THE EXPULSION OF THE NEGROES FROM THE LEGISLATURE
AND THE USES TO WHICH THIS EVENT WAS APPLIED

When the Georgia Republicans, or Radicals, as they were locally called, found that instead of a sweeping victory they had won only a governorship hemmed in by a hostile legislature, an effort was made, as we have said, to improve their position through the interference of Meade. Meade refused to aid them. When, a short time afterwards, federal power, on which they had hitherto relied, was completely withdrawn, they seemed left to make the best of an uncomfortable position without any assistance. At this point a god appeared from the machine.

In the state senate there were three negroes, in the lower house twenty-five.[159] Their presence was an offense. It was an offense not merely to the Conservative members. Some of the Republicans entertained Conservative sentiments and principles, but supported reconstruction simply in order to hasten the liberation of the state from Congressional interference.[160] To them as well as to the Conservatives “negro rule” was obnoxious. Negro rule, so far as it consisted in negro suffrage, was established by the constitution. But negro office-holding was not so established expressly. As early as July 25, 1868, the question, whether negroes were eligible to the legislature, was raised in the state senate.[161]

Legally considered, the question had two sides, each supported by eminent lawyers. For the negroes it was argued that Irwin’s Code, which was made part of the law of the state by the constitution,[162] enumerated among the rights of citizens the right to hold office.[163] Negroes were made citizens of equal rights with all other citizens by the new constitution.[164] Therefore they had the right to hold office. It was true that the constitution did not grant the right to hold office to the negroes expressly, as it granted the right to vote; but in view of the fact that the convention which made the constitution was elected by 25,000 white and 85,000 colored men, and that that constitution was adopted by 35,000 white and 70,000 colored men, it would be absurd to suppose that the intent of that instrument was to withhold office from the negroes.[165] On the other side, it was argued that the right to hold office did not belong to every citizen, but only to such citizens as the law specially designated, or to such as possessed it by common law or custom. Irwin’s Code could not be cited to prove that negroes had the right, because that law had been enacted before the negroes had been made citizens, and the word citizens in it referred to those who were citizens at that time. As the negro had no right to hold office because he was a citizen, and as he could not claim the right from common law or custom, he could obtain it only by specific grant of law. There was no such grant. The argument for the negro was made by the Supreme Court of the state in 1869, the opposing argument by one of the justices of that court in a dissenting opinion.[166]Such were the legal aspects of the question, which were of course less important than the political and the emotional aspects. The legislature passed upon the issue in the early part of September, 1868, by declaring all the colored members ineligible, and admitting to the vacated seats the candidates who had received respectively the next highest number of votes.[167] If there was some legal ground for unseating the negroes, there was none for seating the minority candidates. It was done on the authority of the clause in Irwin’s Code which said:

But this clause is found under the title “Of the Executive Department,” and under the sub-head “Regulations as to All Executive Offices and Officers.” Under the next title “Of the Legislative Department,” there is no such provision.

For a legislature to unseat some of the elected members because on not untenable legal grounds it finds them ineligible, is not unusual. But the act of the Georgia legislature could not, under the circumstances, be regarded in the ordinary way. It showed strong racial prejudice. It was a startling breach of the system which reconstruction had been designed to institute, committed the very moment after the federal government withdrew its hand. It fixed on Georgia at once the earnest and unfavorable attention of northern public opinion. This fact enabled the Georgia Republicans to bring the federal government again to their assistance.

Their leader, Governor Bullock, at the next session of Congress (December, 1868), presented a letter to the Senate, saying that Georgia had not yet been admitted to the Union. She had not been admitted by the Omnibus Act, for that act provided that she should be admitted when certain things had been done, and those things had not been done. By the Reconstruction Act of July 19, 1867, all persons elected in Georgia were required to take the Test Oath. The members of the present legislature had never taken it. Therefore the action which that body had taken on July 21st, regarding the Fourteenth Amendment, was not a ratification by a legislature formed according to the Reconstruction Acts; it was simply a ratification by a body which called itself the legislature. Hence the Omnibus Act had not yet gone into effect as to Georgia, and Georgia was not yet entitled to representation in Congress.[169]

If this argument was valid in the winter of 1868, it must also have been valid in the preceding summer. Yet in July Bullock had made no objection to being inaugurated as governor of Georgia, on the ground that Georgia had not become a state. He had not refused on that ground to issue on September 10th a commission to Joshua Hill, reciting that he had been regularly elected to the Senate of the United States by the legislature of the state, and signed “Rufus B. Bullock, governor.”[170] The argument was an afterthought, not advanced until the expulsion of the negroes created a favorable opportunity for a hearing. It conflicted with the declarations and acts of the military authorities, and of the House of Representatives, but the sentiment aroused by the expulsion of the negroes was considered strong enough to sustain a repudiation of those declarations and acts.

Direct appeal to this sentiment was the auxiliary to the above argument. Bullock’s letter to the Senate was accompanied by a memorial from a convention of colored men held at Macon in October. It said that there existed in Georgia a spirit of hatred toward the negroes and their friends, which resulted in the persecution, political repression, terrorizing, outrage and murder of the negroes, in the burning of their schools, and in the slander, ostracism and abuse of their teachers and political friends. Of this the act of the legislature was an instance and an evidence. The aid of the federal government was implored.[171]

Similar charges had been made, it will be remembered, in the debates of 1866 and 1867. Now, however, they began to be urged with an earnestness and persistence altogether new. So conspicuous is this fact in the debates in Congress that a southern writer ironically remarks: “From this time forth the entire white race of the South devoted itself to the killing of negroes.”[172] The rest of this chapter will be devoted to considering how much truth there was in the reported abuse of negroes and “loyal” persons.

We stated in Chapter II. that after the war a bitter jealousy and animosity toward the negroes arose among the lower class of the white population, and in Chapter IV. that the restless conduct of the negroes under the influences of reconstruction filled the upper class with such alarm that they formed secret organizations in self-defence. This practice, at first supported and led by good men of the higher class, simply for defence, soon fell into the hands of the poor white class, the criminal class, and the turbulent and discontented young men of all classes, and became an instrument of revenge, crime and oppression. The change, however, was not a complete transformation. A great deal of the whipping inflicted upon negroes was bona fide chastisement for actual misdemeanors. This mode of punishment was the natural product of the transition from the old social conditions, when the negroes were disciplined by their masters, to the new conditions.[173] But besides these acts of correction many outrages were committed upon negroes, and also upon white men, simply from malice or vengeance, or other private motive.[174] These outrages included some homicides.[175] The testimony of credible contemporaries belonging to both political parties agrees that the Ku Klux Klan and similar organizations were used only to a very small extent for political purposes.[176]

How many of these corrective or purely vicious acts were perpetrated upon negroes? Democrats of that time commonly said that the number was insignificant, that the peace was as well kept in Georgia as in any northern state, and that statements to the contrary were invented for political purposes.[177] The number was, indeed, greatly exaggerated by Republicans, as some of the Republicans themselves admitted.[178] Making allowance for the warping of the truth in both directions, and considering the statements of the moderate Republicans,[179] and the admissions of some of the Democrats,[180] remembering also the recent disbandment of the army and the disturbed conditions of society, we must conclude that the attacks on negroes, made by disguised bands and otherwise, were very numerous.The friends of the negroes also fared badly. Philanthropic women who came from the North to teach in the negro schools were almost invariably treated with contempt and avoided by the white people.[181] This was due partly to the lingering bitterness of the war and partly to the connection of the negro schools with the Freedmen’s Bureau. This institution, the office of which was to set up strangers, from a recently hostile country, to instruct the southern people in their private affairs, was in itself odious. It was rendered more odious by the want of intelligence and tact, and even of honesty, which is said to have frequently characterized its officers. That the hatred thus aroused should be visited upon true philanthropists who were connected with the Bureau was unfortunate, but inevitable. As for the political friends of the negroes, the “loyal” men, or in other words the white men who supported reconstruction, they were habitually treated by the Conservative press and by Conservative speakers with violent invective. Conservative editors and orators neither engaged in nor recommended the slaughter or outrage of Radicals, but by continually voicing furious sentiments, they furnished encouragement to action of that sort by men of less intelligence and self-control.[182]

The accounts of lawlessness and persecution in Georgia, though exaggerated, undoubtedly had a substantial foundation. Whether this fact was a good argument for renewed interference in the state government by Congress is another question.