State Rights men but never a leader in theDemocratic party. Once, in 1848, when all were angry on account of theopposition on the Mexican question, Yancey was called to the front in theDemocratic state convention. He offered resolutions, which wereadopted,[9] to the effect (1) that the people of a territory could notprevent the holding of slaves before the formation of a stateconstitution, and that Congress had no power whatever to restrict slaveryin the territories; (2) that those who held the opposite opinion were notDemocrats, and that the Democratic party of Alabama would not support forPresident any candidate who held such views. The delegates to the NationalDemocratic Convention at Baltimore were instructed to withdraw if theAlabama resolutions were rejected. By a vote of two hundred and sixteen tothirty-six they were rejected; yet none of the delegates except Yanceywithdrew. Refusing to support Cass for the presidency because he believedin “squatter sovereignty,” Yancey was again ostracized[Pg 14] by the Democraticleaders.[10] Now the State Rights men became more aggressive, for theysaid this was the time to settle the slavery question, before it was toolate. The North, it was thought, would not be averse to separation fromthe South. The Whigs began to advance non-intervention theories, and butfor the death of President Taylor, who adhered to the free-soil Whigs,political parties in Alabama would probably have broken up in 1850 andfused into one on the slavery question.

The compromise measures of 1850 pleased few people in Alabama, and therewas talk of resistance and of assisting Texas by force, if necessary,against the appropriation of her territory by the central government. Themoderates condemned the Compromise and said they would not yield again.The more advanced demanded a repeal of the Compromise or immediatesecession. Yancey said there was no hope of a settlement and that it wastime to set the house in order. In 1850-1851 there was a widespreadmovement toward a rejection of the Compromise and a secession of the lowerSouth, but the political leaders were disposed to give the Compromise atrial. To the Nashville convention, held in June, 1850, to discussmeasures to secure redress of grievances, the Alabama legislature at anunofficial meeting chose the following delegates: Benjamin Fitzpatrick,William Cooper, John A. Campbell, Thomas J. Judge, John A. Winston, LeroyP. Walker, William M. Murphy, Nicholas Davis, R. C. Shorter, Thomas A.Walker, Reuben Chapman, James Abercrombie, and William M. Byrd—all Whigsor Conservative Democrats. The resolutions passed by the convention werecautious and prudent, and were generally supported by the Whigs andopposed by the Democrats. In Montgomery, upon the return of the Alabamadelegation, a public meeting, held to ratify the action of the Nashvilleconvention, condemned it instead, and approved the programme of Yancey whoagain declared that it was “time to set the house in order.” The contestin Alabama was simply between the Compromise, with maintenance of theUnion, and rejection of the[Pg 15]Compromise to be followed by secession. Itwas not a campaign between Whig and Democrat, but between Union andSecession. The old party lines were not drawn. Associations were formedall over the state to oppose the Compromise and to advocate secession. TheUnionists drew together, but less heartily. The compact State Rightselement lost influence on account of a division that now showed in itsranks. One section, led by William L. Yancey, was for separate andunconditional secession; another, led by J. J. Seibels, favoredcoöperation of the southern states within the Union and uniteddeliberation before secession.[11] The State Rights Convention met inMontgomery, February 10, 1851, and recommended a southern congress todecide the questions at issue and declared that if any other state wouldsecede, Alabama should go also.[12] The action of the convention pleasedfew and was repudiated by the “separate secessionist” element. Thecandidates of the State Rights—now called the “Southern Rights”—partywere supported by a majority of the Democrats. They demanded the repeal ofthe Compromise, and resistance to future encroachments; they demandedsouthern ministers and southern churches, southern books and papers, andsouthern pleasure resorts.

The “Union” leaders were Judge Benajah S. Bibb, James Abercrombie, ThomasJ. Judge, Henry W. Hilliard, Thomas H. Watts, Senator William R.King,—nearly all Virginians or North Carolinians by birth or descent. Atthe State “Union” Convention held in Montgomery, January 19, 1851, amongthe more prominent delegates were: Thomas B. Cooper, R. M. Patton, W. M.Byrd, B. S. Bibb, J. M. Tarleton, W. B. Moss, James H. Clanton, L. E.Parsons, Robert J. Jamison, Henry W. Hilliard, R. W. Walker, Thomas H.Watts, Nicholas Davis, Jr., and C. M. Wilcox,—all were Whigs, and wereVirginians, North Carolinians, and men of northern birth. This meetingdenied the “constitutional” right of secession. The Union candidates forCongress were C. C. Langdon, James[Pg 16] Abercrombie, Judge Mudd, William R.Smith, W. R. W. Cobb, George S. Houston, and Alexander White,—each ofwhom denied the “constitutional” right of secession, but said nothingabout it as a “sovereign” right.

The “Unionists”—the old Whigs and the Jacksonian Democrats—weresuccessful in the elections, but by accepting, though disapproving, theCompromise measures, and by repudiating the doctrine of secession as a“constitutional” right,[13] they had advanced beyond the position held byYancey in 1848.

After the success of the “Union” party in 1851-1852, the Southern RightsAssociations resolved to suspend for a time the debate on secession.Thereupon the “Union” Democrats resumed their old party allegiance and the“Union” party was left to consist of old Whigs alone. The Whigs wished tocontinue the “Union” organization, for they no longer found it possible toact with the northern Whigs, and in 1852 several of their prominentleaders in Alabama refused to support the Whig presidential ticket. On theother hand, the extreme “Southern Rights” men broke away from theDemocrats in 1852 and declared for immediate secession. They supportedTroup and Quitman, who polled, however, only 2174 votes in the state; butthe Whigs and the Democrats each lost about 15,000, who refused to vote.

And now came the break-up of old parties. The slavery question was alwaysbefore the people and was becoming more and more irritating. Compromiseshad failed to quiet the controversy. The position of the “Union” Whigs inthe black counties became intolerable. They had to combat secession athome, and they had to guard against trouble among their slaves caused bythe abolitionist propaganda. By 1855 almost all the Alabama Whigs hadbecome “Americans,” at the same time searching for a new issue andrepudiating the principles upon which the “American” party was founded.Again they were left alone by the antislavery stand taken by the northernwing of this party. Yet in spite of every possible discouragement theyheld together and controlled the black counties. When the Kansas questionarose all the parties in Alabama were united in reference to it. Thedoctrine of squatter sovereignty was not accepted, but there was anopportunity, both parties thought, to[Pg 17] win Kansas peaceably and stay thethreatened separation, but the northern methods of settling Kansas byorganized antislavery emigration from New England paralyzed the efforts ofthe moderate “Union” southerners. Similar methods were attempted by theSouth, and several colonies of emigrants were sent from Alabama;[14] butby 1857 it was known that Kansas was lost.

The great debate between William L. Yancey and Roger A. Pryor in theSouthern Commercial Convention held in Montgomery in May, 1858, showedthat the people of Alabama were then in advance of their political leadersand were coming to the position long held by Yancey and the secessionists.Pryor’s position in favor of compromise and delay had the support ofnearly all the party leaders of Alabama; Yancey, always in disfavor withparty leaders, captured the convention with his policy of secession incase of failure of redress of grievances. Secession was no longer adoctrine to be condemned unless on the ground of expediency. Whig leaderswere now becoming Southern Rights Democrats. Many Democrats thought it wastime to force an issue and come to a settlement; this Yancey proposed todo by demanding a repeal of all the laws against the slave trade becausethey expressed a disapproval of slavery. If slavery were not wrong, thenthe slave trade should not be denounced as piracy. Yancey had not theslightest desire to reopen the slave trade, and knew that the North wouldnot consent to a repeal of the laws against it, yet he said the demandshould be made. He believed the demand to be legitimate, though sure to berejected. The national Democratic party would thus be divided and theissue forced.[15]

For any purpose of opposing the Yancey programme the Alabama “Union” menwere rendered helpless by the turn politics were taking in the North. Theformation out of the wreck of the old Whig party of the distinctlysectional and radical Republican party, the attitude of the leaders ofthat party, the talk about the “irrepressible[Pg 18] conflict” and the “Unioncannot endure half slave and half free,” the indorsement of the “ImpendingCrisis” with its incendiary teachings, the effect of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”on thousands who before had cared nothing about slavery, and finally theraid of John Brown into Virginia,[16]—these were influences more powerfultoward uniting the people to resistance than all the speeches of StateRights leaders on abstract constitutional questions. After 1856 the peoplewere in advance of their leaders.

On January 11, 1860, the Democratic state convention unanimously adoptedresolutions favoring the Dred Scott decision as a settlement of theslavery question. The delegation to the national nominating convention atCharleston was instructed to withdraw in case these resolutions were notaccepted in substance as a part of the platform. At Charleston themajority report of the committee on the platform sustained the Alabamaposition. When the report was laid before the convention, a propositionwas made to set it aside for the minority report, which vaguely saidnothing. Yancey in a great speech delivered the ultimatum of the South,the adoption of the majority report. The vote was taken and the Southdefeated. L. Pope Walker[17] announced the withdrawal of the Alabamadelegation and the delegations from the other southern statesfollowed.[18] Both sections of the convention then adjourned to meet inBaltimore. Influences for and against compromise were working, and it isprobable that a majority of the seceders would have harmonized had not theDouglas organization declared the seats of the seceders vacant andadmitted delegates irregularly elected by Douglas conventions[Pg 19] in theSouth. After the damage was done, Yancey was pressed to take thevice-presidency on the Douglas ticket.[19] Douglas was known to be in badhealth and Yancey was told that he might expect to be President within afew months, if he accepted. But it was too late for further compromise,and Yancey toured the North, speaking for Breckenridge. A State Rightsconvention in Alabama indorsed the candidates of the seceded convention; aconvention of Douglas Democrats in Montgomery declared for Douglas; the“Constitutional Union” party (the old Whigs and “Americans” or“Know-nothings”), for Bell and Everett and old-fashioned conservativerespectability. During the campaign Douglas visited the state and was wellreceived, but aroused no enthusiasm, while Yancey was tumultuouslywelcomed.

As far back as February 24, 1860, the legislature had passed almostunanimously a resolution concurring with South Carolina in regard to theright and necessity of secession, and declaring that Alabama would notsubmit to the domination of a “foul sectional party.” In case of theelection of a “Black” Republican President a convention was to be called,and $200,000 was appropriated for its use.[20] A committee was appointedto reorganize the militia system of the state, and so important was thework deemed that the committee was excused from all other duties. TheSenate declared that it was expedient to establish an arsenal, a firearmsfactory, and a powder mill. A bill was passed to encourage the manufactureof firearms in Alabama.[21] At this session seventy-four militarycompanies were incorporated and provision made for military schools.[22]

Elections returns were anxiously awaited.[23] It was certain that theelection of Lincoln and Hamlin would result in secession.[24] When thenews came the old “Union” leaders declared for secession and by noon ofthe next day the “Union” party had gone to pieces. The leaders who hadopposed secession to the last—Watts, Clanton, Goldthwaite, Judge, andHilliard—now took their stand by the side of Yancey and declared thatAlabama must withdraw from the Union. Governor Moore, a very moderate man,in a public speech said that no course was left but for the state tosecede, and with the other southern states form a confederacy. Publicmeetings were held in every town and village to declare that Alabama wouldnot submit to the rule of the “Black Republican.” A typical meeting heldin Mobile, November 15, 1860, arraigned the Republican party because: (1)it had declared for the abolition of slavery in all territories andFederal districts and for the abolition of the interstate slave trade; (2)it had denied the extradition of murderers, marauders, and other felons;(3) it had concealed and shielded the murderers of masters who had soughtto recover fugitive slaves; (4) it advocated negro equality and made itthe basis of legislation hostile to the South; (5) it opposed protectionof slave property on the high seas and had justified piracy in the case oftheCreole; (6) it had invaded Virginia and shed the blood of hercitizens on her own soil; and (7) had announced a policy of[Pg 21] totalabolition.[25] In December, 1860, the Federal grand jury at Montgomerydeclared the Federal government “worthless, impotent, and a nuisance,” asit had failed to protect the interests of the people of Alabama. Thepresentment was signed by C. C. Gunter, foreman, and nineteen others.[26]

Had the governor been willing to call a convention at once, secessionwould have been almost unanimous; but delay caused the more cautious andtimid to reflect and gave the so-called “coöperationists” time to putforth a platform. The leaders of the party of delay representing northAlabama, the stronghold of radical democracy, were William R. Smith, M. J.Bulger, Nicholas Davis, Jere Clemens, and Robert J. Jemison, all strongmen, but none of them possessing the ability of the secessionist leadersor of the former “Union” leaders who had joined the secession party. Butsecession was certain,—it was only a question as to how and when. By lawthe governor was to call a convention in case the “Black Republican”candidates were elected, and December 24, 1860, was fixed as the time forelection of delegates, and January 4, 1861, the time for assembly.

Before the political division in 1861 the religious division had alreadyoccurred in the larger and in several of the smaller denominations. At theclose of 1861 every religious body represented in the South, except theRoman Catholic church,[27] had been divided into northern and southernbranches. The political rather than the moral aspects of slavery hadfinally led to strife in the churches. The southern churches protestedagainst the action of the northern[Pg 22] religious bodies in going intopolitics on the slavery question and thus causing endless strife betweenthe sections as represented in the churches. The response of the northernsocieties to such protests resulted in the gradual alienation of thesouthern members and finally in separation. The first division in Alabamacame in 1821, when the Associate Reformed Presbyterian church excludedslaveholders from communion and thereby lost its southern members.[28]Next came the separation of the two strongest Protestant denominations,the Baptists and the Methodists. The southern Baptists were, asslaveholders, excluded from appointment as missionaries, agents, orofficers of the Board of Foreign Missions, although they contributed theirfull share to missions. The Alabama Baptist Convention in 1844 led the wayto separation with a protest against this discrimination. The Board statedin reply that under no circumstances would a slaveholder be appointed bythem to any position. The Board of the Home Mission Society made a similardeclaration. The formal withdrawal of the southern state conventionsfollowed in 1844, and in 1845 the Southern Baptist Convention wasformed.[29]

In the Methodist Episcopal church the conflict over slavery had long beensmouldering, and in 1844 it broke out in regard to the ownership of slavesby the wife of Bishop Andrew of Alabama. The hostile sections agreed toseparate into a northern and a southern church, and a Plan of Separationwas adopted. This was disregarded by the northern body and the question ofthe division of property went to the courts. The United States SupremeCourt finally decided in favor of the southern church. From these troublesangry feelings on both sides resulted. The southern church took the nameof the Methodist Episcopal Church South; the northern church retained theold name.[30]

In 1858, the northern conferences of the Methodist Protestant[Pg 23] Church,having failed to change the constitution of the church in regard toslavery, withdrew, and uniting with a number of Wesleyan Methodists,formed the Methodist Church.[31]

The Southern Aid Society was formed in New York in 1854 for mission workin the South because it was generally believed that the American HomeMission Society was allied with the abolitionists, and because the lattersociety refused to aid any minister or missionary who was a slaveholder.In Alabama the Southern Aid Society worked principally among thePresbyterians of north Alabama.[32]

The Presbyterians (N.S.) separated in 1858 “on account of politics,” andthe southern branch formed the United Synod South.[33] The East AlabamaPresbytery (O.S.) in 1861 supported the Presbytery of Memphis in a protestagainst the action of the General Assembly of the church in enteringpolitics. The Presbytery of South Alabama (O.S.) met at Selma in July,1861, severed its connection with the General Assembly, and recommended ameeting of a Confederate States Assembly. This Assembly was held atAugusta and formed the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States ofAmerica. A long address was published, setting forth the causes of theseparation, the future policy of the church, and its attitude towardsslavery. It declared that the northern section of the church with itsradical policy was playing into the hands of both slaveholders andabolitionists and thus weakening its influence with both. “We,” theaddress stated, “in our ecclesiastical capacity are neither the friendsnor foes of slavery.” As long as they were connected with the radicalnorthern church the southern Presbyterians felt that they would beexcluded from useful work among the slaves by the suspicions of thesouthern people concerning their real intentions.[34]

The Christian church was divided in 1854. During the war the southernsynods of the Evangelical Lutherans withdrew and[Pg 24] formed the General SynodSouth. There were few members of these churches in Alabama.[35]

The Cumberland Presbyterians, though separated by the war, seem not tohave formally established an independent organization in the ConfederateStates. A convention was called to meet at Selma in 1864, but nothingresulted.[36]

In May, 1861, the Protestant Episcopal Convention of Alabama declared nulland void that part of the constitution of the diocese relating to itsconnection with the church in the United States. Instead of the Presidentof the United States, the Governor of Alabama, and later, the President ofthe Confederate States, was prayed for in the formal prayer. Bishop Cobbs,a strong opponent of secession, died one hour before the secession of thestate was announced. Rev. R. H. Wilmer, a Confederate sympathizer, waselected to succeed him.[37] In July the bishops of the southern states metin Montgomery to draft a new constitution and canons. A resolution waspassed stating that the secession of the southern states from the Unionand the formation of a new government rendered it expedient that thedioceses within those states should form an independent organization. Thenew constitution was adopted in November, 1861, by a general convention,and the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States wasformed.[38] And thus the religious ties were broken.

Business had also become sectionalized by 1861. The southern states feltkeenly their dependence upon the states of the North for manufactures,water transportation, etc. For two decades before the war the southernnewspapers agitated the question and advocated measures that would tend tosecure economic independence of the North. As an instance of the feeling,many of the educators of the state were in favor of using only thosetext-books written by southern men and printed in the South. Professor A.P. Barnard[39] of the University of Alabama was strenuously in favor ofsuch action. He[Pg 25] declared that nothing ought to be bought from the North.From 1845 to 1861, fifteen “Commercial Conventions” were held in theSouth, largely attended by the most prominent business men andpoliticians. The object of these conventions was to discuss means ofattaining economic independence.

When Alabama withdrew from the Union in 1861, no bonds were broken.Practically the only bond of Union for most of the people had been in thechurches; to the Washington government and to the North they had neverbecome attached. The feelings of the great majority of the people of thestate are expressed in the last speech of Senator C. C. Clay of northAlabama in the United States Senate. It had been forty-two years, he said,since Alabama had entered the Union amidst scenes of excitement andviolence caused by the hostility of the North against the institution ofslavery in the South (referring to the conflict over Missouri). In thechurches, southern Christians were denied communion because of what theNorth styled the “leprosy of slavery.” In violation of Constitution andlaws southern people were refused permission to pass through the Northwith their property. The South was refused a share in the lands acquiredmainly by her diplomacy, blood, and treasure. The South was robbed of herproperty and restoration was refused. Criminals who fled North wereprotected, and southern men who sought to recover their slaves weremurdered. Southern homes were burned and southern families murdered. Thishad been endured for years, and there was no hope of better. TheRepublican platform was a declaration of war against the South. It washostile to domestic peace, reproached the South as unchristian andheathenish, and imputed sin and crime to that section. It was a strongincitement to insurrection, arson, and murder among the negroes. Thesouthern whites were denied equality with northern whites or even withfree negroes, and were branded as an inferior race. The man nominated forPresident disregarded the judgment of courts, the obligations of theConstitution, and of his oath by declaring his approval of any measure toprohibit slavery in the territories of the United States. The people ofthe North branded the people of the South as outlaws, insulted them,consigned them to the execration of posterity and to ultimate destruction.“Is it to be expected that we will or can exercise that Godlike virtuethat beareth all things, believeth all things,[Pg 26] hopeth all things,endureth all things; which tells us to love our enemies, and bless themthat curse us? Are we expected to be denied the sensibilities, thesentiments, the passions, the reason, the instincts of men?” Have we nopride, no honor, no sense of shame, no reverence for ancestors and carefor posterity, no love of home, of family, of friends? Are we to confessbaseness, discredit the fame of our sires, dishonor ourselves and degradeposterity, abandon our homes and flee the country—all—all—for the sakeof the Union? Shall we live under a government administered by those whodeny us justice and brand us as inferiors? whose avowed principles andpolicy must destroy domestic tranquillity, imperil the lives of our wivesand children, and ultimately destroy the state? The freemen of Alabamahave proclaimed to the world that they will not.[40]

CHAPTER II

On November 12, 1860, a committee of prominent citizens, appointed by aconvention of the people of several counties, asked the governor whetherhe intended to call the state convention immediately after the choice ofpresidential electors or to wait until the electors should have chosen thePresident. They also asked to be informed of the time he intended to orderan election of delegates to the convention.[41] Governor Moore repliedthat a candidate for the presidency was not elected until the electorscast their votes, and until that time he would not call a convention. Theelectors would vote on December 5, and as he had no doubt that Lincolnwould be elected, he would then order an election for December 24, and theconvention would assemble in Montgomery on January 7, 1861. The date, hesaid, was placed far ahead in order that the people might have time toconsider the subject. He summed up the situation as follows: Lincoln wasthe head of a sectional party pledged to the destruction of slavery; thenon-slaveholding states had repeatedly resisted the execution of theFugitive Slave Law, even nullifying the statutes of the United States bytheir laws intended to prevent the execution of the Fugitive Slave Law;Virginia had been invaded by abolitionists and her citizens murdered;emissaries had burned towns in Texas; and in some instances poison hadbeen given to slaves with which to destroy the whites. With Lincoln asPresident the abolitionists would soon control the Supreme Court and thenslavery would be abolished in the Federal district and in the territories.There would[Pg 28] soon be a majority of free states large enough to alter theConstitution and to destroy slavery in the states. The state of society,with four million negroes turned loose, would be too horrible tocontemplate, and the only safety for Alabama lay in secession, which waswithin her right as a sovereign state. The Federal government wasestablished for the protection and not the destruction of rights; it hadonly the powers delegated by the states and hence had not the power ofcoercion. Alabama was devoted to the Union, but could not consent tobecome a degraded member of it. The state in seceding ought to consult theother southern states; but first she must decide for herself, andcoöperate afterwards. The convention, the governor said, would not be aplace for the timid or the rash. Men of wisdom and experience were needed,men who could determine what the honor of the state and the security ofthe people demanded, and who had the moral courage to carry out thedictates of their honest judgment.

The proclamation, ordering an election on Christmas Eve and the assemblyof the convention at Montgomery, on January 7, 1861, was issued onDecember 6, the day after the choice of Lincoln by the electors. OnJanuary 7, every one of the one hundred delegates was present. It was asplendid body of men, the best the people could send.

There were the “secessionists,” who wanted immediate and separatesecession of the state without regard to the action of the other southernstates; the “coöperationists,” who were divided among themselves, somewanting the coöperation of the southern states within the Union in orderto force their rights from the central government, and others wanting thesouthern states to come to an agreement within the Union and then secedeand form a confederacy, while a third class wanted a clear understandingamong the cotton states before secession. It was said that there were afew “submissionists,” but the votes and speeches fail to show any.

At first both parties claimed a majority, but before the convention openedit was known that the larger number were secessionists. A test vote on theelection of a presiding officer showed the relative strength of theparties. William M. Brooks of Perry was elected over Robert Jemison ofTuscaloosa by a vote of 54 to 46, north Alabama voting for Jemison,central and south Alabama for Brooks. And thus the parties votedthroughout the convention.

[Pg 29]It is probable that the majority of the delegates were formerly Whigs, anda majority of them was still hostile to Yancey, who was the only prominentagitator elected. His colleague, from Montgomery County, was Thomas H.Watts, formerly a Whig. Other prominent secessionists were J. T. Dowdell,John T. Morgan, Thomas H. Herndon, E. S. Dargan, William M. Brooks, andFranklin K. Beck. The opposition leaders were William R. Smith, RobertJemison, M. J. Bulger, Nicholas Davis, Jeremiah Clemens, Thomas J.McClellan, and David P. Lewis. Yancey, Morgan, and Watts excepted, theopposition had the more able speakers and debaters and the more politicalexperience. The advantage of representation was with the white counties,which sent 70 of the 100 delegates.

When the convention settled down to work, the grievances of the South hadno important place in the discussions. The little that was said on thesubject came from the coöperationists and that only incidentally. Therewas a genuine fear of social revolution brought about by the Republicanprogramme, but the secessionists had been stating their grievances fortwenty years and were now silent.[42] All seemed to agree that the presentstate of affairs was[Pg 30] unbearable, and that secession was the only remedy.The only question was, How to secede? To decide that question the leadersof each party were placed on the Committee on Secession. A majority of theconvention was in favor of immediate, separate secession. They held thelogical state sovereignty view that the state, while a member of theUnion, should not combine with another against the government or the partycontrolling it. Such a course would be contrary to the Constitution andwould be equivalent to breaking up the Union while planning to save it. Asa sovereign state, Alabama could withdraw from the Union, and henceimmediate, separate secession was the proper method. Then would followconsultation and coöperation with the other seceded southern states informing a southern confederacy. From the first it was known that thesecessionists were strong enough to pass at once a simple ordinance ofwithdrawal. They said but little because their position was already wellunderstood. The people were now more united than they would be after longdebates and outside influence. Yet, for policy’s sake, and in deference tothe feelings of the minority, the latter were allowed to debate for fourdays before the question at issue was brought to a vote. In that time theyhad about argued themselves over to the other side. With the exception ofYancey, the secessionists were silent until the ordinance was passed. Thefirst resolution declared that the people of Alabama would not submit tothe administration of Lincoln and Hamlin. Both parties voted unanimouslyfor this resolution.[43]

The coöperationists were determined to resist Republican rule, but did notconsider delay dangerous. Some doubtless thought that in some way Lincolncould be held in check and the Union still be preserved, and a number ofthem were doubtless willing to wait and make another trial. It was knownthat an ordinance of secession would be passed as soon as thesecessionists cared to bring the question to a vote, but for four days theCommittee on Secession[Pg 31]considered the matter while the coöperationistsmade speeches.[44] On January 10 the committees made two reports. Themajority report, presented by Yancey, simply provided for the immediatewithdrawal of the state from the Union. The minority report, presented byClemens, was in substance as follows: We are unable to see in separatestate secession the most effectual mode of guarding our honor and securingour rights. This great object can best be attained by concurrent andconcentrated action of all the states interested, and such an effortshould be made before deciding finally upon our own policy. All thesouthern states should be requested to meet in convention at Nashville,February 22, 1861, to consider wrongs and appropriate remedies. As a basisof settlement such a convention should consider: (1) the faithfulexecution of the Fugitive Slave Law and the repeal of all state lawsnullifying it; (2) more stringent and explicit provisions for thesurrender of criminals escaping into another state; (3) guarantees thatslavery should not be abolished in the Federal district or in any otherplace under the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress; (4) non-interferencewith the interstate slave trade; (5) protection of slavery in theterritories which, when admitted as states, should decide for themselvesthe question of slavery; (6) right of transit through free states withslave property; (7) the foregoing to be irrepealable amendments to theConstitution. This basis of settlement was not to be regarded as absolute,but simply as the opinion of the Alabama convention, to which itsdelegates to the proposed convention were expected to conform as nearly aspossible. Secession should not be attempted except after the most thoroughinvestigation and discussion.[45]

The secessionists were of one mind in regard to secession and did notdebate the subject; the coöperationists—all from north Alabama—werecareful to explain their views at length in their speeches of opposition.Bulger (c.)[46] of Tallapoosa thought that separate secession was unwiseand impolitic, but that an effort should be made[Pg 32] to secure thecoöperation of the other southern states before seceding. To this end heproposed a convention of the southern states to consider the grievances ofthe South and to determine the mode of relief for the present and securityfor the future, and, should its demands not be complied with, to determineupon a remedy.

Clark (c.) of Lawrence denied the right of separate secession, which wouldnot be a remedy for existing evils. The slavery question would not besettled but would still be a vital and ever present issue. Separatesecession would revolutionize the government but not the northern feeling,would not hush the pulpits, nor calm the northern mind, nor purify BlackRepublicanism. The states would be in a worse condition politically thanthe colonies were before the Constitution was adopted. The border stateswould sell their slaves south and become free states; separate secessionwould be the decree of universal emancipation. A large majority of thepeople were opposed to separate secession, and besides, the state alonewould be weak and at the mercy of foreign powers. The proper policy forAlabama was to remain in a southern union, at least, with the borderstates for allies. Would secession repeal “personal liberty” laws, returna single fugitive slave, prevent abolition in the Federal district andterritories, or the suppression of interstate slave trade? By secessionAlabama would relinquish her interest in the Union and leave it in thecontrol of Black Republicans. It would be almost impossible to unite thesouthern states after separate secession—as difficult as it was to formthe original Union. The only hope for peaceable secession was in a unitedSouth, and now was the time for it, for southern sentiment, though opposedto separate secession, was ripe for southern union. The “United South”would possess all the requirements of a great nation—territory,resources, wealth, population, and community of interests. Separatesecession would result in the deplorable disasters of civil war. He hopedthat even yet some policy of reconciliation might succeed, but if thecontrary happened, there should be no scruples about state sovereignty;the United South would assert the God-given right of every community tofreedom and happiness. Jones (c.) of Lauderdale declared that it was agreat mistake to call his constituents submissionists, since time aftertime they had declared that they would not submit to Black Republicanrule. They differed as to the time and[Pg 33]manner of secession, believingthat hasty secession was not a proper remedy, that it was unwise,impolitic, and discourteous to the border states.

Smith of Tuscaloosa, the leader of the coöperationists,[47] read theplatform upon which he was elected to the convention; which, in substance,was to use all honorable exertions to secure rights in the Union, andfailing, to maintain them out of the Union. Allegiance, he went on to say,was due first to the state, and support was due her in any course shemight adopt. If an ordinance of secession should be passed, it would bethe supreme law of the land. Kimball (c.) of Tallapoosa said that hisconstituents were opposed to secession, but were more opposed to BlackRepublicanism. Before taking action he desired a solid or united South. Heagreed with General Scott that with a certain unanimity of the southernstates it would be impolitic and improper to attempt coercion. To securethe coöperation of the southern states and to justify themselves to theworld a southern convention should be called. However, rights should bemaintained even if Alabama had to withdraw from the Union.

Watkins (c.) of Franklin stated that he would vote against the ordinanceof secession in obedience to the will of the people he represented. Hebelieved that separate secession was wrong. Edwards (c.) of Blount saidthat secession was unwise on the part of Alabama, while Beard (c.) ofMarshall thought the best, safest, and wisest course would be to consultand coöperate with the other slave states. He favored resistance to BlackRepublican rule, and his constituents, though desiring coöperation, wouldabide by the action of the state.

Bulger (c.) of Tallapoosa stated that he had voted against everyproposition leading to immediate and separate secession. Yet he would giveto the state, when the ordinance was passed, his whole allegiance; and, ifany attempt were made to coerce the state, would join the army.[48]Winston (c.) of De Kalb stated that his constituents were opposed toimmediate secession, yet they would, no doubt, acquiesce. He had writtento his son, a cadet at West Point, to resign and come home. A conventionof the slave states should be called to make an attempt to settledifficulties. Davis (c.) of Madison, who had stoutly[Pg 34] opposed separatesecession, now declared that since the meeting of the convention seriouschanges had occurred. Several states had already seceded and others wouldfollow. Consequently Alabama would not be alone. Clemens (cs.) of Madisonsaid he would vote for secession, but would not do so if the resultdepended upon his vote. He strongly preferred the plan proposed by theminority of the committee on secession.

During the debates there was not a single strong appeal for the Union.There was simply no Union feeling, but an intense dislike for the North asrepresented by the Republican party. The coöperationists contemplatedultimate secession. They wished to make an attempt at compromise, but theyfelt sure that it would fail. Their plan of effecting a united Southwithin the Union was clearly unconstitutional and could only be regardedas a proposition to break up the old Union and reconstruct a new one.[49]

The secessionists held clear, logical views on the question before them.They clearly distinguished the “state” or “people” from “government.” Nosecessionist ever claimed that the right of secession was one derived fromor preserved by the Constitution; it was a sovereign right. Granted thesovereignty of the state, the right to secede in any way at any time was,of course, not to be questioned. Consequently, they said but little onthat point.

The coöperationists were vague-minded. Most of them were stanch believersin state sovereignty and opposed secession merely on the ground ofexpediency. A few held a confused theory that while the state wassovereign it had no right to secede unless with the whole South. This viewwas most strongly advocated by Clark of Lawrence. Separate secession wasnot a right, he said, though he admitted the sovereignty of the state. Tosecede alone would be rebellion; not so, if in company with other southernstates. Earnest (c.) of Jefferson said that the state was sovereign, andthat after secession any acts of the state or of its citizens to protecttheir rights would not be treason. But unless the state acted in itssovereign capacity, it could not withdraw from the Union, and hercitizens[Pg 35] would be subject to the penalties of treason.[50] Sheffield (c.)of Marshall believed in the right of “secession or revolution.” Clemens ofMadison, elected as a coöperationist, said that in voting for secession hedid it with the full knowledge that in secession they were all about tocommit treason, and, if not successful, would suffer the pains andpenalties pronounced against the highest political crime. Acting “upon theconvictions of a lifetime” he “calmly and deliberately walked intorevolution.”[51]

The coöperationists were generally disposed to deny the sovereignty of theconvention. Most of them were former Whigs, who had never worked out atheory of government. Davis (c.) of Madison repeatedly denied that theconvention had sovereign powers; sovereignty, he said, was held by thepeople. Clark (c.) of Lawrence complained that the convention wasencroaching upon the rights of the people whom it should protect, andasserted it did not possess unlimited power, but that its power wasconferred by act of the legislature, which created only a general agencyfor a special purpose; that the convention had no power to do more thanpass the ordinance of secession and acts necessary thereto. Smith (c.)said that the convention was the creature of the legislature, not of thepeople, and that the southern Congress was the creature of the convention.Buford (s.) of Barbour[52] doubted whether the convention possessedlegislative powers. According to his views, political or sovereign powerwas vested in the people; the convention was not above the constitutionwhich created the legislature. Watts (s.) of Montgomery believed that thepower of the convention to interfere with the constitution was confined tosuch changes as were necessary to the perfect accomplishment of secession.Yelverton (s.) of Coffee summed up the theory of the majority: theconvention had full power and control over the legislative, executive, andjudiciary; the people were present in convention in the persons of theirrepresentatives and in them was the sovereignty, the power, and the willof the state. This was the theory upon which the convention acted.

On January 11, 1861, Yancey spoke at length, closing the debate on thequestion of secession. Referring to the spirit of fraternity thatprevailed, he stated that irritation and suspicion had, in great degree,subsided. The majority had yielded to the minority all the time wanted fordeliberation, and every one had been given an opportunity to record hissentiments. The question had not been pressed to a vote before all wereready. Though preferring a simple ordinance of secession, the majorityhad, for the sake of harmony and fraternal feeling, yielded to amendmentby the minority. All, he said, were for resistance to Republican rule, anddiffered only as to the manner of resistance. Some believed in secession,others in revolution. The ordinance might mean disunion, secession, orrevolution, as the members preferred. The mode was organized coöperation,not of states, but of the people of Alabama, in resistance to wrong. Yetthe ordinance provided for coöperation with other states upon the basis ofthe Federal Constitution. Every effort, he said, had been made to findcommon ground upon which the advocates of resistance might meet, and allparties had been satisfied. This was not a movement of the politicians,but a great popular movement, based upon the widespread, deep-seatedconviction that the government had fallen into the hands of a sectionalmajority who were determined to use it for the destruction of the rightsof the South. All were driven by an irresistible tide; the minority hadbeen unable to repress the movement, the majority had not been able to addone particle to its momentum; in northern, not in southern, hands was heldthe rod that smote the rock from which flowed this flood.

Some, he said, concluded that by dissolving the Union the rich inheritancebequeathed by the fathers was hazarded. But liberties were one thing, thepower of government delegated to secure them was another. Liberties wereinalienable, and the state governments were formed to secure them; theFederal government was the common agent, and its powers should bewithdrawn when it abused them to destroy the rights of the people. Thismovement was not hostile to liberty nor to the Federal Constitution, butwas merely a dismissal of an unfaithful agent. The state now resumed theduties formerly delegated to that agent. The ordinance of secession was adeclaration[Pg 37] of this fact and also a proposition to form a newgovernment similar to the old. All were urged to sign the ordinance, notto express approval, but to give notice to their enemies that the peoplewere not divided. “I now ask that the vote may be taken,” he said.

The ordinance was called up. It was styled “An Ordinance to dissolve theUnion between Alabama and other States united under the Compact styled‘The Constitution of the United States of America.’” The preamble statedthat the election of Lincoln and Hamlin by a sectional party avowedlyhostile to the domestic institutions, peace, and security of Alabama,preceded by many dangerous infractions of the Constitution by the statesand people of the North, was a political wrong of so insulting andmenacing a character as to justify the people of Alabama in the adoptionof prompt and decided measures for their future peace and security. Theordinance simply stated that Alabama withdrew from the Union and that herpeople resumed the powers delegated by the Constitution to the Federalgovernment. A coöperationist amendment expressed the desire of the peopleto form with the other southern states a permanent government, and inviteda convention of the states to meet in Montgomery on February 4, 1861, forconsultation in regard to the common safety. The ordinance was passed by avote of 69 to 31, every delegate voting. Fifteen coöperationists voted forsecession and 22 signed the ordinance.

In the convention opinions varied as to whether peace or war would followsecession. The great majority of the members, and of the people also,believed that peaceful relations would continue. All truly wished forpeace. A number of the coöperationists expressed themselves as fearingwar, but this was when opposing secession, and they probably said morethan they really believed. Yet in nearly all the speeches made in theconvention there seemed to be distinguishable a feeling of fear and dreadlest war should follow. However, had war been a certainty, secession wouldnot have been delayed or checked.

There was warm discussion on the question of submitting the ordinance tothe people for ratification or rejection. The coöperationists, both beforeand after the passage of the ordinance, favored its reference to thepeople in the hope that the measure would be delayed or defeated. No oneexpected that it would be referred to the people, but this was a goodquestion for obstructive purposes.[Pg 38] The minority report on secessiondeclared that, in a matter of such vital importance, involving the livesand liberties of a whole people, the ordinance should be submitted to themfor their discussion, and that secession should be attempted only afterratification by a direct vote of the people on that single issue.

Posey (c.) of Lauderdale said that his constituents expected the questionof secession to be referred to the people, and that they would submit morewillingly to a decision made by popular vote; that the ordinance wasobjectionable to them unless they were allowed to vote on it. He furtherstated that when the convention had refused to submit the ordinance to thepopular vote, the first impulse of some of the coöperationists had been to“bolt the convention.” However, not being responsible, they preferred toremain and aid in providing for the emergencies of the future. Kimbal (c.)of Tallapoosa said that the people were the interested parties, thatsovereignty was in the people, and that they ought to decide the question.Edwards (c.) of Blount said that his constituents expected the ordinanceto be referred to them and had instructed him to use his best exertions tosecure reference to the people. Bulger (c.) of Tallapoosa voted againstall propositions looking toward secession without reference to the people.Davis (c.) of Madison denied the sovereignty of the convention. He saidthat the vote of the people might be one way and that of the conventionanother. He believed that the majority in convention represented aminority of the people.

In closing the debate on this subject, Yancey (s.) of Montgomery saidthat, as a measure of policy, to submit the ordinance to a vote of thepeople was wrong. The convention was clothed with all the powers of thepeople; it was the people acting in their sovereign capacity; thegovernment was not a pure democracy, but a government of the people,though not by the people. Historically the convention was the supremepower in American political theory, and submission to the people was a newdoctrine. If the ordinance should be submitted to the people, the friendsof secession would triumph, but irritation and prejudice would be aroused.Yancey’s views prevailed.

A number of the coöperationists professed to believe that secession wouldresult in disintegration and anarchy in the South. The secessionists wereaccused of desiring to tear down, not to build up. These assertions were,in fact, unfounded, since, during the entire debate, those favoringimmediate secession stated plainly that they expected to reunite with theother southern states after secession. Williamson (s.) of Lowndes saidthat to declare to the world that they were not ready to unite with theother slave states in a permanent government would be to act in bad faithand subject themselves to contempt and scorn; united action was necessary;financial and commercial affairs were in a deplorable condition;confidence was lost, and in the business world all was gloom anddespair—this could be remedied only by a permanent government. Whatley(s.) of Calhoun was unwilling for it to be said by posterity that theytore down the old government and failed to reconstruct a new; the cottonstates should establish a government modelled on the Federal Union.

In accordance with these views the ordinance of secession proposed aconvention of southern states, and a few days later a resolution waspassed approving the suggestion of South Carolina to form a provisionalgovernment upon the plan of the old Union and to prepare for a permanentgovernment. Each state was to send as many delegates to the convention onFebruary 4 as it had had senators and representatives in Congress. TheAlabama convention (January 16) elected one deputy from each congressionaldistrict and two from the state at large, most of them beingcoöperationists or moderate secessionists.

Yancey, on January 16, read a unanimous report from the Committee onSecession in favor of forming a provisional confederate government atonce. The report also stated that the people of Alabama had never beendissatisfied with the Constitution of the United States; that theirdissatisfaction had been with the conduct of the northern people inviolating the Constitution and in dangerous misinterpretation of it,causing the belief that, while acting through the forms of government,they intended to destroy the rights of the South. The FederalConstitution, the report declared, represented a complete scheme ofgovernment, capable of being put into speedy[Pg 40]operation, and was sofamiliar to the people that when properly interpreted they would feel safeunder it. A speedy confederation of the seceded states was desirable, andthere was no better basis than the United States Constitution. The reportrecommended the formation, first, of a provisional, and later, of apermanent, government. The secessionists warmly advocated the speedyformation of a new confederacy. The coöperationists renewed their policyof obstruction. Jemison (c.) of Tuscaloosa proposed to strike out the partof the resolution relating to the formation of a permanent government.Another coöperationist wanted delay in order that the border states mighthave time to take part in forming the proposed government. Others wantedthe people to elect a new convention to act on the question. Yanceyreplied that delay was dangerous, if coercion was intended by the North;that the issue had been before the people and that they had invested theirdelegates with full power; that the convention then in session had ampleauthority to settle all questions concerning a provisional or a permanentgovernment; that another election would only cause irritation; that delay,waiting for the secession of the border states, would be suicidal. Theproposition for a new convention was lost by a vote of 53 to 36.

The convention decided to continue the work until the end. After choosingdelegates (January 16) to the southern convention, which was to meet inMontgomery on February 4, the state convention adjourned until theConfederate provisional government was planned and the permanentconstitution written. Then the state convention met again on March 4 toratify them. The coöperationists now proposed that the new plan ofgovernment be submitted to the people. It was right and expedient, theysaid, to let the people decide. Morgan[53] (s.) of Dallas said that theproposition for ratification by direct vote of the people was absurd. Thepeople would never ratify, for too many unrelated questions would bebrought in. Dargan (s.) of Mobile said that the people had conferred uponthe convention full powers to act, and that a new election would harassthe candidates with new issues such as the slave trade, reconstruction,etc., introduced by the opponents of secession. Stone (s.) of Pickensthought that a new election would cause angry and bitter discussions,wrangling, distrust, and division among the people; that the proposed[Pg 41]constitution was very like the United States Constitution, to which thepeople were so devoted that they had given up the Union rather than theConstitution; that Lincoln’s inaugural address was a declaration of war,and a permanent government was necessary to raise money for armies andfleets. Still the coöperationists obstructed, saying that not to refer tothe people was unfair and illiberal; that the convention was usurping thepowers of the people, who desired to be heard in the matter; thatgovernment by a few was like a house built on the sand; that there was nodanger in waiting, for the people would be sure to ratify and then wouldbe better satisfied, etc. Finally most of the coöperationists agreed thatit would be better not to refer the question to the people and thepermanent Confederate constitution was ratified on March 12 by the vote of87 to 5.[54]

For the first time Yancey stood at the head of the people of the state.They were ready to give him any office. But the coöperationists and a fewsecessionist politicians in the convention were jealous of his risingstrength and desired to stay his progress. So Earnest (c.) of Jeffersonintroduced a self-denying resolution making ineligible to election toCongress the members of the state legislature and of the convention. Itwas a direct attack by the dissatisfied politicians upon the prominent menin the convention, and especially upon Yancey. The measure was supportedby Jemison (c.) who said that it was a practice never to elect a member ofa legislative body to an office created by the legislature. Clemens (cs.)thought such a measure unnecessary, as the majority necessary to pass itcould defeat any undesirable candidate. Stone (s.) said that such aresolution would cost the state the services of some of her best men whenmost needed; that the best men were in the convention; and that thesouthern Confederacy should be intrusted to the friends, not to theenemies, of secession. Morgan (s.) of Dallas thought that, as a matter ofpolicy, the congressmen would be chosen from outside of the convention.Bragg (s.) of Mobile wanted the best men regardless of place; this was noordinary work and the best men were needed; the people had already made achoice of the members once and would approve them again. Yancey said thatin principle he was opposed to such a measure. He declared that he wouldnot be a candidate.[Pg 42] But he believed that the people had a right to achoice from their entire number, and that the convention had no right toviolate the equality of citizenship by disfranchising the 223 members ofthe convention and the legislature. Yelverton (s.) of Coffee at firstfavored the resolution, but upon discovering that it was aimed at a fewleaders and especially at Yancey, he opposed it. He did not wish theleaders of secession to be proscribed.

The resolution was lost by a vote of 46 to 50, but the delegates sent tothe Provisional Congress were, with one exception, taken from outside theconvention. A few politicians among the secessionists united with thecoöperationists and, passing by the most experienced and able leaders,chose an inexperienced Whiggish delegation.[55]

The Committee on Foreign Relations reported that the power of regulatingthe slave trade would properly be conferred upon the Confederategovernment, but, meanwhile, believing that the slave trade should beprohibited until the Confederacy was formed, the committee reported anordinance forbidding it. Morgan (s.) of Dallas opposed the ordinancebecause it was silent as to the cause of the prohibition. He was opposedto the slave trade on the ground of public policy. If at liberty to carryout Christian convictions, he would have Africans brought over to be madeChristian slaves, the highest condition attainable by the negro. Inholding slaves, the South was charged with sin and crime, but the southernpeople were unable to perceive the wrong and unwilling to cease to do whatthe North considered evil. The present movement rested, in great measure,upon their assertion of the right to hold the African in slavery. The lawsof Congress denouncing the slave trade as piracy had been a shelter tothose who assailed the South, and had affected the standing of the Southamong nations. If the slave trade were wrong, then it was much worse tobring Christian and enlightened negroes from Virginia to Alabama than aheathen savage from Africa to Alabama. Slavery was the only force whichhad ever been able to elevate the negro. He believed that on grounds ofpublic policy the traffic should be condemned, but it was a questionbetter left to the Confederate[Pg 43] government, because the various stateswould not make uniform laws. There were slaves enough for twenty yearsand, when needed, more could be had. Reopening of the African slave tradeshould be forbidden by the Confederate government expressly for reasons ofpublic policy.

Smith (c.) of Tuscaloosa said that the question of morality did not arise;the slave trade was not wrong. The heathen African was greatly benefitedby the change to Christian Alabama. But no more negroes were needed; theywere already increasing too fast and there was no territory for extension.Crowded together, the white and black might degenerate like the Spaniardsand natives in Mexico. He supported the ordinance as a measure to disarmfoes who charged that one of the reasons for secession was a desire toreopen the African slave trade, which should be denied to the world. Theslave trade would lead to war, and “If Cotton is King, his throne ispeace,” war would destroy him. Jones (c.) of Lauderdale did not wantanother negro on the soil of Alabama. The people of the border states wereafraid that the cotton states would reopen the slave trade, but for thesake of uniformity the question should be left to the Confederategovernment. Posey (c.) of Lauderdale also thought the border states shouldbe reassured, and said that on the grounds of expediency alone he wouldvote against the slave trade. There were already too many negroes; alreadymore land was needed, and that for whites. The slave trade should beprohibited as a great evil to the South. Potter (c.) of Cherokee wasastonished that the slave trade and slavery were treated as if identicalin point of morality. It was a duty to support and perpetuate slavery; theslave trade was immoral in its tendency and effects; the question,however, should be settled on the grounds of policy alone.

Yelverton (s.) of Coffee[56] said that the slave trade should not now bereopened nor forever closed, but that the regulation of it should be leftto the legislature. It was said that the world was against the South onthe slavery question; then the South should either own all the slaves, orset them all free in deference to unholy prejudice. As the southern peoplewere not ready to surrender the negroes, they should be at liberty to buythem in any market, subject simply to the laws of trade. Slavery was thecause of secession and should not be[Pg 44] left in doubt. A slave in Alabamacost eight times as much as one imported from Africa. If the border statesentered the Confederacy, they could furnish slaves; if they remained inthe Union and thus became foreign country, the South should not be forcedto buy from them alone. Slavery was a social, moral, and politicalblessing. The Bible sanctioned it, and had nothing to say in favor of itin one country and against it in another. To restrict the slave market tothe United States would be a blow at states rights and free trade, andwith slavery stricken, King Cotton would become a petty tyrant. Slaveryhad built up the Yankees, socially, politically, and commercially. TheEnglish were a calculating people and would not hesitate, on account ofslavery, to recognize southern independence, and other nations would dolikewise. Expansion of territory would come and would cause an increaseddemand for slaves. The arguments against the slave trade, he said, werethat fanaticism might be angered, that there were too many negroesalready, and that those who had slaves to sell might suffer from reducedprices. But the larger part of the people would prefer to purchase in acheaper market, and non-slaveholders, as they grew wealthier, could becomeslave owners. The argument against the slave trade, he added, was usuallythe one of dollars and cents. The great moral effect was lost sight of,and it seemed from some arguments that Christianity did not require theBible to be taught to the poor slave unless profit followed. The time wasnot far distant when the reopening of the slave trade would be consideredessential to the industrial prosperity of the cotton states.

Stone (s.) of Pickens said that he would not hesitate, from moral reasons,to purchase a slave anywhere. Slavery was sanctioned by the divine law; itwas a blessing to the negro. But on grounds of policy he would insist uponthe prohibition of the slave trade. Too many slaves would make too muchcotton; prices would then fall and weaken the institution. Keep the priceshigh, and the institution would be strengthened; reduce the value of theslaves, and the interest of the owners in the institution would bereduced, and the border states would listen to plans for generalemancipation. There was no territory in which slavery could expand.

Yancey (s.) explained his course in the Southern Commercial Conventions inpreceding years when he had advocated the repeal of the laws against theslave trade. He thought that the laws of[Pg 45]Congress defining the slavetrade as piracy placed a stigma on the institution, condemned it from thepoint of view of the government, and thus violated the spirit of theConstitution by discriminating against the South. He did not then advocatethe reopening of the slave trade, nor would he do so at this time. For tworeasons he insisted that the Confederate Congress should prohibit theslave trade: (1) already there were as many slaves as were needed; (2) toinduce the border states to enter the Confederacy.

Dowdell (s.) of Chambers proposed an amendment to the ordinance ofprohibition, declaring that slavery was a moral, social, and politicalblessing, and that any attempt to hinder its expansion should be opposed.He opposed reopening the slave trade, though he considered that there wasno moral distinction between slavery and the slave trade. The borderstates, he said, need not be encouraged by declarations of policy; theywould join the Confederacy anyway. Slavery might be regulated by Congress,but should not be prohibited by organic law. He expressed a wish that hemight never see the day when white immigration would drive out slave laborand take its place, nor did he want social or political inequality amongwhite people whom he believed should be kept free, independent, and equal,recognizing no subordinate except those made as such by God. Thelegislature, he thought, should be left to deal with the evil of whiteimmigration from the North, so that the southern people might be kept aslaveholding people. But, he asked, can that be done with slaves at $1000a head? And must the hands of the people be tied because a fantasticaloutside world says that slavery and the slave trade are morally wrong?

Watts (s.) of Montgomery proposed that the Confederacy be given power toprohibit the importation of slaves from any place. Smith (c.) ofTuscaloosa said that the proposal of Watts was a threat against the borderstates, which would lose their slave market unless they joined theConfederacy; that the border states must be kept friendly, a bulwarkagainst the North.

A resolution was finally passed to the effect that the people of Alabamawere opposed, for reasons of public policy, to reopening the slave trade,and the state’s delegates in Congress were instructed to insist on theprohibition.

The debates show clearly the feeling of the delegates that, on the[Pg 46]slavery question, the rest of the world was against them, and hence, as ameasure of expediency, they were in favor of prohibiting the trade. Somewished to have all the whites finally become slaveholders; others believedthat the negroes were the economic and social enemies of the whites, andthey wanted no more of them. But all agreed that slavery was a good thingfor the negro.

Yancey (s.) introduced a resolution favoring the free navigation of theMississippi. The North, he said, was uncertain as to the policy of theSouth and must be assured that the South wished no restrictions upontrade. “Free trade” was its motto. Dowdell (s.) proposed that thenavigation should be free only to those states and territories lying onthe river and its tributaries, while Smith (c.) thought that allnavigation should remain as unrestricted and open to all as beforesecession. Yancey thought that absolutely unrestricted navigation wouldtend to undermine secession, for it would tend to reconstruct the latepolitical union into a commercial union. Such a policy would discriminateagainst European friends in favor of New England enemies. As passed, theresolution expressed the sense of the convention that the navigation ofthe Mississippi should be free to all the people of those states andterritories which were situated on that river or its tributaries.

As soon as the governor issued writs of election for a convention, fearingthat the legislatures of other states then in session might adjourn beforecalling conventions, he sent a commissioner to each southern state toconsult and advise with the governor and legislature in regard to thequestion of secession and later confederation. These commissioners madefrequent reports to the governor and convention and did much to secure theprompt organization of a permanent government.[57]

[Pg 47]After the ordinance of secession was passed a resolution was adopted tothe effect that Alabama, being no longer a member of the Union, was notentitled to representation at Washington and that her representativesthere should be instructed to withdraw. A second resolution, authorizingthe governor to send two commissioners to Washington to treat with thatgovernment, caused some debate.

Clemens (cs.) said that there was no need of sending commissioners toWashington, because they would not be received. Let Washington sendcommissioners to Alabama; South Carolina was differently situated; Alabamaheld her own forts, South Carolina did not. Smith (c.) proposed that onlyone commissioner be sent. One would do more efficient work and the expensewould be less. Watts (s.) said that Alabama as a former member of theUnion should inform the old government of her withdrawal and of her policyfor the future; that there were many grave and delicate matters to besettled between the two governments; and that commissioners should be sentto propose terms of adjustment and to demand a recognition of the neworder.

Webb (s.) of Greene said that Alabama stood in the same attitude towardthe United States as toward France. And the fact that the commissioners ofSouth Carolina had been treated with contempt should not influenceAlabama. If one was to be in the wrong, let it be the Washingtongovernment. To send commissioners would not detract from the dignity ofthe state, but would show a desire for amicable relations. Whatley (s.)took the same ground, and added that, having seized the forts to preventtheir being used against Alabama, the state, as retiring partner, wouldhold them as assets until a final settlement, especially as its share hadnot been received. Some members urged that only one commissioner be sentin order to save expenses. All were getting to be very economical. Andpractically all agreed that it was the duty of the state to show herdesire for amicable relations by making advances.

Yancey thought the matter should be left to the Provisional Congress; theUnited States had made agreements with South Carolina about the militarystatus of the forts and had violated the agreement; the other states alsohad claims of public property, and negotiations should be carried on bythe common agent. Separate action by the state would only complicatematters.

[Pg 48]Finally, it was decided to send one commissioner, and the governorappointed Thomas J. Judge, who proceeded to Washington, with authority tonegotiate regarding the forts, arsenals, and custom-houses in the state,the state’s share of the United States debt, and the future relationsbetween the United States and Alabama, and through C. C. Clay, late UnitedStates senator from Alabama, applied for an interview with the President.Buchanan refused to receive him in his official capacity, but wrote thathe would be glad to see him as a private gentleman. Judge declined to bereceived except in his official capacity, and said that futurenegotiations must begin at Washington.

Foreseeing war, Watts (s.) proposed that the general assembly be givenpower to confiscate the property of alien enemies, and also to suspend thecollection of debts due to alien enemies. Shortridge (s.) thought that themeasure was not sufficiently emphatic, since war had practically beendeclared. He said the courts should be closed against the collection ofdebts due persons in the northern states which had passed personal libertylaws. He stated that Alabama owed New York several million dollars, andthat to pay this debt would drain from the country the currency, whichshould be held to relieve the strain.

Jones (c.) was opposed to every description of robbery. The courseproposed, he said, would be a flagrant outrage upon just creditors, as thegreater wrong would be done the friends of the South, fornineteen-twentieths of the debt was due to political friends—merchantswho had always defended the rights of the South. Those debts should bepaid and honor sustained. The legislature, he added, would pass astay-law, which he regretted, and that would suffice. Smith (c.) said thatconfiscation was an act of war, and would provoke retaliation. Everyaction should look toward the preservation of peace.

Clarke (s.) of Marengo saw nothing wrong in the measure. There was no wishor intention of evading payment of the debt; payment would only besuspended or delayed. It was a peace measure. Lewis (cs.) said that onlythe war-making power would have authority to pass such a measure, and thatthis power would be lodged in the Confederate Congress. Meanwhile, heproposed to give the power temporarily to the legislature.

[Pg 49]Early in the session the secessionists introduced a resolution pledgingthe state to resist any attempt by the United States to coerce any of theseceded states. Alabama could not stand aside, they said, and see theseceded states coerced by the United States government, which had noauthority to use force. All southern states recognized secession as theessence and test of state sovereignty, and would support each other.

Earnest (c.) of Jefferson was of the opinion that this resolution wasintended to cover acts of hostility already committed by individuals, suchas Governor Moore and other officials, before the state seceded, and tovote for the resolution subjected the voter to the penalties of treason.When a state acted in its sovereign capacity and withdrew from the Union,then those individuals were relieved. But to vote for such a measurebefore secession was treason.

Morgan (s.) of Dallas said that, whether Alabama were in or out of theUnion, she could see no state coerced; the question was not debatable. Toattack South Carolina was to attack Alabama. “We are one united people andcan never be dissevered.” The North was pledging men and money to coercethe southern states, and its action must be answered. Jemison (c.) thoughtthe war alarms were false and that there was no necessity for immediateaction, while Smith (c.), his colleague, heartily indorsed the measure.Jones (c.) declared that before the state seceded he would not break thelaws of the United States; that he had sworn to support the Constitution,and only the state could absolve him from that oath; that such a measurewas not lawful while the state was in the Union.

After secession the resolution was again called up, and all speakersagreed that aid should be extended to seceded states in case of coercion.Some wanted to promise aid to any one of the United States which mighttake a stand against the other states in behalf of the South. Events movedso rapidly that the measure did not come to a vote before the organizationof the Provisional Congress.

Not only was the old political structure to be torn down, but a new onehad to be erected. In organizing the new order the convention performedmany duties pertaining usually to the legislature.[Pg 50] This was done in orderto save time and to prevent confusion in the administration.

Citizenship was defined to include free whites only, except such as werecitizens of the United States before January 11, 1861. A person born in anorthern state or in a foreign country before January 11, 1861, must takethe oath of allegiance to the state of Alabama, and the oath ofabjuration, renouncing allegiance to all other sovereignties. The stateconstitution was amended by omitting all references to the United States;the state officers were absolved from their oath to support the UnitedStates Constitution; jurisdiction of the United States over waste andunappropriated lands and navigable waters was rescinded; and navigationwas opened to all citizens of Alabama and other states that “may unitewith Alabama in a Southern Slaveholding Confederacy.” A registration oflands was ordered to be made; the United States land system was adopted, ahomestead law was provided for, and a new land office was established atGreenville, in Butler County. The governor was authorized to revokecontracts made under United States laws with commissioners appointed tolocate swamps and overflowed lands. The general assembly was authorized tocede to the Confederacy exclusive jurisdiction over a district ten milessquare for a seat of government for the Confederate States of America.

Provision was made for the military defence of Alabama, and the UnitedStates army regulations were adopted almost in their entirety. The militiawas reorganized; all commissions were vacated, and new elections ordered.The governor was placed in charge of all measures for defence. He wasauthorized to purchase supplies for the use of the state army, to borrowmoney for the same, and to issue bonds to cover expenses. Later, theconvention decreed that all arms and munitions of war taken from theUnited States should be turned over to the Confederacy; only the smallarms belonging to the state were retained. The governor was authorized totransfer to the Confederate States, upon terms to be agreed upon betweenthe governor and the president, all troops raised for state defence. Thusall volunteer companies could be transferred to the Confederate service ifthe men were willing, otherwise they were discharged. A number ofordinances were passed organizing the state military system, andcoöperating with the Confederate government. Jurisdiction[Pg 51] over forts,arsenals, and navy yards was conferred upon the Confederate States. Thisordinance could only be revoked by a convention of the people.

The port of Mobile was resumed by the state. The collector of the port andhis assistants were continued in office as state officials who were to actin the name of the state of Alabama. With a view to future settlement thecollector was ordered to retain all funds in his hands belonging to theUnited States, and the state of Alabama guaranteed his safety, as to oath,bond, etc. As far as possible, the United States customs and portregulations were adopted. Vessels built anywhere, provided that one-thirdwas owned by citizens of the southern states and commanded by southerncaptains, were entitled to registry as vessels of Alabama. The collectorwas authorized to take possession in the name of the state of allgovernment custom-houses, lighthouses, etc., and to reappoint the officersin charge if they would accept office from the state. The weights andmeasures of the United States were adopted as the standard; discriminatingduties imposed by the United States, and regulations on foreign vesselsand merchandise were abolished; Selma and Mobile were continued as portsof entry, and all ordinances relating to Mobile were extended to Selma.

Thaddeus Sanford, the collector of Mobile, reported to the convention thatthe United States Treasury Department had drawn on him for $26,000 onJanuary 7, 1861, and asked for instructions in regard to paying it. TheCommittee on Imports reported that the draft was dated before secessionand before the ordinance directing the collector to retain all UnitedStates funds, that it was drawn to pay parties for services rendered whileAlabama was a member of the Union. So it was ordered to be paid.

After the Confederacy was formed, the convention ordered that thecustom-houses, marine hospital, lighthouses, buoys, and the revenuecutter,Lewis Cass, be turned over to the Confederate authorities; andthe collector was directed to transfer all money collected by him to theConfederate authorities, who were to account for all moneys and settlewith the United States authorities. The collector was then released fromhis bond to the state.

Postal contracts and regulations in force prior to January 11, 1861, werepermitted to remain for the present. The general assembly[Pg 52] was empoweredto make postal arrangements until the Confederate government should beestablished. Meanwhile, the old arrangements with the United States wereunchanged.[58] Other ordinances adopted the laws of the United Statesrelating to the value of foreign coins, and directed the division of thestate into nine congressional districts.

The judicial powers were resumed by the state and were henceforth to beexercised by the state courts. The circuit and chancery courts and thecity court of Mobile were given original jurisdiction in cases formerlyarising within the jurisdiction of the Federal courts. Jurisdiction overadmiralty cases was vested in the circuit courts and the city court ofMobile. The chancery courts had jurisdiction in all cases of equity. Thestate supreme court was given original and exclusive jurisdiction overcases concerning ambassadors and public ministers. All admiralty cases,except where the United States was plaintiff, pending in the Federalcourts in Alabama were transferred with all records to the state circuitcourts; cases in equity in like manner to the state chancery courts; theUnited States laws relating to admiralty and maritime cases, and to thepostal service were adopted temporarily; the forms of proceedings in statecourts were to be the same as in former Federal courts; the clerks of thecircuit courts were given the custody of all records transferred fromFederal courts and were empowered to issue process running into any partof the state and to be executed by any sheriff; United States marshals inwhose hands processes were running were ordered to execute them and tomake returns to the state courts under penalty of being prosecuted as ifdefaulting sheriffs; the right was asserted to prosecute marshals who wereguilty of misconduct before secession. The United States laws of May 26,1796, and March 27, 1804, prescribing the method of authentication ofpublic acts, records, or judicial proceedings for use in other courts,were adopted for Alabama. In cases appealed to the United States SupremeCourt from the Alabama supreme court, the latter was to act as if noappeal had been taken and execute judgment; cases appealed from inferiorFederal courts to the United States[Pg 53] Supreme Court, were to be consideredas appealed to the state supreme court which was to proceed as if thecases had been appealed to it from its own lower courts. The United Stateswere not to be allowed to be a party to any suit in the state courtsagainst a citizen of Alabama unless ordered by the convention or by thegeneral assembly. Federal jurisdiction in general was to be resumed bystate courts until the Confederate government should act in the matter.

No law of Alabama in force January 11, 1861, consistent with theConstitution and not inconsistent with the ordinances of the convention,was to be affected by secession; no official of the state was to beaffected by secession; no offence against the state, and no penalty, noobligation, and no duty to or of state, no process or proceeding in court,no right, title, privilege, or obligation under the state or United StatesConstitution and laws, was to be affected by the ordinance of secessionunless inconsistent with it. No change made by the convention in theconstitution of Alabama should have the effect to divest of any right,title, or legal trust existing at the time of making the change. Allchanges were to have a prospective, not a retrospective, effect unlessexpressly declared in the change itself.

The general assembly was to have no power to repeal, alter, or amend anyordinance of the convention incorporated in the revised constitution.Other ordinances were to be considered as ordinary legislation and mightbe amended or repealed by the legislature.[59]

All the counties of north Alabama sent coöperation delegates to theconvention, and these spoke continually of a peculiar state of feeling onthe part of their constituents which required conciliation by theconvention. The people of that section, in regard to their grievances,thought as the people of central and south Alabama, but they were not soready to act in resistance. Moreover, it would seem that they desired allthe important measures framed by the convention to be referred to them forapproval or disapproval. The coöperationists made much of this state offeeling for purposes of obstruction. There was, and had always been, aslight lack of sympathy between the people of the two sections; but on thepresent question they were[Pg 54] very nearly agreed, though still opposing fromhabit. Had the coöperationists been in the majority, secession would havebeen hardly delayed. Of course, among the mountains and sand-hills ofnorth Alabama was a small element of the population not concerned in anyway with the questions before the people, and who would oppose any measuresupported by southern Alabama. Sheets of Winston was probably the onlyrepresentative of this class in the convention. The members of theconvention referred to the fact of the local nature of thedissatisfaction. Yancey, angered at the obstructive tactics of thecoöperationists, who had no definite policy and nothing to gain byobstruction, made a speech in which he said it was useless to disguise thefact that in some parts of the state there was dissatisfaction in regardto the action of the convention, and warned the members from northAlabama, whom he probably considered responsible for the dissatisfaction,that as soon as passed the ordinance of secession became the supreme lawof the land, and it was the duty of all citizens to yield obedience. Thosewho refused, he said, were traitors and public enemies, and the sovereignstate would deal with them as such. Opposition after secession wasunlawful and to even speak of it was wrong, and he predicted that the name“tory” would be revived and applied to such people. Jemison of Tuscaloosa,a leading coöperationist, made an angry reply, and said that Yancey wouldinaugurate a second Reign of Terror and hang people by families, by towns,counties, and districts.

Davis (c.) of Madison declared that the people of north Alabama wouldstand by the expressed will of the people of the state, and intimated thatthe action of the convention did not represent the will of the people. If,he added, resistance to revolution gave the name of “tories,” it waspossible that the people of north Alabama might yet bear the designation;that any invasion of their rights or any attempt to force them toobedience would result in armed resistance; that the invader would be metat the foot of the mountains, and in armed conflict the question of thesovereignty of the people would be settled. Clark (c.) of Lawrence saidthat north Alabama was more closely connected with Tennessee, and thatmany of the citizens were talking of secession from Alabama and annexationto Tennessee. He begged for some concession to north Alabama, but did notseem to know exactly what he wanted. He intimated that there would be[Pg 55]civil war in north Alabama. Jones (c.) of Lauderdale said that hispeople were not “submissionists” and would share every toil and danger insupport of the state to which was their supreme allegiance. Edwards (c.)of Blount was not prepared to say whether his people would acquiesce ornot. He promised to do nothing to excite them to rebellion! Davis ofMadison, who a few days before was ready to rebel, now said that he, andperhaps all north Alabama, would cheerfully stand by the state in thecoming conflict.

A majority of the coöperationists voted against the ordinance ofsecession, at the same time stating that they intended to support it whenit became law. The ordinance was lithographed, and the delegates weregiven an opportunity to sign their names to the official copy.Thirty-three of the delegates from north Alabama, two of whom had votedfor the ordinance, refused to sign, because, as they said, it might appearas if they approved all that had been done by the secessionists. Theiropposition to the policy of the majority was based on the followingprinciples: (1) the fundamental principle that representative bodiesshould submit their acts for approval to the people; (2) the interests ofall demanded that all the southern states be consulted in regard to a planfor united action. The members who refused to sign repeatedly acknowledgedthe binding force of the ordinance and promised a cheerful obedience, but,at the same time, published far and wide an address to the people,justifying their opposition and refusal to sign, causing the impressionthat they considered the action of the convention illegal. There was noreason whatever why these men should pursue the policy of obstruction tothe very last, yet it was done. Nine of the thirty-three finally signedthe ordinance, but twenty-four never signed it, though they promised tosupport it.

The majority of the members and of the people contemplated secession as afinality; reconstruction was not to be considered. A few of thecoöperationists, however, were in favor of secession as a means ofbringing the North to terms. Messrs. Pugh and Clay (members of Congress)in a letter to the convention suggested that the border states consideredthe secession of the cotton states as an indispensable basis for areconstruction of the Union. Smith of Tuscaloosa, the leadingcoöperationist, stated his belief that the revolution[Pg 56] would teach theNorth her dependence upon the South, how much she owed that section, bringher to a sense of her duty, and cause her to yield to the sensible demandsof the South. He looked forward with fondest hopes to the near future whenthere would be a reconstruction of the Union with redress of grievances,indemnity for the past, complete and unequivocal guarantees for thefuture.

The proceedings were dignified, solemn, and at times even sad. During thewhole session, good feeling prevailed to a remarkable degree among theindividual members, and toward the last the utmost harmony existed betweenthe parties.[60] For this the credit is due the secessionists. At timesthe coöperationists were suspicious, and pursued a policy of obstructionwhen nothing was to be gained; but they were given every privilege andshown every courtesy. During the early part of the session an enthusiasticcrowd filled the halls and galleries and manifested approval of the courseof the secessionist leaders by frequent applause. In order to secureperfect freedom of debate to the minority, it was ordered that no applausebe permitted; and this order failing to keep the spectators silent, thegalleries were cleared, and thereafter secret sessions were the rule.

Affecting and exciting scenes followed the passage of the ordinance ofsecession. One by one the strong members of the minority arose and, forthe sake of unity at home, surrendered the opinions of a lifetime andforgot the prejudices of years. This was done with no feeling ofhumiliation. To the last, they were treated with distinguishedconsideration by their opponents. There was really no difference in theprinciples of the two parties; the only differences were on local,personal, sectional, and social questions. On the common ground ofresistance to a common enemy they were united.

On January 11, 1861, after seven days’ debate, it became known that thevote on secession would be taken, and an eager multitude crowded CapitolHill to hear the announcement of the result. The senate chamber, oppositethe convention hall, was crowded with the waiting people, who wereaddressed by distinguished orators on the topics of the day. As many womenas men were present, and, if[Pg 57] possible, were more eager for secession.Their minds had long ago been made up. “With them,” says the gravehistorian of the convention, “the love songs of yesterday had swelled intothe political hosannas of to-day.”

The momentous vote was taken, the doors were flung open, the resultannounced, and in a moment the tumultuous crowd filled the galleries,lobbies, and aisles of the convention hall. The ladies of Montgomery hadmade a large state flag, and when the doors were opened this flag wasunfurled in the hall so that its folds extended almost across the chamber.Members jumped on desks, chairs, and tables to shake out the floatingfolds and display the design. There was a perfect frenzy of enthusiasm.Yancey, the secessionist leader and splendid orator, in behalf of theladies presented the flag to the convention. Smith, the leader of thecoöperationists, replied in a speech of acceptance, paying an affectingtribute to the flag that they were leaving—“the Star-Spangled Banner,sacred to memory, baptized in the nation’s best blood, consecrated in songand history, and the herald of liberty’s grandest victories on land and onsea.” In memory of the illustrious men who brought fame to the flag, hesaid, “Let him who has tears prepare to shed them now as we lower thisglorious ensign of our once vaunted victories.” Alpheus Baker of Barbourin glowing words expressed to the ladies the thanks of the convention.

Amidst wild enthusiasm in hall and street the convention adjourned. Onehundred and one cannon shots announced the result. The flag of theRepublic of Alabama floated from windows, steeples, and towers. Partylines were forgotten, and until late in the night every man who wouldspeak was surrounded by eager listeners. The people were united in commonsentiment in the face of common danger.

One hour before the signal cannon shot announced that the fateful step hadbeen taken and that Alabama was no longer one of the United States, theredied, within sight of the capitol, Bishop Cobb of the Episcopal Church,the one man of character and influence who in all Alabama had opposedsecession in any way, at any time, or for any reason.[61]

PART II
WAR TIMES IN ALABAMA

CHAPTER III

On January 4, 1861, the Alabama troops, ordered by Governor Andrew B.Moore, seized the forts which commanded the entrance to the harbor atMobile, and also the United States arsenal at Mount Vernon, thirty milesdistant. A few days later the governor, in a communication addressed toPresident Buchanan, explained the reason for this step. He was convinced,he said, that the convention would withdraw the state from the Union, andhe deemed it his duty to take every precaution to render the secessionpeaceable. Information had been received which led him to believe that theUnited States government would attempt to maintain its authority inAlabama by force, even to bloodshed. The President must surely see, thegovernor wrote, that coercion could not be effectual until capacity forresistance had been exhausted, and it would have been unwise to havepermitted the United States government to make preparations which would beresisted to the uttermost by the people. The purpose in taking possessionof the forts and arsenal was to avoid, not to provoke, hostilities.Amicable relations with the United States were ardently desired byAlabama; and every patriotic man in the state was praying for peacefulsecession. He had ordered an inventory to be taken of public property inthe forts and arsenal, which were held subject to the control of theconvention.[62] A month later, Governor Moore, in a communicationaddressed to the Virginia commissioners for mediation, stated thatAlabama, in seceding, had no hostile intentions against the United States;that the sole object was to protect her rights, interests, and honor,without disturbing peaceful relations. This would continue to be thepolicy[Pg 62] of the state unless the Federal government authorized hostileacts. Yet any attempt at coercion would be resisted. In conclusion, hestated that he had no power to appoint delegates to the proposedconvention, but promised to refer the matter to the legislature. However,he did not believe that there was the least hope that concessions would bemade affording such guarantees as the seceding states could accept.[63]

For a year Alabama soil was free from invasion, though the coast wasblockaded in the summer of 1861. In February, 1862, Fort Henry, on theTennessee River, fell, and on the same day Commodore Phelps with fourgunboats sailed up the river to Florence. Several steamboats with suppliesfor Johnston’s army were destroyed to prevent capture by the Federals.Phelps destroyed a partly finished gunboat, burned the Confederatesupplies in Florence, and then returned to Fort Henry.[64] The fall ofFort Donelson (February 16) and the retreat of Johnston to Corinth leftthe Tennessee valley open to the Federals. A few days after the battle ofShiloh, General O. M. Mitchell entered Huntsville (April 11, 1862) andcaptured nearly all the rolling stock belonging to the railroads runninginto Huntsville. Decatur, Athens, Tuscumbia, and the other towns of theTennessee valley were occupied within a few days. To oppose this invasionthe Confederates had small bodies of troops widely scattered across northAlabama. The fighting was almost entirely in the nature of skirmishes andwas continual. Philip D. Roddy, later known as the “Defender of NorthAlabama,” first appears during this summer as commander of a small body ofirregular troops, which served as the nucleus of a regiment and later abrigade. Hostilities in north Alabama at an early date assumed the worstaspects of guerilla warfare. The Federals were never opposed by largecommands of Confederates, and were disposed to regard the detachments whofought them as guerillas and to treat them accordingly. In spite of thestrenuous efforts of General Buell to have his subordinates wage war incivilized manner,[65] they were guilty of infamous[Pg 63] conduct. GeneralMitchell was charged by the people with brutal conduct towardnon-combatants and with being interested in the stealing of cotton andshipping it North. He was finally removed by Buell.[66]

One of Mitchell’s subordinates—John Basil Turchin, the Russian colonel ofthe Nineteenth Illinois regiment—was too brutal even for Mitchell, andthe latter tried to keep him within bounds. His worst offence was atAthens, in Limestone County, in May, 1862. Athens was a wealthy place,intensely southern in feeling, and on that account was most heartilydisliked by the Federals. Here, for two hours, Turchin retired to his tentand gave over the town to the soldiers to be sacked after the old Europeancustom. Revolting outrages were committed. Robberies were common whereTurchin commanded. His Russian ideas of the rules of war were probablyresponsible for his conduct. Buell characterized it as “a case ofundisputed atrocity.” For this Athens affair Turchin was court-martialledand sentenced to be dismissed from the service. The facts were notoriousand well known at Washington, but the day before Buell ordered hisdischarge, Turchin was made a brigadier-general.[67]

General Mitchell himself reported (May, 1862) that “the most terribleoutrages—robberies, rapes, arson, and plundering—are being committed bylawless brigands and vagabonds connected with the army.” He asked forauthority to hang them and wrote, “I hear the most deplorable accounts ofexcesses committed by[Pg 64] soldiers.”[68] About fifty of the citizens ofAthens, at the suggestion of Mitchell, filed claims for damages. ThereuponMitchell informed them that they were laboring under a very seriousmisapprehension if they expected pay from the United States governmentunless they had proper vouchers.[69] Buell condemned his action in thismatter also. Mitchell asked the War Department for permission to sendprominent Confederate sympathizers at Huntsville to northern prisons. Hesaid that General Clemens and Judge Lane advised such a measure. Hereported that he held under arrest a few active rebels “who refused tocondemn the guerilla warfare.” The War Department seems to have beenannoyed by the request, but after Mitchell had repeated it, permission wasgiven to send them to the fort in Boston Harbor.[70]

Mitchell was charged at Washington with having failed in his duty ofrepressing plundering and pillaging. He replied that he had no greatsympathy with the citizens of Athens who hated the Union soldiers sointensely.[71]

As the war continued the character of the warfare grew steadily worse.Ex-Governor Chapman’s family were turned out of their home to make roomfor a negro regiment. A four-year-old child of the family wandered back tothe house and was cursed and abused by the soldiers. The house was finallyburned and the property laid waste. Governor Chapman was imprisoned and atlast expelled from the country. Mrs. Robert Patton they threatened tostrip in search of money and actually began to do so in the presence ofher husband, but she saved herself by giving up the money.[72] Suchexperiences were common.

The provost marshal at Huntsville—Colonel Harmer—selected a number ofmen to answer certain political questions, who, if their answers were notsatisfactory, were to be expelled from the country. Among these were,George W. Hustoun, Luke Pryor, and —— Malone of Athens, Dr. Fearn ofHuntsville, and two ministers—Ross and[Pg 65] Banister. General Stanleycondemned the policy, but General Granger wanted the preachers expelledanyway, although Stanley said they had never taken part in politics.[73]The harsh treatment of non-combatants and Confederate soldiers by Federalsoldiers and by the tories resulted in the retaliation of the former whenopportunity occurred. Toward the end of the war prisoners were seldomtaken by either side. When a man was caught, he was often strung up to alimb of the nearest tree, his captors waiting a few minutes for theirhalters, and then passing on. The Confederate irregular cavalry became aterror even to the loyal southern people. Stealing, robbery, and murderwere common in the debatable land of north Alabama.[74]

Naturally the “tory” element of the population suffered much from the sameclass of Confederate troops. The Union element, it was said, suffered morefrom the operation of the impressment law. The Confederate and stategovernments strictly repressed the tendency of Confederate troops topillage the “Union” communities in north Alabama.[75]

General Mitchell and his subordinates were accustomed to hold the peopleof a community responsible for damages in their vicinity to bridges,trestles, and trains caused by the Confederate forces. In August, 1862,General J. D. Morgan, in command at Tuscumbia, reported that he “sent outfifty wagons this afternoon to the plantations near where the track wastorn up yesterday, for cotton. I want it to pay damages.”[76] When Turchinhad to abandon Athens, on the advance of Bragg into Tennessee, he set fireto and burned much of the town, but his conduct was denounced by hisfellow-officers.[77] Near Gunterville (1862) a Federal force was firedupon by scouts, and the Federals, in retaliation, shelled the town. Thiswas done a second time during the war, and finally the town was burned. InJackson County four citizens were arrested (1862) because the pickets atWoodville, several miles away, had been fired upon.[78]

In a skirmish in north Alabama, General R. L. McCook was[Pg 66] shot by CaptainGurley of Russell’s Fourth Alabama Cavalry. The Federals spread the reportamong the soldiers that he had been murdered, and as the Federal commanderreported, “Many of the soldiers spread themselves over the country andburned all the property of the rebels in the vicinity, and shot a rebellieutenant who was on furlough.” Even the house of the family who hadministered to General McCook in his last moments was burned to the ground.The old men and boys for miles around were arrested. The officer who wasshot was at home on furlough and sick. General Dodge’s command committedmany depredations in retaliation for the death of McCook. A year laterCaptain Gurley was captured and sentenced to be hanged. The Confederateauthorities threatened retaliation, and he was then treated as a prisonerof war. After the close of the war he was again arrested and kept in jailand in irons for many months at Nashville and Huntsville. At last he wasliberated.[79]

Later in the war (1864), General M. L. Smith ordered the arrest of “fiveof the best rebels” in the vicinity of a Confederate attack on one of hiscompanies, and again five were arrested near the place where a Union manhad been attacked.[80] These are examples of what often happened. Itbecame a rule to hold a community responsible for all attacks made by theConfederate soldiers.

The people suffered fearfully. Many of them had to leave the country inorder to live. John E. Moore wrote to the Confederate Secretary of Warfrom Florence, in December, 1862, that the people of north Alabama “havebeen ground into the dust by the tyrants and thieves.”[81] The citizens ofFlorence (January, 1863) petitioned the Secretary of War for protection.They said that they had been greatly oppressed by the Federal army in1862. Property had been destroyed most wantonly and vindictively, theprivacy of the homes invaded, citizens carried off and ill treated, andslaves carried off and refused the liberty of returning when they desiredto do so. The harshness of the Federals had made many people submissivefor fear of worse things. No men, except the aged and infirm, were left inthe country; the population was composed chiefly of women and[Pg 67]children.[82] It was in response to this appeal that Roddy’s command wasraised to a brigade. But the retreat of Bragg left north Alabama to theFederals until the close of the war, except for a short period duringHood’s invasion of Tennessee.

April 19, 1863, Colonel A. D. Streight of the Federal army, with 2000picked troops, disembarked at Eastport and started on a daring raidthrough the mountain region of north Alabama. The object of the raid wasto cut the railroads from Chattanooga to Atlanta and to Knoxville, whichsupplied Bragg and to destroy the Confederate stores at Rome. To coverStreight’s movements General Dodge was making demonstrations in theTennessee valley and Forrest was sent to meet him. Hearing by accident ofStreight’s movements, Forrest left a small force under Roddy to hold Dodgein check and set out after the raider. The chase began on April 29.Streight had sixteen miles the start with a force reduced to 1500 men,mounted on mules. As his mounts were worn out, he seized fresh horses onthe route. The chase led through the counties of Morgan, Blount, St.Clair, De Kalb, and Cherokee—counties in which there was a strong toryelement, and the Federals were guided by two companies of Union cavalryraised in north Alabama. Streight had asked for permission to dress someof his men “after the promiscuous southern style,” but, fortunately forthem, was not allowed to do so.[83]

On May 1 occurred the famous crossing of Black Creek, where Miss EmmaSansom guided the Confederates across in the face of a heavy fire. Forrestnow had less than 600 men, the others having been left behind exhausted orwith broken-down horses. The best men and horses were kept in front, andStreight was not allowed a moment’s rest. At last, tired out, the Federalshalted on the morning of May 3. Soon the men were asleep on their arms,and when Forrest appeared, some of them could not be awakened. Men wereasleep in line of battle, under fire. Forrest placed his small force so asto magnify his numbers, and Streight was persuaded by his officers tosurrender—1466 men to less than 600. The running[Pg 68] fight had lasted fourdays, over a distance of 150 miles, through rough and broken countryfilled with unfriendly natives. Forrest could not get fresh mounts, theFederals could; the Federals had been preparing for the raid a month;Forrest had a few hours to prepare for the pursuit, and his whole forcewith Roddy’s did not equal half of the entire Federal force of 9500.[84]

During the summer and fall there were many small fights between thecavalry scouts of Roddy and Wheeler and the Federal foraging parties. InOctober General S. D. Lee from Mississippi entered the northwestern partof the state, and for two or three weeks fought the Federals and tore upthe Memphis and Charleston Railroad. The First Alabama Union Cavalrystarted on a raid for Selma, but was routed by the Second Alabama Cavalry.The Tennessee valley was the highway along which passed and repassed theFederal armies during the remainder of the war.

During the months of January, February, March, and April, 1864, scouting,skirmishing, and fighting in north Alabama by Forrest, Roddy, Wheeler,Johnson, Patterson, and Mead were almost continuous; and Federal raidswere frequent. The Federals called all Confederate soldiers in northAlabama “guerillas,” and treated prisoners as such. The Tennessee valleyhad been stripped of troops to send to Johnston’s army. In May, 1864, theFederal General Blair marched through northeast Alabama to Rome, Georgia,with 10,500 men. Federal gunboats patrolled the river, landing companiesfor short raids and shelling the towns. In August there were many raidsand skirmishes in the Tennessee valley. On September 23, Forrest with 4000men, on a raid to Pulaski, persuaded the Federal commander at Athens thathe had 10,000 men, and the latter surrendered, though in a strong fortwith a thousand men.

July 10, 1864, General Rousseau started from Decatur, Morgan County, with2300 men on a raid toward southeast Alabama to destroy the Montgomery andWest Point Railway below Opelika, and thus cut off the supplies comingfrom the Black Belt for Johnston’s army. General Clanton, who opposed himwith a small force,[Pg 69] was defeated at the crossing of the Coosa on July 14;the iron works in Calhoun County were burned, and the Confederate storesat Talladega were destroyed. The railroad was reached near Loachapoka inwhat is now Lee County, and miles of the track there and above Opelikawere destroyed, and the depots at Opelika, Auburn, Loachapoka, andNotasulga, all with quantities of supplies, were burned. This was thefirst time that central Alabama had suffered from invasion.[85]

In October General Hood marchedvia Cedartown, Georgia, into Alabama toGadsden, thence to Somerville and Decatur, crossing the river nearTuscumbia on his way to the fatal fields of Franklin and Nashville. “Mostof the fields they passed were covered with briers and weeds, the fencesburned or broken down. The chimneys in every direction stood like quietsentinels and marked the site of once prosperous and happy homes, longsince reduced to heaps of ashes. No cattle, hogs, horses, mules, ordomestic fowls were in sight. Only the birds seemed unconscious of theruin and desolation which reigned supreme. No wonder that Hood pointed tothe devastation wrought by the invader to nerve his heroes for one moredesperate struggle against immense odds for southern independence.”[86] Afew weeks later the wreck of Hood’s army was straggling back into northAlabama, which now swarmed with Federals. Bushwhackers, guerillas, tories,deserters, “mossbacks,” harried the defenceless people of north Alabamauntil the end of the war and even after. A few scattered bands ofConfederates made a weak resistance.

To return to south Alabama. During the years 1861 and 1862 the defences ofMobile were made almost impregnable. They were commanded in turn byGenerals Withers, Bragg, Forney, Buckner, and Maury. The port wasblockaded in 1861, but no attacks were made on the defences until August,1864, when 15,000 men were landed to besiege Fort Gaines. Eighteen warvessels under Farragut passed the forts into the bay and there fought thefiercest naval battle of the war. Admiral Buchanan commanded theConfederate fleet of four vessels—theMorgan, theSelma, theGaines, and the[Pg 70]Tennessee.[87] TheTecumseh was sunk by a torpedoin the bay, and Farragut had left 17 vessels, 199 guns, and 700 menagainst the Confederates’ 22 guns and 450 men. The three smallerConfederate vessels, after desperate fighting, were riddled with shot; onewas captured, one beached, and one withdrew to the shelter of the forts.TheTennessee was left, 1 against 17, 6 guns against 200. After fourhours’ cannonade from nearly 200 guns, her smoke-stack and steering gearshot away, her commander (Admiral Buchanan) wounded, one hour after herlast gun had been disabled, theTennessee surrendered. The Federals lost52 killed, and 17 wounded, besides 120 lost on theTecumseh. TheTennessee lost only 2 killed and 9 wounded, theSelma 8 killed and 17wounded, theGaines about the same.[88] The fleet now turned itsattention to the forts. Fort Gaines surrendered at once; Fort Morgan heldout. A siege train of 41 guns was placed in position and on August 22these and the 200 guns of the fleet opened fire. The fort was unable toreturn the fire of the fleet, and the sharpshooters of the enemy soonprevented the use of guns against the shore batteries of the Federals. Thefiring was furious; every shell seemed to take effect; fire broke out, andthe garrison threw 90,000 pounds of powder into cisterns to preventexplosion; the defending force was decimated; the interior of the fort wasa mass of smouldering ruins; there was not a place five feet square notstruck by shells; many of the guns were dismounted. For twenty-four hoursthe bombardment continued, the garrison not being able to return the fireof the besiegers, yet the enemy reported that the garrison was not “movedby any weak fears.” On the morning of August 23, 1864, the fort wassurrendered.[89] Though the outer defences had fallen, the city could notbe taken. The inner defences were strengthened, and were manned with“reserves,”—boys and old men, fourteen to sixteen, and forty-five tosixty years of age.

[Pg 71]In March, 1865, General Steele advanced from Pensacola to Pollard with15,000 men, while General Canby with 32,000 moved up the east side ofMobile Bay and invested Spanish Fort. He sent 12,000 men to Steele, whobegan the siege of Blakely on April 2. Spanish Fort was defended by 3400men, later reduced to 2321, against Canby’s 20,000. The Confederate lineswere two miles long. After a twelve days’ siege a part of the Confederateworks was captured, and during the next night (April 8), the greater partof the garrison escaped in boats or by wading through the marshes. Blakelywas defended by 3500 men against Steele’s 25,000. After a siege of eightdays the Federal works were pushed near the Confederate lines, and acharge along the whole three miles of line captured the works with thegarrison (April 9). Three days later batteries Huger and Tracy, defendingthe river entrance, were evacuated, and on April 12 the citysurrendered.[90] The state was then overrun from all sides.[91]

During the winter of 1864-1865, General J. H. Wilson gathered a pickedforce of 13,500 cavalry, at Gravelly Springs in northwestern Alabama, inpreparation for a raid through central Alabama, the purpose of which wasto destroy the Confederate stores, the factories, mines, and iron works inthat section, and also to create a diversion in favor of Canby atMobile.[92] On March 22 he left for the South. There was not a Confederatesoldier within 120 miles; the country was stripped of its defenders. TheFederal army under Wilson foraged for provisions in north Alabama whenthey themselves reported people to be starving.[93] To confuse theConfederates, Wilson moved his corps in three divisions along differentroutes. On March 29, near Elyton, the divisions united, and GeneralCroxton[Pg 72] was again detached and sent to burn the University and publicbuildings at Tuscaloosa. Driving Roddy before him, Wilson, on March 31,burned five iron works near Elyton. Forrest collected a motley force tooppose Wilson. The latter sent a brigade which decoyed one of Forrest’sbrigades away into the country toward Mississippi,[94] so that this forcewas not present to assist in the defence when, on April 2, Wilson arrivedbefore Selma with 9000 men. This place, with works three miles long, wasdefended by Forrest with 3000 men, half of whom were reserves who hadnever been under fire. They made a gallant fight, but the Federals rushedover the thinly defended works. Forrest and two or three hundred menescaped; the remainder surrendered. When the Federals entered the city,night had fallen, and the soldiers plundered without restraint untilmorning. Forrest had ordered that all the government whiskey in the citybe destroyed, but after the barrels were rolled into the street theConfederates had no time to knock in the heads before the city wascaptured. The Federals were soon drunk. All the houses in the city wereentered and plundered. A newspaper correspondent who was with Wilson’sarmy said that Selma was the worst-sacked town of the war. One woman savedher house from the plunderers by pulling out all the drawers, tearing upthe beds, throwing clothes all over the floor along with dishes andoverturned tables, chairs, and other things. When the soldiers came to thehouse, they concluded that others had been there before them and departed.The outrages, robberies, and murders committed by Wilson’s men,notwithstanding his stringent order against plundering,[95] are almostincredible. The half cannot be told. The destruction was fearful. The citywas wholly given up to the soldiers, the houses sacked, the women robbedof their watches, earrings, rings, and other jewellery.[96] The negroeswere pressed into the work of destruction, and when they refused to burnand destroy, they were threatened with death by the soldiers. Every onewas robbed who had anything worth taking about his person. Even negro menon the streets[Pg 73] and negro women in the houses were searched and theirlittle money and trinkets taken.[97]

The next day the public buildings and storehouses with three-fourths ofthe business part of the town and 150 residences were burned. Threerolling mills, a large naval foundry, and the navy yard,—where theTennessee had been built,—the best arsenal in the Confederacy, powderworks, magazines, army stores, 35,000 bales of cotton, a large number ofcars, and the railroad bridges were destroyed. Before leaving, Wilson sentmen about the town to kill all the horses and mules in Selma, and had 800of his own worn-out horses shot. The carcasses were left lying in theroads, streets, and dooryards where they were shot. In a few days thestench was fearful, and the citizens had to send to all the country aroundfor teams to drag away the dead animals, which were strewn along the roadsfor miles.[98]

Nearly every man of Wilson’s command had a canteen filled with jewellerygathered on the long raid through the richest section of the state. Thevaluables of the rich Cane Brake and Black Belt country had been depositedin Selma for safe-keeping, and from Selma the soldiers took everythingvaluable and profitable. Pianos were made into feeding troughs for horses.The officers were supplied with silver plate stolen while on the raid. InRussell County a general officer stopped at a house for dinner, and hadthe table set with a splendid service of silver plate taken from Selma.His escort broke open the smoke-house and, taking hams, cut a small piecefrom each of them and threw the remainder away. Everything that could bewas destroyed. Soft soap and syrup were poured together in the cellars.They took everything they could carry and destroyed the rest.

On April 10 Wilson’s command started for Montgomery. A negro regiment of800 men[99] was organized at Selma and accompanied[Pg 74] the army, subsistingon the country. Before reaching Georgia there were several such regiments.On April 12 Montgomery was surrendered by the mayor. The Confederates hadburned 97,000[100] bales of cotton to prevent its falling into the handsof the enemy. The captors burned five steamboats, two rolling mills, asmall-arms factory, two magazines of stores, all the rolling stock of therailways, and the nitre works, the fire spreading also to the businesspart of the town.[101] Here, as at Selma, horses, mules, and valuableswere taken by the raiders.

The force was then divided into two columns, one destined for West Pointand the other for Columbus. The last fights on Alabama soil occurred nearWest Point on April 16, and at Girard, opposite Columbus, on the same day.At the latter place immense quantities of stores, that had been carriedacross the river from Alabama, were destroyed.[102]

Croxton’s force reached Tuscaloosa April 3, and burned the Universitybuildings, the nitre works, a foundry, a shoe factory, and the Sipseycotton mills. After burning these he moved eastward across the state,destroying iron works, nitre factories, depots, and cotton factories.Before he reached Georgia, Croxton had destroyed nearly all the iron worksand cotton factories that had been missed by Rousseau and Wilson.[103]

For three years north Alabama was traversed by the contending armies. Eachburned and destroyed from military necessity and from malice. GeneralWilson said that after two years of warfare the valley of the Tennesseewas absolutely destitute.[104] From the spring of 1862 to the close of thewar the Federals marched to and fro in the valley. There were fewConfederate troops for its defence, and the Federals held each communityresponsible for all attacks made within its vicinity. It became the customto destroy property[Pg 75] as a punishment of the people. Much of thedestruction was unnecessary from a military point of view.[105] Athens andsmaller towns were sacked and burned, Guntersville was shelled and burned;but the worst destruction was in the country, by raiding parties ofFederals and “tories,” or “bushwhackers” dressed as Union soldiers.Huntsville, Florence, Decatur, Athens, Guntersville, and Courtland, allsuffered depredation, robbery, murder, arson, and rapine.[106] The toriesdestroyed the railways, telegraph lines, and bridges, and as long as theConfederates were in north Alabama they had to guard all of these.[107]

Along the Tennessee River the gunboats landed parties to ravage thecountry in retaliation for Confederate attacks. In the counties ofLauderdale, Franklin, Morgan, Lawrence, Limestone, Madison, and Jacksonnearly all property was destroyed.[108]

In 1863, a member of Congress from north Alabama tried to get arms fromBragg for the old men to defend the county against Federal raiders, butfailed, and wrote to Davis that all civilized usages were beingdisregarded, women and children turned out and the houses burned, grainand provisions destroyed, women insulted and outraged, their money,jewellery, and clothing being stolen.

In December, 1863, General Sherman ordered that all the forage andprovisions in the country around Bridgeport and Bellefont “be collectedand stored, and no compensation be allowed rebel owners.” In April, 1864,General Clanton wrote to Governor Watts that the “Yankees spared neitherage, sex, nor condition.” Tories and deserters from the hills madefrequent raids on the defenceless population.

General Dodge reported, May, 1863, that his army had destroyed or carriedoff in one raid near Town Creek, “fifteen million bushels of corn, fivehundred thousand pounds of bacon, quantities of wheat, rye, oats, andfodder, one thousand horses and mules, and an equal number of cattle,sheep, and hogs, besides thousands that the army consumed in three weeks;we also brought out fifteen hundred negroes, destroyed five tanyards andsix flouring mills, and we left the country in such a devastated conditionthat no crop can be raised[Pg 76] during the year;” and nothing was left thatwould in the least aid the Confederates. On the night of his retreat Dodgelit up the Tennessee valley from Town Creek to Tuscumbia with the flamesof burning dwellings, granaries, stables, and fences. In June ColonelCornyn reports that in a raid from Corinth to Florence he had destroyedcotton factories, tanyards, all the corn-cribs in sight, searched everyhouse in Florence, burned several residences, and carried off 200 mulesand horses.[109] A few days later General Stanley raided from Tennessee toHuntsville and carried off cattle and supplies, but did not lay waste thecountry. General Buell did all that he could to restrain his subordinates,but often to no avail. After Sherman took charge affairs grew steadilyworse. In a remarkable letter giving his views in the matter he says: “Thegovernment of the United States has in north Alabama any and all rightswhich they choose to enforce in war, to take their lives, their houses,their lands, their everything, because they cannot deny that war existsthere, and war is simply power unrestrained by constitution or compact. Ifthey want eternal warfare, well and good. We will accept the issue anddispossess them and put our friends in possession. To those who submit tothe rightful law and authority all gentleness and forbearance, but to thepetulant and persistent secessionists, why, death is mercy and the quickerhe or she is disposed of the better. Satan and the rebellious saint ofheaven were allowed a continuance of existence in hell merely to swelltheir just punishment.” He referred to the fact that in Europe, whence theprinciples of war were derived, wars were between the armies, the peopleremaining practically neutral, so that their property remained unmolested.However, this present war was, he said, between peoples, and the invadingarmy was entitled to all it could get from the people. He cited as a likeinstance the dispossessing of the people of north Ireland during the reignof William and Mary.[110] After this no restraint on the plundering andpersecution of Confederate non-combatants was even attempted, and hundredsof families from north Alabama “refugeed” to south Alabama.

General Sherman wrote to one of his generals, “You may send[Pg 77] notice toFlorence that if Forrest invades Tennessee from that direction, the townwill be burned; and if it occurs, you will remove the inhabitants north ofthe Ohio River and burn the town and Tuscumbia also.”[111] All throughthis section fences were gone, fields grew up in bushes, and weeds,residences were destroyed, farm stock had disappeared. People who lived inthe Black Belt report that Wilson’s raiders ate up all the cookedprovisions wherever they went, taking all the meat, meal, and flour totheir next camping-place, where they would often throw away wagon loads ofprovisions. Frequently the meal and flour that could not be taken wasstrewn along the road. The mills were burned, and some families for threemonths after the close of the war lived on corn cracked in a mortar. Allthe horses and mules were taken; and only a few oxen were left to work thecrops.

Governor Parsons said that Wilson’s men were a week in destroying theproperty around Selma. Three weeks after, as Parsons himself was awitness, it was with difficulty that one could travel from Planterville toSelma on account of the dead horses and mules. The night marches of theenemy in the Black Belt were lighted by the flames of burning houses.Until this raid only the counties of north Alabama had suffered.[112]

Wilson had destroyed during this raid 2 gunboats; 99,000 small arms andmuch artillery; 10 iron works; 7 foundries; 8 machine shops; 5 rollingmills; the University buildings; many county court-houses and publicbuildings; 3 arsenals; a naval foundry and navy yard; 5 steamboats; apowder magazine and mills; 35 locomotives and 565 cars; 3 large railroadbridges and many smaller ones; 275,000 bales of cotton; much privateproperty along the line of march, many magazines of stores; and hadsubsisted his army on the country.[113] Trowbridge, who passed throughAlabama in the fall of 1865, said that Wilson’s route could be traced byburnt gin-houses dotting the way.[114] Three other armies marched throughthe state in 1865, burning and destroying.

[Pg 78]The Federals took horses and mules, cattle and hogs, corn and meat, goldand silver plate, jewellery, and other valuables. Aged citizens weretortured by “bummers” to force them to tell of hidden treasure. Some wereswung up by the neck until nearly dead. Straggling bands of Federalscommitted depredations over the country. Houses were searched, mattresseswere cut to pieces, trunks, bureaus, wardrobes, and chests were brokenopen and their contents turned out. Much furniture was broken and ruined.Families of women and children were left without a meal, and many homeswere burned. Cattle and stock were wantonly killed. What could not becarried away was burned and destroyed.[115]

Though two-thirds of the state was untouched by the enemy two monthsbefore the close of hostilities, yet when the surrender came. Alabama wasas thoroughly destroyed as Georgia or South Carolina in Sherman’s track.

The exact number of Confederate soldiers enlisted in Alabama cannot beascertained. The original records were lost or destroyed, and duplicateswere never completed. There were on the rolls infantry regiments numberedfrom 1 to 65, but the 52d and 64th were never organized. Of the 14 cavalryregiments, numbered from 1 to 12, two organizations were numbered 9. Therewas one battalion of artillery, afterwards transferred to the regularservice, and 18 batteries.

In Alabama, as in the other southern states, local pride has placed thenumber of troops furnished at a very high figure. Colonel W. H. Fowler,superintendent of army records, who worked mainly in the Army of NorthernVirginia, estimated the total number of men from Alabama at about 120,000.Governor Parsons, in his inaugural proclamation, evidently followingFowler’s statistics, placed the number at 122,000,[116] while Colonel M.V. Moore placed the number[Pg 79] at 60,000 to 65,000.[117] General SamuelCooper, adjutant and inspector-general of the Confederate States Army,estimated that not more than 600,000 men in the Confederacy actually borearms.[118] This estimate would make the share of Alabama even less thanColonel Moore estimated. The highest estimates have placed the number at128,000 and 135,000, but the correct figures are evidently somewherebetween these extremes.[119]

The Superintendent of the Confederate Bureau of Conscription estimatedthat according to the census of 1860 there were in Alabama, from 1861 to1864, 106,000 men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, and ofthese, more than 8000 had been regularly exempted during the year 1864,all former exemptions having been revoked by act of Congress, February 17,1864.[120] Livermore’s estimate,[121] based on the census of 1860, was:There were in Alabama (1861) between the ages of eighteen and forty-five,99,967 men, and in the entire Confederacy there were 265,000 between theages of thirteen and sixteen. Of the latter, a rough estimate would placeAlabama’s proportion about one-tenth of the whole, that is, about 26,500.Those men over forty-five who later became liable to military duty heestimates at 20,000, that is, about 2000 in Alabama. Thus there were inAlabama, in 1861, not allowing for deaths, 127,467 persons who wouldbecome subject to military service unless exempted. Livermore places thenumber of boys from ten to twelve years of age and of men from forty-sevento fifty, in the Confederacy in 1861, at 300,000, or about 30,000 inAlabama. These would become liable to service in the state militia before1865.[122] In 1861 the governor stated that by October 7 there had been27,000 enlistments in the various organizations. Several of these commandswere enrolled for short terms of three months, six months, or one year.Before November, 1862, there had been 60,000 enlistments. Included in thisnumber were several thousand reënlistments and transfers. At the end of1863, when[Pg 80] enlistment and reorganization had practically ceased, therehad been 90,857 enlistments of all kinds from Alabama.[123] For two yearstroops were organized in Alabama much faster than they could be suppliedwith arms. For months some of the new regiments waited for equipment. Fourthousand men at Huntsville were in service several months before armscould be procured, and several infantry regiments were drilled asartillery for a year before muskets were to be had.[124]

Before the close of 1863, Alabama had placed in the Confederate serviceabout all the men that could be sent. The organization of new regiments byoriginal enlistment practically ceased with the fall of 1862. In 1863,only three regiments were thus organized, and two of these were composedof conscripts and men attracted by the special privileges offered.[125]The other regiments, formed after the summer of 1862, were made byconsolidating smaller commands that were already in service. The few smallregiments of reserves called out in 1864 and 1865 and given regulardesignations saw little or no service. Those few who were made liable toservice by the conscript law and who entered the army at all, as a rulewent as volunteers and avoided the conscript camps. The strength of theAlabama regiments came from central and south Alabama, for the fullmilitary strength of north Alabama could not be utilized on account ofinvasion by the enemy. At first there were many small commands—companiesand battalions—which were raised in a short time and sent at once to thefront before a regimental organization could be effected. Later these wereunited to form regiments. Nearly all the higher numbered infantryregiments and more than half of the cavalry regiments were formed in thisway. The first regiments raised and the strongest in numbers were sent toVirginia. To these went also the largest number of the recruits secured bythe[Pg 81] recruiting officers sent out by the regiments. On an average, about350 recruits or transfers were secured by each Alabama regiment inVirginia, though some had almost none. There were numbers of persons whoobtained authority to raise new commands for service near their homes, andin order to fill the ranks of their regiments and companies they wouldoffer special inducements of furloughs and home stations. The cavalry andartillery branches of the service were popular and secured many men neededin the infantry regiments.[126] Each commander of a separate company orbattalion desired to raise his force to a regiment, and it was to theinterest of the state to have as many organizations as possible in thefield as its quota. A better show was thus made on paper. Such conditionsprevented the recruitment of old regiments, especially those in the armiesthat surrendered under Johnston and Taylor. Consequently the regiments inthe Western Army were, as a rule, much smaller than the ones in the Armyof Northern Virginia, to which recruits were sent instead of newregiments.

In each infantry and cavalry regiment there were ten companies.[127] Theoriginal strength of each company was from 64 to 100. Later the number wasfixed at 104 to the company for infantry, 72 for cavalry, and 70 in theartillery. After the formation of new commands had practically ceased, thenumber for each company of infantry was raised to 125 men, 150 in theartillery, and 80 in the cavalry.[128] The original strength of eachinfantry regiment was, therefore, from 640 to 1000, not includingofficers; of cavalry, 600 to 720. A battery of artillery seems to have hadany number from 70 to 150, though usually the smaller number. The size ofthe regiments varied greatly. Colonel Fowler reported that to February 1,1865, 27,022 men had joined the 20 Alabama regiments in Virginia, anaverage of 1351 men to the regiment. Brewer gives the total enrolment of15 regiments in the Army of Northern Virginia as 21,694, an average of1446 to the regiment.[129] Four of these regiments had an enrolment ofless than[Pg 82] 1200;[130] so it is evident that the other 5, not given byBrewer, must have averaged about 1265 to the regiment.[131] These numbersinclude transfers, details, and reënlistments, the exact number of whichit is impossible to ascertain. Brewer lists the transfers and dischargesfrom 15 regiments at 4398, an average of 293 each, of which aboutone-third seem to have been transfers.[132] There were also manyreënlistments from disbanded organizations.[133] Both Brewer and Fowlercount each enlistment as a different man and arrive at about the sameresults.[134]

The enrolment of 8 Alabama regiments in Johnston’s army, as given byBrewer, amounted to 8300, an average to the regiment of 1037.[135] It wasthe practice, in 1864 and 1865, to unite two or more weaker regiments intoone. No Alabama regiments in Virginia were so united, and of the 8 in theWestern Army, whose enrolment is given by Brewer, only 1 was afterwardunited with another.[136] It would then seem that the enrolment of thestrongest regiments is known.[137] The total number of enlistments in theAlabama commands in Virginia was, according to Fowler, about 30,000, andthese were in 20 infantry regiments, and a few smaller commands. In thearmies surrendered by Johnston and Taylor there were 38 Alabama infantryregiments, and 13 of these had been consolidated on account of their smallnumbers. Eight of them which remained separate and which must have beenstronger than the ones united had enrolled[Pg 83] an average of 1037 (accordingto Brewer). Thirty-eight regiments of this strength (which is probably toolarge an estimate) would give a total enrolment of 39,406. This number,added to Fowler’s estimate of 27,022 in the Army of Northern Virginia,will give 66,428 enlistments of all kinds, for the infantry arm of theservice. Add to this 3000 for the 3 regiments of reserves called out in1864,[138] and the total is 69,428 enlistments in the infantry.

There were 14 cavalry regiments, 7 of which, and possibly more, wereformed by the consolidation of smaller commands already in service. Thecavalry regiments did not enter the service as early as the infantry, only1 regiment being organized in 1861. The original strength of eachregiment, as has been said, was from 600 to 720. All these regimentsserved in the commands surrendered by Johnston and Taylor, where recruitswere scarce, so 1000 to the regiment is a very large estimate of totalenrolment. However, this would give 14,000 in the cavalry regiments.

Of artillery, there were 19 batteries and 1 battalion of 6 batteries,making 25 batteries in all, with an enrolment ranging from 70 to 150 ineach. A total enrolment of 3750, or 150 to each battery, would be a largeestimate.

Fowler reported about 3000 enlistments in the various smaller commandsfrom Alabama in the Army of Northern Virginia.[139] An additional 2000would more than account for all similar scattering commands in the otherarmies.[140]

This total includes many transfers and reënlistments, which can be onlyroughly estimated. In the Army of Northern Virginia 464[Pg 84]resigned, 245were retired, 3639 were discharged, 1815 were transferred to othercommands, and 1666 deserted or were unaccounted for. Those whoresigned—as a rule to accept higher positions—reëntered the service.Almost all of those who retired or were discharged had to enter thereserves, and many of them again became liable to service. Numbers ofsoldiers were accustomed to leave one command and go to another withoutany formality of transfer. Deserters who were driven back to the armynearly always chose to enter other regiments than their own. There werenumbers of transfers from the cavalry to the infantry, for each cavalrymanhad to furnish his own horse, and, should it be killed or die and thesoldier be unable to secure another, he was sent to an infantry regiment.There were also smaller infantry organizations, which were mounted andmerged into the cavalry regiments. Half of the enlistments in theartillery came from the infantry. One regiment[141] at one time lost 100men in this way, and it has been estimated that one-fifth of the Alabamasoldiers served in more than one command.[142] Counting each name on therolls as one man, as Brewer and Fowler do,[143] it is difficult to see howmore than 90,000 enlistments can be counted, and from this total must bededucted several thousand for transfers and reënlistments. Miller’sestimate of a deduction of one-fifth for names counted twice would makethe total number of different men about 75,000, which is probably aboutthe correct number. Not only were the same names counted twice, and evenoftener in different commands, but sometimes in the same companies andregiments they were counted more than once. It was to the interest oflocal and state authorities to have each enlistment counted as a differentman, and this was invariably done.[144] Five of the early regiments werereorganized and reënlisted, and thus 5000 at least were added to the totalenrolment without securing a single recruit. The three-year regimentsreënlisted in 1864,[145]and here again were extra[Pg 85]thousands ofenlistments to be added to the former total. There were also 19 infantryregiments[146] which were formed by the reorganization of former commandsthat had already been counted, and upon reënlistment for the war they wereagain counted. In this same way 7 regiments at least of cavalry wereformed.[147] this way it is possible to count up a total enlistment fromAlabama of about 120,000.[148] There is no method which will evenapproximate correctness by which the total number of enlistments may bereduced to enlistments for a certain term, as three years or four years.The history of every enlistment must first be known.

There were three lieutenant-generals who entered the service in command ofAlabama troops—John B. Gordon, Joseph Wheeler,[149] JamesLongstreet[149]; seven major-generals—H. D. Clayton, Jones M.Withers,[149] E. M. Law, C. M. Wilcox, John H. Forney,[149] W. W. Allen,R. E. Rodes[147]; and thirty-six brigadier generals—Tennent Lomax,[150]P. D. Bowles,[149] S. A. M. Wood, E. A. O’Neal, William H. Forney, J. C.C. Sanders,[149,150] I. W. Garrott,[150]Archibald Gracie,[149,150] B.D. Fry, James Cantey, J. T. Holtzclaw, E. D. Tracy,[150] E. W. Pettus, Z.C. Deas, G. D. Johnston, C. M. Shelly, Y. M. Moody, Wm. F. Perry, John T.Morgan, M. H. Hannon, Alpheus Baker, J. H. Clanton, James Hagan, P. D.Roddy, John Gregg,[150] L. P. Walker, D. Leadbetter,[149,150] J. H.Kelley,[149,150] J. Gorgas, C. A. Battle, John W. Frazer, Alex. W.Campbell, Thomas M. Jones, M. J. Bulger, John C. Reid, James Deshler.[150]Other Alabamians exercised commands in the troops of other states, andseveral were staff officers of general rank. The naval commanders wereSemmes, Randolph, and Glassell, and a few subordinate officers.[151]

[Pg 86]During the early months of 1865 a movement was started to enroll negroesas Confederate soldiers, and a number of officers, among whom was John T.Morgan, received permission to raise negro troops. The conference ofgovernors at Augusta in 1864 recommended the arming of slaves, butGovernor Watts asked the Alabama legislature to disapprove such amovement.[152] An enthusiastic meeting of citizens, held in Mobile,February 19, 1865, declared that the war must be prosecuted “to victory ordeath,” and that 100,000 negroes should be placed in the field.[153] Itwas too late, however, for success. Wilson, on his raid, picked up theConfederate negro troops at Selma, and took them with him.[154] In 1862,the “Creoles” of Mobile applied for permission to enlist in a body. Theywere mulattoes, but were free by the treaties with France in 1803 and withSpain in 1819, were property holders, often owning slaves, and were anorderly, respectable class, true to the South and anxious to fight for theConfederacy. The Secretary of War was not friendly to the proposal, but inNovember, 1862, the legislature of Alabama authorized their enlistment forthe defence of Mobile. A year later, at the urgent request of GeneralMaury, they were received into the Confederate service as heavyartillery.[155]

The Alabama troops in the Confederate service made a notably good record.The flower of the Alabama army served with Lee in Virginia, but nearly asgood were the Alabama troops in the western armies. Brewer says they moved“high and haughty in the face of death.” The regiments of reserves raisedlate in the war and stationed within the state were not very good. Yetthere were instances of regiments, with bad reputation when stationed nearhome, making splendid records when sent to the front. The spirit of thetroops at the front was high to the last. In 1864 an Alabama regimentreënlisted for the war, with the oath that they would “live on bread andgo barefoot before they would leave the flag under which they had foughtfor three years.”[156] On the morning of April 9, 1865, the SixtiethAlabama (Hilliard’s Legion), then about 165 strong,[Pg 87] captured a Federalbattery.[157] Fowler, in his report in 1865, asserts that Alabama sentmore troops into the service than any other state; also that she sent moretroops in proportion to her population than any other state. “I am certaintoo,” he says, “that when General Lee surrendered his army, therepresentation from Alabama on the field that day was inferior to no othersouthern state in numbers, and surely not in gallantry.”[158]

To the Union army Alabama furnished about 3000 regular enlistments. Ofthese 2000 were white men. It is not likely that there were many more,since in 1900 there were in Alabama only 3649 persons, northerners,negroes, and all, drawing pensions, and some of these on account of theIndian and Mexican wars.[159] The white Union troops served in the FirstAlabama Union Cavalry, in the First Alabama and Tennessee Cavalry (theFirst Vedette), Kennamer’s Scouts (Cavalry), and in northernregiments—principally those from Indiana. The report of the Secretary ofWar for 1864-1865 says that no white regiments were regularly enlisted inAlabama for the Union army. But this is evidently not correct, since thereport for 1866 says that there were 2576 enlistments in Alabama forvarious periods of service.[160]

Of negro regiments in the Union army, there were the First AlabamaVolunteers, afterward known as the Fifth United States Colored Infantry,the Second Alabama Volunteers (negroes), and the First Alabama ColoredArtillery, afterward known as the Sixth United States Heavy Artillery,which served at Fort Pillow. Late in 1864 General Lorenzo Thomas reportedthat he had recently organized three regiments of colored infantry inAlabama, and Wilson organized several other negro regiments in the statein 1865. Many[Pg 88] negroes from north Alabama went into various negroorganizations, and were credited to the northern states, the officialrecords showing only 4969 negro enlistments credited directly to Alabama.A conservative estimate would be from 2000 to 2500 whites and 10,000negroes enlisted in Alabama, not counting those who were enrolled in thespring of 1865.[161] The white Union soldiers from Alabama were mostlypoor men from the mountain counties of north Alabama. The Union troopsfrom Alabama received no bounty.[162]

The militia system of Alabama in 1861 existed only in the statute books,and in the persons of a few brigadiers and a major-general, whose entireduty had consisted in wearing uniforms at the inauguration of a governorand ever thereafter bearing military titles. A series of Arabic numbers,something more than a hundred, was assigned to the militia regiments thatwere unorganized, but which, under favorable circumstances, might beenrolled and called out. The county was the unit. To each county wasassigned one regiment or more according to the white population. Severalcounties formed a militia district under a brigadier-general, and over allwas a major-general. Bodies of trained volunteers were not connected withthe militia system at all, but these went at once, on the outbreak of war,into the state army, which was soon merged into the Confederate army.

In theory the militia consisted of all the male citizens of Alabama ofmilitary age. The enlistments for war service soon reduced the materialfrom which militia regiments could be formed, and the system broke downbefore it was tried. A few regiments may have been enrolled in 1861 and1862, but if so, they at once entered the Confederate service. TheForty-eighth Alabama Militia regiment was ordered out to defend Mobile in1861, and $6000 was appropriated to provide pikes and knives with which toarm them, as it was[Pg 89]impossible to get firearms. On March 1, 1862,Governor Shorter appealed to the people to give their shotguns, rifles,bowie-knives, pikes, powder, and lead to state agents, probate judges,sheriffs, and other state officials for the use of the state militia.[163]A few days later he ordered out, for the defence of Mobile and the coast,the militia from the river counties and the southwesterncounties—eighteen counties in all. But the militia failed to appear. Itseems that the governor expected a hearty response from the people. Heasked for too much, and got nothing. On March 12, 1862, he again orderedout the militia, this time specifying the regiments by number.[164] Butagain the militia failed to respond. The fact was, there was no longer anymilitia; the officers and men had gone, or were preparing to go, into theConfederate service. Many of the militia regiments could not have mustereda dozen men, and it is doubtful if there was a muster-roll of a militiaregiment in all Alabama.[165] In May, 1862, the governor, recognizing thatthe militia system was worthless as a means of raising troops for homedefence, issued a proclamation asking the people to form volunteerorganizations. The response, as he said, “was not prompt.” The legislatureof that year, not seeing the necessity, refused to reorganize the militiaso as to give the governor any effective control. The people seem not tohave been worried by any fear of invasion, and many thought thatorganization into militia companies was merely preliminary to entering theConfederate service. Some did not wish to go until they had to do so,others preferred to go at once to the Confederate army. It appears thatall persons, for various reasons, disliked militia service.

December 22, 1862, the governor issued a proclamation, in which, aftermentioning the tardy response to his May proclamation and the failure ofthe legislature to reorganize the system, he again asked the people tovolunteer in companies for home defence.[166] He begged the people todrive those who were shirking service to their duty by the force of publicscorn. He requested that business houses be closed early in order to givetime for drill. The response to this[Pg 90] was the same as to his previousproclamation. There was no longer any material for a militia organization.Early in 1863, and in some sections even before, the need began to be feltfor a militia force to execute the laws. Under the direction of thegovernor, small commands were organized here and there of those who werenot likely to become subject to service in the Confederate army. Thesewere state and Confederate officials, young boys, and sometimes old men.These organizations were later a source of constant conflict between thestate authorities and the Confederate enrolling officers, who wanted totake such commands bodily into the Confederate service, and who usuallydid so with the full consent of most of the men and to the greatindignation of the governor.[167] In August, 1863, the legislature finallypassed a law to reorganize the militia system, or rather to establish anew system. By the law an official in each county, appointed by thegovernor, was to enroll as first-class militia all males under seventeenand over forty-five years of age, including all state and Confederatecivil officials, and those physically disqualified for service in theConfederate army. The second class was to consist of those not in thefirst class, that is, of men between seventeen and forty-five years ofage. But men of the second class were subject to enrolment by Confederateconscript officers, and consisted of the few thousand who were speciallyexempted by the Confederate authorities. Those of the first class whowished to do so might enroll in the second class. The governor was giventhe usual power over the militia, but it was ordered that the first-classmilitia was not to go beyond the limits of the county to which itbelonged.[168] Presumably the second class might be ordered beyond thecounty limits, but there were so few in their class that they were notorganized. The first-class militia in each county was under a commandantof reserves, militia now being called reserves. He had the power to callit out to repel invasion and execute the laws. Jealousy of Confederateauthority had caused the legislature to take legal means of making themilitia worthless to the Confederacy, and useful only for local defenceand for executing the state laws in[Pg 91]particular localities.[169] Still,the system seems to have been practically useless, and the governorcontinued to organize small irregular commands to execute the laws and tofurnish military escorts to civil officials. As has been stated, suchcommands were highly approved of by the Confederate enrolling officers,who eagerly persuaded them to join the Confederate army, and thus calledforth strong remonstrances from Governor Watts. The War Departmentreasoned that a state could keep troops of war which were not subject toabsorption in the Confederate service, but that the militia were subjectto the superior claims of the Confederacy.[170] February 6, 1864, GovernorWatts, in an address to the people, declared that a raid into the statewas threatened and called upon young and old to volunteer for the defenceof the state.[171] The reserve system was now worthless. Few of theregiments had more than fifty men, many had none, and the governor waspowerless to use them beyond the limits of their respective counties. Thestate was at the mercy of any invading force, and Rousseau’s Raid, throughthe heart of the state, showed the woful condition of affairs. On October7, 1864, the legislature passed an act which prohibited Confederate armyofficers from commanding the reserves. It was again ordered that thefirst-class reserves should not serve beyond the limits of the county towhich they belonged. At the same time, permission was granted to theharassed citizens of Dale and Henry counties to organize themselves toprotect their homes, provided they did so under the direction of thecommandant of the first-class militia. Perhaps the legislature was afraidthat, if left to themselves, they might cross the county line, or choose aConfederate officer to lead them. In December, 1864, when north Alabamawas almost entirely overrun by tories, deserters, and Federals, thecitizens of Marion County were authorized to organize into squads andprotect themselves.[172] Still the legislature refused to make aneffective reorganization of the militia. When the spring campaign in 1865began, Governor Watts appealed to the people to do what the legislaturehad failed to do. The first-class militia could not, he said, be orderedbeyond the limits of their[Pg 92]counties, and in three congressional districtsin north Alabama it had not been and, by law, could not be, organized. Heestimated that 30,000 men were enrolled in the first-class militia, ofwhom 4000 were boys, and to the latter he made the appeal to defend thestate. Evidently the remaining 26,000 men were, in his estimation, notworth much as soldiers. However, he called upon all first-class militia tovolunteer as second class.[173] A few hundred responded to this appeal,and all of them who saw active service were with Forrest in front ofWilson.

The various organizations mentioned in the War Records, the JuniorReserves, Senior Reserves, Mobile Regiment, Home Guards, Local DefenceCorps,[174] and others, were, except the reserves, volunteer organizationsfor local defence, and all that saw active service before 1865, except theHome Guards, were absorbed into the Confederate organization.[175] Thestupid conduct of the legislature during the last two years of the war infailing to provide for the defence of the state cannot be too stronglycondemned. The final result would have been the same, but a strong forceof militia would have enabled Governor Watts to execute the laws in allparts of the state, and to protect the families of loyal citizens fromoutrage by tories and deserters.

In the spring of 1862, the Confederate Congress passed the Enrolment Act,by which all white men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five weremade liable to military service at the call of the President, and thosealready in service were retained. The President was authorized to employstate officials to enroll the men made subject to duty, provided thegovernor of the state gave his consent; otherwise he was to employConfederate officials. The conscripts thus secured were to be assigned tothe state commands already in the field until these organizations wererecruited to their full strength. Substitutes were allowed under suchregulations as the Secretary of[Pg 93] War might prescribe.[176] Five dayslater, a law was passed exempting certain classes of persons from theoperations of the Enrolment Act. These were: Confederate and stateofficials, mail-carriers, ferrymen on post-office routes, pilots,telegraph operators, miners, printers, ministers, college professors,teachers with twenty pupils or more, teachers of the deaf, dumb, andblind, hospital attendants, one druggist to each drug store, andsuperintendents and operatives in cotton and wool factories.[177] In thefall of 1862, the Enrolment law was extended to include all white men fromthirty-five to forty-five years of age and all who lacked a few months ofbeing eighteen years of age. They were to be enrolled for three years, theoldest, if not needed, being left until the last.[178]

At this time was begun the practice, which virtually amounted toexemption, of making special details from the army to perform certainkinds of skilled labor. The first details thus made were to manufactureshoes for the army.[179] The list of those who might claim exemption, inaddition to those named in the act of April 21, 1862, was extended toinclude the following: state militia officers, state and Confederateclerks in the civil service, railway employees who were not commonlaborers, steamboat employees, one editor and the necessary printers foreach newspaper, those morally opposed to war, provided they furnished asubstitute or paid $500 into the treasury, physicians, professors, andteachers who had been engaged in the profession for two years or more,government artisans, mechanics, and other employees, contractors and theiremployees furnishing arms and supplies to the state or to the Confederacy,factory owners, shoemakers, tanners, blacksmiths, wagon makers, millers,and engineers. The artisans and manufacturers were granted exemption frommilitary service provided the products of their labor were sold at notmore than seventy-five per cent profit above the cost of production. Onevery plantation where there were twenty or more negroes one white man wasentitled to exemption as overseer.[180]

[Pg 94]In the spring of 1863 mail contractors and drivers of post-coaches wereexempted;[181] and it was ordered that those exempted under the so-called“twenty-negro” law should pay $500 into the Confederate treasury; also,that such state officials as were exempted by the governor might be alsoexempted by the Confederate authorities. The law permitting the hiring ofsubstitutes by men liable to service was repealed on December 28, 1863,and a few days later even those who had furnished substitutes were madesubject to military duty.[182]

A law of February 17, 1864,[183] provided that all soldiers between theages of eighteen and forty-five should be retained in service during thewar. Those between the ages of seventeen and eighteen, and forty-five andfifty were called into service as a reserve force for the defence of thestate. All exemptions were repealed except the following: (1) the membersof Congress and of the state legislature, and such Confederate and stateofficers as the President or the governors might certify to be necessaryfor the proper administration of government; (2) ministers regularlyemployed, superintendents, attendants, and physicians of asylums for thedeaf, dumb, and blind, insane, and other public hospitals, one editor foreach newspaper, public printers, one druggist for each drug store whichhad been two years in existence, all physicians who had practised sevenyears, teachers in colleges of at least two years’ standing and in schoolswhich had twenty pupils to each teacher; (3) one overseer or agriculturistto each farm upon which were fifteen or more negroes, in case there was noother exempt on the plantation. The object was to leave one white man, andno more, on each plantation, and the owner or overseer was preferred. Inreturn for such exemption, the exempt was bound by bond to deliver to theConfederate authorities, for each slave on the plantation between the agesof sixteen and fifty, one hundred pounds of bacon or its equivalent inproduce, which[Pg 95] was paid for by the government at prices fixed by theimpressment commissioners. In addition, the exempt was to sell his surplusproduce at prices fixed by the commissioners. The Secretary of War wasauthorized to make special details, under the above conditions, ofoverseers, farmers, or planters, if the public good demanded it; also (4)to exempt the higher officials of railroads and not more than one employeefor each mile of road; and (5) mail carriers and drivers. The Presidentwas authorized to make details of old men for special service.[184] By anact passed the same day free negroes from eighteen to fifty years of agewere made liable to service with the army as teamsters. These acts ofFebruary 17, 1864, were the last Confederate legislation of importance inregard to conscription and exemption. During the year 1864 the Confederateauthorities devoted their energies to construing away all exemptionspossible, and to absorbing the state reserve forces into the Confederatearmy.

To return to 1861. The state legislature, when providing for the statearmy, authorized the governor to exempt from militia duty all railway,express, steamboat, and telegraph employees, but even the fire companieshad to serve as militia.[185] The operation of the enrolment law strippedthe land of men of militia age, and on November 17, 1862, the legislatureordered to duty on the public roads men from sixteen to eighteen years ofage, and forty-five to fifty-five, and later all from sixteen to fifty aswell as all male slaves and free negroes from fourteen to sixty years ofage.[186] Militia officers between the ages of eighteen and forty-fivewere declared subject to the enrolment acts of Congress,[187] as were alsojustices of the peace, notaries public, and constables.[188]

Yet, instead of making an effective organization of the militia, thelegislature in 1863 proceeded to frame a law of exemptions patterned afterthat of the Confederacy. It released from militia duty all persons overforty-five years of age, county treasurers, physicians of seven years’practice or who were in the public service, ministers, teachers of threeyears’ standing, one blacksmith in each beat, the[Pg 96] city police and firecompanies, penitentiary guards, general administrators who had been inservice five years, Confederate agents, millers, railroad employees,steamboat officials, overseers, managers of foundries, salt makers whomade as much as ten bushels a day and who sold it for not more than $15per bushel. Besides, the governor could make special exemptions.[189] In1864 millers who charged not more than one-eighth for toll wereexempted.[190] It will be seen that in some respects the state laws gofarther in exemption than the Confederate laws, and thus were in conflictwith them. But it must be remembered that the Confederacy had alreadystripped the country of nearly all the able-bodied men who did not evadeduty. To this time, however, there was no conflict between the state andConfederate authorities in regard to conscription. An act was also passedproviding for the reorganization of the penitentiary guards, and onlythose not subject to conscription were retained.[191] A joint resolutionof August 29, 1863, called upon Congress to decrease the list ofexemptions, as many clerks and laborers were doing work that could be doneby negroes. At the end of the year 1863 the legislature asked that theconscript law be strictly enforced by Congress.[192]

On the part of the state rights people, there was much opposition to theenrolment or conscription laws on the ground that they wereunconstitutional. Several cases were brought before the state supremecourt, and all were decided in favor of the constitutionality of the laws;furthermore, it was decided that the courts and judicial officers of thestate had no jurisdiction onhabeas corpus to discharge from the custodyof a Confederate enrolling officer persons who had been conscripted underthe law of Congress.[193] A test case was carried to the state supremecourt, which decided that a person who had conscientious scruples againstbearing arms might pay for a substitute in the state militia and claimexemption from state service, but[Pg 97] if conscripted he was not exemptedfrom the Confederate service unless he belonged to the religiousdenominations specially exempted by the act of Congress.[194] The courtalso declared constitutional the Confederate law which provided that whena substitute became subject to military duty his principal was therebyrendered liable to service.[195] In 1864 the supreme court held that thestate had a right to subject to militia service persons exempted by theConfederate authorities as bonded agriculturists under the acts ofFebruary 17, 1864, and that only those overseers were granted exemptionfrom militia service under the act of Congress in 1863 who at the timewere not subject to militia duty, and not those exempted from Confederateservice by the later laws,[196] and that the clause in the act of Congresspassed February 17, 1864, repealing and revoking all exemptions, wasconstitutional.[197] In other cases the court held that a person regularlyenrolled and sworn into the Confederate service could not raise anyquestion, onhabeas corpus, of his assignment to any particular commandor duty,[198] but that the state courts could discharge onhabeas corpusfrom Confederate enrolling officers persons held as conscripts, who wereexempted under Confederate laws;[199] that the Confederacy might reassertits rights to the military service of a citizen who was enrolled as aconscript and, after producing a discharge for physical disability, hadenlisted in the state militia service;[200] and finally, that the right ofthe Confederacy to the military service of a citizen was paramount to theright of the state.[201]

During the year 1864 Governor Watts had much trouble with the Confederateenrolling officers who insisted upon conscripting his volunteer andmilitia organizations, whether they were subject to duty under the laws ornot. The authorities at Richmond held that while a state might keep“troops of war” over which the Confederacy could have no control, yet thestate militia was subject to all the laws of Congress. “Troops of war,” asthe Secretary of War explained, would be troops in active and permanentservice,[202] and hence virtually Confederate troops. A state with troopsof that description would be very willing to give them up to theConfederacy to save expense.[Pg 98] Thus we find the legislature of Alabamaasking the President to receive and pay certain irregular organizationswhich had been used to support the Conscript Bureau.[203] The legislature,now somewhat disaffected, showed its interest in the operations of theenrolling officers by an act providing that conscript officials who forcedexempts into the Confederate service should be liable to indictment andpunishment by a fine of $1000 to $6000 and imprisonment of from six monthsto two years.[204] It went a step further and nullified the laws ofCongress by declaring that state officials, civil and military, were notsubject to conscription by the Confederate authorities.[205]

Few good soldiers were obtained by conscription,[206] and the system, asit was organized in Alabama,[207] did more harm than good to theConfederacy. The passage of the first law, however, had one good effect.During the winter of 1861-1862, there had been a reaction from theenthusiastic war feeling of the previous summer. Those who thought itwould be only a matter of weeks to overrun the North now saw theirmistake.[208] Many of the people still had no doubt that the North wouldbe glad to make peace and end the war if the government at Richmond werewilling. Numbers, therefore, saw no need of more fighting, and hence didnot volunteer. Thousands left the army and went home. A measure like theenrolment act was necessary to make the people realize the actualsituation. Upon the passage of the law all the loyal population liable toservice made preparations to go to the front before being conscripted,which was deemed a disgrace, and the close of the year 1862 sawpractically all of them in the army. Those who entered after 1862 wereboys and old men.[209] Many not subject to service[Pg 99] volunteered, so thatwhen the age limit was extended but few more were secured.

Great dissatisfaction was expressed among the people at the enrolment law.Some thought that it was an attack upon the rights of the states, and theirritating manner in which it was enforced aroused, in some localities,intense popular indignation. Conscription being considered disgraceful,many who would have been glad for various good reasons to remain at home afew months longer went at once into service to escape conscription. Yetsome loyal and honest citizens found it disastrous to leave their homesand business without definite arrangements for the safety and support oftheir families. Such men suffered much annoyance from the enrollingofficers, in spite of the fact that the law was intended for theirprotection. The conscript officials, often men of bad character,persecuted those who were easy to find, while neglecting the disloyal andrefractory who might make trouble for them. In some sections such weakconduct came near resulting in local insurrections; this was especiallythe case in Randolph County in 1862.[210] The effect of the law was ratherto stop volunteering in the state organizations and reporting to camps ofinstructions, since all who did either were classed as conscripts. Notwishing to bear the odium of being conscripted, many thousands in 1862 and1863 went directly into the regular service.[211]

While the conscript law secured few, if any, good soldiers who would nothave joined the army without it, it certainly served as a reminder to thepeople that all were needed, and as a stimulus to volunteering. Threeclasses of people suffered from its operations: (1) those rightfullyexempted, who were constantly annoyed by the enrolling officers; (2) thosesoon to become liable to service, who were not allowed to volunteer inorganizations of their own choice; and (3) “deadheads” and malcontents whodid not intend to fight at all if they could keep from it. It was thislast class that made nearly all the complaints about conscription, and itwas they whom the enrolling officers left alone because they were sotroublesome.

[Pg 100]The defects in the working of conscription are well set forth in a letterfrom a correspondent of President Davis in December, 1862. In this letterit was asserted that the conscript law had proven a failure in Mississippiand Alabama, since it had stopped the volunteering. Governor Shorter wasreported to have said that the enforcement of it had been “a humbug and afarce.” The writer declared that the enrolling officers chosen werefrequently of bad character; that inefficient men were making attempts tosecure “bomb-proof” offices in order to avoid service in the army; andthat the exemption of slave owners by the “twenty-negro law” had a badinfluence upon the poorer classes. He also declared that the system ofsubstitutes was bad, for many men were on the hunt for substitutes, andothers liable to duty were working to secure exemptions in order to serveas substitutes, while large numbers of men connected with the army managedin this way to keep away from the fighting. He was sure, he said, thatthere were too many hangers-on about the officers of high rank, and thatit was believed that social position, wealth, and influence served to getyoung men good staff positions.[212] Another evil complained of was that“paroled” men scattered to their homes and never heard of their exchange.To a conscript officer whose duty it was to look after them they said thatthey were “paroled,” and he passed them by. The officers were said to beentirely too lenient with the worthless people and too rigorous with thebetter classes.[213]

After the passage of the enrolment laws, every man with excessive regardfor the integrity of his person and for his comfort began to secureexemption from service. In north Alabama men of little courage andpatriotism lost confidence after the invasions of the Federals, andresorted to every expedient to escape conscription. Strange and terriblediseases were developed, and in all sections of the state health began tobreak down.[214] It was the day of certificates,—for old age, rheumatism,fits, blindness, and various physical disabilities.[215] Various otherpretexts were given for staying away from the[Pg 101] army, while some men hidout in the woods. The governor asked the people to drive such persons totheir duty.[216] There was never so much skilled labor in the South asnow. Harness making, shoe making, charcoal burning, carpentering—allthese and numerous other occupations supposed to be in support of thecause secured exemption. Running a tanyard was a favorite way of escapingservice. A pit was dug in the corner of the back yard, a few hidessecured, carefully preserved, and never finished,—for more hides mightnot be available; then the tanner would be no longer exempt. There werepurchasing agents, sub-purchasing agents, and sub-sub-agents, cattledrivers, tithe gatherers, agents of the Nitre Bureau, agents to examinepolitical prisoners,[217] and many other Confederate and state agents ofvarious kinds.[218] The class left at home for the enrolling officers tocontend with, especially after 1862, was a source of weakness, not ofstrength, to the Confederate cause. The best men had gone to the army, andthese people formed the public. Their opinion was public opinion, and withfew exceptions the home stayers were a sorry lot. From them came thecomplaint about the favoritism toward the rich. The talk of a “rich man’swar and a poor[Pg 102] man’s fight” originated with them, as well as thecriticism of the “twenty-negro law.” In the minds of the soldiers at thefront there was no doubt that the slaveholder and the rich man were doingtheir full share.[219]

Very few of the slaveholders and wealthy men tried to escape service; butwhen one did, he attracted more attention and called forth sternerdenunciation than ten poor men in similar cases would have done. In fact,few able-bodied men tried to secure exemption under the “twenty-negrolaw.” It would have been better for the Confederacy if more planters hadstayed at home to direct the production of supplies, and the fact wasrecognized in 1864,[220] when a “fifteen-negro law” was passed by theCongress, and other exemptions of planters and overseers wereencouraged.[221]

There is no doubt that those who desired to remain quietly at home—to beneutral, so to speak—found it hard to evade the conscript officers. Oneof these declared that the enrolling officers “burned the woods and siftedthe ashes for conscripts.” Another who had been caught in the siftingprocess deserted to the enemy at Huntsville. He was asked, “Do theyconscript close over the river?” “Hell, stranger, I should think they do;they take every man who has not been dead more than two days.”[222] Butthe “hill-billy” and “sand-mountain” conscripts were of no service whencaptured; there were not enough soldiers in the state to keep them intheir regiments. The Third Alabama Regiment of Reserves ran away almost ina body. There were fifteen or twenty old men in each county as asupporting force to the Conscript Bureau, and they had old guns, some ofwhich would not shoot, and ammunition that did not fit.[223] Thus the bestmen went into the army, many of them never to return, and a class ofpeople the country could well have spared survived to assist a second timein the ruin of their country in the darker days of Reconstruction. Oftenthe “fire-eating, die-in-the-last-ditch” radical of 1861 who remained athome “to take care of the ladies” became an exempt, a “bomb-proof” or aconscript officer, and later a “scalawag.”

[Pg 103]Some escaped war service by joining the various small independent andirregular commands formed for frontier service by those officers who foundfield duty too irksome. Though these irregular bodies were, as we haveseen, gradually absorbed by the regular organizations, yet during theirday of strength they were most unpleasant defenders. The men sometimesjoined in order to have more opportunity for license and plunder, and suchwere hated alike by friend and foe.

Another kind of irregular organization caused some trouble in another way.Before the extension of the age limits to seventeen and fifty, thegovernor raised small commands of young boys to assist in the execution ofthe state laws, no other forces being available. Later, when theConfederate Congress extended its laws to include these, the conscriptofficers tried to enroll them, but the governor objected. The officerscomplained that, in order to escape the odium of conscription, the youngboys who were subject by law to duty in the reserves evaded that law bygoing at once into the army, or by joining some command for special duty.They were of the opinion that these boys should be sent to camps ofinstruction. The governor had ten companies of young men under eighteenyears of age raised near Talladega, and really mustered into theConfederate service as irregular troops, before the law of February 17,1864, was passed. After the passage of the law, the enrolling officerswished to disband these companies and send the men to the reserves. Wattswas angered and sharply criticised the whole policy of conscription. Hesaid that much harm was done by the method of the conscript officers; thatit was nonsense to take men from the fields and put them in camps ofinstruction when there were no arms for them, and no active service wasintended; they had better stay at home, drill once a week with volunteerorganizations, and work the rest of the time; to assemble the farmers incamps for useless drill while the crops were being destroyed was “mostegregious folly.” The governor also attacked the policy of the Bureau inrefusing to allow the enrolment in the same companies of boys undereighteen and men over forty-five.[224] In regard to the attempts todisband his small[Pg 104] force of militia in active service, the governor usedstrong language. To Seddon, the Secretary of War, he wrote in May, 1864:“It must not be forgotten that the states have some rights left, and thatthe right to troops in the time of war is guaranteed by the Constitution.These rights, on the part of Alabama, I am determined shall be respected.Unless you order the Commandant of Conscripts to stop interfering with[certain volunteer companies] there will be a conflict between theConfederate general [Withers] and the state authorities.”[225] Wattscarried the day and the Confederate authorities yielded.

The enrolment law provided that state officials should be exempt fromenrolment upon presenting a certificate from the governor stating thatthey were necessary to the proper administration of the government. InNovember, 1864, Governor Watts complained to General Withers, whocommanded the Confederate reserve forces in Alabama, that the conscriptofficers had been enrolling by force state officials who held certificatesfrom the governor and also from the commandant of conscripts, and, headded: “This state of things cannot long last without a conflict betweenthe Confederate and state authorities. I shall be compelled to protect mystate officers with all the forces of the state at my command.” Theenrolling officers referred him to a decision of the Secretary of War inthe case of a state official in Lowndes County,—that by the act ofFebruary 17, 1864, all men between the ages of seventeen and fifty weretaken at once into the Confederate service, and that state officialselected later could not claim exemption. Governor Watts then wrote toSeddon, “Unless you interfere, there will be a conflict between theConfederate and the state authorities.” He denied the right of Confederateofficers to conscript state officials elected after February 17, 1864: “Ideny such right, and will resist it with all the forces of thestate.”[226] The Secretary of War replied by commending the Confederateofficers for the way in which they had done their duty, insisting that itwas not a political nor a constitutional question, but one involvingprivate rights, and that it should be left to the courts. This wasreceding from the confident ruling made in the case of the Lowndes Countyman. There was no more dispute and it is to be[Pg 105] presumed that the governorretained his officials.[227] No wonder that Colonel Preston, the chief ofthe Bureau of Conscription, wrote to the Secretary of War that, “from oneend of the Confederacy to the other every constituted authority, everyofficer, every man, and woman was engaged in opposing the enrollingofficer in the execution of his duties.”[228]

But these officers had only themselves to blame. They pursued ashort-sighted, nagging policy, worrying those who were exempt—the stateofficials and the militia—because they were easy to reach, and neglectingthe real conscript material.[229] The work was known to be useless, andthe whole system was irritating to the last degree to all who came incontact with it. It was useless because there was little good material forconscription, except in the frontier country where no authority could beexerted. During 1862 and 1863 practically nothing was done by the Bureauin Alabama, and at the end of the latter year, Colonel E. D. Blake, theSuperintendent of Special Registration, reported that there were 13,000men in the state between the ages of seventeen and forty-five, and ofthese he estimated 4000 were under eighteen years of age, and hence, atthat time, beyond the reach of the enrolling officers. More than 8000[230]were exempt[Pg 106] under laws and orders. This left, he said, 1000 subject toenrolment. Nowhere, in any of the estimates, are found allowances forthose physically and mentally disqualified. The number then exempted inAlabama by medical boards is unknown. In other states this number wassometimes more and sometimes less than the number exempted by law and byorder.

A year later, after all exemptions had been revoked, the numberdisqualified for physical disability by the examining boards amounted to3933. Besides these there were the lame, the halt, the blind, and theinsane, who were so clearly unfit for service that no enrolling officerever brought them before the medical board. The 4000 between the ages ofseventeen and eighteen, and also the 4600 between sixteen and seventeen,came under the enrolment law of February 17, 1864, as also severalthousand who were over forty-five. But it is certain that many of these,especially the younger ones, were already in the general service asvolunteers. It is also certain that many hundreds of all ages who wereliable to service escaped conscription, especially in north Alabama. In away, their places in the ranks were filled by those who did not becomeliable to enrolment until 1864, or even not at all, but who volunteerednevertheless.

From April, 1862, to February, 1865, there had been enrolled at the campsin Alabama 14,875 men who had been classed in the reports as conscripts.This included all men who volunteered at the camps, all of military agethat the officers could find or catch before they went into the volunteerservice, details made as soon as enrolled, irregular commands formedbefore the men were liable to duty, and a few hundred genuine conscriptswho had to be guarded to keep them from running away. It was reported thatfor two years not a recruit was sent by the Bureau from Alabama to thearmy of Tennessee or to the Army of Northern Virginia, but that the menwere enrolled in the organizations of the state. This means that much ofthe enrolment of 14,875 was only nominal, and that this number includedthe regiments sent to the front from Alabama in 1862, after the passage ofthe Enrolment Act in April. Eighteen regiments were organized in Alabamaafter that date, in violation of the Enrolment Act, many of the menevading conscription, as the Bureau reported, by going at once into thegeneral service. The number who left in[Pg 107] these regiments was estimated atmore than 10,000.[231] There was not a single conscript regiment.

It is possible to ascertain the number exempted by law and by order before1865. A report by Colonel Preston, dated April, 1864, gives the number ofexempts in Alabama as 8835 to January, 1864.[232] A month later, allexemptions were revoked.[233] In February, 1865, a complete report placesthe total number exempted by law and order in Alabama at 10,218, of whom3933 were exempted by medical boards. The state officials exemptednumbered 1333,[234] and Confederate officials, 21; ministers, 726;editors, 33, and their employees, 155; public printers, 3; druggists, 81;physicians, 796; teachers, 352; overseers and agriculturists, 1447;railway officials and employees, 1090; mail carriers and contractors, 60;foreigners, 167; agriculture details, 38; pilots, telegraphers,shoemakers, tanners, and blacksmiths, 86; government contractors, 44;details of artisans and mechanics, 570; details for government service(not specified), 218. There were 1046 men incapable of field service whowere assigned to duty in the above details, chiefly in the ConscriptBureau, Quartermaster’s Department, and Commissariat.[235] It is certainthat many others were exempted by being detailed from service in the army.The list of those pardoned in 1865 and 1866 by President Johnson showsmany occupations not mentioned above.

It is interesting to notice the fate of the conscript officers whencaptured by the Federals. Bradford Hambrick was tried by a militarycommission in Nashville, Tennessee, in January, 1864, charged with being aConfederate conscript officer and with forcing “peaceable citizens of theUnited States” in Madison County, Alabama, to enter the Confederate army.He was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment at hard labor for one year,and to pay a fine of $2000 or serve an additional imprisonment of 1000days.[236]

To sum up: The early enrolment laws served to stimulate enlistment; thelater ones probably had no effect at all except to give[Pg 108] the Bureausomething to do, and the law officers something on which to exercise theirwits. The conscript service also served as an exemption board. It securedfew, if any, enlistments that the state could not have secured, andcertainly lost more than it gained by harassing the people. The laws wereconstantly violated by the state; this is proved by the enlistment ofeighteen new regiments contrary to the law. It finally drove the stateauthorities into an attitude of nullification by its construction of theenrolment laws.

Neither the state nor the Confederate government had an efficientmachinery for securing enlistments. If there ever were laws regarded onlyin the breaking, the Enrolment Acts were such laws. The conscripts andexempts, like the deserters, tories, and Peace Society men, are important,not only because they so weakened the Confederacy, but also because theyformed the party that would have carried out, or at least begun,Reconstruction according to the plans of Lincoln and Johnson as firstproclaimed. Many of these people became “scalawags” later, probablyinfluenced to some extent by the scorn of their neighbors.

In Alabama opposition to the Confederate government took two forms. Onewas the rebellious opposition of the so-called “unionists” or “tories,”who later joined with the deserters from the army; the other was the legalor constitutional opposition of the old coöperation or anti-secessionparty, which maintained an unfriendly attitude toward the Confederateadministration, though the great majority of its members were loyal to thesouthern cause. From this second class arose a so-called “Peace Party,”which desired to end the war on terms favorable to the South; and fromthis, in turn, when later it was known that such terms could not besecured, sprang the semi-treasonable secret order—the “Peace Society.” In1864, the “tories” and the Peace Society began to work together. Peculiarsocial and political conditions will in part account for the strength andgrowth of the opposition in two sections of the state far removed fromeach other—in north Alabama and in southeast Alabama.

To the convention of 1861 forty-four members from north Alabama wereelected as coöperationists, that is, in favor of a union of the southernstates, within the old Union, for the purpose of securing their rightsunder the Constitution or of securing safe secession. They professed to beafraid of separate state secession as likely to lead to disintegration andwar. Thirty-one of these coöperationists voted against the ordinance ofsecession, and twenty-four of them (mostly members from the northern hillcounties) refused to sign the ordinance, though all expressed theintention to submit to the will of the majority, and to give the statetheir heartiest support. When war came all espoused the Confederatecause.[237] The coöperationist party as a whole supported the Confederacyfaithfully, though nearly always in a more or less disapproving spirittoward the administration, both state and Confederate.

North Alabama differed from other portions of the state in many ways.There was no railroad connecting the country north of the mountains withthe southern part of the state, and from the northern counties it was ajourney of several days to reach the towns in central and south Alabama.Hence there was little intercourse between the people of the two sections,though the seat of government was in the central part of the state; evento-day the intimacy is not close. For years it had been a favorite schemeof Alabama statesmen to build railroads and highways to connect moreclosely the two sections.[238] Geographically, this northern section ofthe state belonged to Tennessee. The people were felt to be slightlydifferent in character and sympathies from those of central and southAlabama, and whatever one section favored in public matters was usuallyopposed by the other. Even in the northern section the population was moreor less divided. The people of the valley more closely resembled the westTennesseeans, the great majority of them being planters, having little incommon with the small farmers of the hill and mountain country, who werelike the east Tennesseeans. Of[Pg 110] the latter the extreme element was theclass commonly known as “mountain whites” or “sand-mountain” people. Thesewere the people who gave so much trouble during the war, as “tories,” andfrom whom the loyal southerners of north Alabama suffered greatly when thecountry was stripped of its men for the armies. Yet it can hardly be saidthat they exercised much influence on politics before the war. Their onlyrepresentative in the convention of 1861 was Charles Christopher Sheets,who did not speak on the floor of the convention during the entiresession.

On the part of all in the northern counties there was a strong desire fordelay in secession, and they were angered at the action of the conventionin not submitting the ordinance to a popular vote for ratification orrejection. Many thought the course taken indicated a suspicion of them orfear of their action, and this they resented. Their leaders in theconvention expressed the belief that the ordinance would have easilyobtained a majority if submitted to the popular vote.[239] Much of theopposition to the ordinance of secession was due to the vague sectionaldislike between the two parts of the state. It was felt that the ordinancewas a south Alabama measure, and this was sufficient reason for oppositionby the northern section. Throughout the entire session a local sectionalspirit dictated their[Pg 111] course of obstruction.[240] In January and Februaryof 1861, there was some talk among the discontented people of secedingfrom secession, of withdrawing the northern counties of Alabama anduniting with the counties of east Tennessee to form a new state, whichshould be called Nick-a-Jack, an Indian name common in EastTennessee.[241] Geographically, this proceeding would have been correct,since these two parts of the country are closely connected, the peoplewere alike in character and sentiment, and the means of intercourse werebetter. The people of the valley and many others, however, had no sympathywith this scheme. Lacking the support of the politicians and no leadersappearing, the plan was abandoned after the proclamation of Lincoln, April10, 1861. Had the war been deferred a few months, it is almost certainthat the discontented element of the population would have taken positivesteps to embarrass the administration; many believed that reconstructionwould take place. Only after four years of war was there after this anyappreciable number of the people willing to listen again to such aproposition. In February, 1861, Jeremiah Clemens wrote that Yancey hadbeen burned in effigy in Limestone County (something that might havehappened at any time between 1845 and 1861); that some discontent stillexisted among the people, but that this was daily growing weaker, andunless something were done to excite it afresh, it would soon dieout.[242] Mr. John W. DuBose, a keen observer from the Cotton Belt,travelled on horseback through the northern hill counties during thewinter of 1861 and 1862 as a Confederate recruiting officer. Thus he cameinto close contact with all classes of people, eating at their tables,sleeping in their beds, and in conversation learning their opinions andsentiments on public[Pg 112] matters. He saw no man, he says, who was not devotedto the Confederacy. Several of the first and best volunteer regiments camefrom this section of the state, and in these regiments there were wholecompanies of men none of whom owned a slave. In order to preserve thisspirit of loyalty in those who had been opposed to the policy ofsecession, Yancey and others, after the outbreak of the war, recommended aprompt invasion of the North.[243]

Before secession, the term “unionist” was applied to those who wereopposed to secession and who wished to give the Union a longer trial. Theywere mostly the old Whigs, but many Democrats were among them. Then againthe coöperationists, who wanted delay and coöperation among the statesbefore secession, were called “unionists.” In short, the term was appliedto any one opposed to immediate secession. This fact deceived the peopleof the North, who believed that the opposition party in the South wasunconditionally for the Union, and that it would remain in allegiance tothe Union if secession were attempted. But after secession this “union”party disappeared.

[Pg 113]The “tories” were those who rebelled against the authority of theConfederate States. Some of them were true “unionists” or “loyalists,” asthey were called at the North. Most of them were not. The “mossback,” whoaccording to popular belief hid himself in the woods until moss grew onhis back, might or might not be a “tory.” If he were hostile to theConfederacy, he was a “tory”; if he was simply keeping out of the way ofthe enrolling officers, he was not a “tory,” but a plain “mossback” or“conscript.” When too closely pressed he would either become a “tory” orenter the Confederate army, though he did not usually remain in it. The“deserter” was such from various reasons, and often became a “tory” aswell; that is, he became hostile to the Confederacy. Often he was nothostile to the government, but was only hiding from service, and doing noother harm. The true “unionists” always claimed great numbers, even afterthe end of the war. The North listened to them and believed that oldWhigs, Know-nothings, Anti-secessionists, Douglas Democrats, Bell andEverett men, coöperationists—all were at heart “Union” men. It was alsoclaimed that the only real disunion element was the BreckenridgeDemocracy. Such, however, was not the case. Probably fewer of the old Whigparty than of any other were disloyal to the Confederacy. So far as the“tory” or “loyalist” had any politics, he was probably a Democrat, and themore prominent of them had been Douglas Democrats. The others were Douglasand Breckenridge Democrats from the Democratic stronghold—northAlabama.[244] Very few, if any, Bell and Everett men were among them. Thesmall lower class had no party affiliations worth mentioning. During thewar, the terms “unionist” and “tories” were very elastic and covered amultitude of sins against the Union, against the Confederate States, andagainst local communities. With the exception of those who entered theFederal army the “tories” were, in a way, traitors to both sides. NorthAlabama was not so strongly opposed[Pg 114] to secession as was eastTennessee,[245] nor were the Alabama “unionists” or “loyalists,” as theycalled themselves, “tories” as other people called them, of as goodcharacter as the “loyalists” of Tennessee.

The Alabama tory was, as a rule, of the lowest class of the population,chiefly the “mountain whites” and the “sand-mountain” people, who wereshut off from the world, a century behind the times, and who knew scarcelyanything of the Union or of the questions at issue. There was a certainsocial antipathy felt by them toward the lowland and valley people,whether in south or in north Alabama, and a blind antagonism to the“nigger lord,” as they called the slaveholder, wherever he was found. Inthis feeling the women were more bitter than the men. Secluded andignorant, they did not feel it their duty to support a cause in which theywere not directly concerned, and most of them would have preferred toremain neutral during the entire war, as there was little for them to gaineither way. As long as they did not have to leave their hills, they werequiet, but when the enrolling officers went after them, they becamedangerous. To-day those people are represented by the makers of“moonshine” whiskey and those who shoot revenue officers. They were“moonshiners” then. Colonel S. A. M. Wood, who caught a band of thirty ofthese “tories,” reported to General Bragg, “They are the most miserable,ignorant, poor, ragged devils I ever saw.”[246] Many of the “tories”became bushwhackers, preying impartially on friend and foe, and especiallyon the people of the rich Tennessee valley.[247]

The invasion of the Tennessee valley had discouraging effects on theweaker element of the population, and caused many to take a ratherdegrading position in order to secure Federal protection[Pg 115] for themselvesand their property. To call the tories and those who submitted and tookthe oath “unionists” would be honoring them too highly. Little true“Union” sentiment or true devotion to the United States existed except onthe part of those who enlisted in the Federal armies. In October, 1862, C.C. Clay, Jr., wrote to the Secretary of War at Richmond that the Federalinvasion had resulted in open defiance of Confederate authority on thepart of some who believed that the Confederacy was too weak to protect orpunish. Even loyal southerners were afraid to be active for fear of areturn of the Union troops. Some had sold cotton to the Federals duringtheir occupation, bought it for them, acted as agents, spies, andinformers; and now these men openly declared for the Union and signedcalls for Union meetings. Huntsville, Mr. Clay stated, was the centre ofdisaffection.[248] But in April, 1863, a northern cotton speculatorreported that there were but few “true Union men” at Huntsville or in thevicinity.[249]

Though not fully in sympathy with the secession movement, the majority ofthe people in the northern counties acquiesced in the action of the state,and many volunteers entered the army. Until late in the war this districtsent as many men in proportion to population as any other section, and themen made good soldiers. But with the opening of the Tennessee and thepassage of the conscription laws the mountaineers and the hill peoplebecame troublesome. To avoid conscription they hid themselves. Theirfamilies, with their slender resources, were soon in want of thenecessaries of life, which they began to obtain by raids on their morefortunate neighbors in the river valleys. A few entered the Federal army.In July, 1862, small parties came to Decatur, in Morgan County, from themountains and joined the Federal forces under the command of ColonelStreight. They told him of others who wished to enlist, so Streight madean expedition to Davis Gap, in the mountains south of Decatur, and secured150 recruits.

These formed the nucleus of the First Alabama Union Cavalry, of whichGeorge E. Spencer of Ohio, afterward notorious in Alabama politics, wascolonel. At this time C. C. Sheets, who said that he had been in hiding,appeared and made a speech encouraging all to enlist. Streight said thatthe “unionists” were poor people,[Pg 116] often destitute. There were, hereported, about three “unionists” to one “secessionist” in parts ofMorgan, Blount, St. Clair, Winston, Walker, Marion, Taylor, and Jeffersoncounties, and he thought two full regiments could be raised near Decatur.Though so few in numbers, the “secessionists” seem to have made it livelyfor the “unionists,” for Streight reported that the “unionists” were muchpersecuted by them and often had to hide themselves.[250] The Confederatecommander at Newberne, in Greene County, reported (January, 1862) that inan adjoining county the “Union” men were secretly organizing, that 300 hadmet, elected officers, and gone into camp.[251] A month later,Lieutenant-Commander Phelps of the United States navy, after his riverraid to Florence (1862), reported that along the Tennessee the “Union”sentiment was strong, and that men, women, and children in crowds welcomedthe boats. However, he adds that they were very guarded in theirconversation. It may be that he mistook curiosity for “Union” sentiment.Another naval officer reported that the fall of Fort Donelson wasbeneficial to the Union cause in north Alabama. Neither of these observerslanded, and their observations were limited to the river banks.[252] InJune, 1862, Governor Shorter said that much dissatisfaction existed inseveral of the northern counties,[253] and in December, 1862, thatRandolph County was defying the enforcement of the conscript law, andarmed forces were releasing deserters from jail. Colonel Hannon was atlength sent with a regiment and suppressed for a time the disloyalelement.[254] September 21, 1862, General Pillow reported to Seddon thatthere were 8000 to 10,000 deserters and tory conscripts in the mountainsof north Alabama, as “vicious as copperheads.”[255] In April, 1863, acivilian of influence and position wrote to General Beauregard that thecounties of north Alabama were full of tories. During 1862, he stated, aconvention had been held in the corner of Winston, Fayette, and Marioncounties, in which the people had resolved to remain neutral. He believedthat this meant that when the enemy appeared the so-called neutrals would[Pg 117]join them, for they openly carried United States flags.[256] A similarconvention was held in north Alabama (apparently in Winston County) in thespring of 1863. A staff officer reported to General Beauregard (May, 1864)that in the counties of Lawrence, Blount, and Winston, Federal recruitingagents for mounted regiments carried on open correspondence with thedisaffected citizens,[257] apparently with little success, for althoughdisaffection and hostility to the Confederacy among the people of northAlabama had continued for three years, and there was every opportunity forentering the Federal army, yet the official statistics give the totalnumber of enlistments and reënlistments of whites from Alabama at2576.[258]

In 1862 deserters from the army began to gather in the more remotedistricts of the state. Many of them had been enrolled under the conscriptlaw, and had become dissatisfied. As the war went on the number of thesedeserters increased, until their presence in the state became a menace togovernment. After the Confederate reverses in the summer of 1863, greatnumbers of deserters and stragglers from all of the Confederate armieseast of the Mississippi River and from the Union armies collected amongthe hills, mountains, and ravines of north Alabama. A large portion ofthem became outlaws of the worst character. In August, 1863, the generalassembly passed a law directing the state officials and the militiaofficers to assist the Confederate enrolling officers in enforcing theconscript law, and in returning deserters to their commands. The state andcounty jails were offered as places to confine the deserters until theycould be sent back to the army. To give food and shelter to deserters wasdeclared a felony, and civilians were authorized to arrest them.[259]

The deserters and stragglers of north Alabama were well armed and somewhatorganized, and kept the people in terror. General Pillow thought that thetemporary suspension of the conscript law had made them bolder. Elevencounties were infested with them. No man was safe in travelling along theroads, for murders, robberies, and burnings were common, and peaceablecitizens were shot while[Pg 118] at work in the fields. It was estimated that inJuly, 1863, there were 8000 to 10,000 tories and deserters in themountains of north Alabama, and these banded themselves together to killthe officers sent to arrest them. It was impossible to keep a certainclass of men in the army when they were encamped near their homes.[260]Even good soldiers, when so stationed, sometimes deserted. Had these samemen been in the Army of Northern Virginia, they would have done their dutywell. But here, near their home, many influences led them to desert. Therewas little fighting, and they could see no reason why they should be keptaway from their suffering families.

General Pillow, in the fall of 1863, forced several thousand deserters andstragglers from Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas, who were in hiding innorth Alabama, to return to their commands. The legislature commended hiswork and asked that his jurisdiction be extended over a larger area, evenover the whole Confederacy.[261] In April, 1864, the Ninth Texas Cavalrywas sent against the “unionists” in Marion County. The colonel reportedthat the number of tories had been greatly exaggerated, though the woodsseemed to be swarming with deserters, and he learned that they had asecret organization.[262] The deserters always infested the wildest andmost remote parts of the country, and were found wherever disaffectiontoward the Confederacy had appeared. The Texans, who had no localattachments to interfere with their duty, drove back into the army severalthousand “stragglers,” as the better class of deserters were called.[263]General Polk reported (April, 1864) that in north Alabama formidable bandswere being organized for resistance to the government, and that hostilityto the Confederacy was openly proclaimed by them. He sent out detachmentswhich forced more than a thousand men to leave the woods and hills andreturn to the army.[264] When Alabama soldiers were captured or desertedto the enemy, it was the custom of the Federals to send them north of theOhio River, and to offer to enlist as many as possible in regiments tofight the Indians in the West. Some took advantage of the offer[Pg 119] and thusavoided prison life. Such men were called “galvanized Yankees” and werehated by the loyal soldiers. Early in 1865, J. J. Giers, a prominent tory,wrote General Grant that if Alabama deserters were permitted to remainnear home their numbers would increase.[265]

The tory and the deserter often led squads of Federal soldiers onexpeditions of destruction and pillage. When possible, they would burn thecounty court-houses, jails, and other public buildings, with the books andrecords of the counties. Sometimes disguised as Union troops, theycommitted the worst outrages. On one occasion four men, dressed assoldiers, went to the house of an old man named Wilson, three miles fromFlorence, and searched it for money supposed to be hidden there. As theold man would tell them nothing, they stripped him to the waist, tied himface downward upon a table, tore leaves from a large Bible, and, pilingthem on him, burned him to death. His nephew, unable to tell about themoney, was shot and killed. A grandson was shot and wounded, and left fordead. The overseer, coming up, was shot and killed in spite of the appealsof his wife. Senator R. M. Patton had the wounded boy taken to Florence,where the same band came the next night and demanded him. Upon beingrefused, they fired repeatedly into the house until they were driven away.They then went to the house of a druggist, and, failing to find money,burned him as they had Wilson. Though fearfully burned, he survived. Twoof the band, natives of Florence, were captured, court-martialled by theFederal authorities, and hanged.[266]

Twenty Federals, or disguised tories, led by a tory from Madison County,killed an old man, his son, a nephew and his son, and wounded a fifthperson, who was then thrown into the Tennessee River. When he caught thebush on the bank, he was beaten and shot until he turned loose. Anenrolling officer was made to wade out into the river, and then was shotfrom the bank. An overseer who had[Pg 120] hidden some stock was hanged. AConfederate officer was robbed of several thousand dollars and driven fromthe country.[267]

The tories, who were often deserters from the armies, gathered in the hillcountry and watched for an opportunity to descend into the valley to rob,burn, and murder. One family had the following experience with Federaltroops or “unionists”: On the first raid six mules, five horses, a wagon,and fifty-two negroes were taken; on the second, the remainder of themules, a cart, the milch cows, some meat, and the cooking utensils. On thethird the wagons were loaded with the last of the meat, and all of thesugar, coffee, molasses, flour, meal, and potatoes. The mother of thefamily told the officer in charge that they were taking away their onlymeans of subsistence, and that the family would starve. “Starve and bed—d,” was the reply. Then the buggy and the carriage harness and cushionswere taken, and the carriage cut to pieces. The house was searched formoney. Closets and trunks were broken open, the offer of keys beingrefused. Clothing and bedding, dishes, knives and forks were taken, andwhatever could not be carried was broken. The “Destroying Angels,” as theycalled themselves, then burned the gin-house and cotton press with onehundred and twenty-five bales of cotton, seven cribs of corn, stables, andstacks of fodder, a wagon, four negro cabins, the lumber room, $500 worthof thread, axes, hoes, scythe-blades, and other plantation implements.They started to burn the dwelling house, but the woman pleaded that it wasthe only shelter for her children and herself. “You may thank your goodfortune, madam, that we have left you and your d—d brats with your headsto be sheltered,” answered one of the “Destroying Angels.” Then an officergalloped up, claimed to be much astonished, and ordered away the men.[268]

The tories or “unionists” of the mountains, instead of joining the Federalarmy, formed bands of “Destroying Angels,” “Prowling Brigades,” etc., toprey upon their lowland neighbors. All the able-bodied loyal men were inthe army, and there were no defenders. During the Federal occupation thesemarauders harassed the country. When the Confederates temporarilyoccupied[Pg 121] the country, they tried to drive out the brigands, whence arosethe “persecution of unionists” that we read about. Thousands ofConfederate sympathizers were driven from their homes during the Federaloccupation in 1862. When the Union army retreated in 1862, attempts atretaliation were made by those who had suffered, but this was strictlysuppressed by the state and Confederate authorities. An officer wasdismissed for cruelty to “unionists,” and the state troops destroyed aband of deserters and guerillas who were preying upon the “union” peoplein the mountain districts. Marion, Walker, and Winston counties wereespecially infested with tories.[269]

In 1864, when there were few Confederate troops in north Alabama, thetories were very troublesome in De Kalb, Marshall, Marion, Winston,Walker, Lawrence, and Fayette counties, and the poor people were largelyunder their control. Among the hills were deserters from both armies, andthese, banded with the tory element, reduced the helpless poor whites tosubmission. These men were few in comparison with the total population,but most of the able-bodied loyal men were in the army, and the tories anddeserters were almost unchecked.[270] Sometimes the Confederate soldiersfrom north Alabama would get furloughs, come home, and clear the countryof tories, who had been terrorizing the people. Short work was made ofthem when the soldiers found them. Some were shot, others were hanged, andthe remainder driven out of the country for a time.[271]

After their occupation of north Alabama, the Federal commanders wereembarrassed by the violent clamorings of the “unionists” for revenge, andfor superior privileges over the non-unionist population. Materialadvantage and personal dislikes were too often the basic principles oftheir unionism. They were extremely vindictive, demanding that allConfederate sympathizers be driven from the country. Thus they madethemselves a nuisance to the Federal officers, and especially was thistrue of the small lowland tory element. Subjugation, banishment, hanging,confiscation,—was the programme planned by the “loyalists.” They wantedthe country “pacified” and then turned over to themselves. Though they[Pg 122]claimed to be numerous, no instance is found where they proposed to doanything for themselves; they seemed to think that the sole duty of theUnited States army in Alabama was to look after their interests. Thenortherners who had dealings with the “loyalist” did not like him, as hewas a most unpleasant person, with a grievance which could not be rightedto his satisfaction without giving rise to numerous other grievances.

Some qualifications of loyalty seem to have been: a certain milddisapproval of secession, a refusal to enlist in the Confederate army ordesertion after enlisting, hiding in the woods to avoid conscriptofficers. These qualifications, or any of them, the “loyalist” thoughtentitled him to the everlasting gratitude and protection of the UnitedStates. But a newspaper correspondent, who was on a sharp lookout for allsigns of weakness in the Confederacy, said: “You can tell the southernloyalists as far as you can see them. They all have black or yellow skinsand kinky hair.” Sometimes, he added, there was a white “unionist,” butthis was rare, and the exceptions in any town in north Alabama could becounted on the fingers of one hand.[272] As long as the war lasted thelawless element fared well, and when peace should come they hoped for adivision of the spoils.[273]

So much for toryism in the northern part of the state. There were alsomanifestations of a disloyal spirit in the extreme inaccessible corner ofthe state next to Florida and Georgia, where the population of thesparsely settled country was almost entirely non-slave-holding. Thoughmost of the people were Democrats, they were somewhat opposed tosecession. Delegates were elected, however, to the convention of 1861, whovoted for secession, and after the war began nearly or quite all of thosewho had opposed secession heartily supported the Confederacy. If therewere any “union” men, they[Pg 123] kept very quiet, and for two years there wasno trouble.[274] But during the winter of 1862-1863, numerous outrageswere committed by outlaws who were called, indiscriminately, tories anddeserters. Much trouble was given by an organization called the FirstFlorida Union Cavalry, which for two years committed various outrageswhile on bushwhacking expeditions under the leadership of one JosephSanders. After being soundly beaten one night by the citizens of Newton,in Dale County, these marauders were less troublesome.[275] The countrynear the Gulf coast was infested with tories, deserters, and runawayslaves, concealed in caves, “tight-eyes,”[276] canebrakes, swamps, and thethick woods of the sparsely settled country. In January, 1863, GovernorShorter wrote to President Davis that nearly all the loyal population ofsoutheast Alabama was in the army, and that the country was suffering fromthe outrages of tories and deserters. About the same time, Colonel Price“suppressed unionism and treason in Henry County,” though only oneprisoner was reported as being taken.[277]

In August of the same year (1863) conditions had grown worse. GeneralHowell Cobb reported that there was a disloyal feeling in southeastAlabama, but that there was no way to reach the offenders, as they wereguilty of no overt act, and therefore the military courts could not trythem. To turn them over to the civil authorities in that district wouldsecure only a farcical trial, and the justices of the peace, thoughassuming the highest jurisdiction, were ignorant, and there was littlechance of conviction. At this time, Governor Shorter said that affairs inlower Henry County were in bad condition; that the deserter element wasstrong and threatened the security of loyal people; and that the soldierswere afraid to leave their families.[278] A judge could not hold courtunless he had a military escort.

During the next year matters grew worse in this section as well as innorth Alabama. Some of the best soldiers felt compelled to go home, evenwithout permission, to protect or to support their[Pg 124] families; and inOctober, 1864, the legislature recognized this condition of affairs, andasked the Alabama soldiers, then absent without leave, to return to theirduty under promise of lenient treatment.[279]

The worst depredations were committed during the winter of 1864-1865, inthe counties of Dale, Henry, and Coffee. The loyal people in the thinlysettled country were terrorized. The legislature, unable to protect them,authorized them to band themselves together in military form forprotection against the outlaws. These bands of self-constituted “HomeGuards,” composed of boys and old men, captured numbers of the outlaws andstraightway hanged them.

Desertions from the regiments raised in the white counties were oftencaused by denying to recruits or conscripts the privilege of choosing thecommand in which they should serve. Others deserted because their familieswere exposed to tory depredations and Federal raids, or were in want ofthe necessaries of life. These would have returned to the army afterproviding for their families had they been permitted to join otherorganizations and not subjected to punishment. Assigned arbitrarily tocommands in need of recruits, some became dissatisfied, and deserted. Adeserter was an outlaw and found it impossible to remain neutral. Hencemany joined the bands of outlaws to pillage, and burn, and steal horsesand cattle. Others of better character joined the Federals or becametories, that is, allied themselves with the original tories in order towork against the Confederacy. Numbers of these disaffected people had oncebeen secessionists.[280]

In view of the fact that the “unionists” were to play an important part inReconstruction, it will be of interest to examine the records of the mostprominent tories and deserters. A few prominent men joined the Federalsduring the course of the war, though none did so before the Union armyoccupied the Tennessee valley. Only one of these tried to assume anyleadership over the so-called[Pg 125]unionists. This was William H. Smith, whohad come within a few votes of being elected to the Confederate Congress,and was later the first Reconstruction governor. He went over to the enemyin 1862, and did much toward securing the enlistment of the 2576 Unionsoldiers from Alabama.

At the same time, a more important character, General JeremiahClemens,[281] who had been in command of the militia of Alabama with therank of major-general, became disgruntled and went over to the enemy. Inthe secession convention, Clemens had declared that he “walkeddeliberately into rebellion” and was prepared for all itsconsequences.[282] He first opposed, then voted for, the ordinance ofsecession, and afterwards accepted the office of commander of the militiaunder the “Republic of Alabama.” For a year Clemens was loyal to the“rebellion,” but in 1862 he had seen the light and wished to go toWashington as the representative of north Alabama to learn from PresidentLincoln in what way the controversy might be ended. The Washingtonadministration, by that time, had little faith in any following he mighthave, and when Clemens with John Bell started to Washington, Stantonadvised them to stay at home and use their influence for the Union.[283]

George W. Lane, also of Madison County, was a prominent man who cast hislot with the Federals. Lane never recognized secession, and was anoutspoken Unionist from the beginning. He was appointed Federal judge byLincoln and died in 1864.[284] In April, 1861, Clemens wrote to theConfederate Secretary of War that the acceptance of a United Statesjudgeship by Lane was treason, and that the “north Alabama men wouldgladly hang him.”[285] General O. M. Mitchell seemed to think that thenegroes were the only “truly loyal,” but he recommended in May, 1862,that, when a military government should be established in Alabama, GeorgeW. Lane,[Pg 126] the United States district judge appointed by Lincoln, beappointed military governor. Lane’s faded United States flag still flewfrom the staff to which he had nailed it at the beginning of the war, andhis appointment as governor, Mitchell thought, would give the greatestsatisfaction to Huntsville and to all north Alabama.[286]

Two members of the convention of 1861, besides Clemens, deserted to theFederals. These were C. C. Sheets and D. P. Lewis. Like Clemens, they wereelected as coöperationists and opposed immediate secession, though allthree voted for the resolution declaring that Alabama would not submit tothe rule of Lincoln. Sheets voted against secession and would not sign theordinance. For a while he remained quietly at home and refused to enterthe Confederate army. At length he reappeared from his place of hiding andassisted in recruiting soldiers for the First Alabama Union Cavalry. Hewas elected to the state legislature, but in 1862 was expelled fordisloyalty. After some time in hiding, he was arrested, and imprisoned fortreason. General Thomas retaliated by arresting and holding as a hostageGeneral McDowell. Sheets remained in prison until the end of the war.[287]

David P. Lewis of Madison County voted against secession but signed theordinance, and was elected to the Provisional Congress by the convention,and in 1863 was appointed circuit judge by the governor. This position heheld for a few months, and then deserted to the Federals. During theremainder of the war he lived quietly at Nashville.[288]

Another prominent citizen of Madison County, Judge D. C. Humphreys, joinedthe Federals late in the war. Humphreys had been in the Confederate armyand had resigned. He was arrested by General Roddy on the charge ofdisloyalty. It is not known that he was ever tried or put into prison, butin January, 1865, Hon. C. C. Clay, Sr., and other prominent citizens ofHuntsville, of southern sympathies, all old men, were arrested and carriedto prison in Nashville as hostages for the safety of Humphreys, who hadbeen released[Pg 127] by order of the Confederate War Department as soon as therumor of his arrest reached Richmond.[289] In April, 1864, GeneralClanton, commanding in north Alabama, sent Governor Watts a Nashvillepaper in which Jeremiah Clemens, “the arch traitor,” and that “crazy man,”Humphreys, figured as advisers to their fellow-citizens of Alabama inrecommending submission.[290] There are indications that several suchaddresses were issued by Clemens, Humphreys, Lane, and others from thesafety of the Federal lines, but the text of none of them has been foundexcept those written and published when the war was nearly ended.

Of the men of position and influence who were found in the ranks ofopposition to the Confederate government after 1861, Judge Lane is theonly one whose course can command respect. He was faithful to the Unionfrom first to last, while the others were erratic persons who changedsides because of personal spites and disappointments. They had little orno influence over, and nothing in common with, the dissatisfied mountainpeople and the tories and deserters.[291]

At the surrender the deserters came in in large numbers to be paroled. Thereports of the Federal generals who received the surrender of theConfederate armies in the southwest show a surprisingly large number ofConfederates paroled. A large proportion of them were deserters,“mossbacks,” and tories, who, hated by the Confederate soldiers andfearing that the latter would seek revenge for their misdeeds during thewar, felt that it would be some protection to take the oath, be paroled,and secure the certificate. Then, they thought, the United Statesgovernment would see to their safety. At the surrender of a Confederatecommand in their vicinity, they flocked in from their retreats and wereparoled as Confederate[Pg 128]soldiers. To show how large this element inMississippi and Alabama was, when General Dick Taylor surrendered, May 4,1865, at Meridian, Mississippi, he had not more than 8000 real soldiers,or men under arms. It is possible, though not probable, that many wereabsent with leave. Yet of the 42,293 soldiers paroled in the armies of theSouthwest[292] about 30,000 of them were at Meridian. Many of these hadnever been in the army; some had served in both armies; none had been ineither for a long time. For weeks they kept coming in at all points wherea United States officer was stationed in order to be paroled. The soldierswere furious. The statistics show[293] that strong Confederate armies weresurrendered in this section of the country, when, as a matter of fact, thegovernor of Alabama had for two years been unable to secure sufficientmilitary support to enforce the laws over more than half of thestate.[294]

It is difficult to estimate the number of disaffected persons within thelimits of the state. Probably in southeast Alabama there were in all, oftories and deserters, 1000 who at times were actively hostile to theConfederate authorities, and who committed depredations on the loyalpeople, and 1000 or 1500 more would include the “mossbacks” andobstructionists, who were without the courage to do more than keep out ofthe army and talk sedition. In addition to the 2576 enlistments in theFederal army credited to Alabama, it is probable that several hundred morewere enlisted in northern regiments. Some of these were the Confederateprisoners captured late in the war and enlisted as “Galvanized Yankees” inthe United States regiments sent West to fight the Indians.

Of deserters, tories, and “mossbacks” there could not have been less than8000 or 10,000 in north Alabama. Of these, at least half were in activedepredation all over the section. There were several thousand desertersfrom the Alabama troops, most of them from north Alabama and from commandsstationed near their homes. At the beginning of the war there wereprobably no more than 2000[Pg 129] men who were wholly disaffected,[295] andthese only to the extent of desiring neutrality for themselves.

On November 30, 1864, the Confederate “Deserter Book” showed that sinceApril, 1864, 7994 Alabama soldiers had deserted or been absent withoutleave from the armies of the West and of Northern Virginia. Of these 4323were again in the ranks, leaving still to be accounted for 3671 men. Therewere many deserters in the hills of Alabama from the commands from otherstates. After the fall of Atlanta, the number of stragglers and desertersgreatly increased, and late in 1864 it was estimated that 6000 of themwere in the state, some in every county; there being no longer a force todrive them back to the army. For a year or more the force for this purposehad been very weak.[296]

Much of the toryism and of the trouble resulting from it was due to theweak policy of the Confederate authorities in dealing with discontent andin protecting the loyal people in exposed districts. Many a man had todesert in order to protect his family from outlaws, and was then easilydriven into toryism.

There was a mild annoyance of the more peaceable tories by the Confederateofficials in the spasmodic attempts to enforce the conscription laws, butit amounted to very little. The loyal southern people suffered more fromthe depredations of the disaffected “union” people of north and southeastAlabama than the latter suffered from all causes combined. The state andConfederate authorities were very lenient—too much so—in their treatmentof these people. There was no great need of a strong Confederate force innorth Alabama, since only raids, not invasions in force, were to befeared; yet the governments—both state and Confederate—were guilty ofneglect in leaving so many of the people at the mercy of the outlaws when,as shown in several instances, two or three thousand good soldiers couldmarch through the country and scatter the bands that infested it. Assumingthat the state had a right to demand obedience and support from itscitizens, it was weak and[Pg 130] reprehensible conduct on the part of theauthorities to allow three or four thousand malcontents and outlaws todemoralize a third of the state. Often the families of tories and“mossbacks” were supplied from the state and county stores for thedestitute families of soldiers, while the men of such families were in theFederal service or were hiding in the woods, caves, and ravines, or wereplundering the families of loyal soldiers. Not enough arrests were made,and too many were released. The majority of the troublesome class was ofthe kind who preferred to take no stand that incurred the fulfilment ofobligations. In an emergency they would incline toward the stronger side.Prompt and rigorous measures, similar to the policy of the United Statesin the Middle West, stringently maintained, would have converted thissource of weakness into a source of strength, or at least would haverendered it harmless. The military resources of that section of the statecould then have been better developed, the helpless people protected,outlaws crushed, and there would have been peace after the war wasended.[297] As it was, the animosities then aroused smouldered on untilthey flamed again in one phase of the Ku Klux movement.[298]

When, by the passage of the ordinance of January 11, 1861, the advocatesof immediate secession had gained their end, the strong men of thevictorious party, for the sake of harmony, stood aside, and intrusted muchof the important work of organizing the new government to the defeatedcoöperationist party, who, to say the least, disapproved of the wholepolicy of the victors. The delegates chosen to the Provisional Congresswere: R. H. Walker of Huntsville, a Union Whig, who had supported Bell andEverett and opposed secession; Robert H. Smith, a pronounced Whig, who hadsupported Bell and Everett and opposed secession; Colin J. McRae ofMobile, a commission merchant, a Whig; John Gill Shorter of Eufaula, whohad held judicial office for nine years; William P. Chilton of Montgomery,for several years chief justice and before that an active Whig; Stephen F.Hale of Eutaw, a Whig who supported Bell and[Pg 131]Everett; David P. Lewis ofLawrence, an “unconditional Unionist” who had opposed secession in theconvention of 1861, and who, in 1862, deserted to the Federals; Dr. ThomasFearn of Huntsville, an old man, a Union Whig; and J. L. M. Curry ofTalladega, the only consistent Democrat of the delegation, the only onewho had voted for Breckenridge, and the only one with practical experiencein public affairs. The delegation was strong in character, but weak inpolitical ability and not energetic.[299] The delegation elected to thefirst regular Congress was more representative and more able.

In August, 1861, John Gill Shorter, a State Rights Democrat, was electedgovernor by a vote of 57,849 to 28,127 over Thomas Hill Watts, also aState Rights Democrat, who had voted for secession, but who had formerlybeen a Whig. Watts was not a regular candidate since he had forbidden theuse of his name in the canvass.[300] For a time the peopleenthusiastically supported the administration. Governor Shorter’s messageof October 28, 1861, to the legislature closed with the words: “We maywell congratulate ourselves and return thanks that a timely action on ourpart has saved our liberties, preserved our independence, and given us, itis hoped, a perpetual separation from such a government. May we in allcoming time stand separate from it, as if a wall of fire intervened.”[301]The legislature in 1861 declared that it was the imperative duty as wellas the patriotic privilege of every citizen, forgetting past differences,to support the policy adopted and to maintain the independence assumed. Tothis cause the members of the general assembly pledged their lives,fortunes, and sacred honor.[302] A year later the same body declared thatMobile, then threatened by the enemy, must never be desecrated by thepolluting tread of the abolitionist foe. It must never be surrendered, butmust be defended from street to street, from house to house, and at lastburned to the ground rather than surrendered.[303] The same legislature,elected in 1861 when the war feeling was strong, stated in August, 1863,that the war was unprovoked and unjust on the part of the United Statesgovernment, which[Pg 132] was conducting it in utter disregard of the principleswhich should control and regulate civilized warfare. They renewed thepledge never to submit to abolitionist rule. The people were urged not tobe discouraged by the late reverses, nor to attribute their defeats to anywant of courage or heroic self-sacrifice on the part of the armies. Allthe resources of the state were pledged to the cause of independence andperpetual separation from the United States. It was the paramount duty,the assembly declared, of every citizen to sustain and make effective thearmies by encouraging enlistments, by furnishing supplies at low prices tothe families of soldiers, and by upholding the credit of the Confederategovernment. To enfeeble the springs of action by disheartening the peopleand the soldiers was to strike the most fatal blow at the very life of theConfederacy.[304]

This resolution was called forth partly by the constant criticism that the“cross-roads” politicians and a few individuals of more importance weredirecting against the civil and military policy of the administration. Thedoughty warriors of the office and counter were sure that the “Yankees”should have been whipped in ninety days. That the war was still going onwas proof to them that those at the head of affairs were incompetent.These people had never before had so good an opportunity to talk and to belistened to. Those to whom the people had been accustomed to look forguidance were no longer present to advise. They had marched away with thearmies, and there were left at home as voters the old men, the exempts,the lame, the halt, and the blind, teachers, preachers, officials,“bomb-proofs,” “feather beds”[305]—all, in short, who were most unlikelyto favor a vigorous war policy and who, if subject to service, wanted tokeep out of the army. Consequently, among the voting population at home,the war spirit was not as high in 1863 as it had been before so many ofthe best men enlisted in the army.[306] The occupation of north Alabama bythe enemy, short crops in 1862, and reverses in the field such asVicksburg and Gettysburg, had a chilling[Pg 133] effect on the spirit of thosewho had suffered or were likely to suffer. The conscription law wasunpopular among those forced into the service; it was much more dislikedby those who succeeded for a time in escaping conscription. These lived inconstant fear that the time would come when they would be forced to theirduty.[307]

Further, the official class and the lawmakers were not up to the oldstandard of force and ability. The men who had the success of the causemost at heart usually felt it to be their duty to fight for it, ifpossible, leaving lawmaking and administration to others of more peaceabledisposition. Some of the latter were able men, but few were filled withthe spirit that animated the soldier class. Many of these unwarlikestatesmen in the legislature and in Congress thought it to be theirespecial duty to guard the liberties of the people against theencroachments of the military power. They would talk by the hour aboutstate rights, but would allow a few thousand of the sovereign state’sdisloyal citizens to demoralize a dozen counties rather than consent toinfringe the liberties of the people by making the militia system moreeffective to repress disorder. They succeeded in weakening the efforts ofboth state and Confederate governments, and their well-meant argumentsdrawn from the works of Jefferson were never remembered to their credit.One of the best of these men—Judge Dargan, a member of Congress fromMobile—seems to have had a very unhappy disposition, and he spent much ofhis time writing to the governor and to the President in regard to thecritical state of the country and suggesting numberless plans for itssalvation. Among many things that were visionary he advanced some originalschemes. In 1863 he proposed a plan for the gradual emancipation ofslaves, later a plan for arming them, and suggested that blockade runningbe prohibited, as it was ruining the country.[308]

Even while the tide of war feeling was at the flood there occurredinstances of friction between the state and the Confederate governments.In December, 1862, the legislature complained of the continued use of therailroads by the Confederate government, to the exclusion of privatetransportation. The railroads were built, it[Pg 134] was stated, for freeintercourse between the states, and, since the blockade had becomeeffective, were more important than ever in the transportation of thenecessaries of life.[309] The legislature complained about the conduct ofthe Confederate officers in the state, about impressment, taxation, andredemption of state bonds, the state’s quota of troops for the Confederateservice, about arms and supplies purchased by the state, and about tradethrough the lines. Suits were brought again and again in the state courtsby the strict constructionists to test the constitutionality of theconscript laws and the law forbidding the hiring of substitutes. But thecourts declared both laws constitutional.[310] The lawmakers of the statewere much more afraid of militarism than of the Federal invasion ordomestic disorder, and refused to organize the militia effectively.[311]

The military reverses in the summer of 1863 darkened the hopes of thepeople and chilled their waning enthusiasm, and the effect was shown inthe elections of August. Thomas H. Watts, who had been defeated in 1861,was elected governor by a vote of 22,223 to 6342 over John G. Shorter, whohad been governor for two years. Watts had a strong personal following,which partly accounted for the large majority; but several thousand, atleast, were dissatisfied in some way with the state or the Confederateadministration. Jemison, a former coöperationist, took Yancey’s place inthe Confederate Senate. J. L. M. Curry was defeated for Congress becausehe had strongly supported the administration. The delegation elected tothe second Congress was of a decidedly different temper from thedelegation to the first Congress. A large number of hitherto unknown menwere elected to the legislature.[312]

At the close of the term of Governor Shorter, the new legislature passedresolutions indorsing his policy in regard to the conduct of the war andcommending his wise and energetic administration.[313] Other resolutionswere passed which would seem to indicate that the[Pg 135] war feeling ran as highand strong as ever. In fact, it was only the voice of the majority, not ofall, as before. There was a strong minority of malcontents who pursued apolicy of obstruction and opposition to the measures of the administrationand thereby weakened the power of the government. It was believed by manythat Watts, who had been a Whig and a Bell and Everett elector, would bemore conservative in regard to the prosecution of the war than was hispredecessor. There were numbers of people in the state who believed orprofessed to believe that it was possible to end the war wheneverPresident Davis might choose to make peace with the enemy. Others, who sawthat peace with independence was impossible, were in favor ofreconstruction, that is, of ending the war at once and returning to theold Union, with no questions asked. They believed that the North would beready to make peace and welcome the southern states back into the Union onthe old terms. These constituted only a small part of the population, butthey had some influence in an obstructive way and were great talkers. Anyone who voted for Watts from the belief that he would try to bring aboutpeace was much mistaken in the man. It was reported that he was in favorof reconstruction. This he emphatically denied in a message to thelegislature: “He who is now ... in favor of reconstruction with the statesunder Lincoln’s dominion, is a traitor in his heart to the state ... anddeserves a traitor’s doom.... Rather than unite with such a people I wouldsee the Confederate states desolated with fire and sword.... Let us preferdeath to a life of cowardly shame.”[314] Though Watts was elected somewhatas a protest against the war party, he was in favor of a vigorousprosecution of the war. However, at times, he had trouble with theConfederate government, and we find him writing about “the tyranny ofConfederate officials,” that “the state had some rights left,” that “therewill be a conflict between the Confederate and state authorities unlessthe conscript officials cease to interfere with state volunteers and stateofficials.”[315]

[Pg 136]The governor was in favor of supporting the war, and recommended therepeal of some of the state laws obstructing Confederate enlistments; hewas willing for any state troops that were available to go to the aid ofanother state, and he desired to aid in returning deserters to the army;but he opposed the manner of execution of laws by the Confederategovernment. He demanded for the state the right to engage in the blockadetrade in order to secure necessaries. He also protested against theproposed policy of arming the slaves.[316]

During the year 1864 the legislature protested against the action ofConfederate conscript officers who insisted on enrolling certain stateofficials. It was ordered that the reserves, when called out for service,should not be put under the command of a Confederate officer. Thefirst-class reserves were not to leave their own counties. An act waspassed to protect the people from “oppression by the illegal execution ofthe Confederate impressment laws.”[317] Confederate enrolling officers whoforced exempt men into the army were made liable to punishment by heavyfine.[318]

An Alabama newspaper, in the fall of 1864, advocated a convention of thestates in order to settle the questions at issue, to bring about peace,and to restore the Union. Such a proposition found supporters in thelegislature. A resolution was introduced favoring reconstruction on thebasis of the recent platform of the Democratic party and McClellan’sletter of acceptance.[319] The resolution was to this effect: if theDemocratic party is successful in 1864, we are willing to opennegotiations for peace on the basis indicated in the platform adopted bythe convention; provided that our sister states of the Confederacy arewilling. A lengthy and heated discussion followed. The governor sent in amessage asking “who would desire a political union with those who havemurdered our sons, outraged our women, with demoniac malice wantonlydestroyed our property, and now seek to make slaves of us!” It would causecivil war, he said, if the people at home attempted such a course. Afterthe reading of the message and some further debate, both houses united ina declaration that extermination was preferable to reconstructionaccording to theLincoln plan. The proposed resolution, the extended[Pg 137]debate, the governor’s message, all clearly indicate a strong desire onthe part of some to end the war and return to the Union.[320]

With the opening of 1865 conditions in Alabama were not favorable to thewar party: the old coöperationists, with other malcontents, were chargingthe Davis administration with every political crime; the stateadministration was disorganized in half the counties; deserters andstragglers were scattered throughout the state; and many of the state andcounty officials were disaffected. Those who were in favor of war were inthe armies. Had the war continued until the August election, there is nodoubt that an administration would have been elected which would haverefused further support to the Confederacy. Had it not been for fear ofthe soldier element, the malcontents at home could have controlled affairsin the fall of 1864. For a year there had been indications that thediscontented were thinking of acoup d’état and an immediate close ofthe war. The formation of secret societies pledged to bring about peacewas a sign of formidable discontent.

It was after the reverses of 1863 that the enthusiasm of the people forthe war very perceptibly declined. For the first time, many felt thatperhaps after all their cause would not win, and that the horrors of warmight be brought home to them by hostile invasion of their country. Publicopinion was more or less despondent. There was a searching for scapegoatsand a more pronounced hostility to the administration. The “cross-roads”statesmen were sure that a different policy under another leader wouldhave been crowned with success, though what this policy should have been,perhaps no two would have agreed. This feeling was largely confined to theless well informed, but it was also found in a number of the old-timeconservatives who would never believe that extreme measures werejustifiable in any event, and who could never get over a feeling[Pg 138] ofhorror at all that the Democrats might do. If left alone, they thought,time would have brought all things right in the end. It was as painful tothem to think that Lincoln was marching armies over the fragments of theUnited States Constitution, as that the Davis administration wasstrangling state sovereignty in the Confederate States. Their minds neverrose above the narrow legalism of their books. But they were few innumbers as compared with the more ignorant people (who were conscious onlyof dissatisfaction and suffering) who had willingly plunged into the war“to whip the Yankees in ninety days,” and who now thought that all thathad to be done to bring peace was to signify to the North a willingness tostop fighting. This course, many thought, need not result in a loss oftheir independence. Later they were minded to come back into the Union onthe old terms, and later still they were ready to make peace withoutconditions and return to the Union. It seems never to have occurred tothem that northern opinion had changed since 1861, and that severe termsof readmission would be exacted. The hardest condition likely to beimposed, they thought, would be the gradual emancipation of the slaves. Asa rule, they owned few slaves, but such a condition would probably havebeen considered harder by them than by the larger slaveholders who feltthat slavery had come to an end, no matter how the struggle might result.

This dissatisfaction culminated in the formation of numerous secret orsemi-secret political organizations which sprang up over the state, andwhich together became generally known as the “Peace Society,” though therewere other designations. Often these organizations were formed forpurposes bordering on treason; often not so, but only for constitutionalopposition to the administration. The extremes grew farther apart as thewar progressed, until the constitutional wing withdrew or ceased to exist,and the other became, from the point of view of the government, whollytreasonable in its purposes. These organizations had several thousandmembers, at least half the active males left in the state.

The work of the peace party was first felt in the August elections of1863. The governor, though a true and loyal man, was elected with the helpof a disaffected party, and a disaffected element was elected to thelegislature and to Congress. Six members of Congress from Alabama weresaid to be “unionists,” that is, in favor of ending[Pg 139] the war at once andreturning to the Union.[321] A Confederate official who had wideopportunities for observation reported that the district (Talladega) inwhich he was stationed had been carried by the peace party undercircumstances that indicated treasonable influence. Unknown men wereelected to the legislature and to other offices by a secret order which,he stated, had for its object the encouragement of desertion, theprotection of deserters, and resistance to the conscription laws. Some menof influence and position belonged to it, and the leaders were believed tobe in communication with the enemy. The entire organization was notdisloyal, but he feared that the controlling element was faithless. Theelection had been determined largely by the votes of stragglers anddeserters and of paroled Vicksburg soldiers who, it was found later, hadbeen “contaminated” by contact with the western soldiers of Grant’sarmy.[322] By this he evidently meant that the soldiers had been initiatedinto the “Peace Society.”

A few months later the “Peace Society” appeared among the soldiers ofGeneral Clanton’s brigade stationed at Pollard, in Conecuh County. Some ofthe soldiers had served in the army of Tennessee, and had there beeninitiated into this secret society. Clanton, who was strongly disliked byGeneral Bragg and not loved by General Polk, had much trouble with thembecause he asserted that the order appeared first in Bragg’s army andspread from thence. Later[Pg 140] developments showed that he was correct.[323]It was in December, 1863, that the operations of the order among thesoldiers were exposed. A number of soldiers at Pollard determined to laydown their arms on Christmas Day, as the only means of ending the war.These troops, for the most part, were lately recruited from the poorerclasses of southwest Alabama by a popular leader and had never seen activeservice. They were stationed near their homes and were exposed to homeinfluences. Upon them and their families the pressure of the war had beenheavy.[324] Many of them were exempt from service but had joined becauseof Clanton’s personal popularity, because they feared that later theymight become liable to service, and because they were promised specialprivileges in the way of furloughs and stations near their homes. To thisunpromising material had been added conscripts and substitutes in whom thefires of patriotism burned low, and who entered the service veryreluctantly. With them were a few veteran soldiers, and in command wereveteran officers. A secret society was formed among the discontented, withall the usual accompaniment of signs, passwords, grips, oaths, andobligations. Some bound themselves by solemn oaths never to fight theenemy, to desert, and to encourage desertion—all this in order to breakdown the Confederacy. General Maury, in command at Mobile, concluded afterinvestigation that the society had originated with the enemy and hadentered the southern army at Cumberland Gap.[325]

In regard to the discontent among the soldiers, Colonel Swanson of theFifty-ninth and Sixty-first Alabama[326] regiments (consolidated) statedthat there was a general disposition on the part of the poorer classes,substitutes, and foreigners to accept terms and stop the war. They hadnothing anyway, so there was nothing to fight for, they said. There was nogeneral matured plan, and no leader, Colonel Swanson thought.[327] MajorCunningham of the Fifty-seventh Alabama Regiment[328] reported that therehad been considerable manifestation[Pg 141] of revolutionary spirit on account ofthe tax-in-kind law and the impressment system, and that there was muchreckless talk, even among good men, of protecting their families from theinjustice of the government, even if they had to lay down their arms andgo home.[329] General Clanton said that the society had existed inHilliard’s Legion and Gracie’s brigade, and that few men, he was sure,joined it for treasonable purposes.[330] Before the appointedtime—Christmas Day—sixty or seventy members of the order mutinied andthe whole design was exposed. Seventy members were arrested and sent toMobile for trial by court-martial.[331] There is no record of the actionof the court. The purged regiments were then ordered to the front andobeyed without a single desertion. Bolling Hall’s battalion, which wassent to the Western army for having in it such a society, made a splendidrecord at Chickamauga and in other battles, and came out of theChickamauga fight with eighty-two bullet-holes in its colors.[332]

During the summer and fall of 1863 and in 1864 the Confederate officialsin north Alabama often reported that they had found certain traces ofsecret organizations which were hostile to the Confederate government. TheProvost-Marshal’s Department in 1863 obtained information of the existenceof a secret society between the lines in Alabama and Tennessee, the objectof which was to encourage desertion.

Confederate soldiers at home on furlough joined the organization and madeknown its object to the Confederate authorities. The members were pledgednot to assist the Confederacy in any way, to encourage desertion of thenorth Alabama soldiers, and to work for a revolution in the stategovernment. Stringent oaths were taken by the members, a code of signals,and passwords was used, and a well-organized society was formed. The bulkof the membership[Pg 142]consisted of tories and deserters, with a fewdiscontented Confederates. Their society gave information to the Federalsin north Alabama and Tennessee and had agents far within the Confederatelines, organizing discontent. General Clanton early in 1864 endeavored tobreak up the organization in north Alabama and made a number of arrests,but failed to crush the order.

In middle Alabama, about the same time (the spring of 1864), the workingsof a treasonable secret society were brought to light. Colonel JeffersonFalkner of the Eighth Confederate Infantry overheard a conversationbetween two malcontents and began to investigate. He found that in thecentral counties a secret society was working to break down theConfederate government and bring about peace. The plans were notperfected, but some were in favor of returning to the Union on theArkansas or Sebastian platform,[333] others wanted to send to Washingtonand make terms, and still others were in favor of unconditionalsubmission. As to methods, the malcontents meant to secure control of thestate administration, either by revolution or by elections in the summerof 1865, then they would negotiate with the United States and end the war.The society had agents in both the Western army and the Army of NorthernVirginia, tampering with the soldiers and endeavoring to carry theorganization into the Federal army. The leaders in the movement hoped toorganize into one party all who were discontented with the administration.If successful in this, they would be strong enough either to overthrow thestate government, which was supported only by home guards, or byobstruction to force the state government to make peace. The oaths,passwords, and signals of this society were similar to those of the northAlabama organization, with which it was in communication. Conscriptofficers, county officials, medical boards, and members of the legislaturewere members of the order. If a deserter were arrested, some memberreleased him; the members claimed that the society caused the loss of thebattle of Missionary Ridge and the surrender at Vicksburg.

The strength of the so-called Peace Society lay in Alabama, Georgia,Tennessee, and North Carolina. The organizers were called Eminents. Theygave the “degree” to (that is, initiated)[Pg 143] those whom they consideredproper persons. No records were kept; the members did not know one anotherexcept by recognition through signals. They received directions from theEminents, who accommodated their instructions to the person initiated. Anignorant but loyal person was told that the object of the order was tosecure a change of administration; the disloyal were told that the purposewas to encourage desertion and mutiny in the army, to injure loyalcitizens, and to overthrow the state and Confederate governments. Owing tothe non-intercourse between members there were many in the order who neverknew the real objects of the leaders or Eminents, who intended to use theorganization to further their designs in 1865. The swift collapse of theConfederacy in the spring of 1865 anticipated the work of the secretsocieties. The anti-Confederate element was, however, left somewhatorganized through the work of the order.[334]

Besides the open obstruction of politicians, officials, and legislature,and the secret opposition of the peace societies, there was a thirdmovement for reconstruction. This movement took place in that part ofAlabama held by the Federal armies, and the reconstruction meetings wereencouraged by the Union army officers. The leaders were D. C. Humphreysand Jeremiah Clemens, whose defection has been noted before. A moresubstantial element than the tories and deserters supported thismovement—the dissatisfied property[Pg 144] holders who were afraid ofconfiscation. Several Confederate officers were drawn into the movementlater.[335]

Early in 1864, Humphreys[336] issued an elaborate address renouncing hiserrors. There was no hope, he told his fellow-citizens, that foreignpowers would intervene. Slavery as a permanent institution must be givenup. Law and order must be enforced and constitutional authorityreëstablished. Slavery was the cause of revolution, and as an institutionwas at an end. With slavery abolished, there was, therefore, no reason whythe war should not end. The right to regulate the labor question would besecured to the state by the United States government. At present labor wasdestroyed, and in order to regulate labor, there must be peace. Theaddress was printed and distributed throughout the state with theassistance of the Federal officials. A number of the packages of theseaddresses was seized by some women and thrown into the TennesseeRiver.[337] Jeremiah Clemens, who had deserted in 1862, issued an addressto the people of the South advocating the election of Lincoln asPresident.[338] March 5, 1864, a reconstruction meeting, thinly attended,was held in Huntsville under the protection of the Union troops. Clemenspresided. Resolutions were passed denying the legality of secessionbecause the ordinance had not been submitted to the people for theirratification or rejection. Professions of devotion and loyalty to theUnited States were made by Clemens, the late major-general of Alabamamilitia and secessionist of 1861.[339] A week later the same party metagain. No young men were present, for they were in the army. All were menover forty-five, concerned for their property. Clemens spoke, denouncingthe “twenty-negro” law. The Gilchrist story was here originated by Clemensand told for the first time. The story was that J. G. Gilchrist ofMontgomery County went to the Secretary of War, Mr. Walker, and urged himto begin hostilities by firing on Fort Sumter, saying, “You must sprinkleblood in the face of the people of Alabama or the state will[Pg 145] be back intothe Union within ten days.” In closing, Clemens said, “Thank God, there isnow no prospect of the Confederacy succeeding.”

D. C. Humphreys then proposed his plan: slavery was dead, but bysubmitting to Federal authority gradual emancipation could be secured, andalso such guarantees as to the future status of the negro as would relievethe people from social, economic, and political dangers. He expressedentire confidence in the conservatism of the northern people, and assertedthat if only the ordinance of secession were revoked, the southern peoplewould have as long a time as they pleased to get rid of the institution ofslavery. In case of return to the Union the people would have politicalcoöperation to enable them to secure control of negro labor. “There isreally no difference, in my opinion,” he said, “whether we hold them asslaves or obtain their labor by some other method. Of course, we preferthe old method. But that is not the question.” He announced the defectionfrom the Confederacy of Vice-President Stephens, and bitterly denouncedBen Butler, Davis, and Slidell, to whose intrigues he attributed thepresent troubles. Resolutions were proposed by him and adopted,acknowledging the hopelessness of secession and advising a return to theUnion. Longer war, it was declared, would be dangerous to the liberties ofthe people, and the restoration of civil government was necessary. Thegovernor was asked to call a convention for the purpose of reunitingAlabama to the Union. It was not expected, it was stated, that thegovernor would do this; but his refusal would be an excuse for theindependent action of north Alabama and a movement toward setting up a newstate government. Busteed could then come down and hold a “bloody assize,trying traitors and bushwhackers.”[340]

In the early winter of 1864-1865, the northern newspaper correspondents inthe South[341] began to write of the organization of a strong peace partycalled the “State Rights party,” in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. Theleaders were in communication with the Washington authorities. Theyclaimed that each state[Pg 146] had the right to negotiate for itself terms ofreconstruction. The plan was to secure control of the state administrationand then apply for readmission to the Union. The destruction of Hood’sarmy removed the fear of the soldier element. Several thousand of Hood’ssuffering and dispirited soldiers took the oath of allegiance to theUnited States, or dispersed to their homes. Early in 1865 peace meetingswere held in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, within the Confederatelines; commissioners were sent to Washington; and the tories and desertersorganized. A delegation waited on Governor Watts to ask him to negotiatefor the return of the state to the Union, but did not get, nor did theyexpect, a favorable answer from him. The peace party expected to gain theAugust elections and elect as governor J. C. Bradley of Huntsville, or M.J. Bulger of Tallapoosa.[342] The plan, then, was not to wait for theinauguration in November, but to have the newly elected administrationtake charge at once. It was continually reported that General P. D. Roddywas to head the movement.[343]

There is no doubt that during the winter of 1864-1865 some kind ofnegotiation was going on with the Federal authorities. J. J. Giers, whowas a brother-in-law of State Senator Patton,[344] was in constantcommunication with General Grant. In one of his reports to Grant he statedthat Roddy and another Confederate general had sent Major McGaughey,Roddy’s brother-in-law, to meet Giers near Moulton, in Lawrence County, tolearn what terms could be obtained for the readmission of Alabama. MajorMcGaughey said that the people considered that affairs were hopeless andwanted peace. If the terms were favorable, steps would be taken to induceGovernor Watts to accept them. If Watts should refuse, a civil andmilitary movement would be begun to organize a state government forAlabama which would include three-fourths of the state. The plan, it wasstated, was indorsed by the leading public men.[Pg 147] The peace leaders wantedGrant, or the Washington administration, to announce at once a policy ofgradual emancipation in order to reassure those afraid of outrightabolition, and to “disintegrate the rebel soldiery” of north Alabama,which they said was never strongly devoted to the Confederacy. It wasasserted that all the counties north of the cotton belt and those in thesoutheast were ready for a movement toward reconstruction. Giers statedthat approaches were then being made to Governor Watts. Andrew Johnson,the newly elected Vice-President, vouched for the good character ofGiers.[345] Ten days later Giers wrote Grant that on account of the rumorsof the submission of various Confederate generals he had caused to bepublished a contradiction of the report of the agreement with theConfederate leaders. He further stated that one of Roddy’s officers,Lieutenant W. Alexander, had released a number of Federal prisonerswithout parole or exchange, according to agreement.[346] In severalinstances, in the spring of 1865, subordinate Confederate commandersproposed a truce, and after Lee’s surrender and Wilson’s raid this was ageneral practice. During the months of April and May, there was a combinedmovement of citizens and soldiers in a number of counties in north Alabamato reorganize civil government according to a plan furnished by GeneralThomas, Giers being the intermediary.[347] On May 1 General Steele of thesecond army of invasion was informed at Montgomery by J. J. Seibels, L. E.Parsons, and J. C. Bradley—all well-known obstructionists—thattwo-thirds of the people of Alabama would take up arms to put down the“rebels.”[348] Colonel Seibels alone of that gallant company had evertaken up arms for any cause. The other two and their kind may have been,and doubtless often were, warlike in their conversation, but they neverdrew steel to support their convictions.

It is quite likely that the strength of the disaffection, especially innorth and east Alabama, was exaggerated by the reports of both Union andConfederate authorities. There never had been during the war much loyalty,in the proper sense of the word, to the United[Pg 148] States. There was muchpure indifference on the part of some people who desired the strongestside to win as soon as possible and leave them in safety. There was muchdiscontent on the part of others who had supported the Confederacy for awhile, but who, for various reasons, had fallen away from the cause andnow wanted peace and reunion. There was a very large element of outrightlawlessness in the opposition to the Confederate government. The lowestclass of men on both sides or of no side united to plunder thatdefenceless land between the two armies. This class wanted no peace, foron disorder they thrived. For years after the war ended they gave troubleto Federal and state authorities. The discontent was actively manifestedby civilians, deserters, “mossbacks,” “bomb-proofs,” and “feather beds.”These had never strongly supported the Confederacy. It was largely atimid, stay-at-home crowd, with a few able but erratic leaders. Thesoldiers may have been dissatisfied,—many of them were,—and many of themleft the army in the spring of 1865 to go home and plant crops for therelief of their suffering families. Many of them in the dark days afterNashville and Franklin took the oath of allegiance and went home, surethat the war was ended and the cause was lost. Yet these were not the onesfound in such organizations as the Peace Society. That was largely made upof people whom the true soldier despised as worthless. There were fewsoldiers in the peace movement and these only at the last.

The peace party, however, was strong in one way. All were voters and,being at home, could vote. The soldiers in the army had no voice in theelections. The malcontents, had they possessed courage and good leaders,could have controlled the state after the summer of 1864. The able men inthe movement were not those who inspired confidence in their followers.There were no troops in the state to keep them down, and the only checkseems to have been their fear of the soldiers, who were fighting at thefront, in the armies of Lee and Johnston, of Wheeler and Hood and Taylor.They were certainly afraid of the vengeance of these soldiers.[349] It wasmuch better that the war resulted in the complete destruction of thesouthern cause, leaving no questions for future controversy, such as wouldhave arisen had the peace party succeeded in its plans.

CHAPTER IV

Early in the war the blockade of the southern ports became so effectivethat the southern states were shut off from their usual sources of supplyby sea. Trade through the lines between the United States and theConfederate States was forbidden, and Alabama, owing to its centrallocation, suffered more from the blockade than any other state. For threeyears the Federal lines touched the northern part of the state only, and,as no railroads connected north and south Alabama, contraband trade wasdifficult in that direction. Mobile, the only port of the state, wasclosely blockaded by a strong Federal fleet. The railroad communicationswith other states were poor, and the Confederate government usually keptthe railroads busy in the public service. Consequently, the people ofAlabama were forced to develop certain industries in order to secure thenecessaries of life. But outside these the industrial development wasnaturally in the direction of the production of materials of war.

During the first two years of the war volunteers were much more plentifulthan equipment. The arms seized at Mount Vernon and other arsenals inAlabama were old flint-locks altered for the use of percussion caps andwere almost worthless, being valued at $2 apiece. These were afterwardstransferred to the Confederate States, which returned but few of them toarm the Alabama troops.[350] Late in 1860 a few thousand old muskets werepurchased by the state from the arsenal at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for$2.50 each. A few Mississippi rifles were also secured, and with these theSecond Alabama[Pg 150] Infantry was armed. These rifles, however, required aspecial kind of ammunition, and this made them almost worthless. Otherarms were found to be useless for the same reason. Both cavalry andinfantry regiments went to the front armed with single and doublebarrelled shot-guns, squirrel rifles, muskets, flint-locks, and oldpistols. No ammunition could be supplied for such a miscellaneouscollection. Many regiments had to wait for months before arms could beobtained. Before October, 1861, several thousand men had left Alabamaunarmed, and several thousand more, also unarmed, were left waiting in thestate camps.[351] In 1861 the state legislature bought a thousand pikesand a hundred bowie-knives to arm the Forty-eighth Militia Regiment, whichwas defending Mobile. The sum of $250,000 was appropriated to lend tothose who would manufacture firearms for the government.[352] In 1863 theConfederate Congress authorized the enlistment of companies armed withpikes who should take the places of men armed with firearms when thelatter were dead or absent.[353] Private arms—muskets, rifles, pistols,shot-guns, carbines—were called for and purchased from the owners[Pg 151] whennot donated.[354] An offer was made to advance fifty per cent of theamount necessary to set up machinery for the manufacture of smallarms.[355] Old Spanish flint-lock muskets were brought in from Cubathrough the blockade, altered, and placed in the hands of the troops.[356]

In 1862 a small-arms factory was established at Tallassee which employed150 men and turned out about 150 carbines a week. At the end of 1864 ithad produced only 6000.[357] At Montgomery the Alabama Arms ManufacturingCompany had the best machinery in the Confederacy for making Enfieldrifles. At Selma were the state and Confederate arsenals, a navy-yard, andnaval foundry with machinery of English make, of the newest and mostcomplete pattern. It had been brought through the blockade from Europe andset up at Selma because that seemed to be a place safe from invasion andfrom the raids of the enemy. Here the vessels for the defence of Mobilewere built, heavy ordnance was cast, with shot and shell, and plating formen-of-war. The armored ramTennessee, famous in the fight in MobileBay, the gunboatsMorgan,Selma, andGaines were all built at theSelma navy-yard—guns, armor, and everything being manufactured on thespot. When theTennessee surrendered, after a terrible battle, its armorhad not been penetrated by a single shot or shell. The best cannon inAmerica were cast at the works in Selma. The naval foundry employed 3000men, the other works as many more. Half the cannon and two-thirds of thefixed ammunition used during the last two years of the war were made atthese foundries and factories. The foundry destroyed by Wilson waspronounced by experts to be the best in existence. It could turn out atshort notice a fifteen-inch Brooks or a mountain howitzer. Swords, rifles,muskets, pistols, caps, were manufactured in great quantities. There weremore than a hundred buildings, which covered fifty acres; and afterWilson’s destructive work, Truman, the war correspondent, said that theypresented the greatest mass of ruins he had ever seen.[358][Pg 152] There was anavy-yard on the Tombigbee, in Clarke County, near the Sunflower Bend.Several small vessels had been completed and several war vessels, probablygunboats, were in process of construction here when the war ended; bothvessels and machinery were destroyed by order of the Confederateauthorities.[359]

Gunpowder was scarce throughout the war, and nitre or saltpetre, itsprincipal ingredient, was not to be purchased from abroad. A powder millwas established at Cahaba,[360] but the ingredients were lacking. Charcoalfor gunpowder was made from willow, dogwood, and similar woods. The nitreon hand was soon exhausted, and it was sought for in the caves of thelimestone region of Alabama and Tennessee. In north Alabama there weremany of these large caves. The earth in them was dug up and put in hoppersand water poured over it to leach out the nitre. The lye was caught (justas for making soft soap from lye ashes), boiled down, and then dried inthe sunshine.[361] The earth in cellars and under old houses was scrapedup and leached for the nitre in it. In 1862 a corps of officers under thetitle of the Nitre and Mining Bureau[362] was organized by the WarDepartment to work the nitre caves of north Alabama which lay in thedoubtful region between the Union and the Confederate lines, and whichwere often raided by the enemy. The men were subjected to militarydiscipline and were under the absolute command of the superintendent, whooften called them out to repulse Federal raiders. As much as possible inthis department, as in the others, exempts and negroes were used forlaborers. For clerical work those disabled for active service wereappointed, and instructions were[Pg 153] issued that employment should be givento needy refugee women.[363] These important nitre works were repeatedlydestroyed by the Federals, who killed or captured many of theemployees.[364] In the district of upper Alabama, under the command ofCaptain William Gabbitt, whose headquarters were at Blue Mountain (nowAnniston), most of the work was done in the limestone caves of themountain region.[365] Several hundred men—whites and negroes—wereemployed in extracting the nitre from the cave earth. To the end ofSeptember, 1864, this district had produced 222,665 pounds of nitre at acost of $237,977.17, war prices.[366]

The supply from the caves proved insufficient, and artificial nitre bedsor nitraries were prepared in the cities of south and central Alabama. Itwas necessary to have them near large towns, in order to obtain aplentiful supply of animal matter and potash, and the necessary labor.Efforts were also made to induce planters in marl or limestone counties towork plantation earth.[367] Under the supervision of Professor W. H. C.Price, nitraries were established at Selma, Mobile, Talladega, Tuscaloosa,and Montgomery. Negro labor was used almost entirely, each negro havingcharge of one small nitre bed. To October, 1864, the nitraries of southAlabama produced 34,716 pounds at a cost of $26,171.14, which was somewhatcheaper than the nitre from the caves. From these nitraries better resultswere obtained than from the French, Swedish, and Russian nitraries whichserved as models. The Confederate nitre beds were from sixteen totwenty-seven months old in October, 1864, and hence not at their bestproducing stage. Yet, allowing for the difference in age, they gave betterresults, as they produced from 2.57 to 3.3 ounces of nitre per cubic foot,while the average European nitraries at four years of age gave 4 ouncesper cubic foot. Earth from under old houses and from cellars produced from2 to 4 ounces to the cubic foot. Nitre caves produced from 6 to 12 ouncesper cubic foot. Most of the nitre thus obtained was made into powder atthe mills in Selma. There were some private manufacturers of nitre, and toencourage[Pg 154] these the Confederate Congress authorized the advance to makersof fifty per cent of the cost of the necessary machinery.[368]

The state legislature appropriated $30,000 to encourage the manufactureand preparation of powder, saltpetre (nitre), sulphur, and lead. Little ofthe last article was found in Alabama.[369] Some of the powder works werein operation as early as 1861, and in that year the War Department gaveDr. Ullman of Tallapoosa a contract to supply 1000 to 1500 pounds ofsulphur a day.[370]

The Confederate Nitre and Mining Bureau had charge of the production ofiron in Alabama for the use of the Confederacy. The mines were principallyin the hilly region south of the Tennessee River, where several furnacesand iron works were already established before the war. Two or three newcompanies, with capital of $1,000,000 each, had bought mineral lands andhad commenced operations when the war broke out. The Confederategovernment bought the property or gave the companies financial assistance.The iron district was often raided by the Federals, who blew up thefurnaces and wrecked the iron works.[371] The Irondale works, near Elyton,were begun in 1862, and made much iron, but they also were destroyed in1864 by the Federals.[372] Other large iron furnaces, with their forges,foundries, and rolling-mills, were destroyed by Rousseau’s raid in 1864.The government employed several hundred conscripts and several thousandnegroes in the mines and rolling-mills. It also offered fifty per cent ofthe cost of equipment to encourage the opening of new mines by privateowners.[373] There is record of only about 15,000 tons of Alabama ironbeing mined by the Confederacy, but probably there was much more.[374] Theiron was sent to Selma, Montgomery, and other places for manufacture. Theordnance cast in[Pg 155] Selma was of Alabama iron; and after the war, when theUnited States sold the ruins of the arsenal, the big guns were cut up andsent to Philadelphia. Here the fine quality of the iron attracted theattention of experts and led to the development by northern capital of theiron industry in north Alabama.

The Confederate government encouraged the building and extension ofrailroads, and paid large sums to them for the transportation of troops,munitions of war, and military supplies.[375] Several lines of road withinthe state were made military roads, and the government extended theirlines, built bridges and cars, and kept the lines in repair.[376] In 1862$150,000 was advanced to the Alabama and Mississippi Railway Company, tocomplete the line between Selma and Meridian,[377] and the duty on ironneeded for the road was remitted.[378] On June 25 of this year this roadwas seized by the military authorities in order to finish it,[379] andbecause of the lack of iron D. H. Kenny was directed (July 21, 1863) toimpress the iron and rolling stock belonging to the Alabama and FloridaRailway, the Gainesville Branch of[Pg 156] the Mobile and Ohio, the Cahaba,Marion, and Greensborough Railroad, and the Uniontown and NewberneRailroad. The Alabama and Mississippi road was a very important line,since it tapped the supply districts of Mississippi and the Black Belt ofAlabama. There were many difficulties in the way of the builders. In 1862the locomotives were wearing out and no iron was to be obtained. In thefall of the same year the planters withdrew their negroes who were workingon the road, and left the bridges half finished. But finally, in December,1862, the road was completed.[380] In the fall of 1862 a road between BlueMountain, Alabama, and Rome, Georgia, was planned, and $1,122,480.92 wasappropriated by the Confederate Congress, a mortgage being taken assecurity.[381] This road was graded and some bridges built and iron laid,but was not in running order before the end of the war.

Telegraph lines, which had been few before the war, were now placed alongeach railroad, and several cross-country lines were put up. The firstimportant new line was along the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, from Mobile toMeridian.[382]

Both the state and the Confederate government encouraged manufactures byfavorable legislation. The Confederate government was always ready toadvance half of the cost of the machinery and to take goods in payment. Alaw of Alabama in 1861 secured the rights of inventors and authors. Allpatents under the United States laws prior to January 11, 1861, were tohold good under the state laws, and the United States patent and copyrightlaws were adopted for Alabama.[383] Later, jurisdiction over patents,inventions, and copyrights was transferred to the Confederate government.A bonus of five and ten cents apiece on all cotton and wool cards made inAlabama was offered by the legislature in December, 1861.[384] Allemployees in iron mills, in foundries, and in factories supplying thestate[Pg 157] or Confederate governments with arms, clothing, cloth, and the likewere declared by the state exempt from military duty.

Factories were soon in operation all over the state, especially in centralAlabama. In all places where there were government factories there alsowere found factories conducted by private individuals. In 1861 there werefactories at Tallassee, Autaugaville, and Prattville, with 23,000 spindlesand 800 employees, which could make 5000 yards of good tent cloth aday.[385] And other cotton mills were established in north Alabama asearly as 1861.[386] The Federals burned these buildings and destroyed themachinery in 1862 and 1863. There was the most “unsparing hostilitydisplayed by the northern armies to this branch of industry. Theydestroyed instantly every cotton factory within their reach.”[387]

At Tuscaloosa were cotton and shoe factories, tanneries, and an ironfoundry. A large cotton factory was established in Bibb County, and atGainesville there were workshops and machine-shops. In addition to thegovernment works, Selma had machine-shops, car shops, iron mills, andfoundries, cotton, wool, and harness factories, conducted by privateindividuals. There were cotton and woollen factories at Prattville andAutaugaville, and at Montgomery were car shops, harness shops, iron mills,foundries, and machine-shops. The best tent cloth and uniform cloth wasmade at the factories of Tallassee. The state itself began the manufactureof shoes, salt, clothing, whiskey, alcohol, army supplies, and suppliesfor the destitute.[388] Extensive manufacturing establishments of variouskinds in Madison, Lauderdale, Tuscumbia, Bibb, Autauga, Coosa, andTallapoosa counties were destroyed during the war by the Federals. Therewere iron works in Bibb, Shelby, Calhoun, and Jefferson counties, and in1864 there were a dozen large furnaces with rolling-mills and foundries inthe state.[389] However, in that year the governor complained that thoughAlabama had immense quantities of iron ore, even the planters in the ironcountry were unable to get sufficient[Pg 158] iron to make and mend agriculturalimplements, since all iron that was mined was used for purposes of theConfederacy.[390] The best and strongest cast iron used by the Confederacywas made at Selma and at Briarfield. The cotton factories and tanneries inthe Tennessee valley were destroyed in 1862 by the Federal troops.[391]

Salt was one of the first necessaries of life which became scarce onaccount of the blockade. The Adjutant and Inspector-General of Alabamastated, March 20, 1862, that the Confederacy needed 6,000,000 bushels ofsalt, and that only an enormous price would force the people to make it.In Montgomery salt was then very scarce, bringing $20 per sack, andspeculators were using every trick and fraud in order to control thesupply.[392] The poor people especially soon felt the want of it, and inNovember, 1861, the legislature passed an act to encourage the manufactureof salt at the state reservation in Clarke County.[393] The stategovernment even began to make salt at these salt springs. At the UpperWorks, near Old St. Stephens, 600 men and 120 teams were employed at 30furnaces, which were kept going all the time, the production amounting to600 bushels a day. These works were in operation from 1862 to 1865. TheLower Works, near Sunflower Bend on the Tombigbee River, for four yearsemployed 400 men with 80 teams at 20 furnaces. The production here wasabout 400 bushels a day. The Central Works, near Salt Mountain, were underprivate management, and, it is said, were much more successful than theworks under state management.[394] The price of salt at the works rangedfrom $2.50 to $7 a bushel in gold, or from $3 to $40 in currency. From1861 to 1865, 500,000 bushels of good salt were produced each year.

[Pg 159]To obtain the salt water, wells were bored to depths ranging from 60 to100 feet,—one well, however, was 600 feet deep,—while in the bottom orswamp lands brine was sometimes found at a depth of 8 feet. The water atfirst rose to the surface and overflowed about 30 gallons a minute in somewells, but as more wells were sunk the brine ceased to flow out and had tobe pumped about 16 feet by steam or horse power. It was boiled in largeiron kettles like those then used in syrup making and which are still seenin remote districts in the South. Seven or eight kettles of water wouldmake one kettle of salt. This was about the same percentage that wasobtained at the Onondaga (New York) salt springs. About the same boilingwas required as in making syrup from sugar-cane juice. The wells werescattered for miles over the country and thousands of men were employed.For three years more than 6000 men, white and black, were employed at thesalt works of Clarke County, from 2000 to 3000 working at the Upper Worksalone. All were not at work at the furnaces, but hundreds were engaged incutting and hauling wood for fuel, and in sacking and barrelling salt. Itis said that in the woods the blows of no single axe nor the sound of anysingle falling tree could be distinguished; the sound was simplycontinuous. Nine or ten square miles of pine timber were cleared for fuel.

The salt was sent down the Tombigbee to Mobile or conveyed in wagons intothe interior of Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. These wagons were sonumerous that for miles from the various works it was difficult to crossthe road. The whole place had the appearance of a manufacturing city.These works had been in operation to some extent since 1809. The wellswere exhausted from 1865 to 1870, when they began flowing again.

Besides the smaller works and large private works there were hundreds ofsmaller establishments. When salt was needed on a plantation in the BlackBelt, the overseer would take hands, with pots and kettles, and go to thesalt wells, camp out for several weeks, and make enough salt for theyear’s supply. All private makers had to give a certain amount to thestate.[395] People from the interior of the state and from southeastAlabama went to the Florida coast and made salt by boiling the sea water.The state had salt works at Saltville, Virginia, but found it difficult toget transportation for[Pg 160] the product. Salt was given to the poor people bythe state, or sold to them at a moderate price. The legislature authorizedthe governor to take possession of all salt when necessary for public use,paying the owners a just compensation; $150,000 was appropriated for thispurpose in 1861, and in 1862 it was made a penal offence to send salt outof the state.[396] A Salt Commission was appointed to look after the saltworks owned by the state in Louisiana. A private salt maker in ClarkeCounty made a contract to deliver two-fifths of his product to the stateat the cost of manufacture, and the state purchased some salt from theLouisiana saltbeds.[397] As salt became scarcer the people took the brinein old pork and beef barrels and boiled it down. The soil under oldsmoke-houses was dug up, put in hoppers, and bleached like ashes, and thebrine boiled down and dried in the sunshine.[398]

At Bon Secour Bay, near Mobile, there were salt works consisting offifteen houses, capable of making seventy-five bushels per day from thesea-water. In 1864 these were burned by the Federals, who often destroyedthe salt works along the Florida coast.[399] At Saltmarsh, ten miles westof Selma, there were works which furnished much of the salt used inMississippi, central Alabama, and east Georgia during the years 1862,1863, and 1864. Wells were dug to the depth of twelve or fifteen feet,when salt water was struck. The wells were then curbed, furnaces of limerock were built, and upon them large kettles were placed. The water waspumped from the wells and run into the kettles through troughs, thenboiled down, and the moisture evaporated by the sun. The fires were keptup day and night. A large number of blacks and whites were employed atthese wells, and, as salt makers were exempt from military duty, the workwas quite popular.[400]

Besides the industries above mentioned there were many minor enterprises.Household manufactures were universal. The more[Pg 161] important companies werechartered by the legislature. The acts of the war period show that in 1861there were incorporated six insurance companies and the charters of otherswere amended to suit the changed conditions; three railroad companies wereincorporated, and aid was granted to others for building purposes. Roadscarrying troops and munitions free were exempted from taxation. Two miningand manufacturing companies were incorporated, four iron and coalcompanies, one ore foundry, an express company,[401] a salt manufacturingcompany, a chemical manufacturing company, a coal and leather company, anda wine and fruit company. In 1862 the legislature incorporated four ironand foundry companies, a railroad company, the Southern Express Company, agas-light company, six coal and iron companies, a rolling-mill, and an oilcompany, and amended the charters of four railroad companies and twoinsurance companies. In 1864 two railroad companies were given permissionto manufacture alcohol and lubricating oil, and the Citronelle Wine,Fruit, and Nursery Company was incorporated. Various other manufacturingcompanies—of drugs, barrels, and pottery—were established.

Besides salt the state made alcohol and whiskey for the poor. Every manwho had a more than usual regard for his comfort and wanted to keep out ofthe army had a tannery in his back yard, and made a few shoes or someharness for the Confederacy, thus securing exemption.

Governor Moore, in his message to the legislature on October 28, 1861,said: “Mechanical arts and industrial pursuits, hitherto practicallyunknown to our people, are already in operation. The clink of the hammerand the busy hum of the workshop are beginning to be heard throughout ourland. Our manufactories are rapidly increasing and the inconvenience whichwould result from the continuance of the war and the closing of our portsfor years would be more than compensated by forcing us to the developmentof our abundant resources, and the tone and the temper it would give toour national character. Under such circumstances the return of peace wouldfind us a self-reliant and truly independent people.”[402][Pg 162] And had thewar ended early in 1864, the state would have been well provided withmanufactures.

The raids through the state in 1864 and 1865 destroyed most of themanufacturing establishments. The rest, whether owned by the government orprivate persons, were seized by the Federal troops at the surrender andwere dismantled.[403]

In a circular letter dated December 4, 1860, and addressed to the banks,Governor Moore announced that should the state secede from the Union, asseemed probable, $1,000,000 in specie, or its equivalent, would be neededby the administration. The state bonds could not be sold in the North norin Europe, except at a ruinous discount, and a tax on the people at thistime would be inexpedient. Therefore he recommended that the banks holdtheir specie. Otherwise there would be a run on the banks, and should anextra session of the legislature be called to authorize the banks tosuspend specie payments, such action would produce a run and thus defeatthe object. He requested the banks to suspend specie payments, trusting tothe convention to legalize this action.[404] The governor then issued anaddress to the people stating his reasons for such a step. It was done, hesaid, at the request and by the advice of many citizens whose opinionswere entitled to respect and consideration. Such a course, they thought,would relieve the banks from a run during the cotton season, would enablethem to aid the state, would do away with the expense of a special sessionof the legislature, would prevent the sale of state bonds at a greatsacrifice, and would prevent extra taxation of the people in time offinancial crisis.[405]

Three banks—the Central, Eastern, and Commercial—suspended at thegovernor’s request and made a loan to the state of $200,000 in coin. Theirsuspension was legalized later by an[Pg 163]ordinance of the convention. TheBank of Mobile, the Northern Bank, and the Southern Bank refused tosuspend, though they announced that the state should have their fullsupport. The legislature passed an act in February, 1861, authorizing thesuspension on condition that the banks subscribe for ten year state bondsat their par value. The bonds were to stand as capital, and the billsissued by the banks upon these bonds were to be receivable in payment oftaxes. The amount which each bank was to pay into the treasury for thebonds was fixed, and no interest was to be paid by the state on thesebonds until specie payments were resumed. All the banks suspended underthese acts, and thus the government secured most of the coin in thestate.[406] In October, 1861, before all the banks had suspended, statebonds at par to the amount of $975,066.68 had been sold—all but $28,500to the banks. By early acts specie payments were to be resumed in May,1862, but in December, 1861, the suspension was continued until one yearafter the conclusion of peace with the United States. By this law thebanks were to receive at par the Confederate treasury notes in payment ofdebts, their notes being good for public dues. The banks were furtherrequired to make a loan to the state of $200,000 to pay its quota of theConfederate war tax of August 16, 1861. So the privilege of suspension wasworth paying for.[407]

The banking law was revised by the convention so that a bank might depositwith the state comptroller stocks of the Confederate States or of Alabama,receiving in return notes countersigned by the comptroller amounting totwice the market value of the bonds deposited. If a bank had in depositwith the comptroller under the old law any stocks of the United States,they could be withdrawn upon the deposit of an equal amount of Confederatestocks or bonds of the state. The same ordinance provided that none exceptcitizens of Alabama and members of state corporations might engage in thebanking business under this law. But no rights under the old law[Pg 164] were tobe affected. It was further provided that subsequent legislation mightrequire any “free” bank to reduce its circulation to an amount notexceeding the market value of the bonds deposited with the comptroller.The notes thus retired were to be cancelled by the comptroller.[408] Thesuspension of specie payments was followed by an increase of bankingbusiness; note issues were enlarged; eleven new banks were chartered,[409]and none wound up affairs. They paid dividends regularly of from 6 to 10per cent in coin, in Confederate notes, or in both. Speculation ingovernment funds was quite profitable to the banks.

The convention authorized the general assembly of the state to issue bondsto such amounts and in such sums as seemed best, thus giving the assemblypractically unlimited discretion. But it was provided that money must notbe borrowed except for purposes of military defence, unless by atwo-thirds vote of the members elected to each house; and the faith andcredit of the state was pledged for the punctual payment of the principaland interest.[410]

The legislature hastened to avail itself of this permission. In 1861 abond issue of $2,000,000 for defence, and not liable to taxation, wasauthorized at one time; at another, $385,000 for defence, besides an issueof $1,000,000 in treasury notes receivable for taxes. Of the first issueauthorized, only $1,759,500 were ever issued. Opposition to taxationcaused the state to take up the war tax of $2,000,000 (August 19, 1861),and for this purpose $1,700,000 in bonds was issued, the banks supplyingthe remainder. There was a relaxation in taxation during the war; papermoney was easily printed, and the people were opposed to heavy taxes.[411]

In 1862 bonds to the amount of $2,000,000 were issued for the benefit ofthe indigent. The governor was given unlimited authority to issue bondsand notes, receivable for taxes, to “repair the treasury,” and $2,085,000in bonds were issued under this permit. These bonds[Pg 165] drew interest at 6per cent, ran for twenty years, and sold at a premium of from 50 per centto 100 per cent. Bonds were used both for civil and for military purposes,but chiefly for the support of the destitute. Treasury notes to the amountof $3,500,000 were issued, drawing interest at 5 per cent, and receivablefor taxes. The Confederate Congress came to the aid of Alabama with agrant of $1,200,000 for the defence of Mobile.[412] In 1863 notes andbonds for $4,000,000 were issued for the benefit of indigent families ofsoldiers, and $1,500,000 for defence; $90,000 in bonds was paid for thesteamerFlorida, which was later turned over to the Confederategovernment.[413] In 1864 $7,000,000 was appropriated for the support ofindigent families of soldiers, and an unlimited issue of bonds and noteswas authorized.[414] In 1862 the Alabama legislature proposed that eachstate should guarantee the debt of the Confederate States in proportion toits representation in Congress. This measure was opposed by the otherstates and failed.[415] A year later a resolution of the legislaturedeclared that the people of Alabama would cheerfully submit to any tax,not too oppressive in amount or unequal in operation, laid by theConfederate government for the purpose of reducing the volume of currencyand appreciating its value. The assembly also signified its disapproval ofthe scheme put forth at the bankers’ meeting at Augusta, Georgia—to issueConfederate bonds with interest payable in coin and to levy a heavy tax of$60,000,000 to be paid in coin or in coupons of the proposed newissue.[416]

The Alabama treasury had many Confederate notes received for taxes. BeforeApril 1, 1864 (when such notes were to be taxed one-third of their facevalue), these could be exchanged at par for twenty-year, 6 per centConfederate bonds. After that date the Confederate notes were fundable at33⅓ per cent of their face value only.[417] After June 14, 1864, thestate treasury could exchange Confederate notes for 4 per cent non-taxableConfederate bonds, or one-half for 6 per cent bonds and one-half for newnotes. The Alabama legislature[Pg 166] of 1864 arranged for funding the notesaccording to the latter method.[418] The Alabama legislature of 1861 hadmade it lawful for debts contracted after that year to be payable inConfederate notes.[419] Later a meeting of the citizens of Mobile proposedto ostracize those who refused to accept Confederate notes. Cheap moneycaused a clamor for more, and the heads of the people were filled withfiat money notions. The rise in prices stimulated more issues of notes.On February 9, 1861, $1,000,000 in state treasury notes was issued, and in1862 there was a similar issue of $2,000,000 more. These state notes wereat a premium in Confederate notes, which were discredited by theConfederate Funding Act of February 17, 1864. Confederate notes wereeagerly offered for state notes, but the state stopped the exchange.[420]December 13, 1864, a law was passed providing for an unlimited issue ofstate notes redeemable in Confederate notes and receivable for taxes.

Private individuals often issued notes on their own account, and anenormous number was put into circulation. The legislature, by a law ofDecember 9, 1862, prohibited the issue of “shinplaster” or other privatemoney under penalty of $20 to $500 fine, and any person circulating suchmoney was to be deemed the maker. It was not successful, however, inreducing the flood of private tokens; the credit of individuals was betterthan the credit of the government.

Executors, administrators, guardians, and trustees were authorized to makeloans to the Confederacy and to purchase and receive for debts due thembonds and treasury notes of the Confederacy and of Alabama and theinterest coupons of the same. One-tenth of the Confederate $15,000,000loan of February 28, 1861, was subscribed in Alabama.[421] In December,1863, the legislature laid a tax of 37½ per cent on bonds of the stateand of the Confederacy unless the bonds had been bought directly from theConfederate government or from the state.[422] This was to punishspeculators. After October 7, 1864, the state treasury was directed torefuse[Pg 167]Confederate notes issued before February 17, 1864 (the date of theFunding Act) in payment of taxes except at a discount of 33⅓ per cent.Later, Confederate notes were taken for taxes at their full marketvalue.[423]

Gold was shipped through the blockade at Mobile to pay the interest on thestate bonded debt held in London. It has been charged that this money wasborrowed from the Central, Commercial, and Eastern banks and was neverrepaid, recovery being denied on the ground that the state could not besued.[424] But the banks received state and Confederate bonds under thenew banking law in return for their coin. The exchange was willingly made,for otherwise the banks would have had to continue specie payments orforfeit their charters. And to continue specie payments meant immediatebankruptcy.[425] After the war, the state was forbidden to pay any debtincurred in aid of the war, nor could the bonds issued in aid of the warbe redeemed. The banks suffered just as all others suffered, and it isdifficult to see why the state should make good the losses of the banks inConfederate bonds and not make good the losses of private individuals. Todo either would be contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment.

[Pg 168]To dispose of nearly $7,000,000 in small notes must have kept the treasuryvery busy during the last seven months of its existence. It is interestingto note that the treasury kept at work until May 24, 1865, six weeks afterthe surrender of General Lee.

Besides the regular appropriations for the usual expenses of thegovernment, there were many extraordinary appropriations. These, ofcourse, were for the war expenses which were far greater than the ordinaryexpenses. The chief item of these extraordinary appropriations was for thesupport of the indigent families of soldiers, and for this purpose about$11,000,000 was provided. For the military defence of the state severalmillion dollars were appropriated, much of this being spent for arms andclothing for the Alabama troops, both in the Confederate and the stateservice. Money was granted to the University of Alabama and other militaryschools on condition that they furnish drill-masters for the state troopswithout charge. Hospitals were furnished in Virginia and in Alabama forthe Alabama soldiers. The gunboatFlorida was bought for the defence ofMobile, and $150,000 was appropriated for an iron-clad ram for the samepurpose. Loans were made to commanders of regiments to buy clothing fortheir soldiers, and the state began to furnish clothing, $50,000 beingappropriated at one time for clothing for the Alabama soldiers in northernprisons. By March 12, 1862, Alabama had contributed $317,600 to thesupport of the Army of Northern Virginia.[426] Much was expended in themanufacture of salt in Alabama and in Virginia, which was sold at cost orgiven away to the poor; in the purchase of salt from Louisiana to be soldat a low price, and in bounties paid to salt makers in the state who soldsalt at reasonable prices. The state also paid for medical attendance forthe indigent families of soldiers. When the records and rolls of theAlabama troops in the Confederate service were lost, money wasappropriated to have new ones made. Frequent grants were made to thevarious benevolent societies of the state whose object was to care for themaimed and sick soldiers, the widows and the orphans. Cotton and woolcards and agricultural implements were purchased and distributed[Pg 169] amongthe poor. Slaves and supplies were taken for the public service and theowners compensated.

The appropriations for the usual expenses of the government were light,seldom more than twice the appropriations in times of peace,notwithstanding the depreciated currency. The salaries of public officerswho received stated amounts ranged from $1500 to $4000 a year in statemoney. In 1862 the salaries of the professors in the State University weredoubled on account of the depreciated currency, the president receiving$5000 and each professor $4000.[427] The members of the general assemblywere more fortunate. In 1864 they received $15 a day for the time insession, and the clerks of the legislature, who were disabled soldiers orexempt from service, or were women, were paid the same amount. The saltcommissioners drew salaries of $3000 a year in 1864 and 1865, though thisamount was not sufficient to pay their board for more than six months.Salaries were never increased in proportion to expenses. The compensation,in December, 1864, for capturing a runaway slave was $25, worth probably50 cents in coin. For the inaugural expenses of Governor Watts, $500 inpaper was appropriated.[428] Many laws were passed, regulating andchanging the fees and salaries of public officials. In October, 1884, forexample, the salaries of the state officials, tax assessors andcollectors, and judges were increased 50 per cent. Besides the generaldepreciation of the currency, the variations of values in the differentsections of the state rendered such changes necessary. In the centralpart, which was safe for a long time from Federal raids, the currency wasto the last worth more, and the prices of the necessaries of life werelower than in the more exposed regions. This fact was taken intoconsideration by the legislature when fixing the fees of the state andcounty officers in the various sections of the state.

As a result of the policy adopted at the outset of meeting theextraordinary expenses by bond issues,[429] the people continued to pay[Pg 170]the light taxes levied before the war, and paid them in paper money.Though falling heavily on the salaried and wage-earning classes, it wasnever a burden upon the agricultural classes except in the poorest whitecounties. The poll tax brought in little revenue. Soldiers were exemptfrom its payment and from taxation on property to the amount of $500. Thewidows and orphans of soldiers had similar privileges. A special tax of 25per cent on the former rate was imposed on all taxable property inNovember, 1861, and a year later, by acts of December 9, 1862, afar-reaching scheme of taxation was introduced. Under this poll taxes werelevied as follows:—

[Pg 171]In 1863 a tax of 37½ per cent was laid on Confederate and state bondsnot in the hands of the original purchaser;[430] 7½ per cent was leviedon profits of banking, railroad companies, and on evidence of debt; 5 percent on other profits not included in the act of the year before. The taxon gold and silver was to be paid in gold and silver; on bank-notes, innotes; on bonds, in coupons.[431] In December, 1864, the taxes levied bythe laws of 1862 and 1863 were increased by 33⅓ per cent. Taxes on goldand silver were to be paid in kind or in currency at its marketvalue.[432] This was the last tax levied by the state under Confederaterule. From these taxes the state government was largely supplied.

A number of special laws were passed to enable the county authorities tolevy taxes-in-kind or to levy a certain amount in addition to the statetax, for the use of the county. The taxes levied by the state did not bearheavily upon the majority of the people, as nearly all, except thewell-to-do and especially the slave owners, were exempt. The constantdepreciation of the currency acted, of course, as a tax on thewage-earners and salaried classes and on those whose income was derivedfrom government securities.

While the state taxes were felt chiefly by the wealthier agriculturalclasses and the slave owners, this was not the case with the Confederatetaxes. The loans and gifts from the state, the war tax of August 19, 1861,the $15,000,000 loan, the Produce Loan, and the proceeds ofsequestration—all had not availed to secure sufficient supplies. TheProduce Loan of 1862 was subscribed to largely in Alabama, the Secretaryof the Treasury issuing stocks and bonds in return for supplies,[433] and$1,500,000 of the $15,000,000 loan was raised in the state. Still theConfederate government was in desperate need. The farmers would notwillingly sell their produce for currency which was constantly decreasingin value, and, when selling at all, they were forced to charge exorbitantprices because of the high prices charged them for everything by thespeculators.[434] The speculator also ran up the prices of supplies beyondthe reach of the government purchasing agents who had to buy according tothe list of prices issued by impressment commissioners. So in the spring[Pg 172]of 1863 all other expedients were cast aside and the Confederategovernment levied a genuine “Morton’s Fork” tax. No more loans of papermoney from the state, no more assumption of war taxes by the stategovernments because the people were opposed to any form of directtaxation, no more holding back of supplies by producers and speculatorswho refused to sell to the Confederate government except for coin; the newlaw stopped all that.[435]

First there was a tax of 8 per cent on all agricultural products in handon July 1, 1863, on salt, wine, and liquors, and 1 per cent on all moneysand credits. Second, an occupation tax ranging from $50 to $200 and from2½ per cent to 20 per cent of their gross sales was levied on bankers,auctioneers, brokers, druggists, butchers, fakirs, liquor dealers,merchants, pawnbrokers, lawyers, physicians, photographers, brewers, anddistillers; hotels paid from $30 to $500, and theatres, $500. Third, therewas an income tax of 1 per cent on salaries from $1000 to $1500 and 2 percent on all over $1500. Fourth, 10 per cent on all trade in flour, bacon,corn, oats, and dry goods during 1863. Fifth, a tax-in-kind, by which eachfarmer, after reserving 50 bushels of sweet and 50 bushels of Irishpotatoes, 20 bushels of peas or beans, 100 bushels of corn or 50 bushelsof wheat out of his crop of 1863, had to deliver (at a depot within 8miles) out of the remainder of his produce for that year, 10 per cent ofall wheat, corn, oats, rye, buckwheat, rice, sweet and Irish potatoes,hay, fodder, sugar, molasses, cotton, wool, tobacco, peas, beans, andpeanuts; 10 per cent of all meat killed between April 24, 1863, and March1, 1863.[436]

By this act $9,500,000 in currency was raised in Alabama. Alabama, withGeorgia and North Carolina, furnished two-thirds of the tax-in-kind.Though at first there was some objection to the tax-in-kind because itbore entirely on the agricultural classes, yet it was a just tax so far asthe large planters were concerned, since the depreciated money had actedas a tax on the wage-earners and salaried classes, who had also some statetax to pay. The tax-in-kind fell heavily upon the families of smallfarmers in the white counties, who had no negro labor and who produced nomore than the barest necessaries of life. To collect the tax-in-kindrequired an army of[Pg 173] tithe gatherers and afforded fine opportunities ofescape from military service. The state was divided into districts for thecollection of all Confederate taxes, with a state collector at the head.The collection districts were usually counties, following the statedivision into taxing districts. In 1864 the tobacco tithe was collected bytreasury agents and not by the quartermaster’s department, which hadformerly collected it.[437] The tax of April 24, 1863, was renewed onFebruary 17, 1864, and some additional taxes laid as follows:—

On June 10, 1864, an additional tax of 20 per cent of the tax for 1864 waslaid, payable only in Confederate treasury notes of the new issue. Fourdays later an additional tax[438] was levied as follows:—

The taxes during the war, state and Confederate, were in all five to tentimes those levied before the war. Never were taxes paid more willingly bymost of the people,[439] though at first there was opposition to them. Itis probable that the authorities did not, in 1861 and 1862, givesufficient consideration to the fact that conditions were much changed,and that in view of the war the people would willingly have paid taxesthat they would have rebelled against in times of peace.

Of the tax-in-kind for 1863, $100,000 was collected in Pickens countyalone, one of the poorest counties in the state. The produce was sent intoo freely to be taken care of by the government quartermasters, and, asthere was enough on hand for a year or two, much of it was ruined for lackof storage room.[440] An English traveller in east Alabama, in 1864,reported that there was abundance. The tax-in-kind was working well, andenough provisions had already been collected for the western armies of theConfederacy to last until[Pg 174] the harvest of 1865.[441] There were fewrailroads in the state and the rolling stock on these was scarce and soonworn out. So the supplies gathered by the tax-in-kind law could not bemoved. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of beef and bacon and bushels ofcorn were piled up in the government warehouses and at the depots, whilestarvation threatened the armies and the people also in districts remotefrom the railroads or rivers. At the supply centres of Alabama and alongthe railroads in the Black Belt there were immense stores of provisions.When the war ended, notwithstanding the destruction by raids, greatquantities of corn and bacon were seized or destroyed by the Federaltroops.[442]

The state quite early began to secure supplies by impressment. Salt wasprobably the first article to which the state laid claim. Later theofficials were authorized to impress and pay for supplies necessary forthe public service. In 1862 the governor was authorized to impress shoes,leather, and other shoemakers’ materials for the use of the army. Thelegislature appropriated $250,000 to pay for impressments under thislaw.[443] In case of a refusal to comply with an order of impressment thesheriff was authorized to summon aposse comitatus of not less than 20men and seize double the quantity first impressed. In such cases nocompensation was given.[444] The people resisted the impressment of theirproperty. By a law of October 31, 1862, the governor was empowered toimpress slaves, and tools and teams for them to work with, in the publicservice against the enemy, and $1,000,000 was appropriated to pay theowners.[445] Slaves were regularly impressed by the Confederate officialsacting in coöperation with the state authorities, for work onfortifications and for other public service. Several thousand were at workat Mobile at various times. They were secured usually by requisition onthe state government, which then impressed them. In December, 1864,Alabama was asked for 2500 negroes for the Confederate service.[446] Thepeople[Pg 175] were morbidly sensitive about their slave property, and there wasmuch discontent at the impressment of slaves, even though they were paidfor. As the war drew to a close, the people were less and less willing tohave their servants impressed.

In the spring of 1863, the Confederate Congress authorized the impressmentof private property for public use.[447] The President and the governoreach appointed an agent, and these together fixed the prices to be paidfor the property taken.[448] Every two months they published schedules ofprices, which were always below the market prices.[449] Evidentlyimpressment had been going on for some time, for, in November, 1862, JudgeDargan, member of Congress from Alabama, wrote to the President that thepeople from the country were afraid to bring produce to Mobile for fear ofseizure by the government. In November, 1863, the Secretary of War issuedan order that no supplies should be impressed when held by a person forhis own consumption or that of his employees or slaves, or while beingcarried to market for sale, except in urgent cases and by order of acommanding general. Consequently the land was filled with agents buying ayear’s supply for railroad companies, individuals, manufactories, andcorporations, relief associations, towns, and counties—all these to beprotected from impressment. Most speculators always had their goods on theway to market for sale. The great demand caused prices to rise suddenly,and the government, which had to buy by scheduled prices, could notcompete with private purchasers; yet it could not legally impress. Therewas much abuse of the impressment law, especially by unauthorized persons.It was the source of much lawless conduct on the part of many who claimedto be Confederate officials, with authority to impress.[450] Thelegislature frequently protested against the manner of execution of thelaw. In 1863 a state law was passed which indicates that the people hadbeen suffering from the depredations of thieves who[Pg 176]pretended to beConfederate officials in order to get supplies. It was made a penaloffence in 1862 and again in 1863, with from one to five years’imprisonment and $500 to $5000 fine, to falsely represent one’s self as aConfederate agent, contractor, or official.[451] The merchants of Mobileprotested against the impressment of sugar and molasses, as it would causeprices to double, they said.[452] There was much complaint from suffererswho were never paid by the Confederate authorities for the suppliesimpressed. Quartermasters of an army would sometimes seize the necessarysupplies and would leave with the army before settling accounts with thecitizens of the community, the latter often being left without any proofof their claim. In north Alabama, especially, where the armies nevertarried long at a place, the complaint was greatest. To do away with thisabuse resulting from carelessness, the Secretary of War appointed agentsin each congressional district to receive proof of claims for forage andsupplies impressed.[453] The state wanted a Confederate law passed toauthorize receipts for supplies to be given as part of thetax-in-kind.[454] The unequal operation of the impressment system may beseen in the case of Clarke and Monroe counties. In the former, from 16persons, property amounting to $1700 was impressed. In Monroe, from 37persons $60,000 worth was taken. The delay in payment was so long that themoney was practically worthless when received.[455]

In the secession convention the question of indebtedness to northerncreditors came up, and Watts of Montgomery proposed confiscation, in caseof war, of the property of alien enemies and of debts due northerncreditors. The proposal was supported by several members, who declaredthat the threat of confiscation would do much to promote peace. But themajority of the convention were opposed to any measure looking towardconfiscation, and the matter was carried over for the Confederategovernment to settle.[456]

Stay laws were enacted in Alabama on February 8, 1861, and on[Pg 177] December10, 1861. The Confederate Provisional Congress enacted a law (May 21,1861) that debtors to persons in the North (except in Delaware, Maryland,Missouri, and the District of Columbia) be prohibited from paying theirdebts during the war.[457] They should pay the amount of the debt into theConfederate treasury and receive a certificate relieving them from theirdebts, transferring it to the Confederate treasury. A Confederate law ofNovember 17, 1862, provided that when payment of the interest on a debtwas proffered in Confederate treasury notes and refused, it should beunlawful for the plaintiff to secure more than ¼ of 1 per cent interest.On August 30, 1861, Congress, in retaliation for the confiscation anddestruction of the property of Confederate citizens, passed theSequestration Act, which held all property of alien enemies (exceptcitizens of the border states) as indemnity for such destruction anddevastation.[458] Under the Sequestration Act receivers were appointed ineach county to take possession of all property belonging to alien enemies.They were empowered to interrogate all lawyers, bank officials, officialsof corporations engaged in foreign trade, and all persons and agentsengaged for persons engaged in foreign trade, for the purpose ofdiscovering such property. The proceeds were to be held for the indemnityof loyal citizens suffering under the confiscation laws of the UnitedStates.[459] Later the property thus seized was sold and the money paidinto the Confederate treasury.[460] In the last days of the war (February15, 1865), the Sequestration Act was extended to include the property ofdisloyal citizens who had gone within the Federal lines to escape militaryservice, or who had entered the Union service to fight against theConfederacy.[461]

In December, 1861, a law was passed by the legislature which[Pg 178] providedthat no suit by or for an alien enemy for debt or money should beprosecuted in any court in Alabama. No execution was to be issued to analien enemy, and suits already brought could be dismissed on the motion ofthe defendant.[462] In Alabama much of the time of the Confederatedistrict courts was taken up by sequestration cases. In fact, they didlittle else. However, but little money was ever turned into theConfederate treasury from this source.[463]

Just as the state sent nearly all its coin through the blockade to pay theinterest of its London debt, so the Mobile, Montgomery, or Selma merchantcancelled his indebtedness and sent money, as he was able, during theearly years of the war, to his northern and European creditors. Most debtsdue to northerners were concealed from the government. The stringent lawspassed against it were of no avail. As a source of revenue thesequestration of the property of alien enemies hardly paid expenses. Afterall, however, the northern creditor probably lost nearly all his accountsin the South in the general wreck of property in 1865.

After the outbreak of war, business was soon almost at a standstill. Thegovernment monopolized all means of transportation for military purposes.There were few good railroads in the state and few good wagon roads. Inone section there would be plenty, while seventy-five or a hundred milesaway there would be great suffering from want. Depreciated currency andthe impressment laws made the producer wary of going to market at all. Hepreferred to keep what he had and live upon it, effecting changes in theold way of barter. Cows, hogs, chickens, mules, farm implements, cotton,corn, peas—all were exchanged and reëxchanged for one another. The farmertended more and more to become independent of the merchant and of money.Consequently the townspeople suffered. Confederate money, at firstreceived at par, soon began to depreciate, though the most patrioticpeople considered it their duty to accept it at its par value.[464]

[Pg 179]At the end of 1861,Confederate money was worth as much[465] as Federal,but it had depreciated. Often private credit was better than public, andindividuals in need of a more stable circulating medium issued notes orpromises to pay which in the immediate neighborhood passed current attheir face value. Great quantities of this “card money” or shinplasterswere issued, and in some communities it almost supplanted the legal moneyas a more reliable medium of exchange. The Alabama legislature passedsevere laws against the practice of issuing “card money,” but with littleeffect.

The effect of depreciation of paper money was the same as a tax so far asthe people were concerned. Forced into circulation, it supported thegovernment, but it gradually depreciated and each holder lost a little.Finally, when almost worthless, it was practically repudiated by the stateand by the Confederacy, and funding laws were passed, providing for theredemption of old notes at a low rate in new issues. Depreciation of thecurrency caused extravagance and other more evil results. A person whohandled much money felt that he must at once get rid of all that came intohis possession in order to avoid loss by depreciation. Consequently therewas speculation, reckless spending, and extravagance. Money would be spentfor anything offered for sale. If useful things were not to be had, thenluxuries would be bought, such as silks, fancy articles, liquors, etc.,from blockade-runners. This was especially the case in Selma, Mobile, andMontgomery, and in northern Alabama. Persons formerly of good characterfrequently drifted into extravagant and dissipated habits, because theytried to spend their money and there were not enough legitimate ways inwhich to do so.

[Pg 180]Depreciation, speculation, and scarcity caused prices to rise, especiallythe prices of the necessaries of life. These varied in the differentsections of the state. In Mobile, in 1862, prices were as follows:—

In May, 1862, at Huntsville, then in the hands of the Federals, someprices were, in Federal currency:—

In Russell County and east Alabama the following prices were paid in1863-1864:—

At the close of 1864, in Mobile, Alabama, $1 in gold was worth $25 instate currency, and prices were as follows:—

The War Department published, on September 26, 1864, the followingprices[475] as agreed upon by the commissioners of February 17, 1864, forthe states east of the Mississippi:—

A little property or labor would pay a large debt. Merchants did not wantto be paid in money, and were sorry to see a debtor come in with greatrolls of almost worthless currency. Barter was increasingly resorted to.There were so many different series and issues of money and so manyregulations concerning it that no one could know them all, and thisoperated to discredit the currency. Besides, it was known that much of itwas counterfeited at the North and quantities sent South. Prices advancedrapidly in 1865; state money was worth more than Confederate money, thoughit was much depreciated. Board was worth $600 a month; meals, $10 to $25each; a boiled egg, $2; a cup of imitation coffee, $5. After the news ofLee’s surrender, few would accept the paper money, though for[Pg 183] two orthree months longer, in remote districts, state money remained incirculation.

When Wilson’s army was marching into Montgomery, a young man asked an oldnegro woman who stood gazing at the soldiers if she could give him a pieceof paper to light his pipe. She fumbled in her pocket and handed him aone-dollar state bill. “Why, auntie, that is money!” remarked the youngman. “Haw, haw!” the old crone chuckled, “light it, massa; don’t you seede state done gone up?”[476]

For several months after the secession of the state, its one importantseaport—Mobile—was open, and export and import trade went on as usual.The proclamation of Lincoln, April 19, 1861, practically declared ablockade of the ports of the southern states. A vessel attempting to enteror to leave was to be warned, and if a second attempt was made, the vesselwas to be seized as a prize.[477] By proclamations of April 27 and August16, 1861, the blockade was extended and made more stringent. All vesselsand cargoes belonging to citizens of the southern states found at sea orin a port of the United States were to be confiscated.[478] As the summeradvanced, the blockade was made more and more effective, until finally, atthe end of 1861, the port of Mobile was closed to all but the professionalblockade-runners.[479] The fact that the legislature in the fall of 1861was fostering various new industries and purchasing certain articles ofcommon use shows that the effects of the blockade were beginning to befelt.[480]

[Pg 184]At first the general confidence in the power of King Cotton made mostsouthern people desire to let the blockade assist the work of war, and, bycreating a scarcity of cotton abroad, cause foreign governments torecognize the Confederate government and raise the blockade.[481] Thepinch of want soon made many forget their faith in the power of cotton;there was a general desire to get supplies through the blockade and tosend cotton in exchange. The state administration was distinctly in favorof blockade-running and foreign trade.[482] In 1861 the legislatureincorporated two “Direct Trading Companies,” giving them permission to ownand sail ships between the ports of the state and the ports of foreigncountries for the purpose of carrying on trade.[483] The generalregulation of foreign commerce, however, fell to the Confederategovernment, which was distinctly opposed to all blockade-running not underits immediate control and supervision. The state authorities complainedthat the course of the Confederate administration was harsh andunnecessary. The state was willing to prohibit blockade-running on privateaccount, but insisted that its public vessels be allowed to importsupplies needed by the state. The complaint about restrictions on tradewas general throughout the southern states and, in October, 1864, thesouthern governors, in a meeting in Augusta, Georgia, Governor Watts ofAlabama taking a leading part, declared that each state had the right toexport its productions and import such supplies as might be necessary forstate use or for the use of[Pg 185] the state troops in the army, state vesselsbeing used for this purpose. The governors united in a request to Congressto remove the restrictions on such trade.[484] But the Confederateadministration to the last retained control of foreign trade. Agents weresent abroad by the Treasury and War Departments[485] who were instructedto send on vessels attempting to run the blockade, first, arms andammunition; second, clothing, boots, shoes, and hats; third, drugs andchemicals that were most needed, such as quinine, chloroform, ether,opium, morphine, and rhubarb. These agents were instructed to see that allvessels leaving for southern ports were laden with the articles named.Such part of the cargoes as was not taken by the government was sold atauction to the highest bidder. These blockade auction sales were attendedby merchants from the inland towns, whose shelves were almost bare ofgoods during three years of the war.[486] For two years military and navalsupplies were the most important articles brought into the southern ports.The Alabama troops were in great need of all kinds of war equipment, andthe state administration made every effort to obtain military suppliesfrom abroad. Shipments of arms from Europe were made to the West Indies,generally to Cuba, and thence smuggled into Mobile and other Gulf ports.The shipments were always long delayed while waiting for a favorableopportunity to attempt a run. A large proportion of the blockade-runnersmaking for Mobile were captured by the United States vessels.[487] Darknights, and rainy, stormy weather furnished the opportunity to the runnersto slip into or out of a port. Once at sea, nothing could catch them,since they were built for fast sailing rather than for capacity to carryfreight.[488]

[Pg 186]Most of the arms secured by Alabama came by way of Cuba, as did nearly allthe supplies that entered the port of Mobile or were smuggled in on boatsalong the coast. Havanna was 590 miles from Mobile, and between theseports most of the blockade trade of the Gulf Coast was carried on. Oneshipment, welcomed by the state authorities, was a lot of condemnedSpanish flint-lock muskets, which were remodelled and repaired and placedin the hands of the state troops. Machinery for the naval foundry andarsenal at Selma and for the navy-yard on the Tombigbee was broughtthrough the blockade from Englandvia the West Indies. The Confederategovernment, besides taking its own half of each cargo, had the firstchoice of all other goods brought through the blockade and usually choseshoes, clothing, and medicine. The state could only make contracts for theimportation of supplies; it could not import them on its own vessels. TheConfederate government paid high prices for goods, but, on the whole, paidmuch less than did the private individual for the remainder of the cargowhen sold at auction. The merchants made large profits on the few articlesof merchandise secured by them. Speculators bought up lots of merchandiseat Mobile and carried them far inland, to the small towns and villages ofthe Black Belt and farther north, and secured fabulous prices inConfederate money for ordinary calico, shoes, women’s apparel, etc. Thecentral part of the state was more completely shut from the outside worldthan any other section of the South. The Federal lines touched thenorthern part of the state, but the traffic carried on through the linesseldom reached the central counties. Consequently, the arrival of amerchant in the Black Belt village with a small lot of blockade calicoes,shoes, hats, scented soap, etc., was a great event, and people came fromfar and near to gaze upon the fine things exhibited in the usually emptyshow windows. Few had sufficient Confederate money to buy the commonestarticles, but some one could always be found to purchase the latestuseless trifle that came from abroad.[489]

[Pg 187]In exchange for goods thus imported, the blockade-runners carried outcargoes of cotton. As has been stated, the Confederate administration wasin charge of cotton exportation. The Confederate Treasury Departmentpurchased in Alabama 134,252 bales of cotton for $13,633,621.90—that is,$101.55 a bale. This cotton was to be sold abroad for the benefit of theConfederate government. Nearly all the cotton purchased by the governmentwas in the great producing states of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.Alabama furnished more than any other state. In 1864 3226 bales of cottonwere shipped from Mobile by the Treasury Department, and the proceedsapplied to the support of the Erlanger Loan. To avoid competition betweenthe departments of the government, it was agreed, June 1, 1864, that allstores for shipment should be turned over to the Treasury, transported tothe vessels by the War Department, and consigned to Treasury agents in theWest Indies or in Europe. It was to be sold finally by the Treasury agentat Liverpool and the proceeds placed to the credit of the Treasury. Theexport business was under the direction of the Produce Loan Office, whichhad charge of all government cotton and tobacco. Contracts were usuallymade with companies, to whom the government turned over the cotton forshipment. In November, 1864, there were 115,450 bales of government cottonin Alabama, 18,802 bales having been sold. It is hardly possible that itwas all exported; some of it was sold through the lines.[490] It was foundvery difficult to secure bagging and ties sufficient to bale the cottonfor shipping.

The state lost much as well as gained by trade through the blockade. Therisks were great and the exporters had to have a large share of theprofit; but arms, medicine, and blankets were valuable and very necessary.In spite of regulations, the blockade-runners brought in more luxuriesthan necessaries, causing much extravagance, and there were people whoobjected to the practice altogether. In March, 1863, the Mobile Committeeof Safety reported that there were several vessels then in the harborfitting out to carry cotton to Cuba. They were of the opinion that thegovernment ought not to allow them to depart, since the country could notafford to lose[Pg 188] the vessels with their machinery, which could not bereplaced. Governor Shorter agreed with them, and a protest was made to theRichmond authorities; but the vessels went out.[491] Judge Dargan, whommany things troubled, wrote to the Richmond authorities that theblockade-runners were ruining the country by supplying the enemy withcotton and bringing in return useless gewgaws.[492]

From March 1, 1864, to the end of the war, the Confederate governmentsucceeded better in regulating the imports by blockade-runners. But afterAugust, when Farragut captured the forts defending the harbor entrance,the port of Mobile received little from the outside world. Before thestringent regulations of the Confederacy went into force, blockade-runningwas demoralizing. The importers refused to accept paper money for theirgoods, and thus discredited currency while draining specie from thecountry. High prices and extortion followed. Cotton, instead of beingexchanged for British gold, brought in trinkets, silks, satins, laces,broadcloths, brandy, rum, whiskey, fancy slippers, and ladies’ goodsgenerally. Curiously enough, there was great demand for these, in spite ofthe wants of the necessaries of life, medicine, and munitions of war.Delicate women, old persons, and children suffered most from the effectsof the blockade. As Spears says, there were many tiny graves made in theSouth because the blockade kept out necessary medicines.[493]

The blockade reduced the Confederacy; the Union navy rather than the Unionarmy was the prime factor in crushing the South; it made possible thevictories of the army. As it was, the blockade-runners probably postponedthe end for a year or more.[494] Though the number of blockade-runnersincreased in the latter part of 1864 and in 1865, Alabama profited butlittle; her one good seaport was closed in August, 1864, by Farragut’sfleet, and with the fleet came the last regular blockade-runner. As thewarships were moving up to engage the forts, a blockade-runner passed inwith them unnoticed.[495] Small boats still brought in supplies.

The early policy of the Confederate administration was to bring the Northto terms by shutting off the cotton supply and by ceasing to purchasesupplies which had heretofore been a source of great profit to northernmerchants, and was, on the whole, consistently adhered to during the war.The state administration held the same theory until one-fourth of itspeople were destitute; then it was ready to relax restrictions ontrade.[496] Individuals who had plenty of cotton and little to eat andwear soon came to the conclusion that traffic with the North would do noharm, but much good. The United States wanted the products of the South,and made stronger efforts to get them than the blockaded South made to getsupplies by the exchange. Until the very last, the North was more activein commercial intercourse than the South, notwithstanding the fearful wantall over the southern country. The policy of the North was to have alltrade in southern products pass through the hands of its own Treasuryagents, who were to strip such products of all extraordinary profits forthe benefit of the United States Treasury, and to see that the Confederacyprofited as little as possible.[497] The Confederate States government,when forced to allow some kind of trade through the lines, sought to sellonly government cotton or to force traders to traffic under its license.The state administration, at times, worked in its agents under Confederatelicense in order to get supplies for the destitute in the counties nearthe lines of the enemy. Few regulations of[Pg 190]commercial intercourse weremade by the Confederate States, but many were made by the United States.The Confederate States had the problem almost under control; the UnitedStates did not, and had to try to regulate what it could not prohibit.

Trade along the Tennessee and Mississippi frontier was subject to thefollowing regulations on the side of the United States: Trade was carriedon under the control of the Treasury Department; all trade had to belicensed; there were numerous officials to regulate the trade and the armywas directed to assist traders; no coin, no foreign money, and no supplieswere to be allowed to get to the Confederates; the trader must not gowithin Confederate territory; until 1864 the southern seller, whitherConfederate or Union, when he went beyond the lines could get only 25 percent of the New York value of his produce; from 1864 to 1865 he could get75 per cent of the value if the cotton were not produced by slave labor;in all cases the seller had to take the oath of allegiance to the UnitedStates. These regulations were gradually repealed during the latter partof 1865 and early in 1866.[498]

The legislation of the Confederate States was not so full, but the policywas about the same and more consistently enforced. In 1862 the ConfederateCongress made it unlawful to sell in any part of the Confederate States inthe possession of the enemy any cotton, tobacco, rice, sugar, molasses, ornaval stores.[499] Licenses, however, for the sale of certain merchandisecould be obtained from the Secretary of War. Trade through the lines wasnot under the supervision of Treasury officials but was looked after bythe generals commanding the frontier. In 1864 a law of Congress prohibitedthe export of[Pg 191] military and naval stores, and agricultural production,such as cotton and tobacco, except under regulations prescribed by thePresident.[500]

But the restrictions were not strictly enforced. It was not possible to doso; commerce would find a way in spite of the war. The people of Alabamawere, on the whole, disposed to approve the policy of the Confederateauthorities, but, when want and destitution came, the owners of cottonproceeded to find a way to sell a few bales. Early in 1863 north Alabamawas occupied by the Federals, and trade began along the line of theTennessee River. Later, there were trade lines to the northwest throughMississippi, and to the northeast through Georgia and Tennessee.[501]After the capture of New Orleans, cotton was sent through Mississippi toNew Orleans, or to the banks of the Mississippi River, and always foundpurchasers. There was a thriving trade between Mobile and New Orleansduring the Butler régime in the latter city.

By the trade through the lines, the people of Alabama secured more of thescarcer commodities than by the blockade-running. Much of the trade wascarried on by firms in Mobile that had agents or branch houses in NewOrleans. Three pounds of cotton were exchanged for one of bacon; armysupplies, clothing, blankets, and medical stores were secured in exchangefor cotton; salt was also a commodity much in demand. For three years,from 1862 to 1864, trade was quite brisk between the two cities, some ofit under license by the Confederate Secretary of War, and some of itpurely contraband. As long as Butler controlled New Orleans there was notrouble.[502] When General Canby went to New Orleans, he reported thatEnglish houses in Mobile were making contracts to export 200,000 bales of[Pg 192]cottonvia New Orleans, and expected to realize $10,000,000 net profits.Canby was of the opinion that the cotton trade aided the Confederates. Thecharacter of the Treasury agents in charge of the cotton trade was bad;they were likely to do anything for gain. He stated on the authority of aNew Orleans banker, who was the agent of a cotton speculator, thatConfederate agents would come to New Orleans with United States legaltender notes and invest in sterling with him, drawing against cotton whichwas ostensibly purchased from “loyal” or foreign citizens.[503] Thespeculators would give information to the Confederates with regard to themovements of the Federals, in order that the Confederates might preservecotton that would in an emergency be destroyed. The speculators would buythe cotton later.

In 1864 a New York manufacturer testified that he had made contracts withfirms in Selma, Montgomery, and Mobile to take pay for debts due him incotton delivered through the lines at New Orleans. The price was $1.24 to$1.30 a pound in New York. Treasury agents made similar contracts forAlabama cotton to be delivered through New Orleans, Pensacola, or throughthe lines in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Georgia. One agent, H. A. Risley,made contracts with half a dozen persons for more than 350,000 bales ofcotton, the bulk of which was to come from Alabama. Most of this, it isneedless to say, was not delivered.[504]

The Confederate officials tried to manage that only government cotton wentout under the licenses from the War Department and that only necessarysupplies were imported in exchange. But there was much abuse of theprivilege and much private smuggling of cotton in 1864, through theMississippi to New Orleans and the river; and on September 22, 1864,General Dick Taylor (at Selma) annulled all cotton export contracts in theDepartment of Alabama, Mississippi, and East Louisiana. However, he said,the Confederate authorities would purchase necessaries imported and wouldpay for them in cotton at 50 cents a pound. This cotton could then becarried beyond the lines. No luxuries were to be imported, under penaltyof confiscation.[505]

[Pg 193]Surgeon Potts, of the Confederate army, stationed at Montgomery, securedmedical supplies from the Federal lines in Louisiana and Mississippi, bothby water and by land, sending cotton in exchange. One of the last reportsmade to President Davis was by Lieutenant-Colonel Brand, of Miles’sLouisiana Legion, who stated (April 9, 1865, at Danville, Virginia) thaton March 21, 1865, a Mr. McKnight of the Alabama Reserves had presented apermit to General Hodges in Louisiana for indorsement and orders for agrant to escort 1,666,666⅔ pounds of cotton (about 4000 bales) throughsouthwestern Mississippi and eastern Louisiana to exchange for medicalsupplies for Surgeon Potts. Brand was of the opinion that this was merelya scheme to sell cotton and not to get medicines, as he had known of onlyone wagon-load of medical supplies that had gone through his territory toDr. Potts. McKnight had no government cotton to carry, for there was nonein that section of the country, but he expected to buy it as aspeculation. This practice, Brand stated, was common. Even governmentcotton would be sold for coffee, soap, flour, etc., under the name ofmedical supplies, and these would be sold by the speculators.[506]

In north Alabama a brisk trade was carried on for three years with theconnivance of the Federal officers, many of whom were interested in thefleecy staple in spite of orders forbidding such conduct.[507] Negroeswere given “free papers” in order that they might go in and out of thelines of the armies on contraband trade. The Confederate officials on theborder were also often implicated in the traffic or connived at it througha desire to see poor people get supplies.[508]

One of the mildest charges against the Federal General O. M. Mitchel wasthat he had profited by speculation in the contraband[Pg 194] trade in cottonwhile he was in command in north Alabama. It was alleged that he usedUnited States transportation to haul cotton when the transportation wasneeded for other purposes. Mitchel claimed that personally he had receivedno profit from his trade; it appeared, however, that he had used hisofficial position to advance the interests of his brother-in-law and hisson-in-law. The discussion over his case brought out the fact that thenorthern cotton speculator or agent would go into the Confederate linesand buy cotton at ten and eleven cents a pound, Confederate currency, andtake the cotton North and realize immense profits.[509] Mitchel and otherFederal officers, it was shown, approved and assisted the trade beyond thelines.[510]

Individual permits were sometimes given by President Lincoln, authorizingthe bearers to go within the Confederacy, without restriction, and getcotton and other southern produce. Sometimes, after bringing it out, thesepeople lost their cotton to United States Treasury agents, because thepermission given by the President was not in accordance with the Treasuryregulations. In north Alabama several agents got into trouble in this way.Lincoln, it seems, understood that the laws gave him authority to issuepermits to trade within the Confederate lines.[511]

In 1864, when cotton was selling at forty to fifty cents a pound in coin,numbers of Federal officers resigned in order to speculate in cotton. Aformer beef contractor who had grown rich in the cotton trade was said tohave controlled almost the whole of Huntsville. Both hotels, thewaterworks, and the gas works belonged to him, and there was complaint ofhis extortions.[512]

Small packages, especially of quinine, were sent South through the AdamsExpress Company, which would guarantee to deliver them within theConfederacy.[513] This caused speculation, and it was finally stopped.Women passed through the lines and brought back quinine and othermedicines concealed in their clothing. A druggist in middle Alabamadetermined to carry on a contraband trade in[Pg 195] cotton and drugs. The Southhad prohibited private trade in cotton; the North forbade the sale ofmedical supplies to the Confederates. But following the example of manyothers, he went into north Mississippi, loaded a wagon with cotton, andcarried it to Memphis, then held by the Federals, and sold it for a highprice in United States money. He then exchanged his wagon for an ambulancewith a white canvas cover, on which was painted the word “SMALLPOX” inlarge letters, and over which fluttered a yellow flag. He loaded theambulance with quinine, ether, morphine, and other valuable drugs, andother articles of merchandise scarce in Alabama. The yellow flag and themagic word “SMALLPOX” kept people away, and, after many adventures, hefinally reached home.[514] Only by such methods could the beleagueredpeople obtain the precious medicines.

One of the last contracts on record in respect to trade through the lineswas a deal made on January 6, 1865, by Samuel Noble and George W.Quintard, his agent, both of Alabama, to deliver several thousand bales ofcotton to an agent of the United States Treasury.[515] There is evidencethat some of the cotton was delivered.

The illicit trade in cotton by private parties became so flagrant that inthe winter of 1864-1865, a fresh Confederate regiment, which had not yetbeen touched by the fever of speculation, was sent from the interior ofGeorgia to guard part of the frontier in Alabama and Mississippi. One ofthe first persons captured smuggling a cotton train through the lines wasthe wife of the Confederate commanding general, who, of course, releasedher.[516] Much of the trade was carried on by poor people who had a fewbales of cotton and who were obliged to sell it or suffer from want. Thisfact caused the Confederate officers to be lax in the enforcement of theregulations.[517]

[Pg 196]The extraordinary prices of cotton in the outside world brought littlegain to the blockaded Confederacy. Before the cotton could be brought intothe Union lines or beyond the blockade, all the profits had been absorbedby the Confederate speculator, or, most often, by the Union speculatorsand Treasury agents. Theoretically, the regulations of the United Statesshould have brought much profit to the Federal government. In fact, asSecretary Chase reported, the United States did not realize a great dealfrom Confederate staples brought into the Union lines. These frauds andthe demoralizing effects of the system were evidenced by many reports fromofficers from the army and navy.[518]

But in spite of the demoralizing effects of the contraband trade withinthe Confederacy and in spite of the extremely low prices obtained forConfederate staples, much-needed supplies were sent in in such quantitiesas to enable the contest to be maintained much longer than otherwise itwould have lasted. Owing to its interior location, it is probable thatAlabama profited less by this trade than the other states.

When the men went away to the army, many poor families began to suffer forthe necessaries of life. The suffering was greater in the white counties,where slaves were relatively few, many families feeling the touch of wantas soon as the breadwinners left. The Black Belt had plenty, such as itwas, until the end of the war.

The first legislature, after the secession of the state, levied a specialtax of 25 per cent of the regular tax for the next year to provide for thedestitute families of absent volunteers.[519] A month later a law waspassed permitting counties to assume the tax and to pay the amount intothe state treasury, and thus secure exemption from the state tax.[520] Thecounty commissioners were directed to appropriate money from the countytreasury for the support of the[Pg 197] indigent families of soldiers.[521] Thiswas to secure immediate relief, which was imperatively necessary, sincethe special tax for their benefit would not be collected until the nextyear.

Early in 1862 portions of north Alabama were so devastated by the Federalsthat many people, to escape starvation, had to “refugee” to other parts ofthe country, usually to middle Alabama, there to be supported by thestate. At this time all crops were short, owing to a drought, and thepoorer people suffered greatly.[522] Speculators had advanced the priceson food, and wage-earners were unable to buy. Impressment by thegovernment made farmers afraid to bring produce to town.[523]

The county commissioners were authorized in 1862 to levy for the next yeara tax equal to the regular state tax and to use it for the benefit of thedestitute.[524] The state also made an appropriation of $2,000,000 for thesame purpose. This appropriation was to be distributed by the countycommissioners in the form of supplies or money. The families ofsubstitutes were not made beneficiaries of this fund.[525] The sum of$60,000 was appropriated for cotton and wool spinning cards, which were tobe purchased abroad and distributed among the counties in proportion tothe white population. They were sold at cost to those able to buy,[526]and several distributions were made to the needy families ofsoldiers.[527] Salt was the scarcest of all the necessaries of life. Thestate took entire charge of the whole supply that was for sale and sold itat a moderate price, sometimes at cost, and to those in great need it wasfurnished free.[528] The county commissioners were authorized to hire andrehire slaves and take in return provisions, which were distributed amongthe poor families of soldiers.[529] The commissioners of Sumter and Walkercounties were permitted to borrow $10,000 in each county for the poor, andto levy a tax of 50 per cent of the state tax with which to repay theborrowed money.[530]

Judge Dargan, member of Congress, wrote to President Davis[Pg 198] in the winterof 1862 that many people of Mobile were destitute.[531] Mobile was fartheraway from country supplies, and the people suffered greatly. In the springof 1863 there was suffering in the southern white counties. A party ofwomen, the wives and daughters of soldiers, raided a provision shop inMobile, when there were instances of dire distress in the families ofsoldiers.[532] The richer citizens of the city gave $130,000 to support afree market, where for a while 4000 needy persons were furnished daily.Another contribution of $70,000 was raised to clothe a thousand destitutefamilies.[533]

In 1863 the non-combatants of north Alabama suffered more than in theprevious year. Houses had been burned, grain and provisions destroyed, andmany were homeless and destitute. Numbers were driven from the country bythe persecutions of the Federals and tories. The Confederate war tax andthe state tax were suspended in districts invaded by the enemy,[534] andin August, 1863, the legislature appropriated $1,000,000 for the supportof the destitute families of soldiers during the next three months.Twenty-five pounds of salt were also given to each member of a soldier’sfamily as a year’s supply.[535] Probate judges impressed provisions andpaid for them out of this million-dollar fund. In November, 1863, anappropriation of $3,000,000 was made for the support of soldiers’ familiesduring the coming year. In counties held by the enemy where there were nocommissioners’ courts, the probate judges paid to soldiers’ families theirshare of the appropriation. The county commissioners were authorized toimpress provisions for the poor if they were unable to buy them.[536]Washington County was permitted to borrow $10,000 for the relief ofsoldiers’ families.[537] The policy of giving a county permission to raisemoney for its own poor was much opposed on the ground that the countieswhich had furnished most soldiers and where the destitution was greatestwere the least able to pay. The legislature declared then that the poorsoldiers’ families should be the charge of the state.[538] The sum of[Pg 199]$500,000 was appropriated for the destitute of north Alabama, who had losteverything from the seizure and destruction by the enemy. Disloyal personsand their families were not entitled to aid.[539] Macon County wasauthorized to levy a tax-in-kind for the poor, and Pike County atax-in-kind and a property and income tax, practically a duplicate of theConfederate tax.[540]

The legislature of 1864 appropriated $5,000,000 for soldiers’families,[541] and made a special appropriation of $180,000 for the poorin the counties of Cherokee, De Kalb, Morgan, St. Clair, Marshall, andBlount, which were overrun by the enemy.[542] The probate judge ofCherokee County was authorized to act for De Kalb because the probatejudge of that county had been carried off by the Federals.[543] InLawrence County the Federals raided the probate judge’s office, and took$3000 belonging to the destitute, and the agent was robbed of $3887.50while trying to carry it to Moulton. Both losses were made good by thestate.[544]

Statutes were repeatedly passed, prohibiting the distilling of grain forthe purpose of making alcoholic liquors. The state placed this industryunder the supervision of the governor, and alcohol and whiskey weredistributed among the counties where most needed, to be sold at a moderateprice for medicinal purposes, and the profit given to the poor, or to begiven away upon physicians’ prescriptions. Later the prohibition wasextended to include potatoes, peas, and even molasses and sugar. Thisprohibition was not a temperance measure, but was designed to preserve asfoodstuffs the grain, molasses, peas, and potatoes.[545]

The county commissioners usually had charge of the destitute, and lookedafter the collection of the special taxes which were levied for thebenefit of the poor. They also distributed the supplies, purchased orcollected by the tax-in-kind, among the needy people after investigatingthe merits of each case. In those portions of the state overrun by theenemy or liable to repeated invasion, the probate judge of the county wasauthorized to take charge of[Pg 200] all matters relating to the relief of thedestitute. Many thousand dollars’ worth of supplies were furnished thenorthern counties when they were within the Federal lines or between thehostile lines. Many of the supplies sent there fell into the hands oftories or Federals, and many undeserving persons obtained assistance.Confederate sympathizers within the Federal lines had a struggle to live,and numbers, completely ruined by the ravages of the Federals and tories,had to flee to the central and southern counties.

The quartermaster-general of the state had charge of the statedistribution among the counties, and among the Confederate soldiers. Therewas an agent of the state whose business it was to look after claims forpay and bounty due the families of deceased soldiers. It is safe to saythat little was ever collected on this account.[546] The Confederatesoldiers, as plentiful as paper money was, were rarely paid. Much of theirsupplies came from home. The Confederate government could not supply themeven with blankets and shoes. This the state undertook to do and with somedegree of success. And at one time, however (1862), after impressing allthe leather and shoes in the state, only one thousand pairs could besecured.[547] Agents were sent with the armies going north into Kentuckyand Maryland to buy supplies of blankets, shoes, woollen clothing, andsalt, for the state. Blankets could not be obtained except by capture,running the blockade, or purchase through the lines, as there was not ablanket factory in the Confederacy in 1862. In the following year thecarpets in the state capitol were torn up and sent to the Alabama soldiersto be used as blankets.[548] In 1863 the legislature asked Congress toexempt from payment of the tax-in-kind the people of that part[Pg 201] of northAlabama which was subject to the invasions of the enemy. This was done.Congress was also asked to exempt from the payment of this tax thosefamilies of soldiers whose support was derived from white labor.[549] As aresult of economic conditions the taxation fell upon the slave owners ofcentral and south Alabama. But the suffering was much greater among thepeople whose supplies came from white labor. These were the peopleassisted by the state and county appropriations. Yet when they were ableto pay the tax-in-kind, they, at times, almost rebelled against it.

It has been estimated that from the latter part of 1862 to the close ofthe war at least one-fourth of the white population of the state wassupported by the state and counties. This estimate does not include thesoldiers.[550] A letter written in April, 1864, to the governor, fromTalladega County discloses the following facts in regard to that county:With a white population of 14,634, it had furnished up to April, 1864, 27companies of volunteers, not counting those who volunteered in otherregiments or who furnished substitutes or were enrolled in the reserves ormilitia. The citizens of the county pledged the soldiers that they wouldraise $20,000 annually, if necessary, for the support of the soldiers’families. In May, 1861, 30 persons received aid from the county; in April,1864, 3799. In 1863, the county received about $80,000 from the state forthe poor, and 25 pounds of salt for each member of needy families ofsoldiers. In addition to this the people of the county raised in thatyear, for the poor, $7276 in cash, 2570 bushels of corn, 102 bushels ofwheat, and 16 sacks of salt. The county bought 21,755 bushels of corn at$3 a bushel, and sold it at 50 cents a bushel to the poor; 920 bushels ofwheat at $10 a bushel and sold it at $2 a bushel; 233 sacks of salt at $80per sack, and sold it at $20 per sack. The destitute families were thoseof laborers who had joined the army. They lived mostly in the hillcountry, where they suffered much from the tories. Many were refugees fromnorth Alabama.[551] In May, 1864, 1600 soldiers’ families in RandolphCounty were supported by the state and county. Many thousand bushels ofcorn brought from middle Alabama had to be hauled 40 miles from therailway. Eight thousand people, or one-third of the population, weredestitute. The same condition[Pg 202] existed in other white counties.[552]Colonel Gibson, probate judge of Lawrence County, relates an experience ofhis in caring for the destitute. He went in person to Gadsden for 100sacks of salt. He found the sacks in a very bad condition, and repairedthe whole lot with his own hands so as to preserve the precious contents.This judge, with his own money, bought cotton cards for the poor people ofhis county as well as salt, which at that time cost $100 a barrel.[553]The people who had supplies gave to those who had none, and thussupplemented the work of the state. They felt it a duty to divide to thelast with the deserving families of the poorer soldiers.[554]

Early in the war, in order to provide against famine, the authorities,state and Confederate, began to urge the people to plant food crops only.They were asked to plant no cotton, except for home needs. Corn, wheat,beans, peas, potatoes, and other farm produce and live stock wereessential.[555] During the winter of 1862-1863 there was much distressamong the poor people in the cities and towns, and the next spring thesenators and representatives of Alabama united in an address to thepeople, asking them to stop raising cotton and raise more foodstuffs andlive stock. Governor Shorter begged the people to raise food crops to keepthe soldiers from starving. The planters were asked as a patriotic duty toraise the largest possible quantities of supplies. The ConfederateCongress also urged the people to raise provision crops instead ofcotton.[556] Though hard to convince that cotton was not king, the peoplein 1863 and 1864 turned their attention more to food crops, and hadtransportation facilities been good in 1864 and 1865, there need not havebeen any suffering in the state, and the armies could have been fedbetter.[557]

Because of the few railways, and the bad roads, often people in onesection of the state would be starving when there was an[Pg 203] abundance ahundred miles away. In the upper counties, when the soldiers’ familiesfailed to make a crop, and when supplies were hard to get, the probatejudges would give the women certificates, and send them down into thelower country for corn. Women whose husbands were at home hiding to escapethe conscript officer or the squad searching for deserters, young girls,and old women came in droves into the central counties both by railway andby boat, for free passage was given them, getting off at every landing andstation. With large sacks, these “corn women,” as they were called,scoured the country for corn and other provisions. Something was alwaysgiven them, and these supplies were sent to the station or landing forthem. Money was sometimes given to them, and a crowd of “corn women” ontheir way home would have several hundred dollars and quantities ofprovisions. These women were usually opposed to the war, and hated thearmy and every one in it; the negro they especially disliked. The “cornwomen” became a nuisance to the overseers and planters’ wives on theplantations.[558]

When there was plenty in the country, the towns and the armies were oftenin want. Speculators controlled the prices on whatever found its way tothe market. In 1861 Governor Moore issued a proclamation condemning theextortion of tradesmen, who were buying up the necessaries of life for thepurposes of speculation. Such, he declared, was unpatriotic andwicked.[559] The legislature made such an action a penal offence, and tobuy up provisions and clothing on the false pretence of being aConfederate agent was “felony.”[560] In 1862 some officers of theQuartermaster’s Department were found guilty of speculation in foodsupplies.[561] To prevent extortion the legislature afterwards enactedthat on all goods for sale or speculation, except medicine and drugs, aprofit of 15 per cent only could be made. All over that amount was to bepaid into the state treasury.[562] Millers were not to take more thanone-eighth for toll.[563]

At times it was unlawful to buy corn or other grain for shipment[Pg 204] and salein another part of the state or in other states. The military authoritiesin charge of the railroads sometimes prohibited the shipment of grain orsupplies away from the regions where the armies were likely to camp or tomarch. In December, 1862, it was enacted that no one except the produceror miller should sell corn without a license from the judge of probate,which license limited the sale to one county for one year at a profit ofnot more than 20 per cent.[564] However, in 1863 the legislatureauthorized T. B. Bethea of Montgomery to sell corn bought in MarengoCounty in any market in the state.[565]

Distress was produced in south Alabama by General Pemberton’s orderprohibiting shipment by private individuals from Mississippi to Alabama onthe railways.[566]

In each state and later in each congressional district there were pricecommissioners appointed, whose duty it was to fix schedules of prices atwhich the articles of common use and necessity were to be sold by theowners or paid for by the government when impressed. These prices werefixed for the whole state, were usually for a term of three months, andwere often below the real market value. Consequently this had no effectexcept to make the people hide their supplies from the government.[567]Prices necessarily varied greatly in the different sections of the state,and what was a reasonable value in central Alabama was unreasonably low innorth Alabama or at Mobile. In 1863 a Confederate quartermaster in northAlabama insisted that the price commissioners must raise their prices orhe would be unable to buy for the army. He wrote that wool and woollen andleather goods sold at Mobile in December, 1863, for from three to fivetimes as much as the scheduled prices of November 1, 1863. Prices in northAlabama, he added, must be made higher than in south Alabama because therewas barely enough in that section for the people themselves to liveon.[568]

For months after the end of the war the inhabitants of the hill andmountain districts of north Alabama and of the pine barrens[Pg 205] of southAlabama were on the verge of starvation, and a number of deaths actuallyoccurred. The Black Belt fared better, and recovered more quickly from thedevastation of the armies.

The large non-combatant negro population was not wholly a source ofmilitary and economic weakness to the state. In many respects it was asource of strength to the military authorities, who employed negroes invarious capacities, thus relieving whites for military service. They wereemployed as teamsters, cooks, nurses, and attendants in the hospitals,laborers on the fortifications at Mobile, Montgomery, and Selma, aroundthe ordnance factories at Selma, in the salt works of Clarke County, andat the nitre works of central and southern Alabama. Half as many whitescould be released for war as there were negroes employed in militaryindustries. The negroes employed by the authorities were usually chosenbecause trustworthy, and they were as devoted Confederates as the whites,all in all, perhaps, more so. They were efficient and faithful, and rarelydeserted to the enemy or allowed themselves to be captured, though manyopportunities were offered in north Alabama.[569]

After the secession of the state and before the formation of theConfederacy numerous offers of the services of negro men were made bytheir masters. The legislature passed an act to regulate the use of men soproffered.[570] Where the negroes were employed in great numbers by thegovernment they worked under the supervision, not of a governmentoverseer, but of one appointed by the master who supported the negroes,and who was paid or promised pay for their work. In the early part of thewar the white soldiers wanted to fight, but not to dig trenches, cook,drive teams, or play in the band. Congress authorized, in 1862, theemployment of negroes as musicians in the army, and the enlistment of fourcooks, who might be colored, for each company.[571] In the same year thestate[Pg 206] legislature authorized the governor to impress negroes to work onthe fortifications.[572] The state government impressed numbers of negroesas laborers in the various state industries, such as nitre and saltworking, building railroads, and hauling the tax-in-kind. The legislature,in August, 1863, declared that negroes ought to be placed in all possiblepositions in the workshops and as laborers, and the white men thusreleased should be sent to the army.[573]

Most of the impressment of blacks was done by the Confederate government.The Confederate Impressment Act of March 26, 1863, provided that no farmslave should be impressed before December 1. On February 17, 1864, freenegroes were made liable to service in the army as laborers and teamsters.Before the passage of this act free negroes had often been hired assubstitutes, and sent to the army as soldiers in place of those whopreferred the comforts of home.[574] Bishop-General Polk made a generalimpressment of negroes in north Alabama to work on the defences in hisdepartment, and many protests were made by the owners. A public meetingwas held in April, 1864, in Talladega County to protest against furtherimpressment of negroes. This county, in December, 1862, sent 90 negroes tothe fortifications; in January, 1863, 120 more were sent; in February,1863, 160; in March, 1863, 160; and so on. Talladega was one of thecounties that had to furnish supplies to the destitute mountain counties,and the loss of labor was severely felt. Randolph and other north Alabamacounties made similar protests. From north Alabama 2500 negroes were takenat one time to work on the fortifications in the Tennessee valley; thisfrequently occurred. Central and south Alabama and southeast Mississippifurnished many negroes to work on the fortifications at Selma, Montgomery,and Mobile. After Farragut passed the forts at Mobile, 4500 negroes wereat once set to throwing up earthworks and soon had the city insafety.[575] The lines of earthworks then made by the negroes stillstretch for miles around the city, through the pine woods, almost as welldefined as when thrown up.

When the crack regiments of young men from the black counties[Pg 207] went toVirginia, early in 1861, nearly every soldier had with him a negro servantwho faithfully took care of his “young master” and performed the roughtasks that fell to the soldier—splitting wood, digging ditches about thecamp, hauling, and building. The Third Alabama regiment of infantry, oneof the best, left Alabama a thousand strong in rank and file and severalhundred strong in negro servants. Two years later there were no negroservants; they had been sent home when their masters were killed, orbecause they were needed at home, or they had been sold and “eaten up” bythe youngsters, who now had to do their own work.[576] Only the officerskept body-servants after the first year or two. These servants were alwaysfaithful, even unto death. The old Confederate soldiers have pleasantrecollections of the devotion of the faithful black who “fought, bled, anddied” with him for four years in dreary camp and on bloody battle-field.The old soldier-servants who survive tell with pride of the times whenwith “young master” and “Mass Bob Lee” they “fowt the Yankees in Virginny”or at “Ilun 10.” Many a bullet was sent into the northern lines by theslaves secretly using the white soldiers’ guns. When capture was imminent,the negro servant would take watches, papers, and other valuables of themaster, and, making his way through the enemy’s lines, return to the oldhome with messages and directions from his master, then in prison. Inbattle the slave was close at hand to aid his master when wounded orexhausted. With a pine torch at night he searched among the wounded anddead for his master. Finding him wounded, he cared for him faithfully,bore him to hospital or friendly house, or carried him a long journeyhome. Finding him dead, the devoted slave performed the last duties andalone often buried his master, and then went sadly home to break the news.Sometimes he managed to carry home his master’s body, that it might lieamong kindred in the family burying-ground. If he could not do that, hecarried to his mistress his master’s sword, horse, trinkets, and often hislast message.[577]

The negroes were more willing to serve as soldiers than the whites werefor them to serve. The slave owner did not like the idea of[Pg 208] having thenegro fight, because it was felt that fundamentally the black was thecause of strife. Others were sensitive about using slave property to fightthe quarrels of free men. As the years went on opinion was more and morefavorable to negro enlistment, but it was too late before the Confederategovernment took up the matter.[578]

The average white person and the private soldiers generally were opposedto the enlistment of the negroes. The white soldier thought it was a whiteman’s duty and privilege to serve as a soldier and that the fight was awhite man’s fight. To make a negro a soldier was to grant him militaryequality at least. To enlist negroes meant to abolish slavery, sooner orlater: negro soldiers would be emancipated at once; the rest would befreed gradually. The non-slaveholders were more opposed to such a schemethan the slaveholders. The negro would have made a good soldier under hismaster, but he was worth almost as much to the Confederacy to raisesupplies and perform labor.[579]

The free negro population, though less than 3000 in number, were devotedsupporters of the Confederacy, and nearly all free black men were engagedin some way in the Confederate service. Some entered the service assubstitutes, others as cooks, teamsters, and musicians. In Mobile theyasked to be enlisted as soldiers under white officers. The skilfulartisans usually stayed at home at the urgent request of the whites, whoneeded their work, but, nevertheless, they contributed. All accounts agreethat they never avoided payment of the tax-in-kind, and othercontributions. One of the best-known of the free negroes was Horace Godwin(or King)[580] of Russell County. He was a constant and liberalcontributor to the support of the Confederacy. He also furnished clothesand money to the sons of his former master who were in the army, anderected a monument over the grave of their father.

During the war the greater part of the farm labor in the white countieswas done by old men, women, and children, and in the Black Belt by thenegroes. Usually the owner, who was perhaps entitled to exemption underthe “twenty-negro” law, went to war and left his family and plantation tothe care of the blacks. In no known instance was the trust misplaced.There was no insubordination among the negroes, no threat of violence. Thenegroes worked contentedly, though they were soon aware that if the warwent against their masters their freedom would result.[581] Under thedirection of the mistress, advised once in a while by letter from themaster in the army, the black overseer controlled his fellow-slaves,planted, gathered, and sold the crops, paid the tax-in-kind (underprotest), and cared for the white family.[582] In a day’s ride in theBlack Belt no able-bodied white man was to be found.[583] When raiderscame, the negroes saved the family valuables and concealed the farm cattlein the swamps, and though often mistreated by the plundering soldiersbecause they had hidden the property, they were faithful. Women andchildren felt safer then, when nearly all the white men were away, thanthey have ever felt since among free negroes.[584] The Black Belt couldnever again send out one-half as many whites to war, in proportion, as in1861-1865.

The negroes had every opportunity to desert to the Federals, except in theinterior of the state, but desertions were infrequent until near the closeof the war. In the Tennessee valley many were captured and carried off towork in the Federal camps. Numbers of these captives escaped and gladlyreturned home. As the Federal armies invaded the neighboring states,negroes from Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, and Mississippi were sent intothe state to escape capture. In many instances the refugee slaves were incharge of one of their own number—the overseer or driver. The invadingarmies in 1865 found numbers of negro refugees doing their best to keepout of the way of the Federals. As a rule only the negroes of badcharacter or young boys deserted to the enemy or gave information to theirarmies. The young negroes who followed the Federal raiders did not meetwith the treatment expected, and were glad enough to get back home. Mostof the negroes disliked and feared the invaders until they came asintensely as the whites did.[585]

The devotion and faithfulness of the house-servants and of many of thefield hands where they came in contact with the white people at “the bighouse” cannot be questioned.[586] On the part of these there was a desireto acquit themselves faithfully of the trust imposed in them.[587] It isone of the beautiful aspects of slavery. Yet this will not account for thegood behavior of the blacks on the large plantations where a white personwas seldom seen. They were as faithful almost as the house-servants. Itwas the faithfulness of trained obedience rather than of love orgratitude, for these were fleeting emotions in the soul of the averageAfrican.[588] On the other hand, the negro did not harbor malice orhatred. Constitutionally[Pg 211]good-natured, the negroes were as faithful to aharsh and strict master as to one who treated them as men and brothers.Where one would expect a desire and an effort for revenge, there wasnothing of the sort. Not so much love and fidelity, but training anddiscipline, made insurrection impossible among the blacks. Moreover, thenegro lacked the capacity for organization under his own leaders. Hadthere been strong leaders and agitators, especially white ones, it islikely that there would have been insurrection, and a negro rising inMarengo County would have disbanded the Alabama troops. But the system ofdiscipline prevented that.

The good church people maintain that one of the strongest influences tohold the negro to his duty was his religion. He had often been carefullyinstructed by preachers, black and white, and by his white master, and hisreligion was a real and living thing to him. Invariably the influence ofthe sturdy old black plantation preacher was exerted for good. Thisinfluence was strongly felt on the large plantations, where the negroesseldom held converse with white men.[589]

The negroes were frightened, during the last months of the war, atpossible capture by the Federals and forced enlistment or deportation tofreedom and work in camps. They had somewhat the small white child’s ideaof a “Yankee” as some kind of a thing with horns. When the end was at handand the bonds of the social order were loosening, the negro heard more ofthe freedom beyond the blue armies, and some of them hoped for andwelcomed the invaders. When the armies came at last, most of the negroeshelped, as before, to save all that could be saved from the plunderers. Atthe worst, the negro celebrated freedom by quitting work and following thearmies. Much stealing was done by them with the encouragement of theirdeliverers, but the behavior of the blacks was always better than that ofthe invaders. Many rode off the plantation stock in order to be[Pg 212] able tofollow the army to freedom and no work. Some burned buildings, etc.,because the army did. Most of the former house-servants remained faithfulto the whites until it was no longer safe for a black man to be the friendof a native white.

On the whole the behavior of the slaves during the war, whatever may bethe causes, was most excellent. To the last day of bondage the greatmajority were true against all temptations. With their white people theywept for the Confederate slain, were sad at defeat, and rejoiced invictory.[590]

During the first year of the war the higher institutions of learning kepttheir doors open and the common schools went on as usual. The strongesteducational institution was the University of Alabama, which was supportedby state appropriations. In 1860 a military department was established atthe university under Captain Caleb Huse, U.S.A., who afterwards became aConfederate purchasing agent in Europe. This step was not taken inanticipation of future trouble with the United States, but had beencontemplated for years. The student body had been rather turbulent andhard to control, and for the sake of order they were put under a strictmilitary discipline similar to the West Point system. Many studentsresigned early in 1861 and went into the Confederate service. Others,proficient in drill, were ordered by the governor to the state camps ofinstruction to drill the new regiments. There were no commencementexercises in 1861; but the trustees met and conferred degrees upon agraduating class of fifty-two, the most of whom were in the army.

The fall session of 1861 opened with a slight increase of students,[Pg 213] butthey were younger than usual,—from fourteen to seventeen years, and notas well prepared as before the war. Parents sent young boys to school tokeep them out of the army; many went to get the military training in orderthat they might become officers later; the state needed officers andencouraged military education. The university was required to furnishdrill-masters to the instruction camps without expense to the state. Assoon as the boys were well drilled they usually deserted school andentered the Confederate service. This custom threatened to break up theschool, and in 1862 all students were required to enlist as cadets fortwelve months, and were not permitted to resign. Yet they still desertedin squads of two, three, and four, and went to the army. Recruitingofficers would offer them positions as officers, and they would accept andleave the university. The students refused to study seriously anythingexcept military science and tactics. Numbers refused to take theexaminations in order that they might be suspended or expelled, and thusbe free to enlist.

In 1862-1863, 256 students were enrolled,—more than ever before,—butmostly boys of fourteen and fifteen. The majority of them were badlyprepared in their studies, and it was necessary to establish a preparatorydepartment for them. In 1863-1864 there were 341 boys enrolled—youngerthan ever. At the end of this session the first commencement since 1860was held, and degrees were conferred on a few who had enlisted and on oneor two who had not. The enrolment during the session of 1864-1865 wasbetween 300 and 400—all young boys of twelve to fifteen. The cadets werecalled out several times during this session to check Federal raids.Little studying was done; all were spoiling for a fight. When Croxtoncame, one night in 1865, the long roll was beaten, and every cadetresponded. Under the command of the president and the commandant theymarched against Croxton, whose force outnumbered theirs six to one. Therewas a sharp fight, in which a number of cadets were wounded, and then thepresident withdrew the corps to Marion in Perry County, where it wasdisbanded a few days later. It was now the end of the war. Croxton hadimperative orders to burn the university buildings, and they weredestroyed. There was a fine library, and the librarian, a Frenchman,begged in vain that it might be spared. The officers who[Pg 214] fired thelibrary saved one volume—the Koran—as a souvenir of the occasion.[591]

The Hospital for the Deaf and Dumb at Talladega and the Insane Asylum werecontinued throughout the war by means of state aid, and after the collapseof the Confederacy were not destroyed by the Federals.[592] La GrangeCollege, a Methodist institution at Florence, in north Alabama, lost itsendowment during the war, and after the occupation of that section by theFederals was closed. After the war it was given to the state, and is nowone of the State Normal Colleges. In 1861, Howard College, the Baptistinstitution at Marion, sent three professors and more than forty studentsto the army. Soon there was only one professor left to look after thebuildings; the rest of the faculty and all of the students had joined thearmy. The endowments and equipment of the college were totally destroyed.Nothing was left except the buildings.

The Southern University at Greensboro kept its doors open for three years,but had to close in 1864 for want of students and faculty. Most of itsendowment was lost in Confederate securities. After two years of war theEast Alabama College at Auburn suspended exercises. The buildings werethen used as a Confederate hospital. The endowment was totally lost inConfederate bonds, and after the war the property was given to the statefor the Agricultural and Mechanical College, now the Alabama PolytechnicInstitute. The Catholic College at Spring Hill near Mobile, the JudsonInstitute at Marion, a well-known Baptist College for women, and theMethodist Woman’s College at Tuskegee managed to keep going during thewar.[593] The student body at both male and female colleges was composedof younger and younger students each successive year. In 1865 onlychildren were found in any of them.

In 1860 there were many private schools throughout the state. Every townand village had its high school or academy. For several[Pg 215] years before thewar military schools had been springing up over the state. State aid wasoften given these in the form of supplies of arms. Several wereincorporated in 1860 and 1861. Private academies were incorporated in 1861in Coffee, Randolph, and Russell counties, with the usual provision thatintoxicating liquors should not be sold within a mile of the school.Charters of several schools were amended to suit the changed conditions.These schools were all destroyed, with the exception of ProfessorTutwiler’s Green Springs School, which survived the war, though all itsproperty was lost,[594] and two schools in Tuscaloosa. One of these, knownas “The Home School,” was conducted by Mrs. Tuomey, wife of the well-knowngeologist, and the other by Professor Saunders in the building later knownas the “Athenæum.”[595]

The only independent city public school system was that of Mobile,organized in 1852, after northern models. The Boys’ High School in thiscity was kept open during the war, though seriously thinned in numbers.The lower departments and the girls’ schools were always full.[596] Thestate system of schools was organized in 1855 on the basis of the Mobilesystem. It was not in full operation before the war came, though much hadbeen done.

During the first part of the war public and private schools went on asusual, though there was a constantly lessening number of boys whoattended. Some went to war, while others, especially in the whitecounties, had to stop school to look after farm affairs as soon as theolder men enlisted. Teachers of schools having over twenty pupils wereexempt,[597] but as a matter of fact the teachers who were physically ableenlisted in the army along with their older pupils. The teaching was leftto old men and women, to the preachers and disabled soldiers; most of thepupils were small girls and smaller boys. The older girls, as the war wenton, remained at home to weave and spin or to work in the fields. Insparsely settled[Pg 216]communities it became dangerous, on account of desertersand outlaws, for the children to make long journeys through the woods, andthe schools were suspended. The schools in Baldwin County were suspendedas early as 1861.[598]

Legislation for the schools went on much as usual. After the first yearfew new schools were established, public or private. Appropriations weremade by the legislature and distributed by the county superintendents.When the Federals occupied north Alabama, the legislature ordered thatschool money should be paid to the county superintendents in that sectionon the basis of the estimates for 1861.[599] The sixteenth section landswere sold when it was possible and the proceeds devoted to schoolpurposes.[600] A Confederate military academy was established in Mobileand conducted by army officers. The purpose of this institute was to givepractical training to future officers and to young and inexperiencedofficers.

Few, if any, of the schools were entirely supported by public money. Thesmall state appropriation was eked out by contributions from the patronsin the form of tuition fees. These fees were paid sometimes in Confederatemoney, but oftener in meat, meal, corn, cloth, yarn, salt, and othernecessaries of life. The school terms were shortened to two or threemonths in the summer and as many in the winter. The stronger pupils didnot attend school when there was work for them on the farm; consequentlythe summer session was the more fully attended. The school system as thusconducted did not break down, except in north Alabama, until thesurrender, though many schools were discontinued in particular localitiesfor want of teachers or pupils.

The quality of the instruction given was not of the best; only thosetaught who could do little else. The girls are said to have been muchbetter scholars than the boys, whose minds ran rather upon militarymatters. Often their play was military drill, and listening to war storiestheir chief intellectual exercise.[601]

Some rare and marvellous text-books again saw the light during the war.Old books that had been stored away for two generations[Pg 217] were brought outfor use. Webster’s “blue back” Speller was the chief reliance, and whenthe old copies wore out, a revised southern edition of the book wasissued. Smith’s Grammar was expurgated of its New Englandism and made apatriotic impression by its exercises. Davies’s old Arithmetics were used,and several new mathematical works appeared. Very large editions ofConfederate text-books were published in Mobile, and especially inRichmond; South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia also furnishedConfederate text-books to Alabama. Mobile furnished Mississippi.[602] Ihave seen a small geography which had crude maps of all the countries,including the Confederate States, but omitting the United States. A fewlines of text recognized the existence of the latter country. Anothergeography was evidently intended to teach patriotism and pugnacity, tojudge from its contents. Here are some extracts from W. B. Moore’s PrimaryGeography: “In a few years the northern states, finding their climate toocold for the negroes to be profitable, sold them to the people livingfarther south. Then the northern states passed laws to forbid any personowning slaves in their borders. Then the northern people began to preach,to lecture, and to write about the sin of slavery. The money for whichthey had sold their slaves was now partly spent in trying to persuade thesouthern states to send their slaves back to Africa.... The people [of theNorth] are ingenious and enterprising, and are noted for their tact in‘driving a bargain.’ They are refined and intelligent on all subjects butthat of negro slavery; on this they are mad....[Pg 218] This [the Confederacy] isa great country! The Yankees thought to starve us out when they sent theirships to guard our seaport towns. But we have learned to make many things;to do without others.

“A. A fine inland commerce, and bids fair, sometime, to have a grandcommerce on the high seas.

In some families the children were taught at home by a governess or bysome member of the family. This was the case especially in the Black Belt,where there were not enough white children to make up a school. Manymistresses of plantations were, however, too busy to look after theeducation of their children, and the latter, when old enough, would besent to a friend or relative who lived in town, in order to attendschool.[604] Sometimes a planter had a school on his plantation for thebenefit of his own children. To this school would be admitted the childrenof all the whites on the plantation, and of the neighbors who were nearenough to come.[605]

In 1860 there were ninety-six periodicals of various kinds published inAlabama. About twenty-five of these suspended publication during the warand were not revived afterwards. Numbers of others suspended for a shorttime when paper could not be secured or when being moved from the enemy.The monthly publications—usually agricultural—all suspended. Theso-called “unionist” newspapers of 1860 went to the wall early in the waror were sold to editors of different political principles.[606] In spiteof the existence of war, the circulation decreased. Most of the readingmen were in the army; the people at home became less and less able to payfor a newspaper as the war progressed, and many persons read a[Pg 219] singlecopy, which was handed around the community. People who could not readwould subscribe for newspapers and get some one to read for them. An eagercrowd surrounded the reader. Papers left for a short time in thepost-office were read by the post-office loiterers as a right. Few warpapers are now in existence, there were so many uses for them after theywere read.

It is said that the newspaper men did more service in the field inproportion to numbers than any other class. At the first sound of war manyof them left the office and did not return until the struggle was ended.Often every man connected with a paper would volunteer, and the paperwould then cease to be issued. There were instances when both father andson left the newspaper office, and one or both were killed in the war.Colonel E. C. Bullock of the Alabama troops was a fine type of the Alabamaeditor. The law exempted from service one editor and the necessaryprinters for each paper. But little advantage was taken of this; fewable-bodied newspaper men failed to do service in the field.[607]

Sometimes in north Alabama publication had to cease because of theoccupation of the country by the Federal forces, which confiscated ordestroyed the printing outfits. It was difficult to get supplies of paper,ink, and other newspaper necessaries. No new lots of type were to be hadat all during the whole war. Some papers were printed for weeks at a timeon blue, brown, or yellow wrapping-paper. The regular printing-paper wasoften of bad quality and the ink was also bad, so that to-day it is almostimpossible to read some of the papers. Others are as white and clean as ifprinted a year ago. A bound volume presents a variegated appearance—someissues clear and white and strong, others stained and greasy from the badink. The type was often so worn as to be almost illegible. In someinstances, when the sense could be made out, letters were omitted fromwords, and even words were omitted, in order to save the type for useelsewhere.

The reading matter in the papers was not as a rule very exciting. Briefsummaries were given of military operations, in which the Confederateswere usually victorious, and of political events, North and South. One ofthe latest war papers that I have seen chronicles[Pg 220] the defeat of Grant byLee about April 10, 1865. Letters were printed from the editor in thefield; former employees also wrote letters for the paper, and items ofinterest from the soldiers’ letters were published. New legislation, stateand Confederate, was summarized. The governor’s proclamations were madepublic through the medium of the county newspapers. It was about the onlyway in which the governor could reach his people. The orders andadvertisements of the army commissaries and quartermasters and conscriptofficers were printed each week; there were advertisements forsubstitutes, a few for runaway negroes, and a very few tradeadvertisements. If a merchant had a stock of goods, he was sure to befound without giving notice. Notices of land sales were frequent, but veryfew negroes were offered for sale. The price of slaves was high to thelast, a sentimental price. Many papers devoted columns and pages to theprinting of directions for making at home various articles of food andclothing that formerly had been purchased from the North—how to makesoap, salt, stockings, boxes without nails, coarse and fine cloth,substitutes for tea, coffee, drugs, etc.

Mobile, Montgomery, Selma, and Tuscaloosa were the headquarters of thestrongest newspapers. TheMobile Tribune and theRegister andAdvertiser were suppressed when the city fell; the material of the latterwas confiscated. Both had been strong war papers. In April, 1865, theMontgomery Advertiser sent its material to Columbus, Georgia, to escapedestruction by the raiders, but Wilson’s men burned it there. InMontgomery the newspaper files were piled in the street by Wilson andburned; and when Steele came, with the second army of invasion, theAdvertiser, which was coming out on a makeshift press, was suppressed,and not until July was it permitted to appear again. TheMontgomeryMail, edited by Colonel J. J. Seibels, who had leanings toward peace,began early in 1865 to prepare the people for the inevitable. Its attitudewas bitterly condemned by theAdvertiser and by many people, but it wassaved from destruction by this course.[608]

Most of the people of Alabama had but little time for reading, and thosewho had the time and inclination were usually obliged to contentthemselves with old books. The family Bible was in a great number of homesalmost the only book read. Most of the new books read were published inAtlanta, Richmond, or Charleston, though during the last two years of thewar Mobile publishers sent out many thousand volumes. W. G. Clark and Co.,of Mobile, confined their attention principally to text-books, but S. H.Goetzel was more ambitious. His list includes text-books, works onmilitary science and tactics, fiction, translations, music, etc. Thebest-selling southern novel published during the war was “Macaria,” byAugusta J. Evans of Mobile. It was printed by Goetzel, who also publishedMrs. Ford’s “Exploits of Morgan and his Men,” which was pirated orreprinted by Richardson of New York. Evans and Cogswell of Charlestonpublished Miss Evans’s “Beulah.” Both “Macaria” and “Beulah” werereprinted in the North. Goetzel bound his books in rotten pasteboard andin wall-paper. Goetzel was also an enterprising publisher of translations.In 1864 he published (on wrapping-paper) a four-volume translation, byAdelaide de V. Chaudron, of Muhlbach’s “Joseph II and His Court.” Hepublished other translations of Miss Muhlbach’s historical novels,—herfirst American publisher. Owen Meredith’s poem, “Tanhauser,” was firstprinted in America in Mobile. An opera of the same name was alsopublished. Hardee’s “Rifle and Infantry Tactics,” in two volumes, andWheeler’s “Cavalry Tactics” were printed in large editions by Goetzel forthe use of Alabama troops.

Lieutenant-Colonel Freemantle’s book, “Three Months in the SouthernStates,” was published in Mobile in 1864, and in the same year the worksof Dickens and George Eliot were reprinted by Goetzel. An interesting bookpublished by Clark of Mobile was entitled “The Confederate States Almanacand Repository of Useful Knowledge.” It appeared annually to 1864 inMobile and Augusta, and resembled the annual cyclopædias and year-books ofto-day. Small devotional books and tracts were printed in nearly everytown that had a printing-press. It is said that the church societiespublished no doctrinal or controversial tracts. Hundreds of different[Pg 222]tracts, such as Cromwell’s “Soldier’s Pocket Bible,” were printed fordistribution among the soldiers. But not enough Bibles and Testamentscould be made. The northern Bible societies “with one exception” refusedto supply the Confederate sinners. The American Bible Society of New Yorkgave hundreds of thousands of Bibles, Testaments, etc., principally forthe Confederate troops. At one time 150,000 were given, at another 50,000,and the work was continued after the war. In 1862 the British and ForeignBible Society gave 310,000 Bibles, etc., for the soldiers, and gaveunlimited credit to the Confederate Bible Society.[609]

After the surrender the material of the newspapers and publishing houseswas confiscated or destroyed.

The religious organizations represented in the state strongly supportedthe Confederacy, and even before the beginning of hostilities several ofthem had placed themselves on record in regard to political questions. Asa rule, there was no political preaching, but at conferences andconventions the sentiment of the clergy would be publicly declared.

The Alabama Baptist Convention, in 1860, declared, in a series ofresolutions on the state of the country, that though standing aloof forthe most part from political parties and contests, yet their retiredposition did not exclude the profound conviction, based on unquestionedfacts, that the Union had failed in important particulars to answer thepurpose for which it was created. From the Federal government the southernpeople could no longer hope for justice, protection, or safety, especiallywith reference to their peculiar property, recognized by the Constitution.They thought themselves entitled to equality of rights as citizens of therepublic, and they meant to maintain their rights, even at the risk oflife and all things held dear. They felt constrained “to declare to ourbrethren and fellow-citizens, before mankind and before our God, that wehold ourselves subject to the call of proper authority in defence of thesovereignty and[Pg 223] independence of the state of Alabama and of her sacredright as a sovereignty to withdraw from this Union, and to make anyarrangement which her people in constituent assemblies may deem best forsecuring their rights. And in this declaration we are heartily,deliberately, unanimously, and solemnly united.”[610] Bravely did theystand by this declaration in the stormy years that followed. A year later(1861) the Southern Baptist Convention adopted resolutions sustaining theprinciples for which the South was fighting, condemning the course of theNorth, and pledging hearty support to the Confederate government.[611]Like action was taken by the Southern Methodist Church, but little can nowbe found on the subject. One authority states that in 1860 the politicianswere anxious that the Alabama Conference should declare its sentiment inregard to the state of the country. This was strongly opposed andfrustrated by Bishops Soule and Andrew, who wanted to keep the church outof politics.[612] From another account we learn that in December, 1860, ameeting of Methodist ministers in Montgomery declared in favor ofsecession from the Union.[613]

In 1862 a committee report to the East Liberty Baptist Association urged“one consideration upon the minds of our membership: the present civil warwhich has been inaugurated by our enemies must be regarded as aprovidential visitation upon us on account of our sins.” This called forthwarm discussion and was at once modified by the insertion of the words,“though entirely just on our part.”[614]

In 1863 the Alabama ministers—Baptist, Methodist Episcopal South,Methodist Protestant, United Synod South, Episcopal, andPresbyterian—united with the clergy of the other southern states in “TheAddress of the Confederate Clergy to Christians throughout the World.” Theaddress declared that the war was being waged to achieve that which it wasimpossible to accomplish by violence, viz. to restore the Union. Itprotested against the action of the North in forcing the war upon theSouth and condemned the abolitionist policy of Lincoln as indicated in theEmancipation[Pg 224]Proclamation. It made a lengthy defence of the principlesfor which the South was fighting.[615]

By law ministers were exempt from military service.[616] But nearly all ofthe able-bodied ministers went to the war as chaplains, or as officers,leading the men of their congregations. It was considered ratherdisgraceful for a man in good physical condition to take up the professionof preaching or teaching after the war began. Young men “called to preach”after 1861 received scant respect from their neighbors, and the governmentrefused to recognize the validity of these “calls to preach.” Thepreachers at home were nearly all old or physically disabled men.Gray-haired old men made up the conferences, associations, conventions,councils, synods, and presbyteries. But to the last their spirit was high,and all the churches faithfully supported the Confederate cause. Theycheered and kept up the spirits of the people, held society togetheragainst the demoralizing influences of civil strife, and were a strongsupport to the state when it had exhausted itself in the struggle. Theygave thanks for victory, consolation for defeat; they cared for the needyfamilies of the soldiers and the widows and orphans made by war. Thechurch societies incorporated during the last year of the war show thatthe state relief administration had broken down. Some of them were, “TheMethodist Orphans’ Home of East Alabama,” “The Orphans’ Home of the Synodof Alabama,” “The Samaritan Society of the Methodist Protestant Church,”“The Preachers’ Aid Society of the Montgomery Conference of the MethodistEpiscopal Church South.” The Episcopal Church was incorporated in orderthat it might make provision for the widows and orphans of soldiers.[617]

In 1861 the Presbyterian, Cumberland Presbyterian, Episcopal, andMethodist churches in Huntsville sent their bells to Holly Springs,Mississippi, and had them cast into cannon for a battery to be called the“Bell Battery of Huntsville.” Before they were used the cannon werecaptured by the Federals when they invaded north Alabama in 1862.[618]

Each command of volunteers attended church in a body before[Pg 225] departing forthe front. On such occasions there were special services in which divinefavor was invoked upon the Confederate cause and its defenders. Religionexercised a strong influence over the southern people. The strongestdenominations were the Methodists and the Baptists. Nearly all thesoldiers belonged to some church, the great majority to the two justnamed. The good influence of the chaplains over the undisciplined men ofthe southern armies was incalculable. To the religious training of the menis largely due the fact that the great majority of the soldiers returnedbut little demoralized by the four years of war.[619]

Not only was the southern soldier not demoralized by his army life, butmany passed through the baptism of fire and came out better men in allrespects. The “poor whites,” so-called, arrived at true manhood, theyfought their way into the front of affairs, and learned their true worth.The reckless, slashing temper of the young bloods disappeared. All weresteadied and sobered and imbued with greater self-respect and respect forothers. And the work of the church at home and in the army aided thistendency; its democratic influences were strong.

The white congregations at home were composed of women, old men, cripples,and children. Among the women the religious spirit was strongest; itaccounts in some degree for their marvellous courage and constancy duringthe war. They were often called to church to sanctify a fast. The favoritereadings in the Bible were the first and second chapters of Joel. Theyworked and fasted and prayed for protection and for victory.[620] TheBible was the most commonly read book in the entire land. The people,naturally religious before the war, became intensely so during thestruggle.[621]

After the separation of the southern churches from the northernorganizations the religious instruction of the negroes was conducted[Pg 226]under less difficulties, and greater progress was made. There was nolonger danger of interference by hostile mission boards controlled byantislavery officials.[622] The mission work among the negroes wasprospering in 1861, and while the white congregations were often withoutpastors during the war, the negro missions were always supplied.[623] Manynegro congregations were united to white ones and were thus served by thesame preacher; others were served by regular circuit riders. Some of thebest ministers were preachers to the blacks, and were most devotedpastors. One winter a preacher in the Tennessee valley, when the Federalshad burned the bridges, swam the river in order to reach his negro charge.The faithful[Pg 227] blacks were waiting for him and built him a fire of pineknots. He preached and dried his clothes at the same time.[624]

The fidelity of the slave during these trying times called forthexpressions of gratitude from the churches, and all of them did what theycould to better his social and religious condition.[625] Often when therewas no white preacher, the old negro plantation preacher took his place inthe pulpit and preached to the white and black congregation.[626] The goodconduct of the slaves during the war was due in large degree to thereligious training given them by white and black preachers and by thefamilies of the slaveholders. The old black plantation preacher was atower of strength to the whites of the Black Belt.[627] The missions weredestroyed by the victorious Unionists, and the negro members of thesouthern churches were encouraged to separate themselves from the “rebel”churches; and never since have the southern religious organizations beenable to enter successfully upon work among the blacks.

With the advance of the Federal armies came the northern churches.Territory gained by northern arms was considered territory gained for thenorthern churches. Ministers came, or were sent down, to take the place ofsouthern ministers, who were prohibited from preaching. The militaryauthorities were especially hostile to the Methodist Episcopal ChurchSouth,[628] and to the Protestant Episcopal Church, annoying the ministersand congregations of these bodies in every way. They were told that uponthem lay the blame for the war; they had done so much to bring it on.There were very few “loyal” ministers and no “loyal” bishops, but theSecretary of War at Washington, in an order dated November 30, 1863,placed at the disposal of Bishop Ames of the northern Methodist Church,all houses of worship belonging to the southern Methodist Church in whicha “loyal” minister, appointed by a “loyal” bishop, was[Pg 228] not officiating.It was a matter of the greatest importance to the government, the orderstated, that Christian ministers should by example and precept support andfoster the “loyal” sentiment of the people. Bishop Ames, the orderrecited, enjoyed the entire confidence of the War Department, and no doubtwas entertained by the government but that the ministers appointed by himwould be “loyal.” The military authorities were directed to support BishopAmes in the execution of his important mission.[629] A second order, datedJanuary 14, 1864, directed the military authorities to turn over to theAmerican Baptist Home Mission Society all churches belonging to thesouthern Baptists. Confidence was expressed in the “loyalty” of thissociety and its ministers.[630] Other orders placed the Board of HomeMissions of the United Presbyterian Church in charge of the churches ofthe Associate Reformed Church, and authorized the northern branches of the(O. S. and N. S.) Presbyterians to appoint “loyal” ministers for thechurches of these denominations in the South.

Lincoln seems to have been displeased with the action taken by the WarDepartment, but nothing more was done than to modify the orders so as toconcern only the “churches in the rebellious states.”[631]

Under these orders churches in north Alabama were seized and turned overto the northern branches of the same denomination. In some of the mountaindistricts this was not opposed by the so-called “union” element of thepopulation. But in most places bitter feelings were aroused, andcontroversies began which lasted for several years after the war ended.The northern churches in some cases attempted to hold permanently theproperty turned over to them during the war. In central and south Alabama,where the Federal forces did not appear until 1865, these orders were notenforced.

In the section of the country occupied by the enemy, the militaryauthorities attempted to regulate the services in the various churches.Prayer had to be offered for the President of the United States and forthe Federal government. It was a criminal offence to pray for theConfederate leaders. Preachers who refused to pray “loyal”[Pg 229] prayers andpreach “loyal” sermons were forbidden to hold services. In Huntsville, in1862, the Rev. Frederick A. Ross, a celebrated Presbyterian clergyman, wasarrested by General Rousseau, and sent North for praying a “disloyal”prayer in which he said, “We pray Thee, O Lord, to bless our enemies andto remove them from our midst as soon as seemeth good in Thy sight.” Heseems to have been released, for in February, 1865, General R. S. Stanleywrote to General Thomas’s adjutant-general protesting against the policyof the provost-marshal in Huntsville, who had selected a number ofprominent men to answer certain test questions as to “loyalty.” If notanswered to his satisfaction, the person catechized was to be sent beyondthe lines. Among other prominent citizens two ministers—Ross andBannister—were selected for expulsion. These, General Stanley said, hadnever taken part in politics, and he thought it was a bad policy. However,he stated that General Granger wanted the preachers expelled.[632]

Throughout the war there was a disposition on the part of some armyofficers to compel ministers of southern sympathies to conduct “loyal”services—that is, to preach and pray for the success of the Federalgovernment. It was especially easy to annoy the Episcopal clergy, onaccount of the formal prayer used, but other denominations also suffered.In one instance, a Methodist minister was told that he must take the oath(this was soon after the surrender) and pray for the President of theUnited States, or he must stop preaching. For a time he refused, butfinally he took the oath, and, as he said, “I prayed for the President;that the Lord would take out of him and his allies the hearts of beastsand put into them the hearts of men, or remove the cusses from office. Thelittle captain never asked me any more to pray for the President and theUnited States.”[633]

In the churches the situation at the close of the war was not promisingfor peace. Some congregations were divided; church property was held byaliens supported by the army; “loyal” services were still demanded; thenorthern churches were sending agents[Pg 230] to occupy the southern field; thenegroes were being forcibly separated from southern supervision; thepolicy of “disintegration and absorption” was beginning. Consequently thechurch question during Reconstruction was one of the most irritating.[634]

During the early months of 1861 society was at its brightest and best. Forseveral years social life had been characterized by a vague feeling ofunrest. Political questions became social questions, society and politicswent hand in hand, and the social leaders were the political leaders. Thewomen were well informed on all questions of the day and especially on theburning sectional issues that affected them so closely. After the JohnBrown episode at Harper’s Ferry, the women felt that for them there couldbe no safety until the question was settled. They were strongly in favorof secession after that event if not before; they were even more unanimousthan the men, feeling that they were more directly concerned in questionsof interference with social institutions in the South. There was to them agreat danger in social changes made, as all expected, by John Brownmethods.[635]

Brilliant social events celebrated the great political actions of the day.The secession of Alabama, the sessions of the convention, the[Pg 231] meeting ofthe legislature, the meeting of the Provisional Congress, the inaugurationof President Davis—all were occasions for splendid gatherings of beautyand talent and strength. There were balls, receptions, and other socialevents in country and in town. There was no city life, and country andtown were socially one. Enthusiasm for the new government of the southernnation was at fever heat for months. At heart many feared and dreaded thatwar might follow, but had war been certain, the knowledge would haveturned no one from his course. When war was seen to be imminent,enthusiasm rose higher. Fear and dread were in the hearts of the women,but no one hesitated. From social gayety they turned to the task of makingready for war their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sweethearts. Theyhurriedly made the first gray uniforms and prepared supplies for thecampaign. When the companies were fitted out and ready to depart, therewere farewell balls and sermons, and presentations of colors by youngwomen. These ceremonies took place in the churches, town halls, andcourt-houses. Speeches of presentation were made by young women, and ofacceptance by the officers. The men always spoke well. The women showed athorough acquaintance with the questions at issue, but most of theiraddresses were charges to the soldiers, encouragement to duty. “Go, mysons, and return victorious or fall in the cause of the South,” or asimilar paraphrase, was often heard. One lady said, “We confide [to you]this emblem of our zeal for liberty, trusting that it will nerve yourhearts and strengthen your hands in the hour of trial, and that itspresence will forbid the thought of seeking any other retreat than indeath.” Another maiden told her soldiers that “we who present this bannerexpect it to be returned brightened by your chivalry or to become theshroud of the slain.” “The terrors of war are far less to be feared thanthe degradation of ignoble submission,” the soldiers were assured byanother bright-eyed girl. The legends embroidered or woven into the colorswere such as these: “To the Brave,” “Victory or Death,” “NeverSurrender.”[636]

There were dress parades, exhibition drills, picnics, barbecues; and thenthe soldiers marched away. After a short season of feverish social gayety,the seriousness of war was brought home to the[Pg 232]people, and those leftbehind settled down to watch and wait and work and pray for the loved onesand for the cause. It was soon a very quiet life, industrious, strainedwith waiting and listening for news. For a long time the interior countrywas not disturbed by fear of invasion. Life was monotonous; sorrow cameafresh daily; and it was a blessing to the women that they had to work sohard during the war, as constant employment was their greatest comfort.

The great majority of the people of Alabama lived in the country on farmsand plantations. They had been dependent upon the North for all the finerand many of the commoner manufactured articles. The staple crop wascotton, which was sold in exchange for many of the ordinary necessaries oflife. Now all was changed. The blockade shut off supplies from abroad, andthe plantations had to raise all that was needed for feeding and clothingthe people at home and the soldiers in the field. This necessitated achange in plantation economy. After the first year of war less and lesscotton was planted, and food crops became the staple agriculturalproductions. The state and Confederate authorities encouraged thistendency by advice and by law. The farms produced many things which wereseldom planted before the war, when cotton was the staple crop. Cerealswere cultivated in the northern counties and to some extent in centralAlabama, though wheat was never successful in central and south Alabama.Rice, oats, corn, peas, pumpkins, ground-peas, and chufas were grown moreand more as the war went on. Ground-peas (called also peanuts, goobers, orpindars, according to locality) and chufas were raised to feed hogs andpoultry. The common field pea, or “speckled Jack,” was one of themainstays of the Confederacy. It is said that General Lee called it “theConfederacy’s best friend.” At “laying by” the farmers planted peasbetween the hills of corn, and the vines grew and the crop matured withlittle further trouble. Sweet potatoes were everywhere raised, and becamea staple article of food.

Rice was stripped of its husk by being beaten with a wooden pestle in amortar cut out of a section of a tree. The threshing of the wheat was acause of much trouble. Rude home-made flails were used, for[Pg 233] there were noregular threshers. No one raised much of it, for it was a great task toclean it. One poor woman who had a small patch of wheat threshed it bybeating the sheaves over a barrel, while bed quilts and sheets were spreadaround to catch the scattering grains. Another placed the sheaves in alarge wooden trough, then she and her small children beat the sheaves withwooden clubs. After being threshed in some such manner, the chaff wasfanned out by pouring the grain from a measure in a breeze and catching iton a sheet.

Field labor was performed in the Black Belt by the negroes, but in thewhite counties the burden fell heavily upon the women, children, and oldmen. In the Black Belt the mistress of the plantation managed affairs withthe assistance of the trusty negroes. She superintended the planting ofthe proper crops, the cultivation and gathering of the same, and sent tothe government stores the large share called for by the tax-in-kind. Theold men of the community, if near enough, assisted the women managers byadvice and direction. Often one old gentleman would have half a dozenfeminine planters as his wards. Life was very busy in the Black Belt, butthere was never the suffering in this rich section that prevailed in theless fertile white counties from which the white laborers had gone to war.In the latter section the mistress of slaves managed much as did her BlackBelt sister, but there were fewer slaves and life was harder for all, andhardest of all for the poor white people who owned no slaves. When fewslaves were owned by a family, the young white boys worked in the fieldwith them, while the girls of the family did the light tasks about thehouse, though at times they too went to the field. Where there were noslaves, the old men, cripples, women, and children worked on the littlefarms. All over the country the young boys worked like heroes. All hadbeen taught that labor was honorable, and all knew how work should bedone. So when war made it necessary, all went to work only the harder;there was no holding of hands in idleness. The mistress of the plantationwas already accustomed to the management of large affairs, and war broughtadditional duties rather than new and strange problems; but the wife ofthe poor farmer or renter, left alone with small children, had a hard timemaking both ends meet.

Many articles in common use had now to be made at home, and the plantationdeveloped many small industries. There was much joy when a substitute wasfound, because it made the people independent of the outside world. Farmimplements were made and repaired. Ropes were made at home of variousmaterials, such as bear-grass, sunflower stalks, and cotton; baskets, ofwillow branches and of oak splints; rough earthenware, of clay and thenglazed; cooking soda from seaweed and from corn-cob ashes; ink fromnut-galls or ink balls, from the skin of blue fig, from green persimmons,pokeberries, rusty nails, pomegranate rind, and indigo. Cement was madefrom wild potatoes and flour; starch from nearly ripe corn, sweetpotatoes, and flour. Bottles or gourds, with small rolls of cotton forwicks, served as lamps, and in place of oil, cotton-seed oil, ground-peaor peanut oil, and lard were used. Candles made of wax or tallow wereused, while in the “piney woods” pine knots furnished all the necessaryillumination. Mattresses were stuffed with moss, leaves, and “cat-tails.”No paper could be wasted for envelopes. The sheet was written on exceptjust enough for the address when folded. In other instances wall-paper andsheets of paper with pictures on one side and the other side blank werefolded and used for envelopes. Mucilage for the envelopes was made frompeach-tree gum. Corn-cob pipes with a joint of reed or fig twig for a stemwere fashionable. The leaves of the China tree kept insects away fromdried fruit; the China berries were made into whiskey and were used as abasis for “Poor Man’s” soap. Wax myrtle and rosin were also used in makingsoap. Beer was made from corn, persimmons, potatoes, and sassafras;“lemonade” from may-pops and pomegranates. Dogwood and willow bark weremixed with smoking tobacco “to make it go a long way.” Shoes had to bemade for white and black, and backyard tanneries were established. Thehides were first soaked in a barrel filled with a solution of lye untilthe hair would come off, when they were placed in a pit between alternatelayers of red oak bark and water poured in. In this “ooze” they soaked forseveral months and were then ready for use. The hides of horses, dogs,mules, hogs, cows, and goats were utilized, and shoes, harness, andsaddles were made on the farm.

[Pg 235]All the domestic animals were now raised in larger numbers, especiallybeef cattle, sheep, goats, and hogs. Sheep were raised principally fortheir wool. The work of all was directed toward supplying the army, andthe best of everything was sent to the soldiers.

Home life was very quiet, busy, and monotonous, with its daily routine ofduty in which all had a part. There were few even of the wealthiest whodid not work with their hands if physically able. Life was hard, butpeople soon became accustomed to makeshifts and privation, and most ofthem had plenty to eat, though the food was usually coarse. Corn bread wasnearly always to be had; in some places often nothing else. After thefirst year few people ever had flour to cook; especially was this the casein the southern counties. When a family was so fortunate as to obtain asack or barrel of flour, all the neighbors were invited in to getbiscuits, though sometimes all of it was kept to make starch. Bolted mealwas used as a substitute for flour in cakes and bread. Most of the meatproduced was sent to the army, and the average family could afford it onlyonce a day, many only once a week. When an epidemic of cholera killed thehogs, the people became vegetarians and lived on corn bread, milk, andsyrup; many had only the first.[637] Tea and coffee were very scarce inthe interior of Alabama, and small supplies of the genuine were saved foremergencies. For tea there were various substitutes, among them hollyleaves, rose leaves, blackberry and raspberry leaves; while for coffee,rye, okra seed, corn, bran, meal, hominy, peanuts, and bits of parched orroasted sweet potatoes were used. Syrup was made from the juice of thewatermelon, and preserves from its rind. The juice of corn-stalks was alsomade into syrup. In south Alabama sugar-cane and in north Alabama sorghumfurnished “long sweetening.” The sorghum was boiled in old iron kettles,and often made the teeth black. In south Alabama syrup was used instead ofsugar in cooking. In grinding sugar-cane and sorghum, wooden rollers oftenhad to be made, as iron ones were scarce. However, when they could beobtained, they were passed from family to family around the community.

Before the war most articles of clothing were purchased in the North orimported from abroad. Now that the blockade shut Alabama off from allsources of supply, the people had to make their cloth and clothing athome. The factories in the South could not even supply the needs of thearmy, and there was a universal return to primitive and frontierconditions. Old wheels and looms were brought out, and others were madelike them. The state government bought large quantities of cotton and woolcards for the use of poor people. The women worked incessantly. Everyhousehold was a small factory, and in an incredibly short time the womenmastered the intricacies of looms, spinning-wheels, warping frames,swifts, etc. Negro women sometimes learned to spin and weave. The whites,however, did most of it; weaving was too difficult for the average negroto learn. The area devoted to the cultivation of cotton was restricted bylaw, but more than enough was raised to supply the few factories thenoperating, principally for the government, and to supply thespinning-wheels and hand looms of the people.

As a rule, each member of the family had a regularly allotted task foreach day in spinning or weaving. The young girls could not weave, butcould spin;[638] while the women became expert at weaving and spinning andmade beautiful cloth. All kinds of cotton goods were woven, coarseosnaburgs, sheetings, coverlets, counterpanes, a kind of muslin, andvarious kinds of light cloth for women’s dresses. Wool was grown on alarge scale as the war went on, and the women wove flannels, plaids,balmorals, blankets, and carpets.[639] Gray jeans was woven to makeclothing for the soldiers, who had almost no clothes except those sentthem by their home people. A soldier’s pay would not buy a shirt, evenwhen he was paid, which was seldom the case. Nearly every one wovehomespun, dyed with home-made dyes, and it was often very pretty. Thewomen took more pride in their neat homespun dresses than they did beforethe war in the possession of silks and satins. And there was friendlyrivalry between them in[Pg 237] spinning and weaving the prettiest homespun asthere was in making the whitest sugar, the cleanest rice, and the bestwheat and corn. But they could not make enough cloth to supply both armyand people, and old clothes stored away were brought out and used to thelast scrap. When worn out the rags were unravelled and the short threadsspun together and woven again into coarse goods. Pillow-cases and sheetswere cut up for clothes and were replaced by homespun substitutes, andwindow curtains were made into women’s clothes. Carpets were made intoblankets. There were no blanket factories, and the legislatureappropriated the carpets in the capitol for blankets for thesoldiers.[640] Some people went to the tanyards and got hair from horseand cow hides and mixed it with cotton to make heavy cloth for winter use,which is said to have made a good-looking garment. Once in a long whilethe father or brother in the army would send home a bolt of calico, oreven just enough to make one dress. Then there would be a very proud womanin the land. Scraps of these rare dresses and also of the homespun dressesare found in the old scrap-books of the time. The homespun is thebetter-looking. No one saw a fashion plate, and each one set the style.Hoop-skirts were made from the remains of old ones found in the garretsand plunder rooms. It is said that the southern women affected dressesthat were slightly longer in front than behind, and held them aside intheir hands. Sometimes fortunate persons succeeded in buying for a fewhundred dollars some dress material that had been brought through theblockade. A calico dress cost in central Alabama from $100 to $600, othermaterial in proportion. Sewing thread was made by the home spinners withinfinite trouble, but it was never satisfactory. Buttons were made ofpasteboard, pine bark, cloth, thread, persimmon seed, gourds, and woodcovered with cloth. Pasteboard, for buttons and other uses, was made bypasting several layers of old papers together with flour paste.[641]

Sewing societies were formed for pleasure and to aid soldiers and thepoor. At stated intervals great quantities of clothing and supplies weresent to the soldiers in the field and to the hospitals. All[Pg 238] women becameexpert in crocheting and knitting—the occupations for leisure moments.Even when resting, one was expected to be doing something. Many formed thehabit of knitting in those days and keep it up until to-day, as it becamesecond nature to have something in the hands to work with. Many women wholearned then can now knit a pair of socks from beginning to end withoutlooking at them. After dark, when one could not see to sew, spin, orweave, was usually the time devoted to knitting and crocheting, whichsometimes lasted until midnight. Capes, sacks, vandykes, gloves, socks andstockings, shawls, underclothes, and men’s suspenders were knitted. Themakers ornamented them in various ways, and the ornamentation served auseful purpose, as the thread was usually coarse and uneven, and theornamentation concealed the irregularities that would have shown in plainwork. The smoothest thread that could be made was used for knitting. Tomake this thread the finest bolls of cotton were picked before rain hadfallen on them and stained the fibre.

The homespun cloth had to be dyed to make it look well, and, as theordinary dye materials could not be obtained, substitutes were made athome from barks, leaves, roots, and berries. Much experimentation provedthe following results: Maple and sweet gum bark with copperas producedpurple; maple and red oak bark with copperas, a dove color; maple and redwalnut bark with copperas, brown; sweet gum with copperas, a nearly blackcolor; peach leaves with alum, yellow; sassafras root with copperas, drab;smooth sumac root, bark, and berries, black; black oak bark with alum,yellow; artichoke and black oak, yellow; black oak bark with oxide of tin,pale yellow to bright orange; black oak bark with oxide of iron, drab;black oak balls in a solution of vitriol, purple to black; alder withalum, yellow; hickory bark with copperas, olive; hickory bark with alum,green; white oak bark with alum, brown; walnut roots, leaves, and hulls,black. Copperas was used to “set” the dye, but when copperas was not to behad blacksmith’s dust was used instead. Pine tree roots and tops, anddogwood, willow bark, and indigo were also used in dyes.[642]

[Pg 239]Shoes for women and children were made of cloth or knitted uppers or ofthe skins of squirrels or other small animals, fastened to leather orwooden soles. A girl considered herself very fortunate if she could get apair of “Sunday” shoes of calf or goat skin. There were shoemakers in eachcommunity, all old men or cripples, who helped the people with theirmakeshifts. Shoes for men were made of horse and cow hides, and often thesoles were of wood. A wooden shoe was one of the first things patented atRichmond. Carriage curtains, buggy tops, and saddle skirts furnishedleather for uppers, and metal protections were placed on leather soles.Little children went barefooted and stayed indoors in winter; many grownpeople went barefooted except in winter. Shoe blacking was made from sootmixed with lard or oil of ground-peas or of cotton-seed. This was appliedto the shoe and over it a paste of flour or starch gave a good polish.

Old bonnets and hats were turned, trimmed, and worn again. Pretty hatswere made of cloth or woven from dyed straw, bulrushes, corn-shucks,palmetto, oat and wheat straw, bean-grass, jeans, and bonnet squash, andsometimes of feathers. The rushes, shucks, palmetto, and bean-grass werebleached by boiling and sunning. Bits of old finery served to trim hats aswell as feathers from turkeys, ducks, and peafowls, with occasional wheatheads for plumes. Fans were made of the palmetto and of the wing feathersand wing tips of turkeys and geese. Old parasols and umbrellas werere-covered, but the majority of the people could not afford cloth for sucha purpose. Hair-oil was made from roses and lard. Thin-haired unfortunatesmade braids and switches from prepared bark.

The ingenious makeshifts and substitutes of the women were innumerable.They were more original than the men in making use of what material layready to hand or in discovering new uses for various things. The few menat home, however, were not always of the class that make discoveries or dooriginal things. In an account of life on the farms and plantations in theSouth during the war, the white men may almost be left out of the story.

After the blockade became effective, drugs became very scarce andhome-made preparations were substituted. All doctors became botanicalpractitioners. The druggist made his preparations from[Pg 240] herbs, roots, andbarks gathered in the woods and fields. Manufacturing laboratories wereearly established at Mobile and Montgomery to make medical preparationswhich were formerly procured abroad. Much attention was given to themanufacture of native preparations, which were administered bypractitioners in the place of foreign drugs with favorable results.Surgeon Richard Potts, of Montgomery, Alabama, had exclusive charge of theexchange of cotton for medical supplies, and when allowed by thegovernment to make the exchange, it was very easy for him to get drugsthrough the lines into Alabama and Mississippi. But this permission wastoo seldom given.[643]

Quinine was probably the scarcest drug. Instead of this were used dogwoodberries, cotton-seed tea, chestnut and chinquapin roots and bark, willowbark, Spanish oak bark, and poplar bark. Red oak bark in cold water wasused as a disinfectant and astringent for wounds. Boneset tea, butterflyor pleurisy root tea, mandrake tea, white ash or prickly ash root, andSampson’s snakeroot were used in fever cases. Local applications ofmustard seed or leaves, hickory leaves, and pepper were used in cases ofpneumonia and pleurisy, while sumac, poke root and berry, sassafras,alder, and prickly ash were remedies for rheumatism, neuralgia, andscrofula. Black haw root and partridge berry were used for hemorrhage;peach leaves and Sampson’s snakeroot for dyspepsia and sassafras tea inthe spring and fall served as a blood medicine. The balsam cucumber wasused for a tonic, as also was dogwood, poplar, and rolled cherry bark inwhiskey. Turpentine was useful as an adjunct in many cases. Hops were usedfor laudanum; may-apple root or peach tree leaf tea for senna; dandelion,pleurisy root, and butterfly weed for calomel. Corks were made from blackgum roots, corn-cobs, and old life preservers. Barks were gathered whenthe sap was running, the roots after the leaves were dead, and medicinalplants when they were in bloom.[644] Opium was made from the poppy,cordials from the blackberry, huckleberry, and persimmon, brandy fromwatermelons and fruits, and wine from the elderberry.[645] Whiskey made inthe hills of north Alabama, in gum log stills, formed the basis of nearlyall medicinal preparations. The state had agents who looked after theproper distribution of the whiskey among the counties. The[Pg 241] castor beansraised in the garden were crushed and boiled and the oil skimmed off.[646]

Life in the towns was not so monotonous as in the country. In the largerones, especially in Mobile, there was a forced gayety throughout the war.Many marriages took place, and each wedding was usually the occasion ofsocial festivities. In the country “homespun” weddings were thefashion—all parties at the wedding being clad in homespun. Colonel ThomasDabney dined in Montgomery in November, 1864, with Mr. Woodleaf, a refugeefrom New Orleans. “They gave me,” he said, “a fine dinner, good for anytime, and some extra fine music afterwards, according to the Italian,Spanish, and French books, for we had some of each sort done up in trueopera fashion, I suppose. It was aleetle too foreign for my ear, butthat was my fault, and not the fault of the music.”[647] The people weretoo busy for much amusement, yet on the surface life was not gloomy. Workwas made as pleasant as possible, though it could never be made play. Thewomen were never idle, and they often met together to work. There weresewing societies which met once a week for work and exchange of news.“Quiltings” were held at irregular intervals, to which every woman camearmed with needle and thimble. At other times there would be spinning“bees,” to which the women would come from long distances and stay allday, bringing with them in wagons their wheels, cards, and cotton. When asoldier came home on furlough or sick leave, every woman in the communitywent to see him, carrying her work with her, and knitted, sewed, or spunwhile listening to news from the army. The holiday soldier, the“bomb-proof,” and the “feather bed” received little mercy from the women;a thorough contempt was the portion of such people. “Furlough” wounds cameto receive slight sympathy.[648] The soldiers[Pg 242] always brought messagesfrom their comrades to their relatives in the community, which was oftenthe only way of hearing from those in the army. Letters were uncertain,the postal system never being good in the country districts. Postage wasten to twenty cents on a letter, and one to five cents on smallnewspapers. Letters from the army gave news of the men of the settlementwho were in the writer’s company or regiment, and when received were readto the neighbors or sent around the community. Often when a young man camehome on furlough or passed through the country, there would be many socialgatherings or “parties” in his honor, and here the young people gathered.There were parties for the older men, too, and dinners and suppers. Herethe soldier met again his neighbors, or rather the feminine half of them,anxious to hear his experiences and to inquire about friends and relativesin the army. The young people also met at night at “corn shuckings” and“candy pullings,” from which they managed to extract a good deal ofpleasure. At the social gatherings, especially of the older people, somekind of work was always going on. Parching pindars to eat and makingpeanut candy were amusements for children after supper.

The intense devotion of the women to the Confederate cause was mostirritating to a certain class of Federal officers in the army that invadednorth Alabama. They seemed to think that they had conquered entrance intosociety, but the women were determined to show their colors on alloccasions and often had trouble when boorish officers were in command. Asociety woman would lose her social position if seen in the company ofFederal officers. When passing them, the women averted their faces andswept aside their skirts to prevent any contact with the hated Yankee.They played and sang Confederate airs on all occasions, and when orderedby the military authorities to discontinue, it usually took a guard ofsoldiers to enforce the order. The Federal officers who acted in agentlemanly manner toward the non-combatants were accused by their rudefellows and by ruder newspaper correspondents of being “wound round thefingers of the rebel women,” who had some object to gain. When the peopleof a community were especially contemptuous of the Federals, they weresometimes punished by having a negro regiment stationed as a garrison.Athens, in Limestone county, one of the most intensely[Pg 243] southern towns,was garrisoned by a regiment of negroes recruited in the immediatevicinity.[649]

For the negroes in the Black Belt life went on much as before the war.More responsibility was placed upon the trusty ones, and they provedthemselves worthy of the trust. They were acquainted with the questions atissue and knew that their freedom would probably follow victory by theNorth. Yet the black overseer and the black preacher, with theirfellow-slaves, went on with their work. The master’s family lived on thelarge plantation with no other whites within miles and never felt fear ofharm from their black guardians. The negroes had their dances and, ’possumhunts on Saturday nights after the week’s work was done. There waspreaching and singing on Sunday, the whites often attending the negroservices andvice versa. Negro weddings took place in the “big house.”The young mistresses would adorn the bride, and the ceremony would beperformed by the old white clergyman, after which the wedding supper wouldbe served in the family dining room or out under the trees. These weregreat occasions for the negroes and for the young people of the master’sfamily. The sound of fiddle and banjo, songs, and laughter were alwaysheard in the “quarters” after work was done, though Saturday night was thegreat time for merrymaking. In July and August, after the crops were “laidby,” the negroes had barbecues and picnics. To these the whites wereinvited and they always attended. The materials for these feasts werefurnished by the mistress and by the negroes themselves, who had gardenpatches, pigs, and poultry. The slaves were, on the whole, happy andcontent.

The clothes for the slaves were made under the superintendence of themistress, who, after the war began, often cut out the clothes for everynegro on the place, and sometimes assisted in making them. Some of thenegro women had spinning-wheels and looms, and clothed their own families,while others spun, wove, and made their clothes under the direction of themistress. But most of them could not be trusted with the materials,because they were so unskilful. It took a month or two twice a year to getthe negroes into their new outfits. The rule was that each negro shouldhave two suits of heavy material for winter wear and two of light goodsfor summer. To[Pg 244] clothe the negroes during the war time was a heavy burdenupon the mistress.

To those negroes who did their own cooking rations were issued on Saturdayafternoon. Bacon and corn meal formed the basis of the ration, besideswhich there would be some kind of “sweetening” and a substitute forcoffee.[650] Special goodies were issued for Sunday. The negroes in theBlack Belt fared better during the war than either the whites or thenegroes in the white counties. When there were few slaves or in the timeof great scarcity, the cooking for whites and blacks was often done in thehouse kitchen by the same cooks. This was done in order to leave more timefor the negroes to work and to prevent waste. Where there were manyslaves, there was often some arrangement made by which cooking was done incommon, though there were numbers of families that did their own cookingat home all the time. When meat was scarce, it was given to the negrolaborers who needed the strength, while the white family and the negrowomen and children denied themselves.

As the Confederate government did not provide well for the soldiers, theirwives and mothers had to supply them. The sewing societies undertook toclothe the soldiers who went from their respective neighborhoods. Once aweek or once a month, a box was sent from each society. One box sent tothe Grove Hill Guards contained sixty pairs of socks, twenty-fiveblankets, thirteen pairs of gloves, fourteen flannel shirts, sixteentowels, two handkerchiefs, five pairs of trousers, and one bushel of driedapples. Other boxes contained about the same. Hams and any other ediblesthat would keep were frequently sent and also simple medicine chests. Whenblankets could not be had, quilts were sent, or heavy curtains and piecesof carpet. With the progress of the war, there was much suffering amongthe soldiers and their destitute families that the state could do butlittle to relieve, and the women took up the task. Besides the variouschurch aid societies, we hear of the “Grove Hill Military Aid Society” andthe “Suggsville Soldiers’ Aid Society,” both of Clarke County; the “AidSociety of Mobile”; the “Montgomery Home Society” and the “Soldiers’Wayside Home,” in Montgomery; the “Wayside Hospital” and the “Ladies’Military Aid Society” of Selma; the “Talladega Hospital”; the “Ladies’Humane Society”[Pg 245] of Huntsville,[651] and many others. The legislature gavefinancial aid to some of them. Societies were formed in every town,village, and country settlement to send clothing, medicines, andprovisions to the soldiers in the army and to the hospitals. The memberswent to hospitals and parole camps for sick and wounded soldiers, tookthem to their homes, and nursed them back to health. “Wayside Homes” wereestablished in the towns for the accommodation of soldiers travelling toand from the army. Soldiers on sick leave and furlough who were cut offfrom their homes beyond the Mississippi came to the homes of theircomrades, sure of a warm welcome and kind attentions. Poor soldiers sickat home were looked after and supplies sent to their needy families.

The last year of the war a bushel of corn cost $13, while a soldier’s paywas $11 a month, paid once in a while. So the poor people becamedestitute. But the state furnished meal and salt to all[652] and the morefortunate people gave liberally of their supplies. Many of the poorerwhite women did work for others—weaving, sewing, and spinning—for whichthey were well paid, frequently in provisions, which they were in greatneed of. Some made hats, bonnets, and baskets for sale. The cottoncounties supported many refugees from the northern counties, and numerouspoor people from that section imposed upon the generosity of the plantingsection. The overseers, white or black, had a dislike for those to whomsupplies were given; they also objected to the regular payment of thetax-in-kind, and to impressment which took their corn, meat, horses, cows,mules, and negroes, and crippled their operations. The mistresses had tointerfere and see that the poor and the government had their share.

In the cities the women engaged in various patriotic occupations,—sewingfor the soldiers, nursing, raising money for hospitals, etc. The women ofTuskegee raised money to be spent on a gunboat for the defence of MobileBay. They wanted it calledThe Women’s Gunboat.[653] “A niece of JamesMadison” wrote to a Mobile paper,[Pg 246] proposing that 200,000 women in theSouth sell their hair in Europe to raise funds for the Confederacy. Themovement failed because of the blockade.[654] There were other similarpropositions, but they could not be carried out, and year after year thelegislatures of the state thanked the women for their patriotic devotion,their labors, sacrifices, constancy, and courage.

The music and songs that were popular during the war show the changingtemper of the people. At first were heard joyous airs, later contemptuousand defiant as war came on; then jolly war songs and strong hymns ofencouragement. But as sorrow followed sorrow until all were stricken; aswounds, sickness, imprisonment, and death of friends and relatives castshadow over the spirits of the people; as hopes were dashed by defeat, andthe consciousness came that perhaps after all the cause was losing,—theiron entered into the souls of the people. The songs were sadder now. Thechurch hymns heard were the soul-comforting ones and the militant songs ofthe older churchmen. The first year were heard “Farewell to BrotherJonathan,” “We Conquer or We Die;” then “Riding a Raid,” “StonewallJackson’s Way,” “All Quiet Along the Potomac,” “Lorena,” “Beechen Brook,”“Somebody’s Darling,” “When the Cruel War is O’er,” “Guide Me, O ThouGreat Jehovah.” “Dixie” was sung and played during the entire time, whitesand blacks singing it with equal pleasure. The older hymns were sung andthe doctrines of faith and good works earnestly preached. The promiseswere, perhaps, more emphasized. A deeply religious feeling prevailed amongthe home workers for the cause.

The women had the harder task. The men were in the field in activeservice, their families were safe at home, there was no fear forthemselves. The women lived in constant dread of news from the front; theyhad to sit still and wait, and their greatest comfort was the hard workthey had to do. It gave them some relief from the burden of sorrow thatweighed down the souls of all. To the very last the women hoped and prayedfor success, and failure, to many of them, was more bitter than death. Theloss of their cause[Pg 247] hurt them more deeply than it did the men who had thesatisfaction of fighting out the quarrel, even though the other side wasvictorious.[655]

PART III
THE AFTERMATH OF WAR

CHAPTER V

The surviving soldiers came straggling home, worn out, broken in health,crippled, in rags, half starved, little better off, they thought, than thecomrades they had left under the sod of the battle-fields on the border.In the election of 1860 about 90,000 votes were cast, nearly the entirevoting population, and about this number of Alabama men enlisted in theConfederate and Union armies. Various estimates were made of Alabama’slosses during the war, most of which are doubtless too large. Among theseGovernor Parsons, in his inaugural address, gives the number as 35,000killed or died of wounds and disease, and as many more disabled.[656]Colonel W. H. Fowler, for two years the state agent for settling theclaims of deceased soldiers and also superintendent of army records,states that he had the names of nearly 20,000 dead on his lists andbelieved this to be only about half of the entire number; that the Alabamatroops lost more heavily than any other troops. He asserted that of the30,000 Alabama troops in the Army of Northern Virginia over 9000 had diedin[Pg 252] service, and of those who were retired, discharged, or who resigned,about one-half were either dead or permanently disabled.[657] Theseestimates are evidently too large, and they probably form the basis of thestatements of Governors Parsons and Patton. Governor Patton estimated that40,000 had died in service, while 20,000 were disabled for life, and thatthere were 20,000 widows and 60,000 orphans.[658] ATimes correspondentplaces the loss in war at 34,000.[659] The strongest regiments were wornout by 1865. At Appomattox, when three times as many men surrendered aswere in a condition to bear arms, the Alabama commands paroled hardlyenough men in each regiment to form a good company. Though the averageenlistment had been 1350 to the regiment, one of the best regiments—theThird Alabama Infantry—paroled: from Company B, 8 men; from Company D, 7men; Company G, 4; Company E, 7; while the Fifth Alabama paroled: fromCompany A, 2; B, 7; C, 2; E, 2; F, 1; K, 3. The Twelfth Alabama: CompanyA, 4; C, 6; D, 6; E, 4; G, 3; I, 5; M, 4. Sixth Alabama (over 2000enlistments): D, 2; F, 2; I, 5; M, 4. Sixty-first Alabama: B, 2; C, 4; E,1; G, 5; I, 4; K, 3. Fifteenth Alabama: C, 8. Forty-eighth Alabama: C, 6;K, 7. Ninth Alabama: 70 men in all—an average of 7 to a company.Thirteenth Alabama: 85 men in all. Forty-first Alabama: 74 men in all.Forty-first, Forty-third, Fifty-ninth, Sixtieth, and Twenty-third: 220 menin all. Some companies were entirely annihilated, having neither officernor private at the surrender. A company from Demopolis is said to havelost all except 7 men, that is, 125 by death in the service.[660] Thecensus of 1866 contains the names of 8957 soldiers killed in battle,13,534 who died of disease or wounds, and 2629 disabled for life.[661]These are the only facts obtainable on which to base calculations, yet thecensus was very imperfect, as hundreds of families were broken up,thousands of men forgotten, and there was no one to give informationregarding them to the census taker.

[Pg 253]The white population decreased 3632 from 1860 to 1866, according to thecensus of the latter year. But for the war, according to rate of increasefrom 1850 to 1860, there should have been an increase of 50,000. In 1870the census showed a further decrease of 1415, due, perhaps, to the greatmortality just after the war. In other words, the white population wasabout 100,000 less in 1870 than it would have been under normalconditions, without immigration. Contemporary accounts state that thenegro suffered much more than the whites in the two years immediatelyfollowing the war, from starvation, exposure, and pestilence, and thecensus of 1866 showed a decrease of 14,325 in the colored population, whenthere should have been an increase of nearly 70,000 according to the rateof 1850 to 1860, besides the 20,000 that it has been estimated were sentinto the interior of the state from other states to escape capture by theraiding Federals. The census of 1866 was not accurate, for the negroes atthat time were in a very unsettled condition, wandering from place toplace. However, in 1870, the number of negroes had increased 37,740 overthe numbers for 1860, while the number of whites had decreased severalthousand, which would seem to indicate that the census of 1866 wasdefective. But there is no doubt that the negroes suffered terribly duringthis time.[662]

Governor Patton, in a communication to Congress dated May 11, 1866, givesthe property losses in Alabama as $500,000,000,[663] which sum doubtlessincludes the value of the slaves, estimated in 1860 at $200,000,000, orabout $500 each.[664] The value of other property in 1860 has beenestimated at $640,000,000, the assessed value, $256,428,893, being 40 percent of the real value.[665]

[Pg 254]A comparison of the census statistics of 1860 and of 1870 after five yearsof Reconstruction will be suggestive:—

Not until 1880 was the acreage of improved lands as great as in 1860.[666]Live stock, valued at $43,000,000 in 1860, is still to-day $7,000,000behind. Farm implements and machinery in 1900 were worth $1,000,000 morethan in 1860, having doubled in value in the last ten years.[667] Landimprovements and buildings, worth $175,000,000 in 1860, were in 1900 stillmore than $30,000,000 below that mark. The total value of farm property in1860 was $226,669,511; in 1870, $97,716,055;[668] and in 1900,$179,339,882. Though the population has increased twofold since 1860[669]and the white counties have developed and the industries have become morevaried, agriculture has not yet reached the standard of 1860, the BlackBelt farmer is much less prosperous, and the agricultural system of theold cotton belt has never recovered from the effects of the war. From thetheoretical point of view the abolition of slavery should have resulted inloss only during the readjustment of industrial conditions. Yet$200,000,000 capital had been lost; and, as a matter of fact, thestatistics of agriculture show that, while in the white counties in 1900there was a greater yield of the staple crops,—cotton and corn,—in[Pg 255] theblack counties the free negroes of double the number do not yet produce asmuch as the slaves of 1860.[670]

The manufacturing establishments that had existed before the war or weredeveloped during that time were destroyed by Federal raids, or wereseized, sold, and dismantled after the surrender because they hadfurnished supplies to the Confederacy. The public buildings used by theConfederate authorities in all the towns and all over the country wereburned or were turned over to the Freedmen’s Bureau. The state and countypublic buildings in the track of the raiders were destroyed. The stocks ofgoods in the stores were exhausted long before the close of the war. Allbanking capital, and all securities, railroad bonds and stocks, state andConfederate bonds, and currency were worth nothing. All the accumulatedcapital of the state was swept away; only the soil and some buildingsremained. People owning hundreds of acres of land often were as destituteas the poorest negro. The majority of people who had money to invest hadbought Confederate securities as a patriotic duty, and all the coin hadbeen drawn from the country. The most of the bonded debt was held inMobile, and that city lost all its capital when the debt was declared nulland void.[671] This city suffered severely, also, from a terribleexplosion soon after the surrender. Twenty squares in the business partwere destroyed.[672]

Thousands of private residences were destroyed, especially in northAlabama, where the country was even more thoroughly devastated than in thepath of Sherman through Georgia. The third year of the war had seen thedestruction of everything destructible in north Alabama outside of thelarge towns, where the devastation was usually not so great. In Decatur,however, nearly all the buildings were burned; only three of the principalones were left standing.[673] Tuscumbia was practically destroyed, andmany houses were condemned for army use.[674] The beautiful buildings ofthe Black Belt[Pg 256] were out of repair and fast going to ruin. Many of thefine houses in the cities—especially in Mobile—had fallen into the handsof the Jews. One place, which was bought for $45,000 before the war, wassold with difficulty in 1876 for $10,000. Before the war there weresixteen French business houses in Mobile; none survived the war. The portof Mobile never again reached its former importance. In 1860, 900,000bales of cotton had been shipped from the port; in 1865-1866, 400,000bales; in 1866-1867, 250,000 bales; in 1876, 400,000 bales. There was nodisposition on the part of the Washington administration to remove theobstructions in Mobile harbor. They were left for years and furnished anexcuse to the reconstructionists for the expenditure of state money.[675]Nearly all the grist-mills and cotton-gins had been destroyed, mill-damscut, and ponds drained. The raiders never spared a cotton-gin. The cotton,in which the government was interested, was either burned or seized andsold, and private cotton, when found, fared in the same way. Cotton hadbeen the cause of much trouble to the commanders on both sides during thewar; it was considered the mainstay of the South before the war and theroot of all evil. So of all property it received[Pg 257] the least considerationfrom the Federal troops, and was very easily turned into cash. All farmanimals near the track of the armies had been carried away or killed bythe soldiers (as at Selma), or seized after the occupation by the troops.Horses, mules, cows, and other domestic animals had almost disappearedexcept in the secluded districts. Many a farmer had to plough with oxen.Farm and plantation buildings had been dismantled or burned, housesruined, fences destroyed, corn, meat, and syrup taken. The plantations inthe Tennessee valley were in a ruined condition. The gin-houses wereburned, the bridges ruined, mills and factories gone, and the roadsimpassable.[676] In the homes that were left, carpets and curtains weregone, for they had been used as blankets and clothes, window glass wasout, furniture injured or destroyed, and crockery broken. In the largertowns, where something had been saved from the wreck of war, the lootingby the Federal soldiers was shameful. Pianos, furniture, pictures,curtains, sofas, and other household goods were shipped North by theFederal officers during the early days of the occupation. Gold and silverplate and jewellery were confiscated by the bummers who were with everycommand. Abuses of this kind became so flagrant that the northern paperscondemned the conduct of the soldiers, and several ministers, among themHenry Ward Beecher, rebuked the practice from the pulpit.[677]

Land was almost worthless, because the owners had no capital, no farmanimals, no farm implements, in many cases not even seed. Labor wasdisorganized, and the product of labor was most likely to be stolen byroving negroes and other marauders. Seldom was more than one-third of aplantation under cultivation, the remainder growing up in broom sedgebecause laborers could not be gotten. When the Federal armies passed, manynegroes followed them and never returned. Numbers of them died in thecamps. When the war ended, many others left their old homes, some of whomseveral[Pg 258] years later came straggling back.[678] Land that would produce abale of cotton to the acre, worth $125, and selling in 1860 for $50 peracre at the lowest, was now selling for from $3 to $5 per acre. Among thenegroes, especially after the occupation, there was a general belief,which was carefully fostered by a certain class of Federal officials andby some leaders in Congress, that the lands would be confiscated anddivided among the “unionists” and the negroes. When the state seceded, ittook charge of the public lands within its boundaries and opened them tosettlement. After the fall of the Confederacy those who had purchasedlands were required to rebuy them from the United States or to give uptheir claims. Some lands were abandoned, as the owners were able neitherto cultivate nor to sell them, for there was no capital. In Cumberland, avillage, at one time there were ninety advertisements of sales posted inthe hotel. The planters often found themselves amid a wilderness of land,without laborers, and often rented land free to some white man or to anegro who would pay the taxes.[679] Many hundreds of the people could seeno hope whatever for the future of the state, and certainly the North wasnot acting so as to encourage them. Hence there was heavy emigration toBrazil, Cuba, Mexico, the northern and western states, and much propertywas offered at a tenth of its value and even less.

The heaviest losses fell upon the old wealthy families, who, by the lossof wealth and by political proscription, were ruined. In middle life andin old age they were unable to begin again, and for a generation theirnames disappear from sight. Losses, debts, taxes, and proscriptions boredown many, and few rose to take their places.[680] The poorer people,though they had but little to lose, lost all, and suffered extreme povertyduring the latter years of the war and the early years of Reconstruction.No wonder they were in despair and seemed for a while a menace to publicorder. To the power and influence of the leaders succeeded in part asecond-rate class—the rank and file of 1861—upon whom the losses of thewar fell with less weight, and who were thrown to the front by the warwhich ruined those above and those below them. They were the sound,hard-working men—the lawyers, farmers, merchants, who had[Pg 259]formerly beencontent to allow brilliant statesmen to direct the public affairs. Nowthose leaders were dead or proscribed, for poverty, war, reconstruction,and political persecution rapidly destroyed the old ruling element, anddeaths among them after the war were very common. The men who rescued thestate in 1874 were the men of lesser ability of 1860, farmer subordinatesin the political ranks.[681]

The steamboats on the rivers were destroyed. At that time the steamersprobably carried as much freight and as many passengers as did therailroads, and served to connect the railway systems. The railroads alsowere in a ruined condition; depots had been burned, bridges and trestlesdestroyed, tracks torn up, cross-ties burned or were rotten, rails wornout or ruined by burning, cars and locomotives worn out or destroyed orcaptured. The boards of directors and the presidents of the roads, becauseof the aid they had given the Confederacy, were not considered safepersons to trust with the reorganization of the system, and, in August,1865, Stanton, the Secretary of War, directed that each southern railwaybe reorganized with a “loyal” board of directors.

In 1860 there were about 800 miles of railways in Alabama. Nearly all ofthe roads were unfinished in 1861, and, except on the most importantmilitary roads, little progress was made in their construction during thewar—only about 20 or 30 miles being completed. During this time all roadswere practically under the control of the Confederate government, whichoperated them through their own boards of directors and other officials.The various roads suffered in different degrees. At the close of the war,the Tennessee and Alabama Railroad had only two or three cars that couldbe used, the rails also were worn out, the locomotives out of order anduseless, nearly all the depots, bridges, and trestles destroyed, as wellas all of its shops, water tanks, machinery, books, and papers. TheMemphis and Charleston, extending across the entire northern part of thestate, fell into the hands of the Federals in 1862, who captured atHuntsville nearly all of the rolling stock and destroyed the shops[Pg 260] andthe papers. The rolling stock had been collected at Huntsville, ready tobe shipped to a place of less danger; but because of the treachery of atelegraph operator who kept the knowledge of the approaching raid from theofficials, all was lost, for to prevent its falling into the hands of theenemy much more was destroyed than was captured. When the Federals weredriven from a section of the road, they destroyed it in order to preventthe Confederates from using it. The length of this road in the state was155 miles, and 140 miles of the track were torn up, the rails heated inthe middle over fires of burning cross-ties, and the iron then twistedaround trees and stumps so as to make it absolutely useless. In 1865 verylittle machinery of any kind was left. Besides this the company lostheavily in Confederate securities, and the other losses (funds, etc.)amounted to $1,195,166.79.

The Mobile and Ohio lost in Confederate currency $5,228,562.23.Thirty-seven miles of rails were worn out, 21 miles were burned andtwisted, 184 miles of road cleared of bridges, trestles, and stations, thecross-ties burned, and the shops near Mobile destroyed. There were 18 of59 locomotives in working order, 11 of 26 passenger cars, 3 of 11 baggagecars, 231 of 721 freight cars. The Selma and Meridian lost its shops anddepots in Selma and Meridian, and its bridges over the Cahaba and Valleycreeks. It sustained a heavy loss in Confederate bonds and currency. TheAlabama and Tennessee Rivers Railroad lost a million dollars inConfederate funds, its shops, tools, and machinery at Selma, 6 bridges,its trestles, some track and many depots, its locomotives and cars. TheWills Valley Road suffered but little from destruction or from loss inConfederate securities. The Mobile and Great Northern escaped with a lossof only $401,190.37 in Confederate money, and $164,800 by destruction,besides the wear and tear on its track and rolling stock in the four yearswithout repairs. The Alabama and Florida Road lost in Confederate currency$755,343,21. It had at the end of the war only 4 locomotives and 40 carsof all descriptions. The people were so poor that in the summer of 1865this road, on a trip from Mobile to Montgomery and return, a distance of360 miles, collected in fares only $13. The Montgomery and West Point, 161miles in length, and one of the best roads in the state, probably sufferedthe heaviest loss from raids. It lost in currency $1,618,243, besides allof its[Pg 261] rolling stock that was in running order; much of the track wastorn up and rails twisted, all bridges and tanks and depots weredestroyed. Both Rousseau and Wilson tore up the track and destroyed theshops and rolling stock at Montgomery and along the road to West Point andalso the rolling stock that had been sent to Columbus, Georgia. After thesurrender an old locomotive that had been thrown aside at Opelika and 14condemned cars were patched up, and for a while this old engine and acouple of flat cars were run up and down the road as a passenger train.The worn strap rails used in repairing gave much trouble. The fare was 10cents a mile in coin or 20 cents in greenbacks.[682] Every road in theSouth lost rolling stock on the border. The few cars and locomotives leftto any road were often scattered over several states, and some of themwere never returned.

As the Federal armies occupied the country, they took charge of therailways, which were then run either under the direction of the WarDepartment or the railroad division of the army. After the war they werereturned to the stockholders as soon as “loyal” boards of directors wereappointed or the “disloyal” ones made “loyal” by the pardon of thePresident. Contractors who undertook to reopen the roads in the summer of1865 were unable to do so because the negroes refused to work. Thecompanies were bankrupt, for all money due them was Confederate currency,and all they had in their possession was Confederate currency. Many debtsthat had been paid by the roads during the war to the states and countiesnow had to be paid again. All of the nine roads in the state attemptedreorganization, but only three were able to accomplish it, and these thenabsorbed the others. None, it appears, were abandoned.[683]

Immediately after the surrender of the armies a general demand arose fromthe people throughout the lower South that the governors convene the statelegislatures for the purpose of calling conventions which, by repealingthe ordinance of secession and abolishing slavery, could prepare the wayfor reunion. This, it was thought, was all that the North wanted, and itseemed to be in harmony with Lincoln’s plan of restoration. GeneralRichard Taylor, when he surrendered at Meridian, Mississippi, advised thegovernors of Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi to take steps to carryout such measures; and General Canby, to whom Taylor surrendered thedepartment, indorsed the plan, as did also the various general officers ofthe armies of occupation. But these generals were not in touch withpolitics at Washington. The Federal government outlawed the existingsouthern state governments, leaving them with no government at all.Governor Watts and ex-Governors Shorter and Moore were arrested and sentto northern prisons. A number of prominent leaders, among them John Gayleof Selma and ex-Senators Clay and Fitzpatrick, were also arrested. Thestate government went to pieces. General Canby was instructed by PresidentJohnson to arrest any member of the Alabama legislature who might attemptto hold a meeting of the general assembly. Consequently, from the first ofMay until the last of the summer the state of Alabama was without anystate government;[684] and it was only after several months of service asprovisional governor that Parsons was able to reorganize the stateadministration.

For six months after the surrender there was practically no government ofany kind in Alabama except in the immediate vicinity of the militaryposts, where the commander exercised a certain authority over the peopleof the community. A good commander could do little more than let affairstake their course, for the great mass of the people only wanted to be leftalone for a while. They were tired of war and strife and wanted rest andan opportunity to work their crops and make bread for their sufferingfamilies. The strongest[Pg 263] influence of the respectable people was exertedin favor of peace and order. While much lawlessness appeared in the state,it was not as much as might have been expected under the existingcircumstances at the close of the great Civil War. Much of the disorderwas caused by the presence of the troops, some of whom were even moretroublesome than the robbers and outlaws from whom they were supposed toprotect the people. The best soldiers of the Federal army had demandedtheir discharge as soon as fighting was over, and had gone home. Those whoremained in the service in the state were, with few exceptions, verydisorderly, and kept the people in terror by their robberies and outrages.Especially troublesome among the negro population, and a constant cause ofirritation to the whites, were the negro troops, who were sent into thestate, the people believed, in order to humiliate the whites. They werecommanded by officers who had been insulted and threatened all during thewar because of their connection with these troops, and this treatment hadembittered them against the southern people. The negro troops werestationed in towns where Confederate spirit had been very strong, as adiscipline to the people. For months and even years after the surrenderthe Federal troops in small detachments were accustomed to march throughthe country, searching for cotton and other public property and arrestingcitizens on charges preferred by the tories or by the negroes, many ofwhom spent their time confessing the sins of their white neighbors. Thegarrison towns suffered from the unruly behavior of the soldiers. Theofficers, who were only waiting to be mustered out of service, devotedthemselves to drinking, women, and gambling. The men followed theirexample. The traffic in whiskey was enormous, and most of the sales wereto the soldiers, to the lowest class of whites, and to the negroes. Thestreets of the towns and cities such as Montgomery, Mobile, Selma,Huntsville, Athens, and Tuscaloosa, were crowded with drunken and violentsoldiers. Lewd women had followed the army and had establisheddisreputable houses near every military post, which were the centre andcause of many lawless outbreaks. Quarrels were frequent, and at adisorderly ball in Montgomery, in the fall of 1865, a Federal officer waskilled. The peaceable citizens were plundered by the camp followers,discharged soldiers, and the deserters who now crawled out of theirretreats. Sometimes these marauders dressed in[Pg 264] the Federal uniforms whenon their expeditions, in order to cast suspicion on the soldiers, who wereoften wrongfully charged with these crimes.[685]

As one instance of the many outrages committed at this time the followingmay be cited: in the summer of 1865, when all was in disorder and nogovernment existed in the state, a certain “Major” Perry, as his followerscalled him, went on a private raid through the country to get a part ofanything that might be left. He was one of the many who thought that theydeserved some share of the spoils and who were afraid that the time oftheir harvest would be short. So it was necessary to make the best of thedisordered condition of affairs. Perry was followed by a few whitesoldiers, or men who dressed as soldiers, and by a crowd of negroes. Athis saddle-bow was tied a bag containing his most valuable plunder. Fromhouse to house in Dallas and adjoining counties he and his men went,demanding valuables, pulling open trunks and bureau and wardrobe drawers,scattering their contents, and choosing what they wanted, tearing picturesin pieces, and scattering the contents of boxes of papers and books in aspirit of pure destructiveness. At one house they found some old shirtswhich the mistress had carefully mended for her husband, who had not yetreturned from the army. One of the marauders suggested that they be addedto their collection. “Major” Perry looked at them carefully, but, as hewas rather choice in his tastes, rejected them as “damned patched things,”spat tobacco on them, and trampled them with his muddy boots. Incidentssimilar to this were not infrequent, nor were they calculated to softenthe feelings of the women toward the victorious enemy. Their cordialhatred of Federal officers was strongly resented by the latter, who wereoften able to retaliate in unpleasant ways.[686]

In southeast Alabama deserters from both armies and members of theso-called First Florida Union Cavalry continued for a year after the closeof the war their practice of plundering all classes of people andsometimes committing other acts of violence. Some[Pg 265] persons were robbed ofnearly all that they possessed.[687] Joseph Saunders, a millwright of DaleCounty, served as a Confederate lieutenant in the first part of the war.Later he resigned, and being worried by the conscript officers, alliedhimself with a band of deserters near the Florida line, who drew theirsupplies from the Federal troops on the coast. Saunders was made leader ofthe band and made frequent forays into Dale County, where on one occasiona company of militia on parade was captured. The band raided the town ofNewton, but was defeated. After the war, Saunders with his gang returnedand continued horse-stealing. Finally he killed a man and went to Georgia,where, in 1866, he himself was killed.[688] He was a type of the nativewhite outlaw.

The burning of cotton was common. Some was probably burned because theUnited States cotton agents had seized it, but the heaviest loss fell onprivate owners. A large quantity of private cotton worth about $2,000,000,that had escaped confiscation and had been collected near Montgomery, wasdestroyed by the cotton burners.[689] Horse and cattle thieves infestedthe whole state, especially the western part. Washington and Choctawcounties especially suffered from their depredations.[690] The rivers wereinfested with cotton thieves, who floated down the streams in flats,landed near cotton fields, established videttes, went into the fields,stole the cotton, and carried it down the river to market.[691] A band ofoutlaws took passage on a steamboat on the Alabama River, overcame thecrew and the honest passengers, and took possession of the boat.[692]

A secret incendiary organization composed of negroes and some dischargedFederal soldiers plotted to burn Selma. The members of the band wore redribbon badges. One of the negroes informed the authorities of the plot andof the place of meeting, and forty of the band were arrested. The otherswere informed and escaped. The military authorities released theprisoners, who denied the charge, though some of their society testifiedagainst them.[693] There were[Pg 266] incendiary fires in every town in thestate, it is said, and several were almost destroyed.

The bitter feeling between the tories and the Confederates of northAlabama resulted in some places in guerilla warfare. The Confederatesoldiers, whose families had suffered from the depredations of the toriesduring the war, wanted to punish the outlaws for their misdeeds, and inmany cases attempted to do so. The tories wanted revenge for having beendriven from the country or into hiding by the Confederate authorities, sothey raided the Confederate soldiers as they had raided their familiesduring the war. Some of the tories were caught and hanged. In revenge, theConfederates were shot down in their houses, and in the fields while atwork, or while travelling along the roads. The convention called byGovernor Parsons declared that lawlessness existed in many counties of thestate and authorized Parsons to call out the militia in each county torepress the disorder. They also asked the President to withdraw theFederal troops, which were only a source of disorder,[694] and gave to themayors of Florence, Athens, and Huntsville special police powers withintheir respective counties in order to check the lawless element, which wasespecially strong in Lauderdale, Limestone, and Madison counties.[695]These counties lay north of the Tennessee River, along the Tennesseeborder. There was a disposition on the part of the civil and militaryauthorities in Alabama to attribute the lawlessness in north and northwestAlabama to bands of desperadoes from Tennessee and Mississippi, but northAlabama had numbers of marauders of her own, and it is probable thatTennessee and Mississippi had little to do with it. Half a dozen men,where there was no authority to check them, could make a whole countyuncomfortable for the peaceable citizens.[696]

The Federal infantry commands scattered throughout the country were oflittle service in capturing the marauders. General Swayne repeatedly askedfor cavalry, for, as he said, the infantry was the source of as muchdisorder as it suppressed. The worst outrages, he added, were committed bysmall bands of lawless men organized[Pg 267] under various names, and whose chiefobject was robbery and plunder.[697] After the establishment of theprovisional government an attempt was made to bring to trial some of theoutlaws who had infested the country during and after the war, and whorichly deserved hanging. They were of no party, being deserters from botharmies, or tories who had managed to keep out of either army. However,when arrested they raised a strong cry of being “unionists” and appealedto the military authorities for protection from “rebel” persecution,though the officials of the Johnson government in Alabama were nevercharged by any one else with an excess of zeal in the Confederate cause.The Federal officials released all prisoners who claimed to be“unionists.” Sheriff Snodgrass of Jackson County arrested fifteenbushwhackers charged with murder. They claimed to be “loyalists,” andGeneral Kryzyanowski, commanding the district of north Alabama, orderedthe court to stop proceedings and to discharge the prisoners. This was notdone, and Kryzyanowski sent a body of negro soldiers who closed the court,released the prisoners, and sent the sheriff to jail at Nashville.[698]The military authorities allowed no one who asserted that he was a“unionist” to be tried for offences committed during the war, and anyeffort to bring the outlaws to trial resulted in an outcry against the“persecution of loyalists.”

In August, 1865, Sheriff John M. Daniel of Cherokee County arrested andimprisoned a band of marauders dressed in the Federal uniform, though theyhad no connection with the army. A short time afterwards the citizensasked him to raise aposse and arrest a similar band which was engagedin robbing the people, plundering houses, assaulting respectable citizens,and threatening to kill them. And as such occurrences were frequent,Sheriff Daniel, after consulting with the citizens, summoned apossecomitatus and went in pursuit of the marauders. One squad was encounteredwhich surrendered without resistance. A second, belonging to the sameband, approached, and, refusing to surrender, opened fire on the sheriff’sparty. In the fight the sheriff killed one man. Upon learning that hisprisoners were soldiers and were on detail duty, he desisted[Pg 268] from furtherpursuit, released the citizens who were held as prisoners by the soldiers,and turned his prisoners over to the military authorities. This was onAugust 24. Daniel was at once arrested by the military authorities andconfined in prison at Talladega in irons. Six months later he had had notrial, and the general assembly petitioned the President for his release,claiming that he had acted in the faithful discharge of his duty.[699] Thememorial asserts that such outrages were of frequent occurrence. Anotherpetition to the President asked for the withdrawal of the troops, whosepresence caused disorder, and who at various times provoked unpleasantcollisions. Many of the troops, remote from the line of transportation,subsisted their stock upon the country. This was a hardship to the people,who had barely enough to support life.[700]

For several years the arbitrary conduct of some of the soldiers was acause of bad feeling on the part of the citizens.[701] But the soldierswere very often blamed for deeds done by outlaws disguised as Federaltroops. In northern Alabama a party of northern men bought property, andcomplained to Governor Parsons of the depredations of the Federal troopsstationed near and asked for protection. Parsons could only refer theirrequest to General Davis at Montgomery, and in the meantime the troopscomplained of drove out of the community the signers of the request forprotection. One of them, an ex-captain in the United States army, wasordered to leave within three hours or he would be shot.[702] Thesoldiers, except at the important posts, were under slack discipline, andtheir officers had little control over them. At Bladen Springs some negrotroops shot a Mr. Bass while he was in bed and beat his wife and childrenwith ramrods. They drove the wife and daughters of a Mr. Rhodes from homeand set fire to the house. The citizens fled from their homes, which werepillaged by the negro soldiers in order to get the clothing, furniture,books, etc. The trouble originated in the refusal of the white people toassociate with the white officers of the colored troops.[703] Thesenegroes had little respect for their officers and[Pg 269] threatened to shoottheir commanding officers.[704] At Decatur the negro troops plundered andshot into the houses of the whites. In Greensboro a white youth struck anegro who had insulted him, and was in turn slapped in the face by aFederal officer, whom he at once shot and then made his escape. The negropopulation, led by negro soldiers, went into every house in the town,seized all the arms, and secured as a hostage the brother of the man whohad escaped. A gallows was erected and the boy was about to be hanged whenhis relatives received an intimation that money would secure his release.With difficulty about $10,000 was secured from the people of the town andsent to the officer in command of the district. No one knows what he didwith the money, but the young man was released.[705]

Before the close of 1865, the commanding officers were reducing the troopsto much better discipline and many were withdrawn. The provisionalgovernment also grew stronger, and there was considerably less disorderamong the whites, though the blacks were still demoralized.

The conduct of the negro during the war and after gaining his freedomseemed to convince those who had feared that insurrection would followemancipation that no danger was to be feared from this source. Most of theformer slaveholders, who were better acquainted with the negro characterand who knew that the old masters could easily control them, at no timefeared a revolt of the blacks unless under exceptional circumstances. Itwas only when the wretched characters who followed the northern armiesgained control of the negro by playing upon his fears and exciting hisworst passions that the fear of the negro was felt by many who had neverfelt it before, and who have never since been entirely free from thisfear.

When the Federal armies passed through the state, the negroes along theline of march followed them in numbers, though many returned to the oldhome after a day or two. Yet all were restless and expectant, as wasnatural. During the war they had understood[Pg 270] the questions at issue so faras they themselves were concerned, and now that the struggle was decidedagainst their masters they looked for stranger and more wonderful things,not so much at first, however, as later when the negro soldiers and thewhite emissaries had filled their minds with false impressions of the newand glorious condition that was before them. For several weeks before themaster came home from the army the negroes knew that, as a result of thewar, they were free. They, however, worked on, somewhat restless, ofcourse, until he arrived and called them up and informed them that theywere free. This was the usual way in which the negro was informed of hisfreedom. The great majority of the blacks, except in the track of thearmies, waited to hear from their masters the confirmation of the reportsof freedom. And the first thing the returning slaveholder did was toassemble his negroes and make known to them their condition with itsprivileges and responsibilities. It did not enter the minds of the mastersthat any laws or constitutional amendments were necessary to abolishslavery. They were quite sure that the war had decided the question. Someof the legal-minded men, those who were not in the army and who read theirlaw books, were disposed to cling to their claims until the law settledthe question. But they were few in number.[706]

The negro believed, when he became free, that he had entered Paradise,that he never again would be cold or hungry, that he never would have towork unless he chose to, and that he never would have to obey a master,but would live the remainder of his life under the tender care of thegovernment that had freed him. It was necessary, he thought, to test thiswonderful freedom. As Booker Washington says, there were two things whichall the negroes in the South agreed must be done before they were reallyfree: they must change their names and leave the old plantation for a fewdays or weeks. Many of them returned to the old homes and made contractswith their masters for work, but at the same time they felt that it wasnot proper to retain their old master’s name, and accordingly took newones.[707]

[Pg 271]Upon leaving their homes the blacks collected in gangs at the cross-roads,in the villages and towns, and especially near the military posts. To thenegro these ordinary men in blue were beings from another sphere who hadbrought him freedom, which was something that he did not exactlyunderstand, but which he was assured was a delightful state. The townswere filled with crowds of blacks who left their homes with absolutelynothing, thinking that the government would care for them, or, moreprobably, not thinking at all. Later, after some experience, they weredisposed to bring with them their household goods and the teams and wagonsof their former masters. This was the effect that freedom had uponthousands; yet, after all, most of the negroes either stayed at their oldhomes, or, that they might feel really free, moved to some place near by.But among the quietest of them there was much restlessness and neglect ofwork. Hunting and fishing and frolics were the duties of the day. Everyman acquired in some way a dog and a gun as badges of freedom. It wasquite natural that the negroes should want a prolonged holiday to enjoytheir new-found freedom; and it is rather strange that any of them worked,for there was a universal impression, vague of course in the remotedistricts—the result of the teachings of the negro soldiers and of theFreedmen’s Bureau officials—that the government would support them. Stillsome communities were almost undisturbed. The advice of the old plantationpreachers held many to their work, and these did not suffer as did theirbrothers who flocked to the cities. Many negro men seized the opportunityto desert their wives and children and get new wives. It was considered arelic of slavery to remain tied to an ugly old wife, married in slavery.Much suffering resulted from the desertion, though, as a rule, the negromother alone supported the children much better than did the father whostayed.[708]

In many districts the negro steadily refused to work, but persisted insupporting himself at the expense of the would-be employer. Thousands ofhogs and cattle that had escaped the raiding armies or the Confederatetithe gatherer went to feed the hungry African[Pg 272] whom the Bureau did notsupply. The Bureau issued rations only three times a week, and as thehomeless negro had nowhere to keep provisions for two or three days, therewould be a season of plenty and then a season of fasting. The Bureaureached only a small proportion of the negroes; and, of those it couldreach, many, in spite of the regulations, neglected to apply for relief.By causing the negroes to crowd into the towns and cities the Bureaubrought on much of the want that it did not relieve. The complaint wasmade that in the worst period of distress the soldiers in charge of theissue of supplies made no effort to see that the negroes were cared for.It was easier also for the average negro to pick up pigs and chickens thanto make trips to the Bureau. During the summer the roving negro lived upongreen corn from the nearest fields and blackberries from the fence cornersand pine orchards. With the approach of winter suffering was sure to cometo those who were now doing well in a vagrant way, but winter was to themtoo far in the future to trouble them.

The negroes soon found that freedom was not all they had been led toexpect. A meeting of 900 blacks held near Mobile decided by a vote of 700to 200 to return to their former masters and go to work to make a living,since their northern deliverers had failed to provide for them in anyway.[709]

The negro preacher, especially those lately called to preach, and thenorthern missionaries had, during the summer and fall, a flourishing timeand a rich harvest. A favorite dissipation among the negroes was going tochurch services as often as possible, especially to camp-meetings where heor she could shout. It was another mark of freedom to change one’s church,or to secede from the white churches. All through the summer of 1865 therevival meetings went on, conducted by new self-“called” colored preachersand the missionaries. The old plantation preachers, to their credit be itremembered, frowned upon this religious frenzy. The people living near theplaces of meetings complained of the disappearance of poultry and pigs,fruit and vegetables after the late sessions of the African congregations.The various missionaries filled the late slave’s head with false notionsof many things besides religion, and gathered thousands into their foldsfrom the southern religious organizations.[Pg 273] Baptizings were as popular asthe opera among the whites to-day. That ceremony took place at the riveror creek side. Thousands were sometimes assembled, and the air waselectric with emotion. The negro was then as near Paradise as he ever camein his life. The Baptist ceremony of immersion was preferred, because, asone of them remarked, “It looks more like business.” Shouting they wentinto the water and shouting they came out. One old negro woman wasimmersed in the river and came out screaming: “Freed from slavery! freedfrom sin! Bless God and General Grant!”[710]

The negroes massed in the towns lived in deserted and ruined houses, inhuts built by themselves of refuse lumber, under sheds and under bridgesover creeks, ravines, and gutters, and in caves in the banks of rivers andravines. Many a one had only the sky for a roof and the ground in a fencecorner for a bed. They were very scantily clothed. Food was obtained bybegging, stealing, or from the Bureau. Taking from the whites was notconsidered stealing, but was “spilin de Gypshuns.” The food supply wasinsufficient, and was badly cooked when cooked at all. It was not possiblefor the army and the Freedmen’s Bureau, which came later, to do halfenough by issuing rations to relieve the suffering they caused byattracting the negroes to the cities. While in slavery the negro had beenforced to keep regular hours, and to take care of himself; he had plentyto eat and to wear, and, for reasons of dollars and cents, if for noother, his health was looked after by his master. Now all was changed. Thenegroes were like young children left to care for themselves, and eventhose who remained at home suffered from personal neglect, since they nolonger could be governed in such matters by the directions of the whites.Among the negroes in the cities and in the “contraband” camps the sanitaryconditions were very bad. To make matters infinitely worse disease in itsmost loathsome forms broke out in these crowded quarters. Smallpox,peculiarly fatal to negroes, raged among them for two years and carriedoff great numbers. The Freedmen’s Bureau had established hospitals[Pg 274] forthe negroes, but it could not or would not care for the smallpox patientsas carefully as for other sickness. In Selma, for instance, the cityauthorities had been sending the negroes who were ill to one of the cityhospitals. But the military authorities interfered, took the negroes away,and informed the city authorities that the negroes were the especial wardsof the government, which would care for them at all times. When smallpoxbroke out, the military authorities in charge of the Bureau refused tohave anything to do with the sick negroes, and left them to the care ofthe town.[711] Consumption and venereal diseases now made theirappearance. The relations of the soldiers of the invading army and thenegro women were the cause of social demoralization and physicaldeterioration. An eminent authority states that from various causes theefficient negro population was reduced by one-fourth.[712] Though thisestimate must be too large, still the negro population decreased between1860 and 1866, as the census of the latter year shows,[713] in spite ofthe fact that thousands of negroes[714] were sent into Alabama during thewar from Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Florida to escape capture bythe Federal armies. The greatest mortality was among the negroes in theoutskirts of the cities and towns. Some of the loss of population must beascribed to the enrolment of negroes as soldiers and to the capture ofslaves by the Federal armies.[715] For several years after the war youngnegro children were scarce in certain districts. They had died by hundredsand thousands through neglect.[716]

For a year or two the relations between the blacks and whites were, on thewhole, friendly, in spite of the constant effort of individual northernersand negro soldiers to foment trouble between the races. As a result of thework of outsiders, there was a growing tendency to insolent conduct on thepart of the younger negro men, who were convinced that civil behavior andfreedom were incompatible. On the part of some there was a disposition notto submit to the direction of the white men in their work, and the negro’sadvisers warned him against the efforts of the white man to enslave him.Consequently he refused to make contracts that called for anyresponsibility on his part, and if he made a contract the Bureau mustratify it, and, as he had no knowledge of the obligation of contracts, hewas likely to break it. In an address of the white ministers of Selma tothe negroes, they said that papers had been circulated among the negroestelling them that they were hated and detested by the whites, and thatsuch papers caused bad feeling, which was unfortunate, as the races mustlive together, and the better the feeling, the better it would be forboth. At first, the address added, there was some bad feeling when certainnegroes, in order to test their freedom, became impudent and insulting,but on the part of the white man this feeling was soon changed. Later thenegroes were poisoned against their former masters by listening to lyingwhites, and then they refused to work. The ministers warned the negroesagainst their continual idleness and their immoral lives, and told themthat those of them who pretended to work were not making one bushel ofcorn where they might make ten, and that the whites wanted workers. Theself-respecting negroes were asked to use their influence for thebettering of the worthless members of their race.[717]

When the negroes became convinced that the government would not supportthem entirely, they then took up the notion that the lands of the whiteswere to be divided among them. In the fall of 1865 there was a generalbelief that at Christmas or New Year’s Day a division of property would bemade, and that each negro would get his share—“forty acres of land and anold gray mule” or the equivalent in other property. The soldiers and theofficials of the Freedmen’s[Pg 276] Bureau were responsible for putting thesenotions into the heads of the negroes, though General Swayne endeavored tocorrect such impressions. The effect of the belief in the division ofproperty was to prevent steady work or the making of contracts. Manyceased work altogether, waiting for the division. In many cases northernspeculators and sharpers deceived the negroes about the division of land,and, in this way, secured what little money the latter had.

The trust that the negro placed in every man who came from the North wasabsolute. They manifested a great desire to work for those who bought orleased plantations in the South, and nearly all observers coming from theNorth in 1865 spoke of the alacrity with which the blacks entered intoagreements to work for northern men. At the same time there was no illfeeling toward the southern whites; only, for the moment, they wereeclipsed by these brighter beings who had brought freedom with them. Twoyears’ experience at the most resulted in a thorough mutual distrust. Thenorthern man could make no allowances for the difference between white andnegro labor, he expected too much; the negro would not work for so hard ataskmaster.

The northern newspaper correspondents who travelled through the South in1865 agreed that the old masters were treating the negroes well, and thatthe relations between the races were much more friendly than they hadexpected to find. When cotton was worth fifty cents a pound, it was to theinterest of the planter to treat the negro well, especially as the negrowould leave and go to another employer on the slightest provocation oroffer of better wages. The demand for labor was much greater than thesupply. The lower class of whites, the “mean” or “poor whites,” as thenorthern man called them, were hostile to the negro and disposed to holdhim responsible for the state of affairs, and, in some cases, mistreatedhim. The negro, in turn, made many complaints against the vicious whites,and against the policemen in the towns, who were not of the highest type,and who made it hard for Sambo when he desired to hang around town andsleep on the sidewalks. One correspondent said that the Irish wereespecially cruel to the negroes.

The negro freedman undoubtedly suffered much more from mistreatment by lowcharacters than the negro slave had suffered. In slavery times his mastersaw that he was protected. Now he had[Pg 277] no one to look to for protection.The strongest influence of the great majority of the whites was usedagainst any mistreatment of the negro, and the meaner element of thewhites was suppressed as much as it was possible to do when there was noauthority except public opinion. All in all the negro had less illtreatment than was to be expected, and suffered much more from his ownignorance and the mistaken kindness of his friends.[718]

When the war ended, there was little good money in the state, and industrywas paralyzed. The gold and silver that remained was carefully hoarded,and for months there was none in circulation except in the towns. AConfederate officer relates that on his way home, in 1865, he gave $500 inConfederate currency to a Federal soldier for a silver dime, and that thiswas the only money he saw for several weeks. The people had no faith inpaper money of any kind, and thought that greenbacks would becomeworthless in the same way as Confederate currency. All sense of values hadbeen lost, which may account for the fabulous and fictitious prices in theSouth for several years after the war, and the liberality ofappropriations of the first legislature after the surrender, which insmall matters was severely economical. The legislators had been accustomedto making appropriations of thousands and even millions of dollars, withno question as to where the money was to come from, for the state hadthree public printers to print money. Now it was hard to realize thatbusiness must be brought to a cash basis.

Here and there could be found a person who had a bale or two of cottonwhich he had succeeded in hiding from the raiders and the Treasury agents.This was sold for a good price and relieved the wants of the owner; butthose who had cotton to sell often spent the money foolishly for gewgawsand fancy articles to eat and wear, such as they had not seen for severalyears. There was an almost maddening desire for the things which they hadonce been accustomed[Pg 278] to, and which the traders and speculators now placedin tempting array in the long-empty store windows. But the majority of thepeople had no cotton to sell, and in many cases a pig or a cow was driventen or fifteen miles to sell for a little money to buy necessaries, orfrequently trinkets.

In certain parts of the state the crops planted by the negroes were ingood condition in April, 1865, but after the invasions they wereneglected, and in thousands of cases the negroes went away and left them.In the white counties conditions were as bad as it was possible to be.Half of the people in them had been supported by state and county aidwhich now failed. Nearly all the men were injured or killed, and therewere no negroes to work the farms. The women and the children dideverything they could to plant their little crops in the spring of 1865,but often not even seed corn was to be had. All over the state, where itwas possible, the returning soldiers planted late crops of corn, and inthe Black Belt they were able to save some of the crops planted by thenegroes. But in the white counties, especially in the northern part of thestate, nothing could be done. Often the breadwinner had been killed in thewar, and the widow and orphans were left to provide for themselves. Thelate crops were almost total failures because of the drought, notone-tenth of the crop of 1860 being made. In this section everything thatwould support life had been stripped from the country by the contendingarmies and the raiding bands of desperadoes. A double warfare haddevastated the country, “tories” raiding their neighbors andvice versa;and the bitter state of feeling prevented neighbor from relievingneighbor. But the “Unionists,” who were sure that their turn had come,wanted the destitute cared for, even if some were fed “who curse us astraitors.” This part of the country had been supported by the centralBlack Belt counties, but in 1865 the supply was exhausted. In the cottoncounties there was enough to support life, and had the negroes remained athome and worked, they would not have suffered. As it was, those who leftthe plantation were decimated by disease and want. Soon after theoccupation, the army officers distributed the supplies captured from theConfederates among the needy whites and blacks who applied for aid. Butmany out of reach of aid starved, and especially did this happen among theaged and helpless who made no[Pg 279] appeal for aid, but who died in silencefrom want of shelter and food.

After several months the Freedmen’s Bureau, under the charge of GeneralSwayne, who was a man of discretion and common sense, and who understoodthe real state of affairs, extended its assistance to the destitutewhites. Among the negroes the Bureau created much of the misery itrelieved, for in the cotton belt there was enough to support life; and hadthe negroes not flocked to the Bureau, they would have lived in plenty.Besides, the aged and infirm negroes were not assisted by the Bureau, butremained with their master’s people, who took care of them. But thegenerous assistance extended by that much-abused institution saved many apoor white from starvation. In the fall of 1865, 139,000 destitute whiteswere reported to the provisional government. They were mostly in themountain counties of north and northeast Alabama, though in southeastAlabama there was also much want. And in Governor Parsons’s last messageto the legislature (December, 1865), he stated that those in need of foodnumbered 250,000.[719] A state commissioner for the destitute wasappointed to coöperate with General Swayne and the Freedmen’s Bureau. Thelegislature appropriated $500,000 in bonds to buy supplies for the poor,but the attitude of Congress toward the Johnson state governmentsprevented the sale of state securities. However, the governor went to theWest and succeeded in getting some supplies. In December, 1865, it wasbelieved that there were 200,000 people who needed assistance in somedegree.

The failure of the crops in 1865 left affairs in even a worse conditionthan before. Small farmers could not subsist while making a new crop, andmany widows and children were in great need. Some of the latter walkedthirty or forty miles for food for themselves and for those at home.[720]

In January, 1866, the state commissioner, M. H. Cruikshank, reported toGovernor Patton that 52,921 whites were entirely destitute.[Pg 280] These weremostly in the counties of Bibb, Shelby, Jefferson, Talladega, St. Clair,Cherokee, Blount, Jackson, Marshall, all white counties; nine othercounties had not been heard from.[721] During the same month, a Freedmen’sBureau official who travelled through the counties of Talladega, Bibb,Shelby, Jefferson, and Calhoun reported that the suffering among thewhites was appalling, especially in Talladega County. The Freedmen’sBureau had neglected the poor whites, though there was little suffering inthe richer sections where the negroes lived. He stated that near Talladegamany white families were living in the woods with no shelter except thepine boughs, and this in the middle of winter.[722]

In Randolph County, in January, 1866, the probate judge said that 5000persons were in need of aid. Most of these had been opposed to theConfederacy. The “unionists” complained that the Confederate foragers haddiscriminated against them, which, while very likely true, was more thanoffset by the depredations of the tories and Federals on the Confederatesympathizers. All accounts agree that the Confederate sympathizers were inthe worse condition; many of them had not tasted meat for months. Butcharges were brought that the probate judges of the provisionalgovernment, who certainly were not strong Confederates, did not fairlydistribute provisions among the “damned tories,” as the latter complainedthat they were called.[723] The state commissioner could relieve onlyabout one-tenth of the destitute whites. In January, 1866, he gaveassistance in the form of meal, corn (and sometimes a little meat) to 5245whites and 2426 blacks; in February, to 13,083 whites and to 4107 blacks;and in March, to 17,204 whites and to 5877 blacks, most of whom were womenand children, the men receiving assistance being old, infirm, or crippled.General Swayne of the Freedmen’s Bureau helped Cruikshank in every way hecould, and took charge of some of the negroes. But owing to the failure ofthe crops in 1865, the situation was growing worse,[Pg 281] and there was no hopefor any relief until the summer of 1866 when vegetables and corn wouldripen.[724]

In May, 1866, Governor Patton said that of 20,000 widows and 60,000orphans, three-fourths were in need of the necessaries of life, that theyhad been able to do very little for themselves, even those who had landbeing unable to work it to any advantage, and that their corn crop of theprevious year had failed.[725] There is little doubt that many died fromlack of food and shelter during 1865 and 1866, but in the disordered timesincomplete records were kept. Many cases of starvation were reported,especially in north Alabama, but few names can now be obtained. NearGuntersville there were three cases of starvation, while hundreds were inan almost perishing condition. From Marshall County, where, it was said,there were 2180 helpless and destitute persons and 2000 who were able towork, but could get nothing to do, it was reported that not more thantwenty people had more than enough to supply their own needs. The peopleof Cherokee County, when on the verge of starvation, appealed to southAlabama for aid. They asked for corn, and said that if they could not getit they must leave the country. Hundreds, they said, had not tasted meatfor months, and farm stock was in a wretched condition. Nashville sent$15,000 and Montgomery $10,000 to buy provisions for them.[726] From CoosaCounty much distress was reported among the old people, widows, children,refugees, and the families whose heads had returned from the army too lateto make a crop. However, the negroes in this section who had remained ontheir farms had made good crops and were doing well.[727] In the valley ofthe Coosa, in northeast Alabama, several cases of starvation werereported. One woman went seventeen miles for a peck of meal, but diedbefore she could reach home with it. Another, after fasting three days,walked sixteen miles to obtain supplies, and failing, died. One familylived on boiled greens, with no salt nor pepper, no meat nor bread. An oldwoman, living eighteen miles from Guntersville, walked to that village toget meal for her grandchildren. It has been estimated that there were20,000 people[Pg 282] in the five counties south of the Tennesseeriver—Franklin, Lawrence, Morgan, Marshall, De Kalb—in a state of wantbordering on starvation.[728]

The majority of the destitute whites never appealed for aid, but managed,though half starved, to live until better times. Numbers left the land offamine and went where there was plenty, and where they could get work.Others who could not emigrate and those broken in spirit receivedassistance. From January to September, 1866, 15,000 to 20,000 whites, and4000 to 14,000 negroes were aided each month by the Freedmen’s Bureau andby the state. Most of these were women and children, the rule being not toassist able-bodied whites except in extreme cases.

In 1866 the state succeeded in selling some of its bonds, and raised moneyin other ways. Much was spent for supplies for the poor, for in 1866 thecrops almost failed again. From November, 1865, to September, 1866, theFreedmen’s Bureau and the state commissioner issued, to black and white,3,789,788 rations. There were also large donations from the West and fromTennessee and Kentucky. After this the Freedmen’s Bureau gave less, thoughduring the year from September, 1866, to September, 1867, it issued214,305 rations to whites and 274,399 to blacks. To the whites, and partlyto the blacks, the issue of provisions was made under the generalsupervision of General Swayne, and through state agents in each county whowere acceptable to Swayne.[729]

In November, 1867, the Freedmen’s Bureau reported that there were 10,000whites and 50,000 blacks without means of support, and 450,000 rations permonth were asked for. It would have been much better to have put an end torelief work, since by this time the officials of the Freedmen’s Bureauwere very active in politics and showed a disposition to report theirpolitical henchmen as destitute and in need of support. And in another waythere was much abuse of the[Pg 283] charity of the government, for somebroken-down, spiritless people would never work for themselves as long asthey could draw rations for nothing. The negroes, especially, weredemoralized by the issue of rations. Fear of the contempt of theirneighbors would drive all but the meaner class of whites back to work, butthe negro came to believe that he would be supported the rest of his lifeby the government.

As late as October, 1868, it was reported that there was great want inmiddle and south Alabama, and soup houses were established by the stateand the Bureau in Mobile, Huntsville, Selma, Montgomery, and other centralAlabama towns.[730] The location of the soup kitchens, and the date, leadone to suspect that politics, perhaps, had something to do with thematter. These towns were the very places where there was less want thananywhere else in the state, but Grant was to be elected, and there weremany negro votes.

For more than two years after the war in all the small towns were seenemaciated persons who had come long distances to get food. General Swaynethought the condition of the poor white much worse than that of the negro.The latter, he said, was hindered by no wounds nor by a helpless family,for his aged and helpless kin were cared for at the old master’s. The“refugees,” as the poor whites were called who had but little and lost allby the war, lived in a different part of the country,—in the mountainsand in the pine woods,—beyond the reach of work or help, clinging to theold home places in utter hopeless desolation. For the negro, Swaynethought, there was hope, but for the “refugee” there was none; he existedonly.[731]

It was years before a large number of the people again attained acomfortable standard of living. Some gave up altogether. Many died in thestruggle. Numbers left the country; others, in reach of assistance, becametrifling and worthless from too much aid. In later years the opening ofmines and the building of railroads in north Alabama, the lumber industryand the rapid development of south Alabama, saved the “refugee” from thefate that General Swayne thought was in store for him.

CHAPTER VI

At the time of the collapse of the Confederacy trade within the state ofAlabama was subject to the following regulations: gold and silver was inno case to be paid for southern produce; all trade was to be done throughofficers appointed by the United States Treasury Department;[732] thestate was divided into districts and sub-districts called agencies, underthe superintendence of these Treasury agents, whose business it was toregulate trade, and collect captured, abandoned, and confiscable property;in making purchases of cotton, and other produce the agents were to payonly three-fourths of the value, or to purchase the produce atthree-fourths its value, and then at once resell it to the former owner atfull value, with permission to export or ship to the North; in order toget permission to sell, the owner must take the Lincoln amnesty oath ofDecember 8, 1863; there was, besides, an internal revenue tax of two centsa pound, and a shipping fee of four cents a pound.[733] So for a monthafter the surrender the person who owned cotton near any port or place ofsale had to sell to United States Treasury agents, or pretended agents,and have twenty-five per cent to fifty per cent of the value of his cottondeducted before it could be sent North. On May 9, 1865, a regulationprovided that “all cotton not produced by personswith their own laboror with the labor offreedmen or others employed andpaid by them,must, before shipment to any port or[Pg 285] place in a loyal state, be sold toand resold by an officer of the government ... and before allowing anycotton or other product to be shipped ... the proper officer must requirea certificate from the purchasing agent or the internal revenue officerthat the cotton proposed to be shipped had been resold by him or that 25per cent of the value thereof has been paid to such purchasing agent inmoney.”[734]

This was in accord with the general policy of Johnson, at first, viz. topunish the slaveholding class and to favor the non-slaveholders. Cottonwas then worth $250 or more a bale, and cotton raised by slave labor hadto pay the 25 per cent tax—$60 to $75. However, the regulations orderedthat no other fees were to be exacted after the fourth was taken. Nearlyall the cotton not yet destroyed was in the Black Belt, and was raised byslave labor. The few people who had cotton raised by their own labor mightsell it after paying the tax of three cents a pound, or $12 to $15 a bale.

May 22, 1865, the proclamation of the President removed restrictions oncommercial intercourse except as to the right of the United States toproperty purchased by agents in southern states, and except as to the 25per cent tax on purchases of cotton. No exceptions were made to the 25 percent tax. The ports were to be opened to foreign commerce after July 1,1865.[735] After June 30, 1865, restrictions as to trade were removedexcept as to arms, gray cloth, etc.[736] And after August 29, 1865, evencontraband goods might be admitted on license.[737]

The confiscation laws relating to private property under which the armyand Treasury agents were acting in Alabama in 1865 were: (1) the act ofJuly 17, 1862, which authorized the confiscation and sale of property as apunishment for “rebels”; (2) the act of March 12, 1863, which authorizedTreasury agents to collect and sell “captured and abandoned”property,—but a “loyal” owner might within two years after the close ofthe war prove his claim, and “that[Pg 286] he has never given any aid or comfort”to the Confederacy, and then receive the proceeds of the sales, lessexpenses; (3) the act of July 2, 1864, authorizing Treasury agents tolease or work abandoned property by employing refugee negroes. “Abandoned”property was defined by the Treasury Department as property the owner ofwhich was engaged in war or otherwise against the United States, or wasvoluntarily absent. According to this ruling all the property ofConfederate soldiers was “abandoned” and might be seized by Treasuryagents. North Alabama suffered from the operation of these laws from theirpassage until late in 1865, the rest of Alabama only in 1865.

The blockade prevented the people from disposing of most of the cottonraised during the war; there were heavy crops in 1860, 1861, 1862, andsmall ones in 1863 and 1864. The number of bales produced in 1859 was989,955; in 1860, about the same; and less in 1861 and 1862.

Comparatively little cotton was sent out on blockade-runners, and not verymuch was sent through the lines from the cotton belt proper, so that atthe close of the war there were many thousands of bales of cotton in thecentral counties of the state. Cotton was selling for high prices—30cents to $1.20 a pound, or $200 to $500 a bale. It was almost the soledependence of the people to prevent the severest suffering. The state andConfederate governments had some kind of a claim on much of the cottonearly in 1865. No one knew how much nor exactly where all of theConfederate cotton was stored, and it bore no marks that would distinguishit from private cotton. But the records surrendered by General Taylor andothers showed who had subscribed to the Cotton or Produce Loan. Manythousand bales had been destroyed by the raiders in 1864 and 1865, andmany thousand more had been burned by Confederate authorities to preventits falling into the hands of the Federals.[738]

[Pg 287]On October 30, 1864, a report was made to Secretary of the Treasury[739]Trenholm which showed the amount of Confederate cotton in the southernstates. By far the greater part that was still on hand was in Alabama. Inthis state the Confederacy had received as subscriptions to the ProduceLoan, 134,252 bales, at an average cost of $101.55, in all,$13,633,621.90. Other sales or subscriptions on other products to thisProduce or Cotton Loan raised the amount in Alabama to $16,691,500.Alabama, as one of the producing states, and the one least affected by theravages of war, furnished to all of these loans more produce than anyother state.[740] The people, unable to sell their cotton abroad,exchanged some of it for Confederate bonds. Several thousand bales (6000in 1864) were gathered by the cotton tithe. After shipping severalthousand bales through the blockade, and smuggling some through the lines,and after some destruction by the enemy, or to prevent seizure by theenemy, there remained in the state, in the fall of 1864, 115,450 bales ofConfederate cotton. Nearly all of this was destroyed in 1865, before thesurrender, by Federals and Confederates, and very little remained whichthe Federal government could rightfully claim as Confederate property.This claim was based on the theory that cotton subscribed to the ProduceLoan was devoted to the aid of the Confederacy, in intention at least, andtherefore was forfeited to the United States, even though the owner hadnever delivered the cotton or other produce, and though the United Statesheld that the Confederacy could not legally acquire property.[741] Therewere three classes of property claimed by the United States: (1)“captured” property or anything seized by the army and navy; (2)“abandoned” property, the owner being in the Confederate service, nomatter whether his family were present or not; (3) “confiscable” property,or that liable to seizure and sale under the Confiscation Act of July[Pg 288] 17,1862. Until 1865, all sorts of property were seized and used by theFederal forces, or, if portable, sent North for sale. Live stock, plantingimplements and machinery, wagons, etc., were in some cases sent North andsold;[742] but most was used on the spot.

After the surrender the Secretary of Treasury ordered household furniture,family relics, books, etc., to be restored to all “loyal” owners or tothose who had taken the amnesty oath.[743] In no case had a person whocould not prove his or her “loyalty” any remedy against seizure ofproperty. Until the surrender the people of north Alabama were despoiledof all property that could be moved, and after the surrender the samepolicy was pursued all over the state, especially in regard to cotton. Noright of property in cotton was there recognized, but by a previous law a“loyal” owner had until two years after the war to prove his claim and his“loyalty.”[744]

The Attorney-General delivered an opinion, July 5, 1865, that cotton andother property seized by the agents or the army wasde facto anddejure,captured property, and that neither the President nor theSecretary of the Treasury had the power to restore such property to theformer owners. They must go through the courts, and under the laws only“loyal” claimants had any basis for claims, and “loyalty” must first bedetermined by the courts.[745] After the opinion of the Attorney-General,Secretary McCulloch followed it so far as[Pg 289] captures by the army wereconcerned, but still continued to “revise the mistakes” of the cottonagents who “frequently seized the property of private individuals.” Proofof “loyalty” was, however, required in all cases before restoration, andthe fourteen classes excepted by the amnesty proclamation of May 29, 1865,could get no restoration. In all cases the expenses charged against theproperty had to be paid before the owner could get it. After April 4,1867, by request of the Joint Sub-Committee on Retrenchment, no furtherreleases of any kind were made.[746] On March 30, 1868, a joint resolutionof Congress covered into the Treasury all money received from sales ofproperty in the South. After this only an act of Congress could restorethe proceeds to the owner.[747]

The result was in the long run that the “disloyal” owners never receivedrestoration of their property seized by the army, and by the Treasuryagents during and after the war, but claim agents and perjurers havepursued a thriving business in proving “loyal” claims against theTreasury. “Disloyal” persons, whose property was liable to confiscation,and who could not recover in the Court of Claims, were, as decided by thatbody: those who served in the military, naval, or civil service of thestate or the Confederacy; those who voted for secession or for secessioncandidates; those who furnished supplies to the Confederacy, engaged inbusiness that aided the Confederacy, subscribed to its loans, resided orremoved voluntarily within the Confederate lines, or sold produce to theConfederacy. Women who had sons or husbands in the Confederate army, orwho belonged to “sewing societies,” or made flags and clothing for, orfurnished delicacies to, Confederate soldiers were “disloyal” and couldnot recover property. “Loyalty” had to be proven, not only for theoriginal owner, but also for the heirs and claimants. The claims ofdeserters were allowed. In order to test the “loyalty” of claimants, theywere asked to answer in writing lists of questions (numbering at varioustimes 49, 62, 79, and 80 questions) regarding their conduct during thewar. The questions covered several hundred points, and embraced everypossible activity from 1861 to 1865. No man and few women who lived withinthe state until 1865 could,[Pg 290] without perjury, pass the examination andprove a claim. Yet numbers have proved claims.[748]

The minority report of the Ku Klux Committee in 1872 asserted that, of the5,000,000 bales of cotton in the South at the close of the war, 3,000,000had been seized by United States Treasury agents or pretended agents.[749]The Gulf states, and especially Alabama, were for a year or more filledwith agents and “cotton spies,” seeking Confederate cotton and otherproperty. They were paid a percentage of what they seized—25 to 50 percent. Native scoundrels united with these, and all reaped a richharvest.[750]

On much of the cotton subscribed to the Confederate Produce Loan thegovernment had advanced a small amount to the owner and allowed him tokeep it. In many cases no payment had been made. The farmer consideredthat the cotton still belonged to him, but that the Confederacy had aclaim on a part of it. The records kept were imperfect, and few personsknew just what was Confederate cotton and what was not. Much of the cottonsubscribed had been destroyed or sent to government warehouses in Selma,Mobile, Montgomery, and Columbus, where it was burned in April and May,1865. Of course each man considered that the cotton destroyed wasConfederate cotton, and that all left was private cotton. In most casesthe claim of the government was very shadowy. Where cotton was still inthe hands of the planter, private and government cotton could not bedistinguished. The records did not show whether a man had kept ordelivered the cotton he had subscribed to the Produce Loan. The agentsproceeded upon the assumption that he had kept it, and that all he hadkept was government cotton.[751] No proof to the contrary would convincethe average agent. Secretary[Pg 291] McCulloch said, “I am sure I sent somehonest cotton agents South; but it sometimes seems very doubtful whetherany of them remained honest very long.”[752] It was said that SecretaryChase had foreseen the trouble that would result if the cotton wereconfiscated, and had proposed to leave all cotton in the hands of theformer owners who then held it. When the records were certain, the cottonmight be confiscated; but in most cases there were no correct records.Such a policy would have been generous and magnanimous, and would have hada good effect.[753] The plan of Chase was not accepted, and a carnival ofcorruption followed. In August, 1865, President Johnson wrote to GeneralThomas, “I have been advised that innumerable frauds are being practisedby persons assuming to be Treasury agents, in various portions of Alabama,in the collection of cotton pretended to belong to the Confederate Statesgovernment.”[754] The thefts of the Treasury agents and the worstcharacters of the army did much to arouse bitter feelings among the peoplewho lost their only possession that could be turned into ready money. Itwas assumed, as a general rule, that all cotton belonged to the governmentuntil the real owner could prove his claim and his “loyalty,” and ofcourse he could seldom do this to the satisfaction of the agent or of thearmy officer who was bent on supplementing his pay. Cotton had been allalong an object of the special hostility of Federals. The old southernbelief that cotton was king and the hopes that Confederates had founded onthis belief were well known. “Cotton is the root of all evil” was a commondeclaration of the invading army and of the cotton agents. When no otherprivate property was taken or destroyed, cotton was sure to be. Everycotton-gin and press in reach of the armies was burned from 1863 to 1865.There seemed to be an intense desire to destroy the royal power of KingCotton. As opportunity offered, officers in the army, contrary to orders,began to interest themselves in speculations in cotton—captured,purchased, or stolen. The small garrisons were not officered by the bestmen of the army, and many who would never have touched money from anyother kind of plunder thought it perfectly legitimate to fill theirpockets by the seizure and sale of cotton. They[Pg 292] did not consider itdefrauding the government, for the latter, they knew, had no more title toit than they had.[755]

The disposition of the cotton collectors to regard the people as withoutrights resulted in the growth of a feeling on the part of the latter thatit was perfectly legitimate to keep the government and its rascally agentsfrom profiting by the use of Confederate property. In every way peoplebegan to hinder the agents and the army in its work of collecting cotton.Colonel Hunter Brooke stated, in 1866, that most of the people who hadsubscribed cotton to the Confederate government or on whose cotton theConfederates had some claim utterly refused to recognize the title of theUnited States to that property and refused to give any assistance to theauthorities in tracing the cotton. At times the citizens rose in rebellionagainst the invasion of Treasury agents and the military escorts sent withthem. A cotton spy was sent into Choctaw County to collect informationabout cotton stealing. He had an escort of twenty soldiers, but the peopledrove them out. A battalion of cavalry was then sent. Steamers sent up therivers to get the cotton seized by the agents were sometimes firedupon.[756]

Not only cotton but stores collected on private plantations for the army,no matter whether private property or not, were seized. Horses and mulesused in the Confederate service were taken, notwithstanding the terms ofsurrender and the fact that the Confederate soldiers owned the cavalryhorses.[757] The counties of Cherokee,[Pg 293] Franklin, Jackson, Jefferson,Lauderdale, Limestone, Madison, Morgan, St. Clair, Walker, andWinston—all white counties—lost principally corn, fodder, provisions,harness, mules, horses, and wagons.[758]

As to cotton, much pure stealing was done by the followers of the army andthieving soldiers and some natives, but sooner or later the officialsbecame implicated in it, since only by their permission could thecommodity be shipped. A thieving southerner would find where a lot ofcotton was stored and inform a soldier, usually an officer, who would makearrangements to ship the cotton, and the two would divide the profits.Planters who were afraid that their cotton would be seized by Treasuryagents went into partnership with Federal officers and shipped theircotton to New Orleans or to New York. No one outside the ring could shipcotton until five or ten dollars a bale was paid the military officers whocontrolled affairs. Along the line of the Mobile and Ohio Railway 10,000bales of cotton were said to have been stolen from the owners and sold inMobile and New Orleans. The thieves often paid $75 a bale to have thecotton passed through to New Orleans.[759]

But all petty thievery went unnoticed when the Treasury agents beganoperations. They harried the land worse than an army of bummers. There wasno protection against one; he claimed all cotton, and, unless bribed,seized it. Thousands of bales were taken to which the government had not ashadow of claim. In November, 1865, theTimes correspondent (Truman)stated that nearly all the Treasury agents in Alabama had been fillingtheir pockets with cotton money, and that $2,000,000 were unaccounted for.One agent took 2000 bales on a vessel and went to France. Their method ofproceeding was to find a lot of cotton, Confederate or otherwise, and givesome man $50 a bale to swear the cotton belonged to him, and that it hadnever been turned over to the Confederate States. Then the agent shippedthe cotton and cleared $100 a bale.[760]

[Pg 294]Secretary McCulloch said that the most troublesome and disagreeable dutythat he was called upon to perform was the execution of the law in regardto Confederate property. The cotton agents, being paid by a commission onthe property collected, were disposed to seize private property also.There was no authority at hand to check them. And people were disposed, hethought, to lay claim to Confederate cotton and “spirited away” much ofit, while on the other hand much private property was taken by theagents.[761]

Five years later the testimony taken in Alabama at the instance of theminority members of the Ku Klux Committee exposed the methods of thecotton agents.[762] The country swarmed with agents or pretended agentsand their spies or informers; the commission given was from one-fourth toone-half of all cotton collected; everybody’s cotton was seized, but forfear of future trouble a proposition from the owner to divide was usuallylistened to and a peaceable settlement made; when private or public cottonwas shipped it was consigned by bales and not by pounds; the variousagents through whose hands it passed were in the habit of “tolling” or“plucking” it, often two or three times, about one-fifth at a time; inthis way a bale weighing 500 pounds would be reduced to 200 or 300 pounds;even after the private cotton arrived at Mobile or New Orleans, paying“toll” all the way, it was liable to seizure by order of some Treasuryagent; as a rule, terms could be arranged by which a planter might keepone-fourth to three-fourths of his cotton, whether Confederate or not; itwas safer for the agent to take a part of the cotton with the consent andsilence of the owner than to steal both from the owner and from thegovernment for which he pretended to work, and in this way the ownerssaved some for themselves; much private cotton was seized on theplantations near the rivers before the owners came home from the war;cotton seized in the Black Belt was shipped to Simeon Draper, UnitedStates cotton agent, New York, while that from north Alabama was sent toWilliam P. Mellen, Cincinnati;[763] complaint was made by those few ownerswho succeeded in tracing[Pg 295] their cotton that, after being reduced by“tolling” or “plucking,”[764] it was sold by the agent in the North, bysamples which were much inferior to the cotton in the bales, and in thisway the purchaser, who was in partnership with the agents, would pay tenor fifteen cents a pound for a lot of cotton certainly not worth more thanthat if the samples were honest, but which was really good cotton, worth35 cents to $1.20 a pound in New York.

So in case the Secretary of the Treasury could be brought to “revise themistakes” of his agents, the owner would get only the small sum paid infor inferior cotton, and even this was reduced by excessive charges andfees.[765] There was also complaint that when a lot of private cotton wasseized and traced to Draper, the latter would inform the owners that onlya small proportion of what had been seized was received,[766] and that hadbeen sold at a low price. It was afterwards shown that Draper never gavereceipts for cotton received. There was nothing businesslike about thecotton administration. Cotton was consigned to Draper or Mellen by thebale and not by the pound. A bale might weigh 200 or 500 pounds. As soonas cotton was seized the bagging was stripped off, and it was thenrepacked in order to prevent identification.[767] Many persons who knewnothing of the law and who saw that their property was unsafe were inducedby the Treasury agents to surrender their cotton to the United Statesgovernment, even though there might be no claim against it, the agentspromising that the United States would pay to the owners the proceeds uponapplication to the Treasury Department. When the Secretary of the Treasurydiscovered this, and when the agent would certify that such was the case,his “mistake was revised” and the money received from the sale of cottonwas refunded.[768] The owner had no remedy if the agent declined to[Pg 296]certify, and he usually declined, since the cotton had probably neverbeen turned over to the United States by him.

The experience of Hon. F. S. Lyon[769] is typical of many in the BlackBelt. He stated[770] that after the surrender of Taylor, General Canbyissued an order that all who had sold cotton to the Confederate governmentmust now surrender it to United States authorities under penalty ofconfiscation of other property to make good the failure to deliverConfederate cotton. Under this order some cotton was seized to replaceConfederate cotton that had disappeared. United States army wagons,guarded by soldiers, went over the country day and night, gathering cottonfor persons who pretended to be Treasury agents. Lyon had 384 bales ofConfederate cotton which were claimed by General Dustin, a cotton agent(later a carpet-bag politician), and Lyon agreed to haul it to therailroad, under an “agreement” with Dustin. But one night a train of armywagons, guarded by soldiers, came and carried off 26 bales, and the nextday, 70 bales. (They had asked the manager “if he would accept $2000 andsleep soundly all night.”) The wagons were traced to Uniontown, and thecommanding officer there was induced to hold the cotton until the questionwas settled. General Hubbard, commanding the district, arrested one Ruter,who, with the soldiers, had taken the cotton. Ruter claimed to be actingunder the authority of a cotton agent in Mississippi, but could show noevidence of his authority, and his name was not on the list of authorizedagents. However, General Hubbard was ordered by superior authority toregard Ruter as a cotton agent and to discharge him. The 70 bales werelost.

The Mobile agent, Dustin,[771] would not make a decision in disputed casesbecause he was afraid of appeal to Washington. A proposition to divide theprofits, however, would always secure from him a declaration that thecotton had no claims against it. Lyon reported that not one-tenth of thecotton seized was consigned to government[Pg 297] agents, but that the agentsusually sold it on the spot to cotton buyers. The planter was heldresponsible for cotton sold or subscribed to Confederate government.Cotton stolen from the agent had to be made good by the person from whomthe agent had seized it. Seed cotton was often hauled away at night bypretended agents. In every part of the cotton belt the looting of cottonwent on.

There were frequent changes of agents. As soon as a man became rich hisplace would be taken by another. The chief cotton agents sold for highprices appointments as collecting agents. The new agents often seized thecotton that through bribery had escaped former agents; and in this way thesame lot would be seized two or three times. One cotton agent, a mereyouth, at Demopolis received as his commission for one month 400 bales ofcotton which netted him $80,000. The Treasury Department made a regulationallowing one-fourth to a person who had kept the Confederate cotton anddelivered it safely to the United States authorities, but the agents didnot make known the regulation, and the one-fourth went to them.[772]

There were complaints of the seizure of cotton grown after the war. ThePlanters’ Factory of Mobile lost 240 bales of cotton grown in 1865. Thiscompany was made up of “Union” and northern men who were able to obtain anorder for the release of the cotton. There was of course no way to tellwhat cotton was seized, and 240 bales of “dog tail,” worth six cents apound, were turned over to the factory instead of the good cotton, worthsixty cents, a pound.[773]

The Federal grand jury reported that at the end of the war there were150,000 bales of cotton in Alabama to which the government[Pg 298] had cleartitle;[774] the records showed the history and location of each bale, andthese records were placed in the hands of the cotton agents; the papers oftwo agents, in south Alabama, Dexter and Tomeny, showed that while a largepart of this cotton had been shipped but little of it had been consignedto the government, the bulk of it having become a source of private profitto the agents; the 20,000 bales turned over to the government by theseagents had been much reduced in weight, in some cases as much asone-third, and exorbitant expenses had been charged against them; largequantities of cotton had been fraudulently released to parties whopresented fictitious claims; cotton belonging to private individuals hadoften been seized, and release refused unless the owner sold at a ruinoussacrifice to S. E. Ogden and Company, who seemed to be on the inside atNew York; cotton thus seized was not released except through the influenceof Ogden and Company, and it was said that Tomeny openly advised someparties to make arrangements with Ogden and Company, who paid less thanhalf-price for cotton under such circumstances.[775] The grand jurydeclared that in Alabama 125,000 bales had been stolen by agents. Tomeny,who seems to have secured a much smaller share of the spoils than Dexter,stated that when he began business in November, 1865, nearly all cottonhad been collected or stolen, and that not a hundred bales had beenreceived by himself except from other agents who had collected it. Heconsigned all his cotton to Simeon Draper, in New York City. None wasreleased to Ogden and Company, and they bought only one lot of cotton thathad been seized—505 bales seized from Ellis and Alley, themselves cottonagents under the First Agency. This lot, Tomeny claimed, was bought byOgden and Company without his knowledge or consent.[776]

Two cotton agents, T. C. A. Dexter and T. J. Carver, were finallyarraigned, in the fall and winter of 1865, in the Federal courts, andJudge Busteed proceeded to try them; but they denied the jurisdiction ofthe court, and the army interfered and stopped the proceedings, whereuponBusteed closed the court. Then a military[Pg 299] commission was convened, andbefore it the cases were tried. Lieutenant-Colonel Hunter Brooke presidedover the commission. The culprits denied the legality of this trial by amilitary commission in time of peace and ultimately were pardoned on thisaccount. Carver was convicted of fraud in the collection of cotton, andwas fined $90,000 and sentenced to imprisonment for one year and until thefine should be paid. Carver had paid Dexter $25,000 for his commission ascotton agent. So it seems the office must have carried with it certainopportunities. Dexter was convicted of fraud in the cotton business andfor selling the appointment to Carver. Only 3321 bales of governmentcotton could be traced directly to his stealing.[777] He was fined$250,000 and imprisoned for one year and until the fine should bepaid.[778]

The minority report of the Ku Klux Committee asserted, as has been said,that in 1865 there were 5,000,000 bales of cotton in the South, and thatthe agents seized 3,000,000 bales for themselves and for thegovernment;[779] Dr. Curry said that there were about 250,000 bales ofConfederate cotton;[780] another expert estimate placed the total numberof bales of Confederate cotton at 150,000 on April 1, 1865; after April 1,many thousand bales were destroyed in Alabama, where most of theConfederate cotton was gathered; the report of A. Roane, in 1864, showed115,000 bales in Alabama. It is not probable, after all the burnings whichlater took place in Alabama,[Pg 300] that there was much government cotton leftin Alabama, 20,000 bales at the most.

Secretary McCulloch, on March 2, 1867, reported that the total receiptsfrom captured and abandoned property amounted to $34,052,809.54, netting$24,742,322.55.[781] The cotton sold for $29,518,041.17.[782] The recordsshow that only 115,000 bales were turned over to the United States, and ofthese Draper received 95,840½ bales which he sold for about $15,000,000when cotton was worth 33 cents to $1.22 a pound, and a bale weighed 400 to450 pounds. This cotton was worth in New York $500,000,000.[783] Therecords of the agencies were badly kept or not kept at all, and manyagents made no reports. The government never knew how many bales had beencollected in its name.

The First Special Agency reported that in Alabama it had seized cotton(after June 1, 1865) in the counties of Greene, Marengo, Perry, Dallas,Pickens, Montgomery, Sumter, and Tuscaloosa, during October, November, andDecember, 1865, and January, 1866. This agency had, before June 1,1866,[784] shipped 5697 bales to the government agent in New York, whosold them for $750,702.68, and had made charges of $209,338.58 forfreight, fees, etc., $35 a bale. The Ninth Agency, under the notorious T.C. A. Dexter and J. M. Tomeny, gathered cotton from the counties ofDallas, Marengo, Sumter, Montgomery, Wilcox, Lowndes, Barbour, Butler,Tuscaloosa, Macon, and Mobile. This agency had thirty-six collectingagents, and turned over to the government only 9,712 bales, which sold for$1,412,335.68, with fees and charges amounting to $540,962.38.[785]

[Pg 301]Most of the government cotton was consigned to New York agents and soldthere.[786]

The army quartermasters at Mobile received 19,396 bales of cotton, ofwhich 6149 were delivered to Dexter and 9741 were, it was claimed,destroyed by the great explosion. Dexter turned over to the governmentonly 7469 bales and Tomeny 7732, other agents accounted for enough tobring the total up to about 30,000 bales. Dexter sold $823,947 worth ofother property.[787]

The Freedmen’s Bureau in Alabama was supported for two years by the saleof confiscated property, of which no accounts were kept. The army alsosold cotton and other confiscated property and used the proceeds.“Abandoned” cotton netted to the Treasury $2,682,271.69. After June 30,according to Treasury records, 33,638 bales (worth $7,650,675.93, butnetting only $4,886,671) were illegally seized. It is this money which isstill held because the former owners once subscribed to the ConfederateProduce Loan. “Loyal” claimants, 22,298 in number in 1871, were askingdamages, to the amount of $60,258,150.44. When Congress, on March 30,1868, called into the Treasury all proceeds of captured and abandonedproperty, it was found that Jay Cooke and Company had $20,000,000, whichthey had been using in their business for years. The cotton agents andothers interested lobbied persistently in Washington[Pg 302] against legislationin behalf of claimants, fearing investigation and exposure.

The statistics given in the public documents are often those for the wholeSouth, but usually only for Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Seldomcan the figures for Alabama be separated from the others. Alabama lostmore from the invasion of Treasury agents than any other state, since in1865 she had more cotton and other property, and many more agents visitedher soil. The United States Treasury received only a small fraction of theconfiscated property, and most of the proceeds of that have been releasedto people who were willing to commit perjury in order to get it.[788]

Under the act of March 12, 1863, “loyal” owners had until two years afterthe war to file claims, and by February, 1888, $9,864,300.75 had been paidout to satisfy these people. Since 1888, $520,700.18 has been paid out.Under the act of May 18, 1872, providing for return of proceeds of cottonseized illegally after June 30, 1865, 1337 claims were filed, 339 of whichwere from Alabama. These Alabama claims called for 23,529 bales. Only avery small amount ($195,896.21) was returned to the claimants, because therecords showed that most of them had once sold cotton to the Confederategovernment. Therefore, they now say, all cotton seized after June 30,1865, was Confederate cotton, and the proceeds will be held. Only aboutfour and a half millions now (1904) remain in the Treasury, as theproceeds of all the cotton seized. This is the amount for which the cottonseized after June 30, 1865, was sold. All other proceeds have either beenreturned to “loyal” claimants or have been absorbed by expenses. Very few,if any, claimants not able to prove “loyalty” have been able to securerestoration, since “loyalty” was in most cases a prerequisite toconsideration.[789]

[Pg 303]The confiscation policy, it may be concluded, profited the governmentnothing; the Treasury agents and pretended agents were enriched by theirstealings and but few were punished; nearly all private cotton was lost;the people were reduced to more desperate want and exasperated against thegovernment which, it seemed, had acted upon the assumption that theex-Confederates had no rights whatever.

Another heavy burden imposed on the prostrate South was the tax levied bythe United States government on each pound of cotton raised. An act ofJuly, 1862, imposed a tax of one-half cent a pound on cotton, but this taxcould be collected only on that part of the crop that was brought throughthe lines by speculators. January 30, 1864, the tax was increased to twocents a pound, collectible on all cotton coming from the ConfederateStates. This was raised to two and a half cents a pound on March 3, 1865,and to three cents a pound, or $15 a bale, on July 13, 1866.[790] Afterthe war the tax bore with crushing weight on the impoverishedfarmers.[791] On March 2, 1867, in anticipation of Reconstruction, the taxwas reduced to two and a half cents a pound, or $12.50 a bale, to takeeffect after September 1, 1867. A year later, partly because of thedecided objections of those carpet-baggers, scalawags, and negroes who hadsmall farms and whose remonstrances had more influence than those of theplanters, the tax was discontinued on all cotton raised after the crop of1867. The tax was a lien on the cotton from the time it was baled untilthe tax was paid, and was often collected in the states to which thecotton was shipped.

Of this tax Alabama paid within her borders $10,388,072.10,[793] and sinceshe was one of the three great cotton states, her share of the tax paid innorthern ports must have been several million dollars more. Of the othercotton states,—Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Tennessee, andArkansas,—all except Georgia, which paid about a million dollars morethan Alabama, suffered in less degree.

From April 1, 1865, to February 1, 1866, Alabama paid in other taxes, intothe United States Treasury, $1,747,563.51, of which $1,655,218.31 wasinternal revenue, and from September 1, 1862, to January 30, 1872,$14,200,982 internal revenue.[794] The former sum was much more than theFederal government spent in Alabama during that year for the relief of thedestitute, both black and white. The cotton spirited away by thieves andconfiscated by the government would have paid several times over all theexpenses of the army and the Freedmen’s Bureau during the entire time ofthe occupation. Many times as much money was taken from the negro tenantin the form of this cotton tax as was spent in aiding him. The mostcrushing weight of the tax came in 1866 and 1867, and it was much heavierthan the taxation imposed by the Confederate and state governments even inthe darkest days of the war. Had the price of cotton remained high, thetax would not have borne so heavily on the people; but with the decline ofthe price the tax finally amounted to a third of the net value of thecotton, while the amount raised in these years was about one-fifth of thevalue of the farming lands.[795] The tax absorbed all the profits ofcotton planting and left the farmer nothing.

[Pg 305]A letter from the Secretary of the Treasury in reference to the proprietyof refunding the money received from the cotton tax stated some of thearguments of the opponents of the tax. It was claimed (1) that the tax wasunconstitutional because it was not uniform and because it was virtually atax upon exports; (2) that the tax was unequal and oppressive in itsoperations because it fell entirely upon cotton producers; (3) that it waslevied without the consent of the people and when they were notrepresented in Congress; and (4) that in addition to the cotton tax theproducers of the cotton were subject to all taxes paid by citizens ofother states.[796] These objections were answered by the Secretary, whosaid that the tax was added to the price of cotton and was borne by theconsumer, not the producer, and that it was the fault of the cotton statesthat they were not represented. He asserted that the tax on cotton was anexcise like that on tobacco and whiskey.[797]

In 1866 an effort was made in Congress to raise the tax to five cents apound. Such a tax, they said, would raise $66,000,000, or, at the least,$50,000,000 a year, of which Alabama’s share would be about $12,000,000 to$15,000,000. The Committee on the Revenue reported that such a tax “willnot prove detrimental to any national interest.” The testimony of expertswas quoted to prove that the tax would fall upon the consumer, though mostof the experts, who were manufacturers from New England, said that onaccount of the great demand and excessive prices of cotton goods the taxwould fall upon the manufacturer for the present time. Nevertheless, theywere all in favor of the proposed tax, except one manufacturer and oneplanter from Georgia, who objected on the ground that the producer wouldhave the burden to bear.[798]

The business men of New York and other northern cities opposed[Pg 306] the taxand defeated the extra levy. The New York Chamber of Commerce, when themeasure to raise the cotton tax to five cents a pound was proposed,memorialized Congress against the injustice of the tax. The memorialstated that the North and the West must not take advantage of the South inthe days of her weakness; that the cultivation of cotton should not bethus discouraged. It was shown that the manufacturer would be protected bythe drawback of five cents a pound allowed on cotton goods exported, whilethe cotton farmer would pay a five-cent tax. By the operation of such atax, they stated, the rich would be made richer, and the poor made poorer.That in the proposed law “there is a want of impartiality which iscalculated to provoke hostility at the South, and to excite in all honestminds at the North the hope that such a purpose will not prevail.”[799]

By the people who had to pay the tax it was considered an unjust andpurely vindictive measure, which was the more exasperating because theyhad no voice in the matter and because no attention was paid to theirremonstrances. They complained that it was levied as a penalty, that itwas confiscation under color of law. They felt that it was a blow ofrevenge aimed at them when there was no fear of resistance or hope ofprotection, as no other part of the country had its exports taxed.[800]The fact that the tax was removed because of the objections of thecarpet-baggers, scalawags, and negroes, instead of pleasing the whites,was a source of irritation to them. The respectable people had asked forjustice and it was refused them, but was granted to those who were ofopposing politics. Those who paid the tax never believed that the mass ofthe people at the North were in favor of such a measure, and they hopedthat favorable elections would reverse the policy of Congress, which, thenrecognizing the unconstitutionality of the tax, would refund it, if not toindividuals, at least to the states in proportion to the amount raised ineach, or, that Congress would give it to the states as a long-timeloan.[801][Pg 307] For years there was a belief among the farmers that the unjusttax would be refunded, and the cotton tax receipts were carefullypreserved against a day of reimbursement, but, like the negroes’ “fortyacres and a mule,” the money never came.[802]

CHAPTER VII

The paroled Confederate soldier returned to his ruined farm and went towork to keep his family from extreme want. For him the war had decided twoquestions, the abolition of slavery, and the destruction of statesovereignty. Further than that he did not expect the effects of the war toextend, while punishment, as such, for the part he had taken in thewar[803] was not thought of. He knew that there would be a temporary delayin restoring former relations with the central government, but politicalproscription and humiliation were not expected. That after a fair fight,which had resulted in their defeat, they should be struck when down, wassomething that did not occur to the soldiers at all. No one thought offurther opposition to the United States; the results of the war wereaccepted in good faith, and the people meant to abide by the decision ofarms. Naturally, there were no profuse expressions of love for the UnitedStates,—which was the North,—but there was an earnest desire to leavethe past behind them and to take their place and do their duty as citizensof the new Union.[804]

[Pg 309]The women and the children, who heard with a shock of the surrender, felta terrible fear of the incoming armies. The raids of the latter part ofthe war had made them fear the northern soldiers, from whom they expectedharsh treatment. The women had been enthusiastic for the Confederatecause; their sacrifices for it had been incalculable, and to many thedisappointment and sorrow were more bitter than death. The soldier had thesatisfaction of having fought in the field for his opinions, and it waseasier for him to accept the results of war. A certain class of people whohad served during the war at duties which kept them at home professed tobe afraid of hanging, of confiscation, of negro suffrage and negroequality, and many other horrible things; they were loud in theirdenunciation of the surrender; they would have “fought and died in thelast ditch,” they declared. It is hard to see how they could so flatterthemselves as to think the conqueror would hold them responsible foranything, unless for their violent talk on political questions before andduring the war.

Such was the state of feeling in the first stage, before there was anygeneral understanding of the nature of the questions to be solved or ofthe conflicting policies. News from the outside world came in slowly; eachcountry community was completely cut off from the world; the whole statelay prostrate, breathless, exhausted, resting. Little interest was shownin public questions; the long strain had been removed, and the people weredazed about the future. There was no information from abroad exceptthrough the army officials, who reported the news to suit themselves. Therailroads and steamboats were not running; for months there was nopost-office system, and for years the service was poor. The people settleddown into a lethargy, seemingly indifferent to what was going on, andexhibiting little interest in the government and in politics. Some personsdumbly awaited the worst, but the soldiers feared nothing; at present theytook no interest in politics; they were working, when they were able, toprovide for their families.

With many people there was a disposition to see in the defeat the work ofGod. There was a belief that fate, destiny, or Providence had been againstthe South, and this state of mind made them the more ready to accept asfinal the results of war. The fear expressed by northern politicians thatin case of foreign war the South would[Pg 310] side with the enemy was withoutcause. The South had had enough and too much of war. It disliked Englandand France more than it hated the North, because they had withheld theiraid after seeming to promise it.

From the general gloom and seeming despair the young people soon recoveredto some degree, and among them there was much social gayety of a quietsort. For four years the young men and young women had seen little of eachother, and there had been comparatively few marriages. Now they were gladto be together again, and all the surviving young men proceeded to getmarried at once. This revival of spirits did not extend to the olderpeople. Nearly all were grieving over the loss of sons, brothers,husbands, or relatives. Much that made life worth living was lost to themforever, and unable to adapt themselves to changed conditions or torecover from the shock of grief and the strain of war, they died one afterthe other, until soon but few were left.[805]

One of the first things to awaken the people of Alabama from the blanklethargy into which they had fallen was the question of what was to bedone by the United States government with the Confederate leaders who hadbeen arrested. President Davis and Vice-President Stephens, Senator Clay,the war governors,—Moore, Shorter, and Watts,—Admiral Semmes, severaljudicial officers of the state, and many minor officials were arrested andimprisoned in the North. Davis, Moore, and Clay were known to be in feeblehealth, and from them came accounts of harsh treatment. The arrests oflesser personages were purely arbitrary, and in most cases were probablydone by the military without any higher authority. It was announcedunofficially that all who had held office before the war and who hadsupported the Confederacy, even those who had never taken an oath tosupport the Constitution and laws of the United States, would be arrestedand tried for treason.[806] During the spring and summer of 1865 rumor wasbusy. Thus, fear of arrest and imprisonment, the sympathy of the peoplefor their leaders who[Pg 311] were being made to suffer as scapegoats, theirritating methods of the Freedmen’s Bureau, the work of various politicaland religious emissaries among the negroes, and the confiscation ofproperty served progressively to awaken the people from the stupor intowhich they had fallen, and they began to take an interest in affairs ofsuch vital importance to them. The newspapers began to discuss theproblems of Reconstruction and to condemn the treatment of the politicalprisoners from the South. This renewed interest was characterized by asection of the northern press and by prominent politicians as“disloyalty,”—a proof of a “rebellious” spirit which ought to bechastised.

The President, who began with a vindictive policy, gradually modified ituntil it was as fair as the South could expect from him. To support hispolicy, he sent agents to the South to ascertain the state of feeling hereand the exact condition of affairs. These agents were General Grant, thehead of the army, Carl Schurz, a sentimental foreign revolutionist andpolitician with an implicit belief in the Rights of Man, and Benjamin C.Truman, a well-known and able journalist.

General Grant reported: “I am satisfied that the thinking men of the Southaccept the present condition of affairs in good faith. The questions thathave heretofore divided the sentiment of the people of the two sections,slavery and state rights, or the right of a state to secede from theUnion, they regard as having been settled by the highesttribunal—arms—that man can resort to.” He believed that acquiescence inthe authority of the general government was universal, but that thedemoralization following four years of civil war made it necessary to postsmall garrisons throughout the South until civil authority was fullyestablished.[807]

The report of Carl Schurz was distinctly unfavorable to the[Pg 312]southerners.He made a classification of the people into four divisions: (1) Thebusiness and professional men and men of wealth who were forced intosecession. These, though prejudiced, were open to conviction, and acceptedthe results of the war. However, as a class, they were neither bold norenergetic. (2) The professional politicians who supported the policy ofthe President and wanted the state readmitted at once, as they hoped thento be able to arrange things to suit themselves. (3) A strong lawlesselement, idlers and loiterers, who persecuted negroes and “union” men, andin politics would support the second class. They appealed to the passionsand prejudices of the masses and commanded the admiration of the women.(4) The mass of the people, who were of weak intellect, with no definiteideas about anything; who were ruled by those who appealed to theirimpulses and prejudices. He stated, however, that all were agreed thatfurther resistance to the government was useless and that all submitted toits authority. The people, he said, were hostile toward the soldiers,northern men, unionists, and negroes; their loyalty was only submission tonecessity; and they still honored their old political leaders.[808]

B. C. Truman, the journalist, after a long stay in the South, of whichabout two months were spent in Alabama, reported to the President that thesoutherners were loyal to the government and were cheerfully submissiveand obedient to the law. The fates were against them, the people thought,and it was the will of God that they should lose; the dream ofindependence was over, and secession would never be thought of again; thewar had decided this question, and the decision was accepted. TheConfederate soldier, the backbone and sinew of the South, who must be thereal basis of reconstruction and worthy citizenship, was exerting hisinfluence for peace and reconciliation;[Pg 313] there were few more potentinfluences at work in promoting real and lasting reconciliation andreconstruction than that of the Confederate soldier. The fear that in caseof foreign war the South would fight against the United States he knew tobe unfounded; the soldiers hated England, and would fight for the UnitedStates; this, Hardee, McLaws, and Forrest had told him; but, he added, thesoldiers preferred to have no war at all, they had had all that theywanted. At the collapse of the Confederacy, there had been a generalfeeling of despair. The people at home, especially, had expected theworst; and the reaction was wrongly called “disloyal.” The people weregradually returning to old attachments, but that they would repudiatetheir old leaders was not to be expected; neither would they acknowledgeany wrong in their former belief in slavery and the right of secession,though ready to grant that those no longer existed. They were betterfriends to the negro than the northern men who came South; and the courts,magistrates, and lawyers would see that justice was done the negro.[809]

In order to produce a report which would justify the action of Congress inopposing the President’s plan,[810] a committee of Congress for severalmonths held an inquest at Washington and examined selected witnesses whogave the desired testimony relative to the condition of affairs in theSouth. The committee consisted of six senators and nine representatives.Only three Democrats were on this committee, and not one of them was onthe sub-committee that took testimony relating to affairs in Alabama.[811]All sessions of the subcommittees were held in Washington, far removedfrom the state under inquisition. Care was exercised in calling aswitnesses only Republicans, and these usually were not citizens of thestate. No citizens of Alabama testified except two deserters,[812] onetory,[813] and one[Pg 314] man who, during the war, had been an agent of theConfederate government “to examine political prisoners,”[814] but who toldthe committee that during the war he had been a “union” man. A witnessfrom Ohio claimed to be a citizen of Alabama.[815] Another witness was acotton speculator from Massachusetts, and still another, a land office manfrom the North. Three hailed from Illinois, three from Iowa, one each fromCalifornia and Minnesota, and the remainder were from the North, with theexception of General George H. Thomas, who had been a Virginian and whohad not been allowed to remain in ignorance of what the Virginians calledhis “treasonable” conduct toward his native state. Three were connectedwith the Freedmen’s Bureau, already fiercely criticised in all sections ofthe country, and twelve were, or had been, connected with the army, andfor short periods had served in some part of Alabama.[816]

Of the five men who resided in the state, each was bitter in denunciationof existing conditions and tendencies in Alabama. The course they hadtaken during the war made it impossible for them to attain to any positionof honor or profit so long as the Confederate[Pg 315]sympathizers were notproscribed. Existing institutions must be overthrown before they couldhope for political preferment.[817]

The conflicting stories of most of the witnesses neutralized one another,and the remainder corroborated the testimony of General Wager Swayne, thehead in Alabama of that much-hated institution, the Freedmen’s Bureau.General Swayne stated that he had been agreeably disappointed in thetemper of the people. In most of his conclusions he agreed with Truman. Hesaid that he had observed a gradual cessation of disorder, the opening ofcourts to the negro, and favorable legislation for him; but a markedincrease of political animosity. He thought the northerner was welltreated except socially. He thought the people were determined to make ithonorable to have been engaged in “rebellion” and dishonorable to havebeen a “unionist” among them during the war.[818] The statements ofGeneral Swayne were probably as near to the truth as the average humanbeing could attain to.[819] His account was from the northern standpoint,but was as impartial as any one could make at that time.[820] A few weekslater he said that the bluster of a few irreconcilables should not beexaggerated into the threatening voice of a whole people.[821] This herepeatedly asserted.

[Pg 316]Ex-Governor Andrew B. Moore spoke for the people when he said: “Slaveryand the right of secession are settled forever. The people will stand byit.” Rev. Thomas O. Summers, who lived in the heart of the Black Belt,said, “I have not found a planter who does not think the abolition ofslavery a great misfortune to both races; but all recognize abolition tobe an accomplished fact.”[822]

The people had little faith in the free negro as a laborer, but weredisposed to make the best of a bad situation and to give the negro a fairchance. The old soldiers took a hopeful view, and the great wrong ofReconstruction was not so much in the enfranchising of the ignorant slaveas in the proscription and humiliation of the better whites with thealienated negro as an instrument.

There was no indication at this time that the people could ever be unitedinto one political party. Before the war party lines had sharply dividedthe people, and the divisions were deep and political prejudices strong,though not based to any great extent on differences of principles. The warhad served to unite the people only temporarily, and the last years of thestruggle showed that this temporary union would fall to pieces when thepressure from without was removed. When normal conditions should berestored, local political strife was sure to be warm and probably bitter,and parties would separate along the old Whig and Democratic lines. Atthis time there was a disposition on the part of Whig and Democrat,secessionist and coöperationist, each to charge the responsibility forpresent evils upon the other, and by the “bomb-proof” people there wasmuch talk of the “twenty-nigger law,” of “the rich man’s war and the poorman’s fight,” etc., in order to discredit the former leaders.[823]

An unpleasant and violent part of the population was the Union “loyal” ortory party, consisting of a few thousand persons who had now returned fromthe North or had crept out of their hiding-places and were demanding thepunishment of the “traitors” who had carried the state into war. Hanging,imprisonment, disfranchisement, confiscation, banishment, was theprogramme demanded by[Pg 317] them. From the Johnson régime in the state theycould hope only for toleration, never for official preferment, nor evenfor respect. They demanded the assistance of the Federal government toplace them in power and maintain them there.[824]

About this time it became difficult to distinguish the various species of“loyal” men or “loyalists.” There were: (1) Those who had taken the sideof the United States in the war. These numbered two or three thousand andthey were “truly loyal,” as they were called. (2) Those who had escapedservice in the Confederate army by hiding out or by desertion, or whoengaged in secret movements intended to overthrow the Confederategovernment. These claimed and were accorded the title of “loyalists” or“union” men. (3) All who during the war became in any way disaffectedtoward the Confederate or state government and gave but weak support tothe cause asked to be called “loyalists” or “unionists.” (4) All negroeswere, in the minds of the northern radical politician, “loyalists” byvirtue of their color, and had all the time been “devoted to the Union”;the fact, of course, was that the negroes had been about as faithful astheir masters to the Confederate cause. (5) All who took the oath in 1865or were pardoned by the President and who promised to support thegovernment thereby acquired the designation of “loyal” men. These includedpractically all the population except negroes and the first class. (6) Asmall number included in the fifth class who were conservative people, andwho now used their influence to bring about peace and reconstruction. Thiswas the best class of the citizens, and the majority of them were oldsoldiers,—men like Clanton, Longstreet, Gordon, and Hardee. (7) Later,only those who approved the policy of Congress were “loyal,” while thosewho disapproved were “disloyal.” The first and second classes coalesced atonce, and finally they admitted the right of the third class to bear thedesignation “loyal.” They, for a long time, would not admit the claims ofthe negro to “loyalty,” but at last political necessity drove them to it;they denied always that the sixth class had any right to share the rewardsof “loyalty.” These various definitions of[Pg 318]loyalty were made by the menthemselves, by the various political parties, and by the party newspapers.Every man in the South was some kind of a “loyalist,” and most of themwere also “disloyal,” according to the various points of view.

There was no question more irritating to both sides than that of socialrelations between the southern people and the northerners. After the firstweeks of occupation the relations between the enlisted men of the Unionarmy and the native whites became somewhat friendly and in most casesremained so, while, with few exceptions, the regular officers and thepeople maintained friendly relations, in public matters, at least. Thevolunteers, however, were much more disagreeable, especially the volunteerofficers, who lacked the social training of the regulars. Too often thenortherners seemed to feel that they had conquered in war the right toenter the most exclusive southern society, and individuals made themselvesdisliked more than ever by striving to obtain social recognition wherethey were not known and were not desired. They had a newspaper knowledgeof social conditions before the war, and, while professing to scorn thepretensions of the “southern chivalry and beauty,” yet were very desirousof closer acquaintance with both, and especially the latter. Soon afterthe armies of occupation came, matters were pretty bad for the southernpeople. The less refined subordinate volunteer officers almost demandedentrance, and even welcome, into southern social circles. They found thatwhile the southern men would meet them courteously in business relationsand in public places, they were never invited to the homes. On alloccasions the women avoided meeting the northern men; this was their ownwish, as well as that of their male relatives. They felt the losses of warmore keenly than did the men because they had lost more. All of them hadlost some loved one in the war, and quite naturally had no desire to meetin social relations the men who had overcome their country and possiblykilled their fathers, brothers, husbands, lovers. They must have time tobury their dead, and it was long before the sight of a Federal soldiercaused other than bitter feelings of sorrow and loss. Yet most of thenortherners overlooked this fact. The southern women[Pg 319] reigned supreme oversociety; the death in the war of so large a number of young men had onlystrengthened the influence of the women; as a rule, they were bettereducated than the men, especially the young men, whose education had beeninterrupted by the war.[825]

When the families of the northern people came South, the doors of thesouthern homes were not opened to them. The northerners resented thisostracism by the southerners, and the coldness of society toward themcaused many a sarcastic and sneering letter to be written home or to thenewspapers.[826] There was constant interference in semi-social relations:the mistress of the house was told how she must treat her colored cook;the employer was warned that his conduct must be more respectful towardthe negroes in his employ; ex-Confederates were forbidden to wear theiruniforms, or even to use their buttons; nor could southern airs be sung orplayed.[827] The soldiers would crowd a woman off the sidewalk in order tomake her look at them. Women would go far out of the way to avoid meeting[Pg 320]a Federal officer, and when forced to pass one, would sweep their skirtsaside as if to avoid contagion. Forthwith the man insulted indited anepistle in which such incidents were related and the size of the ladies’feet and ankles and the poverty-stricken appearance of their dresscommented upon. This naturally found its way into the newspapers, as homeletters from soldiers usually do. Soldiers, white and black, would sit onthe back fence and jeer at the former mistress of slaves as she worked atthe family washing. United States flags were hung over the sidewalks toforce the women to walk under them, and in some instances, when theyrefused to do so and went out into the street, efforts were made to forcethem to pass under the flag. For refusal and for exceedingly “disloyal”remarks made under the excitement of such treatment, several were arrestedand lectured by coarse officials. Drunken soldiers terrorized women in thegarrison towns. A lot of drunken officers in a launch in Mobile Bayhabitually terrified pleasure parties of women who were on the bay insmall boats. The officers invited the women to balls and entertainments,but the latter paid no attention to what they considered impertinence.This angered the officers. The northern newspapers of 1865, 1866, and 1867have many letters from correspondents in the South complaining of socialneglect or ostracism. Letters were written about the coarseness, unlovelytempers, and character of the southern men and women who, it was insisted,were of the best families.[828]

These letters the violent southern press afterward made a practice ofcopying for political reasons.[829] The more incorrigible officers wereaccustomed to express their most offensive sentiments in regard to[Pg 321] negroinequality, the position of the negro, the slavery question, and thetreatment of the negro by the whites. The Bureau officials were cordiallydisliked for their tendency to such conduct. Though only a small portionof the northerners and Federal officials were guilty of offensive actions,the relations in many places being kindly and the conduct of most of theofficers considerate and courteous, yet the insolent behavior of somecaused all to be blamed.[830]

The question of the social standing of the tory element may be summed upin a few words. They were mercilessly ostracized and thoroughly despisedby the Confederate element of the population at that time, and the samefeeling of social contempt had descended to their children’s children. Itis rather a feeling of indifference now, but the result is even moredeadly. The true Unionist was disliked but respected.

All the witnesses called before the sub-committee at Washington complainedof the dislike exhibited toward “unionists” and northerners. It was aburning question and had much influence on the later course ofreconstruction.[831]

As soon as the war was ended, there was an influx of northern men andnorthern capital into Alabama. Cotton was selling at a[Pg 322] fabulousprice,—40 to 50 cents a pound, $200 to $250 a bale,—and the newcomersexpected to make fortunes in a few years. They were welcomed by theplanters who wanted to sell or to lease their plantations, which, for wantof funds, they were unable to cultivate. General Swayne said that in 1866there were 5000 northern men[832] in Alabama engaged in trading andplanting. They were sought for as partners or as overseers by those whohoped that northern men could control free negro labor. Lands were sold orleased at low prices, and many soldiers, especially officers, decided tobuy land and raise cotton. Numbers of large plantations in the Black Beltwere bought or leased by officers of the army, all of whom had lofty ideasas to what they were going to do. The soil was fertile, cotton was sellingfor high prices, and the free blacks, they were sure, would work for themout of gratitude and trust. They wanted to help reconstruct southernindustry, and to show what could be done toward developing the greatnatural resources of the state. They embarked in large enterprises, and aslong as their money lasted bought everything that was offered for sale.Their success or failure was dependent largely upon the negro laborer, whowas to make the cotton, and the new planters made extraordinarily liberalterms with him. They dealt with the negro as if he were a New Englanderwith a black skin, and they purchased expensive machinery for him to use.They would not listen to southern advice, but went as far as possible tothe opposite extreme from southern methods of farming. All suggestionswere met with the assurance that the southern man was used only to slaves,and could not know how free men would work.

Reports, generally false and made mainly for political purposes, werecontinually published by the northern press in regard to the ill treatmentof northern men who wished to make their homes in the South.[833] But nota single authenticated case of violence to such persons can be found tohave taken place in Alabama.

In some localities, on account of bands of outlaws, for several[Pg 323] monthsafter the war it was not safe for any stranger to settle. The ignorantwhites had no liking for the northern men (and may not have to this day).The better class of people was in favor of much immigration from theNorth, and Governor Parsons made a tour through the North to inducenorthern men and capital to come to Alabama.[834] The people had nocapital, and wanted to induce those who possessed it to come and live inthe state. The testimony of travellers was that the accounts of crueltyand intolerance toward northerners were almost entirely false; that theywere welcomed if they did not attempt to stir up trouble between theraces.[835] The refusal of Congress to recognize the state government andthe rejection of the members elected to Congress caused a fresh outburstof bitter feeling against the North; but General Swayne, who had the bestopportunities for observation, said that rudeness and insult and theoccasional attentions of a horse-thief were the worst things that hadhappened to the northern settlers.[836]

These northern men meant well but, as a rule, were incompetent as farmersand business men. Consequently they failed, and most of them never quiteunderstood the reasons for their failure. They knew next to nothing ofplantation economy, and the negroes were their only teachers. Most of themwere from the West, and had never seen cotton growing before. It wasalmost pathetic to see these 5000 northerners risking all they possessedupon their faith in the negro, and losing. The northern merchant gave thenegro unlimited credit and lost; the planter gave his tenant all he askedfor, whenever it pleased him to ask. The farm stock was driven tocamp-meetings[Pg 324] and frolics while the grass was killing the cotton. Millsand factories were built and negro laborers employed, but the negroes,because of a lack of quickness and sensitiveness of touch, proved to beunfit for factory work. Besides, the noise of the machinery made themsleepy, and it was beyond their power to report for work at a regular houreach morning. At first, the negroes showed great confidence in thenorthern man and were glad to work for him, but too much was required ofthem, and after a year or two the disgust was mutual. The revulsion offeeling following failure and disappointment and ostracism injured theSouth by creating hostile opinion in the North. Nearly all the northernmen went home, but the less desirable ones remained to assist in thepolitical reconstruction of the state, when many of them became stateofficials.[837]

At the close of the war, the churches were in a disturbed condition, owingto the attitude of the Washington government. Most of the southernchurches held by the northern organizations were restored to their formerowners. The northern Methodist Church caused irritation by retainingsouthern church property that had been placed under its control by themilitary authorities. But the most aggravated ill feeling was aroused inthe Protestant Episcopal Church.

After the collapse of the Confederate government, Bishop Wilmer of Alabamadirected the Episcopal clergy to omit that portion of the prayermentioning the President of the Confederate States. Further, he orderedthat when civil authority should be restored, the prayer for the Presidentof the United States should be used.[838] Bishop Wilmer, consecrated in1862, had never made a declaration of conformity to the constitution andcanons of the church in the United States, and, consequently, even by thenorthern Episcopal Church, was not considered amenable to itsconstitution.[839]

[Pg 325]For several months his directions were not noticed by the Federalauthorities, and services were held in conformity to the bishop’s orders.In September, “Parson” William G. Brownlow of Tennessee, it is said,brought the matter of the Wilmer pastoral letters to the attention ofGeneral George H. Thomas, who commanded the Military Division of theTennessee, to which belonged the Department of Alabama. Thomas, likeWilmer, was a Virginian, and was regarded by the latter and othersoutherners as a traitor to his native state. Thomas was peculiarlysensitive to such a charge, and disliked Wilmer, who had expressed hisopinion in regard to the matter. So it was easy to secure hisinterference. General Woods, at Mobile, was directed to investigate thematter. An officer was sent to ask Wilmer when he intended to order theclergy to pray for the President of the United States. The bishop refusedto direct its use at the dictation of the military authority, or while thestate was under military domination, since no one desired “length oflife,” nor the least prosperity to such a government.[840] The result wasthe argumentative order which follows:[841]—

Headquarters Department of Alabama,
Mobile, Ala., Sept. 20, 1865.

General Order No. 38:

The Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States has established aform of prayer to be used for “the President of the United States andall in civil authority.” During the continuance of the late wicked andgroundless rebellion the prayer was changed to one for the Presidentof the Confederate States, and so altered, was used in the ProtestantEpiscopal churches of the Diocese of Alabama.

Since the “lapse” of the Confederate government, and the restorationof the authority of the United States over the late rebellious states,the prayer for the President has been altogether omitted in theEpiscopal churches of Alabama.

This omission was recommended by the Rt. Rev. Richard Wilmer, Bishopof Alabama, in a letter to the clergy and laity, dated June 20, 1865.The only reason given by Bishop Wilmer for the omission of a prayer,which, to use his own language, “was established by the highestecclesiastical authorities, and has[Pg 326] for many years constituted a partof the liturgy of the church,” is stated by him in the followingwords:—

“Now the church in this country has established a form of prayer forthe President and all in civil authority. The language of the prayerwas selected with careful reference to the subject of the prayer—allin civil authority—and she desires for that authority prosperity andlong continuance. No one can reasonably be expected to desire a longcontinuance of military rule. Therefore, the prayer is altogetherinappropriate and inapplicable to the present condition of things,when no civil authority exists in the exercise of its functions.Hence, as I remarked in the circular, we may yield a true allegianceto, and sincerely pray for grace, wisdom, and understanding in behalfof a government founded on force, while at the same time we could notin good conscience ask for its continuance, prosperity, etc.”

It will be observed from this extract, first, that the bishop, becausehe cannot pray for the continuance of “military rule,” thereforedeclines to pray for those in authority; second, he declares theprayer inappropriate and inapplicable, because no civil authorityexists in the exercise of its functions. On the 20th of June, the dateof his letter, there was a President of the United States, a Cabinet,Judges of the Supreme Court, and thousands of other civil officers ofthe United States, all in the exercise of their functions. It was forthem specially that this form of prayer was established; yet thebishop cannot, among all these, find any subject worthy of hisprayers.

Since the publication of this letter a civil governor has beenappointed for the state of Alabama, and in every county judges andsheriffs have been appointed, and all these are, and for weeks havebeen, in the exercise of their functions; yet the prayer has not beenrestored.

The prayer which the bishop advised to be omitted is not a prayer forthe continuance of military rule, or the continuance of any particularform of government or any particular person in power. It is simply aprayer for the temporal and spiritual weal of the persons in whosebehalf it is offered—it is a prayer to the High and Mighty Ruler ofthe Universe that He would with His power behold and bless Hisservant, the President of the United States, and all others inauthority; that He would replenish them with grace of His holy spiritthat they might always incline to His will and walk in His ways; thatHe would endow them plenteously with heavenly gifts, grant them inhealth and prosperity long to live, and finally, after this life, toattain everlasting joy and felicity. It is a prayer at once applicableand appropriate, and which any heart not filled with hatred, malice,and all uncharitableness, could conscientiously offer.

The advice of the bishop to omit this prayer, and its omission by theclergy, is not only a violation of the canons of the church, but showsa factious and disloyal spirit, and is a marked insult to every loyalcitizen within the department. Such men are unsafe public teachers,and not to be trusted in places of power and influence over publicopinion.

It is therefore ordered, pursuant to the directions of Major-GeneralThomas, commanding the military division of Tennessee, that saidRichard Wilmer, Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church of theDiocese of Alabama, and the Protestant Episcopal clergy of saiddiocese be, and they are hereby suspended from[Pg 327]their functions, andforbidden to preach, or perform divine service; and that their placesof worship be closed until such time as said bishop and clergy show asincere return to their allegiance to the government of the UnitedStates, and give evidence of a loyal and patriotic spirit by offeringto resume the use of the prayer for the President of the United Statesand all in civil authority, and by taking the amnesty oath prescribedby the President.

This prohibition shall continue in each individual case until specialapplication is made through the military channels to theseheadquarters for permission to preach and perform divine service, anduntil such application is approved at these or superior headquarters.

District commanders are required to see that this order is carriedinto effect.

By order of
Major-GeneralCharles R. Woods,
Frederick H. Wilson, A. A.-G.

Wilmer denied the right of civil or military officials to interfere insuch matters. Prayer, he said, was religious, not political, and was notto be prescribed by secular authority.[842] Woods threatened to use force,and had the churches closed by soldiers. St. John’s Church in Montgomeryhaving been closed by the military authorities, the congregation attemptedto meet in Hamner Hall, a school building, but was dispersed by soldiersat the point of the bayonet. Much to the indignation of Generals Woods andThomas, services were held in private houses.[843] The House of Bishops ofthe northern church protested against this edict to the President. Wilmerappealed to Governor Parsons and found that the “civil governor” of G. O.No. 38 was only a subordinate military official with no power. PresidentJohnson at first refused to interfere, but was finally induced to directThomas to revoke the suspension of the clergy. This was done in thefollowing remarkable order:[844]—

Headquarters
Military Division of the Tennessee,
Nashville, Tenn., Dec. 22, 1865.

General Orders No. 40:

Armed resistance to the authority of the United States having been putdown, the President, on the 29th of May last, issued his Proclamationof Amnesty, declaring that armed resistance having ceased in allquarters, he invited those lately in rebellion to reconstruct andrestore civil authority, thus proclaiming the magnanimity of ourgovernment towards all, no matter how criminal or how deserving ofpunishment.

[Pg 328]Alarmed at this imminent and impending peril to the cause in which hehad embarked with all his heart and mind, and desiring to check, ifpossible, the spread of popular approbation and grateful appreciationof the magnanimous policy of the President in his efforts to bring thepeople of the United States back to their former friendly and nationalrelations one with another, an individual, styling himself Bishop ofAlabama, forgetting his mission to preach peace on earth and good willtowards man, and being animated with the same spirit which throughtemptation beguiled the mother of men to the commission of the firstsin—thereby entailing eternal toil and trouble on earth—issued, frombehind the shield of his office, his manifesto of the 20th of Junelast to the clergy of the Episcopal Church of Alabama, directing themto omit the usual and customary prayer for the President of the UnitedStates and all others in authority, until the troops of the UnitedStates had been removed from the limits of Alabama; cunninglyjustifying this treasonable course, by plausibly presenting to theminds of the people that, civil authority not yet having been restoredin Alabama, there was no occasion for the use of said prayer, as suchprayer was intended for the civil authority alone, and as the militarywas the only authority in Alabama it was manifestly improper to prayfor the continuance of military rule.

This man in his position of a teacher of religion, charity, and goodfellowship with his brothers, whose paramount duty as such should havebeen characterized by frankness and freedom from all cunning, thustook advantage of the sanctity of his position to mislead the minds ofthose who naturally regarded him as a teacher in whom they couldtrust, and attempted to lead them back into the labyrinths of treason.

For this covert and cunning act he was deprived of the privileges ofcitizenship, in so far as the right to officiate as a minister of theGospel, because it was evident he could not be trusted to officiateand confine his teachings to matters of religion alone—in fact, thatreligious matters were but a secondary consideration in his mind, hehaving taken an early opportunity to subvert the church to thejustification and dissemination of his treasonable sentiments.

As it is, however, manifest that so far from entertaining the samepolitical views as Bishop Wilmer, the people of Alabama are honestlyendeavoring to restore the civil authority in that state in conformitywith the requirements of the Constitution of the United States, and torepudiate their acts of hostility during the past four years, and haveaccepted with a loyal and becoming spirit the magnanimous termsoffered them by the President; therefore, the restrictions heretoforeimposed upon the Episcopal clergy of Alabama are removed, and BishopWilmer is left to that remorse of conscience consequent to theexposure and failure of the diabolical schemes of designing andcorrupt minds.

By command of
Major-GeneralThomas.
William D. Whipple,
Assistant Adjutant-General.

Wilmer had won, and three days after the order was promulgated in Alabamahe directed the use of the prayer for the President of the United States.Two months earlier, the General Council of the[Pg 329]Confederate States hadprovided for such a prayer, but this provision was not to have the forceof law in any diocese until approved by the bishop. This was to enableWilmer to win the fight and then to resume the use of the prayer.[845]

The General Council of the Confederate Church, in November, 1865, decidedthat each diocese should decide for itself whether to remain in union withthe General Council (of the Confederate States) or to withdraw and unitewith the General Convention (of the United States). A small party in thenorthern church wanted “to keep the southern churchman out for a while inthe cold,” and “to put the rebels upon stools of repentance,” but betterfeeling and better policy prevailed. The southern church was met halfwayby the northern church, and the only important reunion of churchesseparated by sectional strife was accomplished. The diocese of Alabama wasthe last to join, Bishop Wilmer making the declaration of conformityJanuary 31, 1866.[846]

PART IV
PRESIDENTIAL RESTORATION

CHAPTER VIII

Owing to the important bearing upon the problem of Reconstruction of thedisputes between the President and Congress in regard to the status of theseceded states, it will be of interest to examine the various plans andtheories for restoring the Union. From the beginning of the war thequestion of the status of the seceded states was discussed both inCongress and out, and with the close of the war it became of the gravestimportance. There was nothing in the Constitution to guide the Presidentor Congress, though each sought to base a policy on that ancientinstrument. Many questions confronted them. Were the states in the Unionor out? If in the Union, what rights had they? If out of the Union, werethey conquered territories subject to no law but the will of the UnitedStates government, or were they United States territory with rights underthe Constitution? Must they be reconstructed or restored, and who was tobegin the movement—the people of the states, Congress, or the President?Were the states in their corporate capacity, or the people as individuals,responsible for secession? What punishment was to be inflicted, and onwhom or what must it fall—the people or the states? Who or what decideswho are the political people of the state? Exactly what was a state? Wasthe Union the old Union of Washington, or a new one? Congress and thePresident could never agree in their answers to these questions.[847]

As to the status of the seceded states and the proper method ofReconstruction, all interested persons had theories, but the only onewhich was logical and consistent with regard to the “Constitution[Pg 334] as itwas” was the so-called Southern theory. This theory was that secessionhaving failed, state sovereignty was at an end; the doctrine wasworthless; secession was a nullity, and therefore the states were not outof the Union; the state was indestructible. The war was prosecuted againstindividuals and not against states, and the consequences must fall uponindividuals; the states had all the rights they ever possessed, but, beingout of their proper relation to the Union, its officers must take the oathof allegiance to the United States government, representatives must besent to Congress, and the people must submit to the authority of thegovernment. Then the Union would be restored as it was.[848] At the fallof the Confederacy the general belief was that restoration would proceedalong these lines. Many of the higher officials of the United States armywere of the same opinion, and on this theory the celebratedJohnston-Sherman convention was drawn up by General Sherman, whichpromised amnesty to the people and recognition of the state governments assoon as the officials should have taken the oath of allegiance.[849]Likewise, in the Southwest, General Dick Taylor, with the approval ofGeneral Canby, advised the governors of the states in his department totake steps toward restoring their states to their former relations to theUnion. General Thomas, and perhaps General Grant, had likewise advised thepeople of north Alabama, and the subordinate Federal commanders in theSouthwest favored such reconstruction and were inclined to help along themovement. But orders from Washington put an end to any such course bydirecting the arrest of all state officials who endeavored to act. Amongthose who had taken steps to restore the former relations with the Unionwere the governors of Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida.[850]

The Presidential and Democratic theories, like the Southern theory, werebased on the doctrine of the indestructibility of the state. In thebeginning the Democratic theory would have recognized the stategovernments of the seceded states and thus practically coincided with thelater Southern theory. The Presidential theory, as formulated later, wouldnot have recognized the state governments,[Pg 335] and to this view the Democratscame after the war. The Union was indestructible and was composed ofindestructible states. To assert that the states as states were not in theUnion was to admit the success of secession and the dissolution of theUnion. But the people as insurgents were incapable of politicalrecognition by the United States government. So the state after the warwas in a condition of suspended animation: the so-called state governmentswere not governments in a constitutional sense; the President could havethe citizens tried for treason and punished, or he could pardon them andthus restore to them all their former rights, which, of course, includedthe right to reëstablish their governments and to resume their formerrelations with the Union. Congress had no power to interfere or todisfranchise any man, nor to regulate the suffrage in any way. Its onlypart in Reconstruction was to admit to Congress the representatives of thestates as soon as constitutional government was restored by the peoplewith the assistance of the President.[851]

The earliest legislative declaration touching this subject was in theCrittenden Resolutions passed by the House of Representatives on July 22,1861.[852] Two days later practically the same resolutions were introducedin the Senate by Andrew Johnson of Tennessee and passed with only fivedissenting voices.[853] They declared that “war is not waged upon our partin any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest orsubjugation, nor for the purpose of overthrowing or interfering with therights or established institutions of these states, but to defend andmaintain the supremacy of the Constitution with all the dignity, equality,and rights of the several states unimpaired; and that as soon as theseobjects are accomplished the war ought to cease.”[854] To this declarationof principles the Democratic party adhered throughout the war and after.The Union as it was must be restored and maintained, one andindivisible.[855]

President Lincoln had no such regard for the “sacred rights of a state” ashad the Democrats and his successor, Andrew Johnson. In his inauguraladdress he asserted that the Union existed before the states and wasperpetual; that no state could withdraw from the Union; that secession wasnull and void; and that the Union was[Pg 336] unbroken.[856] In the formation ofthe provisional governments by the aid of the military authorities inTennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana, Lincoln showed that he expected thepolitical institutions of 1861 to be restored. In December, 1863, hebrought forth this plan for restoration: When one-tenth of the votingpopulation of a state in 1861 should take an oath to support theConstitution and should establish a government on the basis of the stateconstitution and laws in 1861, such a government would be recognized asthe government of the state.[857] In July, 1864, he announced byproclamation that he was unwilling to commit himself formally to any fixedplan of restoration. This was in answer to the Wade-Davis bill passed byCongress, which, if approved, would set aside the governments he haderected in Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arkansas, and it showed that heconsidered it the prerogative of the executive to bring about andrecognize the restored government.[858] These restored states he expectedto take their places in the Union on the old terms,[859] for as soon asthe people submitted and civil governments were established,constitutional relations would be resumed, and Congress would be obligedto admit their representatives.[860] Early in the war, he said nothingabout abolition, but rather to the contrary. Later he advocated gradualand compensated emancipation by state action. At the close of the war,after the practical, if not the theoretical, abolition of slavery, hesuggested that the newly established governments might, as a measure ofexpediency, confer the privilege of voting upon the best negroes.[861] Heconsidered the matter of the suffrage beyond the control of the centralgovernment. The enfranchisement of the negro as a measure of revenge, andas a means of keeping the southern whites down and the Republican party inpower, never entered his thoughts.

President Johnson succeeded to the policy of Lincoln, or, at least, toLincoln’s belief that restoration was a matter for the executiveattention, not for the legislative. He asserted that secession[Pg 337] was nulland void from the beginning; that a state could not commit treason; thatby the attempted revolution the vitality of the state was impaired and itsfunctions suspended but not destroyed; that it was the duty of theexecutive to breathe into the inanimate state the life-giving breath ofthe Constitution. He recognized no power in Congress to pass lawspreliminary to or restricting the admission of duly qualifiedrepresentatives of the states.[862]

The plan of Lincoln was, in theory and at first in practice,objectionable. It would recognize as the political people of a state theloyal minority, which would be an oligarchy, and the principle of the ruleof majorities would thus be repudiated. Those who claimed to be loyal werenot promising material for a new political people, and the “10 per cent”governments were treated with just contempt. But the plan was based, noton any narrow principle of legality, but on the broader grounds of justiceand expediency, and was capable of expansion into a very different planfrom what it was in the beginning. As applied to Louisiana and Arkansas,it was severely, and in theory justly, criticised on the ground that thePresident was assuming absolute authority in dealing with the secededstates, and that by this plan the entire political power would be given toa small class not capable of using it. As later modified, his plan wouldhave admitted to participation in Reconstruction nearly or quite all thecitizens of the southern states.

President Johnson, a war Democrat, gave promise of being more harsh thanLincoln in the work of restoration. Lincoln’s policy was based onexpediency; Johnson’s, on the narrow legal principles of a State RightsDemocrat. He had a strong regard for the “sacred rights of a state.” Heproposed to reëstablish the state governments by means of a politicalpeople of the lower classes, and the old political leaders were to bedisfranchised. Lincoln imposed certain conditions on individuals as aprerequisite to participation in reconstruction. Having created by thepardoning power a political people, he expected the initiative to comefrom them. The executive then retired into the background and waited theimpulse of the people. He shrank from interfering with the states, notfrom any great respect for their rights, but from motives of policy. AsJohnson applied his theory, there was little initiative left to thepeople. The executive[Pg 338] authority as the source of power set the machineryof restoration in motion, and the people were obliged to do as he ordered,many of them being at first excluded from participation. The wholeprogramme was prescribed by him, and he watched every step of the progressmade. For a firm believer in the rights of states he took strangeliberties with them while restoring their suspended animation. Lincolnadvised a limited suffrage for the blacks; but negroes could have no partin the Johnson scheme. Like Lincoln, however, Johnson so modified his planthat practically all the white people were to take part in thereëstablishment of the government. The conservative theories contemplatedrestoration, not reconstruction.

The Republican majority in Congress soon advanced from the position takenin the Crittenden-Johnson resolutions. Most of the Republican party had nofixed opinions in regard to Reconstruction, but formed a kind of a centreor swamp between the Democrats and the President on the one extreme, andthe Radicals on the other. The plan of Lincoln, as first announced andapplied, was offensive to all parties, and some leaders never seem to haverecognized that the President had, to any appreciable degree, modified hispolicy. The extreme Radicals were not sorry to have the matter ofreconstruction fall from the hands of the wise and kind Lincoln into thoseof the narrow and vindictive Johnson. But the seeming defection of thelatter soon disappointed those who were in favor of harsh measures indealing with the defeated southerners. The best-known of the Radicaltheories advanced in opposition to the presidential policy were (1) theState Suicide theory of Charles Sumner, (2) the Conquered Province theoryof Thaddeus Stevens, and (3) the Forfeited Rights theory, practically thesame as the Conquered Province theory, but expressed in less definitelanguage for the benefit of the more timid members of the Republicanparty.

Charles Sumner, the Radical leader of the Senate, set forth the Suicidetheory in a series of resolutions to the effect that the ordinances ofsecession were void, and, when sustained by force, amounted to abdicationby the state of all constitutional rights; that the treason involvedworked instant destruction of the body politic, and the state[Pg 339] becameterritory under the exclusive control of Congress. Consequently, therewere no state governments in the South, and all peculiar institutions hadceased to exist—among them slavery. Sumner constantly asserted thatCongress now had exclusive jurisdiction over the southern territory.[863]He made strong objection to the despotic power of the President as appliedin dealing with the seceded states, and declared that the executive wasencroaching upon the sphere of Congress, which was the proper authority toorganize the new governments. The seceded states, he affirmed, by breakingthe constitutional compact had committed suicide, and no longer hadcorporate existence, and that the “loyalists,” who were few in number,should not have the power formerly possessed by all. The whole South was a“tabular rasa,” “a clean slate,” upon which Congress might write thelaws.[864] The existence of slavery was declared to be incompatible with arepublican form of government, which it was the duty of Congress toestablish. For it is necessary to such a form of government that there beabsolute equality before the law, suffrage for all, education for all, thechoice of “loyal” citizens for office, and the exclusion of “rebels.” Thenegro must take part in Reconstruction, for his vote would be needed tosupport the cause of human rights and “the party of the Union”—meaning,of course, the Republican party.[865]

Sumner cared little for the Constitution except for the clause aboutguaranteeing a republican form of government to the states, and on this hebased the power of Congress to act. The Declaration of Independence was tohim the supreme law and above the Constitution, and to make the governmentconform to that document was his aim. He wearied his colleagues with hiscontinual harping on the Declaration of Independence as the fundamentallaw, upon which footing the seceded states must return. That, he declared,would destroy slavery and all inequality of rights, political andcivil.[866]

The Conquered Province theory was originated by Thaddeus Stevens, theRadical leader of the House of Representatives, who, however, refused tocall it a theory. He made no attempt to harmonize his plan with theConstitution, and frankly expressed his[Pg 340] opinion that there was nothing inthe Constitution providing for such an emergency; that the laws of waralone should govern the action of Congress, allowing no constitutions tointerfere.[867] It was impossible to execute the Constitution in theseceded states, he said, which the victors must treat “as conqueredprovinces and settle them with new men and exterminate or drive out thepresent rebels as exiles from this country.”[868] Every inch of the soilof the southern states should be held for the costs of the war, to paydamages to the “loyal” citizens and pensions to soldiers and theirfamilies, and slavery should be abolished.[869] Secession, according toStevens, was so far successful that the southern states were out of theUnion and the people had no constitutional rights.[870] All ties werebroken by the war. The states in their corporate capacities made war, andwere out of the Union so far as the conqueror might choose to considerthem, and must come back into the Union as new states or remain asconquered provinces with no rights except such as the conqueror mightchoose to grant. Perpetual ascendency of the North must be secured bygiving the ballot to the negro, by confiscation, and by banishment. TheConstitution, in his opinion, had been torn to atoms; it was now a “bit ofworthless parchment,” and there could be no reconstruction on the basis ofthat instrument. Congress had absolute jurisdiction over the wholequestion.[871] Stripped of its violence, Stevens’s theory was probably thecorrect one from the point of view of public law. It was more in accordwith historical facts. It recognized the great changes wrought by war inthe structure of the government. It was frank, explicit, and practical.Unfortunately, the statesmanship necessary to carry to success such a planwas entirely lacking in its supporters.

Sumner would limit the authority of Congress only by the provisions of theDeclaration of Independence; Stevens would have Congress unchecked by anylaw. By martial law and the law of nations, he meant no law at all, as hisutterances show; nothing must stand in the way of the absolute powers ofCongress. Both theories agreed in reducing the states to a territorialstatus. Sumner would[Pg 341] leave the people of these states the rights ofpeople in the United States territories. Stevens would deny that they hadany such rights whatever under any law, but that they were to beconsidered conquered foes, with their lives, liberty, and property at themercy of the conqueror.[872]

The Forfeited Rights theory, patched up to suit the more timid Radicalswho would not concede that the states had succeeded in getting outside ofthe Union or that they could be destroyed, was, in effect, the Stevenstheory, though recognizing some kind of a survival of the states. Thenames and boundaries of the states alone survived; the politicalinstitutions were entirely destroyed, and must be reconstructed byCongress.

It is a waste of time to try to find a basis in the old Constitution forany of the theories advanced. If a legal basis must be had, it will haveto be found in the Constitution as revolutionized by seventy-five years ofdevelopment and four years of war. The main purposes of the congressionalplans were to reduce the late dictatorial powers of the President, toremove forever from political power the political leaders of the South, togive the ballot to the negro as a measure of revenge and to assure thecontinuation in power of the Republican party.[873]

Owing to the fact that Congress was not in session for several monthsafter the downfall of the Confederacy, the President had a goodopportunity to put into operation the executive plan for restoring thesouthern states to their proper standing in the Union.

In the early spring of 1865, Governor Watts, in a speech calling upon thepeople to make renewed exertions against the invader, said: “We hold moreterritory than a year ago, more of Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas, Georgiais overrun but is ready to rise. Our financial condition is better thanfour years ago. Arms,[Pg 342]commissary and quartermaster’s stores are moreabundant now.”[874] But there were no more men. A month later Lee hadstarted on the march to Appomattox; two months later Dick Taylor wassurrendering the last Confederate armies east of the Mississippi; threemonths later the war governors of Alabama were in northern prisons, andnot a vestige of the Confederate or state governments remained. There wasno government.

Even before the collapse of the Confederacy there were indications of anapproaching revolution in the state government, to be carried out by theunion of all discontented factions. The object was to gain control of thestate government or to organize a new one and return to the Union. Thismovement was strongest in north Alabama and was supported and encouragedby the Federal military authorities. One of the disaffected cliquetestified before the Subcommittee on Reconstruction that in the last yearsof the war a “Reconstruction” or “Union” party was organized in Alabama,which, at the time of the surrender, had a majority in the lower house ofthe legislature.[875] But the Senate, elected in 1861, held over andprevented any action by the House. During the year 1865 the “Union” partyhoped to secure both the governorship and the Senate in the firstelections which were to occur under the new constitution, and thus securecontrol of the state. But the invasion and surrender stopped themovement.[876]

There were indications during the winter and spring of 1865 thatReconstruction movements were going on in the northern half of the state.After the invasion of the state in April many people more influential thanthe ordinary peace party men began to think of Reconstruction. GeneralThomas authorized the citizens of Morgan, Marshall, Lawrence, and theneighboring counties to organize a civil government based on the Alabamalaws of 1861. J. J. Giers, a brother-in-law of State Senator Patton (latergovernor), was sent by the military leaders to “reorganize civil law.”Thomas invited[Pg 343] the people of the other northern counties to do likewiseand thus show that they were “forced into rebellion.” Colonel Patterson ofthe Fifth Alabama Cavalry accepted the terms for his forces, and Giersstated that Roddy’s men were so pleased with Thomas’s letter that theyreleased their prisoners and stopped fighting. A Reconstruction meetingwas held at Somerville, Morgan County, and was largely attended bysoldiers. This was early in April.[877] In the central and southernportions of the state the movement did not begin until the Federal forcestraversed the country. General Steele with the second army of invasionreported from Montgomery, May 1, 1865, that J. J. Seibels, L. E. Parsons,and J. C. Bradley[878] had approached him and had told him that two-thirdsof the people of the state would take up arms to “put down therebels.”[879] A meeting was held at Selma, in Dallas County, on May 10,and called upon the governor to convene the legislature and take the stateback into the Union. Judge Byrd,[880] one of the speakers, said that thewar had decided two things—slavery and the right of secession—and bothagainst the South. He counselled a spirit of conciliation and moderation,and in this he expressed the general sentiment of the people.[881]

A more important meeting was held the next day in Montgomery. A number ofthe more prominent politicians met to take steps to place the state in theway of readmission to the Union.[882] George Reese[883] of Chambers Countypresided over the meeting and Albert Roberts was secretary. Seibelsintroduced resolutions, which were adopted, pledging to the United Statesgovernment earnest and zealous coöperation in the work of restoring thestate of Alabama to its proper relation with the Union at the earliestpossible moment. The murder[Pg 344] of Lincoln and the attempt on the life ofSeward were condemned as “acts of infamous diabolism revolting to everyupright heart.” The bad effect the crime would have on political matterswas deplored. The desire was expressed that all guilty of participation inthe attempt might be brought to speedy and condign punishment, and “weshall hold as enemies all who sympathize with the perpetrators of the fouldeed.” The majority reported a memorial to the President asking him topermit the governor of Alabama to convene the legislature, which wouldcall a convention in order to restore the state to her political relationsto the United States. This they believed was the most speedy method. Butif this were not permitted, then the President was requested to appoint amilitary governor from among the most prominent and influential “loyal”men of the state and invest him with the power to call a convention. Theywere encouraged to ask this, the memorial stated, by the recent statementof the President of the principle that the states which attempted tosecede were still states, and not being able to secede would not be lostin territorial or other division. “To forever put an end to the doctrineof secession; to restore our state to her former relations to the Unionunder the Constitution and the laws thereof; to enable her to resume therespiration of her life’s breath in the Union,—is a work in which we ingood faith pledge you our earnest and zealous coöperation, and we hazardnothing in the assurance that the people of Alabama will concur with uswith a majority approaching almost unanimity.”

Colonel J. C. Bradley presented a memorial from the minority of thecommittee. It was the same as the other memorial, except that the partrelating to the appointment of a military governor was omitted. Such anofficial was not desired nor needed, he stated. After some discussion bothmemorials were adopted and each person present signed the one hepreferred. The chairman appointed a committee to bear the memorials to thePresident. The general sentiment of the meeting and of the people seemedto be that, since they had failed to maintain their independence, therewas nothing left to do but to accept as a working basis the theory that astate could not secede, and to get straight into the Union by having thePresident restore the suspended animation of the Constitution. The bestand shortest way, they thought, was for Governor Watts to convene thelegislature, which should begin the work, and a convention[Pg 345] of the peoplewould complete it. Governor Watts and the Supreme Court (Stone and Phelan)approved the action of the meeting, though they took no part in it.[884]

Another meeting on the same day (May 11), at Guntersville, in MarshallCounty, in the heart of the devastated section of the state, proposed tosubmit cheerfully to the decision of war and return to the Union. Twosoldiers, Major A. C. Baird and Colonel J. L. Sheffield,[885] were theleaders in the meeting.[886] Two mass-meetings were held in CovingtonCounty (one at Andalusia on May 17) and passed resolutions favoring arestoration of the Union. The Union General Asboth said that these peoplehad returned to their allegiance early in April and had organized andarmed to resist the “rebels.” The resolutions were signed by 280 and 376persons respectively. Asboth reported great excitement on account of theaction taken by the meeting.[887] On May 23 there was a meeting ofcitizens in Franklin County. James W. Ligon was president, H. C. Tompkins,vice-president, and R. B. Lindsey (governor in 1870-1872) addressed themeeting. This meeting seems to have been behind the times, for it acceptedthe overtures of Thomas made April 13, and promised to assist cheerfullyin restoring law and order. They were anxious to resume former friendlyrelations to the United States and wanted a state convention called tosettle matters.[888]

About this time the President, General Grant, and Stanton, by repeatedorders, managed to reach the generals who were encouraging the movementtoward Reconstruction, and put an end to their plans by ordering them notto recognize the state government in Alabama and to prevent the assemblyof the legislature.[889] Thereupon, on[Pg 346] May 23, a memorial was signed by106 prominent citizens of Mobile, asking the President to take steps toenable Alabama to be restored to the Union. Robert H. Smith[890] and PercyWalker[891] were sent as a committee to General Granger, who commanded inthe city, to ask him to transmit the memorial to the President. GeneralGranger did so with the indorsement that no impediment existed toimmediate restoration, that the signers were influential men andrepresented the sentiment of the people of the state.[892] At Athens, inLimestone County, the citizens met and adopted resolutions declaring thatall must be restored to the Union; that the state officials should berecognized, but that a new election should be held under the laws ofAlabama as they were before secession; that a convention was not necessaryand in the present unsettled condition of the county it would be dangerousto hold one; that the constitution of 1819, changed by amendment, shouldbe used. The murder of Lincoln was deplored.[893] Similar meetings wereheld all over the state, especially in north Alabama.[894]

The “loyal” element held a meeting in north Alabama about the first ofJune.[895] Resolutions were introduced by K. B. Seawell to the effect thatthe government of Alabama had been illegally set aside in 1861 by acombination of persons regardless of the best interests of the state, thatsecession was not the act of the people, and that the Confederacy was ausurpation. It was decided that Alabama must go back to the Union, and theauthority of the United States was invoked to enable “loyal” citizens toform a state government.[896] The sentiments of the more violent“unionists” or tories may be understood from a letter of D. H.Bingham,[897] then at West Point, New York. He said that reconstructionmust not be[Pg 347]committed to the hands of the “rebels”; that Parsons, who wasspoken of for provisional governor, was not one of the “union” men ofAlabama and would use his influence to secure control to the old slavedynasty; that his appointment would be unfair to the “union” men; that themasses were coerced and deluded into fighting the battles of slavery; “I,George W. Lane,[898] and J. H. Larcombe,” he said, “never gave way tosecession.” The non-slaveholding whites in slaveholding districts weretrained to obey, he wrote, and the official class used its influence tokeep the non-slaveholders in ignorance. Hence the small number ofslaveholders (of whom most were owners of few slaves and hence were unionmen) controlled the “union” population of over 5,000,000. He said that theAlabama delegates, then in Washington,[899] were not inactive in producingthese results, though they claimed to be “unionists.” They were once“union” men, but went over. Now they alleged that they were carried intorebellion by a great wave of public feeling. Such men should not betrusted until they had passed through a probationary state.[900]

The southerners who wanted immediate restoration of constitutional rightsand privileges on the basis of the Crittenden Resolution of 1861,[901]soon found that this plan would not work; so, to make the best of a badsituation, all accepted the Johnson plan and declared that the state,since it had not had the right to secede, must still be in the Union. Thepress and the prominent men, even those who would be disfranchised by thePresident’s plan, gave it a hearty support in order to give peace to theland and restore civil government.[902] At this time the Johnson planpromised to be one of merciless proscription of the prominent men. AsJohnson himself expressed it: “The American people must be made tounderstand the nature of the crime, the length, the breadth, the depth,and height of treason. For the thousands who were driven into the infernalrebellion there[Pg 348] should be amnesty, conciliation, clemency, and mercy. Forthe leaders, justice—the penalty and the forfeit should be paid. Thepeople must understand that treason is the blackest of crimes and must bepunished.”[903] The leaders were not afraid of such threats and meant notto stand in the way. The people intended to make the best they could outof a bad state of affairs. They believed then and always that their causewas right, secession justifiable and necessary; that the provocation wasgreat, and that they were the aggrieved party; that the abolitionists andfanatics forced secession and civil war. But since they were beaten inwar, after they had done all that men could do, they meant to accept theresult and abide by the decision of the sword. There was a general purposeto stand by the government—certainly no dream of opposition to it. Thepeople meant (which was neither treasonable nor unreasonable) to allythemselves to the more conservative political party in the North in orderto secure as many advantages as possible to the South. Their aim was topreserve as much of their old constitution as they could, all the whilerecognizing that state sovereignty and slavery ended with the war. Theircourse in ceasing at once all useless opposition and proceeding to securereinstatement on the old terms was,The Nation declared, “a display ofconsummate political ability.” Southerners like to think that had Lincolnlived his plan would have succeeded, and that the most shameful chapter ofAmerican history would not have to be written.[904] Johnson helped to ruinhis own cause and his supporters along with it. The people never seem tohave taken seriously the proposed merciless plans of Johnson, and theopposition of moderate advisers and the pleasure of pardoning southern“aristocrats” (and later Radical criticism) caused a distinct modificationof his policy in the direction of mildness until the proscriptive part wasalmost lost sight of.[905]

The southern leaders[906] saw clearly that there was no hope for theirparty unless the President could win the fight against the Radicals[Pg 349] inCongress, and they attempted to disarm northern hostility outside Congressuntil the Radical party, aided by the rash conduct of the President,educated the people of the North to the proper point for approving drasticmeasures.[907]

On May 29 the President began his attempt at restoration by proclaimingamnesty to all, except certain specified classes of persons. They werepardoned and therefore restored to all rights of property, except inslaves, on condition that the following oath be taken:—

Fourteen classes of people were excluded from the benefits of thisproclamation; of these twelve were affected in Alabama:—

(1) The civil or diplomatic officers, or domestic or foreign agents ofthe Confederacy; (2) those who left judicial positions under theUnited States to aid the Confederacy; (3) all above the rank ofcolonel in the army and lieutenant in the navy; (4) those who leftseats in the United States Congress and aided the Confederacy; (5)those who resigned commissions in the United States army and navy toescape service against the Confederacy; (6) persons who went abroad toaid the Confederacy in a private capacity; (7) graduates of the navaland military academies who were in the Confederate service; (8) thewar governors of Confederate states; (9) those who left the UnitedStates to aid the Confederacy; (10) Confederate sailors (considered aspirates); (11) all in confinement as prisoners of war or for otheroffences; (12) those who supported the Confederacy and whose taxableproperty was over $20,000.

The classes excluded embraced practically all Confederate and stateofficials, for the latter had acted as Confederate agents, all the oldpolitical leaders of the state, many of the ablest citizens who had notbeen in politics but had attained high position under the Confederategovernment or in the army, the whole of the navy,—officers andmen,—several thousand prisoners of war, a number of political[Pg 350] prisoners,and every person in the state whose property in 1861 was assessed at$20,000 or more. According to the proclamation the assessment was to be in1865, but it was made on the basis of 1861, at which time slaves wereincluded and a slaveholder of very moderate estate would be assessed at$20,000. In 1865 there were very few people worth $20,000.

It was provided that persons belonging to these excepted classes mightmake special application to the President for pardon, and the proclamationpromised that pardon should be freely granted.[909] The oath could betaken before any United States officer, civil, military, or naval, or anystate or territorial civil or military officer, qualified to administeroaths.[910] In Alabama 120 army officers were sent into all the countiesto administer the amnesty oath. These officers were strict in barring out“all improper persons” and subscription went on slowly until the militarycommander issued orders that all who were eligible must take the oath.Less than 50,000 persons took the oath; 90,000 had voted in 1860.

There was a fight for appointment to the provisional governorship. WilliamH. Smith of Randolph and D. C. Humphreys of Madison, both of whom hadopposed secession, then entered the Confederate service, and laterdeserted; D. H. Bingham of Limestone, who had been a tory during the war;and L. E. Parsons of Talladega, who had aided the Confederacy materiallyand damned it spiritually—all wanted to oversee the restoration of thestate.[911]

June 21, 1865, the President, acting as commander-in-chief of the army andunder the clause in the Constitution requiring the United States toguarantee to each state a republican form of government and protect eachstate against invasion and domestic violence,[912] proceeded to breathethe breath of life into the prostrate state by appointing Lewis E. Parsonsprovisional governor.[913]

[Pg 351]It was made the duty of Parsons to call a convention of delegates chosenby the “loyal”[914] people of the state. This convention was to amend oralter the state constitution to suit the changed state of affairs, toexercise all the powers necessary to enable the people to restore thestate to its constitutional relations with the central authority, and toset up a republican form of government. All voters and delegates must havetaken the oath of amnesty, and must have the qualifications for votersprescribed by the Alabama constitution and laws prior to the secession ofthe state. This excluded the fourteen proscribed classes and said nothingof the negroes. The convention, when assembled, was to prescribequalifications for voters and for office holders. The military and navalofficers of the United States were directed to assist the provisionalofficials and to refrain from hindering and discouraging them in any way.The Secretary of State was directed to put in force in the state ofAlabama all laws of the United States, the administration of whichbelonged to the State Department. The Secretary of the Treasury wasdirected to nominate assessors, collectors, and other treasury officials,and to put into execution in Alabama the revenue laws of the UnitedStates. The Postmaster-General was ordered to establish post-offices andpost routes and to enforce the postal laws. The Attorney-General and theFederal judges were directed to open the United States courts in thestate. The Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of the Interior wereordered to put in execution the regulations of their respectivedepartments, so far as related to Alabama.[915]

In making appointments to office in the southern states, the departmentswere to give preference to “loyal”[916] persons of the district or statewhere they were to serve. If no “loyal” persons could be found in thestate or district, such persons might be imported from other states ordistricts.

In this measure the difference appears between the Lincoln and the Johnsonplan of restoration. Lincoln believed that the executive should only makethings easy for the people to erect a government for themselves. He keptas much as possible in the background[Pg 352] and let it appear that the movementoriginated with the people. Several times he merely suggested that negroeswith certain qualifications should be granted the suffrage. Johnson, onthe other hand, made it clear that he was the source of all authority inthe movement. He himself made stringent regulations of the suffrage, thuscreating a body of citizens, and set up a government of his own for thepurpose of creating a new state government. The people were to do as hebade them. He did not suggest negro suffrage in any form and was, likemost southern Unionists, opposed to it. The Johnson provisional governmentwas a military government with the President as the source of authority.Parsons was a military governor appointed by the commander-in-chief andpaid by the War Department.[917] Lincoln’s provisional government wouldhave been popular government based on election by the people.

The appointment of Parsons gave general satisfaction to all parties exceptthe more violent tory element in the northern part of the state, whowanted men like D. H. Bingham or William H. Smith. A correspondent ofTheNation who travelled among them in August, 1865, when this element of thepeople seemed likely to form a strong portion of the new ruling class ofthe South, before the President modified his plans, said of them: they areignorant and vindictive, live in poor huts, drink much, and all usetobacco and snuff; they want to organize and receive recognition by theUnited States government in order to get revenge—really want to bebushwhackers supported by the Federal government; they “wish to have thepower to hang, shoot, and destroy in retaliation for the wrongs they haveendured”; they hate the “big nigger holders,” whom they accuse of bringingon the war and who, they are afraid, would get into power again; they arethe “refugee,” poor white element of low character, shiftless, with noambition.[918] To proscribe the mass of leading citizens, the experiencedmen in public affairs, as Johnson’s plan at first promised to do, wouldhave had serious results, but his later, more liberal, policy restored therights of all except the more prominent. But the old leaders were neveragain leaders, thinking it more politic to put forward less well-knownmen. At first Johnson had the mountaineer’s dislike of the “slave[Pg 353]aristocracy,” as he called it, and his plan was devised to humiliate andruin this class.[919]

A month after his appointment Governor Parsons issued (July 20) aproclamation to the people, drawn largely from the census of 1860, showinghow prosperous the state was at that time and inviting attention to thepresent condition of affairs. The question of slavery and secession, hesaid, had been decided against the South, but every political and propertyright, except slavery, still remained. He thus repudiated any formerbelief he may have had in the right of secession. A funny comparison wasmade in exuberant language and with many mixed metaphors, likening theUnion to a steamship and the state of Alabama to a man swimming around inthe water, trying to get on board. The following officers of theConfederate state government who were in office on the 22d of May,[920]1865, were reappointed to serve during the continuance of the provisionalgovernment: justices of the peace, constables, members of common councils,judges of courts, except probate, county treasurers, tax collectors andassessors, coroners, and municipal officers. Judges of probate andsheriffs who were in office on May 22 were directed to take the amnestyoath and serve until others were appointed. All officers reappointed wereto take the amnesty oath and give new bond. The right was reserved toremove any officer for disloyalty or for misconduct in office. Thus therewas a continuity between the Confederate administration and the“restoration” administration.

The civil and criminal laws of the state as they stood on January 11,1861, except as to slavery, were declared in full force, and an electionof delegates to a constitutional convention was ordered for August 31, andthe convention was to meet on September 10.[921] No one could vote in theelection or be a candidate for election to the convention who was not alegal voter according to the law on January 11, 1861, and all voters andcandidates must first take the amnesty oath or must have been pardoned bythe President. Instructions were given as to how a person who was excludedfrom the benefits of the amnesty proclamation might proceed in order tosecure a[Pg 354] pardon. A list of questions was appended by which “an improperperson” might test his case and see how bad it was. They ran like this:—

Parsons appointed to assist him a full staff of secretaries as follows:Wm. Garrett, Secretary of State; M. A. Chisholm, Comptroller of Accounts;L. P. Saxton, Treasurer; —— Collins, Adjutant-General; M. H. Cruikshank,Commissioner for the Destitute; John B. Taylor, Superintendent ofEducation.

A report on the condition of the treasury on September 1, 1865, shows thatof $791,294 in the treasury on May 24, 1865, only $337 was in silver and$532 in gold. The rest was in state and Confederate money, now worthless.The financial status of the provisional treasury was uncertain. Receiptsfrom July 20 to September 21, 1865, were $1766 and disbursements had been$1572. The bonded debt of the state, held in London, was $1,336,000, inNew York, $2,109,000, a total of $3,445,000.[923]

Parsons could hardly do otherwise than reappoint the old state officialsas temporary officers, but it created some dissatisfaction in the stateand much in the North; and in truth the Confederate state officers in 1865were not, in general, very efficient, being old men, cripples, incapables,“bomb-proofs,” “feather beds,” and deadheads. They were not much liked byany party unless perhaps by the few who put them in office. TheHuntsville Advocate may have been voicing the objections of either“tory” or “rebel” when it condemned Governor Parsons’s reappointment ofthede facto state[Pg 355]officers—“they are not the proper persons torekindle the fires of patriotism in the hearts of the people.”[924]

The provisional governor was obliged to rely upon inferior material inrestoring the state government. Though the President’s plan soon was shornof its worst proscriptive features, the work of restoration had begun byexcluding the natural leaders from a share in the upbuilding of the state,and they were thus rendered somewhat indifferent to the process. The classto whom the task fell was good, but it was not the best. The best men wentinto the southern army or otherwise committed themselves strongly to thecause of the Confederacy. The strong men of the state who sulked in theirtents during the war were few in numbers, and they were usuallydisgruntled and cranky, and now, without influence, were much disliked bythe people. The so-called “union” men who stayed at home in “bomb-proof”offices, or as teachers, overseers, ministers, etc., were not the kind ofmen to reconstruct the shattered government. The few who had openlyespoused the Union cause had not the character, experience, and trainingnecessary to fit them to rule a state. Though the administration began ona basis of very inferior material, yet the modification of the plan of thePresident gradually admitted the second-rate leaders to politicalprivileges, and, had the experiment continued, they would have graduallyresumed control of the politics of the state. It was in some degree thehope of this that made them willing to submit to proscription andexclusion for a while and support the reconstruction measures of thePresident. They hoped for better times.[925]

Parsons revised the official lists thoroughly, and many of the oldofficers were discharged and new ones appointed. However, they had littleto do; the army and the Freedmen’s Bureau usurped their functions. Aproclamation of August 19, 1865, directed the probate judge, sheriff, andclerk in each county to destroy, after August 31, old jury lists and makenew ones from the list of names of “loyal” citizens who had taken theamnesty oath and registered. Circuit court judges were directed to holdspecial sessions of court for the trial of state cases and to have theirgrand juries inquire particularly into the cases of cotton and horsestealing, now common crimes.[926]

One of the principal occupations of the provisional government wassecuring pardons for those who were excluded from the general amnesty ofMay 29, 1865. Governor Parsons was for reconciliation, and those who hopedto profit by the disfranchisement of the leaders complained of the lenienttreatment of the latter. Parsons’s policy of “proscribing proscription”was greatly disliked by those who would profit by disfranchisement. If itwere continued, they saw there would be no spoils for them. One of theaggrieved parties related a case which might well have been his own: Aprominent “union” man went to the President to get his pardon, statingthat he had been as much a Union man as possible for the last four years.“I am delighted to hear that,” the President said. Directly the “union”man said that he had been forced to become somewhat implicated in therebellion, that he had been obliged to raise money by selling cotton tothe Confederates, and, as he was worth over $20,000, it was necessary toget a pardon. “Well, sir,” the President answered, “it seems that you werea Union man who was willing to let the Union slide. Now I will let youslide.” On the other hand, Judge Cochran of Alabama told the Presidentthat he had been a rabid, bitter, uncompromising rebel; that he had doneall he could to cause secession, and had fought in the ranks as a private;that he regretted very much that the war had resulted as it had; that hewas sorry they had not been able to hold out longer. But he now acceptedthe results. The President asked: “Upon what ground do you base yourapplication for pardon? I do not see anything in your statement to justifyyou in making such an application.” Judge Cochran replied, “Mr. President,I read that where sin abounds, mercy and grace doth much more abound, andit is upon that principle that I ask for pardon.” The pardon wasgranted.[927]

The President in the end granted pardons to nearly all persons who appliedfor them, but not a great number applied. The total number pardoned inAlabama from April 15, 1865, to December 4, 1868, was less than 2000, andof these most were those who had been worth over $20,000 in 1861 and hadaided the Confederacy with their[Pg 357] substance. For this offence (for offenceit was in Johnson’s eyes) 1456 people (of whom 72 were women) werepardoned before the general amnesty in 1868.[928] How many of this classof excepted persons did not ask for pardon is not known. It is certainthat all who possessed that amount of wealth assisted the Confederacy.Half at least of the $20,000 must have been slave property.[929]

Few of the state and Confederate officials applied for pardon. Many worthover $20,000 in 1861 did not apply. Most of those who were wealthy in 1861lost all they had in the war. To December 31, 1867, the President hadpardoned in Alabama only 12 generals, viz. Battle, Baker, F. M. Cockerill,Clayton, Deas, Duff C. Green, Holtzclaw, Morgan, Moody, Pettus, Roddy, andWood; 11 members of the Confederate Congress had been pardoned, 1 formerUnited States judge, 1 former member United States Congress, 1 West[Pg 358] Pointgraduate; 2 naval officers, and 2 governors. These were the only prominentpolitical leaders who applied for pardon.[930]

The election for delegates was held August 31, and the convention met inMontgomery September 12 and adjourned on September 30. The total vote castfor delegates was about 56,000,[931] a very large vote when all things areconsidered. This being a representative body of the men who were to carryout the Johnson plan of restoration, it will be of interest to examineclosely the personnel of the convention. There were 99 delegates, of whomonly 18 were under forty years of age, the majority being over fifty; itwas a body of old rather than middle-aged men; 26 were natives of Alabama;24 were born in Georgia; Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolinafurnished 28; Maryland, Kentucky, and Tennessee, 14; 6 were from northernstates, and 1 from Ireland. There were 23 Methodists; 19 Baptists; 16Presbyterians (the most able members), and 5 Episcopalians; 34 belonged tono church (not a mark of respectability at that time). There were 33lawyers and 42 farmers and planters; 6 physicians, 9 merchants, 2teachers, and 7 ministers. The proportion of ministers andnon-church-members is remarkable. As to politics, 45 were old Whigs andhad voted for Bell and Everett electors in 1861, 24 voted forBreckenridge, and 30 for Douglas; 18 had been in favor of immediatesecession and a few of these were now called “precipitators”; 11 had beenin the convention of 1861, and 10 had then voted for secession. Only onemember of the convention of 1861 from the southern and central parts ofthe state was returned to the convention of 1865. All the others had bytheir course in the war made themselves ineligible. Fifty-two had had noprevious experiences in public life. There were two ex-governors, twoformer members of Congress, and one who had been minister to Belgium.[932]

There were several extreme “union” men, a few “precipitators,” who,however, made no factious opposition, and a large majority of conservativemen. The votes on test questions showed a wide difference between theextremists from north Alabama and the other members. The proportion wasabout 63 conservatives to 36 north Alabama anti-Confederates. It was theold sectional division. The minority was made up about equally of rampant“union” men and old conservative Whigs; the majority, of the more liberalWhigs and conservative Democrats. Neither party was as united as theparties had been in 1861. There were almost as many minor divisions asthere were members, but the most of them acted together in order totransact business, and none were allowed to obstruct. As a body theconvention was much inferior in ability to that of 1861 and lackedexperience. Nearly all were men of ordinary ability, while those of 1861were the best from both sections of the state. Yet this was quite arespectable conservative body.[933] The secessionists and former Democratswere the ablest members, and were more inclined to accept the results ofwar in a philosophical spirit, and, making the best of things, to go towork to bring order out of political chaos. TheHerald correspondentsaid that John A. Elmore was the strongest[Pg 360] man in the convention. He hadbeen an ardent secessionist of the Yancey school, yet in the convention hedid more than any other man to bring the weaker men around to correctviews and harmony of action.[934]

Ex-Senator and Ex-Governor Fitzpatrick was chosen to preside, and GovernorParsons administered the amnesty oath. The convention at once notifiedPresident Johnson of the desire and intention of the people to be and toremain loyal citizens of the United States. It indorsed his administrationand policy and asked him to pardon all who were not included in theamnesty proclamation of May 9, 1865.[935]

The debate on the action to be taken as to the ordinance of secession waswarm and extended over the entire session. The dispute was concerning theform of words to be used in repealing or otherwise getting rid of theordinance of secession. One delegate proposed that it be declared“unconstitutional and therefore illegal and void”; another wanted itdeclared “null and void”; another, “the so-called ordinance of secession,null and void”; others, “unconstitutional, null and void”; “unauthorized,null and void”; or “unauthorized and void from the beginning.” Theminority proposition to declare it “unauthorized, null and void,” was laidon the table by a vote of 69 to 21, the minority being from north Alabama.A proposition to declare it “unconstitutional, null and void” was lost bythe same vote. And all similar propositions fared about the same.[936]However, a proposition to say that “it is and was unconstitutional”secured 34 votes against 59. Clark of Lawrence, who had been in theconvention of 1861, wanted this convention to declare the ordinance ofsecession “unauthorized, null and void,” because, he said, in 1861, themajority of the people voted for “union and coöperation,” and that, as theconvention refused to submit its work to the people, the people weremisrepresented and the ordinance of secession was unauthorized. Yet hewould not say that it was unconstitutional and void from the beginning.Other members said that the convention of 1861 had full authority. Fromthe act of the[Pg 361] legislature of 1860 which provided for the calling of theconvention, the people understood that it had full authority and they alsoknew that it would use its authority to secede. “Unauthorized” would meanthat there was no cause for calling the convention of 1861, and would evendeny the right to secede as a revolutionary right. It would mean consentto the doctrine of passive obedience, and also that the convention of 1861and those who supported it had usurped authority, and “we therebyimpliedly should leave the memory of our dead who died for their countryto be branded as traitors and rebels and turn over the survivors, so faras we are concerned, to the gibbet.”[937] The ordinance favored by themajority of the convention declared that the ordinance of secession “isnull and void,” and was adopted by a unanimous vote.[938] All otherordinances, resolutions, and proceedings of the convention of 1861, andsuch provisions of the constitution of 1861 as were in conflict with theConstitution of the United States, were declared null and void.[939]

The state bonded debt in aid of the war was $3,844,500, which was heldprincipally in Mobile. There were other indirect war debts, but no oneknew the amount. On a test vote early in the session the convention wasdivided, 58 to 34, against repudiating the war debt.[940] Later, by a voteof 60 to 19, all debts created by the state of Alabama, directly orindirectly in aid of the war, were declared void, and the legislature wasforbidden to pay any part of it, or of any debts contracted directly orindirectly by the Confederacy or its agents or by its authority.[941]

[Pg 362]In the debate in regard to the abolition of slavery, Mr. Coleman ofChoctaw[942] desired to know by what authority the people of Alabama hadbeen deprived of their constitutional right to property in slaves.[943] Heurged the convention not to pass an ordinance to abolish slavery, but toleave the President’s proclamations and the acts of Congress to be testedby the Supreme Court; that there was no such thing as secession; a statecould not be guilty of treason, and Alabama had committed no crime;individuals had done so; others were loyal and were entitled to theirrights. Not only those who had always been loyal but also those who hadtaken the amnesty oath were entitled to their property;[944] thosepardoned by the President were entitled to the same rights, and Congresshad no authority to seize property except during the lifetime of thecriminal. The Federal government had no right to nullify the Constitution.The abolition of slavery should be accepted as an act of war, not as thefree and voluntary act of the people of Alabama which latter course wouldprevent the “loyalists” of Alabama, from receiving compensation forslaves. He denied that slavery was non-existent; Lincoln’s proclamationdid not destroy slavery; it was a question for the Supreme Court todecide, and to admit that Lincoln’s proclamation destroyed slavery was toadmit the power of the President and Congress to nullify every law of thestate. For all these reasons it was inexpedient for the convention todeclare the abolition of slavery.

Judge Foster of Calhoun answered that the war had settled the question ofslavery and secession; that the question of slavery was beyond the powerof the courts to decide, and, besides, a decision of the Supreme Courtwould not be respected. The question had to be decided by war, and havingbeen so decided, there was no appeal from the decision. The institution ofslavery had been destroyed[Pg 363] by secession. The question was not open fordiscussion. Slavery, he said, does not exist, is utterly and foreverdestroyed,—by whom, when, where, is no matter. The power of arms isgreater than all courts. Citizens should begin to make contracts withtheir former slaves. Should the Supreme Court declare the proclamations ofthe Presidents and the acts of Congress unconstitutional, slavery wouldnot be restored. Whether destroyed legally or illegally, it was destroyed,and the people had better accept the situation and restore Federalrelations.[945]

Mr. White of Talladega[946] proposed to abide by the proclamations of thePresident and the acts of Congress until the Supreme Court should decidethe question of slavery. White said that he had opposed secession as longas he could; that the states were not out of the Union, but had all theirrights as formerly.[947] Mr. Lane of Butler wanted an ordinance to theeffect that since the institution of slavery had been destroyed in thestate of Alabama by act of the Federal government, therefore slavery nolonger exists. This was lost by a vote of 66 to 17.[948] On September 22,1865, an ordinance was adopted by a vote of 89 to 3 which declared thatthe institution of slavery having been destroyed, neither slavery norinvoluntary servitude should thereafter exist in the state, except as apunishment for crime. All provisions in the constitution regarding slaverywere struck out, and it was made the duty of the next legislature to passlaws to protect the freedmen in the full employment of all their rights ofperson and property and to guard them and the state against any evils thatmight arise from their sudden emancipation.[949] Mr. Taliafero Towles ofChambers, a “loyalist,” proposed an ordinance to make all “freenegroes”[950] who were not inhabitants of the state[Pg 364] before 1861 leave thestate. Mr. Langdon of Mobile regretted this proposition, and thought itwould do harm. Mr. Towles explained that he lived near the Georgia lineand that he was much annoyed by the negroes who came into Alabama fromGeorgia. Mr. Patton[951] of Lauderdale opposed such a policy. It wasunwise, he said; let people go where they pleased; he would invite peoplefrom all parts of the Union to Alabama. Mr. Mudd of Jefferson thought thatsuch a measure would be extremely unwise. Mr. Hunter of Dallas said thatit was very unwise, that it would do no good, and at such a time would beharmful. Passions must be allayed. Towles withdrew the resolution.[952]

Mr. Saunders of Macon introduced a memorial to the President to releasePresident Davis. It was referred to a committee and was not heardfrom.[953] General Swayne of the Freedmen’s Bureau sent to the conventiona memorial from a negro mass-meeting in Mobile praying for the extensionof suffrage to them. It was unanimously laid on the table.[954]

General Swayne had made an arrangement with the governor by which thestate officials were required to act as agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau.The convention now passed an ordinance requiring these officers tocontinue to discharge the duties of agents of the Bureau “until theadjournment of the next general assembly.” Seventeen north Alabama menopposed the passage of this ordinance.[955]

Mr. Patton of Lauderdale proposed an ordinance in regard to the basis ofrepresentation in the general assembly. It was not correctly understood innorth Alabama, which section, thinking it called for representation basedon population, rose in wrath. TheHuntsville Advocate said: “This is awhite man’s government and a white man’s state. We are opposed to anychanges in the convention except such as are necessary to get the stateinto the Union again.”[956] Mr. Patton explained that the purpose of hismeasure[Pg 365] was to base representation on the white population. He cheerfullyindorsed north Alabama doctrine, “This is a white man’s government and wemust keep it a white man’s government.”[957] The ordinance as passedprovided for a census in 1866, and the apportionment of senators andrepresentatives according to white population as ascertained by thecensus. The delegates from the white counties of north Alabama andsoutheast Alabama voted for the ordinance, and thirty delegates from theBlack Belt voted against it.[958]

This measure destroyed at a blow the political power of the Black Belt,and had the Johnson government survived, the state would have been ruledby the white counties instead of by the black counties. This was partlythe result of antagonism between the white and black counties.

Early in the session Mr. Sheets of Winston, “loyalist,” demanded that allamendments to the Constitution adopted by the convention should bereferred to the people for ratification or rejection, except such asrelated to slavery.[959] Mr. Webb of Greene, chairman of the Committee onthe Constitution, reported that, on account of the state of the times, itwas not expedient to refer the amendments to the people. Mr. Clark ofLawrence[960] wanted the people to have an opportunity to show whetherthey favored the work of the convention. He said that, in 1861, had theordinance of secession been referred to the people, it would have beendefeated.

The members who were in favor of not sending the amendments to the peoplesaid that there was not time, and that there were too many otherelections; that the people had confidence in the convention or they wouldnot have elected the delegates who were there. But the north Alabamadelegates insisted that their constituents not only expected to have theamendments submitted to them, but that they (the delegates) had pledgedthat they would have the amendments sent before the people.[961] The northAlabama party could not consistently do anything but object to theadoption of the constitution by proclamation. Some had never recognizedthe supreme[Pg 366] authority of a constitutional convention; others were opposedto the expediency of adoption by proclamation. By a vote of 61 to 25 theconstitution was proclaimed in force without reference to the people.[962]

The convention did some important legislative work necessary to put thebusiness of administration in running order again. All the laws enactedduring the war not in conflict with the United States Constitution, andnot relating to the issue of money and bonds nor to appropriations, wereratified and declared in full force since their dates.[963] All officialsacts of the state and county officials, all judgments, orders, and decreesof the courts, all acts and sales of trustees, executors, administrators,and guardians, not in conflict with United States Constitution wereratified and confirmed. Deeds, bonds, mortgages, and contracts made duringthe war were declared valid and binding. But in cases where payments wereto be made in Confederate money the courts were to decide what the truevalue of the consideration was at the time.[964] Divorces granted duringthe war by the chancery court were declared valid.[965] Marriages betweennegroes, whether during slavery or since emancipation, were declaredvalid; and in cases where no ceremony had been performed, but the partiesrecognized each other as man and wife, such relationship was declaredvalid marriage. The children of all such marriages were declaredlegitimate. Fathers of bastard negro children were required to provide forthem. The freedmen were placed under the same laws of marriage as thewhites, except that they were not required to give bond.[966] Thelegislature was commanded to pass laws prohibiting the intermarriage ofwhites with negroes or with persons of mixed blood.[967]

In view of the lawlessness prevailing in some of the counties, theprovisional governor was authorized to call out the militia in eachcounty, and the mayors of Huntsville, Athens, and Florence were givenpolice jurisdiction over their respective counties until the[Pg 367] legislatureshould act. The ante-bellum militia code was declared in force, and allother laws in regard to the militia were repealed.[968]

The governor was ordered to pay the interest on the bonded debt of thestate that was made before 1861, and the convention pledged the faith ofthe people that the old debt should be paid in full with interest.[969]The state was divided into six congressional districts. The negro was nolonger counted in the “Federal number,” and the representation of thestate in Congress was thus reduced. Elections were ordered for variousoffices in November and December, 1865, and March and May, 1866. Theprovisional governor was authorized to act as governor until another waselected and inaugurated. It was ordered that in the future no conventionbe held unless first the question of convention or no convention besubmitted to the people and approved by a majority of those voting.[970]

Finally, the convention asked that the President withdraw the troops fromthe state, the people and the convention having complied with all theconditions and requirements necessary to restore the state to itsconstitutional relations to the Federal government.[971] The conventionadjourned on September 30, having been in session ten days in all. Theconstitution went into effect gradually, Parsons enforcing some of it;Patton and the newly elected legislature organized the government under itfrom December, 1865, to May, 1866. But it never became more than aprovisional constitution, which was set aside by the President atpleasure.

By convention ordinance and by constitutional amendment the civil rightsof the freedmen were made secure, family relations legalized, propertyrights secured; the courts of law were open to them, and in all casesaffecting themselves, their evidence was admissible. The admission ofnegro testimony was generally approved by the bar and the magistracy, butdisliked by the ignorant classes of whites. All magistrates and judicialofficers who refused to admit negro testimony or to act as Bureau agentswere removed from office by the governor. One mayor (of Mobile) and onejudge were removed.

[Pg 368]Affairs were going on well, though the civil government was weakened andlost prestige by being subordinated to the military authorities.[972] Theconvention having authorized Parsons to organize the militia to aid inrestoring order, several companies were organized and instructed to actsolely in aid of the civil authorities and in subordination to them. Theywere to act alone only when there was no civil officer present.[973]

Among the whites there was a vague but widespread fear of negroinsurrections, and toward Christmas this fear increased. The negroes weredisappointed because of the delayed division of lands, and their temperwas not improved by the reports of adventurers, black and white, who cameamong them as missionaries and sharpers. There was a general and naturaldesire among the freedmen to get possession of firearms, and all throughthe summer and fall they were acquiring shotguns, muskets, and pistols ingreat quantities. Most of the guns were worthless army muskets, but newarms of the latest pattern were supplied by their ardent sympathizers inthe belief that the negroes were only seeking means of protection. Asharper who claimed to be connected with the government travelled throughsome of the black counties, telling the negroes that they were mistreatedand must arm themselves for protection. He sold them certificates for$2.50 each which he said would entitle the bearers to muskets if presentedat the arsenals at Selma, Vicksburg, etc.[974] Hence arose the fears ofthe whites who were poorly armed.

In several instances where there was fear of negro insurrection the civilauthorities, backed by the militia, searched negro houses for concealedweapons, and sometimes found supplies of arms, which were confiscated.There was a general desire to disarm the freedmen until after Christmas,when the expected insurrection failed to materialize; but no order fordisarming was issued by the governor, and a bill for that purpose wasdefeated in the legislature. Some of the militia companies undertook topatrol the country to scare the negroes with a show of force,[975] and insome places disguised patrols rode through the negro settlements to keepthem in order.[Pg 369] There were several instances of unauthorized disarming andlawless plunder under the pretence of disarming the blacks, by marauderswho took advantage of the state of public feeling and followed the exampleof the disguised patrol bands. General Swayne himself was afraid of negroinsurrection, and before Christmas did not interfere with the attempts ofthe whites to control the blacks. After Christmas the negroes quieteddown, and most of them made some pretence of working. The next case ofdisarming that occurred brought the interference of General Swayne, whoordered that neither the civil nor the military authorities should againinterfere with the negroes under any pretext, unless by permission fromhimself. He threatened to send a negro garrison into any community wherethe blacks might be interfered with. After that, he says, the people were“more busy in making a living,” and the militia organizations disbanded.Two classes of the population were now beyond the reach of the civilgovernment, the “loyalists” and the negroes, and the civil authoritiesmaintained that these were the source of most disorder.[976]

An act of Congress, July 2, 1862, prescribed that every person elected orappointed to any office under the United States government should, beforeentering upon the duties of the office, subscribe to the “iron-clad” testoath,[977] which obliged one to swear that he had never aided in any waythe Confederate cause. Outside of the few genuine Union men of NorthAlabama, there were not half a dozen respectable white men in the statewho could take[Pg 370] such an oath. Those who had been opposed to secession hadnearly all aided in the prosecution of the war or had held office underthe Confederate government. The thousands who had fallen away from theConfederates in the last year of the war could not take the oath. Thewomen could not take it, and few even of the negroes could. Those whocould take the oath were detested by all, and the unfitness of suchpersons for holding office was clearly recognized by the administration.By law, certain Federal offices had to be filled by men who lived in thecounty or state. The Federal service did not exist in Alabama at the endof the war, and the President and Cabinet, agreeing that the requirementof the oath could not be enforced, made temporary appointments in theTreasury and postal service of men who could not take the oath. In Alabamathe men appointed were the old conservatives, those who had opposedsecession. The officers appointed were marshals and deputy marshals,collectors and assessors of internal revenue, customs officers, andpostmasters. Objection was made in Congress to the payment of theseofficers, and Secretary McCulloch of the Treasury made a report on thesubject. He stated that it was difficult to find competent persons whocould take the oath, and that it was better for the public service and forthe people that their own citizens should perform the unpleasant duty ofcollecting taxes from an exhausted people. There was no civil governmentwhatever, and it was necessary that the Federal service be established. Inregard to future appointments, he said, it would be difficult, if notimpossible, to find competent men in the South who could take the oath,that very few persons of character and intelligence had failed to connectthemselves in some way with the insurgent cause. The persons who couldpresent clean records for loyalty would have been able to present equallyfair records to the Confederate government had it succeeded, or else theylacked the proper qualifications. Northern men of requisite qualificationswould not go South for the compensation offered. For the government tocollect taxes in the southern states by the hands of strangers was notadvisable. Better for the country politically and financially to suspendthe collection of internal revenue taxes in the South for months or yearsthan to collect them by men not identified with the taxpayers in sympathyor interest. It would be a calamity to the nation and to the cause ofcivil liberty[Pg 371]everywhere if, instead of a policy of conciliation, theaction of the government should tend to intensify sectional feeling. Tomake tax-gatherers at the South of men who were strangers to the peoplewould be a most unfortunate course for the government to pursue, and fatalconsequences, he thought, would follow such a policy. He asked that theoath be modified so that the men in office could take it.[978] ThePostmaster-General made similar recommendations.[979]

For years after the war the test oath obstructed administration andjustice in the South. The Alabama lawyers could not take the oath, andUnited States courts could not be held because there were no lawyers topractise before them. There were many cases of property libelled whichshould have come before the United States courts, but it was notpossible.[980] As men of character could not be found to fill the offices,the Post-office Department tried to get women to take the post-offices,but they could not take the test oath. Many post-offices remained closed,and mail matter was sent by express. Letters were thrown out at a stationor given to a negro to carry to the proper person. Juries in the Federalcourts had to take practically the same oath as the “iron-clad,” and thejury oath was in existence long after the others were modified. So foryears a fair jury trial was in many localities impossible.[981]

The effect of the proscription by the test oaths of the only men who werefit for office was distinctly bad. It drove the oldWhig-coöperationist-Unionist men into affiliation with the secessionistsand Democrats. The division of the whites into different parties[Pg 372] was madeless likely. The Senate regularly rejected nominations made by thePresident of men who could not take the oath,[982] and the militaryauthorities were inclined to enforce the taking of the test oath by thestate and local officials of the provisional government.[983]

The convention ordered an election, on November 30, for governor, stateand county officials, and legislature. There were three candidates forgovernor, all respectable, conservative men, old-line Whigs, from northAlabama, the stronghold of those who had opposed secession. They were R.M. Patton of Lauderdale, M. J. Bulger of Tallapoosa, and W. R. Smith ofTuscaloosa.[984] The section of Alabama where the spirit of secession hadbeen strongest refrained from putting forward any candidate. The radical“loyalists” had no candidate. The few prominent men of that faction sawthat it would be political suicide for them to commit themselves to theJohnson plan after he had begun the pardoning process, and were nowworking to overthrow the present political institutions. Only in case theplan of the Radicals in Congress should succeed would the “loyalists” getany share in the spoils. The Conservative candidates were in sympathy withthe north Alabama desire for “a white man’s government.” Mr. Patton in thelate convention had secured the revision of the constitution so as to baserepresentation on the white population. During the war General M. J.Bulger, the second candidate, made a speech at Selma in which he said hehad opposed secession and had refused to sign the ordinance, but haddeemed it his duty to fight when the time came and had served throughoutthe war. There could be, he said, no negro suffrage, no negro[Pg 373]equality.[985] W. R. Smith had been the leader of the coöperationists inthe convention of 1861. The election resulted in the choice of R. M.Patton of Lauderdale over Bulger and Smith by a good majority.[986]

The new legislature met on November 20, but Patton was not inaugurateduntil a month later, owing to the refusal of the Washington administrationto allow Parsons to resign the government into the hands of what theadministration intended should be the permanent, “restored” stategovernment. The object in the delay was the desire of the President tohave the Thirteenth Amendment ratified before he relinquished the stategovernment. It was a queer mixture of a government—an electedconstitutional legislature and a governor and state administrationappointed by the commander-in-chief of the army.[987] The legislature wasrecognized, but the governor elected at the same time was not. Severalacts of legislation were done by this military-constitutional governmentduring the thirty days of its existence, the most important being theratification of the Thirteenth Amendment by the legislature. This was donewith the understanding, the resolution stated, that it did not confer uponCongress the power to legislate upon the political status of the freedmenin Alabama.[988] The amendment was ratified December 2, 1865, and[Pg 374] on the10th, Secretary Seward telegraphed to Parsons that the time had arrivedwhen in the judgment of the President the care and conduct of the properaffairs of the state of Alabama might be remitted to the constitutionalauthorities chosen by the people. Parsons was relieved, the instructionsstated, from the trust imposed in him as provisional governor. When thegovernor-elect should be qualified, Parsons was to transfer papers andproperty to him and retire.[989] On the strength of these instructionsGovernor Patton was inaugurated December 13, 1865. In his inauguraladdress the new governor said that the extinction of slavery was one ofthe inevitable results of the war. “We shall not only extend to thefreedmen all their legitimate rights,” he stated, “but shall throw aroundthem such effectual safeguards as will secure them in their full andcomplete enjoyment. At the same time it must be understood thatpolitically and socially ours is a white man’s government. In the future,as has been the case in the past, the state affairs of Alabama must beguided and controlled by the superior intelligence of the white man. Thenegro must be made to realize that freedom does not mean idleness andvagrancy. Emancipation has not left him where he can live withoutwork.”[990]

Though Patton was inaugurated on December 13, the Washington authoritiesdid not authorize the formal transfer of the government until December 18,and the charge was made on December 20, 1865.

The legislature at once elected ex-Governor Parsons and George S. Houstonto the United States Senate. The people had already elected sixcongressmen of moderate politics.[991] So far as concerned[Pg 375] the state ofAlabama, the presidential plan of restoration was complete, if Congresswould recognize the work.

A proclamation of the President on December 1, revoking and annulling thesuspension of the writ ofhabeas corpus, expressly excepted all thesouthern states and the southern border states. It was not until April 2,1866, that the President declared the rebellion at an end.[992] He hadlittle faith in his restored governments, or else he liked to interfere,and he still retained the power to do so.

CHAPTER IX

It was generally understood in the state that while Congress was opposedto the presidential plan of restoration and repudiated it as soon as itconvened, yet if the state conventions should abolish slavery, and thestate legislatures should ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, theirrepresentatives would be admitted to Congress. This was the meaning, itseemed, of a resolution offered in the Senate December 4, 1865, by CharlesSumner, one of the most radical of the Radical leaders.[993] On the sameday, in the House of Representatives, Thaddeus Stevens, the Radical leaderof the lower house, introduced a resolution, which was adopted, to appointa joint committee of the Senate and House to inquire into conditions inthe southern states. Until the committee should make a report, norepresentatives from the southern states should be admitted toCongress.[994] Under this resolution, the Committee of Fifteen onReconstruction was appointed. In order to support a report in favor of thecongressional plan of reconstruction and to justify the overturning of thesouthern state governments, the committee took testimony at Washingtonwhich was carefully calculated to serve as a campaign document. SuchRadicals as Stevens professed to believe that the arbitrary rule of thePresident was hateful to the southern people. Stevens said: “That theywould disregard and scorn their present constitutions forced upon them inthe midst of martial law, would be most natural and just. No one who hasany regard for freedom of elections can look upon these governments,forced upon them in duress, with any favor.”[995] Just exactly how much ofthis he meant may be inferred from his later[Pg 377] course as leader of theRadicals of the House, in the movement which forced the negro-carpet-baggovernment upon the southern states. Now Stevens proposed to “take noaccount of the aggregation of whitewashed rebels who, without any legalauthority, have assembled in the capitals of the late rebel states andsimulated legislative bodies.”[996]

The Republican caucus instructed Edward McPherson, clerk of the House, toomit from the roll the names of the members-elect from the South ascertified by the Secretary of State. This was done, and the southerncongressmen were not even allowed the usual privileges ofcontestants.[997]

As soon as the leaders in Congress felt that they were strong enough tocarry through their plan to destroy the governments erected under thePresident’s plan, they agreed that no senator or representative from anysouthern state should be admitted to either branch of Congress until bothhouses should have declared such state entitled to representation.[998]The state governments were recognized as provisional only, and for a yearor more Congress was occupied in the fight with the President overReconstruction. The consequence was that Patton became provisionalgovernor of a territory and not the constitutional governor of a state.The state suffered from much government at this time. First, came themilitary authorities with military commissions; then, the Freedmen’sBureau with its courts supported by the military; the Bureau also actedindependently of the army and with civilian officers; it was also a partof the Parsons provisional government, and later of the Patton government,and so controlled the minor officials of the state administration. Tocomplicate matters further, the President constantly interfered by orderor direction with all the various administrations, for all were subject tohis supervision. The many governments were bound up with one[Pg 378] another, andby interfering with the action of one another increased the generalconfusion. The people lost respect for authority, and only public opinionserved to regulate the conduct of individuals.

For several months the industrial system was entirely disorganized,especially in the neighborhood of the cities, and many people realized theabsolute necessity of laws to regulate negro labor. The negro insisted ontaking a living from the country without working for it. There were alsofears of insurrection by the idle negroes who were waiting for thedivision of spoils, and General Swayne of the Bureau felt a touch of theapprehension.[999]

When the legislature met, a few of the demagogues who had told theirconstituents that they would soon regulate all troubles introduced manybills to regulate labor, and thousands of copies were printed fordistribution. On December 15 it was agreed to print ten thousand copies ofall bills relating to freedmen.[1000] This was done, and though thegovernor had not approved them, the country members went home with pocketsfull of bills introduced by themselves, to show to their constituents andto scare the negroes into work. The regulations proposed made specialprovision for the freedmen, and under different circumstances it wouldhave been well for the negro if they had been passed into law andenforced; but it was not good policy at this time to propose suchregulations, in view of the fact that the Radicals were watching for suchaction and hoping for it. However, it is probable that nothing that thesouthern whites could have done would have met with the approval of theRadicals.

Governor Patton asked General Swayne for advice in regard to the pendingbills relating to freedmen, and Swayne informed him of the probable badeffect on public opinion in the North. After Christmas the Senate passedsome obnoxious bills, and these the governor vetoed. The other bills thatcame up from the lower house failed to pass in the Senate. Similar bills,modified in many details, but which would have been of much use could theyhave been enforced as law, were passed by both houses only to be vetoed bythe governor. The[Pg 379] negroes were now showing a disposition to work, and thelegislature did not attempt to pass the bills over the governor’s veto.Next, a law relating to contracts between whites and blacks was attempted.General Swayne was known to favor such a law, but Governor Patton vetoedit. He declared that such a law would cause much trouble; he hadinformation that everywhere freedmen were going to work on termssatisfactory to both parties and that they were disposed to dischargetheir obligations, and there should not be, he said, one law for whitesand another for blacks; special laws for regulating contracts betweenwhites and freedmen would do no good and might cause harm; the common lawgave sufficient remedy for violations of contracts, viz. damages. GeneralSwayne had been strongly of the opinion that contracts regularly made andcarefully inspected on behalf of the negro were necessary. Later he cameto the conclusion that the negro needed no protection by contract or byspecial law; that he had a much better protection in the demand for hislabor, and would only be injured by artificial safeguards; contracts wouldcause litigation, and it was best for both parties to be able to break anengagement at pleasure. He was of the opinion that the whites preferredcontracts, while the negro disliked to bind himself to anything. Hungerand cold, he declared, were the best incentives to labor. Swayne furtherreported that all objectionable bills relating to freedom had beenvetoed.[1001]

A bill passed both houses to extend to freedmen the old criminal laws ofthe state formerly applicable to free persons of color. Governor Pattonvetoed the bill on the ground that a system of laws enacted during slaverywas not applicable to present conditions. He showed how the proposed lawswould act, and the legislature not only accepted the veto, but repealedall such laws then in the code and on the statute books.[1002] At theclose of the session there were two laws on the statute books which made adistinction before the law between negroes and whites. The first made it amisdemeanor, with a[Pg 380]penalty of $100 fine and ten days’ imprisonment, topurchase or receive from a “free person of color” any stolen goods,knowing the same to have been stolen.[1003]

The second act gave the freedmen the right to sue and be sued, to pleadand be imprisoned, in the state courts to the same extent as whites. Theywere competent to testify only in open court, and in cases in whichfreedmen were concerned directly or indirectly. Neither interest in thesuit nor marriage should disqualify any black witness.[1004] This law, ifrestrictive at all, was never in force in the lower courts where minormagistrates and judicial officers presided; for, by the order of theconvention and later of the legislature, the state officials wereexofficio agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and sworn to make no distinctionbetween white and black.[1005]

Two laws were passed for the purpose of regulating labor, in theoryapplicable equally to white and black. They had the approval of GeneralSwayne, who was always present when labor legislation was discussed.[1006]The first law made it a misdemeanor to interfere with, to hire, enticeaway, or induce to leave the service of another any laborer or servant whohad made a contract in writing, as long as the contract was in force,unless by consent of the employer given in writing or verbally “in thepresence of some reputable white person.” The penalty for inducing alaborer to break a contract was a fine of $50 to $500,—in no case lessthan double the amount of the injury sustained by the employer; and halfthe fine was to go to the injured[Pg 381] party.[1007] The compilers of the PenalCode refused to incorporate this statute into the code on the ground thatit was inconsistent with other provisions of the code as adopted by thelegislature. The Penal Code had an old ante-bellum provision which made ita penal offence to entice, decoy, or persuade a servant or apprentice toleave the service of his master. The penalty was a fine of $20 to $100,and imprisonment for not more than three months might also beallowed.[1008]

The second labor law defined the relations of master and apprentice. Thewar had made orphans of many thousand children, white and black, and therewere few people who could look after them. Under slavery no regulation ofsuch things had been necessary for negro children. Now the children wererunning wild, in want, neglected, becoming criminals and vagabonds. Negrofathers ran off when freedom came, left their wives and children, and tookunto themselves other and younger wives. The negro mother, left alone,often incapable and without judgment, could not support her children; andmany negro children were found both of whose parents had died, or who haddeserted them. As a result of the war, there were many white orphanchildren and many widowed mothers who were unable to care for theirchildren. For years (1862-1875) there was much suffering among thechildren of the poorer whites and the negroes. The apprentice law was anextension of an old statute, and was designed to make it possible to carefor these dependent children. It was made the duty of county officials toreport to the probate courts all minors under the age of eighteen who weredestitute orphans, or whose parents refused or were unable to supportthem; and the court was to apprentice them to suitable persons. In casethe minor were the child of a freedman, the former owner should have thepreference when he or she should be proven a suitable person. In suchcases the probate judge was to keep a record of all the proceedings. Themaster to whom the minor was apprenticed was obliged to give bond that hewould furnish the apprentice sufficient food and clothing, treat himhumanely, furnish medical attention in case of sickness, and teach or havehim taught to read and write, whether white or black, if under the age offifteen.[Pg 382] Power was given to inflict such punishment as a father orguardian might inflict on a child or ward, but in no case should thepunishment be cruel. In case the apprentice should leave the employment ofthe master without the consent of the latter, he might be arrested by themaster and carried before a justice of the peace, whose duty it was toremand the apprentice to the service of his master. If the apprenticerefused to return, he was to be committed to jail until the next sessionof the probate court, which would investigate the case, and, if convincedthat the apprentice had not good cause for leaving his master, wouldpunish the apprentice under the vagrancy laws. If the court should decidethat the apprentice had good cause to leave his master, he was to bereleased from the indenture and the master fined not more than $100, whichwas to be given to the apprentice. Apprenticeship was to end at the age oftwenty-one for men and eighteen for women. Parents could bind out minorchildren under the regulations of this act.[1009] It was a penal offenceto sell or give intoxicating liquors to apprentices or to gamble withthem.[1010]

The definition of vagrancy was extended to include stubborn and refractoryservants, laborers, and servants who loitered away their time or refused,without cause, to comply with a contract for service. A vagrant might befined $50 and costs, and hired out until the fine was paid, but could notbe hired for a longer time than six months. The proceeds of fines andhiring in all cases were to go to the county treasury for the benefit ofthe poor.[1011]

[Pg 383]These statutes form the so-called “Slave Code” or “Black Code” of thestate which was so harshly criticised by the Radicals as being designed toreënslave the negroes.[1012] There is no doubt that if enforced they wouldhave affected the blacks more than the whites, though they were meant toapply to both.[1013] Something of the kind was felt to be a necessity.There were hundreds of negroes wandering about the country, living bypetty theft, and some rascally whites made it a business to purchasestolen property, especially cotton, from them. White vagrants werenumerous. The refuse of both armies and numbers of the most worthlesswhites, who had lost all they had in the war, travelled about the countryas tramps, their sole occupation being to victimize the ignorant by somescheme. Stringent laws, strictly enforced, would have done much to restoreorder.[1014]

The lawlessness prevalent in the state consequent upon civil war andemancipation had resulted in filling the jails with all sorts andconditions of criminals—mostly negroes—who were charged with minoroffences, such as stealing, fighting, burning, which were committed duringthe jubilee after the coming of the Federal troops. They were clearlyguilty of the crimes alleged, since they were imprisoned by consent of theFreedmen’s Bureau, which allowed no negro to be arrested without itspermission. There were some whites confined for similar small offences,and there were many “union” men, or “rebels,” according to locality, whowere under arrest for crimes committed during the war. Most of the crimeswere not serious[Pg 384] or were committed under the abnormal conditions of war.The governor, after consultation with General Swayne, “with entiresingleness of purpose” (Swayne), issued a proclamation of amnesty andpardon[1015] for all offences, except murder and rape, committed betweenApril 13, 1861, and July 20, 1865.[1016] Many hundred prisoners were thusliberated, among them eight hundred freedmen[1017] confined forpenitentiary offences. No bad results followed.[1018]

By state law and military order the negro was now freed from slavery andgiven all the civil rights possessed by the whites, unless in certaincases of law between whites in the higher courts where the negro was notpermitted to testify. In all cases concerning his own race, directly orindirectly, his standing before the court was the same as that of a whiteor better. The races were forbidden to intermarry. The apprentice andvagrancy laws, which were meant to regulate the economic relations betweenthe races, could not be enforced because of technical and practicaldifficulties, and because the officials who were to enforce them wereexofficio agents of the Bureau and therefore forbidden to enforce suchlaws. The Bureau upheld the negro in all his rights and much beyond. Therewas the most urgent demand for his labor, and to secure his wages therewas a lien on the employer’s crop. The negro was free to come and go whenhe pleased, and his pleasure led him to do this so often that writtencontracts fell into immediate disfavor on account of the uselesslitigation and disputes that ensued. Many of the more thrifty blacks beganto acquire small bits of property.

The travellers who visited the South in the fall of 1865 and in 1866agreed (except Schurz) that there was no thought of reënslavement of thenegro by the white; that the white was more afraid of the negro than thenegro of the white; that there was no need of protection, for the demandfor his labor would protect him. There were more colored artisans thanwhite, and all were sure of employment. At first the strong convictionthat they were not free unless they were careering around the country inidleness resulted in a[Pg 385]general wandering. In the fall and winter a largemajority returned to their old homes. “Once being assured of their libertyto go and come at will, they generally returned to the service of thesoutherner.”[1019] The courts gave substantial justice, it was reported;the judge and jury would prefer the case of a black to that of a meanwhite man; negro testimony in lawsuits was more and more favored, and thestanding of the negro in the courts became more and more secure.Conditions as to the treatment of the negroes were steadilyimproving.[1020] An unfriendly critic who travelled through the Gulfstates said that the negro was fairly well paid and fairly welltreated.[1021] A charge to the grand jury of Pike County by Judge Henry D.Clayton, on September 9, 1866, will serve to show the sentiments of thejudicial officers and members of the bar as well as juries. It wasreprinted at the North as a campaign document. The following is asummary:—

A certain class of our population is clothed with civil rights andprivileges that it did not possess until recently, and in dealing withthem some embarrassment will be felt. One of the results of the war wasthe freedom of the black race. We deplore the result as injurious to thecountry and fatal to the negroes, but we are in honor bound to observe thelaws which acknowledge their freedom. “When I took off my sword insurrender, I determined to observe the terms of that surrender with thesame earnestness and fidelity with which I first shouldered my musket.” Wemay cherish the glorious memories of that past, in the history of whichthere is nothing of which we need be ashamed, but now we have toreëstablish society and rebuild our ruined homes. Those unwilling tosubmit to this condition of things may seek homes abroad.[1022] We arebound to this soil for better or for worse. What is our duty? Let us dealwith the facts as they are. The negro has been made free, though he didnot seek freedom. Nominally free, he is beyond expression helpless by hiswant of self-reliance, of experience, of ability to understand andappreciate his condition. For promoting his welfare and adapting him tothis new[Pg 386] relation to society, all agencies from abroad will proveinadequate. The task is for us who understand him. To remedy the evilgrowing out of abolition two things are necessary: (1) we must recognizethe freedom of the race as a fact, enact just and humane laws, andwillingly enforce them; (2) we must in all our relations with the negrotreat him with perfect fairness. We shall thus convince the world of ourgood faith, get rid of the system of espionage [the Freedmen’s Bureau] byremoving the pretext for its necessity, and secure the services of thenegroes, teach them their place, and convince them that we are theirfriends. We need the labor of the negro and it is worth the effort tosecure it. We owe the negro no grudge; he has done nothing to provoke ourhostility; freedom was forced upon him. “He may have been the companion ofyour boyhood; he may be older than you, and perhaps carried you in hisarms when an infant. You may be bound to him by a thousand ties which onlya southern man knows, and which he alone can feel in all their force. Itmay be that when, only a few years ago, you girded on your cartridge boxand shouldered your trusty rifle to go to meet the invaders of yourcountry, you committed to his care your home and your loved ones; and whenyou were far away upon the weary march, upon the dreadful battle-field, inthe trenches, and on the picket line, many and many a time you thought ofthat faithful old negro, and your heart warmed toward him.”[1023]

The Freedmen’s Bureau and the provisional government had set aside,repealed, or suspended laws which treated the negro as a separate class.It was soon seen that the civil government had little real authority,being frequently overruled by the officials of the army[Pg 387] and Bureau and bythe President. The civil officials became accustomed to considering Swayneor Woods, the commander of the troops in Alabama, rather than the stategovernment, as the source of authority. It was known that the Radicalswere bent on giving the ballot to the negro and on disfranchising southernpolitical and military leaders. Some politicians began to consider thequestion of giving the ballot to the negro under certain restrictions.This was not done from any faith in the political intelligence of thenegro, or belief that he was fitted for or needed the exercise of thefranchise; for it was and is an article of the political faith of thesouthern people that the exercise of suffrage is a high privilege, anhistorical and inherited right, not the natural and absolute right of allmen. The reasons were very different, and were based entirely onexpediency and necessity: (1) Such action would forestall the Radicalprogramme and disarm, to some extent, the hostile party at the North. (2)It would enable the native leaders, by conferring the privilege on thenegro, to gain his confidence, control his vote, and thereby make itharmless. It was certain, it seemed, that two widely separated whitepolitical parties would arise as soon as outside pressure should beremoved, and each hoped to get control of most of the negro vote. (3) Sucha measure would increase the representation of the state in the Congress,thus giving them needed strength at a critical period. (4) The Black Belthoped in this way to regain its former political influence. The newconstitution, by making the white population the basis of representation,had transferred political supremacy to the white counties.

As early as October, 1865, Truman remarked that some leaders were thinkingof giving the ballot to the negroes. He thought that suffrage for thenegroes would harm them and would inflame the lower classes of whitesagainst them. But if left to the leaders and politicians, they, for thesake of increased representation in Congress, would bring the peoplearound, and by 1870 the negro would be voting.[1024] About the same time acorrespondent ofThe Nation observed that there was no great objectionto giving the negro the ballot because the white leaders thought that theycould control it. It would not be opposed by the planters of the South,but by the middle and poorer classes,—the merchants, mechanics, andlaborers.[1025] Early in 1866[Pg 388] Representative Brooks[1026] of Lowndes, ablack county, introduced a bill in the lower house providing for aqualified negro suffrage based on education and property. It was laid onthe table, but not before a calm and dispassionate discussion. The billproposed by Brooks was opposed more because it disfranchised a largenumber of whites than because it gave suffrage to the negro. The debatesshowed that later the legislature would do something along that line ifassured that such a course would result in readmission into the Union. Inthe discussion the idea was urged that something must be done to preventthe Radicals from taking the question of suffrage to the centralgovernment. This, it was held, would be dangerous to the South, with itspeculiar population, to which general Federal legislation would not wellapply, and hence it would be dangerous for the suffrage question to becomeone of national instead of state concern. Then, too, the people wereintensely weary of provisional rule, and wanted to resume their properposition in the Union.[1027]

The people of the north Alabama white counties, the hilly section of thestate, were opposed to any form of negro suffrage, though some of theirleaders who understood the state of affairs were willing to think of it asa last resort to defeat the intentions of the Radicals. The Black Beltpeople, who had less prejudice against the negro and who were sure thatthey could control him and gain in political power, were more favorablyinclined. Left alone, the various interests would have united to carrythrough the project in time. Suffrage so conferred upon the blacks wouldhave been strictly limited,—a premium offered, not a rightacknowledged,—under the control of the native white leaders andsupporting their interests, just exactly the situation of the lower-classvoters everywhere else, and the reverse of the southern situation since1867.

One of the north Alabama leaders, L. Pope Walker,[1028] after consultingwith other prominent men, went to Montgomery and conferred with GeneralSwayne in regard to the state of affairs. Swayne gave assurance that aqualified negro suffrage would be favorably received[Pg 389] at the North, wouldcreate a good impression, and assist, perhaps, in an early restoration ofthe state to the Union. He knew that suffrage for the negro brought aboutin this way would result in gaining the black vote for the southern andprobably for the Democratic party. Though a believer in the rights of allmen to vote and a strong Republican, Swayne was not then committed to theRadical programme and was ready to encourage the movement. An opportunityfor the entering wedge was now at hand. Many of the minor magistrates andthe sheriffs were also administering the affairs of the Freedmen’s Bureau,and consequently were more or less under the direction of Swayne, who wasthe assistant commissioner in Alabama. His instructions to agents, beforethe convention, directed that all laws be administered without regard tocolor. Governor Parsons approved these directions and required allprovisional officers to take oath accordingly. The convention sanctionedthis arrangement, and ordered it to continue until the close of the nextgeneral assembly. This general assembly had practically continued thearrangements already made. In consequence, the state officials, whetherwillingly or not, were still, at the time when the movement for negrosuffrage began, obliged to obey the directions of Swayne. The bulk of thepeople being opposed to the movement, it was proposed to make anexperiment on the responsibility of the Freedmen’s Bureau and to use thatmuch-disliked institution as an instrument, for the people would not bemuch surprised at anything it would do. So the sheriff of Madison County,in the winter of 1866-1867, when some local election was at hand, wrote toGeneral Swayne, asking if the election laws also were to be carried outregardless of color. He announced his willingness to carry outinstructions. Here was an opportunity to begin the experiment, but publicfeeling became so irritated by the Radical measures in Congress thatnothing was done, the election was not held, and the Reconstruction Acts,coming soon after, prejudiced the people more strongly than ever againstanything of the kind.[1029]

[Pg 390]About December 1, 1866, a bill was introduced into the state legislature“to amend the constitution of the state according to impartial suffrage,and then ask representation, leaving the amnesty question in the hand ofCongress.” Reporting this action to Chief Justice Chase, Swayne added:“This I am told is popular, and the member is sustained by hisconstituents.”[1030] The legislature, at the same time, intended to rejectthe Fourteenth Amendment.

It has been stated that in February, 1867, an effort was made, with theindorsement of the President, to induce the southern legislatures whichhad rejected the Fourteenth Amendment to adopt a qualified negro suffrage.This was tried in Alabama and North Carolina, and probably hastenedcongressional Reconstruction.[1031]

With the passage of the Reconstruction Acts and other congressional actionin regard to the negroes, affairs changed complexion rapidly. Thealienation of the races began. It was seen that the negro vote would nowbe controlled by worthless outsiders and native whites. The expecteddivision of the whites into two well-defined parties did not occur; therewas an almost united white party. A few whites, indeed, there were whowere ready to try negro suffrage, not those, however, who had beenthinking of it during the past two years. The result of the war hadintensified party spirit. The old “Union” men were intensely bitteragainst the secessionists or “precipitators,” and in the present crisissome otherwise good citizens were so blinded by party passion as to putrevenge above the welfare of their country, and were ready to accept theaid of their former slaves in their fight against the men whom theyconsidered responsible for the present condition of affairs. Others whonow took up negro suffrage were mere politicians, content to take officeat any price to the country, and who could never hope for office untilexisting institutions were destroyed.[1032]

The first general assembly under the provisional government ratified theThirteenth Amendment, “with the understanding that it does not confer uponCongress the power to legislate upon the political status of freedmen inthis state.”[1033] The same legislature requested the President to orderthe withdrawal of the Federal troops on duty in Alabama, for theirpresence was a source of much disorder and there was no need ofthem.[1034]

The President was asked to release Hon. C. C. Clay, Jr., who was still inprison.[1035] At the end of the session a resolution was adopted approvingthe policy of President Johnson and pledging coöperation with his “wise,firm, and just” work; asserting that the results of the late contest wereconclusive, and that there was no desire to renew discussion on settledquestions; denouncing the misrepresentations and criminal assaults on thecharacter and interest of the southern people; declaring that it was amisfortune of the present political conditions that there were personsamong them whose interests were promoted by false representations;confidence was expressed in the power of the administration to protect thestate from malign influences; slavery was abolished and should not bereëstablished; the negro race should be treated with humanity, justice,and good faith, and every means be used to make them useful andintelligent members of society; but “Alabama will not voluntarily consentto change the adjustment of political power as fixed by the Constitutionof the United States, and to constrain her to do so in her presentprostrate and helpless condition, with no voice in the councils of thenation, would be an unjustifiable breach of faith.”[1036]

During the year 1866 there was a growing spirit of independence in theAlabama politics. At no time had there been a subservient spirit, but fora time the people, fully accepting the results of the war, were disposedto do nothing more than conform to any reasonable conditions which mightbe imposed, feeling sure that the North would[Pg 392] impose none that weredishonorable. To them at first the President represented the feeling ofthe people of the North, perhaps worse. The theory of state sovereigntyhaving been destroyed by the war, the state rights theories of Lincoln andJohnson were easily accepted by the southerners, who were content, afterJohnson had modified his policy, to leave affairs in his hands. When theserious differences between the executive and Congress appeared, and thelatter showed a desire to impose degrading terms on the South, the peoplebelieved that their only hope was in Johnson. They believed the course ofCongress to be inspired by a desire for revenge. Heretofore the people hadtaken little interest in public affairs. Enough voters went to the pollsand voted to establish and keep in operation the provisional government.The general belief was that the political questions would settlethemselves or be settled in a manner fairly satisfactory to the South. Nowa different spirit arose. The southerners thought that they had compliedwith all the conditions ever asked that could be complied with withoutloss of self-respect. The new conditions of Congress exhausted theirpatience and irritated their pride. Self-respecting men could not tamelysubmit to such treatment.[1037]

During the latter part of 1865 and in 1866, ex-Governor Parsons travelledover the North, speaking in the chief cities in support of the policy ofthe President. He asked the northern people to rebuke at the polls thepolitical fanatics who were inflaming the minds of the people North andSouth. He demanded the withdrawal of the military. There had been, hesaid, no sign of hostility since the surrender; the people were opposed toany legislation which would give the negro the right to vote; and it wasthe duty of the President, not of Congress, to enforce the laws.[1038]

Much angry discussion was caused by the passage of the Freedmen’s BureauBill in 1866. The Bureau officials had caused themselves to be hated bythe whites. They were a nuisance, when no worse, and useless,—a plague tothe people. Though there were comparatively few in the state, they werethe cause of disorder and ill-feeling between the races. Though there wasnow even less need of the institution than a year before, the new measurewas much more[Pg 393] offensive in its provisions.[1039] There was greatrejoicing when the President vetoed the bill, which theMobile Timescalled “an infamous disorganization scheme of radicalism.” The Bureau hadbecome a political machine for work among white and black. The passage ofthe bill over the veto was felt to be a blow at the prostrate South.[1040]

The Civil Rights Bill of 1866 was also a cause of irritation. There was adisposition among the officials of the Freedmen’s Bureau to enforce allsuch measures before they became law. Orders were issued directing theapplication of the principles of measures then before Congress. The UnitedStates commissioner in Mobile decided that under the “Civil RightsBill”[1041] negroes could ride on the cars set apart for the whites.Horton, the Radical military mayor of Mobile, banished to New Orleans anidiotic negro boy who had been hired to follow him and torment him byoffensive questions. Horton was indicted under the “Civil Rights Bill” andconvicted. The people of Mobile were much pleased when a “Yankee officialwas the first to be caught in the trap set for southerners.”[1042]

Another citizen of Mobile, a magistrate, was haled before a Federal court,charged with having sentenced a negro to be whipped, contrary to theprovisions of the “Civil Rights Bill.” The magistrate explained that therewas nothing at all offensive about the whipping. He had not acted in hismagisterial capacity, but had himself whipped the negro boy for lying,stealing, and neglect of duty while in his employ.[1043] The agent of theBureau at Selma notified the mayor that the “chain gang system of workingconvicts on the streets had to be discontinued or he would be prosecutedfor violation of the ‘Civil Rights Bill.’”[1044] Judge Hardy of Selmadecided in a case brought before him that the “Civil Rights Bill” wasunconstitutional. He declared it to be an attack on the independence ofthe judiciary.[1045]

In the fall of 1866 the proposed Fourteenth Amendment was submitted to thelegislature. There was no longer any belief that further yielding would doany good; the more the people gave the more was asked. State Senator E. A.Powell wrote to John W. Forney that the people would do nothing about theFourteenth Amendment because they were convinced that any action would beuseless. Condition after condition had been imposed and had been absolved;slavery had been abolished, secession acknowledged a failure, and the wardebt repudiated by the convention; the legislature had ratified theThirteenth Amendment, had secured the negro in all the rights of propertyand person; and after all the state was no nearer to restoration.[1046]This was the view of nearly all the newspapers of the state, and in thisthey represented popular opinion. They were intensely irritated by thefact that, although they had made so many concessions, still they wereexcluded from representation in Congress, and were heavily and unjustlytaxed.[1047] Moreover, they were opposed to the amendment because itbranded their best men as traitors.[1048] One newspaper, alone, advocatedadoption of the amendment as the least of evils.[1049]

John Forsyth, in theMobile Register, said: “It is one thing to beoppressed, wronged, and outraged by overwhelming force. It is quiteanother to submit to voluntary abasement” by adopting the FourteenthAmendment. It should be rejected, he said, because it would disfranchisethe very best of the respectable whites, the beloved leaders of thepeople. Judge Busteed, in a charge to the Federal grand jury, delivered apolitical harangue advocating the adoption of the Amendment. Many ultra“union” men in north Alabama opposed the Amendment for three reasons: (1)though it would disfranchise the leaders, the great mass of the whitepeople would still be allowed to vote, especially those who had not heldcivil office during the war; (2) some of these “union” men had been ardentsecessionists at the beginning and had thus compromised themselves,[Pg 395] orhad been elected to the legislature or to some “bomb-proof” office duringthe war—as “obstructionists,” they claimed—and the proposed amendmentwould disfranchise them along with the Confederate leaders; (3) this classas a rule disliked the negro and never wanted negro suffrage if it werepossible to secure the overthrow of existing institutions without it. Twoplanters of the Black Belt were ready for negro suffrage to one“buckra.”[1050] Those men who considered themselves “unionists” wanted nonegro suffrage, nor anything so weak as the Fourteenth Amendment; butdesired some kind of a military régime in which the United Statesgovernment should place them in permanent possession of the stateadministration and exclude all who were not like themselves. The testshould be a political one, they said. It seems to be a fact that a fewhundred such men with, at the most, five thousand followers expected tohave the whole state administration under their direction for years. Yetit would have required a special law of exemption for each of them inorder to protect them from the proscription which was to be visited uponthe ex-Confederates. For these “unionists” had often betrayed both sidesduring the war. Their most patriotic duty had been “obstruction.”

By most persons the question of negro political rights was considered tobelong to the state and was not a matter for the Federal government toregulate. “Loyalists” as well as “rebels” were afraid to leave negroaffairs to the regulation of Congress. In his annual message to thelegislature, in November, 1866, Governor Patton advised the legislaturenot to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, on the ground that it could do nogood and might do harm. It involved a creation of a penalty after the act.On this point, he said that it was anex post facto law, and contrary tothe whole spirit of modern civilization; that such a mode of dealing withcitizens charged with offences against government belonged only todespotic tyrants; that it might accomplish revengeful purposes, but thatwas not the proper mode of administering justice; that adoption wouldvacate merely all offices in most of the unrepresented states—governors,judges, legislators, sheriffs, justices of peace, constables—and thestate governments would be completely broken up and reduced to utter andhopeless anarchy; that the disabilities imposed by the[Pg 396] test oath wereseriously detrimental to the interests of the government; thatratification of the Amendment could not accomplish any good to the countryand might bring upon it irretrievable disaster.[1051]

Under the circumstances, the legislature refused to consider theAmendment. But the governor during the next few weeks was induced byvarious considerations to recommend the ratification, and on December 7,1866, he sent a special message stating that there was a purpose on thepart of those who controlled the national legislation to enforce their ownterms of restoration at all hazards; and that their measures wouldimmeasurably augment the distress already existing and inaugurate endlessconfusion. The cardinal principle of restoration seemed to be, he said,favorable action on the Fourteenth Amendment. Upon principle he wasopposed to it. Yet necessity must rule. So now he recommendedreconsideration. If they should ratify and restoration should follow, theymight trust to time and their representatives to mitigate its harshness.If they should ratify and admission should be delayed, it would serve as awarning to other states and thus prevent the necessary number forratification.[1052]

The message created excitement in the legislature and the chances werefavorable for ratification; but ex-Governor Parsons, who was in the North,advised against it. He thought the northern people would support thePresident in the matter. The legislature refused to ratify by a vote of 27to 2 in the Senate, and 69 to 8 in the House.[1053] Potter of Cherokeegave notice that on January 15 he would move to reconsider the vote.Governor Patton, moreover, was convinced[Pg 397] that Congress meant to carry outits plan of reconstruction, and that opposition might make matters worse.General Swayne kept a strong pressure upon him, assuring him that Congresswould have its own way. During the Christmas holidays the governor madespeeches in north Alabama in favor of ratifying the Amendment. Congresswould require it, he said. On principle he opposed the measure, but itmust come at last. “Look the situation squarely in the face,” he said;only 2000 or 3000 men (himself included) would be deprived of office, andto oppose Congress was to ruin the state, to territorialize it. There weremen in Washington, he said, who were already working in order to be madeprovisional governor under the new régime.[1054] After the recess Pattonsent a second message recommending that the Amendment be adopted, since itwas the evident purpose of Congress to enforce their own terms.[1055] Fora day or two it was considered, General Swayne and the governor usingtheir influence with the members, and it seemed almost sure to beratified. But Parsons, then in Montgomery, telegraphed (January 17, 1867)to the President that the legislature was reconsidering the Amendment.Johnson replied saying that no possible good could come of such action;that he did not believe the people of the country would sustain “any setof individuals” in attempts to change the whole character of thegovernment, but that they would uphold those who stood by theConstitution; and that there should be no faltering on the part of thosewho were determined to sustain the coördinate departments of thegovernment in accordance with its original design. For the third time theAmendment failed to pass.[1056] One of the last resolutions passed by theprovisional legislature before it was abolished by the Reconstruction Actswas on February 1, 1867, in regard to memorializing Congress to establisha uniform system of bankruptcy. Relief was needed, they stated, “yet thepromptings of self-respect forbid the propriety of further intruding ourappeals upon a Congress which refuses to recognize the state of Alabamafor any purpose other than that of taxation. It is a source of regret thatCongress has assumed[Pg 398] an attitude toward the state of Alabama totallyincompatible with the mutual obligations of allegiance andprotection.”[1057]

In the convention of 1865 two well-defined parties had appeared, thoughgenerally, at that time, for the sake of harmony they acted together.These parties grew farther and farther apart. One of them, consisting ofmost of the people, especially of the central and southern section of thestate, supported the policy of the President. The other party was a motleyopposition. In it were the few original “Union” men, the tories, and manymore self-styled “union” men, who saw an opportunity for advancement forthemselves if the present government were overthrown. There were otherswho thought that the old ruling class should now retire absolutely frompublic life and allow their former followers to take their places. Therewas a fair sprinkling of respectable men who were bitterly opposed to anyparty or policy that suited the former Democrats, and believing thatCongress would not be too severe, they were willing to see three or fourthousand of the leaders disfranchised in order to get the state back intothe Union. They were willing also to become leaders themselves in theplace of those disfranchised.

During the year 1866 these parties were organized to some degree, heldmeetings, and made bids for northern support. The opposition worked intothe hands of the Radical party at the North, though many of them did notfavor the full Radical programme, especially as regarded negro suffrage.The other party took the name of the “Conservative” or “Democratic andConservative.” It was composed of former Democrats, Whigs, Know-nothings,Anti-Know-nothings, Bell and Everett men,—nearly all of the respectablevoting people. These allied with the “Conservative” party in othersouthern states and with the Democrats in the North and formed the“National Union Party.” Its platform was essentially the presidential planof Reconstruction.[1058] The campaign of 1866 was made on manyissues,—the Civil Rights Bill, Freedmen’s Bureau Bill, FourteenthAmendment, the plans of Reconstruction. Ex-Governor Parsons and otherprominent Alabamians spoke in the cities of the North in support of[Pg 399] thepolicy of the President. Ex-Governor Shorter, in a public letter, saidthat he had been a “rebel” until the close of the war, and understood thefeeling of the people of Alabama. There had not been since the surrenderand there was not now, he said, any antagonism to the United Statesgovernment, and Reconstruction based on the assumption of this would beharmful and hopeless. The people had given their allegiance to thegovernment and had remodelled their state organizations in goodfaith.[1059]

“Southern outrages” now began afresh. The Radical press and Radicalpoliticians began to manufacture tales of outrage and cruelty on the partof the southern whites against negroes. There had been all along adisposition to look for “outrages” in the South, and the reports of Schurzand the Joint Committee on Reconstruction seemed to put the seal of truthon the tissue of falsehoods, and for campaign purposes “outrages” wereincreased. For several years, judging from some accounts, the entire whitepopulation—men, women, and children—must have given much of their timeto persecuting, beating, and killing negroes and northern men. The Radicalpapers seized upon the silly things said or done by the idlers ofbar-rooms and street corners or printed in the small newspapers andmagnified them into the “threatening voice of a whole people.” Againstthis mistake General Swayne repeatedly protested. He had no special likingfor the southern people, but he scorned to misrepresent the true state ofaffairs for political capital. During his stay in the state (more than twoyears) the tenor of his reports was: There was no trouble from thesouthern whites; northern men were welcomed in a business way; disorderand lawlessness existed in sections of the state, but this was a naturalresult of long war and civil strife among the people. In his reports,Swayne repeatedly stated that as time went on the condition of affairs wasgradually improving. Newspaper correspondents sent to write up conditionsin the South went among the most worthless part of the population, inbar-rooms, hotel lobbies, on street corners, in country groceries, andwrote up the doings and sayings of these people as representative of all.Even E. L. Godkin was not above doing such a thing at times.[1060][Pg 400] Thesewriters carefully recorded the idle talk about the negro and the North anddressed it up for Radical information. A favorite plan was to find somewoman, coarse and vulgar and cruel-minded, and describe her and herspeeches as representative of southern women. The southern newspapersrepublished such correspondence as specimens of Radical methods. Thewhites were more and more irritated. This aggravating correspondence andthe more aggravating editorials continued in some papers long after theReconstruction period.[1061]

On the other hand, northern men received little or no social welcome inthe South. Most of them would not have been sought after in any section;few representatives of northern culture came South. The indiscretions ofsome caused the ostracism of all. But that was not the sole reason.General Swayne seemed surprised at “social exclusion” and mentioned itbefore the Reconstruction sub-committee. But, said an Alabamacorrespondent, what else can he expect? Why is he surprised? Can thesister, the mother, and the father who have lost their loved ones care tomeet those who did the deeds? They meet with respectful treatment; letthem not ask too much.[1062]

What the people needed and wanted was a settled and certain policy. Themixed administrations of the provisional authorities and the President, ofthe Freedmen’s Bureau and the army, did not result in respect for thelaws. The talk of confiscation and disfranchisement kept the peopleirritated. They thought that they had already complied with the conditionsimposed precedent to admission to the Union and now believed that Congresswas acting in bad faith. Many were willing to affiliate even withconservative Republicans in order to overthrow the Radicals. Much washoped for in the way of good results from the “National Union” movement.Few or none of the northern business men in the state thought that theRadical plan was necessary. They did not expect or desire itssuccess.[1063]

[Pg 401]There was a convention of the Conservative party at Selma in July, 1866.Delegates were elected to the National Union convention atPhiladelphia.[1064] The Selma convention indorsed the policy of Johnsonand condemned the Radical party as the great obstacle to peace. The mostprominent men of the state were present, representing both of the oldparties—Whigs and Democrats.[1065] The national platform adopted inPhiladelphia stated the principles to which the southerners had nowcommitted themselves, viz.: the war had decided the national character ofthe Constitution; but the restrictions imposed by it upon the generalgovernment were unchanged and the rights and authority of the states wereunimpaired; representation in Congress and in the electoral college was aright guaranteed by the Constitution to every state, and Congress had nopower to deny such right; Congress had no power to regulate the suffrage;there is no right of withdrawal from the Union; amendments to theConstitution must be made as provided for by the Constitution, and allstates had the right to a vote on an amendment; negroes should receiveprotection in all rights of person and property; the national debt wasdeclared inviolable, the Confederate debt utterly invalid; and AndrewJohnson’s administration was indorsed.[1066]

Ex-Governor Parsons and others from Alabama spoke in New York, New Jersey,Maine, and Pennsylvania, at National Union meetings. Parsons told theNorth that the conservative people of Alabama were in charge of theadministration, and would not send extreme men to Congress; therepresentatives chosen had opposed secession. The “Union” party,—a largeone in the state,—he said, had hoped that after the war each individualwould have to answer for himself, but instead all were suffering incommon.[1067]

[Pg 402]The opposition party was weak in numbers and especially weak in leaders.The tory and deserter element, with a few from the obstructionists of thewar time and malcontents of the present who wanted office, made up thenative portion of the party. Northern adventurers, principally agents ofthe Freedmen’s Bureau, teachers and missionaries, and men who had failedto succeed in some southern speculation, with a number of those who followin the path of armies to secure the spoils, composed the alien wing of theopposition party.[1068] The fundamental principle upon which the existenceof the party was based required the destruction of present institutionsand the creation of a new political people who should be kept in power byFederal authority. The northern soldiers of fortune saw at once that itwould be necessary to give the ballot to the negro. The native Radicalsdisliked the idea of negro suffrage and seemed to think that the centralgovernment should proscribe all others, place them in power and hold themthere by armed force until they could create a party.

Such a party could secure a northern alliance only with the extremeRadical wing of the Republican party. A convention of “Southern Unionists”was held in Washington, in July, 1866, which issued an address to the“loyalists” of the South, declaring that the reconstruction of thesouthern state governments must be based on constitutional principles, andthe present despotism under an atrocious leadership must not be permittedto remain; the rights of the citizens must not be left to the protectionof the states, but Congress must take charge of the matter and makeprotection coextensive with citizenship; under the present stategovernments, with “rebels” controlling, there would be no safety forloyalists,—they must rely on Congress for protection. A meeting of“southern loyalists” was called to be held in September, in IndependenceHall in Philadelphia.[1069] The Alabama delegates to this convention wereGeorge Reese, D. H. Bingham, M. J. Saffold, and J. H. Larcombe. ThisPhiladelphia convention condemned the “rebellion as unparalleled for itscauselessness, its cruelty, and its criminality.” “The unhappy policy” ofthe President was “unjust, oppressive, and intolerable.” The policy ofCongress was indorsed, but regret was expressed that it did not provide[Pg 403]by law for the greater security of the “loyal” people in the southernstates. Demand was made for “the establishment of influences of patriotismand justice” in each of the southern states. Washington, Lincoln, theDeclaration of Independence, Philadelphia, and Independence Hall—all werebrought in. The question of negro suffrage was discussed, and most of thedelegates favored it. Of the five delegates from Alabama, two announcedthemselves against it.[1070] At a Radical convention in Philadelphia aboutthe same time the delegates from Alabama were Albert Griffin, anadventurer from Ohio; D. H. Bingham, a bitter tory, almost demented withhate; and M. J. Saffold, who had been an obstructionist during the war.Here was the beginning of the alliance of carpet-bagger and scalawag thatwas destined to ruin the state in six years of peace worse than four yearsof war had done. The convention indulged in unstinted abuse of Johnson anddemanded “no mercy” for Davis. Bingham was one of the committee thatpresented the hysterical report demanding the destruction of theprovisional governments in the South. Saffold opposed the negro suffrageplank. He had no prejudice himself, he explained, but thought it was notexpedient. He was hissed and evidently brought to the correctopinion.[1071]

After the report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction in 1866 it wasbelieved by the Radicals that Congress would be victorious over thePresident, and the party in Alabama that expected to control thegovernment under the new régime began to hold meetings and organizepreparatory to dividing the offices. January 8-9, 1867, a thinly attended“Unconditional Union Mass-meeting” was held at Moulton, in LawrenceCounty. Eleven of the counties of north Alabama were represented, the hilland mountain people predominating. Nicholas Davis, who presided, said thatnone but “loyal” men must control the states, lately in rebellion.[1072]The action of Congress was[Pg 404]commended by the convention; the proposedFourteenth Amendment was indorsed; and Congress was asked to distinguishbetween the “precipitators” and those “coerced or otherwise led by theusurpers.”[1073] They asked for $100 a year bounty for all Union soldiersfrom north Alabama, and for the compensation of Unionists for propertylost during the war. The leaders here present were Freedmen’s Bureauagents, Confederate deserters, and former obstructionists.[1074]

A “Union” convention was held in Huntsville, March 4, 1867. Seventeennorth Alabama counties were represented by much the same crowd thatattended the Moulton convention.[1075] General Swayne was there, carriedalong by the current, and, it was said, hoping for high office under thenew régime.[1076] The convention declared that a large portion of thepeople of the South had been opposed to secession, but rather than havecivil war at home had acquiesced in the revolution; that the true positionof these “unionists” now was with the party that would protect themagainst future rebellion; it was necessary that the Federal government bestrengthened; the “union” men of each county were asked to hold meetingsand send delegates to a state convention to be held during thesummer.[1077]

The spring of 1867 saw the white Radical party stronger than it ever wasagain. The few native whites who were to take part in the Reconstructionhad chosen their side. After this time the party gradually lost all itsrespectable members. The carpet-baggers and[Pg 405] Bureau agents had not yetshown their strength. The scalawags did not foresee that to thecarpet-baggers would fall the lion’s share of the plunder, owing to theircontrol over the negro vote.

The President’s plan failed, not because of any inherent defect in itself,but because of the bungling manner in which it was administered. IfPresident Johnson had been content to place confidence in any one of theagencies to which were intrusted the government of the South, it wouldhave been better. Had the governments set up by him been endowed withvigor, it is probable that Congress would not have fallen wholly under thecontrol of the Radicals. The penalty for the indiscretions of thePresident was visited upon the South. To-day the southern people like tobelieve that, had Lincoln lived, his policy would have succeeded, and thehorrors of Reconstruction would have been mitigated or prevented.Johnson’s policy was that of Lincoln, except that he reserved to himself amuch larger part in setting up and running the provisional governments. Heestablished state governments, pronounced them constitutional, completed,perfected, and asked Congress to recognize them before he had proclaimedthe rebellion at an end or restored the privilege of the writ ofhabeascorpus.[1078]

He interfered himself, and allowed or ordered the army to interfere, inthe smallest details of local administration. The military rule in Alabamawas on the whole as well administered as it could be, which is seldomwell. There were too few soldiers and the posts were too widely separatedfor the exercise of any firm or consistent authority. But the people weresorry to see even the worst of this give place to the reign ofcarpet-bagger, scalawag, and negro. The interference of the army and thePresident discredited the civil government in the minds of the people. Theabsolute rule of the President over the whole of ten states, though neverused for bad purposes, was, nevertheless, not to be viewed with equanimityby those who were afraid of the almost absolute power that the executivehad assumed during the war. That the power had not been used for badpurposes was no guarantee against future misuse. There was some excuse forthe pretended fright of the Radical leaders, like Sumner and Stevens, andthe real anxiety of more moderate men, at the[Pg 406]dictatorial course ofJohnson. But it must be said that a desire for a share in politicalappointments was a cause of much of this “real anxiety.”

From 1865 to 1868, and even later, there was, for all practical purposes,over the greater part of the people of Alabama, no government at all.There was little disorder; the people were busy with their own affairs.Public opinion ruled the respectable people. Until the close ofReconstruction, the military and civil government touched the peoplemainly to annoy. From 1865 to 1874 government and respect for governmentwere weakened to a degree from which it has not yet recovered. The peoplegoverned themselves extra-legally and have not recovered from thepractice.

By taking cases from the civil authorities for trial before militarycommission, by dictating the course of the civil government, by nullifyingthe actions of the highest executive officers, the acts of thelegislature, and the decisions of the highest courts, the army was mainlyresponsible for the lack of confidence in the civil administration.

CHAPTER X

In the account of the affairs thus far we have seen many evidences of theactive participation of the military power of the United States in theconduct of government in Alabama. It will be useful at this point toexamine with some care the form and scope of the authority concernedduring the period of the provisional state government’s existence.

The Military Division of the Tennessee (1863), under General Grant,included the Department of the Cumberland, under the command of GeneralGeorge H. Thomas. Several counties of north Alabama in the possession ofthe Federals formed a part of this department and for three years weregoverned entirely by the army, except for two short intervals, when theFederal forces were flanked and forced to retire. Anarchy then reigned,for the civil government had been almost entirely destroyed in ten of thenorthern counties. June 7, 1865, the Military Division of the Tennesseewas reorganized under General Thomas, and included in it was theDepartment of Alabama, commanded by General C. R. Woods, with headquartersat Mobile. In October, 1865, Georgia and Alabama were united into amilitary province called the Department of the Gulf, under General Woods.This department was still in the Military Division of the Tennessee,commanded by General Thomas. June 1, 1866, Alabama and Georgia were formedinto the Department of the South and were still in Thomas’s MilitaryDivision of the Tennessee. General Woods commanded, with headquarters atMacon, Georgia. Alabama was ruled by General Swayne from Montgomery.August 6, 1866, the Military Division of the Tennessee was discontinuedand was made a department, General Thomas retaining the command. In thisdepartment Georgia and Alabama formed the District of the Chattahoochee,with headquarters at Macon, commanded by General Woods. The Sub-districtof Alabama[Pg 408] was commanded by General Swayne, who was also in charge of theFreedmen’s Bureau at Montgomery. This organization lasted until the ThirdMilitary District, under the Reconstruction Acts of March 2, 1867, wasformed of Alabama, Florida, and Georgia, and General Thomas (immediatelysuperseded by General Pope) was put in command.[1079]

Within a month after the surrender of Lee, Alabama was occupied by Federalarmies, and garrisons were being stationed at one or more points in allthe more populous counties. Everywhere, the state and county governmentwas broken up by the military authorities, who were forbidden to recognizeany civil authority in the state. Into each of the 52 counties soldierswere sent to administer the oath of allegiance to the United States to anyone who wished to take it. Most people were indifferent about it.[1080]

For several months there was no civil government at all, and no governmentof any kind except in the immediate vicinity of the army posts and thetowns where military officers and Freedmen’s Bureau agents regulated theconduct of the negroes, and incidentally of the whites, well or badly,according to their abilities and prejudices. Some of the officers,especially those of higher rank, endeavored to pacify the land, gave goodadvice to the negroes, and were considerate in their relations with thewhites; others incited the blacks to all sorts of deviltry and were aterror to the whites.[1081] Each official in his little district ruled assupreme as the Czar of all the Russias. He was the first and lastauthority on most of the affairs of the community.

Early in the summer each city and its surrounding territory was formedinto a military district under the command of a general[Pg 409] officer, who wassubject to the orders of General Woods at Mobile. There were the districtsof Mobile, Montgomery, Talladega, and Huntsville—each with a dozen ormore counties attached. Then there were isolated posts in each. Thedistrict was governed by the rules applying to a “separate brigade” in thearmy.[1082] The different posts, districts, and departments were formed,discontinued, reorganized, with lightning rapidity. Hardly a single daypassed without some change necessitated by the resignation or muster outof officers or troops. Commanding officers stayed a few days or a fewweeks at a post, and were relieved or discharged. Some of the officersspent much of their time pulling wires to keep from being mustered out.Others resigned as soon as their resignations would be accepted. Few ornone had any adequate knowledge of conditions in their own districts, norwas it possible for them to acquire a knowledge of affairs in the shorttime they remained at any one post.

After the establishment of the provisional government, the army wassupposed to retire into the background, leaving ordinary matters ofadministration to the civil government. This it did not do, but constantlyinterfered in all affairs of government. The army officers cannot beblamed for their meddling with the civil administration, for the Presidentdid the same and seemed to have little confidence in the governments hehad erected, though he gave good accounts of them to Congress. Thestruggle at Washington between the President and Congress overReconstruction confused the military authorities as to the proper policyto pursue. The instructions from the President and from General Grant weresometimes in conflict.

In August, 1865, the military commander published the President’s AmnestyProclamation of May 29, 1865, and sent officers to each county toadminister the oath.[1083] Instructions were given that “no improperpersons are to be permitted to take the oath.” The oath was to be signedin triplicate, one copy for the Department of State, one for militaryheadquarters, and one for the party taking the oath. Regulations wereprescribed for making special applications for[Pg 410] pardon by those exceptedunder the Amnesty Proclamation. There were 120 stations in the state whereofficials administered the oath of amnesty.[1084] The military authoritiesgave the term “improper persons” a broad construction and excluded manywho applied to take the oath. The various officers differed greatly intheir enforcement of the regulations. Special applications for pardon hadto go through military channels, and that meant delays of weeks or months;so, after civil officials were appointed in Alabama, “improper persons”took the oath before them, and then their papers were sent at once toWashington for the attention of the President. There was some scandalabout the provisional secretary of state accepting reward for pushingcertain applications for pardon. But there was no need to use influence,for the President pardoned all who applied.

Soon after Parsons was appointed provisional governor, an order statedthat the United States forces would be used to assist in the restorationof order and civil law throughout the state and would act in support ofthe civil authorities as soon as the latter were appointed and qualified.The military authorities were instructed to avoid as far as possible anyassumption or exercise of the functions of civil tribunals. No arrest orimprisonment for debt was to be made or allowed, and depredations byUnited States troops upon private property were to be repressed.[1085]

As acting agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau, the army officers had to dowith all that concerned the negroes; but sometimes, in a differentcapacity, they issued regulations concerning the colored race. It isdifficult to distinguish between their actions as Bureau agents and asarmy officers. On the whole, it seems that each officer of the armyconsidered himselfex officio an acting agent of the Bureau.

Soon after the occupation of Montgomery, an order was issued prohibitingnegroes from occupying houses in the city without the consent of theowner. They had to vacate unless they could get permission. Negroes inrightful possession had to show certificates to that effect from theowner. All unemployed negroes were advised[Pg 411] to go to work, as the UnitedStates would not support them in idleness.[1086] This order was intendedto discourage the tendency of the negro population to flock to thegarrison towns. The first troops to arrive were almost smothered by thewelcoming blacks, who were disposed to depend upon the army formaintenance. The officers were at first alarmed at the great crowds ofblacks who swarmed around them, and tried hard for a time to induce themto go back home to work. Their efforts were successful in some instances.In view of the fact that the posts and garrisons were the gathering placesof great numbers of unemployed blacks, an order, issued in August, 1865,instructed the commanders of posts and garrisons to prohibit the loiteringof negroes around the posts and to discourage the indolence of theblacks.[1087]

In Mobile some kind of civil government must have been set up under thedirection of the military authorities, for we hear of an order issued byGeneral Andrews that in all courts and judicial proceedings in theDistrict of Mobile the negro should have the same standing as thewhites.[1088] These may have been Bureau courts.

It was represented to the military commander that the negroes of Alabamahad aided the Federals in April and May, 1865, by bringing into the lines,or by destroying, stock, provisions, and property that would aid theConfederacy, and that they were now being arrested by the officers of theprovisional government for larceny and arson. So he ordered that the civilauthorities be prohibited from arresting, trying, or imprisoning any negrofor any offence committed before the surrender of Taylor (on May 4, 1865),except by permission of military headquarters or of the assistantcommissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau.[1089] When the Federal armiespassed through the state in April and May, 1865, thousands of negroes hadseized the farm stock and followed the army, for a few days at least.There was more of this seizure of property by negroes after garrisons werestationed in the towns. The order was so construed that practically nonegro could be arrested for stealing when he was setting out for[Pg 412] town andthe Bureau. A few weeks before the order was issued, Woods stated, “I donot interfere with civil affairs at all unless called upon by the governorof the state to assist the civil authorities.”[1090]

Terrible stories of cruel treatment of the negroes were brought to Woodsby the Bureau officials, and he sent detachments of soldiers toinvestigate the reports. Nothing was done except to march through thecountry and frighten the timid by a display of armed force, which wasevidently all the agents wanted. One detachment scoured the counties ofClarke, Marengo, Washington, and Choctaw, investigating the reports of theagents.[1091]

The commanding officers at some posts authorized militia officers of theprovisional government to disarm the freedmen when outbreaks werethreatened. But after Christmas General Swayne ordered that no authoritybe delegated by officers to civilians for dealing with freedmen, but thatsuch cases be referred to himself as the assistant commissioner of theFreedmen’s Bureau.[1092] There had been great fear among some classes ofpeople that the negroes would engage in plots to massacre the whites andsecure possession of the property, which they were assured by negrosoldiers and Bureau agents the governor meant them to have. AboutChristmas, 1865, the fear was greatest. For six months the blacks had beeneagerly striving to get possession of firearms. The soldiers andspeculators made it easy for them to obtain them. In Russell County $3000worth of new Spencer rifles were found hidden in negro cabins.[1093] Therewere few firearms among the whites, for all had been used in war and weretherefore seized by the United States government. Some feared that thenegroes were preparing for an uprising, but it is more probable that theymerely wanted guns as a mark of freedom. The purchase of firearms bywhites was discouraged by the army. The sale of arms and ammunition intothe interior was forbidden, but speculators managed to sell both. GeneralSmith, at Mobile, had one of them—Dieterich—arrested and confined in themilitary prison at Mobile.[1094] TheMobile Daily Register was warnedthat it[Pg 413] must not print articles about impending negroinsurrections,[1095] a very good regulation; but the violent negro sheetin Mobile was not noticed, though it was a cause of excitement among theblacks.

In the fall of 1866 it was reported to the Secretary of State, Mr. Seward,that negroes were being induced to go to Peru on promise of higher wages.Seward induced Howard, the commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau, to havethe Bureau annul or disapprove all contracts of freedmen to go beyond thelimits of the United States. General Swayne, who was now both assistantcommissioner and military commander, was directed to enforce Howard’sorder in Alabama.[1096]

From April to December, 1865, all trade and commerce had to go on underthe regulations prescribed by the army. The restrictions placed on tradecaused demoralization both in the army and among the Treasury agents, whoworked under the protection of the military.[1097] It was ordered thatcivilians guilty of stealing government cotton should be punished, aftertrial and conviction by military commission, according to the statutes ofAlabama in force before the war. Later all cases of theft of governmentproperty were tried by military commission.[1098]

When the cotton agents were tried by military commission[1099] there arosea conflict of authority between the military authorities and the FederalJudge. One agent, T. C. A. Dexter, was arrested and sued out a writ ofhabeas corpus before Busteed, the Federal judge. The writ was served onGeneral Woods and Colonel Hunter Brooke, who presided over the militarycommission. The officers declined to obey, saying that a militarycommission had been convened to try Dexter, and that no interference ofthe civil authorities would be permitted. Busteed ordered Dexter to bedischarged, and Woods to appear before him and show why he should not beprosecuted for contempt of court. Woods paid no attention to this order,and Busteed sent the United States marshal to arrest him. The[Pg 414] marshalreported that he was unable to get into the presence of Woods, because themilitary guard was instructed not to allow him to pass. Woods sent amessage to Busteed that the writ had not been restored in Alabama. Busteedmade a protest to the President and asserted that the trial could notlawfully proceed except in the civil courts. President Johnson sustainedthe course of General Woods, and thereby gave a blow to his provisionalgovernment, for Busteed at once adjourned his court—the only Federalcourt in the state. The sentiment of the people was with Busteed in spiteof his own notorious character and that of the defendant. All wanted thecivil government to take charge of affairs.[1100]

Of the cases of civilians tried by summary courts in the summer of 1865,there is no official record; of the cases tried by military commissionduring 1865 and 1866, only incomplete records are to be found. A partiallist of the cases, with charges and sentences, is here given:—

Wilson H. Gordon,[1101] civilian, murder of negro, May 14, 1865. Convicted.

Samuel Smiley,[1101] civilian, murder of negro, 1865. Acquitted.

T. J. Carver,[1102] cotton agent, stealing cotton. Fined $90,000 andone year’s imprisonment.

T. C. A. Dexter,[1103] cotton agent, stealing cotton (3321 bales) andselling appointment of cotton agent to Carver for $25,000. Fined$250,000 and imprisonment for one year.

William Ludlow,[1104] civilian, stealing United States stock. Fouryears’ imprisonment.

L. J. Britton,[1105] civilian, guerilla warfare and robbery. Fined$5000 and imprisonment for ten years. (Fine remitted by reviewing officer.)

George M. Cunningham,[1106] late Second Lieutenant 47th Ill. Vol.Inf., stealing government stores. Fined $500.

John C. Richardson,[1107] civilian, guerilla warfare and robbery.Imprisonment for ten years.

Owen McLarney,[1107] civilian, assault on soldier. Acquitted.

William B. Rowls,[1107] civilian, guerilla warfare and robbery.Imprisonment for ten years.

Samuel Beckham,[1107] civilian, receiving stolen property.Imprisonment for three years.

[Pg 415]John Johnson,[1108] civilian, robbery and pretending to be UnitedStates officer. Fined $100, “to be appropriated to the use of theFreedmen’s Bureau.”

Abraham Harper,[1108] civilian, robbery and pretending to be UnitedStates officer. Fined $100 “to be appropriated to the use of theFreedmen’s Bureau.”

Most of the civilians tried by the military commissions were campfollowers and discharged soldiers of the United States army. Those chargedwith guerilla warfare were regularly enlisted Confederate soldiers andwere accused by the tory element, who were guilty of most of the guerillawarfare.[1109] It was impossible to punish outlaws for any depredationscommitted during the war, and for several months after the surrender, ifthey claimed to be “loyalists,” which they usually did. The civilauthorities were forbidden to arrest, try, and imprison dischargedsoldiers of the United States army for acts committed while inservice.[1110] A similar order withdrew all “loyal” persons from thejurisdiction of the civil courts so far as concerned actions during orgrowing out of the war.[1111] The negroes had already been withdrawn fromthe authority of the civil courts so far as similar offences wereconcerned.[1112]

Upon the complaint of United States officials collecting taxes andrevenues of the refusal of individuals to pay, the military commandersover the state were ordered to arrest and try by military commissionpersons who refused or neglected “to pay these just dues.”[1113]

Numerous complaints of arbitrary arrests and of the unwarranted seizure ofprivate property called forth an order from General Thomas, directing thatthe persons and property of all citizens must be respected. There was tobe no interference with or arrests of[Pg 416] citizens unless upon properauthority from the district commander, and then only after well-supportedcomplaint.[1114]

The local military authorities were directed to arrest persons who hadbeen or might be charged with offences against officers, agents, citizens,and inhabitants of the United States, in cases where the civil authoritieshad failed, neglected, or been unable to bring the offending parties totrial. Persons so arrested were to be confined by the military until aproper tribunal might be ready and willing to try them.[1115] This wasanother one of many blows at the civil government permitted by thePresident, who allowed the army to judge for itself as to when it shouldinterfere.

These are the more important orders issued by the military authorityrelating to public affairs in Alabama during the existence of the twoprovisional or “Johnson” state governments. It will be seen from the scopeof the orders that the local military officials had the power of constantinterference with the civil government. A large part of the population waswithdrawn from the jurisdiction of the civil administration. The officialsof the latter had no real power, for they were subject to frequent reproofand their proceedings to frequent revision by the army officers. BothGovernor Parsons and Governor Patton wanted the army removed, confidentthat the civil government could do better than both together. Parsonsappealed to Johnson to remove the army or prohibit its interference.[1116]He complained that the military officials had caused and were stillcausing much injustice by deciding grave questions of law and equity uponex parte statements. Personal rights were subject to captious anduncertain regulations. The tenure of property was uncertain, and citizensfelt insecure when the army decided complicated cases of title to land andquestions of public morals. A military commission at Huntsville, actingunder direction of General Thomas, had assumed to decide questions oftitle to property, and in one case, a widow was alleged to have beenturned out of her home.[1117] The citizens of Montgomery were indignantbecause the military authorities had issued licenses for the sale ofliquor, and had permitted[Pg 417] prostitution by licensing houses of ill repute.Circular No. 1, District of Montgomery, September 9, 1865, required thatall public women must register at the office of the provost marshal; thateach head of a disorderly house must pay a license tax of $25 a week inaddition to $5 a week for each inmate, and that medical inspection shouldbe provided for by military authority. In case of violation of theseregulations a fine of $100 would be imposed for each offence, and ten tothirty days’ imprisonment. The bishop and all the clergy of the EpiscopalChurch were suspended and the churches closed for several months becausethe bishop refused to order a prayer for the President.[1118] Therestaurant of Joiner and Company, at Stevenson, was closed by order of thepost commander because two negro soldiers were refused the privilege ofdining at the regular table.[1119] Admiral Semmes, after being pardoned,was elected mayor of Mobile, but the President interfered and refused toallow him to serve. Many arrests and many more investigations were made atthe instigation of the tory or “union” element, and on charges made bynegroes.[1120]

The unsatisfactory character of the military rule was due in a largemeasure to the fact that the white volunteers were early mustered out,leaving only a few regulars and several regiments of negro troops togarrison the country.[1121] These negro troops were a source of disorderamong the blacks, and were under slack discipline. Outrages and robberiesby them were of frequent occurrence. There was ill feeling between thewhite and the black troops. Even when the freedmen utterly refused to goto work, they behaved well, as a rule, except where negro troops werestationed. There is no reason to believe that it was not more the fault ofthe white officers than of the black soldiers, for black soldiers wereamenable to discipline when they had respectable officers. Truman reportedto the President that the negro troops[Pg 418] should be removed, because “to agreat extent they incite the freedmen to deeds of violence and encouragethem in idleness.”[1122] The white troops, most of them regulars, behavedbetter, so far as their relations with the white citizens were concerned.The general officers were as a rule gentlemen, generous and considerate.So much so, that some rabid newspaper correspondents complained becausethe West Pointers treated the southerners with too muchconsideration.[1123] In the larger posts discipline was fairly good, butat small, detached posts in remote districts the soldiers, usually, butnot always, the black ones, were a scourge to the state. They ravaged thecountry almost as completely as during the war.[1124] The numerous reportsof General Swayne show that there was no necessity for garrisons in thestate. He wanted, he said, a small body of cavalry to catch fugitives fromjustice, not a force to overcome opposition. The presence of the largerforces of infantry created a great deal of disorder. The soldiers were notamenable to civil law, the refining restraints of home were lacking, anddiscipline was relaxed.[1125]

Of the subordinate officers some were good and some were not, and thelatter, when away from the control of their superior officers and incommand of lawless men, ravaged the back country and acted like brigands.For ten years after the war the general orders of the various militarydistricts, departments, and divisions are filled with orders publishingthe results of court-martial proceedings, which show the demoralization ofthe class of soldiers who remained in the army after the war. The best menclamored for their discharge when the war ended and went home. The moredisorderly men, for whom life in garrison in time of peace was too tame,remained, and all sorts of disorder resulted. Finally “Benzine” boards, asthey were called, had to take hold of the matter, and numbers of men[Pg 419] whohad done good service during the war were discharged because they wereunable to submit to discipline in time of peace.

The rule of the army might have been better, especially in 1865, had therenot been so many changes of local and district commanders andheadquarters. Some counties remained in the same military jurisdiction amonth or two, others a week or two, several for two or three days only.The people did not know how to proceed in order to get military justice.Orders were issued that business must proceed through military channels.This cut off the citizen from personal appeal to headquarters, unless hewas a man of much influence. Often it was difficult to ascertain just whatmilitary channels were. Headquarters and commanders often changed beforean application or a petition reached its destination.[1126]

The President merited failure with his plan of restoration because heshowed so little confidence in the governments he had established. He wasconstantly interfering on the slightest pretexts. He asked Congress toadmit the states into the Union, and said that order was restored and thestate governments in good running order, while at the same time he had notrestored the writ ofhabeas corpus, had not proclaimed the “rebellion”at an end, and was in the habit of allowing and directing the interferenceof the army in the gravest questions that confronted the civil government.In this way he discredited his own work, even in the eyes of those whowished it to succeed. His intentions were good, but his judgment wascertainly at fault.

[Pg 420]The army authorities went on in their accustomed way until Swayne wasplaced in command, June 1, 1866, when a more sensible policy wasinaugurated, and there was less friction. Swayne aspired to control thegovernor and legislature by advice and demands rather than to rule throughthe army. There were few soldiers in the state after the summer of 1866.Order was good, except for the disturbing influence of negro troops andindividual Bureau agents. There were in remote districts outbreaks oflawlessness which neither the army nor the state government couldsuppress. The infantry could not chase outlaws; the state government wastoo weak to enforce its orders or to command respect as long as the armyshould stay. At their best the army and the civil administrationneutralized the efforts and paralyzed the energies of each other. Therewere two governments side by side, the authority of each overlapping thatof the other, while the Freedmen’s Bureau, a third government, supportedby the army, was much inclined to use its powers. The result was that mostof the people went without government.

On the 28th of March, 1867, the policy of Johnson came to its logical endin failure. General Grant then issued the order which overturned the civilgovernment established by the President. In Alabama, which was to form apart of the Third Military District, all elections for state and countyofficials were disallowed until the arrival of the commander of thedistrict. All persons elected to office during the month of March (afterthe passage of the Reconstruction Acts) were ordered to report to militaryheadquarters for the action of the new military governor.[1127] Militarygovernment then entered on a new phase.

CHAPTER XI

Any account of the causes of disturbed conditions in the South during thetwo years succeeding the war must include an examination of the workingsof the Freedmen’s Bureau, the administration of which was uniformlyhostile to the President’s policy and in favor of the Radical plans.

As soon as the Federal armies reached the Black Belt, it became a seriousproblem to care for the negroes who stopped work and flocked to the camps.Some of the generals sent them back to their masters, others put them towork as laborers in the camps and on the fortifications. Officers—usuallychaplains—were temporarily detailed to look after the blacks who swarmedabout the army, and thus the so-called “Department of Negro Affairs” wasestablished extra-legally, and continued until the passage of theFreedmen’s Bureau Act in 1865. The “Department” was supported by capturedand confiscated property, and was under the direction of the WarDepartment.[1128]

For a year after north Alabama was overrun by the Federal troops, noattempt was made to segregate the blacks; but in 1863 a camp for refugeesand captured negroes was established on the estate of ex-Governor Chapman,near Huntsville in Madison county, and Chaplain Stokes of the EighteenthWisconsin Infantry was placed in charge. It was not intended that thenegroes should remain there permanently, but they were to be sent later tothe larger concentration camps at Nashville. No records were kept, but thereport of the inspector states that several hundred negroes were[Pg 422] receivedbefore August, 1864, of whom only a small proportion was sent toNashville. Those who remained were employed in cultivating theland,—planting corn, cotton, sorghum, and vegetables,—and in buildinglog barracks and other similar houses. Schools were established for thechildren. The War Department issued three-fourths rations to the negroes,and the aid societies also helped them, although this colony was nearerself-sustaining than any other.[1129]

In 1864 the Treasury Department assumed partial charge of negro refugeesand captive slaves. Regulations provided that captured and abandonedproperty should be rented and the proceeds devoted to the purchase ofsupplies for the blacks, who, when possible, were to be employed aslaborers. In each special agency there was to be a “Freedmen’s HomeColony” under a “Superintendent of Freedmen,” whose duty it was to carefor the blacks in the colony, to obtain agricultural implements andsupplies, and to keep a record of the negroes who passed through thecolony. A classification of laborers was made and a minimum schedule ofwages fixed as follows:—

No. 1 hands, males, 18 to 40 years of age, minimum wage, $25 per month;No. 2 hands, males, 14 to 18, 40 to 55 years of age, minimum wage, $20 permonth; No. 3 hands, males, 12 to 14 years of age, minimum wage, $15 permonth; corresponding classes of women, $18, $14, $10, respectively.

It was the duty of the superintendent to see that all who were physicallyable secured work at the specified rates. He acted as an employment agent,and the planters had to hire their labor through him. He exercised ageneral supervision over the affairs of all freedmen in the district.Beside paying the high wages fixed by the schedule, the planter wasobliged to take care of the young children of the family hired by him; tofurnish without charge a separate house for each family with an acre ofground for garden, medical attendance for the family, and schooling forthe children; to sell food and clothing to the negroes at actual cost; andto pay for full time unless the laborer was sick or refused to work. Halfthe wages was paid at the end of the month, and the remainder at the endof the contract. Wages due constituted a first lien on the crop, whichcould not be moved until the superintendent certified that the wages[Pg 423] hadbeen paid or arranged for. Not more than ten hours a day labor was to berequired. Cases of dispute were to be settled by civil courts (Union),where established,—otherwise the superintendent was vested with the powerto decide such cases. Provision was made for accepting the assistance ofthe aid societies, especially in the matter of schools.[1130] Under suchregulations it was hardly possible for the farmer to hire laborers, and wefind that only 205 negroes were disposed of by the colony near Huntsville.If the wages could have been paid in Confederate currency, they would havebeen reasonable; but United States currency was required, and most peoplehad none of it.

In the fall of 1864 the army again took charge of negro affairs andadministered them along the lines indicated in the Treasury regulations.Wherever the army went its officers constituted themselves into freedmen’scourts, aid societies, etc., and exercised absolute control over allrelations between the two races and among the blacks.

The law of March 3, 1865, created a Bureau in the War Department to whichwas given control of all matters relating to freedmen, refugees, andabandoned lands. All officials were required to take the iron-clad testoath.[1131] No appropriation was made for the purpose of carrying out thislaw, and for the first year the Bureau was maintained by taxes on salariesand on cotton, by fines, donations, rents of buildings and lands, and bythe sales of crops and confiscated property.[1132] On July 16, 1866, asecond Bureau Bill, amplifying the law of March 3, 1865, and extending itto July 16, 1868, was passed over the President’s veto. In 1868 the Bureauwas continued for one year, and on January 1, 1869, it was discontinued,except in educational work.[1133] There is no indication that theprovisions of the laws had much effect on the administration of theBureau. From the beginning it had entire control of all that concernedfreedmen,[Pg 424] who thus formed a special class not subject to the ordinarylaws. In Alabama there were nearly 500,000 negroes thus set apart, of whom100,000 were children and 40,000 were aged and infirm.[1134]

It was several months before the organization of the Bureau was completedin Alabama. Meanwhile army officers acted asex officio agents of theBureau, and regulated negro affairs. They were disposed to persuade thenegroes to go home and work, and not congregate around the military posts.They issued some rations to the negroes in the towns who were most inwant, but discouraged the tendency to look to the United States forsupport. Only a small proportion of the race was affected by theoperations of the Bureau during the months of April, May, and June, 1865.In north and south Alabama, above and below the Black Belt, the negroeswere more under control of the Bureau than in the Black Belt itself. Theassistant commissioner for Tennessee had jurisdiction over the negroes innorth Alabama, who had been under nominal northern control since 1862. TheBureau was established at Mobile in April and May, under the control ofthe army, and was an offshoot of the Louisiana Bureau, T. W. Conway,assistant commissioner for Louisiana, being for a short while in charge ofnegro affairs in Alabama. At the same time there was at Mobile one T. W.Osborn, who was called the assistant commissioner for Alabama. Later hewas transferred to Florida, and in July, 1865, General Wager Swaynesucceeded Conway in Alabama.[1135]

There were but few regular agents in Alabama before the arrival of GeneralSwayne. A few stray missionaries and preachers, representing the aidsocieties, came in, and were placed in charge of the camps of freedmennear the towns. Conway appointed agents at Mobile, Demopolis, Selma, andMontgomery, who were officers in the negro regiments.[1136] For severalmonths the army officers were almost the only agents, and, as has beenstated, the higher officials, and some of the subordinates pursued asensible course, giving the negroes sensible advice, and laboring toconvince them that they[Pg 425] could not expect to live without work. Othersencouraged them in idleness and violence and advised them to stop work andcongregate in the towns and around the military posts. The black troopsand their commanders were a source of disorder and cause of irritationbetween the races. The officers of these troops, and others also, wereprobably often sincere in their convictions that the southern white,especially the former slave owner, could not be trusted in anything wherenegroes were concerned, that he was the natural enemy of the black andmust be guarded against.[1137]

It was on June 20, 1865, that General Swayne was appointed assistantcommissioner for Alabama, and on July 14, T. W. Conway directed allofficials of the Bureau in the state (except those in north Alabama whowere under the control of the assistant commissioner of Tennessee) toreport to Swayne on his arrival.[1138] On July 26 the latter assumedcharge and appointed Charles A. Miller as his assistant adjutant-general,later another saviour of his country in Reconstruction days. GeneralSwayne stated that on his arrival he was kindly received by most of thepeople, and that he was “agreeably disappointed” in the temper of thepeople and their attitude toward him. Howard’s instructions made it theduty of the assistant commissioner or his agents to adjudicate alldifferences among negroes and between negroes and whites. Exclusive andfinal jurisdiction was vested in him.[1139]

The Bureau in Alabama was organized in five departments: (1) theDepartment of Abandoned and Confiscated Lands; (2) the Department ofRecords (Labor, Schools, and Supplies); (3) the Department of Finance; (4)the Medical Department; (5) the Bounty Department. Before the end ofAugust, 1865, the organization was completed, on paper, and the state hadbeen divided into five districts, each controlled by a superintendent.These districts were:

[Pg 426](1) Mobile, with seven counties; (2) Selma, with ten counties; (3)Montgomery, with nine counties; (4) Troy, with six counties: (5)Demopolis, with eight counties; later, (6) north Alabama, consisting oftwelve counties, was withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the assistantcommissioner of Tennessee, General Fiske, and became the sixth division inAlabama.

The officials of the Freedmen’s Bureau, except the state officials andsubordinate employees, numbered, in 1865, twenty-seven army officers, andtwo civilians.[1140] By November the Bureau was well organized, and asmany offices as possible were established to examine into labor contracts.Each superintendent had charge of the issue of rations in the county wherehe was stationed, and in each of the other counties of his district he hadan assistant superintendent. It was the duty of these seventy-five or moreofficers to investigate complaints against county or state officials, whohad been madeex officio Freedmen’s Bureau agents; and when a negro madea complaint, Swayne forced Parsons to appoint a new officer. Later, whencomplaint was made, Swayne would replace a civil agent by a regular Bureauagent. Thus the Bureau gradually passed out of the hands of the stateofficials. The superintendents and the assistant superintendents had thepower to arrest outlaws and evil-doers. They could also delegate thecharge of contracts to responsible persons. Depots were established fromwhich supplies were issued to the counties, each county furnishingtransportation and distributing the supplies under the observation of thesuperintendent.[1141]

General Swayne was succeeded, January 14, 1868, by BrevetBrigadier-General Julius Hayden, who in turn was succeeded, March[Pg 427] 31,1868, by Brevet Brigadier-General O. L. Shepherd, Colonel of the FifteenthInfantry, and he was relieved on August 18, 1868, by BrevetLieutenant-Colonel Edwin Beecher, who wound up the affairs of the Bureauin the state, except the educational and bounty divisions.[1142] Thesub-districts were continued during the existence of the Bureau. Theseconsisted of four to six counties each, and were sometimes under thecharge of regular army officers, sometimes under civilians.[1143] TheTribune correspondent had doubts of the benefits of the Freedmen’sBureau where army officers, especially West Pointers, were in charge. TheWest Pointers were strict with the negroes, there was no idleness; thenegro had to work; and the officers always took the side of thewhite.[1144]

Pressure from the northern Radicals was brought to bear on Swayne, as timewent on, to force him to do away more and more with army officers andcivil officials of the state, and to substitute civilians from the North,who had a different plan for helping the negro. The alien agents wereopposed to Swayne’s plan of appointing native whites as agents, and toldhim tales of outrage that had been committed, but he paid no attention tothem. The Bureau officers told much more horrible tales than any of thearmy officers.[1145]

The Nation’s correspondent seemed disappointed because the Freedmen’sBureau and the people and the negro were getting along fairly well.[1146]

There was, according to the state laws of 1861, no provision for the negroin the courts, and Swayne asked Governor Parsons to issue a proclamationopening the courts to them and giving them full civil rights. He remindedParsons that he (Parsons) was merely a military official, and that the lawadministered by him was martial law, which had its limits only in thediscretion of the commander.[Pg 428] Parsons and his advisers thought that thepeople would oppose such action and so refused to issue theproclamation.[1147]

Thereupon Swayne himself issued a proclamation, stating that exclusivecontrol of all matters relating to the negroes belonged to him. He wasunwilling, however, he said, to establish tribunals in Alabama conductedby persons foreign to her citizenship and strangers to her laws.Consequently, all judicial officers, magistrates, and sheriffs of theprovisional government were made Bureau agents for the administration ofjustice to the negroes. The laws of the state were to be applied so far asno distinction was made on account of color. Processes were to run in thename of the provisional government and according to the forms provided bystate law. The military authorities were to support the civil officials ofthe Bureau in the administration of justice. Each officer was to signifyhis acceptance of this appointment, and failure to accept or refusal toadminister the laws without regard to color would result in thesubstitution of martial law in that community.[1148]

This order was remarkable for several reasons. In the first place, it wasrather an arrogant seizure of the provisional administration andsubordination of it to the Bureau. All officials were forced to accept bythe threat of martial law in case of refusal to serve. Again, Swayne wasnot in command of the military forces of the state, though the army wasdirected to support the Bureau. This law gave to Swayne unlimiteddiscretion, so that by a short order he practically placed himself at thehead of the whole administration,—civil and military,—and throughout histerm of service in Alabama he never allowed anything to stand in hisway.[1149] Again, the act of March 3, 1865, provided that all officials ofthe Bureau must take the “iron-clad,” and it is doubtful if a single stateofficial could have taken it. Swayne did not require it.

As soon as Swayne’s proclamation was made known, the majority of thejudges and magistrates applied to Governor Parsons for instructions in thematter. Parsons, who disliked the Bureau, but who[Pg 429] was a timid and prudentman, issued a proclamation requiring compliance, and even enforcedcompliance by removing those who refused and appointing in their placesnominees of Swayne. The entire body of state and county officials finallysignified their acceptance, and the negro was then given exactly the samecivil rights as possessed by the whites.[1150] Had all the state officialsrefused to serve, there would have ensued an interesting state of affairs;an official of the Freedmen’s Bureau would have overturned the stategovernment set up by the President. It was, however, done with a goodpurpose, and for a while worked well by not working at all. Swayne was aman of common sense, a soldier, and a gentleman, and honestly desired todo what was best for all—the negro first. He did not profess much regardfor the native white, and he made it plain that his main purpose was tosecure the rights which he thought the negro ought to have. Incidentally,he pursued a wise and conciliatory policy, as he understood it, toward thewhites, for he saw that this was the best way to aid the negro. The workof the Bureau under his charge was probably the least harmful of all inthe South, and for most of the harm done he was not responsible. GeneralSwayne attributed what he termed his success with the Freedmen’s Bureau tothe fact that he used at first the native state and county officials ashis agents, and thus dispensed to some, extent with alien civilians andarmy officials, who were obnoxious to the mass of the people. Therequisite number of army officials of proper character could not have beensecured, and they would not have understood the conditions. The same wastrue of alien civilians. Even the best ones would have inclined toward theblacks in all things, and thus would have incensed the whites, or theywould have been “seduced by social amenities” to become the instruments ofthe whites, or they would have become merchantable. In any case the negrowould suffer. General Swayne said that he thoroughly understood that hewas expected by the Radicals to pursue no such policy, and that he halfexpected to be forced from the service for so doing. Influence was broughtto bear to cause him to change and with some success.

Later some few officials were removed, the most notable case[Pg 430] being thatof Major H. H. Slough and the police of Mobile.[1151] It was reported toSwayne that Slough was not enforcing the laws without regard to color. Astaff officer was sent at once to Mobile to demand instant acceptance orrejection of Swayne’s proclamation. The mayor rejected it, and Swayne theninformed Parsons that Mobile had to have either a new mayor, or martiallaw and a garrison of negro troops.[1152] Parsons yielded, and made allthe changes that Swayne demanded. Two commissions were made out,—oneappointed John Forsyth as mayor, and the other, F. C. Bromberg, a “Union”man. Swayne was to deliver the commission he wished. He went to Mobile anddecided to try Forsyth, who at that time was down the bay at a pleasureresort. Swayne went after him in a tug, and met a tug with Forsyth onboard coming up the bay. He hailed it and asked it to stop, but the tugonly went the faster. He chased it for several miles,[1153] and at lengththe pursued boat was overtaken. Swayne called for Forsyth, and all thoughtthat he was to be arrested. But to the great relief of the party theappointment as mayor was offered to him, and Forsyth soon decided toaccept the office. As Swayne said, he was a “hot Confederate,” a Democrat,and would fight, and no one would dare criticise him. He soon had theconfidence of both white and black.[1154]

The order admitting the testimony of and conferring civil rights upon thenegro was favored by most of the lawyers of the state. The “testimony” wasthe fulcrum to move other things. The tendency of the law of evidence isto receive all testimony and let the jury decide. So there was no troublefrom the lawyers, and their opinion greatly influenced the people. None ofthe respectable people of Alabama were opposed to allowing the negro totestify. They were not afraid of such testimony, for no jury would everconvict a reputable man on negro testimony alone. This was one objectionto it—its unreliability and consequent possible injustice.

Landlords were prevented from evicting negroes who had taken possession ofhouses or lands until complete provision had been made for them elsewhere.Thus the negroes would do nothing and kept others from coming in theirplaces.[1155] “Loyal” refugees and freedmen were made secure in thepossession of land which they were cultivating until the crops weregathered or until they were paid proper compensation.[1156] Littlecaptured, abandoned, or confiscated private property remained in the handsof the Bureau officials after the wholesale pardoning by the President. Assoon as pardoned, the former owner regained rights of property except inslaves, though the personal property had been sold and the proceeds usedfor various purposes.[1157] There was, however, a great deal ofConfederate property and state and county property that had been devotedto the use of the Confederacy. In every small town of the state there wassome such property—barns, storehouses, hospital buildings, foundries,iron works, cotton, supplies, steamboats, blockade-runners. An order fromthe President, dated November 11, 1865, directed the army, navy, andTreasury officials to turn over to the Freedmen’s Bureau all real estate,buildings, and other property in Alabama that had been used by theConfederacy. The sale of this property furnished sufficient revenue forone year, and, until withdrawn several years later, the educationaldepartment was sustained by the proceeds of similar sales.[1158] Thefailure of Congress to appropriate funds made it almost necessary to usestate officials as agents, as there was no money to pay other agents. TheConfederate iron works at Briarfield were sold for $45,000, threeblockade-runners in the Tombigbee River for $50,000, and some hospitalbuildings for $8000. There was besides a large amount of Confederateproperty in Selma, Montgomery, Demopolis, and Mobile. Of private property,at the close of 1865, the Bureau was still holding 2116 acres of land andthirteen pieces of town property.[1159] A year[Pg 432] later all of thisproperty, except seven pieces of town property, had been restored to theowners.[1160]

In 1866 a blockade-runner was sold for $4000 and a war vessel in theTombigbee for $27,351.93. The expenses of the Bureau in 1865, so far asaccounts were kept, amounted to $126,865.77.[1161] This sum was obtainedfrom sales of Confederate property. There was, also, a tax on contracts offrom 50 cents to $1.50, and a fee on licenses for Bureau marriages. Butthe money thus obtained seems to have been appropriated by the agents, whokept no record. Rations were issued by the army to the Bureau agents andthere was no further accountability. No accounts were kept of the proceedsfrom the sales of abandoned and confiscated property, a neglect which ledto grave abuses. All records were confused, loosely kept, andunbusinesslike. There were, also, funds from private sources at thedisposal of the authorities, besides the appropriations of 1866 and 1867,those in the former year being estimated at $851,500. There was little orno supervision over and no check on the operations of the agents. It hasbeen stated that the salaries proper of the Bureau agents in Alabamaamounted to about $50,000 annually.[1162] State officials acting as agentsreceived no salaries. It is impossible to ascertain the amount expended inAlabama, though the entire expenditure accounted for in the South wasnearly twenty million dollars; much was not accounted for.

During the two decades preceding the war many individual planters haderected chapels and churches for the use of the negroes[Pg 433] in the towns andon the plantations. Some few such buildings belonged to the negroes andwere held in trust by the whites for them, but most of them were theproperty of the planters or of church organizations that had built them.General Swayne ordered that all such property should be secured to thenegroes.[1163] These buildings were used for schools and churches by themissionary teachers and religious carpet-baggers who were instructing thenegro in the proper attitude of hostility toward all things southern.

The Bureau issued a retroactive order, requiring negroes to take outlicenses for marriages, and all former marriages had to be againsolemnized at the Bureau. Licenses cost fifty cents, which was consideredan extortion and was supposed to be for Buckley’s benefit.[1164]

The Bureau inherited the policy of the “superintendents” in regard to theregulation of negro labor, and the first regulations by the Bureau wereevidently modelled on the Treasury Regulations of July 29, 1864. Themonthly wage was lowered, but there was the same absurd classification oflabor with fixed wages. The first of these regulations, promulgated inMobile in May, 1865, was to this effect:—

Laborers were to be encouraged to make contracts with their former mastersor with any one else. The contracts were to be submitted to the“Superintendent of Freedmen” and, if fair and honest, would be approvedand registered. A register of unemployed persons was to be kept at theFreedmen’s Bureau, and any person by applying there could obtain laborersof both sexes at the following rates: first class, $10 per month; secondclass, $8 per month; third class, $6 per month; boys under 14 years ofage, $3 per month; girls under 14 years of age, $2 per month. Coloredpersons skilled in trade were also divided into three classes at thefollowing rates: men and women receiving the same, first class, $2.50 perday; second class, $2 per day; third class, $1.50 per day. Mechanics werealso to receive not less than $5 per month in addition to first-classrates. Wages were to be paid quarterly, on July 1 and October 1, and thefinal[Pg 434] payment on or before the expiration of the contract, which was tobe made for not less than three months, and not longer than to the end of1865. In addition to his wages, the contracts must secure to the laborerjust treatment, wholesome food, comfortable clothing, quarters, fuel, andmedical attendance. No contract was binding nor a person consideredemployed unless the contract was signed by both parties and registered atthe Bureau office, in which case a certificate of employment was to befurnished. Laborers were warned that it was for their own interest to workfaithfully, and that the government, while protecting them against illtreatment, would not countenance idleness and vagrancy, nor support thosecapable of earning an honest living by industry. The laborers must fulfiltheir contracts, and would not be allowed to leave their employer exceptwhen permitted by the Superintendent of Freedmen. For leaving withoutcause or permission, the laborers were to forfeit all wages and beotherwise punished. Wages would be deducted in cases of sickness, andwages and rations withheld when sickness was feigned for purposes ofidleness, the proof being furnished by the medical officer in attendance.Upon feigning sickness or refusing to work, a laborer was to be put atforced labor on the public works without pay. A reasonable time havingbeen given for voluntary contracts to be made, any negro found withoutemployment would be furnished work by the superintendent, who was tosupply the army with all that were required for labor, and gather theaged, infirm, and helpless into “home colonies,” and put them onplantations. Employers and their agents were to be held responsible fortheir conduct toward laborers, and cruelty or neglect of duty would besummarily punished.[1165] The ignorance of conditions shown by theseseemingly fair regulations is equalled in other regulations issued by theBureau agents during the summer and fall of 1865. It is no wonder that thenegroes could not find work in Mobile when they wanted it.

Instructions from Howard directed that agreements to labor must beapproved by Bureau officers. Overseers were not to be tolerated. Allagents were to be classed as officers, whether they were enlisted men orcivilians. Wages were to be secured by a lien on the crops or the land,the rate of pay being fixed at the wages paid[Pg 435] for an able-bodied negrobefore the war, and a minimum rate was to be published. All contracts wereto be written and approved by the agent of the Bureau, who was to keep acopy of the documents.[1166]

At Huntsville, in north Alabama, orders were issued that freedmen must goto work or be arrested and forced to work by the military authorities.Contracts had to be witnessed by a friend of the freedmen, and weresubject to examination by the military authorities. Breach of contract byeither party might be tried by the provost marshal or by a militarycommission, and the property of the employer was liable to seizure forwages.[1167]

At first the planters thought that they saw in the contract system a meansof holding the negro to his work, and they vigorously demandedcontracts.[1168] This suited Swayne, and he issued the followingregulations, which superseded former rules:—

1. All contracts with freedmen for labor for a month or more had to be inwriting, and approved by an agent of the Freedmen’s Bureau, who mightrequire security.

2. For plantation labor: (a) contracts could be made with the heads offamilies to embrace the labor of all members who were able to work; (b)the employer must provide good and sufficient food, quarters, and medicalattendance, and such further compensation as might be agreed upon; (c)such contracts would be a lien upon the crops, of which not more than halfcould be moved until full payment had been made, and the contract releasedby the Freedmen’s Bureau agent or by a justice of the peace in case anagent was not at hand.

3. The remedies for violation of contracts were forfeiture of wages anddamages secured by lien.

4. In case an employer should make an oath before a justice of the peace,acting as an agent of the Bureau, that one of his laborers had been absentmore than three days in a month, the justice of the[Pg 436] peace could proceedagainst the negro as a vagrant and hand him over to the civil authorities.

5. Vagrants when convicted might be put to work on the roads or streets orat other labor by the county, or municipal authorities, who must providefor their support; or they might be given into the charge of an agent ofthe Freedmen’s Bureau. This was usually done and the agent released them.Besides this, he often interfered, and took charge of the negro vagrantsconvicted in the community.

The lien upon the crop was to be enforced by attachment, which must beissued by any magistrate when any part of the crop was about to be movedwithout the consent of the laborer. The plaintiff (negro) was not obligedto give bond.[1170] These regulations had no effect in reorganizing labor,and were only a cause of confusion.

A committee of citizens of Talladega, appointed to make suggestions inregard to enforcing the regulations of the Freedmen’s Bureau concerningcontracts, reported that: (1) contracts for a month or more between whitesand blacks should be reduced to writing and witnessed; (2) civil officersshould enforce these contracts according to law and the regulations of theFreedmen’s Bureau; (3) the law of apprenticeship should be applied tofreedmen where minors were found without means of support; (4) civilofficers should take duties heretofore devolving upon the Freedmen’sBureau in matters of contract between whites and blacks. This practicallyasked for the discontinuance of the Freedmen’s Bureau as beingsuperfluous.[1171]

When enforced, the contract regulations caused trouble. The lien on thecrop for the negro’s wages prevented the farmer from moving a bale ofcotton if the negro objected. No matter whether the negro had been paid ornot, if he made complaint, the farmer’s whole crop could be locked upuntil the case was settled by a magistrate or agent; and the negro was notbackward in making claims[Pg 437] for wages unpaid or for violation of contract.The average southern farmer had to move a great part of his crop before hecould get money to satisfy labor and other debts, and when the negro sawthe first bale being moved, he often became uneasy and made trouble.[1172]The contract system resulted in much litigation, of which the negro wasvery fond; he did not feel that he was really free until he had had alawsuit with some one. It gave him no trouble and much entertainment, butwas a source of annoyance to his employer. The Bureau agents wereparticular that no negro should work except under a written contract, as afee of from fifty cents to a dollar and a half was charged for eachcontract. If a negro was found working under a verbal agreement, he andhis employer were summoned before the agent, fined, and forced into awritten contract. When the negroes refused to work, the planters couldsometimes hire the Bureau officials to use their influence. The whitescharged that it was a common practice for the agents to induce a strike,and then make the employers pay for an order to send the blacks back towork.[1173] This was the case only under alien Bureau agents, for wherethe magistrates were agents, all went smoothly with no contracts. The endof 1865 and the spring of 1866 found the whites, who at first had insistedon written contracts, weary of the system and disposed to make only verbalagreements, and the negro had usually become afraid of a written contractbecause it might be enforced. The legislature passed laws to regulatecontracts, which Governor Patton vetoed on the ground that no speciallegislation was necessary; the laws of supply and demand should be allowedto operate, he said. Swayne also said that contracts were not necessary,as hunger and cold on the part of one, and demand for labor on the part ofthe other, would protect both negro and white.[1174]

Some planters, having no faith in free negro labor, refused to[Pg 438] give thenegro employment requiring any outlay of money. And “freedmen were notuncommon who believed that work was no part of freedom.” There was adisposition, Swayne reported, to preserve as much as possible the oldpatriarchal system, and the general belief was that the negro would notwork; and he did refuse to work regularly until after Christmas.[1175]Some planters thought that the government would advance supplies tothem,[1176] and they asked Howard to bind out negroes to them. Howardvisited Mobile and irritated the whites by his views on the racequestion.[1177]

In Alabama, the state courts were made freedmen’s courts,—to test, asHoward said, the disposition of the judges; Swayne says that it was donefrom reasons of policy, and because at first there were not enough aliensto hold Bureau courts. The reports were favorable except from northAlabama, where the “unionists” were supposed to abound.[1178] In all caseswhere the blacks were concerned the assistant commissioner was authorizedto exercise jurisdiction, and the state laws relating to apprenticeshipand vagrancy were extended by his order to include freedmen. The Bureauofficials were made the guardians of negro orphans, but each city andcounty had to take care of its own paupers.[1179] Freedmen’s Bureau courtswere created, each composed of three members appointed by the assistantcommissioner, one of whom was an official of the Freedmen’s Bureau, andtwo were citizens of the county. Their jurisdiction extended to casesrelating to the compensation of freedmen to the amount of $300, and allother cases between whites and blacks, and criminal cases by or againstnegroes where the sentence might be a fine of $100 and one month’simprisonment.

In his report for 1866, Swayne states that “martial law administeredconcurrently” by provisional and military authorities was in forcethroughout the state; that the coöperation of the provisional governmentand the Freedmen’s Bureau had secured to the freedmen the same rights andprivileges enjoyed by the other non-voting inhabitants; in some cases, hesaid, on account of prejudice, the[Pg 439] laws were not executed, but this wasnot to be remedied by any number of troops, since no good result could beobtained by force.[1180] During 1865 and 1866 General Swayne repeatedlyspoke of the friendly relations between the Freedmen’s Bureau and thestate officials—Governors Parsons and Patton and Commissioner Cruikshank,who was in charge of relief of the poor.

By means of the Bureau courts the negro was completely removed from trialby the civil government or by any of its officers, except when the latterwere acting as Bureau agents, which, as time went on, was less and lessoften the case, and the negro passed entirely under the control of thealien administration, and an army officer and two or three carpet-baggersadministered what they called justice in cases where the negroes wereconcerned. The negroes frequently broke their contracts, telling theprovost marshal that they had been lashed, and this caused the employer tobe arrested and often to be convicted unjustly. The white planter was muchannoyed by the disposition on the part of the blacks to transfer theirfailings to him in their tales to the “office,” as the negro called theBureau and its agents. “The phrase flashed like lightning through theregion of the late Confederacy that at Freedmen’s Bureau agencies ‘thebottom rail was on top.’ The conditions which this expression impliedexasperated the whites in like ratio as the negroes were delighted.”[1181]In the Ku Klux testimony, the whites related their grievances against theBureau courts conducted by the aliens: the Bureau men always took anegro’s word as being worth more than a white’s; the worst class of blackswere continually haling their employers into court; the simple assertionof a negro that he had not been properly paid for his work was enough toprevent the sale of a crop or to cause the arrest of the master, who wasfrequently brought ten or fifteen miles to answer a trivial chargeinvolving perhaps fifty cents;[1182] the negroes were taken from work andsent to places of refuge—“Home Colonies”[1183]—where hundreds died of[Pg 440]disease caused by neglect, want, and unsanitary conditions; the Bureaucourts encouraged complaints by the negroes; the trials of cases were madeoccasions for lectures on slavery, rebellion, political rights of negroes,social equality, etc., and the negro was by official advice taught todistrust the whites and to look to the Bureau for protection.[1184] TheBureau perhaps did some good work in regulating matters among the negroesthemselves, but when the question was between negro and white, the justiceadministered was rather one-sided.[1185] Genuine cases of violence andmistreatment of negroes were usually not tried by the Bureau courts, butby military commission. The following humorous advertisement shows theresult of a legitimate interference of the Bureau:—

The Bureau courts, after the aliens came into control, proceeded upon thegeneral principle that the negro was as good as or better than thesouthern white, and that he had always been mistreated by the latter, whowished to still continue him in slavery or to cheat[Pg 441] him out of theproceeds of his labor, and who, on the slightest provocation, would beat,mutilate, or murder the inoffensive black. The greatest problem was toprotect the negroes from the hostile whites, the agents thought. Thealiens did not understand the relations of slave and master, and assumedthat there had always been hostility between them, and that for theprotection of the negro this hostility ought to continue. A system ofespionage was established that was intensely galling. Men who had heldhigh offices in the state, who had led armies or had represented theircountry at foreign courts,—men like Hardee, Clanton, Fitzpatrick,etc.,—were called before these tribunals at the instance of some ward ofthe nation, and before a gaping crowd of their former slaves were lecturedby army sutlers and chaplains of negro regiments.[1187]

The medical department of the Freedmen’s Bureau gave free attendance tothe refugees and freedmen. In 1865 there were in the state 4 hospitals,capable of caring for 646 patients, with a staff of 11 physicians and 26male and 22 female attendants. In the hospitals in 1866 were 18 physiciansand 16 male and 18 female attendants.[1188] In 1866 there were 6hospitals, which number was increased in 1867 to 8, with a staff of 13physicians and 50 male and 40 female attendants. In 1868-1869 there wereonly three hospitals.

In 1865 no refugees were treated, but there were 2533 negro patients, ofwhom 602, or 24 per cent, died. To August 31, 1866, 271 refugees had beentreated, of whom 8 died, and 4153 negroes, of whom 460 died. FromSeptember 1, 1866, to June 30, 1867, 220 refugees[Pg 442] were treated and 6died; 2203 negroes, and 186 died; to October 31, 1866, 3801 freedmen, ofwhom 473 died, and 305 refugees, of whom 12 died. After July, 1868, 289freedmen were treated.[1189] These statistics show the relativeinsignificance of the relief work.

Smallpox was the most fatal disease among the negroes in the towns, andseveral smallpox hospitals were established. In Selma the complaint wasraised that the assistant superintendent encouraged the negroes to stay intown, and insisted on caring for all their sick, but when an epidemic ofsmallpox broke out, he notified the city that he could not care for thesecases. The Bureau sent supplies for distribution by the county authoritiesto the destitute poor and to the smallpox patients. But the relief workfor the sick amounted to but little.[1190]

The Department of Records had charge of the issue of supplies to thedestitute refugees and blacks. Among the whites of all classes in thenorthern counties there was much want and suffering. The term “refugee”was interpreted to include all needy whites,[1191] though at first itmeant only one who had been forced to leave home on account of hisdisloyalty to the Confederacy. The best work of the Bureau was done inrelieving needy whites in the devastated districts; and for this theupholders of the institution have never claimed credit. The negro had notsuffered from want before the end of the war, but now great crowdshastened to the towns and congregated around the Bureau offices andmilitary posts. They thought that it was the duty of the government tosupport them, and that there was to be no more work.

Before June, 1865, rations were issued by the army officers. From June,1865, to September, 1866, the Freedmen’s Bureau issued 2,522,907 rationsto refugees (whites) and 1,128,740 to freedmen.[Pg 443] The following table showsthe number of people fed each month in Alabama by the Freedmen’s Bureaubefore October, 1866:—

Men, 23,421; women, 63,888; children, 151,295; aggregate, 238,704;rations issued, 3,789,788; value, $643,590.18.

During the month of September, 1865, 45,771 rations were issued to 1971refugees, and 36,295 rations to 3537 freedmen; in October, 1865, 2875refugees and 2151 freedmen drew 153,812 rations. From September 1, 1866 toSeptember 1, 1867, 214,305 rations were issued to refugees and 274,329 tofreedmen. From September 1, 1867, to September 1, 1868, refugees drew only886 rations, and freedmen 86,021. Fewer and fewer whites and more and morefreedmen were fed by the Bureau.[1192]

In 1865 and 1866, the crops were poor, and in 1866 there were at least10,000 destitute whites and 5000 destitute blacks in the state. The Bureauasked for 450,000 rations per month, but did not receive them. The agentswere now (1866) beginning to use the issue of rations to control thenegroes, and to organize them into political clubs or “Loyal Leagues.”During this time (1866-1867), however, the state gave much assistance, andcoöperated with the[Pg 444] Freedmen’s Bureau. Some of the agents of the Bureausold the supplies that should have gone to the starving.[1193]

The Bureau furnished transportation to 217 refugees and to 521 freedmenwho wished to return to their homes, and to a number of northern schoolteachers. These transactions were not attended by abuses.[1194]

After the Federal occupation, when the negroes had congregated in thetowns, the higher and more responsible officers of the army used theirinfluence to make the blacks go home and work. If left to these officers,the labor question would have been somewhat satisfactorily settled; theywould have forced the negroes to work for some one, and to keep away fromthe towns. But the subordinate officers, especially the officers of thenegro regiments, encouraged the freedmen to collect in the towns. Fewsupplies were issued to them by the army, and there was every prospectthat in a few weeks the negroes would be forced by hunger to go back towork. The establishment of the Freedmen’s Bureau, however, changedconditions. It assumed control of the negroes in all relations, and upsetall that had been done toward settling the question by gathering many ofthe freedmen into great camps or colonies near the towns. One large colonywas established in north Alabama, and many temporary ones throughout thestate,[1195] into which thousands who set out to test their new-foundfreedom were gathered. On one plantation, in Montgomery County, in July,1865, 4000 negroes were placed. There was another large colony nearMobile.[1196] A year later the Montgomery colony had 200 invalids. Perhapsmore misery was caused by the Bureau in this way than was relieved by it.The want and sickness arising from the crowded conditions in the towns wasonly in slight degree relieved by the food distributed, and the hospitalsopened. There were 40,000 old and infirm negroes in the state, andthousands died of disease. Not one-tenth did the Bureau reach. Thehelpless old negroes were supported by their former[Pg 445] masters, who now inpoverty should have been relieved of their care. Those who were fed werethe able-bodied who could come to town and stay around the office. Thecolonies in the negro districts became hospitals, orphan asylums, andtemporary stopping places for the negroes; and the issue of rations waslongest and surest at these places.[1197] Several hundred white refugeesalso remained worthless hangers-on of the Bureau.

The regular issue of rations to the negroes broke up the labor system thathad been partially established and prevented a settlement of the laborproblem. The government would now support them, the blacks thought, andthey would not have to work. Around the towns conditions became very bad.Want and disease were fast thinning their numbers. They refused to makecontracts, though the highest wages were offered by those planters andfarmers who could afford to hire them, and the agents encouraged them intheir idleness by telling them not to work, as it was the duty of theirformer masters to support them, and that wages were due them, at leastsince January 1, 1863.[1198] They told them, also, to come to the townsand live until the matter was settled.[1199] Domestic animals near thenegro camps were nearly all stolen by the blacks who were able butunwilling to work. These marauders were frequently shot at or werethrashed, which gave rise to the stories of outrage common at that time.

Doctor Nott of Mobile wrote that in or near Mobile no labor could behired; that it was impossible to get a cook or a washerwoman, whilehundreds were dying in idleness from disease and starvation, deceived bythe false hopes aroused, and false promises of support by the government,made by wicked and designing men who wished to create prejudice againstthe whites, and to prevent the negroes from working by telling them thatto go back to work was to go back to slavery. The negro women were toldthat women should not work, and they announced that they never intended togo to the field or do other work again, but “live like whiteladies.”[1200] Wherever[Pg 446] it was active the Bureau demoralized labor byarousing false hopes and by unnecessary intermeddling. It has been claimedfor the Bureau that it was a vast labor clearing-house, and that a part ofits work was the establishment of a system of free labor.[1201] In otherstates such may have been the case; in Alabama it certainly was not. Thelabor system partially established all over the Black Belt in 1865 wasderanged wherever the Bureau had influence. The system proposed by theBureau was simply that of old slave wages paid for work done under awritten contract. The excessive wages and the interference of the agentsin the making of contracts made it impossible for the system to work, andSwayne acquiesced in the nullification of the Bureau rules by black andwhite, saying that natural forces would bring about a proper state ofaffairs. Wherever the Bureau had the least influence, there industry wasleast demoralized. So far from acting as a labor agency, its influence wasdistinctly in the opposite direction wherever it undertook to regulatelabor. The free labor system, such as it was, was already in existencewhen the Bureau reached the Black Belt, and, in spite of that institution,worked itself out.[1202]

A general belief grew up among the freedmen that at Christmas, 1865, therewould be a confiscation and division of all land in the South. Thesoldiers,—black and white,—the preachers, and especially the Bureauagents and the school-teachers, were responsible for this belief. Swaynereported that an impression, well-nigh universal, prevailed that theconfiscation, of which they had heard for months, would take place atChristmas, and led them to refuse any engagement extending beyond theholidays, or to work steadily in the meantime.[1203] Christmas or NewYear’s the negro thought would[Pg 447] be the millennium. Each would have a farm,plenty to eat and drink, and nothing to do,—“forty acres of land and amule.” There is no doubt that the “forty acres and a mule” idea was partlycaused by the distribution among the negroes of the lands on the southAtlantic coast by General Sherman and others, and by the provisions of theearly Bureau acts. “Forty acres and a mule” was the expectation, and tothis day some old negroes are awaiting the fulfilment of thispromise.[1204] Many went so far, in 1865, as to choose the land that wouldbe theirs on New Year’s Day; others merely took charge at once of smallanimals, such as pigs, turkeys, chickens, cows, etc., that came withintheir reach.[1205]

On account of this belief in the coming confiscation of property and theirimplicit confidence in all who made promises, the negroes were deceivedand cheated in many ways. Sharpers sold painted sticks to the ex-slaves,declaring that if set up on land belonging to the whites, they gave titlesto the blacks who set them up. A document purporting to be a deed wasgiven with one set of painted sticks. In part it read as follows: “Knowall men by these presents, that a naught is a naught, and a figure is afigure; all for the white man, and none for the nigure. And whereas Moseslifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so also have I lifted this d—dold nigger out of four dollars and six bits. Amen. Selah!” In the campaignof 1868 this was circulated far and wide by the Democrats as a campaigndocument. There is record of the sale of painted sticks in Clarke,Marengo, Sumter, Barbour, Montgomery, Calhoun, Macon, Tallapoosa, andGreene counties, and in the Tennessee valley. The practice must have beengeneral. In Sumter County, 1865-1866,[Pg 448] the seller of sticks was anex-cotton agent. He had secured the striped pegs in Washington, he said,and his charge was a dollar a peg. He instructed the buyer how to “stepoff” the forty acres, and told them not to encroach upon one another andto take half in cleared land and half in woodland.[1206] In Clarke County,as late as 1873, the sticks were sold for three dollars each if the negropossessed so large a sum; but if he had only a dollar, the agent would leta stick go for that. Some of the negroes actually took possession of land,and went to work.[1207] In Tallapoosa County the painted pegs were sold aslate as 1870.[1208] In 1902 a man was arrested in south Alabama forcollecting money from negroes in this way. It was said that one cause ofthe survival of this practice was the course of Wendell Phillips, who, intheAntislavery Standard, advocated the distribution of land among thenegroes, eighty acres to each, or forty acres and a furnished cottage. Thespeeches of Thaddeus Stevens on confiscation were widely distributed amongthe negroes. His Confiscation Bill of March, 1867, caused expectationsamong the negroes, who soon heard of such propositions.[1209] GeneralWilson, on his raid, had taken all the stock from Montgomery and had leftwith the planters his broken-down mules and horses. The militaryauthorities of the Sixteenth Army Corps had declared that these animalsbelonged to the planters, who had already used them a year. But the Rev.C. W. Buckley, a Bureau chaplain, promised them to the negroes, who beganto take possession of them.[1210]

The subordinate agents of the Bureau frequently were broken-down men whohad made failures at everything they had undertaken;[1211] some werepreachers with strong prejudices, and others were the dregs of amustered-out army,—all opposed to any settlement of the negro questionwhich would leave them without an office. Such men sowed the seeds ofdiscord between the races and taught the negro that he must fear and hatehis former master, who desired above all things to reënslave him.[1212] Inthis way they were ably abetted by the northern teachers andmissionaries.

[Pg 449]There were some favorable reports from the Bureau in Alabama, principallyfrom districts where the native whites were agents. But in the summer of1866 Generals Steedman and Fullerton, accompanied by a correspondent, madea trip through the South inspecting the institution. They reported that inAlabama it was better conducted than elsewhere in the South; that all ofthe good of the system and not all of the bad was here most apparent. Overthe greater part of the state, they said, it interfered but little withthe negro, and consequently the affairs of both races were in bettercondition. General Patton thought that Swayne was the best man to be atthe head of the Bureau, yet he was sure that the institution wasunnecessary, its only use being to feed the needy, which could be done bythe state with less demoralization. The negro, he said, should be left tothe protection of the law, since there was no discrimination against him.As long as free rations were issued, the blacks would make no contractsand would not work. Swayne, Patton declared, was doing his best, but hecould not prevent demoralization, and the very presence of the Bureau wasan irritation to the whites, thus operating against the good of the negro.He stated that in Clarke and Marengo counties, where there were no agents,the relations between the races were more friendly than in any other blackcounties, and there the negro was better satisfied. The southern peopleknew the negro and his needs, Steedman and Fullerton reported, and heshould be left to them; the Bureau served as a spy upon the planters; itwas the general testimony that where there was no northern agent, therethe negro worked better, and there was less disorder among the blacks andless friction between the races. The fact was clearly demonstrated in westAlabama, where there was little interference on the part of the Bureau,and where the negro did well.[1213]

An account of conditions in one county where the agents were army officersand were somewhat under the influence of the native whites will be ofinterest. When the army and the Bureau came to Marengo County, the whitepeople, who were few in number, determined to win their good will. Therewere “stag” dinners and feasts, and the eternal friendship of theofficers, with few exceptions,[Pg 450] was won. The exceptions were those who hadpolitical ambitions. The population, being composed largely of negroes,was under the control of the “office,” which here did not heed the talesof “rebel outrages.” The negro received few supplies and did well, thoughafterwards, in places doubtful politically, supplies were issued forpolitical purposes. One planter in Marengo gave an order to the negroes onhis plantation to do a certain piece of work. They refused and sent theirhead man to report at the “office.” He brought back a sealed envelopecontaining a peremptory order to cease work. The negroes were ignorant ofthe contents, so the planter read the letter, called the negroes up, andordered them back to the same work. They went cheerfully, evidentlythinking it was the order of the Bureau. At any time the Bureau couldinterfere and say that certain work should or should not be done. Anotherplanter lived twelve miles from Demopolis. One day ten or twelve of thenegro laborers went to Demopolis to complain to the “office” about one ofhis orders. The planter went to Demopolis by another road, and was sittingin the Bureau office when the negroes arrived. They were confused and atfirst could say nothing. The planter was silent. Finally they told theirtale, and the officer called for a sergeant and four mounted men.“Sergeant,” he said, “take these people back to Mr. DuBose’s on therun!You understand; on therun!” They ran the negroes the whole twelvemiles, though they had already travelled the twelve miles. Upon theirarrival at home the sergeant tied them to trees with their hands abovetheir heads, and left them with their tongues hanging out. It was the mostterrible punishment the negroes had ever received, and they never againhad any complaints to pour into the ear of the “office.”[1214] The whitesoldiers usually cared little for the negroes, it is said.

From the first the Bureau was unnecessary in Alabama. The negro had feltno want before the beginning of the war, and the efforts of the generalofficers of the army, besides hunger and cold, would have soon forced himto work. He was not mistreated except in rare cases which did not becomerarer under the Bureau. Cotton was worth fifty cents to a dollar a pound,and the extraordinary demand for labor thus created guaranteed goodtreatment. Much more suffering was caused by the congregation of the blackpopulation[Pg 451] in the towns than would have been the case had there been norelief. Not a one did it really help to get work, because no man whowanted work could escape a job unless it prevented, and with its red tapeit was a hindrance to those who were industrious. Its interference inbehalf of the negro was bad, as it led him to believe that the governmentwould always back him and that it was his right to be supported. Thusindustry was paralyzed. Yet as first organized by Swayne, the Bureau wouldhave been endurable, though it would have been a disturbing element, andthe negro would have been the greater sufferer from the disorder caused byit; but, as time went on, General Swayne was gradually forced by northernopinion to change his policy, and to put into office more and morenorthern men as subordinate agents. These men, of character alreadydescribed, had to live by fleecing the negroes, by fees, and by stealingsupplies.[1215] Then, recognizing the trend of affairs and seeing theirgreat opportunity, they began to organize the negro for politicalpurposes; they themselves were to become statesmen. The Bureau was thenmanipulated as a political machine for the nomination and election ofstate and federal officers, and the public money and property were usedfor that purpose. The Howard Investigation refused to enter that field,but the testimony shows that the Bureau agents, teachers, thesavings-bank, and missionaries industriously carried on politicaloperations.[1216]

In 1869 the Bureau was intrusted with the payment of bounties to the negrosoldiers who had been discharged or mustered out. There were severalthousand of these in Alabama. Gross frauds are said to have beenperpetrated by the officials in charge of the distribution. The worstscandals were in north Alabama, where most of the negro soldierslived.[1217]

The Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company was an institution closelyconnected with the Freedmen’s Bureau, and had the sanction[Pg 452] and support ofthe government, especially of the Bureau officials. Many of the trusteesof the bank were or had been connected with the Bureau,[1218] and it wasgenerally understood by the negroes that it was a part of the Bureau. Itpossessed the confidence of the blacks to a remarkable degree and gavepromise of becoming a very valuable institution by teaching them habits ofthrift and economy.[1219]

The central office was in Washington, and several branch banks wereestablished in every southern state. The Alabama branch banks wereestablished at Huntsville, in December, 1865, and at Montgomery and Mobileearly in 1866. The cashiers at the respective branches, when the bankfailed, in 1874, were Lafayette Robinson, who seems to have been an honestman though he could not keep books, Edwin Beecher,[1220] and C. R.Woodward, both of whom seem to have had some picturesque ideas as to theirrights over the money deposited. A bank-book was issued to each negrodepositor, and in the book were printed the regulations to be observed byhim. On one cover there was a statement to the effect that the bank waswholly a benevolent institution, and that all profits were to be dividedamong the depositors or devoted to charitable enterprises for the benefitof freedmen. It was further stated that the “Martyr” President Lincoln hadapproved the purpose of the bank, and that one of his last acts was tosign the bill to establish it. On the cover of the book was the printedlegend:[1221]—

To the negro this was sufficient recommendation. There was also printed onthe cover a very attractive table, showing how much a[Pg 453] man might save bylaying aside ten cents a day and placing it in the bank at 6 per centinterest. The first year the man would save, in this way, $36.99, thetenth year would find $489.31 to his credit. And all this by saving tencents a day—something easily done when labor was in such demand. Thisunique bank-book had on the back cover some verses for the education ofthe freedmen. The author of these verses is not known, but the negroesthought that General Howard wrote them.

“’Tis little by little the bee fills her cell;
And little by little a man sinks a well;
’Tis little by little a bird builds her nest;
By littles a forest in verdure is drest;
’Tis little by little great volumes are made;
By littles a mountain or levels are made;
’Tis little by little an ocean is filled;
And little by little a city we build;
’Tis little by little an ant gets her store;
Every little we add to a little makes more;
Step by step we walk miles, and we sew stitch by stitch;
Word by word we read books, cent by cent we grow rich.”

The verses were popular, the whole book was educative, and it was notabove the comprehension of the negro. If all the teaching of the negro hadbeen as sensible as this little book, much trouble would have beenavoided. It was a proud negro who owned one of these wonderful bank-books,and he had a right to be proud. Many at once began to make use of thesavings-banks, and small sums poured in. Only the negroes in and near thethree cities—Huntsville, Montgomery, and Mobile—where the banks werelocated seem to have made deposits, for those of the other towns and ofthe country knew little of the institution. During the month of January,1866, deposits to the amount of $4809 were made in the Mobile branch. Thiswas all in small sums and was deposited at a time of the year when moneywas scarcest among laborers.[1222] In 1868 the interest paid on long-timedeposits to depositors at Huntsville was $38.02; at Mobile, $1349.40. OnMay 1, 1869, the deposits at Huntsville amounted to $17,603.29; at Mobile,$50,511.66.

[Pg 454]The following statements of the two principal banks will show how thescheme worked among the negroes:—

These branch banks exercised a good influence over the negro population,even over those who did not become depositors. The negroes became moreeconomical, spent less for whiskey, gewgaws, and finery, and when wageswere good and work was plentiful, they saved money to carry them throughthe winter and other periods of lesser prosperity. Some of those who hadno bank accounts would save in order to have one, or, at least, saveenough money to help them through hard times. Much of the money drawn fromthe banks was invested in property of some kind. Excessive interest inpolitics prevented a proper increase in the number of depositors and inthe amount of deposits.

In 1874, after the bank failed through dishonest and inefficientmanagement, the liabilities to southern negro depositors amounted[Pg 455] to$3,299,201.[1224] A total business of $55,000,000 had been done. Thefollowing table, compiled by Hoffman, will show the total business of thebank, 1866 to 1874.[1225]

In Alabama the depositors lost, for the time at least, $35,963 atHuntsville; $29,743 at Montgomery; $95,144 at Mobile. After years of delaydividends were paid; but few of the depositors profited by the latepayment.[1226] The philanthropic incorporators took care to desert thefailing enterprise in time, and Frederick Douglass, a well-known negro,was placed in charge to serve as a scapegoat. No one was punished for thecrooked proceedings of the institution. Several of the incorporators weredead; the survivors pleaded good intentions, ignorance, etc., and finallyplaced the blame on their dead associates. Their sympathy for the negrodid not go the length of assuming money responsibility for the operationsof the bank, and thus saving the negro depositors. There were several ofthe incorporators who could have assumed all the liabilities and not feltthe burden severely. Agents and lawyers got most of the later proceeds,and the good work was all undone, for the negro felt that the UnitedStates government and the Freedmen’s Bureau had cheated him. It is said tohave affected his faith in banks to this day.[1227]

As the Federal armies occupied southern territory and numbers of negroeswere thrown upon the care of the government which gathered them intocolonies on confiscated plantations, there arose a demand from the friendsof the negro at the North that his education should begin at once. Aneducated negro, it was thought, was even more obnoxious to theslaveholding southerner than a free negro; hence educated negroes shouldbe multiplied. No doubt was entertained by his northern friends but thatthe negro was the equal of the white man in capacity to profit byeducation. To educate the negro was to carry on war against the South justas much as to invade with armed troops, and various aid societies demandedthat, as the negro came under the control of the United States troops,schools be established and the colored children be taught. The Treasuryagents, who were in charge of the plantations and colonies where thenegroes were gathered, were instructed by the Secretary to establishschools in each “home” and “labor” colony for the instruction of thechildren under twelve years of age. Teachers, supplied by thesuperintendent of the colony, who was usually the chaplain of a negroregiment, or by benevolent associations, were allowed to take charge ofthe education of the blacks in any colony they decided to enter.[1228]Before the end of the war only three or four such schools were establishedin Alabama. One was on the plantation of ex-Governor Chapman, in MadisonCounty, another at Huntsville, and one at Florence.

The law of March 3, 1865, creating the Freedmen’s Bureau, gave to itsofficials general authority over all matters concerning freedmen. Nothingwas said about education or schools, but it was understood thateducational work was to be carried on and extended, and after theorganization of the Bureau in the state of Alabama its “Department ofRecords” had control of the education of the negro. For the support ofnegro education the second Freedmen’s Bureau Act, July 16, 1866,authorized the use of or the sale of all buildings and lands and otherproperty formerly belonging to the Confederate States[Pg 457] or used for thesupport of the Confederacy. It directed the authorities of the Bureau tocoöperate at all times with the aid societies, and to furnish buildingsfor schools where these societies sent teachers, and also to furnishprotection to these teachers and schools.[1229]

The southern churches had never ceased their work among the negroes duringthe war,[1230] and immediately after the emancipation of the slaves alldenominations declared that the freedmen must be educated so as to fitthem for their changed condition of life.[1231] The churches spoke for thecontrolling element of the people, who saw that some kind of training wasan absolute necessity to the continuation of the friendly relations thenexisting between the two races. The church congregations, associations,and conferences, and mass meetings of citizens pledged themselves to aidin this movement. Dr. J. L. M. Curry first appeared as a friend of negroeducation when, in the summer of 1865, he presided over a mass meeting atMarion, which made provision for schools for the negroes. On the part ofthe whites whose opinion was worth anything, there was no objection worthmentioning to negro schools in 1865 and 1866.[1232] In the latter year,before the objectionable features of the Bureau schools appeared, GeneralSwayne commented upon the fact that the various churches had not onlydeclared in favor of the education of the negro, but had aided the work ofthe Bureau schools and kept down opposition to them. He was, however,inclined to attribute this attitude somewhat to policy. He wrote withspecial approval of the assistance and encouragement given by theMethodist Episcopal Church South, through Rev. H. N. McTyeire (laterbishop), who was always in favor of schools for negroes. He reported,also, that there was a growing feeling of kindliness on the part of thepeople toward the schools. Where there was prejudice the school oftendispelled it, and the movement had the good will of Governors Parsons andPatton.[1233]

[Pg 458]Just after the military occupation of the state there was the greatestdesire on the part of the negroes, young and old, for book learning.Washington speaks of the universal desire for education.[1234] The wholerace wanted to go to school; none were too old, few too young. Old peoplewanted to learn to read the Bible before they died, and wanted theirchildren to be educated. This seeming thirst for education was not rightlyunderstood in the North; it was, in fact, more a desire to imitate thewhite master and obtain formerly forbidden privileges than any real desiredue to an understanding of the value of education; the negro had not theslightest idea of what “education” was, but the northern people gave themcredit for an appreciation not yet true even of whites. There were dayschools, night schools, and Sunday-schools, and the “Blue-back Speller”was the standard beginner’s text. Yet, as Washington says, it was yearsbefore the parents wanted their children to make any use of educationexcept to be preachers, teachers, Congressmen, and politicians. Rascalswere ahead of the missionaries, and a number of pay schools wereestablished in 1865 by unprincipled men who took advantage of this desirefor learning and fleeced the negro of his few dollars. One school,established in Montgomery by a pedagogue who came in the wake of thearmies, enrolled over two hundred pupils of all ages, at two dollars permonth in advance. The school lasted one month, and the teacher left, butnot without collecting the fees for the second month.[1235]

When General Swayne arrived, he assumed control of negro education, and a“Superintendent of Schools for Freedmen” was appointed. The Rev. C. M.Buckley, chaplain of a colored regiment and official of the Freedmen’sBureau, was the first holder of this office. In 1868, after he went toCongress, the position was held by Rev. R. D. Harper, a northern Methodistpreacher, who was superseded in 1869 by Colonel Edwin Beecher, formerly apaymaster of the Bureau and cashier of the Freedmen’s Savings Bank inMontgomery. There also appeared a person named H. M. Bush as“Superintendent of Education,” a title the Bureau officials were fond ofassuming and which often caused them to be confused with the stateofficials of like title.[1236]

[Pg 459]The sale of Confederate property at Selma, Briarfield, and other places,small tuition fees, and gifts furnished support to the teachers. GeneralSwayne was deeply interested in the education of the blacks, and thoughtthat northern teachers could do better work for the colored race thansouthern teachers. Most of the aid societies had spent their funds beforereaching Alabama, but Swayne secured some assistance from the AmericanMissionary Association. The teachers were paid partly by the Association,but mostly by the Bureau. The Pittsburg Freedmen’s Aid Commissionestablished schools in north Alabama, at Huntsville, Stevenson, Tuscumbia,and Athens, and also had a school at Selma. The Cleveland Freedmen’s UnionCommission worked in Montgomery and Talladega by means of Sunday-schools.A great many of the schools with large enrolments were Sunday-schools. TheAmerican Missionary Association, besides furnishing teachers to theBureau, had schools of its own in Selma, Talladega, and Mobile. TheAmerican Freedmen’s Union Commission (Presbyterian branch) also hadschools in the state. The Freedmen’s Aid Society of the MethodistEpiscopal Church (North) did some work in the way of education, but wasengaged chiefly in inducing the negroes to flee from the wrath to come byleaving the southern churches. At Stevenson and Athens schools wereestablished by aid from England.[1237] In 1866 the Northwestern AidSociety had a school at Mobile.[1238] At the end of 1865, the Bureau hadcharge of eleven schools at Huntsville, Athens, and Stevenson, one inMontgomery with 11 teachers and 497 pupils, and one in Mobile with 4teachers and 420 pupils.[1239] Some ill feeling was aroused by the actionof the Bureau in seizing the Medical College and Museum at Mobile andusing it as a schoolhouse. Even the Confederate authorities had notdemanded the use of it. Before the war it was said that the museum was oneof the finest in America. Many of the most costly models were now takenaway, and a negro shoemaker was installed in the chemicaldepartment.[1240]

The attitude of the southern religious bodies enabled the Bureau to extendits school system in 1866, and to secure native white teachers.[Pg 460] Schoolstaught by native whites, most of whom were of good character, wereestablished at Tuskegee, Auburn, Opelika, Salem, Greenville, Demopolis,Evergreen, Mount Meigs, Tuscaloosa, Gainesville, Marion, Arbahatchee,Prattville, Haynesville, and King’s Station,—in all twenty schools. Therewere negro teachers in the schools at Troy, Wetumpka, Home Colony (nearMontgomery), and Tuscaloosa. The native whites taught at places where notroops were stationed, and General Swayne stated that they were especiallywilling to do this work after the churches had declared their intention tofavor the education of the negro. It was of such schools that he saidtheir presence dispelled prejudice.[1241] The history of one of theseschools is typical: In Russell County a school was established by theBureau, and Buckley, the Superintendent of Schools, who had no availablenorthern teacher, allowed the white people to name a native white teacher.Several prominent men agreed that a Methodist minister of the communitywas a suitable person. The neighbors assured him that his family shouldnot suffer socially on account of his connection with the school, and thatthey wanted no northern teacher in the community. The minister acceptedthe offer, was appointed by the Bureau, and the school was held in hisdooryard, out buildings, and verandas, his family assisting him. Thenegroes were pleased, and big and little came to school. The relationsbetween the whites and blacks were pleasant, and all went well for morethan two years, until politics alienated the races, and the negroesdemanded a northern teacher or one of their own color.[1242] The schoolsat Huntsville, Mobile, Montgomery, Selma, Tuscumbia, Stevenson, andAthens, where troops were stationed, were reserved for the northernteachers who were sent by the various aid societies. The disturbinginfluence of the teachers was thus openly acknowledged. The Bureaucoöperated by furnishing buildings, paying rent, and making repairs, and,in some instances, by giving money or supplies.[1243]

The statistics of the Bureau schools are confused and incomplete. In 1866one report states that there were 8 schools with 31 teachers and 1338pupils under the control of the Bureau. General Swayne’s[Pg 461] list includesthe schools at the various places named above, and reports 43 schools in23 of the 52 counties, with 68 teachers and a maximum enrolment of 3220pupils—the average being much less.[1244] Buckley’s report for March 15,1867, gives the number of negro schools of all kinds as 68 day schools and27 night schools. The total enrolment for the winter months had been 5352;the average attendance, 4217. At this time the Bureau was supporting 38day schools, 19 night schools, and paying 49 teachers. Benevolentsocieties under supervision of the Bureau were conducting 21 day schools,7 night schools, with 36 teachers and a total enrolment of 2157 pupils.Besides these there were 10 private schools with 443 pupils. In all theschools, there were 75 white and 20 negro teachers. There were more than100,000 negro children of school age in the state who were not reached bythese schools.

The following table, compiled from the semiannual reports on Bureauschools in Alabama, will show the slight extent of the educational work ofthe Bureau. The list includes all the schools in charge of the Bureau, orwhich received aid from the Bureau.

[Pg 462]These statistics showing expenditures are not complete, but they are givenas they are in the reports, which are carelessly made from carelessly keptand defective records. There was a disposition on the part of the Bureauto claim all the schools possible in order to show large numbers. Many ofthese so-called schools were in reality only Sunday-schools,—that is,they were in session only on Sundays,—(and the missionary Sunday-schoolswere counted), and were not as good as the Sunday-schools which for yearsbefore the war had been conducted among the negroes by the differentchurches. The Bureau did not consider of importance the private plantationand mission schools supported by the native whites, nor the state schools,which largely outnumbered the Bureau schools, but only those aided in someway by itself. The schools entirely under the control of the Bureau hadsmall enrolment. Assistance was given to all the schools taught bynorthern missionaries, to some taught by native whites, and to some taughtby negroes. It was given in the form of buildings, repairs, supplies, andsmall appropriations of money for salaries. Rent was paid by the Bureaufor school buildings not owned by the schools or by the Bureau. Accountswere carelessly kept, and after General Swayne left, if not before, abusescrept in. At least one of the aid societies received money from theBureau, and its representatives established a reputation for crookednessthat was retained after the Bureau was a thing of the past. Thissociety,—The American Missionary Association,—along with other workamong the negroes, carried on a crusade against the Catholic Church whichwas endeavoring to work in the same field. Church work and educationalwork were not separated. A building in Mobile, valued at $20,000, wasgiven by the Bureau to the association as a training school for negroteachers. The society charged the Bureau rent on this building, and therewere other similar cases where the Bureau paid rent on its own buildingswhich were used by the aid societies.[1245]

[Pg 463]As already stated, for two years there was little or no opposition by thewhites to the education of the negro, and to some extent they even favoredand aided it. The story of southern opposition to the schools originatedwith the lower class of agents, missionaries, and teachers. Of course, toa person who had taken the abolitionist programme in good faith, it wasincomprehensible that the southern whites could entertain any kindly orliberal feelings toward the blacks. But Buckley reported, as late as March15, 1867, that the native whites favored the undertaking, and that nodifficulty was experienced in getting southern whites to teach negroschools. Some of these teachers were graduates of the State University,some had been county superintendents of education. Crippled Confederatesoldiers and the widows of soldiers sought for positions in theschools.[1246] There were also some northern whites of common sense andgood character engaged in teaching these Bureau schools. But too many ofthe latter considered themselves missionaries whose duty it was to showthe southern people the error of their sinful ways, and who taught thenegro the wildest of the social, political, and religious doctrines heldat that time by the more sentimental friends of the ex-slaves.

The temper and manner and the beliefs in which the northern educator wentabout the business of educating the negro are shown in the reports andaddresses in the proceedings of the National[Pg 464] Teachers’ Association from1865 to 1875. The crusade of the teachers in the South was directed by thepeople represented in this association, and its members went out asteachers. Some of the sentiments expressed were as follows: Education andReconstruction were to go hand in hand, for the war had been one of“education and patriotism against ignorance and barbarism.”[1247] “The oldslave states [were] to be a missionary ground for the nationalschoolmaster,”[1248] and knowledge and intellectual culture were to bespread over this region that lay hid in darkness.[1249] There was a demandfor a national school system to force a proper state of affairs upon theSouth, for free schools were necessary, they declared, to a republicanform of government, and the free school system should be a part ofReconstruction. The education of the whites as well as the blacks shouldbe in the future a matter of national concern, because the “old rebels”had been sadly miseducated, and they had been able to rule only becauseothers were ignorant and had been purposely kept in ignorance. Muchcommiseration was expressed for “the poor white trash” of the South. The“rebels” were still disloyal, and, as one speaker said, must be treated asa farmer does stumps, that is, they must be “worked around and left to rotout.” The old “slave lords” must be driven out by the education of thepeople, and no distinction in regard to color should be allowed in theschools. The work of education must be directed by the North, for only theNorth had correct ideas in regard to education. Nothing good was found inthe old southern life; it was bad and must give way to the correctnorthern civilization. The work of “The Christian Hero” was praised, andit was declared that it ought to inspire an epic even greater than theimmortal epic of Homer.[1250]

The missionary teachers who came South were supported by this sentiment inthe North, and they could not look with friendly eyes upon anything doneby the southern whites for the negroes. Altogether there were not many ofthese heralds of light, and it was a year before the character of theirteaching became generally known[Pg 465] to the whites or its results were plainlyseen. Their dislike for all things southern was heartily reciprocated bythe native whites, who soon acquired a dislike for the northern teacherwhich became second nature. The negro was taught by the missionaryeducators that he must distrust the whites and give up all habits andcustoms that would remind him of his former condition; he must not saymaster and mistress nor take off his hat when speaking to a white person.In teaching him not to be servile, they taught him to be insolent. Themissionary teachers regarded themselves as the advance guard of a new armyof invasion against the terrible South. In recent years a HamptonInstitute teacher has expressed the situation as follows: “When the combatwas over and the Yankee schoolma’ams followed in the train of the northernarmies, the business of educating the negroes was a continuation ofhostilities against the vanquished, and was so regarded to a considerableextent on both sides.” The North in a few years became disappointed andindifferent, especially after the negro began to turn again to thesouthern whites.[1251]

The negro schools felt the influence of the politics of the day, besidessuffering from the results of the teachings of the northern pedagogues.Buckley made a report early in 1867, stating that conditions werefavorable. On July 1, 1868, Rev. R. D. Harper, “Superintendent ofEducation,” reported that there was a reaction against negro schools; thatthe whites were now hostile to the negro schools on account of theirteachers, who, the whites claimed, upheld the doctrines of social andpolitical equality; the negroes were too much interested in politics in1867 and 1868, and spent their money in the campaigns; the teachers of thenegro schools were intimidated, ostracized from society, and could notfind board with the white people. Because of this, he said, some schoolshad been broken up. The civil authorities, he declared, winked at theintimidation of the teachers.[1252] Beecher, the Assistant Commissionerand “Superintendent of Education,” reported that the schools had beensupported on confiscated Confederate property until 1869, and that thissource of supply[Pg 466] being exhausted, the teachers were returning to theNorth. He reported that 100,000 children had never been inside aschoolhouse. The night schools were not successful because the negroeswere unable to keep awake. A year later, Beecher reported that the schoolswere recovering from unfavorable conditions, and that some of the teacherswho had proven to be immoral and incompetent had been discharged.

The last reports (1870) stated that there was less opposition by thewhites to the Bureau schools.[1253] This can be partly accounted for bythe fact that the majority of the obnoxious northern teachers had returnedto the North or had been discharged. The best ones, who had come with highhopes for the negroes, sure that the blacks needed only education to makethem the equal of the whites, were bitterly disappointed, and in themajority of cases they gave up the work and left. Not all of them were ofgood character and a number were discharged for incompetency orimmorality; others were coarse and rude. The respectable southern whitesresigned as soon as the results of the teaching of the outsiders began tobe realized, and those who remained were beyond the pale of society. Thewhite people came to believe, and too often with good reason, that thealien teachers stood for and taught social and political equality,intermarriage of the races, hatred and distrust of the southern whites,and love and respect for the northern deliverer only. Social ostracismforced the white teachers to be content with negro society. Naturally theybecame more bitter and incendiary in their utterances and teachings. Somenegroes were only too quick to learn such sentiments, and the generallyinsolent behavior of the negro educated under such conditions was one ofthe causes of reaction against negro education. The hostility againstnegro schools was especially strong among the more ignorant whites, andduring the Ku Klux movement these people burned a number of schoolhousesand drove the teachers from the country where a few years before they hadbeen welcomed by some and tolerated by all.

The results of the attempts by the Bureau and the missionary societies toeducate the negro were almost wholly bad. DuBois makes the astonishingstatement that the Bureau established the free[Pg 467] public school system inthe South.[1254] It is true that some of the schools then established havesurvived, but there would have been many more schools to-day had thesenever existed. For the whites the public school system of Alabama existedbefore the war; the example of the Bureau in no way encouraged itsextension for the blacks; reconstructive educational ideals caused areaction against general public education. In 1865 to 1866 the thinkingpeople of the state, such men as Dr. J. L. M. Curry and Bishop McTyeire,were heartily in favor of the education of the negro, and all the churcheswere also in favor of giving it a trial. As conditions were at that time,even the best plan for the education of the negro by alien agencies wouldhave failed. General Swayne hoped to use both northern and southernteachers, but it was not possible that the temper of either party wouldpermit coöperation in the work. Buckley seems to have had glimmerings ofthis fact, when he tried to get southern teachers for the schools. But thedamage was already done. The logical and intentional result of theteachings of the missionaries was to alienate the races. If the negroaccepted the doctrine of the equality of all men and the belief in theutter sinfulness of slavery and slaveholders, he at once found that thesouthern whites were his natural enemies.

Unwise efforts were made to teach the adult blacks, and they wereencouraged to believe that all knowledge was in their reach; that withouteducation they would be helpless, and with it they would be the whiteman’s equal. Some of the negroes almost worshipped education, it was to doso much for them. The schools in the cities were crowded with grownnegroes who could never learn their letters. All attempts to teach theseolder ones failed, and the failure caused grievous disappointment to many.The exercise of common sense by the teachers might have spared them this.But the average New England teacher began to work as if the negroes wereMayflower descendants. No attention was paid to the actual condition ofthe negroes and their station in life. False ideas about manual labor wereput into their heads, and the training given them had no practical bearingon the needs of life.[1255]

[Pg 468]From the table given above it will be seen that the Bureau schools reachedonly a very small proportion of the negro children. The missionary schoolsnot connected with the Bureau were few. It is likely that for five yearsthere were not more than two hundred northern teachers in the state, yetthe effect of their work was, in connection with the operations of thepolitical and religious missionaries, to make a majority perhaps of thewhite people hostile to the education of the negro. The crusading spiritof the invaders touched the most sensitive feelings of the southerners,and the insolence and rascality of the educated negroes were taken asnatural results of education. The good was obscured by the bad. Theinnocent missionary suffered for the sins of the violent and incendiary.The educated black rascal was pointed out as a fair example of negroeducation. The damage was done, not so much by what was actually taught inthe relatively few schools, as by the ideas caught by the entire negropopulation that came in contact with the missionaries. Naturally theblacks were more likely to accept the radical teachers. A most unfortunateresult was the withdrawal of the southern church organizations and of allwhite southerners from the work of training the negro. The profession hadbeen discredited. One of the hardest tasks of the negro educators ofto-day—like Washington or Councill—is to undo the work of the aliens whowrought in passion and hate a generation before they began. The evil ofthe Bureau system did not die with that institution, but when thereconstructionists undertook to mould anew the institutions of the South,the educational methods of the Bureau and its teachers were transferredinto the new state system which they helped to discredit.[1256]

There have been many apologies for the Freedmen’s Bureau, many assertionsof the necessity for such an institution to protect the blacks from thewhites. It was necessary, the friends of the institution claimed, toprevent reënslavement of the negro, to secure equality before the law, toestablish a system of free labor, to relieve want, to force a beginning ofeducation for the negro, to make it safe for northern missionaries andteachers to work among the blacks. It was, of course, not to be expectedthat the victorious North would leave the negroes entirely alone after thewar, and in theory there were only two objections to such an institutionwell conducted,—(1) it was not really needed, and (2) it was, as aninstitution, based on an idea insulting to southern white people. It meantthat they were unfit to be trusted in the slightest matter that concernedthe blacks. It was based on the theory that there was general hostilitybetween the southern white and the southern black, and that the governmentmust uphold the weaker by establishing a system of espionage over thestronger. The low characters of the officials made the worst of what wouldhave been under the best agents a bad state of affairs. In 1865 it wasnecessary for the good of the negro that social and economic laws cease tooperate for a while and allow the feelings of sentiment, duty, andgratitude of the Southern whites to work in behalf of the black and enablethe latter to make a place for himself in the new order. After thesurrender there was, on the part of the whites, a strong feeling ofgratitude to the negroes, that was practically universal, for theirfaithful conduct during the war. The people were ready, because of thisand many other reasons, to go to any reasonable lengths to reward theblacks. The Bureau made it impossible for this feeling to find expressionin acts. The negro was taken from his master’s care and in alien schoolsand churches taught that in all relations of life the southern white manwas his enemy. The whites came to believe that negro education was worsethan a failure. The southern churches lost all opportunity to work amongthe negroes. Friendly relations gave way to hostility between the races.The better elements in southern society that were working for the good ofthe black were paralyzed and the worst element remained active. Thefriendship of the native whites was of more value to the blacks[Pg 470] than anyamount of theoretical protection against inequalities in legislation andjustice. Finally, the claim that the Bureau was essential in establishinga system of free labor is ridiculous. The reports of the Bureau officialsthemselves show clearly, though not consciously, that the new labor systemwas being worked out according to the fundamental economic laws of supplyand demand, and largely in spite of the opposition of the Bureau with itsred tape-measures. The Bureau labor policy finally gave way everywherebefore the unauthorized but natural system that was evolved.[1257]

PART V
CONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION

CHAPTER XII

The Radicals in Congress triumphed over the moderate Republicans, theDemocrats, and the President, when, on March 2, 1867, they succeeded inpassing over the veto the first of the Reconstruction Acts. This actreduced the southern states to the status of military provinces andestablished the rule of martial law. After asserting in the preamble thatno legal governments or adequate protection for life and property existedin Alabama and other southern states, the act divided the South into fivemilitary districts, subject to the absolute control of the centralgovernment, that is, of Congress.[1258] Alabama, with Georgia and Florida,constituted the Third Military District. The military commander, a generalofficer, appointed by the President, was to carry on the government in hisprovince. No state interference was to be allowed, though the provisionalcivil administration might be made use of if the commander saw fit.Offenders might be tried by the local courts or by military commissions,and except in cases involving the death penalty, there was no appealbeyond the military governor. This rule of martial law was to continueuntil the people[1259] should adopt a constitution providing forenfranchisement of the negro and for the disfranchisement of such whitesas would be excluded by the proposed Fourteenth Amendment to the UnitedStates Constitution. As soon as this constitution should be ratified bythe new electorate (a majority voting in the election) and theconstitution approved by Congress, and the legislature elected under thenew constitution should ratify the proposed Fourteenth[Pg 474] Amendment, thenrepresentatives from the state were to be admitted to Congress upon takingthe “iron-clad” test oath of July 2, 1862.[1260] And until soreconstructed the present civil government of the state was provisionalonly and might be altered, controlled, or abolished, and in all electionsunder it the negro must vote and those who would be excluded by theproposed Fourteenth Amendment must be disfranchised.[1261]

The President at once (March 11, 1867) appointed General George H. Thomasto the command of the Third Military District, with headquarters atMontgomery, but the work was not to General Thomas’s liking, and at hisrequest he was relieved, and on March 15 General Pope was appointed in hisplace.[1262] Pope was in favor of extreme measures in dealing with thesouthern people and stated that he understood the design of theReconstruction Acts to be “to free the southern people from the balefulinfluence of old political leaders.”[1263]

The act of March 2 did not provide for forcing Reconstruction upon thepeople. If they wanted it, they might initiate it through the provisionalgovernments, or if they preferred, they might remain under martial law.While all people were anxious to have the state restored to the Union,most of the whites saw that to continue under martial law, even whenadministered by Pope, was preferable to Reconstruction under the proposedterms. Consequently the movement toward Reconstruction was made by a verysmall minority of the people and had no chance whatever of making anyheadway.

Therefore, in order to hasten the restoration of the states and to insurethe proper political complexion of the new régime, Congress assumedcontrol of the administration of the law of March 2, by the supplementaryact of March 23, 1865. “To facilitate restoration” the commander of thedistrict was to cause a registration of all men[Pg 475] over twenty-one notdisfranchised by the act of March 2, who could take the prescribedoath[1264] before the registering officers. The commander was then toorder an election for the choice of delegates to a convention. He was toapportion the delegates according to the registered voting population. Ifa majority voted against holding the convention, it should not be held.The boards of registration, appointed by the commanding general, were toconsist of three loyal persons. They were to have entire control of theregistration of voters, and the elections and returns which were to bemade to the military governor. They were required to take the “iron-clad”test oath, and the penalties of perjury were to be visited upon officialor voter who should take the oath falsely. After the convention shouldframe a constitution, the military commander should submit it to thepeople for ratification or rejection. The same board of registration wasto hold the election. If the Constitution should be ratified by a majorityof the votes cast in the election where a majority of the registeredvoters voted, and the other conditions of the act of March 2 having beencomplied with, the state should be admitted to representation inCongress.[1265]

On April 1, 1867, General Pope arrived in Montgomery and assumed commandof the Third Military District. General[Pg 476] Swayne was continued in commandof Alabama as a sub-district. Pope announced that the officials of theprovisional government would be allowed to serve out their terms ofoffice, provided the laws were impartially administered by them. Failureto protect the people without distinction in their rights of person andproperty would result in the interference of the military authorities.Civil officials were forbidden to use their influence againstcongressional reconstruction. No elections were to be held unless negroeswere allowed to vote and the whites disfranchised as provided for in theact of March 2. However, all vacancies then existing or which might occurbefore registration was completed would be filled by military appointment.The state militia was ordered to disband.[1266] General Swayne proclaimedthat he, having been intrusted with the “administration of the militaryreconstruction bill” in Alabama, would exact a literal compliance with therequirements of the Civil Rights Bill. All payments for services renderedthe state during the war were peremptorily forbidden.[1267] TheHeraldcorrespondent reported that Pope’s early orders were favorably received bythe conservative press of Alabama, and that there was no opposition of anykind manifested. The people did not seem to realize what was in store forthem. The army thought necessary to crush the “rebellious” state wasincreased by a few small companies only, and now consisted of fourteencompanies detached from the Fifteenth and the Thirty-third Infantry andthe Fifth Cavalry, amounting in all to 931 men, of whom eight companieswere in garrison in the arsenal at Mount Vernon and the forts atMobile.[1268] The rest were stationed at Montgomery, Selma, andHuntsville.

Writing to Grant on April 2, Pope stated that the civil officials were allactive secessionists and would oppose Reconstruction. But the people wereready for Reconstruction, which he predicted would be speedy in Alabama.Five days later he wrote that there would be no trouble in Alabama; thatGovernor Patton and nearly all the civil officials and most of theprominent men of the state were in[Pg 477] favor of the congressionalReconstruction and were canvassing the state in favor of it.[1269] He wasevidently of changeable opinions. However, he was so impressed with thegoodness of Alabama and the badness of Georgia, that, in order to be nearthe most difficult work, he asked Grant to have headquarters removed toAtlanta, which was done on April 11.[1270]

The Georgia people were evidently so bad that they caused a change in hisformer favorable opinion of the people in general, or rather of thewhites, for in a letter to Grant, July 24, 1867, we find a frankexpression of his sentiments in regard to Reconstruction. He thought thedisfranchising clauses were among the wisest provisions of theReconstruction Acts; that the leading rebels should have been forced toleave the country and stay away; that all the old official class wasopposed to Reconstruction and was sure to prevail unless keptdisfranchised; that it was better to have incompetent loyal men in officethan rebels of ability,—in fact, the greater the ability the greater thedanger; that in order to retain the fruits of reconstruction the oldleaders must be put beyond the power of returning to influence. He had bythis time evidently become somewhat disgusted with the reconstructionists,for he intimated that none of the whites were fit for self-government, andwas strongly of the opinion that, in a few years, intelligence andeducation would be transferred from the whites to the negroes. Hepredicted ten thousand majority for Reconstruction in Alabama, but thoughtthat in case Reconstruction succeeded in the elections, some measureswould have to be taken to free the country of the turbulent and disloyalleaders of the reactionary party, or there would be no peace.[1271]

Pope instructed the post commanders in Alabama to report to headquartersany failures of civil tribunals to administer the laws in accordance withthe Civil Rights Bill or the recent acts of Congress. They were, aboveall, to watch for discrimination on account of color, race, or politicalopinion. While not interfering with the[Pg 478] functions of civil officers, theywere instructed to give particular attention to the manner in which suchfunctions were discharged.[1272] Civil officials were warned that theprohibition against their using influence against Reconstruction would bestringently enforced. They were not to give verbal or written advice toindividuals, committees, or the public unless in favor of Reconstruction.Officials who violated this prohibition were to be removed from office andheld accountable as the case demanded.[1273] District and post commanderswere ordered to report to Pope all state, county, or municipal officialswho were “disloyal” to the government of the United States, or who usedtheir influence to “hinder, delay, prevent, or obstruct the due and properadministration of the acts of Congress.”[1274] Later, Grant and Popedecided that the paroles of soldiers were still in force and that anyattempt to “prevent the settlement of the southern question would be aviolation of parole.”[1275]

In May, Pope issued orders informing the officials of Alabama of theirproper status. There was no legal government in Alabama, they were told,and Congress had declared that no adequate protection for life andproperty existed. The military authorities were warned that upon themrested the final responsibility for peace and security. Consequently whennecessary they were to supersede the civil officials. In towns, the mayorand chief of police were required to be present at every public meeting,with sufficient force to render disturbance impossible. It would be noexcuse not to know of a meeting or not to apprehend trouble. Outside oftowns, the sheriff or one of his deputies was to be present at suchgatherings, and in case of trouble was to summon a posse from the crowd,but must not summon officers of the meeting or the speakers. It wasdeclared the duty of civil officials to preserve peace, and assure rightsand privileges to all persons who desired to hold public meetings. In caseof disturbance, if it could not be shown that the civil officials didtheir full duty, they would be deposed and held responsible by themilitary authorities. When the civil authorities asked for it, thecommanders of troops were to furnish detachments to be present atpolitical meetings and prevent disturbance. The commanding officers[Pg 479] wereto keep themselves informed in regard to political meetings and holdthemselves ready for immediate action.[1276]

From the beginning, Pope, supported and advised by General Swayne, pursuedextreme measures. There were soon many complaints of his arbitraryconduct. In his correspondence with General Grant he complained of theattitude of the Washington administration toward his acts, and largely tosupport Pope (and Sheridan in the Fifth District), Congress passed the actof July 19, 1867, which was the last of the Reconstruction Acts, so far asAlabama was concerned. This law declared that the civil governments werenot legal state governments and were, if continued, to be subjectabsolutely to the military commanders and to the paramount authority ofCongress. The commander of the district was declared to have full power,subject only to the disapproval of General Grant, to remove or suspendofficers of the civil government and appoint others in their places.General Grant was vested with full power of removal, suspension, andappointment. It was made the duty of the commander to remove from officeall who opposed Reconstruction.[1277] Pope had already been making use ofthe most extreme powers, and the only effect of the act was to approve hiscourse. Pope gave the laws a very broad interpretation, believing thatReconstruction should be thoroughly done in order to leave no room forfuture trouble and embarrassment. Grant, on August 3, wrote to him[1278]approving his sentiments, and went on to say: “It is certainly the duty ofthe district commander to study what the framers of the Reconstructionlaws wanted to express, as much as what they do express, and to executethe law according to that interpretation.”[1279] This was certainly aunique method of interpretation and would justify any possible assumptionof power.

There had been several instances of prosecution by state authorities[Pg 480] ofsoldiers and officials for acts which they claimed were done undermilitary authority. Pope disposed of this question by ordering the civilcourts to entertain no action against any person for acts performed inaccordance with military orders or by sanction of the military authority.Suits then pending were dismissed. The military authorities were toenforce the order strictly and report all officials who mightdisobey.[1280] A few weeks later a decree went forth that all jurorsshould be chosen from the lists of voters registered under the acts ofCongress. They must be chosen without discrimination in regard to color,and each juror must take an oath that he was a registered voter. Those whocould not take the oath were to be replaced by those who could.[1281]

So much for the general regulation and supervision of the civilauthorities by the army. There were but a few hundred troops intrustedwith the execution of these regulations, which were, of course, enforcedonly spasmodically. The more prominent officials were closely watched, butthe only effect in country districts was to destroy all government. Manyjudges, while willing to have their jurors drawn from the voting lists,refused to accept ignorant negroes on them, or to order the selection ofmixed juries, and many courts were closed by military authority. JudgeWood, of the city court of Selma, had a jury drawn of whites. A militarycommission, sitting in Selma, refused to allow cases to be tried unlessnegroes were on the jury. Pope’s order was construed as requiring negroeson each jury, and he so meant it.[1282] Later, he published an orderrequiring jurors to take the “test oath,” which would practically excludeall the whites.[1283] Prisoners confined in jail under sentence by jurorsdrawn under the old laws were liberated by the army officers or byFreedmen’s Bureau officials. Twice in the month of December, 1867, therewere jail deliveries by military authorities in Greene County.[1284]

Within the first month Pope began to remove civil officials and appointothers. Mayor Joseph H. Sloss of Tuscumbia was the[Pg 481] first to go. Popealleged that the election had not been conducted in accordance with theacts of Congress and forthwith appointed a new mayor. No complaint hadbeen made, the removal being caused by outside influence.[1285] At thiselection, negroes for the first time in Alabama had voted under theReconstruction Acts. Sloss had received two-thirds of all votes cast.Evidently the blacks had been controlled by the whites, which was contraryto the spirit of the Reconstruction.

Immediately after a riot in Mobile[1286] following an incendiary speech by“Pig Iron” Kelly of Pennsylvania, one of the visiting orators, ColonelShepherd of the Fifteenth Infantry assumed command of the city. The policewere suspended. Breach of the peace was punished by the militaryauthorities. Out-of-door congregations after nightfall were prohibited.Notice of public meetings had to be given to the acting mayor in time tohave a force on hand to preserve the peace. The publication of incendiaryarticles in the newspapers was forbidden. The provost guard was directedto seize all large firearms in the possession of improper persons and tosearch suspected persons for small arms. The special police, whenappointed, were ordered to restrict their duties to enforcing the cityordinances. All offences against military ordinances would be attended toby the military authorities. A later order prohibited the carrying oflarge firearms without special permission. Deposits of such arms wereseized.[1287]

Pope declared all offices vacant in Mobile and filled them anew,[1288] inthe face of a report by Swayne that reasonable precautions had been takento prevent disorder. The blame for this action of Pope’s fell upon Swayne,who had to carry out the orders. The officers appointed by Pope refused toaccept office, and then he seems to have offered to reappoint the oldofficials, and they declined. Thereupon he lost his temper and directedSwayne to fill the vacancies in the city government of Mobile “from thatlarge class of citizens who have[Pg 482] heretofore been denied the right ofsuffrage and participation in municipal affairs and whose patriotism willprevent them from following this disloyal example.” He was referring tothe refusal of the former members of the city government to acceptreappointment after suspension, and meant that negroes should now beappointed. Swayne offered positions to some of the most respected andinfluential negroes, who declined, saying that they preferred whiteofficials. Negro policemen were appointed.[1289] In October a case came upin Mobile which caused much irritation. The negro policemen weretroublesome and insolent, and one day a little child ran out into thestreet in front of a team driven by a negro, who paid no attention to themother’s call to him to stop his horses. Some one snatched the baby fromunder the heels of the horses, and the scared and angry mother relievedher feelings by calling the driver a “black rascal.” The negro policemencame to her house, arrested her, and with great brutality dragged her fromthe house and along the street. Another woman asked the negroes if theyhad a warrant for the arrest of the first woman. She was answered by thepolite query, “What the hell is it your business?” Mayor Horton, Pope’sappointee, fined the woman ten dollars[1290]—for violation of the CivilRights Bill, it is to be presumed, since that was considered to cover mostthings pertaining to negroes.

This Mayor Horton had a high opinion of his prerogatives as military mayorof Mobile. TheMobile Tribune had been publishing criticisms on hisadministration and also of Mr. Bromberg, one of his political brethren.Archie Johnson, a crippled, half-witted negro newsboy, was, it is said,hired to follow the mayor about, selling hisTribune papers, much to theannoyance of Mayor Horton. On one occasion Archie cried, “Here’s yerMobile Tribune, wid all about Mayor Horton and his Bromberg rats.” Thiswas too much for the military mayor, and, considering the offence as oneagainst the Civil Rights Bill, he sentenced the negro to banishment to NewOrleans. Archie soon returned and was again exiled by the mayor. Here wasan opportunity for the people to get even[Pg 483] with Horton, and suit wasbrought in the Federal court before Busteed, who was now somewhat out withhis party. Horton was fined for violation of the Civil Rights Bill.[1291]

Many officials were removed and many appointments made by Pope. Hisremovals and appointments included mayors, chiefs of police, tax assessorsand collectors, school trustees, county commissioners, justices of thepeace, sheriffs, judges, clerks of courts, bailiffs, constables, cityclerks, solicitors, superintendents of schools, aldermen, common councils,and all the officials of Jones and Colbert counties.[1292] Pope wasroundly abused by the newspapers and by the people for making so manychanges. I have been unable to find, however, the names of more thanthirty-four officials of any consequence who were removed by Pope. He made224 appointments to such offices, besides minor ones. A clean sweep of allofficials from mayor to policemen was made in Mobile and again in Selma.Most vacancies were caused by expiration of term of office or by forcedresignation.[1293]

As there was need of money to pay the expense of the convention soon toassemble, and as the taxpayers were beginning to understand for whatpurposes their money was to be used and were in many instances refusing topay, Pope issued an order to the post and detachment commanders directingthem to furnish military aid to state tax-collectors.[1294] The bitterestreconstructionists were heartily in favor of aid to the tax-collectingbranch of the “rebel” administration. They needed money to carry out theirplans. When the terms of the tax-collectors expired, they were ordered tocontinue in office until their successors were duly elected andqualified,[1295] which, of course, meant to continue the presentadministration until the reconstructed government should take charge. Popewas very careful not to allow the civil government to spend any of themoney coming in from taxes. He said that he thought it proper[Pg 484] to prohibitthe state treasurer from paying out money for the support of families ofdeceased Confederate soldiers, for wooden legs for Confederate soldiers,etc., since the convention soon to meet would probably not approveexpenditure for such purposes.[1296] Later the treasurer was ordered topay theper diem of the delegates and the expenses of the convention,though Pope expressed doubt, for once, of his authority in thematter.[1297]

General Swayne, at Montgomery, who had long been at the head of theFreedmen’s Bureau in the state and also military commander of the Districtof Alabama since June 1, 1866, found himself relegated to a somewhatsubordinate position after Pope assumed command in the Third District. Thelatter took charge of everything. If a negro policeman were to beappointed in Mobile, Pope made the appointment and issued the order. Nordid he always send his orders to Swayne to be republished. In consequence,Swayne dropped out of the records somewhat, but he had to bear much of theblame that should have fallen on Pope, though he was in full sympathy withthe views of the latter. He was, however, a man of much more ability thanPope, of sounder judgment, and had had legal training. Consequently, Poperelied much upon him for advice in the many knotty questions that came up,often coming from Atlanta to Montgomery to see Swayne, and as a rule noneof his well-known proclamations were ever issued when under the latter’sinfluence. The orders written for him or outlined by Swayne werestringent, of course, but clear, short, and to the point. Pope’s ownmasterpieces were long, rhetorical, and blustering. His favoritevaledictory at the end of an order was a threat of martial law andmilitary commissions.

General Swayne was still at the head of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and in thiscapacity he made his authority felt. In April, 1867, he ordered probatejudges to revise former actions in apprenticing minors to former ownersand to revoke all indentures made since the war if the minors were able tosupport themselves. Though the vagrancy law had never been enforced andhad been repealed by the legislature, he declared its suspension. Thechain-gang[Pg 485] system was abolished, except in connection with thepenitentiary.[1298] In the fall, in order to secure pay for negrolaborers, he ordered a lien on the crops grown on the farm where they wereemployed. This lien was to attach from date of order and to havepreference over former liens.[1299]

When Pope first assumed command, it was reported that the conservativepapers were, at the worst, not hostile to him;[1300] but within a fewweeks he had aroused their hostility and the battle was joined. Popebelieved that the papers had much to do with inciting hostility againstthe visiting orators from the North, resulting in such disturbances as theKelly riot in Mobile. Consequently, instructions were issued prohibitingthe publication of articles tending to incite to riot. This order wasaimed at the conservative press. No one except the negroes paid muchattention to the Radical press. However, after the Mobile trouble themilitary commander was somewhat nervous and wanted to prevent futuretroubles. The negroes, now much excited by the campaign, were supposed tobe much influenced by the violent articles appearing in the Radical paperof Mobile,—theNational. On May 30 an article was printed in that paperinstructing the freedmen when, where, and how to use firearms. It went onto state: “Do not, on future occasions [like the Kelly riot], waste asingle shot until you see your enemy, be sure he is your enemy, neverwaste ammunition, don’t shoot until necessary, and then be sure to shootyour enemy. Don’t fire into the air.” Fearing the effect upon the negroesof such advice, the commanding officer at Mobile suppressed the edition ofMay 30, and prohibited future publication unless the proof should first besubmitted to the commandant according to the regulations of May 19, issuedby Pope. Instead of approving the action of the Mobile officer, Popestrongly disapproved of and revoked his orders. The Mobile commander wasinformed that it was the duty of the military authorities, not torestrict, but to secure, the utmost freedom of speech. No officers orsoldiers should interfere with newspapers or speakers on any pretextwhatever. “No satisfactory execution of the late[Pg 486] acts of Congress ispracticable unless this freedom is secured and its exercise protected,”Pope said. However, “treasonable utterances” were not to be regarded asthe legitimate exercise of the freedom of discussion.[1301]

The conservative papers managed to keep within bounds, and Pope was unableto harm them. Finally he decided to strike at them through the officialpatronage. By the famous General Order No. 49,[1302] he stated that he wasconvinced that the civil officials were obeying former instructions[1303]only so far as their personal conversation was concerned, and were usingtheir official patronage to encourage newspapers which opposedreconstruction and embarrassed civil officials appointed by militaryauthority by denunciations and threats of future punishment. Such use ofpatronage was pronounced an evasion of former orders and an employment ofthe machinery of the state government to defeat the execution of theReconstruction Acts. Therefore it was ordered that official advertisingand official printing be given to those newspapers which had not opposedand did not then oppose Reconstruction or embarrass officials by threatsof violence and of prosecution as soon as the troops were withdrawn.[1304]This order affected nearly every newspaper in the state. There weresixty-two counties, and each had public printing and advertising. On anaverage, at least one paper for each county was touched in the exchequer,and as Pope reported, “a hideous outcry” arose from the press of thestate.[1305] There were only five or six Reconstruction papers in thestate, and a modification of the order in practice was absolutelynecessary. Pope was so roundly abused by the newspapers, North and South,and especially in Alabama and Georgia, that he seems to have been affectedby it. He endeavored to explain away the order by saying that it relatedonly to military officials and not to civil officials. He did not say thatin the order, though he may have meant it, and was now using theremarkable method of interpretation suggested to him by Grant in regard tothe Reconstruction Acts. Several accounts of newspapers for publicadvertisements were held up and payments disallowed.[Pg 487] The best-known ofthese papers were theSelma Times and theEutaw Whig andObserver.[1306] The order was strictly enforced until General Meadeassumed command of the Third Military District.

The newspapers state that many arrests of citizens were made by militaryauthorities, and in the spring of 1868 they generally remarked that thejails were filled with prisoners thus arrested who were still awaitingtrial. Most of these were probably arrested under the Pope régime, sinceMeade, his successor, was not so extreme. However, Pope, in spite of histhreats, had but few persons tried by military commissions. D. C. Ballardwas convicted of pretending to be a United States detective and ofstealing ninety-five bales of cotton, and was sentenced to eight years’imprisonment.[1307] One David J. Files was arrested for inciting the Kellyriot at Mobile. Pope said that he was the chief offender and had himimprisoned at Fort Morgan until he could be tried by a militarycommission. He was fined $100.[1308] William A. Castleberry was convictedby a military commission, fined $200, and imprisoned for one year forpurchasing stolen property and for assisting a deserter to escape. JesseHays, a justice of the peace in Monroe County, was sentenced to fivemonths’ imprisonment and fined $100 for prescribing a punishment for anegro that could not be prescribed for a white, that is, fifty lashes.Matthew Anderson and John Middleton, who were tried for carrying out thesentence imposed on the negro, were acquitted.[1309] These are all thecases that I have been able to find of trial of civilians by militarycommission under Pope. In one case there was a direct interference by Popewith the administration of justice. Daniel and James Cash had beenindicted in Macon County for murder and had made bond. They were laterindicted and arrested in Bullock County. Pope ordered that they bereleased and that all civil officials let them alone.[1310]

But the prime object of Pope’s administration was not merely to carry onthe government in his military province, but to see that theReconstruction was rushed through in the shortest possible time and in themost thorough manner, according to the intentions of the Congressionalleaders as he understood them. As already stated, he had very clear ideasof what should be done, and from the first was hampered by no few doubtsas to the limits of his power. The Reconstruction laws were given thebroadest interpretation. In the liberal interpretation of his powers Popewas equalled only by Sheridan in the Fifth District.

A week after his arrival in Montgomery Pope directed Swayne to divide thestate into registration districts. Army officers were to be used asregistrars only when no civilians could be obtained. General supervisorswere to look after the working of the registration, and there was to be ageneral inspector at headquarters. Violence or threats of violence againstregistration officials would be punished by military commission.[1311] May21, 1867, the state was divided into forty-two (later forty-four)registration districts, so arranged as to make the most effective use ofthe black vote.[1312] A board of registration for each district wasappointed, each board consisting of two whites and one negro. Since eachhad to take the “iron-clad” test oath, practically all native whites wereexcluded, those who were on the lists being men of doubtful character andno ability. There were numbers of northerners. For most of the districtsthe white registrars had to be imported. It is not saying much for thenegro members to say that they were much the more respectable part of theboards of registration.[1313] Again it was stated that in order to securefull registration, the compensation would be fixed at so much for eachvoter—fifteen to forty cents, the price varying according to density ofpopulation. Five to ten cents mileage was paid in order[Pg 489] to enable theregistrars to hunt up voters. They were directed to inform the negroeswhat their political rights were and how necessary it was for them toexercise those rights. Voters were to be registered in each precinct, andlater, in order to register those missed the first time, the board was tosit, after due notice, for three days at each county seat. Any kind ofinterference with registration, by threats or by contracts deprivinglaborers of pay, was to be punished by military commission. The right ofevery voter under the acts of Congress to register and to vote wasguaranteed by the military. In case of disturbance the registrars were tocall upon the civil officials or upon the nearest military authorities. Ifthe former refused or failed to protect the registration, they were to bepunished by a military commission.[1314] May 1, Colonel James F. Melinewas appointed inspector of registration for the Third MilitaryDistrict,[1315] and William H. Smith was appointed general supervisor forAlabama.[1316] Boards of registration were authorized to report cases ofcivil officials using their influence against reconstruction.[1317] When avoter wished to remove from his precinct after registration, he was to begiven a certificate which would enable him to vote anywhere in the state.If he should lose this certificate, his own affidavit before any civil ormilitary official would suffice to obtain a new certificate.[1318]

On June 1, Pope issued pamphlets containing instructions to registrarswhich were especially definite as to those former state officials whoshould be excluded from registration. The list of those who were to bedisfranchised included every one who had ever been a state, county, ortown official and later aided the Confederacy;[1319] former members of theUnited States Congress, former United States officials, civil andmilitary, members of state legislatures and of the convention of 1861; allofficials of state, counties, and towns during the war; and finallyjudicial or administrative officials not named elsewhere.[1320] Therecords fail to show that any officials were not[Pg 490]excluded fromregistration except the keepers of poorhouses, coroners, and healthofficers. Instructions issued later practically repeated the firstinstructions and added former officials of the Confederate States to thelist of disfranchised. The registrars were reminded to enforce thedisfranchising clauses of the acts both as to voters and candidates.[1321]

The stringent regulations of Pope caused much bitter comment, and theWashington administration was besought to revoke them. Complaints werecoming in from other districts, and on June 18, 1867, at a Cabinetmeeting, the questions in controversy were brought up point by point, andthe Cabinet passed its opinion on them. A strict interpretation of theReconstruction Acts was arrived at, which was much more favorable towardthe southern people. Stanton alone voted against all interpretationfavorable to the South. The interpretation of the acts thus obtained wasissued as a circular, the opinion of the Attorney-General, through the WarDepartment and sent to the district commanders on June 20.[1322] As soonas Pope received a copy of the opinion of the Attorney-General he wrote toGrant protesting against the enforcement of the opinion as an order, sofar as it related to registration. If enforced, his instructions toregistrars would have to be revoked. According to all rules of militaryobedience, it was his duty to consider the instructions sent him throughthe adjutant-general’s office as binding, though in this case theinstructions were not in the technical form of an order, but he expresseddoubt if they were to be considered as an order to him. Grant telegraphedto him to enforce his own construction of the acts until ordered to dootherwise.[1323]

In order to remove all doubt in the matter, Congress, in the act of July19, 1867, sustained Pope’s interpretation of the acts and made it law. Theconstruction placed upon the laws by the Cabinet was repudiated, andofficers acting under the Reconstruction Acts were not to considerthemselves bound by the opinion of any civil officer of the UnitedStates.[1324] This was aimed at the Attorney-General and[Pg 491] the Cabinet. Thelaw also gave the registrars full judicial powers to investigate therecords of those who applied for registration. Witnesses might be examinedtouching the qualifications of voters. The boards were empowered to revisethe lists of voters and to add to or strike from it such names as theythought ought to be added or removed. No pardon or amnesty by thePresident was to avail to remove disability.[1325]

After the passage of this law it was smooth sailing for Pope. Registrationwent on with such success that on August 31 he was induced to order anelection to be held on October 1 to 4, for the choice of delegates to aconvention, and an apportionment of delegates among the various districtswas made at the same time. In the distribution the black counties werefavored at the expense of the white counties.[1326]

The work of the registrars was thoroughly done. The negro enrolment wasenormous; the white enrolment was small. The registration of voters beforethe elections was: whites, 61,295; blacks, 104,518; total, 165,813.[1327]For the convention and for delegates 90,283 votes were cast. Of these18,553 were those of whites, and 71,730 were negro votes. Against holdinga convention, 5583 white votes were cast, and 69,947 registered votersfailed to vote—37,159 whites and 32,788 blacks.[1328] The names of thedelegates chosen were published in general orders, and the convention wasordered to meet in Montgomery on November 5.[1329] During the session ofthe convention Pope took a rest from his labors and spent some time inMontgomery. He was a great favorite with the reconstructionists and wasaccorded special honors by the convention. But he did not think as highlyof reconstructionists as when he first assumed command, and the antics ofthe “Black Crook” convention[Pg 492] made him nervous. After a month’s session hewas glad to see it disband.[1330]

One of the last important acts of Pope’s administration was to order anelection for February 4 and 5, 1868, when the constitution should besubmitted for ratification or rejection, and when by his advice candidatesfor all offices were to be voted for. Two weeks beforehand the registrarswere to revise their lists, adding or striking off such names as they sawfit. Polls were to be opened at such places as the board saw fit. Anyvoter might vote in any place to which he had removed by making affidavitbefore the board that he was registered and had not voted before.[1331]

Both Pope and Swayne had been charged with being desirous of representingthe states of the Third Military District in the United States Senate.Pope had made himself obnoxious to the President, and the white people ofAlabama and Georgia were demanding his removal. So, on December 28, 1867,an order was issued by the President, relieving Pope and placing GeneralMeade in command of the Third Military District. General Swayne was at thesame time ordered to rejoin his regiment,[1332] and a few days later hisplace was taken by General Julius Hayden.[1333] The whites were greatlyrelieved and much pleased by the removal of both Pope and Swayne. Theformer had become obnoxious on account of the extreme measures he hadtaken in carrying out the Reconstruction Acts, on account of hisirritating proclamations, his attitude toward the press, etc. GeneralSwayne had long enjoyed the confidence of the best men. His influence overthe negroes was supreme, and had been used to[Pg 493]promote friendly relationsbetween the races. But as soon as the Reconstruction was taken charge ofby Congress and party lines were drawn, all his influence, personal andofficial, was given to building up a Radical party in the state and tosecuring the negroes for that party. He was high in the councils of theUnion League and controlled the conventions of the party. The change ofrulers is said to have had a tranquillizing effect on disturbed conditionsin Alabama.[1334] But the people of Alabama would have been pleased withno human being as military governor invested with absolute power.

On January 6, 1868, General Meade arrived in Atlanta and assumed commandof the Third Military District.[1335] His first and most important dutywas to complete the military registration of voters, and hold the electionfor ratification of the constitution and for the choice of officials underit. Registration had been going on regularly since the summer of 1867, andafter the convention had adjourned there was a rush of whites to registerin order to defeat the constitution by refraining from voting on it. Asthe time for the election drew near the friends of the Reconstruction,much alarmed at the tactics of the Conservative party, brought pressure tobear upon Grant, who suggested to Meade that an extension of time be made.Consequently, the time for the election was extended from two to five daysin order to enable the remotest negro to be found and brought to thepolls. At the same time the number of voting places was limited to threein each county,[1336] in order to lessen the influence of the whites overthe blacks.

General Meade was opposed to holding the election for state officials atthe same time with that on ratification of the constitution. He thought itwould be difficult to secure the adoption of the constitution on accountof the proscriptive clauses in it, but in his opinion[Pg 494] thecandidates[1337] nominated by the convention were even more obnoxious tothe people than the constitution, and many would refrain from voting onthat account. Swayne, who seems to have still been in Montgomery, admittedthe force of the objection, but Grant objected to any change until toolate to make other arrangements.[1338]

The election took place on February 1 to 5, and passed off without anydisorder. Meade reported that the charges of fraud made by the Radicalswere groundless, and that the constitution had been defeated on itsmerits, or rather demerits. Both the constitution and the candidates wereobnoxious to a large number of the friends of Reconstruction. He reportedthat the constitution failed of ratification by 13,550 votes, and advisedthat the convention assemble again, revise the constitution of itsproscriptive features, and again submit to it the people.[1339]

Pending the decision of the Alabama question by Congress, Meade carried onthe military government as usual. He thoroughly understood that his powerwas unlimited. No more than Pope did he allow the civil government tostand in the way. There was, however, a vast difference in theadministrations of the two men. Meade was less given to issuingproclamations, but was firmer and more strict, and less arbitrary. He wasnot under the influence of the Radical politicians in the slightestdegree, and was abused by both sides, especially by the Radicaladventurers. It was a thankless task, for which he had no liking, but hisduty was done in a soldierly manner, and his administration was probablythe best that was possible.

He made it clear to the civil authorities that he was the source of allpower, and that they were responsible to him and must obey all orderscoming from him. If they refused, he promised trial by a militarycommission, fine, and imprisonment. They must under no circumstancesinterfere, under color of state authority, with the militaryadministration. He had no admiration for the “loyal” element; and when abill was before Congress providing that the officials of the civilgovernment be required to take the “iron-clad” test oath or vacate theiroffices, he made a strong protest and declared that he could not fill halfthe offices with men who could take the test oath.[1340] After theFebruary elections political influence was brought to bear to force Meadeto vacate the offices of the civil government and to appoint certainindividuals of the proper political beliefs. The persons voted for in theelections were clamorous for their places. Grant suggested that whenappointments were made, the men recently voted for be put in. Meaderesisted the pressure and made few changes, and these only afterinvestigation. Removals were made for neglect of duty, malfeasance inoffice, refusing to obey orders, and “obstructing Reconstruction.” Manyappointments were made on account of the deaths or resignations of thecivil officials.[1341] Few of[Pg 496] the officials appointed by him could takethe test oath, and he was much abused by the Radicals for saying that itwould be impossible to fill half the offices with men who could take theoath. He was constantly besought to supersede the civil authorityaltogether and rule only through the army. In this connection, he reportedthat he was greatly embarrassed by the want of judgment and of knowledgeon the part of his subordinates, and by the great desire of those whoexpected to profit from military intervention. So he issued an orderinforming the civil officials that as long as they performed their dutiesthey would not be interfered with. The army officials were informed thatthey should in no case interfere with the civil administration beforeobtaining the consent of Meade; that the military was to act insubordination to and in aid of the civil authority;[1342] and that nosoldiers or other persons were to be tried in court for acts done bymilitary authority or for having charge of abandoned land or otherproperty.[1343]

There was much disorder by thieves and roughs on the river boats duringthe spring of 1868. To facilitate trials of these lawbreakers, Meadedirected that they be arrested and tried in any county in the state wherefound, before any tribunal having jurisdiction of such offences.[1344]

The courts were not interfered with as under Pope’s rule. The judgescontinued to have white jurors chosen, and the army officers, as a rule,approved. In one case, however, in Calhoun County, there was trouble. OneLieutenant Charles T. Johnson, Fifteenth Infantry, attended the courtpresided over by Judge B. T. Pope. He found that no negroes were on thejury, and demanded that the judge order a mixed jury to be chosen. Thejudge declined to comply, and Johnson at once arrested him. Johnson foundthat the clerk of the court did not agree with him, and he arrested theclerk also. Pope was placed in jail until released by Meade.[1345] Theconduct of Johnson was condemned in the strongest terms by Meade, whoordered him to be court-martialed. A general order was published[Pg 497] recitingthe facts of the case and expressing the severest censure of the conductof Johnson. Meade informed the public generally that even had Judge Popeviolated previous orders, Johnson had nothing to do in the case except toreport to headquarters. Moreover, Johnson was wrong in holding that alljuries had to be composed partly of blacks. This order stoppedinterference with the courts in Alabama.[1346]

Meade did not approve of Pope’s policy toward newspapers, and on February2, 1868, he issued an order modifying General Order No. 49 on the groundthat it had in its operations proved embarrassing. In the future, publicprinting was to be denied to such papers only as might attempt tointimidate civil officials by threats of violence or prosecution, as soonas the troops were withdrawn, for acts performed in their officialcapacity. However, if there was but one paper in the county, then it wasto have the county printing regardless of its editorial opinions.“Opposition to reconstruction, when conducted in a legitimate manner, is,”the order stated, “not to be considered an offence.” Violent andincendiary articles, however, were to be considered illegal,[1347] andnewspapers were warned to keep within the bounds of legitimate discussion.The Ku Klux movement, especially after it was seen that Congress was goingto admit the state, notwithstanding the defeat of the constitution, gaveMeade some trouble. Its notices were published in various papers, andMeade issued an order prohibiting this custom. The army officers wereordered to arrest and try offenders. Only one editor came to grief. RylandRandolph, the editor of theIndependent Monitor, of Tuscaloosa, wasarrested by General Shepherd and his paper suppressed for a shorttime.[1348]

General Meade was no negrophile, and hence under him there[Pg 498] were no morelong oration orders on the rights of “that large class of citizensheretofore excluded from the suffrage.” He set himself resolutely againstall attempts to stir up strife between the races, and quietly reported atthe time, and again a year later, that the stories of violence andintimidation, which Congress accepted without question, were withoutfoundation. He ordered that in the state institutions for the deaf, dumb,blind, and insane, the blacks should have the same privileges as thewhites. The law of the state allowed to the sheriffs for subsistence ofprisoners, fifty cents a day for white and forty cents a day for negroprisoners. Meade ordered that the fees be the same for both races, andthat the same fare and accommodations be given to both. Swayne hadabolished the chain-gang system the year before, because it chieflyaffected negro offenders. Meade gave the civil authorities permission torestore it.[1349]

The convention had passed ordinances which amounted to stay laws for therelief of debtors. In order to secure support for the constitution, it wasprovided that these ordinances were to go into effect with theconstitution. Complaint was made that creditors were oppressing theirdebtors in order to secure payment before the stay laws should go intoeffect. Though opposed in principle to such laws, Meade considered thatunder the circumstances some relief was needed. The price of cotton waslow, and the forced sales were ruinous to the debtors and of littlebenefit to the creditors. Therefore, in January, he declared theordinances in force to continue, unless the constitution should beadopted. A later order, in May, declared that the ordinances would beconsidered in force until revoked by himself.[1350]

When the ghostly night riders of the Ku Klux Klan began to frighten thecarpet-baggers and the negroes, Meade directed all officials, civil andmilitary, to organize patrols to break up the secret organizations. Civilofficials neglecting to do so were held to be guilty of disobedience oforders. Where army officers raisedposses[Pg 499] to aid in maintaining thepeace, the expenses were charged to the counties or towns where thedisturbances occurred.[1351]

Nearly all prisoners arrested by the military authorities were turned overto the civil courts for trial. Military commissions were frequently insession to try cases when it was believed the civil authorities would beinfluenced by local considerations. The following list of such trials iscomplete: H. K. Quillan of Lee County and Langdon Ellis, justice of thepeace of Chambers County, were tried for “obstructing reconstruction” andwere acquitted; Richard Hall of Hale County, tried for assault, wasacquitted;[1352] Joseph B. F. Hill, William Pettigrew, T. W. Roberts, andJames Steele of Greene County were sentenced to hard labor for five years,for “whipping a hog thief, and threatening to ride him on a rail”;[1353]Samuel W. Dunlap, William Pierce, Charles Coleman, and John Kelley,implicated in the same case, were fined $500 each, and sentenced to oneyear’s imprisonment; Frank H. Munday, Hugh L. White, John Cullen, andSamuel Strayhorn, charged with the same offence, were each fined $500, andsentenced to hard labor for two years;[1354] Ryland Randolph, editor oftheMonitor, was tried for “obstructing reconstruction” in his paper andfor nearly killing a negro, and was acquitted. During the trial Busteedgranted a writ ofhabeas corpus, and Meade and Grant both were preparedto submit to the decision of the court, but Randolph wanted the militarytrial to go on.[1355]

Meade was much irritated by the careless conduct of officers in reportingcases for trial by military courts which were unable to stand the test ofexamination. After frequent failures to substantiate[Pg 500] charges in casessent up for trial, orders were issued that subordinate officials mustexercise the greatest caution and care in preferring charges, and in allcases must state the reasons why the civil authorities could not act.Sworn statements of witnesses must accompany the charges, and the accusedmust be given an opportunity to forward evidence in his favor.[1356]

The troops in the state during 1867 and 1868, though sadly demoralized asto discipline, gave the people little trouble except in the vicinity ofthe military posts. The records of the courts-martial show that thenegroes were the greatest sufferers from the outrages of the commonsoldiers. The whites were irritated chiefly by the arrogant conduct of afew of the post commanders and their subordinates. At Mount Vernon,Frederick B. Shepard, an old man, was arrested and carried before CaptainMorris Schoff, who shot the unarmed prisoner as soon as he appeared. Forthis murder Schoff was court-martialed and imprisoned for ten years.[1357]Johnson, the officer who arrested Judge Pope, was cordially hated inmiddle Alabama. He arrested a negro who refused to vote for theconstitution; in a quarrel he took the crutch of a cripple and struck himover the head with it; hung two large United States flags over thesidewalk of the main street in Tuscaloosa, and when the schoolgirlsavoided walking under them, it being well understood that Johnson hadplaced them there to annoy the women, he stationed soldiers with bayonetsto force the girls to pass under the flags. For his various misdeeds hewas court-martialed by Meade.[1358]

Most of the soldiers had no love for the negroes, carpet-baggers, andscalawags, and at a Radical meeting in Montgomery, the soldiers on duty atthe capitol gave three groans for Grant, and[Pg 501] three cheers for McClellanand Johnson. For this conduct they were strongly censured by Major Hartzand General Shepherd, their commanders.[1359]

The soldiers sent to Hale County knocked a carpet-bag Bureau agent on thehead, ducked a white teacher of a negro school in the creek, and cuffedthe negroes about generally.[1360]

The act providing for the admission of Alabama in spite of the defeat ofthe constitution was passed June 25, 1868.[1361] Three days later Grantordered Meade to appoint as provisional governor and lieutenant-governorthose voted for[1362] in the February elections, and to remove the presentincumbents.[1363] So Smith and Applegate were appointed as governor andlieutenant-governor, their appointments to take effect on July 13, 1868,on which date the legislature said to have been elected in February wasordered to meet.[1364]

Until the state should comply with the requirements of the ReconstructionActs all government and all officials were to be considered as provisionalonly. The governor was ordered to organize both houses of the legislature,and before proceeding to business beyond organization each house wasrequired to purge itself of any members who were disqualified by theFourteenth Amendment.[1365]

A few days later, Congress having admitted the state to representation,Meade ordered all civil officials holding under the provisional civilgovernment to yield to their duly elected successors. The militarycommander in Alabama was directed to transfer all property and paperspertaining to the government of the state to the proper civil authoritiesand for the future to abstain from any interference or control over civilaffairs. Prisoners held for offences against the civil law were ordered tobe delivered to state officials.[1366] This was, in theory, the end ofmilitary government in Alabama, though, in fact, the army retired into thebackground, to remain[Pg 502] for six years longer the support and mainstay ofthe so-called civil government.[1367]

The rule of the army had been intensely galling to the people, but it wasinfinitely preferable to the régime which followed, and there was generalregret when the army gave way to the carpet-bag government. In January,1868, a day of fasting and prayer was observed for the deliverance of thestate from the rule of the negro and the alien.

CHAPTER XIII

In the preceding chapter the part of the army in executing theReconstruction Acts has been set forth. In the three succeeding chapters Ishall sketch the political conditions in the state during the same period.The people of Alabama had, for several months before March, 1867, foreseenthe failure of the President’s attempt at Reconstruction. The “MilitaryReconstruction Bill” was no worse than was expected; if liberallyconstrued, it was even better than was expected. And there was apossibility that Reconstruction under these acts might be delayed andfinally defeated. Though President Johnson was said to be hopeful ofbetter times, the people of Alabama were decided that no good would comefrom longer resistance. A northern observer stated that they were sofearfully impoverished, so completely demoralized, by the break-up ofsociety after the war, that they hardly comprehended what was left tothem, what was required of them, or what would become of them. Still, theyhad a clear conviction that Johnson could do no more for them. Every one,except the negroes, was too much absorbed in the struggle for existence topay much attention to politics. The whites seemed generally willing to dowhat was required of them, or rather to let affairs take their own courseand trust that all would go well. They had given up hope of an earlyrestoration of the Union, but the Radicals, they thought, could not ruleforever.[1368]

On March 19, 1867, Governor Patton published an address advisingacquiescence in the plan of Congress. He had all along been opposed toRadical Reconstruction, but he now saw that it could not be avoided andwished to make the best of it. He said that a few thousand good men wouldbe disfranchised, but that there were other[Pg 504] good men and from these awise and patriotic convention could be chosen. He advised that negrosuffrage be accepted as a settled fact, with no ill feeling against thefreedmen; that antagonism between the races should be discouraged, andthat no effort be made to control the votes of the blacks.[1369] Moreconsideration, Patton thought, should have been given to Congress as thecontrolling power; antagonism to Congress had caused infinite mischief. Itwas folly, he added, to expect more favorable terms, and furtheropposition might cause harsher conditions to be imposed.[1370]

Other prominent men advised the people to accept the plan of Congress andto participate in the Reconstruction. Nearly all the leading papers of thestate, in order to make the best of a bad situation, now supportedcongressional Reconstruction. Consequently, when General Pope arrived inApril, the people were ready to accept the situation in good faith, anddesired that he should make a speedy registration of the voters and endthe agitation.[1371] Even at this late date the southern people seem notto have foreseen the inevitable results of this revolution ingovernment.[1372]

While a large number of the influential men of the state were ready toaccept the situation, “not because we approve the policy of thereconstruction laws, but because it is the best we can do,” and while alarger number were more or less indifferent, there were many who wereopposed to Reconstruction on any such terms, preferring a continuance ofthe military government until passions were calmer and a more liberalpolicy proposed. There was, however, no organized opposition toReconstruction for two months or more, and even then it was renderedpossible only by the arbitrary conduct of General Pope and the violentagitation carried on among the negroes by the Radical faction. For severalmonths, in the white counties of north Alabama the so-called “loyal”people, reënforced by numbers of the old “Peace Society” men, had beenholding meetings looking toward organization in order to secure the fruitsof Reconstruction. These meetings were continued, and by them it wasdeclared that the people of Alabama were in favor of Reconstruction by theSherman Bill, to which only the original secession leaders were opposed,and the Sherman plan, negro suffrage and all, was indorsed as a properpunishment for the planters.[1373] After the beginning of congressionalReconstruction, however, the centre of gravity in the Radical partyshifted to the Black Belt, and no one any longer paid serious attention[Pg 506]to the few thousand “loyal” whites in north Alabama. The first negromeetings held were in the larger towns, Selma leading with a largeconvention of colored “Unionists,” who, under the guidance of a few whiteofficers of the Freedmen’s Bureau, declared in favor of militaryReconstruction.[1374] The Montgomery reconstructionists held a meeting inthe capitol “in which whites and blacks fraternized.” The meeting wasaddressed by several “rebel” officers: A. C. Felder, —— Doster, and H.C. Semple, and by General Swayne and John C. Keffer from the north.General Swayne and Governor Patton served as vice-presidents. The blackswere eulogized and declared capable of political equality; and it wasurged that only those men in favor of military Reconstruction should besupported for office.[1375] In Mobile, a meeting held on April 17 resolvedthat “everlasting thanks” were due to Congress for its wisdom in passingthe Reconstruction Acts. Both whites and negroes spoke in favor of therights of the negro to hold office, sit on juries, and ride in the samecars and eat at the same tables with whites. The prejudices of the whites,they declared, must give way. At a meeting of negroes only the next dayone of the speakers made a distinction between political and socialrights. He said that the latter would come in time but that the formermust be had at once; they were defined as the right to ride in street carswith the whites, in first-class cars on the railroad, to have the beststaterooms on the boats, to sit at public tables with whites, and to go tothe hotel tables “when the first bell rang.” What social rights were hedid not explain. Negroes attended these meetings armed with clubs,pistols, muskets, and shotguns, most of which, of course, would not shoot;but several hundred shots were fired, much to the alarm of the near-bydwellers.[1376]

To counteract the effect of these meetings, the “moderate”reconstructionists held a meeting in Mobile, April 19, presided over byGeneral Withers, the mayor of the city. Several influential citizens andalso a number of colored men were vice-presidents. Judge Busteed, a“moderate” Radical, spoke, urging all to take part in the Reconstructionand not leave it to the ignorant and vicious. Resolutions were passed tothe effect that the blacks would be accorded every legal right andprivilege. The “moderate” spirit of Pope was[Pg 507]commended, and coöperationwas promised him. All were urged to register and vote for delegates to theconvention.[1377]

A state convention of negroes was called by white Radical politicians tomeet in Mobile on May 1, and in all of the large towns of the statemeetings to elect delegates were held under the guidance of the UnionLeague. The delegates came straggling in, and on May 2 and 3 theconvention was held. It at once declared itself “Radical,” and condemnedthe efforts of their oppressors who would use unfair and foul means toprevent their consolidation with the Radical party. Swayne and Pope wereindorsed, a standing army was asked for to protect negroes in theirpolitical rights, and demand was made for schools, to be supported by aproperty tax. Violations of the Civil Rights Bill should be tried bymilitary commission, and the Union League was established in every county.Finally, the convention resolved that it was the undeniable right of thenegro to hold office, sit on juries, ride in any public conveyances, sitat public tables, and visit places of public amusement.[1378]

The Alabama Grand Council of the Union League, the machine of the Radicalsin Alabama,[1379] met in April and formulated the principles upon whichthe campaign was to be conducted. Congress was thanked for putting thereorganization of the state into the hands of “Union” men; the return tothe principle that “all men are created equal” and its application to a“faithful and patriotic class of our fellow-men” was hailed with joy; anysettlement which denied the ballot to the negro could not stand, theyasserted; and “while we believe that rebellion is the highest crime knownto the law, and that those guilty of it hold their continued existencesolely by the clemency of an outraged but merciful government, we arenevertheless willing to imitate that government in forgiveness of thepast, and to reclaim to the Republican Union party all who, forsakingentirely the principles on which the rebellion was founded, will sincerelyand earnestly unite with us in establishing and maintaining for the futurea government of equal rights and unconditional loyalty;” “we consider[Pg 508]willingness to elevate to power the men who preserved unswerving adherenceto the government during the war as the best test of sincerity inprofessions for the future;” and “if the pacification now proposed byCongress be not accepted in good faith by those who staked and forfeitedtheir lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, in rebellion, then itwill be the duty of Congress to enforce that forfeiture, by theconfiscation of the lands at least of such a stiff-necked and rebelliouspeople;” “the assertion that there are not enough intelligent and loyalmen in Alabama to administer the government is false in fact, and mainlypromulgated by those who aim to keep treason respectable by retainingpower in the hands of its friends and votaries.”[1380] This was adeclaration of principles to which self-respecting whites could hardly beexpected to subscribe. That was the very reason for its proclamation. TheRadical leaders in control of the machinery of the Union League began todiscourage the accession of whites to the party. The negro vote was to betheir support, and not too many whites were desired at the division ofspoils.[1381] Other causes conspired to drive the respectable people fromthe ranks of the reconstructionists. Prominent politicians were sent intothe state to tell the negro that, having received his freedom from theRepublican party, to it his vote was due. Senator Henry Wilson ofMassachusetts made a bitter speech against the southern whites at thecapitol in Montgomery. The negroes were informed that the Republican partywas entitled to their votes, and the whites were asked to join them, assubordinates perhaps.[1382] This speech was delivered on May 11, and fromthis date may be traced the organized opposition to Reconstruction.General James H. Clanton[1383] replied to Wilson, maintaining that thesouthern[Pg 509] white was the real friend of the negro and declaring in favor offull political and educational rights for the negro, while asserting thatWilson’s plan would result in a black man’s party, controlled byaliens.[1384] This speech of Clanton’s had the effect of rousing thepeople to organized resistance against the plans of the Radicals.

On May 14, Judge “Pig Iron” Kelly of Pennsylvania spoke in Mobile to anaudience of one hundred respectable whites and two thousand negroes, thelatter armed. His language toward the whites was violent and insulting, aninvitation for trouble, which inflamed both races. A riot ensued for whichhe was almost solely to blame.[1385] Several whites were killed or woundedand one negro. From the guarded report of General Swayne it was evidentthat the blame lay upon Kelly for exciting the negroes. It was a mostunfortunate affair at a critical period, and the people began tounderstand the kind of control that would be exercised over the blacks byalien politicians.[1386]

In May theAlabama Sentinel, a short-lived reconstructionist newspaperin Montgomery, assisted by a negro mass-meeting, nominated Grant for thepresidency and Busteed for vice-president. The platform demanded that thenegro have his rights at once or upon his oppressors must fall theconsequences. The Republican party was indorsed as the negro party, theonly party that had done anything for the negro.[1387]

When the registrars were appointed it was necessary, in order to getcompetent men, to import both blacks and whites into some districts. Thewhites were brought from north Alabama or sent out from the Bureaucontingents in the towns. They were members of the Union League, and itwas a part of their duty to spread that[Pg 510]organization among the negroes ofthe Black Belt, thus carrying out that part of their instructions whichdirected them to instruct the negroes in their rights andprivileges.[1388] The Radical organization steadily progressed, but eventhus early two tendencies or lines of policy appeared which were to weakenthe Radicals and later to render possible their overthrow. The nativewhite reconstructionists, living mostly in the white counties, wanted areconstruction in which they (the native “unionists”) should be thecontrolling element. They were in favor of negro suffrage as a necessarypart of the scheme and because it would not directly interfere with them,as the negro was supposed to be content with voting. These white“scalawags” were thus to gather the fruits of reconstruction. But the“carpet-baggers,” or the alien-bureau-missionary element, having workedamong the negroes and learned their power over them, intended to use thenegroes to secure office and power for themselves. They were lessprejudiced against the negroes than were the “scalawags” and were willingto associate with them more intimately and to give them small offices whenthere were not enough carpet-baggers to take them. It was soon discoveredthat the native white “unionist” and the black “Unionist,” like oil andwater, would not mingle. However, all united temporarily to gain thevictory for reconstruction, each faction hoping to be the greater gainer.

On June 4, 1867, a “Union Republican Convention” met in Montgomery, and atthe same time the Union League held its convention. The Union League wasmerely a select portion of the Union Republican Convention and met atnight to slate matters for the use of the convention next day. F. W. Sykesof Lawrence County[1389] was chairmanpro tem., and William H. Smith ofRandolph County was permanent chairman.[1390] The delegates to theconvention[Pg 511] consisted of a large number of office-seekers, “union” men,deserters, “scalawags,” ex-Union army officers, and employees of theFreedmen’s Bureau, and negroes.[1391] There were one hundred negroes andfifty whites. The negroes sat on one side of the house and the whites onthe other, but the committees were divided equally by color. The committeeon permanent organization consisted of “three Yankees,” four “palefaces,”and six negroes, who nominated several negroes and Bureau men forofficials.[1392] TheMail said that the negroes presented a betterappearance than the whites, that they were cleaner and better dressed.General Swayne took a prominent part in the proceedings, and with Smithand the negroes voted out Busteed.[1393] Griffin (of Ohio) from Mobileoffered a resolution dictated by Swayne, declaring that the recentopinions of the Attorney-General upon the registration of votes weredangerous to the restoration of the Union according to the plan ofCongress.[1394] The proceedings were turbulent, there was much angrydiscussion, and the meeting ended in a fight after[Pg 512] having indorsed theRadical programme and declaring against the United States cotton tax andthe state poll tax,[1395] and agreeing to support only “union” or “loyal”men for office.[1396]

Though the leaders complained of the “appalling apathy of the whites inpolitical matters,”[1397] a change was coming. The teachings of theRadicals were beginning to have effect on the negroes, some of whom werebecoming hostile to the whites and were resisting the white officers ofthe civil government. Their old belief in “forty acres of land and a mule”was revived by the speeches of Thaddeus Stevens, which were widelycirculated by the agents of the Union League, who were sent through thecountry to distribute the speeches and to organize the movement resultingfrom it. Many of the whites now began to believe that at last confiscationwould be enforced and that the negroes and low whites of the Union Leaguewould become the landowners.[1398] Clanton had been at work for twomonths, and on July 23, as chairman of the state committee of theConservative party, called a convention of that party to meet inMontgomery on September 4.[1399] Meetings of the Conservative party wereheld in the larger towns. A slight hope was entertained that the whitesmight be able, by uniting, to obtain some representation in theconvention. At a meeting in Montgomery, in August, Joseph Hodgson[1400]urged the[Pg 513] people to take action and save the state from“Brownlowism,”[1401] as the worst results were to be feared from inaction;the enemies of the Conservatives were making every effort to control theconstitutional convention; the Conservatives were in favor of concedingevery legitimate result of the war and were willing to grant suffrage tothe negro by state action—the only legitimate way; at the same time thenegro must assist in guaranteeing universal amnesty. The negroes wereasked by the speaker to reflect and to learn for what purpose the Radicalleaders were using them. The best people of the state, he said, and notthe worst, ought to reconstruct the state under the Sherman law.[1402]

Although strenuous efforts were made to secure a large attendance at theConservative convention in September, there were only thirteen of thesixty-two counties represented. General M. J. Bulger was chosen topreside. Resolutions were adopted asserting the old constitutional view ofthe Federal government and declaring that the present state of affairs wasdestructive of federal government, in which each state had the absoluteright to regulate the suffrage. An appeal was made to the negroes not tofollow the counsels of bad men and designing strangers. The conventionfavored the education of the negro so as to fit him for his moral andpolitical responsibilities.[1403]

About the time of the meeting of the Conservative convention an eventoccurred which showed the results of the teachings of the Radical leaders.A plan was formed by the more violent blacks to prevent the meeting of theConservatives. Some of the more sensible negroes used their influence as a“Special Committee on the Situation” to prevent the attempt to break upthe convention, and L. J. Williams, a prominent negro politician, was thechairman of the committee. The white Radicals did nothing to preventviolence. Later a negro Conservative speaker was mobbed by the negroes andwas rescued only by the aid of General Clanton. Other negroes who sidedwith the whites were expelled from their churches.[1404]

The registrars continued to instruct “that part of the population[Pg 514] whichhas heretofore been denied the right of suffrage” in the mysteries ofcitizenship or membership in the Union League. By the time of the electionthey were so effectively instructed that they were sure to vote as theywere told by the League leaders. Nearly all of the respectable whitemembers of the League in the Black Belt had fallen away, and but fewremained in the white counties. Governor Patton yielded to Radicalpressure, wrote Reconstruction letters, appeared at Reconstructionmeetings, and deferred much to Pope and Swayne. He was harshly criticisedby the Conservatives for pursuing such a course.

The elections, early in October, were the most remarkable in the historyof the state. For the first time the late slaves were to vote, while manyof their former masters could not. Of the 65 counties in Alabama, 22 hadnegro majorities (according to the registration) and had 52 delegates ofthe 100 total, and in nearly all of the others the negro minority held thebalance of power.[1405] To control the negro vote the Radicals devoted allthe machinery of registration and election, of the Union League, and ofthe Freedmen’s Bureau. The chiefs of the League sent agents to theplantation negroes, who were showing some indifference to politics, withstrict orders to go and vote. They were told that if they did not votethey would be reënslaved and their wives made to work the roads and quitwearing hoopskirts.[1406] In Montgomery County, the day before election,the Radical agents went through the county, summoning the blacks to comeand vote, saying that Swayne had ordered it and would punish them if theydid not obey. The negroes came into the city by thousands in regularlyorganized bodies, under arms and led by the League politicians, and campedabout the city waiting for the time to vote. The danger of outbreak was sogreat that the soldiers disarmed them. They did not know, most of them,what voting was. For what or for whom they were voting they knewnot,—they were simply obeying the orders of their Bureau chiefs.[1407]Likewise, at Clayton, the negroes were driven to town and camped the daybefore the election[Pg 515] began. There was firing of guns all night. Early thenext morning the local leaders formed the negroes into companies andregiments and marched them, armed with shotguns, muskets, pistols, andknives, to the court-house, where the only polling place for the countywas situated. The first day there were about three thousand of them, ofall ages from fifteen to eighty years of age, and no whites were allowedto approach the sacred voting place. When drawn up in line, each man wasgiven a ticket by the League representatives, and no negro was allowed tobreak ranks until all were safely corralled in the court-house square.Many of the negroes had changed their names since they were registered,and their new ones were not on the books, but none lost a vote on thataccount.[1408]

In Marengo County the Bureau and Loyal League officers lined up thenegroes early in the morning and saw that each man was supplied with theproper ticket. Then the command, “Forward, March!” was given, the linefiled past the polling place, and each negro deposited his ballot. Abouttwelve o’clock a bugle blew as a signal to repeat the operation, and allthe negroes present, including most of those who had voted in the morning,lined up, received tickets, and voted again. Late in the afternoon thefarce was gone through the third time. Any one voted who pleased and asoften as he pleased.[1409]

In Dallas County the negroes were told that if they failed to vote theywould be fined $50. The negroes at the polls were lined up and giventickets, which they were told to let no one see. However, in some casesthe Conservatives had also given tickets to negroes, and a carefulinspection was made in order to prevent the casting of such ballots. Theaverage negro is said to have voted once for himself and once “for Jim whocouldn’t come.” The registration lists were not referred to except when awhite man offered to vote. Most of the negroes had strange ideas of whatvoting meant. It meant freedom, for one thing, if they voted the Radicalticket, and slavery if they did not. One negro at Selma held up a blue(Conservative) ticket and cried out, “No land! no mules! no votes! slaveryagain!” Then holding up a red (Radical) ticket he shouted, “Forty acres ofland! a mule! freedom! votes! equal of white man!” Of course he voted thered ticket. Numbers of them brought halters[Pg 516] for their mules or sacks “toput it in.” Some country negroes were given red tickets and told that theymust not be persuaded to part with them, as each ticket was good for apiece of land. The poor negroes did not understand this figurativelanguage and put the precious red tickets in their pockets and hurriedhome to locate the land. Another darky was given a ticket and told tovote—to put the ballot in the box. “Is dat votin’?” “Yes.” “Nuttin’ more,master?” “No.” “I thought votin’ was gittin’ sumfin.” He went home indisgust. The legend of “lands and mules” was revived during the fall andwinter of 1867-1868, and many negroes were expecting a division ofproperty. By this time they were beginning to feel that it was the faultof their leaders that the division did not take place, and there werethreats against those who had made promises. However, the sellers ofpainted sticks again thrived—perhaps they had never ceased tothrive.[1410] General Swayne reported about this time that the giving ofthe ballot to the negro had greatly improved his condition.[1411]

The election went overwhelmingly for the convention and for the Radicalcandidates. The revision of the voting lists before election struck offthe names of many “improper” whites and placed none on the list; with thenegroes the reverse was true. The whites had no hope of carrying theelections in most of the counties, and as the negroes were intenselyexcited, and as trouble was sure to follow in case the whites endeavoredto vote or to control the negro vote, most of the Conservatives refrainedfrom voting. Even at this time a large number of people were unable tobelieve seriously that the negro voting had come to stay. To them itseemed something absurd and almost ridiculous except for the ill feelingsaroused among the negroes. Such a state of affairs could not last long,they thought. Two Conservative delegates and ninety-eight Radicaldelegates were elected to the convention.[1412]

CHAPTER XIV

The delegates elected to the convention were a motley crew—white, yellow,and black—of northern men, Bureau officers, “loyalists,” “rebels,” whohad aided the Confederacy and now perjured themselves by taking the oath,Confederate deserters, and negroes.[1413] The Freedmen’s Bureau furnishedeighteen or more of the one hundred members. There were eighteenblacks.[1414] Thirteen more of the members had certified, as registrars,to their own election and with six other members had certified to theelection of thirty-one, nineteen of whom were on the board ofregistration. No pretence of residence was made by the northern men in thecounties from which they were elected. Several had never seen the countiesthey represented, a slate being made up in Montgomery and sent to remotedistricts to be voted for. Of these northern men, or foreigners, therewere thirty-seven or thirty-eight, from Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut,Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, New Jersey, Illinois,Ireland, Canada, and Scotland.[1415] The native whites were for the most[Pg 518]part utterly unknown and had but little share in the proceedings of theconvention.[1416] Of the negro members two could write well and werefairly well educated, half could not write a word, and the others had beentaught to sign their names and that was all. There were many negroes whocould read and write, but they were not sent to the convention. Perhapsthe carpet-baggers feared trouble from them and wanted only those whomthey could easily control.[1417]

[Pg 519]Griffin of Ohio was appointed temporary chairman, and on the motion ofKeffer of Pennsylvania, Robert Barbour of New York was made temporarysecretary and later permanent secretary. Keffer nominated Peck, a NewYorker who had resided for some years in Alabama, for president of theconvention, and he was unanimously elected.[1418] There were several negroclerks in the convention. The disgusted Conservatives designated theaggregation by various epithets, such as “The UnconstitutionalConvention,” “Pope’s Convention,” “Swayne’s World-renowned Menagerie,”“The Circus,” “Black and Tan,” “Black Crook,” etc. The last, which wasprobably given by the New YorkHerald correspondent, seems to have beenthe favorite name. The white people still persisted in looking upon thewhole affair as a more or less irritating joke.

The carpet-baggers intended that the convention should be purged of“improper” persons, and one of them proposed that the test oath be taken.This aroused opposition on the part of the ex-“rebels,” who did not careto perjure themselves more than was necessary. Coon of Iowa then proposeda simple oath to support the Constitution, which after some wrangling wastaken.[1419] Caraway, a negro, wanted no chaplain to officiate in theconvention who had not remained loyal to the United States. Skinner ofFranklin said: “Let none offer prayer who are rebels and who have notfought under the stars and stripes.” This was to prevent such reverendmembers of the convention as Deal of Dale from officiating. Finally, thepresident was empowered to appoint the chaplain daily. A colored chaplainwas called upon once in a while, and one of them invoked the blessings ofGod on “Unioners and cusses on rebels.”[1420]

[Pg 520]Another way of showing the loyalty of the body was by directing acommittee to bring in an ordinance changing the names of the counties“named in honor of rebellion and in glorification of traitors.” Keffer ofPennsylvania was the author of this resolution. Steed of Cleburne wantedthe name of his county changed to Lincoln, and Simmons of Colbert wantedhis county to be named Brownlow. The test votes on such questions wereabout 55 to 30 in favor of changing. Baine, Colbert, and Jones counties,established by the “Johnson” government, were abolished.[1421]

The president was directed to drape his chair with two “Federal” flags.Generals Pope and Swayne, and Governor Patton, as friends ofReconstruction, were invited to seats in the convention and were asked tospeak before the body. Pope was becoming somewhat nervous at the conductof the supreme rulers of the state and in his speech counselled moderationand fairness. He also commended them for the “firmness and fearlessnesswith which you have conducted the late campaigns,” and congratulated themupon “the success which has thus far crowned your efforts in thepacification of this state and its restoration to the Union.”[1422] Themost radical members of the convention were bringing pressure to bear toforce Pope to declare vacant at once all the offices of the provisionalgovernment and fill them with reconstructionists. In this they were aidedby northern influence. Pope, however, refused to make the change, and thusdispleased the Radicals, who wanted offices at once.[1423]

The first ordinance of the convention reconstructed Jones County, namedfor a Confederate colonel, out of existence, and the second, third, andfourth arranged for the pay of the convention. The president received $10a day and the members $8 each; the clerks from $6 to $8, and the pages$4.[1424] The president and members received 40 cents as mileage for eachmile travelled. To cover these expenses an additional tax of 10 per centon taxes already assessed was levied. The comptroller refused to pay themembers until ordered by Pope.[Pg 521] The latter hesitated to give the order, ashe doubted if he had the authority. However, he finally said that he wouldorder payment provided the compensation be fixed at reasonable rates, andthat the payments be not made before the convention completed its work. Hefurther added that the convention must be moderate in action; “I speak notmore for the interests of Alabama than for the interests of the politicalparty upon whose retention of power for several years to come the successof Reconstruction depends.” When Pope urged moderation, it is likely thatsomething serious was the matter. A proposition to reduce the pay of themembers from $8 to $6 per day was lost by a vote of 35 to 57. A few daysbefore the close of the convention, Pope ordered the payment of theperdiem to the hungry delegates, many of whom refused to accept the stateobligations called “Patton money.” They were told that it was receivablefor taxes, and one answered for all: “Oh, damn the taxes! We haven’t gotany to pay.”[1425]

The colored delegates brought up the negro question in several forms.First, Rapier of Canada wanted a declaration that negroes were entitled toall the privileges and rights of citizenship in Alabama.[1426] ThenStrother of Dallas demanded that the negroes be empowered to collect payfrom those who held them in slavery, at the rate of $10 a month forservices rendered from January 1, 1863, the date of the EmancipationProclamation, to May 20, 1865. An ordinance to this effect was actuallyadopted by a vote of 53 to 31.[1427] The scalawags, as a rule, wished toprohibit intermarriage of the races, and Semple of Montgomery reported anordinance to that effect. He would prohibit intermarriage to the fourthgeneration. The negroes and carpet-baggers united to vote this down, whichwas done by a vote of 48 to 30. Caraway (negro) of Mobile wanted lifeimprisonment for any white man marrying or living with a black woman, buthe said it was against the Civil Rights Bill to prohibit intermarriage.This seems to have irritated the scalawags. Gregory (negro) of Mobilewanted all regulations, laws, and customs wherein distinctions were[Pg 522] madeon account of color or race to be abolished, and thus allowintermarriages. The convention refused to adopt the report providingagainst amalgamation.[1428] The Mobile negroes alone seem to have beenopposed to the prohibition of intermarriage. The convention of 1865 hadrecognized the validity of all slave marriages and had ordered that theybe considered legal. During 1865 and 1866 the fickle negroes, male andfemale, made various experiments with new partners, and the result wasthat in 1867 thousands of negroes had forsaken the husband or wife ofslavery times and “taken up” with others. All sorts of prosecutions werehanging over them, and an ordinance was passed for the relief of suchpeople. It directed that marriages were to date from November 30, 1867,and not from 1865 or earlier. All who were living together in 1867 were tobe considered man and wife, and all prosecutions for former misconductwere forbidden.[1429]

Caraway (negro) of Mobile succeeded in having an ordinance passeddirecting that church property used during slavery for coloredcongregations be turned over to the latter.[1430] Some of this propertywas paid for by negro slaves and held in trust for them by white trustees.Most of it, however, belonged to the planters, who erected churches forthe use of their slaves.

Not much was said about separate or mixed schools for the races. There wasa disposition on the part of the leaders to keep such questions in thebackground for a time in order to prevent irritating discussions. Aproposition for separate schools was voted down on the ground that it wasbetter for the children of both races to go to school together and wearoff their prejudices. This was the carpet-baggers’ view, but most of theblacks finally voted against a measure providing for mixed schools,because, they said, they did not want to send their children to schoolwith white children. The matter was hushed up and left unsettled.[1431]

In spite of efforts to keep the question in the background, the socialequality of the negro race was demanded by one or two[Pg 523]irrepressibleMobile mulattoes, and a discussion was precipitated. The scalawags withfew exceptions were opposed to admitting negroes to the same privileges aswhites,—in theatres, churches, on railroads and boats, and athotels,—though they were willing to require equal but separateaccommodations for both races. Semple reported from his committee anordinance requiring equal and separate accommodations, but declared thatequality of civil rights was not affected by such a measure. By a vote of32 to 46 this measure failed to pass.[1432] Griffin[1433] (white) of Ohiobriefly attacked Semple for proposing such an iniquitous measure. McLeod(negro) said he did not exactly want social equality, and added “supposeone of you white gentlemen want a negro in the same car with you. Theconductor would not allow it. This should be changed.” Caraway (negro)objected to having his wife travel in the coach with low and obscene whitemen. Jim Green (negro) said it was a “common thing to put cullud folks inde same cyar wid drunk and low white folks. We want nebber be subjic to nosich disgrace,” but wanted to be allowed to go among decent white people.Gregory (negro) made some scathing observations at the expense of Sempleand his associates, who were hoping to make political use of the negro,yet did not want to ride in the same car with him. How could thedelegates, he said, go home to their constituents, nineteen-twentieths ofwhom were negroes, after voting against their enjoying the same rights asthe whites? Did Semple feel polluted by sitting by Finley, his coloredcolleague? Why then should he object to sitting in the same car with him?He (Gregory) was as good a man as Napoleon on his throne, and could not behonored by sitting by a white man, but “in de ole worl de cullud folksride wid de whites” and so it should be here. Rapier (negro) of Canadasaid that the manner in which colored gentlemen and ladies were treated inAmerica was beyond his comprehension. He (Rapier) had dined with lords inhis lifetime, and though he did not feel flattered by sitting by a whiteman, yet he would vote for social equality. Some of the negroes feeblyopposed the agitation of the question on the ground that the civil andpolitical rights of the negro were not yet safe and should not beendangered by the agitation of the social question. Griffin[Pg 524] of Ohio andKeffer of Pennsylvania supported the negroes in all their demands. Thecarpet-baggers in general were in favor of social equality, but most ofthem thought it much more important that the spoils be secured first. Thenegroes were placated with numerous promises and by a special resolutionopening the galleries to “their ladies” and inviting the latter to bepresent[1434] at the sessions of the convention.

The debates on the question of suffrage were the most extended and showedthe most violent spirit on the part of most of the members. Dustan of Iowaproposed that the new constitution should in no degree be proscriptive,but his resolution was voted down by a vote of 30 to 51. Some of thenegroes voted for it.[1435] Rapier (negro) proposed that the conventionmemorialize Congress to remove the political disabilities of those whomight aid in reconstruction according to the plan of Congress. This wasadopted and Griffin, the most radical member of the committee, was madechairman to make merciful recommendations. Gardner of Massachusetts,representing Butler County, said that there were persons in the state whoshould have been tried and convicted of felony and would thus have beendisfranchised, but owing to fault of courts and juries they were notconvicted. He wanted a special commission to disfranchise such persons.The majority report on the franchise[1436] called for the disfranchisementof those who had mistreated Union prisoners, those who were disfranchisedby the Reconstruction Acts, and those who had registered under the actsand had later refrained from voting. Such persons were not to be allowedto vote, register, or hold office. An oath was to be taken repudiatingbelief in the doctrine of secession, accepting the civil and politicalequality of all men, and agreeing never to attempt to limit the suffrage.“The only question is,” they reported, “whether we have not been tooliberal.” It was necessary that all who registered be forced to vote inthe election on pain of being[Pg 525]disfranchised, in order to get a sufficientnumber of voters to the polls, though the report stated that Congress wasnot bound by the law of March 23 to reject the constitution if a majoritydid not vote; the convention had the right to say that men must vote or bedisfranchised; as to the oath, any one who would refuse to take it had nofaith in American principles and was hostile to the Constitution and lawsof the United States.[1437]

The minority report[1438] objected to going beyond the acts of Congress indisfranchising whites. Lee (negro) said that such a course would endangerthe ratification of the constitution and if the negroes did not get theirrights now, they would never get them. He wanted his rights at thecourt-house and at the polls and nothing more. Charity and moderationwould be better than proscription.[1439] Speed said that the measure woulddisfranchise from 30,000 to 40,000 men beyond the acts of Congress.[1440]Griffin of Ohio, speaking in favor of the majority report, said that “theinfernal rebels had acted like devils turned loose from hell,” and thathis party could not stand against them in a fair political field; andtherefore proscription was necessary. Another advocate of sweepingdisfranchisement wanted all the leading whites disfranchised until 1875,in order to prevent them from regaining control of the government.[1441]

Numerous amendments were offered to the majority report. Haughey ofScotland wanted to disfranchise all Confederates above the rank ofcaptain, and all who had held any civil office anywhere, or who had votedfor secession. A stringent test oath was to discover the disabilities ofwould-be electors. Again, he wanted every elector to prove that onNovember 1, 1867, he was a friend of the Reconstruction Acts. He wouldhave voters and office-holders swear to accept the civil and politicalequality of all men, and to resist any change, and also swear that theyhad never held office, aided the Confederacy, nor given aid or comfort toConfederates.[1442] Nearly all the amendments included a provision forcingthe voter or office-holder to accept the political and civil equality ofall men,[Pg 526] and to swear never to change. Springfield of St. Clair thoughtthat all who were opposed to Reconstruction should be disfranchised, andRussell of Barbour, with Applegate of Wisconsin, held that allConfederates should be disfranchised who had voluntarily aided theConfederacy.[1443]

D. H. Bingham of New York thought that voters should swear that on March4, 1864, they preferred the United States government to the Confederacy,and would have abandoned the latter had they had the opportunity.[1444]Applegate thought that no citizen, officer, or editor who opposedcongressional Reconstruction ought to be permitted to vote before1875.[1445] Silsby of Iowa would also exclude from the suffrage those whohad killed negroes during the last two years, who opposed Reconstruction,or dissuaded others from attending the election.[1446] Garrison of Blountwanted to disfranchise those who were in the convention of 1861 and votedfor secession, Confederate members of Congress who voted for theconscription law, those disfranchised by the Reconstruction Acts,Confederates above the rank of captain, and state and Confederateofficials of every kind above justice of the peace and bailiff.[1447]Skinner of Franklin wanted to disfranchise enough rebels to hold thebalance of power. “We have the rod over their heads and intend to keep itthere.”[1448] The most liberal amendments were proposed by Peters ofLawrence, who would continue the disfranchisement made by Congress unlessthe would-be voter would swear that he was in favor of congressionalReconstruction. Rapier (negro) would have all disabilities removed by thestate as soon as they were removed by Congress.[1449] The price of pardonin all ordinary cases was support of congressional Reconstruction.

The debate lasted for four days, and it was all that Swayne could do toprevent a division in the Radical party. An agent was sent to Washingtonfor instructions. The violent character of the proceedings of theconvention made the northern friends of Reconstruction nervous, and HoraceGreeley persuaded Senator Wilson to exert his influence to prevent theadoption of extreme measures by the convention. Wilson wrote to Swaynethat the convention and especially such men as D. H. Bingham were doingmuch harm to[Pg 527]Reconstruction and to the Republican party. The northernRepublican press generally seemed afraid of the action of the convention,and suggested more liberal measures. So we find Pope and Swayne advocatingmoderation.[1450] Peck, the president of the convention, still spoke outfor the test oath and disfranchisement. It was necessary to secure thefruits of Reconstruction, and the test oath would keep out many; but, hesaid, if the old leaders, who were honorable men, should take the oath,they would abide by it,[1451] and Reconstruction would then be safe. Theoath finally adopted, which had to be taken by all who would vote or holdoffice, was the usual oath to support the Constitution and laws with thefollowing additions: “I accept the civil and political equality of allmen; and agree not to attempt to deprive any person or persons, on accountof race, color or previous condition, of any political or civil right,privilege or immunity, enjoyed by any other class of men; and furthermore,that I will not in any way injure or countenance in others any attempt toinjure any person or persons on account of past or present support of thegovernment of the United States, the laws of the United States, or theprinciples of the political and civil equality of all men, or foraffiliation with any political party.”[1452] It was finally settled thatin addition to those disfranchised by the Reconstruction Acts othersshould be excluded for violation of the rules of war.[1453] They couldneither register, vote, nor hold office until relieved by the vote of thegeneral assembly for aiding in Reconstruction, and until they had acceptedthe political equality of all men.[1454] It was estimated that thesuffrage clause would disfranchise from voting or holding office 40,000white men. The oath was likely to exclude still more. Bingham thought theoath as adopted was a back-down, and demanded the iron-clad oath. Thecommittee on the franchise wanted[Pg 528] to prohibit the legislature fromenfranchising any person unless he had aided in Reconstruction.[1455]

The convention organized a new militia system, giving most of thecompanies to the black counties. All officers were to be loyal to theUnited States, that is, they were to be reconstructionists. No one who wasdisfranchised could enlist. The proceeds of the sale of contraband andcaptured property taken by the militia were to be used in itssupport.[1456] Stay laws were enacted to go into force with the adoptionof the constitution, also exemption laws which exempted from sale for debtmore property than nineteen-twentieths of the people possessed.[1457] Thewar debt of Alabama was again declared void, and the ordinance ofsecession stigmatized as “unconstitutional, null and void.”[1458]Contracts made during the war, when the consideration was Confederatemoney, were declared null and void at the option of either party, as werealso notes payable in Confederate money and debts made for slaves. Binghamforced through an ordinance providing for a new settlement in UnitedStates currency of trust estates settled during the war in Confederatesecurities.[1459] Judicial decisions in aid of the war were declared void.Defendants in civil cases against whom judgment was rendered during thewar were entitled to a revision or to a new trial.[1460]

The negroes were complaining about the cotton tax, and a memorial wasaddressed to Congress, asking for its repeal on the ground that when thetax was imposed the state had no voice in the government; that it wasoppressive, amounting to 20 per cent of the gross value of the cottoncrop, and fell heavily on the negroes, who were the principal producers;that for two years the tax had made cotton cultivation unprofitable, andhad driven away capital.[1461]

[Pg 529]A memorial to Congress was adopted by a vote of 50 to 6, asking that thepart of the reconstruction law which required a majority of the registeredvoters to vote in the election for the adoption of the constitution berepealed. It was now seen that the Conservatives would endeavor to defeatthe constitution by refraining from voting.[1462]

An ordinance was passed to protect the newly enfranchised negro voters.The penalty for using “improper influence” and thereby deceiving ormisleading an elector was to be not less than one nor more, than tenyears’ imprisonment or fine of not more than $2000. The election wasordered for February 4, 1868, to be held under direction of the militarycommander. In order to bring out a large number of voters, elections wereordered for the same time for all state and county officers, and formembers of Congress—several thousand in all. The officers thus electedwere to enter at once upon their duties, and hold office for the properterm of years, dating from the legal date for the next general electionafter the admission of the state.[1463]

Among the scalawag members of the convention, who saw that thecarpet-baggers would rule the land by controlling the negro vote, therewas much dissatisfaction and at length open revolt. Nine members signed aformal protest against the proposed constitution, stating that agovernment framed upon its provisions would entail upon the state greaterevils than any that then threatened.[1464] Another member protestedagainst the test oath, against the extension of proscription, and againstthe absence of express provision for separate schools.[1465] Theconstitution was adopted by a vote of 66 to 8, 26 not voting. A few daysafter the adjournment, 15 or 20 scalawag members united in an address tothe people of Alabama, protesting against the proposed constitutionbecause it was more proscriptive than the acts of Congress, because of thetest oath, because the course of the convention had shown that thegovernment would be in the[Pg 530] hands of a few adventurers under the controlof the blacks, to whom they had promised mixed schools and laws protectingthe negro in his rights of voting, eating, travelling, etc., with whites.For these reasons they urged that the constitution be rejected.[1466]

Just before the convention adjourned, Caraway (negro) offered aresolution, which was adopted, stating that the constitution was foundedon justice, honesty, and civilization, and that the enemies of law andorder, freedom and justice, were pledged to prevent its adoption. But heasserted that God would strengthen and assist those who did right;therefore he advised that a day be set apart “whereby the good and loyalpeople of Alabama can offer up their adorations to Almighty God, andinvoke His aid and assistance to the loyal people of the state, whilepassing through the bitter strife that seems to await them.”[1467]

A study of the votes and debates leads to the following generalconclusion: The majority of the scalawags were ready to revolt afterfinding that the carpet-bag element had control of the negro vote; thenegroes with a few exceptions made no unreasonable and violent demandsunless urged by the carpet-baggers; the carpet-baggers with a few extremescalawags were disposed to resort to extreme measures of proscription inorder to get rid of white leaders and white majorities, and to agitate thequestion of social equality in order to secure the negroes, and to driveoff the scalawags so that there would be fewer with whom to share thespoils.[1468]

CHAPTER XV

The debates in the convention over mixed schools, proscription, militia,and representation had seemingly resulted in a division between thecarpet-baggers, who controlled the negroes, and the more moderatescalawags. The carpet-baggers and extreme scalawags of the conventionresolved themselves into a body for the nomination of candidates foroffice. This body formed the state Union League convention. Of the 101delegates to the convention, 67 or 68 had signed the constitution, and ofthese at least 56 were candidates for office under it. Full tickets werenominated by the convention and by the local councils of the Union League.In the black counties only members of the League were nominated, and itwas practically the same in the white counties, where the League then hadbut few members. Nearly all the election officials were candidates. Menrepresented one county in the convention, and were candidates in othersfor office.[1469]

[Pg 533]The state of politics in the average Black Belt county was like that inPerry or Montgomery. In Perry, the Radical nominees for probate judge,state senator, sheriff, and tax assessor were from Wisconsin; forrepresentative, two negroes and one white from Ohio, and for taxcollector, a northern man.[1471] In Montgomery, for the legislature, onewhite from Ohio and one from Austria, and three negroes; for probatejudge, clerk of circuit court, sheriff, and tax assessor, men from NewYork and other northern states.[1472] One or two negroes ran independentlyin each Black Belt county. In the white counties the extreme scalawagshad a better chance for office, and most of the moderatereconstructionists fell away at once, leaving the spoils to the Radicals.It is doubtful if there were enough white men in the state who could readand write and who supported the new constitution, to fill the officescreated by that instrument. Hence the assignment of candidates to far-offcounties, and the admission of negro candidates.[1473] The state ticketwas headed by an[Pg 534] Alabama tory, William H. Smith, and the other candidatesfor state offices were from Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maine, and New York, fiveof them being officers of the Freedmen’s Bureau.[1474] The candidates forCongress were from Massachusetts, Ohio, Michigan, New York, Maine, andNebraska. In several instances the candidate hailed from two or moredifferent states.[1475]

The campaign in behalf of the constitution did not differ in characterfrom that in behalf of the convention. The Radical candidates for office,working through the Union League, drilled the negroes in the properpolitical faith. Nearly all the whites having gone over to theConservatives, or withdrawn from politics, little or no attention was paidto the white voters. All efforts were directed toward securing the negrovote. Agents were sent over the state by the League to organize thenegroes, who were again told the old story: If the constitution is notratified, you will be reënslaved and your wives will be beaten and yourchildren sold; if you do not get your rights now you will never get them.A subsidized press[1476] distributed campaign stories among those negroeswho could read, and they spread the news. In this way the remotest darkyheard that he was sure to return to slavery if the constitution failed ofratification.[1477] The Union League assessed its members, especially[Pg 535]those who happened to be holding office under the military government, formoney for campaign purposes.[1478]

The Radicals were forced by the general denunciation of the constitution,both in the North and in the South, to make some statement in regard tothe matter. So on January 2, 1868, the Radical campaign committee issuedan address stating that there had been general and severe criticism ofsome features of the constitution, and that Congress would expect arevision, though the state would be admitted promptly even beforerevision. The existence of political disabilities need not fetter theparty, the address stated, in the choice of a candidate. A Republicannomination was a proof that the candidate was a “proper” person, and hisdisabilities would be at once removed. This was a way to mitigate theproscription.[1479]

From the first the Conservatives[1480] had no hope of carrying theelection against the reconstructionists, who had control of the machineryof election and were supported by the army and the government. There waslittle organized opposition to the convention election, because the peoplewere indifferent and because the leaders feared that a contest at thepolls would result in riots with the negroes. To the Conservatives theconvention at first was a joke; the disposition was rather to stand offand keep quiet, and let the Radicals try their hands for a while; theycould not stay in power forever. Later, the violent opinions and extrememeasures of the convention excited the alarm of many of the whites; themoderate reconstructionists deserted their party; a large minority of theconvention refused to sign the constitution; and a number made formalprotests. The nomination of candidates by the Union League membership ofthe convention and the character of the nominees showed that rule by alienand negro was threatened. The Conservative party, now embracing nearly allthe whites except the Radical candidates, determined to oppose theratification of the constitution. Many of the whites,[1481] now thoroughlydiscouraged, left the state forever—going[Pg 536] to the north and west, toTexas especially, and to South America and Mexico.[1482]

On December 10 a number of the delegates to the convention, some of whomhad signed the constitution, united in an address to the people advisingagainst its adoption. All of them were native whites and formerreconstructionists. They declared that under the proposed governmentdesigning knaves and political adventurers, who had a jealous hatred ofthe native whites, would use the blacks for their own selfish purposes;that this was clearly shown in the convention when the black delegation,with one honorable exception, moved like slaves at the command of theirmasters.[1483] Several hundred citizens sent a petition to the President,setting forth that some of the delegates to the convention were notresidents of the state, that others did not, and had not, resided in thecounties which they pretended to represent, and that others belonged tothe army or were officials of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and were thus notlegally qualified to sit in the convention. The petitioners asked for aninvestigation.[1484] One of the delegates, Graves of Perry County, tookthe stump against the constitution framed by “strangers, deserters,bushwhackers, and perjured men,” who were characterized by “a fiendishdesire to disqualify all southern men from voting or holding office whoare unwilling to perjure themselves with a test oath.”[1485]

The so-called “White Man’s Movement” in Alabama is said to have beenoriginated in 1867, by Alexander White and ex-Governor L. E.Parsons.[1486] At a Conservative meeting in Dallas County, in January,1868, the former offered a series of resolutions declaring that Americaninstitutions were the product of the wisdom of white men and were designedto preserve the ascendency of the white race in political affairs; thatthe United States government was a white man’s government, and that whitemen should rule America; that the negro was not fit to take part in thegovernment, as he had never achieved civilization nor shown himselfcapable of directing the affairs of a nation; that the right of suffragewas the fountain of all political power, therefore the negro should not beinvested with[Pg 537] the right. Parsons proposed the same resolutions at aConservative conference in Montgomery in January, 1868.[1487]

The Conservative executive committee decided to advise the whites torefrain from voting, and thus defeat the constitution by taking advantageof the law requiring a majority of the registered voters to vote on thequestion of ratification before the constitution could be ratified. Nonominations for office were made for fear that some whites might thus voteon the constitution, and also for fear of conflicts between the races incase of contest at the polls. All were advised to register and to remainaway from the polls on election day. It was thought that less irritationwould be caused in Congress and elsewhere if the constitution failed inthis way than if it were voted down directly. The whites could be moreeasily persuaded to remain away than to go to the polls, and fewer negroeswould vote if the whites did not vote. The people were urged to formorganizations to carry out this non-participating programme.[1488]

In every county in the state the Conservatives held meetings, opposing theconstitution and pledging all the whites to stay away from the polls. TheConservative press from day to day made known new objections to theconstitution: it exempted from sale for debt $3000 worth ofproperty,—whereas the old constitution exempted $500,—and this wouldexempt every Radical in the state from paying his debts; the power oftaxation was in the hands of the non-taxpayers; the distribution ofrepresentation was unequal, favoring the black counties;[1489] mixedschools and amalgamation of the races were not forbidden, but wereencouraged by the reconstructionists; a large number of whites weredisfranchised from voting or holding office,[1490] while all the blackswere enfranchised; the test oath required all voters to swear that theywould accept the political equality of the[Pg 538] negro and never change theiropinions; the Board of Education was given legislative power, and couldpass measures over the governor’s veto; an ordinance, which was keptsecret, required the governor to organize at once 137 companies ofmilitia, to be assigned almost entirely to the black counties, and undersuch regulations that it was certain that few whites could serve; thismilitia, when in service, was to be paid like the regular army, and was toget the proceeds from all property captured or confiscated by it; thegovernment, under this constitution, would cost from one and a half to twomillion dollars a year.[1491]

Under the proposed constitution it was certain that for a while thegovernment would be in the hands of the extremest Radical clique. Themachinery, of the Radical party, of the registration and elections and thecandidates nominated by the League were of this faction. The continuedrule of the military was preferred by the whites to the rule of thecarpet-baggers and the negro. Another reason why the Conservatives wishedto keep the state out of the Union still longer was to prevent itselectoral vote from being cast for Grant in the fall of 1868. During 1865and 1866 Grant’s moderate opinions had won the regard of many of thepeople, but his course during the last year had caused him to be intenselydisliked. Though many meetings were held in opposition to theconstitution, the campaign on the Conservative side was quiet andunexciting. The thirtieth day of January was set apart as a day of fastingand prayer to deliver the people of Alabama “from the horrors of negrodomination.”[1492]

The registration before the election of delegates to the convention was165,123,[1493] of whom 61,295 were whites and 104,518 were blacks.Registration continued, and all the eligible whites registered. It isprobable that more whites than negroes registered during December andJanuary. And the revision demanded by all honest people[Pg 539] evidently had theeffect of striking off thousands of negro names; for at the end of theyear the registration stood: whites, 72,748; blacks, 88,243; total,160,991.[1494] By February 1, 1868, the registration amounted to about170,000,[1495] of whom about 75,000 were whites and 95,000 were blacks.Therefore, more than 85,000 registered voters must participate in theelection, or, according to the law, the constitution would fail ofadoption.[1496]

The registrars were those who had been appointed by Pope in 1867. Morethan half of them were candidates for election to office. Meade was notfavorably impressed with the character of the candidates nominated by theconstitutional convention and by the local councils of the Union League,and he advised against holding the election for officers at the same timethat the vote was taken on the constitution. He thought that the nomineeswere not such men as the friends of Reconstruction would choose if theyhad a free choice. He believed that the ratification would be seriouslyaffected if these candidates were to be voted for at the same time. Swayneadmitted the force of the objection, but was afraid that a revocation ofthe permission to elect officers at the same time would be disastrous toReconstruction. Later he agreed that the two elections should not be heldat the same time. But Grant objected to making the change, and theelection went on.[1497]

General Hayden, Swayne’s successor, removed a dozen or more of theregistrars who were candidates for important offices,[1498] and inconsequence was abused by the Radicals, who accused him of “hobnobbingwith the rebels.” He was “utterly loathed by loyal men,” and they at oncebegan to work for his removal.[1499] Every[Pg 540] election official was obligedto take the iron-clad test oath, and as one-third of them were negroes, itwas not likely that any of them were hostile to Reconstruction, as wasafterwards claimed.

The elections were to begin on February 4 and last for two days. At thesuggestion of General Grant the time was extended to four days, and astorm coming on the first day, instructions were sent out to keep thepolls open until the close of the 8th of February. But in the remotecounties no notice of the extension of time was received. There were threevoting places in each county and a person might vote at any one of them(or at all of them if he chose). Late instructions ordered electionofficials to receive the vote of any person who had registered anywhere inthe state. Of the 62 counties, 20 voted four days; 13, two days; 27, fivedays; and in 2 there were no elections.[1500]

Besides being told the old stories of returning to slavery, of forty acresand a mule, of social rights, etc., various new promises were made to thenegroes. One was promised a divorce if he would vote for Reynolds asAuditor, and it was said that Reynolds kept his promise, and saw that thenegro afterward secured it. Numerous negro politicians were, according topromise, relieved from “the pains of bigamy” by the first Reconstructionlegislation. The discipline of the League was brought to bear onindifferent black citizens, and by threats of violence or of proscriptionmany were driven to the polls. On February 3 the negroes began to flock tothe voting places, each with a gun, a stick, a dog, and a bag of rations,as directed by their white leaders. It was again necessary for them tovote “early and often.” The Radical candidates were desperately afraidthat the constitution would fail of ratification, and every means wastaken to swell the number of votes cast. Many negroes voted rolls oftickets given them by the candidates. They voted one day in one precinct,and the next day in another, or several times in the same place. Littleattention was paid to the registration lists, but every negro over sixteenwho presented himself was allowed to vote. Hundreds of negro boys voted;it was said that none were ever turned away. Where the whites had men atthe polls to challenge voters, it was found almost impossible to followthe lists because so many of the negroes had changed their names sinceregistration.[Pg 541] The sick at their homes sent their proxies by their friendsor relatives. In one case the Radicals voted negroes under the names ofwhite men who were staying away. The voters migrated from one county toanother during the elections and voted in each. This was especially thecase in Mobile, Marengo, Montgomery, Macon, Lee, Russell, Greene, Dallas,Hale, and Barbour counties.[1501] TheMobile Register claimed that negrowomen were dressed in men’s clothes and voted. The Radical chairman of theBoard of Registration in Perry County stated that one-third of the votespolled in that county were illegal.[1502] In Mobile, when a negro manappeared whose name was not on the voting list and was challenged by theConservatives, he was directed by a “pirate”[1503] to go to one D. G.Johnson, a registrar, who would give him, not a certificate ofregistration, but a ballot, indorsed with the voter’s name and Johnson’ssignature. This ballot was to serve as a certificate and was also to bevoted.[1504]

The result of the voting was: for the constitution, 70,812 votes; againstit, 1005. The 18,000 white votes for the convention had dwindled down to5000 for the constitution. For ratification, 13,550 more votes werenecessary, and the ratification had failed. So General Meade reported. Thereasons for the falling off of the white vote have already been indicated.The black vote fell off also. One cause of this was the chilling of thenegro’s faith in his political leaders, who had made so many promisesabout farms, etc., and had broken them all. Many of the old aristocraticnegroes[Pg 542] would have nothing to do with such leaders as the carpet-baggersand scalawags, and this class and many others also were influenced by thewhites to stay away from the polls. The general absence of respectablewhites at the elections made it easier to convince the old Conservativenegroes.[1505] In two white counties—Dale and Henry—no elections wereheld because there were not enough reconstructionists to act as electionofficials.[1506] Some whites, probably not many, were kept away by threatsof social and business ostracism. Most of the reconstructionists carednothing for such threats, as they could not be injured.[1507]

The Radicals explained the result of the election by asserting that manywhites were registered illegally, foreigners, minors, etc., that thevoters were intimidated by threats of violence, social ostracism, anddischarge from employment; that the voting places were too few and thetime too short in many of the counties; that there was a great storm andthe rivers were flooded, preventing access to the polls in someplaces;[1508] that the Conservatives interfered with the votes, and toreoff that part of the ballot that contained the vote on[Pg 543] the constitution;that many election officials were hostile to reconstruction, and hadturned off 10,000 voters because of slight defects in the registration;that there were not 170,000 voters in the state but only 160,000, asseveral thousand had removed from the state; that in spite of allobstructions the vote for the constitution, if properly counted, was81,000 instead of 70,000, and that there were 120,000 “loyal” voters inthe state; that the ballot-boxes in Lowndes County were stolen, and thatthe returns from Baine, Colbert, and Jones counties had been fraudulentlythrown out;[1509] that General Hayden had especially desired the defeat ofReconstruction, and that he had managed the election in such a way as toenable the “rebels” to gain an apparent victory; and that practically allthe army officers were opposed to the Radical programme, which was nowtrue; and finally, that the attendance of Conservatives as challengers atthe polls in some places was “a means of preventing the full and freeexpression of opinion by the ballot.”[1510]

After a thorough investigation General Meade reported that the electionhad been quiet, and that there had been no disorder of any kind; thatthere had been no frauds in mutilating negroes’ tickets by tearing off thevote for the constitution, and that the other charges of fraud would proveas illusive; that the vote for the governor and other officials was lessthan that for the constitution; and that a more liberal constitution wouldhave commanded a majority of votes. He said, “I am satisfied that theconstitution was lost on its merits;” that the constitution was fairlyrejected by the people, under the law requiring a majority of theregistered voters to cast their ballots for or against, and that thisrejection was based on the merits of the constitution itself was proved bythe fact that out of 19,000 white voters for the convention, there wereonly 5000 for[Pg 544] the constitution; it might also be partially explained bythe fact that the constitutional convention had made nominations to allthe state offices, which ticket was “not acceptable in all respects to theparty favoring reconstruction.”[1511] He recommended that Congressreassemble the convention, which should revise the constitution,eliminating the objectionable features, and again submit it to the people.However, as he afterwards stated, “my advice was not followed.” The toneof Meade’s report showed that he did not expect Congress to refuse toadmit the state. Indeed, at times the staid general seemed almost toapproach something like disrespect toward that highly honorable body.

When the Radicals began to make an outcry about fraud, Meade complainedthat they were not specific in their charges, and told the leaders to gettheir proofs ready. The state Radical Executive Committee issuedinstructions for all Radicals to collect affidavits concerning high water,storms, obstruction, fraud, violence, intimidation, and discharge, andsend them to the Radical agents at Washington, who were urging theadmission of the state, notwithstanding the rejection of the constitution.They refused to send these reports to Meade, who was not in sympathy withthe Radical programme. Many of what purported to be affidavits of mendischarged from employment for voting were printed for the use ofCongress. Most of them were signed by marks and gave no particulars. Theusual statement was “for the reason of voting at recent election.”[1512]

[Pg 545]TheNationalist gave fifteen flippant reasons why the constitution hadfailed, and then asserted that the state was sure to be admitted in spiteof the failure of ratification. Agents were sent to[Pg 546] Washington to urgethe acceptance by Congress of the constitution and Radical ticket. Atfirst all, however, were not hopeful. There was a general exodus of theless influential carpet-baggers from the state, such a marked movementthat the negroes afterwards complained of it. Some returned North; otherswent to assist in the reconstruction of other states.[1513]

C. C. Sheets, a native Radical, speaking of the failure of theratification, declared that a year earlier the state might have beenreconstructed according to the plan of Congress, but a horde of armyofficers sent South, followed by a train of office-seekers, went intopolitics, and these “with the help of a class here at home even less fitand less honest,” if possible, had disgusted every one.[1514]

While waiting for Congress to act, the so-called legislature met, February17, 1868, at the office of theSentinel in Montgomery. Applegate, thecandidate for lieutenant-governor, called the “Senate” to order, andharangued them as follows: Congress would recognize whatever they mightdo; it was absolutely necessary for the assembly to act before Congress,as the life of the nation was in danger and there was a pressing“necessity for two Senators from Alabama to sit upon the trial of thatrenegade and traitor, Andrew Johnson”; he stated that General Meade was inconsultation with them and would sustain them;[1515] if protection werenecessary, Major-General Dustan[1516] could, at short notice, surroundthem with several regiments of loyal militia.[1517] They attempted totransact some business, but the[Pg 547] unfriendly attitude of Meade and Haydendiscouraged them; and they disbanded, to await the action of Congress.

February 17, 1868, a few days after the election, Bingham of Ohiointroduced a joint resolution in the House to admit Alabama with its newconstitution.[1518] The Radicals of Alabama assumed that it was only aquestion of a short time before they would be in power. On March 10,Stevens, from the Committee on Reconstruction, reported a bill for theadmission of Alabama. During the lengthy debate which followed, theRadical leaders undertook to show that when Congress passed the law ofMarch 23, it did not know what it was doing, and that therefore the lawcould not now be considered binding. The carpet-bag stories about fraudsin the election, icy rivers, etc., were again told. During the debates itdeveloped that Beck of Kentucky and Brooks of New York, the minoritymembers of the Committee on Reconstruction, had not been notified of themeeting of the committee, which was called to meet at the house ofStevens, and hence knew nothing of the report until it was printed. Theymade strong speeches against the bill and introduced the protests of thedelegates to the convention, the reports of Meade, and the petition of thewhites of the state against the proposed measure, and on March 17introduced the minority report, which had to be read as part of a speechin order to get it printed. It was a summary of the Conservativeobjections to the constitution. For the moment Thaddeus Stevens seemed tobe convinced that it was not desirable to admit Alabama. “After a fullexamination,” he said, “of the final returns from Alabama, which we hadnot got when this bill was drawn, I am satisfied, for one, that to force avote on this bill and admit the state against our own law, when there is amajority of twenty odd thousand against the constitution, would not bedoing such justice in legislation as will be expected by the people.” Sothe measure was withdrawn.[1519] But the next day Farnsworth of Illinoisreported a new bill providing[Pg 548] for the admission of Alabama. He arguedthat 7000 whites had voted for the constitution, and that 20,000 whitesbelonged to the Union Leagues in the state,[1520] and that only by fraudhad the constitution been defeated. Kelly of Pennsylvania, of “Mobileriot” fame, said that “the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” Hewas convinced that typographical and clerical errors in the voting listshad turned thousands away.[1521] Spalding of Ohio proposed a substitute,which was adopted, making the new constitution the fundamental law for aprovisional government, and placing in office the candidates who werevoted for. The legislature was to be convened to adopt amendments to theconstitution and resubmit the latter to the people. The bill passed theHouse, but was not taken up in the Senate.[1522] In the debates on thisbill Paine of Wisconsin said: “These men [the whites] during the war weretraitors. They have no right to vote or to hold office, and for thepresent this dangerous power is most rightfully withheld.” Williams, aRepublican of Pennsylvania, objected to accepting a negro minoritygovernment. Stevens closed the debate, saying that Congress had passed anact “authorizing Alabama and other waste territories of the United Statesto form constitutions so as, if possible, to make them fit to associatewith civilized communities”; the House had foreseen difficulties aboutrequiring a majority to vote, and had passed an act to remedy it, but theSenate had let it lie for two months; he knew that he was outside theconstitution, which did not provide for such a case; he wanted to shacklethe whites in order to protect the blacks.[1523]

The effect of establishing a new provisional government on the basis ofthe constitution just rejected would be to require a new registration anddisfranchisement according to that instrument. The proposal pleased thelocal Radicals very much. This plan was probably preferred by all thewould-be officers except those who had been candidates for Congress andwho could not sit until the state was admitted. TheNationalist[1524]said: “If we can get the offices, we, and not a ‘military saphead’[Meade], can conduct the next election; we can by the Spalding bill getthe government, rule the[Pg 549] state as long as we please provisionally, and,when satisfied we can hold our own against the rebels, submit theconstitution to a vote. We must wait until sure of a Republican majorityif we have to wait five years.”[1525] The carpet-baggers were in highhope. A girl applied to one of the managers of the Montgomery “soup house”for a ticket for ten days, saying that she would not need it longer, asher father by the end of that time would be a judge.[1526]

The whites began to close ranks, to leave no room in their midst for thewhite man of the North, the ruler and ally of the black. Social andbusiness ostracism was declared against all who should take office underthe Reconstruction Acts. They were turned away from respectablehotels.[1527]

TheIndependent Monitor, now the head and front of opposition toReconstruction, gave the following advice to the white people, who,however, did not need it: “We reiterate the advice hitherto offered tothose of our southern people who are not ashamed to honor the service ofthe ‘lost cause’ and the memory of their kith and kin whose lives werenobly laid down to save the survivors from a subjection incomparably moretolerable in contemplation than in realization. That advice is not totouch a loyal leaguer’s hand; taste not of a loyal leaguer’s hospitality;handle not a loyal leaguer’s goods. Oust him socially; break himpecuniarily; ignore him politically; kick him contagiously; hang himlegally; or lynch him clandestinely—provided he becomes a nuisance asClaus or Wilson.”[1528]

The Conservative Executive Committee addressed a memorial to Congressagainst the proposed measures. In conclusion the address stated: “We arebeset by secret oath-bound political societies, our character and conductare systematically misrepresented to you and in the newspapers of theNorth; the intelligent and impartial administration of just laws isobstructed; industry and enterprise are paralyzed by the fears of thewhite men and the expectation of the black that Alabama will soon bedelivered over to the rule of the[Pg 550] latter; and many of our people are, forthese reasons, leaving the homes they love for other and stranger lands.Continue over us, if you will, your own rule by the sword. Send down amongus honorable and upright men of your own people, of the race to which youand we belong, and, ungracious, contrary to wise policy and theinstitutions of the country, and tyrannous as it will be, no hand will beraised among us to resist by force their authority. But do not, we imploreyou, abdicate your rule over us, by transferring us to the blightingbrutality and unnatural dominion of an alien and inferior race.”[1529]

The proposition to establish a Radical provisional government for Alabamawas forgotten in the Senate during the progress of the impeachment trial,and on May 11 Stevens introduced a bill providing for the admission ofGeorgia, Louisiana, North and South Carolina, and Alabama.[1530] A motionby Woodbridge of Vermont to strike Alabama from the bill was lost by avote of 60 to 74. Farnsworth said it was nonsense to make any distinctionbetween Alabama and the other states. The bill passed the House on May 14,by a vote of 109 to 35, and went to the Senate. On June 5 Trumbull fromthe Judiciary Committee reported the bill with Alabama struck out becausethe constitution had not been ratified according to law. Wilson ofMassachusetts moved to insert Alabama in the bill. Alabama, he said, wasthe strongest of all the states for the policy of Congress, and it wouldbe unjust to leave her out. Sherman repeated the old charges of fraud inthe elections, which had been contradicted by General Meade, from whosereport Sherman quoted garbled extracts. It was absolutely necessary, hesaid, to admit Alabama in order to settle the Fourteenth Amendment beforethe presidential election. Hendricks of Indiana objected because ofproscriptive clauses in the constitution, which would disfranchise from25,000 to 30,000 men. Pomeroy of Kansas said it would be “a cruel thing”to admit the other states and leave out Alabama. Morton of Indiana was ofthe opinion that the bill with Alabama in it would pass over thePresident’s veto as well as without it, and said[Pg 551] that Congress must waivethe condition and admit Alabama.[1531] The Radicals of Alabama kept thewires hot sending telegrams to their agents in Washington and to Wilsonand Sumner, urging the inclusion of Alabama in the bill. On June 9 theSenate in Committee of the Whole amended the bill as reported from theCommittee on the Judiciary by inserting Alabama. On this the vote stood 22to 21. The next day Senator Trumbull moved to strike out Alabama, but themotion was lost by a vote of 24 to 16. So the report of the JudiciaryCommittee was revised by the insertion of Alabama, and the bill passed bya vote of 31 to 5, 18 not voting.[1532] The House Committee onReconstruction recommended concurrence in certain amendments that theSenate had made, which was done by a vote of 111 to 28, 50 not voting. Thebill was then signed by the Speaker and the Presidentpro tem. of theSenate and sent to the President.[1533] The President returned the billwith his veto on June 25. “In the case of Alabama,” he said, “it violatesthe plighted faith of Congress by forcing upon that state a constitutionwhich was rejected by the people, according to the express terms of an actof Congress requiring that a majority of the registered electors shouldvote upon the question of its ratification.”[1534] The bill was at oncepassed by both houses over the President’s veto, in the Senate by a voteof 35 to 8, 13 not voting, and in the House by a vote of 108 to 31, 53 notvoting.[1535]

The bill as passed declared that Alabama with the other southern stateshad adopted by large majorities the constitutions recently framed, andthat as soon as each state by its legislature should ratify the FourteenthAmendment it should be admitted to representation upon the fundamentalcondition “that the constitution of neither of said states shall ever beso amended or changed as to deprive any citizen or class of citizens ofthe United States of the right to vote in said state who are entitled tovote by the constitution thereof herein recognized” except as a punishmentfor crime.[1536] As soon as the[Pg 552] new legislature should meet and ratifythe Fourteenth Amendment, the officers of the state were to beinaugurated. No one was to hold office who was disqualified by theproposed Fourteenth Amendment.[1537]

June 29, Grant wrote to Meade that to avoid question he should remove thepresent provisional governor and install the governor andlieutenant-governor elect, this to take effect at the date of conveningthe legislature. So in July, by general order, Governor Patton was removedand Smith and Applegate installed. After the ratification of theFourteenth Amendment by the legislature, Meade directed all provisionalofficials to yield to their duly elected successors. The militarycommanders transferred state property, papers, and prisoners to the stateauthorities.[1538] And for six years the carpet-bagger, scalawag, andnegro, with the aid of the army, misruled the state.

The members of Congress returned from their migrations[1539] and presentedthemselves with their credentials to Congress.[1540] Brooks of New Yorkobjected to the admission of these men on the ground that they were therein violation of the act of Congress in force at the time of the election.But on July 21 all were admitted by a vote of 125 to 33, 52 not voting.After taking the iron-clad test oath, they took their seats among thenation’s lawmakers. Spencer and Warner were admitted to the Senate on July25, and also took the iron-clad oath.[1541]

CHAPTER XVI

In order to understand the absolute control exercised over the blacks bythe alien adventurers, as shown in the elections of 1867-1868, it will benecessary to examine the workings of the secret oath-bound societypopularly known as the “Loyal League.” The iron discipline of this orderwielded by a few able and unscrupulous whites held together the ignorantnegro masses for several years and prevented any control by theconservative whites.

The Union League movement began in the North in 1862, when the outlook forthe northern cause was gloomy. The moderate policy of the Washingtongovernment had alienated the extremists; the Confederate successes in thefield and Democratic successes in the elections, the active opposition ofthe “Copperheads” to the war policy of the administration, the rise of thesecret order of the Knights of the Golden Circle in the West opposed tofurther continuance of the war, the strong southern sympathies of thehigher classes of society, the formation of societies for thedissemination of Democratic and southern literature, the low ebb ofloyalty to the government in the North, especially in the cities—allthese causes resulted in the formation of Union Leagues throughout theNorth.[1542] This movement began among those associated in the work of theUnited States Sanitary Commission. These people were important neither aspoliticians nor as warriors, and they had sufficient leisure to observethe threatening state of society about them. “Loyalty must be organized,consolidated, and made effective,” they declared. The movement, firstorganized in Ohio, took effective form in Philadelphia in the fall of1862, and in December of that year the Union League of Philadelphia wasorganized. The members were[Pg 554] pledged to uncompromising and unconditionalloyalty to the Union, the complete subordination of political ideasthereto, and the repudiation of any belief in states’ rights. The New YorkUnion League Club followed the example of the Philadelphia League early in1863, and adopted, word for word, its declaration of principles.[1543]Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, Baltimore, and other cities followed suit, andsoon Leagues modelled after the Philadelphia plan and connected by a loosebond of federation were formed in every part of the North. These Leagueswere social as well as political in their aims. The “Loyal NationalLeague” of New York, an independent organization with thirty branches, wasabsorbed by the Union League, and the “Loyal Publication Society” of NewYork, which also came under its control, was used to disseminate theproper kind of political literature.

As the Federal armies went South, the Union League spread among thedisaffected element of the southern people.[1544] Much interest was takenin the negro, and negro troops were enlisted through its efforts. Teacherswere sent South in the wake of the armies to teach the negroes, and to usetheir influence in securing negro enlistments. In this and in similar workthe League acted in coöperation with the Freedmen’s Aid Societies, theDepartment of Negro Affairs, and later with the Freedmen’s Bureau. Withthe close of the war it did not cease to take an active interest in thingspolitical. It was one of the earliest bodies to declare for negro suffrageand white disfranchisement,[1545] and this declaration was made repeatedlyduring the three years following the war, when it was continued as a kindof Radical bureau in the Republican party to control the negro vote in theSouth. Its agents were always in the lobbies of Congress, clamoring forextreme measures; the Reconstruction policy of Congress was heartilyindorsed and the President condemned. Its headquarters were in New York,and it was represented in each state by “State Members.” John Keffer ofPennsylvania was “State Member” for Alabama.

[Pg 555]Part of the work of the League was to distribute campaign literature, andmost of the violent pamphlets on Reconstruction questions will be found tohave the Union League imprint. The New York League alone circulated about70,000 publications,[1546] while the Philadelphia Union League farsurpassed this record, circulating 4,500,000 political pamphlets[1547]within eight years. The literature printed consisted largely of accountsof “southern atrocities.” The conclusions of Carl Schurz’s report on thecondition of the South justified, the League historian claims, thepublication and dissemination of such choice stories as these: A preacherin Bladon (Springs), Alabama, said that the woods in Choctaw County stunkwith dead negroes. Some were hanged to trees and left to rot; others wereburned alive.

It is quite likely that such Leagues as those in New York andPhiladelphia, after the first year or two of Reconstruction, grew awayfrom the strictly political “Union League of America” and became more andmore social clubs. The spiritual relationship was close, however, and inpolitical belief they were one. The eminently respectable members of theUnion Leagues of Philadelphia and New York had little in common with thesouthern Leagues except radicalism. Southern “Unionists” who went Northwere entertained by the Union League and their expenses paid. In 1866 thePhiladelphia convention of southern “Unionists” was taken in hand by theLeague, carried to New York, and entertained at the expense of the latter.In 1867 several of the Leagues sent delegates to Virginia to reconcile thetwo warring factions of Radicals. The formation of the Union League amongthe southern “Unionists” was extended throughout the South within a fewmonths of the close of the war, but a “discreet secrecy” was maintained.In Alabama it was easy for the disaffected whites, especially those whohad been connected with the Peace Society, to join the order, which soonincluded Peace Society men, “loyalists,” deserters, and manyanti-administration Confederates. The most respectable element consisted[Pg 556]of a few old Whigs who had an intense hatred of the Democrats, and whowanted to crush them by any means. In this stage the League was strongestin the white counties of the hill and mountain country.[1548]

Even before the end of the war the Federal officials had established theorganization in Huntsville, Athens, Florence, and other places in northAlabama. It was understood to be a very respectable order in the North,and General Burke, and later General Crawford, with other Federal officersand a few of the so-called “Union” men of north Alabama, formed lodges ofwhat was called indiscriminately the Union or Loyal League. At first butfew native whites were members, as the native “unionist” was not exactlythe kind of person the Federal officers cared to associate with more thanwas necessary. But with the close of hostilities and the establishment ofarmy posts over the state, the League grew rapidly. The civilians whofollowed the army, the Bureau agents, the missionaries, and the northernschool-teachers were gradually admitted. The native “unionists” came in asthe bars were lowered, and with them that element of the population which,during the war, especially in the white counties, had become hostile tothe Confederate administration. The disaffected politicians saw in theorganization an instrument which might be used against the politicians ofthe central counties, who seemed likely to remain in control of affairs.At this time there were no negro members, but it has been estimated thatin 1865, 40 per cent of the white voting population in north Alabamajoined the order, and that for a year or more there was an average of halfa dozen “lodges” in each county north of the Black Belt. Later, the localchapters were called “councils.” There was a State Grand Council withheadquarters at Montgomery, and a Grand National Council with headquartersin New York. The Union League of America was the proper designation forthe entire organization.

The white members were few in the Black Belt counties and[Pg 557] even in thewhite counties of south Alabama, where one would expect to find them. Insouth Alabama it was disgraceful for a person to have any connection withthe Union League; and if a man was a member, he kept it secret. To thisday no one will admit that he belonged to that organization. So far as thenative members were concerned, they cared little about the originalpurposes of the order, but hoped to make it the nucleus of a politicalorganization; and the northern civilian membership, the Bureau agents,preachers, and teachers, and other adventurers, soon began to see otherpossibilities in the organization.[1549]

From the very beginning the preachers, teachers, and Bureau agents hadbeen accustomed to hold regular meetings of the negroes and to makespeeches to them. Not a few of these whites expected confiscation, or somesuch procedure, and wanted a share in the division of the spoils. Somebegan to talk of political power for the negro. For various purposes, goodand bad, the negroes were, by the spring of 1866, widely organized bytheir would-be leaders, who, as controllers of rations, religion, andschools, had great influence over them. It was but a slight change toconvert these informal gatherings into lodges, or councils, of the UnionLeague. After the refusal of Congress to recognize the Restoration aseffected by the President, the guardians of the negro in the state beganto lay their plans for the future. Negro councils were organized, andnegroes were even admitted to some of the white councils which were undercontrol of the northerners. The Bureau gathering of Colonel John B. Callisof Huntsville was transformed into a League. Such men as the Rev. A. S.Lakin, Colonel Callis, D. H. Bingham, Norris, Keffer, and Strobach, allaliens of questionable character from the North, went about organizing thenegroes during 1866 and 1867. Nearly all of them were elected to office bythe support of the League. The Bureau agents were the directors of thework, and in the immediate vicinity of the Bureau offices they themselvesorganized the councils. To distant plantations and to country districtsagents were sent to gather in the embryo citizens.[1550] In[Pg 558] everycommunity in the state where there was a sufficient number of negroes theLeague was organized, sooner or later.[1551] In north Alabama the work wasdone before the spring of 1867; in the Black Belt and in south Alabama itwas not until the end of 1867 that the last negroes were gathered into thefold.

The effect upon the white membership of the admission of negroes wasremarkable. With the beginning of the manipulation of the negro by hisnorthern friends, the native whites began to desert the order, and whennegroes were admitted for the avowed purpose of agitating for politicalrights and for political organization afterwards, the native whites leftin crowds. Where there were many blacks, as in Talladega, nearly all ofthe whites dropped out. Where the blacks were not numerous and had notbeen organized, more of the whites remained, but in the hill countiesthere was a general exodus.[1552] Professor Miller estimates that five percent of the white voters in Talladega County, where there were manynegroes, and 25 per cent of those in Cleburne County, where there were fewnegroes, remained in the order for several years. The same proportionwould be nearly correct for the other counties of north Alabama. Wherethere were few or no negroes, as in Winston and Walker counties, the whitemembership held out better, for in those counties there was no fear ofnegro domination, and if the negro voted, no matter what were hispolitics, he would be controlled by the native whites. What the negrowould do in the black counties, the whites in the hill counties cared butlittle. The sprinkling of white members served to furnish leaders for theignorant blacks, but the character of these men was extremelyquestionable. The native element has been called “lowdown, trifling whitemen,” and the alien element “itinerant, irresponsible, worthless white menfrom the North.” Such was the opinion of the respectable white people, andthe later history of the Leaguers[Pg 559] has not improved theirreputation.[1553] In the black counties there were practically no whitemembers in the rank and file. The alien element, probably more able thanthe scalawag, had gained the confidence of the negroes, and soon hadcomplete control over them. The Bureau agents saw that the Freedmen’sBureau could not survive much longer, and they were especially active inlooking out for places for the future. With the assistance of the negrothey had hoped to pass into offices in the state and county governments.

One thing about the League that attracted the negro was the mysterioussecrecy of the meetings, the weird initiation ceremony that made him feelfearfully good from his head to his heels, the imposing ritual and thesongs. The ritual, it is said, was not used in the North; it was probablyadopted for the particular benefit of the African. The would-be Leaguerwas told in the beginning of the initiation that the emblems of the orderwere the altar, the Bible, the Declaration of Independence, theConstitution of the United States, the flag of the Union, censer, sword,gavel, ballot-box, sickle, shuttle, anvil, and other emblems of industry.He was told that the objects of the order were to preserve liberty, toperpetuate the Union, to maintain the laws and the Constitution, to securethe ascendency of American institutions, to protect, defend, andstrengthen all loyal men and members of the Union League of America in allrights of person and property,[1554] to demand the elevation of labor, toaid in the education of laboring men, and to teach the duties of Americancitizenship. This sounded well and was impressive, and at this point thenegro was always willing to take an oath of secrecy, after which he wasasked to swear with a solemn oath to support the principles of theDeclaration of Independence, to pledge himself to resist all attempts tooverthrow the United States, to strive for the maintenance of liberty,elevation of labor, education of all people in the duties of[Pg 560] citizenship,to practise friendship and charity to all of the order, and to support forelection or appointment to office only such men as were supporters ofthese principles and measures.[1555]

The council then sang “Hail Columbia” and “The Star-Spangled Banner,”after which an official harangued the candidate, saying that, though thedesigns of traitors had been thwarted, there were yet to be securedlegislative triumphs with complete ascendency of the true principles ofpopular government, equal liberty, elevation and education, and theoverthrow at the ballot-box of the old oligarchy of political leaders.After prayer by the chaplain, the room was darkened, the “fire ofliberty”[1556] lighted, the members joined hands in a circle around thecandidate, who was made to place one hand on the flag and, with the otherraised, swore again to support the government, to elect true Union men tooffice, etc. Then placing his hand on a Bible, for the third time he sworeto keep his oath, and repeated after the president “the Freedman’sPledge”: “To defend and perpetuate freedom and union, I pledge my life, myfortune, and my sacred honor. So help me God!” Another song was sung, thepresident charged the members in a long speech concerning the principlesof the order, and the marshal instructed the members in the signs. To passone’s self as a Leaguer, the “Four L’s” were given: (1) with right handraised to heaven, thumb and third finger touching ends over palm,pronounce “Liberty”; (2) bring the hand down over the shoulder and say“Lincoln”; (3) drop the hand open at the side and say “Loyal”; (4) catchthe thumb in the vest or in the waistband and pronounce “League.”[1557]This ceremony of initiation was a most effective means of impressing thenegro, and of controlling him through his love and fear of the secret,mysterious, and midnight mummery. An oath taken in daylight would beforgotten[Pg 561] before the next day; not so an oath taken in the dead of nightunder such impressive circumstances. After passing through the ordeal, thenegro usually remained faithful.

In each populous precinct there was at first one council of the League. Ineach town or city there were two councils, one for the whites, andanother, with white officers, for the blacks.[1558] The council met once aweek, sometimes oftener, and nearly always at night, in the negro churchesor schoolhouses.[1559] Guards, armed with rifles and shotguns, werestationed about the place of meeting in order to keep away intruders, andto prevent unauthorized persons from coming within forty yards. Members ofsome councils made it a practice to attend the meetings armed as if forbattle. In these meetings the negroes met to hear speeches by the would-bestatesmen of the new régime. Much inflammatory advice was given them bythe white speakers; they were drilled into the belief that their interestsand those of the southern whites could not be the same, and passion,strife, and prejudice were excited in order to solidify the negro raceagainst the white, thus preventing political control by the latter. Manyof the negroes still had hopes of confiscation and division of property,and in this they were encouraged by the white leaders. Professor Millerwas told[1560] by respectable white men, who joined the order before thenegroes were admitted and who left when they became members, that thenegroes were taught in these meetings that the only way to have peace andplenty, to get “the forty acres and a mule,” would be to kill some of theleading whites in each community as a warning to others. The council inTuscumbia received advice from Memphis to use the torch, that the blackswere at war with the white race. The advice was taken. Three men went infront of the council as an advance guard, three followed with coal-oil[Pg 562]and fire, and others guarded the rear. The plan was to burn the wholetown, but first one negro and then another insisted on having some whiteman’s house spared because “he is a good man.” The result was that noresidences were burned, and they compromised by burning the FemaleAcademy. Three of the leaders were lynched.[1561] The general belief ofthe whites was that the objects of the order were to secure politicalpower, to bring about on a large scale the confiscation of the property ofConfederates,[1562] and while waiting for this to appropriate all kinds ofportable property. Chicken-houses, pig-pens, vegetable gardens, andorchards were invariably visited by members when returning from themidnight conclaves. This evil became so serious and so general that manybelieved it to be one of the principles of the order. Everything of valuehad to be locked up for safe-keeping.

As soon as possible after the war each negro had supplied himself with agun and a dog as badges of freedom. As a usual thing, he carried them tothe League meetings, and nothing was more natural than that the negroesshould begin drilling at night. Armed squads would march in militaryformation to the place of assemblage, there be drilled, and after theclose of the meeting, would march along the roads shouting, firing theirguns, making great boasts and threats against persons whom they disliked.If the home of such a person happened to be on the roadside, the negroesusually made a practice of stopping in front of the house and treating theinmates to unlimited abuse, firing off their guns in order to waken them.Later military parades in the daytime were much favored. Several hundrednegroes would march up and down the roads and streets, and amusethemselves by boasts, threats, and abuse of whites, and by shoving whitesoff the sidewalks or out of the road. But, on the whole, there was verylittle actual violence done the whites,—much less than might have beenexpected. That such was the case was due, not to any[Pg 563] sensible teachingsof the leaders, but to the fundamental good nature of the blacks, who weregenerally content with being impudent.[1563]

The relations between the races, with exceptional cases, continued to besomewhat friendly until 1867-1868. In the communities where the League andthe Bureau were established, the relations were soonest strained. For awhile in some localities, before the advent of the League, and in otherswhere the Bureau was conducted by native magistrates, the negroes lookedto their old masters for guidance and advice, and the latter, for the goodof both races, were most eager to retain a moral control over the blacks.Barbecues and picnics were arranged by the whites for the blacks, speecheswere made, good advice given, and all promised to go well. Sometimes thenegroes themselves would arrange the festival and invite prominent whitesto be present, for whom a separate table attended by the best waiterswould be reserved; and after dinner there would be speaking by both whitesand blacks. With the organization of the League, the negroes grew morereserved, and finally unfriendly to the whites. The League alone, however,was not responsible for the change. The League and the Bureau had to someextent the same personnel, and it is impossible to distinguish clearlybetween the work of the League and that of the Bureau. In many ways theLeague was simply the political side of the Bureau. The preaching andteaching missionaries were also at work. On the other hand, among thelower classes of whites, a hostile feeling quickly sprang to oppose thefeeling of the blacks.

When the campaign grew exciting, the discipline of the order was used toprevent the negroes from attending Democratic meetings or hearingDemocratic speakers. The League leaders even went farther and forbade theattendance of the blacks at Radical political meetings where the speakerswere not indorsed by the League. Almost invariably the scalawag dislikedthe Leaguer, black or white, and often the League proscribed the former aspolitical teachers. Judge Humphreys was threatened with political deathunless he joined the League. This he refused to do, as did most whiteswhere there were many negroes. All Republicans in good standing had tojoin the League. Judge (later Governor) D. P. Lewis was a member[Pg 564] for ashort while, but he soon became disgusted and published a denunciation ofthe League. Nicholas Davis and J. C. Bradley, both scalawags, wereforbidden by the League to speak in the court-house at Huntsville becausethey were not members of the order. At a Republican mass-meeting a whiterepublican wanted to make a speech. The negroes voted that he should notbe allowed to speak because he was “opposed to the Loyal League.” He wastreated to abuse and threats of violence. He then went to another place tospeak, but was followed by the crowd, which refused to allow him to sayanything. The League was the machine of the Radical party, and allcandidates had to be governed by its edicts. Nominations to office wereusually made in its meetings.[1564]

Every negro wasex colore a member or under the control of the League.In the opinion of the League, white Democrats were bad enough, but blackDemocrats were not to be tolerated. The first rule was that all blacksmust support the Radical programme. It was possible in some cases for anegro to refrain from taking an active part in political affairs. He mighteven fail to vote. But it was martyrdom for a black to be a Democrat; thatis, try to follow his old master in politics. The whites, in many cases,were forced to advise their faithful black friends to vote the Radicalticket that they might escape mistreatment. There were numbers of negroes,as late as 1868, who were inclined to vote with the whites, and to bringthem into line all the forces of the League were brought to bear. Theywere proscribed in negro society, and expelled from negro churches, norwould the women “proshay” (appreciate) a black Democrat. The negro man whohad Democratic inclinations was sure to find that influence was beingbrought to bear upon his dusky sweetheart or wife to cause him to see theerror of his ways, and persistent adherence to the white party wouldresult in the loss of her. The women were converted to Radicalism longbefore the men, and almost invariably used their influence strongly forthe purpose of the League. If moral suasion failed to cause the delinquentto see the light, other methods were used. Threats were common from thefirst and often sufficed, and fines were levied by the League onrecalcitrant members. In case of the more stubborn, a sound beating[Pg 565] wasusually effective to bring about a change of heart. The offending darkywas “bucked and gagged,” and the thrashing administered, the suffererbeing afraid to complain of the way he was treated. There were many casesof aggravated assault, and a few instances of murder. By such methods theorganization succeeded in keeping under its control almost the entirenegro population.[1565] The discipline over the active members wasstringent. They were sworn to obey the orders of the officials. A negronear Clayton disobeyed the “Cap’en” of the League and was tied up by thethumbs; and another for a similar offence was “bucked” and whipped. Acandidate having been nominated by the League, it was made the duty ofevery member to support him actively. Failure to do so resulted in a fineor other more severe punishment, and members that had been expelled werestill under the control of the officials.[1566]

The effects of the teachings of the League orators were soon seen in theincreasing insolence and defiant attitude of some of the blacks, in thegreater number of stealings, small and large, in the boasts, demands, andthreats made by the more violent members of the order. Most of them,however, behaved remarkably well under the circumstances, but the fewunbearable ones were so much more in evidence that the suffering whiteswere disposed to class all blacks together as unbearable. Some of themethods of the Loyal League were similar to those of the later Ku KluxKlan. Anonymous warnings were sent to the obnoxious individuals, houseswere burned, notices were posted at night in public places and on thedoors of persons who had incurred the hostility of the League.[1567] Inorder to destroy the influence of the whites where kindly relations stillexisted, an “exodus order” was issued[Pg 566] through the League, directing allmembers to leave their old homes and obtain work elsewhere. This was veryeffective in preventing control by the better class of whites. Some of theblacks were loath to leave their old homes, but to remonstrances from thewhites the usual reply was: “De word done sont to de League. We got togo.”[1568]

In Bullock County, near Perote, a council of the League was organizedunder the direction of a negro emissary, who proceeded to assume thegovernment of the community. A list of crimes and punishments was adopted,a court with various officials established, and during the night allnegroes who opposed them were arrested. But the black sheriff and hisdeputy were arrested by the civil authorities. The negroes then organizedfor resistance, flocked into Union Springs, the county seat, andthreatened to exterminate the whites and take possession of the county.Their agents visited the plantations and forced the laborers to join themby showing orders purporting to be from General Swayne, giving them theauthority to kill all who resisted them. Swayne sent out detachments oftroops and arrested fifteen of the ringleaders, and the Perote governmentcollapsed.[1569]

When first organized in the Black Belt, and before native whites wereexcluded from membership, numbers of whites joined the League uponinvitation in order to ascertain its objects, to see if mischief wereintended toward the whites, and to control, if possible, the negroes inthe organization. Most of these became disgusted and withdrew, or wereexpelled on account of their politics. In Marengo County several whiteDemocrats joined the League at McKinley in order to keep down theexcitement aroused by other councils, to counteract the evil influences ofalien emissaries, and to protect the women of the community, in which butfew men were left after the war. These men succeeded in controlling thenegroes and in preventing the discussion of politics in the meetings. TheLeague was made simply a club where the negroes met to receive advice,which was to the effect that they should attend strictly to their ownaffairs and vote without reference to any secret organization. Finally,they were advised to withdraw from the order.[1570]

[Pg 567]For two years, 1867-1869, the League was the machine in the Radical party,and its leaders formed the “ring” that controlled party action.Nominations for office were regularly made by the local and statecouncils. It is said that there were stormy times in the councils whenthere were more carpet-baggers than offices to be filled. The defeatedcandidate was apt to run as an independent, and in order to be electedwould sell himself to the whites. This practice resulted in a weakening ofthe influence of the machine, as the members were sworn to support theregular nominee, and the negroes believed that the terrible penaltieswould be inflicted upon the political traitor. The officers would go amongthe negroes and show their commissions, which they pretended were ordersfrom General Swayne or General Grant for the negroes to vote forthem.[1571] A political catechism of questions and answers meant to teachloyalty to the Radical party was prepared in Washington and sent out amongthe councils, to be used in the instruction of negro voters.[1572]

After it was seen that existing political institutions were to beoverturned, the white councils and, to a certain extent, the negrocouncils became simply associations for those training for leadership inthe new party soon to be formed in the state by act of Congress. The fewwhites who were in control did not care to admit more white members, asthere might be too many to share in the division of the spoils. Hence wefind that terms of admission were made more stringent, and, especiallyafter the passage of the Reconstruction Acts, in March, 1867, manyapplicants were rejected. The alien element was in control of the League.The result was that where the blacks were numerous the largest plums fellto the carpet-baggers. The negro leaders,—politicians, preachers, andteachers,—trained in the League, acted as subordinates to the whiteleaders in controlling the black population, and they were sent out todrum up the country negroes when elections drew near. They were also givenminor positions when offices were more plentiful than carpet-baggers. Alltogether they received but few offices, which fact was later a cause ofserious complaint.

[Pg 568]The largest white membership of the League was in 1865-1866, and afterthat date it constantly decreased. The largest negro membership was in1867 and 1868. Only the councils in the towns remained active after theelection of 1868, for after the discipline of 1867 and 1868 it was notnecessary to look so closely after the plantation negro, and he became akind of visiting member of the council in the town.[1573] The League as anorganization gradually died out by 1869, except in the largest towns. Manyof them were transformed into political clubs, loosely organized underlocal political leaders. The Ku Klux Klan undoubtedly had much to do withbreaking up the League as an organization. The League as the ally andsuccessor of the Freedmen’s Bureau was one of the causes of the Ku Kluxmovement, because it helped to create the conditions which made such amovement inevitable.[1574] In 1870 the Radical leaders missed the supportformerly given by the League, and an urgent appeal was sent out all overthe State from headquarters in New York by John Keffer and othersadvocating the reëstablishment of the Union Leagues to assist in carryingthe elections of 1870.[1575]

However, before its dissolution, the League had served its purpose. Itmade it possible for a few outsiders to control the negro by alienatingthe races politically, as the Bureau had done socially. It enabled thenegroes to vote as Radicals for several years, when without it they eitherwould not have voted at all or they would have voted as Democrats alongwith their former masters. The order was necessary to the existence of theRadical party in Alabama. No ordinary political organization could havewelded the blacks into a solid party. The Freedmen’s Bureau, which hadmuch influence over the negroes for demoralization, was too weak innumbers to control the negroes in politics. The League finally absorbedthe personnel of the Bureau and inherited its prestige.[1576]

PART VI
CARPET-BAG AND NEGRO RULE

CHAPTER XVII

After the war it was certain that taxation would be higher and expendituregreater, both on account of the ruin caused by the war that now had to berepaired, and because several hundred thousand negroes had been added tothe civic population. Before the war the negro was no expense to the stateand county treasuries; his misdemeanors were punished by his master. Yetneither the ruined court-houses, jails, bridges, roads, etc., nor thecriminal negroes can account for the taxation and expenditure under thecarpet-bag régime. During the three and a half years after the war, underthe provisional governments, most of the burned bridges, court-houses, andother public buildings had been replaced; and there were relatively fewnegroes who were an expense to the carpet-bag government.

After the overthrow of Reconstruction, Governor Houston stated that thetotal value of all property in Alabama in 1860 was $725,000,000, and thatin 1875 it was $160,000,000.[1577] In 1866 the assessed valuation was$123,946,475;[1578] in 1870 it was $156,770,385,[1579] and in 1876, afterten years of Reconstruction, it was $135,535,792.[1580] Before the war thetaxes were paid on real estate and slaves. In 1860 the taxes were paidupon slave property assessed at $152,278,000, and upon real estateassessed at $155,034,000.[1581]

Although there was some property left in 1865, the owners could barely paytaxes on it. The bank capital was gone, and no one had money that wasreceivable for taxes. Consequently, it was impossible to collect generaltaxes, and the state government was obliged to place temporary loans andlevy license taxes. No regular taxes[Pg 572] were collected during 1865 and 1866.The first regular tax was levied in 1866, and was collected in time to bespent by the Reconstruction convention.[1582] For four years after thesurrender the crops were bad, and when called good they were hardly morethan half of the crops of 1860.[1583] However, if no state taxes were paidby the impoverished farmers, there still remained the heavy Federal tax of$12.50 to $15 per bale on all cotton produced.

The rate of taxation before the war on real estate and on slaves wasone-fifth of one per cent. After the war the taxes were raised by theprovisional government to one-fourth of one per cent, and license taxeswere added. The reconstructed government at once raised the rate tothree-fourths of one per cent on property of all descriptions,[1584] andadded new license taxes, more than quadrupling the[Pg 573] former rate. UnderLindsay, the Democratic governor in 1871-1872, the rate was lowered toone-half of one per cent. The assessment of property under Reconstructionwas much more stringent than before. There were only five other statesthat paid a tax rate as high as three-fourths of one per cent, and four ofthese were southern states.[1585]

Before the war the county tax was usually 60 per cent of the state tax,never more. The city and town tax was insignificant. After the war thetown and city taxes were greatly increased, the county tax was invariablyas much as the state tax, and many laws were passed authorizing thecounties to levy additional taxes and to issue bonds. The heaviest burdenswere from local taxation, not from state taxes.[1586] In MontgomeryCounty, the county taxes before the war had never been more than $30,000,and had been paid by slaveholders and owners of real estate. DuringReconstruction the taxes were never less than $90,000, and every oneexcept the negroes had to pay on everything that was property. In fact,the taxes in this county were about quadrupled.[1587] In Marengo Countythe taxes before the war were $12,000; after 1868 they were $25,000 to$30,000, notwithstanding the fact that property had depreciated two-thirdsin value since the war. Land worth formerly $50 to $60 an acre now soldfor $3 to $15.[1588] In Madison County, the state taxes in 1858 were$23,417.63 (gross); in 1870, $66,745.53 (net). The state land tax in 1858in the same county was $7,213.10; in 1870, $51,445.30. Madison Countytaxes were:—

[Pg 574]The general testimony was that the exemption laws relieved from taxationnearly all the negroes, except those who paid taxes before the war.[1589]

[Pg 575]The average yearly cost of state, county, and town administration from1858 to 1860 was $800,000; from 1868 to 1870, the average cost of thestate administration alone was $1,107,080, the cost of state, county, andtown government being at least $3,000,000.[1601] The provisional stategovernment disbursed in the year 1866-1867, $676,476.54, of which only$262,627.47 was spent for state expenses; the remainder was used forschools.[1602]

The greater expenditure of the Reconstruction government can, in smallpart, be explained by the greater number of officials and by the highersalaries paid.[1603]

The administration of Lindsay to a great extent had to pay the debts ofthe former administration. Expenses were curtailed when possible, andnotwithstanding the fact that the indorsed railroads defaulted in 1871,the business of the state was conducted much more economically, and therewere fewer and smaller issues of bonds and[Pg 576] obligations.[1605] The Senate,however, had but one Democrat in it, and the House was only doubtfullyDemocratic, as the Democratic members were young and inexperienced men orelse discontented scalawags.[1606] Consequently, the tide of corruptionand extravagance was merely checked, not stopped. The capitol expenses ofSmith and of Lindsay for a year make an instructive comparison:—

Other expenses, in so far as they were under the control of Lindsay,formed a like contrast.[1607] The cost of holding sessions of thelegislature under the provisional government was $83,856.60 in 1865-1866,and $83,852 in 1866-1867. Under Smith it was about $90,000 per session,and there were three regular sessions the first year. One session(1870-1871) under Lindsay cost $95,442.30, and two under Lewis, 1873-1874,cost $175,661.50 and $166,602.65 respectively.[1608] The cost of keepingstate prisoners for trial was about $50,000 a year. The Reconstructionlegislature cut down expenses by passing a law to liberate criminals of agrade below that of felon, upon their own recognizance.[1609]

The Democrats complained of the way the reconstructionists spent thecontingent fund of the state. This abuse was never so bad as in othersouthern states at the time, but still there was continual stealing on asmall scale. Some examples[1610] may be given: Governor Lewis spent $800on a short visit to New York and Florida;[1611] the governor’s privatesecretary received $21,000 for services rendered[Pg 577] in distributing the“political” bacon in 1874;[1612] the treasurer drew $1200 to pay hisexpenses to Mobile and New York, though he had no business to attend to ineither place, and travelled on roads over which he had passes; ex-GovernorW. H. Smith, when attorney for the Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad, waspaid $500 by the state for services rendered in connection with his ownroad, and the committee was unable to discover the nature of theseservices; the secretary of state charged $952 for signing his name tobonds, though it was his constitutional duty to do so without charge; abill of stationery from Benedict of New York cost $7761.58, when the bidof Joel White of Montgomery on the same order was $4336.54; $50 wasallowed to John A. Bingham (presumably a relative of the treasurer) forsigning enough bonds to purchase a farm for the penitentiary. Suchpurchases as these were common: one refrigerator, $65; one looking-glass,$5; one clothes-brush, $1.50. Very few of the small accounts against thecontingent fund were itemized. In no case were any of them accounted forby proper vouchers. The private secretary of the governor was in the habitof approving and allowing accounts against the contingent fund, even goingso far as to approve the governor’s own accounts. The InvestigatingCommittee said that the private secretary seemed to be the actinggovernor.[1613]

The Florida commissioners, J. L. Pennington, C. A. Miller, and A. J.Walker, who were appointed to negotiate for the cession to Alabama of WestFlorida, spent $10,500, of which Walker, the Democratic member, spent$516, and Miller and Pennington spent the remainder, “according to thebest judgment and discretion” of themselves. They claimed that part of itwas used to entertain the Florida commissioners, and part to influence theelections in West Florida.[1614]

The governor was accused of transferring appropriations. In one case, hedrew out of the treasury $484,346.76, ostensibly to pay the interest onthe public debt, and used it for other purposes. A committee appointed toinvestigate was able to trace all of it except $75,196.56, which sum couldnot be accounted for. The accounts[Pg 578] were carelessly kept. The auditor,treasurer, and governor never seemed to know within a million or two ofdollars what the public debt was. The reports for the period from 1868 to1875 do not show the actual condition of the finances, and the DebtCommission in 1875 was unable to get accurate information from the staterecords, but had to advertise for information from the creditors anddebtors of the state.[1615]

The misrule of the Radicals in Alabama resulted in a general shrinkage invalues after 1867, especially in the Black Belt, where financial andeconomic chaos reigned supreme, and where the carpet-bagger flourishedsupported by the negro votes. Recuperation was impossible until the ruleof the alien was overthrown. This was done in some of the white countiesin 1870. At that date land values were still 60 per cent below those of1860, and the numbers of live stock 40 per cent below. This was duelargely to the condition of the Black Belt counties under the control ofthe Radicals.[1616]

Thousands of landowners were unable to pay the taxes assessed, and theirfarms were sold by the state. TheIndependent Monitor, on March 8, 1870,advertised the sale of 1284 different lots of land (none less than fortyacres) in Tuscaloosa County, and the next week 2548 more were advertisedfor sale, all to pay taxes. Often, it was complained, the tax assessorfailed to notify the people to “give in” their taxes, and thus caused themtrouble. In some cases, where costs and fines were added to the originaltaxes, it amounted to confiscation. In 1871, F. S. Lyon exhibited beforethe Ku Klux Committee a copy of theSouthern Republican containingtwenty-one and a half columns of advertised sales of land lying in therich counties of Marengo, Greene, Perry, and Choctaw.[1617] One Radicaldeclared that he wanted the taxes raised so high that the largelandholders would be compelled to sell their lands, so that he, and otherslike him, could buy.[1618] Property sold for taxes could be redeemed onlyby paying double the amount of the taxes plus the costs. A tax sale deed[Pg 579]was conclusive evidence of legal sale, and was not a subject for thedecision of a court.[1619]

There were hundreds of mortgage sales in every county of the state duringthe Reconstruction period. At these sales everything from land tohousehold furniture was sold. The court-house squares on sale days werefavorite gathering places for the negroes, who came to look on, and atraveller, in 1874, states that in the immense crowds of negroes at thesales there were some who had come a distance of sixty miles.[1620] Eachwinter, from 1869 to 1875, there was an exodus of people to Texas and toSouth America, driven from their homes by mortgages, taxes, the conditionof labor, and corrupt government. Landowners sold their lands for whatthey would bring and went to the West, where there were no negroes, noscalawags, and no carpet-baggers.[1621]

Most of the farmers and tenants of that period were unable to send theirchildren to school and pay tuition. The reconstructed school system failedalmost at the beginning. Consequently, tens of thousands of children grewup ignorant of schools, most of them the children of parents who had hadsome education. Hence the special provision for them in the constitutionof 1901. The first Democratic legislature restricted taxation tothree-fifths of one per cent and local taxation to one-half of one percent. The rates were lowered gradually, until in the early nineties therate was only two-fifths of one per cent. Since that time, the rate hasagain increased until in 1899 the state tax was again three-fourths of oneper cent, the increase being used for Confederate pensions and forschools.

But in addition to the expenditure of the sums raised by extraordinarytaxation, the Reconstruction administration greatly increased the bondeddebt of the state and by mortgaging the future left a heavy burden uponthe people that has as yet been but slightly lessened.

After 1868 it is impossible to ascertain what the public debt of the statewas at any given time until 1875, when the first Democratic legislaturebegan to investigate the condition of the finances.

In 1860 the total debt—state bonds and trust funds—was $5,939,654.87(and the bonded debt was $3,445,000), most of which was due to the failureof the state bank. The payment of the war debt, which amounted to$13,094,732.95, was forbidden by the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1865 thetotal bonded debt with three years’ unpaid interest was $4,065,410, whilethe trust funds amounted to $2,910,000. Governor Patton reissued the bondsto the amount of $4,087,800, and the sixteenth section and the universitytrust funds with unpaid interest raised the total debt, in 1867, to$6,130,910. In July, 1868, when the state went into the hands of thereconstructionists, the total debt was $6,848,400. The provisionalgovernment had been increasing the debt because no taxes were collectedduring 1865 and 1866. Taxes were collected in 1867, but before the end of1868 the debt amounted to $7,904,398.92, and after that date no one knew,nor did the officials seem to care, exactly how large it was.[1622]

State and county and town bonds were issued in reckless haste by theplunderers, but the reports do not show the amounts issued; no correctrecords were kept. The acts of the legislature authorized the governor toissue about $5,000,000 state bonds, besides the direct bonds issued torailroads, which amounted to about $4,000,000 not including interest. Thecounties, besides being authorized to levy heavy additional taxes, werepermitted to issue bonds for various purposes.[1623] A number of acts gavethe counties general permission[Pg 581] to issue bonds, but there are no recordsaccessible of the amounts raised. There were issues of town and countybonds without legislative authorization. This practice is said to havebeen common, but in the chaotic conditions of the time little attentionwas paid to such things and no records were kept.

To dispose of its bonds the state had a large number of financial agentsin the North and abroad. Some of these made no reports at all; othersreported as they pleased. Certain bonds were sold in 1870 by one of thefinancial agents, and two years later the proceeds had not reached thetreasury or been accounted for. In like manner some bond sales wereconducted in 1871 and in 1872.[1624] Not only was no record kept of theissues of direct and indorsed bonds, but no records were kept of thepayment of interest and of the domestic debts of the state. Some of thefinancial agents exercised the authority of auditor and treasurer andsettled any claim that might be presented to them. Some agents, who paidinterest on bonds, returned the cancelled coupons; others did not. InGovernor Lewis’s office $20,000 in coupons were found with nothing to showthat they had been cancelled. One lot of bonds was received with everycoupon attached, yet the interest on these had been paid regularly in NewYork.[1625]

Provision was made for the retirement of all “state money”; but if thetreasury was empty when it came in, it was apt to be reissued[Pg 582] without anyauthority of law. A large sum was returned, but no record was made of it,and it was not destroyed. Later it was discovered among a mass of wastepaper, where any thief might have taken it and put it again intocirculation. One transaction may be cited as an illustration of themanagement of the finances: in 1873 the state owed Henry Clews & Company$299,660.20. Governor Lewis gave his notes (twelve in number) as governor,for the amount, and at the same time deposited with Clews as collateralsecurity $650,000 in state bonds. Clews, when he failed, turned over thegovernor’s notes to the Fourth National Bank of New York, to which he wasindebted. He had already disposed of, so the state claimed, the $650,000in bonds which he held as collateral security; and a year later, accordingto the Debt Commission, he still made a claim against the state for$235,039.43 as a balance due him. Thus a debt of $299,660.20 had grown inthe hands of one of the state agents to $1,184,689.63, besidesinterest.[1626]

In 1872 it was estimated that the general liabilities of the state,counties, and towns amounted to $52,762,000.[1627] The country was floodedwith temporary obligations receivable for public dues, and the taxcollectors substituted these for any coin that might come into theirhands. There was much speculation in the depreciated currency by the stateand county officials. During Lewis’s first year (1873), the state bondswere quoted at 60 per cent, but on November 17, 1873, he reported, “Thisdepartment has been unable to sell for money any of the state bonds duringthe present administration.” He raised money for immediate needs byhypothecation of the state securities. Thus came about the remarkabletransaction with Clews. The state money went down to 60 per cent, then to40 per cent before the elections of 1874, and at one time state bonds soldfor cash at 20 and 21 cents on the dollar.[1628]

After the overthrow of the Radicals in 1874 taxation was limited,expenditures were curtailed, and the administration undertook to make somearrangement in regard to the public debt. For two years the state had beenbankrupt; for nearly four years the railroads aided by the state had beenbankrupt; the debt was enormous, but how large no one knew. A commission,consisting of Governor Houston, Levi W. Lawler, and T. B. Bethea, wasappointed to ascertain and adjust the public debt.[1629] After advertisingin the United States and abroad, the commission found a debt amounting inround numbers to $30,037,563. Some claims were not ascertained; manycreditors or claimants not being heard from and many fraudulent bonds notbeing presented. The debt was divided into four classes: (1) therecognized direct debt, consisting of state bonds (exclusive of bondsissued to railroads), state obligations, state certificates or “Pattonmoney,” unpaid interest and other direct debts of the state,—in all,amounting to $11,677,470; (2) the state bonds issued to railroads underthe law providing for the substitution of $4000 state bonds per mileinstead of $16,000 per mile in indorsed bonds, which in all amounted to$1,156,000; (3) a class of claims of doubtful character, among them thatof Henry Clews & Company, amounting in all to $2,573,093; (4) the indorsedbonds of the state-aided railroads, amounting to $11,597,000 (severalmillions having been retired), and state bonds loaned to railroads,—whichdebt, with the unpaid interest on the same, amounting to $3,024,000, wasin all $14,641,000.

The interest on this debt at the legal rate of 8 per cent would be over$2,000,000, more than twice the total yearly income of the state.[Pg 584] Thecommission and the legislature declared that in the present condition ofthe finances the state could not pay the interest, that it would beseveral years before the state could pay any interest at all. Moreover, itcould not recognize as valid many items in the great debt. Afterconference with the representatives of the more innocent creditors, thedebt was thus adjusted:—

I. (a) The state proposed for the next few years to confine itsattention to paying domestic claims and to retiring state obligations.(b) New bonds were issued to the amount of $7,000,000, to be exchangedfor outstanding state bonds sold by the state tobona fide purchasers.These bonds, known as Class A, were to draw interest for five years at 2per cent, for the next five years at 3 per cent, at 4 per cent for thenext ten years, and thereafter at 5 per cent. These bonds were issued tothe most innocent creditors and constituted the least questionable part ofthe debt.

II. On the $1,192,000 railroad debt of Class Two the state accepted aclear loss of one-half, and issued $596,000 in bonds, known as Class B, tobe exchanged at the rate of one for two. These bonds drew interest at 5per cent.

III. Class Three was the worst of all, and none of the items were at thetime recognized, though the commissioners were authorized to take $310,000of Class A bonds and distribute the amount among the innocent holders ofthe $650,000 bonds sold by Henry Clews when held by him as collateral. Theother Clews claims were emphatically repudiated as fraudulent.

IV. Class Four was more complicated. (a) The state gave $1,000,000 inbonds, Class C, drawing interest at 2 per cent for five years and at 4 percent thereafter, to the holders of the Alabama and Chattanooga firstmortgage indorsed bonds. The state was then relieved of furtherresponsibility. (b) To the holders of the $2,000,000 state bonds issuedto the Alabama and Chattanooga road, and which the commissioners wereinclined to consider fraudulent, the state transferred its lien on theproperty of the Alabama and Chattanooga road, provided the bonds bereturned to the governor.

The claims of the holders of the indorsed bonds of five other railroadswere left for future settlement. They were declared fraudulent, and thestate finally declined to recognize them. The Montgomery and Eufaula roadhad a loan of $300,000 in state bonds and an[Pg 585] indorsement of $960,000. Theroad was sold for $2,129,000, and the state was secured against furtherloss.[1632]

This act of settlement caused the issue of $8,596,000 in bonds. There werebesides several millions more in bonds, state obligations, claims, etc.The Commission reported that the innocent holders of the bonds were veryreasonable in their demands.[1633] Henry Clews declined to give theCommission any information in regard to his agency for the state, but theCommission declared that he had in his possession, or had transferredimproperly, coupons on which interest had been paid, and which he had notsurrendered to the state. They recommended a fresh repudiation of anyclaim founded on Clews’ securities.[1634] The Commission also discoveredthat Josiah Morris & Company of Montgomery had possession of $650,000 instate bonds which they refused to release without legal proceedings.[1635]There is not available sufficient evidence on which to base an account ofthe history of town and county debts. Some towns, unable to pay, gave uptheir charters; others still pay interest on the carpet-bag debt. Foryears in several counties the income was not large enough to pay theinterest on its Reconstruction debt.

After the arrangement of state obligations, the state debt soon rose topar and above. The Democratic administration was economical even tostinginess. Salaries were everywhere reduced 25 per cent, the pay of themembers of the legislature from $6 to $4 per day, and mileage from 40cents to 10 cents.[1636] The people of the state even complained of toomuch economy. It was said that a “deadhead” could not borrow a sheet ofwriting paper in the capitol, nor in a county court-house.

There was not an honest white person who lived in the state duringReconstruction, nor a man, woman, or child, descended from such a person,who did not then suffer or does not still suffer from the[Pg 586] direct resultsof the carpet-bag financiering. Homes were sold or mortgaged; schools wereclosed, and children grew up in ignorance; the taxes for nearly twentyyears were used to pay interest on the debt then piled up. Not until 1899was there a one-mill school tax (until then the interest paid on theReconstruction debt was larger than the school fund), and not until 1891was the state able to care for the disabled Confederate soldiers. The debthas been slightly decreased by the retirement of state obligations, butthe bonded debt remains the same. In 1902 it was $9,357,600, on which anannual interest of $448,680 was paid,[1637] about one-fourth of the totalincome of the state.

The corrupt financiering in itself was not, by any means, the worst partof Reconstruction. It was only a phase of the general misgovernment.Though the whites were conservative and economical during the period ofthe provisional government and did not spend money or pledge creditrecklessly, yet when the carpet-baggers began to loot the treasury, thepeople were not at first alarmed. Many were in sympathy with any honestscheme to aid internal improvements. Their Confederate experience madethem accustomed to the appropriations of large sums—in paper.

Though from the first there were several newspapers that denounced thefinancial measures of the reconstructionists and warned purchasers againstbuying the bonds issued under doubtful authority, still it was only thethinking men who understood from the beginning the danger of financialwreck. When the railroads became bankrupt, the people began to understand,and when the state failed two years later to meet its obligations, theyhad learned thoroughly the condition of affairs. Extraordinary taxationhad helped to teach them.

CHAPTER XVIII

For forty years before the Civil War there was a feeling on the part ofmany thoughtful citizens that the state should extend aid to anyenterprise for connecting north and south Alabama. It was an issue inpolitical campaigns; candidates inveighed against the political evilsresulting from the unnatural union of the two sections. South Alabama wasafraid that the northern section wanted connections with Charleston andthe Atlantic seaboard, and not with Mobile and the Gulf; the planters ofthe Black Belt wanted the mineral region made accessible; the merchants ofMobile wanted all the trade from north Alabama; the Whig counties of southand central Alabama wanted closer connections with the white counties forthe purpose of enlightening them and preventing the continual Democraticmajorities against the Black Belt at elections.

At first it was proposed to build plank roads and turnpikes between thesections and thus bring about the desired unity. These failed, and thenthere was a demand for railroads. There were also other reasons forinternal improvements. Not only ought the two antagonistic sections to beconsolidated, but emigration to the West must be prevented, for thousandsof the citizens of the state had gone to Texas during the two decadesbefore the war. There was a general feeling that the state only neededrailroads to make it immensely wealthy, and a large “western” elementdemanded that the state or the Federal government assist in thusdeveloping the resources of the state and in uniting its people. Duringthe session of 1855-1856, though the governor vetoed thirty-three billspassed in aid of railroads, still the legislature voted $500,000 to tworoads.

However, conservative sentiment, strict constructionist theories,sectional jealousies, and the knowledge of the sad experience of the[Pg 588]state in other public enterprises[1638] operated against state aid tointernal improvements, and before the $500,000 bonds were issued the actappropriating them was repealed, thus putting an end to the last attemptat direct state aid before the war.[1639]

In 1850 Senator Douglas of Illinois began the policy of Federal aid torailroads by securing the passage of a bill in aid of the Illinois CentralRailroad. The Alabama delegation was then opposed to such a measure, butDouglas visited Alabama, conferred with the directors of the MobileRailroad, and promised to include that road in his bill in return for thesupport of the Representatives and Senators from Alabama and Mississippi.The directors then brought influence to bear, and the two statelegislatures instructed their congressmen to support the measure, whichwas passed.

Thus began the Federal policy of granting alternate sections of publicland along a road to the state for the corporation. Later, the grants weremade directly to the corporation. Before 1857, land to the extent of307,373 acres had been granted to Alabama railroads,[1640] and liberal aidhad also been given for improving the river system of the state.[1641] Bythe act of admission to the Union in 1819, Alabama was entitled to 5 percent of the proceeds from the sales of public lands, to be used forinternal improvements. Three per cent was to be expended by thelegislature, and 2 per cent by Congress. In 1841 Congress relinquished the“two per cent fund” to the state to aid railroads and other publicenterprises from “east to west” and from “north to south.” The State Bankfailed and the “three per cent fund” was lost, but the legislature assumedit as a debt and issued state bonds to the railroads to the amount of$858,498. The “two per cent fund” was loaned before the war as follows:—

[Pg 589]In 1850 there were two railroads in the state with a total of 132.5 milesof track, which cost $1,946,209. In 1860, there were eleven roads, 743miles long, costing $17,591,188.[1643] During the Civil War the roadsreceived much aid from the state and Confederate governments, thoughduring this time only a few miles of track were built and some gradingdone. At the end of the war all were completely worn out or had beendestroyed. The want of railroad communication with the armies and betweenthe various sections of the state caused much suffering among soldiers andcivilians, and after the war the people were more than ever anxious tohave roads built. For two years the railway companies were busy repairingthe old roads, but by 1867 popular opinion demanded new roads.

The provisional legislature, on February 19, 1867, passed an act whichserved as a basis for all later legislation. The governor was authorizedto indorse its first mortgage bonds to the extent of $12,000 per mile,when 20 miles of a new road should have been completed, and to continuethe indorsement at that rate as the road was built. No indorsed bonds wereto be sold by the road for less than 90 cents on the dollar, and theproceeds were to be used only for construction and equipment. The statewas to have two directors, appointed by the governor, on the board of eachroad receiving state aid.[1644] The Reconstruction Acts of Congress werepassed a few days later, however, and there was no opportunity for thislaw to go into effect.

The first Reconstruction legislature[1645] increased the endowment to$16,000 a mile, authorized the indorsement of bonds in five-mile blocksinstead of twenty-mile blocks, as before, and to the roads that proposedto extend outside of the state it promised aid for 20 miles beyond theboundaries of the state.[1646] The next session Governor Smith, in amessage to the legislature, stated that the indorsement[Pg 590] law wasdefective; that he was in favor of lending the credit of the state, butobjected to a general statute requiring indorsement of any road; thatthere was danger that the roads would depend entirely upon indorsement andwould have no paid-up capital; moreover, taking advantage of the railroadfever, roads would be built where they were not needed; that aid should begiven only to those capitalists whose enterprises promised success.Finally, he advised that the law be repealed and aid be given only inspecific cases.[1647]

The legislature responded to the Governor’s message by another generallaw, practically reënacting the former laws. By its provisions proof wasrequired that the five-mile block had been built and that the road-bed,rails, bridges, and cross-ties were in good order, before the first issueof the bonds was made. The company was to show what use was made of thebonds. The indorsement was to constitute a first lien in favor of thestate, and in case of default of interest by the road, the governor was toseize and sell the road if necessary.[1648] A few days later a sweepingmeasure was passed, declaring that all acts and “things done in the state”for railroad purposes were ratified and made legal.[1649] This was thelast general legislation enacted while the railroad boom continued.Governor Lindsay and the pseudo-Democratic lower house stood out againstrailroad legislation, and the indorsed roads were in bad condition whenthe next scalawag governor was elected. Under Governor Lewis, in 1873, anact was passed to relieve the state of some of its obligations. Roadsentitled to an indorsement might take instead a loan of $4,000 per mile instate bonds, and roads already indorsed might exchange indorsed bonds forstate bonds at the rate of four for one. But no state bonds were to begiven for fraudulent issues of indorsed bonds, and when exchanges weremade the road was released from all obligations to the state.[1650] Hadthe roads accepted this offer, the state would have suffered only a lossof $482,000 in interest each year. However, from this time on the stateauthorities[Pg 591] were busy trying to extricate the state from the bankruptcycaused by indorsing the railroad bonds.

The Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad was the first of the roads to applyfor aid under the indorsement law, and was in the worst condition. Thestory of this road is the story of all, only of greater length and moredisgraceful. The Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad Company was made up oftwo older corporations, which, passing into the hands of Bostonfinanciers, united in order to secure the spoils from the state. Beforethe union the officials had secured special legislation for one of the oldroads, the Wills Valley. The sharpers who were engineering the scheme hadagents at Montgomery when the Reconstruction legislature met, and thesewere instrumental in having the indorsement raised from $12,000 to $16,000a mile. The second corporation was the Northeast and Southwest AlabamaRailroad.[1651] The proposed road would be 295 miles long, and whencompleted would be entitled to $4,720,000 from the state in indorsedbonds. The law was explicit in regard to indorsation, but Governor Smith,notwithstanding his opposition to the principle of the law, was criminallycareless, if no worse, in the way he administered it. The first 20 mileswere not built as required by law, but were purchased from the oldNortheast and Southwest Alabama Railroad. Moreover, the road was neverproperly equipped, and the 20 miles from Chattanooga, on which indorsementamounting to $320,000 was secured, were only rented from anothercorporation (which was already indorsed to the amount of $8000 per mile bythe state of Georgia), and the rent was paid from the proceeds of theindorsed bonds, which by law should have been applied only to constructionand equipment. Nor was the rented road equipped.[1652]

[Pg 592]The indorsed bonds of the road to November 15, 1869, amounted to$1,800,000,[1653] and Auditor Reynolds reported in 1870 that theindorsement to September 30, 1870, was $3,840,000 on 240 miles.[1654]These figures should have been correct, but they were not. In fact, 240miles had been roughly finished, but the indorsement was far above thelegal limit. On December 5, 1870, a few days before he retired fromoffice, Smith reported to the legislature that he had indorsed the Alabamaand Chattanooga road for $4,000,000 for 250 miles.[1655] The facts, asafterwards disclosed, were that only 240 miles were completed, and ofthese only 154 were in Alabama. Yet he had issued bonds to the amount of$4,720,000, covering not only the whole 295 miles of the proposed road,but also including $580,000 in excess of what the law allowed to thecompleted road, which with equipment was worth only $4,018,388. So herewere $1,300,000 in bonds which were clearly fraudulent. There was nofurther indorsement of this road.[1656]

As if the enormous issue of indorsed bonds was not enough for the Stantonsof Boston, who were in control of the corporation, a second descent ofrailroad promoters was made on the legislature in 1869-1870, and$2,000,000 in direct state bonds were obtained for the Alabama andChattanooga Railroad. Indorsement was not enough for them. The act statedthat the bonds were to be issued from time to time as needed for use inconstruction within the state, and in return the railroad lands were to bemortgaged to the state.[1657] In order to secure the passage of this act,the most shameful bribery was resorted to by the agents of the railroadand of the New York capitalists who were financing the Stantons. One ofthe Stantons came to Montgomery, also an agent from the banking house ofHenry Clews & Company, and agents from other houses interested in theStanton scheme. The Stantons themselves had no money except what theyreceived from the state. On February 4, 1870, the bill failed in theHouse; but on February 5 a reconsideration was moved and the bill wasreferred back to the committee with directions[Pg 593] “to report within fifteenminutes.” The report was favorable, and the members having seen the light,the bill was passed by a vote of 62 to 27.[1658] From the first, specificcharges of bribery had been made against those who, within three days, hadchanged from active opposition to support of the measure.[1659] A yearlater the House had a majority of young and inexperienced Democrats, andthey ordered an investigation. The Senate, with one solitary exception,was still Radical. The investigation brought to light many unpleasantfacts relating to the methods employed in securing the passage of the$2,000,000 appropriation and other railroad bills. Jerre Haralson, a negromember, told his experience. Jerre was opposing the grant and posing as aDemocrat because he had not been sufficiently remembered on previousoccasions when the spoils were divided. Hearing that something was to bedivided, he went to Stanton’s room, where, he said, there were manymembers. Caraway, the negro member from Mobile, told Haralson that he(Caraway) would not vote for the grant for less than $500. Stanton hadfour rooms at the Exchange Hotel, to which, at his invitation, all thepurchasable members went. Stanton would take the members, one at a time,into the hall, after which that member would leave. Haralson, to hissorrow, was not called into the hall, but the next day he heard from theother negro members that money was to be had, so he called again. Stantonthen accused Haralson of being a Democrat, but Haralson replied that hehad left that party, and after receiving a “loan” of $50, he wenthome.[1660]

George B. Holmes, of the firm of Holmes & Goldthwaite, bankers, testifiedthat Gilmer, president of the South and North[Pg 594] Alabama Railroad (Stantonhad all the roads in need of “boodle” working with him), asked him for$25,000 to be used at the capitol. Gilmer told Holmes that the banker ofthe road had refused it, as had also the Farley bank. Finally, Farley andHolmes each agreed to furnish $12,000 to Gilmer. John Hardy, the chairmanof the committee, had asked for $25,000 to oil the bearings of thepolitical machine, and for that amount had agreed to have the bill passed.At the last moment Hardy demanded $10,000 more, which Holmes obtained fromJosiah Morris. The committee was thus gotten into condition “to reportwithin fifteen minutes,” and the legislature made ready to accept thereport.[1661] Two years later, Governor Lindsay stated in his message thatthe Alabama and Chattanooga $2,000,000 bill had not passed the legislatureby the two-thirds vote as required by law.[1662] The law provided for theissue of the state bonds for $2,000,000 from time to time as the road wascompleted. Instead, however, they were issued in reckless haste, within amonth, and hurried away to Europe for sale. The proceeds were used tobuild a hotel and an opera house in Chattanooga, where Stanton was accusedof trying to imitate Fiske and Gould of Erie.[1663]

When Governor Lindsay went into office, he could not find the “scratch ofa pen” relating to railroad indorsement. Governor Smith, as laterdevelopments showed, had become careless with his[Pg 595] bond indorsement andkept no records, or else destroyed them or carried them away. AuditorReynolds reported in 1871 that his office had official knowledge only ofthe indorsement of the Mobile and Montgomery road.[1664] In his message ofJanuary 24, 1871, Lindsay said, “To what extent bonds under the variousstatutes have been indorsed and issued by the state it is impossible toinform you. No record can be found in any department of the action of theexecutive in this regard.” None of the securities required by law could befound. Lindsay was unable to ascertain even the form of the indorsedbonds, except those of the Mobile and Montgomery and the Montgomery andEufaula roads. Lindsay telegraphed to Smith’s secretary, who replied thatthere was no record of the bond issues except the certificates of therailroad presidents. Lindsay found some of these, which were plaincertificates: “This is to certify that five more miles of the (——)railroad has been finished.” On each five-mile certificate, like the oneabove, the road drew $80,000. Yet the law was strict in requiring proof ofcompletion, of good rails, bridges, road-bed, and equipment. At this time45 or 50 miles of the Alabama and Chattanooga road had not been completed,and 50 miles more had only a temporary track hastily thrown together inorder to get the indorsement. Governor Lindsay believed that the road asplanned promised great success, and was of the opinion that had the bondsbeen issued according to law the road would have been completed. He had tocorrespond with the railroad officials in order to ascertain the amount ofthe bonds.[1665] A few days before Smith went out of office he reported$4,000,000 indorsement on 244 miles of the Alabama and Chattanooga road.Lindsay found no record of this. Almost immediately (January, 1871) theAlabama and Chattanooga road defaulted in payment of interest, and Lindsaywas authorized by the legislature to go to New York and provide for thepayment of interest on 4000 bonds legally issued and held by innocentpurchasers.[1666] Statements were constantly appearing in the state pressthat fraudulent issues had been[Pg 596] made, and the Democratic papers werewarning purchasers against them, declaring that when the people of Alabamaagain came into power, they had no intention of paying them.

The carpet-bag régime had numerous financial agents in New York,Philadelphia, Boston, London, Germany, and elsewhere. Most of the agentsin New York gave Lindsay assistance in his investigations. Souter &Company stated they had sold 4000 first mortgage Alabama and Chattanoogabonds (all that were legal), and 2000 state bonds for the Alabama andChattanooga Company, all for more than 90 cents on the dollar. Erlanger etCie., of Paris, had purchased the state bonds at 95 cents in gold. Lindsaysoon discovered that 1300 Alabama and Chattanooga bonds in excess had beenissued, 580 in excess of what the road would be entitled to whencompleted. Braunfels of Erlanger et Cie. testified that he had loaned$300,000 on 500 bonds numbered between 4000 and 4720. The trustees underthe first deed of trust held bonds 4720 to 4800 and had refused to sellthem, knowing them to be fraudulent; 344 bonds of the fraudulent excesshad been partly sold and partly hypothecated to Drexel & Company ofPhiladelphia; thirty had been hypothecated to a firm in Boston forlocomotives. Lindsay saw some of these fraudulent bonds, which were signedby Governor Smith and sealed with the seal of the state.[1667] Lindsay,through the state agents, Duncan, Sherman, & Company, recognized as legalthe first 4000 of these indorsed bonds and the 2000 state bonds andordered interest to be paid on them. All the others were rejected asfraudulent.[1668]

[Pg 597]The acts of February 25 and March 8, 1871,[1669] authorized the governorto pay interest on the Alabama and Chattanooga bonds which were in thehands of innocent purchasers on January 1, 1871. At that date at least 500of the fraudulent issue had not been sold. The other 700 or 800 bondsnumbered above 4000 were declared fraudulent by Lindsay on the ground thatthe part of road which called for the extra bonds simply did not exist. Atthis time he paid interest on the railroad bonds, amounting to$545,000,[1670] and later to $834,000. No interest was paid on bonds heldby the road or hypothecated by its officials. The governor was authorizedto proceed against the road, and, in July 1871, Colonel John H. Gindrat,the governor’s secretary, was ordered to seize the road and act asreceiver. The road had ceased running two weeks before. Stanton claimedthat the default had been caused by the threats of repudiation, and whenGindrat went to take charge every possible obstacle[Pg 598] and embarrassmentwere imposed by the company. Besides, at the Mississippi end of the linethe employees had seized the road in order to secure their pay. Gindratpacified them, and went slowly along the road toward Georgia, where he wasstopped at the state line. Not only had Alabama indorsed that part of theroad within Georgia and Tennessee, for $16,000 a mile, but Georgia hadalso indorsed it for $8000 a mile, and the part within her boundaries sheseized. The governor was forced to employ a large number of attorneys andinstitute legal proceedings, not only in Alabama, but also in Georgia,Tennessee, Mississippi, and in the Federal courts. Bullock, the carpet-baggovernor of Georgia, would not run the road in Georgia in connection withthe Alabama section, and not until there was a new governor (Conley) couldconnections be made over the whole line.[1671]

For his action in repudiating the fraudulent bonds and in seizing theroad, Lindsay was much abused by all the railroad interests, by the hungrypromoters who wanted more money from the state, and by a section of hisown party which was influenced by prominent Democrats who were officers ofthe road,[1672] and especially by influential Democratic lawyers. Thisfact was important in weakening the Democratic cause in 1872. There weresome who opposed the seizure of the road because they believed that in thethen unsettled condition of affairs the state would not be able to managethe road[Pg 599] successfully; there were others who believed that the stateshould not acknowledge the legality of the indorsement by seizure of theroad. The Debt Commission in 1876 reported that, although the laws werestrict, yet they had been violated in letter and in spirit beforeindorsement. But though many (including the Debt Commission) believed theissues illegal, yet by the seizure of the road the state acknowledged theobligations.[1673]

The history of the road while in the hands of the state authorities wasnot pleasant to Democrat or Radical. The state had first seized thesection of the road that was in Alabama, and had gone into the statecourts to get the remainder. The litigation promised to be endless, andthe case was taken to the Federal courts. Finally the road was sold at abankrupt sale, and Lindsay purchased it for the state, paying $312,000.The Circuit Court reversed this action, and there was a new case in whichBusteed, district judge, adjudged the company bankrupt. In May, 1872, theFederal court placed the road in the hands of receivers for the firstmortgage bondholders, who were to issue $1,200,000 in certificates to runthe road,—this to be alien prior to the claim of the state. August 24,1874, the same court placed the road in the hands of the trustees of thefirst mortgage bondholders.

The road, while in the hands of the state receiver, was either badlymanaged or was unsuccessful because of the obstruction by the other roadsand by capitalists. Several attempts were made, by Governors Lindsay,Lewis, and Houston, to sell the road, but with no success. Finally, in1876, the Debt Commission arranged with the holders of the first mortgagebonds to turn over to them the whole claim of the state to the road, thestate paying $1,000,000, besides the interest, to be out of thebusiness.[1674]

[Pg 600]Governor Lindsay had paid $834,000 interest on the Alabama and Chattanoogabonds, and in 1874 there were arrears amounting to $1,054,000.[1675]Congress had made a grant of land, six sections per mile, amounting to1,000,000 acres, for all the roads within the boundaries of Alabama, andthe state held a mortgage on this land. Much of it was sold fraudulentlyby the railroad company, and titles were given where there had been nosales. One railroad agent pocketed $33,447.97 received from fraudulentsales of this land. The state never received a cent.[1676]

The story of the other roads that applied for aid is similar, thoughshorter and of a meaner nature. The Savannah and Memphis road was the onlyone that failed to default.[1677] It was indorsed for $640,000, but whenthe House committee was investigating, in 1871, as there was no record ofany indorsement, the president refused to appear or to give anyinformation.[1678] Later it was ascertained that at the time that the roadwas worth only $263,000 it had been indorsed to the extent of$320,000.[1679]

The South and North Alabama Railroad was a persistent applicant forlegislative favors. On December 30, 1868, the available portion of the“two and three per cent fund,” amounting to $691,789.43, was turned overto the South and North road.[1680] The road secured indorsement at therate of $16,000 a mile along with other roads, but this was not enough,and, on March 3, 1870, the legislature increased its indorsement to$22,000 a mile.[1681] Governor Smith knew so little of[Pg 601] what he did inregard to railroads that in his last message he stated that the South andNorth road was indorsed for $1,440,000, that is, for ninety miles at$16,000 a mile,[1682] while he raised the indorsement of the Selma andGulf to $22,000 a mile, thus confusing the two roads. The House RailroadCommittee declared that by means of bribery the road had secured onehundred miles of indorsement, amounting to $2,200,000.[1683] When Lindsaywas asked to indorse more bonds for this road, he made an investigationwhich convinced him that too many bonds had already been issued, and herefused to sign any more. Under the law the road was entitled to 1900one-thousand-dollar indorsed bonds, but had received 2200,[1684] anindorsement of $2,200,000, while the road equipped was valued at only$1,625,200.[1685] When it became known that fraudulent issues had beenmade, the Investigating Committee called before them the ex-treasurer ofthe state, Arthur Bingham, of Ohio. He claimed and was allowed theconstitutional privilege of refusing to testify on the ground that histestimony would tend to incriminate himself.[1686] In 1870 it wasestimated that including the “three per cent” fund the road had receivedfrom the state $2,000,000 more than the cost of building it.[1687]Governor Lewis, in 1873, reported that the South and North road wasindorsed for $4,026,000, including $2,200,000 that was not recorded on thebooks of the state.[1688]

The East Alabama and Cincinnati corporation consisted of Governor W. H.Smith, three senators (two of whom were J. J. Hinds and J. L. Pennington),and two members of the lower house. Stanton of the Alabama and Chattanoogawas also connected with it; in fact, he was connected in some way withnearly all the schemes to secure state aid. The road was mortgaged toHenry Clews & Company for $500,000. It had no money of its own, butsecured state indorsement for $400,000 and a bond issue of $25,000 fromthe town of Opelika. This indorsement by Governor Smith was notdiscovered[Pg 602] until 1871, when Lindsay was accused of issuing the bonds.This he flatly denied, and he was correct. The Tennessee and Coosa riversroad had $33,513.25, if no more, of the “two per cent fund.” On March 2,1870, that road was released from its indebtedness to the state (part ofthe “two and three per cent funds”) on condition that it apply for nofurther aid. But now, in order to get the indorsement, a part of this roadwas transferred to the East Alabama and Cincinnati road, to pass as a newroad. With an indorsement of $400,000 besides the $25,000 Opelika bonds,the road equipped was valued at only $264,150.[1689]

The Selma and Gulf was another road without resources of its own, and, sofar as it was completed, was built with state aid. Governor Smith, inclear violation of the law, the committee reported, indorsed the road for$480,000. Some one, probably Smith, though Lindsay was accused of it,raised this amount to $640,000, $160,000 of which was not recorded. Atthis time the road was valued at $424,900, and the company threatened todefault unless further aid was extended. Smith thought that the road wasindorsed for $22,000 a mile and reported $660,000 indorsement.[1690]

The Mobile and Alabama Grand Trunk road, valued at $704,225, was indorsedby the state for $800,000. The city of Mobile also issued $1,000,000 inbonds for this road.[1691] There was no record of an application for aidfrom the New Orleans and Selma Railroad. Neither Smith nor Lindsayreported it, yet its financial agent had secretly secured an indorsementof $320,000, contrary to law. The road was valued at $255,350. It had noresources except $140,000 in Dallas County bonds, and its president,Colonel William M. Byrd, resigned rather than be a party to thestealing.[1692]

The promoters of the Selma, Marion, and Memphis road placed General N. B.Forrest at the head of the enterprise, and for three years he worked hardto make the road a success. Governor Smith indorsed the road for $720,000,or $18,000 a mile, when only forty[Pg 603] miles were completed. In 1873 the roadwas valued at $738,400. When the company failed, as was intended from thefirst, General Forrest gave up every dollar he could raise in order to paydebts due on contracts, and he himself was left a poor man.[1693]

The Montgomery and Eufaula road obtained something over $30,000 of the“three per cent fund” from the state, and in 1868 the governor wasauthorized by the legislature to indorse the road, notwithstanding thisdebt to the state, which was considered simply as an indorsement.[1694]Under this act the road was indorsed for $1,280,000, and in addition statedirect bonds to the amount of $300,000 were issued to the company in 1870.For this loan there was no security. Lewis Owen, a former president,refused to answer when it was charged that bribery had been used to securethe passage of the bill. At this time the road was valued at $825,289. In1873 capitalists offered to lease the road for enough to pay the intereston its bonds, provided the state would release the road from all claimsand give to it the $330,000 already loaned. This was done. Later it wasseized by the state and eventually sold for sufficient money to coverlosses caused by the indorsement.[1695]

The Mobile and Montgomery road secured $2,500,000 by special act of thelegislature.[1696] The road was valued at $2,516,250[1697] and was alreadybuilt, hence the indorsement was safe.

An act of December 31, 1868, authorized the counties, towns, and cities tosubscribe to railroad stock. The road corporation was to be voted on bythe people. If “no subscription” was voted, a new election might beordered within twelve months, and if again voted down, the matter was tobe considered as settled. If a subscription was voted, an extra tax was tobe levied to pay the interest on the bonds; the taxpayer was to bepresented with a tax receipt which was good for its face value in thecounty or city railroad stock.[1705] Several of the counties and townsissued bonds and incurred heavy debts which have burdened them for years.No one seems to have profited by[Pg 605] the issues except the promoters.[1706]The counties that suffered worst from Reconstruction bond issues wereRandolph, Chambers, Lee, Tallapoosa, and Pickens. These were hopelesslyburdened with debt and became known as the “strangulated” counties. Therewas, after the Democrats came into power, much legislation for theirrelief. The state gave them the state taxes to assist in paying off thedebt and also loaned money to them. Several cities and towns, notablyMobile, Selma, and Opelika, were so deeply in debt that they were unableto pay interest on their debts. They lost their charters, ceased to becities, and became districts under the direct control of the governor.There are still several such districts in the state. The constitution of1875 forbade state, counties, or towns to engage in works of internalimprovement, or to lend money or credit to such, or to any private orcorporate enterprise.

It is impossible to secure complete statistics of the railroad bond issuesof counties and towns. Some issues were made in ignorance, withoutauthority of law, others were made under the provisions of a general law.Naturally, the counties that suffered most were those of the Black Beltunder carpet-bag control. The following is a summary of the issues madeunder special acts:—

CHAPTER XIX

The public school system of the state of Alabama was organized in 1854,and was an expansion of the Mobile system, which was partly native andpartly modelled on the New York-New England systems.[1707] By 1856 it wasin good working order. The school fund for 1855 was $237,515.00; for 1856,$267,694.41, and the number of children in attendance was 100,279, whichwas about one-fourth of the white population. For 1857 the fund amountedto $281,874.41; for 1858, $564,210.46, with an attendance of 98,274children.[1708] The schools were not wholly free, since those parents whowere able to do so paid part of the tuition.[1709] In 1860 there were also206 academies, with an enrolment of 10,778 pupils, and in the statecolleges there were 2120 students.

In spite of the war the system managed to exist until 1864, and someschools were still open in 1865, at the time of surrender. Few of theprivate schools and colleges survived until that time, and the majority ofthe school buildings of all kinds were either destroyed during the war, orafter its close were placed in the hands of the Freedmen’s Bureau or ofthe army. The State Medical College was used for a negro primary schoolfor three years, and was not given up until the reconstructionists cameinto power. An attempt in 1865 was made to reopen the University, althoughthe buildings had been burned by the Federals in 1865. The trustees met,elected a president and two professors, but on the day appointed for theopening (in October) only one student appeared.[1710]

[Pg 607]During the summer and fall of 1865 and during the next year the variousreligious denominations of the state and mass-meetings of citizensdeclared that the changed civil relations of the races made negroeducation a necessity. The Freedmen’s Bureau was established andanticipated much of the work planned by the churches and by southernleaders, but the methods employed by the alien teachers caused many whitesto become prejudiced against negro education.[1711]

The provisional government adopted the ante-bellum public school systemand put it into operation. The schools were open to both races, from sixto twenty years of age, separate schools being provided for the blacks.The greater part of the expenditure of the provisional government was forschools. Relatively few negroes attended the state schools proper, asevery influence was brought to bear to make them attend the Bureau andmissionary schools, and the state negro schools soon fell into the handsof the Bureau educators, who drew the state appropriation.

The colleges at Marion, Greensboro, Auburn, Florence, and other placeswere reopened in 1866-1867. The legislature loaned $70,000 to theUniversity, besides paying the interest on the University fund. For threeyears the University was being rebuilt, and so well were its financesmanaged that in 1868, when the carpet-baggers came into power, thebuildings were completed and the institution out of debt, although it hadused only half of the loan from the state.[1712]

The Reconstruction convention of 1867 was much more interested in politicsthan in education. The negro members demanded free schools and specialadvantages for the negro, and a few carpet-baggers had much to say aboutthe malign influence of the old régime in keeping so many thousands in thedarkness of ignorance. The scalawags demanded separate schools for theraces, but pressure was brought to bear and most of them gave way. Sixteenof the native whites refused to sign the constitution and united in aprotest against the action of the convention in refusing to provideseparate schools.[1713]

The new constitution placed all public instruction under the control of aBoard of Education consisting of the Superintendent of Public Instructionand two members from each congressional district,[1714] the latter toserve for four years, half of them being elected by the people every twoyears. Full legislative powers in regard to education were given to theBoard. Its acts were to have the force of law, and the governor’s vetocould be overridden by a two-thirds vote. The legislature might repeal aschool law, but otherwise it had no authority over the Board.[1715] Thisbody also acted as a board of regents for the State University. Oneschool, at least, was to be established in every township in the state,though some townships did not have half a dozen children in them. Theschool income was fixed by the constitution at one-fifth of all staterevenue, in addition to the income from school lands, poll tax, and taxeson railroads, navigation, banks, and insurance.[1716] The legislatureadded another source of income by chartering several lotteries andexempted them from taxation provided they paid a certain amount to theschool fund. On October 10, 1868, the Mutual Aid Association was chartered“to distribute books, paintings, works of art, scientific instruments andapparatus, lands, etc., stock and currency, awards, and prizes.” For thisprivilege it was to give $2000 a year to the school fund.[1717] Two monthslater the Mobile Charitable Association was formed, which paid $1000 ayear to the school fund,[1718] and a number of other lotteries werechartered soon after.

[Pg 609]The school system, as a whole, did not differ greatly from the old, exceptthat it was top-heavy with officials, and in that all private assistancewas discouraged by a regulation forbidding the use of the public money tosupplement private payments. The first Board of Education probablycontained a collection of as worthless men as could be found in thestate.[1719] The elections had gone by default, and since only the mostincompetent men had offered themselves for educational offices, the worksuffered. Dr. N. B. Cloud, an incapable of ante-bellum days, was chosenSuperintendent of Public Instruction. He was a man without character,without education, and entirely without administrative ability. Before thewar he was known as a cruel master to his few slaves. In August, 1868, heproceeded to put the system into operation by appointing sixty-four countysuperintendents, of Radical politics, each of whom in turn appointed threetrustees in each township. The stream rose no higher than its source, andthe school officials were a forlorn lot. One of them signed for his salaryby an X mark. Another, J. E. Summerford, the superintendent of Lee County,was a man of bad morals, and so incompetent that, when attempting toexamine teachers for licenses, he in turn was contemptuously questioned bythem on elementary subjects. In revenge for this expression of contempt,he revoked the license of every teacher in the county. One countysuperintendent was a preacher who had been expelled from his church formisappropriating charity funds. But Cloud paid no attention to chargesmade against the integrity of his school officials.

Cloud proceeded with much haste to open the schools. A year later he madea report which is an interesting document. There was little progress to benoted, but much space was devoted to an appreciation of that “gloriousdocument,” the constitution of 1867, the crowning glory of which—thearticle on education—should “entitle the members to the rare merit ofstatemen and sages.” This provision for education, he said, was the firstblow struck in the South,[Pg 610] and especially in Alabama, to clear out thelast vestige of ignorance with all its attendant evils; and now, in spiteof the burdens imposed by the unwise legislation of the past forty years,the bosoms of the citizens expanded with a noble pride in the presentsystem of schools.

After this he proceeds to business. He reports that in every county and inalmost every township in the state his officials met with opposition, not,he confesses, on account of opposition to schools, but on account of theobjectionable government and its agents. The reports from the whitecounties, especially, indicate opposition to the establishment of negroschools, while in the Black Belt this opposition was not so strong.Everywhere, he states, the opposition died out, more or less, intime.[1720]

Before the new system went into operation, a meeting of the Board was heldin Montgomery to clear away the remains of the old system. They voted tothemselves a secretary, sergeant-at-arms, pages, etc., like the House ofRepresentatives; all school offices were declared vacated and all schoolcontracts void; separate schools were provided for the races where theparents were unwilling to send to mixed schools; eleven normal schoolswere provided for, with no distinction of color; and a bill was introducedby G. L. Putnam and passed into a law, the object of which was to mergethe Mobile schools into the state system and also to make an office forPutnam. A sum of money had been appropriated by the previous legislaturesto pay the teachers in the state schools, and now the Board declared thatany association, society, or teacher in a school open to the public shouldhave a claim for part of this money.[1721] The country superintendentswere made elective after 1870; coöperation with the Freedmen’s Bureau wasdeclared desirable, and the Bureau was asked to furnish or to rent houses,or to assist in building, while the aid societies were asked to sendteachers who would be paid by the state, and who would be subject to thesame regulations as native teachers. The “Superintendent of Education” ofthe Bureau was to have supervision over the Bureau schools, but he, inturn, would be under the supervision of Cloud.[1722]

The Board then tried to reconstruct the University. After the appearanceof the lone student in 1865, the efforts of the trustees had been directedonly towards completing the buildings. In 1868, after the constitution of1867 had failed of adoption, the old trustees met, elected a president andfaculty, and ordered the University to be opened in October, 1868. A fewweeks later Congress imposed the constitution on the state, and the Boardof Education as regents took charge of the University. Their first act wasto declare null and void all acts of any pretended body of trustees sincethe secession of the state. This was done in order to repudiate a debtmade by the University with a New York firm in 1861. No suitable candidatefor the presidency was presented, and the regents chose for that positionMr. Wyman, the acting president.[1723] He declined, and the position wasthen sought for and obtained by the Rev. A. S. Lakin, a Northern Methodistpreacher, who had been sent to Alabama in 1867 by Bishop Clark of Ohio, togather the negroes of the Southern Methodist Church into the northernfold.[1724] Lakin, accompanied by Cloud, went to the University to takecharge. Wyman, who was then in charge, refused to surrender the keys, anda Tuscaloosa mob, or Ku Klux Klan, serenaded Lakin and threatened to lynchhim if he remained in town. It is said that he was saved from the mob byWyman, who hid him under a bed. The next morning Lakin decided that he didnot like the place and left.[1725] He did not resign, however, and threeyears later still had a claim pending for a full year’s salary. On this hecollected $800 from the Board of Regents.[1726]

[From the Independent Monitor, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, September 1, 1868.]

A PROSPECTIVE SCENE IN THE CITY OF OAKS, 4TH OF MARCH, 1869.

“Hang, curs, Hang! * * * * * Their complexion is perfect gallows. Stand fast, good
fate, totheir hanging! * * * * * If they be not born to be hanged, our case is miserable.”

The above cut represents the fate in store for those great pests ofSouthern society—the carpet-bagger and scalawag—if found in Dixie’s landafter the break of day on the 4th of March next.

Thegenus carpet-bagger is a man with a lank head of dry hair, a lankstomach, and long legs, club knees, and splay feet, dried legs, and lankjaws, with eyes like a fish and mouth like a shark. Add to this a habit ofsneaking and dodging about in unknown places, habiting with negroes indark dens and back streets, a look like a hound, and the smell of apolecat.

Words are wanting to do full justice to thegenus scalawag. He is a curwith a contracted head, downward look, slinking and uneasy gait; sleeps inthe woods, like old Crossland, at the bare idea of a Ku-Klux raid.

Our scalawag is the local leper of the community. Unlike thecarpet-bagger, he is native, which is so much the worse. Once he wasrespected in his circle, his head was level, and he would look hisneighbor in the face. Now, possessed of the itch of office and the saltrheum of radicalism, he is a mangy dog, slinking through the alleys,hunting the governor’s office, defiling with tobacco juice the steps ofthe capitol, stretching his lazy carcass in the sun on the square or thebenches of the mayor’s court.

He waiteth for the troubling of the political waters, to the end that hemay step in and be healed of the itch by the ointment of office. Foroffice he “bums,” as a toper “bums” for the satisfying dram. For office,yet in prospective, he hath bartered respectability; hath abandonedbusiness and ceased to labor with his hands, but employs his feet kickingout boot-heels against lamp-post and corner-curb while discussing thequestion of office.

It requires no seer to foretell the inevitable events that are to resultfrom the coming fall election throughout the Southern States.

The unprecedented reaction is moving onward with the swiftness of avelocipede, with the violence of a tornado, and with the crash of anavalanche, sweeping negroism from the face of the earth.

Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of Alabama who have recently become squatter-

It was in connection with Lakin’s short visit that theIndependentMonitor published the famous hanging picture of the carpet-bagger (Lakin)and the scalawag (Cloud).[1727]

[Pg 613]The next offer of the presidency was made to R. D. Harper, a NorthernMethodist Bureau minister, who at one time was the Bureau “Superintendentof Education” for the state, and who organized the Bureau schools and theNorthern Methodist churches in north Alabama. He, after someconsideration, declined the position, which, to an alien, was one of moredanger than honor.[1728]

Difficulty was also experienced in securing a faculty. Some of the facultyelected by the old board of trustees were reëlected. Geary of Ohio wasgiven the chair of mathematics, and Goodfellow of Chicago, who hadpreviously been a clerk of the lower house of the legislature, was electedcommandant and professor of military science. The latter said that he didnot know anything about his work, but that he guessed he could learn.General John H. Forney, a Confederate and native, was also elected to achair, the Board, it is said, voting for him under a misapprehension. Thenative contingent refused to serve under the regents, and the vacancieshad again to be filled.[1729] Loomis of Illinois was elected professor ofAncient Languages; J. De F. Richards of Vermont, professor of NaturalPhilosophy and Astronomy, etc. W. J. Collins, who was elected professor ofOratory and Rhetoric, wrote, “I except the situation.” TheMonitor said,“We predict an uncomfortable time for the aggregation.”[1730] That paperchronicled all the weaknesses, peculiarities, and failings of the faculty.If one of them drank a little too much and staggered on the street, theMonitor informed the public.[1731] Upon the arrival of an heir in theCollins family, Randolph promptly demanded that he be named forhim,—Ryland Randolph Collins,—and the name stuck.

Finally, as it seemed impossible to secure a president, the regents[Pg 614]determined to open the University with Richards as acting president.[1732]On April 1, 1869, the University opened with thirty students, twenty-eightof whom were beneficiaries.[1733] TheMonitor said that the members ofthe faculty were known as Shanghai, Cockeye, Tanglefoot, Old Dicks, etc.Another woodcut appeared in theMonitor—of Richards, this time.[1734]

Thirty was the highest enrolment reached under the Reconstruction faculty.The number gradually dwindled away until at the end of the session therewere only ten. The next session ended with only three. In October, 1870,there were ten students, four of whom were sons of professors. William R.Smith[1735] was elected president during this session, but he reportedthat there was no prospect of success under the present conditions andresigned. By the end of the session not one student remained. Thescientific apparatus was scattered and lost, as were also the museumspecimens and library books, and the $2000 object-glass of the telescopehad disappeared.[1736]

The people of Alabama did not favor the continuance of the Universityunder the reconstructed faculty, and were glad when the doors were closed.The Ku Klux Klan took part in the work of breaking down the venture.Notices were posted on the doors, directed to the[Pg 615] students, advising themto leave. One sent to the son of Governor Smith read as follows:—

Charles Muncel, son of Joel Muncel, the publisher, of Albany, NewYork,[1737] received the following notice:—

Before the summer of 1871 the reconstructed faculty had absolutely failed;there never had been any chance for them to succeed. The regents wereunfitted to manage educational affairs, and they chose men to the facultywho would have been objectionable anywhere.[1739] The professors and theirfamilies were socially ostracized. Even southern men who accepted placesin the Radical faculty were made to feel that they were scorned; no onewould sit by them at public gatherings or in church. The men might havesurvived this treatment, but not so the women. In 1871 the Superintendentof Public Instruction and two members of the board of regents were[Pg 616]Democrats. The faculty was reorganized for the eighth time since 1865, anda faculty of natives was elected. The effect upon the attendance wasmarked. In April, 1871, there were three students and in June none, whileduring the session of 1871-1872, 107 students were enrolled. In 1873 and1874 the Radicals again had control, but they did not attempt toreconstruct the University.[1740]

When the land grant college, provided for in the Morrill act of 1862, wasestablished in 1872, there was no attempt made to appoint a reconstructedfaculty or board of trustees. But there was sharp competition among thetowns of the state to secure the college. The legislature was to choosethe location, and many of the members let it be known that their voteswere to be had only in return for material considerations. It was finallylocated at Auburn, in Lee County. One Auburn lobbyist went out on thefloor of one of the houses and there paid a negro solon $50 to talk nomore against Auburn. The next day the same negro was again speakingagainst the location at Auburn. His purchaser went to him andremonstrated. The negro acknowledged that he had accepted the $50 not tospeak against Auburn, but said, “Dat was yistiddy, boss.” Another Auburnman promised a cooking stove to a negro of more domestic inclinations, andamidst the excitement forgot all about it; but after the vote the negrocame up and demanded his stove. He received it. Another was given asewing-machine.[1741]

There was no attempt to force the entrance of negroes into the StateUniversity. Some reformers wanted the test made, but too many scalawagswere bitterly opposed to such a step, to say nothing of the Ku Klux Klan.In December, 1869, the Board of Education[Pg 617] asked the legislature toprovide a university for the negroes,[1742] and several colored normalschools were established. In 1871, Peyton Finley, the negro member of theBoard of Education,[1743] introduced a series of resolutions declaringthat the negro had no desire to push any claim to enter the StateUniversity, but that they wanted one of their own, and Congress was urgedto grant land for that purpose.[1744] But not until December, 1873, wasLincoln school at Marion, Perry County, designated as the coloreduniversity and normal school, where a liberal education was to be giventhe negro.[1745]

For more than a year Cloud had trouble in the schools of Mobile. TheMobile schools (always independent of the state system) were under thecontrol of a school board appointed by the military authorities in 1865.When all offices and contracts were vacated, G. L. Putnam, a member of theBoard of Education, and also connected with the Emerson Institute, whichwas conducted at Mobile by the American Missionary Association, hadsecured the enactment, because he wanted the position, of a school lawproviding for a superintendent of education for Mobile County. In August,1868, Cloud gave him the office. The old school commissioners refused torecognize the authority of Putnam, who was unable to displace them,because he himself could not make bond. But, in order to give him somekind of office, Cloud went to Mobile and proposed a compromise, which wasto appoint one of the old commissioners superintendent of education andPutnam superintendent of negro schools under the supervision of the othersuperintendent and the board of commissioners, which was still to exist.This was an arrangement Cloud had no lawful authority to make.

As part of the compromise the principal and teachers of the AmericanMissionary Association were to be retained and paid by the state.[Pg 618] TheEmerson Institute (or “Blue College,” as the negroes called it) was toremain in possession of the American Missionary Association, but theschool board and county superintendent were to have control over theschools in it. Putnam, as superintendent of the “Blue College” school,refused to allow the control of the board. He wanted them to pay histeachers, but would have no supervision. The general field agent of theAmerican Missionary Association, Edward P. Smith, offered the “schools andteachers” to the school commissioners to be paid but not controlled. “Weought now in some way,” he said, “to have our teachers recognized and paidfor, from the public fund, an amount equal to that paid for similar gradesto other teachers in Mobile.” At the same time the state was paying $125per month for the use of the building over which the Association andPutnam would allow no supervision. The county superintendent and thecommissioners, unable to secure any control over the Putnam schools,refused to recognize them as a part of the Mobile system. Cloud declaredall the offices vacant, but the commissioners refused to vacate. The casewas carried into court and the commissioners were put in jail. The supremecourt ordered them released. The Board of Education then met and abolishedthe Mobile system and merged the special and independent schools of thatcounty into the general state system. This was done on November 13,1869.[1746]

The judiciary committee of the legislature, consisting of three Radicalsand one Democrat, was directed to investigate the conduct of Cloud in theMobile troubles. It was reported (1) that Cloud had appointed twosuperintendents in Mobile County, contrary to law; (2) that on January 29,1869, G. L. Putnam, who was not an official of the state and who,according to the compromise, should have been[Pg 619] under the control of thecounty superintendent, drew from the state treasury with the connivance ofCloud between $5000 and $6000, with which he paid the teachers of “BlueCollege,” who were in the employ of the American Missionary Associationand not of the state of Alabama; (3) that in July, 1869, Cloud againappointed Putnam superintendent of education for Mobile County, and sixtydays afterwards he made a bond which was declared worthless by the grandjury, and after that Cloud gave Putnam a warrant for $9000, which he wasprevented from collecting only by an injunction; (4) that while theinjunction was in force as concerned both Putnam and Cloud, the latterdrew from the treasury $2000 or more of the Mobile school funds to paylawyers’ fees; (5) that while the injunction was still in force Cloud drew$3600 from the treasury for Putnam, the greater part or all of which wasillegally used; (6) that Cloud again drew a warrant for $3300, which theauditor, discovering that Putnam was interested, refused to allow, and itwas destroyed; (7) the committee further stated that very large salarieswere paid to the teachers in “Blue College,” or Emerson Institute,—thatone of them (Squires) received $4000 a year. The committee went beyond thelimit of the resolution and reported that county superintendents were paidtoo much, and recommended the abolition of the Board of Education byconstitutional amendment, the reduction of the pay of all school officialswho acted as a sponge to absorb all the school funds, and, finally, thatno person should hold more than one school office at the same time.[1747]

Later investigation showed that Putnam had made out pay-rolls for theteachers of the Emerson Institute for the last quarter of 1868 andpresented them to A. H. Ryland, the county superintendent of Mobile, forhis approval. This Ryland refused to give, as the compromise in regard tothe Institute dated only from January 22, 1869. Putnam then went to hisown American Missionary Association Negro Institute Board, had thepay-rolls approved, and then, as “county superintendent of education,”drew $5327.20, Cloud certifying to the correctness of his accounts.[1748]Putnam padded the pay-rolls and, in order to draw principal’s wages foreach teacher, divided the Institute into ten schools. As there were onlyten teachers besides the principal,[Pg 620] there were now elevenprincipals.[1749] Kelsey, the principal, stated that no matter how muchPutnam obtained for “Blue College,” the teachers received none of it, butwere paid only their regular salaries by the Association. Kelsey himselfwas paid only $250 a quarter. The teachers were under contract with theAssociation to teach for $15 a month and board. Some of them testifiedthat they had received no more. However, a part of the appropriation wasturned into the treasury of the Association, and we may well ask whatbecame of the remainder of it.[1750]

Superintendent Cloud was handicapped, not only by his own incapacity, butalso by the bad character of his subordinates, whom he appointed in greathaste from the unpromising material that supported the Reconstructionrégime. Many of the receipts for the salaries were signed by the teacherswith marks, some being unable to write their[Pg 621] own names. From the schoolofficials he received inaccurate reports, and on these he based hisapportionments, which were defective, many of the teachers not receivingtheir money. The county superintendents had absolute authority over theschool fund belonging to their counties, and could draw it from thetreasury and use it for private purposes nearly a year before the salariesof the teachers were due.[1751] Complaint was made that the black countiesreceived more than their proper share of the school fund. In PickensCounty the superintendent neglected to draw anything but his own salary,and a north Alabama superintendent ran away with the money for his county.Other superintendents were accused of scaling down the pay of the teachersfrom 20 to 50 per cent, and it was estimated that in some countiestwo-thirds of the school money never reached the teachers. There was nocheck on the county superintendent, who could expend money practically athis own discretion.[1752] Three trustees were appointed in each townshipby the county superintendent; these trustees, who were not paid, appointedfor themselves a clerk who was paid, and these clerks met in a countyconvention and fixed the salary of the county superintendent.[1753]

The bookkeeping in the office of State Superintendent Cloud was irregular.Some of the accounts were kept in pencil, and for a whole year the bookswere not posted. Of $235,000 paid to the county superintendents only$10,000 was accounted for by them. In 1871, $50,000 or more was still inthe hands of the ex-superintendents, and the state and the teachers weretaking legal proceedings against some of them.[1754] Both sons of Cloudembezzled school money and[Pg 622] fled from the state.[1755] Cloud receipted forone sum of $314 in payment for sixteenth-section lands. This he forgot topay to the treasurer. He issued patents for 4000 acres of school land andturned into the treasury only $323. A township in Marengo County rentedits sixteenth-section land; nevertheless, Cloud paid to this county itssixteenth-section funds. In 1871 an investigation of Cloud’s accountsshowed that a large number of his vouchers were fraudulent, hundreds beingin the same handwriting. He signed the name of J. H. Fitts & Company,financial agents of the University, to a receipt by which he drew from thetreasury several hundred dollars to advance to a needy professor. He said,when questioned about it, that he thought he could “draw on” Messrs. Fitts& Company. It afterwards developed that he did not know the differencebetween a receipt and a draft. His accounts were so confused that he oftenpaid the same bill twice. In 1871, when he went out of office, the sumunaccounted for by vouchers amounted to $260,556.37. After two years hesucceeded in getting vouchers for all but $129,595.71.[1756]

In the black counties the school finances became confused, especially asthe negro and carpet-bag officials tolled the funds that passed throughtheir hands. At the end of 1870 the school funds of Selma were $40,000short. It was found practically impossible to collect a poll tax from thenegroes, the Radical collectors being afraid to insist on the negroes’paying taxes. In Dallas County the collector refused to allow the plantersto pay taxes for their negro hands on the ground that it would be a relicof slavery. If the negroes refused to pay, nothing more was said aboutit.[1757] In 1869 there were 200,000 polls[Pg 623] and only $66,000 poll tax wascollected, which meant that only 44,000 men had paid the tax.[1758] In1870 Somers states that the insurance tax was $13,327, and the number ofpolls was 162,819. Yet from both sources less than $100,000 wasobtained.[1759]

The Board of Education, according to the constitution, was to classify bylot before the election of 1870. But in 1869, when the matter was broughtup, they refused to classify. Several vacancies occurred, and these werefilled by special election. Consequently the Democrats in 1870 did not geta fair representation on the board.[1760]

The Board of Education had the power to adopt a uniform series oftext-books for the public schools; Superintendent Cloud, however, assumedthis authority and chose texts which were objectionable to the majority ofthe whites. This was especially the case with the history books, which thewhites complained were insulting in their accounts of southern leaders andsouthern questions. Cloud was not the man to allow the southern view ofcontroversial questions to be taught in schools under his control. About1869 he secured a donation of several thousand copies of history bookswhich gave the northern views of American history, and these hedistributed among the teachers and the schools. But most of the literaturethat the whites considered objectionable did not come from Cloud’sdepartment, but from the Bureau and aid society teachers, and was used inthe schools for blacks. There were several series of “Freedmen’s Readers”and “Freedmen’s Histories” prepared for use in negro schools. But the factremains that for ten or fifteen years northern histories were taught inwhite schools and had a decided influence on the readers. It resulted inthe combination often seen in the late southern writer, of northern viewsof history with southern prejudices; the fable of the “luxury of thearistocrats” and the numbers and wretchedness of the “mean whites” was nowaccepted by numerous young southerners; on such questions as slavery thenorthern view of the institution was accepted, but on the other hand thetu quoque answer was made to the North. Consequently, the task of thehistorian was not to explain[Pg 624] the southern civilization, but to accept itas rather bad and to prove that the North was partly responsible andequally guilty—a fruitless work.[1761]

Cloud, in his first report, admitted that the opposition to schools wasrather on account of the officials than because the people disliked freeschools. He further stated that the opposition had ceased to a greatextent. There were many whites in the Black Belt who disliked the idea offree or “pauper” schools, and to this day some of them have not overcomethis feeling. They believed in education, but not in education that wasgiven away,—at least not for the whites. Each person must make an effortto get an education. However, they, and especially the old slaveholders,were not opposed to the education of the negro, believing it to benecessary for the good of society. In the white counties of north andsoutheast Alabama there was less opposition to the public schools forwhites. But in the same sections schools for the negroes were bitterlyopposed by the uneducated whites who were in close competition with them,for they knew that the whites paid for the negro schools, and also that,having a different standard of living, it would be easier for the negroesto send their children to school than for them to send theirs. In theBlack Belt there were a few of these people, who disliked to see three orfour negro schools to one white school, for here the number of the negroesnaturally secured for them better advantages. The whites were so few innumbers that not half of them were within easy reach of a school. Wheneverthe numbers of one or both races were small, it was (and has been eversince) a burden on a community to build two schoolhouses and to supporttwo separate schools, especially where the funds provided are barelysufficient for one.[1762]

Before the negro question in all its phases was brought directly intopolitics, and before the Radicals, carpet-baggers, and scalawags hadcaused irritation between the races, there was a determination on[Pg 625] thepart of the best whites in public and private life, as a measure ofself-defence as well as a duty and as justice, to do all that lay in theirpower to fit the negro for citizenship. Most of the newspapers were infavor of education to fit the negro for his changed condition. Now that hehad to stand alone, education was necessary to keep him from stealing,from idleness, and from a return to barbarism; in some parts of the BlackBelt there was a tendency to return to African customs. It was necessaryto substitute the discipline of education for the discipline ofslavery.[1763] The Democratic party leaders were in favor of negroeducation, and General Clanton, who for years was the chairman of theexecutive committee, repeatedly made speeches in favor of it, and attendedthe sessions and examinations at the negro schools, often examining theclasses himself. He and General John B. Gordon spoke in Montgomery at apublic meeting and declared that it was the duty of the whites to educatethe negro, whose good behavior during the war entitled him to it. Theirremarks were cheered by the whites.[1764] Colonel Jefferson Falkner, at aBaptist Association in Pike County, advised that the negro be educated bysouthern men and women. Pike was a white county, and while no objectionwas raised to Falkner’s speech, several persons told him that if hethought southern women ought to teach negroes, he had better have his owndaughters do it. Falkner replied that he was willing when their serviceswere needed.[1765] White people made destitute by the war or crippledsoldiers were ready to engage in the instruction of negroes; and theMontgomery Advertiser and other papers took the ground that they shouldbe employed, especially the disabled soldiers.[1766] General Clantonstated that many Confederate soldiers and the widows of Confederatesoldiers were teaching negro schools, that he had assisted them insecuring positions. Such work, he said, was indorsed by most of theprominent people.[1767]

The blacks in Selma signed an appeal to the city council for their ownwhite people to teach them, and the churches made preparations to giveinstruction to the freedmen.[1768] The Monroe County Agricultural[Pg 626]Association declared it to be the duty of the whites to teach the negro,and a committee was appointed to formulate a plan for negro schools.[1769]Conecuh and Wilcox counties followed with similar declarations. A publicmeeting in Perry County, of such men as ex-Governor A. B. Moore and J. L.M. Curry, declared that sound policy and moral obligation required thatprompt efforts be made to fit the negro for his changed politicalcondition. His education must be encouraged. The teachers, white andblack, were to be chosen with a careful regard to fitness. A committee wasappointed to coöperate with the negroes in building schoolhouses and inprocuring teachers, whom they assured of support.[1770]

Besides the purely unselfish reasons, there were other reasons why theleading whites wanted the negro educated by southern teachers. It would bea step towards securing control over the negro race by the best nativewhites, who have always believed and will always believe that the negroshould be controlled by them. The northern school-teachers did not have aninfluence for good upon the relations between the races, and thus causedthe southern whites to be opposed to any education of the negro bystrangers, as it was felt that to allow the negro to be educated by thesepeople and their successors would have a permanent influence forevil.[1771]

The whites generally aided the negroes in their community to buildschoolhouses or schoolhouses and churches combined. Schoolhouses were inthe majority of cases built by the patrons of the schools; if rented, therent was deducted from the school money; the state made no appropriationfor building. In Dallas County forty negro schoolhouses were built withthe assistance of the whites. This was usually done in the Black Belt, butwas less general in the white counties. In Montgomery the prominentcitizens gave money to help build a negro “college”; some paid the tuitionof negro children at schools where charges were made. White men were oftenmembers of the board of colored schools. All this was before the negro wasseen to be hopelessly in the clutches of the northerners.[1772]

In spite of the fact that for several years there were southern[Pg 627] whiteswho taught negroes, the schools were judged by the results of the teachingof the northerners. The Freedmen’s Bureau brought discredit on negroeducation.[1773] The work of the various aid societies was little better.The personnel of both, to a great extent, passed to the new system, Bureauand Association teachers becoming state teachers; and in the transfer theteachers tried to secure a better standing for themselves than the nativeteachers had. Many of the northern teachers were undoubtedly good people,but all were touched with fanaticism and considered the white peoplehopelessly bad and by nature and training brutal and unjust to negroes.The negro teachers who were trained by them, both in the North and in theSouth, and who occupied most of the subordinate positions in the schools,had caught the spirit of the teaching. The native negro teacher, however,never quite equalled his white instructor in wrong-headedness. Hepersisted in seeing the actual state of affairs quite often. But theresults of some of the educational work done during Reconstruction for thenegro was to make many white people, especially the less friendly and thecareless observers, believe that education in itself was a bad thing forthe negroes. It became a proverb that “schooling ruins a negro,” and amongthe ignorant and more prejudiced whites this opinion is still firmly held.Not all of the northern teachers were of good character, and the otherssuffered for the sins of these. Almost from the first the doors of thesouthern whites were closed against the northern teacher, not only onaccount of the character of some and the objectionable teachings of many,but because they generally insisted on being personally unpleasant; and,had all of them been above reproach in character and training, theiropinions in regard to social questions, which they expressed on everyoccasion, would have resulted in total exclusion from white society. Theyreally cared little, perhaps, but they had a great deal to say on thesubject, and made much trouble on account of it.[1774]

At first, when they wished it, some northern teachers were able to secureboard with white families. After a few weeks such was not the case, and,except in the cities where the teachers could live[Pg 628]together, they wereobliged to live with the negroes. This could produce only bad results. Itat once caused them to be excluded from all white society, and gained forthem the contempt of their white neighbors, at the same time losing themthe support and even the respect of the negroes. For the negro alwaysinsists that a white person to be respected must live up to a certainstandard; otherwise, he may like, or fear, or despise, but never respect.Again, some of the doubtful characters caused scandal by their manner oflife among the negroes, and in several instances male teachers werevisited by the Ku Klux Klan because of their irregular conduct with negrowomen. One in Calhoun County was killed. Negro men who lived with whitewomen teachers were killed, and in some cases the women were thrashed.Others were driven away.[1775] But on the whole there was little violence,the forces of social proscription at length sufficing to drive out theobnoxious teachers.[1776]

Much was said during Reconstruction days about the burning of negroschoolhouses by the whites. There were several such cases, but not as manyas is supposed. In the records only one instance can be found of a schoolbuilding being burned simply from opposition to negro schools. As a rulethe schoolhouses (and churches also) were burned because they were theheadquarters of the Union League and the general meeting places forRadical politicians, or because of the character of the teacher and theresults of his or her teachings. Regular instruction of the negro had beengoing on for two years or more before the Ku Klux Klan began burningschoolhouses. When one was burned, the Radical leaders used the fact withmuch effect among the negroes; and in several instances it was practicallycertain that the Radical leaders, when the negroes were wavering, fired achurch or a schoolhouse in order to incense them against the whites, whowere charged with the deed. When a schoolhouse was burned, the negroeswere invariably assisted to rebuild by the respectable whites. Theburnings were condemned by all respectable[Pg 629] persons, and also by the partyleaders on account of the bad effect on political questions.[1777]

Some teachers of negro schools fleeced their black pupils and theirparents unmercifully. Teachers of private schools collected tuition inadvance and then left. In Montgomery, a teacher in the Swayne schoolnotified his pupils that they must bring him fifty cents each by a certainday, and that he, in return, would give to each a photograph ofhimself.[1778] In Eutaw, Greene County, the Rev. J. B. F. Hill, a NorthernMethodist preacher who had been expelled from the Southern MethodistChurch, taught a negro school and taxed his forty little scholarstwenty-five cents each to purchase a forty-cent water bucket.[1779]

In the cities where there were several negro schools, it was founddifficult at first to keep the small negro in attendance in the sameschool. A little negro would attend a school until he discovered that hedid not like the teacher or the school, and then he would go to another. Arule was made against such impromptu transfers, and then the small boychanged his name when he decided to try another school. Finally, theteacher was required to ask the other children the newcomer’s name beforehe was admitted.[1780]

The negro children were poorly supplied with books, and what few they didhave they promptly lost or tore up to get the pictures.[Pg 630] The attendancewas very irregular. For a few days there would be a great many scholarsand perhaps after that almost none, for the parents were willing to sendtheir children when there was no work for them to do, but as soon ascotton needed chopping or picking they would stop them and put them towork.[1781] If the negroes suspected that the trustees, who were (later)Democrats, had appointed a Democratic teacher, they would not send theirchildren to school to him, and in this they were upheld by their newleaders.[1782]

When the public funds were exhausted, the majority of the white schoolscontinued as pay schools, but the negro schools closed at once, for after1868 the interest of the negro in education was no longer strong enough toinduce him to pay for it. The education given the negro during this periodwas little suited to prepare him for the practical duties of life. The NewEngland system was transplanted to the South, and the young negroes wereforced even more than the white children. As soon as a little progress wasmade, the pupils were promoted into the culture studies of the whites.Those who learned anything at all had, in turn, to teach what they hadlearned; their education would help them very little in everydaylife.[1783] Negro education did not result in better relations between theraces. The northern teacher believed in the utter sinfulness of slaveryand in all the stories told of the cruelties then practised. TheAdvertiser gave as one reason why the southern whites should teach negroschools, that northern teachers caused trouble by using books and tractswith illustrations of slavery and stories about the persecution andcruelties of the whites against the blacks.[1784] General Clanton statedthat in the school in which he had often attended the exercises andexamined the classes, and where he had paid the tuition of negro children,the teachers ceased to ask him to make visits; that the school-books had“Radical pictures” of the persecuted slaves and the freedman; that Radicalspeeches were made by the scholars, reciting the wrongs done the negrorace; finally, that the school was a political nursery of race[Pg 631] prejudice,and that where the negroes were greatly in excess of the whites, it was aserious matter.[1785] He also said that the teachers from the North wereresponsible for the prejudice of the whites against negro schools. Thenative whites soon refused to teach, and if they had wished to do so, theyprobably could have gotten no pupils. The primary education of the negrowas left to the northern teachers and to incompetent negroes; highereducation was altogether under the control of the alien. It was mostunfortunate in every way, he added, that the southern white had had nopart in the education of the negro.[1786] The higher education of thenegroes in the state continued to be directed by northerners. Washingtonand Councill have done much toward changing the nature of the educationgiven the negro; they have also educated many whites from opposition tofriendliness to negro schools.

In 1870 Cloud was a candidate for reëlection, but was defeated by ColonelJoseph Hodgson, the Democratic candidate.[1787] When[Pg 632] Hodgson appeared aspresident of the Board, Cloud refused to yield on the ground that Hodgsonwas not eligible to the office, having once challenged a man to a duel.The Board, however, refused to recognize Cloud, and he was obliged toretire.[1788]

The first year of the reform administration was a successful one in spiteof the fact that the state was bankrupt and the treasury ceased to makecash payments to county superintendents early in 1872.[1789] The secondyear was a fair one, although the treasury could not pay the teachers, forthe Radical senate refused to make the appropriations for which their ownconstitution provided. However, the attendance of both whites and blacksincreased, notwithstanding the fact that the United States Commissioner ofEducation reported that Alabama had retrograded in educationalmatters.[1790] The school officials elected in 1870 were much superior totheir predecessors in every way. A state teachers’ association wasorganized, and institutes were frequently held. Four normal schools wereestablished for black teachers and four for whites. Private assistance forpublic schools was now sought and obtained, and hundreds of the schoolscontinued after the public money was exhausted.[1791]

Hodgson did valuable service to his party and to the state in exposing thecorrupt and irregular practices of the preceding administration. His ownadministration was much more[Pg 633] economical than that of his predecessor, asthe following figures will show:—

In the fall of 1872, owing to the operation of the Enforcement Acts, theelections went against the Democrats. The Radicals filled all the offices,and Joseph H. Speed was elected Superintendent of PublicInstruction.[1793] Speed was not wholly unfitted for the position, and didthe best he could under the circumstances. But nowhere in the Radicaladministration did he find any sympathy with his department, not even adisposition to comply with the direct provisions of the constitution inregard to school funds. So low had the credit of the state fallen that theadministration could no longer sell the state bonds to raise money. Thetaxes were the only resources, and the office-holding adventurers, feelingthat never again could they have an opportunity at the spoils, could sparenone of the money for schools. Practically all of the negro schools andmany of the white ones were forced to close, and the teachers, when paidat all by the state, were paid in depreciated state obligations.

The constitution required that one-fifth of all state revenue in additionto certain other funds be appropriated for the use of schools. Yet year byyear an increasing amount was diverted to other uses. The poll tax and theinsurance tax were used for other purposes. At the end of 1869,$187,872.49, which should have been appropriated for schools, had beendiverted. In 1872, $330,036.93 was lost to[Pg 634] the schools by failure toappropriate, and in 1873, $456,138.47 was lost in the same way. By the endof 1873 the shortage was $1,260,511.92, and a year later it was nearly twomillion dollars. During 1873 and 1874 schools were taught only where therewere local funds to support them. The carpet-bag system had failedcompletely.[1794]

The new constitution made by the Democrats in 1875 abolished the Board ofEducation, and returned to the ante-bellum system. Separate schools wereordered; the administrative expenses could not amount to more than 4 percent of the school fund;[1795] no money was to be paid to anydenominational or private school;[1796] the constitutional provision ofone-fifth of the state revenue for school use was abolished;[1797] and thelegislature was ordered to appropriate to schools at least $100,000 a yearbesides the poll taxes, license taxes, and the income from trust funds.The schools began to improve at once, and the net income was never againas small as under the carpet-bag régime.

Neither of the Reconstruction superintendents, Cloud or Speed, furnishedfull statistics of the schools. It appears that the average enrolment ofstudents under Cloud was, in 1870, 35,963 whites and[Pg 635] 16,097 blacks; underhis Democratic successor the average enrolment, in spite of lack ofappropriations, was 66,358 whites and 41,308 blacks in 1871, and 61,942whites and 41,673 blacks in 1872. Speed evidently kept no records ofattendance. In 1875, after the Democrats came into power, the attendancewas 91,202 whites and 54,595 blacks. The average number of days taught ina year under Cloud was 49 days in white schools and the same in black;under Hodgson the average length of term was 68.5 days and 64.33 daysrespectively. Theoretically the salaries of teachers under Cloud shouldhave been about $75 per month, but they received increasingly less eachyear as the legislature refused to appropriate the school money. Thefollowing table will show what the school funds should have been, asprovided for by the constitution; the sums actually received were smallereach successive year. In no case was the appropriation as great as in theyear 1858, nor was the attendance of black and white together much largerin any year than the attendance of whites alone in 1858 or 1859.

CHAPTER XX

The close of the war found the southern church organizations in a more orless demoralized condition. Their property was destroyed, their buildingswere burned or badly in need of repair, and the church treasuries wereempty. It was doubtful whether some of them could survive the terribleexhaustion that followed the war. The northern churches, “coming down todivide the spoils,” acted upon the principle that the question of separatechurches had been settled by the war along with that of state sovereignty,and that it was now the right and the duty of the northern churches toreconstruct the churches in the South. So preparations were made to“disintegrate and absorb” the “schismatical” southern religiousbodies.[1805]

In 1864 the Northern Methodist Church declared the South a proper fieldfor mission work, and made preparations to enter it. None were to beadmitted to membership in the church who were slaveholders or who were“tainted with treason.”[1806] In 1865 the bishops of the northernorganization resolved that “we will occupy so far as practicable thosefields in the southern states which may be open to us ... for black andwhite alike.”[1807] The General Missionary Committee of the northernchurch divided the South into departments for missionary work, and Alabamawas in the Middle Department. Bishop Clark of Ohio was sent (1886) to takecharge of the Georgia and Alabama Mission District. The declared purpose[Pg 637]of this mission work was to “disintegrate and absorb” the southern church,the organization of which was generally believed to have been destroyed bythe war.[1808]

In August, 1865, three Southern Methodist bishops met at Columbus,Georgia, to repair the shattered organization of the church and to infusenew life into it. They stated that the questions of 1844 were not settledby the war; that, “A large portion of the Northern Methodists has becomeincurably radical.... They have incorporated social dogmas and politicaltests into their church creeds.” They condemned the northern church forits action during the war in taking possession of southern church propertyagainst the wishes of the people and retaining it as their own after thewar, and for its more recent attempts to destroy the southernchurch.[1809]

In the confusion following the war, before the church administration wasagain in working order, the Protestant Episcopal Church, especially thenorthern section, attempted to secure the Southern Methodists. SomeMethodists wanted to go over in a body to the Episcopalians. The greatmajority, however, were strongly opposed to such action, and the attemptonly caused more ill feeling against the North.[1810]

At the time there was a belief among the Northern Methodists that in 1845thousands of members had been carried against their will into the southernchurch, and that they would now gladly seize the opportunity to join thenorthern body, which claimed to be the only Methodist Episcopal Church.Those thousands proved to be as disappointing as the “southern loyalists”had been, both in character and in numbers. The greatest gains were amongthe negroes, and to the negroes the few whites secured were intenselyhostile. In 1866, A. S. Lakin was sent to Alabama to organize the NorthernMethodist Church.[1811] After two years’ work the Alabama Conference[Pg 638] wasorganized, with 9431 members, black and white.[1812] In 1871, Lakinreported 15,000 members, black and white.[1813] The whites were from the“loyal” element of the population. There was great opposition by the whitepeople to the establishment of the northern church. Lakin and hisassociates excited the negroes against the whites and kept both races in acontinual state of irritation. Governor Lindsay stated before the Ku KluxCommittee that in his opinion the people bore with Lakin and his churchwith a remarkable degree of patience; that Lakin encouraged the negroes toforce themselves into congregations where they did not belong and toobstruct the services; and that they also made attempts to get control ofchurch property belonging to the southern churches.[1814] No progress wasmade among the whites, except in the white counties among the hills ofnorth Alabama and in the pine barrens of the southeast. The congregationswere small and were served by missionaries. Lakin and his assistants had apolitical as well as a religious mission—General Clanton said that theywere “emissaries of Christ and of the Radical party.” They claimed,nevertheless, that they never talked politics in the pulpit. Lakin oncepreached in Blountsville, and when he opened the doors of the church tonew members, he said that there was no northern church, no southernchurch, there was only the Methodist Episcopal Church.[1815] But everymember of this[Pg 639] church, he added, must be loyal, and therefore nosecessionist could join. He said that he had been ordered by hisconference not to receive “disloyal” men into the church.[1816]

The political activity of these missionaries resulted in visits from theKu Klux Klan. Some of the most violent ones were whipped or were warned tomoderate their sermons. Political camp-meetings were sometimes broken up,and two or three church buildings used as Radical headquarters wereburned.[1817] Every Northern Methodist was a Republican; and to-day insome sections of the state the Northern Methodists are known as“Republican” Methodists, as distinguished from “Democratic” or SouthernMethodists.

The organization of the Baptist church into separate congregations savedit from much of the annoyance suffered by such churches as the Methodistand the Episcopal, with their more elaborate systems of government. Yet innorth Alabama, there was trouble when the negro members were encouraged bypolitical and ecclesiastical emissaries to assert their rights under thedemocratic form of government by taking part in all church affairs, in theelection of pastors and other officers. Often there were more negromembers than white, and under the guidance of a missionary from the Norththese could elect their own candidate for pastor, regardless of the wishesof the whites and of the character of the would-be pastor. This danger,however, was soon avoided by the organization of separate negrocongregations.[1818]

The Southern Baptist Convention, organized in 1845, continued its separateexistence. The northern Baptists demanded, as a[Pg 640]prerequisite tocoöperation and fellowship, a profession of loyalty to the government.During 1865 the southern associations expressed themselves in favor ofcontinuing the former separate societies, and severely censured thenorthern Baptists for their action in obtaining authority from the Federalgovernment to take possession of southern church property against thewishes of the owners and trustees, and for trying to organize independentchurches within the bounds of southern associations. They were not infavor of fraternal relations with the northern Baptist societies.[1819]

In May, 1865, the Presbyterian General Assembly (New School) voted toplace on probation the southern ministers of the United Synod South whohad supported the Confederacy.[1820] Few, if any, offered themselves forprobation, while as a body the United Synod joined the SouthernPresbyterians (Old School). The General Assembly (O. S.) of the northernchurch in 1865 stigmatized “secession as a crime and the withdrawal of thesouthern churches as a schism.” The South, the Assembly decided, was to betreated as a missionary field, and loyal ministers to be employed withoutpresbyterial recommendation. Southern ministers and members were offeredrestoration if they would apply for it, and submit to certain tests,namely, proof of loyalty or a profession of repentance for disloyalty tothe government, and a repudiation of former opinions concerningslavery.[1821] Naturally this policy was not very successful inreconstructing their organization in the South. The General Assembly (O.S.) of the Presbyterian Church in the South met in the fall of 1865 atMacon, Georgia, and warned the churches against the efforts of thenorthern Presbyterians to sow seeds of dissension and strife in theircongregations.[1822] A union was formed with the United Synod South (N.S.), and the “Presbyterian Church in the United States,” popularly knownas the Southern[Pg 641] Presbyterian Church, was formed. To this acceded in 1867the Associate Reformed Church of Alabama.[1823]

The Episcopal Church in the United States during the war had heldconsistently to the same theory in regard to the withdrawal of thesouthern dioceses that the Washington administration held in regard to thesecession of the southern states. There was no recognition of awithdrawal, nor of a southern organization. The Confederate church wascalled a schismatic body, and its actions considered as illegal. The rollin the General Convention was called as usual, beginning withAlabama.[1824] But after the war a generous policy of conciliation waspursued; the southern churchmen were asked to come back; no tests orconditions were imposed; the House of Bishops of the northern churchupheld Wilmer in his trouble with the military authorities. The acts ofthe southern church during the war were recognized and accepted as validby the northern church. Such a policy easily resulted in reunion.

The attempt at Reconstruction in the churches had practically failed. Onlythe Episcopal Church, one of the weakest in numbers, had reunited.[1825]The others seemed farther apart than ever.

The other denominations had recognized the legal division of theirchurches before the war. Now they acted on the principle that territoryconquered for the United States was also conquered for the northernchurches. Southern ministers and members were asked to submit to degradingconditions in order to be restored to good standing. They must repudiatetheir former opinions, and renouncing their sins, ask for pardon andrestoration. Naturally no reunion resulted.

At the end of the war nearly every congregation had black members as wellas white, the blacks often being the more numerous. With the changedconditions, the various denominations felt it necessary to makedeclarations of policy in regard to the former slaves.[Pg 642] General Swayne,Assistant Commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau in Alabama, in his reportfor 1866, stated that at an early date the several denominations expressedthemselves as being strongly in favor of the education of the negro. “Theprincipal argument,” he said, “was an appeal to sectional and sectarianprejudice, lest, the work being inevitable, the influence which must comefrom it be realized by others; but it is believed that this was the shieldand weapon which men of unselfish principle found necessary atfirst.”[1826]

The Alabama Baptist Convention, in 1865, passed the following resolutionin regard to the relations between the white and black members:—

“Resolved, That the changed civil status of our late slaves does notnecessitate any change in their relations to our churches; and while werecognize their right to withdraw from our churches and form organizationsof their own, we nevertheless believe that their highest good will besubserved by their retaining their present relation to those who knowthem, who love them, and who will labor for the promotion of theirwelfare.”

The Convention also ordered renewed exertions in the work among thenegroes by means of lectures, private instruction, andSunday-schools.[1827] In 1866 the North Alabama Baptist Associationdirected that provision be made for the religious welfare of the negroesand for their education in the common schools. The negroes were to beallowed to choose their own pastors and teachers from among thewhites.[1828] But soon the results of the work of the northernmissionaries and political emissaries were seen in the separation of thetwo races in religious matters. The negroes were taught that the whiteswere their enemies, and that they must have their own separate churches.They were encouraged to assert their rights by obstructing in all theaffairs of the churches, and in the north Alabama Baptist churches, wherethey were in the majority, there was danger[Pg 643] that they would takeadvantage of the democratic system of the church government and, promptedby emissaries from the North, control the administration. They were,therefore, assisted by the whites to form separate congregations andassociations.[1829]

The principal work of the northern Baptists in central and south Alabamawas to separate the blacks into independent churches, and the secondColored Baptist Convention in the United States was organized in Alabamain 1867. The free form of government of this church attracted bothministers and members. In 1868 Bethel Association (white) reported that alarge number of the negroes desired no religious instruction from thewhites, although they were in great need of it, and that this oppositionwas caused by ignorance and prejudice. But, the report stated, thereshould be no relaxation in the effort to impart to them a knowledge of theGospel; that the first duty of the church was to instruct the ignorant andsuperstitious at home before sending missionaries to the far-off heathen;that all self-constituted negro preachers who claimed personal interviewswith God and personal instruction from Him should be discouraged, and onlythe best men selected as pastors. Advice and assistance were now given tothe negro congregations, which were organized into associations as soon aspossible. In 1872 three negro churches with a white pastor applied foradmission to Bethel Association. But it was thought best to maintainseparate associations.[1830] For years the white Baptists of Alabamaexercised a watchful care over the colored Baptists, whom they assisted inthe work of organizing congregations and associations, and in the erectionof schoolhouses and churches. Church and school buildings destroyed by theKu[Pg 644] Klux Klan were rebuilt by the whites, even when the coloredcongregation was only moderately well behaved. The whites in Montgomerycontributed to build the first negro Baptist church in that city, and awhite minister preached the sermon when the church was dedicated andturned over to the blacks. A number of white ladies were present at theservices.[1831] For fifteen years Dr. I. T. Tichenor was pastor of theFirst Baptist Church in Montgomery. During that time he baptized over 500negroes into its fellowship. At the end of the war there were 300 whiteand 600 negro members. Dr. Tichenor tells the story of the separation asfollows: “When a separation of the two bodies was deemed desirable, it wasdone by the colored brethren, in conference assembled, passing aresolution, couched in the kindliest terms, suggesting the wisdom of thedivision, and asking the concurrence of the white church in such action.The white church cordially approved the movement, and the two bodiesunited in erecting a suitable house of worship for the colored brethren.Until it was finished they continued to occupy jointly with the whitebrethren their house of worship, as they had done previous to this action.The new house was paid for in large measure by the white members of thechurch and individuals in the community. As soon as it was completed thecolored church moved into it with its organization all perfected, theirpastor, board of deacons, committees of all sorts; and the whole machineryof church life went into action without a jar. Similar things occurred inall the states of the South.”[1832]

The old plantation preachers were ordained and others called and regularlyordained to the ministry by the whites. But good negro preachers wereoverwhelmed by an influx of “self-called” pastors who were oftenincompetent and often immoral. At last the whites seem to have given up ashopeless their work for the negroes. In 1885 an urgent appeal from theColored Baptist Convention for advice and assistance met with no responsefrom the white convention. Politics and prejudice, imprudent and immoralleaders, had completed the work of separation. Still something was done bythe Home Mission Board towards instructing negro preachers and deacons,and in 1895 this Board and the Home Mission Board of the northern Baptistsagreed to coöperate and aid such negro[Pg 645]conventions as might desire it.But the Alabama negro convention has not yet asked for assistance.[1833]

In 1869, encouraged by the white members, the negro members of theCumberland Presbyterian Church in Tennessee and north Alabama asked forand received separate organization and were henceforth known as theAfrican Cumberland Presbyterian Church.[1834]

It is this division of the Cumberland Presbyterians that is now (1905)hindering somewhat the union of the Cumberland Presbyterian with theNorthern Presbyterian organization. The blacks demanded the separation ofthe races; the whites now demand that it be continued.

Various branches of the Northern Presbyterian organizations worked inAlabama among the negroes. The principal result of their work was theseparation of the blacks into independent churches. The SouthernPresbyterian Church (Presbyterian Church in the United States) madeearnest efforts for the negro after the war, and with some success. TheInstitute at Tuscaloosa for the education of colored Presbyterianministers is now the only school in the South for negroes which isconducted entirely by southern white teachers.[1835] The work of thePresbyterians among the negroes has continued to the present day, thoughin 1898 a movement was started to separate the blacks of the SouthernPresbyterian Church into an independent church. This movement was notsuccessful, as not a majority of the negro preachers desired separation.But the number of colored Presbyterians has always been small.[1836]

The Roman Catholic Church did much work among the negroes in the citiesand at first with a fair degree of success. It was strongly opposed by allProtestant denominations, both northern and southern, and especially bythe Northern Methodist Church. It seemed to be dreadful news to theMethodists when it was reported that the Catholic Church was about to openfifteen schools in Alabama for the negro, where free board and tuitionwould be given.[1837] The American Missionary Association, supported inAlabama mainly by money from the Freedmen’s Bureau, used its influenceamong the negroes against the Catholic Church, which, the Associationstated in a report, “was making extraordinary efforts to enshroud foreverthis class of the unfortunate race in Popish superstition anddarkness.”[1838]

But the Catholic Church had no place for the negro preacher of littleeducation and less character who desired to hold a high position in thenegro church. There was better prospect for promotion in the Baptist andMethodist churches, and to those churches went the would-be negro preacherand, through his influence, the majority of his people.[1839]

The Protestant Episcopal Church did nearly all of its work among thenegroes in the cities and among the negroes on the large plantations ofthe Black Belt. This church offered little more hope of advancement to theaverage negro preacher than the Roman Catholic, and the hostility of themilitary authorities to this church in 1865 and 1866 and the efforts ofthe missionaries and politicians caused a loss of most of the negromembers that it had. In 1866 the laity of the State Convention seemedrather unenthusiastic in regard to work among the negroes, and left it tobe managed by the bishop and clergy. The General Convention establishedthe “Freedmen’s Commission” to assist in the work, which was not to beunder the jurisdiction of the bishop. Bishop Wilmer stated that he was[Pg 647]unwilling to accept this “schism-breeding proposition,” but would be gladof assistance which would be under his direction as bishop. No such aidwas forthcoming. In 1867 only two congregations of negroes were left, onein Mobile and one in Marengo County. A few solitary blacks were to befound in the white congregations, and during Reconstruction these sufferedreal martyrdom on account of their loyalty to their old churches. Theywere ostracized by the other negroes, were called heathen and traitors,and were left alone in sickness and death. Under such treatment, themajority of the negro members were forced to withdraw from the Episcopalchurches.[1840]

In 1861 the Methodist Episcopal Church South had more than 200,000 coloredmembers and 180,000 children under instruction. One year after thesurrender of Lee only 78,000 remained.[1841] The Montgomery Conference, inNovember, 1865, decided that there was no necessity for a change in thechurch relations of white and black; that in the church there should be nodistinction on account of color and race; and that the negro had specialclaims on the whites. Presiding elders and preachers were directed to doall that lay in their power for the colored congregations, and establishSunday-schools and day schools for them when practicable.[1842] TheMethodist Protestants announced a similar policy.[1843] General Swayne ofthe Freedmen’s Bureau reported that he received much assistance towardnegro education from the Southern Methodist Church, and especially fromReverend H. N. McTyeire (afterwards bishop).[1844]

The Southern Methodist congregations lost their negro members from thesame causes that brought about the separation of the races in otherchurches. The negroes were told by their new leaders that for their safetythey must consider the southerners as their natural[Pg 648] enemies;[1845] theywere convinced that there was spiritual safety only in the northern or inindependent churches. All the forces of social ostracism were employedagainst those who chose to remain in the old churches. The southernplanter was not able to support the missionary who formerly preached tohis slaves, the negroes would not pay; and the church treasury wasempty.[1846] In 1866 the General Conference directed that the coloredmembers be organized as separate charges when they so desired; thatcolored preachers and presiding elders be appointed by the bishop, annualconferences organized when necessary, and especial attention be directedtowards Sunday-schools for the negroes.[1847]

Against all efforts of the Southern Methodists to work among the negroes,the Northern Methodists struggled with a persistence worthy of a bettercause. Missionaries were sent South, narrow and prejudiced, thoughsincere, men and women, who were possessed with the fixed conviction thatno good could come to the negro except from the North; in this convictionschools were established and churches organized. The injudicious andviolent methods of these[Pg 649] persons and their bitter prejudices caused theirexclusion from all desirable society, and naturally they became moreviolent and prejudiced than ever. Their letters written to their homesshowed that they believed the native white to be possessed by an inhumanhatred of the blacks, and that on the slightest provocation the whiteswould slaughter the entire negro population.[1848] They favored at least apartial confiscation in behalf of the negro. Through the Freedmen’s AidSociety the northern church entered upon work among the whites also,opposing the southern church on the ground that it was sectional andcondemning all its efforts among the blacks as useless and harmful. Foryears there was not a word of recognition of the work done by the southernchurches among the slaves.[1849] The missionaries were afraid of “the oldfeudal forces” which were still working, they thought, under variousdisguises such as “Historical Societies, Memorial Days, and monuments tothe Confederate dead.”[1850] Their work was thoroughly done. Two negroMethodist churches, organized in the North, secured the greater part ofthe negroes.[1851] Some joined the Northern Methodist Church, “which alsocame down to divide the spoils.”[1852]

[Pg 650]After 1866 the colored congregations still adhering to the SouthernMethodists had been divided into circuits, districts, and conferences. By1870 political differences and the efforts of other churches had soalienated the races that it was thought best to set up an independentorganization for the negroes, for their own protection. This was done in1870 by the General Conference. Two negro bishops were ordained, and allchurch property that had ever been used for negro congregations was turnedover to the new organization, which was called the Colored MethodistEpiscopal Church. A few negroes refused to leave the white church, and in1892 there were still 357 colored members on its rolls.[1853] Untilrecently there has been strong opposition on the part of the other Africanchurches to the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church because of itsrelations to the Southern Methodist Church. The latter has continued toaid and direct its protégé, and the opposition is graduallysubsiding.[1854]

After thirty years’ experience, most people who have knowledge[Pg 651] of thesubject agree that the religious interests of the negro have suffered fromthe separation of the races in the churches and from the enforcedwithdrawal of the native whites from religious work among the blacks. Theinfluence of the master’s family is no longer felt, and instead of thewhite minister came the negro preacher, with “ninety-five superstitions tofive eternal truths,”—superstitions, many of them reminiscences fromAfrica.[1855] There have been too many negro churches; every one who couldread and write wanted to preach,[1856] and many of them claimed directcommunication with the Supreme Being; every one who applied was admittedto the churches; morality and religion were only remotely connected;leaders of thedemi-monde were stout pillars of the church. APresbyterian minister in charge of negro interests has stated that in hischurch the personnel of the independent negro congregations is inferior incharacter and morality to the congregations under the supervision of thewhites. In the colored Baptist associations it is reported that frequentand radical changes have been the custom. Discontented churches secede andform new associations, which exist for a short while, and are thenabsorbed by other associations. The boundaries of the associations alsochange frequently; the church government seems to be in a kind of fluidstate. Thoughtful religious leaders now believe that the southern white,for the good of both races, should again take part in the religioustraining of the negro.[1857] But the difficulties in the way of such acourse are almost insurmountable and date back to forced separation of theraces in the churches.

An editorial in theNation in 1866 expressed the situation from onepoint of view very clearly and forcibly: The northern churches claim thatthe South is determined to make the religious division permanent, though“slavery no longer furnishes a pretext for separation.” Too much pains aretaken to bring about an ecclesiastical reunion,[Pg 652] and irritating offers ofreconciliation are made by the northern churches, all based on theassumption that the South has not only sinned, but sinned knowingly, inslavery and in war. We expect them to be penitent and to gladly accept ouroffers of forgiveness. But the southern people look upon a “loyal”missionary as a political emissary, and “loyal” men do not at presentpossess the necessary qualifications for evangelizing the southerners orsoftening their hearts, and are sure not to succeed in doing so. We lookupon their defeat as retribution and expect them to do the same. It willdo no good if we tell the southerners that “we will forgive them if theywill confess that they are criminals, offer to pray with them, preach withthem, and labor with them over their hideous sins.”[1858]

“Reconstruction” in the church was closely related to “Reconstruction” inthe state, and was so considered at the time by the reconstructionists ofboth.[1859] The same mistaken, intolerant policy was followed, on thetheory that the southern whites were as incapable of good action in churchas in state. Irritating and impossible tests and conditions of readmissionwere proposed before reconciliation. Later the efforts to weaken anddestroy the southern churches after attempts at reunion had failedcompleted the alienation, which in several organizations seems to bepermanent. There was a Solid South in church as well as in politics.

CHAPTER XXI

The Ku Klux movement was an understanding among southern whites, broughtabout by the chaotic condition of social and political institutionsbetween 1865 and 1876. It resulted in a partial destruction of theReconstruction and a return, as near as might be, to ante-bellumconditions. This understanding or state of mind took many forms and wascalled by many names. The purpose was everywhere and always the same: torecover for the white race control of society, and destroy the balefulinfluence of the alien among the blacks.[1860]

When the surviving soldiers of the Confederate army returned home in thespring and summer of 1865, they found a land in which politicalinstitutions had been destroyed and in which a radical social revolutionwas taking place—an old order, the growth of hundreds of years, seemed tobe breaking up, and the new one had not yet taken shape; all was confusionand disorder. At this time began a movement which under different formshas lasted until the present day—an effort on the part of the defeatedpopulation to restore affairs to a state which could be endurable, toreconstruct southern society. This movement, a few years later, was in oneof its phases known as the Ku Klux movement. For the peculiar aspects ofthis secret revolutionary movement many causes are suggested.

For several months before the close of the war the state government waspowerless except in the vicinity of the larger towns, the countrydistricts being practically without government. After the surrender therewas an interval of four months during which there was no pretence ofgovernment except in the immediate vicinity[Pg 654] of the points garrisoned bythe Federal army. The people were forbidden to take steps toward settingup any kind of government.[1861] From one end of the state to the otherthe land was infested by a vicious element left by the war,—Federal andConfederate deserters, and bushwhackers and outlaws of every description.These were especially troublesome in the counties north of the Black Belt.The old tory class in the mountain counties was troublesome.[1862] Of thelittle property surviving the wreck of war, none was safe from thievery.The worst class of the negroes—not numerous at this time—were insolentand violent in their new-found freedom. Murders were frequent, andoutrages upon women were beginning to be heard of.[1863] The whites,especially the more ignorant ones, were afraid of the effects of preachingof the doctrines of equality, amalgamation, etc., to the blacks. Therewere soon signs to show that some negroes would endeavor to put thetheories they had heard of into practice.[1864]

There was much talk of confiscation of property and division of land amongthe blacks. The negroes believed that they were going to be rewarded atthe expense of the whites, and many of the latter began to fear that suchmight be the case. The Freedmen’s Bureau early began its most successfulcareer in alienating the races, by teaching the black that the southernwhite was naturally unfriendly to him. In this work it was ably assistedby the preaching and teaching missionaries sent out from the North, whotaught the negro to beware of the southern white in church and in school.The Bureau broke up the labor system that had been patched up in thesummer and fall of 1865, and people in the Black Belt felt that labor mustbe regulated in some way.[1865] In the white counties the poorer whites,who had been the strongest supporters of the secession movement, notbecause they liked slavery, but because they were afraid of thecompetition of free negroes, began to show signs of a desire to drive thenegro tenants from the rich lands which they wanted for[Pg 655]themselves.[1866]For years after the war it was almost impossible for the farmer or planterto raise cows, hogs, poultry, etc., on account of the thievingpropensities of the negroes.[1867] Houses, mills, gins, cotton pens, andcorn-cribs were frequently burned.[1868] The Union League was believed bymany to be an organization for the purpose of plundering the whites andfor the division of property when the confiscation should takeplace.[1869] It was also an active political machine. Nearly all thewitnesses before the Ku Klux Committee who stated the causes of the riseof Ku Klux said that the League was the principal one. The whites sooncame to believe that they were persecuted by the Washington government.The cotton frauds in 1865; the cotton tax, 1865-1868; the refusal to admitthe southern states to representation in Congress, though they wereheavily taxed; the passage of the Reconstruction Acts, by which thegovernments in the South were overturned, the negroes enfranchised, andall the prominent whites disfranchised,—all combined to make the whitepeople believe that the North was seeking to humiliate them, to punishthem when they were weak. They did not contemplate such treatment whenthey laid down their arms. As one soldier expressed it: the treatmentreceived was in violation of the terms of surrender as expressed in theirparoles; the southern soldiers could have carried on a guerilla warfarefor years; the United States had made terms with men who had arms in theirhands; they had laid them down, and the United States had violated theseterms and punished individuals for alleged crime without trial; yet theirparoles stated that they were not to be disturbed as long as they werelaw-abiding; the whole Reconstruction was a violation of the terms ofsurrender as the southern[Pg 656] soldiers understood it; it was punishment of awhole people by legislative enactment, and contrary to the spirit ofAmerican institutions. It was not a matter of law, but of commonhonesty.[1870]

General Clanton complained that the southern people passed out of thehands of warriors into the hands of squaws.[1871] The government imposedupon Alabama after the voters had fairly rejected it according to act ofCongress was administered by the most worthless and incompetent ofwhites—alien and native—and negroes. Heavy taxes were laid; the publicdebt was rapidly increased; the treasury was looted; public office wastreated as private property. The government was weak and vicious; it gaveno protection to person or property; it was powerless, or perhapsunwilling, to repress disorder; and was held in general contempt. Theofficials were notoriously corrupt and unjust in administration. Therewere many disorders which the people believed the state and Federalgovernments could not or would not regulate.[1872] There was a generalfeeling of insecurity, in some sections a reign of terror. Innumerablehumiliations were inflicted on the former political people of the state bycarpet-bagger and scalawag, using the former slave as an instrument. Negropolicemen stood on the street corners annoying the whites, making a greatparade of all arrests, sometimes even of white women. The elections werecorrupt, and the law was deliberately framed to protect ballot-boxfrauds.[1873] The highest officers of the judiciary, Federal and state,took an active interest in politics, contrary to judicial traditions.Justice, so called, was bought and sold. The most thoroughly politicalpeople of the world, the proudest people of the English race, were thepolitical inferiors of their former slaves, and the newcomers from theNorth never failed to make this fact as irritating as possible, by speechand print and action.[1874]

In short, there was anarchy, social and political and economic. As thenegro said, “The bottom rail is on top.” The strenuous[Pg 657] editor Randolphsaid, “The origin of Ku Klux Klan is in the galling despotism that broodslike a nightmare over these southern states,—a fungus growth of militarytyranny superinduced by the fostering of Loyal Leagues, the abrogation ofour civil laws, the habitual violation of our national constitution, and apersistent prostitution of all government, all resources, and all powers,to degrade the white man by the establishment of negro supremacy.”[1875]

On account of the disordered condition of the state in 1865, some kind ofa police power was necessary, the Federal garrisons being but few andweak. The minds of all men turned at once to the old ante-bellumneighborhood police patrol.[1876] This patrol had consisted of men usuallyselected by the justice of the peace to patrol the entire community once aweek or once a month, usually at night. The duty was compulsory, and everyable-bodied white was subject to it, though there was sometimescommutation of service. The principal need for this patrol was to keep theblack population in order, and to this end the patrollers were investedwith the authority to inflict corporal punishment in summary fashion.There were about two companies, of six men and a captain each, to everytownship where there was a dense negro population. The attentions of thepatrol were not confined to negroes alone, but now and then a white manwas thrashed for some misdemeanor.[1877] In this respect the patrol was abody for the regulation of society, so far as petty misdemeanors wereconcerned, and every respectable white man was by virtue of his color amember of this police guard. He had the right, whether in active patrol ornot, to question any strange negro found abroad, or any negro travellingwithout a pass, or any white man found tampering with the negroes. It wasto some extent a military organization of society. Much of this was simplycustom, the development of hundreds of years, not a statute regulation,for that was a recent[Pg 658] thing in the history of slavery. It was the oldEnglish neighborhood police system become a part of the customary law ofslavery. After the war some regulation was necessary; the whites wereaccustomed to settling such matters outside of law or court; it was bredinto their nature, and they returned perhaps unconsciously to the oldsystem.[1878]

But now, under the régime of the Freedmen’s Bureau backed by the army, theold way of dealing with refractory blacks was illegal. As a matter of factthere was no legal way to control them. The result was natural—themovement to regulate society became a secret one. The white men of eachcommunity had a general understanding that they would assist one anotherto protect women, children, and property. They had a system of signals forcommunication, but no disguises, and the organization was not kept secretexcept from the negroes. In one locality the young men alone were unitedinto a committee for the regulation of the conduct of negroes. Theyrequested the women who lived alone on the plantations, the old men, andothers who were likely to be unable to control the negroes, to inform thecommittee of instances of misconduct on the part of the blacks. When suchinformation came, it was immediately acted upon, and the next day therewere sadder and better negroes on some one’s plantation.[1879] As a ruleone thrashing in a community lasted a long time. In Hale County avigilance committee was formed to protect the women and children in asection of the black country where there were few white men, most havingbeen killed in the war. They had a system of signals by means ofplantation bells. There were no disguises, and there was a public place ofmeeting.[1880] In the same county, in the fall of 1865, the whites nearNewberne asked General Hardee, then living on his plantation, to takecommand of their patrol. His answer was: “No, gentlemen, I want you toenroll my name for service, but put a younger man in command. I haveserved my day as commander. I will be ready to respond[Pg 659] when called uponfor active duty. I want to advise you to get ready for what may come. Weare standing over a sleeping volcano.”[1881] In Limestone County a similarorganization was composed of peaceable citizens united to disperse orcrush out bands of thieves.[1882] This was in a white county in thenorthern section of the state, where the people had suffered during thewar, and were still suffering, from the depredations of the tories. InWinston and Walker counties the returning Confederate soldiers bandedtogether and drove many of the tories from the country, hanging several ofthe worst characters.[1883] In central and southern Alabama the citizensresolved themselves into vigilance committees and hanged horse thieves andother outlaws who were raiding the country, some of them disguised in theuniforms of Federal soldiers.[1884]

In Marengo County while negro insurrection was feared a secretorganization was formed for the protection of the whites. The members wereinitiated in a Masonic hall. Regular meetings were held, and each memberreported on the conduct of the negroes in his community. There were nowhippings necessary in this section, and after a few night rides thesociety dissolved. The Bureau and Union League were never successful ingetting absolute control over the “Cane Brake” region, and therefore thenegroes were better behaved and there was less disorder.[1885]

Before Christmas, 1865, when there seemed to be danger of outbreaks ofthat part of the negro population who were disappointed in regard to thedivision of property, there was a disposition among the whites in somecounties, especially in the eastern Black Belt, to form militia companies,though this was forbidden by the Washington authorities. Some of thesecompanies regularly patrolled their neighborhoods. Others undertook todisarm the freedmen, who were purchasing arms of every description, and inorder to do this searched the negro houses at night. General Swayne,recognizing the dangerous situation of the whites, forbore to interferewith these militia companies until after Christmas, when, the negroes[Pg 660]remaining peaceable, he issued an order forbidding furtherinterference;[1886] but the militia organizations persisted in some shapeuntil the Reconstruction Acts were passed.

In the eastern counties of the state there was in 1865 and 1866 anorganization, preceding the Ku Klux, called the “Black Cavalry.” It was asecret, oath-bound, night-riding order. Its greatest strength was inTallapoosa County, where it was said to have 200 to 300 members. It wasnot only a band to regulate the conduct of the negroes, but there was alarge element in it of the poorer whites, who wanted to drive the negrofrom the rich lands upon which slavery had settled them, in order to getthem for themselves. This was generally true of all secret orders ofregulators in the white counties from 1865 to 1875, and exactly theopposite was the case in the Black Belt, where the planters preferred thenegro labor, and never drove out the blacks. The “Black Cavalry,” it issaid, drove more negroes from east Alabama than the Ku Klux did.[1887]

There were local bands of regulators policing nearly every district inAlabama. Few of them had formal organizations or rose to the dignity ofhaving officers or names, but there were the “Men of Justice,” in northAlabama, principally in Limestone County, and the “Order of Peace,”partially organized in Huntsville early in 1868,[1888] and many otherlocal orders.

The local bands of regulators in existence immediately after the war werea necessary outcome of the disordered conditions prevailing at the time,and would have disappeared, with a return to normal conditions under astrong government which had the respect of the people. But during theexcitement over the action of the Reconstruction convention in the fall of1867 and the elections of February, 1868, a new secret order becameprominent in Alabama; and when, after the people had defeated theconstitution, Congress showed a disposition to disregard the popular willas expressed in the result of the election, this order—Ku Klux[Pg 661]Klan—sprang into activity in widely separated localities. The campaignof the previous six months had made the people desperate when theycontemplated what was in store for them under the rule of carpet-bagger,scalawag, and negro. The counter-revolution was beginning.

The Ku Klux Klan originated in Pulaski, Tennessee, in the fall of1865.[1889] The founders were James R. Crowe, Richard R. Reed, CalvinJones, John C. Lester, Frank O. McCord, and John Kennedy. Some wereAlabamians and some Tennesseeans. Lester and Crowe lived later inSheffield, Alabama. Crowe and Kennedy are the only survivors. It was aclub of young men who had served in the Confederate army, who united forpurposes of fun and mischief, pretty much as college boys in secretfraternities or country boys as “snipe hunters.” The name was anaccidental corruption of the Greek wordkuklos, a circle, and had nomeaning.[1890] The officers had outlandish titles, and fancy disguiseswere adopted. The regalia or uniform consisted of a tall cardboard hatcovered with cloth, on which were pasted red spangles and stars; there wasa face covering, with openings for nose, mouth, and ears; and a long robecoming nearly to the heels, made of any kind of cloth—white, black, orred—often fancy colored calico. A whistle was used as a signal.[1891]

This scheme for amusement was successful, and there were plenty ofapplications for admission. Members went away to other towns, and underthe direction of the Pulaski Club, or “Den” as it was called, other Denswere formed. The Pulaski Den was in the habit of parading in full uniformat social gatherings of the whites at night, much to the delight of thesmall boys and girls. Pulaski was near the Alabama line, and many Alabamayoung men saw these parades or heard of them, and Dens were organized overnorth[Pg 662] Alabama in the towns. Nothing but horse-play and tomfoolery tookplace in the meetings. In 1867 and 1868 the order appeared in parade inthe north Alabama towns and “cut up curious gyrations” on the publicsquares.[1892] The Klan had not long been in existence and was still inthis first stage, and was rapidly speeding, when a pretty generaldiscovery of its power over the negro was made. The weird night riders inghostly disguises frightened the superstitious negroes, who were told thatthe spirits of dead Confederates were abroad.[1893] There was a generalbelief outside the order that there was a purpose behind all theceremonial and frolic of the Dens; many joined the order convinced thatits object was serious; others saw the possibilities in it and joined inorder to make use of it. After discovering the power of the Klan over thenegroes, there was a general tendency, owing to the disordered conditionsof the time, to go into the business of a police patrol and hold in checkthe thieving negroes, the Union League, and the “loyalists.” From being aseries of social clubs the Dens swiftly became bands of regulators, addingmany fantastic qualities to their original outfit. All this time thePulaski organization exercised a loose control over a federation of Dens.There was danger, as the Dens became more and more police bodies, of someof the more ardent spirits going to excess, and in several instances Denswent far in the direction of violence and outrage. Attempts were made bythe parent Den to regulate the conduct of the Dens, but owing to the looseorganization, they met with little success. Some of the Dens lost allconnection with the original order.

Early in 1867 the Grand Cyclops of the Pulaski Den sent requests to thevarious Dens in the southern states to send delegates to a convention inNashville. This convention met in May, 1867. Delegates from all of theGulf states and from several others were present, and the order of Ku KluxKlan was reorganized. There were at[Pg 663] this time Dens in all the southernstates, and even in Illinois and Pennsylvania.[1894] A constitution calledthe “Prescript” was here adopted for the entire order. The administrationwas centralized, and the entire South was placed under the jurisdiction ofits officials. The former slave states except Delaware constituted theEmpire, which was ruled by the Grand Wizard[1895] with a staff of tenGenii; each state was a realm under a Grand Dragon and eight Hydras; thenext subdivision was the Dominion, consisting of several counties,[1896]ruled by a Grand Titan and six Furies; the county as a Province wasgoverned by a Grand Giant[1897] and four Goblins; the unit was the Den orcommunity organization. There might be several in each county, each undera Grand Cyclops and two Night Hawks. The Genii, Hydras, Furies, Goblins,and Night Hawks were staff officers. Each of the above divisions wascalled a Grand *. The order had no name, and at first was designated bytwo **, later by three ***. The private members were called Ghouls. TheGrand Magi and the Grand Monk were the second and third officers of theDen, and had the authority of the Grand Cyclops when the latter wasabsent. The Grand Sentinel was in charge of the guard of the Den, and theGrand Ensign carried its banner on the night rides.[1898] Every divisionhad a Grand Exchequer, whose duty it was to look after the revenue,[1899]and a Grand Scribe, or secretary, who called the roll, made reports, andkept lists of members (without anything to show what the list meant),usually in Arabic figures,[Pg 664] 1, 2, 3, etc. The Grand Turk was the adjutantof the Grand Cyclops, and gave notice of meetings, executed orders,received candidates, and administered the preliminary oaths. The officersof the Den were elected semiannually by the Ghouls; the highest officersof the other divisions were elected biannually by the officers of the nextlower rank. The first Grand Wizard was to serve three years from May,1867.[1900] Each superior officer could appoint special deputies to assisthim and to extend the order. Every division made quarterly reports to thenext higher headquarters. In case a question of paramount importanceshould arise, the Grand Wizard was invested with absolute authority.[1901]

The Tribunal of Justice consisted of a Grand Council of Yahoos for thetrial of all elected officers, and was composed of those of equal rankwith the accused, presided over by one of the next higher rank; and forthe trial of Ghouls and non-elective officers, the Grand Council ofCentaurs, which consisted of six Ghouls appointed by the Grand Cyclops,who presided.[1902]

A person was admitted to the Den after nomination by a member and strictinvestigation by a committee. No one under eighteen was admitted. The oathtaken was one of obedience and secrecy. The Dens governed themselves bythe ordinary rules of deliberative bodies. The penalty for betrayal ofsecret was “the extreme penalty of the Law.”[1903] None of the secrets wasto be written. There was a Register of alarming adjectives used in datingthe wonderful Ku Klux orders.[1904]

In the original Prescript no mention was made of the peculiar objects ofthe order. The Creed acknowledged the supremacy of[Pg 665] the Divine Being, andthe Preamble the supremacy of the laws of the United States.[1905] TheRevised and Amended Prescript sets forth the character and objects of theorder: (1) To protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenceless from theindignities, wrongs, and outrages of the lawless, the violent, and thebrutal;[1906] to relieve the injured and oppressed; to succor thesuffering and unfortunate, and[Pg 666] especially the widows and orphans ofConfederate soldiers. (2) To protect and defend the Constitution of theUnited States and all laws passed in conformity thereto, and to protectthe states and people thereof from all invasion from any source whatever.(3) To aid and assist in the execution of all “constitutional” laws, andto protect the people from unlawful arrest, and from trial except by theirpeers according to the laws of the land.[1907]

The questions asked of the candidate constituted a test sufficient toexclude all except the most friendly whites. The applicant for admissionwas asked if he belonged to the Federal army or the Radical party, UnionLeague, or Grand Army of the Republic, and if he was opposed to theprinciples of those organizations. He was asked if he was opposed to negroequality, political and social, and was in favor of a white man’sgovernment, of constitutional liberty and equitable laws. He was asked ifhe was in favor of reënfranchisement and emancipation of the southernwhites, and the restoration to the southern people of theirrights,—property, civil, and political,—and of maintaining theconstitutional rights of the South, and if he believed in the inalienableright of self-preservation of the people against the exercise of arbitraryand unlicensed power.

The Revised and Amended Prescript, made in 1868, was an attempt to givemore power of control to the central authorities in order to enable themto regulate the obstreperous Dens. The purposes of the order, omitted inthe first Prescript, was clearly declared in the revision. Little changewas made in the administration of the order.[1908]

[Pg 667]The order continued to spread after the reorganization in 1867. There werescattered Dens over north Alabama and as far south as Tuscaloosa, Selma,and Montgomery. It came first to the towns and then spread into thecountry. It was less and less an obscure organization, and more and more aband of regulators, using mystery, disguise, and secrecy to terrify theblacks into good behavior. It was in many ways a military organization,the shadowy ghost of the Confederate armies.[1909] The whites were allwell-trained military men; they looked to their military chieftains tolead them. The best men were members,[1910] though the prominentpoliticians as a rule did not belong to the order. They fought the fightagainst the Radicals on the other side of the field.[1911]

After the elections in February, 1868, the Ku Klux came into greaterprominence in Alabama, especially in the northern and western portions,while south Alabama was still quiet.[1912]

The counties of north Alabama infested were Lauderdale, Limestone,Madison, Jackson, Morgan, Lawrence, Franklin, Madison, Winston, Walker,Fayette, and Blount. In central Alabama, Montgomery, Greene, Pickens,Tuscaloosa, Calhoun, Talladega, Randolph, Chambers, Coosa, andTallapoosa.[1913] There were bands in most of the other counties, and inthe counties of the Black Belt. The order seldom extended to the loweredge of the Black Belt. In the Black[Pg 668] Belt it met the Knights of the WhiteCamelia, the White Brotherhood, and later the White League, and in a wayabsorbed them all.[1914]

The actual number of the men in regular organized Dens cannot beascertained. It was estimated that there were 800 in Madison County, and10,000 in the state.[1915] Others said that it included all Confederatesoldiers.[1916] The actual number regularly enrolled was much less thanthe number who acted as Ku Klux when they considered it necessary. In onesense practically all able-bodied native white men belonged to the order,and if social and business ostracism be considered as a manifestation ofthe Ku Klux spirit, then the women and children also were Ku Klux.

It is the nature and vice of secret societies of regulators to degenerate,and the Ku Klux Klan was no exception to the rule. By 1869 the order hadfallen largely under control of a low class of men who used it to furthertheir own personal aims, to wreak revenge on their enemies and gratifypersonal animosities. Outrages became frequent, and the order wasdangerous even to those who founded it.[1917] It had done its work. Thenegroes had been in a measure controlled, and society had been heldtogether during the revolution of 1865-1869. The people were stillharassed by many irritations and persecutions, but while almostunbearable, they were mostly of a nature to disappear in time as thecarpet-bag governments collapsed. The most material evil at present wasthe misgovernment of the Radicals, and this could not last always. Butthough the organized Ku Klux Klan was disbanded, the spirit of resistancewas higher than ever; and as each community had problems to deal with theywere met in the old manner—a sporadic uprising of a local Klan.[Pg 669] As longas a carpet-bagger was in power, the principles of the Klan were asserted.

The order known as the Knights of the White Camelia originated inLouisiana in 1867,[1918] and spread from thence through the Gulf states.In Alabama it was well organized in the southwestern counties, and to someextent throughout the lower Black Belt. It probably did not exist in thesoutheastern white counties.[1919] The former local vigilance committees,neighborhood patrol parties, and disbanded militia were absorbed into theorder, which gave them a uniform organization and a certain loose union,and left them pretty much as independent as before. There was a closersympathy between southwest Alabama and Louisiana than between the twosections of Alabama, which perhaps will account for the failure of Ku KluxKlan to organize in the southern counties. The White Camelia came toAlabama from New Orleansvia Mobile, and also through southernMississippi to southwestern Alabama. Later the White League came the sameway.

In June 1868 a convention of the Knights of the White Camelia was held inNew Orleans, and a constitution was adopted for the order.[1920] Thepreamble stated that Radical legislation was subversive of the principlesof government adopted by the fathers, and in order to secure safety andprosperity the order was founded for the preservation of those principles.The order consisted of a Supreme Council of the United States, and ofGrand, Central, and Subordinate councils. The Supreme Council withheadquarters in New Orleans consisted of five delegates from each GrandCouncil. It was the[Pg 670] general legislative body of the order, and maintainedcommunication within the order by means of passwords and ciphercorrespondence. Communication between and with the lowest organizationswas verbal only. All officers were designated by initials.[1921]

In each state the Grand Council[1922] was the highest body, and held itssessions at the state capital. The membership consisted of delegates fromthe Central Councils—one delegate for one thousand members. The GrandCouncil had the power of legislation for the state, subject to theconstitution of the order and the laws of the Supreme Council. In eachcounty or parish there was a Central Council of delegates from SubordinateCouncils.[1923] It was charged with the duty of collecting the revenue andextending the order within its limits. The lowest organization was theCouncil (or Subordinate Council) in a community. This body had soleauthority to initiate members. In each county the Subordinate Councilswere designated by numbers. Each was composed of several Circles (eachunder a Grand Chief); each Circle of five Groups (each under a Chief); andeach Group of ten Brothers. Officials of the order were elected byindirect methods. An ex-member states that “during the three years of itsexistence here [Perry County] I believe its organization and disciplinewere as perfect as human ingenuity could have made it.”[1924]

The constitution prohibited the order as a body from nominating orsupporting any candidate or set of candidates for public office. Eachsubordinate rank had the right of local legislation. Quarterly reportswere made by each division. The officers of the higher councils were knownonly to their immediate subordinates. When[Pg 671] a question came up thatcould not be settled it was referred to the next higher council.

Only whites[1925] over eighteen were admitted to membership, afterelection by the order in which no adverse vote was cast. Each councilacted as a court when charges were brought against its members. Punishmentwas by removal or suspension from office; there was no expulsion from theorder; punishment was simply a reducing to ranks. The candidate formembership into the order was required first to take the oath of secrecy,which was administered by a subordinate official, who then announced himto the next higher official.[1926] By the latter the candidate waspresented to the commander of the Council, and in answer to hisinterrogations made solemn declaration that he had not married and wouldnever marry a woman not of the white race, and that he believed in thesuperiority of the white race. He promised never to vote for any except awhite man, and never to refrain from voting at any election in which anegro candidate should oppose a white. He further declared that he woulddevote his intelligence, energy, and influence to prevent politicalaffairs from falling into the hands of the African race, and that he wouldprotect persons of the white race in their lives, rights, and propertyagainst encroachments from any inferior race, especially the African.After the candidate had made the proper declarations the final oath wasadministered,[1927] after which he was pronounced a “Knight of the ——.”

[Pg 672]The Commander next instructed the new members in the principles of theorder, which he declared was destined to regenerate the unfortunatecountry, and to relieve the white race from its humiliating condition. Itsfundamental object was the “Maintenance of the Supremacy of the WhiteRace.”[1928] History and physiology were called upon to show that theCaucasian race had always been superior to, and had always exerciseddominion over, inferior races. No human laws could permanently change thegreat laws of nature. The white race alone had achieved enduringcivilization, and of all subordinate races, the most imperfect was theAfrican. The government of the Republic was established by white men forwhite men. It was never intended by its founders that it should fall intothe hands of an inferior race. Consequently, any attempt to transfer thegovernment to the blacks was an invasion of the sacred rights guaranteedby the Constitution, as well as a violation of the laws established by Godhimself, and no member of the white race could submit, without humiliationand shame, to the subversion of the established institutions of theRepublic. It was the duty of white men to resist attempts against theirnatural and legal rights in order to maintain the supremacy of theCaucasian race and restrain the “African race to that condition of socialand political inferiority for which God has destined it.” There was to beno infringement of laws, no violations of right, no force employed, exceptfor purposes of legitimate and necessary defence.

As an essential condition of success, the Order proscribed absolutely anysocial equality between the races. If any degree of social equality shouldbe granted, there would be no end to it; political equality wasnecessarily involved. Social equality meant finally intermarriage and adegraded and ignoble population. The white blood must be kept pure topreserve the natural superiority of the[Pg 673] race. The obligation wastherefore taken “To Observe a Marked Distinction between the twoRaces,”[1929] in public and in private life.

One of the most important duties of the members was to respect the rightsof the negroes, and in every instance give them their lawful dues. It wasonly simple justice to deny them none of their legitimate privileges.There was no better way to show the inherent superiority of the whiterace, than by dealing with the blacks in that spirit of firmness,liberality, and impartiality which characterizes all superiororganizations. It would be ungenerous to restrict them in the exercise ofcertain privileges, without conceding to them at the same time the fullestmeasure of their legitimate rights. A fair construction of the white man’sduty to the black would be, not only to respect and observe theiracknowledged rights, but also to see that they were respected and observedby others.

These declarations give a good idea of what was in the minds of thesouthern whites in 1867 and 1868, and later.[1930]

Like the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camelia disbanded when theobjects of the order were accomplished, or were in a fair way towardaccomplishment. In some counties it lived a year or two longer than inothers. In certain counties, by order of its authorities, it was neverorganized. It did not extend north of the Black Belt, though it existed inclose proximity to the more southerly of the Klans. As the oldest of thelarge secret orders, the name of Ku Klux Klan was more widely known thanthe others, and hence the name was applied indiscriminately to all. Alocal body would assume the name of a large one when there was no directconnection. The other organizations similar to Ku Klux in objects andmethods[1931] did not have a strong membership in Alabama.

The task before the secret orders was to regulate the conduct of theblacks and their leaders, in order that honor, life, and property might bemade secure. They planned to do this by playing upon the fears,superstitions, and cowardice of the black race; by creating a white terrorto offset the black one. To this end they made use of strange and horribledisguises, mysterious and fearful conversation, midnight rides and drills,and silent parades.

The costume varied with the locality, often with the individual.[1932] TheTennessee regalia was too fine for the backwoods Ku Klux to duplicate. Thecardboard hat was generally worn. It was funnel-shaped, eighteen inches totwo feet high, covered with white cloth, and often ornamented with starsof gold, or by pictures of animals. The mask over the face was sometimeswhite, with holes cut for eyes, mouth, and nose. These holes were boundaround with red braid so as to give a horrible appearance. Other eyes,nose, and mouth were painted higher up on the hat. Black cloth with whiteor red braid was also used for the mask. Sometimes simply a woman’s veilwas worn over the head and held down by an ordinary woollen hat. The “hillbilly” Ku Kluxes did not adorn themselves very much. To the sides of thecardboard hats horns were sometimes attached, and to the mask a fringe ofquills, which looked like enormous teeth and made a peculiar noise. Themask and the robe were usually of different colors. Sometimes a black sackwas drawn[Pg 675] over the head, and eyes, mouth, and nose holes cut in it. Falseor painted beards were often worn. The robe consisted of a white orcolored gown, reaching nearly to the heels, and held by a belt around thewaist; it was usually made of fancy calico; white gowns were sometimesstriped with red or black. As long as the negro went into spasms of fearat the sight of a Ku Klux, the usual costume seems to have been white; butafter the negro became somewhat accustomed to the Ku Klux, and learnedthat there were human beings behind the robes, the regalia became only adisguise, and less attention was devoted to making fearful costumes. As arule the ordinary clothes worn were underneath, but in Madison County[Pg 676] theGhouls sported fancy red flannel trousers with white stripes, while thewest Alabama spirits were content with wearing ordinary dark trousers, andshirts slashed with red. The white robe was often a bed sheet held on by abelt. After a night ride the disguise could be taken off and stowed aboutthe person. The horses were covered with sheets or white cloth, held on bythe saddle and by belts. There was, at times, a disguise which fitted thehorse’s head, and the horses were sometimes painted. Skeleton sheep’sheads or cows’ heads, or even human skulls, were frequently carried on thesaddle-bows. A framework was sometimes made to fit the shoulders of aGhoul and caused him to appear twelve feet high. A skeleton wooden hand atthe end of a stick served to greet negroes at midnight. Every man had asmall whistle. The costume was completed by a brace of pistols worn underthe robe.[1933]

The trembling negro who ran into the Ku Klux on his return from thelove-feasts at the Loyal League meetings was informed that the white-robedfigures he saw were the spirits of the Confederate dead, killed atChickamauga or Shiloh, and that they were unable to rest in their gravesbecause of the conduct of the negroes. He was told in a sepulchral voiceof the necessity for his remaining at home more and taking a less activepart in various predatory excursions. In the middle of the night thesleeping negro would wake to find his house surrounded by the ghostlycompany, or find several standing by his bedside, ready, as soon as hewoke, to inform him that they were the ghosts of men whom he had formerlyknown, killed at Shiloh. They had scratched through from Hell to warn thenegroes of the consequences of their misconduct. Hell was a dry andthirsty land; they asked him for water. Buckets of water went sizzlinginto a sack of leather, rawhide, or rubber, concealed within the flowingrobe. At other times, Hell froze over to give passage to the spirits whowere returning to earth. It was seldom necessary at this early stage touse violence. The black population was in an ecstacy of fear. A silenthost of white-sheeted horsemen parading[Pg 677] the country roads at night wassufficient to reduce the black to good behavior for weeks or months. Onesilent Ghoul, posted near a League meeting place, would be the cause ofthe dissolution of that club. Cow bones in a sack were rattled. A horriblebeing, fifteen feet tall, walking through the night toward a place ofcongregation, was pretty apt to find that every one vacated the placebefore he arrived. A few figures, wrapped in bed sheets and sitting ontombstones in a graveyard near which negroes passed, would serve to keepthe immediate community quiet for weeks, and give it a reputation for“hants” which lasts perhaps until to-day. At times the Klan paraded thestreets of the towns, men and horses perfectly disguised. The parades werealways silent, and so conducted as to give the impression of very largenumbers. Regular drills were held in town and country, and the men showedthat they had not forgotten their training in the Confederate army. Therewere no commands unless in a very low tone or in a mysterious language;usually they drilled by signs or by whistle signals.[1934]

For a year or more,—until the spring of 1868,—the Klan was successful sofar as the negro was concerned, through its mysterious methods. Thecarpet-bagger and the scalawag were harder problems. They understood thenature of the secret order and knew its objects. As long as the order didnot use violence they were not to be moved to any great extent. Then, too,the negro lost some of his fear of the supernatural beings. Differentmethods were now used. In March and April, 1868, there was an outbreak ofKu Kluxism over a large part of the state.[1935] For the first time thenewspapers were filled with Ku Klux orders and warnings. The warnings werefound posted on the premises of obnoxious negroes or white Radicals. Thenewspapers sometimes published them for the benefit of all who might beinterested. One warning was supposed to be[Pg 678]sufficient to cause the erringto mend their ways.[1936] If still obstinate in their evil courses, a writfrom the Klan followed and punishment was inflicted. Warnings were sent toall whom the Klan thought should be regulated—white or black. Thewarnings were written in disguised handwriting and sometimes purposelymisspelled. The following warning was sent to I. D. Sibley, acarpet-bagger in Huntsville:—

[Pg 679]The published orders of the Klan served a double purpose—to notify themembers of contemplated movements, and to frighten the Radicals, white orblack, who had made themselves offensive. The newspapers usually publishedthese orders with the remark that the order had been found or had beensent to them with a request for publication.[1938] Each Cyclops composedhis own orders, but there was a marked resemblance between the variousdecrees. The most interesting and lively orders were concocted by theCyclops editor of theTuscaloosa Independent Monitor.[1939] Somespecimens are given below.

K. K. K.
Friday, April 3rd, 1868
Warning—For one who understands.
26/3/68 No. 5—116
Recorded 8th / 16 / 24—B.
K. K. K.

KU KLUX.

Hell-a-Bulloo Hole—Den of Skulls.
Bloody Bones, Headquarters of the
Great Ku Klux Klan, No. 1000
Windy Month—New Moon.
Cloudy Night—Thirteenth Hour.

General Orders, No. 2.

The great chief Simulacre summons you!
Be ready! Crawl slowly! Strike hard!
Fire around the pot!
Sweltered venom, sleeping got
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot!
Like a hell broth boil and bubble!
The Great High Priest Cyclops! C. J. F. Y.
Grim Death calls for one, two, three!
Varnish, Tar, and Turpentine!
The fifth Ghost sounds his Trumpet!
The mighty Genii wants two black wethers!
Make them, make them, make them! Presto!

The Great Giantess must have a white barrow. Make him, make him, makehim! Presto!

Meet at once—the den of Shakes—the Giant’s jungles—the hole ofHell! The second hobgoblin will be there, a mighty Ghost of valor. Hiseyes of fire, his voice of thunder! Clean the streets—clean theserpents’ dens.

Red hot pincers! Bastinado!! Cut clean!!! No more to be born. Fire andbrimstone.

Leave us, leave us, leave us! One, two, and three to-night! Otherssoon!

Hell freezes! On with skates—glide on. Twenty from Atlanta. Call theroll.Bene dicte! The Great Ogre orders it!

By order of the Great
BLUFUSTIN.
G. S. K. K. K.

A true copy,
Peterloo.
P. S. K. K. K.

The military authorities forbade the newspapers to publish Ku Kluxorders,[1940] and the Klan had to trust to messengers. Verbal orders andwarnings became the rule. The Den met and discussed the condition ofaffairs in the community. The cases of violent whites and negroes werebrought up, one by one, and the Den decided what was to be done. Except inthe meeting the authority of the Cyclops was absolute.

C. C. Sheets, a prominent scalawag, had been making speeches to thenegroes against the whites. The Klan visited him at his hotel at Florence,caught him as he was trying to escape over the roof, brought him back, andseverely lectured him in regard to his conduct. They explained to him thatthe Klan was a conservative organization to hold society together. Apromise was required of Sheets to be more guarded in his language for thefuture. He saw the light and became a changed man.[1941] When acarpet-bagger became unbearable, he would be notified that he must gohome, and he usually went. If an official, he resigned or sold his office;the people of the community would purchase a $100 lot from him for $2500in order to pay for the office. The office was not always paid for; aparticularly bad man was lucky to get off safe and sound.[1942]Objectionable candidates were forced to withdraw, or to take aconservation bondsman, who conducted the office.[1943]

Before the close of 1868 the mysterious element in the power of Ku KluxKlan ceased to be so effective. The negroes were learning. Most of themummery now was dropped. The Klan became purely a body of regulators,wearing disguises. It was said that in order[Pg 682] to have time to work forthemselves, and in order not to frighten away negro laborers, the Klanbecame accustomed to making its rounds in the summer after the crops werelaid by, and in the winter after they were gathered.[1944]

The activities of the Klan were all-embracing. From regulating bad negroesand their leaders they undertook a general supervision of the morals ofthe community. Houses of ill-fame were visited, the inmates, white orblack, warned and sometimes whipped. Men who frequented such places werethrashed. A white man living with a negro woman was whipped, and a negroman living with a white woman would be killed.[1945] A negro who aired hisopinion in regard to social equality was sure to be punished. One negro innorth Alabama served in the Union army and, returning to Alabama, boastedthat he had a white wife up North and expected to see the custom of mixedmarriages grow down South. He was whipped and allowed a short time inwhich to return North.[1946] White men who were too lazy to support theirfamilies, or who drank too much whiskey, or were cruel to their families,were visited and disciplined. Such men were not always Radicals—not byany means.[1947] Special attention was paid to the insolent and dangerousnegro soldiers who were mustered out in the state. As a rule they hadimbibed too many notions of liberty, equality, and fraternity ever tobecome peaceable citizens. They brought their arms back with them, mademuch display of them, talked largely, drilled squads of blacks, firedtheir hearts with tales of the North, and headed much of the deviltry. TheKlan visited such characters, warned them, thrashed them, and disarmedthem. Over north Alabama there was a general disarming of negroes.[1948]

[Pg 683]The tories or “unionists,” who had never ceased to commit depredations ontheir Confederate neighbors, were taken in hand by the Klan. In parts ofthe white counties where there were neither negroes nor carpet-baggers theKlan’s excuse for existence was to hold in check the white outlaws. Foryears after the war the lives and property of ex-Confederates were notsafe. A smouldering civil war existed for several years, and the Klan wasonly the ex-Confederate side of it.

During the administration of Governor Smith there was no organizedmilitia. The militia laws favored the black counties at the expense of thewhite ones, and Smith was afraid to organize negro militia; he shared thedislike of his class for negroes. There were not enough whitereconstructionists to organize into militia companies. The governor wasafraid to accept organizations of Conservatives; they might overthrow hisadministration. So he relied entirely upon the small force of the Federaltroops stationed in the state to assist the state officials in preservingorder. The Conservative companies, after their services were rejected,sometimes proceeded to drill without authority, and became a kind ofextra-legal militia. In this they were not secret. But the drills had aquieting effect on marauders of all kinds, and the extra-legal militia ofthe daytime easily became the illegal night riders of the Klan.[1949]

The operations of the Klan, especially in the white counties which hadlarge negro populations, were sometimes directed against negro churchesand schoolhouses, and a number of these were burned.[1950] This hostilitymay be explained in several ways: The element of poor whites in the Klandid not approve of negro education; all negro churches and schoolhouseswere used as meeting places for Union Leagues, political gatherings, etc.;they were the political headquarters of the Radical Party;[1951] again,the bad character of some of the white teachers of negro schools or theincendiary teachings of others was excuse for burning the schoolhouses.The burning of school and church buildings took place almost exclusivelyin the white counties of northern and eastern Alabama. The school andchurch[Pg 684] buildings of the whites were also burned.[1952] The negroes wereinvariably assisted by the whites in rebuilding the houses. Most of theburnings were probably done by the so-called spurious Ku Klux. Theteachers of negro schools who taught revolutionary doctrines or who becametoo intimate with the negroes with whom they had to board weredisciplined, and the negroes also with whom they offended.[1953] It waslikewise the case with the northern missionaries, especially the NorthernMethodist preachers who were seeking to disrupt the Southern MethodistChurch. Parson Lakin when elected president of the State University waschased away by the Ku Klux, and life was made miserable for the Radicalfaculty.[1954] Thieves, black and white, and those peculiar clandestinenight traders who purchased corn and cotton from the negroes after darkwere punished.[1955]

The quietest and most effective work was done in the Black Beltprincipally by the Knights of the White Camelia. Nothing was attemptedbeyond restraining the negroes and driving out the carpet-baggers whenthey became unbearable. There were few cases of violence, fewer still ofriots or operations on a large scale.[1956] In northern and westernAlabama were the most disordered conditions.[1957] The question wascomplicated in these latter regions by the presence[Pg 685] of poor whites andplanters, negroes, Radicals and Democrats, Confederates and Unionists.Tuscaloosa County, the location of the State University, is said to havesuffered worst of all. A strong organization of Ku Klux cleared it out. Inthe northern and western sections of the state politics were more likelyto enter into the quarrels. The Radicals—white and black—were more aptto be disciplined because of politics than in the Black Belt. Negroes andoffensive whites were warned not to vote the Radical ticket. There was adisposition to suppress, not to control, the negro vote as the Black Beltwanted to do. There were more frequent collisions, more instances ofviolence.

The most famous parade and riot of the Ku Klux Klan occurred inHuntsville, in 1868, before the presidential election. A band of 1500 KuKlux[1958] rode into the city and paraded the streets. Both men and horseswere covered with sheets and masks. The drill was silent; the evolutionswere executed with a skill that called forth praise from some UnitedStates army officers who were looking on. The negroes were in a frenzy offear, and one of them fired a shot. Immediately a riot was on. The negroesfired indiscriminately at themselves and at the undisguised whites whowere standing around. The latter returned the fire; the Ku Klux fired noshots, but formed a line and looked on. Several negroes were wounded, andJudge Thurlow, a scalawag, of Limestone County, was accidentally killed bya chance shot from a negro’s gun. The whites who took part received onlyslight wounds. Some of the Ghouls were arrested by the militaryauthorities, but were released.[1959] This was, in the annals of theRadical party, a great Ku Klux outrage.

Another widely heralded Ku Klux outrage was the Patona or Cross Plainsaffair, in Calhoun County, in 1870. It seems that at Cross Plains a negroboy was hired to hold a horse for a white man. He turned the horse loose,and was slapped by the white fellow. Then the negro hit the white on thehead with a brick. Other whites came up and cuffed the negro, who went toPatona, a negro railway[Pg 686] village a mile away, and told his story. WilliamLuke, a white Canadian, who was teaching a negro school at Patona, advisedthe negroes to arm themselves and go burn Cross Plains in revenge and forprotection. Thirty or forty went, under the leadership of Luke, and madenight hideous with threats of violence and burning, but finally went awaywithout harming any one. The next night Luke and his negroes returned, andfired into a congregation of whites just dismissed from church. None wereinjured, but Luke and several negroes were arrested. There were signs ofpremeditated delay on the part of some of the civil authorities, so the KuKlux came and took the Canadian and four negroes from the officers,carried them to a lonely spot, and hanged some and shot the rest.[1960]

In Greene County the county solicitor, Alexander Boyd, an ex-convict,claimed to have evidence against members of the Ku Klux organization. Heboasted about his plans, and the Ku Klux, hearing of it, went to his hotelin Eutaw and shot him to death.[1961]

Another famous outrage was the Eutaw riot, in 1870. Both Democrats andRadicals had advertised political meetings for the same time and place.The Radicals, who seem to have been the latest comers, asked the Democratsfor a division of time. The latter answered that the issues as to men ormeasures were not debatable. So the Democrats and Radicals held theirmeetings on opposite sides of the court-house. The Democrats’ meetingended first, and they stood at the edge of the crowd to hear the Radicalspeakers. Some of the hot bloods came near the stand and made sarcasticremarks. One man who was to speak, Charles Hays, was so obnoxious to thewhites that even the Radicals were unwilling for him to speak. Hepersisted, and some one, presumably a Conservative, pulled his feet outfrom under him, and he fell off the table from which he was speaking. Thenegroes, seeing his fall, rushed forward with knives and pistols toprotect him. A shot was fired, which struck Major Pierce, a Democrat, inthe pocket. Then the whites began[Pg 687] firing, principally into the air. Thenegroes tore down the fence in their haste to get away. After the whiteshad chased the negroes out of town the military came leisurely in andquelled the riot.[1962] The campaign report of casualties was five killedand fifty-four wounded. As a matter of fact only one wounded negro wasever found, and no dead ones.[1963]

A common kind of outrage was that on James Alston, the negrorepresentative in the legislature from Macon County in 1870. Alston wasshot by negro political rivals just after a League meeting in Tuskegee.They were arrested, and Alston asked the whites to protect him. TheDemocratic white citizens of Tuskegee guarded him. The carpet-bagpostmaster in Tuskegee saw the possibilities of the situation and sentword to the country negroes to come in armed, that Alston had been shot.They swarmed into Tuskegee, and, thinking the whites had shot Alston, wereabout to burn the town. The white women and children were sent toMontgomery for safety. About the same time the negroes murdered threewhite men. The excitement reached Montgomery, and a negro militia companywas hastily organized to go to the aid of the Tuskegee negroes. GeneralClanton got hold of the sheriff, and they succeeded in turning back thenegro volunteer company. The affair passed off without further bloodshed,and Alston was notified to leave Tuskegee.[1964]

There were no collisions between the United States soldiers and the nightriders. At first they were on pretty good terms with one another. Thesoldiers admired their drills and parades and the way they scared thenegroes. One impudent Cyclops rode his band into Athens, and told thecommanding officer that they were there to assist in preserving order,and, if he needed them, would come if he scratched on the ground with astick.[1965]

[Pg 688]While there was not much dependence upon central authority,[1966] therewas a loose bond of federation between the Dens. They coöperated in theirwork; a Den from Pickens County would operate in Tuscaloosa or Greene andvice versa. Alabama Ku Kluxes went into Mississippi and Tennessee, andthose states returned such favors. When the spurious organizations beganto commit outrages, each state claimed that the other one furnished themen.[1967]

The oath taken by the Ku Klux demanded supreme allegiance to the order sofar as related to the problems before the South. Members of the order saton juries and refused to convict; were summoned as witnesses and deniedall knowledge of the order; were members of the legislature, lawyers, etc.It is claimed that no genuine members of the order were ever caught andconvicted.[1968]

Though the Klan was almost wholly a Democratic organization,[1969] it tooklittle share in the ordinary activities of politics, more perhaps in thenorthern counties than elsewhere. In Fayette County, in 1870, the Klanwent on a raid, and when returning stopped in the court-house, took offdisguises, resolved themselves into a convention, and nominated a countyticket.[1970] Nothing of the kind was done in south Alabama; indeed, theconstitution of the White Camelias forbade interference in politics.[1971]The Union League meetings were broken up only when they were sources ofdisorder, thievery, etc. When cases of outrage were investigated, it wasalmost invariably found that they had no political significance. GovernorLindsay sent an agent into every community where an outrage was reported,and in not a single instance was a case of outrage by Ku Klux discovered.

It is probably true that few, if any, of the leading Democraticpoliticians were members of the Klan or of any similar organization. Undercertain conditions they might be driven by force of[Pg 689]circumstances to joinin local uprisings against the rule of the Radicals. But as a rule theyknew little of the secret orders. There were various reasons for this. TheConservative leaders saw the danger in such an organization, thoughrecognizing the value of its services. It was sure to degenerate. It mightbecome too powerful. It would have a bad influence on politics and wouldfurnish too much campaign literature for the Radicals. It would result inharsh legislation against the South. The testimony of GeneralClanton[1972] and Governor Lindsay[1973] shows just what the party leadersknew of the order and what they thought of it. The Ku Klux leaders werenot the political leaders.[1974] The newspapers of importance opposed theorder. The opposition of the political leaders to the Klan in its earlystages was not because of any wrong done by it to the Radicals, butbecause of fear of its acting as a boomerang and injuring the white party.It was the middle classes, so to speak, and later the lower classes, whofelt more severely the tyranny of the carpet-bag rule, who formed and ledthe Klan. The political leaders thought that in a few years politicalvictories would give relief; the people who suffered were unable to wait,and threw off the revolutionary government by revolutionary means.[1975]

The work of the secret orders was successful. It kept the negroes quietand freed them to some extent from the baleful influence of alien leaders;the burning of houses, gins, mills, and stores ceased; property was moresecure; people slept safely at night; women and children were againsomewhat safe when walking abroad,—they had faith in the honor andprotection of the Klan; the incendiary agents who had worked among thenegroes left the country, and agitators, political, educational, andreligious, became more moderate; “bad niggers” ceased to be bad; labor wasless disorganized; the carpet-baggers and scalawags ceased to batten onthe southern communities, and the worst ones were driven from thecountry.[1976] It[Pg 690] was not so much a revolution as a conquest ofrevolution.[1977] Society was bent back into the old historic grooves fromwhich war and Reconstruction had jarred it.

After an existence of two or three years the Ku Klux Klan was disbanded inMarch, 1869, by order of the Grand Wizard. It was at that time illegal toprint Ku Klux notices and orders in the newspapers. It is probable,therefore, that the order to disband never reached many Dens. However, oneor two papers in north Alabama did publish the order of dissolution, andin this way the news obtained a wider circulation.[1978] Many Densdisbanded simply because their work was done. Otherwise the order of theGrand Wizard would have had no effect. Numbers of Dens had fallen into thehands of lawless men who used the name and disguise for lawless purposes.Private quarrels were fought out between armed bands of disguised men.Negroes made use of Ku Klux methods and disguises when punishing theirDemocratic colored brethren and when on marauding expeditions.[1979] This,however, was not usual except where the negroes were led by whites. Horsethieves in northern and western Alabama, and thieves of every kindeverywhere, began to wear disguises and to announce themselves as Ku Klux.All their proceedings were heralded abroad as Ku Klux outrages.[1980]

In Morgan County a neighborhood feud was resolved into two parties callingthemselves Ku Klux and Anti Ku Klux, and frequently fights resulted. InBlount and Morgan counties (1869) former members of the Ku Klux organizedthe Anti Ku Klux along the lines of the Ku Klux, held regular meetings,and continued their[Pg 691] midnight deviltry as before. It was composed largelyof Union men who had been Federal soldiers.[1981] In Fayette County theAnti Ku Klux order was styled, by themselves and others, “Mossy Backs” or“Moss Backs,” in allusion to their war record. They were regularlyorganized and had several collisions with another organization which theycalled the Ku Klux. The Radical sheriff summoned the “Moss Backs” as aposse to assist in the arrest of the Ku Klux, as they called theex-Confederates.[1982] As long as the Federal troops were in the state itwas the practice of bands of thieves to dress in the army uniform and goon raids.

The Radicals took care that all lawlessness was charged to the account ofKu Klux. It was to their interest that the outrages continue and furnishpolitical capital. Governor Smith accused Senator Spencer and Hinds andSibley, of Huntsville, of fostering Ku Klux outrages for politicalpurposes.[1983]

The disordered condition of the country during and after the war led to ageneral habit among the whites of carrying arms. This fact and thedrinking of bad whiskey accounts for much of the shooting in quarrelsduring the decade following the war. Few of these quarrels had anyconnection with politics until they were catalogued in the Ku Klux Reportas Democratic outrages. As a matter of fact, nearly all the whites killedby whites or by blacks were Democrats. The white Radicals were too few innumber to furnish many martyrs.[1984] The anti-negro feeling of the poorerwhites found expression after the war in movements against the blacks,called Ku Klux outrages. In Winston County, a Republican stronghold, thewhite mountaineers[Pg 692] met and passed resolutions that no negro be allowed inthe county. General Clanton stated that he found a similar prejudice inall the hill counties.[1985]

In the Tennessee valley the planters found difficulty in securing negrolabor because of the operations of the spurious Ku Klux. In Limestone,Madison, and Lauderdale counties the tory element hated the negroes, wholived on the best land, and attempts were made to drive them off. Thetories were incensed against the planters because they preferred negrolabor.[1986] Judge W. S. Mudd of Jefferson County testified that theanti-negro outrages in Walker and Fayette counties were committed by thepoorer whites, who did not like negroes and wanted a purely whitepopulation there. In the white counties generally the negro held nopolitical power and hence the outrages were not political, but because ofracial prejudice. In the north Alabama mountain counties the majority ofthe whites were in favor of deportation and colonization of the blacks.But in nearly every county there was also the large landholder, formerly aslaveholder, who wanted the negro to stay and work, and who treated theex-slave kindly. The poorer whites who had never owned slaves nor muchproperty wanted the negro out of the way.[1987] As a general rule, wherethe population was exclusively white, the people disliked the negro andwanted no contact with the black race. They wanted a white society, andall lands for the whites. In one precinct in Jefferson County, where allthe whites were Republican, an organization of boys and young men wasformed to drive out the negroes and keep the precinct white. In the blackcounties exactly the opposite was true. The secret orders merely wanted tocontrol negro labor and keep it, regulate society, and protect property.General Forney stated that in Calhoun the small mountain farmers,non-slaveholding, poorer whites, were intensely afraid of social equalityand hated the negroes, who called them “poor white trash.” The feeling wascordially returned by the negroes.[1988]

From Tallapoosa County and from eastern Alabama generally,[Pg 693] where theBlack Cavalry and its successors flourished, there was a general exodus ofnegroes who had lived on the richer lands of the larger farms andplantations. The white renters and small farmers were afraid, afterslavery was abolished and the negroes were free, that the latter woulddrag all others down to negro level. The planters preferred negro labor.Therefore the poorer whites united to drive out the negro. This was calledKu Kluxism. The whites wanted higher pay.[1989] Wage-earners felt thatthey could not compete with the negro, who could work for lower wages.General Crawford, who commanded the United States troops in Alabama,stated that the planter bore no antagonism toward the negro at all, but hewanted his labor; that at present he saw the uselessness of interferingwith the negro’s politics and was indifferent about whether the negrovoted or not; he looked forward to the time when the black voters wouldfall away from their alien leaders and would vote according to the adviceof their old masters; on the other hand, the poorer whites, many of themfrom the hill country, were hostile to the negroes; they disliked to seethem at work building the new railroads, and on all the rich lands, andpossessed of political privileges. If rid of the negro, they could be moreprosperous and divide the political spoils now shared by the adventurerswho controlled the black vote. In north Alabama the negro was moregenerally kept away from the polls.[1990] This feeling on the part of thepoor whites was not new, but had survived from slavery days, and itsmanifestations were now called Ku Kluxism. The negro was no longer underthe protection of a master, and the former master was no longer able toprotect the negro. However, there was a general movement among theex-slaves, under the pressure, to return to their old masters.

In March and April, 1868, the operations of the Ku Klux Klan came to thenotice of General Meade, who was then in command of the Third MilitaryDistrict. By his direction General Shepherd issued an order fromMontgomery, requiring sheriffs, mayors, police, constables, magistrates,marshals, etc., under penalty of being held responsible, to suppress the“iniquitous” organization and apprehend[Pg 694] its members. The expenses ofposses were to be charged against the county. If the code of Alabama wassilent on the subject of the offence, the prisoners were to be turned overto the military authorities for trial by military commission. The stateofficers were reminded that the code of Alabama derived its vitality fromthe commanding general of the Third Military District, and in case of aconflict between the code and military orders, the latter were paramount.The posting of placards and the printing in newspapers of orders,warnings, and notices of Ku Klux Klans was forbidden. In no case wouldignorance be considered as an excuse. Citizens who were not officers wouldnot be held guiltless in case of outrage in their community.[1991] Thiswas a revival of the method of holding a community responsible for themisdeeds of individuals.

Troops were shifted about over northern and central Alabama in an endeavorto suppress Ku Klux. Several arrests were made, but there were no trials.There was much parade and night riding, but as yet little violence. Thesoldiers could do nothing.

When the carpet-bag government was installed, the military forces of theUnited States remained to support it. Every one called upon the militarycommands for aid—governor, sheriffs, judges, members of Congress,justices of the peace, and prominent politicians. No request from officialsources was ever refused, and they were frequent. From October 31, 1868,to October 31, 1869, there were fifteen different shiftings of bodies oftroops for the purpose of checking the Ku Klux movement. This does notinclude the movements made in individual cases, but only changes ofheadquarters. These were principally in northern and western Alabama—atHuntsville, Livingston, Guntersville, Lebanon, Edwardsville, Alpine,Summerfield, Decatur, Marysville, Vienna, and Tuscaloosa.[1992]

After a few months’ experience of the carpet-bag government, the bands ofKu Klux were excited to renewed activity. The legislature which met inSeptember, 1868, memorialized the President to send an armed force toAlabama to execute the laws, and to preserve order, etc., during theapproaching presidential election. Governor Smith with two members of theSenate and three of the lower house were[Pg 695] appointed to bear theapplication to the President.[1993] In December an act was passedauthorizing any justice of the peace to issue warrants running in any partof the state, and authorizing any sheriff or constable to go into anycounty to execute such process.[1994] This enabled a sheriff of properpolitics to enter counties where the officials were not of the properfaith, and arrest prisoners.

One of the members of the general assembly, M. T. Crossland, was killed bythe Klan, it was alleged. The legislature offered a reward of $5000 forhis slayers, and authorized the appointment of a committee to investigatethe recent alleged outrages and to report by bill.[1995] Thecommittee,[1996] after pretence of an examination of about a dozenwitnesses, all Radicals, some by affidavit only, reported that there wasin many portions of Alabama a secret organization, purely political, knownas Ku Klux Klan, and that Union men and Republicans were the sole objectsof its abuse, none of the opposite politics being interfered with. Itworked by means of threatening letters, warnings, and beatings; byintimidation and threats negroes were driven from the polls; negroschoolhouses were burned; teachers were threatened, ostracized, and drivenfrom employment; officers of the law were obstructed in the discharge oftheir duty and driven away. In some parts of the state, the reportdeclared, it was impossible for the civil authorities to maintain order.The governor was authorized and advised to declare martial law in thecounties of Madison, Lauderdale, Butler, Tuscaloosa, and Pickens.[1997]The committee reported a bill, which was passed, with a preamble oftwenty-two lines reciting the terrible condition of the state. To appearaway from home in[Pg 696] mask or disguise was made a misdemeanor, punishable bya fine of $100 and imprisonment from six months to one year. For adisguised person to commit an assault was made a felony, and punishmentwas fixed at a fine of $1000, and imprisonment from five to twenty years.Any one might kill a person in disguise. The penalty for destruction ofproperty by disguised persons—burning a schoolhouse or church—wasimprisonment from ten to twenty years. A warrant might be issued by anymagistrate directed to any lawful officer of the state to arrest disguisedoffenders, and in case of refusal or neglect to perform his duty, theofficial was to forfeit his office and be fined $500.[1998]

Two days later it was enacted that in case a person were killed by anoutlaw, or by a mob, or by disguised persons, or for political opinion,the widow or next of kin should be entitled to recover of the county inwhich the killing occurred the sum of $5000. The claimants should bringaction in the circuit court, and in case judgment were rendered in favorof the claimants, the county commissioners should assess an additional taxsufficient to pay damages and costs. Failure of any official to performhis duty in such cases was punishable by a fine of $100 or imprisonmentfor twelve months for every thirty days of neglect or failure. In case ofwhipping the amount of damages collectible from the county was $1000. Butif the offenders were arrested and punished, there could be no claim fordamages. And if the offenders were arrested during the pendency of thesuit for damages, the presiding judge might suspend proceedings in thedamage suit until the result of the trial of the offenders was known. Itwas made the duty of the solicitor to prosecute the claim for therelatives, and his fee was fixed at 10 per cent of the amount recovered;and if the relatives failed to sue within twelve months, the solicitor wasto prosecute in the name of the state, and the damages were to go to theasylums for the insane, deaf, dumb, and blind.[1999]

[Pg 697]A number of arrests were made under these acts, but only one or twoconvictions were secured. It resulted that most of the arrests were ofignorant and penniless negroes, who were unable to pay any fine whatever.Governor Lindsay defended several such cases. The laws were so severe thatthe officials were unwilling to prosecute under them, but alwaysprosecuted under the ordinary laws.

After 1868 there was no further anti-Ku-Klux legislation by the stategovernment, but in 1869-1870 some of the southern states, Alabama amongthem, began to show signs of going Democratic. Virginia, Georgia,Mississippi, and Texas had been forced to ratify the Fifteenth Amendmentin order to secure the requisite number for its adoption.[2000] PresidentGrant then sent in a message announcing the ratification as “the mostimportant event that has occurred since the nation came into life.”[2001]Congress responded to the hint in the message by passing the first of theEnforcement Acts, which had been hanging fire for nearly two years. Theexcuse for its passage was that the Ku Klux organizations would preventthe blacks from voting in the fall elections of 1870.[2002] The act, asapproved on May 31, 1870, declared that all citizens were entitled to votein all elections without regard to color or race and provided thatofficials should be held personally responsible that all citizens shouldhave equal opportunity to perform all tests or prerequisites toregistration or voting; election officials were held responsible for fairelections; any person who hindered another in voting might be fined $500,to go to the party aggrieved, and persons in disguise might be fined $5000or imprisoned for ten years, or both, and should be disfranchised besides.Federal courts were to have exclusive jurisdiction over cases arisingunder this law, and Federal officials were to see to its execution; thepenalty for obstructing an official or assisting an escape might be $500fine and six months’ imprisonment;[Pg 698] the President was given authority touse the army and navy to enforce the law; the district attorneys of theUnited States were to proceed byquo warranto against disfranchisedpersons who were holding office, and such persons might be fined $1000 andimprisonment for one year,—such cases were to have precedence on thedocket; the same penalties were visited upon those who under color of anylaw deprived a citizen of any right under this law; the Civil Rights Billof 1866, April 9, was reënacted;[2003] fraud, bribery, intimidation, orundue influence or violation of any election law at Congressionalelections might be punished by a fine of $500 and imprisonment for threeyears; registrations—congressional, state, county, school, or town—cameunder the same regulation, and officials of all degrees who failed intheir duty were liable to the same penalties; a defeated candidate mightcontest the election in the Federal courts when there were cases of thenegro having been hindered from voting.[2004]

This act marked the arrival of the most ruthless period of Reconstruction.Endowing the negro with full political rights had not sufficed to overcomethe white political people. Disappointed in that, an attempt was now to bemade so to regulate southern elections as to put the mass of the whitepopulation permanently under the control of the negroes and their whiteleaders, and to secure the permanent control of those states to theRepublican party. Tennessee had already escaped from the Radical rule, andstringent measures were necessary to prevent like action in the otherstates. Notwithstanding the Enforcement Act, Alabama, in the election of1870, went partially Democratic, which was to the Radical leadersprimafacie evidence of the grossest frauds in elections. Other states were ina similarly bad condition.

The supplementary Enforcement Act of February 28, 1871, provided for theappointment of two supervisors to each precinct by[Pg 699] the Federal circuitjudge upon the application of two persons; the Federal courts were to bein session during elections for business arising under this act; thesupervisors were to have full authority around the polls, and were tocertify and send in the returns, and report irregularities, which were tobe investigated by the chief supervisor, who was to keep all records; thesupervisors were to be assisted in each precinct by two special deputymarshals appointed by the United States marshal for that district. Thesedeputies and also the supervisors had full power to arrest any person andto summon aposse if necessary. Offenders were haled at once before theFederal court. Any election offence was punishable by a fine of $3000 andimprisonment of two years, with costs. To refuse to give information in aninvestigation subjected the person to a fine of $100 and thirty days’imprisonment and costs. State courts were forbidden to try cases comingunder the act, and proceedings after warning, by state officials, resultedin imprisonment and fine amounting to one year and $500 to $1000, pluscosts.[2005]

It was feared that these acts might prove insufficient to carry thesouthern states for the Republican party in 1872. Grant was becoming moreand more radical as the Republican nominating convention and the electionsdrew nearer. Under the influence of the Radical leaders, he sent, on March23, 1871, a message[2006] to Congress, declaring that in some of thestates a condition of affairs existed rendering life and propertyinsecure, and the carrying of mails and collection of revenue dangerous;the state governments were unable to control these evils; and it wasdoubtful if the President had the authority to interfere. He thereforeasked for legislation to secure life, property, and the enforcement oflaw.[2007]

Congress came to the rescue with the Ku Klux Act of April 20,[Pg 700] 1871, “inwhich Congress simply threw to the winds the constitutional distributionof powers between the states and the United States government in respectto civil liberty, crime, and punishment, and assumed to legislate freelyand without limitation for the preservation of civil and political rightswithin the state.”[2008]

It gave the President authority to declare the southern states inrebellion and to suspend the writ ofhabeas corpus—after a proclamationagainst insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combinations, andconspiracies. Such a state of affairs was declared a rebellion, and thePresident was authorized to use the army and navy to suppress it. Heavypenalties were denounced ($500 to $5000 fine, and six months’ to sixyears’ imprisonment) against persons who conspired to overthrow or destroythe United States government or to levy war against the United States; orwho hindered the execution of the laws of the United States, seized itsproperty, prevented any one from accepting or holding office ordischarging official duties, drove away or injured, in person or property,any official or any witness in court, went in disguise on highway or onthe premises of others, and hindered voting or office-holding. Any personinjured in person, property, or privilege had the right to sue theconspirators for damages under the Civil Rights Bill. In Federal courtsthe jurors had to take oath that they were not in any way connected withsuch conspiracies, and the judges were empowered to exclude suspectedpersons from the jury. Persons not connected with such conspiracies, yethaving knowledge of such things, were liable to the injured party for alldamages.[2009]

On May 3, 1871, Grant issued a proclamation calling attention to the factthat the law was one of “extraordinary public importance” and, while ofgeneral application, was directed at the southern states, and stating thatwhen necessary he would not hesitate to exhaust the powers vested by theact in the executive. The failure of local communities to protect allcitizens would make it necessary for the national government tointerfere.[2010]

In order to justify the passage of the Enforcement Acts and to obtainmaterial for campaign use the next year, Congress appointed a committee,which was organized on the day the Ku Klux Act was approved, toinvestigate the condition of affairs in the southern states.[2011] FromJune to August, 1871, the committee took testimony in Washington. In thefall subcommittees visited the various southern states selected for theinquisition. About one-fourth of the Alabama testimony was taken inWashington, the rest was taken by the subcommittee in Alabama.

The members of the subcommittee that took testimony in Alabama wereSenators Pratt and Rice, and Messrs. Blair, Beck, and Buckley of theHouse. Blair and Beck, the Democratic members, were never presenttogether. So the subcommittee consisted of three Republicans and oneDemocrat. C. W. Buckley was a Radical Representative from Alabama, aformer Bureau reverend, who worked hard to convict the white people of thestate of general wickedness. The subcommittee held sessions in Huntsville,October 6-14; Montgomery, October 17-20; Demopolis, October 23-28;Livingston, October 30 to November 3; and in Columbus, Mississippi, forwest Alabama, November 11. All these places were in black counties.Sessions were held only at easily accessible places, and where scalawag,carpet-bag, and negro witnesses could easily be secured. Testimony wasalso taken by the committee in Washington from June to August, 1871.

It is generally believed that the examination of witnesses by the Ku Kluxcommittees of Congress was a very one-sided affair, and that the testimonyis practically without value for the historian, on account of the immenseproportion of hearsay reports and manufactured tales embraced in it. Ofcourse there is much that is worthless because untrue, and much that maybe true but cannot be regarded because of the character of the witnesses,whose statements are unsupported. But, nevertheless, the 2008 pages oftestimony taken in Alabama furnish a mine of information concerning thesocial, religious, educational, political, legal, administrative,agricultural, and financial conditions in Alabama from 1865 to 1871. Thereport[Pg 702] itself, of 632 pages, contains much that is not in the testimony,especially as regards railroad and cotton frauds, taxation, and the publicdebt, and much of this information can be secured nowhere else.

The minority members of the subcommittee which took testimony in Alabama,General Frank P. Blair and later Mr. Beck of New York, caused to besummoned before the committee at Washington, and before the subcommitteein Alabama, the most prominent men of the state—men who, on account oftheir positions, were intimately acquainted with the condition of affairs.They took care that the examination covered everything that had occurredsince the war. The Republican members often protested against the evidencethat Blair proposed to introduce, and ruled it out. He took exceptions,and sometimes the committee at Washington admitted it; sometimes hesmuggled it in by means of cross-questioning, or else he incorporated itinto the minority report. On the other hand, the Republican members of thesubcommittee seem to have felt that the object of the investigation wasonly to get campaign material for the use of the Radical party in thecoming elections. They summoned a poor class of witnesses, a largeproportion of whom were ignorant negroes who could only tell what they hadheard or had feared. The more respectable of the Radicals were notsummoned, unless by the Democrats. In several instances the Democratscaused to be summoned the prominent scalawags and carpet-baggers, whousually gave testimony damaging to the Radical cause.

An examination of the testimony shows that sixty-four Democrats andConservatives were called before the committee and subcommittee. Of these,fifty-seven were southern men, five were northern men residing in thestate, and two were negroes. The Democrats testified at great length,often twenty to fifty pages. Blair and Beck tried to bring out everythingconcerning the character of carpet-bag rule.[2012]

[Pg 703]Thirty-four scalawags, fifteen carpet-baggers, and forty-one negroRadicals came before the committee and subcommittee. Some of these weresummoned by Blair or Beck, and a number of them disappointed theRepublican members of the committee by giving Democratic testimony.[2013]The Radicals could only repeat, with variations, the story of the Eutawriot, the Patona affair, the Huntsville parade, etc. Of the prominentcarpet-baggers and scalawags whose testimony was anti-Democratic, mostwere men of clouded character.[2014] The testimony of the higher Federalofficials was mostly in favor of the Democratic contention.[2015] Thenegro testimony, however worthless it may appear at first sight, becomesclear to any one who, knowing the negro mind, remembers the influencesthen operating upon it. From this class of testimony one gets valuablehints and suggestions. The character of the white scalawag and carpet-bagtestimony is more complex, but if one has the history of the witness, thetestimony usually becomes intelligible. In many instances the testimonygives a short history of the witness.

The material collected by the Ku Klux Committee, and other committees thatinvestigated affairs in the South after the war, can be used with profitonly by one who will go to the biographical books and learn the social andpolitical history of each person who testified. When the personal historyof an important witness is known, many obscure things become plain. Unlessthis is known, one cannot safely accept or reject any specific testimony.To one who works in Alabama Reconstruction, Brewer’s “Alabama,” Garrett’s“Reminiscences,” the “Memorial Record,” old newspaper files, and thememories of old citizens are indispensable.

There is in the first volume of the Alabama Testimony a delightfullypartisan index of seventy-five pages. In it the summary of Democratictestimony shows up almost as Radical as the most partisan on the otherside. It is meant only to bring out the violence in the testimony.According to it, one would think all those killed[Pg 704] or mistreated wereRadicals. The same man frequently figures in three situations, as “shot,”“outraged,” and “killed.” General Clanton’s testimony of thirty pages getsa summary of four inches, which tells nothing; that of Wager, a Bureauagent, gets as much for twelve pages, which tells something; and that ofMinnis, a scalawag, twice as much. There is very little to be found in thetestimony that relates directly to the Ku Klux Klan and similarorganizations. Had the sessions of the subcommittee been held in the whitecounties of north and southwest Alabama, where the Klans had flourished,probably they might have found out something about the organization. Butthe minority members were determined to expose the actual condition ofaffairs in the state from 1865 to 1871. No matter how much the Radicalsmight discover concerning unlawful organizations, the Democrats stoodready with an immense deal of facts concerning Radical misgovernment toshow cause why such organizations should arise. Consequently the threevolumes of testimony relating to Alabama are by no means pro-Radical,except in the attitude of the majority of the examiners.[2016]

Below is given a table of alleged Ku Klux outrages, compiled from thetestimony taken. The Ku Klux report classifies all violence under the fourheads: killing, shooting, outrage, whipping. The same case frequentlyfigures in two or more classes. Practically every case of violence,whether political or not, is brought into the testimony. The periodcovered is from 1865 to 1871. Radical outrages as well as Democratic arelisted in the report as Ku Klux outrages. In a number of cases Radicaloutrages are made to appear as Democratic. Many of the cases are simplyhearsay. It is not likely that many instances of outrage escaped notice,for every case of actual outrage was proven by many witnesses. Everyviolent death of man, woman, or child, white or black, Democratic orRadical, occurring between 1865 and 1871, appears in the list as a Ku Kluxoutrage. Evidently careful search had been made, and certain witnesses hadinformed themselves about every actual deed of violence. There were thensixty-four counties in the state, and in only twenty-nine of them werethere alleged instances of Ku Klux outrage.

The Ku Klux Committee reported a bill[2017] providing for the execution ofthe Ku Klux Act until the close of the next session of Congress. It passedthe Senate May 21, 1872, and failed in the House on June 6.[2018] The actof February 28, 1871, was amended by extending the Federal supervision ofelections from towns to all election districts on application of tenpersons. Other unimportant amendments were made.[2019]

The passage of these laws had no effect on the Ku Klux Klan proper, whichhad died out in 1869-1870. Nor did they have any effect in decreasingviolence. It is quite likely that there was more violence toward the negroin 1871 and 1872 than in 1869-1870. But the laws did affect the elections.The entire machinery of elections was again under Radical control, and in1872 the state again sank back into Radicalism. But it was the lastRepublican majority the[Pg 706] state ever cast. The execution of these laws didmuch to hasten the union of the whites against negro rule.

Few cases were tried under the Enforcement Acts, though District AttorneyMinnis and United States Marshal Healy were very active.[2020] Busteed, in1871, testified that at Huntsville he had tried several persons for anoutrage upon a negro, and that there were still untried two indictmentsunder the Act of 1870. He stated that his jurors and witnesses were neverinterfered with. One of his grand juries, in 1871, encouraged by theattitude of Congress, reported that while there was no organizedconspiracy throughout the middle district, there was such a thing inMacon, Coosa, and Tallapoosa. Two of the jurors—Benjamin F. Noble andEx-Governor William H. Smith—objected to the report, and Busteed, theFederal judge, condemned it as unwarranted by the facts.[2021]

Nearly all of the carpet-bag and scalawag witnesses who testified on theRadical side before the Ku Klux Committee complained that the courts wouldnot punish Ku Klux when they were arrested, and that juries would notindict them.[2022]

In 1872 a gang of men in eastern Alabama, the home of the Black Cavalryand the spurious Ku Klux Klan, burned a negro meeting-house wherepolitical meetings were held. They were arrested and tried under the KuKlux Act. Four of them, R. G. Young, S. D. Young, R. S. Gray, and NeilHawkins, were fined $5000 each and sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment inthe penitentiary at Albany, New York. Ringold Young was fined $2000[Pg 707] andsent to prison for seven years. —— Blanks and —— Howard were eachfined $100 and imprisoned for five years. The prisoners were taken fromstate officers by force, and during the trial there was much parade by aguard of United States troops. There was complaint that the evidence wasinsufficient, and the punishment disproportionate to the offence even ifproven.[2023]

In the elections of 1872 and 1874 there were numerous arrests of Democratsby the deputy marshals, who often made their arrests before election dayand paraded the prisoners about the country for the information of thevoters. I have been unable to find record of any convictions.[2024]

While the Ku Klux Klan was disbanded by order in 1869, it is not likelythat the order of the White Camelia disbanded except when there was nolonger any necessity for it. In one county it might disband; in another itmight survive several years longer. It is said that its operations were byorder suspended in counties when conditions improved.

The White Brotherhood was a later organization, but had only a limitedextension over south Alabama. The most widely spread of the laterorganizations was the White League, which in some form seems to havespread over the entire state from 1872 to 1874. The close connectionbetween southwestern Alabama and Louisiana accounts for the introductionof both the White Camelia and the White League. In 1875 Arthur Bingham,the ex-carpet-bag-treasurer of the state, stated that he had secured acopy of the constitution of the White League and had published it in theState Journal. Its members were sworn not to regard obligations taken incourts, and to clear one another by all means.[2025]

The White League in Barbour and Mobile, in 1874, declared that noemployment should be given to negro Radicals and no business done withwhite Radicals, and in Sumter County they were said to have gone on raidslike the Ku Klux of former days. Military organizations of whites wereenrolled and applications made to the Radical Governor Lewis for arms. Herejected the services of these companies, but they remained inorganization and drilled. The Confederate gray uniforms were worn. InTuskegee arms were purchased for the company by private subscription. By1874 the white people of the state had become thoroughly united in theWhite Man’s Party. There had been no compromises. The color and race linehad been sharply drawn by the white counties, and the black counties laterfell into line. The campaign of 1874 was the most serious of all. Thewhites intended to live no longer under Radical rule, and the whole statewas practically a great Klan. There was but little violence, but there wasa stern determination to defeat the Radicals at any cost; and ifnecessary, violence would have been used. At the inauguration of GovernorHouston, in 1874, several of[Pg 709] the gray-coated White League companiesappeared from different parts of the state.[2026]

In several later elections the old Ku Klux methods were used, and therewas much mysterious talk of “dark rainy nights and bloody moons.” The“Barbour County Fever” was prevalent for many years: young men and boyswould serenade the Radicals of the community and mortify them in everypossible way, and their families would refuse to recognize socially thefamilies of carpet-baggers and scalawags. They would not sit by them inchurch. The children at school imitated their elders.[2027]

The Ku Klux method of regulating society was nothing new; it was as old ashistory; it had often been used before; it may be used again; when apeople find themselves persecuted by aliens or by the law, they will findsome means outside the law for protecting themselves; it is certain alsothat such experiences will result in a great weakening of respect for lawand in a return to more primitive methods of justice.

CHAPTER XXII

The cotton planter of the South, the master of many negro slaves,organized a very efficient slave labor system. Each plantation was anindustrial community almost independent of the outside world; the divisionof labor was minute, each servant being assigned a task suited to his orher strength and training. Nothing but the most skilful management couldsave a planter from ruin, for, though the labor was efficient, it was verycostly. The value of an overseer was judged by the general condition,health, appearance, and manners of the slaves; the amount of work donewith the least punishment; the condition of stock, buildings, andplantation; and the size of the crops. All supplies were raised on theplantation,—corn, bacon, beef, and other food-stuffs; farm implements andharness were made and repaired by the skilled negroes in rainy weatherwhen no outdoor work could be done; clothes were cut out in the “bighouse” and made by the negro women under the direction of the mistress.The skilled laborers were blacks. Work was usually done by tasks, andindustrious negroes were able to complete their daily allotment and havethree or four hours a day to work in their own gardens and “patches.” Theyoften earned money at odd jobs, and the church records show that theycontributed regularly. Negro children were trained in the arts of industryand in sobriety by elderly negroes of good judgment and firm character,usually women.[2028] Children too young to work were cared for by acompetent mammy in the plantation nursery while their parents were in thefields.

In the Black Belt there was little hiring of extra labor and less rentingof land. Except on the borders, nearly all whites were of the[Pg 711] plantingclass. Their greater wealth had enabled them to outbid the average farmerand secure the rich lands of the black prairies, cane-brakes, and riverbottoms. The small farmer who secured a foothold in the Black Belt wouldfind himself in a situation not altogether pleasant, and, selling out tothe nearest planter, would go to poorer and cheaper land in the hills andpine woods, where most of the people were white.

In the Black Belt cotton was largely a surplus money crop, and once thelabor was paid for, the planter was a very rich man.[2029] In the whitecounties of the cotton states about the same crops were raised as in theBlack Belt, but the land was less fertile and the methods of cultivationless skilful. In the richer parts of these white counties there wassomething of the plantation system with some negro labor. But slaverygradually drove white labor to the hill and mountain country, the sand andpine barrens. No matter how poor a white man was, he was excessivelyindependent in spirit and wanted to work only his own farm. This willaccount for the lack of renters and hired white laborers in black or inwhite districts, and also for the fact that the less fertile land wastaken up by the whites who desired to be their own employers. Land wascheap, and any man could purchase it. There was some renting of land inthe white counties, and the form it took was that now known as “third andfourth.”[2030] It was then called “shares.” There was little or no tenancy“on halves” or “standing rent.” But the average farmer worked his ownland, often with the help of from three to ten slaves.

[Pg 712]On the borders of the Black Belt in Alabama dwelt a peculiar class called“squatters.” They settled down with or without permission on lots of poorand waste land, built cabins, cleared “patches,” and made a precariousliving by their little crops, by working as carpenters, blacksmiths, etc.Some bought small lots of land on long-time payments and never paid forthem, but simply stayed where they were. In the edge of the Black Belt inthe busy season were found numbers of white hired men working alongside ofnegro slaves,[2031] for there was no prejudice against manual labor, thatis, no more than anywhere else in the world.[2032]

As soon as the war was over the first concern of the returning soldierswas to obtain food to relieve present wants and to secure supplies to lastuntil a crop could be made. In the white counties of the state thesituation was much worse than in the Black Belt. The soil of the whitecounties was less fertile; the people were not wealthy before the war, andduring the war they had suffered from the depredations of the enemy andfrom the operation of the tax-in-kind, which bore heavily upon them whenthey had nothing to spare. The white men went to the war and there wereonly women, children, and old men to work the fields. The heaviest lossesamong the Alabama Confederate troops were from the ranks of the whitecounty soldiers. In these districts there was destitution after the firstyear of the war, and after 1862 from one-fourth to one-half of thesoldiers’ families[Pg 713] received aid from the state. The bountiful Black Beltfurnished enough for all, but transportation facilities were lacking. Atthe close of hostilities the condition of the people in the poorer regionswas pitiable. Stock, fences, barns, and in many cases dwellings haddisappeared; the fields were grown up in weeds; and no supplies wereavailable. How the people managed to live was a mystery. Some walkedtwenty miles to get food, and there were cases of starvation. No seeds andno farm implements were to be had. The best work of the Freedmen’s Bureauwas done in relieving these people from want until they could make a crop.

The Black Belt was the richest as well as the least exposed section of thestate and fared well until the end of the war. The laborers were negroes,and these worked as well in war time as in peace. Immense food crops weremade in 1863 and 1864, and there was no suffering among whites or blacks.Until 1865 there was no loss from Federal invasion, but with the spring of1865 misfortune came. Four large armies marched through the centralportions of the state, burning, destroying, and confiscating. In June,1865, the Black Belt was in almost as bad condition as the white counties.All buildings in the track of the armies had disappeared; the stores ofprovisions were confiscated; gin-houses and mills were burned; cattle andhorses and mules were carried away; and nothing much was left except thenegroes and the fertile land. The returning planter, like the farmer,found his agricultural implements worn out and broken, and in all the landthere was no money to purchase the necessaries of life. But in theportions of the black counties untouched by the armies there were suppliessufficient to last the people for a few months. A few fortunateindividuals had cotton, which was now bringing fabulous prices, and it wasthe high price received for the few bales not confiscated by thegovernment that saved the Black Belt from suffering as did the othercounties.

Neither master nor slave knew exactly how to begin anew, and for a whilethings simply drifted. Now that the question of slavery was settled, manyof the former masters felt a great relief from responsibility, though fortheir former slaves they felt a profound pity. The majority of them had nofaith in free negro labor, yet all were willing to give it a trial, and afew of the more strenuous ones said that the energy and strength of thewhite man that had made the savage[Pg 714] negro an efficient laborer could makethe free negro work fairly well; and if the free negro would work, theywere willing to admit that the change might be beneficial to both races.

During the spring and summer and fall the masters came straggling home,and were met by friendly servants who gave them cordial welcome. Each onecalled up his servants and told them that they were free; and that theymight stay with him and work for wages, or find other homes. Except in thevicinity of the towns and army posts the negroes usually chose to stay andwork; and in the remote districts of the Black Belt affairs were littlechanged for several weeks after the surrender, which there hardly caused aripple on the surface of society. Life and work went on as before. Thestaid negro coachmen sat upon their boxes on Sunday as of old; the fieldhands went regularly about their appointed tasks. Labor was cheerful, andthe negroes went singing to the fields. “The negro knew no Appomattox. TheRevolution sat lightly,—save in the presence of vacant seats at home andsilent graves in the churchyard, in the memorials of destructive raids, inthe wonder on the faces of a people once free, now ruled, where ruled atall, by a Bureau agent.” Here it was that the master race believed thatafter all freedom of the negro might be well.[2033] In other sections,where the negro was more exposed to outside influences, people were nothopeful. The common opinion was that with free negro labor cotton couldnot be cultivated with success. The northerner often thought that it was acrop made by forced labor and that no freeman would willingly perform suchlabor; the southerner believed that the negro would neglect the crop toomuch when not under strict supervision. Yet later years have shown thatfree white labor is most successful in the cultivation of cotton becauseof the care the whites expend upon their farms; while cotton is the onlycrop that the free negro has cultivated with any degree of success,because some kind of a crop can be made by the most careless cultivation.

At first no one knew just how to work the free negro; innumerable planswere formed and many were tried. The old patriarchal relations werepreserved as far as possible. Truman,[2034] who made a long stay inAlabama, reported that in most cases there was a genuine attachmentbetween masters and negroes; that the masters were[Pg 715] the best friends thenegroes had; and that, though they regarded the blacks with muchcommiseration, they were inclined to encourage them to collect around thebig house on the old slavery terms, giving food, clothes, quarters,medical attendance, and a little pay.[2035] At that time no one couldunderstand the freedom of the negro.[2036] As one old master expressed it,he saw no “free negroes”[2037] until the fall of 1865, when the Bureaubegan to influence the blacks. But with the extension of the Bureau andthe spread of army posts, the negroes became idle, neglected the cropsthat had been planted in the spring, moved from their old homes and wentto town to the Bureau, or went wandering about the country. The houseservants and the artisans, who were the best and most intelligent of thenegroes, also began to go to the towns. Negro women desiring to be aswhite ladies, refused to work in the fields, to cook, to wash, or toperform other menial duties. It was years before this “freedom” prejudiceof the negro women against domestic service died out.[2038] The negrowould work one or two days in the week, go to town two days, and wanderabout the rest of the time. Under such conditions there was no hope ofcontinuing the old patriarchal system, and new plans, modelled on whatthey had heard of free labor, were tried by the planters. In the whitecounties the ex-soldiers went to work as before the war, but they had comehome from the army too late to plant full crops, and few had suppliesenough to last until the crops should be gathered. In most of the whitecounties the negroes were so few as to escape the serious attention of theBureau, and consequently they worked fairly well at what they could get todo.[2039]

[Pg 716]The first work of the Bureau was to break up the labor system that hadbeen partially constructed, and to endeavor to establish a new systembased on the northern free labor system and the old slave-hiring systemwith the addition of a good deal of pure theory. The Bureau was to act asa labor clearing-house; it was to have entire control of labor; contractsmust be written in accordance with the minute regulations of the Bureau,and must be registered by the agent, who charged large fees.[2040]

The result of these regulations was to destroy industry where an alienBureau agent was stationed, for the planters could not afford to havetheir land worked on such terms. In some of the counties, where the nativemagistrates served as Bureau agents, no attention was paid to the rules ofthe Bureau, and the people floundered along, trying to develop a workablebasis of existence. In the districts infested by the Bureau agents thenegroes had fantastic notions of what freedom meant. On one plantationthey demanded that the plantation bell be no longer rung to summon thehands to and from work, because it was too much like slavery.[2041] Invarious places they refused to work and congregated about the Bureauoffices, awaiting the expected division of property, when they would getthe “forty acres and one old gray mule.” When wages were paid theybelieved that each should receive the same amount, whether his labor hadbeen good or bad, whether the laborer was present or absent, sick or well.In one instance a planter was paying his men in corn according to the timeeach had worked. The negroes objected and got an order from the Bureauagent that the division should be made equally. The planter read the order(which the negroes could not read), and at once directed the division asbefore. The negroes, thinking that the Bureau had so ordered, weresatisfied. In the cane-brake region the agents were afraid of the greatplanters and did not interfere with the negroes except to organize theminto Union Leagues;[Pg 717] but elsewhere in the Black Belt the planter could notafford to hire negroes on the terms fixed by the Bureau.[2042]

With the break-up of the slave system the planter found himself with muchmore land than he knew what to do with. He could get no reliable labor, hehad no cash capital, so in many cases he offered his best lands for saleat low prices. The planters wanted to attract northern and foreignimmigration and capital into the country; the cotton planter sought for anorthern partner who could furnish the capital. Owing to the almostreligious regard of the negro for his northern deliverers, many whitelandlords thought that northern men, especially former soldiers, might bebetter able than southern men to control negro labor. General Swayne, thehead of the Bureau, said that the negroes had more confidence in a“bluecoat” than in a native, and that among the larger planters northernmen as partners or overseers were in great demand.[2043]

For a short time after the close of the war northern men in considerablenumbers planned to go into the business of cotton raising. DeBow[2044]gives a description of the would-be cotton planters who came from theNorth to show the southern people how to raise cotton with free negrolabor. They had note-books and guide-books full of close and exact tablesof costs and profits, and from them figured out vast returns. Theyacknowledged that the negro might not work for the southern man, but theywere sure that he would work for them. They were very self-confident, andwould listen to no advice from experienced planters, whom they laughed atas old fogies, but from their note-books and tables they gave one anothermuch information about the new machinery useful in cotton culture, aboutrules for cultivation, how to control labor, etc. They estimated that eachlaborer’s family would make $1000 clear gain each year. DeBow[Pg 718] would notsay they were wrong, but he said that he thought that they should hasten alittle more slowly. Northern energy and capitol flowed in; plantationswere bought, and the various industries of plantation life started; andmills and factories were established. Because of the paralyzed conditionof industry the southern people welcomed these enterprises, but they werevery sceptical of their final success. The northern settler had confidencein the negro and gave him unlimited credit or supplies; consequently, in afew years the former was financially ruined and had to turn his attentionto politics, and to exploiting the negro in that field in order to make aliving.[2045] Both as employer and as manager the northern men failed tocontrol negro labor. They expected the negro to be the equal of the Yankeewhite. The negroes themselves were disgusted with northern employers.Truman reported, after an experience of one season, that “it is the almostuniversal testimony of the negroes themselves, who have been under thesupervision of both classes,—and I have talked with many with a view tothis point,—that they prefer to labor for a southern employer.”[2046]

Northern capital came in after the war, but northern labor did not, thoughthe planters offered every inducement. Land was offered to whitepurchasers at ridiculously low rates, but the northern white laborer didnot come. He was afraid of the South with its planters and negroes. Thepoorer classes of native whites, however, profited by the low prices andsecured a foothold on the better lands. So general was the unbelief in thevalue of the free negro as a laborer, especially in the Bureau districts,and so signally had all inducements failed to bring native white laborersfrom the North, that determined efforts were made to obtain white laborfrom abroad. Immigration societies were formed with officers in the stateand headquarters in the northern cities. These societies undertook to sendto the South laboring people, principally German, in families at so muchper head.[Pg 719] The planter turned with hope to white labor, of the superiorityof which he had so long been hearing, and he wished very much to give it atrial. The advertisements in the newspapers read much like the old slaveadvertisements: so many head of healthy, industrious Germans of goodcharacter delivered f.o.b. New York, at so much per head. One of the whitelabor agencies in Alabama undertook to furnish “immigrants of any nativityand in any quantity” to take the place of negroes. Children were priced atthe rate of $50 a year; women, $100; men, $150,—they themselves providingboard and clothes. One of every six Germans was warranted to speakEnglish.[2047] Most of these agencies were frauds and only wanted anadvance payment on a car load of Germans who did not exist. In a fewinstances some laborers were actually shipped in; but they at oncedemanded an advance of pay, and then deserted. Like the bounty jumpers,they played the game time and time again. The influence of the Radicalpress of the North was also used to discourage emigration to theSouth;[2048] consequently white immigration into the state did not amountto anything,[2049] and the Black Belt received no help from the North orfrom abroad, and had to fall back upon the free negro.

In the white counties there had been little hope or desire for alienimmigration. The people and the country were so desperately poor that thestranger would never think of settling there. Many of the whites inmoderate circumstances, living near the Black Belt, took advantage of thelow price of rich lands, and acquired small farms in the prairies, butthere was no influx of white labor to the Black Belt from the whitecounties.[2050] Nearly every man, woman, and child in the white districtshad to go to work to earn a living. Many persons—lawyers, public men,teachers, ministers,[Pg 720] physicians, merchants, overseers, managers, and evenwomen—who had never before worked in the fields or at manual occupations,were now forced to do so because of losses of property, or because theycould not live by their former occupations.[2051]

While the number of white laborers had increased somewhat, negro labor haddecreased. Several thousand negro men had gone with the armies; forvarious reasons thousands had drifted to the towns, where large numbersdied in 1865-1866. The rural negro had a promising outlook, for at anytime he could get more work than he could do; the city negro found workscarce even when he wanted it.[2052]

Several attempts were made by the negroes in 1865 and 1866 to work farmsand plantations on the coöperative system, that is, to club work, but withno success. They were not accustomed to independent labor, their facultyfor organization had not been sufficiently developed, and the dishonestyof their leading men sometimes caused failures of the schemes.[2053]

[Pg 721]In the summer of 1865 the Monroe County Agricultural Association wasformed to regulate labor, and to protect the interests of both employerand laborer. It was the duty of the executive committee to look after thewelfare of the freedmen, to see that contracts were carried out and thefreedmen protected in them, and, in cases of dispute, to act asarbitrator. The members of the association pledged themselves to see thatthe freedman received his wages, and to aid him in case his employerrefused to pay. They were also to see that the freedman fulfilled hiscontract, unless there was good reason why he should not. Homes and thenecessaries of life were to be provided by the association for the agedand helpless negroes, of whom there were several on every plantation. Theplanters declared themselves in favor of schools for the negro children,and a committee was appointed to devise a plan for their education. Everyplanter in Monroe County belonged to the association.[2054] Anorganization in Conecuh County adopted, word for word, the constitution ofthe Monroe County association. In Clarke and Wilcox counties similarorganizations were formed, and in all counties where negro labor was themain dependence some such plans were devised.[2055] But it is noticeablethat in those counties where the planters first undertook to reorganizethe labor system, there were no regular agents of the Freedmen’s Bureauand no garrisons.

The average negro quite naturally had little or no sense of the obligationof contracts. He would leave a growing crop at the most critical period,and move into another county, or, working his own crop “on shares,” wouldleave it in the grass and go to work for some one else in order to getsmall “change” for tobacco, snuff, and whiskey. After three years ofexperience of such conduct, a meeting of citizens at Summerfield, DallasCounty, decided that laborers ought to be impressed with the necessity ofcomplying with contracts. They agreed that no laborers discharged forfailure to keep contracts would be hired again by other employers. Theydeclared it to be the duty of the whites to act in perfect good faith[Pg 722] intheir relations with freedmen, to respect and uphold their rights, and topromote good feeling.[2056]

At first the planters had demanded a system of contracts, thinking that bylaw they might hold the negro to his agreements. But the Bureau contractswere one-sided, and the planters could not afford to enter into them.General Swayne early reported[2057] a general breakdown of the contractsystem, though he told the planters that in case of dispute, where nocontract was signed, he would exact payment for the negro at the highestrates. The “share” system was discouraged, but where there were no Bureauagents it was developing. And so bad was the wage system, that even in theBureau districts, share hiring was done. The object of “share” renting wasto cause the laborer to take an interest in his crop and to relieve theplanter of disputes about loss of time, etc. Some of the negroes alsodecided that the share system was the proper one. On the plantations nearSelma the negroes demanded “shares,” threatening to leave in case ofrefusal. General Hardee, who was living near, proposed a plan for a verbalcontract; wages should be one-fourth of all crops, meat and bread to befurnished to the laborer, and his share of crop to be paid to him in kind,or the net proceeds in cash; the planter to furnish land, teams, wagons,implements, and seed to the laborer, who, in addition, had all the slaveryprivileges of free wood, water, and pasturage, garden lot and truck patch,teams to use on Sundays and for going to town. The absolute right ofmanagement was reserved to the planter, it being understood that this wasno copartnership, but that the negro was hired for a share of the crop;consequently he had no right to interfere in the management.[2058]

On another plantation, where a share system similar to Hardee’s was inoperation, the planter divided the workers into squads of four men each.To each squad he assigned a hundred acres of cotton and corn, in theproportion of five acres of cotton to three of corn, and forty acres ofcotton for the women and children of the four families. The squads wereunited to hoe and plough and[Pg 723] to pick the cotton, because they workedbetter in gangs. Wage laborers were kept to look after fences and ditches,and to perform odd jobs. A frequent source of trouble was the custom ofallowing the negro, as part of his pay, several acres of “outside crop,”to be worked on certain days of the week, as Fridays and Saturdays. Theplanter was supposed to settle disputes among the negroes, give themadvice on every subject except politics and religion, on which they hadother advisers, pay their fines and get them out of jail when arrested,and sometimes to thrash the recalcitrant.[2059]

Several kinds of share systems were finally evolved from the industrialchaos. They were much the same in black or white districts, and the usualdesignations were “on halves,” “third and fourth,” and “standing rent.”The tenant “on halves” received one-half the crop, did all the work, andfurnished his own provisions. The planter furnished land, houses to livein, seed, ploughs, hoes, teams, wagons, ginned the cotton, paid for halfthe fertilizer, and “went security” for the negro for a year’s credit atthe supply store in town, or he furnished the supplies himself, andcharged them against the negro’s share of the crop. The “third and fourth”plan varied according to locality and time, and depended upon what thetenant furnished. Sometimes the planter furnished everything, while thenegro gave only his labor and received one-fourth of the crop; again, theplanter furnished all except provisions and labor, and gave the negroone-third of the crop. In such cases “third and fourth” was a lower gradeof tenancy than “on halves.” Later it developed to a higher grade: thetenant furnished teams and farming implements, and the planter the rest,in which case the planter received a third of the cotton, and a fourth ofthe corn raised. “Standing rent” was the highest form of tenancy, and onlyresponsible persons, white or black, could rent under that system. Itcalled[Pg 724] for a fixed or “standing” rent for each acre or farm, to be paidin money or in cotton. The unit of value in cotton was a 500-pound bale ofmiddling grade on October 1st. Tenants who had farm stock, farmingimplements, and supplies or good credit would nearly always cultivate for“standing rent.” The planter exercised a controlling direction over thelabor and cultivation of a crop worked “on halves”; he exercised lessdirection over “third and fourth” tenants, and was supposed to exercise nocontrol over tenants who paid “standing rent.” In all cases the planterfurnished a dwelling-house free, wood and water (paid for digging wells),and pasture for the pigs and cows of the tenants. In all cases the renterhad a plot of ground of from one to three acres, rent free, for avegetable garden and “truck patch.” Here could be raised watermelons,sugar-cane, potatoes, sorghum, cabbage, and other vegetables. Every tenantcould keep a few pigs and a cow, chickens, turkeys, and guineas, andespecially dogs, and could hunt in all the woods around and fish in allthe waters. “On halves” was considered the safest form of tenancy for bothplanter and tenant, for the latter was only an average man, and thismethod allowed the superior direction of the planter.[2060] Many negroesworked for wages; the less intelligent and the unreliable could find noother way to work; and some of the best of them preferred to work forwages paid at the end of each week or month. Wage laborers worked underthe immediate oversight of the farmer or tenant who hired them. Theyreceived $8 to $12 a month and were “found,” that is, furnished withrations. In the white counties the negro hired man was often fed in thefarmer’s kitchen. The laborer, if hired by the year, had a house,[Pg 725]vegetable garden, truck patch, chickens, a pig perhaps, always a dog, andhe could hunt and fish anywhere in the vicinity. Sometimes he was “found”;sometimes he “found” himself. When he was “found,” the allowance for aweek was three and a half pounds of bacon, a peck of meal, half a gallonof syrup, and a plug of tobacco; his garden and truck patch furnishedvegetables. This allowance could be varied and commuted. The system wasworked out in the few years immediately following the war, and has lastedalmost without change. Where the negroes are found, the larger plantationshave not been broken up into small farms, the census statistics to thecontrary notwithstanding.[2061] The negro tenant or laborer had too manyprivileges for his own good and for the good of the planter. The negroshould have been paid more money or given a larger proportion of the crop,and fewer privileges. He needed more control and supervision, and theresult of giving him a vegetable garden, a truck patch, a pasture, and theright of hunting and fishing, was that the negro took less interest in thecrop; the privileges were about all he wanted. Agricultural industry wasnever brought to a real business basis.[2062]

An essential part of the share system was the custom of advancing suppliesto the tenant with the future crop as security. The universal lack ofcapital after the war forced an extension of the old ante-bellum credit orsupply system. The merchant, who was also a cotton buyer, advanced moneyor supplies until the crop was gathered. Before the war his security wascrop, land, and slaves; after the war the crop was the principal security,for land was a drug in the market. Consequently, the crop was moreimportant to the creditor. Cotton was the only good cash staple, and thehigh prices encouraged all to raise it. It was to the interest of themerchant, even when prices were low, to insist that his debtors raisecotton to the exclusion of food crops, since much of his money was made byselling food supplies to them. Before the war the planter alone had muchcredit, and a successful one did not make use of[Pg 726] the system; but afterthe war all classes of cotton raisers had to have advances of supplies.The credit or crop lien system was good to put an ambitious farmer on theway to independence, but it was no incentive to the shiftless. Cottonbecame the universal crop under the credit system, and even when thefarmer became independent, he seldom planted less of his staple crop, orraised more supplies at home.

At the end of the war everything was in favor of the negro cotton raiser;and everything except the high price of cotton was against the whitefarmer in the poorer counties. The soil had been used most destructivelyin the white districts, and it had to be improved before cotton could beraised successfully.[2063] The high price of cotton caused the whitefarmer, who had formerly had only small cotton patches, to plant largefields, and for several years the negro was not a serious competitor. Thebuilding of railroads through the mineral regions afforded transportationto the white farmer for crops and fertilizers,—an advantage that beforethis time had been enjoyed only by the Black Belt,—and improved methodsgradually supplanted the wasteful frontier system of cultivation. Thegradual increase[2064] of the cotton production after 1869 was dueentirely to white labor in the white counties, the black counties neveragain reaching their former production, though the population of thosecounties has doubled. Governor Lindsay said, in 1871, that the whitepeople[Pg 727] of north Alabama, where but little had been produced before thewar, were becoming prosperous by raising cotton, and at the same timeraising supplies that the planter on the rich lands with negro labor hadto buy from the West. This prosperity, he thought, had done more thananything else to put an end to Ku Klux disturbances. Somers reported, asearly as 1871, that the bulk of the cotton crop in the Tennessee valleywas made by white labor, not by black.[2065] As long as there was plentyof cheap, thin land to be had, the poor but independent white would notwork the fertile land belonging to some one else; and before and longafter the war there was plenty of practically free land.[2066] Thereforethe tendency of the whites was to remain on the less fertile land. Dr. E.A. Smith, in the Alabama Geological Survey of 1881-1882, and in the Reporton Cotton Production in Alabama (1884), shows the relation between raceand cotton production, and race location, with respect to fertility ofsoil: (1) On the most fertile lands the laboring population was black; thefarmers were shiftless, and no fertilizers were used; there the creditevil was worse, and the yield per acre was less than on the poorest soilscultivated by whites. (2) Where the races were about equal the best systemwas found; the soils were medium, the farms were small but wellcultivated, and fertilizers were used. (3) On the poorest soils onlywhites were found. These by industry and use of fertilizers could produceabout as much as the blacks on the rich soils.

The average product per acre of the fertile Black Belt is lower than thelowest in the poorest white counties. Only the best of[Pg 728] soil, as inClarke, Monroe, and Wilcox counties, is able to overcome the bad laborsystem, and produce an average equal to that made by the whites inWinston, the least fertile county in the state. In white counties, wherethe average product per acre falls below the average for the surroundingregion, the fact is always explained by the presence of blacks, segregatedon the best soils, keeping down the average product. For example, MadisonCounty in 1880 had a majority of blacks, and the average product per acrewas 0.28 bale, as compared with 0.32 bale for the Tennessee valley, ofwhich Madison was the richest county; in Talladega, the most fertilecounty of the Coosa valley, the average production per acre was 0.32, ascompared with 0.40 for the rest of the valley; in Autauga, where theblacks outnumbered the whites two to one, the average fell below that ofthe country around, though the Autauga soil was the best in the region.The average product of the rich prairie region cultivated by the blackswas 0.27 bale per acre; the average product in the poor mineral regioncultivated by the whites was 0.26 to 0.28; in the short-leaf pine regionthe whites outnumber the blacks two to one, and the average production is0.34 bale, while in the gravelly hill region, where the blacks are twiceas numerous as the whites, the production is 0.30, the soil in the twosections being about equal. In general, the fertility of the soil beingequal, the production varies inversely as the proportion of coloredpopulation to white. Density of colored population is a sure sign offertile soil; predominance of white a sign of medium or poor soil. Outsideof the Black Belt, white owners cultivate small farms, looking closelyafter them. The negro seldom owns the land he cultivates, and is moreefficient when working under direction on the small farm in the whitecounty. In the Black Belt, nearly all land is fertile and capable ofcultivation, but in the white counties a large percentage is rocky, inhills, forests, mountains, etc. Many soils in southeast and in northAlabama, formerly considered unproductive, have been brought intocultivation by the use of fertilizers, hauled in wagons, in many cases,from twenty to a hundred miles. Fertilizers have not yet come into generaluse in the Black Belt. In the negro districts are still found horse-powergins and old wooden cotton presses; in the white counties, steam and waterpower and the latest machinery. In the white counties it has always beena[Pg 729] general custom to raise a part of the supplies on the farm; in theBlack Belt this has not been done since the war.[2067] Though many of thewhite farmers remained under the crop lien bondage, there was a steadygain toward independence on the part of the more industrious andeconomical. But not until toward the close of the century did emancipationcome for many of the struggling whites.

In other directions the whites did better. They opened the mines of northAlabama, cut the timber of south Alabama, built the railroads andfactories, and to some extent engaged in commerce.[2068] Market gardeningbecame a common occupation. Negro labor in factories failed. It was thenegro rather than slavery that prevented and still prevents theestablishment of manufactures.[2069] The development of manufactures inrecent years has benefited principally the poor people of the whitecounties. “For this mill people is not drawn from foreign immigrants, norfrom distant states, but it is drawn from the native-born whitepopulation, the poor whites, that belated hill-folk from the ridges andhollows and coves of the silent hills.”[2070] The negro artisan is givingway to the white; even in the towns of the Black Belt, the occupationsonce securely held by the negro are passing into the hands of the whites.

In the white counties, during Reconstruction, the relations between theraces became more strained than in the Black Belt. One of themanifestations of the Ku Klux movement in the white counties was thedriving away of negro tenants from the more fertile districts by thepoorer classes of whites who wanted these lands. For years immigration wasdiscouraged by the northern press. Foreigners were afraid to come to the“benighted and savage South.”[2071][Pg 730] But in the ’80’s the railroadcompanies began to induce Germans to settle on their lands in the poorestof the white counties. Later there has been a slow movement from theNorthwest. As a rule, where the northerners and the Germans settle thewilderness blossoms, and the negro leaves.

After ploughing their hilltops until the soil was exhausted, the whites,even before the war, decided that only by clearing the swamps in thepoorer districts could they get land worth cultivating. This required muchlabor and money. After the war, with the increase of transportationfacilities, fertilizers came into use, the swamps were deserted, and thefarmers went back to the uplands. “By the use of commercial fertilizers,vast regions once considered barren have been brought into profitablecultivation, and really afford a more reliable and constant crop than therich alluvial lands of the old slave plantations. In nearly everyagricultural county in the South there is to be observed, on the one hand,this section of fertile soils, once the heart of the old civilization, nowlargely abandoned by the whites, held in tenantry by a dense negropopulation, full of dilapidation and ruin; while on the other hand, thereis the region of light, thin soils, occupied by the small whitefreeholder, filled with schools, churches, and good roads, and all theelements of a happy, enlightened country life.”[2072]

The patriarchal system failed in the Black Belt, the Bureau system ofcontracts and prescribed wages failed, the planter’s own wage systemfailed,[2073] and finally all settled down to the share system.[Pg 731] In thisthere was some encouragement to effort on the part of the laborer, and incase of failure of the crop he bore a share of the loss. After a fewyears’ experience, the negroes were ready to go back to the wage system,and labor conventions were held demanding a return to that system.[2074]But whatever system was adopted, the work of the negro was unsatisfactory.The skilled laborer left the plantation, and the new generation knewnothing of the arts of industry. Labor became migratory, and the negrofarmer wanted to change his location every year.[2075] Regular work was athing of the past. In two or three days each week a negro could workenough to live, and the remainder of the time he rested from his labors,often leaving much cotton in the fields to rot.[2076] He went to the fieldwhen it suited him to go, gazed frequently at the sun to see if it wastime to stop for meals, went often to the spring for water, and spent muchtime adjusting his plough or knocking the soil and pebbles from his shoes.The negro women refused to work in the fields, and yet did nothing tobetter the home life; the style of living was “from hand to mouth.” Extramoney went for whiskey, snuff, tobacco, and finery, while the standard ofliving was not raised.[2077] The laborer would always stop to go to acircus, election, political meeting, revival, or camp-meeting. A greatdesolation seemed to rest upon the Black Belt country.[2078]

In the interior of the state, the negroes worked better during[Pg 732] and afterReconstruction than where they were exposed to the ministrations of thevarious kinds of carpet-baggers.[2079] In the Tennessee valley, where thenegroes had taken a prominent part in politics, and had not only seen muchof the war, but many of them had enlisted in the Federal army, cottonraising almost ceased for several years. The only crops made were made bywhites.[2080] In Sumter County, where the black population was dense, itwas, in 1870, almost impossible to secure labor; those negroes who wishedto work went to the railways.[2081] A description of a “model negro farm”in 1874 was as follows: The farmer purchased an old mule on credit andrented land on shares, or for so many bales of cotton; any old tools wereused; corn, bacon, and other supplies were bought on credit, and a liengiven on the crop; a month later, corn and cotton were planted on soil notwell broken up; the negro “would not pay for no guano,” to put on otherpeople’s land; by turns the farmer planted and fished, ploughed andhunted, hoed and frolicked, or went to “meeting.” At the end of the yearhe sold his cotton, paid part of his rent, and some of his debt, returnedthe mule to its owner, and sang:—

If the negro made anything, his fellows were likely to steal it. Somerssaid, “There can be no doubt that the negroes first steal one another’sshare of the crop, and next the planter’s, by way of generalredress.”[2083] Crop stealing was usually done at night. Stolen cotton,corn, pork, etc., was carried to the doggeries kept on the outskirts ofthe plantation by low white men, and there exchanged for bad whiskey,tobacco, and cheap stuff of various kinds. These doggeries were called“deadfalls,” and their proprietors often became rich.[2084] So serious didthe theft of crops become, that the legislature passed a “sunset” law,making it a penal offence to purchase farm produce[Pg 733] after nightfall.Poultry, hogs, corn, mules, and horses were stolen when left in the open.

Emancipation destroyed the agricultural supremacy of the Black Belt. Theuncertain returns from the plantations caused an exodus of planters andtheir families to the cities, and formerly well-kept plantations weredivided into one-and two-house farms for negro tenants, who allowedeverything to go to ruin. The negro tenant system was much more ruinousthan the worst of the slavery system, and none of the plantations everagain reached their former state of productiveness. Ditches choked up,fences down, large stretches of fertile fields growing up in weeds andbushes, cabins tumbling in and negro quarters deserted, corn choked bygrass and weeds, cotton not half as good as under slavery,—these were thereports from travellers in the Black Belt, towards the close ofReconstruction.[2085] Other plantations were leased to managers, who alsokept plantation stores whence the negroes were furnished with supplies.The money lenders came into possession of many plantations. By the croplien and blanket mortgage, the negro became an industrial serf. The “bighouse” fell into decay. For these and other reasons, the former masters,who were the most useful friends of the negro, left the Black Belt, andthe black steadily declined.[2086] The unaided negro has steadily grownworse; but Tuskegee, Normal, Calhoun, and similar bodies are endeavoringto assist the negro of the black counties to become an efficient member ofsociety. In the success[Pg 734] of such efforts lies the only hope of the negro,and also of the white of the Black Belt, if the negro is to continue toexclude white immigration.[2087]

CHAPTER XXIII

During the war the administration of the state government gradually fellinto the hands of officials elected by people more or less disaffectedtoward the Confederacy. Provisional Governor Parsons, who had beensecretly disloyal to the Confederacy, retained in office many of the oldConfederate local officials, and appointed to other offices men who hadnot strongly supported the Confederacy. In the fall of 1865 and the springof 1866 elections under the provisional government placed in office a moreenergetic class of second and third rate men who had had little experienceand who were not strong Confederates. Men who had opposed secession andwho had done little to support the war were, as a rule, sent to Congressand placed in the higher offices of state. The ablest men were notavailable, being disfranchised by the President’s plan.

In 1868, with the establishment of the reconstructed government, anentirely new class of officials secured control. Less than 5000 whitevoters, of more than 100,000 of voting age, supported the Radicalprogramme, and, as more than 3000 officials were to be chosen, the fieldfor choice was limited. The elections having gone by default, the Radicalsmet with no opposition, except in three counties. In all the othercounties the entire Radical ticket was declared elected, even though inseveral of them no formal elections had been held.

William H. Smith, who was made governor under the Reconstruction Acts, wasa native of Georgia, a lawyer, formerly a Douglas Democrat, and hadopposed secession, but was a candidate for the Confederate Congress.Defeated, he consoled himself by going over to the Federals in 1862. Smithwas a man of no executive ability,[Pg 736] careless of the duties of his office,and in few respects a fit person to be governor. He disliked theConfederate element and also the carpet-baggers, but as long as the latterwould not ask for high offices, he was at peace with them. It was his planto carry on the state government with the 2000 or 3000 “unionists” and theUnited States troops. He did not like the negroes, but could endure themas long as they lived in a different part of the state and voted for him.In personal and private matters he was thoroughly honest, but his coursein regard to the issue of bonds showed that in public affairs he could beinfluenced to doubtful conduct. It is certain that he never profited byany of the stealing that was carried on; he merely made it easy for othersto steal; the dishonest ones were his friends, and his enemies paid thetaxes. As governor he had the respect of neither party. He went too far toplease the Democrats, and not far enough to please the Radicals. Heexercised no sort of control over his local officials and shut his eyes tothe plundering of the Black Belt. He was emphatically governor of hissmall following of whites, not of all the people, not even of the blacks.During his administration the whites complained that he was very active inprotecting Radicals from outrage, but paid no attention to the troubles ofhis political enemies. His government did not give adequate protection tolife and property.

His lieutenant-governor, A. J. Applegate of Ohio and Wisconsin, was anilliterate Federal soldier left stranded in Alabama by the surrender.During the war he was taken ill in Mississippi and was cared for by Mrs.Thompson, wife of a former Secretary of the Treasury. Upon leaving theThompson house he carried some valuable papers with him, which, after thewar, he tried to sell to Mrs. Thompson for $10,000. Lowe, Walker, &Company, a firm of lawyers in Alabama, gave Applegate $300, made him signa statement as to how he obtained the papers, and then published all thecorrespondence.[2088] The charge of thievery did not injure his candidacy.Before election he had been anattaché of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Afterthe constitution had been rejected in 1868, Applegate went North, so farthat he could not get back in time for the first session of thelegislature. A special act, however,[Pg 737] authorized him to draw his pay ashaving been present. In a letter written for the Associated Press, whichwas secured by the Democrats, there were thirty-nine mistakes in spelling.As a presiding officer over the Senate, he was vulgar and undignified. Hisspeeches were ludicrous. When the conduct of the Radical senators pleasedhim, he made known his pleasure by shouting, “Bully for Alabama!”

The secretary of state, Charles A. Miller, was a Bureau agent from Maine;Bingham, the treasurer, was from New York; Reynolds, the auditor, fromWisconsin; Keffer, the superintendent of industrial resources, fromPennsylvania. Two natives of indifferent reputation—Morse andCloud—were, respectively, attorney-general and superintendent of publicinstruction. Morse was under indictment for murder and had to be relievedby special act of the legislature. The chief justice, Peck, was from NewYork; Saffold and Peters were southern men; the senators and all of therepresentatives in Congress were carpet-baggers. There were six candidatesfor the short-term senatorship—all of them carpet-baggers. Willard Warnerof Ohio, who was elected, was probably the most respectable of all thecarpet-baggers, and was soon discarded by the party. He had served in theFederal army and after the war was elected to the Ohio Senate. His termexpired in January, 1868; in July, 1868, he was elected to the UnitedStates Senate from Alabama. George E. Spencer was elected to the UnitedStates Senate for the long term. He was from Massachusetts, Ohio, Iowa,and Nebraska. In Iowa he had been clerk of the Senate, and in Nebraska,secretary to the governor. He entered the army as sutler of the FirstNebraska Infantry. Later he assisted in raising the First Union AlabamaCavalry and was made its colonel. Spencer was shrewd, coarse, andunscrupulous, and soon secured control of Federal patronage for Alabama.He attacked his colleague, Warner, as being lukewarm.

The representatives and their records were as follows: F. W. Kellogg ofMassachusetts and Michigan represented the latter state in Congress from1859 to 1865, when he was appointed collector of internal revenue atMobile. C. W. Buckley of New York and Illinois was a Presbyterian preacherwho had come to Alabama as chaplain of a negro regiment. For two years hewas a Bureau official and an active agitator. He was a leading member inthe[Pg 738] convention of 1867. B. W. Norris of Skowhegan, Maine, was anoil-cloth maker and a land agent for Maine, a commissary, contractor,cemetery commissioner, and paymaster during the war. After the war he cameSouth with C. A. Miller, his brother-in-law, and both became Bureauagents. C. W. Pierce of Massachusetts and Illinois was a Bureau official.Nothing more is known of him. John B. Callis of Wisconsin had served inthe Federal army and later in the Veteran Reserve Corps. After the war hebecame a Bureau agent in Alabama, and when elected he was not a citizen ofthe state, but was an army officer stationed in Mississippi. ThomasHaughey of Scotland was a Confederate recruiting officer in 1861-1862 andlater a surgeon in the Union army. He was killed in 1869 by Collins, amember of the Radical Board of Education. It was said that he was withoutrace prejudice and consorted with negroes, but he was the only one of theAlabama delegation whom Governor Smith liked. The latter wrote that “ourwhole set of representatives in Congress, with the exception of Haughey,are ... unprincipled scoundrels having no regard for the state of thepeople.”[2089]

In the first Reconstruction legislature, which lasted for three years,there were in the Senate 32 Radicals and 1 Democrat. In the House therewere 97 Radicals (only 94 served) and 3 Democrats. The lone Democrat inthe Senate was Worthy of Pike, and to prevent him from engaging in debate,Applegate often retired from his seat and called upon him to preside; theDemocrats in the House were Hubbard of Pike, Howard of Crenshaw, andReeves of Cherokee.[2090] In the Senate there was only 1 negro; in theHouse there were 26, several of whom could not sign their names. In theapportionment of representatives there was a difference of 40 per cent infavor of the black counties. Hundreds of negroes swarmed in to see thelegislature begin, filling the galleries, the windows, and the vacantseats, and crowding the aisles. They were invited by resolution to fillthe galleries and from that place they took part in the affairs of theHouse, voting on every[Pg 739] measure with loud shouts. A scalawag from northAlabama wanted the negroes to sit on one side of the House and the whiteson the other, but he was not listened to. The doorkeepers,sergeant-at-arms, and other employees were usually negroes. The negromembers watched their white leaders and votedaye orno as they voted.When tired they went to sleep and often had to be wakened to vote. Bothhouses were usually opened with prayer by northern Methodist ministers orby negro ministers. None but “loyal” ministers were asked to officiate.Strobach, the Austrian member, wearied of much political prayer, movedthat the chaplain cut short his devotions.

SCENES IN THE FIRST RECONSTRUCTED LEGISLATURE.
(Cartoons from “The Loil Legislature,” by Captain B. H. Screws.)

The whites in the legislature were for the most part carpet-baggers orunknown native whites. The entire taxes paid by the members of thelegislature were, it is said, less than $100. Applegate, thelieutenant-governor, did not own a dollar’s worth of property in thestate. Most of the carpet-bag members lived in Montgomery; the rest ofthem lived in Mobile, Selma, and Huntsville. Few of them saw the districtsthey represented after election; some did not see them before or after theelection. The representative from Jackson County lived in Chattanooga,Tennessee. The state constitution prohibited United States officials fromholding state offices, but nearly all Federal officers in the state alsoheld state offices. This was particularly the case in the southwesterncounties, which were represented by revenue and custom-house officialsfrom Mobile. Some of them were absent most of the time, but all drew pay;one of the negro members, instead of attending, went regularly to schoolafter the roll was called. No less than twenty members had been indictedor convicted, or were indicted during the session, of various crimes, fromadultery and stealing to murder. The legislature passed special acts torelieve members from the penalties for stealing, adultery, bigamy, arson,riot, illegal voting, assault, bribery, and murder.[2091]

Bribery was common in the legislature. By custom a room in the capitol wasset apart for the accommodation of those who wished[Pg 740] to “interview” negromembers.[2092] There the agents of railroad companies distributedconscience money in the form of loans which were never to be paid back.Harrington, the speaker, boasted that he received $1700 for engineering abill through the House. A lottery promoter said that it cost him only $600to get his charter through the legislature, and that no Radical, exceptone negro, refused the small bribe he offered. Senator Sibley held hisvote on railroad measures at $500; Pennington, at $1000; W. B. Jones, at$500. Hardy of Dallas received $35,000 to ease the passage of a railroadbond issue, and kept most of it for himself; another received enough tostart a bank; still another was given 640 acres of land, a steam mill, anda side track on a railroad near his mill. Negro members, as a rule, soldout very cheaply, and probably most often to Democrats who wanted someminor measures passed to which the Radical leaders would pay no attention.It was found best not to pay the larger sums until the governor had signedthe bill. A member accepted a gift as a matter of course, and no attentionwas paid to charges of bribery.[2093]

The election of February 4 and 5, 1868, at which the constitution wasrejected on account of the whites’ refraining from voting, was in manycounties a farce. The legislature, in order to remedy any defects in thecredentials of the Radical candidates, passed a number of general andspecial acts legalizing the “informal” elections of February 4 and 5, anddeclaring the Radical candidates elected. In seven counties no votes hadbeen counted, but this made no difference.[2094]

The presiding officers addressed the members as “Captain, John, Mr.Jones,” etc. Quarrels and fights were frequent. One member chased anotherto the secretary’s desk, trying to kill him, but was prevented by thesecretary. In the cloak-rooms and halls were fruit and peanut stands,whiskey shops, and lunch counters. Legislative action did not avail toclear out the sovereign negroes and[Pg 741] keep the halls clean. Politicalmeetings were held in the capitol, much to the damage of thefurniture.[2095]

The only measures that excited general interest among the members were thebond-issue bills. Other legislation was generally purely perfunctory,except in case an election law or a Ku Klux law was to be passed. Therewas much special legislation on account of individual members, such asgranting divorces, ordering release from jail, relieving from the “pains”of marriage with more than one woman, trick legislation, vacating offices,etc. When, as in Mobile, the Democrats controlled too many minor offices,the legislature remedied the wrong by declaring the offices vacant andgiving the governor authority to make appointments to the vacancies. TheMobile offices were vacated three times in this way. In connection withthe Mobile bill it was found that fraudulent interpolations were sometimesmade in a bill after its passage. It would be taken from the clerk’s desk,changed, and then returned for printing.[2096]

Some of the laws passed failed of their object because of mistakes inspelling. A committee was finally appointed to correct mistakes inorthography. The House and Senate constantly returned engrossed bills toone another for correction. A joint committee to investigate the educationof the clerks reported that they were unable to ascertain which of theclerks was illiterate, though they discharged one of them. The minorityreport declared that the fault was not with the clerks, but with themembers, many of whom could not write. Finally a spelling clerk wasemployed to rewrite the bills submitted by the members.[2097] For makingfun of the ignorance of the Radical members, Ryland Randolph, a Democraticmember, elected in a by-election, was expelled from the House.

In 1868 the Radicals, fearing the result of the presidential election andafraid of the Ku Klux movement which was beginning to be felt, passed abill giving to itself the power to choose presidential[Pg 742] electors. Thenegroes were aroused by the Radical leaders who were not in thelegislature, and sufficient pressure was brought to bear on the governorto induce him to veto the measure.[2098]

According to the constitution, the Senate was to classify at once afterorganization, so that half should serve two years and half four years. Noone was willing to take the short term and lose the $8per diem andother privileges. So in 1868 the Senate refused to classify. Again in 1870it refused to classify. The Radicals permitted the usurpation because itwas known that the Democrats would carry the white counties in case theclassification were made and elections held. Then, too, it was feared thatin 1870 the Democrats would have a majority in the lower house; hence aRadical Senate would be necessary to prevent the repudiation of therailroad indorsation. So all senators held over until 1872, and by shrewdmanipulation and the use of Federal troops the Senate kept a Radicalmajority until 1874.[2099]

County and other local officials were incompetent and corrupt. The policyof the whites in abstaining from voting on the constitution (1868) gavenearly every office in the state to incompetent men. In the white countiesit was as bad as in the black, because the Radicals there despaired ofcarrying the elections and put up no regular candidates. However, in everycounty some freaks offered themselves as candidates, and at “informal”elections received, or said they received, a few votes. After the statewas admitted in spite of the rejection of the constitution, these peoplewere put in office by the legislature. Had the white people taken part inthe elections instead of relying upon the law of Congress in regard toratification and not refrained from voting, they could have secured nearlyall the local offices in the white counties. No other state had such anexperience; no other state had such a low class of officials in thebeginning of Reconstruction. But the very incapacity of them worked infavor of better government, for they had to be gotten rid of and othersappointed. Not a single Bureau agent whose name is on record failed to getsome kind of an office. In Perry County most of the officials weresoldiers of a Wisconsin regiment discharged in the South; the circuitclerk was under indictment for horse stealing. In Greene[Pg 743] County asuperintendent of education had to be imported under contract fromMassachusetts, there being no competent Radical. In Sumter County onePrice, who had a negro wife, was registrar, superintendent of education,postmaster, and circuit clerk. A carpet-bagger, elected probate judge,went home to Ohio, after the supposed rejection of the constitution, andnever returned. The sheriff and the solicitor were negroes who could notread. Another Radical was at once circuit clerk, register in chancery,notary public, justice of the peace, keeper of the county poorhouse, andguardianad litem. In Elmore County the probate judge was underindictment for murder. In Montgomery, Brainard, the circuit clerk, killedhis brother-in-law and tried to kill Widmer, the collector of internalrevenue. The Radical chancellor and marshal were scalawags—one a formerslave trader, the other a former divine-right slave owner. The sheriff ofMadison could not write. In Dallas the illiterate negro commissionersvoted for a higher rate of taxation, though their names were not on thetax books; their scalawag associates voted for the lower rate. Thus it wasall over Alabama.

In July, 1868, the Reconstruction legislature continued in force the codeof Alabama, which provided for heavy official bonds. But the adventurerscould not make bond. So a special law was passed authorizing the supremecourt, chancellors, and circuit judges to “fix and prescribe” the bonds ofall “judicial and county officials.” Later the suspended code went intoeffect, and the Democrats succeeded in turning out many newly electedRadicals who could not make bond. Almost at the beginning the Democratsbegan the plan of refusing to make bond for Radicals, and thus made italmost impossible for the latter to hold office until the legislatureagain came to their relief.

There were many vacancies and few white Radicals to fill them; thescalawags thought that the negro ought to be content with voting. Smithhad many vacancies to fill by appointment. Most of the paying ones weregiven to Radicals, and many of the others were given to Democrats, whom hepreferred to negroes. In the black counties the property owners and the KuKlux began to make the most obnoxious officials sell out and leave, andGovernor Smith would, by agreement, appoint some Democrat to suchvacancies. This custom became frequent, and, in spite of himself, Smith’s“lily white”[Pg 744]sentiments were undermining the rule of his party.[2100] Anargument used by the more liberal of the Radicals in favor of removal ofdisabilities was that in some counties the local offices could not befilled on account of the operation of the disfranchising laws.[2101]

The Federal judiciary was represented by Richard Busteed, an Irishman, whowas made Federal judge in 1864. He came South in 1865 with bloodthirstythreats and at once began prosecutions for treason. More than 900 caseswere brought before him. There were no convictions, but a rich harvest ofcosts. He was ignorant of law, and in the court room was arbitrary andtyrannical to lawyers, witnesses, and prisoners. It was charged that hewas in partnership with the district attorney. Bribery was proven againsthim. The leading lawyers, both Radical and Democratic, asked Congress toimpeach him, but to no effect. It was his custom to solicit men to bringcauses before him. A Selma editor was brought before him and severelylectured for writing a disrespectful article about Busteed’s grand jury.There was one Democratic lawyer whom Busteed feared—General James H.Clanton. Clanton paid no attention to Busteed’s vagaries, but sat on thebench with him, advised him and made him take his advice, won all hiscases, and bullied Busteed unrebuked. The latter was afraid he would bekilled if he angered Clanton, and Clanton played upon his fears. At firsta great negrophile, Busteed became more and more obnoxious to the Radicalparty, and was soon accused of being a Democrat and removed. AnotherFederal officer, Wells, the United States district attorney, had beendischarged from the Union army on the ground of insanity.[2102]

The new constitution made all judgeships elective and also provided forthe election of a solicitor in each county. The result was seen in thenumber of incapable judges and illiterate solicitors. The probate judge ofMadison was “a common jack-plane carpenter from Oregon,” and his sheriffcould not write. Many of the judges had never studied law and had neverpractised. Public meetings[Pg 745] were held to protest against incompetentjudges and to demand their resignations. Governor Smith usually appointedbetter men, and not always those of his own party, to the places vacatedby resignation, sale, or otherwise. Before the war the state judiciary hadstood high in the estimation of the people, and judicial officers wereforbidden by public opinion to take part in party politics. Under theReconstruction government the judicial officials took an active part inpolitical campaigns, every one of them, from Busteed and the supreme courtto a county judge, making political speeches and holding office in theparty organization. From a party point of view the scarcity of whiteRadicals made this necessary. Notaries public, who also had the powers ofjustices of the peace, were appointed by the governor. Their powers weregreat and indefinite, and in consequence they almost drove the justicesout of activity. Some of them issued warrants running into all parts ofthe state, causing men to be brought forty to fifty miles to appear beforethem on trifling charges.

The Reconstruction judiciary generally held that a jury without a negro onit was not legal. In the white counties such juries were hard to form.Northern newspaper correspondents wrote of the ludicrous appearance ofBusteed’s half negro jury struggling with intricate points of maritimelaw, insurance, constitutional questions, exchange, and the relative valueof a Prussian guilder to a pound sterling. When they were bored they wentto sleep. The negro jurors recognized their own incompetence and usuallyagreed to any verdict decided upon by the white jurors. Had the latterbeen respectable men, no harm would have been done, but usually they werenot. A negro jury would not convict a member of the Union League—he hadonly to give the sign—nor a negro prosecuted by a white man or indictedby a jury; but many negroes prosecuted by their own race were convicted byblack juries. For many years it was impossible to secure a respectableFederal jury on account of the test oath required, which excluded nearlyall Confederates of ability. As an example of the working of a localcourt, the criminal court of Dallas may be taken. The jurisdictionextended to capital offences. Corbin, the judge, was an old Virginian whohad never read law. He refused to allow one Roderick Thomas, colored, tobe tried by a mixed jury, demanding a full negro jury. The prosecutionwas[Pg 746] then dropped because all twelve negroes drawn were of bad character.Corbin then entered on the record that Thomas was “acquitted.” Thomas hadstolen cotton, and the fact had been proven; but he soon became clerk ofCorbin’s court and later took Corbin’s place as judge, with another negrofor clerk. Nearly every Radical official in Dallas County was indicted forcorruption in office by a Radical or mixed jury, but negro juries refusedto convict them.[2103]

An elaborate militia system was provided for by the carpet-baggers, withGeneral Dustin of Iowa, a carpet-bagger, as major-general. The strength oforganization was to be in the black counties, but Governor Smithpersistently refused to organize the negro militia. He was afraid of theeffect on his slender white following, and he did not think that the negroought to do anything but vote. He was also afraid of Democratic militia,afraid that it would overturn the hated state government. He tried to getseveral friendly white companies to organize, but failed, and during therest of his term relied exclusively upon Federal troops. Even before theReconstruction government was set going it was seen that the whites wouldbe restless. Forcing the rejected constitution and the low-class stategovernment upon the people against the will of the majority had a very badeffect. They recognized it as the governmentde facto only, and they soconsidered it all during the Reconstruction. Then the Ku Klux movementbegan, and north Alabama especially was disturbed for several years. Smithsometimes threatened to call out the militia, but never did so. However,he kept the Federal troops busy answering his calls. After the election ofGrant the army was always at the service of the state officials, who useddetachments as police, marshals, andposses. The government had not therespect of its own party, and had to be upheld by military force. It was afixed custom to call in the military when the law was to beenforced—governor, congressmen, marshals, sheriff, judge, justice ofpeace, politicians, all calling for and obtaining troops. It wasdistasteful duty to the Federal officers and soldiers. Though the peopleknew that only the soldiers upheld the state government, yet they werenot, as a rule, sorry to see the soldiers come in. The military rule waspreferable to the civil rule, and acted as a check on Radical[Pg 747]misgovernment. The whites were often sorry to see the soldiers leave, eventhough they were instruments of oppression. Wholesale arrests by the armywere not as frequent during Smith’s administration as later.[2104]

The state government was shaken to its foundations by the presidentialcampaign and election of 1868. The whites had waked up and gone to work inearnest. It was the first election in which the races voted against oneanother. Busteed, Strobach, and other carpet-baggers toured the North,predicting chains and slavery for the blacks and butchery for the “loyal”whites in case Seymour were elected. The Union League whipped the negroesinto line. Brass bands lent enthusiasm to Radical parades. The negroeswere afraid that they would “lose their rights” and be reënslaved, thattheir wives would have to work the roads and not be allowed to wearhoopskirts. The Radicals urged upon the Democrats the view that those whodid not believe in negro suffrage could not take the voter’s oath. ManyDemocrats refused to register because of the oath. There were numbers whowould not vote against Grant because they believed that he was the onlypossible check against Congress. Others felt that so far as Alabama wasconcerned the[Pg 748] election was cut and dried for Grant. But nevertheless amajority of the whites determined to resist further Africanization ingovernment. Their natural leaders were disfranchised, but a strongcampaign was made. The hope was held out of overthrowing the irregularrevolutionary state government and driving out the carpet-baggers in caseSeymour became President. North Alabama declared that a vote for Grant wasa vote against the whites and formed a boycott of all Radicals. The southAlabama leaders tried to secure a part of the negro vote, and urged thatimprudent talk be avoided and that carpet-baggers and scalawags be letalone, and the negroes be treated kindly as being responsible for none ofthe evils. Orders purporting to be signed by General Grant were sent outamong the negroes, bidding them to beware of the promises of the whitesand directing them to vote for him. Some rascally whites made large sumsof money by selling Grant badges to the blacks. They had been sent downfor free distribution; but the negroes, ordered, as they believed, by thegeneral, purchased his pictures at $2 each, or less. The carpet-baggerswere afraid of losing the state. Some left and went home. Others wantedthe legislature to choose electors. Still others wanted to have noelection at all, preferring to let it go by default; but the highermilitary commanders, Terry and Grant, were sympathetic and troops were sodistributed over the state as to bring out the negro vote. Army officersassisted at Radical political meetings, and the negro was informed by hisadvisers that General Grant had sent the troops to see that they votedproperly. The result was that the state went for Grant by a safemajority.[2105]

During the administration of Smith the incompatibility of the elements ofthe Radical party began to show more clearly. The native whites began todesert as soon as the convention of 1867 showed that the negro vote wouldbe controlled by the carpet-baggers. The genuine Unionist voters resentedthe leadership of renegade secessionists. The carpet-baggers demanded thelion’s share of the spoils and were angered because Smith vetoed some oftheir[Pg 749] measures; the scalawags upheld him. The carpet-baggers felt thatsince they controlled the negro voters they were entitled to the greaterconsideration. Their manipulation of the Union League alarmed the nativeRadicals.

The negroes were becoming conscious of their power and were inclined todemand a larger share of the offices than the carpet-baggers wanted togive them. Some of the negroes were desirous of voting with the whites.Negro leaders were aspiring to judgeships, to the state Senate, to bepostmasters, to go to Congress. Even now the party was held together onlyby the knowledge that it would be destroyed if divided.[2106]

In 1868 Governor Smith and other Radical leaders, convinced that they werepermanently in power, secured the passage of a law providing for thegradual removal of disabilities imposed by state law. The same year acomplete registration had been made for the purpose of excluding theleading whites. After disabilities were removed, so far as state actionwas concerned there was no advantage to Radicals in a registration ofvoters. On the other hand, it threatened to become a powerful aid to theDemocrats, who began to attend the polls and demand that only registeredvoters be allowed to cast ballots, thus preventing repeating.Consequently, as a preparation for the first general election in the fallof 1870, the legislature passed a law forbidding the use of registrationlists by any official at any election. No one was to be asked if he wereregistered. No one was to be required to show a registration certificate.The assertion of the would-be voter was to be taken as sufficient. And itwas made a misdemeanor to challenge a voter, thus interfering with thefreedom of elections. After this a negro might vote under any name hepleased as often as he pleased. This election system was in force until1874, when the Democrats came into power.[2107]

To the Forty-first Congress in 1869 returned only one of the formercarpet-bag delegation, C. W. Buckley. Two so-called Democrats were chosen,two scalawags, and a new carpet-bagger. P. M. Dox, one of the Democrats,was a northern man who had lived in the South before the war, who wasneutral during the war; and after the[Pg 750] war he posed as a “Unionist.”Congressional timber was scarce on account of the test oath and theFourteenth Amendment, so Dox secured a nomination. His opponent was anegro, which helped him in north Alabama. The other Democrat, W. C.Sherrod, who was also from north Alabama, had served in the Confederatearmy. His opponent was J. J. Hinds, one of the most disliked of thecarpet-baggers. Robert S. Heflin, one of the scalawags, was from thatsection where the Peace Society flourished during the war. At first aConfederate, in 1864 he deserted and went within the Federal lines.Charles Hays, the other scalawag, became the most notorious of theReconstruction representatives in Congress. He was a cotton planter in oneof the densest black districts and managed to stay in Congress for fouryears. He is chiefly remembered because of the Hays-Hawley correspondencein 1874. Alfred E. Buck of Maine had been an officer of negro troops. Heserved only one term and after defeat passed into the Federal service. Hedied as minister to Japan in 1902. This delegation was weaker in abilityand in morals than the carpet-bag delegation to the Fortieth Congress.

In the fall of 1870 Governor Smith was a candidate for reëlection againstRobert Burns Lindsay, Democrat. The hostility of Smith to carpet-baggersweakened the party. The ticket was not acceptable[Pg 751] to the whites becauseRapier, a negro, was candidate for secretary of state. The genuineUnionists were becoming ultra Democrats, because of the prominence givenin their party to former secessionists like Parsons, Sam Rice, and Hays,and to negroes and carpet-baggers. Lindsay was from north Alabama, whichsupported him as a “white man’s candidate.” The negroes had been taught todistrust scalawags, as being little better than Democrats. Smith was askedwhy he ran on a ticket with a negro. He replied that now that was the onlyway to get office. He also called attention to the fact that in northAlabama the Democrats drew the color line, and called themselves the“white man’s party,” while in the black counties they made an earnesteffort to secure the negro vote. The Union League, through Keffer, sentout warning that whatever would suit “Rebels” would not suit “union men,”who must treat their “fine professions as coming from the Prince ofDarkness himself,” and that if Lindsay were elected, the “condition ofunion men would be like unto hell itself.” Smith and Senator Warner saidthat the Democrats would repudiate railroad bonds, destroy the schools,and repeal the Amendments and the Reconstruction Acts. In the whitecounties the Radical speakers were generally insulted, and soon the whitedistricts were given up as permanently lost. The Black Belt alone was nowthe stronghold of the Radicals. Strict inspection here prevented thenegroes from voting Democratic, as some were disposed to do. Negroes inthe white counties voted for Democrats with many misgivings. An old mantold a candidate, “I intend to vote for you; I liked your speech; but ifyou put me back into slavery, I’ll never forgive you.” Federal troops wereagain judiciously distributed in the Black Belt and in the white countieswhen there was a large negro vote. As a result the election was veryclose, Lindsay winning by a vote of 76,977 to 75,568.

Ex-Governor Parsons, who had now become a Radical, advised Smith not tosubmit to the seating of Lindsay, but to force a contest, and meanwhile toprevent the vote from being counted by the legislature. So, by injunctionfrom the supreme court, the Radical president of the Senate, Barr, wasforbidden to count the votes for governor. But the houses in joint sessioncounted the rest of the votes, and E. H. Moren, Democrat, was declaredelected lieutenant-governor. A majority of the House was anti-Radical. Theold[Pg 752] Senate, refusing to classify, held over. As soon as Moren wasdeclared elected, Barr arose and left, followed by most of the Radicalsenators, saying that he was forbidden to count the vote for governor.Moren at once appeared, took the oath, and the joint meeting not havingbeen regularly adjourned, he ordered the count for governor to proceed. Afew Radical senators had lingered out of curiosity, and were retained.Thus Lindsay was counted in, and at once took the oath of office. By theadvice of Parsons, Smith, though willing to retire, refused to give placeto Lindsay. The Radical senators recognized Smith; the House recognizedLindsay. Smith brought Federal troops into the state-house to keep Lindsayout, and for two or three weeks there were rival governors. Finally Smithwas forced to retire by a writ from the carpet-bag circuit court ofMontgomery.[2108]

Lindsay was born in Scotland and educated at the University of St.Andrews. He lived in Alabama for fifteen years before the war, opposedsecession, and gave only a half-hearted support to the Confederacy. As hesaid: “I would rather not tell my military history, for there was verylittle glory in it.... I do not know that I can say much about mysoldiering.”[2109] Lindsay was a scholar, a good lawyer, and a pure man,but a weak executive. In this respect he was better than Smith, however,who was supported by a unanimous Radical legislature. Under Lindsay theSenate was Radical and the House doubtful. The Radical auditor held over;Democrats were elected to the offices of treasurer, secretary of state,attorney-general, and superintendent of public instruction. W. W. Allen, aConfederate major-general, was placed in command of the militia andorganized some white companies.

The Democratic and independent majority of the House had some ableleaders, but many of the rank and file were timid and inexperienced.Several thousand of the best citizens were still disfranchised. There weretoo many young men in public office, half-educated and inexperienced. Inthe House there were only fourteen[Pg 753]negroes. So far as the legislature wasconcerned, there would be a deadlock for two years. The Radicals wouldconsent to no repeal of injurious legislation, and thus the evil effectsof the laws relating to schools, railroads, and elections continued.Governor Lindsay tried to bring some order into the state finances, butthe Democrats were divided on the subject of repudiating the fraudulentbond issues, while the Radicals upheld all of the bond stealing. Lindsaywas blamed by the people for not dealing more firmly with the question,but, as a matter of fact, he did as well as any man in his position coulddo.

One cause of weakness to the administration was the fact that some of theattorneys for the railroads were prominent Democrats who insisted upon therecognition of the fraudulent bonds. These attorneys were few in number,but they caused a division among the leaders. The selfish motive was veryevident, though for the sake of appearance they talked of “upholding thestate’s credit,” “the fair name of Alabama,” etc. It is difficult to seethat their conduct was in any way on a higher plane than that of thecarpet-baggers, who issued the bonds with intent to defraud. In order toprotect themselves they mercilessly criticised Lindsay.

Most of the local officials held over from 1868 to 1872; in by-electionsit was clearly shown that the Radicals had lost all except the Black Belt,where they continued to roll up large majorities, but even here they werelosing by resignation, sale of offices, Ku Kluxing, and removal. The moredecent carpet-baggers were leaving for the North; the white Radicals weredistinctly lower in character than before, having been joined by the dregsof the Democrats while losing their best white county men. Lindsay mademany appointments, thus gradually changing for the better the localadministration. Owing to the peculiar methods by which the first set ofofficials got into office, the local administration was never again asbad, except in some of the black counties, as it was in 1868-1869. As thepersonnel of the Radical party ran lower and lower, more and moreDemocrats entered into the local administration. But in spite of the factthat they secured representation in the state government, they were unableto make any important reforms until they gained control of alldepartments. The results of one or two local elections may be noticed. InMobile, which had a white majority, the carpet-bag and negro[Pg 754] governmentwas overthrown in 1870. Though prohibited by law from challengingfraudulent voters, the Democrats intimidated the negroes by standing nearthe polls and fastening a fish-hook into the coat of each negro who voted.The negroes were frightened. Rumor said that those who were hooked weremarked for jail. Repeating was thus prevented; many of them did not voteat all. In Selma the Democrats came into power. Property was then madesafe, the streets were cleaned, and the negroes found out that they wouldnot be reënslaved. Governor Lindsay endeavored to reform the localjudicial administration by getting rid of worthless young solicitors andincompetent judges, but the Radical Senate defeated his efforts. He wasunable to secure any good legislation during his term, and all reform waslimited to the reduction of administration expenses, the checking of badlegislation, and the appointment of better men to fill vacancies.[2110]

To the Forty-second Congress Buckley, Hays, and Dox were reëlected. Thenew congressmen were Turner, negro, Handley, Democrat, and Sloss,Independent. Turner had been a slave in North Carolina and Alabama and hadsecured a fair education before the war. He had at first entered politicsas a Democrat, and advised the negroes against alien leaders. To succeedWarner, George Goldthwaite, Democrat, was chosen to the United StatesSenate.

In 1872 the Democrats nominated for governor, Thomas H. Herndon of Mobile,who was in favor of a more aggressive policy than Lindsay. He was a southAlabama man and hence lost votes in north Alabama. David P. Lewis, theRadical nominee, was from north Alabama and in politics a turncoat.Opposed to secession in 1861, he nevertheless signed the ordinance and waschosen to the Confederate Congress; later he was a Confederate judge; in1864 he went within the Federal lines; in 1867-1868 he was a Democrat, butchanged about 1870. He was victorious for several reasons: theadministration was blamed for the division in the party and for notreforming abuses; Herndon did not draw out the full north Alabama vote;the presidential election was held at the same time and[Pg 755] the Democratswere disgusted at the nomination of Horace Greeley; Federal troops weredistributed over the state for months before the election, and theEnforcement Acts were so executed as to intimidate many white voters. Thefull Radical ticket was elected. All were scalawags, except the treasurer.In a speech, C. C. Sheets said of the Radical candidates,“Fellow-citizens, they are as pure, as spotless, as stainless, as theimmaculate Son of God.”[2111]

In both houses of the legislature the Democrats had by the returns amajority at last. The Radicals were in a desperate position. A UnitedStates Senator was to be elected, and Spencer wanted to succeed himself.He had spent thousands of dollars to secure the support of the Radicals,and a majority of the Radical members were devoted to him. Most scalawagswere opposed to his reëlection, but it was known that he controlled thenegro members, and to prevent division all agreed to support him. But howto overcome the Democratic majorities in both houses? Parsons was equal tothe occasion. He advised that the Radical members refuse to meet with theDemocrats and instead organize separately. So the Democrats met in thecapitol and the Radicals in the United States court-house, as had beenpreviously arranged. The Senate consisted of 33 members and the House of100. The[Pg 756] Democrats organized with 19 senators and 54 members in theHouse, all bearing proper certificates of election, and each house havingmore than a quorum. At the court-house the Radicals had 14 senators and 45or 46 representatives who had certificates of election. There were 4negroes in the Senate and 27 in the House. In neither Radical house wasthere a quorum; so each body summoned 5 Radicals who had been candidates,to make up a quorum. It was hard to find enough, and some custom-houseofficials from Mobile had to secure leave of absence and come toMontgomery to complete the quorum.

The regular (Democratic) organization at the capitol counted the votes anddeclared all the Radical state officials elected. Lewis and McKinstry,lieutenant-governor, accepted the count and took the oath and at oncerecognized the court-house body as the general assembly. Lindsay hadrecognized the regular organization, but had taken no steps to protect itfrom the Radical schemes. The militia was ready to support the regularbody, but Lewis was more energetic than Lindsay. He telegraphed to thenearest Federal troops, at Opelika, to come; when they came, he stationedthem on the capitol grounds. He proposed to the Democrats that they admitthe entire Radical body, expelling enough Democrats to put the latter in aminority. Upon their refusal, he told the court-house body to go aheadwith legislation. Some of the Radicals—one or two whites and four or fivenegroes—were dubious about the security of theirper diem and showedsigns of a desire to go to the capitol. These were guarded to keep them inline, and were also paid in money and promises of Federal offices. Theweak-kneed negroes were shut up in a room and guarded, to keep them fromgoing to the capitol.

Spencer was determined to be elected and would not wait for the trouble tobe settled. On December 3, 1872, the court-house Radicals chose him tosucceed himself. The next thing was to prevent the regular assembly fromelecting a Senator who might contest. Two of that body had died; one ortwo were indifferent and easily kept away from a joint session; otherswere called away by telegrams (forged by the Radicals) about illness intheir families; three members were arrested before reaching the city; onemember was drugged and nearly killed. By such methods a quorum wasdefeated in both houses at the capitol until December 10, when the absent[Pg 757]members came in, and F. W. Sykes was chosen to the United States Senate.

Meanwhile Lewis and the Radical members had appealed to President Grant tobe sustained. By his direction United States Attorney-General Williamsprepared a plan of compromise skilfully designed to destroy the Democraticmajority in the House and produce a tie in the Senate. Lewis was assuredthat the plan would be supported by the Federal authorities. The plan wasas follows: (1) Both bodies were to continue separate organizations untila fusion was effected. (2) On a certain day, both parties of the Housewere to meet in the capitol, and in the usual manner form a temporaryorganization—but the Democrats whose seats were contested but who hadcertificates of election were to be excluded, while the Radicalcontestants were to be seated. This would give a Radical majority. Thenthe contests were to be decided and a permanent organization formed. (3)In the same way the Senate was to be temporarily organized, the regularlyelected Democrats being excluded, while their contestants were seated,except in the case of the Democratic senator from Conecuh and Butler, whowas to sit but not to vote. By this arrangement there was a bare chancethat the Democrats might secure a majority of one in the Senate. (4) Assoon as the fusion was thus made, the permanent organization was to beeffected. Nothing was said about the legality of past legislation by eachbody, but the understanding was that all was to be considered void.

Meanwhile Lewis had tried to obtain forcible possession of the capitol,but Strobach, the sheriff whom he sent, was arrested by order of the Houseand imprisoned until he apologized. The Democrats were plainly informedthat the “gentle intimations of the convictions of the law officer of theUnited States” would be enforced by the use of Federal troops, and therewas nothing to do but give way. The plan was put into operation onDecember 17.

In the House contests the Democrats lost their majority, as was intended.In the Senate they lost all except one by the plan itself. To unseatSenator Martin from Conecuh would be a flagrant outrage. So his case wentover until after Christmas. The Democrats elected the clerks, doorkeepers,and pages. The Radicals still kept up their separate organization, notmeaning to abide by the fusion unless they could gain the entirelegislature. During the vacation[Pg 758]Lieutenant-Governor McKinstry wrote toAttorney-General Williams asking if the Federal government would supporthim in case he himself should decide as to the rightful senator fromConecuh. He explained that a majority of the committee on elections wasgoing to report in favor of Martin, Democrat, who held the certificate ofelection. Further, he said that if the Senate were allowed to vote on thequestion, the Democratic senator would remain seated. He proposed todecide the contest himself upon the report made, and not allow the Senateto vote. Williams was now becoming weary of the conduct of the Radicals;he told McKinstry that the course proposed was contrary to bothparliamentary and statute law, and said that Federal troops would not befurnished to support such a ruling. Moreover, he expressed strongdisapproval of the course of the Radicals in keeping up their separateorganization contrary to the plan of compromise. He ordered the marshalnot to allow the Federal court-house to be used by the Radicals, but themarshal paid no attention to the order.

After the holidays the Democrats and anti-Spencer Radicals hoped to bringabout a new election for Senator. On February 11, 1873, Hunter of Lowndes,a Radical member of the House, proposed that the legislature proceed tothe election of a Senator. Parsons, the speaker, refused to entertain themotion and ordered Hunter under arrest. McKinstry refused to consider theSenate as permanently organized until Martin was disposed of, fearing ajoint session. The Radical solicitor of Montgomery secured severalindictments against Spencer’s agents for bribery, and summoned severalmembers of the legislature as witnesses. Parsons ordered Knox, thesolicitor, and Strobach, the sheriff, to be arrested for invading theprivileges of the House. Next, Hunter, who had been arrested for proposingto elect a Senator, had Parsons arrested for violation of the EnforcementActs in preventing the election of a Senator. Busteed, Federal judge,discharged Parsons “for lack of evidence.”

In the Senate the Radicals matured a plan to get rid of Martin. A caucusdecided to sustain McKinstry in all his rulings. It was known thatEdwards, a Democratic senator, wanted to visit his home. So Glass, aRadical senator, proposed to pair with him, and at the same time both getleave of absence for ten days. Edwards and Glass went off at the sametime, in different directions. A mile outside of town, Glass left thetrain, returned to Montgomery, and[Pg 759] went into hiding. Now was the time.The reports on the Martin contest were called up. A Democrat moved theadoption of the majority report in favor of Martin; a Radical moved thatthe minority report be substituted in the motion. The Democrats werevoting under protest because they wanted debate and wanted Edwards, one ofthe writers of the majority report, to return. In order to move areconsideration, Cobb, a Democrat, fearing treachery, voted with theRadicals; Glass appeared before his name was reached, broke his pair, andvoted; McKinstry refused to entertain Cobb’s motion for a reconsideration,and though the effect of the voting was only to put the minority reportbefore the Senate to be voted upon, McKinstry declared that Martin by thevote was unseated and Miller admitted. The temporary Radical majoritysustained him in all his rulings, and thus the Democrats lost theirmajority in the Senate. The whole thing had been planned beforehand;McKinstry had arms in his desk; the cloak-rooms were filled with roughs tosupport the Radicals in case the Democrats made a fight; the Federaltroops were at the doors in spite of what Williams had said. McKinstry nowannounced that the Senate was permanently organized and the schism healed.Glass was expelled by the Masonic order for breaking the pair. Spencer wassafe, since the Republican Senate at Washington was sure to admit him.

In the course of the contest Spencer had spent many thousands of dollarsin defeating dissatisfied Radical candidates for the legislature and inpurchasing voters. The money he used came from the National Republicanexecutive committee, from the state committee, and from the governmentfunds of the post-office at Mobile and the internal revenue offices inMobile and Montgomery. More than $20,000 of United States funds were usedfor Spencer, who, after his election, refused to reimburse the postmasterand the two collectors, who were prosecuted and ruined. Every Federaloffice-holder was assessed from one-fifth to one-third of his pay duringthe fall months for campaign expenses. They were notified that unless theypaid the assessments their resignations would be accepted. Spencer refusedto pay the bills of a negro saloon-keeper who had, at his orders,“refreshed” the negro members of the legislature. But of those who votedfor Spencer in the Radical “legislature” more than thirty secured Federalappointments. Of other agents about twenty secured Federal[Pg 760] appointments.One of them, Robert Barbour, was given a position in the custom-house atMobile with the understanding that he would not have to go there. His paywas sent to him at Montgomery.

As a preparation for the autumn presidential contest, Spencer worked uponthe fears of Grant and secured the promise of troops, though he had somedifficulty. His letters are not at all complimentary to Grant. Finally hewrote, “Grant is scared and will do what we want.” The deputy marshalsmanufactured Ku Klux outrages and planned the arrest of Democraticpoliticians, of whom scores were gotten out of the way, for a week or two,but none were prosecuted. There was no election of Senator other than thatof Spencer by the irregular body and that of Sykes by the regularorganization at the capitol, neither of which took place on the dayappointed by law. The Senate admitted Spencer on the ground that GovernorLewis had recognized the court-house aggregation. Sykes contested and ofcourse failed; the Senate refused for several years to vote his expenses,as was customary. In 1885, Senator Hoar secured $7,132 for Spencer asexpenses in the contest. In 1875 the Alabama legislature, Radical andDemocratic, united in an address to the United States Senate, asking thatSpencer’s seat be declared vacant.[2112]

Under Lewis the Radical administration went to pieces. The enormous issuesof bonds, fraudulent and otherwise, by Smith and Lewis which destroyed thecredit of the state; ignorant negroes in public office; drunken judges onthe benches; convicts as officials; teachers and school officers unable toread; intermarriage of whites and blacks declared legal by the supremecourt; the low character of the Federal officials; constant arrests ofrespectable whites for political purposes; use of Federal troops; packedjuries; purchase and sale of offices; defaulters in every Radical county;riots instigated[Pg 761] by the Radical leaders; heavy taxes,—all theseburdens bore to the ground the Lewis administration before the end of itsterm. The last year was simply a standstill while the whites werepreparing to overthrow the Radical government, which was demoralized anddisabled also by constant aid and interference from the Federaladministration.

Lewis appointed a lower class of officials than Smith had appointed, amongthem many ignorant negroes for minor offices. Carpet-baggers and scalawagswere becoming scarce. The white counties under their own local governmentwere slowly recovering; the formerly wealthy Black Belt counties werebeing ruined under the burden of local, state, and municipaltaxation.[2113]

To the Forty-second Congress Alabama, now entitled to eightrepresentatives, sent four scalawags, Pelham, Hays, White, and Sheets; onenegro, Rapier; and three Democrats or Independents, Bromberg, Caldwell,and Glass; carpet-baggers were now at a discount; scalawags and negroeswanted all the spoils.

In the spring of 1874 the whites began to organize to overthrow Radicalrule. They were firmly determined that there should not be another Radicaladministration. In the Radical party only a few whites were left to holdthe negroes together. Some of the negroes were disgusted because ofpromises unfulfilled; others were grasping at office; the Union Leaguediscipline was missed; “outrages” were no longer so effective. TheRadicals had no new issues to present. The state credit was destroyed; thenegroes no longer believed so seriously the stories of reënslavement; thenorthern public was becoming more indifferent, or more sympathetic towardthe whites. The time for the overthrow of Radical rule was at hand.

In previous chapters something has been said of social and economicmatters, especially concerning labor, education, religion, and racerelations. Some supplementary facts and observations may be of use.

The central figure of Reconstruction was the negro. How was his lifeaffected by the conditions of Reconstruction? In the first[Pg 762] place, crimeamong the blacks increased, as was to be expected. Removed from therestraints and punishments of slavery, with criminal leaders, the negro,even under the most African of governments, became the chief criminal. Thecrime of rape became common, caused largely, the whites believed, by thesocial equality theories of the reconstructionists. Personal conflictsamong blacks and between blacks and whites were common, though probablydecreasing for a time in the early ’70’s. Stealing was the most frequentcrime, with murder a close second. During the last year of negro rule thereport of the penitentiary inspectors gave the following statistics:—

Thus 1 white to 16,936 of population was in prison for felony; 1 black to2294; felonies, 1 white to 8 blacks; misdemeanors, 1 white to 64 blacks.In Montgomery jail were confined about 12 blacks to 1 white. Thesestatistics do not show the real state of affairs, since most convictionsof blacks were in cases prosecuted by blacks. To be prosecuted by a whitewas equivalent to persecution—so reasoned the negro jury in the BlackBelt. Under the instigation of low white leaders, the negroes frequentlyburned the houses and other property of whites who were disliked by theRadical leaders. Several attempts, more or less successful, were made toburn the white villages in the Black Belt; hardly a single one whollyescaped. For several years the whites had to picket the towns in time ofpolitical excitement. The worst negro criminals were the discharged negrosoldiers, who sometimes settled in gangs together in the Black Belt. Morecharges were made of crimes by blacks against whites, than by whitesagainst blacks. Most criminals did not go to prison after conviction. TheRadical legislature passed a law allowing the[Pg 763] sale of the convict’s laborto relatives. A good old negro could buy the time of a worthless son forten cents a day and have him released.

The marriage relations of the negroes were hardly satisfactory, judged bywhite standards. The white legislatures in 1865-1866 had declared slavemarriages binding. The reconstructionists denounced this as a greatcruelty and repealed the law. Marriages were then made to date from thepassage of the Reconstruction Acts. Many negro men had had several wivesbefore that date. They were relieved from the various penalties ofdesertion, bigamy, adultery, etc. And after the passage of these laws,numerous prominent negroes were relieved of the penalties for promiscuousmarriages. Divorces became common among the negroes who were in politics.During one session of the legislature seventy-five divorces were granted.This was cheaper than going through the courts, and more certain. Theaverage negro divorced himself or herself without formality; some of themwere divorced by their churches, as in slavery.

Upon the negro woman fell the burden of supporting the children. Herhusband or husbands had other duties. Children then began to be unwelcomeand fœticide and child murder were common crimes. The small number ofnegro children during the decade of Reconstruction was generally remarked.Negro women began to flock to towns; how they lived no one can tell;immorality was general among them. The conditions of Reconstruction wereunfavorable to honesty and morality among the negroes, both male andfemale. The health of the negroes was injured during the period 1865-1875.In the towns the standard of living was low; sanitary arrangements werebad; disease, especially consumption and venereal diseases, killed largenumbers and permanently injured the negro constitution.

Negro women took freedom even more seriously than the men. It wasconsidered slavery by many of them to work in the fields; domestic servicewas beneath the freedwomen—especially were washing and milking the cowstabooed. To live like their former mistresses, to wear fine clothes and gooften to church, was the ambition of a negro lady. After Reconstructionwas fully established the negro women were a strong support to the UnionLeague, and took a leading part in the prosecution of negro Democrats.Negro women never were as well-mannered, nor, on the whole, asgood-tempered and cheerful, as the negro men. Both sexes duringReconstruction lost much of their[Pg 764] cheerfulness; the men gradually ceasedto go “holloing” to the fields; some of the blacks, especially the women,became impudent and insulting toward the whites. While many of the negroesfor a time seemed to consider it a mark of servility to behave decently tothe whites, toward the close of Reconstruction and later conditionschanged, and the negro men especially were in general well-behaved andwell-mannered in their relations with whites except in time of politicalexcitement.

The entire black race was wild for education in 1865 and 1866, but most ofthem found that the necessary work—which they had not expected—was toohard, and by the close of Reconstruction they were becoming indifferent.The education acquired was of doubtful value. There was in 1865-1867 areligious furor among the negroes, and several negro denominations wereorganized. The chief result, as stated at length elsewhere, was toseparate from the white churches, discard the old conservative blackpreachers, and take up the smooth-tongued, ranting, emotional, immoralpreachers who could stir congregations. The negro church has not yetrecovered from the damage done by these ministers. Negro health wasaffected by the night meetings and religious debauches. In general it maybe said that the negro speech grew more like that of the whites, onaccount of schools, speeches, much travel, and contact with white leaders.The negro leaders acquired much superficial civilization, and very quicklymastered the art of political intrigue.

A very delicate question to both races was that of the exact position ofthe negro in the social system. The convention of 1867 had contained anumber of equal-rights members, and there had been much discussion. Aproposition to have separate schools was not made obligatory. A measure toprevent the intermarriage of the races was lost, and the supreme court ofthe state declared that marriages between whites and blacks were lawful.Laws were passed to prevent the separation of the races on street cars,steamers, and railway cars, but the whites always resisted the enforcementof such laws. Some negroes, especially the mulattoes, dreamed of havingwhite wives, but the average pure negro was not moved by such a desire.When the Coburn investigation was being made, Coburn, the chairman, wastrying to convince a negro who had declared against the policy and thenecessity of the Civil Rights Bill. The negro retorted[Pg 765] by asking how hewould like to see him sitting by his (Coburn’s) daughter’s side. The blackdeclared that he would not like to be sitting by Miss Coburn and have someyoung man who was courting her come along and knock over the big blacknegro; further he did not want to eat at the table nor sit in cars withthe whites, preferring to sit by his own color. Some of the negroes weredispleased at the proposed Civil Rights Bill, thinking that it was meantto force the negro to go among the whites.[2114] There were negro policein the larger towns, Selma, Montgomery, and Mobile, who irritated thewhites by their arrests and by discrimination in favor of blacks. Thenegroes, in many cases, had ceased to care for the good opinion of thewhites and, following disreputable leaders, suffered morally. The colorline began to be strictly drawn in politics, which increased theestrangement of the races, though individuals were getting along bettertogether.[2115]

The white carpet-baggers and scalawags never formed a large section of theRadical party and constantly decreased in numbers,—the natives returningto the white party, the aliens returning to the North. The native Radicalswere found principally in the cities and holding Federal offices, and inthe white counties were still a few genuine Republican Unionist voters.The carpet-baggers were found almost entirely in the Black Belt and inFederal offices. As their numbers decreased the general character waslowered. Some of the white Radicals were sincere and honest men, but noneof this sort stood any chance for office. If they themselves would notsteal, they must arrange for others to steal. The most respectable of theRadicals were a few old Whigs who had always disliked Democrats and whopreferred to vote with the negroes. Such a man was Benjamin Gardner, whobecame attorney-general in 1872.

All white Radicals suffered the most bitter ostracism—in business, insociety, in church; their children in the schools were persecuted by otherchildren because of their fathers’ sins. The scalawag, being a renegade,was scorned more than a carpet-bagger. In every possible[Pg 766] way they weremade to feel the weight of the displeasure of the whites. Small boys wereunchecked when badgering a white Radical. One Radical complained that theyoungsters would come near him to hold a spelling class. The word would begiven out: “Spelldamned rascal.” It would be spelled. “SpelldamnedRadical.” That would be spelled. “They are nearly alike, aren’t they?”

The blacks always felt that the carpet-bagger was more friendly to themthan the scalawag was, for the carpet-baggers associated more closely withthe negroes. The alien white teachers boarded with negroes; some of thepoliticians made it a practice to live among the negroes in order to gettheir votes. The candidates for sheriff and tax collector in Montgomerywent to negro picnics, baptizings, and church services, drank from thesame bottle of whiskey with negroes, had the negro leaders to visit theirhomes, where they dined together, and the white women furnished music. Thecarpet-baggers seldom had families with them, and, excluded from whitesociety, began to contract unofficial alliances among the blacks. Scarcelyan alien office-holder in the Black Belt but was charged with immoralityand the charges proven. Numbers were relieved by the legislature of thepenalties for adultery. The average Radical politician was in time quitethoroughly Africanized. They spoke of “us niggers,” “we niggers,” at firstfrom policy, later from habit. When Lewis was elected, in 1872, a whiteRadical cried out in his joy, “We niggers have beat ’em.” Two years laterwhite Radicals marched with negro processions and sang the song:—

“The white man’s day has passed;
The negro’s day has come at last.”[2116]

One effect of Reconstruction was to fuse the whites into a singlehomogeneous party. Before the war political divisions were sharply drawnand feeling often bitter, so also in 1865-1867 and to a certain extentduring the early period of Reconstruction. At first there was no “SolidSouth”; within the white man’s party there were grave differences betweenold Whig and old Democrat, Radical and Conservative. There were differentlocal problems before the whites of[Pg 767] the various sections that for a whileprevented the formation of a unanimous white man’s party. There were thewhites of the Black Belt, the former slaveholders, who wished well to thenegro, favored negro education, and looked upon his political activity asa joke, but who came nearer than any other white people to recognizing thepossibility of permanent political privileges for the black. They believedthat they could sooner or later regain moral control over their formerslaves and thus do away with the evils of carpet-bag government.

It must be said that the former slaveholding class had more consideration,then, before, and since, for the poor negro than for the poor white,probably because the negroes only were always with them. The poorestwhites felt that the negro was not only their social but also theireconomic enemy, and, the protection of the owner removed, the blackssuffered more from these people than ever before. The negro in school, thenegro in politics, the negro on the best lands—all this was not liked bythe poorest white people, whose opportunities were not as good as those ofthe blacks. Between these two extremes was the mass of the whites,displeased at the way negro suffrage, education, etc., was imposed, butwilling to put up with the results if good. The later years ofReconstruction found the temper of the whites more and more exasperated.They were tired of Reconstruction, new amendments, force bills, Federaltroops, and of being ruled as a conquered province by the least fit. Everymeasure aimed at the South seemed to them to mean that they wereconsidered incorrigible, not worthy of trust, and when necessary to punishsome whites, all were punished. And strong opposition to proscriptivemeasures was called fresh rebellion. “When the Jacobins say and do low andbitter things, their charge of want of loyalty in the South because ourpeople grumble back a little seems to me as unreasonable as the complaintof the little boy: ‘Mamma, make Bob ’have hisself. He makes mouths at meevery time I hit him with my stick.’” Probably the grind was harder on theyoung men, who had all life before them and who were growing up withslight opportunities in any line of activity. Sidney Lanier, then anAlabama school-teacher, wrote to Bayard Taylor, “Perhaps you know thatwith us of the young generation in the South, since the war, pretty muchthe whole of life has been merely not dying.” Negro and alien rule was aconstant insult to the intelligence of the country. The taxpayers werenon-participants. Some people[Pg 768] withdrew entirely from public life, went totheir farms or plantations, kept away from towns and from speech-making,waiting for the end to come. I know old men who refused for several yearsto read the newspapers, so unpleasant was the news. The good feelingproduced by the magnanimity of Grant at Appomattox was destroyed by hissouthern policy when President. There was no gratitude for any so-calledleniency of the North, no repentance for the war, no desire forhumiliation, for sackcloth and ashes and confession of wrong. Theinsistence of the Radicals upon a confession of depravity only made thingsmuch worse. There was not a single measure of Congress duringReconstruction designed or received in a conciliatory spirit.

Under the Reconstruction régime the political, and to some extent thesocial, morality of the whites declined. Constant fighting fire with firescorched all. While in one way the bitter discipline of Reconstruction wasnot lost, yet with it the pleasantest of southern life went out. Duringthe war and Reconstruction there was a radical change in southerntemperament toward the severe. Hospitality has declined; old southern lifewas never on a strictly business basis, the new southern life is more so;the old individuality is partially lost; class distinctions are less felt.The white people, by the fires of Reconstruction, have been welded into ahomogeneous society.[2117] The material evils of Reconstruction are by nomeans the more lasting: the state debt may be paid and wasted resourcesrenewed; but the moral and intellectual results will be the permanentones.

In spite of the misgovernment during the Reconstruction, there was in mostof the white counties a slow movement toward industrial development. Allover the state in 1865-1868 and 1871-1874 there were poor crops. The whitecounties gradually found themselves better able to stand bad seasons. Thedecadence of the Black Belt gave the white farmer an opportunity. Therailroads now began to open up the mineral and timber districts, ratherthan the cotton counties. During the last four years of negro rule thecoal and iron of the northern part of the state began to attract northerncapital and rapid development began. The timber of the white counties nowbegan[Pg 769] to be cut. In the mines, on the railroads, and in the forests manywhites were profitably employed. Farmers in the white counties, havingthrown off the local Reconstruction government, began to organizeagricultural societies, Patrons of Husbandry, Grangers, etc., and to holdcounty fairs. The Radicals maintained that this granger movement was onlyanother manifestation of Ku Klux, and it was, in a way.[2118]

Immigration from the North or from abroad amounted to nothing; disturbedpolitical conditions and the presence of the negroes prevented it. Nor didthe Reconstruction rulers desire immigration; their rule would be thesooner overthrown. There were two movements of emigration from thestate—culminating in 1869 and in 1873-1874. Those were the gloomiestperiods of Reconstruction, especially for the white man in the Black Belt.Most of the emigrants went to Texas, others to Mexico, to Brazil, to theNorth, and to Tennessee and Georgia, where the whites were in power. Itwas estimated that in this emigration the state lost more of itspopulation than by war.

In the Black Belt the condition of the whites grew worse. Frequentelections demoralized negro labor, and crops often failed for lack oflaborers. The more skilful negroes went to the towns, railroads, mines,and lumber mills. On account of this migration and the gradual dying offof slavery-trained negroes, negro agricultural labor was less and lesssatisfactory. The negro woman often refused to work in the fields. Thewhite population of the Black Belt decreased in comparison with thenumbers of blacks. The whites deserted the plantations, going to the townsor gathering in villages. Taxation was heavy, tax sales became frequent.One of the worst evils that afflicted the Black Belt was the so-called“deadfall.” A “deadfall” was a low shop or store where a white thiefencouraged black people to steal all kinds of farm produce and exchange itwith him for bad whiskey, bad candy, brass jewellery, etc. This evil wasfound all over the state where there were negroes. Whites and industriousblacks lost hogs, poultry, cattle, corn in the fields, cotton in thefields and in the gin. The business of the “deadfall” was usually done atnight. The thirsty negro would go into a cotton field and pick a sack ofcotton worth a dollar, or take a bushel of corn from[Pg 770] the nearest field,and exchange it at a “deadfall” for a glass of whiskey, a plug of tobacco,or a dime. These “deadfalls” were in the woods or swamps on the edges ofthe large plantations. It was not possible to guard against them. The“deadfall” keepers often became rich, the harvests of some amounting to 30to 80 bales of cotton for each, besides farm produce. Careful estimates bygrand juries and business men placed the average annual loss at one-fifthof the crop. A bill was introduced into the legislature to prohibit thepurchase after dark of farm produce from any one but the producer. Themeasure was unanimously opposed by the Radicals, on the ground that it wasclass legislation aimed at the negroes. The debates show that some of themconsidered it proper for a negro to steal from his employer. After theDemocratic victory in 1874 a law was passed abolishing “deadfalls.”[2119]

CHAPTER XXIV

The Republican party of Alabama went into the campaign of 1874 weakened bydissensions within its own ranks and by the lessening of the sympathy ofthe northern Radicals. During the previous six years the opposition to theradical Reconstruction policy had gradually gained strength. Theindustrial expansion that followed the war, the dissatisfaction with theadministration of Grant, the disclosure of serious corruption on the partof public officials, and the revelations of the real conditions in theSouth—these had resulted in the formation of a party of opposition to theadministration, which called itself the “Liberal Republican” party andwhich advocated home rule for the southern states. The Democratic party,somewhat discredited by its course during the war, had now regained theconfidence of its former members by accepting as final the decisions ofthe war on the questions involved and by bringing out conservativecandidates on practical platforms. By 1874 nine northern states had goneDemocratic in the elections; from 1869 to 1872, five southern statesreturned to the Democratic columns. The lower house of Congress was soonto be safely Democratic and no more radical legislation was to beexpected; the executive department of the government alone was in activesympathy with the Reconstruction régime in the southern states.

The divisions within the party in the state were due to various causes. Inthe first place, the action of the more respectable of the whites indeserting the party left it with too few able men to hold the organizationwell together. By 1874 all but about 4000 whites had forsaken theRepublicans and returned to the Democrats. These whites were mainly innorth Alabama, though there were some few in the Black Belt,—five, forinstance, in Marengo County, and fifty in Dallas. A further source ofweakness was the disposition of the[Pg 772] black politician to demand moreconsideration than had hitherto been accorded to him. The blacks hadreceived much political training of a certain kind since 1867, and thenegro leaders were no longer the helpless dupes of the carpet-bagger andthe scalawag. A meeting of the negro politicians, called the “Equal RightsUnion,” was held in Montgomery in January, 1874. The resolutions adopteddemanded that the blacks have first choice of the nominations in blackcounties and a proportional share in all other counties. They expressedthemselves as opposed to the efforts of the carpet-baggers to organize newsecret political societies, “having found no good to result from suchsince the disbursement [sic] of the Union League.”[2120] If the negroesshould be able to obtain these demands, nothing would be left for thewhite members of the party. The rank and file of the blacks had lost muchof their faith in their white leaders and were disposed to listen tocandidates of their own color. Closely connected with the negroes’ demandsfor office were their demands for social rights. The state supreme courthad decided that whites and blacks might lawfully intermarry, and therehad been several instances of such marriages between low persons of eachrace.[2121] Noisy negro speakers were demanding the passage of the CivilRights Bill then pending in Congress. A Mobile negro declared that hewanted to drink in white men’s saloons, ride in cars with whites, and goto the same balls. The white Radicals in convention and legislature weredisposed to avoid the subject when the blacks brought up the question of“mixed accommodations.” The negroes constantly reminded the white Radicalsthat the latter were very willing to associate with them in thelegislature and in political meetings. The speeches of Boutwell ofMassachusetts and Morton of Indiana in favor of mixed schools were quotedby the negro speakers, who now became impatient of the constant request oftheir leaders not to offend north Alabama and drive out of the party thewhites of that region. Lewis, a negro member of the legislature, declaredthat they were weary of waiting for their rights; that the state would notgrant them, but the United States would; and then they would take theirproper places alongside the whites, and “we intend to do it in defiance ofthe immaculate[Pg 773] white people of north Alabama.... Hereafter we intend todemand [our rights] and we are going to press them on every occasion, andpreserve them inviolate if we can. The day is not far distant when youwill find on the bench of the supreme court of the state a man as black asI am, and north Alabama may help herself if she can.”[2122] An “EqualRights Convention,” from which white Radicals were excluded, met inMontgomery in June, 1874. The various speakers demanded that coloredyouths be admitted to the State University, to the Agricultural andMechanical College, and to all other schools on an equal footing with thewhites, “in order that the idea of the inferiority of the negro might bebroken up.” Several delegates expressed themselves as in favor of mixedschools, but advised delay in order not to drive out the white members ofthe party. A negro preacher from Jackson County said that he wanted tohold on to the north Alabama whites “until their stomachs grew strongenough to take Civil Rights straight.”[2123] In 1867 and 1868 there hadbeen some blacks who had opposed the agitation of social matters on theground that their civil and political rights would be endangered, butthese were no longer in politics. The result of the agitation in 1874 wasto irritate the whites generally and to cause the defection of northAlabama Republicans.

Another cause of weakness in the Radical party was the quarrel among theReconstruction newspapers of the state over the distribution of the moneyfor printing the session laws of Congress. TheState Journal and theMountain Home lost the printing, which, by direction of the Alabamadelegation in Congress, was given to theHuntsville Advocate and theNational Republican, “to aid needy newspapers in other localities forthe benefit of the Republican party.” The result was discord among theeditors and a lukewarm support of the party from those dissatisfied.[2124]

In 1874 in each county where there was a strong Republican vote discordarose among those who wanted office. Every white Radical wanted anomination and the negroes also wanted a share. The results were temporarysplits everywhere in the county organizations,[Pg 774] which were usually mendedbefore the elections, but which seriously weakened the party. TheStrobach-Robinson division in Montgomery County may be taken as typical.Strobach was the carpet-bag sheriff of Montgomery County, which wasoverwhelmingly black. There was reason to believe that Strobach was beingpurchased by the Democrats.[2125] The stalwarts accused him of conspiringwith the Democrats to sell the administration to them. They charged thathe would not allow the negroes to use the court-house for politicalmeetings, that entirely too many Republicans were indicted at hisinstance, and that he summoned as jurors too many Democrats and “Strobachtraitors” and too few Republicans. As leader of the regular organizationStrobach had considerable influence in spite of these charges, and hisenemies undertook to form a new organization. The leaders of the bolters,known as the Robinson faction, were Busteed, Buckley, Barbour, andRobinson. They made the fairest promises and secured the support of themajority of the negroes, though Strobach still controlled many. Betweenthe two factions there was practically civil war during 1874. The boltersorganized their negroes in the “National Guards,” a semi-militarysociety—5000 or 6000 strong. This body broke up the Strobach meetings,and serious disturbances occurred at Wilson’s Station, Elam Church, and atUnion Springs. At the latter place the bolters attempted to take forciblepossession of the congressional nominating convention. The negroes, led bya few whites, invaded the town, firing guns and pistols and making threatsuntil it seemed as if a three-cornered fight would result between thewhites and the two factions of the blacks. Rapier, the negro congressman,made peace by agreeing to support the Robinson-Buckley faction providedthey kept the peace and allowed him to receive the nomination for Congressfrom the other faction. They forced him to sign an agreement to thateffect, which he repudiated a few days later. The bolters were notadmitted to the state convention in 1874, and thus weakness resulted.During the summer and fall of 1874, ten or twelve negroes were killed andnumbers injured in the fights between the factions.[2126]

[Pg 775]The Democrats naturally did all that was possible to encourage suchdivision in the ranks of the enemy. Bolting candidates and independentcandidates, especially negroes, were secretly supported by advice andfunds. Carpet-bag and scalawag leaders were purchased, and agreed to usetheir influence to divide their party. To some of them it was clear thatthe whites would soon be in control, and meanwhile they were willing toprofit by selling out their party.[2127] For two or three years it hadbeen a practice in the Black Belt for the Radical office-holders to farmout their offices to the Democrats, who appointed deputies to conduct suchoffices. The stalwarts now endeavored to cast these men out of the party,but only succeeded in weakening it.

In spite of all adverse influence, however, the great majority of thenegroes remained faithful to the Republican party and voted for GovernorLewis in the fall elections. They missed the rigid organization of formeryears, and many of them were greatly dissatisfied because of unfulfilledpromises made by their leaders; but the Radical office-holders, realizingclearly the desperate situation, made strong efforts to bring out theentire negro vote. The Union League methods were again used to drive negromen into line. They were again promised that if their party succeeded inthe elections, there would be a division of property. Some believed thatequal rights in cars, hotels, theatres, and churches would be obtained.Clothes, bacon and flour, free homes, mixed schools, and public officewere offered as inducements to voters. In Opelika, A. B. Griffin told thenegroes that after the election all things would be divided and that eachLee County negro would receive a house in Opelika. To one man he promised“forty acres and an old gray horse.” Heyman, a Radical leader of Opelika,told the blacks that if the elections resulted properly, the land would betaxed so heavily that the owners would be obliged to leave the state, andthen the negroes and northerners would get the land.[2128]

[Pg 776]Promises of good not being sufficient to hold the blacks in line, threatsof evil were added. Circulars were sent out, purporting to be signed byGeneral Grant, threatening the blacks with reënslavement unless they votedfor him. The United States deputy marshals informed the blacks of MarengoCounty that if they voted for W. B. Jones, a scalawag candidate who hadbeen purchased by the whites, they would be reënslaved. Heyman of Opelikadeclared that defeat would result in the negroes’ having their ears cutoff, in whipping posts and slavery. Pelham, a white congressman, told theblacks that if the Democrats carried the elections, Jefferson Davis wouldcome to Montgomery and reorganize the Confederate government. Soindustriously were such tales told that many of the negroes becamegenuinely alarmed, and it was asserted that negro women began to hidetheir children as the election approached.[2129]

The negro women and the negro preachers were more enthusiastic than thenegro men, and through clubs and churches brought considerable pressure tobear on the doubtful and indifferent. They agreed that negro childrenshould not go to schools where the teachers were Democrats. In Opelika anegro women’s club was formed of those whose husbands were Democrats orwere about to be. The initiate swore to leave her husband if he voted fora Democrat. This club was formed by a white Radical, John O. D. Smith, andthe negroes were made to believe that General Grant ordered it. A similarorganization in Chambers County had a printed constitution by which amember, if married, was made to promise to desert her husband should hevote for a Democrat, and a single woman promised not to marry a Democraticnegro or to have anything to do with one. The negro women were used asagents to distribute tickets to voters. These tickets had Spencer’spicture on them, which they believed was Grant’s.[2130]

In the negro churches to be a Democrat was to become liable to discipline.Some preachers preferred regular charges against those members who weresuspected of Democracy. The average negro still believed that it was acrime “to vote against their race” and offenders were sure of expulsionfrom church unless, as happened[Pg 777] sometimes, the bolters were strong enoughto turn the Republicans out. Nearly every church had its political club towhich the men belonged and sometimes the women. Robert Bennett of LeeCounty related his experience to the Coburn Committee. He wanted to votethe Democratic ticket, he said, and for that offence was put on trial inhis church. The “ministers and exhorters” told him that he must not do so,saying, “We had rather you wouldn’t vote at all; if you won’t go with usto vote with us, you are against us; the Bible says so.... We can have youarrested. We have got you; if you won’t say you won’t vote or will votewith us, we will have you arrested.... All who won’t vote with us we willkick out of the society—and turn them out of church;” and so it happenedto Robert Bennett.[2131]

The efforts made to hold the negroes under control indicate that numbersof them were becoming restless and desirous of change. This was especiallythe case with the former house-servant class and those who owned property.One negro, in accounting for his change of politics, said, “Honestly, Ilove my race, but the way the colored people have taken a stand againstthe white people ... will not do.” Of the white Radicals he said, “Theyknow that we are a parcel of poor ignorant people, and I think it is a badthing for them to take advantage of a poor ignorant person, and I do notthink they are honest men; they cannot be.” He said that the Radicalspromised much and gave little; that they never helped him. The Democratsgave him credit and paid his doctor’s bills; so that it was to hisinterest to vote for the Democrats—“I done it because it was to myinterest. I wanted a change.” Another negro explained his change ofpolitics by saying that bad government kept up the price of pork, andallowed sorry negroes to steal what industrious negroes made andsaved—eggs, chickens, and cotton. When Adam Kirk, of Chambers County, wasasked why be belonged to the “white man’s party,” he answered: “I wasraised in the house of old man Billy Kirk. He raised me as a body servant.The class that he belongs to feels nearer to me than the northern whiteman, and actually, since the war, everything that I have got is by theiraid and assistance. They have helped me raise up my family and have stoodby me, and whenever I want a doctor, no matter what hour of the day or[Pg 778]night, he is called in whether I have got a cent or not. I think they havegot better principles and better character than the Republicans.”[2132]There is no doubt that these represented the sentiments of severalthousand negroes who had mustered up courage to remain away from the pollsor perhaps to vote for the Democrats. And while in white counties thecampaign was made on the race issue, in the Black Belt the whites, asStrobach said, “were more than kind” to negro bolters. They encouraged andpaid the expenses of negro Democratic speakers, and gave barbecues to theblacks who would promise to vote for the “white man’s party.” NumerousDemocratic clubs were formed for the negroes and financed by the whites.Of these there were several in each black county, but none in the whitecounties. Though safer than ever before since enfranchisement, negroDemocrats still received rather harsh treatment from those of their colorwho sincerely believed that a negro Democrat was a traitor and an enemy tohis race. Negro Democratic speakers were insulted, stoned, and sometimeskilled. At night they had to hide out. Their political meetings werebroken up; their houses were shot into; their families were ostracized innegro society, churches, and schools. One negro complained that hischildren were beaten by other children at school, and that the teacherexplained to him that nothing better could be expected as long as he, thefather, remained a Democrat. Some negro Democrats were driven away fromhome and others were whipped. Most of them found it necessary to keepquiet about politics; and the members of Democratic clubs were usuallysworn to secrecy.[2133] The colored Methodist Episcopal Church, which wasunder the guardianship of the white Methodist Church, suffered from negropersecution; several of its buildings were burned and its ministersinsulted.

If the Republican party was weaker in this campaign than ever before, theDemocrats, on the other hand, were more united and more firmly determinedto carry the elections, peaceably if possible, by force if necessary.There are evidences that the state government[Pg 779] in Alabama would have beenoverthrown early in 1874 if the Louisiana revolution of that year had notbeen crushed by the Federal government. The different sections of thestate were now more closely united than ever before, owing to thecompletion of two of the railroads which had cost the state treasury somuch. The people of the northern white counties now came down into centralAlabama and learned what negro government really was, and it was now madeclear to the Unionist Republican element of the mountain counties thatwhile they had local white government they were supporting a stategovernment by the negro and the alien, both of whom they disliked. Inorder to gain the support of north Alabama, the opposition of the whitesin the Black Belt to a campaign on the race issue was disregarded, and thecampaign, especially in the white counties, was made on the simpleissue—Shall black or white rule the state?

It may be of interest here to examine the attitude of the whites towardthe blacks since the war. In 1865, the whites would grant civil rights tothe negro, but would have special legislation for the race on the theorythat it needed a period of guardianship; by 1866, many far-sighted menwere willing to think of political rights for the negro after the properpreparation; by 1867, there was serious thought of an immediate qualifiedsuffrage for the black, the object being to increase the representation inCongress, to disarm the Radicals,—the native whites believing that theycould control the negro vote. This shifting of position was checked by thegrant of suffrage to the negroes by Congress, and during the campaigns of1867 and 1868 the whites held aloof, meaning to try to influence the negrovote later, when the opportunity offered. From 1869 to 1872 there was anincreasing tendency, especially in the Black Belt, to appeal to the negrofor political support, but, though the former personal relations were tosome extent resumed, the effort always ended in practical failure. Theresult was that by 1873-1874, the whites despaired of dividing the blackvote and many of the Black Belt whites were willing to join those of thewhite counties in drawing the color line in politics.[2134]

The Democrats were aided in presenting the race issue to north Alabama bythe attitude, above referred to, of the negroes in[Pg 780]demanding office andsocial privileges and by the fact that a strong effort had been made inCongress and would again be made to enact a stringent civil rights lawsecuring equal rights to negroes in cars, theatres, hotels, schools, etc.The Alabama members of Congress, who were Republicans, had voted for sucha bill. The Democrats made the most of the issue. The speeches ofBoutwell, Morton, and Sumner were circulated among the whites as campaigndocuments, and were most effective in securing the unionists andindependents of north Alabama.[2135]

The following extracts from state papers will indicate the state of mindof the whites. TheMontgomery Advertiser of February 19, 1874, declaredthat “the great struggle in the South is the race struggle of whiteagainst black for political supremacy. It is all in vain to protest thatthe southern wing of the Radical party is not essentially a party of blackmen arrayed against their white neighbors in a close and bitter strugglefor power. The struggle going on around us is not a mere contest for thetriumph of this or that platform of party principles. It is a contestbetween antagonistic races and for that which is held dearer than life bythe white race. If the negro must rule Alabama permanently, whether inperson or by proxy, the white man must ultimately leave the state.” “OldWhig” protested in theOpelika Daily Times of June 6, 1874, against therule of the mob of 80,000 yelling negroes who, at scalawag mandate, and inthe name of liberty, deposited ballots against southern white men. Anotherwriter declared that “all of the good men of Alabama are for the whiteman’s party. Outcasts, libellers, liars, handcuffers, and traitors toblood are for the negro party.” Pinned down by bayonets and bound bytyranny, the whites had been forced to silence and expedients andhumiliation until wrath burned “like a seven-fold furnace in the bosom ofthe people.” The negro must be expelled from the government. The white wasa God-made prince; the black, a God-made subordinate. “What right hathDahomey to give laws to Runnymede, or Bosworth Field to take a lesson fromCongo-Ashan? Shall Bill Turner give laws to Watts, Elmore, Barnes, Morgan,and the many mighty men of the South?” “When[Pg 781] Alabama goes down the whitemen of Alabama will go with her.”[2136]

The whites who still remained with the negro party were subjected to moremerciless ostracism than ever before. No one would have business relationswith a Republican; no one believed in his honor or honesty; his childrenwere taunted by their schoolmates; his family were socially ostracized; noone would sit by them at church or in public gatherings.[2137] In thewhite counties numerous conventions adopted a series of resolutions inregard to ostracism, known as the “Pike County Platform,” which first wasadopted in June, 1874, by the Democratic convention in Pike County. Itread in part as follows: “Resolved that nothing is left to the white man’sparty but social ostracism of all those who act, sympathize, or side withthe negro party, or who support or advocate the odious, unjust, andunreasonable measure known as the Civil Rights Bill; and that henceforthwe will hold all such persons as the enemies of our race, and will not forthe future have intercourse with them in any of the social relations oflife.”[2138]

With the changed conditions in 1874 appeared a considerable number of“independent” candidates and voters. These were (1) those whites who hadwearied of radicalism, and, foreseeing defeat, had left their party, yetwere unwilling to join the Democrats; (2) certain half-hearted Democratswho did not want to see the old Democratic leaders come back to power; (3)disappointed politicians, especially old Whigs of strong prejudices, whodisliked the Democrats from ante-bellum days. These people, foreseeing thedefeat of the Radicals, hastened to offer themselves as independentcandidates and voters. They hoped to get the votes of the bulk of theRadicals and many Democrats and thus get into power. The Radicals,otherwise certain of defeat, showed some disposition to meet those peoplehalfway, and a partial success was possible if the[Pg 782]Democrats could notwhip the “independents” into line. This was successfully done. Thefollowing dissertation on “independents” is offered as typical: Theindependent is the Brutus of the South, “the protégé of radicalism, thespawn of corruption or poverty, or passion, or ignorance, come forth asleaders of ignorant or deluded blacks, to attack and plunder for avarice.There may be no God to avenge the South, but there is a devil to punishindependents.” The independents are only the tools of the Radicals, theyare like bloodhounds,—to be used and then killed, for no sooner thantheir work is done the Radicals will knife them. “Satan hath been in theDemocratic camp and, taking these independents from guard duty, led themup into the mountains and shown them the kingdoms of Radicalism, hissilver and gold, storehouses and bacon, and all these promised to give ifthey would fall down and worship him; and they worshipped him, throwingdown the altars of their fathers and trampling them under theirfeet.”[2139]

The Democrats nominated for governor George S. Houston of north Alabama, a“Union” man whose “unionism” had not been very strong, and the Republicansrenominated Governor D. P. Lewis, also of north Alabama. The Democraticconvention met in July, 1874, and put forth a declaration and a platformdeclaring that the Radicals had for years inflamed the passions andprejudices of the races until it was now necessary for the whites to unitein self-defence. The convention denied the power of Congress to legislatefor the social equality of the races and denounced the Civil Rights Billthen pending in Congress as an attempt to force social union. Legislationon social matters was condemned as unnecessary and criminal. The Radicalstate administration was blamed for extravagance and corruption, and adeclaration was made that fraudulent state debts would not be paid if theDemocrats were successful.[2140]

The fact that the race issue was the principal one is borne out by thecounty platforms. In Barbour County the “white man’s[Pg 783] party” declared thatthe issue was “whitevs. black”; that if the whites were defeated, thecounty would no longer be endurable and would be abandoned to the blacks;that a conflict of races would be deplorable, but that the whites mustprotect themselves, and that though in the past some had stayed away fromthe polls through disgust, those who did not vote would be reckoned as ofthe negro party; that the whites would be ready to protect themselves andtheir ballots by force if necessary. In Lee County the convention declaredthat the Democrats had long avoided the race issue, but that now it hadbeen forced upon them by the Radicals; that “this county is the whiteman’s and the white man must rule over it,” and that whites or blacks whoaid the negro party “are the political and social enemies of the whiterace.” In the same county a local club declared that peace was wanted, butnot peace purchased by “unconditional surrender of every freeman’sprivilege to fraud, Federal bayonets, and intimidation.”[2141]

The Republican state convention in August pronounced itself in favor ofthe Civil Rights Bill and the civil and political equality of all menwithout regard to race, declared that the race issue was an invention ofthe Democrats which would result in war with the United States, andaccused the Democrats of being responsible for the bad condition of thestate finances. The Equal Rights convention and the Union Labor conventiondeclared for the Civil Rights Bill and indorsed Charles Sumner and J. T.Rapier, the negro congressman.[2142]

In preparation for the fall elections the Radical members of Congress hadsecured the passage of a resolution by Congress appropriating money forthe relief of the sufferers from floods on the Alabama, Warrior, andTombigbee rivers. The floods occurred in the early spring; theappropriation became available in May, but as late as July the governorhad not appointed agents to distribute the bacon which had been purchasedwith the appropriation. The members of Congress from the state met andagreed upon a division of the bacon without reference to floodeddistricts, but with reference[Pg 784] to the political conditions in the variouscounties.[2143] Their agents were to distribute the bacon, but thegovernor was unable to get their names until August. The purpose was tohold the bacon until near the election. The governor and other Republicanleaders were opposed to the use of bacon in the campaign, and the staterefused to pay transportation; so the agents had to sell part of the baconto pay expenses. In Lewis’s last message to the legislature, he saidpointedly, “Our beloved state has been free from pestilence, floods, andextensive disasters to labor.”[2144] As a matter of fact, there had beenthe regular spring freshets, but there were no sufferers. The loss fellupon the planters, who were under contract to furnish food, stock, andimplements to their tenants. In August, Captain Gentry of the NineteenthInfantry was sent by the War Department, which was supplying the bacon, toinvestigate the matter of the “political” bacon. He found no suffering,and no one was able to tell him where the suffering was, though themembers of Congress were positive that there was suffering. The crops weredoing well. In Montgomery Captain Gentry found that the agents in chargeof Congressman Rapier’s share of the bacon were J. C. Hendrix and HollandThompson (colored), both active politicians. Distribution had been delayedbecause Rapier thought that he had not received his share. CongressmanHays had bacon sent to Calera, Brierfield, and Marion, none of the placesbeing near flowing water. He sent quantities to Perry, Shelby, and Bibbcounties, but none to Fayette and Baker (Chilton). As he wrote to hisagent, “Of course the overflowed districts will need more than those notoverflowed.” When the War Department discovered the use that had been madeof the bacon, Captain Gentry was directed to seize the bacon in drydistricts that[Pg 785] was being held until the election. At Eufaula, 80 milesfrom the nearest flooded district, he seized 5348 pounds that Rapier hadstored there; at Seale, 7638 pounds were seized; and at Opelika, 9792pounds; but not all was discovered at either place.[2145]

An Opelika negro thus described the method of using the bacon: It wasunderstood that only the faithful could get any of it. This negro wasconsidered doubtful, but was told, “If you will come along and do right,you will get two or three shoulders.” Bacon suppers were held at negrochurches, to which only those were admitted who promised to vote theRepublican ticket.[2146]

The use of bacon in the campaign injured the Republican cause more than itaided it; the supply of bacon was too small to go around, and the whiteswere infuriated because the negroes stopped work so long while trying toget some of it.

In previous campaigns the Republicans had used with success the “southernoutrage” issue; stories of murder, cruelty, and fraud by the whites werecarried to Washington and found ready believers, and Federal troops anddeputy marshals were sent to assist the southern Republicans in theelections by making arrests, thus intimidating the whites and encouragingthe blacks. In the campaign of 1874 such assistance was more than evernecessary to the black man’s party in Alabama. The race line was nowdistinctly drawn and most[Pg 786] of the whites had forsaken the black man’sparty. The blacks, many of them, were indifferent; the whites weredetermined to overthrow the Reconstruction rule.

The leaders of the whites were confident of success and strongly advisedagainst every appearance of violence, since it would work to the advantageof the hostile party. There were some, however, who did not object to thetales of outrage, since they would cause investigation and the sending ofFederal troops. These would, in the black districts, really protect thewhites, and any kind of an investigation would result in damage to theRadical party.

Pursuing its plan of a peaceable campaign, the Democratic executivecommittee, on August 29, 1874, issued an address as follows: “Weespecially urge upon you carefully to avoid all injuries to others whileyou are attempting to preserve your own rights. Let our people avoid alljust causes of complaint. Turmoil and strife with those who oppose us inthis contest will only weaken the moral force of our efforts. Let us avoidpersonal conflicts; and if these should be forced upon us, let us only actin that line of just self-defence which is recognized and provided for bythe laws of the land. We could not please our enemies better than bybecoming parties to conflicts of violence, and thus furnish them plausiblepretext for asking the interference of Federal power in our domesticaffairs. Let us so act that all shall see and that all whose opinions areentitled to any respect shall admit that ours is a party of peace, andthat we only seek to preserve our rights and liberties by the peaceful butefficient power of the ballot-box.”[2147] There is no doubt but that thewhites engaged in less violence in this campaign than in former electionyears and less than was to be expected considering their temper in 1874.But there is also no doubt that very little incentive would have beennecessary to have precipitated serious conflict. The whites weredetermined to win, peaceably if possible, forcibly if necessary. This verydetermination made them inclined to peace as long as possible and made theopposite party cautious about giving causes for conflict.

The Republican leaders industriously circulated in the North stories of“outrages” in Alabama. The most comprehensive “outrage” story was that ofCharles Hays, member of Congress, published[Pg 787] in the famous “Hays-Hawleyletter” of September 7, 1874. Hays had borne a bad character in Alabamawhile a slaveholder and had been ostracized for being cruel to his slaves,and as a Confederate soldier he had a doubtful record. Naturally, inReconstruction he had sided against the whites, and the negroes, with fewexceptions, forgot his past history. In order to get campaign material,Senator Joseph Hawley of Connecticut wrote to Hays to get facts forpublication,—“I want to publish it at home and give it to my neighborsand constituents as the account of a gentleman of unimpeachable honor.”Hays responded in a long letter, filled with minute details of horribleoutrages that occurred within his personal observation. The spirit ofrebellion still exists, he said; riots, murders, assassinations,torturings, are more common than ever; the half cannot be told; unless theFederal government interposes there is no hope for loyal men. The lettercreated a sensation. Senator Hawley sent it out with his indorsement ofHays as a gentleman. TheNew York Tribune, then “Liberal” in politics,sent “a thoroughly competent and trustworthy correspondent who is alifelong Republican” to investigate the charges made by Hays. The chargesof Hays were as follows: (1) for political reasons, one Allen was beatennearly to death with pistols; (2) five negroes were brutally murdered inSumter County, for no reason; (3) “No white man in Pickens County evercast a Republican vote and lived after;” (4) in Hale County a negrobenevolent society was ordered to meet no more; (5) masked men drove JamesBliss, a negro, from Hale County; (6) J. G. Stokes, a Republican speaker,was warned by armed ruffians not to make another Radical speech in HaleCounty; (7) in Choctaw County 10 negroes had been killed and 13 wounded bywhites in ambuscade; (8) in Marengo County W. A. Lipscomb was killed forbeing a Republican; (9) “Simon Edward and Monroe Keeton were killed inSumter County for political effect;” (10) in Pickens County negroes werekilled, tied to logs, and sent floating down the river with the followinginscription, “To Mobile with the compliments of Pickens;” (11) W. P.Billings, a northern Republican, was killed in Sumter County on account ofhis politics, and Ivey, a negro mail agent, was also killed for hispolitics in Sumter; (12) there were numerous outrages in Coffee, Macon,and Russell counties; (13) near Carrollton, two negro speakers werehanged. Hays also declared that “only an[Pg 788] occasional murder leaks out;”Republican speakers were always “rotten-egged” or shot at, while not asingle Democrat was injured; the Associated Press agents were all “rebelsand Democrats,” and systematically misrepresented the Radical party to theNorth.

TheTribune after investigation pronounced the Hays-Hawley letter “atissue of lies from beginning to end.” The correspondent sent to Alabamainvestigated each reported outrage and found that the facts were asfollows: (1) Allen said that he was beaten for private reasons by oneperson with the weapons of nature; (2) three negroes were killed bynegroes and two were shot while stealing corn; (3) since 1867 there hadbeen white Republican voters and officials in Sumter County; (4) the negrosocieties in Hale County denied that any of them had been ordered todisband; (5) James Bliss himself denied that he had been driven from HaleCounty; (6) affidavits of the Republican officials of Hale County deniedthe Stokes story; (7) in regard to the “10 killed and 13 wounded” outrage,affidavits were obtained from the “killed and wounded” denying that thereported outrage had occurred (the truth was, a negro was beaten by othernegroes, and when the sheriff had attempted to arrest them, they resistedand one shot was fired; the negroes swore that they had told Hays thatnone was injured); (8) Lipscomb in person denied that he had been murderedor injured; (9) Edward and Keeton lived in Mississippi and there was noevidence that either had been murdered; (10) the story of the dead negroestied to floating logs was not heard in Pickens County before Hayspublished it, and no foundation for it could be discovered; (11) Billingswas killed by unknown persons for purposes of robbery, and Republicanofficials testified that the killing of Ivey was not political; (12)nothing could be found to support the statement about outrages in Coffee,Macon, and Russell counties; (13) the hanging of the two negroes nearCarrollton was denied by the Republicans of that district. TheTribunecorrespondent asserted that Hays “knew that his statements were lies whenhe made them”; that the whites were exercising remarkable restraint; thatthey were trying hard to keep the peace; that counties in Hays’s districtwere showing signs of going Democratic, and since his was the strongestRepublican district, desperate measures were necessary to hold theRepublicans in line; and that the administration press “had grosslyslandered the people of the state.”[Pg 789] Governor Lewis and a few of theRepublicans had opposed the “outrage” issue, and though troops were sentto the state it was against the wishes of Lewis.[2148]

The Washington administration readily listened to the “outrage” storiesand prepared to interfere in Alabama affairs, though Governor Lewis couldnot be persuaded to ask for troops. President Grant wrote, on September 3,1874, to Belknap, Secretary of War, directing him to hold troops inreadiness to suppress the “atrocities” in Alabama, Georgia, and SouthCarolina. Early in September Attorney-General Williams began to encourageUnited States Marshal Healy to make arrests under the Enforcement Acts,and on September 29, 1874, he instructed Healy to appoint special deputiesat all points where troops were to be stationed. He promised that thedeputies would be supported by the infantry and cavalry. During Octoberthe state was filled with deputy marshals, agents of the Department ofJustice and of the Post-office Department, and Secret Service men, most ofthem in disguise, searching for opportunities to arrest whites. Most ofthese men were of the lowest class, since only men of that kind would dothe work required of them. The deputies were appointed, ten to twenty-fivein each county, by Marshal Healy on the recommendation of the officials ofthe Republican party. Charles E. Mayer of Mobile, chairman of theRepublican executive committee, nominated and secured the appointment of217 deputy marshals, vouching for them as good Republicans, all exceptfour Democrats who were warranted to be “mild,i.e. honest.” RobertBarbour of Montgomery and Isaac Heyman of Opelika also nominateddeputies.[2149]

The marshals did some effective work during October. In Dallas County,where the Democrats had encouraged a bolting negro candidate with theintention of purchasing his office from him, the negro bolter and GeneralJohn T. Morgan were arrested for violation of the Enforcement Acts.[2150]In Sumter County, John Little, a negro[Pg 790] who had started a negro Democraticclub called the “Independent Thinkers,” was arrested and the club wasbroken up.[2151] From Eufaula several prominent whites were taken, amongthem General Alpheus Baker, J. M. Buford, G. L. Comer, W. H. Courtney, andE. J. Black.[2152]

In Livingston, where a Democratic convention was being held in thecourt-house, the deputy marshals came in, pretended to search through thewhole room, and finally arrested Renfroe and Bullock, whom, with Chiles,they handcuffed and paraded about the county, exposing them to insult fromgangs of negroes. The jailer in Sumter County refused to give up the jailto the use of the deputy marshals and was imprisoned in his ownjail.[2153] About the same time Colonel Wedmore, chairman of theDemocratic county executive committee, was arrested with forty-two otherprominent Democrats, thus almost destroying the party organization inSumter County. Though there were three United States commissioners inSumter County, Wedmore and others were carried to Mobile for trial beforea United States commissioner there, and, instead of being carried by theshortest route, they were for political effect taken on a long détourvia Demopolis, Selma, and Montgomery. Those arrested were never tried,but were released just before or soon after the election.[2154] The whiteswere thoroughly intimidated in the black districts, but were not seriouslymolested in the white counties. The houses of nearly all the Democrats inthe Black Belt were searched by the deputies and soldiers, and the womenfrightened and insulted. The officers of the army were disgusted with thenature of the work.[2155]

Such was the intimidation practised by the officials of the Federalgovernment. The Republican state administration took little part in thepersecutions, because it was weak, because it was not desirous of beingheld responsible, and because some of the prominent officials were certainthat the intimidation policy would injure their party. In the whitecounties there was considerably less effort to influence the elections.But by no means was all of the intimidation on the[Pg 791]Republican side. Inthe counties where the whites were numerous the determination was freelyexpressed that the elections were to be carried by the whites. There werefew open threats, very little violence, and none of the kind ofpersecution employed by the other side. But the whites had made up theirminds, and the other side knew it, or rather felt it in the air, and werethereby intimidated. Besides the silent forces of ostracism, etc., alreadydescribed, the whites found many other means of influencing the voters onboth sides. Where Radical posters were put up announcing speakers andprinciples, the Democrats would tear them down and post insteadcaricatures of Spencer, Lewis, Hays, or Rapier, or declarations against“social equality enforced by law.” In white districts some obnoxiousspeakers were “rotten-egged,” others forbidden to speak and asked toleave. One Radical speaker complained that whites in numbers came to hearhim, sat on the front seats with guns across their knees, blew tin horns,and asked him embarrassing questions about “political bacon” and raceequality under the Civil Rights Bill. “Blacklists” of active negropoliticians were kept and the whites warned against employing them;“pledge meetings” were held in some counties and negroes strenuouslyadvised to sign the “pledge” to vote for the white man’s party. “TheBarbour County Fever” spread over the state. This was a term used for anyprocess for making life miserable for white Radicals. There was somethinglike a revival of the Ku Klux Klan in the White Leagues or clubs whosemembers were sworn to uphold “white” principles. In many towns these clubswere organized as military companies. Some of them applied to GovernorLewis for arms and for enrolment as militia. But he was afraid to organizeany white militia because it might overthrow his administration, and, onthe other hand, he also refused to give arms to negro militia because hefeared race conflicts. By private subscription, often with money from theNorth, the white companies were armed and equipped. They drilled regularlyand made long practice marches through the country. They kept the peace,they made no threats, but their influence was none the less forcible. TheDemocratic politicians were opposed to these organizations, but the latterpersisted and several companies went in uniform to Houston’s inauguration.The Republicans found cause for anxiety in the increasing frequency ofConfederate veterans’ reunions, and it is said that cavalry companies andsquadrons of ex-Confederates[Pg 792] began to drill again, much to the alarm ofthe blacks.[2156] In truth, some of the whites were exasperated to thepoint where they were about ready to fight again. As one man expressed it:“The attempt to force upon the country this social equality, miscalledCivil Rights Bill, may result in another war. The southern people do notdesire to take up arms again, but may be driven to desperation.”[2157]

The feelings of the poorer whites and those who had suffered most fromRadical rule are reflected in the following speeches. A negro who wascanvassing for Rapier, the negro congressman, was told by a white: “Youmight as well quit. We have made up our minds to carry the state or killhalf of you negroes on election day. We begged you long enough and havepersuaded you, but you will vote for the Radical party.” Another white mansaid to negro Republicans, “God damn you, you have voted my land down tohalf a dollar an acre, and I wish the last one of you was down in thebottom of hell.”[2158]

The Democratic campaign was managed by W. L. Bragg, an able organizer,assisted by a competent staff. The state had not been so thoroughlycanvassed since 1861. The campaign fund was the largest in the history ofthe state; every man who was able, and many who were not, contributed;assistance also came from northern Democrats, and northern capitalists whohad investments in the South or who owned part of the legal bonds of thestate. The election officials were all Radicals and with Federal aid hadabsolute control over the election. If inclined to fraud, as in 1868-1872,they could easily count themselves in, but they clearly understood that nofraud would be tolerated. To prevent the importation of negroes fromGeorgia and Mississippi guards were stationed all around the state. Toprevent “repeating,” which had formerly been done by massing the negroesat the county seat for their first vote and then sending them home to voteagain, the whites made lists of all voters, white and black, kept anaccurate account of all Democratic votes cast, and demanded that the votesbe thus counted. So well did the Democrats know their resources that aweek before the election an estimate of the vote was made that turned outto be almost exactly correct. In Randolph[Pg 793] County, several days before theelection, the Democratic manager reported a certain number of votes forthe Democrats; on election day two votes more than he estimated were cast.

Tons of campaign literature were distributed mainly by freight, express,and messengers, the mails having proved unsafe, being in the hands of theRadicals. For the same reason political messages were sent by telegraph.Every man who could speak had to “go on the stump.” Toward the close ofthe campaign a hundred speeches a day were made by speakers sent out fromheadquarters. The lawyers did little or no business during October; it issaid that of seventy-five lawyers in Montgomery all but ten were usuallyout of the city making speeches.[2159]

The election of 1874 passed off with less violence than was expected; infact, it was quieter than any previous campaign. The Democrats wereassured of success and had no desire to lose the fruits of victory onaccount of riots and disorder. So the responsible people strained everynerve to preserve the peace. A regiment of soldiers was scatteredthroughout the Black Belt and showed a disposition to neglect the affairsof the blacks. But here, in the counties where the numerous arrests hadbeen made, the blacks voted in full strength. In fact, with fewexceptions, both parties voted in full strength, and, as regards thecounting of the votes, it was the fairest election since the negroes beganto vote. There were instances in white counties of negroes being forced tovote for the Democrats, while in the Black Belt negro Democrats weremobbed and driven from the polls. But the negro Democrats resorted toexpedients to get in their tickets. In one county where the Democratictickets were smooth at the top and the negro tickets perforated, theDemocrats prepared perforated tickets for negro Democrats which wentunquestioned. In other places special tickets were printed for the use ofnegro Democrats with the picture of General Grant or of Spencer on themand these passed the hurried Radical inspection and were cast for theDemocrats. In Marengo County the Democrats purchased a Republicancandidate,[Pg 794] who agreed for $300 that he would not be elected. By his “signof the button,” sent out among the negroes, the latter were instructed tovote a certain colored ticket which did not conform to law and hence wasnot counted. Other candidates agreed not to qualify after election, thusleaving the appointment to the governor.

In the Black Belt, now as before, the negroes were marshalled in regimentsof 300 to 1500 under men who wrote orders purporting to be signed byGeneral Grant, directing the negroes to vote for him. In Greene County1400 uniformed negroes took possession of the polls, and excluded the fewwhites.[2160] A riot in Mobile was brought on by the close supervisionover election affairs, which was objected to by a drunken negro who wantedto vote twice, and who declared that he wanted “to wade in blood up to hisboot tops.” The negro was killed. A conflict at Belmont, where a negro waskilled, and another at Gainesville were probably caused by the endeavor ofthe whites to exclude negroes who had been imported from Mississippi. Byrioting the Republicans had everything to gain and the Democratseverything to lose, and while it is impossible in most cases to ascertainwhich party fired the first shot or struck the first blow, the evidence isclear that the desperate Radical whites encouraged the blacks to violentconduct in order to cause collisions between the races and thus secureFederal interference. In Eufaula occurred the most serious riot of theReconstruction period that occurred in Alabama. The negroes came armed andthreatening to the polls, which were held by a Republican sheriff andforty Republican deputies. Judge Keils, a carpet-bagger, had advised theblacks to come to Eufaula to vote: “You go to town; there are severaltroops of Yankees there; these damned Democrats won’t shoot a frog. Youcome armed and do as you please.” The Democrats were glad to have thetroops, who were disgusted with the intimidation work of the previousmonth. Order was kept until a negro tried to vote the Democratic ticketand was discovered and mobbed by other blacks. The whites tried to protecthim and some negro fired a shot. Then the riot began. The few whites wereheavily armed and the negroes also. The deputies, it was said, lost theirheads and fired indiscriminately. When the fight was over it was foundthat ten whites were wounded, and four negroes killed and sixty wounded.The Federal troops came leisurely in after[Pg 795] it was over, and surroundedthe polls. The course of the Federal troops in Eufaula was much as it waselsewhere. They camped some distance from the polls, and when their aidwas demanded by the Republicans the captain either directly refused tointerfere, or consulted his orders or his telegrams or his law dictionary.At last he offered tonotify the white men wanted by the marshal to meetthe latter and be arrested. Another commander, who took possession of thepolls in Opelika in order to prevent a riot, was censured by GeneralMcDowell, the department commander. The troops were weary of such work,and their orders from General McDowell were very vague.[2161] After theelection, as was to be expected, an outcry arose from the Radicals thatthe troops had in every case failed to do their duty.

When the votes were counted, it appeared that the Democrats had triumphed.Houston had 107,118 votes to 93,928 for Lewis. Two years before Herndon(Democrat) had received 81,371 votes to 89,868 for Lewis. The presidentialcampaign in 1872 had assisted Lewis. Grant ran far ahead of the Radicalstate ticket. The legislature of 1874-1875 was to be composed as follows:Senate, 13 Republicans (of whom 6 were negroes)[Pg 796] and 20 Democrats; House,40 Republicans (of whom 29 were negroes) and 60 Democrats.[2162]

The whites were exceedingly pleased with their victory, while theRepublicans took defeat as something expected. There were, of course, theusual charges of outrage, Ku Kluxism, and the intimidation of the negrovote, but these were fewer than ever before. There was considerablecomplaint that the Federal troops had sided always with the whites in theelection troubles. The Republican leaders knew, of course, that for theirown time at least Alabama was to remain in the hands of the whites. Theblacks were surprisingly indifferent after they discovered that there wasto be no return to slavery, so much so that many whites feared that theirindifference masked some deep-laid scheme against the victors.

The heart of the Black Belt still remained under the rule of thecarpet-bagger and the black. The Democratic state executive Committeeconsidered that enough had been gained for one election, so it orderedthat no whites should contest on technical grounds alone the offices inthose black counties. Other methods gradually gave the Black Belt to thewhites. No Democrat would now go on the bond of a Republican official andnumbers were unable to make[Pg 797] bond; their offices thus becoming vacant, thegovernor appointed Democrats. Others sold out to the whites, or neglectedto make bond, or made bonds which were later condemned by grand juries.This resulted in many offices going to the whites, though most of themwere still in the hands of the Republicans.[2163]

Houston’s two terms were devoted to setting affairs in order. Theadministration was painfully economical. Not a cent was spent beyond whatwas absolutely necessary. Numerous superfluous offices were cut off atonce and salaries reduced. The question of the public debt was settled. Toprevent future interference by Federal authorities the time for stateelections was changed from November, the time of the Federal elections, toAugust, and this separation is still in force. The whites now demanded anew constitution. Their objections to the constitution of 1868 werenumerous: it was forced upon the whites, who had no voice in framing it;it “reminds us of unparalleled wrongs”; it had not secured goodgovernment; it was a patchwork unsuited to the needs of the state; it hadwrecked the credit of the state by allowing the indorsement of privatecorporations; it provided for a costly administration, especially for acomplicated and unworkable school system which had destroyed the schools;there was no power of expansion for the judiciary; and above all, it wasnot legally adopted.[2164]

The Republicans declared against a new constitution as meant to destroythe school system, provide imprisonment for debt, abolish exemption fromtaxation, disfranchise and otherwise degrade the blacks. By a vote of77,763 to 59,928, a convention was ordered by the people, and to it wereelected 80 Democrats, 12 Republicans, and 7 Independents. A newconstitution was framed and adopted in 1875.[2165]

From 1875 to 1889 neither national party was able to control both housesof Congress. Consequently no “force” legislation could be directed againstthe white people of Alabama, who had control and were making secure theircontrol of the state administration. The black vote was not eliminated,but gradually fell under the control of the native whites when thecarpet-bagger and scalawag left the Black Belt. In order to gain controlof the black vote, carpet-bag methods were sometimes resorted to, thoughthere was not as much fraud and violence used as is believed, for thesimple reason that it was not necessary; it was little more difficult nowto make the blacks vote for the Democrats than it had been to makeRepublicans of them; the mass of them voted, in both cases, as thestronger power willed it. The Black Belt came finally into Democraticcontrol in 1880, when the party leaders ordered the Alabama Republicans tovote the Greenback ticket. The negroes did not understand the meaning ofthe manœuvre, did not vote in force, and lost their last stronghold. Afew white Republicans and a few black leaders united to maintain theRepublican state organization in order that they[Pg 799] might control thedivision of spoils coming from the Republican administration atWashington. Most of them were or became Federal officials within thestate. It was not to their interest that their numbers should increase,for the shares in the spoils would then be smaller. Success in theelections was now the last thing desired.

This clique of office-holders was almost destroyed by the two Democraticadministrations under Cleveland, and has been unhappy under laterRepublican administrations; but the Federal administration in the state isnot yet respectable. Dissatisfaction on the part of the genuineRepublicans in the northern counties resulted in the formation of a “LilyWhite” faction which demanded that the negro be dropped as a campaignissue and that an attempt be made to build up a decent white Republicanparty. The opposing faction has been called “The Black and Tans,” and hasheld to the negro. The national party organization and the administrationhave refused to recognize the demands of the “Lily Whites”; and it wouldbe exceedingly embarrassing to go back on the record of the past in regardto the negro as the basis of the Republican party in the South. Inconsequence the growth of a reputable white party has been hindered.

The Populist movement promised to cause a healthy division of the whitesinto two parties. But the tactics of the national Republican organizationin trying to profit by this division, by running in[Pg 800] the negroes, resultedin a close reunion of the discordant whites, the Populists furnishing tothe reunited party some new principles and many new leaders, while theDemocrats furnished the name, traditions, and organization.

To make possible some sort of division and debate among the whites thesystem of primary elections was adopted. In these elections the whiteswere able to decide according to the merits of the candidate and theissues involved. The candidate of the whites chosen in the primaries waseasily elected. This plan had the merit of placing the real contest amongthe whites, and there was no danger of race troubles in elections. In theBlack Belt the primary system was legalized and served by its regulationsto confine the election contests to regularly nominated candidates, andhence to whites, the blacks having lost their organization.

The Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments in their operation gave unduepolitical influence to the whites of the Black Belt, and this was opposedby whites of other districts. It also resulted in serious corruption inelections. There was always danger in the Black Belt that the Republicans,taking advantage of divisions among the whites, would run in the negroesagain. There were instances when the whites simply counted out the negrovote or used “shotgun” methods to prevent a return to the intolerableconditions of Reconstruction. The people grew weary of the eternal “negroin the woodpile,” and a demand arose for a[Pg 801] revision of the constitutionin order to eliminate the mass of the negro voters, to do away withcorruption in the elections and to leave the whites free. The conservativeleaders, like Governors Jones and Oates, were rather opposed to adisfranchising movement. The Black Belt whites were somewhat doubtful, butthe mass of the whites were determined, and the work was done; the stampof legality was thus placed upon the long-finished work of necessity, andthe “white man’s movement” had reached its logical end.[2166]

The mistakes and failures of Reconstruction are clear to all. Whether anysuccesses were achieved by the Congressional plan has been a matter fordebate. It has been strongly asserted that Reconstruction, though failingin many important particulars, succeeded in others. The successes claimedmay be summarized as follows: (1) there was no more legislation for thenegro similar to that of 1865-66, that following the Reconstruction being“infinitely milder”; (2) Reconstruction gave the negroes a civil statusthat a century of “restoration” would not have accomplished, for thoughthe right to vote is a nullity, other undisputed rights of the black aredue to the Reconstruction; the unchangeable organic laws of the state andof the United States favor negro suffrage, which will come the sooner forbeing thus theoretically made possible; (3) Reconstruction prevented thesouthern leaders from returning to Washington as irreconcilables, and gavethem troubles enough to keep them busy until a new generation grew upwhich accepted the results of war; (4) by organizing the blacks it madethem independent of white control in politics; (5) it gave the negro anindependent church; (6) it gave the negro a right to education and gave toboth races the public school system; (7) it made the negro economicallyfree and showed that free labor was better than slave labor; (8) itdestroyed the former[Pg 802] leaders of the whites and “freed them from thebaleful influence of old political leaders”; in general, as Sumner said,the ballot to the negro was “a peacemaker, a schoolmaster, a protector,”soon making him a fairly good citizen, and secured peace and order—the“political hell” through which the whites passed being a necessarydiscipline which secured the greatest good to the greatest number.[2167]

On the other hand, it may be maintained (1) that the intent of thelegislation of 1865-1866 has been entirely misunderstood, that it wasintended on the whole for the benefit of the negro as well as of thewhite, and that it has been left permanently off the statute book, notbecause the whites have been taught better by Reconstruction, but becauseof the amendments which prohibit in theory what has all along beenpractised (hence the gross abuses of peonage); (2) that the theoreticalrights of the negro have been no inducement to grant him actualprivileges, and that these theoretical rights have not proven so permanentas was supposed before the disfranchising movement spread through theSouth; (3) that the generation after Reconstruction is more irreconcilablethan the conservative leaders who were put out of politics in1865-1867—that the latter were willing to give the negro a chance, whilethe former, able, radical, and supported by the people, find less and lessplace for the negro; (4) that if the blacks were united, so were thewhites, and in each case the advantage may be questioned; (5) that thevalue of the negro church is doubtful; (6) that as in politics, so ineducation, the negro has no opportunities now that were not freely offeredhim in 1865-1866, and the school system is not a product ofReconstruction, but came near being destroyed by it; (7) that negro freelabor is not as efficient as slave labor was, and the negro as a cottonproducer has lost his supremacy and his economic position is not at allassured; (8) that the whites have acquired new leaders, but the change hasbeen on the whole from conservatives to radicals, from friends of thenegro to those indifferent to him. In short, a careful study of conditionsin Alabama since 1865 will not lead one to the conclusion that the[Pg 803] blackrace in that state has any rights or privileges or advantages that werenot offered by the native whites in 1865-1866.

For the misgovernment of Reconstruction, the negro, who was in no way toblame, has been made to suffer, since those who were really responsiblecould not be reached; so politically the races are hostile; the Black Belthas had, until recently, an undue and disturbing influence in whitepolitics; the Federal official body and the Republican organization in thestate have not been respectable, and the growth of a white Republicanparty has been prevented; the whites have for thirty-five years distrustedand disliked the Federal administration which, until recent years, showedlittle disposition to treat them with any consideration;[2168] the rule ofthe carpet-bagger, scalawag, and negro, and the methods used to overthrowthat rule, weakened the respect of the people for the ballot, for law, forgovernment; the estrangement of the races and the social-equalityteachings of the reconstructionists have made it much less safe than inslavery for whites to reside near negro communities, and the negro is moreexposed to imposition by low whites.

In recent years there have been many signs of improvement, but only inproportion as the principles and practices that the white people of thestate understand are those of Reconstruction are rejected or superseded.To the northern man Reconstruction probably meant and still meanssomething quite different from what the white man of Alabama understandsby the term. But as the latter understands it, he has accepted none of itsessential principles and intends to accept none of its so-calledsuccesses.

In destroying all that was old, Reconstruction probably removed someabuses; from the new order some permanent good must have resulted. Butcredit for neither can rightfully be claimed until it can be shown thatthose results were impossible under the régime destroyed.

APPENDIX I

(a) Typical black counties with boundaries unchanged. (b) Typical white counties.

APPENDIX II

Number of whites registered but unable to comply with other requirementsfor voting, estimated at 60,000.

INDEX

Abolition sentiment in Alabama,10.

Agriculture, during the war,232;
since the war,710-734.

Alabama, admitted to Union,7;
secedes,36;
readmitted,547.

Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad,591-600.

American Missionary Association and negro education,459,462,463,617,620.

Amnesty proclamation of President Johnson,349;
published by military commanders in Alabama,409.

Amusements during the war,241.

Andrew, Bishop, and the separation of the Methodist church,22.

Anti Ku Klux,690.

Anti-slavery sentiment in Alabama,10.

Applegate, A. J., lieutenant-governor,736.

Army, U. S., and the civic authorities,410;
in conflict with Federal court,414;
relations with the people,417-420;
used in elections,694-701,746,756,789,794.

Athens sacked by Colonel Turchin,63.

Bacon used to influence elections,785.

Banks and banking during the war,162.

Baptist church, separation of,22;
declaration in regard to the state of the country,222;
during Reconstruction,639;
relations with negroes,642.

“Barbour County Fever,”709.

Bingham, D. H., mentioned,346,350,402;
in convention of 1867,526;
in Union League,557.

Birney, James G., mentioned,10.

Black Belt, during slavery,710;
at the end of the war,713;
share system in,722;
decadence of, during Reconstruction,726.

“Black Code,” or “Black Laws,”378.

“Black Republican” party arraigned,20.

Blockade-running,183.

Bonded debt of Alabama,580-586.

Bonds, of state,580;
of counties and towns,580,581;
fraudulent issues,581,582;
of railroads,587-607;
fraudulent indorsements,596-606.

Boyd, Alexander, killed by Ku Klux,686.

Bragg, W. L., Democratic campaign manager,793.

Brooks, William M., president of convention of 1861,28;
letter to President Davis,112;
advocates limited negro suffrage,388.

Brown, John, plans negro uprising in Alabama,18.

Buchanan, Admiral Franklin, at battle of Mobile Bay,69.

Buck, A. E., carpet-bagger, in convention of 1867,518;
elected to Congress,750.

Buckley, C. W., carpet-bagger, agent of Freedmen’s Bureau,426,437,440,448,458;
in convention of 1867,518;
elected to Congress,737;
on Ku Klux Committee,702;
sides with the Robinson faction,774.

Bulger, M. J., in secession convention,29,31,33,38;
candidate for governor,372;
in politics,513.

Busteed, Richard, Federal judge, on Fourteenth Amendment,394;
in Radical politics,511,744,774.

Byrd, William M., “Union” leader,15.

Calhoun Democrats,11.

Callis, John B., carpet-bagger, agent of Freedmen’s Bureau,426;
in Union League,557;
elected to Congress,738.

Campaign, of 1867,503-516;
of 1868,493,747;
of 1870,751;
of 1872,754;
of 1874,782-797.

Carpet-bag and negro rule,571et seq.

Carpet-baggers, in convention of 1867,517,518,530;
in Congress,738,749,754,761.
See alsoRepublicans.

Chain gang abolished,393.

Charleston convention of 1860,18.

Churches, separation of,21-24;
during the war,222;
seized by the Federal army and the northern churches,227;
condition after the war,325,326;
attitude toward negro education and religion,225,457,641;
during Reconstruction,636-652.

Civil Rights Bill of 1866,393.

Civil War in Alabama,61-78;
seizure of the forts,61;
operations in north Alabama,62;
Streight’s Raid,67;
Rousseau’s Raid,68;
operations in south Alabama,69;
Wilson’s Raid,71;
destruction by the armies,74.

Clanton, Gen. James H., organizes opposition to Radicals,508,512;
on negro education,625,630;
on the religious situation,638.

Clay, Senator C. C., speech on withdrawal from U. S. Senate,25;
[Pg 810]arrested by Federals,262.

Clayton, Judge Henry D., charge to the Pike County grand jury on the negro question,385.

Clemens, Jere (or Jeremiah), in secession convention,29,34,47;
mentioned,64,111;
deserter,125,127,143;
advocates Reconstruction,125,144,145.

Clews & Company, financial agents,592,596,597.

Cloud, N. B., superintendent of public instruction,610-632.

Cobb, W. R. W., “Union” leader,16;
disloyal to Confederacy,139.

Colleges during the war,212.

Colonies of negroes,421,444.

Color line in politics,779.

Commercial conventions,25.

Commissioners sent to southern states,46,48.

Composition of population of Alabama,3,4.

Concentration camps of negroes,421,422,444.

“Condition of Affairs in the South,”311.

Confederate property confiscated,285.

Confederate States, established,39-42;
Congress of,130;
enrolment laws,92,98;
finance in Alabama,162-183.

Confederate text-books,217.

Confiscation, proposed in secession convention,48;
by United States,284et seq.;
frauds,284,290;
of cotton,290;
of lands,425;
supports Freedmen’s Bureau,431;
belief of negroes in,446,447;
for taxes,578.

Congress, C. S., Alabama delegation to,130.

Congress, U. S., rejects Johnson’s plan,377,405;
imposes new conditions,391;
forces carpet-bag government on Alabama,547-552;
members of, from Alabama,737,749,754,761.

“Conquered province” theory of Reconstruction,339.

Conscription,92-108;
enrolment laws,92-98;
trouble between state and Confederate authorities,96-98.

Conservative party,398,401,512.
See alsoDemocratic party.

Constitution, of 1865,366,367;
of 1868,535,
vote on,538,
rejected,541;
imposed by Congress,547-552,797;
of 1875,797;
of 1902,800.

Contraband trade,189.

“Convention” candidates in 1868,493,530.

Convention, of 1861,27;
of 1865,359;
of 1867,491,517;
of 1875,797.

Coöperationists,28;
policy of, in secession convention,30;
speeches of,32et seq.

“Cotton is King,”184.

Cotton, exported through the lines,187,191-193;
confiscated,290et seq.;
agents prosecuted for stealing,297,413;
cotton tax,303;
production of, in Alabama,710-734,804.

County and local officials during Reconstruction,742,743,753,761,796.

County and town debts,580,581,604,605.

Crowe, J. R., one of the founders of Ku Klux Klan,661.

Curry, J. L., M., in Confederate Congress,131;
defeated,134;
on negro education,457,467,468,625,631.

Dargan, E. S., in secession convention,29,40,41;
on impressment,175.

Davis, Nicholas, in Nashville convention,14;
in secession convention,29,33,38,54;
in Radical politics,403,511;
opposed by Union League,564;
opinion of Rev. A. S. Lakin,612.

“Deadfalls,”769.

Debt commission, work of,583-586.

Debt of Alabama,580-586.

Democratic party, ante-bellum,7et seq.;
reorganized,398,401;
during Reconstruction,748,750,755,778;
Populist influence,799.

Department of Negro Affairs,421.

Deserters,112-130;
outrages by,119;
prominent men,124;
numbers,127.

Destitution, during the war,196-205;
after the war,277.

Destruction of property,74,253.

Disaffection toward the Confederacy,108-130,136,137.

Disfranchisement of whites,489,524,806;
of negroes,801,806.

“Disintegration and absorption” policy of the northern churches,636.

Domestic life during the war,230-247.

Drugs and medicines,239.

Economic and social conditions, 1861-1865,149-247;
in 1865,251;
during Reconstruction,710-734,761-770.

Education, during the war,212;
during Reconstruction,579,606-632,684;
discussion of, in convention of 1867,522;
of the negro,456-468,624.

Election, of Lincoln,19,20;
of 1861,131;
of 1863,134;
of 1865,373-375;
of 1867,491;
of 1868,493,747;
of 1870,750;
of 1872,754;
of 1874,793;
of 1876,796;
of 1880,798;
of 1890,799;
of 1902,800.

Election methods,748,751,754,755.
See alsoUnion League.

Emancipation, economic effects of,710-734.

Emigration of whites from Alabama,769.

Enforcement laws, state,695;
Federal,697.

Enrolment of soldiers from Alabama,78-87;
laws relating to,92,95.

Episcopal church, divided,24;
[Pg 811]closed by the Federal army,325;
loses its negro members,646.

Eufaula riot,794.

Eutaw riot,686.

Exemption from military service,101-108;
numbers exempted,107.

Expenditures of the Reconstruction régime,574,575,577.

Factories during the war,149-162.

Farms and plantations during the war,232.

Federal army closes churches,226.

Federal courts and the army,413.

Finances during the war,162-183;
banks and banking,162;
bonds and notes,164;
salaries,168;
taxation,169;
impressment,174;
debts, stay laws, sequestration,176;
trade, barter, prices,178;
during Reconstruction,571-606.

Financial settlement, 1874-1876,583-586.

Fitzpatrick, Benjamin, in Nashville convention,14;
arrested,262;
president of convention of 1865,360.

Florida, negotiations for purchase of West Florida,577.

Force laws, state and Federal,695,697.

“Forfeited rights” theory of Reconstruction,341.

Forsyth, John, on Fourteenth Amendment,394;
mayor of Mobile,430.

“Forty acres and a mule,”447,515.

Fourteenth Amendment, proposed,394;
rejected,396,397;
adopted by reconstructed legislature,552.

Fowler, W. H., estimates of number of soldiers from Alabama,78,81.

Freedmen,seeNegroes.

Freedmen’s aid societies,459.

Freedmen’s Bureau,392,421-470;
organization of, in Alabama,423-427;
supported by confiscations,431;
character of agents of,448;
native officials of,428,429;
relations with the civil authorities,427;
administration of justice,438-441;
the labor problem,433-438;
care of the sick,441;
issue of rations,442;
demoralization caused,444;
effect on negro education,456-468;
connection with the Union League,557,567,568.

Freedmen’s codes,378.

“Freedmen’s Home Colonies,”422,439,444.

Freedmen’s Savings-bank,451-455;
bank book,452;
good effect of,453;
failure,455.

General officers from Alabama in the Confederate service,85.

Giers, J. J., tory,119,147.

Gordon, Gen. John B., speech on negro education,625.

Grant, Gen. U. S., letter on condition of the South,311;
elected President,747;
orders troops to Alabama,789.

Haughey, Thomas, scalawag, deserter, elected to Congress,488.

Hayden, Gen. Julius, in charge of Freedmen’s Bureau,426.

Hays, Charles, scalawag, in Eutaw riot,686;
member of Congress,749,754;
letter to Senator Joseph Hawley on outrages in Alabama,786-788.

Herndon, Thomas H., candidate for governor,754.

Hilliard, Henry W., “Union” leader,15.

Hodgson, Joseph, mentioned,512;
superintendent of public instruction,631.

Home life during the war,230-247.

Houston, George S., “Union” leader,16;
elected to U. S. Senate,374;
on Debt Commission,582;
elected governor,782,795.

Humphreys, D. C., deserter,126,143,350.

Huntsville parade of Ku Klux Klan,686.

Immigration to Alabama,321,717,734;
not desired by Radicals,769.

Impressment by Confederate authorities,174.

“Independents” in 1874,781.

Indian question and nullification,8,9.

Indorsement of railroad bonds,596-606.

Industrial development during the war,149-162,234;
military industries,149;
private enterprises,156.

Industrial reconstruction,710-734,804.

Intimidation, by Federal authorities,789;
by Democrats,791.

“Iron-clad” test oath,369.

Jemison, Robert, in secession convention,28,29,40,49,54;
elected to Confederate Senate,134.

Johnson, President Andrew, plan of restoration,337;
amnesty proclamation,349;
grants pardons,356,410;
interferes with provisional governments,375,419;
his work rejected by Congress,377,405,406.

Joint Committee on Reconstruction, report on affairs in the South,313.

Jones, Capt. C. ap R., at the Selma arsenal,152.

Juries, of both races ordered by Pope,480;
during Reconstruction,745.

Keffer, John C., mentioned,506,518,524,554,737,751.

Kelly, Judge, in Mobile riot,481,509.

[Pg 812]“King Cotton,” confidence in,184.

Knights of the White Camelia,669,684.
See alsoKu Klux Klan.

Ku Klux Klan, causes,653;
origin and growth,660;
disguises,675;
warnings,678;
parade at Huntsville,685;
Cross Plains or Patona affair,685;
drives carpet-baggers from the State University,612-615;
burns negro schoolhouses,628;
table of alleged outrages,705;
Ku Klux investigation,701;
results of the Ku Klux revolution,674.

Labor laws,380,381.

Labor of negroes and whites compared,710-734.

Labor regulations of Freedmen’s Bureau,433-438.

Lakin, Rev. A. S., Northern Methodist missionary,637,639,648,650;
in Union League,557;
elected president of State University,612;
Davis’s opinion of,612.

Lands confiscated for taxes,578.

Lane, George W., Unionist, Federal judge,125,127.

Lawlessness in 1865,262.

Legislation, by convention of 1861,49;
of 1865,366;
of 1867,528;
about freedmen,379.

Legislature during Reconstruction,738-741,752,755-795.

Lewis, D. P., in secession convention,29;
deserter,126;
repudiates Union League,563;
elected governor in 1872,754.

Life, loss of, in war,251.

Lincoln, effect of election of,20;
his plan of Reconstruction,336.

Lindsay, R. B., taxation under,573-576;
action on railroad bonds,594-600;
elected governor, 1870,751.

Literary activity during the war,211.

Loss of life and property,251.

“Loyalists,” during the war,112,113;
after the war,316.

McKinstry, Alexander, lieutenant-governor, assists to elect Spencer,756-760.

McTyeire, Bishop H. N., on negro education,457,467.

Meade, Gen. George G., in command of Third Military District,493;
his administration,493-502;
installs the reconstructed government,552.

Medicines and drugs in war time,239.

Methodist church, separation,22;
during Reconstruction,637;
favors negro education,648.

Military commissions,seeMilitary government.

Military government, 1865-1866,407-420;
trials by military commissions,413-415;
objections to,416-417.

Military government under the Reconstruction Acts,473-502;
Pope’s administration,473-493;
Meade’s administration,493-502;
control over the civil government,477,495;
Pope’s trouble with the newspapers,485;
trials by military commissions,487,498.

Militia system during the Civil War,88-92;
during Reconstruction,746.

Miller, C. A., carpet-bagger, agent of the Freedmen’s Bureau,425,426;
in convention of 1867,518;
elected secretary of state,737.

Mitchell, Gen. O. M.,62-65.

Mobile Bay, battle of,69.

Mobile riot,481,509.

Mobile schools during Reconstruction,617.

Moore, A. B., governor, calls secession convention,27;
orders forts seized,61;
objects to blockade-running,184;
arrested by Federal authorities,262.

Morgan, John T., in secession convention,29,40,42,49.

Morse, Joshua, scalawag, attorney-general,737.

Mossbacks, tories, and unionists,112,113;
numbers,127.

Nashville convention of 1850,14.

“National Guards,” a negro organization,774.

National Union movement,400,401.

Negro Affairs, Department of,421.
See alsoFreedmen’s Bureau.

Negro criminality,762,763;
negro labor,710-734;
family relations,763;
church in politics,777;
women in politics,776.

Negro education, favored by southern whites,457,626,627;
native white teachers,463;
Freedmen’s Bureau teaching,456-468;
opposition to,628;
character of,464,465,625-630.

Negroes during the war,205-212;
in the army,86,87,205;
on the farms,209;
fidelity of,210;
in the churches,225;
home life,243.

Negroes under the provisional government, test their freedom,269;
suffering among them,273;
colonies of,421,444;
civil status of,383,384;
insurrection feared,368,412;
not to be arrested by civil authorities,411;
attitude of army to,410-413;
negro suffrage in 1866,386.

Negroes during Reconstruction, controlled by the Union League,553-568;
first vote,514;
in the convention of 1867,518,521,530;
in the campaign of 1874,775,776;
negro Democrats,777,778;
punished by Ku Klux Klan,682;
negro juries,480,745;
[Pg 813]disfranchised,801,806.

Negroes, social rights of, allowed in street cars,393;
not allowed at hotel table,417;
demand social privileges,522,764,780,783.

Negroes and the churches,642,777.

Newspapers, during the war,218;
under Pope’s administration,485.

Nick-a-Jack, a proposed new state,111.

Nitre making,152.

Non-slaveholders uphold slavery,10,11.

Norris, B. W., carpet-bagger, agent Freedmen’s Bureau,426;
elected to Congress,738.

North Alabama, anti-slavery sentiment in,10;
in secession convention,53;
during the Civil War,109;
during Reconstruction,403,404,748,770,779.

Northern men, treatment of,318,400.

Nullification, on Indian question,8,9;
divides the Democratic party,11.

Oath, “iron-clad,”369;
prescribed for voters,475,527.

Ordinance of Secession,36,37;
declared null and void,360.

Painted stakes sold to negroes,448.

Pardons by President Johnson,356,410.

Parsons, L. E., obstructionist and “Peace Society” man,143,147,343;
provisional governor,350,353;
elected to U. S. Senate,374;
speaks in the North,392,401;
advises rejection of Fourteenth Amendment,396;
originates “White Man’s Movement,”536;
Radical politician,735,751,755-760.

Parties in the Convention of 1861,28;
of 1865,359.

Patona, or Cross Plains, affair,686.

Patton, R. M., mentioned,281;
elected governor,373;
vetoes legislation for blacks,378,379;
on the Fourteenth Amendment,395-397;
advises Congressional Reconstruction,502.

Peace Society,137-143.

Pike County grand jury, Judge Clayton’s charge to,384.

“Pike County Platform,”781.

“Political bacon,”783-785.

Political beliefs of early settlers,7.

Politics, during the war,130-148;
1865-1867,398;
1868-1874,735et seq.

Pope, General John, in command of Third Military District,473-475;
his administration,473-493;
quarrel with the newspapers,485;
removed,492.

Population, composition of,3,4.

Populist movement,799.

Presbyterian church, separation,22,23,24;
during Reconstruction,640;
attitude toward negroes,645.

Prescript of Ku Klux Klan,664,665.

President’s plan of reconstruction,333et seq.;
rejected by Congress,377;
fails,405,406.

Prices during the war,178.

Property, lost in war,251;
decreases in value during Reconstruction,578.

Provisional government,351,376.

Pryor, Roger A., debate with Yancey,17.

Public bonded debt,580-586.

Publishing-houses during the war,221.

Race question, in convention of 1867,521;
in the campaign of 1874,679-782.

Races, segregation of,see maps in text.

Radical party organized,505.
See alsoRepublican party.

Railroad legislation and frauds,587-606.

Railroads aided by state, counties, and towns during Reconstruction,591-606.

Railroads, built during the war,155;
destroyed,259.

Randolph, Ryland, a member of Ku Klux Klan,612,667,668;
expelled from legislature,741.

Rapier, J. T., negro member of Congress, mentioned,488,521,523,524;
supports Robinson-Buckley faction,774.

Rations issued by Freedmen’s Bureau,442,445.

Reconstruction, sentiment during the war,143-148;
theories of,333-339;
early attempts at,341;
Reconstruction Acts,473-475,490;
Reconstruction Convention,491,517-530;
constitution rejected,494;
completed by Congress,531,550-552;
its successes and failures,801.

Reconstruction, and education,606-632;
and the churches,637-653.

Registration of voters,488,491,493.

Regulators,seeKu Klux Klan.

Reid, Dr. G. P. L., on Knights of the White Camelia,684.

Religious conditions, during the war,222-230;
in 1865,324;
during Reconstruction,637-653.

Republican party in Alabama, organized,402-405;
numbers,735,765;
in the legislature,738,752,755;
divisions in,771,775;
“Lily Whites” and “Black and Tans,”799.

“Restoration,” by the President,349et seq.;
convention,358;
completed,367;
rejected,377.

Restrictions on trade in 1865,284.

Riot, at Eufaula,794;
at Eutaw,686;
at Mobile,481,509.

Roddy, Gen. P. D., mentioned,62,68.

Roman Catholic church and the negroes,646.

[Pg 814]Rousseau’s Raid,68.

Salt making,158.

Sansom, Miss Emma, guides General Forrest,67.

Savings-bank, Freedmen’s,451-455.

Scalawags, in convention of 1867,518,529,530.
See alsoRepublicans.

Schools,seeEducation.

Schurz’s report on the condition of the South,312.

Secession,14,15,19,27-57;
convention called,27,28;
ordinance passed,36,37;
debate on, in 1865,360.

Secession convention, parties in,23,29;
political theories of members,34;
slave trade prohibited,42;
sends commission to Washington,48;
legislation,49-53.

Secessionists,28;
policy in secession convention,30.

Secret societies,seeUnion LeagueandKu Klux Klan.

Segregation of races,710-734.
See also the maps in the text.

Seibels, J. J., favors coöperation,15;
obstructionist,143,147,343.

Sequestration of enemies’ property,176.

Share system of farming,723.

Sheets, C. C., tory,115,126;
in convention of 1865,365;
visited by Ku Klux Klan,681.

Shorter, John G., elected governor,131;
defeated,134;
arrested by Federal authorities,262.

Slaveholders and non-slaveholders, location of,6.

Slavery, and politics,10-14;
upheld by non-slaveholders,10-11;
abolished,362.

Slaves,seeNegroes.

Slave trade prohibited by secession convention,42.

Smith, William H., deserter,350,510,534;
a registration official,488;
first Reconstruction governor,735;
indorses railroad bonds,591,595,601;
opinion of Senator Spencer,692.

Smith, William R., “Union” leader,16;
coöperationist leader in secession convention,29,33,43,49;
candidate for governor,372;
president of State University,612.

Social and economic conditions, during the war,149-247;
in 1865,251et seq.;
during Reconstruction,710-734,761et passim.

Social effects of Reconstruction, on whites,767;
on blacks,761et seq.;
on carpet-baggers,766.

Social rights for negroes,523,772,775.

Soldiers from Alabama, numbers, character, organization,78-87.

Southern Aid Society,23.

“Southern outrages,”399,555,786.

“Southern theory” of Reconstruction,334.

“Southern Unionists’” convention, 1866,402.

Speed, Joseph H., superintendent of public instruction,633.

Spencer, G. E., carpet-bagger, election to U. S. Senate,737,755,760;
Governor Smith’s opinion of,691.

State Rights Democrats,11,12;
led by Yancey,12,13.

“State Suicide” theory of Reconstruction,338.

Statistics of cotton frauds,279.

Status, of freedmen,384;
of the provisional government,376.

Steedman and Fullerton’s report on the Freedmen’s Bureau,449.

Stevens’s plan of Reconstruction,339.

Streight, Col. A. D., raids into Alabama,67.

Strobach-Robinson division in the Radical party,774.

Suffrage for negroes in 1866,387.

Sumner’s plan of Reconstruction,338.

Swayne, Gen. Wager, assistant commissioner of Freedmen’s Bureau,424,425;
on the temper of the people,315;
opinion of the laws relating to freedmen,379,380,384;
fears negro insurrection,369;
in command of Alabama,407,476;
attitude toward civil authorities,428,439;
forces negro education,459;
enters politics,404,511;
removed,492.

Sykes, F. W., in Radical politics,510;
elected to U. S. Senate,757,760.

Taxation during the war,169;
during Reconstruction,571-579;
amounts to confiscation,578.

Temper of the people after the war,308.

Test oath, iron-clad,369,370,527.

Text-books, Confederate,217;
Radical,624.

Theories of Reconstruction,333et seq.

Third Military District, under the Reconstruction Acts,473-502.

Thomas, Gen. G. H., mentioned,325,407,408,474.

Tories and deserters,108-430;
in north Alabama,109;
definition,112,113;
outrages by,119;
numbers,127.

Trade through the lines,189.

Treasury agents prosecuted,297.

Trials by military commission,413,414,487,498.

Tribune, of New York, investigates the “Hays-Hawley letter,”788.

Truman, Benjamin, report on the South,312.

Turchin, Col. J. B., allows Athens to be sacked,63.

Underground railway in Alabama,18.

Union League of America,553-568;
white members,556;
[Pg 815]negroes admitted,557;
ceremonies,559;
organization and method,561;
influence over negroes,568;
control over elections,514,515;
resolutions of Alabama Council,307.

Union troops from Alabama,87.

Unionists, tories, mossbacks,112,113.

University of Alabama under the Reconstruction régime,612.

Wages of freedmen,422,433,720,731.

Walker, L. P., in Nashville convention,14;
at Charleston convention,18;
on negro suffrage,389.

Wards of the nation,421-470.

Warner, Willard, carpet-bagger, elected to U. S. Senate,737.

Watts, Thomas H., “Union” leader,15;
in secession convention,29,35,45,48;
defeated for governor,131;
elected,134;
supports the Confederacy,135;
troubles over militia with conscript officials,91,97,104;
favors blockade-running,185;
speech in 1865,341;
arrested by Federal authorities,262.

Whig party, appears,11;
its progress on the slavery question,12;
breaks up,16,17.

White Brotherhood,708.

White Camelia,670.

White counties, agriculture in,727;
destitution in,196-205;
politics in,see maps.

White labor superior to negro labor,726.

White League,709.

“White Man’s Government,”364.

“White man’s party,”536,778,779.

Wilmer, Bishop R. H.,24;
trouble with military authorities,325-329;
suspended,325.

Wilson’s Raid,71.

Women, interest in public questions,230.

Women’s Gunboat,245.

Yancey, William Lowndes, leader of State Rights Democrats,12,13;
author of Alabama Platform of 1848,13;
advocates secession,14,15;
debate with Roger A. Pryor,17;
offered nomination for vice-presidency,19;
in secession convention,29,31,36,39,44,46,57.

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[2] Hundly, “Social Relations”; Hodgson, “Cradle of the Confederacy,” Ch.1; Garrett, “Reminiscences,” Ch. 1; Miller’s and Brown’s “Histories ofAlabama,”passim; Saunders, “Early Settlers,”passim. From 1840 to1860 there was a slight sectional and political division between thecounties of north Alabama and those of central and south Alabama, owing tothe conflicting interests of the two sections and to the lack ofcommunication. By 1860 this was tending to become a social divisionbetween the white counties and the black counties. The division to someextent still exists.

[3] In all studies of the sectional spirit it should be remembered thatthe Southwest was settled somewhat in spite of the Washington governmentand without the protection of the United States army; the reverse is trueof the Northwest.

[4] Hodgson, “Cradle of the Confederacy,” Chs. 2, 4, 6, 8; DuBose, “Lifeof William L. Yancey”; Phillips, “Georgia and State Rights,” Chs. 2, 3;Pickett, “Alabama,” Owen’s edition.

[5] In 1832 there were eight emancipation societies in north Alabama: TheState Society, Courtland, Lagrange, Tuscumbia, Florence, Madison County,Athens, and Lincoln. Publications, Southern History Association, Vol. II,pp. 92, 93.

[6] See Hodgson, p. 7. In 1842 representation in the legislature waschanged from the “federal” basis and based on white population alone. Thischange was made by the Democrats and was opposed by the Whigs. The latterpredominated in the Black Belt.

[10] Benjamin Fitzpatrick led the conservative element of the Democraticparty and opposed Yancey.

[11] This division in the State Rights ranks existed until secession wasactually achieved and even after.

[12] Each extreme southern state—Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and SouthCarolina—showed a desire to have some more moderate state act first. Someprominent men in this convention were Yancey, Seibels, Thomas Williams,John A. Elmore, B. F. Saffold, Abram Martin, A. P. Bagley, Adam C. Felder,David Clopton, and George Goldthwaite, nearly all South Carolinians bybirth.

[14] For an account of one of these, see theAmerican Historical Review,Oct., 1900.

[15] General Pryor informs me that at the convention of 1858 no oneunderstood that there was any desire on the part of Yancey and others toreopen the slave trade. They recognized that the rest of the world wasagainst them on that question and were demanding simply a repeal of whatthey considered discriminating laws. Yancey compared the question to thatof the tea tax in the American colonies. See also Hodgson, p. 371, andYancey’s speeches in Smith’s “Debates of 1861.”

[16] A branch of the Underground Railway reached from Ohio as far intoAlabama as Tallapoosa County. Kagi, one of Brown’s confederates, hadmarked out a chain of black counties where he had travelled and where thenegroes were expected to rise. He had travelled through South Carolina,Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. Russell County, Alabama, was one ofthose marked on his map. The people were greatly alarmed when the map wasdiscovered. See Seibert’s “Underground Railroad,” pp. 119, 160, 167, 195;Hinton, “John Brown”; Hague, “Blockaded Family.” As early as 1835incendiary literature had been scattered among the Alabama slaves, and inthat year the grand jury of Tuscaloosa County indicted Robert G. Williamsof New York for sending such printed matter among the slaves. GeneralGayle demanded that he be sent to Alabama for trial, but Governor Marcyrefused to give him up. See Brown’s “Alabama,” p. 167, andGulf StatesHist. Mag., July, 1903.

[18] Yancey was willing to disregard instructions and not withdraw; therest of the delegation overruled him. See paper by Petrie in TransactionsAla. Hist. Soc., Vol. IV.

[20] Acts of Alabama (1859-1860), pp. 689-690; Smith’s “Debates,” pp. 10,11.

[21] Acts of Alabama (1859-1860), pp. 681-682; Senate Journal (1859-1860),pp. 147, 176, 293, 302.

[22] During this session Judge Sam. Rice, in reply to John Forsyth andothers who feared that secession would lead to war, said: “There will beno war. But if there should be, we can whip the Yankees with popguns.”After the war, when he had turned “scalawag,” he was taken to task for thespeech. “You said we could whip the Yankees with popguns.” “Yes,—but thedamned rascals wouldn’t fight that way.”

[23] The popular vote in Alabama was: for Breckenridge, 48,831; forDouglas, 13,621; for Bell, 27,875.

[25] Horace Greeley, “The American Conflict,” Vol. I, p. 355. For asimilar meeting in Montgomery, see Hodgson, p. 459et seq.

[26] See Townsend Collection, Columbia University Library, Vol. I, p. 187.One poor white man in Tallapoosa County welcomed the election of Lincoln,for “now the negroes would be freed and white men could get more work andbetter pay.” Authorities for the political history of Alabama before 1860:Hodgson’s “Cradle of the Confederacy”; Garrett’s “Reminiscences of PublicMen of Alabama”; Brewer’s “Alabama”; Brown’s “History of Alabama”;Miller’s “History of Alabama”; Pickett’s “History of Alabama” (Owen’sedition); “Northern Alabama Illustrated”; “Memorial Record of Alabama”;DuBose’s “Life and Times of William L. Yancey”; Hilliard’s “Politics andPen Pictures and Speeches”; Transactions of Ala. Hist. Soc., Vol. IV,papers by Yonge, Cozart, Culver, Scott, and Petrie.

[27] O’Gorman, “History of the Roman Catholic Church in the UnitedStates,” p. 425.

[28] Carroll, “Religious Forces of the United States,” p. 306; Thompson,“History of the Presbyterian Churches in the United States,” pp. 41, 135.

[29] Statistics of Churches, Census of 1890, p. 146; Riley, “History ofthe Baptists in the Southern States East of the Mississippi,” p. 205etseq.; Newman, “History of the Baptists of the United States,” pp.443-454.

[30] See Smith, “Life of James Osgood Andrew”; Buckley, “History ofMethodism”; McTyeire, “History of Methodism”; Alexander, “History of theMethodist Episcopal Church South”; Statistics of Churches, p. 581.

[33] Statistics of Churches, p. 684; Carroll, “Religious Forces,” pp. 281,306; Thompson, “History of the Presbyterian Churches,” p. 135.

[34] Thompson, “History of the Presbyterian Churches,” p. 155; Johnson,“History of the Southern Presbyterian Church,” pp. 333, 339; McPherson,“History of the Rebellion,” p. 508; “Annual Cyclopædia” (1862), p. 707;Statistics of Churches, p. 683.

[38] Perry, “History of the American Episcopal Church,” Vol. II, p. 328et seq.; McPherson, “History of the Rebellion,” p. 515; Whitaker,“Church in Alabama.”

[41] Smith, “History and Debates of the Convention of Alabama,” 1861, p.12. My account of the convention is condensed almost entirely from Smith’s“Debates.” Smith was a coöperationist member from Tuscaloosa County. Hekept full notes of the proceedings and is impartial in his reports ofspeeches. Almost the entire edition of the “Debates” was destroyed by firein 1861. Hodgson, “Cradle of the Confederacy,” and DuBose, “Life and Timesof William L. Yancey,” both give short accounts of the convention.

[42] Except Yancey, who declared that the disease preying on the vitals ofthe Federal Union was not due to any defect in the Constitution, but tothe heads, hearts, and consciences of the northern people; that noguarantees, no amendments, could reëducate the northern people on theslavery question, so as to induce a northern majority to withhold theexercise of its power in aid of abolition. Governor Moore, in thecommissions given to the ambassadors to the other states, declared thatthe peace, honor, and security of the southern states were endangered bythe election of Lincoln, the candidate of a purely sectional party, whoseavowed principles demanded the destruction of slavery.

[43] It would seem that after this vote no one would say that nearly halfof the members were “Unionists,” yet nearly all accounts make thisstatement.

[44] There were many indications that the opposition was more sectionaland personal than political. It is safe to state for north Alabama thathad the Black Belt declared for the Union, that section would have votedfor secession.

[45] This minority report was signed by Clemens of Madison, Lewis ofLawrence, Winston of De Kalb, Kimball of Tallapoosa, Watkins of Franklin,and Jemison of Tuscaloosa, all from north Alabama.

[46] c.=coöperationist; s.=secessionist; cs.=coöperationist who voted forsecession.

[49] Constitution, Article I, Section X: “No state shall without theconsent of Congress enter into any agreement or compact with anotherstate,” etc.

[50] He was here referring indirectly to the action of the stateauthorities in seizing the forts at Pensacola and Mobile before secession.

[51] Clemens was accused of voting for secession in order to obtain thecommand of the militia. He had formerly been an army officer, and was nowmade major-general of militia. It was not long before he deserted and wentNorth.

[54] Bulger of Tallapoosa, Jones and Wilson of Fayette, and Sheets ofWinston voted in the negative.

[57] The commissioners sent to the various states were as follows:Virginia, A. F. Hopkins and F. M. Gilmer;South Carolina, John A.Elmore;North Carolina, I. W. Garrott and Robert H. Smith;Maryland,J. L. M. Curry;Delaware, David Clopton;Kentucky, S. F. Hale;Missouri, William Cooper;Tennessee, L. Pope Walker;Arkansas, DavidHubbard;Louisiana, John A. Winston;Texas, J. M. Calhoun;Florida,E. C. Bullock;Georgia, John G. Shorter;Mississippi, E. W. Pettus.Only one state, South Carolina, sent a delegate to Alabama.

[58] It was not until the end of June, 1861, that the United States postalservice was withdrawn and final reports made to the United States. TheConfederate postal service succeeded. At first, the ConfederatePostmaster-General directed the postmasters to continue to report to theUnited States.

[59] This account of the work of the convention is compiled from thepamphlet ordinances in the Supreme Court Library in Montgomery.

[61] See Smith’s “Debates”; Hodgson’s “Cradle of the Confederacy”;DuBose’s “Yancey”; Wilmer’s “Recent Past.”

[62] Gov. A. B. Moore to President Buchanan, Jan. 4, 1861, in O. R. Ser.I, Vol. I, pp. 327, 328.

[65] See D. C. Buell, “Operations in North Alabama,” in “Battles andLeaders of the Civil War,” Vol. II, pp. 701-708.

[66] Miller, p. 160; Brewer, “Alabama,” p. 65; Mrs. Clay-Clopton, “A Belleof the Fifties,” Chs. 18-22; O. R., Ser. I, Vol. X, Pt. II, pp. 204, 294,295,et passim. Buell stated that “habitual lawlessness prevailed in aportion of General Mitchell’s command,” and that though authority wasgranted to punish with death there were no punishments. Discipline waslost. The officers were engaged in cotton speculation, and Mitchell’swagon trains were used to haul the cotton for the speculators. Flagrantcrimes, Buell stated, were “condoned or neglected” by Mitchell. “Battlesand Leaders,” Vol. II, pp. 705, 706. North Alabama was not important tothe Federals from a strategic point of view, and only the worstdisciplined troops were stationed in that section.

[67] His real name was Ivan Vasilivitch Turchinoff. Several other officerswere court-martialled at the same time for similar conduct. Keifer,“Slavery and Four Years of War,” Vol. I, p. 277; Miller, p. 160; “Battlesand Leaders,” II, p. 706. A former “Union” man declared after the war thatthe barbarities of Turchin crushed out the remaining “Union” sentiment innorth Alabama. Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Testimony, p. 850 (Richardson); O. R.,Ser. I, Vols. X and XVI,passim; Brewer, “Alabama,” pp. 319, 348.Accounts of eye-witnesses.

[70] O. R., Ser. I, Vol. X, Pt. II, pp. 167, 168, 174 (May, 1862); forClemens and Lane, seeCh. III, sec. 4.

[72] Brewer, p. 485,et passim; Miller, p. 125; O. R., Ser. I, Vol.XXXIII, Pt. III, pp. 750-751.

[73] Gen. D. S. Stanley to Gen. William D. Whipple, Feb., 1865; O. R.,Ser. I, Vol. XLIX, Pt. I, p. 718.

[74] Clanton’s report, March, 1864; O. R., Ser. I, Vol. XXXIII, Pt. III,p. 718.

[79] O. R., Ser. I, Vol. XVI, Pt. I, pp. 841, 839; Wyeth, “Life ofForrest,” pp. 111-113.

[83] The Andrews raiders in Georgia were hanged as spies for being dressed“in the promiscuous southern style.”

[84] Wyeth, “Life of Forrest,” pp. 185-222; Mathes, “General Forrest,” pp.109-127; Miller, Ch. 32.

[87] After completion at Selma theTennessee was taken down the river todefend Mobile. It was found, even after removing her armament, that thevessel could not pass the Dog River bar, and timber was cut from theforests up the river and “camels” made with which to buoy up the heavyvessel. By accident these camels were burned and more had to be made. Atlast the heavy ram was floated over the bar. Of course the newspapersharshly criticised those in charge of theTennessee. Maclay, “History ofthe United States Navy,” Vol. II, p. 448.

[88] Brewer, p. 389; Scharf, “Confederate Navy,” Ch. 18; Miller, pp.205-206.

[90] Some of the Confederate gunboats were sunk (Huntsville andTuscaloosa), and Commander Farrand surrendered twelve gunboats in theTombigbee. All of these had been built at Mobile, Selma, and in theTombigbee.

[92] It was intended that Wilson should raid to and fro all throughcentral Alabama. His men were armed with repeating carbines; his train of250 wagons was escorted by 1500 unmounted men who secured mounts as theywent farther into the interior. Greeley, Vol. II, p. 716.

[94] April 5 Cahaba was captured by a part of Wilson’s force and twentyFederal prisoners released from the military prison at that place. Theyreported that they had been well treated.—N. Y. Herald, April 29, 1865.

[96] Parsons’s Cooper Institute Speech inN. Y. Times, Nov. 27, 1865;Trowbridge, “The South,” pp. 435, 440. Accounts of eye-witnesses.

[98] Hardy, “History of Selma,” p. 51; Miller, “Alabama,” pp. 221-226;Parsons, speeches inN. Y. Times, Nov. 27, 1865, Apr. 20, 1866;N. YHerald, May 4, and Apr. 6, 1865;Montgomery Advertiser, July 14, 1867;Wilson’s Report, June 29, 1865;Selma Times, Feb. 13, 1866; “Our Womenin War Times,” p. 277; Greeley, Vol. II, p. 719; Wyeth, “Life of Forrest,”pp. 604-607; “Northern Alabama,” p. 655.

[99] Hardy, “History of Selma,” p. 52, says four regiments were organized,and the others were driven away.

[102]N. Y. World, May 1 and July 18, 1865;N. Y. Herald, May 4 and15, and June 17, 1865; Brewer, p. 512; Greeley, Vol. II, p. 720.

[103]N. Y. Daily News, May 29, 1865;Century Magazine, Nov., 1889;Transactions Ala. Hist. Soc., Vol. IV, p. 449.

[109] Brewer, p. 188et passim; Miller, p. 179; O. R., Ser. I, Vol.XXIII, Pt. I, pp. 245-249.

[113]N. Y. Herald, May 4 and 15, 1865; theWorld, May 1, 1865; theTimes, April 20, and Nov. 2, 1865;Montgomery Advertiser, July 14,1867;Selma Times, Feb. 13, 1866; Wilson’s Report, June 29, 1865: Hardy,“History of Selma,” pp. 46, 51.

[115] Hague, “Blockaded Family,”passim; Riley, “Baptists in Alabama,”pp. 304, 305; “Our Women in the War,” p. 275et seq.; Riley, “History ofConecuh County,” p. 173.

[116] Miller, “History of Alabama,” p. 359; Brewer, “History of Alabama,”pp. 68, 69; Transactions Ala. Hist. Soc., Vol. II, p. 188.

[117] Miller, “History of Alabama,” p. 360; Colonel Moore’s article in theLouisville Post, May 30, 1900.

[119] For other estimates, see Livermore, “Numbers and Losses,” and Curry,“Civil History of the Confederate States,” pp. 152, 153.

[123] Miller, “Alabama,” Appendix; Report of Col. E. D. Blake, Supt. ofSpecial Registration, in O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. III, pp. 102, 103; Brewer,“Alabama,” see “Regimental Histories.”

[124] O. R., Ser. I, Vol. III, pp. 440, 445; Brewer, “Alabama.” Severalcommands were equipped at the expense of the commanders; others wereequipped by the communities in which they were raised; one old gentleman,Joel E. Matthews of Selma, gave his check for $15,000 to the state,besides paying for the outfitting of several companies of soldiers.“Northern Alabama Illustrated,” p. 661.

[126] General Lee protested against this practice as preventing the properrecruitment of the armies. Livermore, “Numbers and Losses in the CivilWar,” p. 12.

[128] See summary of Confederate legislation on the subject. Livermore, p.30. The purpose of these laws was to discourage the formation of newcommands. It was not effective in Alabama.

[129] These were the infantry regiments numbered 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11,12, 13, 14, 15, 41, 44, 48.

[131] The infantry regiments numbered 43, 47, 49, 61. Brewer, “RegimentalHistories.”

[132] These were the infantry regiments numbered 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11,12, 13, 14, 15, 41, 44, 48.

[133] When the regiments enlisted for a short time were retained in theservice, the men were allowed to change to other regiments if theydesired, and many did so. These transfers and reënlistments swelled thetotal enrolment of popular regiments.

[134] This has since been the method of estimating the number of soldiersfurnished by Alabama,—each enlistment counting as one man.

[137] The regiments that were united were: 24, 34, and 28; 33 and 38; 32and 58; 23 and 46; 7, 39, 22, and 26-50. All were in Johnston’s armyexcept the 32d and 58th, which were in Taylor’s command. Some of theseregiments were consolidated after only one year’s service; the othersafter less than two years. This indicates a low enrolment. Many companieswere never recruited to the minimum. Three infantry regiments weredisbanded after short service,—1, 2 and 7,—and the men reënlisted inother organizations.

[138] The 62d, 63d, 65th. A thousand to the regiment is a very liberalestimate; 500 is probably more nearly correct, I am told by old soldiers.

[139] Jeff Davis Artillery, Hadaway’s Battery, Jeff Davis Legion, 4thBattalion Infantry, 23d Battalion Infantry.

[140] The 1st, 3d, 8th, 10th, and 15th Confederate regiments of cavalryhad some companies from Alabama.

[144] Not that this deceived the Confederate administration, but the largeestimates sounded well in the governor’s messages, and when there was adispute with Richmond about the quota of the state.

[145] In 1861 and 1862 some regiments enlisted for short terms, some forthree years, some for the war. I have been unable, in more than two orthree cases, to find out the exact term, but there could hardly have beenmore than one reënlistment of an organization.

[146] The 1st, 2d, 7th, 11th, 21st, 25th, 26th-50th, 27th, 29th, 42d,46th, 54th, 55th, 56th, 58th, 59th, 60th, 62d, 65th.

[148] (a) There had been to the end of 1863, 90,857 enlistments inAlabama. Included in these figures were all reënlistments and transfers.

(b) In the summer of 1863 the state took a census of all males fromsixteen to sixty years of age, a total of 40,500 names. These included8835, and later 10,000, exempts, and all the cripples and deadheads in thestate. Since this was six months previous to the report of the 90,857enlistments, there must have been in the latter number many that were onthe former list. See O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. III, pp. 101-103, 1101.

[151] Derry, “Story of the Confederate States”; Southern Hist. Soc.Papers, Vol. VI; Brewer, “Alabama,” “Regimental Histories”; Miller,“History of Alabama,” p. 375; Brown, “History of Alabama,” pp. 238-254.

[154] Riley, “Baptists of Alabama,” p. 305; O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. III, p.1193.

[157] Southern Hist. Soc. Papers, Vol. II, p. 61; Shaver, “History of theSixtieth Alabama,” p. 106; Miller, “History of Alabama,” pp. 359, 374;Brewer, “Alabama,” pp. 586-705; “Confederate Military History”—Alabama;Longstreet, “Manassas to Appomattox”; “Memorial Record of Alabama”(Wheeler’s “Military History”); McMorries, “History of the First AlabamaRegiment.”

[158] Transactions Ala. Hist. Soc., Vol. II, p. 188; also John S. Wise,“End of an Era”; Longstreet, “Manassas to Appomattox.”

[161] Report of the Secretary of War, 1866, Appendix, Pt. I, p. 69; Reportof the Secretary of War (1864-1865), p. 28; Moore, “Rebellion Record,”Vol. VII, p. 45; Miller, p. 360; O. R., Ser. III, Vol. III, pp. 1115,1190, and Vol. IV, pp. 16, 921, 925, 269, 1270; O. R., Ser. II, Vol. V,pp. 589, 570, 626, 627, 716, 946, 947; “Confederate MilitaryHistory”—Alabama.

[164] The 89th, 94th, 95th, etc. See Moore, “Rebellion Record,”Supplement. The highest number of a militia regiment to be found on therecords was the 102d, in Sumter County.

[166] Moore, “Rebellion Record,” Vol. VI; O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. II, pp.253-256.

[167] O. R., Ser. I, Vol. XXXIX, Pts. II and III, pp. 780, 855; Ser. IV,Vol. III, pp. 175, 323.

[168] Act of General Assembly, Aug. 29, 1863, which seems to have followedan act of Congress of similar nature.

[170] O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. III, pp. 172-174, 256, 376. The state supremecourt held the same view.

[175] The 61st, 62nd, and 65th regiments were thus formed, the menbecoming subject to duty under the conscript act, or by volunteering.

[179] Act, Oct. 9, 1862, Pub. Laws, C.S.A., 1st Cong., 2d Sess. Thesedetails were still carried on the rolls of the company.

[180] Act, Oct. 11, 1862, Pub. Laws, C.S.A., 1st Cong., 2d Sess. Theexemption of one white for twenty negroes was called the “twenty-niggerlaw.” One peaceable Black Belt citizen wished to stay at home, but hepossessed only nineteen negroes. His neighbors thought that he ought to goto war, and no one would give, lend, or sell him a slave. Unable topurchase even the smallest negro, he was sadly making preparations todepart, when one morning he was rejoiced by the welcome news that one ofthe negro women had presented her husband with a fine boy. The tale oftwenty negroes was complete, and the master remained at home.

[182] Acts, Dec. 28, 1863, and Jan. 5, 1864, Pub. Laws, C.S.A., 1st Cong.,4th Sess.

[190] Dec. 13, 1864. This was a measure of obstruction, since theConfederate laws did not exempt millers. The legislature elected in 1863contained many obstructionists.

[193]Ex parte Hill,In re Williset al.vs. ConfederateStates—38 Alabama Reports (1863), 429. All over the state at varioustimes men sought to avoid conscription or some certain service under everypretext, sometimes “even resorting to ahabeas corpus before an ignorantjustice of the peace, who had no jurisdiction over such cases.” See O. R.,Ser. I, Vol. XXVI, Pt. II, p. 139; also Governor Shorter to GeneralJohnston. Aug., 1863.

[207] The Conscript Bureau had posts at the following places: Decatur,Courtland, Somerville, Guntersville, Tuscumbia, Fayetteville, Pikeville,Camden, Montgomery, Selma, Lebanon, Pollard, Troy, Mobile, West Point(Ga.), Marion, Greensborough, Blountsville, Livingston, Gadsden, CedarBluff, Jacksonville, Ashville, Carrollton, Tuscaloosa, Eutaw, Eufaula,Jasper, Newton, Clarksville, Talladega, Elyton. O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. III,pp. 819-821.

[209] President Davis visited Mobile in October, 1863, and upon reviewingthe Alabama troops recently raised, was much moved at seeing the youngboys and the old gray-haired men in the ranks before him. See AnnualCyclopædia (1863), p. 8. The A. and I. General of Alabama reported, July29, 1862, that not more than 10,000 conscripts could be secured fromAlabama unless the enemy could be expelled from the Tennessee valley. Inthat case, 3000 more men might be secured. O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. II, p. 21.

[214] C. C. Clay, Jr., to Secretary of War, O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. II, pp.141, 142.

[215] I know of one man who for two years carried his arm in a sling todeceive the enrolling officers. It was sound when he put it into thesling. After the war ended he could never regain the use of it.

A draft from the Home Guards of Selma was ordered to go to Mobile. Theroll was made out, and opposite his name each man was allowed to write hisexcuse for not wishing to go. One cripple, John Smith, wrote, “One leg tooshort,” and was at once excused by the Board. The next man had no excusewhatever, but he had seen how Smith’s excuse worked, so he wrote, “Bothlegs too short,” but he had to go to Mobile. “The Land We Love,” Vol. III,p. 430.

[217] M. J. Saffold, afterward a prominent “scalawag,” escaped service asan “agent to examine political prisoners.” O. R., Ser. II, Vol. VI, p.432.

[218] The list of pardons given by President Johnson will show a number ofthe titles assumed by the exempts. The chronic exempts were skilled in allthe arts of beating out. If a new way of securing exemption werediscovered, the whole fraternity of “deadheads” soon knew of it. In 1864nearly all the exemptions and details made in order to supply theQuartermaster’s Department were revoked, and agents sent through thecountry to notify the former exempts that they were again subject to duty.Before the enrolling officers reached them nearly all of them had secureda fresh exemption, and from a large district in middle Alabama, I havebeen informed by the agent who revoked the contracts, not one recruit forthe armies was secured. Often the exemption was only a detail, and largenumbers of men were carried on the rolls of companies who never saw theircommands. Often a man when conscripted would have sufficient influence tobe at once detailed, and would never join his company. Little attentionwas paid to the laws regarding exemption.

[219] Curry, “Civil History,” pp. 142-148. The wealthy young menvolunteered, at first as privates or as officers; the older men of wealthnearly all became officers, chosen by their men. One company from Tuskegeeowned property worth over $2,000,000.Opelika Post, Dec. 4, 1903.

[224] The law of Feb. 17, 1864, provided for the separate enrolment ofthese two classes, and the enrolling officers interpreted it as requiringseparate service. Such an interpretation would practically prohibit theformation of volunteer commands and would leave the reserves to theenrolling officers to be organized in camp.

[227] O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. III, pp. 821, 848. At this time there were inthe state 1223 officials who had the governor’s certificate of exemption.There were 1012 in Georgia, 1422 in Virginia, 14,675 in North Carolina,and much smaller numbers in the other states. See O. R., Ser. IV, Vol.III, p. 851.

[229] An ex-Confederate related to me his experiences with the conscriptofficers. In 1864 he was at home on furlough and was taken by the“buttermilk” cavalry, carried to Camp Watts, at Notasulga, and enrolled asa conscript, no attention being paid to his furlough. To Camp Watts werebrought daily squads of conscripts, rounded up by the “buttermilk”cavalry. They were guarded by conscripts. When rested, the new recruitswould leave, the guards often going with them. Then another squad would bebrought in, who in a day or two would desert. This soldier came home againwith a discharge for disability. The conscript officials again took him toCamp Watts. He presented his discharge papers; the commandant tore them upbefore his face, and a few days later this soldier with a friend boardedthe cowcatcher of a passing train and rode to Chehaw. The commandant sentguards after the fugitives, who captured the guards and then went toTuskegee, where they swore out, as he said, ahabeas corpus before thejustice of the peace and started for their homes with their papers. Theyfound the swamps filled with the deserters, who did not molest them afterfinding that they too were “deserters.”

[230] 8835 to January, 1864. See report of Colonel Preston, April, 1864,in O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. III, pp. 355, 363. The estimate was based on thecensus of 1860.

[236] G. O., No. 144, Dept. of the Cumberland, Atlanta, Ga., Oct. 4, 1864,War Department Archives. There were other similar cases, but I foundrecord of no other conviction. The “tories” were sometimes in league withthe conscript officers, and sometimes they shot them at sight.

[237] D. P. Lewis of Lawrence, Jeremiah (or Jere) Clemens of Madison, andC. C. Sheets of Winston deserted later.

[238] T. H. Clark, “Railroads and Highways,” in the “Memorial Record ofAlabama,” Vol. I, pp. 322-323.

[239] Smith, Clemens, Jemison, and Bulger, in Smith’s “History and Debatesof the Convention of 1861”; Hodgson, “Cradle of the Confederacy”; Garrett,“Public Men of Alabama.”

[240] See Smith’s “History and Debates of the Convention of 1861”; Nicolayand Hay, “Lincoln,” Vol. III, p. 186.

[241] A. B. Hendren, mayor of Athens and editor of theUnion Banner,wrote in 1861 to Secretary Walker, stating that he had strongly opposedsecession, but was now convinced that it was right; as mayor, he wascommitted to reconstruction, which he no longer favored; he did notproclaim his new sentiments through his paper for fear of pecuniary loss,but people were becoming suspicious of his lukewarm reconstruction spirit.O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. I, pp. 181, 182.

[242] “Northern Alabama Illustrated,” p. 47; Ku Klux Rept. Ala. Test., pp.592, 824; Saunders, “Early Settlers”; Brewer, “Alabama,” p. 65; Garrett,“Public Men”; Miller, “Alabama”; Nicolay and Hay, Vol. III, p. 186;DuBose, “Life of Yancey,” pp. 562, 563.

The non-slaveholders in the Black Belt appear to have been moredissatisfied than those of the white counties at the outbreak of the war.May 13, 1861, William M. Brooks, who had presided over the secessionconvention, wrote from Perry County to President Davis in regard to thebad effect of the refusal to accept short-time volunteers. He said thatthough there were 20,000 slaves in Perry County, most of the whites werenon-slaveholders. Some of the latter had been made to believe that the warwas solely to get more slaves for the rich, and many who had no love forslaveholders were declaring that they would “fight for no rich man’sslave.” The men who had enlisted were largely of the hill class, poorfolks who left their work to go to camp and drill. Here, while their cropswasted, they lost their ardor, and when they heard that their one-yearenlistment was not to be accepted, they began to murmur. They were made tobelieve by traitors that a rich man could enter the army for a year andthen quit, while they had to enlist for the war. O. R., Ser. IV, Vol.VIII, pp. 318-319.

Horace Greeley in theTribune was reported to have said: Largeslaveholders were not secessionists, they resisted disunion; those who hadmuch at stake hesitated a long while; it was not a “slaveholders’rebellion”; it was really a rebellion of the non-slaveholders resident inthe strongholds of slavery, springing from no love of slavery, but fromthe antagonism of race and the hatred of the idea of equality with theblacks involved in simple emancipation.—Ku Klux Rept., p. 519. There is abasis of truth in this.

[244] North Alabama before the war was overwhelmingly Democratic and wascalled “The Avalanche” from the way it overran the Whiggish counties ofthe southern and central sections. This was shown in the convention, whererepresentation was based on the white vote. Since the war representationin the conventions is based on population, and the Black Belt hascontrolled the white counties. “Northern Alabama Illustrated,” pp. 251,756. See also DuBose, “Yancey,” p. 562.

[245] Professor George W. Duncan of Auburn, Ala., and many others havegiven me information in regard to the people in that section. See also H.Mis. Doc. No. 42, 39th Cong., 1st Sess.;N. Y. Tribune, Nov. 14, 1862.

[246] O. R., Ser. I, Vol. III, p. 249. For much information concerning theconditions in north Alabama during the war, I am indebted to Professor O.D. Smith of the Alabama Polytechnic Institute, a native of Vermont who wasthen a Confederate Bonded Treasury Agent and travelled extensively overthat part of the country.

[247] Reid, “After the War,” pp. 348-350; Saunders, “Early Settlers,” pp.115, 164; Jones, “A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary,” Vol. I, pp. 182, 208.

[250] Moore, “Anecdotes, Poetry, and Incidents of the War,” p. 215(Letters from the chaplain of Streight’s regiment); O. R., Ser. I, Vol.XVI, Pt. I, pp. 124, 785 (Streight’s Report); Miller, “Alabama”; Jones,“Diary,” Vol. I, pp. 182-208.

[258] The official statement of the War Department. See also “ConfederateMilitary History,” Vol. XII, p. 502.

[263] O. R., Ser. I, Vol. XXXII, Pt. I, p. 671, and Vol. XXXIII, Pt. III,pp. 570, 683, 856.

[266] Somers, “The Southern States since the War,” p. 135;MontgomeryAdvertiser, Aug. 17, 1902;N. Y. Tribune, Feb. 10, 1865; Freemantle,“Three Months in the Southern States.”

[268] Freemantle, “Three Months in the Southern States,” p. 141, quotedfrom a local newspaper; accounts of eye-witnesses.

[272] This correspondent defined a “unionist” or “loyalist” as one trulydevoted to the Union and who had never wavered, thus excluding fromconsideration those who had gone with the Confederacy and later becomedisappointed.Boston Journal, Nov. 15, 1864;N. Y. Herald, April 7,1864;The Tribune, Nov. 14, 1862;N. Y. Times, Nov. 23, 1862; Tharin,“The Alabama Refugee.”

[274] Information in regard to affairs in southeast Alabama during the warI have obtained from relatives (all of whom were “Union” men before thewar) and from neighbors who were acquainted with the conditions in thatsection of the country.

[279] Joint Resolution, Oct. 7, 1864. J. J. Seibels proposed to raise aregiment for state defence of men under and over military age. He wanted,also, to get the skulkers who could not otherwise be obtained. O. R., Ser.IV, Vol. II, p. 604.

[280] O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. III, pp. 1042, 1043 (Solicitor James N.Arrington and Attorney-General M. A. Baldwin).

[281] Clemens was a cousin of “Mark Twain.” He was fond of drink, and oncewhen William L. Yancey asked him not to drink so much, he answered that hewas obliged to drink his genius down to a level with Yancey’s.

[283] O. R., Ser. I, Vol. X, Pt. II, pp. 167, 168, 174, 178. Clemens hadbeen captain, major, and colonel of the Thirteenth United States Infantry.From 1849 to 1853 he was United States Senator. He died in Philadelphia afew years after the war. Garrett, “Public Men of Alabama,” pp. 176-179.

[287] “Northern Alabama Illustrated,” p. 327; Acts of Alabama, 1862, p.225; Moore, “Anecdotes, Poetry, and Incidents of the War,” p. 215.

[288] Lewis became the second “Radical” or scalawag governor of Alabama,serving from 1872 to 1874. Miller, “Alabama,” pp. 260, 261; Brewer,“Alabama,” p. 368.

[291] It is a notable fact that among the disaffected persons ofprominence there were none of the old Whigs, or Bell and Everett men.Nearly all were Douglas Democrats. The Bell and Everett people soconducted themselves during the war that afterwards they were ascompletely disfranchised and out of politics as were the BreckenridgeDemocrats. The work of reconstruction under the Johnson plan fell mainlyto the former Douglas Democrats and the lesser Whigs.

[292] Report of the Secretary of War, 1865, Vol. I, p. 45; “ConfederateMilitary History,” Vol. XII, p. 501.

[293] Report of the Secretary of War, Vol. I, p. 45; “Confederate MilitaryHistory,” Vol. XII, p. 501.

[294] I am indebted to old soldiers for descriptions of conditions innorth and west Alabama before and following Taylor’s surrender. All agreein their accounts of the conditions in Alabama and Mississippi at thattime.

[295] These estimates are based on half a hundred other estimates madeduring the war by state, Confederate, and Federal officials, and by otherobservers, and from estimates made by persons familiar with conditions atthat time. They are rather too small than too large. O. R., Ser. IV, Vols.I to IVpassim.

[299] See DuBose, “Yancey,” pp. 566, 567, and Brewer and Garrett under thenames of the above.

[305] A “bomb-proof” was a person who secured a safe position in order tokeep out of service in the field. A “feather bed” was one who stayed athome with good excuse,—a teacher, agriculturist, preacher, etc., who hadonly recently been called to such profession.

[306] By act of the legislature soldiers in the field were to vote, but noinstance is found of their having done so.

[307] See Hannis Taylor, “Political History of Alabama,” in “MemorialRecord of Alabama,” Vol. I, p. 82.

[308] Jones, “A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary,” Vol. I, pp. 250, 335, 391;Schwab, “Confederate States,” p. 210; Garrett, p. 385; Brewer, p. 411.

[310] Annual Cyclopædia (1862), p. 9; Schwab, “Confederate States,” pp.195, 196; Brewer, 127; Garrett, pp. 722, 724. Seeinfra, p.97.

[311] Shorter’s Proclamation, Dec. 22, 1862, in Moore, “Rebellion Record,”Vol. IV, and above, p. 88.

[312] Annual Cyclopædia (1863), p. 6; O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. II, p. 126;Brewer, pp. 66, 126, 460; Garrett, p. 722; Hannis Taylor, in “MemorialRecord of Alabama,” p. 82.

[314] Annual Cyclopædia (1863), p. 7. Francis Wayland, Jr., in a “Letterto a Peace Democrat” in theAtlantic Monthly, Dec., 1863, quotesGovernor Watts as saying immediately after he had been elected: “If I hadthe power I would build up a wall of fire between Yankeedom and theConfederate States, there to burn for ages.” See also O. R., Ser. IV, Vol.I, p. 120; McMorries, “History of the First Alabama Regiment of Infantry.”

[315] O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. III, pp. 37, 463, 466, 817, 820. See alsoabove, pp.97,103,104.

[320] The “Confederate Military History” states that in 1864 the peoplehoped for terms of peace, believing that Democratic successes in thenorthern elections would result in an armistice, and later reconstruction;that the people were always ready to go back to the principles of 1787,and it was believed that Davis was willing, but that the unfavorableelections of 1864 and the military interference by the Federaladministration in the border states killed this constitutional peaceparty. See Vol. I, pp. 505, 537.

[321] Williamson R. W. Cobb of Jackson County, a very popular politician,a member of the 36th Congress, met his first defeat in 1861, when acandidate for the Confederate Congress. In 1863 he was successful over theman who had beaten him in 1861. After the election, if not before, he wasin constant communication with the enemy and went into their lines severaltimes. The Congress expelled him by a unanimous vote. It was rumored thatPresident Lincoln intended to appoint him military governor, but he killedhimself accidentally in 1864. Cobb was a “down east Yankee” who had comeinto the state as a clock pedler. He had no education and little realability, but was a smooth talker and was master of the arts of thedemagogue. In political life he was famed for shaking hands with the men,kissing the women, and playing with the babies. At a Hardshellfoot-washing he won favor by carrying around the towels, in strikingcontrast with his Episcopalian rival, who sat on the back bench. Cobb wasfor the Confederacy as long as he thought it would win; when luck changed,he proceeded to make himself safe. After his desertion he lost influenceamong the people of his district. See Brewer, pp. 286, 287; McPherson, pp.49, 400, 402, 411.

[322] O. R., Vol. II, p. 726 (W. T. Walthall, commandant of conscripts forAlabama, Talladega, Aug. 6, 1863). In the fall of 1864 a secret peacesociety was discovered in southwest Virginia, North Carolina, andTennessee. O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. III, pp. 802-820.

[326] The 61st Alabama Regiment was composed largely of conscripts underveteran officers. It was evidently at first called the 59th. Brewer, p.673.

[328] The 57th Alabama Regiment was recruited in the counties of Pike,Coffee, Dale, Henry, and Barbour. See Brewer, p. 669.

[330] O. R., Ser. I, Vol. XXVI, Pt. II, p. 556. The 59th Alabama Regimentwas formed from a part of Hilliard’s Legion. Brewer, p. 671.

[332] O. R., Ser. I, Vol. XXVI, Pt. II, p. 556; Brewer, “Alabama,” p. 671.It may be that the 59th Regiment here spoken of as consolidated was notthe 59th under the command of Bolling Hall, but was merely the firstnumber given to the regiment, which later became the 61st. See Brewer, pp.671, 673. However, the society existed in Bolling Hall’s regiment.

[333] See Nicolay and Hay, “Lincoln,” Vol. VIII, pp. 410-415; McPherson,“Rebellion,” pp. 320-322.

[334] O. R., Ser. I, Vol. XXXIII, Pt. III, pp. 682, 683, and Vol. XXII,Pt. I, p. 671; Ser. IV, Vol. III, pp. 393-397. A fuller account of thePeace Society will be found in theSouth Atlantic Quarterly, July, 1903.Some of the prominent leaders in the Peace Society were said to be: LewisE. Parsons, later provisional governor, said to be the head of it; Col. J.J. Seibels of Montgomery; R. S. Heflin, state senator from RandolphCounty; W. W. Dodson, William Kent, David A. Perryman, Lieut.-Col. E. B.Smith, W. Armstrong, and A. A. West, of Randolph County; Capt. W. S.Smith, Demopolis; L. McKee and Lieut. N. B. DeArmon.

General James H. Clanton testified in 1871 that while in the Alabamalegislature during the war L. E. Parsons, afterwards governor, introducedresolutions invoking the blessings of heaven on the head of JeffersonDavis and praying that God would spare him to consummate his holypurposes. Jabez M. Curry charged Parsons with being a “reconstructionist”during the war, that is, with being disloyal to the government. Parsonshad two young sons in the Confederate army, and one of them was soindignant at the charge against his father that he shot and wounded Curry.Dr. Ware of Montgomery afterwards made the same charge. Ku Klux Rept.,Ala. Test., p. 234.

[335] See O. R., Ser. I, Vol. XLIX, Pt. I, p. 718. “Confederate MilitaryHistory,” Vol. I, pp. 505, 509, 511, 512, 537.

[336] A Douglas Democrat, a Douglas elector, and a strong secessionist,who had deserted to the enemy. Brewer, p. 364.

[337]N. Y. Times, Feb. 14, 1864; Annual Cyclopædia (1864), pp. 10, 11;N. Y. Daily News, April 16, 1864, from Columbus (Ga.) Sun.

[340]N. Y. Times, March 24, 1864;N. Y. World, March 28, 1864.Busteed was a newly appointed Federal judge who afterward became notoriousin “carpet-bag” days. He succeeded George W. Lane in the judgeship.

[341] There were several regular, reliable correspondents in northAlabama, for the New York, Boston, and Chicago papers. Their accounts arecorroborated by the reports made later by Confederate and Federalofficials.

[342] At this time Bulger was in active service. See Brewer, “Alabama,”pp. 548, 660; “Confederate Military History”—Alabama, see Index. Bradleywas a north Alabama man who had gone over to the enemy to save hisproperty. This was his chief claim to notoriety. He became a prominent“scalawag” later.

[343]N. Y. Herald, Nov. 29, 1864;N. Y. Times, Feb. 10, 1865;BostonJournal, Nov. 15, 1864;The World, March 28, 1864, Feb. 11, 1865; O.R., Ser. I, Vol. XLIX, Pt. I, pp. 590, 659.

[345] Letter from Giers at Decatur, Jan. 26, 1865; O. R., Ser. I, Vol.XLIX, Pt. I, pp. 590, 718. See also Report of Joint Committee onReconstruction, Pt. III, pp. 13-15, 60, 64.

[347] Judging from the correspondence of Giers, the plan had the approvalof General Grant.

[350] Davis, “Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government,” Vol. I, p.471; O. R., Ser. I, Vol. III, p. 440.

[351] Miller, “History of Alabama,” p. 158; Davis, “ConfederateGovernment,” Vol. I, p. 476; O. R., Ser. I, Vol. III, p. 440.

[354] April 16, 1862, Pub. Laws, C.S.A., 1st Cong., 1st Sess.; Governor’sProclamation, March 1, 1862.

[357] O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. III, pp. 986, 987; Davis, Vol. I, p. 480;“Southern Hist. Soc. Papers,” Vol. II, p. 61.

[358] Miller, “History of Alabama,” pp. 180, 181; Davis, Vol. I, pp. 480,481; Hardy, “History of Selma,” pp. 46, 47;N. Y. Times, Nov. 2, 1865(Truman); O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. III, pp. 986, 987. The arsenal wascommanded by Col. J. L. White; the naval foundries and the rolling millswere under the direction of Capt. Catesby ap Roger Jones, the designer oftheVirginia; Commodore Ebenezer Farrand superintended the constructionof war vessels at the Selma navy-yard. Captain Jones cast the heavyordnance for the forts at Mobile, Charleston, and Wilmington. Fivegunboats were built at Selma in 1863 and two or three others in 1864-1865.The ramTennessee, built in 1863-1864, was constructed like theVirginia, but was an improvement except for the weak engines. When thekeel of theTennessee was laid, in the fall of 1863, some of the timbersto be used in her were still standing in the forest, and the iron for herplates was ore in the mines. Scharf, “Confederate Navy,” pp. 50, 534, 550,555; “Northern Alabama Illustrated,” p. 654; Maclay, “History of UnitedStates Navy,” Vol. II, pp. 446, 447; Wilson, “Ironclads in Action,” Vol.I, p. 116.

[365] One of the most valuable of these caves was the “Santa Cave.” See O.R., Ser. IV, Vol. II, pp. 29, 102.

[368] In 1861 the War Department gave Leonard and Riddle of Montgomery anorder for 60,000 pounds of nitre, and a company near Larkinsville in northAlabama was making 700 pounds a day, which it sold to the government at 22to 35 cents a pound. O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. I, p. 556.

[369] April 17, 1862. Pub. Laws, C.S.A., 1st Cong., 1st Sess.; Acts ofAla., Dec. 7, 1861, and Dec. 2, 1862; O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. III, pp. 195,698, 702, 987; Davis, Vol. I, pp. 316, 473, 477; Miller, pp. 201, 230;Schwab, “Confederate States,” p. 270; Annual Cyclopædia (1862), p. 9; LeConte’s “Autobiography,” p. 184.

Troops were to be carried for 2½ to 3½ cents a mile per man. O. R.,Ser. IV, Vol. II, p. 276.

[376] Charles T. Pollard, president of the Montgomery and West Point R.R.,who ran his road under direction of the government, reported, April4, 1862, that he had placed the whole line between Montgomery and Selmaunder contract, and that it would be completed within the year if ironcould be obtained. He thought the road between Selma and Meridian ought tobe completed at once. O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. I, pp. 10, 48. On Sept. 14,1864, it was reported that the grading was finished on the road betweenMontgomery and Union Springs, but that no iron could be obtained. O. R.,Ser. IV, Vol. III, p. 576.

[378] On April 4, 1862, the Secretary of War wrote to A. S. Gaines thatthe road from Selma to Demopolis had been completed; from Demopolis toReagan, a distance of 24 miles, a part of the grading had been done; whilethe road from Reagan to Meridian, a distance of 27 miles, had been graded,bridged, and some iron had been laid. O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. I, pp.1048-1049, 1061. Gaines stated, April 24, 1852, that on the Mississippiend of the road the road was completed to within 8 miles of Demopolis,Ala., and was being built at the rate of 3 miles a week. Connection wasmade by boat to Gainesville, within 2 miles of which a spur of the Mobileand Ohio, 21 miles long, had been completed. O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. I, p.1089.

[381] O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. II, pp. 144-145; Vol. III, p. 312;Stats.-at-Large, Prov. Cong., C.S.A., Feb. 15, 1862; Pub. Laws, C.S.A.,1st Cong., 1st Sess., April 7 and Oct. 2, 1862.

[385] Governor Moore to Sec. L. P. Walker, July 2, 1861, O. R., Ser. IV,Vol. I, p. 493; Somers, p. 136.

[389] Le Conte states that in 1863 he found the only Bessemer furnace inthe Confederacy at Shelbyville; it was the first that he had ever seen.“Autobiography,” pp. 184-185. It was probably the first in America.

[391] Miller, pp. 179, 180, 181, 193; Davis, Vol. I, p. 481;MontgomeryAdvertiser, July 14, 1867;N. Y. Herald, May 15, 1865.

[393] This act authorized the governor to lease the salt springs belongingto the state and to require the lessee to sell salt at 75 cents a bushelat the salt works. The state paid 10 cents a bushel bounty and advanced$10,000 to the salt maker. Acts, Nov. 11 and Nov. 19, 1861.

[394] One private maker with one furnace and from 15 to 20 hands made 60bushels a day. Another, with 15 hands, burning 5 cords of wood, made 36bushels a day. There were also many other private salt makers.

[395] Ball, “Clarke County,” pp. 645-649, 765; “Our Women in War,” p. 275et seq.

[398] Miller, “Alabama,” pp. 156, 167, 230; Hague, “Blockaded Family”;“Our Women in War,” pp. 267, 268.

[400]American Cyclopædia (1864), p. 10;N. Y. Times, April 15, 1864.To show the character of the white laborers employed in the salt works: inreconstruction days, a prominent negro politician told how, when a slave,he had to keep accounts, and read and write letters for the whites at thesalt works, who were very ignorant people.

[401] Later the Southern Express Company, which is still in existence. Itwas the southern division of the Adams Express Company.

[403] Miller, pp. 179, 180, 181, 193; Davis, Vol. II, p. 481;MontgomeryAdvertiser, July 14, 1867;N. Y. Herald, May 15, 1865; Acts of theGeneral Assembly of Alabama, 1861-1864,passim. The Freedman’s Bureauwas largely supported by sales of the remnants of iron works, etc.

[406] In his message of Oct. 25, 1861, Governor Shorter made a reportshowing that the finances of the state for 1861 were in good condition,and advised against levying a tax on the people to pay the state’s quotaof the Confederate tax. He stated that the banks had done good service tothe state; that, though in time of peace they were a necessary evil, nowthey were a public necessity; that all the money used to date by the statein carrying on the war had come from the banks. O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. I,pp. 697-700.

[407] O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. I, pp. 697-699; Acts of Gen. Assembly, Feb. 2,Nov. 27 and 30, and Dec. 7 and 9, 1861; Patton’s Message, Jan. 16, 1866.

[408] Ordinance No. 33, amending sections 1373, 1375, 1393, of the Code,March 16, 1861.

[409] In 1861 two banks were chartered, two in 1862, five in 1863, and twoin 1864. Several of these were savings-banks.

[411] Schwab, p. 302; Davis, Vol. I, p. 495; Journal of the Convention of1865, p. 61; Acts of Ala., Jan. 29, Feb. 6 and 8, Dec. 10, 1861;Stats.-at-Large, Prov. Cong., C. S. A., Feb. 8, 1861; Miller, “Alabama,”pp. 152, 157.

[412] Journal of the Convention, 1865, p. 61; Acts of Ala., Nov. 8, Dec.4, 8, and 9, 1862; Miller, p. 168.

[413] Jour. of the Convention of 1865, p. 61; Acts of Ala., Aug. 29, Dec.8, 1863; Miller, pp. 186, 189.

[420] Acts of Ala.,passim. Notes of the state and of state banks werehoarded, while Confederate notes were distrusted. Pollard, “Lost Cause,”p. 421.

[421] Acts of Ala., Nov. 9, 1861; Schwab, p. 8. It was considered a matterof patriotism to invest funds in Confederate securities. Not many otherinvestments offered; there was little trade in negroes. Pollard, “LostCause,” p. 424.

[424] Clark, “Finance and Banking,” in the “Memorial Record of Alabama,”Vol. I, p. 341. Statement of J. H. Fitts.

[426] Jones, “Diary,” Vol. I, p. 114. North Carolina alone had contributedmore—$325,000.

[429] The state authorities considered it inexpedient to levy heavierstate taxes. The people had always been opposed to heavy state taxes, butpaid county taxes more willingly. So the gift of $500,000 to theConfederate government in 1861 and the $2,000,000 war tax of the same yearwere assumed by the state, and bonds were issued. Stats.-at-Large, Prov.Cong., C.S.A., Feb. 8, 1861; Acts of Ala., Nov. 27, 1861.

[441] Fitzgerald Ross, “Cities and Camps of the Confederate States,” pp.237, 238.

[446] O. R., Ser. II, Vol. III, p. 933; G. O., 86, A. and I. G. Office,Richmond, Dec. 12, 1864; Miller, pp. 198, 199; Beverly, “History ofAlabama,”; A. C. Gordon, inCentury Magazine, Sept., 1888; David Dodge,inAtlantic Monthly, Aug., 1886.

[448] A conference of impressment commissioners met in Augusta, Ga., Oct.26, 1863. Among those present were Wylie W. Mason, of Tuskegee, Ala., andRobert C. Farris, of Montgomery, Ala. See O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. II, pp.898-906.

[449] Schwab, p. 202; Saunders, “Early Settlers.” Schedules were printedin all the newspapers, and many have been reprinted in the OfficialRecords.

[450] Jones, “Diary,” Vol. I, p. 194; Miller, “Alabama,” pp. 198, 199;Pollard, “Lost Cause,” pp. 487-488.

[453] Pub. Laws, C.S.A., 2d Cong., 1st Sess., June 14, 1864; Saunders,“Early Settlers.”

[458] Stat.-at-Large, Prov. Cong., 2d Sess.; McPherson, “Rebellion,” pp.203, 204. European merchants and capitalists also had a large trade withthe South when the war broke out, and thus sustained great losses. Theyhad made large advances to southern planters and merchants, and were alsointerested in property in the South. Proceeds were remitted to foreigncreditors or owners in Confederate or state currency or bonds for therewas no other form of remittance. Robertson, “The Confederate Debt andPrivate Southern Debts” (English pamphlet).

[459] McPherson, “Rebellion,” pp. 203, 204; Acts of Prov. Cong., Aug. 30,1861; Benjamin’s “Instructions to Receivers,” Sept. 12, 1861.

[463] Two years after the passage of the Sequestration Law its entireproceeds in the Confederacy amounted to less than $2,000,000. Pollard,“Lost Cause,” p. 220.

[464] Suspension of specie payments had been made in order to prevent adrain on the banks. The Confederate government took possession of some ofthe coin, while much was used in the contraband and blockade trade. Allthis contributed to discredit Confederate paper currency. Pollard, “LostCause,” p. 421. In May, 1862, General Beauregard seized $500,000 in coinfrom a bank in Jackson, Ala. The coin belonged to a New Orleans bank andhad been sent out to prevent confiscation by Butler. Confederate money wasalmost worthless at Mobile in 1864, while in the interior of the state itstill had a fair value.

[465] Confederate paper held up well in 1861 and 1862, though prices werevery high. The people were opposed to fixing a depreciated value toConfederate money, but they were forced to do so by speculators. The moneywas worth more the farther away from Richmond, though comparison with goldshould not be made, as gold was scarce, and prices in gold fell. Board,which formerly cost $2 a day, could now be had for fifty cents in gold.Gold was not a standard of value, but an article of commerce with afictitious value. Pollard, “Lost Cause,” p. 425.

[466] Clark, “Finance and Banking Memorial Record,” Vol. I, p. 341; “TwoMonths in the Confederate States by an English Merchant,” pp. 111, 115;DeBow’s Review for 1866.

[472] Hague, “Blockaded Family,”passim; “Our Women in the War,”passim; Jacobs, “Drug Conditions.”

[474] Miller, p. 232. A negro went to a conscript camp in 1864 with afifty-cent jug of whiskey. He gave his master a bottleful from the jug,replacing what he had taken out by water. The resulting mixture he soldfor $5 a drink, a drink being a cap-box full. Each drink poured out of thejug was replaced by the same measure of water. In this way he made $300before the mixture was so diluted that the thirsty soldiers would not buy.Related by the negro’s master.

[476]Montgomery Daily Advertiser, April 18, 1865. But for another monthstate money circulated in Montgomery.

[479] In 1860 the South exported $150,000,000 worth of cotton, and Mobilewas the second cotton port of America. Scharf, “History of the ConfederateNavy,” pp. 439, 533. Besides the regular ship channel there were twoshallow entrances to Mobile Bay, through which blockade-runners passed.Soley, “The Blockade and the Cruisers,” p. 134. Regular watercommunication with New Orleans was kept up until 1862 through MississippiSound. Scharf, p. 535; Maclay, “A History of the United States Navy,” Vol.II, p. 445.

[480] Miller, “Alabama,” p. 167; Acts of the Called Sess. (1861), p. 123;Acts of 2d Called and 1st Regular Sess. (1861), pp. 151, 168, 214, 278.

[481] The blockading force before Mobile in 1861 often consisted of onlyone vessel (Soley, p. 134), and the people of Mobile believed that foreignnations would not recognize the blockade as effective. There was anEnglish squadron under Admiral Milne in the Gulf, and on Aug. 4, 1861, theMobile Register and Advertiser said that a conflict between the Englishand United States forces was expected; the English were then to raise theblockade. Scharf, p. 442.

[482] This, however, was not the plan favored by Ex-Gov. A. B. Moore, who,on Feb. 3, 1862, wrote to President Davis stating his belief that thepermission given by the Federal fleet to export cotton was a “Yankeetrick” to get cotton to leave port in order to seize it. He thought thatthe Confederate government should forbid all exportation of cotton untilthe close of the war. “This leaky blockade system should be deprecated asone [in which the parties] are either dupes or knaves and [is] not in theleast calculated to demonstrate the fact that our cotton crops are anecessity to the commerce of the world.” If cotton was not a necessity toEurope, then the sooner the South knew it the better; if it was anecessity, the sooner Europe knew it the better. O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. I,p. 905.

[485] The Confederate War and Treasury Departments required that eachsteamship coming and going should reserve one-half its tonnage forgovernment use. The owners of an outgoing vessel had to make bond toreturn with one-half the cargo for the government and the other half inarticles the importation of which was not prohibited by the Confederategovernment. The Confederate government paid five pence sterling a pound onoutgoing freight, payable in a British port. On return freight £25 a tonwas paid in cotton at a Confederate port. The expenses of oneblockade-runner for one trip amounted to $80,265; while the gross profitswere $172,000, leaving a net gain of $91,735 on the trip. Scharf, pp. 481,485.

[488] See Taylor, “Running the Blockade.” A typical blockade-runner of1862-1864 was a long, low, slender, rakish sidewheel steamer, of 400 to600 tons, about nine times as long as broad, with powerful engines, twinscrews, and feathering paddles. The funnels were short and could belowered to the deck. It was painted a dull gray or lead color, and themasts being very short, it could not be seen more than two hundred yardsaway. When possible to obtain it, anthracite coal was burned, and whenrunning into port all lights were turned out and the steam blown off underwater. Scharf, p. 480; Soley, p. 156; Spears, Vol. IV, p. 55.

[489] “Two Months in the Confederate States by English Merchant,” p. 111;Taylor, “Running the Blockade”; Hague, “A Blockaded Family”; “Our Women inWar,”passim; Jacobs, “Drug Conditions.”

[490] Report of A. Roane, Chief of the Produce Loan Office; Richmond, toSecretary of Treasury Trenholm, Oct. 30, 1864, in H. Mis. Doc., No. 190,44th Cong., 1st Sess.; “Two Months in the Confederate States,” p. 111.

[494] Bancroft. “Seward,” Vol. II, p. 209; Wilson, “Ironclads in Action,”Vol. I, pp. 196-197.

[496] Scharf, p. 446, says that the press and public sentiment wereagainst allowing shipment of cotton to districts or through ports held bythe United States. When in danger of capture the cotton was burned.Pollard states that the Richmond authorities were opposed to allowing anyextensive cotton trade through the lines or through blockaded ports,because it was believed that the Union finances were in bad condition andwould not stand the loss of cotton manufacturing. Moreover, theConfederate authorities were afraid of the demoralization caused bycontraband trade, and also feared that Europe might consider that licensedtrade through ports in possession of the enemy, like New Orleans, was aconfession of the weakness of King Cotton, and would refuse to recognizethe Confederacy. “Lost Cause,” pp. 484-485.

[497] The North was determined to show that cotton was not king, and to dothis it must get all the cotton possible from the South by allowing acontraband trade in which nearly or quite all the profits on the cottonshould be stripped off, leaving only the bare cost to the Confederategovernment or cotton planter. The North was willing that the South shouldsell all its cotton, but the North was to be middleman. Scharf, p. 443;“Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant,” Vol. I, p. 331.

[498] The various proclamations, orders, regulations, and laws affectingcommercial intercourse between the United States and the ConfederateStates will be found in a compilation of the United States TreasuryDepartment entitled “Acts of Congress and Rules and Regulations prescribedby the Secretary of the Treasury, in pursuance thereto, with the approvalof the President, concerning Commercial Intercourse with and in States andparts of States declared in insurrection, Captured, Abandoned, andConfiscable Property, the care of freedmen, and the purchase of productsof insurrectionary districts on government account.” The proclamations ofthe President will be found in the Messages and Papers of the Presidents.See also Sen. Ex. Doc., No. 56, 40th Cong., 2d Sess., and No. 23, 43dCong., 3d Sess., p. 58; Ho. Ex. Doc., No. , 45th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 36;Ho. Mis. Doc., No. 190, 44th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 39. A fuller account ofthe trade regulations is in theSouth Atlantic Quarterly, July, 1905.

[501] The state officials in 1862-1863 planned to exchange cotton fromMississippi and Alabama with the cotton speculators in Tennessee forbacon. Davis opposed (Pollard, p. 481), but, nevertheless, the change wasmade. Along the Tennessee River there was much trading with the enemy. Inorder to conform with the United States regulations forbidding the paymentof coin for Confederate staples, the northern speculator boughtConfederate and state money, often at a high price ($100 gold for $225 inConfederate currency or $120 to $125 in Alabama, Georgia, or SouthCarolina bank-notes), with which to carry on the cotton trade. O. R., Ser.IV, Vol. II, p. 10.

[502] Shorter, who was opposed to contraband trade, complained in July,1862, that the cotton speculators in Mobile had an understanding withButler and Farragut by which salt was allowed to come in and cotton, inunlimited quantities, allowed to go out. O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. II, p. 21.

[506] O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. III, pp. 1180, 1181. Davis probably made hislast official indorsement on this report, Apr. 10, 1865. He forwarded itto the Adjutant and Inspector-General with instructions to look into thematter.

[507] Somers, “The Southern States since the War,” p. 134. General Grant,July 21, 1863, stated that this trade through west Tennessee was injuriousto the United States forces. “Restriction, if lived up to,” he said,“makes trade unprofitable and hence none but dishonest men go into it. Iwill venture to say, that no honest man has made money in west Tennesseein the last year, while many fortunes have been made there during thetime.” So vexed was General Grant with the speculators that, early in1865, he suspended all permits, but within a month he had to remove thesuspensions. Scharf, pp. 443, 446, 447.

[509] Confederate currency was plentiful in the North, where it was madeeven more cheaply than in the South, and the southerners did not noticethe difference.

[513] Jacobs, “Drug Conditions,” p. 7. The Southern Express Company workedin connection with the Adams, of which it had been a part before 1861.

[515] Ho. Repts., 38th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 174. Before this, Samuel Nobleof Rome, Georgia, representing himself as a “loyal” man (he was introducedand vouched for by George W. Quintard), made a contract with a UnitedStates Treasury agent to deliver 250,000 bales of cotton from Alabama,Georgia, Louisiana, and South Carolina. In Alabama at that time he owned800 bales at Selma, 1256 at Mobile, and had much more contracted for. Thecotton was to be delivered at Huntsville, Mobile, and places in theadjoining states. Noble was to get three-fourths of the proceeds,according to the regulations. Ho. Rept., No. 24, 38th Cong., 2d Sess.

[516] Statement of Professor O. D. Smith of Auburn, Ala., who was then aConfederate bonded agent operating in north Alabama.

[518] Letter of Secretary Chase to Hon. E. B. Washburne, in Ho. Mis. Doc.,No. 78, 38th Cong., 1st Sess.

[519] Acts of Gen. Assembly, Nov. 11, 1861. As early as Jan. 14, 1861,Governor Moore reported that the poorest classes were in want and thatmuch suffering, perhaps starvation, would result unless aid were given. O.R., Ser. IV, Vol. I, p. 51. The soldiers’ families were reported to bealmost destitute in April, 1861.Idem, p. 220.

[528] Acts of Gen. Assembly, Oct. 9 and Dec. 9, 1862, and Aug. 29, 1863.Miller, “Alabama,” p. 167.

[534] Act, April 19, 1862, Pub. Laws, C.S.A., 1st Cong., 18th Sess.; Actof Gen. Assembly, Dec. 5, 1863.

[545] Acts of Gen. Assembly, Dec. 8, 1862, Aug. 27 and 29, 1863, and Dec.13, 1864.

[546] Acts of Gen. Assembly, Dec. 8, 1863. There were Confederate soldierswho were paid only twice in two years’ service, and then not enough to buya new uniform. The following incident is related of the 9th AlabamaInfantry: at Chancellorsville some Federals had been captured by theregiment, and as they were being sent back over the field covered withdead Federals, one of the prisoners remarked: “You rebs are sharper thanyou used to be. You used to shoot us anywhere; now you shoot us in thehead so as not to bloody our clothes.” The 9th was a regiment ofsharpshooters from north Alabama. The narrator says that the prisoner wasalluding to “the practice of stripping the dead of their clothing to coverour nakedness.”—“The Land We Love,” Vol. II, pp. 216.

[547] The legislature had offered $200,000 for 50,000 pairs of shoes, butreceived none.

[548] Miller, p. 167; Acts of Gen. Assembly, Dec. 8, 1863; O. R., Ser. IV,Vol. II, pp. 32, 196.

[554] Saunders, “Early Settlers,” p. 206; Hague, “Blockaded Family”;Clayton, “White and Black under the Old Régime”; “Our Women in the War.”

[555] Governor Shorter’s Proclamation, March 1, 1862; Annual Cyclopædia(1862), p. 9.

[556] Annual Cyclopædia (1863), p. 6; Resolution, April 4, 1863, Pub.Laws, 15th Cong., 3d Sess.

[557] A report to Davis in October, 1864, stated that Alabama, Georgia,and Mississippi had been supplying the Confederate armies. Georgia wasexhausted, and Alabama, having sent 125,000 pounds of bacon, could do nomore. Pollard, “Lost Cause,” pp. 648-649. But in remote counties werelarge stores of supplies that could not be moved for want oftransportation facilities.

[567] In September, 1864, Surgeon Richard Potts was instructed to buy allthe apple brandy to be had, at not more than $35 a gallon, but to purchaseas a private individual in order not to have to pay too much. O. R., Ser.IV, Vol. III, p. 682.

[568] Saunders, “Early Settlers of Alabama,” p. 29; O. R., Ser. IV, Vol.I, p. 608.

[569] See also article by C. C. Jones, Jr., inMagazine of AmericanHistory, Vol. XVI, pp. 168-175; J. W. Beverly (colored), “History ofAlabama,” p. 22.

[574] I have known two men who hired negro substitutes to go to the army,and the negroes having been killed in battle, the whites were forced togo.

[575] Beverly, “Alabama,” p. 200; Miller, “Alabama,” pp. 198, 199, 207;Curry, “Civil History,” p. 110; O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. III, p. 933.

[576] John S. Wise, “End of an Era,” pp. 161, 212, speaks of theimpression made by the 3d Alabama before and after the two years’ service.The privates in one company in this regiment paid tax on $3,000,000.

[577] See also Beverly, “Alabama,” p. 200. Several of these oldbody-servants have related their experiences to me.

[578]Sewanee Review, Vol. II, pp. 94-95; Acts of Ala., Nov. 20, 1863,and Resolution of Aug. 29, 1863; Annual Cyclopædia (1865), p. 10.

[579] See also C. C. Jones, Jr., in theMagazine of American History,Vol. XVI, pp. 168-175. When the war ended General (now Senator) Morgan wasrecruiting near Selma for a Confederate negro brigade.

[580] His master was named Godwin. Horace learned to make bridges, andbecame so skilful and was so much in demand that he was set free. Byspecial act of the Alabama legislature he was given civil rights and atonce he became a slave owner. After the war he was in Republican politicsfor a while, but soon went back to bridge-building.

[581] Some masters, like General John B. Gordon, informed their slavesthat the victory of the North meant the freedom of the negroes. See KuKlux Rept., Ga. Test., andSewanee Review, Vol. II, p. 95. I have beentold by ex-slaves that the negroes in the quarters believed from the firstthat their freedom would follow the defeat of the masters, but that fewslaves believed that their masters could be defeated.

[582] The following are some of the various occupations in which slavesrelieved whites: spinners, weavers, dyers, cutters and dressmakers,body-servants, butlers, coachmen, gardeners, carpenters, planters, brickmasons, painters, tanners, shoemakers, harness makers, barrel makers,wheelwrights, blacksmiths, machinists, engineers, millers, seine and sailmakers, and ship carpenters, besides farm occupations. Nearly all of theskilled laborers were negroes. Their industrial capacity was even greaterduring the war than in time of peace. President Winston in Proceedings ofFourth Conference for Education in the South, pp. 40, 41. See also thebooks of Miss Hague, Mrs. Clayton, and Booker T. Washington.

[584] See Mallard, pp. 209, 210; Hague, “Blockaded Family”; Clayton,“White and Black”; “Our Women in War”;Sewanee Review, Vol. II, p. 95.

[585] See Mallard, p. 210;Sewanee Review, Vol. II, pp. 94-95;SouthernMagazine, Jan., 1874.

[586] It has been estimated that one-fourth of the total number of negroeswas not engaged in field labor, but in some kind of service which broughtthem into close relations with the whites. Tillinghast, “Negro in Africaand America,” p. 126. And on the farms and smaller plantations also theblacks knew their “white folks.”

[588] The experiences of Reconstruction showed that the negro had only tofeel the touch of a stronger hand, and, with most of them, the attachmentsof a lifetime were of no force. The negro was as wax in the hands of astronger race. Hence the influence of the carpet-baggers, who were for atime the stronger power.

[589] Harrison, “Gospel among the Slaves,” pp. 299, 300; McTyeire, “AHistory of Methodism”; Riley, “Baptists in Alabama”; Mallard, “PlantationLife,” p. 74et seq. W. H. Thomas (colored), “American Negro,” pp. 41,149, gives as reasons why the slaves did not revolt during the war: (1)genuine affection for the whites; (2) the desire on the part of the negroto do the duty intrusted to him; (3) and most important—the supreme andall-pervading influence of religion. The mission work among the negroeswas kept up all during the war. Harrison, pp. 292-300; Tichenor, “Work ofSouthern Baptists among the Negroes” (pamphlet).

[590] Harrison, pp. 299, 300. For general information in regard to thenegroes during the war, consult Beverly (colored), “Alabama,” pp. 201,202; Miller, “Alabama,” pp. 142-157; Mallard, “Plantation Life”;Washington, “Up from Slavery”; Washington, “Future of the American Negro”;Thomas, “The American Negro”; Tillinghast, “Negro in Africa and America”;Hague, “A Blockaded Family”; Clayton, “White and Black under the OldRégime”; Smedes, “Southern Planter”; “Our Women in War.”

[591] W. G. Clark, “Education in Alabama,” pp. 87-92; W. G. Clark, “TheProgress of Education,” in “Memorial Record,” Vol. I, p. 160; Acts, 1stCalled Sess. (1861), p. 56;N. Y. Daily News, May 29, 1865;CenturyMagazine, Nov., 1889. In recent years Congress has made a grant of landsin north Alabama to replace the burned buildings. Rept. Comr. of Ed.,1899-1900, Vol. I, p. 484.

[592] Clark, “Education in Alabama,” pp. 149, 152, 153, 156; “NorthernAlabama Illustrated,” p. 453.

[594] Clark, “Education in Alabama,” pp. 204, 208, 259; Acts, 1st CalledSess. (1861), pp. 67, 70, 82, 113; Acts, 2d Called Sess. and 1st RegularSess., pp. 92, 93, 94; Brewer, “Alabama,” p. 347.

[596] Clark, “Education in Alabama,” pp. 6, 7, 224, 226, 229, 239, 259;Ingle, “Southern Side-Lights,” p. 172.

[597] Pub. Laws, C.S.A., 1st Cong., 1st Sess., April 21, 1862; 1st Cong.,2d Sess., Oct. 11, 1862.

[600] Acts, 2d Called and 1st Regular Sess. (1861), pp. 65, 182, 183, 223,253, 255; Acts of 1863 and 1864,passim.

[601] My chief source of information in regard to the common schoolsduring the war has been the accounts of persons who were teachers andpupils in the schools.

[602] From 1863 to 1865 W. G. Clark and Co. of Mobile, the chiefeducational publishers of the state, brought out a series of five readers,“The Chaudron Series,”—by Adelaide de V. Chaudron, a well-known writer ofMobile. Large numbers were sold. S. H. Goetzel of Mobile published MadameChaudron’s spelling-book, of which 40,000 copies were sold in 1864 and1865. W. G. Clark and Co. printed a revision of Colburn’s MentalArithmetic in 1864. A Mental Arithmetic by G. Y. Browne of Tuscaloosa isdated Atlanta, 1865, but was probably published in North Carolina. In 1864W. G. Clark and Co. announced “A Book of Geographical Questions.” Beforethe close of the war Confederate text-books were quite common in thestate. The series were usually named “Confederate,” “Dixie,” “Texas,”“Virginia,” etc. Stephen B. Weeks, in “A Preliminary Bibliography ofConfederate Text-books” (Rept. of Comr. of Ed., 1898-1899, Vol. I, p.1139), lists 16 primers, 14 spellers, 29 readers, 4 geographies, 1dictionary, 12 arithmetics, 12 grammars, 8 books in foreign languages, 20Sunday-school and religious works, and 10 miscellaneous educationalpublications. Those published in Georgia, North and South Carolina, andVirginia sold largely in Alabama. Few came from the West. See also YatesSnowden, “Confederate Books.”

[604] See Mrs. Clayton, “White and Black,” p. 115, and Hague, “BlockadedFamily.”

[605] See Hague, “A Blockaded Family.” Miss Hague was a teacher in aplantation school during the war.

[606] W. W. Screws, “Alabama Journalism,” in “Memorial Record,” Vol. II,pp. 195, 234.

[607] Screws, pp. 194, 195, 205, 212, 218, 233, 234; Pub. Laws, C.S.A.,1st Cong., 1st Sess., April 21, 1862; 2d Sess., Oct. 11, 1862; YatesSnowden, “Confederate Books.”

[609] See also Yates Snowden, “Confederate Books.” I have examined copiesof most of the books mentioned.

[616] Pub. Laws, C.S.A., 1st Cong., 1st Sess., April 21, 1862, and 2dSess., Oct. 11, 1862.

[619] Rev. J. William Jones, “The Great Revival in the Southern Armies”;Rev. J. William Jones, “Confederate Military History,” Vol. XII, p. 119et seq.; Bennett, “The Great Revival in the Southern Armies”; Alexander,“History of the Methodist Church South,” p. 74.

[620] Hague, “Blockaded Family,” pp. 111, 112, 142; Ball, “Clarke County,”p. 283.

[621] For one instance, see Hague, “Blockaded Family,” p. 141; and forothers, Jones on the “Morale of the Confederate Armies,” in Vol. XII,“Confederate Military History.”

[622] By the Alabama Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church South,there was appropriated for slave missions in the state

Before the separation the planters were not favorably inclined towardMethodist missionaries on account of the attitude of the northern sectionof the church. They preferred the Baptists and Presbyterians, who did mostof their work with the blacks in connection with the white congregations.After the separation, in 1845, there was a greater demand for Methodistmissionaries. Many planters of the Episcopal Church paid the salaries ofBaptist and Methodist missionaries to their slaves, and erected chapelsfor their use. Harrison, “Gospel among the Slaves,” pp. 302, 312, 313,326. In 1860 there were 20,577 negro southern Methodists in Alabama, abouthalf of whom were attached to the white churches and the rest toplantation missions. The number was rapidly increasing. The number ofnegro Baptists was much greater, but there are no exact statistics ofmembership. There were smaller numbers in all the other churches.

[623] The following statistics relate to colored mission work by theMethodists:—

The General Conference raised, in 1862, $93,509.87 for negro missions; in1864, $158,421.96; and, for 1865, $80,000.

[627] Riley, “Baptists of Alabama,” pp. 286, 300; McTyeire, “A History ofMethodism,” p. 671; Tichenor, “The Work of the Baptists among theNegroes.” The war records of the churches show that sometimes the slavesgave more money for church purposes than the whites; for example, in theMethodist church of Auburn, Ala.

[632] SeeGulf States Hist. Mag., Sept., 1902, on “The Churches inAlabama during Civil War and Reconstruction”; O. R., Ser. I, Vol. XLIX,Pt. I, p. 718;Southern Review, April, 1872, p. 414;Boston Journal,Nov. 15, 1864; McTyeire, “A History of Methodism,” p. 673.

[634] See Whitaker’s paper in Transactions Ala. Hist. Soc., Vol. IV, p.211et seq.

[635] Col. Higginson seems to understand the influence of the women, butnot the reason for their interest in public questions. He says: “But forthe women of the seceding states, the War of the Rebellion would have beenwaged more feebly, been sooner ended, and far more easily forgotten....Had the voters of the South been all women, it would have plunged earlierinto the gulf of secession, dived deeper, and come up even morereluctantly.” Higginson, “Common Sense about Women,” pp. 54, 209.Professor Burgess, with a better understanding, explains the reason forthe interest of the women in sectional questions. He says that, after theattempt of John Brown to incite the slaves to insurrection, “especiallydid terror and bitterness take possession of the hearts of the women ofthe South, who saw in slave insurrection not only destruction and death,but that which to feminine virtue is a thousand times worse than the mostterrible death. For those who would excite such a movement or sympathizewith anybody who would excite such a movement, the women of the South felta hatred as undying as virtue itself. Men might still hesitate ... but thewomen were united and resolute, and their unanimous exhortation was: ‘Menof the South, defend the honor of your mothers, your wives, your sisters,and your daughters. It is your highest and most sacred duty.’” Burgess,“Civil War and the Constitution,” Vol. I, p. 42.

[636] “Our Women in War,”passim; Ball, “Clarke County,” pp. 261-274;oral accounts, scrap-books, letters.

[637] One of my acquaintances says that quite often she had only bread,milk, and syrup twice a day. Sometimes she was unable to eat anybreakfast, but after spinning an hour or two she was hungry enough to eat.To many the diet was very healthful, but the sick and the delicate oftendied for want of proper food.

[638] At the close of the war my mother was twelve years old; for morethan two years she had been doing a woman’s task at spinning. Her sisterhad been spinning for a year, though she was only six years old.

[639] Many of the heavier articles woven during the war, such ascoverlets, counterpanes, rugs, etc., are still, after forty years, almostas good as new.

[641] Hague, “Blockaded Family,”passim; Miller, pp. 223-232; “Our Womenin the War,” p. 275et seq.; Clayton, “White and Black under the OldRégime,” pp. 112-149; Porcher, “Resources of the Southern Fields andForests,” pp. 70, 107, 284-295, 351, 372, 657.

[642] Clayton, “White and Black under the Old Régime”; Hague, “BlockadedFamily,”passim; Miller, p. 229; Jacobs, “Drug Conditions,” p. 16; oralaccounts; Porcher,passim.

[646] Jacobs, “Drug Conditions,” pp. 4-6, 12-14, 16-21; Hague, “BlockadedFamily,”passim; “Our Women in the War”; Ball, “Clarke County”; Miller,“Alabama”; Porcher; Pub. So. Hist. Ass’n, March, 1903.

[648] In the early part of the war when a soldier received a slight woundhe was given a furlough for a few weeks until he was well again. Slightwounds came to be called “furloughs,” and some soldiers when particularlyhomesick are said to have exposed themselves unnecessarily in order to geta “furlough.”

[650] See Mrs. Clayton’s “White and Black” in regard to rations fornegroes.

[651] See Acts of Ala., Nov. 28 and 30, 1861, Dec. 9, 1862, and Dec. 8,1863; Transactions Ala. Hist. Soc., Vol. IV, pp. 219et seq.

[652] It was estimated that one-fourth of the people of the state werefurnished for three years with meal and salt.

[654]N. Y. News, March 29, 1864, from theRichmond Whig, from theMobile Evening News; oral accounts. There were numbers of women whoactually cut off their hair, thinking that it could be sold through theblockade. For a while they were hopeful and enthusiastic in regard to theplan of selling their hair.

[655] P. A. Hague’s “Blockaded Family” is the best account of life inAlabama during the war. Mrs. Clayton’s “White and Black under the OldRégime” is very good, but brief. “Our Women in the War” is a valuablecollection of articles by a number of women. Nearly all the incidentsmentioned I have heard related by relatives and friends. “John Holden,Unionist,” by T. C. De Leon, gives a good account of life in the hillcountry. Mary A. H. Gay’s “Life in Dixie during the War” and Miller’s“History of Alabama” give information based on personal experiences.Porcher’s “Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests,” published in1863, is a mine of information in regard to economic conditions in theSouth. Porcher quotes much from the newspapers and from correspondence.The second edition, published in 1867, omits much of the more interestingmaterial.

[656] In his inaugural proclamation of July 20 (or 21), 1865, GovernorParsons gives the following figures:—

N. Y. Times, Aug. 2, 1865;N. Y. Herald, Aug. 11, 1865; Parsons’sMessage, Nov. 22, 1865; Parsons’s Speech at Cooper Institute, Nov. 13,1865.

[660] Southern Hist. Soc. Papers, Vol. XV (Paroles at Appomattox); Miller,“History of Alabama,” p. 233; Brewer, “Regimental Histories.”

[672] The explosion was caused by fire reaching the ordnance stores leftby the Confederate troops. One of the cotton agents claimed that 9000bales of cotton were destroyed for him in the explosion. But thegovernment held otherwise. It was charged, without satisfactory proof,that the cotton agents caused the explosion to cover their shortage.

[675] M. G. Molinari, “Lettres sur les États-Unis et le Canada,” p. 233;Somers, “Southern States,” pp. 181, 183.

[676] Somers, “Southern States,” p. 114; Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 114, 39thCong., 1st Sess.

[677] John Hardy, “History of Selma,” pp. 51, 52; Reid, “After the War,”pp. 211, 214, 222, 371; Miller, “Alabama,” pp. 233-235; Ho. Mis. Doc., No.114, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. (Patton to Congress);N. Y. Times, Nov. 2,Oct. 31, and Aug. 17, 1865; Riley, “History of Conecuh County”; Riley,“Baptists of Alabama,” pp. 304, 305; Brewer, “Alabama,” pp. 65, 69; Brown,“Alabama,” pp. 254, 256; DuBose, “Alabama,” pp. 114, 115; “Our Women inthe War,” p. 277et seq.

[681] Reid, “After the War,” pp. 222, 371; Ball, “Clarke County,” p. 294;Riley, “Baptists of Alabama,” pp. 304-305;N. Y. Times, Oct. 31, 1865;N. Y. Herald, July 23, 1865.

[682] An indignant northern newspaper correspondent appealed to themilitary authorities to check this “rebellious discrimination,” butnothing was done. The railroad officials, as well as all other southernpeople, were now suspicious of paper money.

[683] Ho. Repts., Vol. IV, 39th Cong., 2d Sess., on “Affairs of SouthernRailroads”; Trowbridge, “The South,” p. 451; Reid, “After the War,” p.212; Brewer, “Alabama,” pp. 78, 79; Miller, “Alabama,” pp. 141, 234;N.Y. World, July 18, 1865;Selma Times, Jan. 25 and Feb. 2, 1866;N. Y.Times, Oct. 31, 1865; April 25 and July 2, 1866; Berney, “Handbook ofAlabama”; Hodgson, “Alabama Manual and Statistical Register.”

[684]N. Y. Herald, June 17 and Aug. 30, 1865; Taylor, “Destruction andReconstruction,” pp. 227, 228; Miller, “History of Alabama,” p. 237;McCulloch, “Men and Measures,” p. 235.

[685]N. Y. Herald, July 17 and 20, 1865;N. Y. World, July 20, 1865;N. Y. Times, Aug. 17 and Dec. 27, 1865; Miller, “History of Alabama,”pp. 235, 237; Herbert, “The Solid South,” pp. 18, 19; Ku Klux Rept., Ala.Test., p. 451; oral accounts.

[686] “Our Women in the War,” p. 279; Riley, “Baptists of Alabama,” pp.304, 305. See also Elizabeth McCracken, “The Southern Woman andReconstruction,” in theOutlook, Nov., 1903.

[687] Miller, “History of Alabama,” p. 238; Patton’s Message, Jan. 16,1866.

[695] Reid, “After the War,” pp. 351, 352; Ordinance, No. 43, Sept. 30,1865.

[696]Daily Times, Aug. 17, Nov. 2, and Dec. 27, 1865; Report of CarlSchurz; oral accounts.

[697] Report of the Freedmen’s Bureau, Oct. 24, 1865; Patton’s Message,Jan. 16, 1866; Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Pt. III,p. 140.

[698]N. Y. Times, Oct. 10, 1865. See also Resolutions of Legislature,1865-1866.

[699] Joint Memorial and Resolutions of the General Assembly, in Acts ofAla. (1865-1866), pp. 598-600.

[705] From Ms. account by a citizen of Greensboro. The young man who cameso near hanging was some years later a hotel proprietor in Birmingham andcreated much newspaper discussion by ordering General Sherman to leave hishotel.

[706] See Mrs. Clayton, “White and Black Under the Old Régime,” pp.152-153.

[708]Columbus (Ga.)Sun, Nov. 22, 1865;The World, July 20, 1865;N. Y. Herald, July 23, 1865; Parsons’s Speech, Cooper Institute, Nov.13, 1865; Riley, “Baptists of Alabama,” pp. 305, 307; Ball, “ClarkeCounty,” p. 294; Herbert, “Solid South,” pp. 19, 20; Miller, “History ofAlabama,” Ch. CXLI; oral accounts.

[710]Huntsville Advocate, July 26 and Nov. 9, 1865; McTyeire, “Historyof Methodism”; Riley, “Baptists of Alabama”; conversations with variousnegroes and whites.

[715]Southern Mag., Jan., 1874. Authorities as already noted andDeBow’s Review, March, 1866;Montgomery Advertiser, March 21, 1866;Hardy, “History of Selma,” p. 85;N. Y. Times, Oct. 31, 1865;Huntsville Advocate, Nov. 9, 1865;N. Y. Herald, July 17, 1865;N. Y.News, Sept. 7 and Dec. 4, 1865; Census of 1866 inSelma Times andMessenger, March 24, 1868; Mrs. Clayton, “White and Black,” pp. 152, 153;“Our Women in the War”; Thomas, “The American Negro,” p. 190; Report ofthe Joint Committee, Pt. III, p. 140; B. C. Truman, Report to thePresident, April 9, 1866; Carl Schurz, Report to the President, see Sen.Ex. Doc., No. 2, 39th Cong., 1st Sess.; General Grant, Report to thePresident, Sen. Ex. Doc., No. 2, 39th Cong., 1st Sess.

[717] Protestant Episcopal Freedmen’s Commission, Occasional Papers, Jan.,1866.

[718]N. Y. Times, Aug. 17, 1865, Jan. 25, Feb. 12, and July 2, 1866;N. Y. Herald, June 24, 1866;The Nation, Feb. 15 and April 19, 1866;Reid, “After the War,” pp. 369-371; Reports of Grant, Truman, and Schurz;Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction (Fisk); Herbert, “SolidSouth,” p. 20; Paper by Petrie in Transactions Ala. Hist. Soc., Vol. IV,p. 465.

[720]Montgomery Advertiser, Dec., 1865, and Jan. 31, 1866;N. Y.Times, Oct. 31 and Dec. 27, 1865;N. Y. News, Dec. 4, 1865;N. Y.Herald, Dec., 1865, and Jan. 31, 1866; Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 70, 39th Cong.,1st Sess.; Ho. Mis. Doc., No. 42, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. (W. H. Smith);Sen. Ex. Doc., No. 6, 39th Cong., 2d Sess. (Swayne’s Report); Riley,“Baptists of Alabama,” p. 305; Trowbridge, “The South,” p. 445; Miller,“Alabama,” pp. 228, 229; Somers, “South since the War,” p. 134;Huntsville Advocate, Nov. 23, 1865.

[722] Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 70, 39th Cong., 1st Sess.; Buckley’s Report, Jan.16, 1865; Report of John H. Hurst and A. B. Strickland, Oct. 4, 1865.

[723] Swayne’s Report, Oct. 31, 1866; R. T. Smith to Swayne, Jan. 6, 1866(in Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 70, 39th Cong., 1st Sess.); W. H. Smith, D. C.Humphreys, and J. J. Giers, Memorial to Congress, Ho. Mis. Doc., No. 42,39th Cong., 1st Sess.; Patton’s Message, Jan. 16, 1866.

[725] Ho. Mis. Doc., No. 114, 39th Cong., 1st Sess;NationalIntelligencer, Oct. 2, 1866.

[726]Huntsville Independent, April 3 and 19, 1866;Selma Times, June9, 1866; oral accounts.

[727] W. Garrett to Swayne, Jan. 15, 1866, in Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 70, 38thCong., 1st Sess.

[728]Chicago Tribune, June 2, 1866 (Correspondent at Bellefonte,Jackson County);Huntsville Independent, April 3 and 19, 1866; Reportsof General Swayne, 1865-1866.

[729] March 8, 1867, General Howard of the Freedmen’s Bureau reported thatin Alabama there were 10,000 whites and 5000 blacks in a destitutecondition, and that during the next five months, owing to the failure ofthe crops in 1866, there would be needed 2,250,000 rations valued at$562,500, or 25 cents per ration. Sen. Ex. Docs., No. 1, 40th Cong., 1stSess. Report of Swayne, Oct. 31, 1866; Report of Com. Bureau, Nov. 1,1867; G. O., No. 4, Hq. Dist. of Ala., Montgomery, Oct. 10, 1866.

[731] Swayne’s Report, Nov., 1866; Sen. Ex. Doc., No. 6, 39th Cong., 2dSess.; Reid, “After the War,” p. 221; Freedmen’s Bureau Report, Nov. 1,1866, Nov. 1, 1867, Oct. 2, 1868; and other authorities noted above.

[732] These were general agents, supervising special agents, assistantspecial agents, local special agents, agency aids, aids to the revenue,customs officers, and superintendents of freedmen. Rules and Regulations,July 29, 1864. Ho. Mis. Doc., No. 190, 44th Cong., 1st Sess.

[734] Rules and Regulations, Sec. IX, Treasury Department, May 9, 1865.Renewed by Circular Instructions, May 16, 1865, and in force to June 30,1865. In Alabama the regulation was enforced during the entire summer. Ho.Rept., No. 83, 45th Cong., 3d Sess.

[738] Wilson burned at Selma 32,000 bales, and at Columbus, Ga., 150,000bales, much of which came from Alabama. During the raid he destroyed275,000 bales, 125,000 of which were burned in Alabama. The Confederatesdestroyed at Montgomery 80,000 bales (other accounts say 97,000 and125,000; see Greeley, Vol. II, p. 19). Government cotton was, of course,the first destroyed, and there is no doubt but that nearly all of it wasburned either by the raiders or by the Confederates to prevent its fallinginto the hands of the enemy. Cotton was also destroyed at Mobile and bythe Federal armies that came up from the South.

[739] Report of A. Roane, Chief of the Produce Loan, C.S.A. Office, in Ho.Mis. Doc., No. 190, 44th Cong., 1st Sess.

[740] Roane then estimated that by April 1, 1865, the Confederacy owned inall no more than 150,000 bales. Dr. Curry, a member of the ConfederateCongress, stated that only 250,000 bales were ever owned by theConfederate government. “Civil History,” pp. 115, 128. F. S. Lyon, when amember of the Confederate Congress in 1864, found that the Confederacy hada claim on about 150,000 bales scattered over ten states. Ku Klux Rept.,Ala. Test., 1426.

[741] J. Barr Robertson, “The Confederate Debt and Private SouthernDebts,” p. 25.

[745] Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 114, 39th Cong., 2d Sess.; Treasury DepartmentDoc., No. 2261. According to a decision of the Supreme Court in case ofKleinvs. United States (13 Wallace, 128), “disloyal” owners mightbecome “loyal” by pardon and thus have all rights of property restored.This was the effect of proclamations of the President. “The restoration ofthe proceeds [then] became the absolute right of persons pardoned.” SeeHo. Repts., No. 784, 51st Cong., 1st Sess., and No. 1377; 52d Cong., 1stSess. The Attorney-General stated that “Congress took notice of the factthat captures of private property on land had been made and would continueto be made by the armies as a necessary and proper means of diminishingthe wealth and thus reducing the powers of the insurgent rulers,” and thatafter a seizure had been made there could be no question of whether theusages of war were observed or violated, except through the courts; thePresident and the Secretary of the Treasury had no discretion in thematter. Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 114, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. According to theopinion of the United States law officers, “No one who submitted to theConfederate States, obeyed their laws, and contributed to support theirgovernment ought to recover under the statute” of March 12, 1863, See Sen.Ex. Doc., No. 22, 40th Cong., 2d Sess.

[746] Secretary McCulloch to President of the Senate, Jan. 16, 1869. Sen.Ex. Doc., No. 22, 40th Cong., 2d Sess., No. 37, 39th Cong., 25th Sess.

[748] See Ho. Mis. Doc., No. 16, 42d Cong., 2d Sess.; No. 12, 42d Cong.,3d Sess.; No. 23, 43d Cong., 1st Sess.; No. 18, 43d Cong., 2d Sess.; No.30, 44th Cong., 1st Sess.; No. 4, 45th Cong., 2d Sess.; Nos. 10 and 30,46th Cong., 2d Sess.; also Treasury Department Doc., No. 2261 (1901);Department Circular, No. 4. Jan. 9, 1900.

[751] Curry, “Civil History Confederate States,” pp. 115, 126, 128. Seetestimony of Lieut.-Col. Hunter Brooke in Rept. Joint Committee onReconstruction, Pt. III, p. 115.

[755] One who suffered writes from Selma: “Our cotton, the only thing leftus with which to buy the necessaries of life, was seized at the point ofthe bayonet under the plea that it was Confederate cotton and that it wasbeing seized by the government for its own use, whereas it was taken bythe officers and sold, and the money put into their own pockets. It wasthen worth $255 a bale. Gen. —— commanded at this place, and he and hisstaff coined money faster than a mint could turn it out.” Judge B. H.Craig. In July, 1865, a train of wagons at Talladega was sent to theginnery of Ross Green, at Alexandria, and 59 bales of cotton, Green’s ownproperty, worth $100 a bale in gold, were carried off. Miller, p. 236.

[756] Testimony in Rept. of Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Pt. III, p.115; Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., p. 1426. F. S. Lyon said that the peoplewould have been better reconciled to the confiscation had the cotton beensold for the benefit of the United States, but it was plainly stolen bythe agents and the army, and they began to resist in every way. Some ofthem concealed Confederate cotton; some stole from the government, somefrom the agents what the latter had stolen from them; some went intopartnership with the agents. No one believed that any one except theoriginal owner had a right to the cotton, and they did anything to geteven.

[757] Miller, p. 236;N. Y. Times, March 2 and Aug. 30, 1865. In theBlack Belt the United States military authorities collected thetax-in-kind which had been levied by the Confederate authorities but notcollected. One planter had to pay one thousand bushels of corn, twobarrels of syrup, and smaller quantities of other produce. From those whorefused to pay the tax was taken forcibly. See Ku Klux Rept., p. 446 (F.S. Lyon).

[759] Trowbridge, “The South,” p. 447; Reid, “After the War,” pp. 208,209, 375;N. Y. Times, Aug. 30, 1865;N. Y. Herald, June 23, 1865.

[760]N. Y. Times, Aug. 30 and Nov. 2, 1865;De Bow’s Review, 1866;oral accounts.

[763] The minority Ku Klux Report asserted that it was a well-known factthat Draper when appointed cotton agent was a bankrupt, and that when hedied he was a millionnaire.

[764] The cotton secured in this way was, it was claimed, sold as “waste,”“trash,” or “dog tail” to some friend of the agent, who would divide withthe latter.

[765] All freight, agency, auctioneer, insurance, storage, etc., charges,and fees for legal advice, were charged against the cotton, and had to bepaid before it was restored.

[766] Probably Draper was correct here. The agents would consign to himall cotton that they felt sure the government had record of, and the restthey sold for their own benefit.

[768] Secretary McCulloch to President of the Senate, March 2, 1867, inSen. Ex. Doc. No. 37, 39th Cong., 2d Sess. In this way, during the summerof 1865, $616,844.34 was restored to owners, and to the end of 1866$1,018,459.83 was restored. Most of the owners lived in Alabama andLouisiana.

[769] See Brewer, p. 375, and Garrett, p. 587. Lyon was one of the mostuseful, reliable, and respected public men of Alabama and his account isentitled to confidence. He had been a lawyer, clerk of the senate,senator, member of Congress, state bank commissioner, presidentialelector, member Confederate Congress, etc.

[770] Letter to F. P. Blair, in Sen. Rept., No. 41, Pt. I, p. 445, 42dCong., 2d Sess.

[771] Under the reconstruction government Dustin held the office ofmajor-general of militia.

[772] See Ku Klux Rept., pp. 444-446. Letter of F. S. Lyon to GeneralBlair. Also Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., pp. 1410-1426, 1661.

Lyon had been agent for the Confederate Produce Loan, and consequentlyknew what was government cotton and what was not. After the war he actedas attorney for those whose cotton was unlawfully seized. The generalofficers commanding in his district approved his conduct, but he was hatedby the cotton agents, who frequently complained of his “rebelliousconduct.” Lyon tried to save even the cotton pledged to the Confederacy,on the ground that the promise or sale had not been completed and that thetransaction was void from the beginning, and that the right of capture didnot exist after the close of the war.

[774] Calculation based on subscriptions to Produce Loan. Most of it hadbeen destroyed.

[775]N. Y. Times, June 2, 1865;Huntsville Advocate, May 26, 1866.Report of Grand Jury.

[778] G. O., No. 55, Department of Ala., Oct. 30, 1865; G. O., No. 8,Department of Ala., Feb. 14, 1866; Ms. records in War Department archives.For years these men were in prison while their friends were working tosecure their release. The principal arguments for Dexter’s release werethe virtue of his wife’s relations in New England and the illegality ofthe trial before the military commission in time of peace. Judging fromthe tone of the indorsements he was probably released, though there is norecord of the fact in the archives. The manuscript proceedings of thetrial show that thousands of bales of cotton had been “spirited away,” buteverything was in such a state of confusion that little could be plainlyproven against the agents. Only one thing was certain, “that much morecotton was seized for the government than was received by the government.”The investigation was hushed up as soon as possible; too many wereimplicated.

[779] Sen. Rept., No. 41, Pt. I, pp. 442, 445, 42d Cong., 2d Sess. Thisestimate is probably too large for both numbers.

[785] An example of the way charges were piled up: A lot of 448 bales ofcotton was seized in Eufaula, Alabama, and shipped to New York,viaAppalachicola. The expenses were:—

[788] See Ku Klux Rept., pp. 443-446; Sen. Ex. Doc., No. 37, 39th Cong.,2d Sess.; Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 97, 39th Cong., 2d Sess.; Ho. Ex. Doc., No.113, 41st Cong., 2d Sess.; Sen. Ex. Doc., No. 23, 43d Cong., 2d Sess.;Department Circular, No. 4, Jan. 9, 1900.

[789] Department Circular, No. 4, Jan. 9, 1900; Sen. Ex. Doc., No. 23, 43dCong., 2d Sess. There are imperfect records of only two Alabama agencies,which reported a certain number of bales seized. The other agencies didnot report their operations in Alabama. The agents not reporting were: J.R. Dillon, H. M. Buckley, S. B. Eaton, E. P. Hotchkiss, L. Ellis, A. D.Banks, James and Ellis Carver, and perhaps others. None of the numerouscollecting agents made reports or kept records. In 1876, thirty-threecotton agents were defaulters to the United States, one man owing theUnited States $337,460.44. Of these, sixteen were not to be foundanywhere. Four of the defaulters had operated in Alabama. These men wereby their own records defaulters—having failed to turn over to thegovernment the proceeds of sales they had reported. Ho. Mis. Doc., No.190, 44th Cong., 1st Sess.

[790] In addition to the tax of twenty-five per cent on purchases ofcotton levied by a Treasury regulation during the war and in force during1865. Treasury regulations, May 9, 1865. See also President’sproclamation, in McPherson, “Reconstruction,” p. 9.

[791] Governor Patton, in his message of Nov. 12, 1866, stated that thecotton tax of three cents a pound was oppressive and unjust, a burden onthe farmers and on the laborers also; that the tax went into the UnitedStates Treasury and then passed into the hands of the manufacturers as agratuity of three cents per pound; that there was no way of getting theruinous tax raised or lightened unless by an appeal in the form of apetition; that the people of Alabama had no voice in the government; thatthis “law paralyzes our energies and represses the development of ourresources and is injurious to the whole country.” Governor’s Message,House Journal, 1866-1867, p. 21.

[792] Twenty states and territories are not included in these sums, as noreports were received from them. Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 181, 42d Cong., 3dSess., and Sen. Ex. Doc., No. 2, 39th Cong., 2d Sess.

[794] Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 47, 39th Cong., 1st Sess.; Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 181,42d Cong., 3d Sess.

[797] The cotton tax was justified on the ground that while Alabama hadpaid $14,200,982 from 1862 to 1872, New Jersey had paid a total tax of$48,528,298, the two states having very nearly the same population. But noaccount was taken of the fact that for four years no tax was collectedfrom Alabama by the United States, while nearly all of the movable wealthwas destroyed during the war, and that in 1865 property was almostnon-existent in Alabama. New Jersey, however, was a rich state. Alabamahad besides paid an enormous war tax and had been looted of millions ofdollars’ worth of cotton. And in Alabama there were 500,000 negroes whopaid no tax, while most of the population of New Jersey were taxpayers.Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 181, 42d Cong., 3d Sess.

[799] Sen. Mis. Doc., No. 100, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. (A. A. Low, Chairmanof Committee of the N. Y. Chamber of Commerce).

[800] Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., pp. 383, 403 (General Pettus); Journal ofthe Convention of 1867.

[801] See Saunders, “Early Settlers,” p. 31 (Reverdy Johnson to Saunders).Jan. 18, 1872, the Alabama legislature (Republican Senate and DemocraticHouse) memorialized Congress, asking to have the cotton tax refunded tothe impoverished people, and stating that the tax was “most unjust andoppressive, a direct tax upon industry”; that to refund the tax would be“evenhanded but tardy justice.” Acts of Ala., 1871-1872, pp. 445-446. Asimilar petition was made on Feb. 23, 1875. Acts of Ala., 1874-1875, p.674.

[802] In December, 1903, Representative J. S. Williams of Mississippiintroduced a measure in Congress to refund the amount of the cotton tax tothe southern states.

[803] It is difficult to understand now how thoroughly the Confederatesoldier realized that the questions at issue were decided against him. Butthat it was a crime to have been a Confederate soldier, he did notunderstand. See also testimony of John B. Gordon and of Edmund W. Pettusin the Ku Klux Testimony.

[804] A neglected point of view is the attitude of the Confederatesoldier. He had surrendered with arms in hand, and certain terms had beenmade with him, as he thought, a contract, embodied in the parole. This hebelieved secured his rights in return for laying down arms, and that aslong as he was law-abiding his rights were to be inviolate. He was wellpleased with the “spirit of Appomattox,” but nearly all that happenedafter Appomattox was in violation, he felt, of the terms of surrender. Thewhole radical programme was contrary to the contract made with men who hadarms in their hands. Lee had decided that there should be no guerillawarfare, and in return certain moral obligations rested on the North. Seethe statements of General (now Senator) Edmund W. Pettus, in Ku KluxRept., Ala. Test., pp. 377, 383, and of General John B. Gordon, in Ga.Test., pp. 314, 332, 333, 343.

[805] See “Our Women in the War,” p. 280; Ball, “Clarke County,” p. 463;Le Conte, “Autobiography,” p. 236.

[806]N. Y. Herald, June 17 and Aug. 30, 1865;N. Y. Times, Aug. 17and Oct. 31, 1865; Mrs. Clay, “A Belle of the Fifties”;Nation, Feb. 15,1865; oral accounts; Clayton, “White and Black under the Old Régime.”

[807] Letter concerning affairs at the South, Dec. 18, 1865, Sen. Ex.Doc., No. 2, 39th Cong., 2d Sess.; McPherson, “Reconstruction,” p. 67.General Grant’s conclusions were undoubtedly correct, but they evidentlycould not be based on the information gathered in a week’s journeyingthrough the South. This gave the Radicals an opportunity to attack hisreport as being based on insufficient information. But General Grant knewthe men against whom he had fought, he had talked with many of therepresentative men of the South, and through military channels was wellinformed as to actual conditions at the South.

[808] Report of Carl Schurz, Sen. Ex. Doc., No. 2, 39th Cong., 1st Sess.Schurz made a journey of more than two months through the southern states.Judging from the testimony which he submits, his confidence must have beenconfined to the officers of the Freedmen’s Bureau. As a foreigner (aGerman), he would not be able, even if so inclined, to ascertain anythingof the sentiments of the representative people. However, his report wasevidently not based entirely on the evidence submitted with it; if it hadbeen, it would have been even more unfavorable. InMcClure’s Magazine,January, 1904, Schurz has an article which is practically a rewriting ofthis report made nearly forty years before. He repeats some of the samestories told him then, and endeavors to reconcile his attitude in1865-1866 with his course as a Liberal Republican in 1871-1872.

[809] Report of Benjamin C. Truman to the President, April 9, 1866, Sen.Ex. Doc., No. 43, 39th Cong., 1st Sess.;N. Y. Times, March 2, 1865.Truman spent two months in Alabama, and saw many prominent men whom Schurzdid not see, and came in contact with thousands of other citizens. His aimwas to picture conditions as they were. The newspaper correspondents,regardless of politics, gave better accounts than the volunteer officers,who had little training or education and much prejudice.

[811] The sub-committee: Senator Harris (New York) and Senator Boutwell(Massachusetts) and Morrill (Vermont) from the House.

[816] The witnesses who furnished testimony to the Congressional committeewere:—

[817] One of these men (W. H. Smith) became the first scalawag governor ofAlabama, another (George E. Spencer) became a United States senator bynegro votes, the third (Giers) was provided for in the departments atWashington, the fourth (Saffold) became a circuit judge in Alabama, andthe fifth (Humphreys) a judge of the Supreme Court of the District ofColumbia. See Herbert, “The Solid South,” pp. 19, 20.

[818] Testimony of General Swayne, Report of the Joint Committee onReconstruction, 1866, Pt. III, pp. 138-141.

[819] Other witnesses gave, in some respects, more favorable testimony,though most of them were very much more bitter. General Swayne showed nobias except the natural bias of one who did not understand the people, andwho had no sympathy with any of the southern social or politicalprinciples. Of the northern men he was the best qualified by experienceand observation to testify as to conditions in the South. He was anintelligent, educated man, trained in the law, and had a good militaryrecord. Most of the others were distinctly below his standard,—ignorant,prejudiced officers of volunteers from the West.

[820] General Swayne was in Alabama nearly three years as the head of theunpopular Freedmen’s Bureau, and his accounts, from first to last, ofconditions in Alabama were marked by a fairness which can be found in butlittle of the official correspondence from the South. He believed in theFreedmen’s Bureau, in negro suffrage, and in the political proscription ofwhite leaders; but his feelings influenced his judgment but little, and,unlike other Bureau officials, he never made misrepresentations.

[824] See Memorial of William H. Smith, J. J. Giers, and D. C. Humphreysto Congress, Feb., 1866, in Ho. Mis. Doc., No. 42, 39th Cong., 1st Sess.Testimony of the same and of M. J. Saffold in Report of Joint Committee onReconstruction, 1866; letter of D. H. Bingham from West Point, New York;Reid, “After the War,”passim.

[825] See Le Conte, “Autobiography,” p. 236; Montgomery correspondent inN. Y. Daily News, May 7, 1866.

[826] A newspaper correspondent, the guest of ex-Governor C. C. Clay,wrote: “While the Yankee boldly marched in at the front door into his[Clay’s] parlors and best chambers to dream loyal dreams and rest now thatthe warfare’s o’er, the quondam aristocrat [a son of ex-Governor Clay,editor of a paper in Huntsville, had been outlawed for his sentimentsduring the occupation of north Alabama by the Federal troops and was inhiding] must plod around to the rear and there eat the (corn) bread of madpassion weighed down with mad remorse.” Letter from a travellingcorrespondent of theN. Y. Times, Aug. 17, 1865. TheTimes usually hadvery little of such correspondence. TheTimes, theHerald, and theWorld had good correspondents in the South, especially duringReconstruction.

[827] An old Alabama river steamboat captain had had his boat burned byWilson, but had secured another. The Federal army regarded him as a mostunmitigated “rebel.” He would play “Dixie” in spite of all prohibitions.He was finally arrested on a more serious charge.

“That you refuse to take the bodies of dead Federal soldiers on your boatto Montgomery.”

“No, no, that’s not true. God knows it would be the pleasure of my life totake the whole Yankee nation up the riverin that same fix.” “Our Womenin the War,” p. 281.

Colonel Robert McFarland returned to Florence in the only suit hepossessed—a gray uniform. He was peremptorily ordered by the Federalofficers not to wear it. He was in a quandary until a friend secured along linen duster for him to wear. “Northern Alabama,” p. 291.

[828] Gen. T. Kilby Smith, on Sept. 14, 1865, in Mobile, made a statementfor Carl Schurz in which he asserted that one of the most intelligent,well-bred, pious ladies of Mobile wanted the military authorities to whipor torture into a confession of theft two negroes whom she suspected ofstealing. She considered it a hardship, he said, that a negro might not bewhipped or tortured in order to force a confession, when there was noevidence against him. “I offer this,” he wrote, “as an instance of thefeeling that exists in all classes against the negro.” See Doc. No. 9,accompanying the report of Schurz.

[829] I have seen a coarse article reflecting on the character of southernwomen originally published in theTribune and copied in a small Alabamapaper each issue for several weeks. It asserted in thinly veiled termsthat many of the young southern women were too intimate with negro men;the solution of the race question by amalgamation was asserted as sure tocome; details of such a solution were suggested, and examples of what wastaking place were cited.

[830] General Terry attempted to explain the condition of affairs bysaying that the results of the war were but the legitimate consequence ofa conflict between an inferior and a superior race. “Land We Love,” Vol.IV, p. 243. Gen. T. Kilby Smith, in September, 1865, complained thatFederal officers were not received in society in Mobile. General Wood, hesaid, had been six weeks in Mobile, “ignored socially and damnedpolitically”; and this, he said, in a community which before the war wasconsidered one of the most refined and hospitable of all the southernmaritime cities, the favorite home of army and naval officers. Doc. No. 9,accompanying the report of Schurz.

[831] In addition to references cited above, see alsoHuntsvilleAdvocate, March 9 and 23, July 26, 1865; Ho. Mis. Doc., No. 42, 39thCong., 1st Sess.; Sen. Mis. Doc., No. 43, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. (Truman);Reid, “After the War,” pp. 211, 212, 218, 219; “The Land We Love,”passim; “Our Women in the War,” p. 279et passim; Abbott, “The Rightsof Man,” pp. 224-226; Clayton, “White and Black,” pp. 150-152; Clay, “ABelle of the Fifties”; Straker, “The New South Investigated,” pp. 24, 57;Report of the Joint Committee, 1866, Pt. III;N. Y. Daily News, April16, 1864, and Dec. 4, 1865; Reports of Schurz, Truman, and Grant; Reportsof the Freedmen’s Bureau;Southern Magazine, 1874 (DeLeon);N. Y.Times, Oct. 31, 1865;N. Y. Herald, July 23, 1865; Miller, “Alabama,”pp. 233-251; Columbus (Ga.)Sun, March 22 and April 19, 1865;TheNation, Feb. 15, 1866; Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test.,passim;Reconstruction articles inAtlantic Monthly, 1901.

[833] Thomas W. Conway, of the Freedmen’s Bureau, who passed through thestate in 1866, stated that there were men in Alabama who, rather than selltheir lands to northern men or borrow money in the North, would see theirplantations lie waste, and before they would hire their former slaves asfree laborers they would starve. The spirit of hatred toward northern menwas universal, he said. Report to Chamber of Commerce, New York, June 7,1866.

[834] Jan. 17, 1867, the state legislature declared that the reportspublished in the northern papers that it was unsafe for northern men toreside in Alabama were false. The lower house declared that “we, in thename of the people of Alabama, most cordially invite skilled labor andcapital from the world, and particularly from all parts of the UnitedStates, and pledge the hearty coöperation and support of the state.”Annual Cyclopædia (1867), p. 15. For several years every inducement wasoffered by the planters to encourage immigration to the Black Belt. Aslate as 1869 immigration conventions were held. Annual Cyclopædia (1869),p. 10. During 1865 the north Alabama “unionists” hoped to see northernwhite men come in and take the place of the negroes.The Nation, Aug.17, 1865.

[835] Report of Truman, Sen. Ex. Doc., No. 43, 39th Cong., 1st Sess.; Reid“After the War,”passim; Trowbridge, “The South,” p. 448;N. Y. Times,Nov. 10, 1865, July 2 and Oct. 31, 1866; General Swayne’s testimony,Report Joint Committee, Pt. III, p. 141; General Tarbell’s testimony,Report Joint Committee, Pt. III, pp. 155, 156.

[837] In addition to the above references, seeThe World, Nov. 13, 1865;N. Y. Times, July 2 and Sept. 9, 1866;N. Y. Herald, July 23 and Aug.28, 1865 (Swayne); Truman’s Report, April 9, 1866; Swayne’s Report, Jan.,1866;Harper’s Monthly Magazine, Jan., 1874.

[839] Perry, “History of the American Episcopal Church,” Vol. II, p. 328et seq.; Whitaker, “The Church in Alabama,” pp. 172-175;N. Y. Herald,Sept. 4, 1865; Wilmer, “The Recent Past from a Southern Standpoint,” p.143. Gen. T. Kilby Smith said that Wilmer had great influence among thebetter class of people, especially the women. Doc. No. 9, accompanying thereport of Carl Schurz.

[840] Perry, “History of the American Episcopal Church,” Vol. II, p. 328et seq.; Whitaker, pp. 175, 176; Wilmer, pp. 143-145.

[841] Whitaker, p. 177; Wilmer, “Recent Past,” p. 145. A copy of the orderwas also found in the War Department archives.

[843] Whitaker, pp. 180, 181; Wilmer, pp. 145, 146;Montgomery Mail,Oct. 2, 1865.

[844] Whitaker, p. 182; Wilmer, p. 146; Copy of order in War Departmentarchives. Republished on G. O. 2, Jan. 10, 1866, Hq. Dept. Ala., Mobile.

[845] Whitaker, p. 186;Mobile Register, Jan. 9, 1866;Montgomery Mail,Jan. 19, 1866.

[846] Annual Cyclopædia (1865), p. 25; Wilmer, pp. 147-152; Whitaker, pp.189-194; Perry, Vol. II, p. 328et seq. The northern conferences of theMethodist Protestant Church returned in 1877 to the southern organization.See “Statistics of Churches,” p. 566.

[848] See Dunning, “Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction,” pp.100-103.

[850] Taylor, “Destruction and Reconstruction”; Report of Joint Committeeon Reconstruction, Pt. III, pp. 15, 60.

[857] Proclamation, Dec. 8, 1863, in Messages and Papers of thePresidents, Vol. VI, p. 213.

[858] Proclamation, July 8, 1864, Messages and Papers of the Presidents,Vol. VI, p. 223.

[862] Message, Dec. 4, 1865, in Messages and Papers of the Presidents,Vol. VI, p. 379.

[865]Globe, Feb. 25, 1865, and Dec. 4, 1865. See Henry Adams,“Historical Essays.”

[871]Globe, Dec. 4, 1865, March 10, 1866; Taylor, “Destruction andReconstruction,” p. 244.

[873] See Dunning, “Essays,” pp. 99-112; Texasversus White (1869), 7Wallace 700; Scott, “Reconstruction during the Civil War”; McCarthy,“Lincoln’s Plan of Reconstruction”; Burgess, “Reconstruction and theConstitution,” pp. 1-143.

[876] Testimony of M. J. Saffold, Report Joint Committee, 1866, Pt. III,p. 60. The “union” men greatly exaggerated the strength of the “union”sentiment in the state during the war and their individual part in thepeace movement. This was necessary in order to secure recognition asrepresentatives of a strong “union” element. When the plan of thePresident was so modified as to leave them in their natural position of noinfluence, they became very bitter against it and played the martyr act toperfection.

[877] Testimony of J. J. Giers, Report Joint Committee, Pt. III, p. 15; O.R., Ser. I, Vol. XLIX, Pt. II, pp. 473, 485, 505, 506.

[880] Judge Byrd was elected to the Supreme Court in 1865. He was adistant relative of Colonel William Byrd, of Westover, Va., Esq. Brewer,p. 224.

[881] General C. C. Andrews, in O. R., Ser. I, Vol. XLIX, Pt. II, p. 727;N. Y. Commercial Advertiser, May 27, 1865;N. Y. Tribune, June 2,1865.

[882] There were present: Ex-Gov. John G. Shorter, M. A. Baldwin(Attorney-General, Brewer, p. 445), W. B. Bell, A. B. Clitherall (Brewer,p. 479), all of whom had been ardent secessionists, and L. E. Parsons (seep.143), Col. J. C. Bradley, Col. J. J. Seibels (Brewer, p. 459; see p.143), W. J. Bibb, J. G. Strother, M. J. Saffold (Brewer, p. 215), GeorgeGoldthwaite (Brewer, p. 451, A. and I. General). It was a fairlyrepresentative body of government officials and “stay-at-homes.”

[884]N. Y. Commercial Advertiser, May 27, 1865;N. Y. Tribune, June2, 1865;Montgomery Mail, May 12, 1865. The members of the committeewhich went to Washington were: Joseph C. Bradley, L. E. Parsons, M. J.Saffold, Lewis Owen, George S. Houston, James Birney, W. J. Bibb, John M.Sutherlin, Albert Roberts, Luke Pryor. None of the committee had beensecessionists. Reese had been a “Union” man, Saffold a “political agent.”W. J. Bibb had made a visit to Washington during the war and had aconsultation with Lincoln. Parsons was a “Union” man. Houston and Pryor(see Brewer, pp. 324, 326) were neither “Union” nor “secessionist,” but“constitutional.” The others were unknown to public life.

[890] Member of Congress, Confederate colonel of the 36th Alabama, formerWhig. Brewer, p. 425.

[891] Former Whig, Adjutant and Inspector-General during the war. Brewer,p. 397.

[893]N. Y. World, June 13, 1865. The absence of the old names in allthese movements is noticeable. The old leaders had been strongly in favorof the Confederacy and now took back seats while smaller men came forward.They never came into power again.

[895] In one of the mountain counties, but the exact location was nevernamed in any of the accounts of the convention.

[899] Parsons, Bradley, Houston, Nicholas Davis, Pryor, Saffold, Bibb,Roberts, etc.

[902] TheMobile Register andAdvertiser (John Forsyth, editor)supported the President’s policy: “The states were never out of theUnion”—July 18, 1865. TheHuntsville Advocate, July 19, said, “Thepresidential policy is simple, direct, and emphatic.” Henry W. Hilliard,General Cullen A. Battle, Ex-Governors Shorter, Moore, Watts, andFitzpatrick declared that there would be no opposition but a hearty effort“to get straight.”

[903] Lilian Foster, “Andrew Johnson: Services and Speeches,” pp. 199,210, “Address to Loyal Southerners,” April, 1865.

[904] There is little reason to believe that Lincoln could have succeededin the struggle with Congress.

[905] See Foster, “Andrew Johnson,” for change of feeling in Johnson asexpressed in his speeches in 1865 and 1866.

[907] McCulloch, p. 517 and Preface;Nation, Oct. 26, 1865; Mayes, “L.Q. C. Lamar”; Reid, “After the War,” pp. 404, 405, 578;Mobile Registerand Advertiser, July 18, 1865;Huntsville Advocate, July 18, 1865.

[913] Lewis Eliphalet Parsons, born 1817, Boone County, New York, was theson of a farmer and the grandson of the celebrated Jonathan Edwards. Hecame to Alabama in 1840 and practised law in Talladega, was a Whig, latera Douglas Democrat, and on both sides during the war. See above, p.143.

[920] The 22d of May was the date when the Confederate state governmentceased to exist.

[921] Garrett, p. 735, says Aug. 30 and Sept. 12. The convention met onSept. 12.

[922] Parsons’s Proclamation, July 20 (or 22), 1865; inN. Y. Herald,July 26 and Aug. 11, 1865; Garrett, p. 735; McPherson, p. 21.

[923] Parsons’s Message to Convention, Sept. 21, 1865; Proclamation, July20, 1865; inN. Y. Herald, Aug. 11, 1865.

[925] See McCulloch, p. 517 andpassim;N. Y. Tribune, May 4, 1866;Mobile Times, April 25, 1866.

[927] Testimony of M. J. Saffold, Report of Joint Committee, 1866, Pt.III, pp. 59-63.

[929] Others were pardoned for having aided the Confederacy in thefollowing occupations: agents of the Nitre and Mining Bureau; taxcollector and state assessor; tax receiver (Confederate); general officerof the Confederate army; postmasters who had held office before the war;members of the state legislature; cotton agents; foreign agents andcommissioners; graduates of West Point and Annapolis; resigning UnitedStates service to join Confederacy; mail contractors; clerks of theConfederate government; state and Confederate judges; members of Congress;receivers of subscriptions for the Confederacy; marshals and deputymarshals; clerks of state and Confederate courts; agents for the purchaseof supplies; members of advisory board; cotton bond agent; Confederategovernment official; commissioner of appraisement; depositary; routeagent; commissioner of Indian affairs; member of convention of 1861; prizecommissioner; commissioner to take testimony; Indian agent; Confederatefinancial agent; commissioner to examine prisoners held by militaryauthorities; agent of the Produce Loan; receiver of the tax-in-kind;leaving loyal state; commissioner of “fifteen million loan”; agent toreceive subscriptions for cotton and produce loans; depot agent to receivethe tax-in-kind; agent under sequestration laws; enrolling officer;impressment agent; Treasury agent; Confederate contractor; sequestrationcommissioner; agent to collect provisions for the army; district attorney;state printer; border agriculturist; custom officer; agent to receivetitles; commissioner to examine political prisoners. Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 16,40th Cong., 2d Sess., gives a list of those pardoned. Some of the morewell-known men pardoned were: R. M. Patton, “agent for the sale of rebelbonds, and worth over $20,000”; Nicholas Davis, “member of rebelprovisional Congress”; Charles Hays, worth over $20,000; BenjaminFitzpatrick, “resigned United States Senate”; J. G. Gilchrist, “member ofSecession Convention”; S. F. Rice, worth over $20,000; S. S. Scott, Indianagent; H. C. Semple, worth over $20,000; Thomas H. Watts, “member of rebelconvention, voted for ordinance of secession, colonel in rebel army,attorney-general of the would-be Southern Confederacy, rebel governor ofAlabama, and worth $20,000”; M. J. Saffold, “commissioner to examinepolitical prisoners, and state printer.”

[930] The names and offences of those pardoned are given in Ho. Ex. Doc.,No. 99, 39th Cong., 1st Sess.; No. 16, 40th Cong., 2d Sess.; and No. 31,39th Cong., 2d Sess.

[936] Journal of the Convention, 1865, pp. 16, 57, 58;N. Y. Herald,Sept. 26 and Oct. 15, 1865.

[937] Annual Cyclopædia (1865), pp. 16, 17; Journal of the Convention,1865, pp. 57, 58.

[938] The vote cast was 92, probably all who were present. Journal of theConvention, p. 59;N. Y. Herald, Sept. 26, 1865; Shepherd, “Constitutionand Ordinances,” 1865, p. 48; Code of 1867, Ordinance No. 13, Sept. 25,1865. Early in the session Mardis of Shelby, a “loyal” member, proposed aresolution to the effect that the ordinance of secession was“unconstitutional and therefore illegal and void, [and that] the leadersof the rebellion having been forced to lay down their arms and turn overto the conservative people of the state the reigns of the civil governmentby which the state has become more peaceful and loyal to the United Statesgovernment. She is now entitled to all the rights as before ordinance ofsecession.” Journal of the Convention, 1865, p. 16. The resolutions of the“loyalists” were curiosities, and the secretary did not always expurgatebad spelling, etc.

[939] Shepherd, “Constitution and Ordinances,” 1865, p. 49; Ordinance No.14.

[941] Annual Cyclopædia (1865), p. 17;N. Y. Times, Sept. 29, 1865;N.Y. Herald, Oct. 15, 1865; Shepherd, “Constitution and Ordinances,” 1865,pp. 53, 54; Ordinances Nos. 25-28, September, 1865. In spite of thisordinance certain war debts were paid. Fowler, Superintendent of ArmyRecords, was paid $3000 for his work during the war, the legislaturebuying the records from him. Coleman, a Confederate judge, was paid forservices during the war. See Acts 65-66 and the Journal of the Conventionof 1867. The newspaper reports give summaries of the debates on the moreimportant ordinances; the Journal of the Convention gives only the votesand resolutions.

[943] It seems to have been taken for granted by the convention thatslavery was already abolished.

[949] Journal of the Convention, 1865, pp. 49, 50;N. Y. Herald, Oct.15, 1865; Shepherd, “Constitution and Ordinances,” 1865, p. 45, OrdinanceNo. 6. The three members who voted against the abolition ordinance wereCrawford of Coosa, Cumming of Monroe, and White of Talladega. They wantedto let the Supreme Court decide. The Supreme Court of Alabama, a yearlater, held that, as a matter of history which the court would recognize,slavery was dead as a result of war before the passage of the ordinance ofSept. 22, 1865.

[950] That class of men called all negroes “free negroes” and “freedmen”for years after the war as a term of contempt.

[955] Journal of the Convention, 1865, p. 80; Shepherd, “Constitution andOrdinances,” 1865, p. 61, Ordinance No. 34.

[956]Huntsville Advocate, Sept. 28, 1865. A “Johnson reconstructionpaper.”

[958] Shepherd, p. 57, Ordinance No. 30; Journal of the Convention, 1865,pp. 67, 68. See Constitution of 1865, Article IV, Section 4.

[967] Shepherd, p. 74, Ordinance No. 42. See Constitution, 1865, ArticleIV, Section 31.

[972]N. Y. Herald, Oct. 15, 1865; Sen. Ex. Doc., No. 26, 39th Cong.,1st Sess. (Parsons); Report Joint Committee, 1866, Pt. III, pp. 138-141.

[976]N. Y. Daily News, Sept. 7, 1865;N. Y. Tribune, Feb. 6, 1866;Swayne’s Report, Jan., 1866, in Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 70, 39th Cong., 1stSess.; Report Joint Committee of Reconstruction, 1866, Pt. III, p. 140(Swayne).

[977] “I,A. B., do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I have nevervoluntarily borne arms against the United States since I have been acitizen thereof; that I have voluntarily given no aid, countenance,counsel or encouragement to persons engaged in armed hostility thereto;that I have never sought nor accepted nor attempted to exercise thefunctions of any office whatever, under any authority or pretendedauthority, in hostility to the United States; that I have not yielded avoluntary support to any pretended government, authority, power orconstitution within the United States, hostile or inimical thereto; and Ido further swear (or affirm) that, to the best of my knowledge andability, I will support and defend the Constitution of the United Statesagainst all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith andallegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without anymental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well andfaithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about toenter. So help me God.” McPherson, “Reconstruction,” p. 193.

[978] Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 81, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., McCulloch, Report,March 19, 1866; McCulloch, “Men and Measures,” pp. 227, 233. The FinanceCommittee reported in favor of paying these officials, accepting ascorrect the secretary’s statement. They were paid, in spite of theopposition of Sumner, who voted not to pay “those rebels.” McCulloch, p.232.

[979] On March 17, 1866, the Postmaster-General, in a letter to thePresident, stated that the test oaths of July 2, 1862, and March 3, 1863,hindered the reconstruction of the postal service in the South. Of 2258mail routes in 1861, only 757 had been restored. Before the war there were8902 postmasters, and in 1866 there were but 2042, of whom 420 were womenand 865 others could not take the oath. Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 81, 39th Cong.,1st Sess.

[981] Cox, “Three Decades,” p. 603; Reid, “After the War,” pp. 401, 402;N. Y. Daily News, Oct. 23 and Dec. 8, 1865;N. Y. Times, July 2, 1866.

[982]Selma Times, April 10, 1866. The rejection of such men as Dr. F.W. Sykes of Lawrence as tax commissioner was especially discouraging tothe anti-Democratic party in the state. Sykes had been an obstructionistin the legislature during the war. Brewer, p. 309.

[983] One official who had suffered from objections made against his pastrecord inserted the following advertisement in theSelma Times, April11, 1866:—

[984] There were no nominating conventions; the candidates were announcedby caucuses of friends. Several other men were spoken of, but the contestnarrowed down to three.

[986] R. M. Patton, 21,442; M. J. Bulger, 15,234; W. R. Smith, 8194. Thetotal vote was 44,870; the registration to Sept. 22, 1865, had been65,825; the vote for delegates to the convention had been about 56,000;the vote for presidential electors in 1860 had been 89,579. The fallingoff in the vote may be explained by the death and disfranchisement ofvoters and by the indifference of south Alabama people to the northAlabama candidates.

[987] The convention in September had proceeded to correct the theory ofthe situation by conferring the powers of a civil governor upon Parsons,and authorizing him to act as governor until the elected governor shouldbe qualified.

[988] McPherson, “Reconstruction,” p. 21. Alabama was the twenty-seventhstate to ratify, and with seven other seceding states made up thenecessary three-fourths of the thirty-six states. So far the Johnson stategovernments were recognized.Tribune Almanac, 1866. Later, when all thatthe “restoration” administration had done was found to be useless or worsethan useless, an Alabama writer, in “The Land We Love,” complained:—

“The constitutional amendment abolishing slavery could only be passedconstitutionally when the southern states were in the Union. We were thenin the Union for the few weeks during which time this was being done. Forthis brief privilege we lost 4,000,000 of slaves valued at $1,200,000,000.We have every reason to be thankful for being wakened out of our briefdream of being in the Union. A few more weeks of such costly sleep wouldhave stripped us entirely of houses and lands.”

[991] Both Parsons and Houston had been “Unionists,” but neither couldhave subscribed to the oath exacted from members of Congress. Therepresentatives chosen were: (1) C. C. Langdon, Whig, Bell and Everettman, of northern birth, opposed secession, a member of the legislature of1861; (2) George C. Freeman, Whig, Bell and Everett man, opposedsecession, captain and major 47th Alabama; (3) Cullen A. Battle, Democrat,major-general C.S.A.; (4) Joseph W. Taylor, Whig, Bell and Everett man,opposed secession; (5) Burwell T. Pope, Whig, opposed secession; (6)Thomas J. Foster, Whig, Bell and Everett man, opposed secession. None ofthe congressmen-elect could subscribe to the test oath. The people wouldhave voted for no man who could take the test oath.

[994]Globe, Dec. 4, 1865. This was a distinct refusal to recognize, forthe present at least, the restoration as done by the President.

[997] McPherson made a collection of extracts from various newspapersrelating to his action in omitting the names of the southern members. Fewof the editorials seem to indicate any belief that a grave constitutionalquestion was to be settled. Most of the editors believed that he hadexceeded his authority, but approved his action because the southernmembers were Democrats. The general opinion seemed to be that theirpolitics alone was a cause of offence. See McPherson’s scrap-book, “TheRoll of the 39th Congress,” in the Library of Congress.

[999] Swayne’s Report, Oct. 31, 1866, Sen. Ex. Doc., No. 6, 39th Cong.,1st Sess.

[1001] Swayne’s Reports, Dec. 26, 1865, Jan. 31, 1866, and Oct. 31, 1866,in Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 70, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., and Sen. Ex. Doc., No. 6,39th Cong., 1st Sess.; Patton’s Message, Jan. 16, 1866;N. Y. Times,Jan. 18, 1866;N. Y. Evening Post, Jan. 29, 1865; McPherson,“Reconstruction,” p. 21; McPherson’s scrap-book, “Freedmen’s Bureau Bill,”1866.

[1002] McPherson, “Reconstruction,” pp. 21, 22; Act, approved Feb. 23,1866, Penal Code of Ala., pp. 6-8; Acts of Ala. (1865-1866), pp. 121, 124.

[1003] Acts of Ala. (1865-1866), Act of Dec. 15, 1865; Penal Code of Ala.,p. 12. The compilers of the Penal Code placed this act in the Codeseparate from the rest, as irreconcilable with the provisions of the Codeand with other legislation. That is, they refused to codify it and left itfor the courts to decide. The law was meant to suppress a common practiceof encouraging negroes to steal cotton, etc., for sale.

[1004] Acts of Ala. (1865-1866), p. 98; Penal Code, pp. 164, 165. In onerespect the negro had a better standing in court than the white: he was acompetent witness in his own behalf, and his wife might also be a witness.

[1006] In an interview with General Swayne, in 1901, he informed me thathe was present when the bills were drawn up. The governor and thepresident of the Senate in consultation decided that all measures alreadybrought forward should be vetoed or dropped; the apprentice and contractlaws as they stood on the statute book were then drawn up, and noobjection was made to them by General Swayne, who was present by request.He made suggestions as to what would be acceptable to the Bureau and tonorthern public opinion.

[1007] Acts of Ala. (1865-1866), pp. 111, 112 (Act of Feb. 16, 1866);Penal Code, p. 13.

[1011] Penal Code of Ala., pp. 10-12; Acts of Ala. (1865-1866), pp.119-121. This was another act which the compilers refused to incorporateinto the Penal Code. It was an amendment to the law already on the statutebooks, and the constitution of the state provided that the law revised oramended must be set forth in full (Article IV, Section 2.) The nextlegislature repealed this and similar laws as being in conflict with theCode. Acts of Ala. (1866-1867), pp. 107, 115, 504. It was never in force,being practically repealed by the later adoption of the Penal Code, whichhad the old ante-bellum law of vagrancy, which provided a fine of $10 to$50 for the first offence, and for a second conviction, $50 to $100 andhard labor for not more than six months. (See Penal Code, p. 37). The lawsregulating labor and vagrancy were so carelessly drawn that it would havebeen practically impossible to enforce them. Not only were theytechnically unconstitutional, but they were also in conflict with theprovisions of the Code. The consequence was confusion and the suspensionof both Code and statutes. Colonel Herbert, in “The Solid South” (pp.31-36), gives a summary of similar laws of the northern states which weremore stringent than the Alabama laws. As a matter of fact, all the stateshad similar laws, but in the South they had always been a dead letter onthe statute book.

[1013] It was not possible then, nor is it now, to pass any law in regardto labor contracts, vagrancy, or minor crimes, that would not affect thenegroes to a much greater degree than the whites. All laws regulatingsociety, if strictly enforced, would bear with much greater force uponblacks than upon whites.

[1014] Neither Swayne nor Howard made any objection to the apprentice andvagrancy laws, and so far as I can gather from the reports of GeneralSwayne, they were not enforced. If so, there were no results unfavorableto the freedmen. In 1901, in an interview, Swayne stated that all measuresthat he considered objectionable had either failed to pass the Senate orhad been vetoed by the governor. He intimated that he had a great deal todo with the suppression of such measures and the framing of new ones.

[1018]Montgomery Advertiser, Feb. 14, 1865; Swayne’s Report, Oct. 31,1866; Swayne’s Testimony, Report Joint Committee, Pt. III, pp. 138-141.

[1019] Truman’s Report, April 19, 1866; Mrs. Clayton, “White and Black,”p. 152et passim; “Our Women in the War,”passim;The Nation, Oct.5, 1865; Reid and Trowbridge.

[1023] This charge was published in the general presentments of the PikeCounty grand jury and was immediately taken up by the northern Democraticand the conservative Republican papers and given a wide publication. Mrs.Clayton republished it in her book (pp. 156-165). Judge Clayton wasdisfranchised by the Reconstruction Acts, and not until 1874 was he againable to hold judicial office. The bench and bar were generally in favor ofadmitting the negro to the fullest standing in the courts. Under slavery,when a case turned on negro testimony, extra-legal trials were often heldand the decision given by “lynch-law” jury, the court officials presiding.In 1865 the lawyers and judges were ready to admit negro testimony,according to General Swayne, but made more or less objection in order notto alienate those of the people who objected.

[1026] Brooks was a cousin of Preston Brooks of South Carolina, and hadbeen president of the convention of 1861. The measure was indorsed byGovernor Patton, Judge Goldthwaite, and a respectable minority. Ku KluxRept., Ala. Test., p. 226.

[1029] For this incident my authority is a statement of General Swaynemade to me in 1901. He was much interested in the movement, and waspositive that in time the native whites would have given the suffrage tothe negro had not the Reconstruction Acts and other legislation soalienated the races. General Swayne gave me full explanations of hispolicy in Alabama. His death, a year after the interview, prevented himfrom verifying some details. His account, though given thirty-five yearsafter the occurrences, was correct so far as I could compare it with theprinted matter available. It agreed almost exactly with his reports asprinted in the public documents, though he had not those at hand, and hadnot seen them for thirty years. I have several times been told by oldcitizens that negroes voted in 1866, in minor elections, by consent of thewhites.

[1030] “Diary and Correspondence of S. P. Chase,” in the Annual Report ofthe Amer. Hist. Assn. (1902), Vol. II, p. 517.

[1036] Resolution, Feb. 22, 1866, Acts of Ala. (1865-1866), p. 607;McPherson, p. 22;Selma Times, Feb. 27, 1867.

[1038] McPherson’s scrap-book, “The Campaign of 1866,” Vol. I, pp. 84,122.

[1040] McPherson’s scrap-book, “Freedmen’s Bureau Bill, 1866,” pp. 47,128.

[1041] The reconstruction laws of Congress were almost invariably referredto as “Bills” even in official documents and military orders.

[1049]N. Y. Tribune, Nov. 30, 1866. I have not been able to discoverwhat the name of the paper was, but very likely it was theMobileNational.

[1051] Governor’s Message, Nov. 12, 1866, in House Journal (1866-1867), p.35;N. Y. Tribune, Nov. 19, 1866; Annual Cyclopædia (1866), pp. 11, 12.

[1053] McPherson, p. 194; McPherson’s scrap-book, “Fourteenth Amendment,”p. 55;N. Y. Times, Jan. 23, 1867. General Wager Swayne to S. P. Chase,Dec. 10, 1866, wrote, in substance, that—the evident intention ofCongress to enforce its own plan makes it seem possible to secure from theAlabama legislature the ratification of the Amendment; that the Senate wasready to ratify in spite of the governor’s message against it, and of thecertain disapproval of “the people, poor, ignorant, and without mailfacilities,” but a despatch had been sent to Parsons in the North foradvice, and he advised rejection; inspired, it was asserted by thePresident, the cry was raised, “we can’t desertour President,” and themeasure was lost; but when they return (in January) they will be preparedfor either course, and the governor will recommend ratification. “Diaryand Correspondence of S. P. Chase,” in the Annual Rept. of the Amer. Hist.Assn. (1902), Vol. II, pp. 516-517.

[1054]N. Y. Times, Jan. 9, 1867. Patton also went to Washington duringthe recess.

[1056] McPherson, pp. 352, 353; McPherson’s scrap-book, “FourteenthAmendment,” pp. 60, 66. The telegrams are in the Impeachment Testimony,Vol. I, pp. 271-272. Interview with General Swayne, 1901.

[1060] According to his own report. SeeNation, Feb. 15, 1866. Hart,“American History as told by Contemporaries,” Vol. IV, p. 49.

[1061] Report of B. C. Truman, April 9, 1866; Report of Joint Committee,1866, Pt. III,passim; Report of Schurz with accompanying documents;N.Y. Times, Sept. 9 and Oct. 3, 1866;Nation, Feb. 15,et passim;World andTribune;Herald andTribune correspondent, 1865;Montgomery Mail and Advertiser;Selma Times;Tuscaloosa Monitor andBlade, 1865 to 1875. Of the New York papers theNation andTribunewere especially violent at first, but changed later. TheTimes and theHerald had fair correspondents most of the time.

[1063] SeeN. Y. Times, Sept. 9, 1866 (Federal soldier), Oct. 3, 1866(Ohio man);N. Y. News, May 7, 1866 (Montgomery correspondent).

[1064] Lewis E. Parsons (New York), Whig; George S. Houston; A. B. Cooper(New Jersey), Whig; John Forsyth, State Rights Democrat; R. B. Lindsay(Scotch), Douglas Democrat; James W. Taylor, Whig; Benjamin Fitzpatrick,Douglas Democrat.

[1065] Some of them were W. H. Crenshaw (Democrat), whopresided,—Crenshaw was then president of the Senate; John G. Shorter(Democrat), war governor of Alabama; H. D. Clayton (Whig), Confederategeneral; C. C. Langdon (Whig); William S. Mudd (Whig); William Garrett(Whig); M. J. Bulger (Douglas Democrat), Confederate general; C. A. Battle(Democrat), Confederate general; A. Tyson (Whig). See Brewer and Garrett,andN. Y. Times, Aug. 3 and 9, 1866.

[1067]N. Y. Times, Aug. 27, 1866. By “Union” party, Parsons evidentlymeant those who opposed secession.

[1072] Davis was of good middle-class Virginia stock. A Whig in politics,Mrs. Chesnut called him “a social curiosity.” In convention of 1861 hevoted against immediate secession, threatened resistance among the hillsof north Alabama, and ended by signing the ordinance of secession; waschosen to succeed Dr. Fearn in the Confederate Provisional Congress; wasappointed lieutenant-colonel of the 19th Alabama Infantry, but declined;commanded a battalion for a while; his “loyalty” consisted in his leavingthe Confederate service and returning to Huntsville within the Federallines. Brewer, p. 365, Garrett, pp. 341, 342; Smith’s Debates,passim.He soon fell out with the carpet-baggers and “formed a party of one.”

[1073] The disposition of some of the north Alabama leaders (even amongthe Conservatives) to play the childish act was one of the disgustingfeatures of Reconstruction.

[1074]N. Y. Times, Jan. 23, 1867. Among those present were: D. C.Humphreys (Douglas Democrat), Confederate officer, who deserted toFederals (he was in the first carpet-bag legislature, and later judge ofthe Supreme Court of the District of Columbia; see Garrett, p. 364); JohnB. Callis, agent of the Freedmen’s Bureau, Veteran Reserve Corps, memberof Congress, 1868; C. C. Sheets, in convention of 1861, refused to signordinance of secession and deserted to Federals, a member of Congress,1868; Thomas M. Peters, Whig, deserted to Federals, later judge of SupremeCourt of Alabama (see Brewer, p. 309; Garrett, p. 440); F. W. Sykes,member of legislature during war, soon returned to Conservative party(Brewer, p. 309); J. J. Hinds, afterward a notorious scalawag.

[1075] One new man was S. C. Posey of Lauderdale, who had been in theconvention of 1861 and refused to sign the ordinance of secession and wasin the legislature during the war. Returned soon to Conservative party.Brewer, p. 299, Garrett, p. 389.

[1076] The Radical party might have done much worse than to send him tothe Senate. Warren and Spencer, the senators elected, were far inferior incharacter and abilities to Swayne. He was too decent a man to suit theRadicals and was soon dropped.

[1078] The proclamation announcing that the rebellion had ended was issuedApril 2, 1866. McPherson, p. 15.

[1079] Van Horne, Life of Thomas, pp. 153, 399, 400, 408;HuntsvilleAdvocate, June 9, 1866 (for copy of order relating to Department of theSouth that I have not found elsewhere); G. O. No. 1, Mil. Div. Tenn., June20, 1865; G. O. No. 118, W. Dept., June 27, 1865; G. O. No. 1, Dept. Ala.,July 18, 1865; G. O. No. 1, Dist. Ala., June 4, 1866; G. O. No. 1, Dept.Tenn., Aug. 13, 1866; G. O. No. 42, Dept. Tenn., Nov. 1, 1866. The generaland special orders cited in this chapter are on file in the War Departmentat Washington.

[1080] O. R., Ser. I, Vol. XLIX, Pt. II, pp. 505, 560, 727, 826, 854, 971;Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Pt. III.

[1082] That is, the officers had the privileges and authority of officersof a division. G. O. Nos. 1, 9, 17, 29, 54, Dept. Ala., 1865; G. O. No. 1,Mil. Div. Tenn., 1865.

[1083] The “Amnesty Oath.” The oath of allegiance had already beenadministered to all who would take it. See McPherson, “Reconstruction,”pp. 9, 10.

[1085] G. O. No. 3, Dept. Ala., July 21, 1865. There was complaint aboutthe stealing of cotton by troops.

[1086] G. O. No. 6, Post of Montgomery, May 15, 1865. This order isprinted on thin, blue Confederate writing paper, which seems to have beenshaped with scissors to the proper size. Supplies had not followed thearmy.

[1090] Statement of General Woods, Sept. 4, 1865, Document No. 11,accompanying the Report of Schurz.

[1098] G. O. No. 30, Dept. of Ala., Sept. 4, 1865; Statement of GeneralWoods, Sept. 4, 1865, in Schurz’s Report.

There were other trials, but the records are missing and the names of theparties are unknown. A large number of cases were prosecuted beforemilitary commissions convened at the instance of the Freedmen’s Bureau.

[1109] For two years after the war the Confederate sympathizers in northAlabama suffered from persecution of this kind. During the war theConfederates in north Alabama had been classed as guerillas by the Federalcommanders.

[1110] G. O. No. 29, Mil. Div. Tenn., Sept. 21, 1865; G. O. No. 42, Dept.Ala., Sept. 26, 1865.

[1111] G. O. No. 3, H. Q. A., Jan. 12, 1866; G. O. No. 7, Dept. Ala., Feb.12, 1866.

[1115] G. O. No. 44, H. Q. A., July 6, 1866; G. O. No. 13, Dept. of theSouth, July 21, 1866.

[1117] P. M. Dox to Governor Parsons, Sen. Ex. Doc., No. 26, 39th Cong.,1st Sess.

[1120] There were really three governments in Alabama based on the warpowers of the President: (1) the army ruling through its commanders; (2)the Freedmen’s Bureau, with its agents; (3) the provisional civilgovernment.

[1122]De Bow’s Review, 1866. De Bow made a trip through the South.Nation, Oct. 5 and 26, 1865; Truman, Report to President, April 9, 1866.See also Grant, Letter to President, Dec. 18, 1865.

[1123] Colonel Herbert says that the relations between the soldiers andthe ex-Confederates were very kindly, but the latter hoped the army wouldsoon be removed, when civil government was established. “Solid South,” p.30.

[1124] Miller, “Alabama,” p. 242; Resolutions of the Legislature, Jan. 16,1866.

[1125] Testimony of Swayne, Report Joint Committee, 1866, Pt. III, p. 139;various reports of Swayne as assistant commissioner of Freedmen’s Bureau.It was noticeable that when Swayne was placed in command of the army inthe state there was less interference and better order than before, thoughhe never obtained the cavalry.

[1126] For instance: In the city of Mobile a petition of some kind mightbe made out in proper form and given to the commander of the Post ofMobile. The latter would indorse it with his approval or disapproval, andsend it to the commander of the District of Mobile, who likewise forwardedit with his indorsement to the commander of the Department of Alabama atMobile or Montgomery. In important cases the paper had to go on until itreached headquarters in Macon, Nashville, Louisville, Atlanta, orWashington, and it had to return the same way.

G. O. Nos. 1, 9, 10, 12, 17, 19, 20, 27, Dept. Ala., from July 18 to Sept.1, 1865; G. O. No. 18, Dept. Ala., March 30, 1866; G. O. No. 1, Dist.Ala., June 1, 1866; G. O. No. 1, Sub-dist. Ala., Oct. —, 1866; G. O. No.1, Mil. Div. Tenn., June 20, 1865; G. O. Nos. 1 and 42, Dept. of theTenn., Aug. 13 and Nov. 1, 1866; G. O. No. 1, Dept. of the South, June 1,1866; G. O. No. 1, Dept. of the Gulf, ——, 1865; G. O. No. 1, Dist. ofthe Chattahoochee, Aug. —, 1866.

There were numerous general orders from local headquarters of the samenature. See also Van Horne, “Life of Thomas,” pp. 153, 399, 400, 418; andSen. Ex. Doc., No. 13, 38th Cong., 2d Sess.

[1128] Freedmen’s Bureau Report, Oct. 20, 1869; Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 143,41st Cong., 2d Sess.

[1131] Stats.-at-Large, Vol. XIII, pp. 507-509. See also O. O. Howard,“The Freedmen during the War,” in theNew Princeton Review, May andSept., 1886.

[1133] McPherson, “Reconstruction,” pp. 69-74, 147-151, 349, 350, 378;Burgess, “Reconstruction,” pp. 87-90.

[1135] Circular No. 16, Sept. 19, 1865 (Howard); Circular No. 6, June 13,1865 (Howard); Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 70, 39th Cong., 1st Sess.; Circular No.1, July 14, 1865 (Conway); Circular No. 2, July 14, 1865 (Conway).

[1136] One of them—Chaplain C. W. Buckley—was guardian of the blacks atMontgomery. He afterwards played a prominent part in carpet-bag politics.

[1137] Ku Klux Rept., p. 441;N. Y. World, July 20, 1865; oral accountsand letters. It was on this theory that the Bureau was established, and atthe head of the institution was placed General O. O. Howard, who was asoft-hearted, unpractical gentleman, with boundless confidence in thenegro and none whatever in the old slave owner. A man of hard common senselike Sherman would have done less harm and probably much good with theBureau.

[1139] Circular No. 5, June 2, 1865 (Howard); Circular No. 2, July 14,1865 (Conway); Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 70, 39th Cong., 1st Sess.

[1141] In November, 1866, the following army officers, most of whom weremembers of the Veteran Reserve Corps, were made superintendents of thesedepots: Montgomery, Capt. J. L. Whiting, V.R.C.; Mobile, Brevet Major G.H. Tracy, 15th Infantry; Huntsville, Brevet Col. J. B. Callis, V.R.C.;Selma, Lieut. George Sharkley; Greenville, James F. McGogy, Late FirstLieut. U.S.A.; Tuscaloosa, Capt. W. H. H. Peck, V.R.C.; Talladega, J. W.Burkholder, A.A.G., U.S.A.; Demopolis, Brevet Major C. W. Pierce, V.R.C.Other Bureau officials who afterward became well-known carpet-baggerswere: Major C. A. Miller, 2d Maine Cavalry, A.A.G.; Major B. W. Norris,Additional Paymaster; Lieut.-Col. Edwin Beecher, Additional Paymaster;Rev. C. W. Buckley, Chaplain 47th U.S.C. Infantry. Other officers of theV.R.C. who arrived later were Capt. Roderick Theune, Lieuts. George F.Browing, G. W. Pierce, John Jones, P. E. O’Conner, and Joseph Logan. SeeSwayne’s Report, Oct. 31, 1866; Sen. Ex. Doc., No. 21, 40th. Cong., 2dSess. With one exception these later assisted in Reconstruction.

[1145] For examples, see Schurz’s Report and accompanying documents, Nos.20, 21, 22, 28; Taylor, “Destruction and Reconstruction”; article bySchurz inMcClure’s Magazine, Jan., 1904.

[1149] No one ever knew exactly how far the military commander was boundto obey the assistant commissioner andvice versa. The problem was atlast solved by making Swayne military commander also.

[1150] Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Pt. III, p. 138(testimony of General Wager Swayne).

[1152] Swayne did not hesitate to intimidate such men as Parsons. He wouldtreat old men—former senators, governors, and congressmen—as if theywere bad boys; he himself was under thirty.

[1153] The reason for this was that the day before several Federal drunkenofficers had been careering around the bay in a boat, and Forsyth, who wason this boat, did not want his party of ladies to meet them.

[1158] Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. VI, p. 352;G. O. No. 64, Dept. Ala., Dec. 10, 1865; Swayne’s Report, Jan. 31, 1865;Freedmen’s Bureau Reports, Dec., 1865, and Nov., 1866.

[1159] Freedmen’s Bureau Report, Dec., 1895; Swayne’s Reports, Jan. 31 andOct. 31, 1866, in Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 70, and Sen. Ex. Doc., No. 6, 39thCong., 1st Sess.

[1161] Ho. Rept., No. 121, 41st Cong., 2d Sess.; Sen. Ex. Doc., No. 6,39th Cong., 1st Sess.

[1162] Freedmen’s Bureau Reports, Dec., 1865, and Nov., 1866; Ho. Ex.Doc., No. 142 41st Cong., 2d Sess.; Miller, “History of Alabama,” p. 240.Congress appropriated $20,000,000, and there was an immense amount ofConfederate property confiscated and sold for the benefit of the Bureau.Of this no account was kept. One detailed estimate of Bureau expenses isas follows:—

Edwin De Leon, “Ruin and Reconstruction of the Southern States,” inSouthern Magazine, 1874. See also Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 142, 41st Cong., 2dSess.

[1164]N. Y. News, Sept. 7, 1865 (Montgomery correspondent); Ku KluxRept., p. 441; oral accounts.

[1166] Howard’s Circular, May 30, 1865; War Department Circular No. 11,July 12, 1865.

[1167]Huntsville Advocate, July 26, 1865. This was when the armyofficials were conducting the Bureau. Later the civilian agents charged $2for making every contract, and the negroes soon wanted the Bureauabolished so far as it related to contracts.N. Y. Times, March 12, 1866(letter from Florence, Ala.). In Madison County some of the negroes tarredand feathered a Bureau agent who had been collecting $1.50 each fordrawing contracts.N. Y. Herald, Dec. 22, 1867.

[1169] These regulations bear the approval of the other two rulers ofAlabama—General Woods and Governor Parsons. See G. O. No. 12, Aug. 30,1865.

[1170] G. O. No. 13, Sept., 1865. This order was in force until 1868. SeeN. Y. World, Nov. 20, 1867.

[1171] These propositions were approved by A. Humphreys, assistantsuperintendent at Talladega, and by General Chetlain, commanding theDistrict of Talladega.Selma Times, Dec. 4, 1865.

[1174] Swayne’s Report, Jan., 1866. Rev. C. W. Buckley, in a report toSwayne (dated Jan. 5, 1866), of a tour in Lowndes County, stated thatwhile the Bureau and the army and the “government of the Christiannation,” each had done much good, all was as nothing to what God wasdoing. The hand of God was seen in the stubborn and persistent reluctanceof the negro to make contracts and go to work; God had taught the8,000,000 arrogant and haughty whites that they were dependent upon thefreedmen; God had ordained that “the self-interest of the former mastershould be the protection of the late slaves.”

[1181] Herbert, “Solid South,” p. 31;N. Y. News, Sept. 3, 1865 (Selmacorrespondent).

[1182] In one case the agent in Montgomery sent to Troy, fifty-two milesdistant, and arrested a landlord who refused to rent a house to a negro.The negro told the Bureau agent that he was being evicted.

[1183] There were several plantations near Montgomery, Selma, Mobile, andHuntsville where negroes were thus collected.

[1184] In Montgomery, the Rev. C. W. Buckley, a “hard-shell” preacher,looked after negro contracts. A negro was not allowed to make his owncontract, but it must be drawn up before Buckley. When a negro broke hiscontract, Buckley always decided in his favor, and avowed that he wouldsooner believe a negro than a white man. His delight was to keep a whiteman waiting for a long time while he talked to the negro, turning his backto and paying no attention to the white caller. He preached to the negroesseveral times a week, not sermons, but political harangues. The audiencewas composed chiefly of negro women, who, if they had work, would leave itto attend the meetings. They would not disclose what Buckley said to them,and when questioned would reply, “It’s a secret, and we can’t tell it towhite folks.” Buckley advocated confiscation, but Swayne, who had morecommon sense, frowned upon such theological doctrines.

[1185] Barker, a carriage-maker at Livingston, was arrested and confinedin prison for some time, and finally was released without trial. He wastold that a negro servant had preferred charges against him, and laterdenied having done so. Such occurrences were common. Ku Klux Rept. Ala.Test., pp. 357, 371, 390, 475, 487, 1132; Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 27, 39thCong., 1st Sess.; Swayne’s Reports, Dec., 1865, and Jan., 1866.

[1186]Selma Times, April 11, 1866. Busteed was a much-dislikedcarpet-bag Federal judge. Mr. Burns survived theBusting, and was amember of the Constitutional Convention of 1901.

[1187] The Bureau courts continued to act even after the state wasreadmitted to the Union. In 1868, two constables arrested a negro chargedwith house-burning in Tuscumbia. Col. D. C. Rugg, the Bureau agent atHuntsville, raised a force of forty negroes and came to the rescue of thenegro criminal. “If you attempt to put that negro on the train,” he said,“blood will be spilled. I am acting under the orders of the militarydepartment.” The officers were trying to take him to Tuscumbia for trial.Rugg thought the Bureau should try him, and said, “These men [the negroes]are not going to let you take the prisoner away, and blood will be shed ifyou attempt it.”N. Y. World, Oct. 23, 1868;Tuscaloosa Times.

[1190] Freedmen’s Bureau Reports, 1865-1870; Hardy, “History of Selma”;N. Y. World, Nov. 13, 1865.

[1191] The Southern Famine Relief Commission of New York, which worked inAlabama until 1867, reported that there was much greater suffering fromwant among the whites than among the blacks. This society sent corn aloneto the state,—65,958 bushels. See Final Proceedings and General Report,New York, 1867.

[1196] Swayne’s Report, Oct. 31, 1866;N. Y. Daily News, Sept. 7, 1865(Montgomery correspondent).

[1198] In the convention of 1867 this teaching bore fruit in the ordinanceauthorizing suits by former slaves to recover wages from Jan. 1, 1863.

[1200]De Bow’s Review, March, 1866 (Dr. Nott);N. Y. Times, Oct. 3,1865;Montgomery Advertiser, March 21, 1866.

[1202] A Tallapoosa County farmer stated that for three years after thewar the crops were very bad. Yet the whites who had negroes on their farmsfelt bound to support them. But if the whites tried to make the negroeswork or spoke sharply to them, they would leave and go to the Bureau forrations. P. M. Dox, a Democratic member of Congress in 1870, said that innorth Alabama, in 1866-1867, negro women would not milk a cow when itrained. Servants would not black boots. There was a general refusal to domenial service. Ala. Test., pp. 345, 1132. The Alabama cotton crop of 1860was 842,729 bales; of 1865, 75,305 bales; of 1866, 429,102 bales; of 1867,239,516 bales; of 1868, 366,193 bales. Of each crop since the war anincreasingly large proportion has been raised by the whites.

[1204] Within the last five years I have seen several old negroes who saidthey had been paying assessments regularly to men who claimed to beworking to get the “forty acres and the mule” for the negro. Theynaturally have little to say to white people on the subject. From what Ihave been told by former slaves, I am inclined to think that the negroeshave been swindled out of many hard-earned dollars, even in recent times,by the scoundrels who claim to be paying the fees of lawyers at work onthe negroes’ cases.

[1205] Swayne’s Report, Oct. 31, 1866; Freedmen’s Bureau Report, Dec.,1865; Grant’s Report; Truman’s Report, April 9, 1866;DeBow’s Review,March, 1866;Montgomery Advertiser, March 1, 1866;N. Y. News, Nov.25, 1865 (Selma correspondent);N. Y. World, Nov. 13, 1865;N. Y.Times, Oct. 31, 1865;N. Y. News, Sept., and Oct. 2, 7, 1865. B. W.Norris, a Bureau agent from Skowhegan, Maine, told the negroes the tale of“forty acres and a mule,” and they sent him to Congress in 1868 to get theland for them. He told them that they had a better right to the land thanthe masters had. “Your work made this country what it is, and it isyours.” Ala. Test., pp. 445, 1131.

[1209] Ala. Test., p. 460; see Annual Cyclopædia (1867), article“Confiscation.”

[1210]Montgomery Advertiser, March, 1866. Buckley was known among the“malignants” as “the high priest of the nigger Bureau.”N. Y. World,Dec. 22, 1867.

[1213]N. Y. Times, Feb. 12, 1866 (letter of northern traveller);Steedman and Fullerton’s Reports;N. Y. Herald, June 24, 1866;Columbus (Ga.)Sun, Nov. 22, 1865;N. Y. Times, Jan. 25, 1866.

[1216] Ho. Rept., No. 121, 41st Cong., 2d Sess.; Ku Klux Rept., p. 441.See chapter in regard to Union League.

[1217] See also DuBois, inAtlantic Monthly, March, 1901; Ho. Ex. Doc.,No. 241, 41st Cong., 2d Sess.

[1219] Some of the prominent incorporators were Peter Cooper, William C.Bryant, A. A. Low, Gerritt Smith, John Jay, A. S. Barnes, J. W. Alvord, S.G. Howe, George L. Stearns, Edward Atkinson, and A. A. Lawrence. The actof incorporation was approved by the President on March 3, 1865, at thesame time the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill was approved. Numbers of theincorporators and bank officials were connected with the Bureau. See Ho.Mis. Doc., No. 16, 43d Cong., 2d Sess.

[1223] See Williams, “History of the Negro Race in America,” Vol. II, p.410. August was a month in which there was little money-making among thenegroes. It was vacation time, between the “laying by” and the gatheringof the crop.

[1225] Hoffman, p. 290; also Sen. Rept., No. 440, 46th Cong., 2d Sess.Williams, Vol. II, p. 411, states that the total deposits amounted to$57,000,000, an average of $284 for each depositor.

[1226] Dividends were declared as follows: Nov. 1, 1875, 20%; March 20,1875-1878, 10%; Sept. 1, 1880, 10%; June 1, 1882, 15%; May 12, 1883, 7%;making 62% in all. To 1886, $1,722,549 had been paid to depositors, andthere was a balance in the hands of the government receivers of $30,476.

[1227] Williams, “History of the Negro Race,” Vol. II, pp. 403-410; FredDouglass, “Life and Times,” Ch. XIV; Ho. Mis. Doc., No. 16, 43d Cong., 2dSess.; Du Bois, “The Souls of Black Folk”; the various reports of theFreedmen’s Bureau and of the commissioners appointed to settle the affairsof the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company, to 1902; Hoffman, “RaceTraits and Tendencies,” pp. 289, 290; Fleming, “Documents relating toReconstruction,” Nos. 6 and 7.

[1229] McPherson, “Rebellion,” pp. 594, 595; McPherson, “Reconstruction,”pp. 147-151.

[1231] DuBois (Atlantic Monthly, March, 1901) declares that theopposition to the education of the negro was bitter, for the Southbelieved that the educated negro was a dangerous negro. This statement isperhaps partially correct for fifteen or twenty years after 1870, but itis not correct for 1865-1869.

[1232]The Gulf States Hist. Mag., Sept., 1902; Report of General Swayneto Howard, Dec. 26, 1865. The evidence on this point that is worthy ofconsideration is conclusive. It is all one way. See also Chs.XIX andXX, below.

[1236] G. O. No. 11, July 12, 1865 (Montgomery); Freedmen’s BureauReports, 1865-1869.

[1239] Freedmen’s Bureau Report, Dec., 1865; Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 70, 39thCong., 1st Sess.

[1240]Daily News, Oct. 21, 1865 (Mobile correspondent);De Bow’sReview, 1866 (Dr. Nott).

[1242] The account of this particular school was given me by Dr. O. D.Smith of Auburn, Ala., who was one of the men who chose the white teacher.

[1245] Rent was usually paid at the rate of $20 a month for thirty pupils.Ho. Rept., No. 121, pp. 47, 369, 374, 377, 41st Cong., 2d Sess. The booksof the American Missionary Association showed that it had received, in1868 and 1869, from the Freedmen’s Bureau for Alabama, the followingamounts in cash, though how much it received before these dates is notknown.

An item in the account of the Association was “Chicago to Mobile,$20,000.” No one was able to explain what it meant unless it was the$20,000 building in Mobile used as a training school for negro teachersand on which the Bureau paid rent. In the southern states the Bureau paidto the American Missionary Association, as shown by the books of thelatter, $213,753.22. Judging from the variable items not noted above, rentwas evidently not included nor even all the cash. Ho. Rept., No. 121, p.369et seq., 41st Cong., 2d Sess. (Howard Investigation).

[1246] Buckley’s Report for March 15, 1867; Semiannual Report on Schoolsfor Freedmen, July 4, 1867; General Clanton in Ku Klux Rept. Ala. Test.

[1250] Reports, Proceedings, and Lectures of the National Teachers’Association, 1865 to 1880; Reports of the Freedmen’s Aid Societies of theMethodist Episcopal Church. For results of the mistaken teachings of theradical instructors, see Page’s article on “Lynching” in theNorthAmerican Review, Jan., 1904.

[1251] Miss Alice M. Bacon, in the Slater Fund Trustees, OccasionalPapers, No. 7, p. 6. Armstrong, at Hampton, Va., was a shining exceptionto the kind of teachers described above.

[1252] The Reconstruction government was now in power. There were, at thistime, thirty-one Bureau schools at thirty-one points in the state.

[1255] Sir George Campbell, “White and Black,” pp. 131, 383; Thomas, “TheAmerican Negro,” p. 240; Washington, “The Future of the American Negro,”pp. 25-27, 55;DeBow’s Review, 1866; Slater Fund Trustees, OccasionalPapers, No. 7. Washington tells of the craze for the education in Greek,Latin, and theology. This education would make them the equal of thewhites, they thought, and would free them from manual labor, and above allfit them for office-holding. Nearly all became teachers, preachers, andpoliticians. “Up from Slavery,” pp. 30, 80, 81; “Future of the AmericanNegro,” p. 49.

[1256] From the surrender of the Confederate armies, to his death in 1903,Dr. Curry was a stanch believer in the work for negro education. No otherman knew the whole question so thoroughly as he. And he had the advantageof a close acquaintance with the negro from his early childhood. Hisobservations as to the effects of alien efforts to educate the black willbe found in the Slater Fund Occasional Papers, and in an address deliveredbefore the Montgomery Conference in 1900. See alsoCh. XIV.

[1257] I have talked with many who uniformly assert that they were unableto conform to the Bureau regulations. It was better to let land remainuncultivated. Wherever possible no attention was paid to the rules. Thenegro laborers themselves have no recollections of any real assistance inlabor matters received from the Bureau. They remember it rather as anobstruction to laboring freely.

[1259] That is, blacks and such whites as were not “disfranchised forparticipation in the rebellion or for felony.”

[1260] July 11, 1868, the oath was modified for those whose disabilitieshad been removed by Congress; Feb. 15, 1871, those not disfranchised bythe Fourteenth Amendment were allowed to take the modified oath of July11, 1868, instead of the iron-clad oath. See MacDonald, “Select Statutes.”The Alabama representatives all took the “iron-clad” oath.

[1261] Text of the Act, McPherson, “Reconstruction,” pp. 191, 192; G. O.No. 2, 3d M. D., April 3, 1867. For criticism, Burgess, “Reconstruction,”pp. 112-122; Dunning, “Civil War and Reconstruction,” pp. 123, 126-135,143.

[1264] The oath was: “I, —— ——, do solemnly swear (or affirm), in thepresence of Almighty God, that I am a citizen of the State of Alabama;that I have resided in said State for —— months, next preceding thisday, and now reside in the county of —— in said State; that I amtwenty-one years old; that I have not been disfranchised for participationin any rebellion or civil war against the United States, nor for felonycommitted against the laws of any State or of the United States; that Ihave never been a member of any State legislature, nor held any executiveor judicial office in any State and afterward engaged in insurrection orrebellion against the United States or given aid and comfort to theenemies thereof; that I have never taken an oath as a member of Congressof the United States, as an officer of the United States, or as a memberof any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of anyState, to support the Constitution of the United States and afterwardsengaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States or givenaid and comfort to the enemies thereof; that I will faithfully support theConstitution and obey the laws of the United States, and will, to the bestof my ability, encourage others to do so, so help me God!” McPherson,“Reconstruction,” pp. 192, 205; G. O. No. 5, 3d M. D., April 8, 1867.

[1265] McPherson, “Reconstruction,” pp. 192-194; Burgess,“Reconstruction,” pp. 129-135; Dunning, “Civil War and Reconstruction,”pp. 124, 125.

[1266] G. O. Nos. 1 and 2, 3d M. D., April 1 and 3, 1866;N. Y. Herald,April 6, 1867; Annual Cyclopædia (1867), p. 19; McPherson, pp. 201, 205;Report of Secretary of War, 1867, Vol. I, p. 322; Herbert, “Solid South,”p. 38.

[1268] Report of Secretary of War, 1867, Vol. I, p. 466;N. Y. Herald,April 6, 1867.

[1276] G. O. No. 25, 3d M. D., May 29, 1867. (This was to favor Radicalmeetings. There were many stump speakers sent down from the North to tellthe negro how to vote, and it was feared they might excite the whites toacts of violence.)N. Y. Herald, June 4, 1867 (explanatory order).

[1278] As long as Pope was in command at Montgomery and Atlanta, he andGrant kept up a rapid and voluminous (on the part of Pope) correspondence.They were usually agreed on all that pertained to Reconstruction, both nowbeing extreme in their views.

[1279] Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 30, 40th Cong., 2d Sess.; No. 20, 40th Cong., 1stSess.; McPherson, p. 312.

[1281] G. O. Nos. 53 and 55, 3d M. D., Aug. 19 and 23, 1867; Report of theSecretary of War, 1867, Vol. I, p. 331; McPherson, p. 319.

[1285] S. O. No. 2, 3d M. D., April 15, 1867; Annual Cyclopædia (1867), p.20;Montgomery Mail, April 30, 1867.

[1287] G. O. Nos. 35, 38, 40, Post of Mobile, 1867; Annual Cyclopædia(1867), pp. 20-23;N. Y. Times, May 21, 1867.

[1288]N. Y. World, May 28, 1867; S. O. No. 34, 3d M. D., May 31, 1867;Herbert, “Solid South,” p. 40;N. Y. Times, May 21, 1867.

[1289] S. O. No. 38, 3d M. D., June 6, 1867; S. O. No. 27, 3d M. D., May22, 1867;N. Y. Tribune, June 12, 1867;Selma Messenger, June 18,1867;Evening Post, May, 1867; Annual Cyclopædia (1867), pp. 20-25;Mobile Register, Oct. —, 1867.

[1291] Herbert, “Solid South,” pp. 40, 41;N. Y. Times, Dec. 27, 1867.See above, p.393.

[1292] S. O. Nos. 9, 10, 16, 18, 19, 20, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 31, 32, 35,36, 37, 38, 39, 3d M. D., 1867; Report of the Secretary of War, 1867, Vol.I, p. 327. (Some of the persons appointed were B. T. Pope and David P.Lewis, judges; George P. Goldthwaite, solicitor; and B. F. Saffold, mayorof Selma.)

[1297] S. O. 254, 3d M. D., Nov. 26, 1867; Pope to Swayne, Nov. 20, 1867;N. Y. World, Dec. 14, 1867.

[1301]N. Y. Tribune, June 1, 1867;N. Y. Herald, June 4, 1867; G. O.No. 28, 3d M. D., June 3, 1867; Report of the Secretary of War, 1867, Vol.I, p. 326.

[1308] S. O. No. 53, 3d M. D., June 27, 1867; G. O. No. 44, 3d M. D., Aug.1, 1867; Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 30, 40th Cong., 2d Sess.

[1310] S. O. No. 96, 3d M. D., Aug 5. 1867; Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 30, 40thCong., 2d Sess. There were other cases not referred to in general andspecial orders, but this was the only case in which Pope himself directlyinterfered.

[1312] In this way, white majorities in ten counties were overcome byblack majorities in the adjoining counties of the district.

[1313] Of the registrars who later became somewhat prominent in politics,the whites were Horton, Dimon, Dereen, Sillsby, William M. Buckley,Stanwood, Ely, Pennington, Haughey—all being northern men. Of the negromembers of the boards, Royal, Finley, Williams, Alston, Turner, Rapier,and King (or Godwin) rose to some prominence, and their records were muchbetter that those of their white colleagues.

[1319] Governor, secretary of state, treasurer, comptroller, sheriff,judicial officers of every kind, and all court clerks and other officials,commissioners, tax assessors and collectors, county surveyors, treasurers,mayor, councilmen, justices of the peace, solicitors.

[1320] Special Instructions to Registrars in Alabama, Report of theSecretary of War, 1867, Vol. I, p. 339.

[1322] Record of Cabinet Meeting, June 18, 1867, in Ho. Ex. Doc., No, 34,40th Cong., 1st Sess.; Burgess, p. 136; Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 20, 40th Cong.,1st Sess.

[1323] Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 20, 40th Cong., 1st Sess.; McPherson, p. 311. Seeabove, p.479.

[1326] G. O. No. 59, 3d M. D., Aug. 31, 1867; Journal of Convention of1867, pp. 3-5; Report of the Secretary of War, 1867, Vol. I, pp. 356, 357;Tribune Almanac, 1868.

[1327] Sen. Ex. Doc., No. 53, 40th Cong., 2d Sess.Tribune Almanac,1867, 1868; Report of Col. J. F. Meline, Inspector of Registration, Jan.27, 1868. These figures are based on the latest reports of 1867. Accordingto the census of 1866, there would be in 1867, 108,622 whites overtwenty-one years of age, and 89,663 blacks.

[1330] McPherson, p. 319; Journal of Convention, 1867, pp. 110, 111, 276;N. Y. World, Dec. 14, 1867. When the convention passed a resolutionindorsing the “firm and impartial, yet just and gentle,” administration ofPope, three delegates voted against it because they said Pope had not donehis full duty in removing disloyal persons from office but, after beinginformed of their politics, had left them in office. Journal ofConvention, 1867, pp. 110, 111. For account of the convention, see below,Ch. XIV.

[1331] G. O. No. 101, Dec. 20, 1867; McPherson, p. 319; Journal ofConvention, p. 267.

[1333] McPherson, p. 346; G. O. No. 104, H. Q. A. (A. G. O.), Dec. 28,1867; G. O. No. 1, 3d M. D., Jan. 1, 1868.

[1336] G. O. No. 16, 3d M. D., Jan. 27, 1868; Annual Cyclopædia (1868), p.15; Report of Major-General Meade’s Military Operations and Administrationof the 3d M. D., etc. (pamphlet);N. Y. Times, Jan. 24, 1868.

[1338] Report of Meade, etc., 1868; Telegrams of Meade to Grant, Jan. 11,12, and 18, and of Grant to Meade, Jan. 13 and 18.

[1339] Report of Meade, etc., 1868; Herbert, “Solid South,” pp. 48, 49. Inhis first report Meade estimated that the constitution failed ofratification by 8114 votes (Herbert, “Solid South,” p. 49). In his reportat the end of the year, based on the official report of General Hayden,which was made a month after the election, he changed the number to13,550. See alsoCh. XVI, on the rejection of the constitution.

[1340] G. O. No. 42, 3d M. D., March 12, 1868; McPherson, p. 320; Meade’sReport, 1868.

[1341] In one case he reinstated Charles R. Hubbard, Clerk of the DistrictCourt, who had been removed by Swayne. This was contrary to instructionsfrom the War Department, which forbade the reappointment of an officer whohad been removed. Annual Cyclopædia (1868), p. 15.

[1343] G. O. No. 7, Jan. 11, 1868, republishing G. O. No. 3, WarDepartment, 1866.

[1345] Pope was in feeble health, and this treatment hastened his death,which occurred shortly after being released from jail. Brewer, “Alabama,”p. 524.

[1346] G. O. No. 53, 3d M. D., April 7, 1868;N. Y. Herald, April 1,1868. Judge Pope was arrested for violating Pope’s G. O. Nos. 53, 55,which certainly provided for mixed juries. Meade was simply putting hisown interpretation on these orders.

[1348] Report of Meade, etc,. 1868;Independent Monitor, April and May,1868. TheIndependent Monitor was a long-established and well-knownweekly paper. F. A. P. Barnard, who was afterwards president of ColumbiaCollege, New York, was, when a professor at the University of Alabama, theeditor of theMonitor, and under him it won a reputation for spicinesswhich it did not lose under Randolph. See alsoCh. XXI, for Randolph andthe Ku Klux Klan.

[1349] G. O. No. 31, Feb. 28, 1868; G. O. No. 44, March 18, 1868; G. O.No. 69, April 24, 1868; McPherson, p. 320; Report of Meade, etc., 1868.

[1350] G. O. No. 6, Jan. 10, 1868; G. O. No. 79, May 20, 1868; McPherson,p. 320; Report of Meade, 1868.

[1352] G. O. No. 64, 3d M. D., April 19, 1868;Selma Times andMessenger, April 29, 1868.

[1353] This was the offence according to conservative testimony. TheRadical testimony did not differ greatly, but the “hog thief” happened tobe a carpet-bag politician also.

[1354] These were the “Eutaw cases,” and were tried at Selma. Meadecommuted some of the sentences at once. The prisoners were sent to DryTortugas, and were later pardoned by Meade. The officials spoiled theeffect of his leniency by putting the pardoned prisoners ashore atGalveston, Texas, without money and almost without clothes, while some ofthe party were ill. Annual Cyclopædia (1868), p. 17;Selma Times andMessenger, May 5, 1868;N. Y. World, May 28, 1868; G. O. No. 80, 3d M.D., May 20, 1868.

[1355]Independent Monitor, April and May, 1868; Report of Meade, 1868;G. O. No. 78, 3d M. D., May 13, 1868.

During the eight months of Meade’s administration in the Third District,there were thirty-two trials by military commission in Georgia, Florida,and Alabama. Only fifteen persons were convicted. The sentences in fourcases were disapproved, in eight cases remitted, and two cases werereferred to the President, leaving only one person confined in prison.Report of Meade, 1868.

[1367] The volume of orders numbered 598 in the Adjutant-General’s officeat Washington contains the General Orders of the Third Military District.Volume 599 relates to civil affairs in the same district.

[1369] Washington (in “The Future of the American Negro,” pp. 11, 112,136) thinks it unfortunate that the native whites did not make strongerefforts to control the politics of the negro, and prevent him from fallingunder the control of unscrupulous aliens. But any attempt to influence thenegro voters was looked upon as “obstructing reconstruction,” and, infact, was contrary to the spirit of the reconstruction laws and rendered aperson liable to arrest. This was recognized by Patton and others, who,however, never dreamed that the negroes would be so successfully exploitedby political adventurers, or perhaps they would have pursued a differentpolicy. General Clanton, the leader of the Conservatives, said that earlyin 1867 the whites had endeavored to keep the blacks away from Radicalleaders by giving them barbecues, etc. On one occasion a Radical, who hadonce been kept from mistreating negroes by the military authorities atClanton’s request, told the negroes that the whites intended to poisonthem at the barbecue. Two long tables had been set, one for each race, andthe preachers, speakers, and the whites were present, but the blacks didnot come. Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., pp. 237, 246.

[1371] Herbert, “Solid South,” p. 39; Herbert, “Political History” in“Memorial Record of Alabama,” Vol. I, p. 88; Annual Cyclopædia (1867), p.16.

[1372] Northern observers who were friendly to the South saw the dangermuch more clearly than the southerners themselves, who seemed unable totake negro suffrage seriously or to consider it as great a danger as it isgenerally believed they did. Two years of the Freedmen’s Bureau had notwholly succeeded in alienating the best of the whites and the negroes. Thewhites thought that the removal of outside interference would quiet theblacks. To give the negro the ballot was absurd, they thought, but theydid not consider it necessarily as dangerous as it turned out to be. Aremarkable prophecy of Reconstruction is found in Calhoun’s Works, Vol.VI, pp. 309-310. The behavior of the negro during and after the war, inspite of malign influences, had been such as to reassure many whites, whobegan to believe that to accept negro suffrage and get rid of theFreedmen’s Bureau and the army would be a good exchange. The northernfriendly observers saw more clearly because, perhaps, they betterunderstood the motives of the Radicals. TheN. Y. Herald said: “Briefly,we may regard the entire ten unreconstructed southern states, withpossibly one or two exceptions, as forced by a secret and overwhelmingrevolutionary influence to a common and inevitable fate. They are allbound to be governed by blacks, spurred on by worse than blacks—whitewretches who dare not show their faces in respectable society anywhere.This is the most abominable phase barbarism has assumed since the dawn ofcivilization. It was all right and proper to put down the rebellion. Itwas all right, perhaps, to emancipate the slaves, although the right tohold them had been acknowledged before. But it is not right to make slavesof white men, even though they may have been former masters of blacks.This is but a change in a system of bondage that is rendered the moreodious and intolerable because it has been inaugurated in an enlightenedinstead of a dark and uncivilized age.” See Annual Register, 1867.

[1373] See McPherson’s scrapbook, “The Campaign of 1876,” Vol. I, p. 105,for an account of a typical meeting.

[1378]N. Y. Herald, May 17, 1869; Annual Cyclopædia (1867), pp. 18, 21.It is noticeable all through Reconstruction that most of the demands forsocial rights or privileges came from Mobile mulattoes.

[1380] McPherson, “Reconstruction,” pp. 249, 250. The last assertionrefers to such statements as those of Secretary McCulloch and thePostmaster-General in regard to the character of the “loyalists.” SeeMcCulloch, “Men and Measures,” p. 228.

[1382] On March 15, 1867, Senator Wilson, in a speech in favor of negrosuffrage, said that when the purpose of the act of March 2 was carriedout, the “majority of these states will, within a twelvemonth, send heresenators and representatives that think as we think, and speak as wespeak, and vote as we vote, and will give their electoral vote for whoeverwe nominate as candidate for President in 1868. The power is all in ourhands.”Cong. Globe, March 15, 1867.

[1383] Clanton had been a Whig, had opposed secession, made a brilliantwar record, became the leader of the Democratic and Conservative party in1866, and led the fight against the carpet-bag government until his deathin 1871. He was killed in Knoxville by a hireling of one of the railroadcompanies which had looted the state treasury and against which he wasfighting. Brewer, p. 466; Garrett, pp. 632-645.

[1385]N. Y. Tribune, May 16, 1867, editorial. When the shots were firedKelly showed the white feather, and reclined upon the platform behind andunder the speaker’s chair; afterwards he ran hatless to the hotel, andtold the clerk to “swear he was out.” A special boat at once took him fromthe city to Montgomery.

[1386]N. Y. Tribune, May 16, 1767;N. Y. Times, May 21, 1867;N. Y.World, May 28, 1867;Mobile Times, ——, 1867;Mobile Register, ——,1867;Evening Post, ——, 1867; Annual Cyclopædia (1867), pp. 22, 23.

[1389] Sykes soon deserted the Radicals, and was a Seymour elector thenext year. Later he was a candidate for the U. S. Senate against Spencer.Brewer, p. 309.

[1390] He was the north Alabama candidate for appointment as provisionalgovernor in 1865, but was defeated by Parsons, the middle Alabamacandidate. Parsons made him a judge, but he resigned because the lawyerswho argued before him spoke in insulting phrases concerning his warrecord. In 1867 Pope appointed him superintendent of registration for thestate. He was a prominent member of the Union League. Brewer, p. 508;N.Y. Herald, June 20, 1867; Report of Joint Committee on Reconstruction,Pt. III.

[1392] Nicholas Davis of Madison County and Judge Busteed were bothcandidates for the chairmanship. But the negroes and Union Leaguers werehostile to Davis, because he did not like negro politicians andcarpet-baggers and was opposed to the Union League. Busteed was not afavorite for practically the same reasons, and because the negroes thoughthe was trying to “ride two horses at once.” He had spoken at a meeting ofmoderate reconstructionists in Mobile, had presided over the Kelly meetingwhere the riot occurred, and was believed to be in favor of moderatemeasures. He wrote a letter to the president of the convention, advisingmoderation and criticising certain methods of the Radicals. This letterwas styled the “God save the Republic” letter, and was characterized, hisenemies said, by its bad taste and malignant spirit, and was a stab at hisbest friends. He was chosen a member of the Lowndes County delegation, buthis name was erased from the list of delegates. He then asked to have theprivileges of the floor as a courtesy, but his request was denied. Onecause of dislike of him was that he was believed to have senatorialaspirations, and expected the support of the moderates, or “rebel”reconstructionists. But he was very unfortunate, for the “rebels” alsothought he was trying to play a double game and were dropping him. Suitswere pending against him charging him with malfeasance in office,fraudulent conversion of money, and corrupt abuse of the judicial office.Ex-Governor Watts, Judges S. F. Rice and Wade Keys, John A. Elmore, H. C.Semple, D. S. Troy, and R. H. Goldthwaite were the parties prosecutinghim.N. Y. Herald, June 20, 1867; Brewer, p. 365;Montgomery Mail,June 5, 1867.

[1393] Swayne, as well as Busteed, was an aspirant for senatorial honors.Busteed had succeeded in causing the rejection of Albert Griffin, theeditor of theMobile Nationalist, as register in chancery. Griffin wasSwayne’s friend, and now each gave the other the benefit of his influence.N. Y. Herald, June 20, 1867;Montgomery Mail, June 5, 1867.

[1396] Annual Cyclopædia (1869), pp. 25, 26;Montgomery Mail, June 5,1867;N. Y. Herald, June 19, 20, 1867.

[1398] Herbert, pp. 43, 44;N. Y. Herald, June 20 and 27, 1867. Most ofthe violent and radical schemes originated and were advocated by the whiteRadical leaders. Generally the negro leaders made moderate demands.Holland Thompson, a negro leader, in a speech at Tuskegee, advised hisrace not to organize a negro military company, as it would be sure tocause trouble. He said that the negro did not ask for social equality. Hetold the negroes to stop buying guns and whiskey and go to work.McPherson’s scrapbook, “The Campaign of 1867,” Vol. I, p. 107. In strikingcontrast were the speeches of such white men as B. W. Norris and A. C.Felder, who undertook to persuade the negroes that Reconstruction was theremedy for all the ills that affected humanity. McPherson’s scrapbook,“The Fourth of July” (1867), pp. 124, 125.

[1400] Lawyer, colonel of 7th Alabama Cavalry, superintendent ofeducation, 1870-1872, author of “The Cradle of the Confederacy,” “AlabamaManual and Statistical Register,” editorMontgomery Mail,MobileRegister, etc.

[1401] A reign of terror had followed the reconstruction of Tennesseeunder “Parson” Brownlow.

[1403]N. Y. Herald, Sept. 6, 1867; Annual Cyclopædia (1867), p. 28;Herbert, p. 44.

[1407]N. Y. World, Nov. 11, 1867; Harris, “Political Conflict inAmerica,” p. 479.

[1410]Selma Messenger, Oct. 10 and 12, Dec. 20 and 22, 1867, and Jan.2, 1868;Montgomery Mail, Jan. 30, 1868; Ball, “Clarke County”; oralaccounts.

[1412] Sen. Ex. Doc., No. 53, 40th Cong., 2d Sess.; Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 238,40th Cong., 2d Sess. TheN. Y. Tribune, Oct. 21, 1867, gives slightlydifferent figures. Statements of the vote do not agree. There was muchconfusion in the records. For statistics, see above, pp.491,494.

[1413] Samuel A. Hale, a dissatisfied Radical from New Hampshire, abrother of John P. Hale, wrote to Senator Henry Wilson, on Jan. 1, 1868,concerning the character of the members of the convention. He said thatmany were negroes, grossly ignorant; a large proportion were northernadventurers who had manipulated the negro vote; and all were “worthlessvagabonds, homeless, houseless, drunken knaves.” Hale had lived forseveral years in Alabama. Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., pp. 1815-1830.

[1414] There is doubt about four or five men, whether they were black orwhite. The lists made at the time do not agree.

[1415]N. Y. World, Nov. 11, 1867, and Feb. 22, 1868;Selma Messenger,Dec. 20 and 22, 1867; Annual Cyclopædia (1867), p. 30; Herbert, “SolidSouth,” p. 45. A partial list of aliens as described by a northerncorrespondent: A. J. Applegate of Wisconsin; Arthur Bingham of Ohio andNew York; D. H. Bingham of New York, who had lived in the state before thewar, an old man, and intensely bitter in his hatred of southerners; W. H.Block of Ohio; W. T. Blackford of New York, a Bureau official, “the wearerof one of the two clean shirts visible in the whole convention”; M. D.Brainard of New York, a Bureau clerk who did not know, when elected torepresent Monroe, where his county was located; Alfred E. Buck of Maine, acourt clerk of Mobile appointed by Pope; Charles W. Buckley ofMassachusetts, New York, and Illinois, chaplain of a negro regiment, latera Bureau official; William M. Buckley of New York, his brother; J. H.Burdick of Iowa, extremely radical; Pierce Burton of Massachusetts, whohad been removed from the Bureau for writing letters to northern papers,advocating the repeal of the cotton tax, but now that the negroes desiredthe repeal of the tax, the breach was healed; C. M. Cabot of (unknown),member of Convention of 1865; Datus E. Coon of Iowa; Joseph H. Davis of(unknown), surgeon U.S.A., member of convention of 1865; Charles H. Dustanof Illinois; George Ely of Massachusetts and New York; S. S. Gardner ofMassachusetts, of the Freedmen’s Bureau; Albert Griffin of Ohio andIllinois, Radical editor; Thomas Haughey of Scotland, surgeon U.S.A.; R.M. Johnson of Illinois, lived in Montgomery and represented Henry County;John C. Keffer of Pennsylvania, chairman of Radical Executive Committee,“known to malignants as the ‘head devil’ of the Loyal League”; David Loreof (unknown); Charles A. Miller of Maine, Bureau official, “wore thesecond clean shirt in the convention”; A. C. Morgan of (unknown); B. W.Norris of Maine, Commissioner of National Cemetery, 1863-1865, Commissaryand Paymaster, 1864-1866, Bureau official; E. Woolsey Peck of New York; R.M. Reynolds of Iowa, six months in Alabama and “knew all about it”; J.Silsby of Massachusetts, another Bureau reverend; N. D. Stanwood ofMassachusetts, a Bureau official who had caused several serious negrodisturbances in Lowndes County; J. P. Stow of (unknown); Whelan ofIreland; J. W. Wilhite of (unknown), U.S. sutler; Benjamin Yordy of(unknown), a Bureau official and revenue official who never saw the countyhe represented; Benjamin Rolfe, a carriage painter from New York, was toodrunk to sign the constitution, and was known as “the hero of two shirts,”because when he failed to pay a hotel bill in Selma his carpet-bag wasseized, and was found to contain nothing but two of those useful garments.Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test.,passim;N. Y. World, Nov. 11, 1867;Herbert, p. 45.

[1416] Some of the better known were: R. Deal of Dale County, a Baptistpreacher, one of those who, in 1865, negligently reconstructed the state,and the hope was now expressed that “he has better success inreconstructing souls than sovereignties”; W. C. Ewing of Baine County,“one of the original Moulton Leaguers who, in 1865, first organized theRadical party in Alabama,” a bitter Radical; W. R. Jones of Covington, hadbeen barbarously murdered in “a rebel outrage,” but came to the conventionnotwithstanding; B. F. Saffold, an officer of the Confederate army andmilitary mayor of Selma; Henry C. Semple, ex-Confederate, nephew ofPresident Tyler; Joseph H. Speed, cousin of Attorney-General Speed.

[1417] The negro members were: Ben Alexander of Greene, field hand; JohnCaraway of Mobile, assistant editor of theMobile Nationalist; ThomasDiggs of Barbour, field hand; Peyton Finley, formerly doorkeeper of theHouse; James K. Green of Hale, a carriage driver; Ovid Gregory of Mobile,a barber; Jordan Hatcher of Dallas and Washington Johnson of Russell,field hands, were the blackest negroes in the convention; L. S. Latham ofBullock; Tom Lee of Perry, field hand, who had a reputation formoderation; Alfred Strother of Dallas; J. T. Rapier of Lauderdale,educated in Canada; J. W. McLeod of Marengo; B. F. Royal of Bullock; J. H.Burdick of Wilcox; H. Stokes and Jack Hatcher of Dallas; Simon Brunson andBenjamin Inge of Sumter; Samuel Blandon of Lee; Lafeyette Robinson andColumbus Jones of Madison. Beverly, “History of Alabama,” p. 203;N. Y.World, Nov. 11, 1867; Owen, “Official and Statistical Register,” p. 125.

[1419] Journal Convention of 1867, p. 5;N. Y. Herald, Nov. 13, 1867;Annual Cyclopædia (1867), p. 30.

[1420]Selma Messenger, Dec. 22, 1867; Journal Convention of 1867, p. 6;N. Y. World, Nov. 11, 1867.

[1421] Journal, pp. 69-71, 249, 251, 264; Annual Cyclopædia (1867), p. 32;N. Y. Herald, March 16, 1867.

[1422] Journal, pp. 10, 12, 13;N. Y. World, Nov. 20, 1869; AnnualCyclopædia (1867), p. 30.

[1425] Journal, pp. 79, 178, 249-251; Pope to Swayne, Nov. 20, 1867;N.Y. World, Dec. 14, 1867; G. O. No. 254, 3d M. D., Nov. 26, 1867.

[1428] Journal, p. 189; Herbert, “Solid South,” p. 46;N. Y. Herald,Nov. 13, 1867; Annual Cyclopædia (1867), p. 33.

[1433] Dubbed “the incarnate fiend” by the whites because of his violentprejudice.

[1434]N. Y. World, Dec. 14, 1867;Montgomery Mail, Nov., 1867;N. Y.Herald, Nov. 13 and 23 and Dec. 8, 1867.

[1436] By Griffin of Ohio, Keffer of Pennsylvania, Norris of Maine, andDavis of (?). It was said that Norris and Davis had to be influenced bySwayne to sign the majority report.N. Y. World, Nov. 20, 1867.

[1452] Code of Alabama, 1876, p. 113. Griffin said that the oath requiredthe voter never to favor a change in the new constitution so far as thesuffrage was concerned; that “it was the determination of the committee toforever fasten this constitution on the people of Alabama. He wanted totie the hands of rebels, so that complete political equality should besecured to the negro.” Annual Cyclopædia (1867), p. 32.

[1453] This was aimed at the Confederate soldiers of north Alabama, whohad imprisoned and in some cases hanged the tories and outlaws of thatsection.

[1461] Journal, p. 63. The whites had for more than two years been askingfor the repeal of this unjust tax, but they were not heeded. As soon asthe negroes demanded its repeal, it was repealed. That was certainly oneadvantage they received from the possession of political rights. Onepetition from the negroes asked that the tax be repealed because, in manyinstances, it was greater than the value of the land. If this was notdone, they wanted the land taken from the owners and worked in common.N.Y. Herald, Nov. 13, 1867.

[1464] Journal, p. 240; Meade, Speed, Semple, Cabot, Graves, J. L.Alexander, Ewing, Latham, and Hurst.

[1468] The Codes of Alabama for 1876 and 1896 do not recognize thevalidity of the constitution of 1868. It is listed as the “Constitution(so-called) of the State of Alabama, 1868.” The president of theconvention of 1875 said, “What is called the present constitution of thestate of Alabama is a piece of unseemly mosaic, composed of shreds andpatches gathered here and there, incongruous in design, inharmonious inaction, discriminating and oppressive in the burdens it imposes, recklessin the license it confers on unjust and wicked legislation, and utterlylacking in every element to inspire popular confidence and the reverenceand affection of the people.” Journal, 1875, p. 5.

[1469] Ely, a delegate from Russell, was a candidate in Montgomery;Brainard, a delegate from Monroe, was a candidate in Montgomery; R. M.Johnson, a delegate from Henry, was also a candidate in Montgomery. Thesemen, however, lived in Montgomery and had never seen the counties theyrepresented.

[1470]N. Y. World, Feb. 13 and 22, 1868;Selma Times and Messenger,Feb. 28, 1868;Cong. Globe, March 11, 1868; Herbert, “Solid South”;Beverly, “Alabama”; Owen, p. 125.

The above list is not complete, as there were undoubtedly other candidatesamong those who did not sign the constitution, since a number of them fellinto line later. The starred names are those of candidates who were alsoregistrars, and who not only conducted their own elections for theconvention, but also for office under the new constitution. Three membersof the majority who signed the report were not eligible for office whenthe election came off, two being in jail,—one for stealing and the otherfor fraud,—while a third “had been betrayed into an act of virtue bydying.”N. Y. World, Feb. 13, 1868.

[1473] After the election, Governor Patton, who at first had supportedReconstruction, issued an address complaining that nearly all thecandidates voted for were strangers to the people; that many were ignorantnegroes, and that in one county all the commissioners-elect were negroeswho were unable to read; that unlicensed lawyers, wholly uneducated, werechosen for state solicitors; that the strangers were too often of badcharacter; and that the Radical party consisted almost entirely ofnegroes, the native whites having forsaken the party as soon as thenegroes fell under the control of the imported Radicals who ran themachine.N. Y. Times, April 23, 1868.

[1476] The Radical papers in Alabama were supported almost entirely bycampaign funds and by appropriations from the government for printing thesession laws of the United States. They styled themselves the “OfficialJournals of the United States Government.” When one offended and theWashington patronage was withdrawn, it always collapsed. In 1867 thereconstructionist papers in the state wereAlabama State Sentinel,TheNationalist,Elmore Standard,East Alabama Monitor,AlabamaRepublican,The Tallapoosian,The Reconstructionist,HuntsvilleAdvocate,Moulton Union,Livingston Messenger. See Journal Conventionof 1867, p. 242. The circulation of each paper was small and almostentirely among the negroes. Special campaign editions were printed andscattered broadcast. The constitution was printed in all of theabove-named papers, and also in a Washington paper which was franked bythe thousands from Congressmen through the Union League as a campaigndocument.N. Y. World, Feb. 22, 1868.

[1477] See, for example,The Nationalist, Feb. 4, 1868 (editorial). OnJan. 16, 1868, an “Address to the Laboring Men of Alabama” stated in part,“If you fail to vote and the constitution fails to be ratified, your rightto vote hereafter closes and all participation on your part in theadministration of the laws of the state is at an end.”Montgomery Mail,Jan., 1868.

[1480] Not yet called Democrats, but sometimes “Democratic andConservative.”

[1481] Popular accounts say thousands, but not as many went this time aslater, in the early 70’s.

[1488]N. Y. Times, Jan. 14, 1898;Montgomery Mail, Jan. 17, 1868;Herbert, p. 48; Annual Cyclopædia (1868), p. 15.

[1489] Thirty-five white counties with a population of 393,441—282,282whites and 111,159 blacks—had 135 representatives, or one representativeto 11,241 of the population. Twenty-four black counties with a populationof 580,717—252,407 whites and 328,300 blacks—had 65 representatives, orone to 8933. Three small white counties were not represented, but had tovote with others.;Selma Times and Messenger, March 10, 1868;Cong.Globe, 1867-1868, pp. 2197, 2198.

[1491]Selma Times and Messenger, March 10, 1868. The minority report,March 17, 1868, of Beck of Kentucky and Brooks of New York, on theadmission of Alabama, sums up the Conservative objections to theconstitution. SeeCong. Globe, March 17, 1868, p. 1937.

[1492] Annual Cyclopædia (1868), p. 15;N. Y. Times, Jan. 24, 1865;Selma Times and Messenger, March 10, 1868.

[1494]Tribune Almanac, 1868. The methods of the registrars may beimagined, since Meade had more than 15,000 names of negroes struck fromthe lists.

[1495] It is impossible to obtain exact figures of the registration; noone ever knew exactly what they were, and accounts never agree. Meade’sestimate was 170,734, Report, 1868. Another estimate was 170,000,Cong.Globe, March 17, 1868, p. 1904; and still another 171,378, Alabama Manualand Statistical Register, p. xxiii. It is evident that the registrationwas about 170,000.

[1496] In 1867 the vote on holding a convention had been more than amajority of registered voters.

[1499]The Nationalist, Aug. 24, 1868;Mobile Register, Feb. 6, 1868;Report of Meade, 1868.

[1501]Montgomery Mail, Feb. 4, 5, 12, and 19, 1868;N. Y. World,March 14, 1868;Cong. Globe, March 17, 1868, p. 1937;Mobile Register,Feb. 6, 1868;Selma Times and Messenger, Feb. 29, 1868.

[1504] The Conservatives had challenged such voters several times andJohnson sent the following order:—

[1505]Cong. Globe, March 17, 1868, p. 1937; Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 303, 40thCong., 2d Sess.;N. Y. World, March 14, 1868.

[1506] In Henry County the registrars had all forsaken the party andresigned. On the last day the United States troops opened the polls and 29people voted.Abbeville Register, Feb. 16, 1868. In Dale County it wasmuch the same way. After a careful search one John Metcalf of Skippervillewas found to make complaint on behalf of the reconstructionists. It was asad story: “We had,” he said, “depended on Mr. Deal, the delegate to theconvention, to bring the registration books, ‘but he fused with thedestructive party’ and we couldn’t register. On the fourth day an electionwas held anyway, but the Conservatives would not let us hold it on thefifth. It was the almost united wish of the voters of the county to adoptthe constitution. There are about 150 in the county that are opposed toit, and they united on the fifth and broke us up. We would have polled1400 to 1500 votes for the constitution.” Ho. Mic. Doc., No. 111, 40thCong., 2d Sess.

[1507] In Montgomery 41 whites of 4200 voted. Of these 15 werecarpet-baggers and nearly all were candidates for office. TheMontgomeryMail of Feb. 11 printed the entire list, with sarcastic comments on theirpast history and present aspirations. The list was headed,Our WhiteBlack List, The Roll of Dishonor. SeeCong. Globe, March 11, 1868, p.1827.

[1508] The storm played a very effective part in the debates in Congresslater. Moving tales were told of negroes swimming the swollen streams inorder to get to the polls. One instance was given where, in swimming theAlabama River, which was beyond its banks and floating with ice, a negrowas drowned.Cong. Globe, 1867-1868, p. 2865. The river at this pointwhen out of its banks is not less than a mile wide, and there was neverany ice in it since the glacial epoch.

[1509] The Conservatives claimed that the Lowndes county box was stolen bythe Radicals themselves as soon as they saw the constitution had failed ofratification, in order to give point to charges of fraud. In the same waythe returns from Baine, Colbert, and Jones counties were so tampered withby the Radical election officials that the military canvassers wereobliged to reject them.Montgomery Mail, Feb. 12, 1868;Cong. Globe,1867-1868, p. 2139.

[1510]The Nationalist, Feb. 13 and 20, and Aug. 24, 1868;N. Y.World, March 14, 1868;Selma Times and Messenger, Feb. 28, 1868;Cong.Globe, March 11, 1868, pp. 1818, 1823. This is a statement signed byGriffin of Ohio, Keffer of Pennsylvania, Burton of Massachusetts, Hardyand Spencer of Ohio, and indorsed by Joshua Morse, who signed himself as“disfranchised rebel.”

[1511] Report of Meade, 1868. Meade made this report to Grant at the time,and at the end of the year he made practically the same, though perhaps alittle stronger. TheNationalist (Albert Griffin of Ohio, editor) said,April 9, 1868, that the statements of Meade, the “military saphead,” were“false in letter and false in spirit.”

[1512] Ho. Mis. Doc., No. 111, 40th Cong., 2d Sess. The whites werecomplaining loudly because of the scarcity of labor, and few woulddischarge a negro laborer, no matter how often he might vote the Radicalticket. General Hayden sent a list of eighteen questions in regard to theelection to every election official. They covered every possible point,and full answers were required. One of the questions was in regard to theproportion of white voters. A summary of the answers is here given: 1.Elmore County. Intimidation and threats of discharge; of the 1000 to1200 whites who registered, from 12 to 15 voted. 2.Autauga. Nointimidation, but threats of discharge; of the 900 whites registered, 200voted. 3.Chambers. Fair election, with 23 white voters of the 1400registered. 4.Russell. Threats of discharge; one-thirty-sixth of thewhites voted. 5.Tallapoosa. “Persuasion and arguments” deterred theblacks from voting; 20 whites voted of the 1500 who registered. 6.Coosa. Two discharges; one-third of the whites voted. 7.Montgomery.“Ostracism,” and two discharges; 41 whites voted of the 4200 whoregistered. 8.Macon. Fair election and 4 whites voted of the 800registered. 9.Lee. One discharge and threats; 30 or 40 whites voted of1500 registered. 10.Randolph. Fair election. 11.Clay. Threats ofostracism and one discharge. 12.Crenshaw. Two discharges. 13.Lowndes. Three threats of discharge; “too much challenging;” 10 whitesvoted of 850 registered. 14.Barbour. Four threats of discharge; “whitesafraid of social proscription.” 15.Bullock. “Needless questions” tovoters, and three threats of discharge; no whites voted. 16.Pike. Onethreat of discharge; one-fourth of the whites voted. 17.Butler. Eightthreats; 3 whites of 1400 voted. 18.Covington. “Threats;” 225 whitesvoted of the 900. 19.Coffee. “Threats” and “proscription.” 20-21.Dale andHenry. No election; no registrars; none would serve. In DaleCounty were a number of “outrageous acts committed by a Mr. Oats.” 22-27.Mobile,Washington,Baldwin,Clarke,Monroe, andConecuh.“Threats and social ostracism;” 125 of 3750 whites voted. 28.Walker.Fair election; one negro driven away; “more whites voted than wereexpected.” 29-30.Winston andJackson. More whites voted than wereexpected; one threat in Jackson. 31-32.Madison andLauderdale. Fairelections; in Lauderdale 150 of 1500 whites voted. 33.Lawrence.“Persuasion;” 311 of 1400 whites voted. 34-35.Colbert andFranklin.Twenty-five per cent of the whites voted; 75 per cent “were opposed toarticle 7, paragraph 4, of constitution.” 36-38.Limestone,Morgan,andCherokee. Fair elections; few whites voted. 39.Marshall.“Threats”; one-third of the whites voted. 40.De Kalb. Fair; 650 of the900 whites. 41.Baine. “Handbills advised people not to vote;” onlyone-fifth voted. 42.Blount. One threat; “persuasion;” one-fourth of thewhites voted. 43.St. Clair. Threats; one-third of the whites voted.44-45.Marion andJones. Fair; two-sevenths of the whites voted. 46.Fayette. Speeches published against the constitution, three drunken menthreatened the managers at one box; liquor given to negroes to “voteagainst their intentions,” all of which “prevented full and freeexpression of opinion by ballot”; two-sevenths of the whites voted. 47.Shelby. Fair; one-fourth of the whites voted. 48.Talladega. Fair,though threats were heard; three-tenths of the whites voted. 49.Perry.Fair; 24 of the 1066 whites voted. 50.Bibb. Fair; 167 of the 1021whites. 51.Dallas. Fair; 78 whites voted; others suffered from “want ofindependence.” 52.Wilcox. Ten threats; 12 whites of 800. 53.Tuscaloosa. One threat; one-fifth of the whites voted. 54.Pickens.“Threats too numerous to mention;” 60 to 70 of the 1100 whites voted. 55.Jefferson. Fair; one-fifth of the whites voted. 56.Sumter. Threatsagainst blacks; whites to be ostracized. 57.Greene. Threats, though the“Union Men” were afraid to tell who threatened them; 446 ballots had“Constitution” torn off. 58.Marengo. Voters were refused at one boxbecause the names were not on the list, though the parties were willing toswear they had been registered. Threats and speeches were made at thepolls and one man made 16 discharges; 16 whites of the 997 voted. 59-62.No reports fromChoctaw,Calhoun,Cleburne, andHale.

Nearly all officials reported quiet elections; the assertions aboutthreats were almost invariably hearsay. Even the few specific instanceswere based on hearsay. The worst complaint was that Conservativessometimes attended and challenged the votes of certain negroes, and madespeeches or used persuasion to induce the negroes not to vote. Muchimportance was attached to the ridicule and jeers of the white leaders.These reports were made by the election officials, who were thoroughgoingreconstructionists. General Meade denied the charges of fraud andintimidation.

It will be noticed that the heaviest white vote was cast in the countieswhere there were few negroes, and where the Peace Society had beenstrongest during the war. If the estimates given above by the registrarswere correct, it is doubtful if 5000 whites voted in the election, as wasasserted. The judges were supposed to mark “C” on the ballot of a negroand “W” on that of a white. Ho. Mis. Doc., No. 111, 40th Cong., 2d Sess.;Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 303, 40th Cong., 2d Sess.; Report of Meade, 1868;Montgomery Mail, Feb. 19, 1868;N. Y. World, March 14, 1868.

[1513] Strobach, the Austrian, went so far off in the Northwest that afterthe state was admitted he could not return to the special session of thelegislature. He drew his pay, however, the Speaker certifying that he waspresent.N. Y. World, Oct. 8, 1868;Montgomery Mail, April 14, 1869;Nationalist, Feb. 18, 1868.

[1519]Cong. Globe, March 10, 11, and 17, 1868, pp. 1790, 1818, 1821,1823, 1824, 1825, 1827, 1934, 1935, 1937, 1938.

[1522] McPherson, “Reconstruction,” p. 337;Globe, March 28, 1868, pp.2193, 2216.

[1527] Yordy, a carpet-bag Bureau agent, registrar, and senator-elect fromSumter County, was turned out of a hotel at Eutaw and told to go to thenegro inn.Tuscaloosa Independent Monitor, Sept. 1, 1868.

[1528]Globe, March 28, 1868, p. 2140. Claus and Wilson were twocarpet-baggers of Tuscaloosa.

[1531]Cong. Globe, June 5 and 6, 1868, pp. 2858, 2865, 2867, 2900,2964; McPherson, “Reconstruction,” p. 340; Foulke, “Life of Morton,” Vol.II, p. 47.

[1536] McPherson, p. 337. The present constitution of the state, adoptedin 1901, nullifies this fundamental condition. Other southern states havealso disregarded this limitation.

[1539] Warner, who was said to have gone to his own state—Ohio—and runfor office, now returned.

[1540] The credentials were signed by E. W. Peck, president of theconvention of 1867, who certified to their election.Globe, July 24,1868, p. 4294.

[1541]Globe, July 17, 18, 21, and 25, 1868, pp. 4173, 4213, 4293, 4295,4459, 4466.

[1542] President Jay’s Address, March 26, 1868; Bellows, “History UnionLeague Club of New York,” pp. 6-9; “Chronicle of Philadelphia UnionLeague,” pp. 5-8.

[1543] “Chronicle of Philadelphia Union League,” pp. 5-8; Bellows, “UnionLeague Club,” p. 9.

[1544] First Annual Report of Board of Directors of Union League ofPhiladelphia; Bellows, pp. 9, 32; “Chronicle of Philadelphia UnionLeague,” pp. 70, 112.

[1547] There were 144 different pamphlets published by the PhiladelphiaLeague and 44 posters; 56,380 pamphlets were issued in 1865; 867,000pamphlets were issued in 1866; 31,906 pamphlets were issued in 1867;1,416,906 pamphlets were issued in 1868; 4,500,000 pamphlets were issuedin eight years. “Chronicle of Philadelphia Union League,” pp. 106, 107,145.

[1548] “Chronicle of Philadelphia Union League,” p. 169; Bellows, pp. 90,99, 100, 102; Reports of the Executive Committee, Union League Club of N.Y., 1865-1866;Century Magazine, Vol. VI, pp. 404, 949; oral accounts.

[1549] I am especially indebted to Professor L. D. Miller, Jacksonville,Ala., for many details concerning the Loyal Leagues. He made inquiries forme of people who knew the facts. I have also had other oral accounts. Seealso Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test. (Pierce), p. 305; (Lowe), p. 894; (Forney),p. 487.

[1550] Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test. (Sayre), p. 357; (Governor Lindsay), p.170; (Nicholas Davis), p. 783; (Richardson), pp. 815, 855; (Ford), p. 684;(Lowe), p. 892; (Forney), p. 487; Miller, “Alabama,” p. 246; Herbert,“Solid South,” pp. 36, 41; also oral accounts.

[1551] There is a copy of the charter of a local council in the AlabamaTestimony of the Ku Klux Report, p. 1017. The Montgomery Council wasorganized June 2, 1866, and three days later General Swayne, of theFreedmen’s Bureau, joined it. It was charged that even thus early he wasdesirous of representing Alabama in the Senate. Herbert, pp. 41-43.

[1553] Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test. (Lowe), p. 872; (English), pp. 1437,1438; (Lindsay), p. 170;N. Y. Herald, Aug. 5, 1869, and June 20, 1867;Professor Miller’s account; oral accounts.

[1554] In Sumter County a northern teacher of a negro school informed aplanter that the Leaguers were sworn to defend one another, and that he,the planter, would be punished for striking a Leaguer whom he had caughtstealing and had thrashed.Selma Times and Messenger, July 21, 1868.

[1555] The Montgomery Council, May 22, 1867, resolved “That the UnionLeague is the right arm of the Union Republican party of the UnitedStates, and that no man should be initiated into the League who does notheartily indorse the principles and policy of the Union Republican party.”Herbert, “Solid South,” p. 41. A Confederate could not be admitted to theLeague unless he would acknowledge that during the war he had been guiltyof treason.

[1556] Alcohol on salt burns with a peculiar flame, making the faces ofthose around, especially the negroes, appear ghostly.

[1557] A copy of the constitution and ritual was secured by the whites andpublished in theMontgomery Advertiser, July 24, 1867; printed also inFleming, “Documents relating to Reconstruction,” No. 3.

[1558] The Montgomery Council was composed of white Radicals, and theLincoln Council in the same city was for blacks. Most of the officers ofthe latter were whites. Herbert, p. 41.

[1559] This fact will partly explain why there were burnings of negrochurches and schoolhouses by the Ku Klux Klan. These were politicalheadquarters of the Radical party in each community.

[1560] See Miller, “Alabama,” pp. 246, 247; Lester and Wilson, “Ku KluxKlan,” pp. 45, 46.

[1561] Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test. (Lindsay), pp. 170, 179; (NicholasDavis), p. 783; (Richardson), pp. 839, 355; (Lowe), pp. 872, 886, 907;(Pettus), p. 384; (Walker), pp. 962, 975.

[1562] Thaddeus Stevens’s speech on confiscation, through the LoyalLeague, had a wide circulation in Alabama. Agents were sent to the stateto organize new councils and to secure the benefits of the proposedconfiscation; free farms were promised the negroes.N. Y. Herald, June20, 1867. Many whites now believed that wholesale confiscation would takeplace.

[1563] Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test. (Sanders), pp. 1803, 1811; (Dox), p. 432;(Herr), pp. 1662, 1663.

[1564] Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test. (Lowe), pp. 886, 887, 894, 997; (Davis),p. 783; (Cobbs), p. 1637; (Pettus), p. 6393.

[1565] Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test. (Ford), p. 684; (Herr), p. 1665;(Pettus), p. 381; (Jolly), pp. 283, 291; (Sayre), p. 357; (Pierce), p.313;N. Y. Herald, Dec. 4, 1867, Oct. 2, 1868; Herbert, “Solid South,”p. 45. One Wash Austin, a Democratic negro, was attacked by a mob,pursued, and when he reached home his wife called him “a damnedConservative,” struck him on the head with a brick, and then left him.Norris V. Hanley, in Ho. Mis. Doc., No. 15, 41st Cong., 2d Sess.

[1566]N. Y. Herald, Oct. 13 and Nov. 11, 1867, Eufaula correspondence;Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test. (Sanders), p. 1812; (Pettus), p. 381; (Herr), p.1663; (Pierce), p. 313; (Sayre), p. 357; Harris, “Political Conflict inAmerica,” p. 479.

[1567] A notice posted on the door of a citizen of Dallas County was tothis effect, “Irvin Hauser is the damnedest rascal in the neighborhood,and if he and three or four others don’t mind they will get a ball inthem.”Selma Times and Messenger, April 21, 1868; oral accounts; seealso Brown, “Lower South,” Ch. IV; Herbert, pp. 3, 8.

[1569]N. Y. Herald, Dec. 5 and 22, 1867;Montgomery Advertiser, Dec.4, 1867 (J. M. Chappell).

[1570] Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test. (Lyon), pp. 1422, 1423; (Abrahams), pp.1382, 1384.

[1571] See Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test. (Alston), p. 1017; (Herr), p. 1665;(Sayre), p. 357; (Pierce), p. 313.

[1572]Selma Messenger, July 19, 1867; see Fleming, “Documents relatingto Reconstruction,” No. 3.

[1573] It is certain that the estimate of 18,000 white and 70,000 blackmembers at the same time is not correct. As the latter increased innumbers the former decreased. Early in 1867 Keffer said there were 38,000whites and 12,000 blacks in the League.N. Y. Herald, May 7, 1867.Perhaps he meant the total enrolment early in the year. In 1868 he claimed20,000 whites, about 17,000 too many.

[1574] Lester and Wilson, “Ku Klux Klan,” p. 47; also Ku Klux Rept., Ala.Test.,passim.

[1576] In the Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., the Conservative and sometimesthe Radical witnesses assert that the Ku Klux movement was caused partlyby the workings of the Union League.

[1581] Ku Klux Rept., p. 170; Census of 1860. The assessed valuation ofproperty increased 117% from 1850 to 1860. The comptroller’s report ofNov. 12, 1858, states that the slave property of the state at that timepaid nearly half the taxes. This was true of all ordinary taxes to 1865.See Senate Journal, 1866-1867, p. 291.

[1582] Journal Convention of 1867, p. 125; Patton’s Report to theConvention, Nov. 11, 1867.

Most of the war crop was confiscated by the United States. The crops of1866-1868 show the effects of politics among the negro laborers ratherthan unfavorable seasons. Hodgson, “Alabama Manual and StatisticalRegister,” 1869.

[1584] The exemption laws were so framed as to release the average negroesfrom paying tax, and also the class of whites that supported the Radicalpolicy. The following list will show the incidence of taxation for 1870:—

Besides these items, heavy taxes were laid on the following: wharves, tollbridges, ferries, steamboats, and all water craft, stocks of goods,libraries, jewellery, plate and silverware, musical instruments, pistols,guns, jacks and jennies, race-horses, watches, money in and out of thestate, money loaned, credits, commercial paper, capital in incorporatedcompanies in or out of the state, bonds except of United States andAlabama, incomes and gains over $1000, banks, poll tax, insurancecompanies, auction sales, lotteries, warehouses, distilleries, brokers,factors, express and telegraph companies, etc. See Ku Klux Report andAuditor’s Report, 1871.

[1585] Revenue Laws of Ala., 1865-1870; Report of the Debt Commission,Jan. 24, 1876; Governor Lindsay’s Message, Nov. 21, 1871; Ku Klux Rept.,Ala. Test., pp. 227, 340, 976, 1056, 1504.

[1590] Taxes are paid on $307,312,000, slaves included; see Census of1860; Census of 1870; Ku Klux Rept., pp. 170, 171, 175, 317, 318.

[1594] Interest paid on the public debt with bond issues included, andexpenses of the convention of 1867. The actual expenses of the stateadministration were $262,627.47.

[1595] The first figures for 1868 include the receipts from taxes and theexpenditures for state purposes only; the other figures include theproceeds from sale of bonds used for state purposes. The Radicals alwaysgave the first set of figures, and the Democrats the second.

[1599] Currency had depreciated. Many claims went unpaid. The “home debt”amounted to $823,454.64. The actual state expenses were $1,384,044.46.

[1600] State expenses only. Democrats in power. See Auditor’s Reports,1869-1873, 1900; Ku Klux Rept., pp. 170, 174, 176, 1055, 1057; Report ofthe Debt Commission, 1876; Journal Convention of 1867, p. 125.

[1601] Ku Klux Rept., pp. 170, 174, 176; Auditor’s Reports, 1869-1870;Reports of the Alabama Debt Commission.

[1602] Report of Governor Patton to the Convention, Nov. 11, 1867; JournalConvention of 1867, p. 125.

[1604] The average legislator in 1872-1873 was paid $904.00 and mileage.The Senate had 33 members and 44 attending officers, clerks, andsecretaries; the lower house, with a membership of 100, had from 77 to 84attending officials. Besides these there were dozens of pages,doorkeepers, firemen, assistants, etc. In 1869 there were 105 regularcapitol servants who received $31,900 in wages. Auditor’s Report,1869-1873;Montgomery Mail, Dec. 31, 1870. There were about 10 in 1900.

[1605] Journal of the “Capitol” Senate, 1872, p. 19-34; in Senate Journal,1873.

[1609] The purpose of the act was to liberate negro prisoners and savemoney for the officials to spend in other ways.

[1611] The Investigating Committee remarked that had he chartered a parlorcar and paid hotel bills at the rate of $10 a day, he would have beenunable to spend $800 on that trip.

[1613] Report of the Committee to Investigate the Contingent Fund, 1875;Senate Journal, 1874-1875, pp. 581-607.

[1614] Caffey, “The Annexation of West Florida to Alabama,” p. 10; SenateJournal, 1869-1870, pp. 234-244.

[1615] Report of the Committee to examine the Offices of Auditor andTreasurer, 1875; Report of the Debt Commission, 1875, 1876.

[1616] See Edwin DeLeon, “Ruin and Reconstruction of the Southern States,”in theSouthern Magazine, Jan., 1874.

[1619] Ala. Test., p. 1409. The Radical newspapers that had the publicprinting made money from the tax sale notices by dividing each lot intosixteenths of a section, advertising each, and charging for each division.The author of the tax sale law was Pierce Burton, a Radical editor.

[1621]Southern Argus, Jan. 17 and Feb. 8, 1872;Scribner’s Monthly,Aug., 1874; Herbert, “Solid South,” pp. 64, 67. Colonel Herbert believesthat during the six years of Reconstruction the state gained practicallynothing by immigration, while it lost more by emigration than it had bythe Civil War.

[1622] Auditor’s Reports, 1869-1873; Comptroller’s Reports, 1861-1865,1866; Patton’s Report, 1867, to the Convention; Journal Convention of1867, pp. 46, 123; Ku Klux Rept., pp. 169, 317, 1055.

And in addition each county and town had a large floating debt in “scrip”or local obligations. Speculators gathered up such obligations and soldthem at reduced prices to those who had local taxes, fines, and licensesto pay.

[1624] Auditor’s Reports, 1871-1872; Report of Committee on Public Debt,1876; McClure, “The South: Industrial, Financial, and PoliticalCondition,” p. 83.

[1625] Report of the Committee on Public Debt, 1876; Senate Journal,1872-1873, p. 544; Auditor’s Report, 1873.

[1626] Senate Journal, 1875-1876, pp. 212, 213; Report of the Committee onthe Public Debt, 1876. In his book Clews tells how he invested in thesecurities of the struggling southern states, being desirous of assistingthem. But when the ungrateful states refused to pay the claims that he andothers like him presented, he says it was because they, the creditors,were northern men. See Clews, “Twenty-eight Years in Wall Street,” pp.550, 551.

[1627] DeLeon, “Ruin and Reconstruction,” in theSouthern Magazine,Jan., 1874. The state debts of the ten southern states were then estimatedat $291,626,015, while the debts of the other twenty-seven states amountedto only $293,872,552.

[1631] Report of the Debt Commission, 1876. This was nearly half the valueof the farm lands of the state, which were worth $67,700,000, and was muchmore than the gross value of a year’s cotton crop.

[1632] Report of the Debt Commission, Jan. 24, 1876; Senate Journal,1875-1876, pp. 203-232; Report of the Joint Committee on the Public Debt,Feb. 23, 1876; Annual Cyclopædia (1875), p. 14; “Northern Alabama,” p. 52;Final Report of the Committee of the Alabama and Chattanooga Bondholders,London, 1876; McClure, “The South,” p. 83; Second Report of the DebtCommission, Dec. 13, 1876.

[1636] Annual Cyclopædia (1875), p. 14; “Northern Alabama,” pp. 51, 51;Acts of 1874-1875.

[1639] T. H. Clark, “Railroads and Navigation,” in “Memorial Record ofAlabama,” Vol. II, pp. 322-323; Martin, “Internal Improvements inAlabama,” pp. 72-77; Garrett, “Public Men,” pp. 577, 580.

[1642] Martin, “Internal Improvements,” pp. 68-71; Auditor’s Report, Oct.12, 1869.

[1645] The constitution of 1867, Art. 13, Sec. 13, provided that thecredit of the state should not be given nor loaned except in aid ofrailways or internal improvements, and then only by a two-thirds vote ofeach house.

[1646] Acts of Ala., Aug. 7 and Sept. 22, 1868. The promoters of the roadsclaimed that the old law was useless, but that $16,000 a mile wouldattract northern and European capital. Herbert, “Solid South,” p. 52.

[1647] Governor’s Message, Nov. 15, 1869. The carpet-bag auditor alsoadvocated the repeal of the law. He thought that no road should beindorsed for more than $10,000 a mile, since the average value was lessthan $13,000 a mile.

[1651] Acts of Oct. 6 and Nov. 17, 1868, Acts of Ala., 1868, pp. 207, 347;Herbert, “Solid South,” p. 52; Annual Cyclopædia (1871), pp. 7, 8. Therailroad must have intended to profit by the indorsement, and must havepaid for it, for when, a year later, ex-Governor Patton, who for the sakeof respectability was made the nominal president, was in Boston, he wasreproached by the Alabama and Chattanooga officials for allowing theircharter to cost them $200,000. See Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., p. 232.

[1652] Alabamavs. Burr, 115 United States Reports, p. 418. Burr, J. C.Stanton, and D. N. Stanton had been prosecuted by the state of Alabama forthe fraudulent use of indorsed bonds.

[1656]Independent Monitor, June 14, 1871; Ku Klux Rept., pp. 172, 317;Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., p. 193; Auditor’s Report, 1871.

[1658]Montgomery Mail, Jan. 25, 1871;Southern Argus, Feb. 2, 1872,and Feb. 28, 1873; Somers, “Southern States,” p. 157; Report of the HouseRailroad Investigation Committee, 1871; Herbert, “Solid South,” pp. 52,53. Colonel Herbert says that the Alabama and Chattanooga officialsdemanded the $2,000,000 and received it. “Solid South,” p. 53. Thelegislature that voted the gift of $2,000,000 was composed as follows:Senate, 32 Radicals and 1 Democrat; House, 85 Radicals (of whom 20 werenegroes) and 15 doubtful Democrats. The carpet-bag editor of theDemopolis Republican said: “Men who never paid ten dollars’ tax in theirlives talk as flippantly of millions as the schoolboy of his marbles.Meanwhile, outsiders talk of buying and selling men at prices which wouldhave been a disgrace to a slave before the war.”Montgomery Mail, Jan.25, 1871.

[1661] Ku Klux Rept., p. 319; House Journal, 1870-1871, p. 236; Report ofthe House Railroad Investigating Committee, 1871; Ku Klux Rept., Ala.Test., p. 232; J. P. Stow, Radical senator from Montgomery, said that whenHardy left at the end of the session, he carried away $150,000. Not all ofit was his own; some of it he had collected for others. One senator issaid to have held his vote at $1000 regularly.

[1662] Senate Journal, 1873; Appendix containing Journal of the CapitolSenate, 1872, pp. 19-34; Lindsay’s Message, 1872, to the CapitolLegislature. Lindsay said that all the Democrats worked hard to preventthe passage of the $2,000,000 bill; that he himself worked in the lobbyuntil three o’clock in the morning trying to defeat the thieves. Ku KluxRept., Ala. Test., p. 199.

[1663] Ku Klux Rept., p. 318; Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., p. 196; Report ofthe House Investigation Committee, p. 1871. Ex-Governor Patton testifiedthat though president of the Alabama and Chattanooga road, he had opposedthe bill and in consequence had been displaced, D. N. Stanton of Bostonbeing elected. Patton stated that none of the capital stock had at thistime been paid in by the stockholders.

In 1870-1871 “another set of financiers had made up their minds to comedown South and help Alabama. Their demand was for $5,000,000 with which toset furnaces and factories going. They were too late. If they had onlycome the session before, there was no chance for a bill containing$5,000,000, properly pressed, to have failed.” But the lower house now hada Democratic majority. Herbert, “Solid South,” p. 57.

[1664] Senate Journal, 1870-1871, p. 78; Lindsay’s Message, Nov. 21, 1871;Senate Journal, 1870-1871.

[1665] Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., pp. 195, 196; Lindsay’s Messages,1871-1872; Lindsay’s Statement of Facts, April 22, 1871; Report ofCommissioners of the Public Debt, Jan. 24, 1876.

[1667] Statement of Facts which influenced Governor Robert B. Lindsay inhis Action in regard to the Bonds of the Alabama and Chattanooga RailroadCompany, April 22, 1871; Lindsay’s Message, Nov. 21, 1871. While Lindsaywas in New York, Ex-Governor Smith called on him and half acknowledged thewhole affair. Ala. Test., p. 199. Afterwards in a letter Smith stronglyprotested that some of the bonds signed and sealed by himself werefraudulent, and blamed Governor Lindsay and the legislature forrecognizing them. He acknowledged that his carelessness had resulted inthe present state of affairs. Somers, “Southern States,” p. 158. April 3,1871, Smith wrote, “I admit that if I had attended strictly to theindorsement and issue of these bonds, that all this never would haveoccurred.” Herbert, “Solid South,” p. 53.

[1668] Statement of Facts, April 22, 1871; Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., pp.198, 199. Lindsay said that since the Alabama and Chattanooga road wasindorsed under the laws of 1867 and 1868, it did not come under the lawsof 1870. Consequently, when the Alabama and Chattanooga defaulted, thestate was not bound to pay interest on the $2,000,000 state bonds untilthe legislature acted in March, 1871.

In his Statement of Facts, Lindsay relates a suggestive and illuminatingincident: On Dec. 13, 1870, John Demerett, an Alabama and Chattanoogabondholder, brought suit in the Superior Court of King’s County, New York,against the Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad Company, the state ofAlabama, and one F. B. Loomis (of the Alabama and Chattanooga Company),alleging that the said railway company was about to place on the market500 first mortgage bonds numbered from 4800 to 5300, indorsed by thegovernor of Alabama in violation of the law. Demerett prayed for aninjunction to restrain the company from selling the bonds. The recordsshowed that the state of Alabama appeared by her attorney, one William D.Vieder, who declared on affidavit that he was employed by Henry Clews &Company, financial agents of Alabama. Vieder filed an answer in behalf ofAlabama, stating that the bonds numbered 4801 to 5300 were properlyindorsed, and were of the same class as others issued by the company, thatthe indorsement was in conformity to law, and that in no case would thebonds be repudiated. The injunction was dissolved and the companypermitted to sell. To the Ku Klux Committee Lindsay suggested that Smithmight have signed the illegal bonds after he went out of office, as theywere not placed on the market until January, 1871. (See Ala. Test., p.197.) But the Demerett case seems to disprove this and to show that thebonds were issued while Smith was governor. The House RailroadInvestigation Committee, in 1871, reported that Smith asserted that thefraudulent indorsements were secured by the active coöperation of HenryClews & Company, Souter & Company, and Braunfels of Émile Erlanger etCie., with the Stantons.Southern Argus, Feb. 2, 1875. Lindsay furtherstated that there were evidences of collusion between Stanton and Smith tosecure the election of the latter in 1870 at all hazards. They wanted togain time in order to conceal the irregularity in the issue of bonds.Stanton furnished much money to the campaign fund, and on election daymarched to the registration office at the head of 900 railroad employees,who came from the entire length of the road, had them registered, gaveeach of them a Radical ticket, and then voted them in a body. Ala. Test.,pp. 193, 197.

[1671] Annual Cyclopædia (1871), pp. 7, 8; Lindsay’s Message, Nov. 21,1871; Senate Journal, 1871-1872, pp. 44, 320; Report of John H. Gindrat,Receiver of the Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad, 1871.

The engineers in the employ of the state reported that to put the road inAlabama in fair condition at the time it was seized would require$507,983.74. Twenty-four miles of rails were old ones that Sherman hadburned. Report of Farrand and Thom, Nov. 9, 1871; Senate Journal,1871-1872, p. 43. To complete the road, Gindrat reported that $1,000,000would be needed. Senate Journal, 1871-1872, p. 337.

At the time the road was seized $10,500,000 from all sources haddisappeared. Part of it was spent on the road, which, with all equipment,in 1871 was valued at $6,120,995. (An estimate of its value in 1873 was$4,183,388.) The capital stock authorized was $7,500,000, of which only$2,700,000 was ever paid in. Ku Klux Rept., pp. 172, 173; Auditor’sReport, 1871 and 1873. The earnings of the road from November, 1872, toNovember, 1873, were $232,583.96. The expenses of the road from November,1872, to November, 1873, were $1,083,851.90. Report of the Receiver of theAlabama and Chattanooga Railroad, 1873.

[1672] Rice and Chilton, attorneys of the Alabama and Chattanooga road,gave the state much trouble. Rice was a scalawag, but several partners hehad at that time and later were Democrats.

[1673] During the whole time there was a large element in favor of notrecognizing the legality of the bond issues authorized by the carpet-baglegislatures. The carpet-bag government was not a government of thepeople, but was imposed and upheld by military force, some said, and hadno right to vote away the money of the people without their consent. TheSelma Times, March 5, 1874, voiced this sentiment: “Alabama must andwill be ruled by whites.... We will not pay a single dollar of theinfamous debt, piled upon us by fraud, bribery, and corruption, known asthe ‘bond swindle’ debt. Let the bondholders take the railroads.” SeeSenate Journal, 1875-1876, pp. 213-221.

[1674] Annual Cyclopædia (1871), p. 8; (1872), pp. 8, 9; Lewis’s Message,Dec. 20, 1872; Senate Journal, 1872-1873, p. 43; Lewis’s Message, Nov.1874; Senate Journal, 1874-1875; Final Report of the Committee of theAlabama and Chattanooga Bondholders, London, 1876; Acts of Ala., Dec. 21,1872; Acts of Ala., March 20, 1875.

[1676] Ku Klux Rept., p. 173; Governor Houston’s Message, Dec., 1875;Senate Journal, 1875-1876.

[1680] Martin, “Internal Improvements,” p. 70; Auditor’s Report, 1869;Acts of Dec. 30, 1869, Acts of Ala., 1868, pp. 487, 494. The South andNorth road was merely an expansion of “The Mountain Railroad Company,” anold corporation.

[1683] Report of House Railroad Inv. Com., 1871. See also Report ofAuditor, 1870, which says $1,980,000 indorsement.

[1689] Report of House Railroad Inv. Com., 1871; Lewis’s Message, Nov. 17,1873; Auditor’s Report, 1869; Auditor’s Report, 1873; House Journal,1871-1872, pp. 305, 353; Acts of 1869-1870, p. 290.

[1690]Southern Argus, Feb. 2, 1872; Governor Lewis’s Message, Nov. 17,1873; Auditor’s Report, 1871 and 1873.

[1691] Lewis’s Message, Nov. 17, 1873; Auditor’s Report, 1873; Act of Jan.17, 1870.

[1692]Southern Argus, Feb. 2, 1872; Auditor’s Report, 1873; Lewis’sMessages, 1873.

[1693]Southern Argus, Feb. 2, 1872; Auditor’s Reports, 1871 and 1873;Mathes, “General Forrest,” p. 362; Wyeth, “Life of General Nathan BedfordForrest,” pp. 617, 619. When Smith had indorsed this road for $720,000, hereported the amount as $640,000.Independent Monitor, Dec. 13, 1870.

[1695] Senate Journal, 1872-1873, pp. 416-422; Acts of Ala., 1872-1873, p.58; Auditor’s Reports, 1871, 1873; Governor Lewis’s Report, Nov. 17, 1873.

[1700] Also “three per cent fund” amounting to $30,000+, and state bondsamounting to $300,000. No record of $720,000.

[1706]Southern Argus, June 14, 1872; Miller, “Alabama,” p. 278; Acts ofAla.,passim; “Northern Alabama,” p. 737; Brown, “Alabama,” p. 291;Herbert, “Solid South,” p. 53.

[1707] A commission from Mobile visited the schools in New York, Boston,and other cities of the North.

[1708] Exclusive of Mobile County, which, as the honored pioneer, hasalways been outside of, and a model for, the state system.

[1709] Clark, “History of Education in Alabama,” pp. 221-241; Report ofthe United States Commissioner of Education, 1876, p. 6.

[1712] Clark, p. 95et passim. In 1869 N. B. Cloud, the Superintendentof Public Instruction, asked the legislature to make the loan a gift,since the destruction of the buildings was “the natural fruits ofsecession,” the fault of the “purblind leaders” who “pretended to secede.”Therefore he thought the state was responsible for the damage done theUniversity.

[1713] See Journal Convention of 1867, p. 242et passim, and above, Chs.XIV and XV.

[1715] The supreme court decided in regard to the Board of Education: “Thenew system has not only administrative, but full legislative, powersconcerning all matters having reference to the common school and publiceducational interests of the state. It cannot be destroyed nor essentiallychanged by legislative authority.” Report of the Commissioner ofEducation, 1873, p. 5. But in 1873-1874 the legislature, however, byrefusing appropriations, did manage to nullify the work of the Board.

[1717] In 1871 the legislature repealed this act, and a case that arosewas carried to the United States supreme court, which, reversing a formerdecision of the state supreme court, held that the action of onelegislature could not restrain subsequent legislatures from legislatingfor the public welfare by suppressing practices that tended to corruptpublic morals. Besides, the court professed itself unable to find in theact any authority for a lottery. See Boydvs. Alabama, 94 United StatesReports, p. 645 (opinion by Justice Field).

[1718] Act of Dec. 31, 1868. At the same time the office of Commissionerof Lotteries was created, with a salary of $2000 a year.

[1719] This is the opinion of two subsequent members—one a Democrat andone a Radical. See also Ku Klux Report, Ala. Test., p. 426. The memberswere G. L. Putnam, A. B. Collins (Collins was made a professor in theUniversity, but murdered Haughey, the Radical Congressman, and fled fromthe state), W. D. Miller, Jesse H. Booth, Thomas A. Cook, James Nichols,William H. Clayton, Gustavus A. Smith,—four scalawags and fourcarpet-baggers. The first two named resigned to accept offices created bythe board. See Register of the University of Alabama, 1831-1901, p. 20.

[1721] This was done at the instance of the aid societies from the Northwhich had been doing work among the negroes.

[1722] Acts, Aug. 11, 1868. Public School Laws (pamphlet). See also Actsof Ala., 1868, pp. 147-160.

[1725] Nicholas Davis, a north Alabama Republican, had this to say aboutLakin to the Ku Klux subcommittee: “He called on me to explain why I saidunkind things about his being candidate for president of the AlabamaUniversity, and I said, ‘Mr. Lakin, you and I are near neighbors, and Idon’t want to have much to do with you—not much; but I think this: didn’tyou try to be president of the Alabama University?’ He said he did. Isaid, ‘It would have been a disgrace to the state. You don’t know anadjective from a verb, nor nothing else.’... He says, ‘... but I ratherdidn’t like what you said.’ I said, ‘Doctor, you will have to like it orlet it alone.’ He let it alone.”—Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., p. 784.

[1726] Clark, p. 98, is not correct on this point; Ku Klux Rept., Ala.Test., pp. 111, 112, 113, 114; account of Dr. O. D. Smith of the secondBoard of Education;Independent Monitor, Aug. 9 and Sept. 1, 1868.

[1727] For the picture see Ala. Test., p. 113, or theIndependentMonitor, Sept 1, 1868. Ryland Randolph, the editor of theMonitor atthat time, says that the picture was made from a rough woodcut, fashionedin theMonitor office. TheCincinnati Commercial published an editionof 500,000 copies of the hanging picture for distribution as a campaigndocument. A Columbus, Ohio, newspaper also printed for distribution alarger edition containing the famous picture. This was during theSeymour-Grant campaign, and the Democratic newspapers and leaders of thestate were furious at Randolph for furnishing such excellent campaignliterature to the Radicals.

[1730] Clark, pp. 98, 99.Monitor, Jan. 5, March 1 and 23, 1869. “TheReconstruction University,” a farce, was acted at the court-house for thebenefit of the brass band. There was no hope whatever that thereconstructed faculty would have a pleasant time.

[1732] Richards was at the same time state senator from Wilcox, sheriff ofthe same county, contractor to feed prisoners, and professor in theUniversity. His income from all the offices was about $12,000, theprofessorship paying about $2500.

[1734] SeeMonitor, April 6, 1869. The editor of theMonitor finallycame to grief because of his attacks on the Radical faculty. His paper hadcharged Professor V. H. Vaughn with drunkenness, whipping his wife,incompetence, etc. After a year of such pleasantries, Vaughn, who was atimid man, determined to secure assistance and be revenged. In theUniversity was a student named Smith, son of a regent and nephew of thegovernor, who, on account of his Union record, was given the position ofsteward of the mess hall, after the removal of the old steward. Smith hadbeen in trouble about abstracting stores from the University commissary,and theMonitor had not spared him. So he and Vaughn with their gunswent after Randolph, and Smith shot him “while Vaughn stood at arespectful distance.” Randolph lost his leg from the shot. Smith andVaughn were put in jail, but through the connivance of the officials madetheir escape. Vaughn went to Washington and was given an office in Utahterritory. See Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., p. 1979.

[1735] He was a competent man, well educated and possessing administrativeability. In the secession convention he had led the coöperationist forces.

[1736] Clark, pp. 99-101;Monitor, Jan. 10 and 25 and March 28, 1871.The Register of the University (p. 218) gives only thirteen names for thesession 1870-1871. No record was kept at the University.

[1738] These notices were printed in the Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., p.418. They were fastened to the door with a dagger. The students who werenotified left at once.

[1740] The following table gives the enrolment of students duringReconstruction:—

[1743] Finley had been doorkeeper for the first Board (1868-1870), and in1870 was elected to serve four years. He was a member of the convention of1867 and of the legislature. He had no education and no ability, but hewas a sensible negro and was an improvement on the white men of thepreceding Board.

[1746] Clark, p. 232; Report of Cloud, Nov., 1869;Montgomery Mail,Sept. 16, 1870. In connection with the act merging the Mobile schools intothe state system, the Board of Education took occasion to enlarge orcomplete its constitutional powers. There was no limit, according to theConstitution, to the time for the governor to retain acts of the Board.Governor Smith had pocketed several obnoxious educational bills, and theBoard now resolved “that the same rules and provisions which by law governand define the time and manner in which the governor of the state shallapprove of or object to any bill or resolution of the General Assemblyshall also apply to any bill or resolution having the force of law passedby this Board of Education.” The governor approved neither resolution northe Mobile act, but they were both declared in force.Montgomery Mail,Nov. 3, 1870.

[1749] A specimen pay-roll of Emerson Institute (“Blue College”) for thequarter ending March 31, 1869:—

At this time the average salary of the teacher in the state schools was$42 a month.

[1750]Montgomery Mail, Sept. 16, 1876. Cloud’s Report, Nov., 1869,shows that $10,447.23 had been drawn out of the treasury by Putnam, and hehad also drawn $2000 for his salary as county superintendent.

[1751] Report of the Auditor, 1871; Report of the Commissioner ofEducation, 1871, 1876.

[1753] The law stated that the trustees were to receive $2 a day, butCloud said that it was a mistake, as it should be the clerks who werepaid, and thus it was done. There were 1485 clerks in the state; they werepaid about $60,000 a year. The county superintendents received about$65,000, an average of $1000 each, which was paid from the school fund.Before the war the average salary of the county superintendent was $300and was paid by the county. In few counties was the work of the countysuperintendent sufficient to keep him busy more than two days in the week.Many of the superintendents stayed in their offices only one day in theweek. The expenses of the Board of Education were from $3000 to $5000 ayear, not including the salary of the state superintendent.MontgomeryMail, Sept. 15 and 16, 1870.

[1755] Cloud, the state superintendent, had power of attorney to act forcertain county superintendents. This he sub-delegated to his son, W. B.Cloud, who drew warrants for $8551.31, which were allowed by the auditor.This amount was the school fund for the following counties: Sumter,$1,535.59; Pickens, $6,423.17; Winston, $215.89; Calhoun, $176.66;Marshall, $200.00.

A clerk in the office of C. A. Miller, the secretary of state, forgedMiller’s name as attorney and drew $3,238.39 from the Etowah County fund.Miller swore that he had notified both auditor and treasurer that he wouldnot act as attorney to draw money for any one.

John B. Cloud bought whiskey with tax stamps. See Hodgson’s Report, 1871;Ala. Test., p. 233;Montgomery Advertiser, Sept. 27, 1872.

[1756] Hodgson’s Report, 1871;Montgomery Advertiser, Sept. 27, 1872;Report of the Commission to Examine State Offices, 1871.

[1761] In recent years the people have demanded and obtained a differentclass of school histories, such as those of Derry, Lee, Jones, Thompson,Cooper, Estill, and Lemmon. Adams and Trent is an example of one of thecompromise works that resulted from the demand of the southerners forbooks less tinctured with northern prejudices.

[1762] Cloud’s Report, Nov., 1869; Hodgson’s Report, 1871; Ku Klux Rept.,Ala. Test., p. 426; Montgomery Conference, “Race Problems,” p. 107.

[1774] For specimen letters written to their homes, see the variousreports of the Freedmen’s Aid Society of the Methodist Church, and thereports of other aid societies.

[1775] The best-known instances of the killing of such negroes were inTuscaloosa and Chambers counties. The Ku Klux Report gives only about halfa dozen cases of outrages on teachers. See Ala. Test., pp. 52, 54, 67, 71,140, 252, 755, 1047, 1140, 1853. Cloud in his report made no mention ofviolence to teachers, nor did the governor. Lakin said a great deal aboutit, but gave no instances that were not of the well-known few. There wasmuch less violence than is generally supposed, even in the South.

[1777] See Ala. Test., pp. 236, 1889; Somers, “Southern States,” p. 169;Report of the Joint Committee on Outrages, 1868. In Crenshaw, Butler, andChambers counties some schools existed for a year or more until teachersof bad character were elected. Then the neighborhood roughs burned theschool buildings. Neither Cloud nor any other official reported cases ofsuch burnings. The legislative committee could discover but two, and inboth instances the women teachers were of bad character. In the recordscan be found only seventeen reports of burnings, and several of these wereevidently reports of the same instance; few were specific. Lakin, whospent several years in travelling over north Alabama, and who was muchaddicted to fabrication and exaggeration, made a vague report of “theruins of a dozen” schoolhouses. (Ala. Test., pp. 140, 141.) There may havebeen more than half a dozen burnings in north Alabama, but there is noevidence that such was the case. The majority of the reports originatedoutside the state through pure malice. The houses burned were principallyin the white counties and were, as Lakin reports, slight affairs costingfrom $25 to $75. It was so evident that some of the fires were caused bythe carelessness of travellers and hunters who camped in them at night,that the legislature passed a law forbidding that practice. See Acts ofAla., p. 187. About as many schoolhouses for whites were destroyed as forblacks. Some were fired by negroes for revenge, others were burned byaccident.

[1783] For opinions in regard to the value of the early education amongthe negroes, see Washington’s “Future of the American Negro” and “Up fromSlavery”; W. H. Thomas’s “American Negro”; P. A. Bruce’s “Plantation Negroas a Freeman”; J. L. M. Curry, in Montgomery Conference.

[1786] Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test. Dr. J. L. M. Curry, who, in 1865, beganhis work for the education of the negro, has thus expressed his opinion ofthe early attempts to educate the blacks: “The education was unsettling,demoralizing, pandered to a wild frenzy for schooling as the quick methodof reversing social and political conditions. Nothing could have beenbetter devised for deluding the poor negro, and making him the tool, theslave, of corrupt taskmasters.... With deliberate purpose to subject thesouthern states to negro domination and secure the states permanently forpartisan ends, the education adopted was contrary to common sense, tohuman experience, to all noble purposes. The aptitude and capabilities andneeds of the negro were wholly disregarded. Especial stress was laid onclassics and liberal culture to bring the raceper saltum to the sameplane with their former masters, and realize the theory of social andpolitical equality. Colleges and universities, established and conductedby the Freedmen’s Bureau and northern churches and societies, sprang uplike mushrooms, and the teachers, ignorant and fanatical, withoutself-poise, proceeded to make all possible mischief.” MontgomeryConference, “Race Problems,” p. 109. See also the papers of Rev. D. ClayLilly and Dr. P. B. Barringer in Montgomery Conference, “Race Problems,”p. 130; William H. Baldwin and Dr. Curry in Second Capon SpringsConference; Barringer, “The American Negro: His Past and Future”;Barringer, W. T. Harris, and J. D. Dreher in Proceedings SouthernEducation Association, 1900; Haygood, “Pleas for Progress” and “OurBrother in Black”; Abbott, “Rights of Man,” pp. 225-226.

[1787] The United States Commissioner of Education, in his report for thatyear, made before the elections, stated that in educational matters thestate of Alabama was about to take a “backward step,” meaning that it wasabout to become Democratic. Report, 1870, p. 15. Later he made similarremarks, much to the disgust of Hodgson, who was an enthusiast ineducational matters.

[1788] Journal of the Board of Education and Regents, 1870. Dr. O. D.Smith, who was one of the newly elected Democratic members of the Board,says that Cloud refused to inform the Board of the contents of Hodgson’scommunications. Thereupon Hodgson addressed one to the Board directly andnot to Cloud. When it came in through the mail, Cloud took possession ofit, but Dr. Smith, who was on the lookout, called his attention to thefact that it was addressed to the Board and reminded him of the penaltiesfor tampering with the mail of another person. The secretary readHodgson’s communication, and the Board was then free to act. TheDemocratic members convinced the Radicals that if Cloud continued inoffice they would not be able to draw theirper diem, so Cloud wascompelled to vacate at once. When he left he had his buggy brought to thedoor, and into it he loaded all the government coal that was in his officeand carried it away.

[1791] Hodgson’s Report, 1871; Report of the Commissioner of Education,1876, p. 7; Journal of the Board of Education and Regents, 1871; Acts ofthe Board of Education, pamphlet.

[1792] And this was the case notwithstanding the fact that the countysuperintendents were now allowed mileage at the rate of eight cents a milein order to get them to come to Montgomery for their money and thus todecrease the chances of corrupt practices of the attorneys. Hodgsoncomplained that many old claims which should have been settled by Cloudwere presented during his administration.

[1793] Speed was a southern Radical. During the war he was a state saltagent at the salt works in Virginia. He was a member of the Board ofEducation from 1870 to 1872, and was far above the average Radicaloffice-holder in both character and ability.

[1794] Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1873, 1874, 1876; Speed’sReport, 1873. Speed was ill much of the time, and his bookkeeping waslittle better than Cloud’s. Two clerks, who, a committee of investigationstated, were distinguished by a “total want of capacity and want ofintegrity,” managed the department with “such a want of system ... as mostnecessarily kept it involved in inextricable confusion.” Money wasreceived and not entered on the books. A sum of money in coin was receivedin June, 1873, and six months later was paid into the treasury indepreciated paper. Vouchers were stolen and used again. Bradshaw, a countysuperintendent, died, leaving a shortage of $10,019.06 in his accounts. Alarge number of vouchers were abstracted from the office of Speed by someone and used again by Bradshaw’s administrator, who was no other than Dr.N. B. Cloud, who made a settlement with Speed’s clerks, and when theshortage was thus made good, the administrator still had many vouchers tospare. This seems to have been Cloud’s last raid on the treasury.Montgomery Advertiser, Dec. 18, 1873; Report of the Joint Committee onIrregularities in the Department of Education, 1873.

[1795] Under the Reconstruction administrative expenses amounted to 16 percent, and even more.

[1796] The experiences with the American Missionary Association, etc.,made this provision necessary.

[1797] The United States Commissioner of Education gave a disapprovingaccount of these changes. It was exchanging “a certainty for anuncertainty,” he said. Speed had not found it a “certainty” by any means.

[1798] Plus the poll tax, which was not appropriated as required by theconstitution, but diverted to other uses.

[1802] Only $68,313.93 was paid, the rest diverted; shortage now was$1,260,511.92.

[1805] McTyeire, “A History of Methodism,” p. 670; Smith, “Life and Timesof George F. Pierce”;Southern Review, April, 1872.

[1807] Matlack, “Anti-Slavery Struggle and Triumph in the MethodistEpiscopal Church,” p. 339; Smith, “Life and Times of George F. Pierce,” p.530.

[1808] Annual Cyclopædia (1865), p. 552; Caldwell, “Reconstruction ofChurch and State in Georgia” (pamphlet).

[1810] “The schismatical plans of the Northern Methodists and the subtleproselytism of the Episcopalians” (Pierce). See Smith, “Life and Times ofGeorge F. Pierce,” pp. 491, 499, 505, 530; West, “History of Methodism inAlabama,” p. 717; McTyeire, “A History of Methodism,” p. 673.

[1811] A Federal official in north Alabama who had known of Lakin in theNorth testified that he had had a bad reputation in New York and inIllinois and had been sent South as a means of discipline. See Ku KluxRept., Ala. Test., p. 619 (L. W. Day, United States Commissioner).Governor Lindsay said that Lakin was a shrewd, cunning, strong-willed man,given to exaggeration and lying,—one who had a “jaundiced eye,” “amagnifying eye,” and who among the blacks was a power for evil. Ala.Test., p. 180.

[1812]N. Y. Herald, May 10, 1868; Buckley, “History of Methodism,” Vol.II, p. 191.

[1813] In 1871, Lakin stated that of his 15,000 members, three-fourthswere whites of the poorer classes; that there were under his charge 6presiding elders’ districts with 70 circuits and stations, and 70ministers and 150 local preachers; and that he had been assisted insecuring the “loyal” element by several ministers who had been expelled bythe Southern Methodists during the war as traitors. Ala. Test., pp. 124,130. Governor Lindsay stated that some of the whites of Lakin’s churchwere to be found in the counties of Walker, Winston, and Blount; thatthere were few such white congregations, and that some of these afterwardsevered their connection with the northern church, and by 1872 there wereonly two or three in the state. Lakin worked among the negro populationalmost entirely, and his statement that three-fourths of his members werewhites was not correct. See Ala. Test., pp. 180, 208.

[1814] Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., pp. 111, 112, 124, 180, 623, 957. Lakinsecured all church property formerly used by the southern church for negrocongregations.

[1817] One of Lakin’s relations was that while he was conducting a greatrevival meeting among the hills of north Alabama, Governor Smith and otherprominent and sinful scalawag politicians were under conviction and wereabout to become converted. But in came the Klan and the congregationscattered. Smith and the others were so angry and frightened that theirgood feelings were dissipated, and the devil reëntered them, so that he(Lakin) was never able to get a hold on them again. Consequently, the Klanwas responsible for the souls lost that night. Lakin told a dozen or moremarvellous stories of his hairbreadth escapes from death byassassination,—enough, if true, to ruin the reputation of north Alabamamen for marksmanship.

[1818] Shackleford, “History of the Muscle Shoals Baptist Association,” p.84.

[1819] Annual Cyclopædia (1865), p. 106. In 1905 there is a much betterspirit, and the churches of the two sections are on good terms, though notunited.

[1823] Carroll, “Religious Forces,” p. 281; Thompson, “History of thePresbyterian Churches,” pp. 163, 171; Johnson, “History of the SouthernPresbyterian Churches,” pp. 333, 339.

[1825] Later the northern congregations of the Methodist Protestant Churchrejoined the main body, which was southern.

[1827] Riley, “History of the Baptists in Alabama,” p. 310;MontgomeryAdvertiser, Oct. 15, 1865;N. Y. Times, Oct. 22, 1865; George Brewer,“History of the Central Association,” pp. 46, 49.

[1829] Shackleford, “History of the Muscle Shoals Baptist Association,” p.84.

The Radical missionaries, in order to further their own plans, encouragedthe negroes to assert their equality by forcing themselves into thecongregations of the various denominations. Governor Lindsay related anincident of a negro woman who went alone into a white church, selected agood pew, and calmly appropriated it. No one molested her, of course. KuKlux Rept., Ala. Test., p. 208.

America Trammell, a negro preacher of east Alabama, before the war andafterward as late as 1870 preached to mixed congregations of blacks andwhites. A part of the church building was set apart for the whites and apart for the blacks. Later he became affected by the work of themissionaries, and in 1871 began to preach that “Christ never died for thesouthern people at all; that he died only for the northern people.” Awhite woman teacher lived in his house, and he was killed by the Ku KluxKlan. Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., p. 1119.

[1830] Ball, “History of Clarke County,” pp. 591, 630; Statistics ofChurches, p. 171.

[1833] See theSouthern Baptist Convention Advanced Quarterly, p. 30,“Missionary Lesson, The Negroes,” March 29, 1903, which is a mostinteresting, artless, southern lesson. The northern Baptists also have amission lesson on the negroes which is distinctly of the abolitionistspirit. The average student will get about the same amount of preparedinformation from each. See “Home Mission Lesson No. 3, The Negroes.”

[1834] Foster, “Sketch of History of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church,”p. 300; Carroll, “Religious Forces,” p. 294; Thompson, “History of thePresbyterian Churches,” p. 193.

[1835] Thompson, “History of the Presbyterian Churches,” p. 193; Scouller,“History of the United Presbyterian Church of North America,” p. 246.

[1839] See “Race Problems,” p. 139, for a statement of the work now beingdone among the negroes in Alabama by the Catholic Church.

[1840] Whitaker, “The Church in Alabama,” pp. 193, 205, 206-212. The workof the Episcopal Church among the negroes is more promising in lateryears. See “Race Problems,” pp. 126-131. It is not a sectional church,with a northern section hindering the work of a southern section among thenegroes, as is the Methodist Episcopal Church.

[1845] Lakin fomented disturbances between the races. His daughter wroteslanderous letters to northern papers, which were reprinted by the Alabamapapers. Lakin told the negroes that the whites, if in power, wouldreëstablish slavery, and advised them, as a measure of safety, physical aswell as religious, to unite with the northern church. The scalawags didnot like Lakin, and one of them (Nicholas Davis) gave his opinion of himand his talks to the Ku Klux Committee as follows: “The character of his[Lakin’s] speech was this: to teach the negroes that every man that wasborn and raised in the southern country was their enemy, that there was nouse trusting them, no matter what they said,—if they said they were forthe Union or anything else. ‘No use talking, they are your enemies.’ Andhe made a pretty good speech, too; awful; a hell of a one; ...inflammatory and game, too, ... it was enough to provoke the devil. Didall the mischief he could.... I tell you, that old fellow is a hell of anold rascal.” Ala. Test., pp. 784, 791. One of Lakin’s negro congregationscomplained that they paid for their church and the lot on which it stood,and that Lakin had the deed made out in his name.

[1846] In the Black Belt and in the cities the slaveholders often erectedchurches or chapels for the use of the negroes, and paid the salary of thewhite preacher who was detailed by conference, convention, association, orpresbytery to look after the religious instruction of the blacks. Nearlyalways the negro slaves contributed in work or money towards buildingthese houses of worship, and the Reconstruction convention in 1867 passedan ordinance which transferred such property to the negroes whenever theymade any claim to it. See Ordinance No. 25, Dec. 2, 1867. See also Acts of1868, pp. 176-177; Governor Lindsay in Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., p. 180;Montgomery Advertiser, Nov. 24, 1865.

[1847]Huntsville Advocate, May 5, 1865; Carroll, “Religious Forces,” p.263.

[1849] The first recognition of such work, I find, is in the Report of theFreedmen’s Aid Society in 1878.

[1851] These religious bodies were the African Methodist Episcopal and theAfrican Methodist Episcopal Zion. The former was organized in Philadelphiain 1816, and the latter in New York in 1820. Both were secessions from theMethodist Episcopal Church. See Statistics of Churches, pp. 543, 559. Atfirst there were bitter feuds between the blacks who wished to join thenorthern churches and those who wished to remain in the southern churches,but the latter were in the minority and they had to go. See Ala. Test., p.180; Smith, “History of Methodism in Georgia and Florida”; “Life and Timesof George F. Pierce,” p. 491.

The main difference between the A. M. E. and the A. M. E. Zion Church,according to a member of the latter, is that in one the dues are 25 centsa week and in the other 20 cents.

[1852] McTyeire, “History of Methodism,” pp. 670-673. A Southern Methodistnegro preacher in north Alabama was trying to reorganize his church andwas driven away by Lakin, who told his flock that there was a wolf in thefold. See Ala. Test, p. 430. The statements of several of the negroministers would seem to indicate that Lakin took possession of a number ofnegro congregations and united them with the Cincinnati Conference withouttheir knowledge. Few of the negroes knew of the divisions in the MethodistEpiscopal Church, and most of them thought that Lakin’s course was merelysome authorized reorganization after the destruction of war. One witnesswho knew Lakin in the North said that he was an original secessionist,since, in Peru, Indiana, he broke up a church and organized a secessioncongregation because he was opposed to men and women sitting together. Thesame person testified that once in north Alabama Lakin asked for lodgingone night at a white man’s house. The host was treated to a lecture byLakin on the equality of the races, and thereupon sent out and got a negroand put him in a bed to which Lakin was directed at bedtime. He hesitated,but slept with the negro. Ala. Test., pp. 791-794. Lakin was a strangecharacter, and for several years was a powerful influence among theRadicals and negroes of north Alabama. See Ala. Test., p. 959. A NorthernMethodist leader among the negroes of Coosa County was the Rev.—— Dorman, who had formerly belonged to the southern church, but had beenexpelled for immorality. He lived with the negroes and led a lewd life. Headvised the negroes to arm themselves and assert their rights, andrequired them to go armed to church. See Ala. Test., pp. 164, 230. Rev. J.B. F. Hill of Eutaw was another ex-Southern Methodist who taught a negroschool and preached to the negroes. He had been expelled from the AlabamaConference (Southern) for stealing money from the church, and it wascharged that he tried to sell a coffin which had been sent him and inwhich he was to send to Ohio the body of a Federal soldier who had died inEutaw. SeeDemopolis New Era, April 1, 1868. During the worst days ofReconstruction a number of negro churches which were used as Radicalheadquarters were burned by the Ku Klux Klan. The Northern MethodistChurch is the weakest of the three negro churches; mountaineers andnegroes do not mix well. The church is not favored by the whites, andthere is opposition to the establishment of a negro university at Annistonby the Freedmen’s Aid Society of this church, on the ground that socially,commercially, and educationally the interests of the white race sufferwhere an institution is located by this society. SeeBrundidge (Ala.)News, Aug. 22, 1903.

[1853] McTyeire, “A History of Southern Methodism,” p. 670; Carroll,“Religious Forces,” p. 263; Alexander, “Methodist Episcopal Church South,”pp. 91-133.

[1854] Carroll, “Religious Forces,” p. 263; Bishop Halsey in theN. Y.Independent, March 5, 1891; Statistics of Churches, p. 604.

[1855] W. T. Harris, Richmond Meeting, Southern Educational Association(1900), p. 100.

[1856] See Washington, “Up from Slavery.” One church with two hundredmembers had eighteen preachers. Exhorters or “zorters” and “pot liquor”preachers were still more numerous.

[1857] “Race Problems,” pp. 114, 120, 123, 126, 130, 131, 135; Haygood,“Our Brother in Black,”passim; Statistics of Churches, p. 171.

[1859] Caldwell, “Reconstruction of Church and State in Georgia”(pamphlet). The circulars of advice to the blacks by the Freedmen’s Bureauofficials repeatedly mention the advisability of the separation of theraces in religious matters. But this was less the case in Alabama than inother southern states.

[1860] See Testimony of Minnis in Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test.; Brown, “LowerSouth,” Ch. IV.

[1862] Saunders, “Early Settlers”; Miller, “Alabama”; Ku Klux Rept., Ala.Test., p. 394 (General Pettus); Somers, “Southern States,” p. 153.

[1863] Ku Klux Rept., pp. 80-81; Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., p. 170(Governor Lindsay).

[1864] Ala. Test., pp. 433, 459 (P. M. Dox, M. C.); p. 1749 (W. S. Mudd);p. 476 (William H. Forney); Beard, “Ku Klux Sketches.”

[1865] Somers, p. 153;Birmingham Age-Herald, May 19, 1901 (J. W.DuBose); Ala. Test., p. 487 (Gen. William H. Forney).

[1867] Planters who before the war were able to raise their own bacon at acost of 5 cents a pound now had to kill all the hogs to keep the negroesfrom stealing them, and then pay 20 to 28 cents a pound for bacon. Thefarmer dared not turn out his stock. Ala. Test., pp. 230, 247 (Clanton).

[1868]N. Y. World, April 11, 1868 (Montgomery Advertiser). There wasa plot to burn Selma and Tuscumbia; Talladega was almost destroyed; thecourt-house of Greene County was burned and that of Hale set on fire. InPerry County a young man had a difficulty with a carpet-bag official andslapped his face. That night the carpet-bagger’s agents burned the youngman’s barn and stables with horses in them. It was generally believed thatthe penalty for a dispute with a carpet-bagger was the burning of a barn,gin, or stable. See also Brown, “Lower South,” Ch. IV.

[1870] Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., pp. 377, 381, 382, 400, statement ofGeneral Pettus, the present junior Senator from Alabama. Pope and Grantcontinually reminded the old soldiers that their paroles were still inforce. Also Beard, “Ku Klux Sketches”; testimony of John D. Minnis, acarpet-bag official, in Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., pp. 527-571.

[1874] For general accounts: Lester and Wilson, “Ku Klux Klan”; Beard, “KuKlux Sketches”; Brown, “The Lower South in American History,” Ch. IV;Nordhoff, “Cotton States in 1875”; Somers, “The Southern States.” Fordocuments, see Fleming, “Docs. relating to Reconstruction.” Forinnumerable details, see the Ku Klux testimony and the testimony taken bythe Coburn investigating committee.

[1878] Ala. Test., p. 873 (William. M. Lowe); p. 443 (P. M. Dox); oralaccounts. It must be remembered that, so far as numbers of whites areconsidered, the Black Belt has always been as a thinly populated frontierregion, where every white must care for himself.

[1879] Rev. W. E. Lloyd and Mr. R. W. Burton, both of Auburn, Ala., andnumerous negroes have given me accounts of the policy of the blackdistricts soon after the war.

[1884] Ala. Test., p. 445 (P. M. Dox); Miller, “Alabama.” The negroesstill point out and avoid the trees on which these outlaws were hanged.

[1886] Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, 1866, Pt. III, p.140 (Swayne).

[1887] Ala. Test., pp. 1125, 1126 (Daniel Taylor); pp. 1136, 1142 (Col.John J. Holley).

[1889] “The so-called Ku Klux organizations were formed in this state(Alabama) very soon after the return of our soldiers to their homes,following the surrender. To the best of my recollection, it was during thewinter of 1866 that I first heard of the Klan in Alabama.”—RylandRandolph. The quotations from Randolph are taken from his letters, unlesshis paper, theIndependent Monitor, is referred to.

[1890] “This fellow Jones up at Pulaski got up a piece of Greek andoriginated it, and then General Forrest took hold of it.”—Nicholas Davis,in Ala. Test., p. 783.

[1891] Lester and Wilson, “Ku Klux Klan,” p. 17; Ala. Test., pp. 660, 661,1282; accounts of members.

[1893] “It [the Klan] originated with the returned soldiers for thepurpose of punishing those negroes who had become notoriously andoffensively insolent to white people, and, in some cases, to chastisethose white-skinned men who, at that particular time, showed a dispositionto affiliate socially with negroes. The impression sought to be made wasthat these white-robed night prowlers were the ghosts of the Confederatedead, who had arisen from their graves in order to wreak vengeance upon anundesirable class of white and black men.”—Randolph.

[1894] Lester and Wilson, Ch. I; Ala. Test., p. 1283 (Blackford); Somers,p. 152; oral accounts.

[1896] There could not be more than two Dominions in a singlecongressional district.

[1898] The office of Grand Ensign was abolished by the Revised and AmendedPrescript, adopted in 1868. The banner was in the shape of an isoscelestriangle, five feet by three, of yellow cloth with a three-inch redborder. Painted on it in black was aDraco volans, or Flying Dragon, andthis motto, “Quod semper, quod umbique, quod ab omnibus.” This, in a noteto the Prescript, was translated, “What always, what everywhere, what byall is held to be true.”

[1899] Sources of revenue: (1) sale of the Prescript to Dens for $10 acopy, of which the treasuries of Province, Dominion, and Realm eachreceived $2 and the treasury of the Empire $4; (2) a tax levied by eachdivision on the next lower one, amounting to 10% of the revenue of thesubordinate division; (3) a special tax, unlimited, might be levied in asimilar manner, when absolutely necessary; (4) the Dens raised money byinitiation fees ($1 each), fines, and a poll tax levied when the GrandCyclops saw fit.

[1900] The Revised Prescript made all officers appointive except the GrandWizard, who was elected by the Grand Dragons,—a long step towardcentralization.

[1903] “We had a regular system of by-laws, one or two of which only do Idistinctly remember. One was, that should any member reveal the names oracts of the Klan, he should suffer the full penalty of the identicaltreatment inflicted upon our white and black enemies. Another was that incase any member of the Klan should become involved in a personaldifficulty with a Radical (white or black), in the presence of any othermember or members, he or they were bound to take the part of the member,even to the death, if necessary.”—Randolph.

[1904] “Terrible, horrible, furious, doleful, bloody, appalling,frightful, gloomy,” etc. The Register was changed in the RevisedPrescript. It was simply a cipher code.

[1905] The Revised Prescript says “the constitutional laws.” Lester andWilson, p. 54.

[1906] Compare with the declaration of similar illegal societies,—the“Confréries” of France in the Middle Ages,—which sprang into existenceunder similar conditions seven hundred years before, “pour defendre lesinnocents et réprimer les violences iniques.” See Lavisse et Rambaud,“Histoire Générale,” Vol. II, p. 466.

[1908] I have before me the original Prescript, a small brown pamphletabout three inches by five, of sixteen pages. The title-page has aquotation from “Hamlet” and one from Burns. At the top and bottom of eachpage are single-line Latin quotations: “Damnant quod non intelligunt”;“Amici humani generis”; “Magna est Veritas, et prevalebit”; “Hic manentvestigia morientis libertatis”; “Cessante causa, cessat effectus”;“Dormitur aliquando jus, moritur nunquam”; “Deo adjuvante, non timendum”;“Nemo nos impune lacessit,” etc. This Prescript belonged to the GrandGiant of the Province of Tuscaloosa County, the late Ryland Randolph,formerly editor of theIndependent Monitor, and was given to me by him.It is the only copy known to be in existence. He called it the “Ku KluxGuide Book,” and states that it was sent to him from headquarters atMemphis. An imperfect copy of the original Prescript was captured in 1868,and printed in Ho. Mis. Doc., No. 53, pp. 315-321, 41st Cong., 2d Sess.,and again in the Ku Klux Rept., Vol. XIII, pp. 35-41.

There is a copy of the Revised and Amended Prescript in ColumbiaUniversity Library, the only copy known to be in existence. No committeeof Congress ever discovered this Prescript, and when the Klan disbanded,in March, 1869, it was strictly ordered that all papers be destroyed. Afew Prescripts escaped destruction, and years afterward one of these wasgiven to the Southern Society of New York by a Nashville lady. TheSouthern Society gave it to Columbia University Library. It was printed inthe office of thePulaski Citizen in 1868. The Revised and AmendedPrescript is reproduced in facsimile as No. 2 of the W. Va. Univ. “Docs,relating to Reconstruction.” Lester and Wilson use it incorrectly (p. 54)as the one adopted in Nashville in 1867. At this time General Forrest issaid to have assumed the leadership. See Wyeth, “Life of Forrest,” p. 619;Mathes, “General Forrest,” pp. 371-373; Ku Klux Rept., Vol. XIII,Forrest’s testimony.

[1910] “Breckenridge Democrats, Douglas Democrats, Watts State RightsWhigs, Langdon Consolidation Know-Nothings,” united in Ku Klux.Birmingham Age-Herald, May 19, 1901; Ala. Test., p. 323 (Busteed)etpassim.

[1911] But some survivors are now inclined to remember all opposition tothe Radical programme as Ku Klux, that is, to have been a Democrat thenwas to have been a member of Ku Klux.

[1913] “The Ku Klux organizations flourished chiefly in middle andsouthern Alabama; notably in Montgomery, Greene, Tuscaloosa, and Pickenscounties.”—Randolph.

[1914] Ku Klux Rept., p. 21; Ala. Test., pp. 67, 68 (B. W. Norris); pp.364, 395 (Swayne); p. 443 (P. M. Dox); p. 385 (General Pettus); p. 462(William H. Forney); p. 77 (Parsons); pp. 1282, 1283 (Blackford); p. 547(Minnis); p. 660 (Daniel Coleman); p. 323 (Busteed).

[1917] “Had these organizations confined their operations to theirlegitimate objects, then their performances would have effected only good.Unfortunately the Klan began to degenerate into a vile means of wreakingrevenge for personal dislikes or personal animosities, and in this waymany outrages were perpetrated, ultimately resulting in casting so muchodium on the whole concern that about the year 1870 there was an almostuniversal collapse, all the good and brave men abandoning it in disgust.Many outrages were committed in the name of Ku Klux that really were doneby irresponsible parties who never belonged to the Klan.”—Randolph.

[1918] It was evidently organized May 23, 1867, since the constitutiondirected that all orders and correspondence should be dated with “the yearof the B.—computing from the 23d of May, 1867.... Thursday the 20th ofJuly, 1868, shall be the 20th day of the 7th month of the 2d year of theB. of the ——.” Constitution, Title VIII, Article 77.

[1919] Ala. Test., pp. 1282-1283 (Blackford); p. 9 (William Miller);accounts of former members. P. J. Glover testified in the Coburn-BucknerReport, pp. 882-883 (1875), that in 1867-1868 he was a member of the orderof the White Camelia in Marengo County, and that it coöperated with asimilar order in Sumter County. The Ku Klux testimony relating to Alabama(p. 1338) shows that in 1871 Glover had denied any knowledge of suchsecret orders.

[1921] The officers of the Supreme Council were: (1) Supreme Commander,(2) Supreme Lieutenant Commander, (3) Supreme Sentinel, (4) SupremeCorresponding Secretary, (5) Supreme Treasurer.

[1923] The officers of a Central Council were Eminent Commander, etc.; ofa Subordinate Council, Commander, etc.

[1924] Dr. G. P. L. Reid, Marion, Alabama, formerly an official in theorder. Mr. William Garrott Brown gives the statement of one of the leadersof the order: “The authority of the commander [this office I held] wasabsolute. All were sworn to obey his orders. There was an inner circlein each circle, to which was committed any particular work; its movementswere not known to other members of the order. This was necessary because,in our neighborhood, almost every southern man was a member.” “LowerSouth,” p. 212.

[1926] In making the presentation the following dialogue took place:Q.Who comes there?Ans. A son of your race.Q. What does he wish?Ans.Peace and order; the observance of the laws of God; the maintenance of thelaws and Constitution as established by the Patriots of 1776.Q. Toobtain this, what must be done?Ans. The cause of our race must triumph.Q. And to secure its triumph, what must we do?Ans. We must be unitedas are the flowers that grow on the same stem, and, under allcircumstances, band ourselves together as brethren.Q. Will he join us?Ans. He is prepared to answer for himself, and under oath.

[1927] The oath: “I do solemnly swear, in the presence of these witnesses,never to reveal, without authority, the existence of this Order, itsobjects, its acts, and signs of recognition; never to reveal or publish,in any manner whatsoever, what I shall see or hear in this Council; neverto divulge the names of the members of the Order, or their acts done inconnection therewith; I swear to maintain and defend the social andpolitical superiority of the White Race on this continent; always and inall places to observe a marked distinction between the White and Africanraces; to vote for none but white men for any office of honor, profit, ortrust; to devote my intelligence, energy, and influence to instil theseprinciples in the minds and hearts of others; and to protect and defendpersons of the White Race, in their lives, rights, and property, againstthe encroachments and aggressions of persons of any inferior race. Iswear, moreover, to unite myself in heart, soul, and body with those whocompose this Order; to aid, protect, and defend them in all places; toobey the orders of those who, by our statutes, will have the right ofgiving those orders; to respond at the peril of my life, to a call, sign,or cry coming from a fellow-member whose rights are violated; and to doeverything in my power to assist him through life. And to the faithfulperformance of this Oath I pledge my life and sacred honor.”

[1930] The Constitution and the Ritual of the Knights of the White Cameliaare reprinted in W. Va. Univ. Docs., No. 1. They were preserved by Dr. G.P. L. Reid of Perry County, Alabama, who buried his papers when the orderwas disbanded, and years afterward dug them up. The secrets of the Knightsof the White Camelia were more closely kept than those of the Ku KluxKlan, and the Federal officials were unable to find out anything about theorder.

[1931] Constitutional Union Guards, Sons of ’76, The ’76 Association, PaleFaces, White Boys, White Brotherhood, Regulators, White League, WhiteRose, etc. Sumarez de Haviland, in an article on “Ku Klux Klan” in theGentleman’s Magazine, Vol. XL, 1888 (evidently based on Lester andWilson), gives the names of a number of secret societies, which he sayswere connected in some way; the first group was absorbed into Ku KluxKlan; the second consisted of opposing societies; they existed before,during, and after the Civil War. 1. The Lost Clan of Cocletz, Knights ofthe Golden Circle, Knights of the White Camelia, Centaurs of CaucasianCivilization, Angels of Avenging Justice, etc. 2. The UndergroundRailroad, The Red String Band, The Union League, The Black Avengers ofJustice, etc.

“The generic name of Ku Klux was applied to all secret organizations inthe South composed of white natives and having for their object theexecution of the ‘first law of nature.’ There were many organizations(principally of local origin) which had no connection one with another;others, again, were more extended in their influence and operations. Theone numerically the largest and which embraced the most territory was theWhite Camelia.”—Dr. G. P. L. Reid.

[1932] “Their robes used in these nocturnal campaigns consisted simply ofsheets wrapped around their bodies and belted around the waist. The lowerportion reached to the heels, whilst the upper had eyeholes through whichto see, and mouth holes through which to breathe. Of course, every man socaparisoned had one or more pistols in holsters buckled to hiswaist.”—Randolph.

[1933] Ala. Test., pp. 149-152, 275, 452, 453, 535, 574, 579, 597, 668,707, 919, 1048, 1553; Somers, “Southern States,” p. 152; Report of JointCommittee, Alabama Legislature, 1868; oral accounts. The Ku Klux costumesrepresented in Wilson’s “History of the American People,” Vol. V, Ch. I,were captured after a Ku Klux parade in Huntsville, Ala. When costumeswere to be made, the materials were sometimes sent secretly to the women,who made them according to directions and returned them secretly.

[1934] Ala. Test., pp. 352, 452, 453, 490, 533, 534; Beard, “Ku KluxSketches”; Brown, “Lower South,” Ch. IV; Lester and Wilson, Ch. III; Weir,“Old Times in Georgia,” p. 32; accounts of former members.

[1935] “Concerning any elaborate organization, I am unable to state fromany personal experience. There were certain heads of departments ororganizations, under heads or chiefs bearing titles intended to strike aweinto the minds of the ignorant. In some instances organizers were sent totowns to establish the Klans. These latter were formed into companiesofficered somewhat in military style. In (1868) I was honored by beingchosen leader of the Tuscaloosa Klan, and even at this late day I amgratified to be able to say that my company did good service toTuscaloosa.”—Randolph.

[1936] “We had regular meetings about once a week, at which the conduct ofcertain offensive characters would be discussed, and if the majority votedto punish such, it would be done accordingly on certain prescribed nights.Sometimes it was deemed necessary only to post notices of warning, which,in some cases, were sufficient to alarm the victims and to induce them toreform in their behavior. To the best of my recollection, our companyconsisted of about sixty members. As soon as our object was effected,viz., got the negroes to behave themselves, we disbanded. I well rememberthose notices inThe Monitor, for they were concocted and posted by myown hand—disguised of course.”—Randolph.

[1937] Printed in Report of Joint Committee, Alabama Legislature, 1868.The warning is not in the ordinary Ku Klux form. The purpose is clear,however. The illiteracy is probably assumed, though not necessarily.

Headquarters S. V. W.,
Ancient Commandery,
Mother Earth.
1st Quarter New Moon.
1st year of Revenge.

The worldly medium for the expression of SOUTHERN OPINION

is notified to publish for the eyes of humanity the orders of the offended Ghosts. Failing to do so, let himprepare his soul for travelling beyond the limits of his corporosity.

[1939] “They [Ku Klux orders] had this meaning: the very night of the dayon which said notices made their appearance, three notably offensive negromen were dragged out of their beds, escorted to the old boneyard (¾ milefrom Tuscaloosa) and thrashed in the regular ante-bellum style, untiltheir unnatural nigger pride had a tumble, and humbleness to the white manreigned supreme.”—Randolph.

[1942] In 1869-1870 there was an epidemic of resignations in the BlackBelt. It was in the rich Black Belt that the carpet-bagger flourished. Thedeparting Radical could always sell his property at a high price, thewhites often uniting to purchase it. In Perry, Pickens, Choctaw, Marengo,Hale, and other Black Belt counties the carpet-baggers resigned and left.Ala. Test., pp. 103, 104.

[1943] The case of W. B. Jones of Marengo County was well known. See Ala.Test., p. 1455et passim.

[1944] Ala. Test., p. 935 (a Bureau agent). It is more likely that thiswas when the Klan was dying out and the class of men composing it had notime to go on night rides while the crops were needing their attention.During the leisure seasons time would hang heavy on their hands, and theywould begin their deviltry again.

[1945] I have learned of only two such cases; one was in TuscaloosaCounty. The woman was a Bureau school-teacher from the North.IndependentMonitor, May 24, 1871. The other was the case of America Trammell in eastAlabama. Ala. Test., p. 1119.

[1948] Ala. Test., pp. 922, 923,et passim. I have been told that in oneplace 2000 muskets were collected, taken from negroes.

[1949] Ala. Test., p. 1179. The legal militia consisted of Major-GeneralDustan only.

[1950] Not nearly so many as is usually supposed. Lakin, who neverunderestimated anything, could think of only six in all north Alabama.

[1952] Several southern churches seized by Lakin for the northern churchwere burned.

[1956] “Of the acts of this Order much has been written which is untrue;every disturbance between the races was laid at its door; every act ofviolence, in which the negro or the northern man was the victim, it wascharged with. I do not deny that extreme measures were sometimes resortedto, but of such I have no personal knowledge.... Four hours would havebeen in [Perry County] ample time to secure the assembly, at any centralpoint, of a thousand resolute men who would have done the bidding of theircommander whatever it might have been, yet in this time [three years] nosingle act of violence was committed on the person or property of a negroor alien by its order or which received its sanction or indorsement.”—Dr.G. P. L. Reid.

[1957] However, in 1871 Governor Lindsay stated that there were in thestate fewer feuds, crimes, difficulties, etc., than since 1819, when thestate was admitted. This was especially the case, he said, in northernAlabama, for this reason: the people of the mountain and hill county werenow prosperous; cotton was selling for $100 to $150 a bale; these whitemountaineers by their own labor were doing well. Such was not the casewith the planter who had to hire negro labor and pay high prices forprovisions, farming implements, and mules. Meat that cost the planter 22cents a pound was raised by the mountain people. Outrages against negroeswere now very rare. Ala. Test., pp. 206-207. It is certain that theprosperity of the white counties which in 1870 got rid of the alien localofficials had much to do with allaying disorder.

[1959] Report Joint Committee of 1868; Ala. Test., p. 115et passim. TheN. Y. Tribune, Nov. 14, 1868, states that Gustavus Horton, the firstRadical mayor of Mobile, was killed in this riot. After the riot was overthe United States troops appeared too late, as they usually were in suchcases.

[1960] Ala. Test., pp. 77, 429et passim;Montgomery Mail, July 16,1870. The mountain people had another grudge against Luke. He associatedconstantly with negroes and was said to be a miscegenationist. Themountain farmers had the greatest horror of such.

[1961] Ala. Test., pp. 257, 266, 275,et passim. Boyd had many privateenemies, among them relatives of a man he had killed, and it was chargedthat they killed him. He was a man of low character, and his own party wasnot sorry to lose him.

[1962] It was a marked fact that no resistance to the United Statessoldiers was ever attempted. When the soldiers appeared, all violenceceased. The soldiers were as a rule in favor of the whites and sometimestook a hand in the Ku Kluxing. They usually appeared after the row wasover.

[1964] Ala. Test., p. 229et passim. When he testified before the KuKlux Committee, Alston swore that it was the men whom he had asked toprotect him that had shot him,—such men as General Cullen A. Battle.

[1966] “The company of K. K. K.’s which was organized in Tuscaloosa, wasan independent organization,i.e. it was altogether a local affair,having no connection with any general Klan.”—Randolph.

[1967] Miss. Test., pp. 60, 223, 249; Ala. Test., pp. 213, 1822-1824;Garner, “Reconstruction in Mississippi,” pp. 345, 346.

[1969] The anti-negro bands of the hills and mountains were rather of thespurious Ku Klux and were largely composed of tories and Radicals.

[1971] Constitution, Article 76; Brown, “Ku Klux Movement,”AtlanticMonthly, May, 1901.

[1975] See Testimony of Lindsay and Clanton, cited above; also Ala. Test.,p. 376 (Pettus); p. 896 (Lowe).

[1976] Somers, “Southern States,” pp. 4, 15, 21; Lester and Wilson, Chs.III, IV, V; Sanders, “Early Settlers,” p. 31. “The peaceful citizen knewthat a faithful patrol had guarded his premises while he slept.”—Mrs.Stubbs. Brown, “Lower South,” Ch. IV; Ala. Test., pp. 432, 1520, 1532,1803.

[1977] Throughout the pages of the Ku Klux Testimony are found assertionsthat Ku Klux was not an organization, but merely the understanding of thesouthern people, the spirit of the community, the concert of feeling ofthe whites, a state of mind in the population.

[1978] Ala. Test., pp. 165, 380, 649, 724; Somers, “Southern States,” p.154. Governor Lindsay said that the so-called Ku Klux who went over toMississippi were roughs and that the people were glad when they heard thatone of them had been shot. In 1870-1871, while living in Alabama, GeneralForrest, the reputed Grand Wizard, repeatedly condemned in the strongestterms the conduct of the so-called Ku Klux. Ala. Test., pp. 212, 213.

[1983] Ala. Test., p. 679. Governor Smith, a Radical, said in regard tothe motives of Senator George E. Spencer, I. D. Sibley, and J. J. Hinds,carpet-baggers: “My candid opinion is that Sibley does not want the lawexecuted, because that would put down crime and crime is his life’s bread.He would like very much to have a Ku Klux outrage every week to assist himin keeping up strife between the whites and blacks, that he might be morecertain of the votes of the latter. He would like to have a few coloredmen killed every week to furnish semblance of truth to Spencer’s libelsupon the people of the state generally. It is but proper in thisconnection that I should speak in strong terms of condemnation of theconduct of two white men in Tuskegee a few days ago, in advising thecolored men to resist the authority of the sheriff; these men were not KuKlux, but Republicans.” Letter inHuntsville Advocate, June 25, 1870.See also Herbert, “Solid South,” p. 55.

[1985] Ala. Test., p. 230. In some communities a negro is still told thathe must not let the sun go down on him before leaving.

[1987] Ala. Test., pp. 1757, 1758, 1764, 1765, 1768. Judge Mudd was by nomeans a representative of the old slaveholding element, but rather of thewhite county people.

[1991] G. O. No. 11, Sub-Dist. Ala., April 4, 1868;Selma Times andMessenger, April 9, 1868;N. Y. Herald, April 7, 1868.

[1992] Report of the Secretary of War, 1869, p. 83et seq.; Report ofMeade, 1868.

[1993] Joint Resolution, Sept. 22, 1868, in Acts of Ala., p. 292. Thedelegation to Washington did not provide themselves with an authenticatedcopy of the resolution and had to wait for it. Governor Smith, who waswith the delegation, spoiled everything by declaring that there was nodisorder except along the Tennessee River and in southwestern Alabama andthat troops were not needed. No officials had been resisted, he said, andit would be imprudent to send troops.N. Y. Herald, Sept. 27, 1868. Thecitizens of Montgomery held a mass-meeting and deniedin toto theallegations of the memorial, denouncing it as a move of partisan politics.The strangers were sure to fall from power unless upheld by outside force.N. Y. Herald, Sept. 25, 1868.

[1996] J. DeF. Richards and G. R. McAfee of the Senate, and E. F.Jennings, W. R. Chisholm, and G. W. Malone of the House.

[1998] Act Dec. 26, 1868; Acts of Ala., 444-446. A supplementary act hadto be passed allowing the probate judges to licensefor one dollar thewearing of masks or disguises at balls, theatres, and circuses and otherplaces of amusement, public and private. Application had to be made atleast three days beforehand by “three responsible persons of establishedcharacter and reputation.” Act Dec. 31, 1868; Acts of Ala., p. 521.

[2002]The Nation, Feb. 4, 1875, in regard to the “Force” legislation:“It would not have been possible for the most ingenious enemy of theblacks to draw up a code better calculated to keep up and fan the spiritof strife and contention between the races.” James L. Pugh, later UnitedStates Senator from Alabama: The people were tired of being reconstructedby President and by Congress. Now the Enforcement Laws punish all for thecrime of a few. They are an insult to a whole people, assuming themincorrigible. Alabama Testimony, pp. 407, 408, 411.

[2004] Text of act in McPherson, pp. 549-550. This act was ostensibly toprovide for the enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments.Its constitutionality has been criticised on these grounds: (1) theamendments were directed againststates, notpersons; (2) the lawenacted penalties not only against state officers, but also against anyperson who might offend against the election laws of the state oragainst this act; (3) it is entirely out of the question to claim that theamendments protect the right of a person within a state againstinfringement by other persons, or even against the state itself unless onaccount of race, color, or previous condition. See Burgess, pp. 253-255.

[2005] Text of act in McPherson, “Handbook of Politics,” 1872, pp. 3-8.While only the congressional elections and all the registrations were tobe guarded, the chief purpose of the act was to control state elections,which were held at the same time and place. See Burgess, “Reconstruction,”pp. 256-257. This was so clearly the purpose that after the rescue of thestate government from carpet-bag rule the time of the state and localelections was changed from November to August in order to escape Federalespionage.

[2006] “Upon the basis of information which turned out to be veryinsufficient and unreliable.”—Burgess, p. 257.

[2009] Text in McPherson, “Handbook,” 1872, pp. 85-87. For criticism,Burgess, pp. 257, 259.

[2012] Some of the Conservatives who testified were Gen. Cullen A. Battle,R. H. Abercrombie, Gen. James H. Clanton, P. M. Dox, Gov. Robert B.Lindsay, Reuben Chapman, Thomas Cobbs, Daniel Coleman, Jefferson M.Falkner, William H. Forney, William M. Lowe, William Richardson, FrancisS. Lyon, William S. Mudd, Gen. Edmund W. Pettus, Turner Reavis, James L.Pugh, P. T. Sayre, R. W. Walker,—all prominent men of high character.

[2013] Some of those who gave, willingly or unwillingly, Democratictestimony: W. T. Blackford (c.), Judge Busteed (c.), General Crawford,Nicholas Davis (s.), L. W. Day (c.), Samuel A. Hale (c.), J. H. Speed(s.), Senator Willard Warner (c.), N. L. Whitfield (s.). (c.) =carpet-bagger; (s.) = scalawag.

[2014] Charles Hays (s.), W. B. Jones (s.), S. F. Rice (s.), John A.Minnis (c.), A. S. Lakin (c.), B. W. Norris (c.), L. E. Parsons (s.), E.W. Peck (s.), and L. R. Smith (c.).

[2016] Senate Report, No. 48, 42d Cong., 2d Sess., Pts. 8, 9, and 10, andHouse Report, No. 22, 42d Cong., 2d Sess., Pts. 8, 9, and 10, contain theAlabama Testimony.

[2019] McPherson, “Handbook,” 1872, pp. 90, 91. These provisions had to beinserted in the Sundry Civil Bill, which was approved June 10, 1872.Kellogg of Louisiana introduced the “rider.”

[2020] For instances of petty annoyances to the people from marshals,deputy marshals, and supervisors, see Sen. Ex. Doc., No. 119, 47th Cong.1st Sess., and Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 246, 48th Cong., 2d Sess. Theseannoyances lasted for several years.

[2022] In his Message, Nov. 15, 1869, Smith stated: “Nowhere have thecourts been interrupted. No resistance has been encountered by theofficers of courts in their effort to discharge the duties imposed uponthem by law.” Smith was criticised by the carpet-baggers for not callingout the negro militia to “enforce the laws.” He stood out against them,and on July 25, 1870, he replied to their criticisms, denouncing George E.Spencer (United States Senator), J. D. Sibley, J. J. Hinds, and others assystematically uttering every conceivable falsehood. “During my entireadministration of the state government,” he said, “but one officer hadcertified to me that he was unable, on account of lawlessness, to executehis official duties. That officer was the sheriff of Morgan County. Iimmediately made application to General Crawford for troops. They weresent and the said sheriff refused their assistance.” “Solid South,” p. 55.

[2023]Montgomery Mail, July 3, 1872. The Black Cavalry and its spuriousKu Klux successors infested those parts of eastern Alabama where, in 1903,the existence of a system of peonage was discovered.

[2024]Tuskegee News, Sept. 3, 1874; Report of Joint Committee onElection of George Spencer. During the remainder of Reconstruction underthe Enforcement Acts, the Federal government exercised supervision overall elections. Election outrages by the Democrats probably decreased,while outrages by the Radicals tended to increase. The Democrats put intheir work of influence and intimidation in the summer and early fall, andwhen the elections came were quiet, trusting to the influence brought tobear some months previously. After the carpet-bag government collapsed,the Federal Enforcement Acts still gave supervision of elections to theWashington government. The Democrats in Congress were unable to secure therepeal of the force legislation. “We do not expect to repeal any of therecent enactments [Force Laws]. They may stand forever, but we intend bysuperior intelligence, stronger muscle, and greater energy, to make themdead letter upon the statute books.”Birmingham News, quoted in theState Journal, June 24, 1874. But in 1880 no appropriation was made forthe pay of the deputy marshals and supervisors.

In 1875 the supreme court in the case of United Statesvs. Reesedeclared the two most important sections of the Enforcement Act of 1870unconstitutional. In 1883, in the case of the United Statesvs. Harris,the Ku Klux Act of April 20, 1871, was declared unconstitutional. In 1888,when House, Senate, and President were Republican, an attempt was made byMr. McKinley (afterward President) to pass a Force Bill to enforce the oldelection laws, which were still on the statute book. The measure failed topass. It was in opposition to this Force Bill that Colonel Hilary A.Herbert of Alabama and other southern congressmen wrote the work called“Why the Solid South? or Reconstruction and its Results.” It is said thatthis book had some influence in causing a halt in force legislation. Itwas the first attempt to write the history of the Reconstruction period,and is still the best general account. In 1894, when House, Senate, andPresident were Democratic, the remnants of the Enforcement Acts wererepealed, and thus was swept away the last of the Radical system. SeeDunning, “The Undoing of Reconstruction,” in theAtlantic Monthly, Oct.,1901.

[2025] Coburn-Buckner Report, p. 238. The constitution is not in theJournal, however.

[2028] The accounts of the wild and idle negro children of the rice andtobacco districts are not true of those in the Cotton Belt. The smallesttot could do a little in a cotton field.

[2029] SeeBirmingham Age-Herald, March 31 and April 7, 1901 (J. W.DuBose);Review of Reviews, Sept., 1903, on “The Cotton Crop of To-day,”by R. H. Edmonds; Ingle, “Southern Sidelights,” p. 271; Address ofPresident Thach, Alabama Polytechnic Institute, before the AmericanEconomic Association, 1903; Tillinghast, “Negro in Africa and America,”pp. 126, 143; Mallard, “Plantation Life before Emancipation”; Washington,“Up from Slavery,” and “The Future of the American Negro,”passim. Theimmense cost of slave labor is seen when the value of the slaves iscompared with the value of the lands cultivated by their labor. In 1859the cash value of the lands in Alabama was $175,824,622, and that of theslaves was $215,540,000. The larger portion of this land had not a negroon it, and if cultivated, was cultivated exclusively by whites. See Censusof 1860. The effect of the loss of slaves on the welfare of a planter isshown in the case of William L. Yancey. His slaves were accidentallypoisoned and died. The loss ruined him, and he was forced to sell hisplantation and engage in a profession. A farmer in a white countyemploying white labor would have been injured only temporarily by such aloss of labor.

[2030] The tenant furnished labor, supplies, and teams, and paid thelandlord a fourth of the cotton and a third of the corn produced.

[2031] There was usually good feeling between the whites and blacks atwork together; but the negroes, at heart, scorned the poor whites, and hadto be closely watched to keep them from insulting or abusing them. Thenegro had little respect for the man who owned no slaves or who owned butfew and worked with them in the fields. To protect the slaves againstoutsiders was one reason why discipline was strict, supervision close,passes required, etc. When both white and black were allowed to go at willover the plantation and community, trouble was sure to result from theimpudent behavior of the negro to “white trash” and the consequentretaliation of the latter. The whites often came to the master and wantedhim to whip his best slaves for impudence to them. The master, to preventthis, regulated the liberty of the slave by passes, etc., and the whites,especially strangers, were expected not to trespass on a plantation whereslaves were.

[2032] The idea of the so-called “prejudice” against manual labor isperhaps due largely to abolitionist theories and arguments, which havebeen partially accepted since the war by some southerners who think it dueto the old system to show its lofty attitude toward the common things oflife. But the negro had, and still has, a contempt for a white who worksas he does. And it has always been a custom of mankind,—white, yellow, orblack,—to get out of doing manual labor if there was anything else to do.

[2036] Colonel Saunders, a noted slaveholder in one of the white countiesin north Alabama, established a patriarchal protectorate over his formerslaves. He built a church for them, and organized a monthly court,presided over by himself, in which the old negro men tried delinquents. Itis said that the findings of this court were often ludicrous in theextreme, but order was preserved, and for a long while there was no resortto the Bureau. Saunders, “Early Settlers,” p. 31. Many similarprotectorates were established in the remote districts, but the policy ofthe Bureau was to break them up.

[2038] SeeSewanee Review, Jan., 1905, article on “Servant Problem in aBlack Belt Village.”

[2039]N. Y. Herald, July 17, 1865; Reid, “After the War,” pp. 211, 218,219; Tillet, inCentury Magazine, Vol. XI; Reports of General Swayne,1865, 1866; Van de Graaf, inForum, Vol. XXI, pp. 330, 339;DeBow’sReview, Feb., 1866, p. 220; oral accounts.

[2040] For a description of the Bureau labor regulations, seeChapter XI,Sec. 1. AlsoMontgomery Mail, May 12, 1865; Howard’s Circular, May 30,1865; Circular No. 11, War Department, July 12, 1865;HuntsvilleAdvocate, July 26, 1865; Swayne’s Reports, 1865, 1866; G. O. No. 12,Dept. Ala., Aug. 30, 1865; G. O. No. 13, Dept. Ala., Sept., 1865;SelmaTimes, Dec. 4, 1865. The so-called “Black Laws” passed by the legislaturein 1865-1866 to regulate labor were scarcely heard of by the people whohired negroes.

[2042]Southern Magazine, Jan., 1874;Selma Messenger, Nov. 15, 1865;Harper’s Monthly Magazine, Jan., 1874;Selma Times, Dec. 4, 1865; oralaccounts;DeBow’s Review, Feb., 1866.

[2043] Swayne to A. F. Perry,N. Y. Herald, Aug. 28, 1865;N. Y.Herald, July 17, 1865; Reid, “After the War,” pp. 211-219;DeBow’sReview, 1866, pp. 213, 220; Somers, “Southern States,” p. 131.

[2045] Many of the carpet-bag politicians were northern men who had failedat cotton planting.

[2046] Report to the President, April 9, 1866; “Ten Years in a GeorgiaPlantation,” by the Hon. Mrs. Leigh; oral accounts. On account of thegeneral failure of the northern men who invested capital in the South in1865 and 1866, there grew up in the business world an unfavorable feelingagainst the South, and for the remainder of Reconstruction days thatsection had to struggle against adverse business opinion.Harper’sMagazine, Jan., 1874.

[2047]Selma Times, Dec. 4, 1865. Nearly all the newspapers printedadvertisements of the immigration societies.

[2050] The great evil of slavery was its tendency to drive the whites whowere in moderate circumstances away from the more fertile lands of theprairie and cane-brake and river bottoms, leaving them to the fewslaveholders and the immense number of slaves. Emancipation thus left onthe finest lands of the state a shiftless laboring population, which stillretains possession. Now, as in slavery times, the white prefers not towork as a field hand in the Black Belt when he can get more independentwork elsewhere. And besides, he does not wish to live among the negroes.Slavery kept white farmers from settling on the fertile lands; the negrokeeps whites from taking possession now.

[2051]Mobile Daily Times, Oct. 21, 1860;Montgomery Advertiser, March21, 1866;DeBow’s Review, March 18, 1866.

Several young women of Montgomery, who were once wealthy, worked in theprinting-office of theAdvertiser. One of them was a daughter of aformer President of the United States. Many women became teachers,displacing men, who then went to the fields. Disabled soldiers generallytried teaching.

There seems to be a belief that emancipation had a good effect in drivingto work a certain “gentleman of leisure” class, who had been supported bythe work of slaves and who had scorned labor. (See W. B. Tillett, in theCentury Magazine, Vol. XI, p. 769.) It is a mistake to regard theslaveholding, planting class as, in any degree, idle, unless from thepoint of view of the negro or the ignorant white, who believed that anyman who did not work with his hands was a gentleman of leisure. TheAlabama planter was and had to be a man of great energy, good judgment,and diligence. It was a belief that a man who could not manage aplantation or other business should not be intrusted with an officialposition. One of the most serious objections made by the cotton plantersto Jefferson Davis as President was that he had failed to manage hisplantation with success. See also Somers, “Southern States,” p. 127.

[2052]DeBow’s Review, Feb. and March, 1866;Montgomery Advertiser,March 21, 1866;N. Y. Herald, July 17, 1866. It was estimated that inthe fall of 1865 the negro male population of the state was reduced by50,000 able-bodied men, who were hanging around the cities and towns,doing nothing. At Mobile there were 10,000; at Meridian, Miss., 5000; atMontgomery, 10,000; at Selma, 5000; and at various smaller points, 20,000.Mobile Times, Oct. 21, 1865.

[2055] Trowbridge, “The South,” p. 431; Reports of General Swayne, Dec.26, 1865, and Jan., 1866, in Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 70, 39th Cong., 1st Sess.General Swayne strongly approved the objects of these societies. He saidthere was not and never had been any question of the right of the negro tohold property. Free negroes had held property before the war.

[2059] Somers, an English traveller, thought that the economic relationsof planter and negro were startling, and that anywhere else they would beconsidered absurd. The tenant, he said, was sure of a support, and did notmuch care if the crop failed. Even his taxes, when he condescended to payany, were paid by his master. For all work outside of his crop he had tobe paid, and often he went away and worked for some one else for cash. Andhis privileges were innumerable. “The soul is often crushed out of laborby penury and oppression. Here a soul cannot begin to be infused into itthrough the sheer excess of privilege and license with which it issurrounded.” “Southern States since the War,” pp. 128, 129.

[2060] My father’s tenants, white and black, rented on all systems. Thenegroes usually began as wage laborers or as tenants “on halves,” for theyhad no supplies when they came. Then the more industrious and thriftywould save and rent farms for “third and fourth” or for “standing rent.”The whites usually obtained the highest grade, and the average white manwould save enough of his earnings to purchase a team, wagon, buggy, farmimplements, and a year’s supply and spend all else, though some savedenough to buy land of their own in cheaper districts or to supportthemselves for a year or two while opening up a homestead in the pinewoods. The negro, as a rule, rented “on halves,” for he spent all hisearnings and required supervision. The average negro stays only a year ortwo at one place before he longs for change and removes to another farm.About Christmas, or just before, the negroes and many of the whites beginto move to new homes. For a description of conditions in Mississippi,where the negro has somewhat better opportunities than in Alabama, see Mr.A. H. Stone’s article in theQuarterly Journal of Economics, Feb., 1905.

[2061] In the census each person cultivating a crop is counted as a farmerand the land he cultivates as a farm. Thus a plantation might berepresented in the census statistics by from five to twenty-five farms.

[2062] See also Otken, “Ills of the South”; Somers, “South since the War,”p. 281;Harper’s Monthly, Jan., 1874;DeBow’s Review, Feb., 1868.

[2063] Any stick is good enough to beat slavery with, so it is usuallystated that slavery was responsible for the wasteful methods ofcultivation that prevailed in the South before the war. That can be trueonly indirectly, for the soil always received the worst treatment in thewhite counties. Like frontiersmen everywhere, the Alabama white farmersfound it easier to clear new land or to move West than to fertilizeworn-out soils. The lack of transportation facilities in the whitedistricts made it almost impossible to bring in commercial fertilizers orto move the crops when made. The railroads had opened up only the richslave districts. If there had not been a negro in the state, the frontiermethods would have prevailed, as they still do among the farmers in someparts of the West. On the other hand, the rich lands worked by slave laborunder intelligent direction were kept in good condition. Under free negrolabor they are in the worst possible condition. Experience, necessity, thedisappearance of free land, and the increase of transportation facilitieshave caused the white county farmer to employ better methods, and to keepup and increase the fertility of the land by using fertilizers.

[2064] But it was nearly forty years before the entire cotton crop of thestate was as large as in 1859.

[2065]Southern Magazine, Jan., 1874; Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., pp.206, 207; Somers, “Southern States,” p. 117. In 1860 it was estimated thatof the whole cotton crop 10 to 12 per cent was produced by white labor; in1876 the proportion of whites to blacks in the cotton fields was 30 to 51;in 1883 white labor produced 44 per cent of the cotton crop; in 1884, 48per cent; in 1885, 50 per cent; in 1893, 70 per cent. And this was done bythe whites on inferior lands. See W. B. Tillett, inCentury Magazine,Vol. XI, p. 771; Hammond, “The Cotton Industry,” pp. 129, 130, 132.

[2066] DeBow estimated that the entire acreage of the cotton crop was asfollows:—

The Commissioner of Agriculture in 1876 estimated that the acreage in 1860was 13,000,000. Taking this estimate, which, while probably too large, ismore nearly correct, only 4 per cent of the arable land was planted incotton—the staple crop. Hammond, “The Cotton Industry,” p. 74.

[2067] Smith, “Cotton Production in Alabama” (1884); Census, 1880; Smithin Ala. Geolog. Survey, 1881-1882; Kelsey, “The Negro Farmer”; oralaccounts and personal observation.

[2068] So poor were the people after the war that, even though the valueof the mineral and timber lands was well known, there was no nativecapital to develop them, and the lion’s share went to outsiders, whobought the lands at tax and mortgage sales during and after the carpet-bagrégime.

[2069] Slavery or negroes prevented the establishment of manufactures bycrowding out a white population capable of carrying on manufactures. Thecensus shows that in 1860 the white districts had a fair proportion ofmanufactures for a state less than forty years old.

[2071] “Northern Alabama Illustrated,” p. 378; see article on “Immigrationto the Southern States” in thePolitical Science Quarterly, June, 1905.

[2073] The decreasing value of the wage laborer is shown by the followingtable of wages:

The figures of 1860 are based on the wages of an able-bodied negro. Thestatistics of 1865-1866 are taken from tables of wages prescribed by theFreedmen’s Bureau; those for 1867 and 1868 show the decline caused by theinefficiency of the free negro laborer. Yet the demand for labor wasalways greater than the supply. In 1860 clothing and rations were alsogiven; in 1866-1868 rations and no clothing. In 1890 nothing wasfurnished. In 1866-1868 the currency was inflated, and the wages for 1868were really much lower. Hammond, “The Cotton Industry,” p. 124;Montgomery Mail, May 16, 1865; Freedmen’s Bureau Reports, 1865-1870.

[2074] A convention held in Montgomery, in 1873, recommended that theshare system be abolished and a contract wage system be inaugurated; wagesshould be secured by a lien on the employer’s crop; separate contractsshould be made with each laborer, and the “squad” system abolished. Inthis way the laborer would not be responsible for bad crops. To aid thelaborers, Congress was asked to pass the Sumner Civil Rights Bill,providing for the recognition of certain social rights for negroes, toexempt homesteads from tax action, and to increase the tax on propertyheld by speculators. And the President was asked to supply bread and meatto the negro farmers. Annual Cyclopædia (1873), p. 19;Tuscaloosa Blade,Nov. 30, 1873.

[2084] The prosperity of several large commercial houses in Alabama issaid to date from the corner groceries of the ’70’s.

[2085] Somers, “Southern States,” pp. 159, 272;Harper’s MonthlyMagazine, Jan., 1874; King, “The Great South”; C. C. Smith, “Colonizationof Negroes in Central Alabama”;Southern Magazine, Jan., 1874;TheForum, Vol. XXI, p. 341; Hoffman, p. 261; Hammond, p. 191. See alsoAppendix II.

[2086] A northern traveller in the Alabama Black Belt in recent years saysof it: “The white population is rapidly on the decrease and the negropopulation on the increase.... There are hundreds of the ‘old mansionhouses’ going to decay, the glass broken in the windows, the doors off thehinges, the siding long unused to paint, the columns of the verandasrotting away, and the bramble thickets encroaching to the very doors. Thepeople have sold their land for what little they could get and moved tothe cities and towns, that they may educate their children and escape theintolerable conditions surrounding them at their old beloved homes....These friends have largely gone from the negro’s life, and he is leftalone in the wilderness, held down by crop liens and mortgages given tothe alien. Land rent is half its value; the tenant must purchase from thecreditor’s store and raise cotton to pay for what he has already eaten andworn.” C. C. Smith, “Colonization of Negroes in Central Alabama,”published by the Christian Women’s Board of Missions, Indianapolis, Ind.

[2087] See also Edmunds, inReview of Reviews, Sept., 1900; Dillingham,inYale Review, Vol. V, p. 190; Stone, “The Negro in theYazoo-Mississippi Delta”; Stone, inQuarterly Journal of Economics,Feb., 1905;Gunton’s Magazine, Sept., 1902 (Dowd); Brown, inNorthAmerican Review, Dec., 1904; Census 1900, Vol. VI, Pt. II, pp. 406-416;Harper’s Monthly Magazine, Jan., 1874, and Jan., 1881; Stone, inSouthAtlantic Quarterly, Jan., 1905; Kelsey, “The Negro Farmer”; Hammond, “TheCotton Industry.”

Another solution of the problem is often suggested, viz. the crowding outof the blacks from the Black Belt by the whites—especially northernersand Germans—who want to cultivate the Black Belt lands, who settle incolonies, and who have no place for the negro in their plans of industrialsociety. The Black Belt landlords are becoming weary of negro labor, andsome are disposed to make special inducements to get whites to settle inthe Black Belt. In Louisiana and Mississippi, Italians have replacednegroes on many sugar and cotton plantations. Georgia and Alabama, inorder to make the negro work, have recently passed stringent vagrancylaws, and the planters are talking of Chinese labor. For the opinions ofthose who favor white immigration to the South, see theManufacturersRecord, theAtlanta Constitution, and theMontgomery Advertiser,during recent years. There is a general demand for foreigners who willperform agricultural labor.

[2088] Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., p. 879 (Lowe);N. Y. World, Dec. 14,1867, Aug. 15, 1868.

[2089] For information in regard to the Radical congressmen: Barnes,“History of the 40th Congress,” Index; Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test. (Clanton,Lowe, Lindsay);Harper’s Weekly, May 1, 1869 (picture of Spencer);Elyton Herald, ——, 1868;Montgomery Mail, July 25, 1868;N. Y.World, Feb. 15 and Sept. 22, 1868; Alabama Manual (1869), p. 32;N. Y.Herald, ——, 1868.

[2090] Pike was the only county that never fell completely into the handsof the Radicals.

[2091] “North Alabama Illustrated,” p. 50;Montgomery Advertiser, July13, 1866;N. Y. World, April 11 and July 23, 1868; Ku Klux Rept., Ala.Test., pp. 187, 188, 881, 1815, 1956; Acts of Ala. (1868), p. 414;(1869-1870), pp. 157, 336; Beverly, “Alabama,” p. 203. A vivid descriptionof the first session of the reconstructed legislature was published byCapt. B. H. Screws, “The Loil Legislature.”

[2092] Tradition says that what is now known as the Davis Memorial Roomwas the one thus used.

[2093] Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., pp. 231, 881, 1411, 1424, 1468;WeeklyMail, March 24, 1869;Independent Monitor, Jan. 11, 1870; Report ofInvestigating Committee; Miller, “Alabama,” p. 254; “Northern Alabama,” p.50; oral accounts of former members.

[2096] Acts of Ala. (1868), pp. 113, 129, 133, 350, 407, 414, 421;(1869-1870), p. 451;Montgomery Mail, Feb. 24, 1870; Annual Cyclopædia(1870), p. 12.

[2097] Annual Cyclopædia (1870), p. 13; Journal (1869-1870),passim;Brown, “Alabama,” p. 268.

[2100] Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., pp. 189, 239, 240, 324, 435, 523, 962,1421, 1590, 1816, 1819, 1820, 1957; Herbert, “Solid South,” p. 53; CoburnReport, p. 256;N. Y. World, April 11, 1868;Montgomery Mail, April21, 1870.

[2102] Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., p. 510;Augusta Chronicle andSentinel, June 13, 1866;Selma Times and Messenger, June 9, 1868.

[2103] Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., pp. 93, 103, 104, 358, 435, 1878;N. Y.World, Nov. 3, 1868; Coburn Report, p. 512; Herbert, “Solid South,” p.60.

[2104] Annual Cyclopædia (1870), p. 14; Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., pp. 91,1177, 1178, 1179, 1242;N. Y. Herald, Sept. 27 and Oct. 26, 1868; Reportof Sec. of War, 1869, vol. I, p. 88.

[2105] McPherson’s scrap-book, “Campaign of 1868,” Vol. I, p. 156; Vol. V,pp. 43, 45, 46, 48, 49; Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., pp. 95, 360, 502, 1956;N. Y. World, Sept. 12, 1868; G. O. No. 27, Dept. of the South, Oct. 8,1868; G. O. No. 38, Dept. of the South, Nov. 10, 1868;Tuskegee News,July 29, 1876.

[2107] Nordhoff, “Cotton States in 1870,” pp. 85, 86; Ku Klux Rept., Ala.Test., pp. 185, 209, 210, 434, 435, 1879.

[2108] Miller, “Alabama,” p. 256; Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., pp. 84, 182,183, 216, 232, 311, 356, 357, 378, 379, 512, 531, 1038, 1625; McPherson’sscrap-book, “Campaign of 1870,” Vol. I, pp. 55, 61; Annual Cyclopædia(1870), pp. 16, 17; “Northern Alabama,” p. 50;Montgomery Mail, Aug. 20,1870 (Union League Appeal).

[2109] Somers, “Southern States,” p. 132; Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., p.225; Miller, “Alabama,” p. 256.

[2110] Somers, “Southern States,” pp. 167, 186; Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test.,214, 232, 381, 423, 1299, 1371, 1558-1561 (see also the whole of Lindsay’stestimony); “Northern Alabama,” p. 50; Annual Cyclopædia (1871), p. 11;Miller, “Alabama,” pp. 259-261; Beverly, “Alabama,” p. 204.

[2112] Report of Joint Committee in regard to election of George E.Spencer; Taft, “Senate Election Cases,” pp. 558, 562, 574-578; AnnualCyclopædia (1872), pp. 11, 12; (1873), 16-18; Memorial of General Assembly(Radical) to President, November, 1872; Coburn Report, p. 716; SenateJournal (1872-1873), pp. 15-86 (“Court-House Senate”); Senate Journal,1871 (“Capitol Senate”), Appendix; McPherson, “Handbook of Politics”(1874), pp. 85, 86; Acts of Ala. (1872-1873), p. 532; Acts of Ala., 1873,p. 156;Montgomery Advertiser, Nov. 12 and 24, 1872; Jan. 4, Feb. 22 and23, 1873;Southern Argus, Nov. 22, 1872; Jan. 10, 1873; Herbert, “SolidSouth,” pp. 57-59; Miller, “Alabama,” p. 261.

[2113] Coburn Report, pp. 230, 262, 267, 271, 274, 280, 525, 528, 529;“Northern Alabama,” p. 51;Tuscaloosa Blade, Nov. 27, 1873;MontgomeryAdvertiser, Sept. 27, 1872.

[2115]Montgomery Advertiser, March, 1870; Report of Inspector ofPenitentiary, 1873-1874; Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., pp. 230, 244, 1220,1380, 1384; Acts of Ala. (1869-1870), p. 28; Washington, “Up fromSlavery,” pp. 83-90;N. Y. World, Feb. 22 and April 11, 1868;Tuscaloosa Monitor, Dec. 18, 1867; Coburn Report, pp. 108, 110, 161,203, 204, 295; Clowes, “Black America,” pp. 131, 140; Herbert, “SolidSouth,” p. 59.

[2116] Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., pp. 71, 233, 390, 391, 881, 1815, 1816;Coburn Report, p. 861;Huntsville Democrat, 1872; Straker, “The NewSouth Investigated,” pp. 24, 41, 57;Ala. State Journal, May 20, 1874;McPherson’s Scrap-book, “Campaign of 1869,” Vol. I, p. 57.

[2117]International Monthly, Vol. V, p. 220; Coburn Report, p. 527;“The Land We Love,” Vol. I, p. 446; Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., pp. 390,391, 405, 411, 926; Riley, “Baptists of Alabama,” pp. 321, 322, 329;Clowes, “Black America,” pp. 53, 131, 140, 144; Murphy, “The PresentSouth.”

[2119] Charge of Judge H. D. Clayton to Barbour County grand jury inCoburn Report, p. 839; Report of Montgomery grand jury inAdvertiser,Oct. 20, 1871;Tuskegee News, March 16, 1876; Little, “History of ButlerCounty,” p. 111;Tuscaloosa Blade, Nov. 19, 1874; Coburn Report, pp.524, 1219;Montgomery Advertiser, Nov. 27, 1873; Ku Klux Rept., Ala.Test., pp. 230, 1175, 1179;Scribner’s Monthly, Sept., 1874; Herbert,“Solid South,” pp. 63, 67.

[2121]State Journal, March 10, 1874. The justice who performed theceremony in one case gave as his excuse that the woman was so bad thatnothing she could do would make her worse.

[2123] Coburn Report on Affairs in Alabama, 1874, pp. xiv, 341, 519, 520,521, 743;Montgomery Advertiser, Oct. 23, 1902.

[2125] A few years ago Strobach offered to tell me all about his politicalcareer in exchange for $50, but died before he could begin the account.

[2126] Coburn Report, pp. 225, 230, 272, 280-282;State Journal, May 20and 27, 1874;Montgomery Advertiser, Oct. 23, 1902.

[2128] Coburn Report, pp. 118, 135, 145, 151, 279. When the CoburnCommittee was in Opelika, Washington Jones, colored, appeared before itand demanded that the promises made to him be fulfilled. He wanted themule, the land, “overflow” bacon, etc. The committee got rid of him in ahurry. See Coburn Report, p. 135.

[2129] Coburn Report, pp. 59, 63, 106, 118, 122, 142, 181, 641;StateJournal, June 10, 1874.

[2132] Coburn Report, pp. 59, 63, 109, 118, 119. See also Ku Klux Rept.,Ala. Test., pp. 1072-1075.

[2134] TheState Journal of Aug. 1, 1874, has a list of extracts fromDemocratic papers from 1868 to 1874, showing the change of attitude inregard to the negro.

[2135]Tuskegee News, June 4, and Aug. 20, and Sept. 10, 1874; CoburnReport, pp. 120, 860, 861, 1231, 1232,et passim;Eufaula Times, July30, 1874, quoting from theBirmingham News,Shelby Guide, andEutawWhig;State Journal, June 24, 1874.

[2136]Opelika Times, Aug. 22, 1874, condensed; Coburn Report, pp. 97,100, 104.

[2137] See testimony of Dunbar and Gardner in Coburn Report, pp. 101, 209,210, 300, 302;Opelika Daily Times, Sept. 30, 1874.

[2138]State Journal, June 16, 1874. For a typical readoption of thisplatform see the resolutions of the Tuscaloosa County Democrats inStateJournal, June 24, 1874. “Old Whig” in theOpelika Daily Times, Sept.30, 1874, proposed that the whites “fall back upon the old Wesleyandoctrine ‘to prefer one another in business’;” “Give the Radicals nosupport;” “The adder that stings should find no warmth in the bosom of thedying victim.”

[2141] Coburn Report, pp. 99, 101, 856, 859;Opelika Daily Times, June29 and Oct. 3, 1874;Montgomery Advertiser, Oct. 23, 1902.

[2142]State Journal, June 4 and 27, 1874; Coburn Report, p. 881; AnnualCyclopædia (1874), pp. 15, 16;Tuskegee News, July 2, 1874.

[2145] For full account of the bacon question see Ho. Doc., No. 110, 43dCong., 2d Sess.; alsoTuskegee News, June 4, Aug. 27, and Sept. 24,1874; Coburn Report, pp. 36, 50, 69, 207, 241.

The following list shows how one distribution was made in October, justbefore the elections:—

[2148]The Tribune, Oct. 7, 8, and 12, 1874;The Nation, Aug. 27, andOct. 15 and 27, 1874; Annual Cyclopædia (1874), p. 12; Foulke, “Life of O.P. Morton,” Vol. II, p. 350. The Hays-Hawley letter was first published intheHartford Courant and in theBoston Daily Advertiser. It is also inthe Coburn Report, pp. 1254-1260.

[2149]N. Y. Tribune, Oct. 7, 1874; Coburn Report, pp. 244, 245, 1221,1226, 1241, 1247, 1264, 1266.

[2155] Coburn Report, pp. 680, 682; “An appeal to Governor Lewis from thePeople of Sumter.”

[2159] For information in regard to the campaign of 1874 I am indebted toseveral of those who took part in it, and especially to Mr. T. J.Rutledge, now state bank examiner, who was then secretary of theDemocratic campaign committee.

[2161] Coburn Report, pp. xix, 43, 80-84, 427, 434, 476, 794, 850, 851,949, 1200-1204;Tuskegee News, Nov. 5, 1874;State Journal, Oct. andNov., 1874.

[2163] Coburn Report, pp. 239, 253, 701, 703;The Nation, Nov. 30, 1874;Tuskegee News, Dec. 10, 1874.

[2164] In the code of Alabama (1876), pp. 100-120, is printed the“Constitution (so-called) of the State of Alabama, 1868,” as the codeterms it. The last three amendments are thus noted, “Adoption proclaimedby the Secretary of State, Dec. 18, 1865” (or July 20, 1868, or March 30,1870). The other amendments have notes stating date of submission and dateof ratification by the state. See code of 1876, pp. 27, 28; also code of1896.

[2165] The negroes voted against it. Some of them were told that, ifadopted, a war with Spain would result and that the blacks, being the“only truly loyal,” would have to do most of the fighting against theSpanish, who would land at Apalachicola, Milton, and Eufaula. SeeTuskegee News, Dec. 9, 1875. See also in regard to the new constitution,Tuskegee News, June 3, 1875; “Northern Alabama Illustrated,” pp. 51, 52;Annual Cyclopædia (1875), p. 14; Ho. Ex. Doc., No. 46, 43d Cong., 2dSess.; “Report of the Joint Committee in regard to the Amendment of theConstitution.”

[2166] Most whites believe that eliminating the negro has solved theproblem of the negro in politics. It seems to me that this is asuperficial view. The black counties are still represented in partyconventions and legislature in proportion to population. The whitecounties are jealous of this undue influence and would like to reduce thisrepresentation. The party leaders have been able to repress this jealousy,but it is not forgotten. Before it will submit to loss of representationthe Black Belt, it is believed, will gradually admit to the franchisethose negroes who have been excluded, and they will vote with the whites.Such a course will undoubtedly cause political realignments. Notice on themaps that the Republican strongholds are now in the white counties. The“Lily Whites” are increasing in numbers.

[2167] These views are set forth most clearly by Alexander Johnston inLalor’s “Cyclopædia of Political Science,” Vol. III, p. 556. See alsoMcCall, “Thaddeus Stevens,” and his article in theAtlantic Monthly,June, 1901; Blaine, “Twenty Years”; Schurz, inMcClure’s Magazine, Jan.,1905; Grosvenor, inForum, Aug., 1900.

[2168] For a belated recognition of the reasons for this, see H. L.Nelson, “Three Months of Roosevelt,” in theAtlantic Monthly, Feb.,1902.


Alexander Hamilton Stephens.		William Lowndes Yancey.

General L. P. Walker, First Confederate Secretary of War. President of Convention of 1875.

William R. Smith, Leader of Coöperationists in 1861.		Jere Clemens.

Army of Northern Virginia (Fowler report)		27,022
Army of Northern Virginia, scattering (Fowler report)		3,000
Armies of the West—infantry (estimate)		39,406
Armies of the West—cavalry		14,000
Scattering		2,500
Artillery		3,750
		89,678


The First Confederate Capitol. The State Capitol, Montgomery.		Montgomery Residence of President Davis.


Confederate Monument, Montgomery.		The Inauguration of Jefferson Davis. (From an old negative.)


Governor Thomas H. Watts.		Governor John Gill Shorter.


Governor Andrew B. Moore.		Bishop R. H. Wilmer.

Balance in treasury, September 30, 1864		$3,713,959
Receipts, September 30, 1864, to May 24, 1865		3,776,188
Total		$7,490,147
Disbursements, September 30, 1864, to May 24, 1865		6,698,853
Balance in treasury, September 30, 1864, to May 24, 1865		$791,294

Movatterモバイル変換

CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION
IN ALABAMA

PREFACE

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

LIST OF MAPS

PART I
INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

PART II
WAR TIMES IN ALABAMA

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

PART III
THE AFTERMATH OF WAR

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

PART IV
PRESIDENTIAL RESTORATION

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

PART V
CONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

PART VI
CARPET-BAG AND NEGRO RULE

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

APPENDIX I

APPENDIX II

INDEX

PART I
INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I
Period of Sectional Controversy
	PAGE
Composition of the Population of Alabama	3
The Indians and Nullification	8
Slavery Controversy and Political Divisions	10
Emancipation Sentiment in North Alabama	10
Early Party Divisions	11
William Lowndes Yancey	13
Growth of Secession Sentiment	14
“Unionists” Successful in 1851-1852	16
Yancey-Pryor Debate, 1858	17
The Charleston Convention of 1860	18
The Election of 1860	19
Separation of the Churches, 1821-1861	21
Senator Clay’s Farewell Speech in the Senate	25

CHAPTER II
Secession from the Union
Secession Convention Called	27
Parties in the Convention	28
Reports on Secession	31
Debate on Secession	31
Political Theories of Members	34
Ordinance of Secession Passed	36
Confederate States Formed	39
Self-denying Ordinance	41
African Slave Trade	42
Commissioners to Other States	46
Legislation by the Convention	49
North Alabama in the Convention	53
Incidents of the Session	56
[Pg xii]
PART II
WAR TIMES IN ALABAMA

CHAPTER III
Military and Political Events
Military Operations	61
The War in North Alabama	62
The Streight Raid	67
Rousseau’s Raid	68
The War in South Alabama	69
Wilson’s Raid and the End of the War	71
Destruction by the Armies	74
Military Organization	78
Alabama Soldiers: Number and Character	78
Negro Troops	86
Union Troops from Alabama	87
Militia System	88
Conscription and Exemption	92
Confederate Enrolment Laws	92
Policy of the State in Regard to Conscription	95
Effect of the Enrolment Laws	98
Exemption from Service	100
Tories and Deserters	108
Conditions in North Alabama	109
Unionists, Tories, and Mossbacks	112
Growth of Disaffection	114
Outrages by Tories and Deserters	119
Disaffection in South Alabama	122
Prominent Tories and Deserters	124
Numbers of the Disaffected	127
Party Politics and the Peace Movement	131
Political Conditions, 1861-1865	131
The Peace Society	137
Reconstruction Sentiment	143

CHAPTER IV
Economic and Social Conditions
Industrial Development during the War	149
Military Industries	149
Manufacture of Arms	150
Nitre Making	153
Private Manufacturing Enterprises	156
Salt Making	157
[Pg xiii]Confederate Finance in Alabama	162
Banks and Banking	162
Issues of Bonds and Notes by the State	164
Special Appropriations and Salaries	168
Taxation	169
Impressment	174
Debts, Stay Laws, Sequestration	176
Trade, Barter, Prices	178
Blockade-running and Trade through the Lines	183
Scarcity and Destitution, 1861-1865	196
The Negro during the War	205
Military Uses of Negroes	205
Negroes on the Farms	209
Fidelity to Masters	210
Schools and Colleges	212
Confederate Text-books	217
Newspapers	218
Publishing Houses	221
The Churches during the War	223
Attitude on Public Questions	223
The Churches and the Negroes	225
Federal Army and the Southern Churches	227
Domestic Life	230
Society in 1861	230
Life on the Farm	232
Home Industries; Makeshifts and Substitutes	234
Clothes and Fashions	236
Drugs and Medicines	239
Social Life during the War	241
Negro Life	243
Woman’s Work for the Soldiers	244

PART III
THE AFTERMATH OF WAR

CHAPTER V
Social and Economic Disorder
Loss of Life in War	251
Destruction of Property	253
The Wreck of the Railways	259
The Interregnum: Lawlessness and Disorder	262
[Pg xiv]The Negro testing his Freedom	269
How to prove Freedom	270
Suffering among the Negroes	273
Relations between Whites and Blacks	275
Destitution and Want, 1865-1866	277

CHAPTER VI
Confiscation and the Cotton Tax
Confiscation Frauds	284
Restrictions on Trade in 1865	284
Federal Claims to Confederate Property	285
Cotton Frauds and Stealing	290
Cotton Agents Prosecuted	297
Statistics of the Frauds	299
The Cotton Tax	303

CHAPTER VII
The Temper of the People
After the Surrender	308
“Condition of Affairs in the South”	311
General Grant’s Report	311
Carl Schurz’s Report	312
Truman’s Report	312
Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction	313
The “Loyalists”	316
Treatment of Northern Men	318
Immigration to Alabama	321
Troubles of the Episcopal Church	324

PART IV
PRESIDENTIAL RESTORATION

CHAPTER VIII
First Provisional Administration
Theories of Reconstruction	333
Presidential Plan in Operation	341
Early Attempts at “Restoration”	341
Amnesty Proclamation	349
“Proscribing Proscription”	356
The “Restoration” Convention	358
Personnel and Parties	358
Debates on Secession and Slavery	360
“A White Man’s Government”	364
Legislation by the Convention	366
“Restoration” Completed	367
[Pg xv]
CHAPTER IX
Second Provisional Administration
Status of the Provisional Government	376
Legislation about Freedmen	378
The Negro under the Provisional Government	383
Movement toward Negro Suffrage	386
New Conditions of Congress and Increasing Irritation	391
Fourteenth Amendment Rejected	394
Political Conditions, 1866-1867; Formation of Parties	398

CHAPTER X
Military Government, 1865-1866
The Military Occupation	408
The Army and the Colored Population	410
Administration of Justice by the Army	413
The Army and the White People	417

CHAPTER XI
The Wards of the Nation
The Freedmen’s Bureau	421
Department of Negro Affairs	421
Organization of the Bureau	423
The Bureau and the Civil Authorities	427
The Bureau supported by Confiscations	431
The Labor Problem	433
Freedmen’s Bureau Courts	437
Care of the Sick	441
Issue of Rations	442
Demoralization caused by Bureau	444
The Freedmen’s Savings-bank	451
The Freedmen’s Bureau and Negro Education	456
The Failure of the Bureau System	469

PART V
CONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION

CHAPTER XII
Military Government under the Reconstruction Acts
Administration of General John Pope	473
Military Reconstruction Acts	473
[Pg xvi]Pope’s Control of the Civil Government	477
Pope and the Newspapers	485
Trials by Military Commissions	487
Registration and Disfranchisement	488
Elections and the Convention	491
Removal of Pope and Swayne	492
Administration of General George G. Meade	493
Registration and Elections	493
Administration of Civil Affairs	495
Trials by Military Commissions	498
The Soldiers and the Citizens	500
From Martial Law to Carpet-bag Rule	501

CHAPTER XIII
The Campaign of 1867
Attitude of the Whites	503
Organization of the Radical Party in Alabama	505
Conservative Opposition Aroused	512
The Negro’s First Vote	514

CHAPTER XIV
The “Reconstruction” Convention
Character of the Convention	517
The Race Question	521
Debates on Disfranchisement of Whites	524
Legislation by the Convention	528

CHAPTER XV
The “Reconstruction” Completed
“Convention” Candidates	531
Campaign on the Constitution	534
Vote on the Constitution	538
The Constitution fails of Adoption	541
The Alabama Question in Congress	547
Alabama readmitted to the Union	550

CHAPTER XVI
The Union League of America
Origin of the Union League	553
Its Extension to the South	556
Ceremonies of the League	559
Organization and Methods	561
[Pg xvii]
PART VI
CARPET-BAG AND NEGRO RULE

CHAPTER XVII
Taxation and the Public Debt
Taxation during Reconstruction	571
Administrative Expenses	574
Effect on Property Values	578
The Public Bonded Debt	580
The Financial Settlement	583

CHAPTER XVIII
Railroad Legislation and Frauds
Federal and State Aid to Railroads before the War	587
General Legislation in Aid of Railroads	589
The Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad	591
Other Indorsed Railroads	600
County and Town Aid to Railroads	604

CHAPTER XIX
Reconstruction in the Schools
School System before Reconstruction	607
School System of Reconstruction	609
Reconstruction of the State University	612
Trouble in the Mobile Schools	618
Irregularities in School Administration	621
Objections to the Reconstruction Education	624
Negro Education	625
Failure of the Educational System	632

CHAPTER XX
Reconstruction in the Churches
“Disintegration and Absorption” Policy	637
The Methodists	637
The Baptists	640
The Presbyterians	641
The Churches and the Negro during Reconstruction	642
The Baptists and the Negroes	643
The Presbyterians and the Negroes	646
The Roman Catholics	647
The Episcopalians	647
The Methodists and the Negroes	648
[Pg xviii]
CHAPTER XXI
The Ku Klux Revolution
Causes of the Ku Klux Movement	654
Secret Societies of Regulators before Ku Klux Klan	659
Origin and Growth of Ku Klux Klan	661
The Knights of the White Camelia	671
The Work of the Secret Orders	675
Ku Klux Orders and Warnings	680
Ku Klux “Outrages”	686
Success of the Ku Klux Movement	690
Spurious Ku Klux Organizations	691
Attempts to suppress the Ku Klux Movement	694
State Legislation	695
Enforcement Acts	697
Ku Klux Investigation	703
Later Ku Klux Organizations	709

CHAPTER XXII
Reorganization of the Industrial System
Break-up of the Ante-bellum System	710
The Freedmen’s Bureau System	717
Northern and Foreign Immigration	718
Attempts to organize a New System	721
Development of the Share and Credit Systems	723
Superiority of White Farmers	727
Decadence of the Black Belt	731

CHAPTER XXIII
Political and Social Conditions during Reconstruction
Politics and Political Methods	733
The First Reconstruction Administration	733
Reconstruction Judiciary	744
Campaign of 1868	747
The Administration of Governor Lindsay	750
The Administration of Governor Lewis	754
Election of Spencer to the United States Senate	755
Social Conditions during Reconstruction	761
Statistics of Crime	762
Social Relations of Negroes	763
Carpet-baggers and Scalawags	765
Social Effects of Reconstruction on the Whites	766
Economic Conditions	769
[Pg xix]
CHAPTER XXIV
The Overthrow of Reconstruction
The Republican Party in 1874	771
Whites desert the Party	771
The Demand of the Negro for Social Rights	772
Disputes among Radical Editors	773
Demand of Negroes for Office	773
Factions within the Party	774
Negroes in 1874	775
Promises made to them	775
Negro Social and Political Clubs	776
Negro Democrats	777
The Democratic and Conservative Party in 1874	778
Attitude of the Whites toward the Blacks	779
The Color Line Drawn	780
“Independent” Candidates	781
The Campaign of 1874	782
Platforms and Candidates	782
“Political Bacon”	783
“Hays-Hawley Letter”	786
Intimidation by Federal Authorities	789
Intimidation by Democrats	791
The Election of 1874	793
The Eufaula Riot	794
Results of the Election	795
Later Phases of State Politics	798
Whites make Secure their Control	798
The “Lily Whites” and the “Black and Tans”	799
The Failure of the Populist Movement	799
The Primary Election System	800
The Negroes Disfranchised	800

Successes and Failures of Reconstruction	801

Appendices:
Cotton Production in Alabama, 1860-1900	804
Registration of Voters under the New Constitution	806

Index	809

		PAGE
Alabama Money	Facing	178
Buckley, Rev. C. W.	"	552
“Bully for Alabama”	"	738
Callis, John B.	"	552
Clanton, General James H.	"	760
Clemens, Jere	"	36
Confederate Capitol, Montgomery	"	96
Confederate Monument, Montgomery	"	96
Confederate Postage Stamps	"	178
Crowe, Major James R.	"	760
Curry, Dr. J. L. M.	"	626
Davis, Jefferson	"	54
Davis, Inauguration of	"	96
Davis, Residence of, Montgomery	"	96
Gaineswood, a Plantation Home	"	8
Hays, Charles	"	552
“Hon. Mr. Carraway”	"	738
Houston, Governor George S.	"	760
John Brown Extra	"	18
Johnson, President Andrew	"	336
Ku Klux Costumes		675
Ku Klux Hanging Pictures		612
Ku Klux Warning		678
Lewis, Governor D. P.	Facing	600
Lindsay, Governor R. B.	"	760
Meade, General George G.	"	476
Moore, Governor Andrew B.	"	130
Negro Members of the Convention of 1875	"	600
“Nigger, Scalawag, Carpetbagger”	"	738
Parsons, Governor L. E.	"	600
Patton, Governor R. M.	"	760
Pope, General John	"	476
Prescript (Original) of Ku Klux Klan, Facsimile of Page of	"	670
Prescript (revised and amended) of Ku Klux Klan, Facsimile of Page of		665
Private Money	Facing	178
Rapier, J. T.	"	552
Ritual of the Knights of the White Camelia, Facsimile of Page of	"	670
[Pg xxii]Shorter, Governor John Gill	"	130
Smith, Governor William H.	"	600
Smith, William R.	"	36
Spencer, Senator George E.	"	552
Stephens, Alexander H.	"	36
Stevens, Thaddeus	"	336
Sumner, Charles	"	336
Swayne, General Wager	"	476
“The Speaker cried out, ‘Order!’”	"	738
Thomas, General George H.	"	476
Union League Constitution, Facsimile of Page of	"	566
Walker, General L. P.	"	36
Warner, Senator Willard	"	552
Watts, Governor Thomas H.	"	130
Wilmer, Bishop R. H.	"	130
Yancey, William Lowndes	"	36

		PAGE
1.	Population in 1860	4
2.	Nativity and Distribution of Public Men	6
3.	Election for President, 1860	20
4.	Parties in the Secession Convention	29
5.	Disaffection toward the Confederacy, 1861-1865	110
6.	Industrial Development, 1861-1865	150
7.	Devastation by Invading Armies	256
8.	Parties in the Convention of 1865	359
9.	Registration of Voters under the Reconstruction Acts	494
10.	Election for President, 1868	747
11.	Election of 1870	750
12.	Election of 1872	755
13.	Election of 1874	795
14.	Election of 1876	796
15.	Election of 1880	798
16.	Election of 1890	799
17.	Election of 1902 under New Constitution	800

Checks on Bank of Mobile, payable in Confederate notes		$11,440
Certificate of deposit, Bank of Mobile, payable in Confederate notes		1,330
Confederate and state notes in treasury		517,889
State notes, change bills (legal shinplasters)		250,004
Notes of state banks and branches		358
Bank-notes		424
Silver		337
Gold on hand		497
Gold on deposit in northern banks		35
Balance		$791,294

White men, 21 to 60 years		$0.75
Free negro men, 21 to 50 years		5.00
Free negro women, 21 to 45 years		3.00
Slaves (children to laborers in prime)		0.50 to 2.00
More valuable slaves		2.00 and up

Crop liens		33⅓%
Hoarded money		1%
Jewellery, plate, furniture		½%
Goods sold at auction		10%
Imports		2%
Insurance premiums (companies not chartered by state)		2%
Playing cards, per pack		$1.00
Gold watches, each		1.00
Gold chains, silver watches, clocks		0.50
Articles raffled off		10%
Legacies, profits and sales, incomes		5%
Profits of Confederate contractors		10%
Wages of Confederate officials		10%
Race tracks		10%
Billiard tables, each		$150.00
Bagatelle		20.00
Tenpin alleys, each		40.00
Readings and lectures, each		4.00
Pedler		100.00
Spirit rapper, per day		500.00
Saloon-keeper		$40.00 to 150.00
Daguerreotypist		10.00 to 100.00
Slave trader, for each slave offered for sale		20.00

Real estate and personal property		5%
Gold and silver ware, jewellery		10%
Coin		5%
Credits		5%
Profits on liquors, produce, groceries, and dry goods		10%

Real estate and personal property and coin		5%
Gold and silver ware		10%
Profits on liquors, produce, groceries, and dry goods		30%
Treasury notes of old issue (after January, 1865)		100%


Alabama Money.


Confederate Postage Stamps.		Private Money. Printed in large sheets on one side only and never used. The other side is a state bill similar to the one above. Paper was scarce, and the state money was printed so that when cut apart the private money was destroyed.

Shoes, per pair		$25.00
Boots, per pair		40.00
Overcoats, each		25.00
Hats, each		15.00
Flour, per barrel	$40.00 to	60.00
Corn, per bushel		3.25
Butter, per pound		1.75
Bacon, per pound		10.00
Soap, per pound (cheap)		1.00
Candles, per pound		2.50
Sugar, per pound	$0.50 to	.75
Coffee, per pound	1.75 to	3.25
Tea, per pound	10.00 to	20.00
Cotton and wool cards, per pair		2.00
Board per week at the Battle House, in 1862	$3.50; in 1863,	8.00	[466]

	1860	1870
Value of farms	$175,824,032	$54,191,229
Value of live stock	43,411,711	21,325,076
Value of farm implements	7,433,178	5,946,543
Number of horses	127,000	80,000
Number of mules	111,000	76,000
Number of oxen	88,000	59,000
Number of cows	230,000	170,000
Number of other cattle	454,000	257,000
Number of sheep	370,000	241,000
Number of swine	1,748,000	719,000
Improved land in farms, acres	6,385,724	5,062,204
Corn crop, bushels	33,226,000	16,977,000
	(35,053,047 in 1899)
Cotton crop, bales	989,955	429,482
	(1,106,840 in 1899)

White						Black
Months	Men	Women	Boys	Girls	Total	Men	Women	Boys	Girls	Total
1865.
Nov.	72	483	821	875	2,521	327	656	346	615	1,944
Dec.	271	909	1,059	1,090	3,329	464	860	345	574	2,243
1866.
Jan.	349	2,377	1,735	2,764	7,225	538	1,053	742	1,002	3,335
Feb.	1,285	3,641	3,806	5,039	13,771	894	1,455	880	1,095	4,324
March	1,181	4,971	5,796	6,758	18,616	995	2,007	1,389	1,662	6,053
April	1,038	4,340	4,844	6,642	16,864	1,176	2,331	1,904	2,771	8,182
May	1,743	5,821	6,939	9,064	23,567	1,479	3,433	2,898	3,576	14,526
June	1,912	5,661	6,932	8,092	22,577	1,654	3,170	2,846	3,151	10,821
July	1,585	5,036	7,108	8,076	21,805	1,294	2,472	2,379	2,648	8,793
Aug.	1,376	4,528	5,932	6,836	18,672	1,178	2,025	2,112	2,247	7,562
Sept.	1,368	4,454	5,547	6,543	17,912	1,242	2,225	1,939	2,126	7,532
Totals	12,180	42,201	50,429	61,779	166,589	11,241	21,687	17,780	21,407	72,115

	Huntsville	Mobile	Montgomery
Deposits for the month	$7,343.50	$11,136.05	$8,522.90
Drafts for the month	10,127.61	18,645.62	8,679.60
Total deposits	416,617.72	1,039,097.05	238,106.08
Total drafts	364,382.51	933,424.30	213,861.71
Total due depositors	52,235.21	105,672.75	24,244.37	[1223]

Year	Total Deposits	Deposits each Year	Due Depositors	Gain each Year
1866	$305,167	$305,167	$199,283	$199,283
1867	1,624,853	1,319,686	366,338	167,054
1868	3,582,378	1,957,525	638,299	271,960
1869	7,257,798	3,675,420	1,073,465	435,166
1870	12,605,782	5,347,983	1,657,006	583,541
1871	19,952,947	7,347,165	2,455,836	798,829
1872	31,260,499	11,281,313	3,684,739	1,227,927
1873	——	——	4,200,000	——
1874	55,000,000	——	3,013,670	——

Green tea (poor quality), per pound	$4.00
Common rough trousers, per pair	13.00
Boots, per pair	25.00
Shoes, per pair	$5.00 to 12.00	[467]

Meat, per pound		$4.00
Lard, per pound		6.00
Salt, per sack at the works	$80.00 to	95.00
Wheat, per bushel		10.00
Corn, per bushel		3.00
A cow (worth $15 in 1860)		127.00	[468]

Salt, per bushel	$30.00
Calico, per yard	10.00
Women’s common shoes, per pair	60.00
Men’s rough boots, per pair	125.00
Cotton cards (worth $1.75 in Connecticut)	85.00	[469]

Flour, per barrel	$250.00 to	$300.00
Bacon, per pound	3.00 to	5.00
Cotton thread, per spool	6.00 to	12.00
Calico, per yard	12.50 to	15.00
Common shoes, per pair	150.00 to	175.00
Boots, per pair	250.00 to	300.00
Nails, per pound		4.00
Cotton shirts (each worth 50 to 60 c. in Massachusetts)	50.00 to	60.00	[470]

Bacon, per pound		$3.50
Beef, per pound	$2.00 to	2.50
Potatoes, per bushel		6.00
Wood, per cord		50.00
Board, per day		30.00	[471]

A calico dress (9 yards)		$108.00
A plain straw hat		100.00
Half a quire of note paper		40.00
Morocco shoes		375.00
Coffee, per pound	$30.00 to	70.00
Corn, per bushel	12.00 to	13.00
Wax candles, each		.10
Wages, per day		30.00
Soldier’s pay, per month (which he seldom received)		11.00	[472]

A mule (worth before the war $75.00 to $120.00)	$800.00 to	$1200.00
A horse (worth before the war $120.00 to $250.00)	1200.00 to	2500.00
A wagon and team cost		2940.00
Beef cattle, each		930.00	[473]

Wheat, per bushel	$30.00 to	$40.00
Corn, per bushel		10.00
Coffee, per pound		20.00
[Pg 182]Fresh beef, per pound		150.00
Bacon, per pound		4.00
Domestics, per yard		5.00
Calico, per yard		15.00
A horse	$1500.00 to	2000.00
Salt, per sack	150.00 to	200.00
Quinine, per ounce		150.00	[474]

Bacon, per pound		$2.50
Fresh beef, per pound		.70
Flour, per barrel		40.00
Meal, per bushel		4.00
Rice, per pound		.30
Peas, per bushel		6.50
Sugar, per pound		3.00
Coffee, per pound		6.00
Candles, per pound		3.75
Soap, per pound		1.00
Vinegar, per gallon		2.50
Molasses, per gallon		10.00
Salt, per pound		.30

For the year ending June 30, 1863	$351,311.48
For the year ending June 30, 1864	1,268,412.56
For the year ending June 30, 1865	1,772,983.48
For the year ending June 30, 1866	18,409,654.90
For the year ending June 30, 1867	23,769,078.80
For the year ending June 30, 1868	22,500,947.77
Total,	$68,072,388.99	[792]

Movatterモバイル変換

CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTIONIN ALABAMA

PREFACE

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

LIST OF MAPS

PART IINTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

PART IIWAR TIMES IN ALABAMA

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

PART IIITHE AFTERMATH OF WAR

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

PART IVPRESIDENTIAL RESTORATION

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

PART VCONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

PART VICARPET-BAG AND NEGRO RULE

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

APPENDIX I

APPENDIX II

INDEX

CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION
IN ALABAMA

PART I
INTRODUCTION

PART II
WAR TIMES IN ALABAMA

PART III
THE AFTERMATH OF WAR

PART IV
PRESIDENTIAL RESTORATION

PART V
CONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION

PART VI
CARPET-BAG AND NEGRO RULE

	Huntsville Branch	Mobile Branch
Total deposits to March 31, 1870	$89,445.10	$539,534.33
Total number of depositors	500	3,260
Average amount deposited by each	$17.89	$165.60
Drawn out to March 31, 1870	70,586.60	474,583.60
Balance to March 31, 1870	18,858.50	64,750.83
Average balance due to each depositor	47.114	39.82
Spent for land (known)	1,900.00	50,000.00
Dwelling houses	800.00	——
Seeds, teams, agricultural implements	5,000.00	15,000.00
Education, books, etc.	1,200.00	——

	July 1, 1867	July 1, 1868	Jan. 1, 1869	July 1, 1869	July 1, 1870
Day schools	122	59	33	79	23
Night schools	53	19	2	1	4
Private schools (negro teachers)	8	22	4	1	—
Semi-private	25	48	25	55	2
Teachers transported by Bureau	122	22	29	3	—
School buildings owned by negroes	27	13	1	4	11
School buildings owned by Bureau	38	36	29	66	—
White teachers	126	67	49	65?	—
Negro teachers	24	28	12	23?	—
White pupils (refugees)	23	—	—	—	—
Black pupils	9,799	4,040	3,330	5,131	2,110
Tuition paid by negroes	$1,542.00	$3,206.56	$1,431.50	$1,248.95	$1,446.30
Bureau paid for tuition	6,693.00	2,097.73	1,219.75	2,938.50	22,559.88
Bureau paid for school expenses	18,685.07	———	———	———	———
Total expenditures	8,235.00	6,463.72	2,723.25	4,187.45	240,061.18

General George H. Thomas, in command of the district including Alabama, 1864-1867.		General Wager Swayne, Assistant Commissioner of Freedmen’s Bureau.

General John Pope, First Commander of Third Military District.		General George G. Meade (in field uniform), Commander of Third Military District.

Name	Nativity	Candidate for
Ben Alexander	Negro	Legislature
A. J. Applegate	Ohio and Wisconsin	Lieutenant Governor
W. A. Austin	Negro	State Senate
Arthur Bingham	New York	State Treasurer
W. H. Black	Ohio	Probate Judge
W. T. Blackford	Illinois	Probate Judge
Samuel Blandon	Negro	Legislature
Mark Brainard	New York	Clerk Circuit Court
Alfred E. Buck	Maine	Clerk Circuit Court
C. W. Buckley	New York, Mass., and Illinois	Congress
W. M. Buckley*	New York and Massachusetts	State Senator
J. H. Burdick	Iowa	Probate Judge
John Caraway	Negro	Legislature
Pierce Burton	Massachusetts	Legislature
J. Collins	North	State Senate
Datus E. Coon	Iowa	State Senate
Tom Diggs	Negro	Legislature
Charles W. Dustan	Iowa	Major-General Militia
S. S. Gardner	Massachusetts	Legislature
George Ely	New York, Conn., and Mass.	Probate Judge
Peyton Finley	Negro	Legislature
Jim Green	Negro	Legislature
Ovide Gregory	Negro	Legislature
Thomas Haughey	Scotland	Congress
G. Horton	Massachusetts	Probate Judge
Benjamin Inge	Negro	Legislature
A. W. Jones*	Alabama	Probate Judge
Columbus Jones	Negro	Legislature
John C. Keffer	Pennsylvania	Supt. of Industrial Resources
S. F. Kennemer	Alabama	Legislature
Tom Lee	Negro	Legislature
David Lore	Negro (?)	Legislature
J. J. Martin	Georgia	Probate Judge
B. O. Masterson	Unknown	Legislature
C. A. Miller	Massachusetts and Maine	Secretary of State
Stephen Moore*	Alabama (?)	Senate
A. L. Morgan	Indiana	Clerk Circuit Court
J. F. Morton*	Unknown	Senate
B. W. Norris	Maine	Congress
E. W. Peck	New York	Chief Justice
Thomas M. Peters	Tennessee	Supreme Court
G. P. Plowman	Alabama	Probate Judge
R. M. Reynolds	Iowa	Auditor
Benjamin Rolfe	New York	Tax Collector
B. F. Royal	Negro	Senate
B. F. Saffold	Alabama	Supreme Court
J. Silsby*	Massachusetts	Clerk Circuit Court
C. P. Simmons	Tennessee	Commissioner
William P. Skinner	Alabama	Chancellor
L. R. Smith*	Massachusetts	Circuit Judge
H. J. Springfield*	Alabama	Legislature
N. D. Stanwood*	Maine and Massachusetts	Legislature
J. P. Stow	Connecticut	Senate
Littleberry Strange	Georgia	Circuit Judge
James R. Walker*	Georgia	Sheriff
B. L. Whelan	Georgia, Ireland, and Mich.	Circuit Judge
C. O. Whitney	North	Senate
J. A. Yordy	North	Senate[1470]


Senator George E. Spencer.		Senator Willard Warner.


C. W. Buckley.		John B. Callis.


J. T. Rapier.		Charles Hays.

	State Tax	County Tax	Total
In 1859	$26,633.71	$13,316.85	$39,950.56
In 1869	65,410.85	65,410.85	130,821.70

	Census Valuation	State Tax	County Tax	Town Tax
1860	$432,198,762[1590]	$530,107	$309,474	$11,590
1870	156,770,387	1,477,414	1,122,471	403,937

Year	Receipts	Expenditures
1860	——	$530,107.00
1865	$1,626,782.93[1591]	2,282,355.97[1591]
1866	62,967.80[1592]	606,494.39[1593]
1867	691,048.86	819,434.85[1594]
1868	724,760.56[1595]	1,066,860.24[1595]
1868	1,788,982.43[1595]	2,233,781.97[1595]
1869	686,451.02[1596]	1,394,960.30
1870	1,283,586.52	1,336,398.85
1871	1,422,494.67[1597]	1,640,116.99[1598]
1872	——	——
1873	2,081,649.39	2,237,822.06[1599]
1874	——	——
1875	725,000.00	500,000.00[1600]
1876	781,800.64	682,591.49
1886	888,724.33	818,366.70

	Before the War		During Reconstruction
Governor	$2,000.00		$4,000.00
Governor’s clerk	500.00		5,400.00	two
Secretary of State	1,200.00		2,400.00	fees and charges
Treasurer	1,800.00		2,800.00
Departmental clerks	1,000.00	each	1,500.00
Supreme Court judge	3,000.00		4,000.00
Circuit judges	13,500.00		36,000.00
Chancellors	4,500.00	three	15,000.00
Member of Legislature,per diem	4.00		6.00
Stationery executive departments	1,200.00		12,708.77	[1604]

	Governor Smith 1869-1870	Governor Lindsay 1871-1872
Contingent expenses	$47,197.28	$20,531.84
Stationery, fuel, etc.	24,310.07	8,847.23
Clerical services	27,883.77	21,883.03
Public printing	80,279.18	49,716.43