Chapter XXIII: Political and Social Conditions During Reconstruction (2)

In the course of the contest Spencer had spent many thousands of dollars in defeating dissatisfied Radical candidates for the legislature and in purchasing voters. The money he used came from the National Republican executive committee, from the state committee, and from the government funds of the post-office at Mobile and the internal revenue offices in Mobile and Montgomery. More than $20,000 of United States funds were used for Spencer, who, after his election, refused to reimburse the postmaster and the two collectors, who were prosecuted and ruined. Every Federal office-holder was assessed from one-fifth to one-third of his pay during the fall months for campaign expenses. They were notified that unless they paid the assessments their resignations would be accepted. Spencer refused to pay the bills of a negro saloon-keeper who had, at his orders, "refreshed" the negro members of the legislature. But of those who voted for Spencer in the Radical "legislature" more than thirty secured Federal appointments. Of other agents about twenty secured Federal appointments. One of them, Robert Barbour, was given a position in the custom-house at Mobile with the understanding that he would not have to go there. His pay was sent to him at Montgomery.

As a preparation for the autumn presidential contest, Spencer worked upon the fears of Grant and secured the promise of troops, though he had some difficulty. His letters are not at all complimentary to Grant. Finally he wrote, "Grant is scared and will do what we want." The deputy marshals manufactured Ku Klux outrages and planned the arrest of Democratic politicians, 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 that of Spencer by the irregular body and that of Sykes by the regular organization at the capitol, neither of which took place on the day appointed by law. The Senate admitted Spencer on the ground that Governor Lewis had recognized the court-house aggregation. Sykes contested and of course failed; the Senate refused for several years to vote his expenses, as was customary. In 1885, Senator Hoar secured $7,132 for Spencer as expenses in the contest. In 1875 the Alabama legislature, Radical and Democratic, united in an address to the United States Senate, asking that Spencer's seat be declared vacant.[2112]

Under Lewis the Radical administration went to pieces. The enormous issues of bonds, fraudulent and otherwise, by Smith and Lewis which destroyed the credit of the state; ignorant negroes in public office; drunken judges on the benches; convicts as officials; teachers and school officers unable to read; intermarriage of whites and blacks declared legal by the supreme court; the low character of the Federal officials; constant arrests of respectable whites for political purposes; use of Federal troops; packed juries; purchase and sale of offices; defaulters in every Radical county; riots instigated by the Radical leaders; heavy taxes,--all these burdens bore to the ground the Lewis administration before the end of its term. The last year was simply a standstill while the whites were preparing to overthrow the Radical government, which was demoralized and disabled also by constant aid and interference from the Federal administration.

GOVERNOR R. M. PATTON.

GENERAL JAMES H. CLANTON. Organizer of the present Democratic Party in Alabama.

GOVERNOR GEORGE S. HOUSTON.

GOVERNOR R. B. LINDSAY.

MAJOR J. R. CROWE, now of Sheffield, Ala., one of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan at Pulaski, Tenn.]

Lewis appointed a lower class of officials than Smith had appointed, among them many ignorant negroes for minor offices. Carpet-baggers and scalawags were becoming scarce. The white counties under their own local government were slowly recovering; the formerly wealthy Black Belt counties were being ruined under the burden of local, state, and municipal taxation.[2113]

To the Forty-second Congress Alabama, now entitled to eight representatives, sent four scalawags, Pelham, Hays, White, and Sheets; one negro, Rapier; and three Democrats or Independents, Bromberg, Caldwell, and Glass; carpet-baggers were now at a discount; scalawags and negroes wanted all the spoils.

In the spring of 1874 the whites began to organize to overthrow Radical rule. They were firmly determined that there should not be another Radical administration. In the Radical party only a few whites were left to hold the negroes together. Some of the negroes were disgusted because of promises unfulfilled; others were grasping at office; the Union League discipline was missed; "outrages" were no longer so effective. The Radicals had no new issues to present. The state credit was destroyed; the negroes no longer believed so seriously the stories of reënslavement; the northern public was becoming more indifferent, or more sympathetic toward the whites. The time for the overthrow of Radical rule was at hand.

SEC. 2. SOCIAL CONDITIONS DURING RECONSTRUCTION

In previous chapters something has been said of social and economic matters, especially concerning labor, education, religion, and race relations. Some supplementary facts and observations may be of use.

The central figure of Reconstruction was the negro. How was his life affected by the conditions of Reconstruction? In the first place, crime among the blacks increased, as was to be expected. Removed from the restraints and punishments of slavery, with criminal leaders, the negro, even under the most African of governments, became the chief criminal. The crime of rape became common, caused largely, the whites believed, by the social equality theories of the reconstructionists. Personal conflicts among blacks and between blacks and whites were common, though probably decreasing for a time in the early '70's. Stealing was the most frequent crime, with murder a close second. During the last year of negro rule the report of the penitentiary inspectors gave the following statistics:--

================================================
CRIMES | WHITES | NEGROES
----------------------------|----------|--------
Murder | 11 | 43
Assault | 2 | 21
Burglary and grand larceny | 15 | 199
Arson | 1 | 4
Rape | 0 | 6
Other felonies | 2 | 14
|----------|--------
Total | 31 | 287
================================================

Thus 1 white to 16,936 of population was in prison for felony; 1 black to 2294; felonies, 1 white to 8 blacks; misdemeanors, 1 white to 64 blacks. In Montgomery jail were confined about 12 blacks to 1 white. These statistics do not show the real state of affairs, since most convictions of blacks were in cases prosecuted by blacks. To be prosecuted by a white was equivalent to persecution--so reasoned the negro jury in the Black Belt. Under the instigation of low white leaders, the negroes frequently burned the houses and other property of whites who were disliked by the Radical leaders. Several attempts, more or less successful, were made to burn the white villages in the Black Belt; hardly a single one wholly escaped. For several years the whites had to picket the towns in time of political excitement. The worst negro criminals were the discharged negro soldiers, who sometimes settled in gangs together in the Black Belt. More charges were made of crimes by blacks against whites, than by whites against blacks. Most criminals did not go to prison after conviction. The Radical legislature passed a law allowing the sale of the convict's labor to relatives. A good old negro could buy the time of a worthless son for ten cents a day and have him released.

The marriage relations of the negroes were hardly satisfactory, judged by white standards. The white legislatures in 1865-1866 had declared slave marriages binding. The reconstructionists denounced this as a great cruelty and repealed the law. Marriages were then made to date from the passage of the Reconstruction Acts. Many negro men had had several wives before that date. They were relieved from the various penalties of desertion, bigamy, adultery, etc. And after the passage of these laws, numerous prominent negroes were relieved of the penalties for promiscuous marriages. 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. The average negro divorced himself or herself without formality; some of them were divorced by their churches, as in slavery.

Upon the negro woman fell the burden of supporting the children. Her husband or husbands had other duties. Children then began to be unwelcome and foeticide and child murder were common crimes. The small number of negro 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 were unfavorable to honesty and morality among the negroes, both male and female. The health of the negroes was injured during the period 1865-1875. In the towns the standard of living was low; sanitary arrangements were bad; disease, especially consumption and venereal diseases, killed large numbers and permanently injured the negro constitution.

Negro women took freedom even more seriously than the men. It was considered slavery by many of them to work in the fields; domestic service was beneath the freedwomen--especially were washing and milking the cows tabooed. To live like their former mistresses, to wear fine clothes and go often to church, was the ambition of a negro lady. After Reconstruction was fully established the negro women were a strong support to the Union League, and took a leading part in the prosecution of negro Democrats. Negro women never were as well-mannered, nor, on the whole, as good-tempered and cheerful, as the negro men. Both sexes during Reconstruction lost much of their cheerfulness; the men gradually ceased to go "holloing" to the fields; some of the blacks, especially the women, became impudent and insulting toward the whites. While many of the negroes for a time seemed to consider it a mark of servility to behave decently to the whites, toward the close of Reconstruction and later conditions changed, and the negro men especially were in general well-behaved and well-mannered in their relations with whites except in time of political excitement.

The entire black race was wild for education in 1865 and 1866, but most of them found that the necessary work--which they had not expected--was too hard, and by the close of Reconstruction they were becoming indifferent. The education acquired was of doubtful value. There was in 1865-1867 a religious furor among the negroes, and several negro denominations were organized. The chief result, as stated at length elsewhere, was to separate from the white churches, discard the old conservative black preachers, and take up the smooth-tongued, ranting, emotional, immoral preachers who could stir congregations. The negro church has not yet recovered from the damage done by these ministers. Negro health was affected by the night meetings and religious debauches. In general it may be said that the negro speech grew more like that of the whites, on account of schools, speeches, much travel, and contact with white leaders. The negro leaders acquired much superficial civilization, and very quickly mastered the art of political intrigue.

A very delicate question to both races was that of the exact position of the negro in the social system. The convention of 1867 had contained a number of equal-rights members, and there had been much discussion. A proposition to have separate schools was not made obligatory. A measure to prevent the intermarriage of the races was lost, and the supreme court of the 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 enforcement of such laws. Some negroes, especially the mulattoes, dreamed of having white wives, but the average pure negro was not moved by such a desire. When the Coburn investigation was being made, Coburn, the chairman, was trying to convince a negro who had declared against the policy and the necessity of the Civil Rights Bill. The negro retorted by asking how he would like to see him sitting by his (Coburn's) daughter's side. The black declared that he would not like to be sitting by Miss Coburn and have some young man who was courting her come along and knock over the big black negro; further he did not want to eat at the table nor sit in cars with the whites, preferring to sit by his own color. Some of the negroes were displeased at the proposed Civil Rights Bill, thinking that it was meant to force the negro to go among the whites.[2114] There were negro police in the larger towns, Selma, Montgomery, and Mobile, who irritated the whites by their arrests and by discrimination in favor of blacks. The negroes, in many cases, had ceased to care for the good opinion of the whites and, following disreputable leaders, suffered morally. The color line began to be strictly drawn in politics, which increased the estrangement of the races, though individuals were getting along better together.[2115]

The white carpet-baggers and scalawags never formed a large section of the Radical party and constantly decreased in numbers,--the natives returning to the white party, the aliens returning to the North. The native Radicals were found principally in the cities and holding Federal offices, and in the white counties were still a few genuine Republican Unionist voters. The carpet-baggers were found almost entirely in the Black Belt and in Federal offices. As their numbers decreased the general character was lowered. Some of the white Radicals were sincere and honest men, but none of this sort stood any chance for office. If they themselves would not steal, they must arrange for others to steal. The most respectable of the Radicals were a few old Whigs who had always disliked Democrats and who preferred to vote with the negroes. Such a man was Benjamin Gardner, who became attorney-general in 1872.

All white Radicals suffered the most bitter ostracism--in business, in society, in church; their children in the schools were persecuted by other children because of their fathers' sins. The scalawag, being a renegade, was scorned more than a carpet-bagger. In every possible way they were made to feel the weight of the displeasure of the whites. Small boys were unchecked when badgering a white Radical. One Radical complained that the youngsters would come near him to hold a spelling class. The word would be given out: "Spell _damned rascal_." It would be spelled. "Spell _damned Radical_." That would be spelled. "They are nearly alike, aren't they?"

The blacks always felt that the carpet-bagger was more friendly to them than the scalawag was, for the carpet-baggers associated more closely with the negroes. The alien white teachers boarded with negroes; some of the politicians made it a practice to live among the negroes in order to get their votes. The candidates for sheriff and tax collector in Montgomery went to negro picnics, baptizings, and church services, drank from the same bottle of whiskey with negroes, had the negro leaders to visit their homes, where they dined together, and the white women furnished music. The carpet-baggers seldom had families with them, and, excluded from white society, began to contract unofficial alliances among the blacks. Scarcely an alien office-holder in the Black Belt but was charged with immorality and the charges proven. Numbers were relieved by the legislature of the penalties for adultery. The average Radical politician was in time quite thoroughly Africanized. They spoke of "us niggers," "we niggers," at first from policy, later from habit. When Lewis was elected, in 1872, a white Radical cried out in his joy, "We niggers have beat 'em." Two years later white 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 single homogeneous party. Before the war political divisions were sharply drawn and feeling often bitter, so also in 1865-1867 and to a certain extent during the early period of Reconstruction. At first there was no "Solid South"; within the white man's party there were grave differences between old Whig and old Democrat, Radical and Conservative. There were different local problems before the whites of the various sections that for a while prevented the formation of a unanimous white man's party. There were the whites of the Black Belt, the former slaveholders, who wished well to the negro, favored negro education, and looked upon his political activity as a joke, but who came nearer than any other white people to recognizing the possibility of permanent political privileges for the black. They believed that they could sooner or later regain moral control over their former slaves 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 poorest whites felt that the negro was not only their social but also their economic enemy, and, the protection of the owner removed, the blacks suffered more from these people than ever before. The negro in school, the negro in politics, the negro on the best lands--all this was not liked by the poorest white people, whose opportunities were not as good as those of the blacks. Between these two extremes was the mass of the whites, displeased at the way negro suffrage, education, etc., was imposed, but willing to put up with the results if good. The later years of Reconstruction found the temper of the whites more and more exasperated. They were tired of Reconstruction, new amendments, force bills, Federal troops, and of being ruled as a conquered province by the least fit. Every measure aimed at the South seemed to them to mean that they were considered incorrigible, not worthy of trust, and when necessary to punish some whites, all were punished. And strong opposition to proscriptive measures was called fresh rebellion. "When the Jacobins say and do low and bitter things, their charge of want of loyalty in the South because our people grumble back a little seems to me as unreasonable as the complaint of the little boy: 'Mamma, make Bob 'have hisself. He makes mouths at me every time I hit him with my stick.'" Probably the grind was harder on the young men, who had all life before them and who were growing up with slight opportunities in any line of activity. Sidney Lanier, then an Alabama school-teacher, wrote to Bayard Taylor, "Perhaps you know that with us of the young generation in the South, since the war, pretty much the whole of life has been merely not dying." Negro and alien rule was a constant insult to the intelligence of the country. The taxpayers were non-participants. Some people withdrew entirely from public life, went to their 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 years to read the newspapers, so unpleasant was the news. The good feeling produced by the magnanimity of Grant at Appomattox was destroyed by his southern policy when President. There was no gratitude for any so-called leniency of the North, no repentance for the war, no desire for humiliation, for sackcloth and ashes and confession of wrong. The insistence of the Radicals upon a confession of depravity only made things much worse. There was not a single measure of Congress during Reconstruction designed or received in a conciliatory spirit.

Under the Reconstruction régime the political, and to some extent the social, morality of the whites declined. Constant fighting fire with fire scorched all. While in one way the bitter discipline of Reconstruction was not lost, yet with it the pleasantest of southern life went out. During the war and Reconstruction there was a radical change in southern temperament toward the severe. Hospitality has declined; old southern life was 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 a homogeneous society.[2117] The material evils of Reconstruction are by no means the more lasting: the state debt may be paid and wasted resources renewed; but the moral and intellectual results will be the permanent ones.

In spite of the misgovernment during the Reconstruction, there was in most of the white counties a slow movement toward industrial development. All over the state in 1865-1868 and 1871-1874 there were poor crops. The white counties gradually found themselves better able to stand bad seasons. The decadence of the Black Belt gave the white farmer an opportunity. The railroads now began to open up the mineral and timber districts, rather than the cotton counties. During the last four years of negro rule the coal and iron of the northern part of the state began to attract northern capital and rapid development began. The timber of the white counties now began to be cut. In the mines, on the railroads, and in the forests many whites were profitably employed. Farmers in the white counties, having thrown off the local Reconstruction government, began to organize agricultural societies, Patrons of Husbandry, Grangers, etc., and to hold county fairs. The Radicals maintained that this granger movement was only another manifestation of Ku Klux, and it was, in a way.[2118]

Immigration from the North or from abroad amounted to nothing; disturbed political conditions and the presence of the negroes prevented it. Nor did the Reconstruction rulers desire immigration; their rule would be the sooner overthrown. There were two movements of emigration from the state--culminating in 1869 and in 1873-1874. Those were the gloomiest periods of Reconstruction, especially for the white man in the Black Belt. Most of the emigrants went to Texas, others to Mexico, to Brazil, to the North, and to Tennessee and Georgia, where the whites were in power. It was estimated that in this emigration the state lost more of its population than by war.

In the Black Belt the condition of the whites grew worse. Frequent elections demoralized negro labor, and crops often failed for lack of laborers. The more skilful negroes went to the towns, railroads, mines, and lumber mills. On account of this migration and the gradual dying off of slavery-trained negroes, negro agricultural labor was less and less satisfactory. The negro woman often refused to work in the fields. The white population of the Black Belt decreased in comparison with the numbers of blacks. The whites deserted the plantations, going to the towns or 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 thief encouraged black people to steal all kinds of farm produce and exchange it with him for bad whiskey, bad candy, brass jewellery, etc. This evil was found all over the state where there were negroes. Whites and industrious blacks lost hogs, poultry, cattle, corn in the fields, cotton in the fields and in the gin. The business of the "deadfall" was usually done at night. The thirsty negro would go into a cotton field and pick a sack of cotton worth a dollar, or take a bushel of corn from 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 of the large plantations. It was not possible to guard against them. The "deadfall" keepers often became rich, the harvests of some amounting to 30 to 80 bales of cotton for each, besides farm produce. Careful estimates by grand juries and business men placed the average annual loss at one-fifth of the crop. A bill was introduced into the legislature to prohibit the purchase after dark of farm produce from any one but the producer. The measure was unanimously opposed by the Radicals, on the ground that it was class legislation aimed at the negroes. The debates show that some of them considered it proper for a negro to steal from his employer. After the Democratic victory in 1874 a law was passed abolishing "deadfalls."[2119]