CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:
The Social Effects of the War on the South
The Attitude of the Former Slave Holders
In 1904, Southern historian Thomas Nelson Page wrote:
Among the chief problems which have vexed the country for the last century and threaten to give yet more trouble in the future, is what is usually termed "The Negro Question." To the South, it has been for nearly forty years the chief public question, overshadowing all others, and withdrawing her from due participation in the direction and benefit of the National Government. It has kept alive sectional feeling; has inflamed partisanship; distorted party policies; barred complete reconciliation; cost hundreds of millions of money, and hundreds if not thousands of lives, and stands ever ready, like Banquo's ghost, to burst forth even at the feast.(1)
The "Negro question" still has not been sufficiently answered to this day, a century after the above words were written. "Sectional feeling" and "inflamed partisanship" remain the rotten root from whence modern racial tensions have sprung, and are the storehouse from which the proponents of "political correctness" draw their strength and the weapons which they intend to use to eradicate all traces of Southern history and heritage from the public arena.
Foremost on the docket of public censure are the planters of the old South, who are alleged to have so maltreated the emancipated slaves among them that Radical Reconstruction was rendered a practical necessity to save the Negroes from ultimate extinction. Horrific tales of widespread lynchings and otherwise oppressive acts by the Ku Klux Klan and other covert organizations in the South are often appealed to as conclusive evidence of the imputed guilt. However, the recorded eyewitness accounts of even the South's enemies do not, to any large degree, substantiate these charges. For example, in his December 1865 report to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, Republican Carl Schurz wrote:
Instances of the most touching attachment of freedmen to their old masters and mistresses have come to my notice. To a white man whom they believe to be sincerely their friend, they cling with greater affection even than to one of their own race. By some northern speculators their confidence has been sadly abused.... Those who enjoy their confidence enjoy also their affection. Centuries of slavery have not been sufficient to make them the enemies of the white race. If in the future a feeling of mutual hostility should develop itself between the races, it will probably not be the fault of those who have shown such an inexhaustible patience under the most adverse and trying circumstances.(2)
In her book, Memorials of a Southern Planter, Susan Dabney Smedes wrote that, for the most part, the former slaves were "very quiet and serious and more obedient and kind than they had ever been known to be...."(3) Rather than widening the social gap between the races, the hardships which the war had brought upon them both, had served instead to increase their mutual dependence upon and friendship with one another:
Something of the beautiful loyalty in them which guarded the women and children with such zeal while husbands and fathers were fighting far away persisted in the early days of their freedom. Old slaves, with fruit and gobblers and game, would sneak into the house with an instinctive sense of delicacy and leave them in the depleted larder surreptitiously. Occasionally some of these loyal creatures, momentarily intoxicated with the breath of liberty, would roam down the road towards the towns only to return with childlike faith to the old plantation. But for the suggestions of soldiers and agitators, the former masters and slaves might easily have effected a social readjustment to their mutual benefit....(4)
As Claude G. Bowers pointed out, the Whites and Blacks of the South, existing before the war in the relation of master and slave, would have, if left to themselves, naturally adapted to their new post-war relation of employer and employee with little to no difficulty. The Southern planters knew that their plight was the result of Northern interference and aggression, and therefore they bore no resentment to their former slaves. Conversely, having known the kindness and care of their former masters which was bestowed upon their people from birth through old age to death, the Blacks generally had no reason to have anything but feelings of affection toward the planters, and "would have turned for leadership to the native whites, who understood them best."(5) This social harmony, as we will see, would soon perish forever in the consuming fire of Northern Radicalism, kindled as it was in the fires of jealousy and sectional hatred.
A great many of the officers of the occupying U.S. military corroborated the above descriptions of the social relations among the planters and the freedmen. Major General John W. Turner, for instance, reported on the treatment of the Blacks in Virginia: "I do not think there is a general feeling of aggression towards the negroes. The more intelligent people there, those who have landed estates, need their labor. Being dependent upon them for labor, they see the necessity of employing them, and are disposed to get along with them.... Among the lower classes of the whites there is a spirit of aggression against the negro; they are disposed to ban the negro, to kick him and cuff him, and threaten him with what they will do as soon as the Yankees go away."(6) Major Benjamin C. Truman gave the same report of the conditions in Texas and Florida:
I have thought all along there was a necessity for the Freedmen's Bureau, but there is not so much necessity for it now as there was, especially in Texas. Texas is, by all odds, doing better than any of the other States. I talked with all the delegates particularly about the freedmen, and I did not meet a delegate or gentleman who made any complaints of the negroes whatever. They said they were doing first-rate. A great many who had been real malicious secessionists were not so generous in talking about other matters as they were about the negroes. I went all over the Brazos and Trinity lands, and a great many planters were giving the negroes two-thirds of the crops. I did not see a negro abused or ill-treated throughout the whole State. Those who owned negroes treat them very well. There are some who did not own them who are not inclined to treat them so well, but everybody is treating them well, because they need their labor. It is their policy to treat them well, even if they are inclined to do otherwise. Free labor is a success in Texas. Most of the former slaves are with their former masters everywhere in the interior....
The only reason why they [the freedmen] have been moving around so much is to assure themselves that they really do possess their freedom. The whites felt a little bitter towards them nine or ten months ago. Some of them maltreated them, and great fault was found with them everywhere; but after Christmas all that died away; they are all at work. The agents of the Freedmen's Bureau, unlike those in most of the other States, make no contracts for them, but leave them to do the best they can. The negroes are not getting less than $20 a month in specie and found, anywhere in the State of Texas, and in some portions of the State they are getting two-thirds the cotton crop and half the corn crop. If the season is good, and the negroes continue to work as well as they are working now, there will be a larger crop of cotton made in Texas than in any other State, and the negroes will make more money than the whites.(7)
Elsewhere, Truman testified, "It is the former slave owners who are the best friends the negro has in the South — those who, heretofore, have provided for his mere physical comfort, generally with sufficient means, though entirely neglecting his best nature, while it is the 'poor whites' that are his enemies. It is from these that he suffers most."(8) General J.B. Kiddoo, stationed in Texas, likewise reported:
The better class of planters, who were former slaveholders, are, as a general thing, disposed to deal fairly with them [the freedmen]... but there is a class of men commonly known in the States as "adventurers," small planters, traveling speculators, country store-keepers... swarming the planting regions like so many buzzards seeking for prey.... It is the lower class of people that have the most bitter and vulgar hatred of the negro. The more intelligent and liberal people consider the negro set free by the arbitration of arms, and hence have no animosity towards him; while the other class hold him personally responsible and treat him accordingly.(9)
The reason for this hostility of the poor Southern Whites toward the Blacks, while not to be condoned, is nevertheless easy to understand. It was precisely the same attitude which the laboring class of Whites in the North had always had towards free Negroes — that "the presence of negroes in large numbers tends to degrade and cheapen labor, and the people have been unwilling that the white laborer shall be compelled to compete for employment with the Negro."(10) Oddly enough, the "bitterest opponents of the negro... [were] the intensely radical loyalists"(11) — the men who had fought in the Northern army against the Southern Confederacy or who had otherwise opposed it. John T. Trowbridge stated that there was "more prejudice against color among the middle and poorer classes — the 'Union' men of the South, who owned few or no slaves — than among the planters who owned them by scores and hundreds."(12) It should be remembered that it was predominantly these loyalists who made up the reconstructed States under Lincoln's ten percent plan(13); the former Confederates had been disfranchised by their inability to take the "Ironclad Oath" of loyalty to the U.S. Government prescribed in the Act of 2 July 1862. This oath required candidates to swear that they had "never voluntarily borne arms against the United States, voluntarily given no aid, countenance, counsel, or encouragement to persons engaged in armed hostility to the National Government, neither sought nor accepted nor attempted to exercise the functions of any office whatever under authority or pretended authority in hostility to the United States, and never yielded a voluntary support to any pretended Government within the United States, hostile or inimical thereto." As stated by James G. Blaine, "[T]he men who had been waging war against the Government could not take this oath except by committing perjury and risking its pains and penalties."(14) There were indeed some, such as Alexander Stephens, who nevertheless took this oath with the expectation that it would later be challenged as unconstitutional,(15) but, for the most part, those who fought for four years for Southern independence, or had served in some official capacity in the government of one of the Confederate States or in that of the Confederacy itself, felt themselves unable to sacrifice their personal honor by participating in the new State governments. There were some, however, who had favored secession, but had never actively participated in the conflict, and many of these men took office following the war. According to Major Truman, "The secessionists all voted to abolish slavery. I was present at four conventions, and I found that to be the fact. The loyal men were very reluctant to vote to abolish slavery, and some who finally did vote for it told me that they had made a full estimate of their losses with a view of claiming compensation."(16)
The Passage of the "Black Codes" in the South
Contrary to James G. Blaine's charge that the official acts of the reconstituted Southern States relating to the freedmen were "inspired by a spirit of apparently irreconcilable hatred of the Union,"(17) these laws, which came to be known as the "Black Codes," were enacted by the same "loyalists" who only reluctantly voted to abolish slavery. Blaine went on:
As soon as the Southern Legislatures assembled, it was made evident that their members disregarded, and even derided, the opinion of those who had conquered the Rebellion and held control of the Congress of the United States. If the Southern men had intended, as their one special and desirable aim, to inflame the public opinion of the North against them, they would have proceeded precisely as they did. They treated the negro, according to a vicious phrase which had at one time wide currency, "as possessing no rights which a white man was bound to respect." Assent to the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was but a gross deception so long as they accompanied it with legislation which practically deprived the negro of every trace of liberty. That which was an offense in a white man was made a misdemeanor, a heinous crime, if committed by a negro. Both in the civil and criminal code his treatment was different from that to which the white man was subjected. He was compelled to work under a series of labor laws applicable only to his own race. The laws of vagrancy were so changed as, in many of their provisions, to apply only to him, and under their operation all freedom of movement and transit was denied. The liberty to sell his time at a fair market rate was destroyed by the interposition of apprentice laws. Avenues of usefulness and skill in which he might specially excel were closed against him lest he should compete with white men. In short his liberty in all directions was so curtailed that it was a bitter mockery to refer to him in the statutes as a "freedman." The truth was, that his liberty was merely of form and not of fact, and the slavery which was abolished by the organic law of a Nation was now to be revived by the enactments of a State.(18)
Blaine was either completely blinded by his own radical prejudice or he was willing to trifle with the facts. Either way, his statements are easily rebutted. In most cases, the codes in question were merely a re-enactment of the vagrancy laws which were formerly in place in the South; in others they were nearly identical to the vagrancy laws even then enforced in the New England States, and, while applicable to both Whites and Blacks, they bore far more severe penalties for the former than the latter. For example, the following law was passed in Florida on 4 November 1865:
That upon complaint made on oath before a justice of the peace, mayor, alderman, or intendant of police, or a judge of the circuit court, that any person able to work, or otherwise to support himself in a reputable way, is wandering or strolling about, or leading an idle, or profligate, or immoral course of life, to issue his warrant to the sheriff or any constable, commanding him to arrest the party accused and bring him before such justice of the peace or other officer, and if the said officer should be satisfied by the testimony of the guilt of the accused, the said officer shall require him to enter into bond, payable to the governor of Florida and his successors in office, in such sum as the said officer may prescribe, not to exceed five hundred dollars, with sufficient security, to be approved by said officer, for his good behavior and future industry for one year; and upon his failing or refusing to give such security, he shall be committed and indicted as a vagrant, and on conviction shall be punished by a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars, and imprisoned for time not exceeding twelve months, or by being sold for a term not exceeding twelve months, at the discretion of the court....(19)
There was nothing in this law which singled out Blacks or imposed upon them a heavier penalty than it did upon Whites found in violation of its provisions, nor was there anything unreasonable about its prohibitions against vagrancy and immoral conduct. Likewise, in Mississippi, a law was passed which prohibited those persons with no lawful employment or business from "unlawfully assembling themselves together, either in the day time or night time, and all white persons so assembling themselves with freedmen, free negroes or mulattoes, on terms of equality, or living in adultery or fornication with a freed woman."(20) Blaine's claim that "that which was an offense in a white man was made a misdemeanor, a heinous crime, if committed by a negro," is contradicted by the plain language of this law, which imposed much stricter penalties and higher fines upon Whites than it did upon Blacks. White offenders were to be punished with a $200 fine and six months imprisonment; for Black offenders, however, the penalty was only a $50 fine and ten days imprisonment with the added stipulation that should the fine not be paid within five days, the sheriff was authorized to "hire out said freedman, free Negro, or mulatto, to any person who will, for the shortest period of service, pay said fine." Even with this added provision, this law was not as severe as a similar one relating to vagrant Negroes which had been passed before the war in Illinois and had only recently been repealed. Other similar laws which were then in effect throughout the North prescribed prison sentences of ninety days to three years for Negro vagrancy, and some went even further to add public flogging of vagrant Blacks and Mulattoes. The apprenticeship laws mentioned above by Blaine were also no different in substance from what had been enforced in such Northern States as New Jersey. The reader is encouraged to refer back to the section in Chapter Six which outlined, in greater detail, these Negro laws of the North.
Another law passed by the reconstituted Mississippi legislature prohibited Negroes from possessing firearms, engaging in riots, trespassing, malicious mischief, cruel treatment of animals, making seditious public speeches, engaging in insulting gestures or in lewd language or acts, preaching the Gospel without a license, selling liquor, or "committing any other misdemeanor."(21) The State legislators said, "While some of the proposed legislation may seem rigid and stringent to the sickly modern humanitarians, they can never disturb, retard, or embarrass the good and true, useful and faithful of either race."(22) Furthermore, Governor Benjamin G. Humphreys honestly believed that with the adoption of these laws, "we may secure the withdrawal of the Federal troops."(23) As the reader can see from the above examples, and many others too numerous to enumerate here, the intent of the so-called "Black Codes" was merely the preservation of social order in the Southern States, which is the most basic duty of any government. There was no malicious singling out of freedmen for maltreatment, and no general feeling of animosity evident on the face of these laws. If anything, these legislatures were guilty of completely misjudging the attitude of the Northern people and giving an erroneous prognostication of their reaction, which was instantaneous and furious. In the words of the Chicago Tribune, "We tell the white men in Mississippi that the men of the North will convert the State of Mississippi into a frog pond before they will allow such laws to disgrace one foot of soil in which the bones of our soldiers sleep and over which the flag of freedom waves."(24) The sleeping Republican beast was beginning to stir.
The Blacks Are Turned Against the Whites
The amicable relations between the planters and the former slaves began to rapidly disintegrate with the arrival of more and more emissaries from the North, particularly agents of the Union League. This society had been organized in Philadelphia in November of 1862 to bolster the faltering war sentiment among the Northerners following the preliminary issuance of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, and had rapidly spread across the Northern States. During the war, the Union League "sent their agents to the South and distributed leaflets to the negroes, instructing them to outrage the women and children, to force the Confederate soldiers to come home for their protection."(25) After the war had ended, the League's unethical tactics had not substantially changed. Representative Fernando Wood of New York pointed out in an official Government report that "hatred of the white race was instilled into the minds of these ignorant people by every art and vile that bad men could devise...."(26) Harriet Beecher Stowe, authoress of Uncle Tom's Cabin, likewise noted with much chagrin, "Corrupt politicians are already beginning to speculate on them [the freedmen] as possible capital for their schemes, and to fill their poor heads with all sorts of vagaries."(27) These people, commonly referred to as "Carpetbaggers," immediately took up the task of turning the Negroes against the Whites and instilling in their minds utopian notions of political equality and future prosperity at the expense of their former masters. Through the literature of the Union League and by word of mouth, the freedmen were generally convinced that if the Democratic party ever came back into power, they would be re-enslaved. They were also promised the elective franchise with "forty acres and a mule" as the reward for voting the Republican ticket,(28) and some enterprising Northern swindlers did a thriving business selling them colored pegs with which to stake off their chosen lots.(29) Claude Bowers explained:
The first evidence that outside influences had been at work upon the freedmen was furnished in their bizarre notions of labor, that under freedom all system ceased. At all hours of the day they could be seen laying down their implements and sauntering singing from the fields. If freedom did not mean surcease from labor, where was the boon?...
Very soon they were eschewing labor and flocking to army camps to be fed, and here they were told, with cruel malice, that the land they had formerly cultivated as slaves was to be given them. Accepting it seriously, some had actually taken possession and planted corn and cotton. The assurance was given them solemnly that when Congress met, the division would be made. Quite soon they would have it on the authority of Thaddeus Stevens. Convinced of the ultimate division, they could see no sense in settling down to toil for the meager wages the impoverished planters could afford to pay....
When military orders drove them from the camps, they flocked to villages, towns, and cities, where, in the summer of 1865, they lived in idleness and squalor, huddled together in shacks, and collecting in gangs at street corners and crossroads.... Freedom — it meant idleness, and gathering in noisy groups in the streets. Soon they were living like rats in ruined houses, in miserable shacks under bridges built with refuse lumber, in the shelter of ravines and in caves in the banks of rivers. Freedom meant throwing aside all marital obligations, deserting wives and taking new ones, and in an indulgence in sexual promiscuity that soon took its toll in the victims of consumption and venereal disease. Jubilant, and happy, the negro who had his dog and a gun for hunting, a few rags to cover his nakedness, and a dilapidated hovel in which to sleep, was in no mood to discuss work.(30)
The misguided freedmen were not the only ones who used the prostrate South as a stage upon which to practice open licentiousness. A correspondent from a Northern periodical called The Nation traced the origin of the growing labor and racial problems to the bad influence of the occupying Northern soldiers.(31) The young Negresses who gathered at the army camps were frequently raped by the soldiers. One citizen in Georgia wrote a scathing letter to General Sherman saying, "The negro girls for miles around are gathering to the camps and debauched. It surely is not the aim of those persons who aim at the equality of colors to begin the experiment with a whole race of whores."(32) On more than a few occasions, their former masters would intervene at the peril of their own lives to protect the Blacks from their Yankee assailants.(33)
As Claude Bowers noted, "It only remained for the Federal Government to drive the disarmed people to the verge of a new rebellion by stationing negro troops in the midst of their homes. Nothing short of stupendous ignorance, or brutal malignity, can explain the arming and uniforming of former slaves and setting them as guardians over the white men and their families."(34) In South Carolina, the atrocities committed by Negro soldiers were the most numerous. At Chester, for instance, a gang of these uniformed Blacks clubbed and bayoneted an elderly man. At Charleston, another gang forced their way into a house, demanding to be fed, and then, after the meal was eaten, they murdered their hostess. A male citizen of Charleston was dragged from his home to the army camp, and after he had been killed by his Negro captors, they danced on his grave.(35) In her book, Dixie After the War, Myrta Lockett Avary related the following horrific details of Negro atrocities against White South Carolinians:
A white congregation was at worship in a little South Carolina church when negro soldiers filed in and began to take seats beside the ladies. The pastor had just given out his text; he stretched forth his hands and said simply, "Receive the benediction," and dismissed his people. A congregation in another country church was thrown into panic by balls crashing through boards and windows; a girl of fourteen was killed instantly. Black troops swung by, singing. Into a dwelling a squad of blacks marched, bound the owner, a prominent aged citizen, pillaged his house, and then before his eyes, bound his maiden daughter and proceeded to fight among themselves for her possession. "Though," related my informant with sharp realism, "her neck and face had been slobbered over, she stood quietly watching the conflict. At last, the victor came to her, caught her in his arms and started into an adjoining room, when he wavered and fell, she with him; she had driven a knife, of which she had in some way possessed herself, into his heart. The others rushed in and beat her until she, too, was lifeless. There was no redress."(36)
The situation in the other Southern States was no different. The following is an account of events in Tennessee:
Friction between the native white people and the freed negroes had been growing steadily in all sections of Tennessee ever since the war. Even in the eastern part of the state, the pro-Union and Abolition stronghold, Brownlow's own newspaper, the Knoxville Whig, reported rapidly increasing bitterness between the races. White people, the paper said, were being wantonly insulted by negroes who "frequently elbow unprotected white women off our narrow pavements, and curse white men passing them, just to show their authority." The Republican Banner in Nashville reported many murders by negroes throughout the state; and in Memphis acts of violence by the negro troops garrisoned there became so frequent that the presiding judge of the county, Judge Thomas Leonard, asked that two regiments of white Federal troops be stationed in Memphis to protect the white citizens against the negro soldiers' robberies, assaults, and murders. The negro soldiers not only committed these offenses themselves, but they crowded the saloons of the city and constituted a serious disturbing influence on the civilian negroes. This bad feeling grew so intense that in May, 1866, there was precipitated a sanguinary race riot which lasted for three days and resulted in the killing of forty-six negroes and two white men, the wounding of seventy-five others and the destruction of property to the value of $130,000, including the burning of ninety-one negro dwellings, four negro churches and twelve negro schools.(37)
So menacing had these soldiers become to the White population that, in many communities throughout the South, the women no longer dared to venture from their houses.(38) Even General Grant was appalled at the behavior of the Black soldiers and wrote in his report to President Johnson that "the presence of black troops, lately slaves, demoralizes labor.... The late slave seems to be imbued with the idea that the property of his late master should belong to him, or at least should have no protection from the colored soldier.... There is danger of collision being brought on by such cases."(39)
The Rise of the Union League
One major element of the corruption of this period, was the formation of chapters in the South of the aforementioned Union League, the purpose of which was to create a solid Republican voting bloc from the Southern Blacks:
Meanwhile, day and night, Union League organizers were rumbling over the country roads drawing the negroes into secret clubs. There was personal persuasion in cotton fields, bar-rooms, and negro cabins, and such perfect fraternization that the two races drank whiskey from the same bottle, and the wives of some of the whites played the piano for the amusement of their black sisters. At every negro picnic, carpetbaggers mingled with the men and danced with the negro women. The time was short. An election was approaching. One July night in 1867, the fashionable Union League Club of New York, with the aristocratic John Jay in the chair, listened approvingly to a report from an organizer sent to Louisiana; and Mr. Jay announced that this was "part of the Republican programme for the next presidential campaign." The organizer in ninety days had established one hundred and twenty clubs, embracing "whites and blacks who mingled harmoniously together." It was an inspiration. Why, asked one member of the Union League Club, should not a club be established in every township in the South?(40)
By October of 1867, a total of eighty-eight Union League chapters had been established in South Carolina alone.(41) In North Carolina, the Union League had 80,000 members and in Louisiana, 57,300 members.(42) As pointed out by Henry T. Thompson, "Practically all the negroes in the South were members of the League,"(43) and those "conservative" Blacks who refused to join were in constant danger of having their property confiscated and being whipped or even lynched as traitors.(44) According to one member's testimony, the League existed "for no other purpose than to carry the elections...."(45) Thousands of ignorant freedmen, who could not even read the names on the ballots, were herded to the polls like "senseless cattle" and instructed for whom they must vote.(46) To vote the Democratic ticket was frequently a capital offense.(47) At one Republican campaign meeting held in Macon, Georgia, a notice was posted which read, "Every man that don't vote the Radical ticket this is the way we want to serve him — hang him by the neck."(48) Whites who crossed the League were also the frequent target of abuse, having their houses and barns burned in the middle of the night.
League meetings were usually conducted at night, consisting of secret initiation rites and military drills,(49) and it was not uncommon for members to disguise themselves in the regalia of the Ku Klux Klan and then "kill, whip and otherwise punish negroes who refused to do their vile bidding, and report them as outrages done by the real Ku Klux Klan."(50) According to Susan Lawrence Davis, "A spurious Ku Klux Klan was organized in the District of Columbia in 1866 and its operations and purposes were to discredit the Ku Klux Klan of the South.... [A]ll the so-called Ku Klux outrages did not originate among the white people of the South, but with the blacks who are not Ku Klux."(51) This assertion was corroborated by Daniel Goodloe, U.S. Marshall for North Carolina for three years during Reconstruction, who said, "I have also heard of combinations of negroes calling themselves Ku Klux and committing outrages.... It has been charged that they have mobbed negroes for [voting] the [Democratic] ticket."(52) The Radical press, of course, had a field day reporting these so-called "Ku Klux outrages" in its tireless efforts to denigrate the Southern people, and a flurry of anti-Klan laws began to be passed by the Carpetbagger governments of the South. Ironically, the first indictment under the 1870 anti-Klan law of Mississippi was of Daniel Price, a Carpetbagger who had led a mob of Negroes in Klan disguise in the lynching of a Black Democrat named Adam Kennard.(53)
Not long afterward, Congress passed and President Grant approved legislation to counter the alleged Klan violence in the South. The first of these Acts provided, "If two or more persons shall band or conspire together, or go in disguise upon the public highway, or upon the premises of another, with intent to... injure, oppress, threaten or intimidate any citizen with the intention to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege, granted or secured to him by the Constitution of the United States, or because of his having exercised the same; such persons shall be guilty of a felony." The second Act further provided that all persons who were connected with the conspirators would also be held responsible for any act committed, "although he was completely ignorant of the intention to commit it, and of the fact of its commission."(54) This legislation was obviously aimed at members of the various Klan chapters, threatening them with arrest merely for their being members. Although Congress conducted an extensive investigation of the alleged activities of the Klan at a cost of several million dollars, and many arrests were made, it is noteworthy that not a single conviction of any genuine Ku Klux member was obtained and no written order to commit any crime was ever found. Instead, the legislation backfired on the South's enemies, causing an outcry against the anti-Klan laws from the very people who had agitated for their enactment:
Among the men who were arrested and tried were members of the spurious Ku Klux Klan which had been formed by the "Loyal League" at Washington to foment trouble in the South. When these counterfeit Ku Klux were tried, as in the case of those prosecuted by Captain William Richardson at Huntsville, Ala., when he was employed by the real Ku Klux Klan, and obtained convictions of these men, the Federal authorities immediately freed them.
Many other citizens who were not members of the Ku Klux Klan were arrested, convicted and sent to the Federal prison.
Thirteen individuals of these spurious Ku Klux Klans were convicted in Alabama, and one pleaded guilty.
The trials and the carpet-baggers in charge of them were bitterly assailed in the Northern papers at that time, for the Northern public began to realize the injustice of the Ku Klux Laws and of the government at Washington, and to see the failure of the Law in reaching the real Ku Klux Klan, and that it was reacting against their own agents and causing them to be convicted and sent to the Federal prisons.(55)
The Purpose of the Genuine Klan
The genuine Ku Klux Klan, which acted merely as a countermeasure to the political corruption and Northern-generated racial animosity and violence that was spreading unchecked throughout the South, has borne the onus ever since of Radical propaganda from the Reconstruction era. In the minds of most Americans today, the Klan is still associated with atrocities which were actually committed in many instances by Negroes and their Radical leaders and the more popular histories continue to fan the flames with one-sided accounts of "the Klan's sadistic campaign of terror."(56) However, as is so often the case, the truth is quite different from the prevailing myth. In the words of former Confederate General John Brown Gordon of Georgia, the Klan was "an organization, a brotherhood of the property-holders, the peaceable, law-abiding citizens of the State, for self-protection."(57) Gordon further testified before the Joint Congressional Committee on Affairs in the Insurrectionary States in 1871:
The instinct of self-protection prompted that organization, the sense of insecurity and danger, particularly in those neighborhoods where the negro population largely predominated. The reasons which led up to this organization were three or four. The first and main reason was the organization of the Union League, as they called it, about which we knew nothing more than this: that the negroes would desert the plantations and go off at night in large numbers; on being asked where they had been would reply, sometimes, "We have been to the muster"; sometimes, "We have been to the lodge"; sometimes, "We have been to the meeting." We knew that the "carpetbaggers," as the people called those who came from a distance and had no interest at all with us, who were unknown to us entirely; who from all we could learn about them did not have any very exalted position at their homes — these men were organizing the colored people....
Apprehension took possession of the entire mind of the State. Men were in many instances afraid to go away from their homes and leave their wives and children, for fear of outrage. Rapes were already being committed in the country. There was this general organization of the black race on the one hand, and an entire disorganization of the white race on the other hand.
We were afraid to have a public organization; because we supposed it would be construed at once, by the authorities at Washington, as an organization antagonistic to the government of the United States. It was therefore necessary, in order to protect our families from outrage and to preserve our own lives, to have something that we could regard as a brotherhood — a combination of the best men in the country, to act purely in self-defense, to repel the attack in case we should be attacked by these people. That was the whole object of this organization.(58)
General Nathan Bedford Forrest likewise testified before the Joint Committee that "the organization was intended entirely as a protection to the people, to enforce the laws, and protect the people against outrages."(59) The veracity of these testimonies is seen in the Klan's own statement of purpose:
This is an institution of Chivalry, Humanity, Mercy, and Patriotism; embodying in its genius and its principles all that is chivalric in conduct, noble in sentiment, generous in manhood, and patriotic in purpose; its peculiar objects being:
First: To protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenseless, from the indignities, wrongs, and outrages of the lawless, the violent, and the brutal; to relieve the injured and oppressed; to succor the suffering and unfortunate, and especially the widows and orphans of Confederate soldiers.
Second: To protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and all laws passed in conformity thereto, and to protect the States and the people thereof from all invasions from any source whatever.
Third: To aid and assist in the execution of all constitutional laws, and to protect the people from unlawful seizure, and from trial except by their peers in conformity to the laws of the land.(60)
The spread of the Klan throughout the Southern States was concurrent with the increase of aggression against their people by members of the Union League and in response to the corruption of the Carpetbaggers. On several occasions, the Klan even came to the rescue of Democratic or even "conservative" Republican Negroes who were targets of violence in consequence of their refusal to join with the Radicals. One such Black family who were thus saved by the interposition of the Klan were the Pooles of Florence, Alabama.(61) The Klan also assisted Government authorities in apprehending associates of Tom Clark, a deserter from both the Confederate and Northern armies who, with his band of marauders, terrorized several counties of Alabama in the early 1870s in Klan disguise.(62) The gruesome murders, rapes, and robberies committed against both Whites and Blacks by Clark and his men were all attributed to the Klan in the Northern papers.
Evidence is utterly lacking that the purpose of the Ku Klux Klan was anything but defensive in nature. Nevertheless, with the growing number of atrocities being wrongly attributed to the Klan by the Northern press, a negative and vengeful reaction from Washington was to be expected. By the time the Thirty-Ninth Congress took their seats in December of 1865, the Radical element had taken what they perceived to be the unrepentance of the Southern people as ample justification to wage a legislative war against the new outbreak of "rebellion." Flying in the face of the collected testimonies of their own military commanders throughout the South, the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, chaired by Senator William P. Fessenden of Maine, reported in early 1866:
Witnesses of the highest character testify that, without the protection of United States troops, Union men, whether of Northern or Southern origin, would be obliged to abandon their homes. The feeling in many portions of the country towards the emancipated slaves, especially among the ignorant and uneducated, is one of vindictive and malicious hatred. The deep-seated prejudice against color is assiduously cultivated by the public journals and leads to acts of cruelty, oppression, and murder, which the local authorities are at no pains to prevent or punish.(63)
Roused by the unlawful and unconscionable acts of its own agents and lackeys, the Republican beast was now awakened and the Southern people were soon to experience its vicious bite.
Endnotes
1. Thomas Nelson Page, The Negro: The Southerner's Problem (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1904), pages 3-4.
2. Carl Schurz, "Report on the Condition of the South," in Senate Executive Document No. 2 (Thirty-Ninth Congress, First Session).
3. Susan Dabney Smedes, Memorials of a Southern Planter (Baltimore, Maryland: Cushings and Bailey, 1888), page 228.
4. Claude G. Bowers, The Tragic Era: The Revolution After Lincoln (New York: Blue Ribbon Books, 1940), page 47.
5. Bowers, ibid., page 198.
6. John W. Turner, testimony given on 23 January 1866; in Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Part II: Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, pages 4-5.
7. Benjamin C. Truman, testimony given on 5 April 1866; in ibid., Part IV: Florida, Louisiana, and Texas, pages 138-139.
8. Truman, quoted by Robert Selph Henry, The Story of Reconstruction (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1938), pages 76-77.
9. J.B. Kiddoo, quoted by Henry, ibid., page 77.
10. Thomas A. Hendricks, Congressional Globe (Thirty-Ninth Congress, First Session), page 2939.
11. Henry, Story of Reconstruction, page 77.
12. John T. Trowbridge, quoted by Henry, ibid., page 77.
13. On 8 December 1863, Lincoln issued a proclamation announcing that he would recognize as the true government of any of the Southern States, with the exception of Virginia, if ten percent of the 1860 voting population would take an oath of allegiance to the U.S. Government (Richardson, Messages and Papers of the President, Volume VI, page 213).
14. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress, Volume II, page 88.
15. Blaine, ibid.
16. Truman, in Report on Reconstruction, Part IV, page 140.
17. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress, Volume II, page 89.
18. Blaine, ibid., pages 93-94.
19. An Ordinance on Vagrancy, adopted 4 November 1865; quoted in Report on Reconstruction, Part IV, pages 32-33.
20. Mississippi statute, quoted by Henry, Story of Reconstruction, page 102.
21. Quoted by Henry, ibid., page 103.
22. Quoted by Henry, ibid., page 100.
23. Benjamin G. Humphreys, quoted by Henry, ibid., pages 103-104.
24. Chicago Tribune, 1 December 1865; quoted by James Wilford Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi (New York: Macmillan Company, 1901), page 104.
25. Susan Lawrence Davis, Authentic History of the Ku Klux Klan, 1865-1877 (New York: American Library Service, 1924), page 172.
26. Fernando Wood, Alleged Ku Klux Outrages (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971), page 5.
27. Harriet Beecher Stowe, in Charles Edward Stowe (editor), The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe Compiled from Her Letters and Journals (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1889), page 395.
28. Henry T. Thompson, Ousting the Carpetbagger From South Carolina (Columbia, South Carolina: R.L. Bryan Company, 1927), page 17.
29. Walter L. Fleming, Documents Relating to Reconstruction (Morgantown, West Virginia: self-published, 1904), pages 44-45.
30. Bowers, Tragic Era, pages 48-49.
31. Bowers, ibid., page 51.
32. C. Mildred Thompson, Reconstruction in Georgia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1915), page 138.
33. John Wallace, Carpetbag Rule in Florida (Jacksonville, Florida: Da Costa Printing and Publishing House, 1888), page 37.
34. Bowers, Tragic Era, page 52.
35. John S. Reynolds, Reconstruction in South Carolina, 1865-1877 (Columbia, South Carolina: The State Company, 1905), pages 5-6.
36. Myrta Lockett Avary, Dixie After the War (New York: Doubleday, Page, and Company, 1906), page 267.
37. Stanley F. Horn, The Invisible Empire: The Story of the Ku Klux Klan, 1866-1871 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1939), pages 76-77.
38. Reid, After the War, Volume I, page 48.
39. Grant, letter to Johnson, 18 December 1865; in Senate Executive Document No. 2, page 107.
40. Bowers, Tragic Era, page 202.
41. Francis B. Simkins and Robert H. Woody, South Carolina During Reconstruction (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina, 1932), page 75 (footnote).
42. Adams, In the Course of Human Events, page 153.
43. Thompson, Ousting the Carpetbagger, page 17.
44. Bowers, Tragic Era, page 205.
45. Quoted by Simkins and Woody, South Carolina During Reconstruction, page 79.
46. Simkins and Woody, ibid., page 80.
47. H.J. Eckenrode, A Political History of Virginia During Reconstruction (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins Press, 1904), page 79; Bowers, Tragic Era, page 202.
48. Republican placard; quoted by Henry, Story of Reconstruction, page 322.
49. Walter L. Fleming, Documentary History of Reconstruction (The Arthur H. Clarke Company, 1907), Volume II, Chapter Seven.
50. Davis, Authentic History of the Ku Klux Klan, page 173.
51. Davis, ibid., pages 195, 219.
52. Daniel Goodloe, quoted by Thomas Boyard, Ku Klux Klan Organization (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1871), page 5.
53. Horn, Invisible Empire, page 154.
54. These laws are still on the books at Title 18, United States Code, Sections 241 and 242 (the same wording is at Title 42, Sections 1982 and 1983), and are frequently appealed to by "patriot" groups as safeguards of the rights of State Citizens against conspiring agents of the Government. Their real purpose was, and has always been, to protect Negroes from deprivation of their civil rights to the detriment of the rights of the States.
55. Davis, Authentic History of the Ku Klux Klan, pages 145-146.
56. Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), page 431. Foner devoted twenty pages to an enumeration of alleged Klan atrocities, some of which were quite gruesome, but never once did he mention the documented existence of the spurious Klans nor did he allow his readers to consider the possibility that the men behind the masks in the horrific incidents he cited could have been other than genuine Ku Klux.
57. John Brown Gordon, quoted by Henry, Story of Reconstruction, page 322.
58. Gordon, Gordon, testimony in Report of the Joint Congressional Committee on Affairs in the Insurrectionary States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1872), Volume VI, page 854.
59. Nathan Bedford Forrest, testimony in ibid., Volume XIII, page 3.
60. Prescript of the Ku Klux Klan, quoted by Horn, Invisible Empire, page 38.
61. Davis, Authentic History of the Ku Klux Klan, page 152.
62. Davis, ibid., pages 151-152.
63. Report on Reconstruction, page xvii.
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