CHAPTER X.. Carpetbag and Negro Rule

Carpetbag and Negro Rule

The Southern States reconstructed by Congress were subject for periods of varying length to governments designed by radical Northerners and imposed by elements thrown to the surface in the upheaval of Southern society. Georgia, Virginia, and North Carolina each had a brief experience with these governments; other States escaped after four or five years, while Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida were not delivered from this domination until 1876. The States which contained large numbers of negroes had, on the whole, the worst experience. Here the officials were ignorant or corrupt, frauds upon the public were the rule, not the exception, and all of the reconstruction governments were so conducted that they could secure no support from the respectable elements of the electorate.

The fundamental cause of the failure of these governments was the character of the new ruling class. Every State, except perhaps Virginia, was under the control of a few able leaders from the North generally called carpetbaggers and of a few native white radicals contemptuously designated scalawags. These were kept in power by negro voters, to some seven hundred thousand of whom the ballot had been given by the reconstruction acts. The adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment in March, 1870, brought the total in the former slave States to 931,000, with about seventy-five thousand more negroes in the North. The negro voters were most numerous, comparatively, in Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia. There were a few thousand carpetbaggers in each State, with, at first, a much larger number of scalawags. The latter, who were former Unionists, former Whigs, Confederate deserters, and a few unscrupulous politicians, were most numerous in Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, Arkansas, and Tennessee. The better class, however, rapidly left the radical party as the character of the new régime became evident, taking with them whatever claims the party had to respectability, education, political experience, and property.

The conservatives, hopelessly reduced by the operation of disfranchising laws, were at first not well organized, nor were they at any time as well led as in antebellum days. In 1868 about one hundred thousand of them were forbidden to vote and about two hundred thousand were disqualified from holding office. The abstention policy of 1867-68 resulted in an almost complete withdrawal of the influence of the conservatives for the two years, 1868-70. As a class they were regarded by the dominant party in State and nation as dangerous and untrustworthy and were persecuted in such irritating ways that many became indifferent to the appeals of civil duty. They formed a solid but almost despairing opposition in the black districts of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and South Carolina. For the leaders the price of amnesty was conversion to radicalism, but this price few would pay.

The new state governments possessed certain characteristics in common. Since only a small number of able men were available for office, full powers of administration, including appointment and removal, were concentrated in the hands of the governor. He exercised a wide control over public funds and had authority to organize and command militia and constabulary and to call for Federal troops. The numerous administrative boards worked with the sole object of keeping their party in power. Officers were several times as numerous as under the old régime, and all of them received higher salaries and larger contingent fees. The moral support behind the government was that of President Grant and the United States army, not that of a free and devoted people.

Of the twenty men who served as governors eight were scalawags and twelve were carpetbaggers--men who were abler than the scalawags and who had much more than an equal share of the spoils. The scalawags, such as Brownlow of Tennessee, Smith of Alabama, and Holden of North Carolina, were usually honest but narrow, vindictive men, filled with fear and hate of the conservative whites. Of the carpetbaggers half were personally honest, but all were unscrupulous in politics. Some were flagrantly dishonest. Governor Moses of South Carolina was several times bribed and at one time, according to his own statement, received $15,000 for his vote as speaker of the House of Representatives. Governor Stearns of Florida was charged with stealing government supplies from the negroes; and it was notorious that Warmoth and Kellogg of Louisiana, each of whom served only one term, retired with large fortunes. Warmoth, indeed, went so far as to declare: "Corruption is the fashion. I do not pretend to be honest, but only as honest as anybody in politics."

The judiciary was no better than the executive. The chief justice of Louisiana was convicted of fraud. A supreme court judge of South Carolina offered his decisions for sale, and Whipper and Moses, both notorious thieves, were elected judges by the South Carolina Legislature. In Alabama there were many illiterate magistrates, among them the city judge of Selma, who in April, 1865, was still living as a slave. Governor Chamberlain, a radical, asserted that there were two hundred trial judges in South Carolina who could not read.

Other officers were of the same stripe. Leslie, a South Carolina carpetbagger, declared that "South Carolina has no right to be a State unless she can support her statesmen," and he proceeded to live up to this principle. The manager of the state railroad of Georgia, when asked how he had been able to accumulate twenty or thirty thousand dollars on a two or three thousand dollar salary, replied, "By the exercise of the most rigid economy." A North Carolina negro legislator was found on one occasion chuckling as he counted some money. "What are you laughing at, Uncle?" he was asked. "Well, boss, I'se been sold 'leben times in my life and dis is de fust time I eber got de money." Godkin, in the Nation, said that the Georgia officials were "probably as bad a lot of political tricksters and adventurers as ever got together in one place." This description will fit equally well the white officials of all the reconstructed States. Many of the negroes who attained public office showed themselves apt pupils of their carpetbag masters but were seldom permitted to appropriate a large share of the plunder. In Florida the negro members of the Legislature, thinking that they should have a part of the bribe and loot money which their carpetbag masters were said to be receiving, went so far as to appoint what was known as a "smelling committee" to locate the good things and secure a share.

From 1868 to 1870 the legislatures of seven States were overwhelmingly radical and in several the radical majority held control for four, six, or eight years. Negroes were most numerous in the legislatures of Louisiana, South Carolina, and Mississippi, and everywhere the votes of these men were for sale. In Alabama and Louisiana negro legislators had a fixed price for their votes: for example, six hundred dollars would buy a senator in Louisiana. In South Carolina, negro government appeared at its worst. A vivid description of the Legislature of this State in which the negroes largely outnumbered the whites is given by James S. Pike, a Republican journalist: ¹

¹ Pike, The Prostrate State, pp. 12 ff.

In the place of this old aristocratic society stands the rude form of the most ignorant democracy that mankind ever saw, invested with the functions of government. It is the dregs of the population habilitated in the robes of their intelligent predecessors, and asserting over them the rule of ignorance and corruption.... It is barbarism overwhelming civilization by physical force. It is the slave rioting in the halls of his master, and putting that master under his feet. And, though it is done without malice and without vengeance, it is nevertheless none the less completely and absolutely done.... We will enter the House of Representatives. Here sit one hundred and twenty-four members. Of these, twenty-three are white men, representing the remains of the old civilization. These are good-looking, substantial citizens. They are men of weight and standing in the communities they represent. They are all from the hill country. The frosts of sixty and seventy winters whiten the heads of some among them. There they sit, grim and silent. They feel themselves to be but loose stones, thrown in to partially obstruct a current they are powerless to resist....

This dense negro crowd ... do the debating, the squabbling, the lawmaking, and create all the clamor and disorder of the body. These twenty-three white men are but the observers, the enforced auditors of the dull and clumsy imitation of a deliberative body, whose appearance in their present capacity is at once a wonder and a shame to modern civilization.... The Speaker is black, the Clerk is black, the doorkeepers are black, the little pages are black, the chairman of the Ways and Means is black, and the chaplain is coal black. At some of the desks sit colored men whose types it would be hard to find outside of Congo; whose costumes, visages, attitudes, and expression, only befit the forecastle of a buccaneer. It must be remembered, also, that these men, with not more than a half dozen exceptions, have been themselves slaves, and that their ancestors were slaves for generations....

But the old stagers admit that the colored brethren have a wonderful aptness at legislative proceedings. They are "quick as lightning" at detecting points of order, and they certainly make incessant and extraordinary use of their knowledge. No one is allowed to talk five minutes without interruption, and one interruption is a signal for another and another, until the original speaker is smothered under an avalanche of them. Forty questions of privilege will be raised in a day. At times, nothing goes on but alternating questions of order and of privilege. The inefficient colored friend who sits in the Speaker's chair cannot suppress this extraordinary element of the debate. Some of the blackest members exhibit a pertinacity of intrusion in raising these points of order and questions of privilege that few white men can equal. Their struggles to get the floor, their bellowings and physical contortions, baffle description. The Speaker's hammer plays a perpetual tattoo to no purpose. The talking and the interruptions from all quarters go on with the utmost license. Everyone esteems himself as good as his neighbor, and puts in his oar, apparently as often for love of riot and confusion as for anything else.... The Speaker orders a member whom he has discovered to be particularly unruly to take his seat. The member obeys, and with the same motion that he sits down, throws his feet on to his desk, hiding himself from the Speaker by the soles of his boots.... After a few experiences of this sort, the Speaker threatens, in a laugh, to call the "gemman" to order. This is considered a capital joke, and a guffaw follows. The laugh goes round and then the peanuts are cracked and munched faster than ever; one hand being employed in fortifying the inner man with this nutriment of universal use, while the other enforces the views of the orator. This laughing propensity of the sable crowd is a great cause of disorder. They laugh as hens cackle--one begins and all follow.

But underneath all this shocking burlesque upon legislative proceedings, we must not forget that there is something very real to this uncouth and untutored multitude. It is not all sham, nor all burlesque. They have a genuine interest and a genuine earnestness in the business of the assembly which we are bound to recognize and respect.... They have an earnest purpose, born of conviction that their position and condition are not fully assured, which lends a sort of dignity to their proceedings. The barbarous, animated jargon in which they so often indulge is on occasion seen to be so transparently sincere and weighty in their own minds that sympathy supplants disgust. The whole thing is a wonderful novelty to them as well as to observers. Seven years ago these men were raising corn and cotton under the whip of the overseer. Today they are raising points of order and questions of privilege. They find they can raise one as well as the other. They prefer the latter. It is easier and better paid. Then, it is the evidence of an accomplished result. It means escape and defense from old oppressors. It means liberty. It means the destruction of prison-walls only too real to them. It is the sunshine of their lives. It is their day of jubilee. It is their long-promised vision of the Lord God Almighty.

The congressional delegations were as radical as the state governments. During the first two years there were no Democratic senators from the reconstructed States and only two Democratic representatives, as against sixty-four radical senators and representatives. At the end of four years the Democrats numbered fifteen against seventy radicals. A negro succeeded Jefferson Davis in the Senate, and in all the race sent two senators and thirteen representatives to Congress, but though several were of high character and fair ability, they exercised practically no influence. The Southern delegations had no part in shaping policies but merely voted as they were told by the radical leaders.

The effect of dishonest government was soon seen in extravagant expenditures, heavier taxes, increase of the bonded debt, and depression of property values. It was to be expected that after the ruin wrought by war and the admission of the negro to civil rights, the expenses of government would be greater. But only lack of honesty will account for the extraordinary expenses of the reconstruction governments. In Alabama and Florida the running expenses of the state government increased two hundred per cent, in Louisiana five hundred per cent, and in Arkansas fifteen hundred per cent--all this in addition to bond issues. In South Carolina the one item of public printing, which from 1790 to 1868 cost $609,000, amounted in the years 1868-1876 to $1,326,589.

Corrupt state officials had two ways of getting money--by taxation and by the sale of bonds. Taxes were everywhere multiplied. The state tax rate in Alabama was increased four hundred per cent, in Louisiana eight hundred per cent, and in Mississippi, which could issue no bonds, fourteen hundred per cent. City and county taxes, where carpetbaggers were in control, increased in the same way. Thousands of small proprietors could not meet their taxes, and in Mississippi alone the land sold for unpaid taxes amounted to six million acres, an area as large as Massachusetts and Rhode Island together. Nordhoff ¹ speaks of seeing Louisiana newspapers of which three-fourths were taken up by notices of tax sales. In protest against extravagant and corrupt expenditures, taxpayers' conventions were held in every State, but without effect.

¹ Charles Nordhoff, The Cotton States in the Spring and Summer of 1875.

Even the increased taxation, however, did not produce enough to support the new governments, which now had recourse to the sale of state and local bonds. In this way Governor Holden's Administration managed in two years to increase the public debt of North Carolina from $16,000,000 to $32,000,000. The state debt of South Carolina rose from $7,000,000 to $29,000,000 in 1873. In Alabama, by 1874, the debt had mounted from $7,000,000 to $32,000,000. The public debt of Louisiana rose from $14,000,000 in 1868 to $48,000,000 in 1871, with a local debt of $31,000,000. Cities, towns, and counties sold bonds by the bale. The debt of New Orleans increased twenty-five fold and that of Vicksburg a thousandfold. A great deal of the debt was the result of fraudulent issues of bonds or overissues. For this form of fraud the state financial agents in New York were usually responsible. Southern bonds sold far below par, and the time came when they were peddled about at ten to twenty-five cents on the dollar.

Still another disastrous result followed this corrupt financiering. In Alabama there was a sixty-five per cent decrease in property values, in Florida forty-five per cent, and in Louisiana fifty to seventy-five per cent. A large part of the best property was mortgaged, and foreclosure sales were frequent. Poorer property could be neither mortgaged nor sold. There was an exodus of whites from the worst governed districts in the West and the North. Many towns, among them Mobile and Memphis, surrendered their charters and were ruled directly by the governor; and there were numerous "strangulated" counties which on account of debt had lost self-government and were ruled by appointees of the governor.

A part of the money raised by taxes and by bond sales was used for legitimate expenses and the rest went to pay forged warrants, excess warrants, and swollen mileage accounts, and to fill the pockets of embezzlers and thieves from one end of the South to the other. In Arkansas, for example, the auditor's clerk hire, which was $4000 in 1866, cost twenty-three times as much in 1873. In Louisiana and South Carolina stealing was elevated into an art and was practiced without concealment. In the latter State the worthless Hell Hole Swamp was bought for $26,000 to be farmed by the negroes but was charged to the state at $120,000. A free restaurant maintained at the Capitol for the legislators cost $125,000 for one session. The porter who conducted it said that he kept it open sixteen to twenty hours a day and that someone was always in the room eating and drinking or smoking. When a member left he would fill his pockets with cigars or with bottles of drink. Forty different brands of beverages were paid for by the State for the private use of members, and all sorts of food, furniture, and clothing were sent to the houses of members and were paid for by the State as "legislative supplies." On the bills appeared such items as imported mushrooms, one side of bacon, one feather bed, bustles, two pairs of extra long stockings, one pair of garters, one bottle perfume, twelve monogram cut glasses, one horse, one comb and brush, three gallons of whisky, one pair of corsets. During the recess, supplies were sent out to the rural homes of the members.

The endorsement of railroad securities by the State also furnished a source of easy money to the dishonest official and the crooked speculator. After the Civil War, in response to the general desire in the South for better railroad facilities, the "Johnson" governments began to underwrite railroad bonds. When the carpetbag and negro governments came in, the policy was continued but without proper safeguards. Bonds were sometimes endorsed before the roads were constructed, and even excess issues were authorized. Bonds were endorsed for some roads of which not a mile was ever built. The White River Valley and Texas Railroad never came into existence, but it obtained a grant of $175,000 from the State of Arkansas. Speaker Carter of the Louisiana Legislature received a financial interest in all railroad endorsement bills which he steered through the House. Negro members were regularly bribed to vote for the bond steals. A witness swore that in Louisiana it cost him $80,000 to get a railroad charter passed, but that the Governor's signature cost more than the consent of the Legislature.

When the roads defaulted on the payment of interest, as most of them did, the burden fell upon the State. Not all of the blame for this perverted legislation should be placed upon the corrupt legislators, however, for the lawyers who saw the bills through were frequently Southern Democrats representing supposedly respectable Northern capitalists. The railroads as well as the taxpayers suffered from this pernicious lobbying, for the companies were loaded with debts and rarely profited by the loans. Valuation of railroad property rapidly decreased. The roads of Alabama which were valued in 1871 at $26,000,000 had decreased in 1875 to $9,500,000.

The foundation of radical power in the South lay in the alienation of the races which had been accomplished between 1865 and 1868. To maintain this unhappy distrust, the radical leaders found an effective means in the negro militia. Under the constitution of every reconstructed State a negro constabulary was possible, but only in South Carolina, North Carolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi were the authorities willing to risk the dangers of arming the blacks. No governor dared permit the Southern whites to organize as militia. In South Carolina the carpetbag governor, Robert K. Scott, enrolled ninety-six thousand negroes as members of the militia and organized and armed twenty thousand of them. The few white companies were ordered to disband. In Louisiana the governor had a standing army of blacks called the Metropolitan Guard. In several States the negro militia was used as a constabulary and was sent to any part of the State to make arrests.

In spite of this provocation there were, after the riots of 1866-67, comparatively few race conflicts until reconstruction was drawing to a close. The intervening period was filled with the more peaceful activities of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Camelia. ¹ But as the whites made up their minds to get rid of negro rule, the clashes came frequently and always ended in the death of more negroes than whites. ² They would probably have continued with serious consequences if the whites had not eventually secured control of the government.

¹ See pages 243-264.

² Among the bloodiest conflicts were those in Louisiana at Colfax, Coushatta, and New Orleans in 1873-74, and at Vicksburg and Clinton, Mississippi, in 1874-75.

The lax election laws, framed indeed for the benefit of the party in power, gave the radicals ample opportunity to control the negro vote. The elections were frequently corrupt, though not a great deal of money was spent in bribery. It was found less expensive to use other methods of getting out the vote. The negroes were generally made to understand that the Democrats wanted to put them back into slavery, but sometimes the leaders deemed it wiser to state more concretely that "Jeff Davis had come to Montgomery and is ready to organize the Confederacy again" if the Democrats should win; or to say that "if Carter is elected, he will not allow your wives and daughters to wear hoopskirts." In Alabama many thousand pounds of bacon and hams were sent in to be distributed among "flood sufferers" in a region which had not been flooded since the days of Noah. The negroes were told that they must vote right and receive enough bacon for a year, or "lose their rights" if they voted wrongly. Ballot-box stuffing developed into an art, and each negro was carefully inspected to see that he had the right kind of ticket before he was marched to the polls.

The inspection and counting of election returns were in the hands of the county and state boards, which were controlled by the governor, and which had authority to throw out or count in any number of votes. On the assumption that the radicals were entitled to all negro votes, the returning boards followed the census figures for the black population in order to arrive at the minimum radical vote. The action of the returning boards was specially flagrant in Louisiana and Florida and in the black counties of South Carolina.

Notwithstanding the fact that the very best arrangements had been made at Washington and in the States for the running of the radical machine, everywhere there were factional fights from the beginning. Usually the scalawags declared hostilities after they found that the carpetbaggers had control of the negroes and the inside track on the way to the best state and federal offices. Later, after the scalawags had for the most part left the radicals, there were contests among the carpetbaggers themselves for the control of the negro vote and the distribution of spoils. The defeated faction usually joined the Democrats. In Arkansas a split started in 1869 which by 1872 resulted in two state governments. Alabama in 1872 and Louisiana in 1874-75 each had two rival governments. This factionalism contributed largely to the overthrow of the radicals.

The radical structure, however, was still powerfully supported from without. Relations between the Federal Government and the state governments in the South were close, and the policy at Washington was frequently determined by conditions in the South. President Grant, though at first considerate, was usually consistently radical in his Southern policy. This attitude is difficult to explain except by saying that Grant fell under the control of radical advisers after his break with Johnson, that his military instincts were offended by opposition in the South which his advisers told him was rebellious, and that he was impressed by the need of holding the Southern radical vote against the inroads of the Democrats. After about 1869 Grant never really understood the conditions in the South. He was content to control by means of Federal troops and thousands of deputy marshals. For this policy the Ku Klux activities gave sufficient excuse for a time, and the continued story of "rebel outrages" was always available to justify a call for soldiers or deputies. The enforcement legislation gave the color of law to any interference which was deemed necessary.

Federal troops served other ends than the mere preservation of order and the support of the radical state governments. They were used on occasion to decide between opposing factions and to oust conservatives who had forced their way into office. The army officers purged the Legislature of Georgia in 1870, that of Alabama in 1872, and that of Louisiana in 1875. In 1875 the city government of Vicksburg and the state government of Louisiana were overturned by the whites, but General Sheridan at once intervened to put back the negroes and carpetbaggers. He suggested to President Grant that the conservatives be declared "banditti" and he would make himself responsible for the rest. As soon as a State showed signs of going over to the Democrats or an important election was lost by the radicals, one House or the other of Congress in many instances sent an investigation committee to ascertain the reasons. The Committees on the Condition of the South or on the Late Insurrectionary States were nearly always ready with reports to establish the necessity of intervention.

Besides the army there was in every State a powerful group of Federal officials who formed a "ring" for the direction of all good radicals. These marshals, deputies, postmasters, district attorneys, and customhouse officials were in close touch with Washington and frequently dictated nominations and platforms. At New Orleans the officials acted as a committee on credentials and held all the state conventions under their control in the customhouse.

Such was the machinery used to sustain a party which, with the gradual defection of the whites, became throughout the South almost uniformly black. At first few negroes asked for offices, but soon the carpetbaggers found it necessary to divide with the rapidly growing number of negro politicians. No negro was elected governor, though several reached the office of lieutenant governor, secretary of state, auditor, superintendent of education, justice of the state supreme court, and fifteen were elected to Congress. ¹ It would not be correct to say that the negro race was malicious or on evil bent. Unless deliberately stirred up by white leaders, few negroes showed signs of mean spirit. Few even made exorbitant demands. They wanted "something"--schools and freedom and "something else," they knew not what. Deprived of the leadership of the best whites, they could not possibly act with the scalawags--their traditional enemies. Nothing was left for them but to follow the carpetbagger.

¹ Revels, Lynch, and Bruce represent the better negro officeholders; Pinchback, Rainey, and Nash, the less respectable ones; and below these were the rascals whose ambition was to equal their white preceptors in corruption.