Part 3

FOOTNOTES:

AMERICAN HOME RULE

BY E.L. GODKIN

American experience has been frequently cited, in the course of the controversy now raging in England over the Irish question, both by way of warning and of example. For instance, I have found in the Times as well as in other journals--the Spectator, I think, among the number--very contemptuous dismissals of the plan of offering Ireland a government like that of an American State, on the ground that the Americans are loyal to the central authority, while in Ireland there is a strong feeling of hostility to it, which would probably increase under Home Rule. The Queen's writ, it has been remarked, cannot be said to run in large parts of Ireland, while in every part of the United States the Federal writ is implicitly obeyed, and the ministers of Federal authority find ready aid and sympathy from the people. If I remember rightly, the Duke of Argyll has been very emphatic in pointing out the difference between giving local self-government to a community in which the tendencies of popular feeling are "centrifugal," and giving it to one in which these tendencies are "centripetal." The inference to be drawn was, of course, that as long as Ireland disliked the Imperial government the concession of Home Rule would be unsafe, and would only become safe when the Irish people showed somewhat the same sort of affection for the English connection which the people of the State of New York now feel for the Constitution of the United States.

Among the multitude of those who have taken part in the controversy on one side or the other, no one has, so far as I have observed, pointed out that the state of feeling in America toward the central government with which the state of feeling in Ireland towards the British Government is now compared, did not exist when the American Constitution was set up; that the political tendencies in America at that time were centrifugal, not centripetal, and that the extraordinary love and admiration with which Americans now regard the Federal government are the result of eighty years' experience of its working. The first Confederation was as much as the people could bear in the way of surrendering local powers when the War of Independence came to an end. It was its hopeless failure to provide peace and security which led to the framing of the present Constitution. But even with this experience still fresh, the adoption of the Constitution was no easy matter. I shall not burden this article with historical citations showing the very great difficulty which the framers of the Constitution had in inducing the various States to adopt it, or the magnitude and variety of the fears and suspicions with which, many of the most influential men in all parts of the country regarded it. Any one who wishes to know how numerous and diversified these fears and suspicions were, cannot do better than read the series of papers known as "The Federalist," written mainly by Hamilton and Madison, to commend the new plan to the various States. It was adopted almost as a matter of necessity, that is, as the only way out of the Slough of Despond in which the Confederation had plunged the union of the States; but the objections to it which were felt at the beginning were only removed by actual trial. Hamilton's two colleagues, as delegates from New York, Yates and Lansing, withdrew in disgust from the Convention, as soon as the Constitution was outlined, and did not return. The notion that the Constitution was produced by the craving of the American people for something of that sort to love and revere, and that it was not bestowed on them until they had given ample assurance that they would lavish affection on it, has no foundation whatever in fact. The devotion of Americans to the Union is, indeed, as clear a case of cause and effect as is to be found in political history. They have learned to like the Constitution because the country has prospered under it, and because it has given them all the benefits of national life without interference with local liberties. If they had not set up a central government until the centrifugal sentiment had disappeared from the States, and the feeling of loyalty for a central authority had fully shown itself, they would assuredly never have set it up at all.

Moreover, it has to be borne in mind that the adoption of the Constitution did not involve the surrender of any local franchises, by which the people of the various States set great store. The States preserved fully four-fifths of their autonomy, or in fact nearly all of it which closely concerned the daily lives of individuals. Set aside the post-office, and a citizen of the State of New York, not engaged in foreign trade, might, down to the outbreak of the Civil War, have passed a long and busy life without once coming in contact with a United States official, and without being made aware in any of his doings, by any restriction or regulation, that he was living under any government but that of his own State. If he went abroad he had to apply for a United States passport. If he quarrelled with a foreigner, or with the citizen of another State, he might be sued in the Federal Court. If he imported foreign goods he had to pay duties to the collector of a Federal Custom-house. If he invented something, or wrote a book, he had to apply to the Department of the Interior for a patent or a copyright. But how few there were in the first seventy years of American history who had any of these experiences! No one supposes, or has ever supposed, that had the Federalists demanded any very large sacrifice of local franchises, or attempted to set up even a close approach to a centralized Government, the adoption of the Constitution would have been possible. If, for instance, such a transfer of both administration and legislation to the central authority as took place in Ireland after the Union had been proposed, it would have been rejected with derision. You will get no American to argue with you on this point. If you ask him whether he thinks it likely that a highly centralized government could have been created in 1879--such a one, for example, as Ireland has been under since 1800--or whether if created it would by this time have won the affection of the people, or filled them with centripetal tendencies, he will answer you with a smile.

The truth is that nowhere, any more than in Ireland, do people love their Government from a sense of duty or because they crave an object of political affection, or even because it exalts them in the eyes of foreigners. They love it because they are happy or prosperous under it; because it supplies security in the form best suited to their tastes and habits, or in some manner ministers to their self-love. Loyalty to the king as the Lord's anointed, without any sense either of favours received or expected, has played a great part in European politics, I admit; but, for reasons which I will not here take up space in stating, a political arrangement, whether it be an elected monarch or a constitution, cannot be made, in our day, to reign in men's hearts except as the result of benefits so palpable that common people, as well as political philosophers, can see them and count them.

Many of the opponents of Home Rule, too, point to the vigour with which the United States Government put down the attempt made by the South to break up the Union as an example of the American love of "imperial unity," and of the spirit in which England should now meet the Irish demands for local autonomy. This again is rather surprising, because you will find no one in America who will maintain for one moment that troops could have been raised in 1860 to undertake the conquest of the South for the purpose of setting up a centralized administration, or, in other words, for the purpose of wiping out State lines, or diminishing State authority. No man or party proposed anything of this kind at the outbreak of the war, or would have dared to propose it. The object for which the North rose in arms, and which Lincoln had in view when he called for troops, was the restoration of the Union just as it was when South Carolina seceded, barring the extension of slavery into the territories. During the first year of the war, certainly, the revolted States might at any time have had peace on the status quo basis, that is, without the smallest diminution of their rights and immunities under the Constitution. It was only when it became evident that the war would have to be fought out to a finish, as the pugilists say--that is, that it would have to end in a complete conquest of the Southern territory--that the question, what would become of the States as a political organization after the struggle was over, began to be debated at all. What did become of them? How did Americans deal with Home Rule, after it had been used to set on foot against the central authority what the newspapers used to delight in calling "the greatest rebellion the world ever saw"? The answer to these questions is, it seems to me, a contribution of some value to the discussion of the Irish problem in its present stage, if American precedents can throw any light whatever on it.

There was a Joint Committee of both Houses of Congress appointed in 1866 to consider the condition of the South with reference to the safety or expediency of admitting the States lately in rebellion to their old relations to the Union, including representation in Congress. It contained, besides such fanatical enemies of the South as Thaddeus Stevens, such very conservative men as Mr. Fessenden, Mr. Grimes, Mr. Morrill, and Mr. Conkling. Here is the account they gave of the condition of Southern feeling one year after Lee's surrender:--

"Examining the evidence taken by your committee still further, in connection with facts too notorious to be disputed, it appears that the Southern press, with few exceptions, and those mostly of newspapers recently established by Northern men, abounds with weekly and daily abuse of the institutions and people of the loyal States; defends the men who led, and the principles which incited, the rebellion; denounces and reviles Southern men who adhered to the Union; and strives constantly and unscrupulously, by every means in its power, to keep alive the fire of hate and discord between the sections; calling upon the President to violate his oath of office, overturn the Government by force of arms, and drive the representatives of the people from their seats in Congress. The national banner is openly insulted, and the national airs scoffed at, not only by an ignorant populace, but at public meetings, and once, among other notable instances, at a dinner given in honour of a notorious rebel who had violated his oath and abandoned his flag. The same individual is elected to an important office in the leading city of his State, although an unpardoned rebel, and so offensive that the President refuses to allow him to enter upon his official duties. In another State the leading general of the rebel armies is openly nominated for Governor by the Speaker of the House of Delegates, and the nomination is hailed by the people with shouts of satisfaction, and openly endorsed by the press....

"The evidence of an intense hostility to the Federal Union, and an equally intense love of the late Confederacy, nurtured by the war is decisive. While it appears that nearly all are willing to submit, at least for the time being, to the Federal authority, it is equally clear that the ruling motive is a desire to obtain the advantages which will be derived from a representation in Congress. Officers of the Union army on duty, and Northern men who go south to engage in business, are generally detested and proscribed. Southern men who adhered to the Union are bitterly hated and relentlessly persecuted. In some localities prosecutions have been instituted in State courts against Union officers for acts done in the line of official duty, and similar prosecutions are threatened elsewhere as soon as the United States troops are removed. All such demonstrations show a state of feeling against which it is unmistakably necessary to guard.

"The testimony is conclusive that after the collapse of the Confederacy the feeling of the people of the rebellious States was that of abject submission. Having appealed to the tribunal of arms, they had no hope except that by the magnanimity of their conquerors, their lives, and possibly their property, might be preserved. Unfortunately the general issue of pardons to persons who had been prominent in the rebellion, and the feeling of kindliness and conciliation manifested by the Executive, and very generally indicated through the Northern press, had the effect to render whole communities forgetful of the crime they had committed, defiant towards the Federal Government, and regardless of their duties as citizens. The conciliatory measures of the Government do not seem to have been met even half-way. The bitterness and defiance exhibited towards the United States under such circumstances is without a parallel in the history of the world. In return for our leniency we receive only an insulting denial of our authority. In return for our kind desire for the resumption of fraternal relations we receive only an insolent assumption of rights and privileges long since forfeited. The crime we have punished is paraded as a virtue, and the principles of republican government which we have vindicated at so terrible a cost are denounced as unjust and oppressive.

"If we add to this evidence the fact that, although peace has been declared by the President, he has not, to this day, deemed it safe to restore the writ of habeas corpus, to relieve the insurrectionary States of martial law, nor to withdraw the troops from many localities, and that the commanding general deems an increase of the army indispensable to the preservation of order and the protection of loyal and well-disposed people in the South, the proof of a condition of feeling hostile to the Union and dangerous to the Government throughout the insurrectionary States would seem to be overwhelming."

This Committee recommended a series of coercive measures, the first of which was the adoption of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution, which disqualified for all office, either under the United States or under any State, any person who having in any capacity taken an oath of allegiance to the United States afterwards engaged in rebellion or gave aid and comfort to the rebels. This denied the jus honorum to all the leading men at the South who had survived the war. In addition to it, an Act was passed in March, 1867, which put all the rebel States under military rule until a constitution should have been framed by a Convention elected by all males over twenty-one, except such as would be excluded from office by the above-named constitutional amendment if it were adopted, which at that time it had not been. Another Act was passed three weeks later, prescribing, for voters in the States lately in rebellion, what was known as the "ironclad oath," which excluded from the franchise not only all who had borne arms against the United States, but all who, having ever held any office for which the taking an oath of allegiance to the United States was a qualification, had afterwards ever given "aid or comfort to the enemies thereof." This practically disfranchised all the white men of the South over twenty-five years old.

On this legislation there grew up, as all the world now knows, what was called the "carpet-bag" regime. Swarms of Northern adventurers went down to the Southern States, organized the ignorant negro voters, constructed State constitutions to suit themselves, got themselves elected to all the chief offices, plundered the State treasuries, contracted huge State debts, and stole the proceeds in connivance with legislatures composed mainly of negroes, of whom the most intelligent and instructed had been barbers and hotel-waiters. In some of the States, such as South Carolina and Mississippi, in which the negro population were in the majority, the government became a mere caricature. I was in Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, in 1872, during the session of the legislature, when you could obtain the passage of almost any measure you pleased by a small payment--at that time seven hundred dollars--to an old negro preacher who controlled the coloured majority. Under the pretence of fitting up committee-rooms, the private lodging-rooms at the boarding-houses of the negro members, in many instances, were extravagantly furnished with Wilton and Brussels carpets, mirrors, and sofas. A thousand dollars were expended for two hundred elegant imported china spittoons. There were only one hundred and twenty-three members in the House of Representatives, but the residue were, perhaps, transferred to the private chambers of the legislators.

Now, how did the Southern whites deal with this state of things? Well, I am sorry to say they manifested their discontent very much in the way in which the Irish have for the last hundred years been manifesting theirs. If, as the English opponents of Home Rule seem to think, readiness to commit outrages, and refusal to sympathize with the victims of outrages, indicate political incapacity, the whites of the South showed, in the period between 1866 and 1876, that they were utterly unfit to be entrusted with the work of self-government. They could not rise openly in revolt because the United States troops were everywhere at the service of the carpet-baggers, for the suppression of armed resistance. They did not send petitions to Congress, or write letters to the Northern newspapers, or hold indignation meetings. They simply formed a huge secret society on the model of the "Molly Maguires" or "Moonlighters," whose special function was to intimidate, flog, mutilate, or murder political opponents in the night time. This society was called the "Ku-Klux Klan." Let me give some account of its operation, and I shall make it as brief as possible. It had become so powerful in 1871 that President Grant in that year, in his message to Congress, declared that "a condition of things existed in some of the States of the Union rendering life and property insecure, and the carrying of the mails and the collecting of the revenue dangerous." A Joint Select Committee of Congress was accordingly appointed, early in 1872, to "inquire into the condition of affairs in the late insurrectionary States, so far as regards the execution of the laws and the safety of the lives and property of the citizens of the United States." Its report now lies before me, and it reads uncommonly like the speech of an Irish Secretary in the House of Commons bringing in a "Suppression of Crime Bill." The Committee say--

"There is a remarkable concurrence of testimony to the effect that, in those of the late rebellious States into whose condition we have examined, the courts and juries administer justice between man and man in all ordinary cases, civil and criminal; and while there is this concurrence on this point, the evidence is equally decisive that redress cannot be obtained against those who commit crimes in disguise and at night. The reasons assigned are that identification is difficult, almost impossible; that, when this is attempted, the combinations and oaths of the order come in and release the culprit by perjury, either upon the witness-stand or in the jury-box; and that the terror inspired by their acts, as well as the public sentiment in their favour in many localities, paralyzes the arm of civil power.

* * * * *

"The murders and outrages which have been perpetrated in many counties of Middle and West Tennessee, during the past few months, have been so numerous, and of such an aggravated character, as almost baffles investigation. In these counties a reign of terror exists which is so absolute in its nature that the best of citizens are unable or unwilling to give free expression to their opinions. The terror inspired by the secret organization known as the Ku-Klux Klan is so great, that the officers of the law are powerless to execute its provisions, to discharge their duties, or to bring the guilty perpetrators of these outrages to the punishment they deserve. Their stealthy movements are generally made under cover of night, and under masks and disguises, which render their identification difficult, if not impossible. To add to the secrecy which envelops their operations, is the fact that no information of their murderous acts can be obtained without the greatest difficulty and danger in the localities where they are committed. No one dares to inform upon them, or take any measures to bring them to punishment, because no one can tell but that he may be the next victim of their hostility or animosity. The members of this organization, with their friends, aiders, and abettors, take especial pains to conceal all their operations.

* * * * *

"Your committee believe that during the past six months, the murders--to say nothing of other outrages--would average one a day, or one for every twenty-four hours; that in the great majority of these cases they have been perpetrated by the Ku-Klux above referred to, and few, if any, have been brought to punishment. A number of the counties of this State (Tennessee) are entirely at the mercy of this organization, and roving bands of nightly marauders bid defiance to the civil authorities, and threaten to drive out every man, white or black, who does not submit to their arbitrary dictation. To add to the general lawlessness of these communities, bad men of every description take advantage of the circumstances surrounding them, and perpetrate acts of violence, from personal or pecuniary motives, under the plea of political necessity."

Here is some of the evidence on which the report was based.

A complaint of outrages committed in Georgia was referred by the general of the army, in June, 1869, to the general of the Department of the South for thorough investigation and report. General Terry, in his report, made August 14, 1869, says--

"In many parts of the State there is practically no government. The worst of crimes are committed, and no attempt is made to punish those who commit them. Murders have been and are frequent; the abuse, in various ways, of the blacks is too common to excite notice. There can be no doubt of the existence of numerous insurrectionary organizations known as 'Ku-Klux Klans,' who, shielded by their disguise, by the secrecy of their movements, and by the terror which they inspire, perpetrate crime with impunity. There is great reason to believe that in some cases local magistrates are in sympathy with the members of these organizations. In many places they are overawed by them and dare not attempt to punish them. To punish such offenders by civil proceedings would be a difficult task, even were magistrates in all cases disposed and had they the courage to do their duty, for the same influences which govern them equally affect juries and witnesses."

Lieutenant-Colonel Lewis Merrill, who assumed command (in Louisiana) on the 26th of March, and commenced investigation into the state of affairs, says (p. 1465)--

"From the best information I can get, I estimate the number of cases of whipping, beating, and personal violence of various grades, in this county, since the first of last November, at between three and four hundred, excluding numerous minor cases of threats, intimidation, abuse, and small personal violence, as knocking down with a pistol or gun, etc. The more serious outrages, exclusive of murders and whippings, noted hereafter, have been the following:--"

He then proceeds with the details of sixty-eight cases, giving the names of the parties injured, white and black, and including the tearing up of the railway, on the night before a raid was made by the Ku-Klux on the county treasury building. The rails were taken up, to prevent the arrival of the United States troops, who, it was known, were to come on Sunday morning. The raid was made on that Sunday night while the troops were lying at Chester, twenty-two miles distant, unable to reach Yorkville, because of the rails being torn up.

Another witness said: "To give the details of the whipping of men to compel them to change their mode of voting, the tearing of them away from their families at night, accompanied with insults and outrage, and followed by their murder, would be but repeating what has been described in other States, showing that it is the same organization in all, working by the same means for the same end. Five murders are shown to have been committed in Monroe County, fifteen in Noxubee, one in Lowndes, by the testimony taken in the city of Washington; but the extent to which school-houses were burnt, teachers whipped, and outrages committed in this State, cannot be fully given until the testimony taken by the sub-committee shall have been printed and made ready to report."