The Sequel of Appomattox Part 8

All the systems devised for handling Negro labor proved to be only partially successful. The laborer was migratory, wanted easy work, with one or two holidays a week, and the privilege of attending political meetings, camp meetings, and circuses. A thrifty Negro could not make headway because his fellows stole from him or his less energetic relations and friends visited him and ate up his substance. One Alabama planter declared that he could not raise a turkey, a chicken, a hog, or a cow; and another a.s.serted that "a hog has no more chance to live among these thieving Negro farmers than a June bug in a gang of puddle ducks." Lands were mortgaged to the supply houses in the towns, the whites gradually deserted the country, and many rice and cotton fields grew up in weeds. Crop stealing at night became a business which no legislation could ever completely stop. A traveler has left the following description of "a model Negro farm" in 1874. The farmer purchased an old mule on credit and rented land on shares or for so many bales of cotton; any old tools were used; corn, bacon, and other supplies were bought on credit, and a crop lien was given; a month later, corn and cotton were planted on soil that was not well broken up; the Negro "would not pay for no guano" to put on other people's land; by turns the farmer planted and fished, plowed and hunted, hoed and frolicked, or went to "meeting." At the end of the year he sold his cotton, paid part of his rent and some of his debt, returned the mule to its owner, and sang:

n.i.g.g.e.r work hard all de year, White man tote de money.

The great landholdings did not break up into small farms as was predicted, though sales were frequent and in 1865 enormous amounts of land were put on the market. After 1867, additional millions of acres were offered at small prices, and tax and mortgage sales were numerous. The result of these operations, however, was a change of landlords rather than a breaking up of large plantations. New men, Negroes, merchants, and Jews became landowners. The number of small farms naturally increased but so in some instances did the land concentrated into large holdings.

It was inevitable that conditions of Negro life should undergo a revolutionary change during the reconstruction. The serious matter of looking out for himself and his family and of making a living dampened the Negro's cheerful spirits. Released from the discipline of slavery and often misdirected by the worst of teachers, the Negro race naturally ran into excesses of petty criminality. Even under the reconstruction governments the proportion of Negro to white criminals was about ten to one. Theft was frequent; arson was the accepted means of revenge on white people; and murder became common in the brawls of the city Negro quarters. The laxness of the marriage relation worked special hards.h.i.+p on the women and children in so many cases deserted by the head of the family.

Out of the social anarchy of reconstruction the Negroes emerged with numerous organizations of their own which may have been imitations of the Union League, the Lincoln Brotherhood, and the various church organizations. These societies were composed entirely of blacks and have continued with prolific reproduction to the present day. They were characterized by high names, gorgeous regalia, and frequent parades. "The Brothers and Sisters of Pleasure and Prosperity" and the "United Order of African Ladies and Gentlemen" played a large, and on the whole useful, part in Negro social life, teaching lessons of thrift, insurance, cooperation, and mutual aid.

The reconstructionists were not able in 1867-68 to carry through Congress any provision for the social equality of the races, but in the reconstructed states, the equal rights issue was alive throughout the period. Legislation giving to the Negro equal rights in hotels, places of amus.e.m.e.nts, and common carriers, was first enacted in Louisiana and South Carolina. Frequently the carpetbaggers brought up the issue in order to rid the radical ranks of the scalawags who were opposed to equal rights. In Florida, for example, the carpetbaggers framed a comprehensive Equal Rights Law, pa.s.sed it, and presented it to Governor Reed, who was known to be opposed to such legislation. He vetoed the measure and thus lost the Negro support. Intermarriage with whites was made legal in Louisiana and South Carolina and by court decision was permitted in Alabama and Mississippi, but the Georgia Supreme Court held it to be illegal. Mixed marriages were few, but these were made occasions of exultation over the whites and of consequent ill feeling.

Charles Sumner was a persistent agitator for equal rights. In 1871 he declared in a letter to a South Carolina Negro convention that the race must insist not only upon equality in hotels and on public carriers but also in the schools. "It is not enough," he said, "to provide separate accommodations for colored citizens even if in all respects as good as those of other persons.... The discrimination is an insult and a hindrance, and a bar, which not only destroys comfort and prevents equality, but weakens all other rights. The right to vote will have new security when your equal right in public conveyances, hotels, and common schools, is at last established; but here you must insist for yourselves by speech, pet.i.tion, and by vote." The Southern whites began to develop the "Jim Crow" theory of "separate but equal" accommodations. Senator Hill of Georgia, for example, thought that hotels might have separate divisions for the two races, and he cited the division in the churches as proof that the Negro wanted separation.

About 1874, it was plain that the last radical Congress was nearly ready to enact social equality legislation. This fact turned many of the Southern Unionist cla.s.s back to the Democratic party, there to remain for a long time. In 1875, as a sort of memorial to Sumner, Congress pa.s.sed the Civil Rights Act, which gave to Negroes equal rights in hotels, places of amus.e.m.e.nt, on public carriers, and on juries. Some Democratic leaders were willing to see such legislation enacted, because in the first place, it would have little effect except in the Border and Northern States, where it would turn thousands into the Democratic fold, and in the second place, because they were sure that in time the Supreme Court would declare the law unconst.i.tutional. And so it happened.

In regions where the more unprincipled radical leaders were in control, the whites lived at times in fear of Negro uprisings. The Negroes were armed and insolent, and the whites were few and widely scattered. Here and there outbreaks occurred and individual whites and isolated families suffered, but as a rule all such movements were crushed with much heavier loss to the Negroes than to the better organized whites. Nevertheless everlasting apprehension for the safety of women and children kept the white men nervous. General Garnett Andrews remarked about the situation in Mississippi:

"I have never suffered such an amount of anguish and alarm in all my life. I have served through the whole war as a soldier in the army of Northern Virginia, and saw all of it; but I never did experience... the fear and alarm and sense of danger which I felt that time. And this was the universal feeling among the population, among the white people. I think that both sides were alarmed and felt uneasy. It showed itself upon the countenance of the people; it made many of them sick. Men looked haggard and pale, after undergoing this sort of thing for six weeks or a month, and I have felt when I laid [sic] down that neither myself, nor my wife and children were in safety. I expected, and honestly antic.i.p.ated, and thought it highly probable, that I might be a.s.sa.s.sinated and my house set on fire at any time."

By the fires of reconstruction the whites were fused into a more h.o.m.ogeneous society, social as well as political. The former slaveholding cla.s.s continued to be more considerate of the Negro than were the poor whites; but, as misrule went on, all cla.s.ses tended to unite against the Negro in politics. They were tired of reconstruction, new amendments, force bills, Federal troops-tired of being ruled as conquered provinces by the incompetent and the dishonest. Every measure aimed at the South seemed to them to mean that they were considered incorrigible and unworthy of trust, and that they were being made to suffer for the deeds of irresponsible whites. And, to make matters worse, strong opposition to proscriptive measures was called fresh rebellion. "When the Jacobins say and do low and bitter things, their charge of want of loyalty in the South because our people grumble back a little seems to me as unreasonable as the complaint of the little boy: 'Mamma, make Bob 'have hisself. He makes mouths at me every time I hit him with my stick.'"*

* Usually ascribed to General D. H. Hill of North Carolina, and quoted in "The Land We Love", vol. 1, p. 146.

Probably this burden fell heavier on the young men, who had life before them and who were growing up with diminished opportunities. Sidney Lanier, then an Alabama school teacher, wrote to Bayard Taylor: "Perhaps you know that with us of the young generation in the South, since the war, pretty much the whole of life has been merely not dying." Negro and alien rule was a constant insult to the intelligence of the country. The taxpayers were nonpartic.i.p.ants in the affairs of government. Some people withdrew entirely from public life, went to their farms or plantations, kept away from towns and from speechmaking, waiting for the end to come. There were some who refused for several years to read the newspapers, so unpleasant was the news. The good feeling produced by the magnanimity of Grant at Appomattox was destroyed by the severity of his Southern policy when he became President. There was no grat.i.tude for any so-called leniency of the North, no repentance for the war, no desire for humiliation, for sackcloth and ashes, and no confession of wrong. The insistence of the radicals upon obtaining a confession of depravity only made things much worse. Scarcely a measure of Congress during reconstruction was designed or received in a conciliatory spirit.

The new generation of whites was poor, bitter because of persecution, ill-educated, overworked, without a bright future, and shadowed by the race problem. Though their new political leaders were shrewd, narrow, conservative, honest, and parsimonious, the constant fighting of fire with fire scorched all. In the bitter discipline of reconstruction, the pleasantest side of Southern life came to an end. During the war and the consequent reconstruction there was a marked change in Southern temperament toward the severe. Hospitality declined; the old Southern life had never been on a business basis, but the new Southern life now adjusted itself to a stricter economy; the old individuality was partially lost; but cla.s.s distinctions were less obvious in a more h.o.m.ogeneous society. The material evils of reconstruction may be only temporary; state debts may be paid and wasted resources renewed; but the moral and intellectual results of the revolution will be the more permanent.

CHAPTER XIII. RESTORATION OF HOME RULE

The radical program of reconstruction ended after ten years in failure rather because of a change in public opinion in the North than because of the resistance of the Southern whites. The North of 1877, indeed, was not the North of 1867. A more tolerant att.i.tude toward the South developed as the North pa.s.sed through its own period of misgovernment when all the large cities were subject to "ring rule" and corruption, as in New York under "Boss" Tweed and in the District of Columbia under "Boss" Shepherd. The Federal civil service was discredited by the scandals connected with the Sanborn contracts, the Whisky Ring, and the Star Routes, while some leaders in Congress were under a cloud from the "Salary Grab" and Credit Mobilier disclosures.*

* See "The Boss and the Machine", by Samuel P. Orth in "The Chronicles of America".

The marvelous material development of the North and West also drew attention away from sectional controversies. Settlers poured into the plains beyond the Mississippi and the valleys of the Far West; new industries sprang up; unsuspected mineral wealth was discovered; railroads were built. Not only bankers but taxpaying voters took an interest in the financial readjustments of the time. Many thousand people followed the discussions over the funding and refunding of the national debt, the retirement of the greenbacks, and the proposed lowering of tariff duties. Yet the Black Friday episode of 1869, when Jay Gould and James Fisk cornered the visible supply of gold, and the panic of 1873 were indications of unsound financial conditions.

These new developments and the new domestic problems which they involved all tended to divert public thought from the old political issues arising out of the war. Foreign relations, too, began to take on a new interest. The Alabama claims controversy with England continued to hold the public attention until finally settled by the Geneva Arbitration in 1872. President Grant, as much of an expansionist as Seward, for two years (1869-71) tried to secure Santo Domingo or a part of it for an American naval base in the West Indies. But the United States had race problems enough already and the Senate, led by Sumner, refused to sanction the acquisition. Relations with Spain were frequently strained on account of American filibustering expeditions to aid Cuban insurgents. Spain repeatedly charged the United States with laxness toward such violations of international law; and President Grant, seeing no other way out, recommended in 1869 and again in 1870 that the Cuban insurgents be recognized as belligerents, but still the Senate held back. The climax came in 1873, when the Spanish authorities in Cuba captured on the high seas the Virginius* with a filibustering expedition on board and executed fifty-three of the crew and pa.s.sengers, among them eight Americans. For a time war seemed imminent, but Spain acted quickly and effected a peaceable settlement.

* See "The Path of Empire", by Carl Russell Fish (in "The Chronicles of America"), p. 119.

It became evident soon after 1867 that the issues involved in reconstruction were not in themselves sufficient to hold the North solidly Republican. Toward Negro suffrage, for example, Northern public opinion was on the whole unfriendly. In 1867, the Negro was permitted to vote only in New York and in New England, except in Connecticut. Before 1869, Negro suffrage was rejected in Connecticut, Wisconsin, Kansas, Ohio, Maryland, Missouri, Michigan, and Minnesota. The Republicans in their national platform of 1868 went only so far as to say that, while Negro suffrage was to be forced upon the South, it must remain a local question in the North. The Border States rapidly lined up with the white South on matters of race, church, and politics.

It was not until 1874, however, that the changing opinion was made generally effective in the elections. The skillfully managed radical organization held large majorities in every Congress from the Thirty-ninth to the Forty-third, and the electoral votes in 1868 and 1879 seemed to show that the conservative opposition was insignificant. But these figures do not tell the whole story. Even in 1864, when Lincoln won by nearly half a million, the popular vote was as eighteen to twenty-two, and four years later Grant, the most popular man in the United States, had a majority of only three hundred thousand over Seymour, and this majority and more came from the new Negro voters. Four years later with about a million Negro voters available and an opposition not pleased with its own candidate, Grant's majority reached only seven hundred thousand. At no one time in elections did the North p.r.o.nounce itself in favor of all the reconstruction policies. The break, signs of which were visible as early as 1869, came in 1874 when the Republicans lost control of the House of Representatives.

Strength was given to the opposition because of the dissatisfaction with President Grant, who knew little about politics and politicians. He felt that his Cabinet should be made up of personal friends, not of strong advisers, and that the military ideal of administration was the proper one. He was faithful but undiscriminating in his friends.h.i.+ps and frequently chose as his a.s.sociates men of vulgar tastes and low motives; and he showed a naive love of money and an undisguised admiration for rich men such as Gould and Fisk. His appointees were often incompetent friends or relatives, and his cynical att.i.tude toward civil service reform lost him the support of influential men. When forced by party exigencies to select first-cla.s.s men for his Cabinet, he still preferred to go for advice to practical politicians. On the Southern question he easily fell under control of the radicals, who in order to retain their influence had only to convince his military mind that the South was again in rebellion, and who found it easy to distract public opinion from political corruption by "waving the b.l.o.o.d.y s.h.i.+rt." Dissatisfaction with his Administration, it is true, was confined to the intellectuals, the reformers, and the Democrats, but they were strong enough to defeat him for a second term if they could only be organized.

The Liberal Republican movement began in the West about 1869 with demands for amnesty and for reform, particularly in the civil service, and it soon spread rapidly over the North. When it became certain that the "machine" would renominate Grant, the liberal movement became an anti-Grant party. The "New Departure" Democrats gave comfort and prospect of aid to the Liberal Republicans by declaring for a constructive, forward-looking policy in place of reactionary opposition. The Liberal chiefs were led to believe that the new Democratic leaders would accept their platform and candidates in order to defeat Grant. The princ.i.p.al candidates for the Liberal Republican nomination were Charles Francis Adams, Lyman Trumbull, Gratz Brown, David Davis, and Horace Greeley. Adams was the strongest candidate but was jockeyed out of place and the nomination was given to Horace Greeley, able enough as editor of the "New York Tribune" but impossible as a candidate for the presidency. The Democratic party accepted him as their candidate also, although he had been a lifelong opponent of Democratic principles and policies. But disgusted Liberals either returned to the Republican ranks or stayed away from the polls, and many Democrats did likewise. Under these circ.u.mstances the reelection of Grant was a foregone conclusion. There was certainly a potential majority against Grant, but the opposition had failed to organize, while the Republican machine was in good working order, the Negroes were voting, and the Enforcement Acts proved a great aid to the Republicans in the Southern States.

One good result of the growing liberal sentiment was the pa.s.sage of an Amnesty Act by Congress on May 22, 1872. By statute and by the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress had refused to recognize the complete validity of President Johnson's pardons and amnesty proclamations, and all Confederate leaders who wished to regain political rights had therefore to appeal to Congress. During the Forty-first Congress (1869-71) more than three thousand Southerners were amnestied in order that they might hold office. These, however, were for the most part scalawags; the most respectable whites would not seek an amnesty which they could secure only by self-stultification.* It was the pressure of public opinion against white disfranchis.e.m.e.nt and the necessity for meeting the Liberal Republican arguments which caused the pa.s.sage of the Act of 1872. By this act about 150,000 whites were reenfranchised, leaving out only about five hundred of the most prominent of the old regime, most of whom were never restored to citizens.h.i.+p. Both Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis died disfranchised.

* The machinery of government and politics was all in radical hands-the carpetbaggers and scalawags, who were numerous enough to fill practically all the offices. These men were often able leaders and skillful managers, and they did not intend to surrender control; and the black race was obedient and furnished the votes. In 1868, with Virginia, Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas unrepresented, the first radical contingent in Congress from the South numbered 41, of whom 10 out of 12 senators and 26 out of 32 representatives were carpetbaggers. There were two lone conservative Congressmen. A few months later, in 1869, there were 64 radical representatives from the South, 20 senators and 44 members of the House of Representatives. In 1877 this number had dwindled to two senators and four representatives. The difference between these figures measures in some degree the extent of the undoing of reconstruction within the period of Grant's Administration.

How the Southern whites escaped from Negro domination has often been told and may here be sketched only in outline. The first States regained from radicalism were those in which the Negro population was small and the black vote large enough to irritate but not to dominate. Although Northern sentiment, excited by the stories of "Southern outrage," was then unfavorable, the conservatives of the South, by organizing a "white man's party" and by the use of Ku Klux methods, made a fight for social safety which they won nearly everywhere, and, in addition, they gained political control of several States-Tennessee in 1869, Virginia in 1869-1870, and North Carolina and Georgia in 1870. They almost won Louisiana in 1868 and Alabama in 1870, but the alarmed radicals came to the rescue of the situation with the Fifteenth Amendment and the Enforcement Laws of 1870-1871. With more troops and a larger number of deputy marshals, it seemed that the radicals might securely hold the remaining states. Arrests of conservatives were numerous, plundering was at its height, the Federal Government was interested and was friendly to the new Southern rulers, and the carpetbaggers and scalawags feasted, troubled only by the disposition of their Negro supporters to demand a share of the spoils. Although the whites made little gain from 1870 to 1874, the states already rescued became more firmly conservative; white counties here and there in the black states voted out the radicals; a few more representatives of the whites got into Congress; and the Border States ranged themselves more solidly with the conservatives.

But while the Southern whites were becoming desperate under oppression, public opinion in the North was at last beginning to affect politics. The elections of 1874 resulted in a Democratic landslide of which the Administration was obliged to take notice. Grant now grew more responsive to criticism. In 1875 he replied to a request for troops to hold down Mississippi: "The whole public are tired out with these annual autumnal outbreaks in the South and the great majority are ready now to condemn any interference on the part of the Government." As soon as conditions in the South were better understood in the North, ready sympathy and political aid were offered by many who had hitherto acted with the radicals. The Ku Klux report as well as the newspaper writings and the books of J. S. Pike and Charles Nordhoff, both former opponents of slavery, opened the eyes of many to the evil results of Negro suffrage. Some who had been considered friends of the Negro, now believing that he had proven to be a political failure, coldly abandoned him and turned their altruistic interests to other objects more likely to succeed. Many real friends of the Negro were alarmed at the evils of the reconstruction and were anxious to see the corrupt political leaders deprived of further influence over the race. To others the constantly recurring Southern problem was growing stale, and they desired to hear less of it. Within the Republican party in each Southern State, there were serious divisions over the spoils. First it was carpetbagger and Negro against the scalawag; later, when the black leaders insisted that those who furnished the votes must have the larger share of the rewards, the fight became triangular. As a result, by 1874 the Republican party in the South was split into factions and was deserted by a large proportion of its white members.h.i.+p.

The conservative whites, fiercely resentful after their experiences under the enforcement laws and hopeful of Northern sympathy, now planned a supreme effort to regain their former power. Race lines were more strictly drawn; ostracism of all that was radical became the rule; the Republican party in the South, it was apparent, was doomed to be only a Negro party weighed down by the scandal of bad government; the state treasuries were bankrupt, and there was little further opportunity for plunder. These considerations had much to do with the return of scalawags to the "white man's party" and the retirement of carpetbaggers from Southern politics. There was no longer anything in it, they said; let the Negro have it!

It was under these conditions that the "white man's party" carried the elections in Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas in 1874, and Mississippi in 1875. a.s.serting that it was a contest between civilization and barbarism, and that the whites under the radical regime had no opportunity to carry an election legally, the conservatives openly made use of every method of influencing the result that could possibly come within the radical law and they even employed many effective methods that lay outside the law. Negroes were threatened with discharge from employment and whites with tar and feathers if they voted the radical ticket; there were nightriding parties, armed and drilled "white leagues," and mysterious firing of guns and cannon at night; much plain talk a.s.sailed the ears of the radical leaders; and several b.l.o.o.d.y outbreaks occurred, princ.i.p.ally in Louisiana and Mississippi. Louisiana had been carried by the Democrats in the fall of 1872, but the radical returning board had reversed the election. In 1874 the whites rose in rebellion and turned out Kellogg, the usurping Governor, but President Grant intervened to restore him to office. The "Mississippi" or "shot-gun plan"* was very generally employed, except where the contest was likely to go in favor of the whites without the use of undue pressure. The white leaders exercised a moderating influence, but the average white man had determined to do away with Negro government even though the alternative might be a return of military rule. Congress investigated the elections in each State which overthrew the reconstructionists, but nothing came of the inquiry and the population rapidly settled down into good order. After 1875 only three States were left under radical government-Louisiana and Florida, where the returning boards could throw out any Democratic majority, and South Carolina, where the Negroes greatly outnumbered the whites.

* See "The New South", by Holland Thompson (in "The Chronicles of America").

Reconstruction could hardly be a genuine issue in the presidential campaign of 1876, because all except these three reconstructed States had escaped from radical control, and there was no hope and little real desire of regaining them. It was even expected that in this year the radicals would lose Louisiana and Florida to the "white man's party." The leaders of the best element of the Republicans, both North and South, looked upon the reconstruction as one of the prime causes of the moral breakdown of their party; they wanted no more of the Southern issue but planned a forward-looking, constructive reform.

To some of the Republican leaders, however, among whom was James G. Blame, it was clear that the Republican party, with its unsavory record under Grant's Administration, could hardly go before the people with a reform program. The only possible thing to do was to revive some Civil War issue-"wave the b.l.o.o.d.y s.h.i.+rt" and fan the smoldering embers of sectional feeling. Blame met with complete success in raising the desired issue. In January 1876, when an amnesty measure was brought before the House, he moved that Jefferson Davis be excepted on the ground that he was responsible for the mistreatment of Union prisoners during the war. Southern hot-bloods replied, and Blaine skillfully led them on until they had foolishly furnished him with ample material for campaign purposes. The feeling thus aroused was so strong that it even galvanized into seeming life the dying interest in the wrongs of the Negro. The rallying cry "Vote as you shot!" gave the Republicans something to fight for; the party referred to its war record, claimed credit for preserving the Union, emanc.i.p.ating the Negro, and reconstructing the South, and demanded that the country be not "surrendered to rebel rule."

Hayes and Tilden, the rival candidates for the presidency, were both men of high character and of moderate views. Their nominations had been forced by the better element of each party. Hayes, the Republican candidate, had been a good soldier, was moderate in his views on Southern questions, and had a clean political reputation. Tilden, his opponent, had a good record as a party man and as a reformer, and his party needed only to attack the past record of the Republicans. The princ.i.p.al Democratic weakness lay in the fact that the party drew so much of its strength from the white South and was therefore subjected to criticism on Civil War issues.

The campaign was hotly contested and was conducted on a low plane. Even Hayes soon saw that the "b.l.o.o.d.y s.h.i.+rt" issue was the main vote winner. The whites of the three "unredeemed" Southern States nerved themselves for the final struggle. In South Carolina and in some parishes of Louisiana, there was a considerable amount of violence, in which the whites had the advantage, and much fraud, which the Republicans, who controlled the election machinery, turned to best account. It has been said that out of the confusion which the Republicans created they won the presidency.

The first election returns seemed to give Tilden the victory with 184 undisputed electoral votes and popular majorities of ninety and over six thousand respectively in Florida and Louisiana; only 185 votes were needed for a choice. Hayes had 166 votes, not counting Oregon, in which one vote was in dispute, and South Carolina, which for a time was claimed by both parties. Had Louisiana and Florida been Northern States, there would have been no controversy, but the Republican general headquarters knew that the Democratic majorities in these States had to go through Republican returning boards, which had never yet failed to throw them out.

The interest of the nation now centered around the action of the two returning boards. At the suggestion of President Grant, prominent Republicans went South to witness the count. Later prominent Democrats went also. These "visiting statesmen" were to support the frail returning boards in their duty. It was generally understood that these boards, certainly the one in Louisiana, were for sale, and there is little doubt that the Democrats inquired the price. But they were afraid to bid on such uncertain quant.i.ties as Governor Wells and T. C. Anderson of Louisiana, both notorious spoilsmen. The members of the boards in both States soon showed the stiffening effect of the moral support of the Federal Administration and of the "visiting statesmen." Rea.s.sured as to their political future, they proceeded to do their duty: in Florida they threw out votes until the ninety majority for Tilden was changed to 925 for Hayes, and in Louisiana, by throwing out about fifteen thousand carefully selected ballots, they changed Tilden's lowest majority of six thousand to a Hayes majority of nearly four thousand. Naturally the Democrats sent in contesting returns, but the presidency was really won when the Republicans secured in Louisiana and Florida returns which were regular in form. But hoping to force Congress to go behind the returns, the Democrats carried up contests also from Oregon and South Carolina, whose votes properly belonged to Hayes.

The final contest came in Congress over the counting of the electoral votes. The Const.i.tution provides that "the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and the House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted." But there was no agreement as to where authority lay for deciding disputed votes. Never before had the presidency turned on a disputed count. From 1864 to 1874 the "twenty-second joint rule" had been in force under which either House might reject a certificate. The votes of Georgia in 1868 and of Louisiana in 1879 had thus been thrown out. But the rule had not been readopted by the present Congress, and the Republicans very naturally would not listen to a proposal to readopt it now.

With the country apparently on the verge of civil war, Congress finally created by law an Electoral Commission to which were to be referred all disputes about the counting of votes and the decision of which was to be final unless both Houses concurred in rejecting it. The act provided that the commission should consist of five senators, five representatives, four designated a.s.sociate justices of the Supreme Court, and a fifth a.s.sociate justice to be chosen by these four. While nothing was said in the act about the political affiliations of the members of the commission, every one understood that the House would select three Democrats and two Republicans, and that the Senate would name two Democrats and three Republicans. It was also well known that of the four justices designated two were Republicans and two Democrats, and it was tacitly agreed that the fifth would be Justice David Davis, an "independent." But at the last moment Davis was elected Senator by the Illinois Legislature and declined to serve on the Commission. Justice Bradley, a Republican, was then named as the fifth justice, and in this way the Republicans obtained a majority on the Commission.

The Democrats deserve the credit for the Electoral Commission. The Republicans did not favor it, even after they were sure of a party majority on it. They were conscious that they had a weak case, and they were afraid to trust it to judges of the Supreme Court. Their fears were groundless, however, since all important questions were decided by an 8 to 7 vote, Bradley voting with his fellow Republicans. Every contested vote was given to Hayes, and with 185 electoral votes he was declared elected on March 2, 1877.

Ten years before, Senator Morton of Indiana had said: "I would have been in favor of having the colored people of the South wait a few years until they were prepared for the suffrage, until they were to some extent educated, but the necessities of the times forbade that; the conditions of things required that they should be brought to the polls at once." Now the condition of things required that some arrangement be made with the Southern whites which would involve a complete reversal of the situation of 1867. In order to secure the unopposed succession of Hayes, to defeat filibustering which might endanger the decision of the Electoral Commission, politicians who could speak with authority for Hayes a.s.sured influential Southern politicians, who wanted no more civil war but who did want home rule, that an arrangement might be made which would be satisfactory to both sides.

So the contest was ended. Hayes was to be President; the South, with the Negro, was to be left to the whites; there would be no further military aid to carpetbag governments. In so far as the South was concerned, it was a fortunate settlement better, indeed, than if Tilden had been inducted into office. The remnants of the reconstruction policy were surrendered by a Republican President, the troops were soon withdrawn, and the three radical states fell at once under the control of the whites. Hayes could not see in his election any encouragement to adopt a vigorous radical position, and Congress was deadlocked on party issues for fifteen years. As a result the radical Republicans had to develop other interests, and the North gradually accepted the Southern situation.

Although the radical policy of reconstruction came to an end in 1877, some of its results were more lasting. The Southern States were burdened heavily with debt, much of which had been fraudulently incurred. There now followed a period of adjustment, of refunding, scaling, and repudiation, which not only injured the credit of the states but left them with enormous debts. The Democratic party under the leaders.h.i.+p of former Confederates began its regime of strict economy, race fairness, and inelastic Jeffersonianism. There was a political rest which almost amounted to stagnation and which the leaders were unwilling to disturb by progressive measures lest a developing democracy make trouble with the settlement of 1877.

The undoing of reconstruction was not entirely completed with the understanding of 1877. There remained a large but somewhat shattered Republican party in the South, with control over county and local government in many Negro districts. Little by little the Democrats rooted out these last vestiges of Negro control, using all the old radical methods and some improvements,* such as tissue ballots, the shuffling of ballot boxes, bribery, force, and redistricting, while some regions were placed entirely under executive control and were ruled by appointed commissions. With the good government which followed these changes a deadlocked Congress showed no great desire to interfere. The Supreme Court came to the aid of the Democrats with decisions in 1875, 1882, and 1883 which drew the teeth from the Enforcement Laws, and Congress in 1894 repealed what was left of these regulations.

*See "The New South", by Holland Thompson (in "The Chronicles of America").

Under such discouraging conditions the voting strength of the Republicans rapidly melted away. The party organization existed for the Federal offices only and was interested in keeping down the number of those who desired to be rewarded. As a consequence, the leaders could work in harmony with those Democratic chiefs who were content with a "solid South" and local home rule. The Negroes of the Black Belt, with less enthusiasm and hope, but with quite the same docility as in 1868, began to vote as the Democratic leaders directed. This practice brought up in another form the question of "Negro government" and resulted in a demand from the people of the white counties that the Negro be put entirely out of politics. The answer came between 1890 and 1902 in the form of new and complicated election laws or new const.i.tutions which in various ways shut out the Negro from the polls and left the government to the whites. Three times have the Black Belt regions dominated the Southern States: under slavery, when the master cla.s.s controlled; under reconstruction, when the leaders of the Negroes had their own way; and after reconstruction until Negro disfranchis.e.m.e.nt, when the Democratic dictators of the Negro vote ruled fairly but not always acceptably to the white counties which are now the source of their political power.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The best general accounts of the reconstruction period are found in James Ford Rhodes's "History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the Restoration of Home Rule at the South in 1877", volumes V, VI, VII (1906); in William A. Dunning's "Reconstruction, Political and Economic", 1865-1877, in the "American Nation" Series, volume XXII (1907); and in Peter Joseph Hamilton's "The Reconstruction Period" (1905), which is volume XVI of "The History of North America", edited by F. N. Thorpe. The work of Rhodes is s.p.a.cious and fair-minded but there are serious gaps in his narrative; Dunning's briefer account covers the entire field with masterly handling; Hamilton's history throws new light on all subjects and is particularly useful for an understanding of the Southern point of view. A valuable discussion of const.i.tutional problems is contained in William A. Dunning's "Essay on the Civil War and Reconstruction and Related Topics" (1904); and a criticism of the reconstruction policies from the point of view of political science and const.i.tutional law is to be found in J. W. Burgess's "Reconstruction and the Const.i.tution, 1866-1876" (1902). E. B. Andrews's "The United States in our own Time" (1903) gives a popular treatment of the later period. A collection of brief monographs ent.i.tled "Why the Solid South?" by Hilary A. Herbert and others (1890) was written as a campaign doc.u.ment to offset the drive made by the Republicans in 1889 for new enforcement laws.

There are many scholarly monographs on reconstruction in the several states. The best of these are: J. W. Garner's "Reconstruction in Mississippi" (1901), W. L. Fleming's "Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama" (1905), J. G. de R. Hamilton's "Reconstruction in North Carolina" (1914), W. W. Davis's "The Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida" (1913), J. S. Reynolds's "Reconstruction in South Carolina", 1865-1877 (1905); C. W. Ramsdell's "Reconstruction in Texas" (1910), and C. M. Thompson's "Reconstruction in Georgia" (1915).