Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama Part 28

The law of March 3, 1865, creating the Freedmen's Bureau, gave to its officials general authority over all matters concerning freedmen. Nothing was said about education or schools, but it was understood that educational work was to be carried on and extended, and after the organization of the Bureau in the state of Alabama its "Department of Records" had control of the education of the negro. For the support of negro education the second Freedmen's Bureau Act, July 16, 1866, authorized the use of or the sale of all buildings and lands and other property formerly belonging to the Confederate States or used for the support of the Confederacy. It directed the authorities of the Bureau to cooperate at all times with the aid societies, and to furnish buildings for schools where these societies sent teachers, and also to furnish protection to these teachers and schools.[1229]

The southern churches had never ceased their work among the negroes during the war,[1230] and immediately after the emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves all denominations declared that the freedmen must be educated so as to fit them for their changed condition of life.[1231] The churches spoke for the controlling element of the people, who saw that some kind of training was an absolute necessity to the continuation of the friendly relations then existing between the two races. The church congregations, a.s.sociations, and conferences, and ma.s.s meetings of citizens pledged themselves to aid in this movement. Dr. J. L. M. Curry first appeared as a friend of negro education when, in the summer of 1865, he presided over a ma.s.s meeting at Marion, which made provision for schools for the negroes. On the part of the whites whose opinion was worth anything, there was no objection worth mentioning to negro schools in 1865 and 1866.[1232] In the latter year, before the objectionable features of the Bureau schools appeared, General Swayne commented upon the fact that the various churches had not only declared in favor of the education of the negro, but had aided the work of the Bureau schools and kept down opposition to them. He was, however, inclined to attribute this att.i.tude somewhat to policy. He wrote with special approval of the a.s.sistance and encouragement given by the Methodist Episcopal Church South, through Rev. H. N. McTyeire (later bishop), who was always in favor of schools for negroes. He reported, also, that there was a growing feeling of kindliness on the part of the people toward the schools. Where there was prejudice the school often dispelled it, and the movement had the good will of Governors Parsons and Patton.[1233]

Just after the military occupation of the state there was the greatest desire on the part of the negroes, young and old, for book learning.

Was.h.i.+ngton speaks of the universal desire for education.[1234] The whole race wanted to go to school; none were too old, few too young. Old people wanted to learn to read the Bible before they died, and wanted their children to be educated. This seeming thirst for education was not rightly understood in the North; it was, in fact, more a desire to imitate the white master and obtain formerly forbidden privileges than any real desire due to an understanding of the value of education; the negro had not the slightest idea of what "education" was, but the northern people gave them credit for an appreciation not yet true even of whites. There were day schools, night schools, and Sunday-schools, and the "Blue-back Speller"

was the standard beginner's text. Yet, as Was.h.i.+ngton says, it was years before the parents wanted their children to make any use of education except to be preachers, teachers, Congressmen, and politicians. Rascals were ahead of the missionaries, and a number of pay schools were established in 1865 by unprincipled men who took advantage of this desire for learning and fleeced the negro of his few dollars. One school, established in Montgomery by a pedagogue who came in the wake of the armies, enrolled over two hundred pupils of all ages, at two dollars per month in advance. The school lasted one month, and the teacher left, but not without collecting the fees for the second month.[1235]

When General Swayne arrived, he a.s.sumed control of negro education, and a "Superintendent of Schools for Freedmen" was appointed. The Rev. C. M.

Buckley, chaplain of a colored regiment and official of the Freedmen's Bureau, was the first holder of this office. In 1868, after he went to Congress, the position was held by Rev. R. D. Harper, a northern Methodist preacher, who was superseded in 1869 by Colonel Edwin Beecher, formerly a paymaster of the Bureau and cas.h.i.+er of the Freedmen's Savings Bank in Montgomery. There also appeared a person named H. M. Bush as "Superintendent of Education," a t.i.tle the Bureau officials were fond of a.s.suming and which often caused them to be confused with the state officials of like t.i.tle.[1236]

The sale of Confederate property at Selma, Briarfield, and other places, small tuition fees, and gifts furnished support to the teachers. General Swayne was deeply interested in the education of the blacks, and thought that northern teachers could do better work for the colored race than southern teachers. Most of the aid societies had spent their funds before reaching Alabama, but Swayne secured some a.s.sistance from the American Missionary a.s.sociation. The teachers were paid partly by the a.s.sociation, but mostly by the Bureau. The Pittsburg Freedmen's Aid Commission established schools in north Alabama, at Huntsville, Stevenson, Tusc.u.mbia, and Athens, and also had a school at Selma. The Cleveland Freedmen's Union Commission worked in Montgomery and Talladega by means of Sunday-schools.

A great many of the schools with large enrolments were Sunday-schools. The American Missionary a.s.sociation, besides furnis.h.i.+ng teachers to the Bureau, had schools of its own in Selma, Talladega, and Mobile. The American Freedmen's Union Commission (Presbyterian branch) also had schools in the state. The Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church (North) did some work in the way of education, but was engaged chiefly in inducing the negroes to flee from the wrath to come by leaving the southern churches. At Stevenson and Athens schools were established by aid from England.[1237] In 1866 the Northwestern Aid Society had a school at Mobile.[1238] At the end of 1865, the Bureau had charge of eleven schools at Huntsville, Athens, and Stevenson, one in Montgomery with 11 teachers and 497 pupils, and one in Mobile with 4 teachers and 420 pupils.[1239] Some ill feeling was aroused by the action of the Bureau in seizing the Medical College and Museum at Mobile and using it as a schoolhouse. Even the Confederate authorities had not demanded the use of it. Before the war it was said that the museum was one of the finest in America. Many of the most costly models were now taken away, and a negro shoemaker was installed in the chemical department.[1240]

The att.i.tude of the southern religious bodies enabled the Bureau to extend its school system in 1866, and to secure native white teachers. Schools taught by native whites, most of whom were of good character, were established at Tuskegee, Auburn, Opelika, Salem, Greenville, Demopolis, Evergreen, Mount Meigs, Tuscaloosa, Gainesville, Marion, Arbahatchee, Prattville, Haynesville, and King's Station,--in all twenty schools. There were negro teachers in the schools at Troy, Wetumpka, Home Colony (near Montgomery), and Tuscaloosa. The native whites taught at places where no troops were stationed, and General Swayne stated that they were especially willing to do this work after the churches had declared their intention to favor the education of the negro. It was of such schools that he said their presence dispelled prejudice.[1241] The history of one of these schools is typical: In Russell County a school was established by the Bureau, and Buckley, the Superintendent of Schools, who had no available northern teacher, allowed the white people to name a native white teacher.

Several prominent men agreed that a Methodist minister of the community was a suitable person. The neighbors a.s.sured him that his family should not suffer socially on account of his connection with the school, and that they wanted no northern teacher in the community. The minister accepted the offer, was appointed by the Bureau, and the school was held in his dooryard, out buildings, and verandas, his family a.s.sisting him. The negroes were pleased, and big and little came to school. The relations between the whites and blacks were pleasant, and all went well for more than two years, until politics alienated the races, and the negroes demanded a northern teacher or one of their own color.[1242] The schools at Huntsville, Mobile, Montgomery, Selma, Tusc.u.mbia, Stevenson, and Athens, where troops were stationed, were reserved for the northern teachers who were sent by the various aid societies. The disturbing influence of the teachers was thus openly acknowledged. The Bureau cooperated by furnis.h.i.+ng buildings, paying rent, and making repairs, and, in some instances, by giving money or supplies.[1243]

The statistics of the Bureau schools are confused and incomplete. In 1866 one report states that there were 8 schools with 31 teachers and 1338 pupils under the control of the Bureau. General Swayne's list includes the schools at the various places named above, and reports 43 schools in 23 of the 52 counties, with 68 teachers and a maximum enrolment of 3220 pupils--the average being much less.[1244] Buckley's report for March 15, 1867, gives the number of negro schools of all kinds as 68 day schools and 27 night schools. The total enrolment for the winter months had been 5352; the average attendance, 4217. At this time the Bureau was supporting 38 day schools, 19 night schools, and paying 49 teachers. Benevolent societies under supervision of the Bureau were conducting 21 day schools, 7 night schools, with 36 teachers and a total enrolment of 2157 pupils.

Besides these there were 10 private schools with 443 pupils. In all the schools, there were 75 white and 20 negro teachers. There were more than 100,000 negro children of school age in the state who were not reached by these schools.

The following table, compiled from the semiannual reports on Bureau schools in Alabama, will show the slight extent of the educational work of the Bureau. The list includes all the schools in charge of the Bureau, or which received aid from the Bureau.

======================================================================== JULY 1, JULY 1, JAN. 1, JULY 1, JULY 1, 1867 1868 1869 1869 1870 -------------------- --------- ---------- --------- --------- ---------- Day schools 122 59 33 79 23 Night schools 53 19 2 1 4 Private schools (negro teachers) 8 22 4 1 -- Semi-private 25 48 25 55 2 Teachers transported by Bureau 122 22 29 3 -- School buildings owned by negroes 27 13 1 4 11 School buildings owned by Bureau 38 36 29 66 -- White teachers 126 67 49 65? -- Negro teachers 24 28 12 23? -- White pupils (refugees) 23 -- -- -- -- Black pupils 9,799 4,040 3,330 5,131 2,110 Tuition paid by negroes $1,542.00 $3,206.56 $1,431.50 $1,248.95 $1,446.30 Bureau paid for tuition 6,693.00 2,097.73 1,219.75 2,938.50 22,559.88 Bureau paid for school expenses 18,685.07 ------ ------ ------ ------ Total expenditures 8,235.00 6,463.72 2,723.25 4,187.45 240,061.18 ========================================================================

These statistics showing expenditures are not complete, but they are given as they are in the reports, which are carelessly made from carelessly kept and defective records. There was a disposition on the part of the Bureau to claim all the schools possible in order to show large numbers. Many of these so-called schools were in reality only Sunday-schools,--that is, they were in session only on Sundays,--(and the missionary Sunday-schools were counted), and were not as good as the Sunday-schools which for years before the war had been conducted among the negroes by the different churches. The Bureau did not consider of importance the private plantation and mission schools supported by the native whites, nor the state schools, which largely outnumbered the Bureau schools, but only those aided in some way by itself. The schools entirely under the control of the Bureau had small enrolment. a.s.sistance was given to all the schools taught by northern missionaries, to some taught by native whites, and to some taught by negroes. It was given in the form of buildings, repairs, supplies, and small appropriations of money for salaries. Rent was paid by the Bureau for school buildings not owned by the schools or by the Bureau. Accounts were carelessly kept, and after General Swayne left, if not before, abuses crept in. At least one of the aid societies received money from the Bureau, and its representatives established a reputation for crookedness that was retained after the Bureau was a thing of the past. This society,--The American Missionary a.s.sociation,--along with other work among the negroes, carried on a crusade against the Catholic Church which was endeavoring to work in the same field. Church work and educational work were not separated. A building in Mobile, valued at $20,000, was given by the Bureau to the a.s.sociation as a training school for negro teachers. The society charged the Bureau rent on this building, and there were other similar cases where the Bureau paid rent on its own buildings which were used by the aid societies.[1245]

As already stated, for two years there was little or no opposition by the whites to the education of the negro, and to some extent they even favored and aided it. The story of southern opposition to the schools originated with the lower cla.s.s of agents, missionaries, and teachers. Of course, to a person who had taken the abolitionist programme in good faith, it was incomprehensible that the southern whites could entertain any kindly or liberal feelings toward the blacks. But Buckley reported, as late as March 15, 1867, that the native whites favored the undertaking, and that no difficulty was experienced in getting southern whites to teach negro schools. Some of these teachers were graduates of the State University, some had been county superintendents of education. Crippled Confederate soldiers and the widows of soldiers sought for positions in the schools.[1246] There were also some northern whites of common sense and good character engaged in teaching these Bureau schools. But too many of the latter considered themselves missionaries whose duty it was to show the southern people the error of their sinful ways, and who taught the negro the wildest of the social, political, and religious doctrines held at that time by the more sentimental friends of the ex-slaves.

The temper and manner and the beliefs in which the northern educator went about the business of educating the negro are shown in the reports and addresses in the proceedings of the National Teachers' a.s.sociation from 1865 to 1875. The crusade of the teachers in the South was directed by the people represented in this a.s.sociation, and its members went out as teachers. Some of the sentiments expressed were as follows: Education and Reconstruction were to go hand in hand, for the war had been one of "education and patriotism against ignorance and barbarism."[1247] "The old slave states [were] to be a missionary ground for the national schoolmaster,"[1248] and knowledge and intellectual culture were to be spread over this region that lay hid in darkness.[1249] There was a demand for a national school system to force a proper state of affairs upon the South, for free schools were necessary, they declared, to a republican form of government, and the free school system should be a part of Reconstruction. The education of the whites as well as the blacks should be in the future a matter of national concern, because the "old rebels"

had been sadly miseducated, and they had been able to rule only because others were ignorant and had been purposely kept in ignorance. Much commiseration was expressed for "the poor white trash" of the South. The "rebels" were still disloyal, and, as one speaker said, must be treated as a farmer does stumps, that is, they must be "worked around and left to rot out." The old "slave lords" must be driven out by the education of the people, and no distinction in regard to color should be allowed in the schools. The work of education must be directed by the North, for only the North had correct ideas in regard to education. Nothing good was found in the old southern life; it was bad and must give way to the correct northern civilization. The work of "The Christian Hero" was praised, and it was declared that it ought to inspire an epic even greater than the immortal epic of Homer.[1250]

The missionary teachers who came South were supported by this sentiment in the North, and they could not look with friendly eyes upon anything done by the southern whites for the negroes. Altogether there were not many of these heralds of light, and it was a year before the character of their teaching became generally known to the whites or its results were plainly seen. Their dislike for all things southern was heartily reciprocated by the native whites, who soon acquired a dislike for the northern teacher which became second nature. The negro was taught by the missionary educators that he must distrust the whites and give up all habits and customs that would remind him of his former condition; he must not say master and mistress nor take off his hat when speaking to a white person.

In teaching him not to be servile, they taught him to be insolent. The missionary teachers regarded themselves as the advance guard of a new army of invasion against the terrible South. In recent years a Hampton Inst.i.tute teacher has expressed the situation as follows: "When the combat was over and the Yankee schoolma'ams followed in the train of the northern armies, the business of educating the negroes was a continuation of hostilities against the vanquished, and was so regarded to a considerable extent on both sides." The North in a few years became disappointed and indifferent, especially after the negro began to turn again to the southern whites.[1251]

The negro schools felt the influence of the politics of the day, besides suffering from the results of the teachings of the northern pedagogues.

Buckley made a report early in 1867, stating that conditions were favorable. On July 1, 1868, Rev. R. D. Harper, "Superintendent of Education," reported that there was a reaction against negro schools; that the whites were now hostile to the negro schools on account of their teachers, who, the whites claimed, upheld the doctrines of social and political equality; the negroes were too much interested in politics in 1867 and 1868, and spent their money in the campaigns; the teachers of the negro schools were intimidated, ostracized from society, and could not find board with the white people. Because of this, he said, some schools had been broken up. The civil authorities, he declared, winked at the intimidation of the teachers.[1252] Beecher, the a.s.sistant Commissioner and "Superintendent of Education," reported that the schools had been supported on confiscated Confederate property until 1869, and that this source of supply being exhausted, the teachers were returning to the North. He reported that 100,000 children had never been inside a schoolhouse. The night schools were not successful because the negroes were unable to keep awake. A year later, Beecher reported that the schools were recovering from unfavorable conditions, and that some of the teachers who had proven to be immoral and incompetent had been discharged.

The last reports (1870) stated that there was less opposition by the whites to the Bureau schools.[1253] This can be partly accounted for by the fact that the majority of the obnoxious northern teachers had returned to the North or had been discharged. The best ones, who had come with high hopes for the negroes, sure that the blacks needed only education to make them the equal of the whites, were bitterly disappointed, and in the majority of cases they gave up the work and left. Not all of them were of good character and a number were discharged for incompetency or immorality; others were coa.r.s.e and rude. The respectable southern whites resigned as soon as the results of the teaching of the outsiders began to be realized, and those who remained were beyond the pale of society. The white people came to believe, and too often with good reason, that the alien teachers stood for and taught social and political equality, intermarriage of the races, hatred and distrust of the southern whites, and love and respect for the northern deliverer only. Social ostracism forced the white teachers to be content with negro society. Naturally they became more bitter and incendiary in their utterances and teachings. Some negroes were only too quick to learn such sentiments, and the generally insolent behavior of the negro educated under such conditions was one of the causes of reaction against negro education. The hostility against negro schools was especially strong among the more ignorant whites, and during the Ku Klux movement these people burned a number of schoolhouses and drove the teachers from the country where a few years before they had been welcomed by some and tolerated by all.

The results of the attempts by the Bureau and the missionary societies to educate the negro were almost wholly bad. DuBois makes the astonis.h.i.+ng statement that the Bureau established the free public school system in the South.[1254] It is true that some of the schools then established have survived, but there would have been many more schools to-day had these never existed. For the whites the public school system of Alabama existed before the war; the example of the Bureau in no way encouraged its extension for the blacks; reconstructive educational ideals caused a reaction against general public education. In 1865 to 1866 the thinking people of the state, such men as Dr. J. L. M. Curry and Bishop McTyeire, were heartily in favor of the education of the negro, and all the churches were also in favor of giving it a trial. As conditions were at that time, even the best plan for the education of the negro by alien agencies would have failed. General Swayne hoped to use both northern and southern teachers, but it was not possible that the temper of either party would permit cooperation in the work. Buckley seems to have had glimmerings of this fact, when he tried to get southern teachers for the schools. But the damage was already done. The logical and intentional result of the teachings of the missionaries was to alienate the races. If the negro accepted the doctrine of the equality of all men and the belief in the utter sinfulness of slavery and slaveholders, he at once found that the southern whites were his natural enemies.

Unwise efforts were made to teach the adult blacks, and they were encouraged to believe that all knowledge was in their reach; that without education they would be helpless, and with it they would be the white man's equal. Some of the negroes almost wors.h.i.+pped education, it was to do so much for them. The schools in the cities were crowded with grown negroes who could never learn their letters. All attempts to teach these older ones failed, and the failure caused grievous disappointment to many.

The exercise of common sense by the teachers might have spared them this.

But the average New England teacher began to work as if the negroes were Mayflower descendants. No attention was paid to the actual condition of the negroes and their station in life. False ideas about manual labor were put into their heads, and the training given them had no practical bearing on the needs of life.[1255]

From the table given above it will be seen that the Bureau schools reached only a very small proportion of the negro children. The missionary schools not connected with the Bureau were few. It is likely that for five years there were not more than two hundred northern teachers in the state, yet the effect of their work was, in connection with the operations of the political and religious missionaries, to make a majority perhaps of the white people hostile to the education of the negro. The crusading spirit of the invaders touched the most sensitive feelings of the southerners, and the insolence and rascality of the educated negroes were taken as natural results of education. The good was obscured by the bad. The innocent missionary suffered for the sins of the violent and incendiary.

The educated black rascal was pointed out as a fair example of negro education. The damage was done, not so much by what was actually taught in the relatively few schools, as by the ideas caught by the entire negro population that came in contact with the missionaries. Naturally the blacks were more likely to accept the radical teachers. A most unfortunate result was the withdrawal of the southern church organizations and of all white southerners from the work of training the negro. The profession had been discredited. One of the hardest tasks of the negro educators of to-day--like Was.h.i.+ngton or Councill--is to undo the work of the aliens who wrought in pa.s.sion and hate a generation before they began. The evil of the Bureau system did not die with that inst.i.tution, but when the reconstructionists undertook to mould anew the inst.i.tutions of the South, the educational methods of the Bureau and its teachers were transferred into the new state system which they helped to discredit.[1256]

Why the Bureau System Failed

There have been many apologies for the Freedmen's Bureau, many a.s.sertions of the necessity for such an inst.i.tution to protect the blacks from the whites. It was necessary, the friends of the inst.i.tution claimed, to prevent reenslavement of the negro, to secure equality before the law, to establish a system of free labor, to relieve want, to force a beginning of education for the negro, to make it safe for northern missionaries and teachers to work among the blacks. It was, of course, not to be expected that the victorious North would leave the negroes entirely alone after the war, and in theory there were only two objections to such an inst.i.tution well conducted,--(1) it was not really needed, and (2) it was, as an inst.i.tution, based on an idea insulting to southern white people. It meant that they were unfit to be trusted in the slightest matter that concerned the blacks. It was based on the theory that there was general hostility between the southern white and the southern black, and that the government must uphold the weaker by establis.h.i.+ng a system of espionage over the stronger. The low characters of the officials made the worst of what would have been under the best agents a bad state of affairs. In 1865 it was necessary for the good of the negro that social and economic laws cease to operate for a while and allow the feelings of sentiment, duty, and grat.i.tude of the Southern whites to work in behalf of the black and enable the latter to make a place for himself in the new order. After the surrender there was, on the part of the whites, a strong feeling of grat.i.tude to the negroes, that was practically universal, for their faithful conduct during the war. The people were ready, because of this and many other reasons, to go to any reasonable lengths to reward the blacks. The Bureau made it impossible for this feeling to find expression in acts. The negro was taken from his master's care and in alien schools and churches taught that in all relations of life the southern white man was his enemy. The whites came to believe that negro education was worse than a failure. The southern churches lost all opportunity to work among the negroes. Friendly relations gave way to hostility between the races.

The better elements in southern society that were working for the good of the black were paralyzed and the worst element remained active. The friends.h.i.+p of the native whites was of more value to the blacks than any amount of theoretical protection against inequalities in legislation and justice. Finally, the claim that the Bureau was essential in establis.h.i.+ng a system of free labor is ridiculous. The reports of the Bureau officials themselves show clearly, though not consciously, that the new labor system was being worked out according to the fundamental economic laws of supply and demand, and largely in spite of the opposition of the Bureau with its red tape-measures. The Bureau labor policy finally gave way everywhere before the unauthorized but natural system that was evolved.[1257]

PART V

CONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION

CHAPTER XII

MILITARY GOVERNMENT UNDER THE RECONSTRUCTION ACTS

SEC. I. THE ADMINISTRATION OF GENERAL POPE

The Military Reconstruction Bills

The Radicals in Congress triumphed over the moderate Republicans, the Democrats, and the President, when, on March 2, 1867, they succeeded in pa.s.sing over the veto the first of the Reconstruction Acts. This act reduced the southern states to the status of military provinces and established the rule of martial law. After a.s.serting in the preamble that no legal governments or adequate protection for life and property existed in Alabama and other southern states, the act divided the South into five military districts, subject to the absolute control of the central government, that is, of Congress.[1258] Alabama, with Georgia and Florida, const.i.tuted the Third Military District. The military commander, a general officer, appointed by the President, was to carry on the government in his province. No state interference was to be allowed, though the provisional civil administration might be made use of if the commander saw fit.

Offenders might be tried by the local courts or by military commissions, and except in cases involving the death penalty, there was no appeal beyond the military governor. This rule of martial law was to continue until the people[1259] should adopt a const.i.tution providing for enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the negro and for the disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of such whites as would be excluded by the proposed Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Const.i.tution. As soon as this const.i.tution should be ratified by the new electorate (a majority voting in the election) and the const.i.tution approved by Congress, and the legislature elected under the new const.i.tution should ratify the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, then representatives from the state were to be admitted to Congress upon taking the "iron-clad" test oath of July 2, 1862.[1260] And until so reconstructed the present civil government of the state was provisional only and might be altered, controlled, or abolished, and in all elections under it the negro must vote and those who would be excluded by the proposed Fourteenth Amendment must be disfranchised.[1261]

The President at once (March 11, 1867) appointed General George H. Thomas to the command of the Third Military District, with headquarters at Montgomery, but the work was not to General Thomas's liking, and at his request he was relieved, and on March 15 General Pope was appointed in his place.[1262] Pope was in favor of extreme measures in dealing with the southern people and stated that he understood the design of the Reconstruction Acts to be "to free the southern people from the baleful influence of old political leaders."[1263]

The act of March 2 did not provide for forcing Reconstruction upon the people. If they wanted it, they might initiate it through the provisional governments, or if they preferred, they might remain under martial law.

While all people were anxious to have the state restored to the Union, most of the whites saw that to continue under martial law, even when administered by Pope, was preferable to Reconstruction under the proposed terms. Consequently the movement toward Reconstruction was made by a very small minority of the people and had no chance whatever of making any headway.

Therefore, in order to hasten the restoration of the states and to insure the proper political complexion of the new regime, Congress a.s.sumed control of the administration of the law of March 2, by the supplementary act of March 23, 1865. "To facilitate restoration" the commander of the district was to cause a registration of all men over twenty-one not disfranchised by the act of March 2, who could take the prescribed oath[1264] before the registering officers. The commander was then to order an election for the choice of delegates to a convention. He was to apportion the delegates according to the registered voting population. If a majority voted against holding the convention, it should not be held.

The boards of registration, appointed by the commanding general, were to consist of three loyal persons. They were to have entire control of the registration of voters, and the elections and returns which were to be made to the military governor. They were required to take the "iron-clad"

test oath, and the penalties of perjury were to be visited upon official or voter who should take the oath falsely. After the convention should frame a const.i.tution, the military commander should submit it to the people for ratification or rejection. The same board of registration was to hold the election. If the Const.i.tution should be ratified by a majority of the votes cast in the election where a majority of the registered voters voted, and the other conditions of the act of March 2 having been complied with, the state should be admitted to representation in Congress.[1265]

Pope a.s.sumes Command

On April 1, 1867, General Pope arrived in Montgomery and a.s.sumed command of the Third Military District. General Swayne was continued in command of Alabama as a sub-district. Pope announced that the officials of the provisional government would be allowed to serve out their terms of office, provided the laws were impartially administered by them. Failure to protect the people without distinction in their rights of person and property would result in the interference of the military authorities.

Civil officials were forbidden to use their influence against congressional reconstruction. No elections were to be held unless negroes were allowed to vote and the whites disfranchised as provided for in the act of March 2. However, all vacancies then existing or which might occur before registration was completed would be filled by military appointment.

The state militia was ordered to disband.[1266] General Swayne proclaimed that he, having been intrusted with the "administration of the military reconstruction bill" in Alabama, would exact a literal compliance with the requirements of the Civil Rights Bill. All payments for services rendered the state during the war were peremptorily forbidden.[1267] The _Herald_ correspondent reported that Pope's early orders were favorably received by the conservative press of Alabama, and that there was no opposition of any kind manifested. The people did not seem to realize what was in store for them. The army thought necessary to crush the "rebellious" state was increased by a few small companies only, and now consisted of fourteen companies detached from the Fifteenth and the Thirty-third Infantry and the Fifth Cavalry, amounting in all to 931 men, of whom eight companies were in garrison in the a.r.s.enal at Mount Vernon and the forts at Mobile.[1268] The rest were stationed at Montgomery, Selma, and Huntsville.

Writing to Grant on April 2, Pope stated that the civil officials were all active secessionists and would oppose Reconstruction. But the people were ready for Reconstruction, which he predicted would be speedy in Alabama.

Five days later he wrote that there would be no trouble in Alabama; that Governor Patton and nearly all the civil officials and most of the prominent men of the state were in favor of the congressional Reconstruction and were canva.s.sing the state in favor of it.[1269] He was evidently of changeable opinions. However, he was so impressed with the goodness of Alabama and the badness of Georgia, that, in order to be near the most difficult work, he asked Grant to have headquarters removed to Atlanta, which was done on April 11.[1270]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FEDERAL COMMANDERS, Who ruled the State, 1865-1868.

GENERAL GEORGE H. THOMAS, in command of the district including Alabama, 1864-1867.

GENERAL WAGER SWAYNE, a.s.sistant Commissioner of Freedmen's Bureau.