Reconstruction

by Brooks D. Simpson

  While I hear it said everywhere that slavery is dead, I cannot learn who killed it. No thoughtful man has pretended that Lincoln’s proclamation, so noble in sentiment, liberated a single slave. It expressly excluded from its operation all those within our lines. No slave within any part of the rebel States in our possession, or in Tennessee, but only those beyond our limits and beyond our power were declared free. So Gen. Smith conquered Canada by a proclamation! The President did not pretend to abrogate the Slave laws of any of the States. “Restoration,” therefore, will leave the “Union as it was,”—a hideous idea. I am aware that a very able and patriotic gentleman, and learned historian, Mr. Bancroft, has attempted to place their freedom on different grounds. He says, what is undoubtedly true, that the proclamation of freedom did not free a slave. But he liberates them on feudal principles. Under the feudal system, when a king conquered his enemy, he parceled out his lands and conquered subjects among his chief retainers; the lands and serfs were held on condition of fealty and rendering military service when required. If the subordinate chief rebelled, he broke the condition on which he held them, and the lands and serfs became forfeited to the lord paramount. But it did not free the serfs. They, with the manors, were bestowed on other favorites. But the analogy fails in another important respect. The American slave-holder does not hold, by virtue of any grant from any Lord paramount—least of all by a grant from the General Government. Slavery exists by no law of the Union, but simply by local laws, by the laws of the States. Rebellion against the National authority is a breach of no condition of their tenure. It were more analogous to say that rebellion against a State under whose laws they held, might work a forfeiture. But rebellion against neither government would per se have any such effect. On whom would the Lord paramount again bestow the slaves? The theory is plausible, but has no solid foundation.

  The President says to the rebel States: “Before you can participate in the government you must abolish Slavery and reform your election laws.” That is the command of a conqueror. That is Reconstruction, not Restoration—Reconstruction too by assuming the powers of Congress. This theory will lead to melancholy results. Nor can the constitutional amendment abolishing Slavery ever be ratified by three-fourths of the States, if they are States to be counted. Bogus Conventions of those States may vote for it. But no Convention honestly and fairly elected will ever do it. The frauds will not permanently avail. The cause of Liberty must rest on a firmer basis. Counterfeit governments, like the Virginia, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas pretenses, will be disregarded by the sober sense of the people, by future law, and by the courts. “Restoration” is replanting the seeds of rebellion, which, within the next quarter of a century will germinate and produce the same bloody strife which has just ended.

  But, it is said, by those who have more sympathy with rebel wives and children than for the widows and orphans of loyal men, that this stripping the rebels of their estates and driving them to exile or to honest labor, would be harsh and severe upon innocent women and children. It may be so; but that is the result of the necessary laws of war. But it is revolutionary, say they. This plan would, no doubt, work a radical reorganization in Southern institutions, habits and manners. It is intended to revolutionize their principles and feelings. This may startle feeble minds and shake weak nerves. So do all great improvements in the political and moral world. It requires a heavy impetus to drive forward a sluggish people. When it was first proposed to free the slaves and arm the blacks, did not half the nation tremble? The prim conservatives, the snobs, and the male waiting-maids in Congress, were in hysterics.

  The whole fabric of southern society must be changed, and never can it be done if this opportunity is lost. Without this, this Government can never be, as it never has been, a true republic. Heretofore, it had more the features of aristocracy than of democracy. The Southern States have been despotisms, not governments of the people. It is impossible that any practical equality of rights can exist where a few thousand men monopolize the whole landed property. The larger the number of small proprietors the more safe and stable the government. As the landed interest must govern, the more it is subdivided and held by independent owners, the better. What would be the condition of the State of New York if it were not for her independent yeomanry? She would be overwhelmed and demoralized by the Jews, Milesians and vagabonds of licentious cities. How can republican institutions, free schools, free churches, free social intercourse, exist in a mingled community of nabobs and serfs; of the owners of twenty thousand acre manors with lordly palaces, and the occupants of narrow huts inhabited by “low white trash?” If the South is ever to be made a safe republic, let her lands be cultivated by the toil of the owners or the free labor of intelligent citizens. This must be done even though it drive her nobility into exile. If they go, all the better. It will be hard to persuade the owner of ten thousand acres of land, who drives a coach and four, that he is not degraded by sitting at the same table, or in the same pew, with the embrowned and hard-handed farmer who has himself cultivated his own thriving homestead of 150 acres. This subdivision of the lands will yield ten bales of cotton to one that is made now, and he who produced it will own it and feel himself a man.

  It is far easier and more beneficial to exile 70,000 proud, bloated and defiant rebels, than to expatriate four millions of laborers, native to the soil and loyal to the Government. This latter scheme was a favorite plan of the Blairs, with which they had for awhile inoculated our late sainted President. But, a single experiment made him discard it and its advisers. Since I have mentioned the Blairs, I may say a word more of these persistent apologists of the South. For, when the virus of Slavery has once entered the veins of the slaveholder, no subsequent effort seems capable of wholly eradicating it. They are a family of considerable power, some merit, of admirable audacity and execrable selfishness. With impetuous alacrity they seize the White House, and hold possession of it, as in the late Administration, until shaken off by the overpowering force of public indignation. Their pernicious counsel had well nigh defeated the reelection of Abraham Lincoln; and if it should prevail with the present administration, pure and patriotic as President Johnson is admitted to be, it will render him the most unpopular Executive—save one—that ever occupied the Presidential chair. But there is no fear of that. He will soon say, as Mr. Lincoln did: “YOUR TIME HAS COME!”

  This remodeling the institutions, and reforming the rooted habits of a proud aristocracy, is undoubtedly a formidable task, requiring the broad mind of enlarged statesmanship, and the firm nerve of the hero. But will not this mighty occasion produce—will not the God of Liberty and order give us—such men? Will not a Romulus, a Lycurgus, a Charlemagne, a Washington arise, whose expansive views will found a free empire, to endure till time shall be no more?

  This doctrine of Restoration shocks me. We have a duty to perform which our fathers were incapable of, which will be required at our hands by God and our Country. When our ancestors found a “more perfect Union” necessary, they found it impossible to agree upon a Constitution without tolerating, nay, guaranteeing, Slavery. They were obliged to acquiesce, trusting to time to work a speedy cure, in which they were disappointed. They had some excuse, some justification. But we can have none if we do not thoroughly eradicate Slavery and render it forever impossible in this republic. The Slave power made war upon the nation. They declared the “more perfect Union” dissolved—solemnly declared themselves a foreign nation, alien to this republic; for four years were in fact what they claimed to be. We accepted the war which they tendered and treated them as a government capable of making war. We have conquered them, and as a conquered enemy we can give them laws; can abolish all their municipal institutions and form new ones. If we do not make those institutions fit to last through generations of freemen, a heavy curse will be on us. Our glorious, but tainted republic has been born to new life through bloody, agonizing pains. But this frightful “Restoration” has thrown it into “cold obstruction
, and to death.” If the rebel States have never been out of the Union, any attempt to reform their State institutions, either by Congress or the President, is rank usurpation.

  Is then all lost? Is this great conquest to be in vain? That will depend upon the virtue and intelligence of the next Congress. To Congress alone belongs the power of Reconstruction—of giving law to the vanquished. This is expressly declared by the Supreme Court of the United States in the Dorr case, 7th Howard, 42. The Court say, “Under this article of the Constitution (the 4th) it rests with Congress to decide what government is the established one in a State, for the United States guarantees to each a republican form of government,” et cetera. But we know how difficult it will be for a majority of Congress to overcome preconceived opinions. Besides, before Congress meets, things will be so inaugurated—precipitated—it will be still more difficult to correct. If a majority of Congress can be found wise and firm enough to declare the Confederate States a conquered enemy, Reconstruction will be easy and legitimate; and the friends of freedom will long rule in the Councils of the Nation. If Restoration prevails the prospect is gloomy, and new “lords will make new laws.” The Union party will be overwhelmed. The Copperhead party has become extinct with Secession. But with Secession it will revive. Under “Restoration” every rebel State will send rebels to Congress; and they, with their allies in the North, will control Congress, and occupy the White House. Then restoration of laws and ancient Constitutions will be sure to follow, our public debt will be repudiated, or the rebel National debt will be added to ours, and the people be crushed beneath heavy burdens.

  Let us forget all parties, and build on the broad platform of “reconstructing” the government out of the conquered territory converted into new and free States, and admitted into the Union by the sovereign power of Congress, with another plank—“THE PROPERTY OF THE REBELS SHALL PAY OUR NATIONAL DEBT, and indemnify freed-men and loyal sufferers—and that under no circumstances will we suffer the National debt to be repudiated, or the interest scaled below the contract rates; nor permit any part of the rebel debt to be assumed by the nation.”

  Let all who approve of these principles rally with us. Let all others go with Copperheads and rebels. Those will be the opposing parties. Young men, this duty devolves on you. Would to God, if only for that, that I were still in the prime of life, that I might aid you to fight through this last and greatest battle of freedom!

  September 6, 1865

  “THE QUESTION OF NEGRO SUFFRAGE”:

  NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 1865

  Georges Clemenceau to Le Temps

  September 28, 1865. The political parties of the country are just now passing through an interesting phase. Republicans and Democrats vie with each other in expressing their friendship for Mr. Johnson, the Democrats seeking to win him over, and the Republicans to keep their claim on him. Both parties have held their conventions, in Albany, New York, and the copperheads praised Johnson to the skies, the same Johnson whom three short months ago they were calling “Dionysius the Tyrant,” accusing of the murder of Mrs. Surratt, Booth’s accomplice, and threatening with dire vengeance unless he made haste to drop from his cabinet Stanton, his Secretary of War.

  Indeed a surprising change! At the bottom of it is the hope of the Democrats that they may harvest for their party’s advantage the fruits of the policies which Johnson appears to be adopting. The vital question just now in American politics is that of negro suffrage. Johnson declares that he will allow each state to settle it independently, whereas the radical Republicans would like to have him assert his authority and settle it once for all. The moderate Republicans are undecided and disturbed about it. They do not wish to join issue openly with the President, and they are consoling themselves for his action in passing the problem of negro suffrage over to the former slave owners and rebels for solution, with the thought that, as Congress must ratify the new constitutions of the Southern states, the question of negro suffrage is simply deferred and will reappear sooner or later before the Federal legislative authority.

  When this happens, however, it will be difficult to require the Southern states to give the negro freedmen all the rights of citizenship if the blacks do not yet enjoy these in the North. In order to avoid any possibility of such a situation, the Republicans are now busy amending the various constitutions of the Northern states, to guarantee to the blacks their electoral rights. In Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire, the negroes have been full citizens for a long time. In Connecticut, where negroes cannot qualify as voters without being property holders, an assembly is to be held next month to decide whether blacks and whites shall be put on the same footing. The decision made in Connecticut will influence all New England. The present constitution of New York state, dating from 1846, limits the negro voters to those who hold property worth $250 a year.

  In all the coming elections, popular feeling about negro suffrage will be voiced: on October 2, in Connecticut; on October 10, in Minnesota and Iowa; on October 7, in Wisconsin. The Unionist convention of Minnesota passed a resolution to the effect that “Political rights should not depend on religion, place of birth, race, nor color, and it is foreign to the spirit of our laws and institutions to permit any part of our population to exist as a subject caste, taxed without representation by a hostile government.”

  In all the discussions, I note that the question of universal suffrage does not arise. Each state is to be left free to define its voting qualifications for itself. The point is that, whatever regulation is made, no distinction shall exist between blacks and whites. Even Horace Greeley, the editor of the Tribune, does not claim universal suffrage for the negroes. A recent statement by him says: “We would readily consent to admitting to the suffrage only those who can read and write, or those who pay taxes, or are engaged in some trade. Any standard which would limit the voting privilege to the competent and deserving, would be acceptable to us.” But the rules and restrictions relating to the suffrage should be applied to all on the same basis, in his opinion. The Southern states contain many poor whites, who are not better qualified to vote than the most ignorant and degraded negroes.

  The question of negro suffrage took a most important place also in the convention of Massachusetts Republicans, recently held in Worcester. Charles Sumner, chairman of the convention, made a very long speech which was garbled to some extent in the telegraphic report. He emphasized the necessity of giving the negroes the suffrage in order to create in the Southern states a voting faction of unquestionable loyalty, to prevent any reëstablishment of slavery in any form, and to avoid putting a helpless race at the mercy of a dominant race, with no political redress. He protested vigorously against Mr. Johnson’s policies, and would like to withhold full exercise of their former rights from the Southerners until they have given positive guarantees to the Union. When once the Federal garrisons have been entirely withdrawn from the South, and the freedmen’s bureau abolished, the blacks will have no protection whatever from their former masters. Mr. Sumner believes time to be an essential factor in the adjustment of political affairs, and Mr. Johnson’s solutions appear to him over hasty. His own advice would be to go slow in every respect. He would prefer to continue the military occupation of the Southern states until all spirit of revolt has entirely died out, and to keep the freedmen’s bureaux in operation. This would mean that the Southern states would not be self-governing, as in the past, until their new constitutions were formed and approved by Congress. He would prefer not to have the country leave the solution of all unsettled problems to the executive power, and believes that the legislative power should be entrusted with far more responsibility in these matters. This hasty summary of his speech is all I can give. It has influenced public opinion profoundly, as does every utterance of this distinguished, upright, and justly popular statesman.

  I cannot deny that many progressive men have not been able to decide among the contradictory views concerning Southern Reconstruction, and are still without any convictio
ns. Many who do not want to oppose Mr. Johnson openly, believing him sincerely devoted to the liberal and popular cause, still are afraid that his moderation and generosity, perhaps too expansive, will allow the Southern states to resume the share of power which they held so long, and that the spirit of compromise, which plunged the United States step by step into the Civil War will once again obscure the issues, veiling the appearance of the danger spots until they grow deep and ineradicable. There is a feeling that the South is now at the mercy of the North, and that for the first time the opportunity is at hand to quell definitely, once for all, the temper of oligarchical pride which worked such disaster to the Republic. There is a widespread feeling of pity for the blacks, who behaved so admirably during the war, committed no excesses nor cruelties, and shed their blood for the Union in the hope of becoming its citizens. Now they are being forced to bargain for, perhaps in the end to lose entirely, the rights which they have already purchased so dearly.

  The real misfortune of the negro race is in owning no land of its own. There cannot be real emancipation for men who do not possess at least a small portion of the soil. We have had an example in Russia. In spite of the war, and the confiscation bills, which remain dead letters, every inch of land in the Southern states belongs to the former rebels. The population of free negroes has become a nomad population, congregated in the towns and suffering wretchedly there, destined to be driven back eventually by poverty into the country, where they will be forced to submit to the harshest terms imposed by their former masters. It would be too much to expect those masters of their own accord to conciliate the negroes by conceding them a little land in order to secure their coöperation. They are still too blinded by passion to see their own best interests.