A Fool's Errand & Bricks without Straw

by Albion Winegar Tourgée

  The constitutions of the North had fostered individual independence, equal rights and power, and general intelligence among the masses. The township system had been the cause and consequence of this. Almost all offices were elective, and, except in rare instances, all men were electors. It developed democratic ideas and sentiments, and was a nursery of democratic freedom.

  In the South the reverse was true. The ballot and the jury-box were jealously guarded from the intrusion of the poor. Wealth was a prerequisite of official eligibility. It was a republic in name, but an oligarchy in fact. Its laws were framed and construed to this end. The land-holdings were enormous, and the bulk of those who cultivated the soil were not freeholders, but either slaves or renters.

  To my mind, the first great prerequisite of successful Reconstruction is to break down the legal barriers to a homogeneous development of the country; to so organize the new State governments that they will tend to encourage individual action, freedom of opinion, diversity of industry, and general education. The task before the coming convention is herculean, even if it is not impossible to accomplish. I have pledged myself to those who elected me, to attempt what I can in this direction, and shall redeem the pledge to the letter. I inclose you a copy of the Circular issued to our electors.

  In conclusion, allow me to say that I do not believe that the interest or success of the Republican party demands or would be promoted by the course you suggest. If it does, I am sure that the ultimate interest of the country does not; and as I was a citizen before I was a Republican, and as I fought for the country and not for the party, you must excuse me if I follow my convictions rather than your counsel. I am, very respectfully,

  Your obedient servant,

  COMFORT SERVOSSE.

  CHAPTER XXV

  A GRUMBLER'S FORECAST

  Table of Contents

  THE transition period was over, so it was said. The conventions had met in the various States, and in a marvelously short time had submitted constitutions which had been ratified by vote of the people. Officers had been chosen under them, they had been approved by the Congress of the nation as required by law, Legislatures had met, senators and representatives in Congress been chosen, the presidential election had taken place, and the Republican party had achieved an overwhelming success. It was all over, — the war, reconstruction, the consideration of the old questions. Now all was peace and harmony. The South must take care of itself now. The nation had done its part: it had freed the slaves, given them the ballot, opened the courts to them, and put them in the way of self-protection and self-assertion. The "root-hog-or-die" policy of the great apostle of the instantaneous transformation era became generally prevalent. The nation heaved a sigh of relief. For three-quarters of a century the South had been the "Old Man of the Sea" to the young Republic: by a simple trick of political legerdemain he was now got rid of for ever. No wonder the Republic breathed freely! Yankee-land could now bend its undivided energies to its industries and commerce. The South would take care of itself, manage its own affairs, look after its own interests. The nation was safe. It had put down rebellion, disbanded its armies, patched up its torn map. The Republican party had accomplished a great mission. It had promised to put down rebellion, and had done so. It had guaranteed freedom to the slave, and had redeemed its promise. There was nothing more to be done until, in the fullness of time, new issues should arise, based on new thoughts, new ideas, and new interests.

  This is what the wise men said. But the Fool looked on with anxious forebodings, and wrote to his old tutor gloomily of the future that seemed so bright to others: —

  WARRINGTON, Dec. 10, 1868.

  To DR. E. MARTIN.

  My dear old Friend, — Your kind and welcome letter, so full of congratulations and bright anticipations, was duly received, and for it I render thanks. Must I confess it, however? it impresses me with a feeling of sadness. The state of affairs which you picture does not exist at the South; and the bright anticipations which you base upon mistaken premises have, in my opinion, little chance of fulfillment. The freedman is just as impotent now of all power of self-protection as he was before the ballot was given him, nay, perhaps more so, as an unskilled person may injure himself with the finest of Damascus blades. Pray keep in your mind my former classification. Of every hundred of the blacks, ninety-five at least can not read or write, ninety-five are landless, and at least eighty have not sufficient to subsist themselves for thirty days without the aid of those who are opposed to them in political thought with an intensity of prejudice you can not begin to understand. These constitute three-fourths of the Republican party of the South. Of the remainder (the whites), twenty-four out of every hundred can not read their ballots; and fifty-five or sixty of the same number are landless, being mere day-laborers, or at least renters, "crappers" as they are called here.

  So that of this party, to whom the wise men of the North have given power, from whom they expect all but impossible things, three-fourths can not read or write, five-sevenths are landless, two-thirds are utterly impoverished, and nearly the whole is inexperienced in the conduct of public affairs. Yet upon this party the nation has rolled the burden of restoration, reconstruction, re-organization! That it will fail is as certain as the morrow's sunrise. For three years the nation has had this problem on the heads and hearts of its legislators, and has not made one step towards its solution. The highest wisdom, the greatest gravity, the profoundest knowledge, and that skill which comes only from experience, are indispensably necessary to this task. It is given into the hands of weaklings; while the great country, whose interest, prosperity, and good faith, are all involved in securing the liberty conferred by the war, and in so organizing these new constituent elements that they shall hereafter be a source of strength, and not danger, — this country stands off, and says, "I will not touch one of the least of these burdens with my little finger. The South must take care of itself."

  My dear old friend, it cannot be done. The experiment must fail; and, when it does fail, it will involve us all — us of the South, I mean — in ruin; but the North, and especially the Republican party of the North, will be responsible for this ruin, for its shame and its loss, for the wasted opportunity, and, it may be, for consequent peril. Of course I shall share it. The North would not see the fact that war did not mean regeneration, nor perform the duty laid upon it as a conqueror. The alternative placed before us at the South was a powerless acceptance of the plan of reconstruction, or opposition and hostility to the government. I, in common with others, chose the former. A loyal man could not do otherwise. Now we, and probably we alone, must share and bear the blame of its failure. I protest in advance against it. If, of a steamer's crew of a hundred men, fifty be deaf-and-dumb, and only five of them all have ever been afloat, her voyage even in the calmest sea is not likely to be a safe one; but when it is in a season of typhoons, off a dangerous coast of which no chart has ever been made, its destruction may be certainly foretold. And, when it perishes amid the breakers of a lee-shore, the despairing wretches, who call for aid which cometh not, will curse, not so much the incompetent captain and inefficient steersman, as the negligent owners who sent her to sea with such a crew.

  It is so with us. We Republicans of the South will go down with the reconstruction movement. Some of us will make a good fight for the doomed craft; others will neither realize nor care for its danger: but on neither will justly rest the responsibility. That will rest now and for all time with the Republican party of the North, — a party the most cowardly, vacillating, and inconsistent in its management of these questions, that has ever been known in any government.

  These are my convictions. I might get away, and avoid this result, so far as I am concerned; but I have cast in my lot with this people. I have advocated this measure, and I will abide with them its results.

  In fact, my dear Doctor, I begin seriously to fear that the North lacks virility. This cowardly shirking of responsibility, this pandering to sentimental whimsi
calities, this snuffling whine about peace and conciliation, is sheer weakness. The North is simply a conqueror; and, if the results she fought for are to be secured, she must rule as a conqueror. Suppose the South had been triumphant, and had overwhelmed and determined to hold the North? Before now, a thoroughly organized system of provincial government would have been securely established. There would have been no hesitation, no subterfuge, no pretence of restoration, because the people of the South are born rulers, — aggressives, who, having made up their minds to attain a certain end, adopt the means most likely to secure it. In this the North fails. She hesitates, palters, shirks.

  There is another danger, Rebellion has ended without punishment. It is true the South has lost, — lost her men, her money, her slaves; but that was only a gambler's stake, the hazard placed upon the dice. There was talk of "making treason odious." How that result should be accomplished was a serious question; but how to make it honorable, I fear we have found an easy matter to demonstrate.

  As I have said, the party, if it may so be called, to whom the mighty task of rehabilitation has been assigned, must fail at the South. Already we hear the threat from the highest seats in the hostile camps, "Just wait until the Blue Coats are gone, and we will make Sodom and Gomorrah more tolerable than these States to Republicans!" They will do it too. They have the power, the intellect, the organizing capacity, the determined will. Our numbers only make us a cumbrous rope of sand. Weak, incoherent particles are not made strong by mere multiplication. In the struggle against us, the most reckless and unworthy of those who led in the war will again come to the front. Their success will make them the heroes of the people, and they will win place and honor thereby. It will result that turbulent, ambitious men will hereafter say that the road to honor, renown, fame, and power, in our nation, lies through the "Traitor's Gate." Burr and his coadjutors won only shame by their attempt to destroy the nation. Davis, Lee, and their compatriots have already won a distinction and eminence they could not have hoped for had they remained peaceful citizens of the Republic. They are destined to achieve far greater honor. From this day the prestige of the Federal soldier will begin to wane throughout the land. In the course of another decade, one will almost be ashamed to confess that he wore the blue. On the other hand, the glory of the Confederate leader will hourly wax greater and brighter. The latter has a people devoted and steadfast, to whose pride, even in defeat, he can appeal with certainty of receiving an unshrinking response. The former has a country debauched by weak humanitarianisms, more anxious to avoid the appearance of offending its enemies than desirous of securing its own power or its own ends. These men who have led in the Rebellion will not be slow to perceive and take advantage of their opportunity; and other generations following them will note the fact that the sure, safe, and brilliant road to fame and success is an armed rebellion against existing powers. You may think me discouraged and morbid; but mark my words, old friend, we have sown to the wind, and shall reap the whirlwind.

  Yours truly,

  COMFORT SERVOSSE.

  So, with foreboding, the Fool looked to the future, and awaited the event of that great experiment, from the preliminaries of which he was only able to presage danger and disaster.

  CHAPTER XXVI

  BALAK AND BALAAM

  Table of Contents

  THE re-action from subjection to autonomy was so sudden and astounding, that even the people of the late rebellious States were unable to realize it for a considerable period. That a nation, after four years of war, the loss of a million of men and uncounted millions of treasure, should relax its grip upon the subjugated territory, relieve its people of all disabilities, or only bar from a useless privilege a few superannuated leaders, who only thus were susceptible of martyrdom, and without guaranties for the future, or without power of reversal or modification, should restore this territory, this people, these States, to the position of equal, independent, and co-ordinate sovereignties, was so incredible a proposition, that years were required for its complete comprehension.

  During these years the public press of the South was a curious study. Immediately after the close of the war, and until about the period of the rehabilitation of the States, its utterances were cautious and guarded. While there was almost always an undertone which might be construed to mean either sullen hate or unconcealable chagrin, there was little of that vindictive bitterness toward the North which had immediately preceded the war, or attended its prosecution. It is true, that, in some instances, its bottles of unparalleled infamy were unstopped, and poured on the heads of unoffending citizens of Northern birth, or those natives who saw fit to affiliate with the conqueror, or to accept office at his hands. This, however, was not a universal rule. As soon as the reconstruction period had passed, this caution relaxed. More and more bitter, more and more loathsome, became the mass of Southern journalism. Defiant hostility, bitter animosity, unrestricted libertinism in the assaults of private character, poured over the columns of the Southern press like froth upon the jaws of a rabid cur. Whatever or whoever was of the North or from the North was the subject of ridicule, denunciation, and immeasurable malignity of vituperation. Whoever had aided, assisted, or assented to the process of reconstruction, became a target for infamous assault. Rank, station, purity of life, uprightness of character, religious connection, age, sex, were no safeguard from these assaults. The accumulated malignity of the years of quietude and suppression burst its bounds, and poured over the whole country a disgusting flood of hideous, horrible, improbable, and baseless accusation and rabid vituperation. Men of the fairest lives were covered over with unutterable infamy; women of the highest purity were accused of unnamable enormities; and even children of tender years were branded with ineffaceable marks of shame. The previous training which the press of the South had received in the art of vilification, under the régime of slavery, became now of infinite service in this verbal crusade. The mass of their readers had long been accustomed to believe any thing absurd and horrible in regard to the North. To them it was already the land of thieves, adulterers, infidels, and cheats. There might be good men there; but they were counted rarer than in Sodom. For fifty years the necessities of slavery had rendered the cultivation of such a sentiment necessary in order to preserve the institution from the assaults of free labor and free thought. To turn this tide of public sentiment against the ideas, principles, and men who were engaged in the work of reconstruction, to intensify its bitterness, increase its credulity, and make thereby a seven-times heated furnace of infamy for those who saw fit to favor this movement, was the assigned work and mission of the Southern press, and right nobly was it executed. Never was such unanimity, never was such persistency, never such rivalry in malevolence, never such munificence in invective, never such fertility in falsehood.

  It was but natural, and in a great measure fair, upon the principle that all in war is fair. So far as the official representatives of the government were concerned, they had nothing of which to complain. The represented the conqueror; and if their master was inherently or accidentally too weak to protect them, or disinclined to compel obedience and respect from the recently vanquished enemy, it was only the fault of their employer, whose service was purely voluntary. The fools who had removed to these States from motives of ease or profit, engaging in production, manufacture, or trade, ought not to have complained, because they came among a conquered people, being of the conqueror, well knowing (or at least they should have known) the generations of antagonism which war had fused into hate, and having, therefore, no right to look for or expect kindliness, favor, or even fair play. If they did so, it was their own folly.

  Those who had most right, or perhaps the sole right, to complain, were those among the conquered people who had espoused the cause of the nation before or after the downfall of the Confederacy. They had a right to suppose that the conquering power would at least make itself respectable, and would not permit its supporters to be disgraced by the mere fact of allegiance to it.
It must have been a matter of sincere astonishment to the Union man — who during the war, from its inception to its close, perhaps, had been an uncompromising opponent of those by whom it was waged, had perhaps fought and hidden and endured, with a rare faith in that government from which he was cut off, but to which he had adhered with marvelous fidelity — to find, after the war, at the first, his neighbors flocking to him in order to obtain the benefit of his good word, his intercession with the powers that were, in their behalf. It must indeed have been a proud day to such when those who had persecuted came to sue; and, let it be said to their credit, rarely was application made to them in vain. These Union men were a most forgiving people, and not unfrequently bestowed the divine favor of forgiveness without price upon the very men who had wrought them the sorest evil. But such surprise must have been as nothing compared with the astonishment with which the Union man must have witnessed, after the accomplishment of reconstruction, himself made an object of scorn, and his family visited with contumely and insult, because of his Union record.

  As Jehu Brown said to the Fool in regard to it, —

  "I can't understan' it, Colonel. They say our side whipped; that the Union won, an' the Confederacy lost: an' yit here they be a-puttin' it on tu me like all possessed day arter day, an' abusin' my wife an' children too bad for white folks to hear about, jes cos I was a Union man. There must be some mistake, Colonel, about the matter. Either 'twas the t'other folks that surrendered at Appomattox, or else you an' I was on t'other side, an' hev jes been a-dreamin' that we was Yank an' Union all this time!"