America Aflame

by David Goldfield

  It was the second time in three years that the High Court had eviscerated a key measure of Congressional Reconstruction. The aversion to further accrual of federal authority appeared most tellingly in a case having nothing to do with Reconstruction or African American rights. The Slaughter-House Cases (1873) involved the issue of whether the state of Louisiana could require New Orleans butchers to ply their trade in a central, state-franchised facility. The state cited health and safety issues for its monopoly (though revenue probably played a more important role). The butchers claimed that the state, by forcing them to operate in a state facility rather than independently, had violated the Fourteenth Amendment, depriving them of “liberty and property without due process of law.”27

  In a five-to-four decision, the Court upheld the right of Louisiana to create a monopoly for health and safety reasons. Justice Samuel F. Miller in his majority opinion went beyond the specific case to remark more generally that the Fourteenth Amendment applied only to those “privileges and immunities” already protected by the federal government. These included access to ports and navigable waterways, the right to run for federal office, the ability to travel to Washington, D.C., and the right to protection on the high seas and in foreign countries. None of these federal rights interested most blacks. In other words, the amendments did not protect individuals from states abridging a broader list of rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights. The butchers, as citizens of Louisiana, could not invoke federal citizenship in this case to seek their remedy.

  Miller used the specific case to ruminate more generally on the nature of federal relations emerging from the war and on the intent of the amendments’ framers. Miller argued that the Reconstruction amendments applied only to African Americans, not to white Louisiana butchers. These were not the views of the amendments’ proponents, however. House Judiciary Chairman James F. Wilson, an Iowa Republican, and Ohio Republican John A. Bingham, who authored portions of the Fourteenth Amendment, clearly stated their intent to provide federal protection to all citizens when states violated their civil rights. The amendments, its framers contended, did not augment federal power as much as they provided enforcement for Article IV, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution that required states to uphold the Bill of Rights.

  Justice Miller, an anti-slavery Republican, worried that the power tilt toward the federal government during and after the war threatened the balance of power between state and federal authority and the balance between the legislative, executive, and judiciary branches. His decision to go well beyond the facts of the case before him reflected this concern. In early 1868, as Congressional Reconstruction was in full swing in the South, Miller wrote, “In the threatened collision between the Legislative branch of the government and the Executive and Judicial branches I see consequences from which the cause of free government may never recover in my day. The worst feature I now see is the passion which governs the hours in all parties and all persons who have controlling influence.” In his opinion, Justice Miller hoped to restore “the balance between State and Federal power.”

  The passions Miller cited, a perpetual concern of Americans since the burning of the Ursuline convent in 1834 and the subsequent violent outbursts eventually leading to civil war, had the potential of veering toward despotism. Lincoln had articulated these fears in the late 1830s, and the failed revolutions in Europe in 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871 provided warning memories of popular excess. Justice David Davis, Lincoln’s campaign manager during the 1860 presidential election race, in joining Miller’s majority opinion, worried in 1868 that “both parties have run into extremes,” leaving him with “great alarm at the tendency to consolidated Government.… This alarms me more than all other things.”

  Justice Stephen J. Field, another Lincoln appointee, dissented, expressing the view that the amendments rendered national citizenship paramount to state citizenship: “A citizen of a State is now only a citizen of the United States residing in the State.” Therefore, the federal government could hold states accountable for enforcing the Reconstruction amendments and the Bill of Rights. Justice Noah H. Swayne, a Virginian, went further, hailing the Reconstruction amendments as “a new departure” and “an important epoch” in constitutional history. These amendments “trench directly upon the power of the States.” Swayne noted that before the war, there was “ample” protection against national “oppression” and “little … against wrong and oppression by the states.” The Reconstruction amendments resolved this imbalance.

  Swayne’s opinion reflected a minority view among northern Republicans by 1873. The disillusionment with Reconstruction and the concern over corruption and disorder made federal power suspect. The Civil War created a unified nation, but the debate over the balance between state and federal authority would continue to rage. The result, as Justice Joseph P. Bradley noted in his dissent, was that the Court had relegated the “rights, privileges, and immunities of the greatest importance to the state’s protection alone.” The decision left African Americans in particular at the mercies of redeemed southern states with little or no recourse to federal redress.

  The cumulative impact of these decisions and the prevailing social and economic contexts of the era encouraged bolder attacks against the remaining Republican governments. White paramilitary groups closely tied to the Democratic Party now operated openly in Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. Leaders announced a “white line” policy, inviting all white men, regardless of party affiliation, to “unite” and redeem the states. Black Republicans feared not only for their political future but also for their lives.28

  The boldest assault occurred in New Orleans in September 1874 when leading citizens and Confederate veterans, organized as the White League, led eighty-five hundred men in an attempted coup to oust Republican governor William P. Kellogg and members of his administration. The league’s manifesto, promulgated in July 1874, offered a clear indication of its intentions: “Having solely in view the maintenance of our hereditary civilization and Christianity menaced by a stupid Africanization, we appeal to the men of our race … to unite with us against that supreme danger … in an earnest effort to re-establish a white man’s government in this city and the State.” These were no mincing words or veiled threats.29

  The New Orleans Leaguers overwhelmed the city’s racially mixed Metropolitan Police Force under the command of former Confederate general James B. Longstreet. Only the timely arrival of federal troops, ordered to the scene by President Grant, prevented the takeover attempt. The aftermath of the “Battle of Liberty Place” was not good for either Longstreet or President Grant. When Confederate-leaning historians wrote about the Civil War in future decades, the turncoat Longstreet appeared as the cause of every major defeat. In the more immediate future, northerners denounced the use of military force to prop up a government many felt was illegitimate. The league was more successful in the Louisiana countryside in the weeks preceding the Democratic victory in November 1874. League troops overthrew or murdered Republican officials in eight parishes.30

  The Democratic victory in Louisiana encouraged white paramilitarists in Mississippi. Blacks dominated the Warren County government headquartered in Vicksburg. The White Liners, as they called themselves, demanded the resignations of all black officials including the sheriff, Peter Crosby, a black Union veteran. Republican governor Adelbert Ames, a native of Maine, ordered the Liners to disperse and granted Crosby’s request to raise a protective militia to respond to future threats. Ames, a hero at Gettysburg, settled in Mississippi because of a deep commitment to the freedman. As part of that desire, he hoped to remake Mississippi as a modern state, much in the image of his native Maine. Almost from the beginning of his administration, however, internal disputes among the state’s Republicans and political pressure and violence from Democrats undermined his progressive agenda. Ames ran one of the most honest administrations in the South, yet Democrats constantly charged him and his colleagues with corruption. No charges were ever fil
ed, but the Democrats understood that mere accusations played sympathetically in the North.31

  Peter Crosby’s efforts to gather a militia force were too successful. An army of several hundred armed African Americans marched in three columns from the surrounding countryside to Vicksburg. Whites responded to the challenge, firing on the militia and terrorizing blacks in the city and county over the next ten days. Among the victims were a black Presbyterian minister and several of his congregants kneeling in prayer. Liners killed at least twenty-nine blacks and wounded countless more. Democrats gained control of the county government.

  The Vicksburg incident was a rehearsal for Democratic victories in statewide elections in 1875. The Birmingham News cheered on the Mississippi White Liners in the popular Darwinian rhetoric of the time: “We intend to beat the negro in the battle of life, and defeat means one thing—EXTERMINATION.” Liners focused on the state’s majority black counties and vowed to “overawe the negroes and exhibit to them the ocular proof of our power.” In September, Governor Ames wrote to his wife, whom he had sent out of state, recounting a Republican barbecue attended by fifteen hundred African Americans in Clinton, Mississippi. White Liners opened fire on the gathering, killing two women and two children, then marauded through the countryside and killed three more blacks, including a man nearly one hundred years old, “defenseless and helpless.” Blacks fought back and killed four of the Liners, but they were no match for the superior numbers and firepower of the whites. “It is cold-blooded murder on the part of the ‘white liners,’” Ames wrote. “You ask what are we to do. That is a question I find it difficult to answer.” Ames requested troops from Grant, but, as he informed his wife, “it will be a difficult thing [for Grant] to do.”32

  Such intimidation worked, and the Democrats swept to victory in Mississippi. They would not allow Governor Ames to finish his term, threatening him with impeachment. Fearing for his safety, Ames resigned and fled the state. A federal grand jury convened several months later and concluded that the “fraud, intimidation, and violence perpetuated” in the 1875 state elections were “without a parallel in the annals of history.” The South’s second war of independence was reaching its climax.33

  The southern white evangelical churches, which had roundly condemned the political activities of northern missionaries and the Republican governments, praised the restoration of Democratic rule. The means justified the ends. The editor of the Christian Index of Georgia hailed the outcomes of the 1874 elections throughout the South, proclaiming that “every Christian in the southern States should devoutly thank God for His mercies bestowed in the political victories of last week.” The “trials” and “oppressions” of the past decade had been so great that “many of our people—otherwise good citizens—have been led to doubt the overruling Providence of God.” Admitting that churchmen ought to devote themselves to “Religion and not to Politics,” the editor excused himself, noting that the “political revolution” was “a Christian triumph,” wrought “by the hands of an All-wise and merciful Providence.”34

  Frederick Douglass despaired. What began as a promising experiment in racial equality was quickly deteriorating into anarchy and murder. The Grant administration and Republican leaders resisted further interventions in the South. After the Democrats battered them in 1874, Republicans listened more carefully to their northern constituents. Reconstruction, as much as the economic downturn, caused the broad rejection of Republican candidates throughout the North. Douglass saw only one alternative for southern blacks: “My own impression is that when the Government will not or can not protect the black man, he ought to and will finally try to protect himself.” That he did; up to the point of reason. Whites commanded the firepower, and many of the attackers had military experience in the Confederate armies. Rarely did black defenders succeed in overwhelming white assaults in these last years of Reconstruction. Nor could blacks turn to federal troops stationed in the South. By 1874, there were fewer than three thousand federal troops in the region, barely enough to contain even a minor insurgency. The rest of the troops were in the West fighting the Indians.35

  The Methodist Advocate, a northern missionary publication located in Atlanta, shared Douglass’s concern about the safety of the freedmen in an era of laissez-faire government. It stated in April 1875, “To leave the States to manage their own affairs without restriction or interference from the central power is simply to put them mostly into the hands of those who were and now are bitter and persistent enemies of the government, of national union, and of universal freedom and education.” While not refuting the Advocate’s characterization of southern white attitudes, Harper’s challenged its solution. The editor claimed that “incessant and direct national control of the States has so alarmed the republican instinct of the most intelligent part of the country that the chances of Democratic success have been visibly increased.” Republican leaders in the North supported the freedman as long as that support did not interfere with the party’s standing among the northern electorate. Now it did. Harper’s concluded in a condescending tone, “It is certainly not the least pressing duty of all sincere friends of the colored race to teach them self-dependence and the essential character of the government under which they are citizens and voters.” It was incumbent on southern whites themselves to dispose of the bullies in their midst as “New York disposed of Tweed and his Ring.” Self-determination for southern whites was now the vogue; the same for blacks was not.36

  Grant’s inaction was political, not personal. In the early days of Congressional Reconstruction, he intervened in several southern states to protect African Americans and the electoral process. He sent troops to North Carolina in 1870 to assist Republican governor William Holden’s fight against the Klan. In 1872, he dispatched soldiers to Alabama to prevent violence after a disputed election in that state. Grant’s most extensive military operation occurred during the fall of 1871 when he rounded up South Carolina Klansmen. Declaring nine upcountry counties to be “in a state of rebellion,” he suspended the writ of habeas corpus and ordered federal military authorities to arrest suspected Klansmen. The effort netted nearly six hundred Klansmen, though the leaders escaped to northern states or to Canada. The intervention broke the Klan in South Carolina. By July 1872, however, reports from the state indicated “the K.K.’s are becoming very much emboldened and their organizations are coming together again.” Out of 1,300 Klan cases, 1,200 never went to trial. Juries convicted twenty Klansmen, and seventy others pleaded guilty. Grant’s actions yielded sparse results and managed to serve as an excellent recruiting tool for white paramilitarists.37

  Louisiana was an especially difficult case for the Grant administration, given the level of violence and the precarious position of Governor William P. Kellogg, who held office from 1872 to 1876. The president’s periodic intrusions into Louisiana saved the Republican government, but Kellogg failed to mend political fences in his own party or hold off opponents sufficiently to strengthen his position within the state. The more Grant intervened, the less legitimacy the Kellogg administration could claim to govern the state.

  From 1874 until the end of his administration, Grant resolved to draw back from federal intervention in the South. Members of his party, especially the Liberal branch, opposed further involvement both on philosophical and practical grounds. In the midst of a recession, government involvement could only worsen the situation everywhere. E. L. Godkin stated the case for northern public opinion: “The government must get out of the ‘protective’ business and the ‘subsidy’ business and the ‘improvement’ and ‘development’ business.” When Mississippi Republicans requested federal intervention to protect their state government in January 1874, Grant had had enough. “This nursing of monstrosities has nearly exhausted the life of the party. I am done with them, and they will have to take care of themselves.” Everyone was on his own now.38

  The Democrats’ victories in 1874 were the final arguments against intervention. Northerners had never real
ly endorsed the extent of the Radical program to begin with. Except for a brief period of collective anger in 1866–67 when white southerners threatened to reverse the verdict of the war, northerners were keen to let the South go on its way as long as it did not interfere with the nation’s progress. Unlike in the era before the Civil War, southerners no longer wielded power nationally. White southerners simply wanted to rule at home.

  Events in Louisiana provided a good gauge of northern public opinion on the issue of federal intervention in the South. For months after the November 1874 elections in the state, Democratic and Republican legislators battled, each contending that the other’s election resulted from fraud. Two rival governments set themselves up. The standoff ended in January 1875 when a contingent of federal troops under the command of Colonel Philippe R. de Trobriand entered the legislative chamber and expelled five Democrats. General Philip Sheridan, overall commander of federal troops in Louisiana and recently returned from the Plains, recycled his old rhetoric for the new venue. He commended the action, adding that some southerners deserved to be “exterminated.” Sheridan’s comment and de Trobriand’s intrusion outraged northerners already disgusted with the continued chaos in the South. New York politicians and merchants “without distinction of party,” held an “Indignation Meeting” in the city to oppose the maneuver and any further involvement of the government in Reconstruction generally. Even citizens of Boston, the erstwhile hotbed of abolitionism, called for a federal withdrawal from the South. The Republican Party could no longer associate itself with southern Republican governments. It no longer needed to. As the New York Times explained, the abolitionists “Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison … represent ideas in regard to the South which the majority of the Republican party have outgrown.”39