The Southern Ballot-Box

Free negroes could vote in North Carolina until 1835, when a Constitutional Convention, not without division of sentiment, abolished negroid franchise on the ground that it was an evil. Thereafter, negroes first voted in the South in 1866, when the “Prince of Carpet-Baggers,” Henry C. Warmouth, who had been dismissed from the Federal Army, conferred the privilege in a bogus election; he had a charity-box attachment to every ballot-box and a negro dropping a ballot into one had to drop fifty cents into the other, contributions paying Warmouth’s expenses as special delegate to Washington, where Congress refused to recognize him. He returned to Louisiana and in two years was governor and in three was worth a quarter of a million dollars and a profitable autograph. “It cost me more,” said W. S. Scott, “to get his signature to a bill than to get the bill through the Legislature”—a striking comparison, for to get a bill through this Legislature of which Warmouth said, “there is but one honest man in it,” was costly process. Warmouth said of himself, “I don’t pretend to be honest, but only as honest as anybody in politics.”

Between the attitude of the army and the politicians on the negro question, General Sherman drew this comparison: “We all felt sympathy for the negroes, but of a different kind from that of Mr. Stanton, which was not of pure humanity but of politics.... I did not dream that the former slaves would be suddenly, without preparation, manufactured into voters.... I doubted the wisdom of at once clothing them with the elective franchise ... and realised the national loss in the death of Mr. Lincoln, who had long pondered over the difficult questions involved.”

April Fool’s Day, 1870, a crowd clustered around General Grant in the White House; a stroke of his pen was to proclaim four millions of people, literate or illiterate, civilised or uncivilised, ready or unready, voters. When the soldier had signed the instrument politicians had prepared for him, the proclamation announcing that the Fifteenth Amendment had been added to the Constitution of the United States by the ratification of twenty-nine, some one begged for the historic pen, and he silently handed it over. One who was present relates: “Somebody exclaimed, ‘Now negroes can vote anywhere!’, and a venerable old gentleman in the crowd cried out, ‘Well, gentlemen, you will all be d—d sorry for this!’ The President’s father-in-law, Dent, Sr., was said to be the speaker.” In Richmond, the Dent family had seen a good deal of freedmen. Negroes voted in 1867, over two years prior to this, Congress by arbitrary act vesting them with a right not conferred by Federal or State Constitutions. They voted for delegates to frame the new State Constitutions; then on their own right to vote!—this right forming a plank in said Constitutions.

The Southern ballot-box was the new toy of the Ward of the Nation; the vexation of housekeepers and farmers, the despair of statesmen, patriots, and honest men generally. Elections were preceded by political meetings, often incendiary in character, which all one’s servants must attend. With election day, every voting precinct became a picnic-ground, to say no worse. Negroes went to precincts overnight and camped out. Morning revealed reinforcements arriving. All sexes and ages came afoot, in carts, in wagons, as to a fair or circus. Old women set up tables and spread out ginger-cakes and set forth buckets of lemonade. One famous campaign manager had all-night picnics in the woods, with bonfires, barrels of liquor, darkeys sitting around drinking, fiddling, playing the banjo, dancing. The instant polls opened they were marched up and voted. Negroes almost always voted in companies. A leader, standing on a box, handed out tickets as they filed past. All were warned at Loyal Leagues to vote no ticket other than that given by the leader, usually a local coloured preacher who could no more read the ballots he distributed than could the recipients. Fights were plentiful as ginger-cakes. The all-day picnic ended only with closing of polls, and not always then, darkeys hanging around and carrying scrapping and jollification into the night.

How their white friends would talk and talk the day before election to butlers, coachmen, hoers and plowers, on the back porch or at the woodpile or the stables; and how darkeys would promise, “Yessuh, I gwi vote lak you say.” And how their old masters would return from the polls next day with heads hung down, and the young ex-masters would return mad, and saying, “This country is obliged to go to the devil!”

There were a great many trying phases of the situation. As for example: Conservatives were running General Eppa Hunton for Congress. Among the General’s coloured friends was an old negro, Julian, his ward of pity, who had no want that he did not bring to the General. Election day, he sought the General at the polls, saying: “Mars Eppie, I want some shingles fuh my roof.” “You voted for me, Julian?” “Naw, naw, Mars Eppie, I voted de straight Publikin ticket, suh.” He got the shingles. When “Mars Eppie” was elected, Julian came smiling: “Now, Mars Eppie, bein’ how as you’s goin’ to Congress, I ’lowed you mought have a leetle suppin tuh gimme.” A party of young lawyers tried to persuade their negro servant to vote with them. “Naw, naw,” he said. “De debbul mought git me. Dar ain’t but two parties named in de Bible—de Publikins an’ Sinners. I gwi vote wid de Publikins.”

In everything but politics, the negro still reposed trust in “Ole Marster;” his aches, pains, “mis’ries,” family and business troubles, were all for “Ole Marster,” not for the carpet-baggers. The latter feared he would take “Ole Marster’s” advice when he went to the polls, so they wrought in him hatred and distrust. The negro is not to blame for his political blunders. It would never have occurred to him to ask for the ballot; as greatness upon some, so was the franchise untimely thrust upon him, and he has much to live down that would never have been charged against him else.

“Brownlow’s armed cohorts, negroes principally,” one of my father’s friends wrote from Tennessee in 1867, “surround our polls. All the unlettered blacks go up, voting on questions of State interest which they do not in the least understand, while intelligent, tax-paying whites, who must carry the consequences of their acts, are not allowed to vote. I stayed on my plantation on election day and my negroes went to the polls. So it was all around me—white men at home, darkeys off running the government. Negro women went, too; my wife was her own cook and chambermaid—and butler, for the butler went.”

Educated, able, patriotic men, eager to heal the breaches of war, anxious to restore the war-wrecked fortunes of impoverished States, would have to stand idly by, themselves disfranchised, and see their old and faithful negroes marched up to the polls like sheep to the shambles and voted by, and for the personal advancement of, political sharpers who had no solid interest in the State or its people, white or black. It would be no less trying when, instead of this meek, good-natured line, they would find masses of insolent, armed blacks keeping whites from the polls, or receive tragic evidence that ambushed guards were commanding with Winchesters all avenues to the ballot-box. Not only “Secesh” were turned back, but Union men, respectable Republicans, also; as in Big Creek, Missouri, when a citizen who had lost four sons in the Union Army was denied right to vote. “Kill him! kill him!” cried negroes when at Hudson Station, Virginia, a negro cast a Conservative ticket.

“This county,” says a Southerner now occupying a prominent place in educational work for the negro, “had about 1,600 negro majority at the time the tissue ballot came into vogue. It was a war measure. The character and actions of the men who rode to power on the negro ballot compelled us to devise means of protection and defense. Even the negroes wanting to vote with us dared not. One of my old servants, who sincerely desired to follow my advice and example in the casting of his ballot, came to me on the eve of election and sadly told me he could not. ‘Marster,’ he said, ‘I been tol’ dat I’ll be drummed outer de chu’ch ef I votes de Conserv’tive ticket.’ A negro preacher said: ‘Marse Clay, dee’ll take away my license tuh preach ef I votes de white folks’ ticket.’ I did not cease to reproach myself for inducing one negro to vote with me when I learned that on the death of his child soon afterwards, his people showed no sympathy, gave no help, and that he had to make the coffin and dig the grave himself. I would have gone to his relief had I known, but he was too terrorised to come to me. I did not seek to influence negro votes at the next election; I adopted other means to effect the issue desired.”

“If the whites succeed at the polls, they will put you back into slavery. If we succeed, we will have the lands of the whites confiscated and give every one of you forty acres and a mule.” This scare and bribe was used in every Southern State; used over and over; negroes only ceased to give credence when after Cleveland’s inauguration they found themselves still free. On announcement of Cleveland’s election, many negroes, prompt to choose masters, hurried to former owners. The butler of Dr. J. L. M. Curry (administrator of the Peabody Education Fund), appeared in distress before Dr. Curry, pleading that, as he now must belong to some one, Dr. Curry would claim him. An old “mammy” in Mayor Ellyson’s family, distracted lest she might be torn from her own white folks and assigned to strangers, put up piteous appeal to her ex-owners.

From the political debauchery of the day, men of the old order shrank appalled. Even when the test-oath qualification was no longer exacted and disabilities were removed, many Southerners would not for a time touch the unclean thing; then they voted as with averted faces, not because they had faith in or respect for the process, but because younger men told them the country’s salvation demanded thus much of them. If a respectable man was sent to the Legislature or Congress, he felt called upon to explain or apologise to a stranger who might not understand the circumstances. His relatives hastened to make excuse. “Uncle Ambrose is in the Legislature, but he is honest,” Uncle Ambrose’s nieces and nephews hurried to tell before the suspicious “Honourable” prefixed to his name brought judgment on a good old man who had intended no harm, but had got into the Legislature by accident rather than by design—who was there, in fact, by reason of circumstances over which he had no control. The few representative men who got into these mixed assemblies had difficulty in making themselves felt. Judge Simonton, of the United States Circuit Court (once President of the Charleston Library Association, Chairman of the Board of School Commissioners, bearer of many civic dignities besides), was member of a reconstruction legislature. He has said: “To get a bill passed, I would have to persuade a negro to present it. It would receive no attention presented by me.”

Negroes were carried by droves from one county to another, one State to another, and voted over and over wherever white plurality was feared. Other tricks were to change polling-places suddenly, informing the negroes and not the whites; to scratch names from registration lists and substitute others. Whites would walk miles to a registration place to find it closed; negroes, privately advised, would have registered and gone. When men had little time to give to politics, patriotism was robust if it could devote days to the siege of a Registration Board, trying to catch it in place in spite of itself.

The Southerner’s loathing for politics, his despair, his inertia, increased evils. “Let the Yankees have all the niggers they want,” he was prone to say. “Let them fill Congress with niggers. The only cure is a good dose!” But with absolute ruin staring him in the face, he woke with a mighty awakening. Taxpayers’ Conventions issued “Prayers” to the public, to State Governments, to the Central Government; they raised out of the poverty of the people small sums to send committees to Washington; and these committees were forestalled by Radical State Governments who, with open State Treasuries to draw upon, sent committees ahead, prejudicing the executive ear and closing it to appeal.

The most lasting wrong reconstruction inflicted upon the South was in the inevitable political demoralisation of the white man. No one could regard the ballot-box as the voice of the people, as a sacred thing. It was a plaything, a jack-in-the-box for the darkeys, a conjurer’s trick that brought drinks, tips and picnics. It was the carpet-bagger’s stepping-stone to power. The votes of a multitude were for sale. The votes of a multitude were to be had by trickery. It was a poor patriot who would not save his State by pay or play. Taxation without representation, again; the tissue ballot—a tiny silken thing—was one of the instruments used for heaving tea—negro plurality—into the deep sea.

“As for me,” says a patriot of the period, “I bless the distinguished Virginian who invented the tissue ballot. It was of more practical utility than his glorious sword. I am free to say I used many tissue ballots. My old pastor (he was eighty and as true and simple a soul as ever lived) voted I don’t know how many at one time, didn’t know he was doing it, just took the folded ballot I handed him and dropped it in, didn’t want to vote at all.” Others besides this speaker assume that General Mahone invented the tissue ballot, but General Mahone’s intimates say he did not, and that to ask who invented the tissue ballot is to ask who struck Billy Patterson. Democrats waive the honour in favor of Republicans, Republicans in favor of Democrats; nobody wants to wear it as a decoration. For my part, I think it did hard work and much good work, and quietly what else might have cost shedding of blood.

“We had a trying time,” one citizen relates, “when negroes gained possession of the polls and officered us. Things got simply unendurable; we determined to take our town from under negro rule. One means to that end was the tissue ballot. Dishonest? Will you tell me what honesty there was, what reverence for the ballot-box, in standing idly by and seeing a horde of negroes who could not read the tickets they voted, cram our ballot-boxes with pieces of paper ruinous to us and them? We had to save ourselves by our wits. Some funny things happened. I was down at the precinct on Bolingbrook Street when the count was announced, and heard an old darkey exclaim: ‘I knows dat one hunderd an’ ninety-seben niggers voted in dis distric’, an’ dar ain’ but th’ee Radicule ballots in de box! I dunno huccum dat. I reckon de Radicule man gin out de wrong ones. I knows he gin me two an’ I put bofe uv ’em in de box.’”

Tissue ballots were introduced into South Carolina by a Republican named Butts, who used them against Mackey, another Republican, his rival for Congressional honours; there was no Democratic candidate. Next election Democrats said: “Republicans are using tissue ballots; we must fight the devil with fire.” A package arrived one night at a precinct whereof I know. The local Democratic leader said: “I don’t like this business.” He was told: “The Committee sent them up from the city; they say the other side will use them and that we’ve got to use them.”

According to election law, when ballots polled exceeded registration lists, a blindfolded elector would put his hand in the box and withdraw until ballots and lists tallied. Many tissue ballots could be folded into one and voted as a single ballot; a little judicious agitation after they were in the box would shake them apart. A tissue ballot could be told by its feel; an elector would withdraw as sympathy or purchase ran. Voting over at the precinct mentioned, the box was taken according to regulations into a closed room and opened. Democrats and Republicans had each a manager. The Republican ran his hand into the box and gave it a stir; straightway it became so full it couldn’t be shut, ballots falling apart and multiplying themselves. The Republican laughed: “I have heard of self-raising flour. These are self-raising ballots! Butts’ own game!” That precinct went Democratic.

So went other precincts. Republicans had failed on tissues. A Congressional Committee, composed of Senators McDonald of Indiana, Randolph of New Jersey, and Teller of Colorado, came down to inquire into elections. Republicans charged tissue ballots on Democrats. But, alas! one of the printers put on the stand testified that the Republicans had ordered many thousand tissue ballots of him, but he had failed to have them on time!

There were other devices. Witness, the story of the Circus and the Voter. “A circus saved us. Each negro registering received a certificate to be presented at the polls. Our people got a circus to come through and made a contract with the managers. The circus let it be known that registration certificates would be accepted instead of admission tickets, or entrance fees, we agreeing to redeem at admission price all certificates turned over to us. The arrangement made everybody happy—none more than the negroes, who got a better picnic than usual and saw a show besides. The circus had tremendous crowds and profited greatly. And one of the most villainous tickets ever foisted upon a people was killed quietly and effectually.”

An original scheme was resorted to in the Black Belt of Mississippi in order to carry the day. An important local election was to be held, and the whites felt that they could not afford to lose. But how to keep out the black vote was a serious question. Finally, a bright young fellow suggested a plan. For a week preceding election, he collected, by paying for it, negro hair from barbers serving negroes, and he got butchers to save waste blood from slaughter-pens. The night before the election, committees went out about a mile on every road and path leading to the town, and scattering wool and blood generously, “pawed up the ground” with foot-tracks and human body imprints. Every evidence of furious scuffle was faithfully carried out. The day dawned beautiful and bright, but not a black vote was cast—not a negro was to be seen. Hundreds had quit farm-work to come to vote, but stopped aghast at the appalling signs of such an awful battle, and fled to their homes in prompt and precipitate confusion.

I heard a good man say, with humour and sadness, “I have bought many a negro vote, bought them three for a quarter. To buy was their terms. There was no other way. And we couldn’t help ourselves.” “There were Federal guards here and they knew just what we were doing,” another relates, “knew we were voting our way any and everybody who came up to vote, had seen the Radicals at the same thing and knew just what strait we were in. I voted a dead man knowingly when some one came up and gave his name. I did the same thing unknowingly. I heard one man ask of a small funeral procession, ‘Who’s dead?’ ‘Hush!’ said his companion, ‘It’s the man that’s just voted!’” “I never voted a dead man,” a second manager chimes in, “but I voted a man that was in Europe. His father was right in front of the ballot-box, telling about a letter just received from his son, when up comes somebody in that son’s name and votes. The old man was equal to the occasion. ‘Why, my dear boy!’—had never seen the other before—‘so glad you got back in time to cast your vote!’ and off they walked, arms around each other.”

“The way we saved our city,” one says, “was by buying the Radical manager of the election. We were standing right under the statue of George Washington when we paid the $500 he demanded. These things are all wrong, but there was no other way. Some stood off and kept clean hands. But a thing had to be done, and we did it, not minding the theoretical dirt. The negroes were armed with ballots and bayonets, and the bayonets were at our breasts. Our lands were taxed until we were letting our homes go because we could not pay the taxes, while corrupt officials were waxing fat. We had to take our country from under negro rule any way we could.” It was not wounds of war that the Southerner found it hard to forget and forgive, but the humiliation put upon him afterward, and his own enforced self-degradation.

I do not wish to be understood as saying that the Southerner re-won control of local government by only such methods as described; I emphasize the truth that, at times, he did use them and had to use them, because herein was his deep moral wound. He employed better methods as he could; for instance, when every white man would bind himself to persuade one negro to vote with him, to bring this negro to the polls, and protect him from Radical punishment. Also, he availed himself of weak spots in the enemy’s armour. Thus in Hancock County, Georgia, in 1870, Judge Linton Stephens challenged voters who had not paid poll-tax, and, when election managers would not heed, had them arrested and confined, while their places were supplied and the election proceeded. The State Constitution, framed by the Radicals themselves, called for this poll-tax—a dollar a head—and its application to “educational purposes.” The extravagant Radical regime, falling short of bribing money, remitted the poll-tax in lieu thereof. Judge Stephens caught them. Governor Bullock disapproved his action; United States Marshal Seaford haled him before United States Commissioner Swayze. The Federal Grand Jury ignored the charge against him, and that was the end of it. The Judge had, however, been put to expense, trouble, and loss of time.

THE WHITE CHILD