James Melville Beard

Terms of Southern Surrender in the War of the Rebellion—Candor of Paroled Troops—“Lee’s Ragamuffins”—Generals Grant’s and Sherman’s Proposed Amnesty—The “Rump Congress” and Disfranchisement—What the Latter meant—Issues which the War Settled—How these were Revived by the Pending Congress—Anarchy in the South—The Loyal League.

The treaty concluded between the conquered and conquering States at the close of the late civil war, while arranging all external differences and disarming physical resistance, yet did not provide for certain contingencies arising from the ethics of the dispute, which were destined to exert a powerful influence over the destinies of the American people. Undoubtedly the Southern troops surrendered their standards, and accepted the conqueror’s amnesty in good faith, and we can but believe that their allegiance to the restored Union—which had been promptly tendered—would have been crowned with this condition but for the disposition manifested by the civil power to review the pledges of its ambassadors in the field, and interpose supplementary conditions that could have no other beneficial effect than might be supposed to result, in a general way, from the humiliation of the conquered, and which would naturally tend to a revival of the casus belli. Having returned to their homes, and been soothed into accord with their new surroundings by those domestic Penates which had escaped the dispensation of fire and sword, through which they had mutually passed, “Lee’s ragamuffins,” as they had been styled by the Jenkinses of the period, set resolutely to work to restore their fallen fortunes, and, at the same time, so amend the shattered social fabric as that their personal and property rights might have that organized protection which cannot always be assured in times of civil disturbance. That they had forfeited any of those rights common to citizens of the republic under which they lived, by taking up arms in defence of a great national doctrine which, they were firmly persuaded, embodied its genius, if it did not represent its life, was a bombproof theory never seriously proposed until the glory of Appomattox had passed into history. To be denationalized, even in the sense which their severer critics ascribed as one of the conditions of their voluntary withdrawal from the national compact, carried with it discomforts of no mean significance; but to have the ill effects of their so-called treason visited upon them in the commonest concerns of social being, and to be denied a part in the administration of those State governments for whose (supposed) integrity they had imperilled their lives, was the harshest of all possible reconstruction issues, and one which candid thinkers will regard a very faint reflection of that peace policy which the measure purported to represent.

Having determined to supersede the military policy enforced against the Southern States by the Union generals, with such felicitous results, the National Legislature, which, immediately upon the close of the war, had developed those diagnostics which caused fair-minded men of the period to look upon it as a distempered and revolutionary body (and achieved for it the title of the “Rump Congress”), resolved to replace it by another, altogether dissimilar in type, and contrasting strangely with it even in reference to the objects supposed to be had in view. The people of the South, contending for the doctrine of State sovereignty, and pledging their fortunes and their lives in defence of a supposed inalienable right, and the masses of the North as strenuously opposing this theory, and asserting that no emergency could arise whereby a member of the Union might reclaim its sovereignty from the national compact, presented an issue altogether susceptible of settlement. And, indeed, proceeding upon the obvious plan that where questions of great practical moment cannot be adjudicated otherwise, they must submit to the a fortiori of determined majorities, the Southern people had already been driven to the amplest concessions regarding this measure; and whatever doubts they may have retained affecting the metaphysics of the discussion, were quite convinced that no other plan of adjustment would prove feasible.

But this inference (and it could be presented in no more tangible shape at the time) was far from satisfying that singular body of peace commissioners who, in the capacity of a national legislature, had assembled at Washington, not only to reaffirm the Southern doctrine, but to reconsider all the mighty results of Grant’s and Sherman’s campaigns, by disallowing the claims of the States lately in rebellion, and forcing them into that mourning period of so-called reconstruction and social and political anarchy, lately terminated. And thus, during the few years succeeding this new legislative departure, was presented the singular spectacle of States belonging to the National Union, who, by certain inherent properties of their being, could not forfeit, nor submit to forfeiture of the bond which established their identity therewith, acting independently of the national government in all things, save those non-essentials represented by taxation, the performance of military duty, etc.; and, at a later period, through the mysterious processes of pardons, congressional amnesties, and reconstruction, becoming (re)-invested with the only sovereignty which it was claimed they had ever possessed, that derived from the national compact.It is needless to say that there was no logical plan supporting that system of political manoeuvres set in motion by the “Rump Congress,” whose earliest and latest results—the social and political emasculation of the white freeman, and the exaltation, in like respect, of the negro—provoked that state of anarchy in the South which alone could have rendered possible the great secret movement whose history we are to discuss in these pages.

It may be doubted whether the mere disfranchisement of the citizens of these States—though that condition were supposed to include every right and privilege dear to freemen—would have prevailed with this people to embrace those extreme measures which, soon after this event, they were driven to adopt with such unanimity. Loyal League supremacy, and the elevation of the black man to those political rights from which the Southern white citizen had been so recently thrust down, were far more conclusive factors of this result; and as such, in all narratives pretending to authenticity in delivering the political events of this period, will be more closely blended with the historical fact.