RECONSTRUCTION

The next event of world-wide concern was the assassination of President Lincoln, which took place April 14, 1865. It does not come within the scope of this work, except as it finds expression or comment in the Trumbull papers. One such, found in a letter of Norman B. Judd, Minister to Prussia, dated Berlin, May 7, ought to be preserved.

At the present moment he [Lincoln] is deified in Europe. History shows no similar outburst of grief and indignation. Crowned heads and statesmen, parliaments and corporate bodies, literary institutions and the people, all vie in pronouncing the eulogy. The entire press of Europe has for the last ten days been filled with nothing else. We have had a very impressive and imposing funeral service. Kings, Representatives, Ministers, and the Diplomatic Corps were amongst the number present. The people assembled to three times the capacity of the church. I told my colleagues to come without uniform.—Something new under the sun at this Court of Uniforms.

When the work of Reconstruction began, two opposing ideas came in conflict with each other respecting the status of the seceding states. One was that the act of secession annihilated the State Governments and put the inhabitants and their belongings in the condition of newly acquired territories, subject in all things to the conquering power. This opinion was held by Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens. The other view was that every act of secession was null and void; that state sovereignty was suspended but not extinguished in the Confederacy; and that when the rebellion was crushed, it became the duty of the General Government to recognize the loyal men in each state, as the rightful nucleus of sovereignty, to assist them to set the state Governments going again; in harmony, however, with accomplished facts, including the abolishment of slavery.

The latter view had been adopted by President Lincoln in a proclamation issued simultaneously with his annual message to Congress December 8, 1863. This proclamation declared that whenever the voters of any seceding state, not less in number than one tenth of those who had voted in the presidential election of 1860, should reËstablish a loyal State Government, it should be recognized as the true Government of the state. The qualifications of voters should be those existing in the state immediately before secession, "excluding all others," but it was provided that all previous proclamations of the President and all acts of Congress in reference to slavery should be held inviolable. It was explained that the question of admitting to seats in Congress any persons who might be elected by such states as members would rest with the respective houses exclusively. It was added that while this plan of Reconstruction was favored by the President he did not mean that no other would be acceptable.

In pursuance of the proclamation an election was held in February, 1864, in that portion of Louisiana controlled by the Union army under command of General Banks, at which election 11,411 votes were cast—the whole vote of the state had usually been about 40,000. At this election, Michael Hahn had been chosen governor and he was inaugurated as such on the 4th of March, with impressive ceremonies, "in the presence of more than 50,000 people," as General Banks announced. Writing to Governor Hahn under date, March 13, 1864, Lincoln said:

Now you are about to have a convention which, among other things, will probably define the elective franchise. I barely suggest for your private consideration whether some of the colored people may not be let in, as, for instance, the very intelligent and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks. They will probably help, in some trying time to come, to keep the jewel of liberty in the family of freedom. But this is only a suggestion, not to the public but to you alone.

A constitutional convention of Louisiana was elected March 28, 1864; it assembled April 6; adopted a free state constitution July 22, which was ratified by popular vote September 5. Under this constitution a legislature was elected by which two Senators were chosen to represent the state at Washington. Their credentials were referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, and on the 8th of January, 1865, Trumbull called at the White House to consult with Lincoln respecting their admission. One of the consequences of the interview was the unanimous agreement of the Judiciary Committee in favor of a joint resolution recognizing the Government of which Michael Hahn was the head. This resolution was reported by Trumbull on the 23d of February. Sumner objected to it because the constitution did not grant negro suffrage, and he avowed the intention of using all parliamentary means to defeat it. In this endeavor he had the coÖperation of Senators Chandler and Wade and of most of the Democrats. The latter opposed the resolution because the constitution was not the work of the majority of the white people of the state. On the 24th, there was a debate of some bitterness between Sumner and Doolittle. The latter contended that the vote of Louisiana was needed to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution. To this Sumner replied that the so-called state of Louisiana was a shadow, that no such state existed, and that its ratification would be worthless if obtained. In this contention he was sustained by Garrett Davis, of Kentucky.

There were only seven working days remaining of the Thirty-eighth Congress, and Sumner managed to stave off the vote, although there was a large majority in favor of the resolution, as was shown by roll-calls on various motions. There was a sharp passage-at-arms between Trumbull and Sumner, which made a breach between them for a considerable time.

On the 11th of April, five days before his assassination, Lincoln delivered a carefully prepared address from the balcony of the White House in response to a greeting of citizens who had assembled to welcome him on his return from Richmond after the surrender of that city. He embraced the occasion to call attention again to the question of Reconstruction which was now becoming momentous. He referred to the plan which he had recommended in his annual message of December, 1863, and said that it had received the approval of every member of his Cabinet (which then included Chase and Blair). It had not been objected to by any professed emancipationist until after the news reached Washington that the people of Louisiana were about to take action in accordance with it. Then the question had been raised whether the seceded states were in the Union or out of it. He did not consider that question a material one, but rather a pernicious abstraction, having only the mischievous effect of dividing loyal men. The question now uppermost was how to get the seceded states again into their proper practical relations with the Union. "Let us all join," he said, "in doing the acts necessary to restoring the proper practical relations between these states and the Union, and each forever after innocently indulge his own opinion whether, in doing the acts, he brought the states from without into the Union, or only gave them proper assistance, they never having been out." The question was not whether the Louisiana Government as reconstructed was quite all that was desirable, but whether it was wiser to take it and help to improve it, or to reject and disperse it. "Concede that the new Government of Louisiana is only, to what it should be, as the egg is to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it." He concluded by saying that his remarks would apply generally to other states, but that there were peculiarities pertaining to each state, and important and sudden changes occurring in the same state, so that no exclusive and inflexible plan could safely be prescribed as to details. Therefore, he held himself free to make some new announcement to the people of the South when satisfied that such action would be proper.

This was, in a political sense, his last will and testament. No other communication from him to his countrymen was more fraught with wisdom and patriotism. It received the prompt endorsement of William Lloyd Garrison, who defended it when attacked by Professor Newman, of London University.[76] Garrison held not only that Lincoln had no right to interfere with the voting laws of the states, but that it would be bad policy to do so; for if negro suffrage were imposed upon the South against the will of the people, then, "as soon as the State was organized and left to manage its own affairs, the white population, with their superior intelligence, wealth, and power, would unquestionably alter the franchise in accordance with their prejudices and exclude those thus summarily brought to the polls."

Garrison saw further than Sumner, but nobody at the North then imagined the tremendous consequences that were to follow the upsetting of Lincoln's plan. If Trumbull's resolution had passed, it would have served as a precedent for all the seceding states, in which case most of the misery of the next fifteen years in the South, including the carpet-bag governments and the Ku-Klux-Klan, would have been avoided.

President Johnson at first had been rather more radical than the majority of his party as to the measure of punishment to be visited upon the leaders of the rebellion. He had several times talked about "making treason odious," and had said that traitors should take back seats in the work of Reconstruction, and had used language which implied that some of the more prominent Confederates ought to be tried and executed for treason. He had a sharp difference with General Grant as to the inclusion of General Lee in that category, Grant insisting that no officer or soldier who had observed the terms of capitulation at Appomattox could be rightfully molested.[77]

But this feeling of animosity on Johnson's part gradually passed away. In an authorized interview with George L. Stearns, October 3, 1865, on the subject of Reconstruction, and again in an interview with Frederick Douglass and others, February 7, 1866, on the suffrage question, he said nothing about making treason odious, but declared himself opposed to unrestricted negro suffrage because he believed it would lead to a war of races—a war between the non-slaveholding class (the poor whites) and the negroes. The former hated and despised the latter, and this feeling he thought would be intensified if the suffrage were granted to the negroes.

"The query comes up," said Johnson in his colloquy with Douglass, "whether these two races, situated as they were before, without preparation, without time for the slightest improvement, whether the one should be turned loose upon the other, and be thrown together at the ballot-box with this enmity and hate existing between them. The question comes up right there, whether we don't commence a war of races. I think I understand this thing, and especially is this the case when you force it upon a people without their consent."

Johnson had adopted not only Lincoln's plan of Reconstruction, but his Cabinet also. At its first meeting, April 16, the unfinished project for the establishment of civil government in Virginia, drafted by Secretary Stanton at Lincoln's instance, was presented but not acted on. At a subsequent meeting, May 8, it was considered and adopted, and was promulgated as an Executive Order on the following day. It recognized Francis M. Peirpoint, who had been nominal governor in Lincoln's time, as actual governor, and declared that in order to guarantee to the state of Virginia a republican form of government and to afford the advantage and security of domestic laws, and the full and complete restoration of peace, he would be aided by the Government of the United States in the measures he might take to accomplish those ends.

A loyal State Government of considerable scope and solidity, formed by Johnson himself as military governor, already existed in Tennessee. This was now recognized by the President as an accomplished fact. W. G. Brownlow had been elected governor, and a legislature had been constituted, which had passed a franchise act that limited the voting privilege to whites and excluded rebels of a certain grade. The Lincoln State Government of Louisiana and a similar one in Arkansas were allowed to stand.

On the 29th of May, the President issued an Executive Order appointing W. W. Holden provisional governor of North Carolina, and prescribing certain duties to be performed by him; among others that of calling a convention to be chosen by the loyal people of the state for the purpose of altering or amending the state constitution, and forming a government fit to be recognized and defended by the Government of the United States. Following the precedent made by Lincoln in the Louisiana case, the qualifications of voters at the election of delegates to the convention were fixed and declared to be those "prescribed by the constitution and laws of North Carolina in force immediately before the 20th day of May, 1861, the date of the so-called ordinance of secession," excepting, however, certain classes of whites. Similar orders followed in rapid succession for reorganizing Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, Alabama, South Carolina, and Florida, the last one bearing date July 13, 1865. Before the form of the order was adopted, a vote had been taken in the Cabinet on the question whether negroes should be allowed to vote in the election of Delegates. Of the six members present, three had voted in the affirmative and three in the negative. Seward was not present, being still confined to his bed by the wounds inflicted on him the night when Lincoln was assassinated. The President then took the matter in his own hands, and at the next meeting of the Cabinet read the North Carolina order and none of the members offered any objection to it.

Thus Reconstruction had been mapped out, so far as the executive branch of the Government was concerned, before the Thirty-ninth Congress assembled.

Together with the order for Reconstruction in North Carolina, the President issued a proclamation of amnesty for all persons who had participated in the rebellion, excepting, however, certain specified classes of offenders. This proclamation bore the same date, and was published simultaneously with the North Carolina order; but the newspapers of the day, while commenting upon and generally approving, made little account of the fact that negroes were excluded from voting at the election for delegates. The New York Tribune of May 30 merely said: "Of course no blacks can vote." The New York Times made mention of the same fact.

The New York Evening Post of the same date, however, after pointing out that only white men and taxpayers could vote in the coming election in North Carolina, said:

Unless, in the process of the reorganization, we build upon the principle laid down in the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created free and equal, there is no assurance that the different elements of which our social and political state is composed will subsist in harmony and tranquil coÖperation. In that direction lies our way to political safety. If we attempt to build upon any foundation of inequality between races and castes, we shall find a condition of things prevailing similar to that which has been the source of so many calamities to Ireland.

The first blast against Andrew Johnson was sounded by Wendell Phillips at the New England Anti-Slavery Convention, Boston, May 31, on a resolution offered by himself affirming that

The reconstruction of the rebel states without negro suffrage is a practical surrender to the Confederacy and will make the anti-slavery proclamation of the late President, and even the expected amendment of the Constitution utterly inefficient for the freedom and protection of the negro.

This resolution was supported by Phillips in a spirit of blind fury. Every life and every dollar that had been spent by the North had been stolen, he contended, if this policy should prevail, and "there was but one way in which the people could still hold the helm of affairs, and that was by a repudiation of the entire war debt!" Such a party would have his voice and vote until God called him home. "Better, far better, would it have been for Grant to have surrendered to Lee, than for Johnson to have surrendered to North Carolina."

The New York Tribune, June 2, took notice of Phillips, and, after adverting to his intemperate attacks on Salmon P. Chase and Abraham Lincoln in the past, turned to his "like delicate attentions" to Mr. Lincoln's successor.

President Johnson [it said] believes in, and favors, the extension of the elective franchise to blacks, but since he holds that no state has gone out, or could go out, of the Union, he believes that the Southern state constitutions stand as before, and that the right of suffrage stands as before until legally changed. We do not insist [it continued] that this is the true doctrine—we do not admit an unqualified right in the enfranchised people of any state to do as they will with the residue. Yet we insist that President Johnson's view is one that a true man may honestly, conscientiously hold—may hold it without being a hypocrite, a demagogue, or a tool of the slave power. And we think few considerate persons will deny that it is greatly desirable, if the desired reparation in the status of the freedmen can be achieved through the several states rather than over them—that it would be more stable, less grudging, more real, if thus accomplished. In fact, we should prefer waiting a year or two, or accepting a limited enfranchisement, to a full recognition of the Equal Rights of Man by virtue only of a presidential edict, or order from the War Department, or even an act of Congress.

The New York Times, June 21, concurred, saying:

It is an open question whether the Government should or should not attempt to secure suffrage to the Southern blacks; the best men may differ about it.

It scored Wendell Phillips for advocating repudiation of the national debt as a cure for any other evil whatsoever.

When Mr. Phillips says that if the Government and the people do not accept his doctrine, he will turn scoundrel and join a party of scoundrels, he does his doctrine the very worst injury possible.

Meanwhile there was a witches' caldron boiling in the South. The Confederate States had been impoverished by the war. Their labor system had been overturned under circumstances and in a mode that no other people had ever experienced. The negroes knew nothing of the responsibilities of freedom. They could not understand the meaning of a contract. The ex-slaves, when hired for a specified time, might abandon their work the next day or the next week, and return the following day or week and run the risk of being flogged or shot, either for going away or for coming back. The ex-masters, knowing only one way of getting work out of the negro,—that of compulsion,—contended and believed that there was no other way, or none that would serve the purpose during their lifetime; and since the crops of the present year could not wait for the milder teachings of education and reason, they adopted the only means that would secure immediate results. The planters, or the majority of them, were still further crippled by having no money to pay wages. All of their money had become filthy rags by the downfall of the Confederacy. The only alternative was hiring labor on shares. This was an embarrassment that the Northern men (carpet-baggers) who went to the South directly after the war did not suffer from. Some of these, tempted by the high price of cotton and the low price of land, hired or bought plantations, and they had the pick of the labor market because they could pay cash. Their example was a fresh irritation to the impecunious native planter, who, in losing the Confederacy, had lost everything except the clothes he stood in, which were much the worse for wear.

If there was to be a crop of cotton, or of anything, in 1865, the laboring population must be kept in some kind of order. Work days must be continuous, and not alternative with hunting and fishing days and play days. The planters looked to their legislatures in this emergency, and the legislatures enacted laws as near to the old slave codes as the condition of emancipation would allow,—if not nearer. These enactments began to reach the North before the Thirty-ninth Congress assembled. They were accompanied by tales of cruelty and outrage committed upon the freedmen, and of disloyal utterances and threats on the part of the unreconciled whites, male and female, who had been deprived of every weapon except their tongues. Little account was made of the need of time in which to become reconciled to these changes and to acquire admiration for those who had brought them about.

Among letters which reached Trumbull was one from Colonel J. W. Shaffer, of the Union Army, dated New Orleans, December 25, 1865, who gave the following account of what he had observed along the Gulf Coast:

I have been to Mobile, spent a week there, have traveled around in this state, talked much with friend and enemy, and I unhesitatingly say that our President has been going too fast. I am told by all Union men that after the surrender of the rebel armies the men returned perfectly quiet, came to Southern and Northern Union men, saying, "We don't know what is expected of us by the Government, but one thing is certain, we are tired of war and desire above all things to return to the quiet pursuits of life and try to mend our fortune as best we can, and cultivate a friendly feeling with all parts of the country once more; now tell us how to do this." Soon, however, to their surprise they found that the control of everything was to be again put in their hands, and at once they became insolent, abused the Government openly, and openly declared that Union men and Yankees must leave as soon as the military is withdrawn. Had they been given to understand that the Government was going to continue to govern and control, and that Union men alone would be trusted with the management of affairs, these people would have been entirely satisfied, glad to escape with their lives, and would at once have adapted themselves to circumstances. Now they are drunk with power, ruling and abusing every loyal man, white and black.

Per contra, Dr. C. H. Ray wrote, under date September 29, 1865, on the subject of Reconstruction:

What are our Republican papers thinking of when they make war upon the President as they are now doing? I see that there is hardly one to stand up in his defense, and that he will be fought out of our ranks into the arms of the Democracy. I do not see that he is so guilty as he is said to be, and for one I cannot join the cry against him. What do his assailants expect—to carry the country on the Massachusetts idea of negro suffrage, female suffrage, confiscation, and hanging? If so, they will drive all moderate men out of the party and the remainder straight to perdition.

Only five Northern States at this time allowed negroes to vote at elections, and one of these (New York) required a property qualification from blacks but not from whites. The state of Illinois had an unrepealed black code similar to that of Kentucky, and had added to it, as lately as 1853, a law for imprisoning any black or mulatto person brought into, or coming into, the state, for the purpose of residing there, whether free or otherwise. Some litigation for the enforcement of this act was begun in Cass County in 1863, while the Civil War was in progress.[78]

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