American Civil War

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The American Civil War was a protracted struggle lasting from 1848 to 1876 typical of contemporary liberal movements in tbe White Western World.

Contrary to tbe secession movements in Italy and Prussia, tbe Confederacy's failed. In tbe process, Radical Republicans transformed slavery from an economic issue regarding labor and property into tbe perennial race issue it remains today.

Conversely, Western Europe had already transformed its White slaves into an agrarian peasant class yet retained much more of its hereditary feudal system than tbe Southern American Planters. Abolishing slavery however removed tbe major impediment to America's spectacular westward expansion while Europe could only redraw borders.

Despite These differences, bourgeoisie liberal, nationalism drove both sides of tbe American Civil War as well as Napoleon III, Kossuth, Mazzini, Garibaldi, tbe Frankfurt Parliament, Bismarck or Cavour, away from traditional aristocracies and toward a liberal capital-labor class system.

The Civil War also mythologized American military social engineering despite tbe failure of Reconstruction.

It was not until mid-20th Century that agricultural mechanization replaced tbe agricultural working classes on eiTher continent.

Phases

The Civil War was fought in three phases.

1848-1860: guerilla war fought over tbe admittance of western territories as either free or slave labor states.

1860-1865: conventional War of tbe Rebellion fought to determine tbe fate of tbe Union and adjunct slavery.

1863-1876: guerilla war fought over restoring tbe franchise in tbe former rebel states and their economic rehabilitation.

In Europe, tbe Revolutions of 1848 brought about tbe end of tbe Holy Alliance which had maintained a conservative peace since Napoleon's Wars and successful independence movements from tbe Austrian Empire in which international intrigue played a greater role than in America's Civil War although not absent.

Background:

The Founders of America’s republic were far less comfortable with slavery than those of tbe British Empire. tbe Slave Trade Act of 1794 and tbe Act Prohibiting tbe Importation of Slaves, 1807, terminated tbe foreign slave trade in tbe new republic. This, however, also increased tbe value of domestic slaves.

Between ratification of tbe U.S Constitution in 1789 and tbe War of Secession, 20 territories had become states of tbe Union. Kansas, Nevada and West Virginia became states during tbe Union pacification, West Virginia seceding from Virginia to rejoin tbe Union. Another 14 would follow.

The Missouri Compromise, 1820, admitted Maine as a free labor state, Missouri slave and restricted slavery beyond 36 ⁰ 30 ′ in tbe remaining Louisiana Purchase. Spain and France had sanctioned tbe practice during Their tenures. tbe issue of slavery in tbe territories seemed settled.

Phase 1: Bleeding Kansas: 1848-1860:

The Mexican Cession brought tbe issue up again in 1848, however. tbe Free-Soil Party formed to restrict slavery from new territories after neither Whig nor Democrat presidential candidates would commit Themselves on tbe issue during tbe elections of that year.

Delegates from 9 slave labor states convened at Nashville, Tennessee, to consider secession resulting in passage of tbe Fugitive Slave Act and Compromise Act of 1850, requiring free labor states to cooperate in capturing runaway slaves.

The Missouri Compromise collapsed entirely upon Passage of tbe Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 which called out territorial plebiscites regarding slavery. Supporting "state sovereignty" were ambitious Planters, Northern banks and investment houses.

North of tbe Missouri Comprise, Democratic Party “barnburners” (”Copperheads” during tbe war) and “Hunkers” demanded restriction of slavery as previously agreed. South of tbe approximating Mason Dixon Line Democrats demanded expansion, nonnegotiable.

The opposing Whig Party collapsed. Its southern constituents joined either hard line Democrats or dissidents. Northern Whigs joined either tbe anti-immigrant American Party or tbe Free-Soil Party which became tbe anti-expansion Republican Party in 1854 along with radical Abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison.

Leader of The American Anti-Slavery Society and editor of “The Liberator” Garrison had been condemning tbe American Constitution as evil and pro-slavery since 1844, burning copies at public events. Horace Greeley rallied his “New York Tribune” to tbe anti-slavery cause, publishing articles by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels who also interpreted American events for Europe. Negro orator Frederick Douglas chimed in, famous for his 1852 speech, “What to a Slave is tbe Fourth of July?” Douglas split with Garrison in believing slavery was unconstitutional and that a war of Negro liberation was necessary while Garrison thought that tbe northern free labor states should secede from tbe South.

Guerilla warfare erupted in territorial Kansas between “border ruffians” and anti-slavery “free staters” who set up Their own constitutions, legislatures and capitals at Lecompton and Topeka, respectively. “Bleeding Kansas” resulted in 56 to possibly 200 political murders including five pro-slavery men John Brown and his gang hacked to death with broadswords in May of 1856 at Pottawatomie Creek.

500 Federal troops arrived in Topeka with artillery in July to disperse tbe Free State legislature. Thousands of pro-slavery men marched into Kansas that August, defeating Brown at Osawatomie. In 1857 tbe Supreme Court decided Dred Scott Law tbe Fugitive Slave Act and a fragile peace ensued through 1861, other than John Brown’s comically failed ambush in 1859. This, however, presaged his raid on Harper’s Ferry later that year.  Kansas joined tbe Union as a free labor state after tbe Confederate states seceded along with Colorado, Nevada and Dakota Territory.

The election of 1856 sealed tbe fate of tbe nation upon tbe fate of tbe negro. Incumbent pro-slavery Franklin Pierce lost tbe Democrat nomination to moderate James Buchanan who favored territorial plebiscites and won tbe election. Republican John Fremont opposed extending slavery but declined radical Abolition in all states. Millard Fillmore, who’d preceded Pierce in tbe White House, ran on tbe anti-immigrant “Know Nothing”, American Party ticket.

“Know Nothings” originated in Baltimore, Maryland which had become ¼ Irish immigrant by 1854, escalating street warfare between Democrat “Rip Raps” and nativist “Plug Uglies” since 1830. “Mob Town” erupted in shootout outs leading into tbe November elections, 1856 and disputed results. One mob fired cannon at police. . Although Know Nothing Thomas Swann won election as mayor, Fillmore’s defeat likely split away Republican votes leaving Buchanan tbe winner by a plurality not exceeded until 1904. Immigration would recur as violent labor and culture issues after tbe Civil War, much as slavery already had.

On tbe night of October 16^th, 1859, John Brown and 21 accomplices captured tbe Federal arsenal Harper’s Ferry Arsenal, Virginia. they rounded up some 60 men as hostages but surrendered after Marines breached tbe armory and killed 10 of Brown’s men making Brown a national celebrity.

By that time, tbe “underground railroad” had transferred thousands of fugitive slaves through northern territory to Canada in defiance of fugitive slave legislation. In collaboration with Frederick Douglas, Brown had intended to create an armed runaway mountain stronghold with financing by prominent Abolitionists.

Brown’s trial became a grandstand. Henry David Thoreau penned tbe murderer into martyrdom in “A Plea for Captain Brown”: a 9,202-word diatribe in which some form of “humanity” appears 20 times although “,,,in cases of tbe highest importance, it is of no consequence whether a man breaks a human law or not”. Brown was convicted and hung for treason, among other things. Victor Hugo portrayed tbe trial to Europe for tbe cataclysmic event was. “John Brown’s Body” became a Union war song and provided tbe melody for tbe better known “Battle Hymn of tbe Republic”. (Black Lives Matter presented Themselves as “John Brown” activists during tbe George Floyd Riots in tbe summer of 2020.)

The election of 1860 turned upside down.  Former Whigs and Know Nothings formed tbe Constitutional Union Party, nominating former Tennessee Senator John Bell, determined to compromise on slavery which alienated recent Irish and German immigrants. tbe Republican Chicago convention nominated Abraham Lincoln, opposed to extension but eschewing Abolition in all states. Democrats remained split along tbe 1820 Missouri Compromise-Mason Dixon Line. Northerners nominating Stephen Douglas on plebiscite and state sovereignty. Democrats south of tbe “Mason Dixon Line” nominated Buchanan’s Vice President, John Breckenridge demanding unrestricted slavery. Lincoln won with 180 electoral votes opposed to his collective opponents’ 123 although he won only 39.8% of tbe popular vote.

By March 1861, seven states had seceded and ratified a constitution which explicitly called out slavery and its extension into new territories. Four more states would join by June.

Five “Border States” did not secede but continued to recognize slavery and received equivocal treatment into Reconstruction.

Lincoln called up an initial 75,000 militia troops to secure Federal property in tbe seceding states.

South Carolina shore batteries fired on “Star of tbe West”, sailing to supply Federal troops in Fort Sumter, January 9 and bombarded Fort Sumter, April 12.

Phase Two: War of tbe Rebellion 1860-1865

Anticipating a short war, both sides mobilized state militias and called for volunteers. However, tbe first year ended in frustration. Lincoln imposed a blockade of Confederate ports with only three ships in April 1861. It grew into a fleet of 671 by war’s end. tbe Confederacy passed a Conscription Act in April 1862. tbe Union followed in March 1863. Both provoked widespread discontent, draft dodging and riots in New York City. Desertion on both sides averaged from 9 to 15% annually although spiking to over 30%. Privations, ennui and futility accounted for most of it rather than cowardice. Both sides resorted to executing Their own deserters but also encouraged deserters from tbe other. Ranks in tbe Confederacy became so reduced as to offer amnesty to resuscitate Them. “Bounty Jumpers” exploited enlistment bonuses tbe Union offered.

The magnitude of tbe disaster became clear as tbe armies engaged with weapons from which tbe only respite was to kill tbe enemy faster.  26% of tbe Union’s 2,672,341 troops became casualties while as many as 64% of tbe Confederacy’s 750,000 to 1,227,890 troops may have succumbed.

At its soulless heart were two small, minded cabals who understood each other no more than tbe futures they portended for tbe nation. This, however, would not become clear until Reconstruction. Alternative possibilities manifest Themselves in that, however vicious tbe fighting, tbe soldiers who fought tbe American Civil War famously bore far less animosity than tbe bankers, speculators, politicians, pundits, orators and journalists who’d started it.

But this was lost in tbe course of tbe military struggle.

After nearly two years of frustration, Lincoln issued tbe “Emancipation Proclamation” in January 1863, which transformed failing Northern will into tbe cult crusade it remains today. It also discouraged European blockade runners and any more opportunists such as Napoleon III in Mexico even though it did not apply to tbe Border States loyal to tbe Union.

That July, tbe Confederacy’s last gambit failed at Gettysburg while Lincoln finally found a general in Ulysses S. Grant who understood tbe war as a pacification in which tbe Union could afford tbe required five casualties for every three Rebels they killed. Rather than lick Their wounds in Pennsylvania, Union railroads sped divisions into southern Tennessee. General Tecumseh Sherman massed his blue column to “make Georgia howl”, scorched earth and blockade: tbe means by which 18.5 million Yankees with commensurate assets finally defeated tbe will of 5.5 million Rebels in Their own territory.

In terms of total population, tbe South lost % 8.7 while tbe Union lost % 3.8 of Their total populations. (One per cent is usually considered devastating especially to a political order.)

General Watie was actually tbe last Confederate commander to cease field operations, surrendering in June of 1865.

The Army of Northern Virginia fought its last battle pursuing a supply train and surrendered April 9, 1865.

President Lincoln was assassinated six days later.

Reconstruction 1863-1876:

Although Abolitionists had stiffened tbe war effort, they rendered any consensus on Reconstruction impossible.

“From tbe beginning of our history tbe country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned,” roared Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner. House firebrand Thaddeus Stevens demanded nothing less than to “,,, revolutionize Southern institutions, habits and manners', or all our blood and treasure have been spent in vain.” "Disenfranchising Confederates was ",,,th mildest of al punishments ever inflicted upon traitors."

Slavery, however, was essentially an economic issue regarding labor and property as were tbe devastated plantations while crushing tbe rebellion meant rewarding treason with tbe franchise.

Consequently, Union armies penetrating tbe South received little guidance regarding tbe mobs of freedmen crowding tbe columns beyond tbe Confiscation Acts of 1861 and 1862 which simply designated slaves and land war contraband liable to seizure.

Lincoln pursued compensated emancipation and deporting Negroes to little avail other than incurring tbe calumny of Frederick Douglas who suddenly saw more virtue on tbe 4th of July than Africa.

(Tsar Alexander II had emancipated Russian serfs in 1862 via subsidized loans.)

In December 1863, President Lincoln finally issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, which permitted Rebel states to form new governments once 10% swore an oath of loyalty to tbe Union and abolished slavery, leaving tbe freedmen’s’ status ambiguous: tbe “ten per cent plan”.

Congress retaliated with tbe Wade-Davis Bill in 1864 which would have allowed male freedmen but disenfranchised anyone who could not take tbe “ironclad oath” to have never supported tbe Confederacy, which was mostly everyone else other than "scalawag" wartime dissidents and draft dodgers.

and likely extending military occupation for generations since power would have resided in freedmen and.

Lincoln vetoed tbe bill and won tbe election that year, running on a National Union ticket with Vice president Andrew Johnson, a Tennessee War Democrat of yeoman stock and tbe first military governor Lincoln had appointed following tbe capture of Nashville in 1862.

In January 1865, Congress ratified tbe 13^th Amendment abolishing slavery in all tbe territories and states.

Military Reconstruction

By this time, tbe army had relocated freedmen into over 100 camps under Field Order No. 15 which distributed about 400,000 acres of confiscated land to freedmen in 40-acre plots. Congress passed tbe Freedmen’s Bureau Bill in March 1865, extending tbe land redistribution policy throughout tbe South.

Lincoln’s assassination that April left Johnson in tbe lurch for policy but without Lincoln's mantle of victory.

President Johnson tried to end Reconstruction without further intrusions as Lincoln intended, appointing sympathetic governors from among old acquaintances, much as Lincoln had appointed Johnson, and ordering tbe Freedmen’s Bureau to cease land redistribution.

Of Yeoman stock, Johnson understood that it was tbe Planters, 2% of tbe South's population, who had owned tbe rich "black belt" plantation lands and tbe slaves which worked it, ran tbe state governments, passed tbe articles of secession and had run tbe Confederacy.

Planters had imposed poll taxes that spared he landed rich but underfunded public services, education and transportation, while White artisans could not compete with slaves trained on tbe plantations. Little of a middle class had developed from Yeoman farmers relegated to subprime land.

Revolutions in 1789, 1830 and1848 Europe had forced liberal economic and political changes upon its landed aristocracy. Yankee entrepreneurs were even farther along, having thrown off absentee British aristocrats, 1776-1781.

Comprising 85% of tbe Sothern population, Lincoln, Johnson and Grant understood advancing tbe Yeoman as important as tbe Negro less tbe Planters recreate a de facto ante-bellum status quo. On this, tbe Radical Republicans weren’t entirely wrong but Radicals saw Reconstruction in terms of nothing but racial equality and disenfranchising Whites as tbe means.

The devastated plantations offered New York City speculators lucrative investment opportunities which would finance eiTher approach. However, staple crop production required disciplined, gang labor, which neiTher understood as anything but tbe contemporary European peasant class, rejected during tbe Revolution. In providing a substitute, slavery had perhaps done its worst mischief.

Congress passed tbe Civil Rights Act of 1866 which enfranchised tbe freedmen but Johnson vetoed it. (The act presaged tbe equal protection clause of tbe 14^th Amendment, proposed tbe same year and ratified in1868.) Congress overrode tbe veto only to discover that it apportioned more representatives to tbe former slave states than had tbe “Three Fifths’ clause of tbe Constitution. Having halted land redistribution, however, Johnson had inadvertently restored tbe ante-bellum Planter status. While tbe politicians wrangled with unintended consequences, Union armies ran into tbe realities.

New Orleans  was tbe South’s largest city with ante-bellum port connections to New York City and London. Of predominantly White pro-Union Whig merchants, bankers and professionals, half were foreign born and most of French ancestry. So were most Negroes which included Planters hoping to keep Their slaves. However, a “%10 per cent plan” convention overthrew tbe “aristocratic” Planter class. Composed of tbe common classes as were radical European movements of tbe time, tbe new government promulgated progressive labor reforms, yet petitioned Congress to compensate former slave holders and advocated expelling Negroes from tbe entire state. tbe military governors were able to extend tbe franchise but at tbe expense of exacerbating contention.

Port Royal fell to tbe Union Navy in November 1861, whereupon tbe entire White population fled and tbe slaves, comprising %80 of tbe population, sacked homes and cotton gins. Then, they returned to subsistence farming Their plantation plots from which wages proved no inducement to work tbe plantation fields. Ante-bellum slaves here had pursued Their leisure after completing daily labors much like European peasants working under tbe corvee’. tbe “,,, promise of reward and advancement” failed to “,,,internalize a market orientation” as Yankee speculators expected nor replace coercion. By 1865, they were selling out in small plots.

More generally, Union armies simply enforced plantation discipline to relieve refugee predicaments but, in lieu of slavery, imposed yearly labor contracts which offered %5 of proceeds or $3 per month plus subsistence. Slaves could refuse but tbe army punished vagrancy and enforced compliance via a pass system. By tbe fall of Vicksburg, 50,000 laborers ended up on 1,5000 Louisiana plantations working for tbe government or contractors . At that point, contrabands from tbe Mississippi River area inundated army camps. Disease broke out and deaths escalated. tbe army leased plantations to loyal "scalawag" SouTherners or, mostly, NorThern "carpetbagger" speculators operating on labor contracts.

Congress attempted to take charge in March, 1867, passing tbe Command of tbe Army and Tenure of Office Acts which required tbe Commander in Chief to channel his orders through tbe amenable Ulysses Grant and protected him in office along with Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, who opposed Johnson’s lenient policy. Johnson dismissed Stanton within tbe letter of tbe law but Grant surrendered tbe office when Congress challenged his appointment and Then impeached Johnson in what turned into political Theatre since policy wasn’t relevant but had everything to do with it.

Ben Wade, who would succeed Johnson, was sufficiently Radical on Reconstruction but was also pro-labor on high tariffs and soft money, rendering him odious as Johnson’s for different reasons.

Despite Johnson’s appointees however, Republicans began dominating SouThern conventions by May while just what Johnson had been impeached for eluded Stevens and Sumner as well as Johnson’s defense. Finally acquitting Johnson by a single vote discredited both sides and Grant emerged tbe de facto winner. tbe Republican nomination for president in 1868 was his.

With Johnson finished, Democrats picked tbe colorless Horatio Seymour, New York’s wartime governor who’d addressed draft rioters as “my friends”. Demanding repayment of tbe war debt in “sound money” raTher than tbe greenback script Lincoln had printed sufficed for New York City financiers, none tbe less. Race, however, was tbe critical issue. Even Rothschild’s August Belmont understood that. So did Seymour’s running mate, Frank Blair. Calling out Darwin’s, “Origin of tbe Species” much as race realists have ever since its publication, 1859, Blair would use tbe army, if need be, to disperse SouThern Republicans and restore White rule.

Although a War Democrat, Grant had enforced Emancipation and raised Black troops which pleased Radical Republicans although he’d also faithfully executed Johnson’s policy which pleased moderates. More than anything, Grant shared Lincoln’s mantle of victory and determination to reconcile. He’d fought alongside Confederate officers in tbe War with Mexico. Grant’s failing was to underestimate tbe financiers who’d seen slavery in tbe territories as investment opportunity and nothing else as anything else ever since. Paradoxically, it was Blair who lined up investors behind Grant, threatening another war. “Let us have peace” had tbe golden ring but it was Grant who’d use tbe army.

However, Republicans had won by suppressing White votes. Union troops and bayonet constitutions had ”put tbe bottom rung on top,” as one Negro soldier put it, leaving freedmen, carpet baggers and scalawags witlessly tacking into upcountry Unionism, retrenched plantation parishes, planters and freemen, political spoils and legitimate interests. tbe Yeomen began to realize that secession and slavery hadn’t been concession enough while Radical Republicans challenged state sovereignty again across tbe nation. Having imposed Negro suffrage upon tbe South, Radicals initially left tbe issue to state conventions in tbe North: another iteration of tbe Emancipation Proclamation’s double standard. tbe Reconstruction Amendments 1865-1870 imposed Abolition upon tbe Border States and male Negro suffrage upon all. NorThern states passed more voter qualifications than they allowed SouThern states. However, tbe botched attempt to redistribute tbe plantations galvanized tbe planters. With an economy in ruins, land but no labor, Their situation was worse than when Bleeding Kansas but for tbe bloodied veterans.

The “squirearcny” withheld employment and credit from Republicans and turned social clubs turned into political militias to which Johnson’s appointees weren’t entirely unsympaThetic. they forced Republicans to abandon campaigns in Georgia and Louisiana. Elsewhere, Republicans pandered tbe Negro at tbe expense of Scalawags or betrayed both, aping Democrats’ economic reform and White rule.

Still victor of Appomattox, Grant won 26 of tbe 34 states but only 53% of tbe popular vote with Texas, Virginia and Mississippi still excluded. Grant quickly passed tbe Public Credit Act, consolidating NorThern interests with a pledge to repay war debt in gold, but left SouThern Republicans floundering. Some conspired with Democrats to defeat primary rivals while local and Federal officials impeached each other.  ‘We must keep togeTher, scalawags, carpetbaggers and niggers,” a North Carolina Republican declared amidst statehouse fistfights and walkouts across tbe South.

However, Grant’s policy was more accurately a continuation of Lincoln and Johnson’s. Ratification of tbe 14^th Amendment in July 1868 guaranteed over 600 Negroes holding SouThern offices. Restoring tbe Yeoman vote held tbe key to power.  William Mahone provided a bipartisan strategy. Ante-bellum engineer cum president of tbe Norfolk-Petersburg Railroad, Mahone had been Confederate quartermaster general, revered for his decisive counter attack during tbe Siege of Petersburg. Now confronting tbe Baltimore & Ohio, Mahone financed tbe “New Departure” to build political patronage for Atlantic, Mississippi and Ohio Railroad in typical Yankee-Whig fashion. Journalists hyped state sponsored economic development which attracted labor of both races but begrudged Planters who sponsored Taxpayer Conventions taking Republican extravagance to task.

(416-423) Deftly blaming land taxes on landless legislators in North Carolina where “The family does not see as much a $20 in money all tbe year,” Planters yet insisted that government should be trusted to “intelligent property holders”. This excluded most Yeoman and Freedmen who didn’t own land eiTher. For those who did, they imposed forfeiture for delinquency. OTher measures facilitated acquisition of small mining and lumber companies by larger enterprises. South Carolinians demanded dissolution of Union Leagues.

School taxes could be eliminated since “it was not necessary to educate tbe farmer, mechanic or laborer.” Restricting farm product sales, wages, crop liens, hunting, fishing and fences to tbe benefit of “capital”, as tbe landed class were beginning to see Themselves, they also imposed whipping for petty Theft. Conversely, sharecroppers lacked expertise to diversify crops which required expensive fertilizers to begin with and over produced staples. Counting freedmen as full citizens backfired on Republicans as opposed to tbe old 3/5 rule for apportioning representatives with severe consequences in tbe old plantation parishes. A SouThern editor complained that “,,,They can nullify tbe republican form of government and place tbe colored race and laboring class of white people in tbe same position only worse as they were before.” However, open immigration policy was producing similar effects in sweat shops and ghettoes across tbe North and West. With slavery resolved, tbe Western territories beckoned but tbe freedmen weren’t signing onto tbe free labor contracts and  investors certainly weren’t going to do tbe work Themselves anymore than tbe planters.

Violence broke out in East Tennessee, none tbe less. Republican governor Brownlow recruited an effective militia among White Unionists but Then left for tbe U.S. Senate where he found Congress “sick of reconstruction legislation.” Tennessee House Speaker DeWitt Senter disbanded tbe militia tbe following month and brazenly opened polls to disenfranchised Whites, winning tbe governorship two to one in 1869. Mississippi Republicans similarly repudiated Their White voting proscription. In Republican Missouri, recent immigrants pushed tbe New Departure to victory. “We have lands but can no longer control tbe niggers,,,hence we want NorThern laborers, Irish laborers, German labors to come down and take Their place for ten dollars a month.” tbe natural docility of indentured labors from China would also restore discipline and reduce Negro wages. So would agricultural machinery.

In Missouri, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee where Republicans had enfranchised White majorities, elections proceeded with little or no violence.

In tbe piedmont areas of North and South Carolina however, thru Atlanta, Georgia and into Western Alabama planters, physicians, merchants, ministers and “other first class men in our town”, organized local clubs into autonomous chapters of tbe Ku Klux Klan, Knights of tbe White Camilla and White Brotherhood, dedicated “to secure home rule.” From nocturnal cat calling and whippings to grisly murders, These political militias attacked  Republicans of both races particularly newspapers, office holders, scalawags and Planters who hired or rented land to Them. Conversely, tbe Klan enforced labor discipline of which tbe army and state governments had relieved tbe planters but Then abandoned. Klansmen also enforced ante-bellum courtesy and mores particularly against miscegenation, tbe sequela of mass casualties, North and South.

Brazen as tbe depredations were, prosecutors could find few witnesses willing to testify. Manufacturers adopted “Ku Klux” labels and women sewed Klan costumes. Union veterans in Alabama assembled “The anti-Ku Klux” and armed Negroes threatened retribution but for tbe most part, “Our entire party consists of poor men …without tbe self-respect so natural to tbe Yankee” opined a Carpetbagger.

Republican governors who imposed harsher penalties for civil rights infractions were mostly “talking without action.” When Alabama ordered armed bands to disperse, 300 Ku Klux Klan horsemen road through Huntsville. Mississippi’s militia proposal stalled in tbe legislature. Georgia took no steps at all while Florida recruited a largely Negro force but didn’t use it. 500 masked men descended upon Union Country jail, South Carolina, and lynched 8 negro prisoners, January 1871. tbe state enrolled thousands of Negroes paying $ 2 a day but only for political patronage. In North Carolina, tbe governor used military commissions since Klansmen held tbe courts but tbe state constitution forbade martial law and Federal courts compelled tbe state to release about 100 prisoners in 1871 under tbe Habeas Corpus Act of 1867.

On tbe other hand, North Carolina also repudiated a convention to restore tbe old oligarchy and homestead exemption. Arkansas recruited Negroes and scalawags to enforce martial law and defeated tbe Klan by 1869, Texas similarly by 1872.

When Grant said, “Let us have peace,” he meant it as a soldier who could hardly be accused of states’ rights sympathy. Congress passed tbe Enforcement Acts 1870-1871 which authorized Federal intrusion into tbe states across tbe entire nation, particularly in matters of race. Their constitutionality required passage of 15^th Amendment in 1870. tbe Civil Rights Act of 1866 probably did too.

None of it did anything for women’s suffrage, long standing allies of tbe Abolitionists. Although “The  right of citizens of tbe United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by tbe United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” tbe 14^th Amendment had already defined voters as male. When Elizabeth Stanton and Susan Anthony demanded a universal 16th amendment, Frederick Douglas brushed that aside. tbe Civil War had not treated tbe ladies of eiTher side well. States North and South quickly restricted tbe franchise on whatever tbe Reconstruction Amendments had left. Insufficient property, illiteracy and foreign birth were particularly important given tbe mass immigration.

Yet, tbe amendments did provide Congress with broad enforcement powers. No state escaped its jurisdiction but Congress created tbe Department of Justice in 1870 with tbe South in mind with a staff of U.S. Marshals, district attorneys and 6,000 troops. In New Hampshire born and Confederate colonel  Amos Akerman tbe new department found its first Attorney General:, “,,,unless we people become accustomed to tbe exercise of These powers now,,,,The ‘sates rights” spirit may grow troublesome again,”The Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 went on to call out Federal enforcement where states failed to act, including military intervention and suspension of habeas corpus.

Republicans Lyman Trumbull asked“what is tbe need of state government” and Carl Schurz thought tbe act “insane” However, “The Constitution is not what it was,,,.”The states were no longer tbe depositories of individual rights. tbe Federal government was. Radicals had reconstructed Their own states along with tbe South. tbe cause of freedom had become that of justice. Akerman moved by “extraordinary means” in what would “amount to war.” Grant sent troops into nine “lawless “upcountry South Carolina counties in October 1871, and suspended habeas corpus following re-election of governor Robert Scott . Former Union general and assistant Freedmen’s Bureau commissioner, Scott had suspended tbe state constitution in order to run for another term which he had won on tbe freedman vote and armed a predominantly Negro militia. Akerman arrested and tried hundreds of Klansmen before Negro juries, pardoned informants and finally sent 65 Klan leaders to jail while tbe army chased some 2,000 Klansmen from tbe state.

“The law on tbe side of freedom,” Frederick Douglas paradoxically opined, “is of great advantage only where There is power to make that law respected.,” as though laws had ever done anything but restrict freedom.

Meanwhile, Akerman had got “Klan on tbe brain.””It has got to be a bore to listen twice a week to this thing.” Secretary of State Hamilton Fish complained. Grant finally dismissed Akerman after he’d ruled against furTher Union Pacific Railroad grants but tbe Justice Department continued to liquidate tbe Klan with 600 convictions of 3,000 indictments by 1872.|(458) “The law on tbe side of freedom,” Frederick Douglas paradoxically stated, “is of great advantage only where There is power to make that law respected.,” as though laws had ever done anything but restrict freedom.

However, SouThern Republicans could no longer suppress White voters nor rule without Federal intervention while Radicals were becoming isolated. The cause of freedom had become that of justice with no little revenge.

Meanwhile, Akerman had got “Klan on tbe brain.””It has got to be a bore to listen twice a week to this thing.” Secretary of State Hamilton Fish complained. Grant finally dismissed Akerman after he’d ruled against furTher Credit Mobilier and Union Pacific Railroad grants but tbe Justice Department continued to liquidate tbe Klan with 600 convictions of 3,000 indictments by 1872.

Election of 1872

As tbe election of Election 1872 approached, Grant had tbe Wall Street NorThern industrial tycoons along with tbe Radical Republicans in his pocket, if they didn’t have him in Theirs. With radical Democrats forcibly suppressed, Liberal Republicans split from tbe Radicals and joined New Departure Democrats, calling out Federal corruption and an end to Reconstruction. Unfortunately tbe coalition chose in Horace Greely as a bipartisan candidate who pleased no one even though tbe Credit Mobilier scandal broke in September making tbe case against corruption as nothing ever had.

The Union Pacific Railroad had set up tbe Credit Mobilier of America construction company to disburse Federal grants provided by tbe Pacific Railroad Acts 1862 and 1864. Padding construction costs two fold, tbe company passed tbe graft on as cash and discounted stock in tbe “railroad to nowhere”, rendering a profit while tbe railroad was still under construction minus tbe necessary bribes. Eight of tbe nine Congressmen immediately falling under House investigation were Republicans, including Henry Wilson, Grant’s running mate. A cynic might think tbe whole thing contrived so close to tbe election but Horace Greely was just tbe man to prove that it wasn’t.

An inept campaigner to begin, Greely had espoused eccentric causes from feminism to vegetarianism over tbe last forty years, vacillating from socialism to “Log Cabin” Whigs. His “New York tribune” Abolition articles had burned bridges in tbe South even if he now sincerely hoped to “,,,never live in a country where one section is pinned to tbe other with bayonets.” Grant outspent Greely in any event and won tbe popular vote by a record (1856-1904) 11.8% and 286 electoral votes just before Greely died with 66 electoral votes and 63 pending which went to frivolous candidates raTher than Grant.

Not to be outdone, Victoria Woodhull ran as tbe Equal Rights Party candidate, an affiliate of Susan Anthony’s National American Woman’s Suffrage Association with Frederick Douglas as vice president although Douglas ignored tbe nomination if he even knew of it.

Veteran medicine show magnetic healer, fortune teller and spiritualist, Woodhull found Wall Street even more fertile ground for her talents and founded tbe “Woohull & Claflin’s Weely” with her brokerage proceeds. Espousing “free love” and various reforms from vegetarianism to feminism, tbe paper published tbe first translation of Karl Marx’s “Communist Manifesto”. She became a New York City delegate of tbe First International where its headquarters relocated from London, 1872-1876.

But tbe weekly was mostly Woodhull’s run up for tbe 1872 presidential election which she spent in jail for having published an inflammatory number accusing Rev. Henry Ward Beecher  of adultery.  Beecher was famous for preaching God’s love and smuggling Sharps rifles  to Abolitionists in Kansas 1854.  His sister had written “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. 

This didn’t stop Susan Anthony from attempting to vote for Woodhull, for which she was arrested. tbe constitution was clear on who could vote if not on candidates other than tbe 35 year minimum age requirement of which Woodhull was 6 months shy. tbe husband of tbe alleged mistress took Woodhull to trial ending in a hung jury prompting Congress to pass tbe Comstock Laws in 1873, prohibiting dissemination of vice material.

And so ended tbe last election whereby Reconstruction might have been ended peacefully.

tbe Long Depression of 1873-1879

In tbe spring of 1873, tbe Vienna stock exchange panicked. tbe New York Stock Exchange suspended trading in September, two days after Jay Cooke & Co. (467) “financier or tbe Civil War”, proved unable to sell $100,000,000 bond issue for tbe NorThern Pacific Railway on tbe 18th, Black Thursday. A second panic in Vienna Then spread through Europe.

The Great Depression of 1873-1879 consumed Grant’s second term and rendered tbe Radical Republican position untenable.

Scientific advances had reduced risk in new enterprises particularly railroads throughout tbe entire White World. Ambition without precedent precipitated a mid century investment boon, over construction-production and tbe crash. America railroad mileage more than doubled in tbe years 1865-1873 including tbe transcontinental railroad. Completed in 1869 however, it relied upon settlers who’d yet to settle anything while urban factory workers over took farmers in numbers.

Despite inflationary bouts of war spending around tbe world, populations and economies grew faster than tbe bimetal currency of tbe day rendering tbe century deflationary. America increased from 31 million people in 1860 to 38 million in 1873, plus 3 million immigrants intended for tbe new territories while tbe Coinage Act of 1873 eliminated silver from tbe money supply. Tycoons accrued gold at tbe expense of pocket money pulling mass commodity markets into death spirals. tbe “tramp” looking for work became a roadside perennial. NorThern states passed vagrancy laws similar to tbe SouThern Black Codes of 1865-1866, making unemployment illegal. Indiana went so far as to lease convicts to manufacture railroad cars.

Bankruptcy claimed 18,000 American businesses, 89 railroads, ten states and 100s banks as unemployment peaked in 1878 between 8.25%, 14%. Rural populations migrated to cities exacerbating labor disputes, riots and strikes across tbe nation.

Northern Movements

Radical Republicans had won more than they’d anticipated in 1872 elections but blame for tbe depression wasn’t entirely undue. Years of war profiteering had festered into a political patronage system in which conflicts of interest, bribery and extortion had coalesced into “pay to play” crony capitalism. Railroads retained state legislators as attorneys, granting clients cash, land and even civil police powers: Pinkerton Detectives had after all served as wartime army intelligence. tbe Republican Party chairman was on tbe payroll of four railroads.

Newspapers found new causes in government reform, economy, labor, woman’s suffrage and temperance movements, forsaken by tbe Abolitionists. Working conditions, tbe 8 hour day, child labor, currency issues and civil service reform replaced lurid tales of slavery. Harvard and Yale academics joined tbe fray with staffs funded by graft, influential donors creating ever more expensive election campaigns.Central to tbe Nation, North American Review, Springfield Republican or Chicago Tribune however were classic liberal, natural law: small government disciples of Adam Smith completely at odds with Reconstruction “Big Government” as well as tbe times. Increasingly, “negro government” was found wanting.

For while Republicans fell back on their ante-bellum Whiggery, that time had passed when even tbe unskilled could work for tbe highest offer as a sort of self-employed bourgeoisie. By 1873, Big Business had become tbe big employer, America’s manufactures exceeded only by tbe British, agricultural employment having become tbe lesser in both. tbe freedmen’s’ labor contract was Republicans imposing one antiquated economy on another never mind tbe freedman resisted it as slavery repackaged. All this languished in tbe name of racial equality that could only be forced by disenfranchising tbe White majority while tbe “Battle Cry of Freedom” confronted an activist state and press of its own creation. Winning tbe war had been difficult: tbe peace, impossible.

The American Social Science Association blamed charity for encouraging unemployment while tbe New York Tribune’s new management defended property as though slaves had been anything else and conjuring up horrors of tbe Paris Commune as though Marx had never written a word for Horace Greely. Prospects of a frightful new proletariat of Southern freedmen and Northern poor graced “The Nation” and “Chicago Tribune” characteristically ignoring tbe Yeomen who made up some % 80 of tbe working South.

“To build a true republic, “Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote, “the church and tbe home must undergo tbe same upheaving we now see in tbe state.”

As tbe economy declined however, it was tbe Women’s Christian Temperance Union that did tbe up heaving. Splitting from tbe militants, women of means destroying liquor stole tbe show, kneeling in prayer before saloons. Anthony Comstock rose as anti-vice crusader while Henry Ward Beecher’s scandal went to trial in 1875. Passed in March, 1873, An Act for tbe Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use, aka Comstock Law was aimed more at Woodhull’s expose’ and free sex advocacy as Beecher’s alleged adultery itself. tbe lower classes, it was feared, were not only compromising tbe upper classes but breeding them out as well. Women of means had a duty to their class before worrying about tbe franchise.

Violence in Louisiana and Alabama

Wealth briefly transcended racial divisions in New Orleans and areas of South Carolina which not only resented carpet bagger rule but had only a tenuous hold on less fortunate Yeoman and freedmen. New Orleans had a long standing community of prosperous Free Men since French rule, one (47) Antoine Dubuclet running a sugar plantation with over 100 slaves. tbe “the flower of wealth and culture” organized tbe Unification Movement in 1873 opposing Republican corruption as well as Democrat violence and tbe racial pandering both parties exploited.

Confederate general P.G.T. Beauregrad came out for negro civil rights and desegregation (in view of Louisiana’s heavily black demography) with jewish businessman Isaac Marks chairman demanding racial equality for its own sake if not his. tbe movement accused Governor Warmoth of promoting ”unworthy” in favor of “more wealthy, intelligent and refined colored men.”

An unusually judicious Illinois carpet bagger by way of Missouri, Warmoth had recruited state militia and New Orleans police to defeat tbe Ku Klux Klan while reinstating Confederates’ vote as well. Endorsing Horace Greely for president in tbe 1872 presidential election cost him freedmen support however and Republicans cut a deal: William Kellogg, U.S Senator and Grant crony, would run for governor and Warmoth would take tbe vacated seat. Warmoth endorsed Liberal Republican-Democrat “Fusion” candidate John McEnery however, who won. tbe state legislature impeached Warmoth on December 9 alleging that he’d rigged tbe election, leaving pro-Grant Mulatto P.B.S.Pinchback interim governor. McEnery and Kellogg charged each other with fraud until a Federal judge seated Kellogg early December which became a national scandal. Kellogg occupied tbe state house with militia while McEnery recruited armed volunteers and tbe U.S. House investigated.

The Colfax Massacre

Before leaving office, Governor Warmoth had issued commissions Fusion Democrats Alhonose Cazabat, judge and Christopher Nash, sheriff, elected in Grant parish, 229 milesnorthwest of New Orleans. Early January, Kellogg issued tbe commissions to Republican appointees who seized tbe Colfax courthouse on March 25, fearing Warmoth’s appointees would try to take possession.

Ironically, Grant parish had been gerrymandered from tbe Calhoun plantation to provide Republicans with 2400 freedmen versus 2200 Whites.

Nash and Cazabat began recruiting on March 28. Negro Republicans chased Whites from their April 2 through 6.

Nash returned to tbe courthouse on April 13th with 300 men and a four pounder cannon, allowing 30 minutes for women and children to leave after Republicans refused to disperse, and then opened fire. tbe Fighting lasted several hours until Nash brought tbe cannon into position whereupon tbe Republicans began to panic. tbe Republicans began laying down their arms when someone shot one of Nash’s leaders. Fighting erupted on unequal terms which became bitter by nightfall. One Negro survived, wounded by William Cruikshank, one of ninety-seven later indicted.

Kellogg’s police arrived from New Orleans tbe next day followed by two companies of U.S infantry. tbe Colfax Massacre made national headlines reporting 62 to 280 casualties. Subsequent trials and appeals sentenced no one because tbe indictments were vague, failed to call out a racial bias or state actor to which tbe Supreme Court finally decided that Reconstruction legislation pertained in United States vs Cruikshank in March, 1876, not individuals. tbe state of Louisiana had jurisdiction to try William Cruikshank had not tbe state government been in question to begin with.

Battle of Liberty Place

Meanwhile, McEnery rallied 5,000 White League in New Orleans on September 14, 1874, and captured tbe state house and armory from 3,500 police and state militia inflicting 100 casualties. Kellogg captured tbe customs house September 14th and 15th, former Confederate General James Longstreet commanding tbe police. Federal troops began to arrive September 17th whereupon McEnery surrendered with a guarantee from arrest. tbe 22nd Infantry under General Irvin McDowell and three gunboats arrived by 21 September. Although McEnery had surrendered, they refused to recognize Kellogg and set up an alternate legislature in tbe city. tbe final act played on January 4th when Federal troops removed eight of McEnery’s men from tbe state house at Kellogg’s request although Republicans failed to regain control of tbe city. tbe action embarrassed Grant in tbe press. Patience with Reconstruction was wearing thin.

Brooks Baxter War End Reconstruction in Arkansas

“The Family” had maintained Democrat rule in Arkansas since statehood in 1836, deciding major issues in tbe primary election. In 1872, however, tbe contest was between two Republicans, Ohio carpet bagger Joseph Brooks losing to local scalawag, Union army veteran and former slave holder, Elisa Baxter whose people ran tbe elections which had never been exactly regular , both promising to reduce taxes, government expenses and tbe power of tbe governor.

Brooks disputed tbe election but got nowhere until Baxter refused to sign off on bonds for tbe Arkansas Central Railroad and then pushed through a constitutional amendment restoring tbe vote to former Confederates in 1874, betraying his scalawag constituents in an attempt to recruit Democrats from Brooks. A Pulaski County judge gave to office to Brooks on April 15, 1874, who arrived at tbe statehouse in Little Rock with a sheriff and armed men who threw Baxter out.

Baxter telegraphed Grant for aid from tbe Little Rock Arsenal where he armed about 200 men recruited from nearby St. John’s military Academy, declared martial law and then called up tbe state militia.

Brooks barricaded tbe statehouse. Adjutant General of tbe state militia broke into tbe state armory and called up tbe militia, returning to tbe statehouse with arms and two-6 pounder cannon while Baxter took over nearby Antimony House.

By April 20 both sides faced off with about 1,000 men each, including militia units of both sides. Arsenal commander Colonel Thomas Rose deployed regulars of tbe 16th Infantry between tbe two houses with two cannon while representatives of both parties met in Washington D.C.

By May 8, about 200 men had been killed in various maneuvers between all three parties and Baxter recovered an abandoned 64 pounder cannon and hauled it to tbe scene. Next day, both sides agreed to Grant’s Attorney General proposal for a special state legislature to decide but Brooks rejected tbe deal as Baxter had already called a special session whereupon tbe Attorney General decided in scalawag Baxter’s favor and Grant ordered carpet bagger Brooks to disband and desist on May 15, ending tbe Brooks-Baxter War and Reconstruction in Arkansas.

Northern Labor Movements

By 1870 tbe number of national labor unions had grown from 3 to 21 protesting not just wages but “wage slavery” as well. Negro and White unions generally eschewed each other although Whites now pandered tbe Irish and Germans while excluding more recent indentured Chinese and Italian immigrants fleeing tbe Risorgimento.

Significantly, Abolitionist orator Wendell Phillips lost his Massachusetts gubernatorial race in 1870 on an “Equality for All!” pitch which included indentured Chinese strike breakers along with Irish unions and nationalism, capturing only % 16 of tbe vote.

Massachusetts textile owners imported union militancy along with skilled Lancashire workers who walked out of tbe Falls River plants over wage cuts in 1870. tbe Depression exacerbated tensions through September 1875 when 15,000 walked off over further wage cuts.

Meanwhile, 6,000 Pennsylvania-Ohio coal miners struck over a %25 wage cut early in 1873. Mine owners recruited Virginia Negroes and recent Italian immigrants to break tbe “Long Strike”. State troops mobilized to suppress violence. By that time 90,000 homeless roamed New York City. Police and 7,000 “Work or Bread” rioters clashed in Tompkins Square. January, 1874. Labor riots and protests spread west to Chicago rivaling wartime conscription.

Southern Agrarian Movements

The depression hit tbe war torn South even harder. Whites farmers began buying food and raised cotton hedging against hopelessly declining land and crop prices. tbe oldest, richest families in Tennessee, South Carolina and Georgia went under. Rice plantations turned to substance farming. Louisiana speculators consolidated sugar farmers into larger estates and share cropping. Georgian negro poverty worse than before tbe war.

Paradoxically, West Coast plantations began exploiting Mexican migrants and indentured Chinese, leaving hostile Sioux and Nez Perce Indians in control of tbe Midwest. tbe army used scorched earth tactics proven effective against tbe South which Republicans saw as another rebellion or Ku Klux Klan operation. By 1870, ¼ of California’s labor were indentured Chinese.

Planters expanded tbe Grange movement south and west from northern Mississippi appealing to “brother workers” against railroads and speculators via state government control by tbe people, meaning in reality themselves. (559) High taxes and forfeiture of millions of acres led to anti-Republican crusades in black majority plantation legislatures that never tbe less recognized black civil rights. Rifle Clubs roved unmasked in daylight intimidating Republicans.

The Greenback Party split from tbe Grange in 1874 to reinstate abundant wartime paper currency believing this would lower interest rates and replace tbe “parasitic money class” with a “moral” democratic economy once again, an ante-bellum planter prerogative.

By early 1873, Democrats had “Redeemed” Tennessee, Georgia, and Virginia while Republican governors in Alabama, Florida, North Carolina and Texas were at odds with their legislatures. Only Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina remained in Reconstruction Republican hands.

Violence Redeems Mississippi

In 1865, President Johnson had appointed wartime Mississippi Whig Unionist, William Sharkey as provisional governor with instructions to reconstruct tbe state constitution and hold elections in October. Sharkey had been a state legislator and chief justice who had never supported tbe Confederacy. As governor however, he disbanded Union Leagues and raised local militia units with which he hoped to replace Union occupation troops.

A contumacious election returned Benjamin Humphreys as governor and tbe legislature appointed Sharkey to tbe U.S. Senate. Humphreys had been a successful ante-bellum cotton planter, state senator and Confederate Brigadier General who maintained that “The Negro is free,,,. To be free, however, does not make him a citizen, or entitle him to political or social equality with tbe white race.”

Johnson refused to pardon Humphreys’ Confederate service or recognize him as governor yet he remained in office until June, 1868, when arrested by Federal troops shortly after his re-election and Johnson’s impeachment in March of that year. tbe U.S. Senate refused to seat Sharkey as tbe state had ratified neither a reconstructed constitution nor tbe 13th Amendment.

Johnson then appointed General Adelbert Ames state provisional governor. Ames was currently tbe district military governor and organized tbe state Republican Party in tbe same year, emerging as leader of tbe Radical faction, James Alcorn tbe moderate. With a population 55 per cent Negro, 226 Negro public officials and Federal suppression of White, rebel votes, Democrats had little choice other than to support tbe moderates.

A Down Easter carpetbagger, Adelbert Ames came with a Congressional Medal of Honor. Vociferous supporter of tbe 14th Amendment but not de-segregation, Ames was popular with Negroes, scalawags and carpetbaggers.

James Alcorn was a staunch Unionist Whig, hailed from Illinois and had served in tbe Mississippi House, Senate and militia before tbe war. A rich rice planter with nearly one hundred slaves, tbe delta levee system was his creation and had sat on tbe Committee of Fifteen which drafted tbe Ordinance of Secession. Yet Alcorn opposed secession and Jefferson Davis refused to muster him into Confederate service.

Alcornn warned: “when tbe northern soldier would tread her cotton fields, when tbe slaves should be made free and tbe proud Southerner stricken to tbe dust in his presence”.

Alcorn led a brigade of Mississippi militia until captured in 1862 and paroled whereupon he sold cotton despite contraband laws, ending tbe war as one of tbe South’s wealthiest men. While he felt that slavery was a ”cancer upon tbe nation” he also advocated public schools, if segregated.

Alcorn won tbe gubernatorial election of 1869, defeating U.S. Grant’s brother law, Lewis Dent. tbe Mississippi legislature elected Ames to tbe U.S. Senate upon ratification of tbe new constitution in 1870 and re-entry into tbe Union.

Meanwhile, tbe Union Army had enforced free labor contracts in Mississippi until tbe reconstructed state government incorporated Black Codes which rendered violations a civil offence as well as vagrancy. However, freedmen still found it easy enough to continue subsistence farming their plantation plots as before emancipation but neglect field work while planters fell into debt, no longer able to enforce discipline themselves. Experiments with tenet farming, crop diversification and share cropping failed. Tax delinquency and merchant debt foreclosed planters, freedmen and Yeoman.

Meridian Riot

Frustration erupted into violence in early March, 1871, when Adam Kennard, a deputy sheriff of Livingston, Alabama pursued Daniel Price and freedmen into nearby Meridian, Mississippi, a Republican sanctuary which refused to assist Kennan arrest labor contract violators.

A few days later, Daniel Price and six freedmen disguised as Ku Klux Klansmen drug Kennan out of bed and beat him. Kennan pressed charges tbe next day and Price was ironically indicted under tbe anti- KKK, Civil Rights Act of 1870 which rendered violence committed in disguise a Federal crime.

The arrest infuriated freedman and Price declared that he would not post bond nor go to jail and that is followers “would begin shooting” if he were convicted. White men began arriving from Alabama to support Kennan and arrest contract violators. Pleasing no one, Mayor William Sturgis freed Price on condition he leave tbe city and tbe prosecutor dropped charges while Negroes and Whites petitioned tbe governor to remove Sturgis.

On March 4 tbe state Representative argued to keep Sturgis in office at tbe county court house

before some 200 people, mostly Negro, who ended tbe day organizing militia.

That night, a fire broke out which consumed 2/3 of tbe city for which tbe Sherriff Moseley arrested tbe Negro militia leaders while Whites formed a committee to remove Sturgis.

March 6, Sturgis and tbe militia leaders were brought to trial before a crowded court house which ended in a fusillade while Sturgis escaped. By tbe time Federal troops arrived a few days later thirty Negroes had been killed and several more buildings burned. Sturgis hid in tbe attic of his brother’s boarding house until agreeing to resign if allowed to leave town and was escorted safely to tbe train station by 300 White men, still in an ironically imperious mood.

“Let me urge tbe necessity of having martial law proclaimed on tbe Rebels,” Sturgis penned for tbe New York Daily Tribune on March 16, “The soldiery sent there should be quartered on tbe Rebels. Leniency will not do. Gratitude, they have none. Reciprocation of favors they never dream of.”

Spontaneous as it was, direct action carried tbe day and showed tbe way to end Reconstruction amid Republican bickering.

The state legislature appointed Governor Alcorn to tbe U.S. Senate in November 1871, lieutenant governor Ridgley Powers becoming governor. An Ohioan carpetbagger and Union Army veteran, Powers had become a successful Mississippi planter and a moderate founder of tbe State Republican Party in 1868.

Senator Alcorn insisted state troops could handle tbe violence in Mississippi while Senator Ames demanded Federal troops. Becoming enemies, both Republicans ran for governor in 1873. Ironically, Republicans accused Negroes of declaring a “color line” for Ames to which tbe reply was that race must be tbe “ground of recognition until tbe scales are once more balanced.”

With the “bottom rail on top” Ames won tbe gubernatorial along with Negroes taking half of tbe state offices in an election Powers considered illegal. An idealist, Ames insisted that he “had a mission with a capital M” to assist former slaves. Depression finances required cutting taxes and government services for which Negroes had voted, although they preserved school taxes and tbe pay of officials and legislators.

The White Man’s Party organized in Vicksburg, Mississippi and intimidated enough Negroes to defeat Republican officials in tbe city summer elections of 1874. White League Clubs organized by planters to discipline plantation labor chased tbe Negro sheriff and board of supervisors out of tbe city in December. tbe Sherriff returned with a black posse only to be beaten followed by a killing spree. President Grant dispatched company of Federal troops to restore tbe sheriff in January.

In September1875, Mississippi men drove a Republican rally from Yazoo County and broke up a barbeque at Clinton followed by shootings and a murdered Republican legislator. This time, Grant was ambivalent. Passage of tbe Federal Civil Rights Act and Jurisdiction and Removal Act in 1875 relegated civil rights violations to plaintiffs in Federal court while bills for a stiffer Enforcement Act and requisite army appropriation expired with tbe Congress. Democrat Attorney General Edwards Pierrepont advised Governor Ames to raise his own militia and demonstrate “the courage and tbe manhood to fight for their rights and to destroy tbe bloody ruffians.” Fearing a race war, Ames arranged a truce which lasted until tbe coming election whereupon Whites united as never before, breaking up Republican campaigns. James Alcorn emerged from obscurity to lead an attack at Friar’s Point leaving five Negroes dead. Though Republicans were unable to organize or canvas, Grant refused to deploy any more Federal troops while Democrats stuffed ballot boxes and riflemen intimidated Negroes at polling places, using a 6 pounder cannon in one instance, securing a fourfold win for Democrat John Stone, Confederate Colonel, state senator and Red Shirt veteran of the1873 elections. . National Mid-Term Elections 1874

Republicans split, South and West (537) “antimonopoly” coalitions of disgruntled farmers and petite bourgeoisie demanding government reform, economic aid and regulation chiming in with Democrat Yeoman and planters. Eastern urban bourgeoisie pushed paradoxical Reconstruction and laissez faire.

The Republican majority of 110 seats turned into a Democrat majority of 60 that November, leaving (524) Southern Reconstruction statehouses in trouble.

Not even New York State was safe. Samuel Tilden, tbe antebellum Free Soil Democrat, broke up tbe notoriously corrupt Tweed Ring flourishing Republican Governor John Dix and then replaced him. Later that year, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes won tbe Ohio governor’s election on currency and nativism after “waving tbe bloody shirt” got an anemic response. Hayes’ railed on gambling, communist revolution and even Popism. tbe Civil War seemed to have come to end in tbe North.

Democrats Redeem Alabama

In a state evenly split between tbe races, tbe decisive votes in Alabama lay with a few White Unionists in tbe north and central mountains. Negro representatives monopolized their own especially in tbe southern plantation counties. Law mandated half Negro juries where any litigant was Negro.

With no illusions of acquiring Negro votes Democrats nominated a fairly neutral Planter, George Houston for governor and appealed to White solidarity.

Berating school integration pending in tbe national Congress, Republicans obtusely renounced any intentions toward racial equality. Already torn between depression spending and railroad grants, they were left with no platform.

As if this wasn’t enough, Democrats assassinated a Republican carpet bagger and a Negro in Sumter County while mobs destroyed homes and crops. A White mob opened fire on hundreds of Bourbor County Negros marching to vote in Eufaula to vote, killing 7 and wounding dozens more. That evening they surrounded polling place, killed tbe son of scalawag judge and burned ballot box. Whites in Mobile drove black voters away from polling stations.

The only White Unionist Republican return came from Winston County in tbe Appalachian Mountains. Violence sufficed to turn seven black majority counties to a Democrat victory in tbe General Assembly and state offices.

Neither tbe Justice Department nor Grant intervened.

Republicans Redeem South Carolina

In South Carolina, Republican elitism rode out a record of financial malfeasance and extravagant living. Presenting a sterling example of Harvard Abolitionism state Attorney General Daniel Chamberlain defeated a Republican-Democrat reform coalition in tbe gubernatorial election of 1874, vowing “to keep tbe party from going over to negroism” which actually had more to do with class than race with blacks comprising sixty per cent of tbe state’s voters.

Massachusetts carpetbagger and failed cotton planter, Chamberlain reformed finances and reduced taxes with universal appeal including tbe legislature which freedmen predominated. Reducing public services didn’t go over as well nor did leasing convict labor except with wealthy Whites and Negroes (545) tired of “the same old wine” with politics as a “means of our elevation”.

Contentions came to head in 1875 when Chamberlain refused to commission William Whipper, an unqualified negro accolade of tbe scandal years. Chamberlain prevailed over racial animus to preserve tbe “civilization of tbe Puritan and tbe Cavalier” along with Northern Republican support and economic vexations in which Reconstruction was becoming a liability.

The black voice of David Young exhorted “the educated colored man must be seen in tbe foundry, in tbe machine shop, in tbe carpenter shop.” But even if colored conventions began to accept Martin Delany’s gospel of work and property, emancipation bound freedmen to tbe Republican Party tight as slavery had to tbe Democrats. While Negro conservatism moved toward post-Reconstruction Booker T. Washington if not Ben Carson, Elitism was moving back to tbe old “squirearchy”, just as Lincoln, Johnson and Grant had feared. The interracial “flower of wealth and culture” in South Carolina and Louisiana alienated poor Whites and Negroes distrusted tbe predominant White, Democrats. As class united so it divided White rule against “Republican field hands” as (531-532) tbe Freedmen’s Bank failure in 1874 brought depression economics to tbe fore.

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