Twenty Years of Congress Volume Ii Part 27

Fessenden at that time," said Mr. Davis, "was not only a young man of eminent ability and attainments, but he was warm-hearted, frank, honorable, eminently conscientious. His health was then good, and he was always bright and genial: sometimes he showed the lambent play of pa.s.sion and of fire."

--His eulogies in both branches of Congress were many. Mr. Hamlin, long his colleague, had been a student in his law office, and placed him in the front rank of American senators. Mr. Trumbull presented him as he was in 1855, when they first met in a Senate of sixty-two members, of whom only fifteen were Republicans. Mr. Williams of Oregon described him as "towering in mind among those around him, like Saul in form among his countrymen." In the House, Mr. Lynch, from his own city, gave the home estimate of Mr. Fessenden's character. Mr. Peters eulogized him for his eminent professional rank; and Mr. Hale described him as a man "who never kept himself before the people by eccentric forces, and went in quest of no popularity that had to be bought by time-serving." Words of tenderness and affection were spoken of him by men whose temperament was as reserved and undemonstrative as his own.

--"A truer, kinder heart," said Henry B. Anthony, "beats in no living breast than that which now lies cold and pulseless in the dead frame of William Pitt Fessenden."

[(1) A few extracts from Mr. Bayard's speech of July 9, 1863, at Dover, Del., will exhibit his spirit of disloyalty to the Union of the States.

Mr. Bayard said,--

"And is such a war necessary for the peace and happiness of the United States? For half a century we have lived at peace with Great Britain, with her Canadian possession upon our Northern border. Upon the South, Mexico holds her government with no threats of trouble to us or our citizens. _Why, then, may not two American confederacies exist side by side without conflict, each emulating the other in the progress of civilization?_ The coterminous kingdoms of Europe offer many examples of similar peace and prosperity. _With such a sickening alternative as civil war, why should not the experiment at least be made? It is this question we are to pa.s.s upon to-day_." . . .

"If peace will restore and secure these blessings to the people of the United States, even though a number of their former a.s.sociates have gone off under a new and independent organization, _in the name of Heaven let us raise our voice for it!_ Shall this earnest cry for peace be stifled at the bidding of a host of fanatical and cowardly editors, aided by an army of greedy contractors and public leeches, stimulating an ignorant mob to denounce and attack us as traitors and secessionists?" . . .

"You and I are citizens of Delaware. _To her laws and government we owe allegiance. Through our state we owe allegiance to the Federal Government_, of which she is a member. But as State officials can command us to no duty unknown to State laws, neither can a Federal officer claim any authority over us in matters not within his const.i.tutional and legal control. _A palpable infraction of our written charter of government_ by our rulers, justifies disobedience upon the part of a citizen as much as lawful orders are ent.i.tled to loyal compliance."

{But who, as Mr. Webster had asked Mr. Hayne thirty years before, was to judge of "the palpable infraction of our written charter of government?" Was it the Judicial department of that government? Or was it Mr. Bayard and his disloyal a.s.sociates in Delaware to whom he was addressing words of hostility to the National Administration and of infidelity to the Union of the States? It is significant that Mr.

Bayard acknowledged allegiance to the National Government _only as he owed it through the State_. This was the rank heresy upon which the leaders of the Southern rebellion sought their justification.}]

[(2) The full text of the Amendment to the Tenure-of-office Act will be found in Appendix B.]

CHAPTER XIX.

The chief interest in the events of General Grant's first term was divided between questions of a diplomatic character and those arising from the condition of the South after Reconstruction had been completed. The first issue that enlisted popular attention was in regard to the annexation of the Dominican Republic. It was the earliest decisive step of General Grant's policy that attracted the observation of the people. The negotiation was opened on the request of the authorities of San Domingo, and it began about three months after the President's inauguration. In July General O. E. Babc.o.c.k, one of the President's private secretaries, was dispatched to San Domingo upon an errand of which the public knew nothing. He bore a letter of introduction from Secretary Fish, apparently limiting the mission to an inquiry into the conditions, prospects, and resources of the Island.

From its tenor the negotiation of a treaty was not at that time antic.i.p.ated by the State Department. General Babc.o.c.k's mission finally resulted however in a treaty for the annexation of the Republic of Dominica, and a convention for the lease of the bay and peninsula of Samana,--separately negotiated and both concluded on the 29th of November, 1869. The territory included in the Dominican Republic is the eastern portion of the Island of San Domingo, originally known as Hispaniola. It embraces perhaps two-thirds of the whole. The western part forms the Republic of Haiti. With the exception of Cuba, the island is the largest of the West India group. The total area is about 28,000 square miles,--equivalent to Ma.s.sachusetts, New Hamps.h.i.+re, Vermont and Rhode Island combined.

President Grant placed extravagant estimates upon the value of the Territory which he supposed was now acquired under the Babc.o.c.k treaties. In his message to Congress he expressed the belief that the island would yield to the United States all the sugar, coffee, tobacco, and other tropical products which the country would consume. "The production of our supply of these articles," said the President, "will cut off more than $100,000,000 of our annual imports, besides largely increasing our exports." "With such a picture," he added, "it is easy to see how our large debt abroad is ultimately to be extinguished.

With a balance of trade against us (including interest on bonds held by foreigners and money spent by our citizen traveling in foreign lands) equal to the entire yield of precious metals in this country, it is not easy to see how this result is to be otherwise accomplished."

He maintained that "the acquisition of San Domingo will furnish our citizens with the necessities of every-day life at cheaper rates than ever before; and it is in fine a rapid stride towards that greatness which the intelligence, industry, and enterprise of our citizens ent.i.tle this country to a.s.sume among nations."

Earnest as General Grant was in his argument, deeply as his personal feelings were enlisted in the issue, thoroughly as his Administration was committed to the treaty, the Senate on the 30th of June (1870), to his utter surprise, rejected it. The vote was a tie, 28 to 28, as was afterwards disclosed in debate in open Senate. Though the votes of two-thirds of the senators were required to confirm the treaty President Grant was not discouraged. He returned to the subject six months later, in his annual message of December, and discussed the question afresh with apparently renewed confidence in the expediency of the acquisition. "I now firmly believe," he said, "that the moment it is known that the United States have entirely abandoned the project of accepting as part of its own territory the Island of San Domingo, a free port will be negotiated for by European nations in the Bay of Samana, and a large commercial city will spring up, to which we will be tributary without receiving responding benefits. Then will be seen the folly of our rejecting so great a prize. . . . So convinced am I of the advantages to flow from the acquisition of San Domingo, and of the great disadvantages, I might also say calamities, to flow from its non-acquisition, that I believe the subject has only to be investigated to be approved." He recommended that "by joint resolution of the two Houses of Congress, the Executive be authorized to appoint a commission to negotiate a treaty with the authorities of San Domingo for the acquisition of that island, and that an appropriation be made to defray the expenses of such commission."

The subject at once led to discussion in both branches of Congress, in which the hostility to the scheme on the part of some leading men a.s.sumed the tone of personal exasperation towards General Grant. So intense was the opposition that the President's friends in the Senate did not deem it prudent even to discuss the measure which he recommended. As the best that could be done, Mr. Morton of Indiana introduced a resolution empowering the President to appoint three Commissioners to proceed to San Domingo and make certain inquiries into the political condition of the island, and also into its agricultural and commercial value. The Commissioners were to have no compensation.

Their expenses were to be paid, and a secretary was to be provided.

Even in this mild shape the resolution was hotly opposed. It was finally adopted by the Senate, but when it reached the House that body refused to concur except with a proviso that "nothing in this resolution shall be held, understood, or construed as committing Congress to the policy of annexing San Domingo." The Senate concurred in the condition thus attached and the President approved it. It was plain that the President could not carry the annexation scheme; but he courted a searching investigation in order that the course he had pursued might be vindicated by the well-considered judgment of impartial men.

The President's selections for the Commission were wisely made.

Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio, Andrew D. White of New York, and Samuel G.

Howe of Ma.s.sachusetts, were men ent.i.tled to the highest respect, and their conclusions, based upon intelligent investigation, would exert large influence upon public opinion. The Commission at once visited the island (carried thither on a United-States vessel of war), made a thorough examination of all its resources, held conferences with its leading citizens, and concluded that the policy recommended by General Grant should be sustained. The Commissioners corroborated General Grant's a.s.sertion that the island could supply the United States with the sugar, coffee, and other tropical products needed for our consumption; and they upheld the President in his belief that the possession of the island by the United States would by the laws of trade make slave labor in the neighboring islands unprofitable, and render the whole slave and caste systems odious.

In communicating the report, the President made some remarks which had a personal bearing. "The mere rejection by the Senate of a treaty negotiated by the President," said he, "only indicates a difference of opinion among different departments of the Government, without touching the character or wounding the pride of either. But when such rejection takes place simultaneously with charges, openly made, of corruption on the part of the President, or of those employed by him, the case is different. Indeed, in such case the honor of the nation demands investigation. This has been accomplished by the report of the Commissioners, herewith transmitted, and which fully vindicates the purity of motive and action of those who represented the United States in the negotiation. And now my task is finished, and with it ends all personal solicitude upon the subject. My duty being done, yours begins, and I gladly hand over the whole matter to the judgment of the American people and of their representatives in Congress a.s.sembled."

The pointed remarks of the President were understood as referring to the speech made by Mr. Sumner when the resolution for the appointment of the Commission was pending before the Senate. Mr. Sumner had previously conceived a strong dislike to General Grant on account of some personal grievance, either fancied or real; and he debated the resolution in a spirit not at all justified by the subject itself. He spoke of it as "a measure of violence" and a "dance of blood." "In other days," said he, "to carry a project, a President has tried to change a committee: it was James Buchanan. Now we have been called this session to witness a similar endeavor by our President. He was not satisfied with the Committee on Foreign Relations, and wished it changed. He asked first for the removal of the chairman [Mr. Sumner himself]. Somebody told him that this would not be convenient. He then asked for the removal of the senator from Missouri [Mr. Schurz], and he was told that this could not be done without affecting the German vote."

Mr. Sumner continued: "The negotiation for annexation began with a political jockey named Buenaventura Baez; and he had about his two other political jockeys, Casneau and Fabens. These three together, a precious copartners.h.i.+p, seduced into their firm a young officer of ours, who ent.i.tles himself _aide-de-camp to the President of the United States_. Together they got up what was ent.i.tled a protocol, in which the young officer, ent.i.tling himself _aide-de-camp_ to the President, proceeded to make certain promises for the President. I desire to say that there is not one word showing that at the time this _aide-de-camp_, as he called himself, had any t.i.tle of instructions to take this step. If he had, that t.i.tle and that instruction have been withheld.

No inquiry has been able to penetrate it. . . . I ask you," said he, addressing the Vice-President, "do you know any such officer in our government as '_aide-de-camp_ to his Excellency the President of the United States'? Does his name appear in the Const.i.tution, in any statute, in the history of this country anywhere? If it does, then your information is much beyond mine. . . . However, he a.s.sumed a t.i.tle; and it doubtless produced a great effect with Baez, Casneau, and Fabens, the three confederates. They were doubtless pleased with the distinction. It helped on the plan they were engineering. The young _aide-de-camp_ pledged the President as follows: 'His Excellency, General Grant, President of the United States, promises _privately_ to use all his influence, in order that the idea of annexing the Dominican Republic to the United States may acquire such a degree of popularity among members of Congress as will be necessary for its accomplishment.' Shall I read the rest of the doc.u.ment? It is somewhat of the same tenor. There are questions of money in it, cash down, all of which must have been particularly agreeable to the three confederates." At one stage of his bitter arraignment of the Administration Mr. Sumner besought the Vice-President (Mr. Colfax) "as a friend of General Grant to counsel him not to follow the examples of Franklin Pierce, of James Buchanan, and of Andrew Johnson."

After the delivery of this speech General Grant and Senator Sumner held no personal intercourse. Public opinion did not justify the course of Mr. Sumner. It was regarded as an exhibition of temper unworthy of his high position, and his speech was distinguished by a tone not proper to be employed towards the President of the United States. But he had not imputed, as General Grant a.s.sumed, any personal corruption to him. On the contrary he considered the questionable course of General Babc.o.c.k to be without instruction. General Grant's reference in his message to Mr. Sumner's angry arraignment, a part of which is already quoted, closed with a mention of "acrimonious debates in Congress" and "unjust aspersions elsewhere." "No man," said he, "can hope to perform duties so delicate and responsible as appertain to the Presidential office without sometimes incurring the hostility of those who deem their opinions and wishes treated with insufficient consideration." This was a direct personal reference to Mr. Sumner, perfectly understood at that time. General Grant continued: "He who undertakes to conduct the affairs of a great government as a faithful public servant, if sustained by the approval of his own conscience, may rely with confidence upon the candor and intelligence of a free people, whose best interests he has striven to subserve, and can hear with patience the censure of disappointed men."

No further attempt was made by the President to urge the acquisition of San Domingo upon Congress. It was evident that neither the Senate nor House could be induced to approve the scheme, and the Administration was necessarily compelled to abandon it. But defeat did not change General Grant's view of the question. He held to his belief in its expediency and value with characteristic tenacity. In his last annual message to Congress (December, 1876), nearly six years after the controversy had closed, he recurred to the subject, to record once more his approval of it. "If my views," said he, "had been concurred in, the country would be in a more prosperous condition to-day, both politically and financially." He then proceeded to re-state the question, and to sustain it with the argument which he had presented to Congress in 1870 and 1871. His last words were: "I do not present these views now as a recommendation for a renewal of the subject of annexation, but I do refer to it to vindicate my previous action in regard to it."

Though the Reconstruction measures were all perfected before General Grant's election to the Presidency, the necessary Acts prescribed by them had not been completed by all the States. The three which had not been admitted to representation, and had not taken part in the National election,--Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas,--had by the spring of 1870 fully complied with all the requirements, and were therefore admitted to all the privileges which had been accorded to the other States of the South. Virginia was admitted to representation in Congress by the Act of Jan. 26, Mississippi by the Act of Feb. 26, and Texas by the Act of March 30 (1870). It was their own fault, and not the design of the Government, that prevented these States from being included in the same bill with their a.s.sociates in rebellion.

The reconstruction of Georgia, supposed to have been completed the preceding year by the admission of her representatives to the House, was taken up for review at the opening of the Forty-first Congress.

Neither her senators nor representatives were permitted to be sworn, but their credentials were referred in each House to the Committee on Elections. In the judgment of the majority the conduct of Georgia justified this severe course. Her Legislature, after complying with every condition of reconstruction, took an extraordinary and unaccountable step. That body decided that colored men were not ent.i.tled to serve as legislators or to hold any office in Georgia.

They were therefore expelled from their seats, while white men, not eligible to hold office under the Fourteenth Amendment, were retained.

The Fifteenth Amendment was then rejected by the Legislature, composed exclusively of white men. These facts were ascertained before the senators from Georgia were admitted to their seats, and before the Fifteenth Amendment had yet been ratified by the requisite number of States.

Congress took prompt cognizance of this condition of affairs, and pa.s.sed another bill on the 16th of December (1869), declaring "that the exclusion of persons from the Legislature upon the ground of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, would be illegal and revolutionary, and is hereby prohibited." In order to make the prohibition effective, Georgia was required, before her senators and representatives could be seated, to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment to the Const.i.tution. The Legislature of Georgia was accordingly re-a.s.sembled, the colored members resumed their seats, and the Fifteenth Amendment was duly ratified on the 2d of February (1870).

The conditions were considered by some prominent Republicans to be an a.s.sumption of power on the part of Congress, and were therefore opposed actively by Mr. Carpenter in the Senate and Mr. Bingham in the House; but the great body of the party insisted upon them, and the movement had the full sympathy of the President. The course pursued by Georgia made her the last State to be reconstructed. The final Act for her re-admission to the right of representation in Congress was pa.s.sed on the 15th of July, 1870.

The adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment had become in the minds of thinking men an essential link in the chain of reconstruction. The action of Georgia in expelling colored men from the Legislature after her reconstruction was supposed to be complete, roused the country to the knowledge of what was intended by the leading men of the South; and the positive action of Congress roused the leading men of the South to a knowledge of what was intended by Congress. On the 30th of March Secretary Fish issued a proclamation making known to the people of the United States that the Fifteenth Amendment had been ratified by the Legislatures of thirty States and was therefore a part of the Const.i.tution of the United States. New York, which had given her ratification when the Legislature was Republican, attempted at the succeeding session, with the Democratic party in power, to withdraw its recorded a.s.sent; but as in the case of the Fourteenth Amendment, action on the subject was held to be completed when the State officially announced it, and New York was numbered among the States which had ratified the Amendment. The only States opposing it were New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, California, and Oregon. At the time the Amendment was submitted, the Legislatures of these States were under the absolute control of the Democratic party. The hostility of that party to the Fifteenth Amendment was as rancorous as it had been to the Fourteenth. Not a single Democrat voted to ratify it in either branch of Congress, and the Democratic opposition in the State Legislatures throughout the Union was almost equally p.r.o.nounced.(1)

This radical change in the Organic Law of the Republic was regarded by President Grant as so important, that he notified Congress of its official promulgation, by special message. He dwelt upon the character of the Amendment, and addressed words of counsel to both races. "I call the attention of the newly enfranchised race," said he, "to the importance of striving in every honorable manner to make themselves worthy of their new privilege. To the race more favored heretofore by our laws, I would say, Withhold no legal privilege of advancement to the new citizens." He called upon Congress to promote popular education throughout the country by all the means within their Const.i.tutional power, in order that universal suffrage might be based on universal intelligence.

In the same spirit that led to the message of the President, Congress proceeded to enact laws protecting the rights that were guaranteed under the new Const.i.tutional Amendment. On the 31st of May (1870), two months after the Amendment was promulgated, an Act was pa.s.sed "to enforce the right of citizens of the United States to vote in the several States in this Union." Eight months later, on the 28th of February, 1871, an additional Act on the same subject was pa.s.sed.

These statutes were designed to protect, as far as human law can protect, the right of every man in the United States to vote, and they were enacted with special care to arrest the dangers already developing in the South against free suffrage, and to prevent the dangers more ominously though more remotely menacing it. The Republican party was unanimous in support of these measures, while the Democratic party had nearly consolidated their votes against them. It was not often that the line of party was so strictly drawn as at this period and on issues of this character.

As the Reconstruction of each State was completed, the Military Government that was inst.i.tuted in 1867 was withdrawn. The Southern people--at first proclaiming a sense of outrage at the presence of soldiers in time of peace--soon became content with the orderly, just, and fair administration which the commanding generals enforced. Many of the wisest men of the South would have been glad to continue the same form of government, until the pa.s.sions engendered by the war had somewhat cooled and the new relations of the two races had become so amicably adjusted as to remove all danger of conflict between them.

But the course of events did not suggest, and perhaps would not have permitted, an arrangement of this character; and hence the States were left, under the Const.i.tution and laws of the Union, to shape their own destiny.

The presumption was that these States would be obedient to the Const.i.tution and laws. But for this presumption, legislation would be but idle play, and a government of laws would degenerate at once into a government of force. In enacting the Reconstruction Laws Congress proceeded upon the basis of faith in Republican government, as defined so tersely by Mr. Lincoln--_of the people, by the people, for the people_. It had the additional a.s.surance of the acceptance of the terms of Reconstruction by the lawful organizations of the Southern States. And if the presumption of obedience with respect to statute law be general, much stronger should it be with respect to organic law, upon which the entire structure of free government is founded. It was therefore logical for the National administration to a.s.sume, as Reconstruction was completed, that the harmonious working of the Federal government through all its members was formally re-established.

It was a cause of great rejoicing that, after four years of b.l.o.o.d.y war and four years of laborious and careful Reconstruction, every State in the Union had regained its autonomy in the first year of General Grant's Presidency; and that the Government and the people of the Union were ent.i.tled to look forward to peaceful administration, to friendly intercourse, to the cultivation of kindly feeling, to the promotion of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce. The lenity with which the triumphant Union had treated the crime of rebellion--sacrificing no man's life, stripping no man of his property, depriving no man of his personal liberty--gave the Government the right to expect order and the reign of law in the South.

But it was soon disclosed that on the part of the large ma.s.s of those who had partic.i.p.ated in the rebellion, properly speaking, indeed, on the part of the vast majority of the white men of the South, there was really no intention to acquiesce in the legislation of Congress, no purpose to abide by the Const.i.tutional Amendment in good faith. A majority of the white people of the South adopted rather the creed of General Blair, whom they had supported for Vice-President, and regarded themselves justified in opposing, repudiating, and if possible destroying, the governments that had grown up under the protection of the Reconstruction Laws. The re-admission of their States to representation was taken by them only as the beginning of the war in which they would more freely wage conflict against that which was distasteful and, as they claimed, oppressive. It is not to be denied that they had the inherent right, inside of Const.i.tutional limitations, to repeal the laws of their States, and even to change the Const.i.tution itself, if they should do it by prescribed methods and by honest majorities, and should not, in the process, disturb the fundamental conditions upon which the General Government had a.s.sented to their re-admission to the right of representation in Congress. It was not, however, the purpose of the Southern Democrats to be fettered and embarra.s.sed by any such exemplary restraints. By means lawful or unlawful they determined to uproot and overthrow the State governments that had been established in a spirit of loyalty to the Union. They were resolved that the negro should not be a political power in their local governments; that he should not, so far as their interposition could prevent it, exert any influence over elections, either State or national; and that his suffrage, if permitted to exist at all, should be only in the innocent form of a minority.

Seeing this determination, the National Government interposed its strong arm, and a detail of soldiers at the princ.i.p.al points throughout the South gave a certain protection to those whose rights were otherwise in danger of being utterly trodden down. It certainly has never been proved in a single instance that a legal voter in any Southern State was deprived of his right of suffrage by the presence of United-States troops in those states; but the issue was at once made by the Democratic party against the administration of President Grant, that free elections were impossible in the Southern states unless soldiers of the Regular Army were excluded; that their simple presence was a form of coercion absolutely inconsistent with Republican government. Many of them, as they now declared, had been willing to accept a Military government--as it had existed under Reconstruction; but they objected to the presence of troops in States where self-government had been conceded by Congress.

There was undoubtedly an instinctive reluctance among the people of all sections to permit the location of troops in the neighborhood of polling-places. It had happened that in the long-continued strife in Kansas, Republicans complained that the anti-slavery voters felt intimidated by the presence of troops of the Regular Army. The application was, therefore, readily made to the existing case; and it was not unnaturally or inaptly asked whether the presence of the military at the elections of a State of the Union was not even more offensive than their presence at the elections in a Territory of the Union, which was directly under the control of the National Government.

On the abstract issue thus presented the Republicans were placed somewhat at a disadvantage; and yet every white man making the complaint knew that the influence of the troops was not to deprive him of a single right, but was to prevent him from depriving the colored man of all his rights.

Between the effort, therefore, of President Grant's administration to protect free suffrage in the South, and the protest of the Democratic party against protecting it by the military arm of the Government, a physical contest ensued in the Southern States and a political contest throughout the Union. It was perfectly understood, and openly proclaimed, in the South, that the withdrawal of the protection of the National Government from the States lately in rebellion meant the end of suffrage to the colored man, or at least such impairment of its force and influence as practically implied its total destruction. So bitter was the hostility to impartial suffrage, so determined were the men who had lately been in rebellion to concentrate all the political power of the Southern States in their own hands, that vicious organizations, of which the most notable were the Ku-Klux-Klans, were formed throughout the South for the express purpose of depriving the negro of the political rights conferred upon him by law. To effect this purpose they resorted to a series of outrages calculated to inspire the negroes with terror if they attempted to resist the will of white men.

In prosecuting their purposes these clans and organizations hesitated at no cruelty, were deterred by no considerations of law or of humanity. They rode by night, were disguised with masks, were armed as freebooters. They whipped, maimed, or murdered the victims of their wrath. White men who were co-operating with the colored population politically were visited with punishments of excessive cruelty. It was difficult to arrest the authors of these flagrant wrongs. Aside from their disguises, they were protected against inculpating testimony by the fear inspired in the minds of those who might be witnesses; and they were protected even by that portion of the white race who were not willing to join in their excesses. It was well said of the leading members of the clans, that "murder with them was an occupation, and perjury was a pastime." The white man who should give testimony against them did so at the risk of seeing his house burned, of being himself beaten with many stripes; and if the offender had been at all efficient in his hostility, he was, after torture, in many instances, doomed to death.

Congress did its utmost to strengthen the hands of the President in a contest with these desperate elements. By the Act of April 20, 1871, "to enforce the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Const.i.tution of the United States" (commonly known as the Ku-Klux Act, or the Enforcement Act), the President was empowered to go to the extreme of suspending the writ of _habeas corpus_ where peace and order could not otherwise be restored. Before acting under the provisions of that vigorous statute, General Grant gave warning to the Southern people by proclamation of May 3, 1871, that they might themselves, by good behavior, prevent the necessity of its enforcement. "Sensible,"

said the President, "of the responsibility imposed upon the Executive by the Act of Congress to which public attention is now called, and reluctant to call into exercise any of the extraordinary powers thereby conferred upon me, except in case of imperative necessity, I do, nevertheless, deem it my duty to make known that I will not hesitate to exhaust the powers thus vested in the Executive, whenever and wherever it shall become necessary to do so, for the purpose of securing to all citizens of the United States the peaceful enjoyment of the rights guaranteed to them by the Const.i.tution and laws." The extreme power of suspending the writ of _habeas corpus_ now placed in the President's hands was limited in time, and would necessarily end, if not renewed, at the close of the next regular session of Congress.

But the task of enforcing obedience to laws, when obedience is not in the hearts of the people, is the most difficult undertaking ever imposed upon the governing power. If the South had been standing alone, if it had not been receiving daily words of encouragement, of aid, and of comfort, from the North, if it had not seen that the Democratic party in Congress was fighting its battle, it might have yielded to the prestige and power of the National Government. But the situation invited, urged, induced men, to persist. They clearly saw, as their co-operating friends in the North had seen long before, that a compact vote of all the Southern States could be used as the sure foundation of a formidable, and, as they hoped, irresistible political power. It was this hope which nerved their arms for every encounter: it was this prospect of domination that steadily encouraged them to continue a battle which must at times have seemed desperate indeed. As the Southern leaders of an earlier day had strenuously endeavored to maintain equality of members.h.i.+p in the Senate, so now their successors promised to themselves such solidification of their electoral vote, as would by its very force attract sufficient strength in the North to restore the South to a position of command in the National Government.

The instinctive hostility of the American people against the use of troops at elections was not the only weapon of offense which the Democratic party was able to use in this prolonged contest. As soon as the war had closed there was a considerable influx of Northern men in the States of the late Confederacy. The original motive which induced the migration was financial and speculative. A belief was prevalent in the North that great profit might be derived from the cotton-culture, and that with the a.s.sured sympathy of the colored men they would be able to command the requisite labor more readily than the old slave masters. As a mere business enterprise cotton-growing at that period, except in a very few instances, proved to be unprofitable.

The complete disorganization of labor throughout the South, consequent upon emanc.i.p.ation, had embarra.s.sed production and added largely to its cost. It would inevitably require time to build up a labor-system based on the new relation of the negro to the white race, and it was the misfortune of the Northern men to embark on their venture at the time of all others when it was least likely to prove remunerative. But these men, though pecuniarily unsuccessful, quickly formed relations of kindness and friends.h.i.+p with the negro race. They addressed them in different tone, treated them in a different manner, from that which they had been accustomed in the past to receive from the white race, and it was natural that a feeling of friends.h.i.+p should grow up between the liberated and those whom they regarded as liberators.

It was soon apparent that, under the protection of the National power and with the numerical superiority of the negroes in several States (certain Southern leaders being under political disabilities), it would be easy for the loyal white men to obtain control of the local governments. Out of these circ.u.mstances there came into political power the cla.s.s of men known as "Carpet-baggers"--so described from the insulting presumption that the entire worldly estate of each one of the cla.s.s was carried in a carpet-bag, enabling him to fly at any moment of danger from the State whose domestic policy he sought to control. The prospect of the success of the new movement induced a number of former rebels to join in it, and to them the epithet of "Scalawag" was applied. This combination was not without disadvantages to the negro. By as much as it gave strength to his political organization, it increased the hatred and desperation of the ruling element among the whites, and demonstrated that the negro could secure the rights conferred upon him by the Const.i.tution and laws, only through violence and bloodshed.

Many of those denounced under the epithet of Carpet-bagger and Scalawag were honorable and true men; but a majority of these were un.o.btrusive and not brought strongly into popular view, while many of those who became entrusted with the power of State governments and found themselves unexpectedly in possession of great authority were not morally equal to its responsibility. The consequence was that some of the States had wretched governments, officered by bad men, who misled the negro and engaged in riotous corruption. Their transgressions were made so conspicuous that the Republican leaders of other Southern States, who were really trying to act their part worthily and honorably, were obscured from view, and did not obtain a fair hearing at the bar of public opinion. The government of South Carolina, under its series of Republican administrations, was of such character as brought shame upon the Republican party, exposed the negro voters to unmerited obloquy, and thus wrought for the cause of free government and equal suffrage in the South incalculable harm. These Southern State governments proved a source of angry contention inside the Republican party in the North, and thus brought one more calamity to the negro, and gave one more advantage to the rebel element of the South that so persistently sought for his disfranchis.e.m.e.nt.

The hostility of Southern men to Carpet-bag rule was instinctive and irrepressible. The failure of the rebellion left its partic.i.p.ants stripped of property, depressed in spirit, angry and unreconciled.

Northern men appearing among them recalled in an offensive manner the power that had overcome and as they thought humiliated them,--recalled it before time had made them familiar with the new order of things, before they could subject themselves to the discipline of adversity, and gracefully accept the inevitable. Even the most decorous and considerate behavior on the part of these men would perhaps have failed to conciliate the Southern population. But while unable to do this, they could no doubt in due season have secured public confidence if they had administered the trusts confided to them with an eye single to the prosperity and happiness of the people over whom by a strange concurrence of circ.u.mstances they were empowered to rule. If these men had in all cases established as good and trustworthy governments in the South as they had been reared under in the North, they would have conferred upon all the reconstructed States a blessing which as prejudice wore away would have caused their names to be respected and honored. Their governments were however demoralized by the violent and murderous course of the clans organized to resist them. In the play between the two forces,--a government too weak to command respect; a native population too resentful to yield obedience,--a state of social disorder and political chaos resulted, which would in advance have seemed impossible among any people clothed with the right of self-government, and living under a Republic of vast power and prestige.

The Republicans lost in many of the Southern States a valuable support upon which they had counted with confidence. Union men whom no persecution could break and no blandishments could seduce, were to be found in the South at the outbreak of the rebellion. They were men who in a less conspicuous way held the same faith that inspired Andrew Johnson and William G. Brownlow during the war. It was the influence and example of this cla.s.s of men which had contributed to the Union Army so large a number of white soldiers from the rebellious States,--numbering in the aggregate more than one hundred thousand men.