Reconstruction

by Brooks D. Simpson

  J. S. P.

  New-York Tribune, March 29, 1873

  WASHINGTON, D.C., MARCH 1873

  Ulysses S. Grant: Second Inaugural Address

  FELLOW-CITIZENS: Under Providence I have been called a second time to act as Executive over this great nation. It has been my endeavor in the past to maintain all the laws, and, so far as lay in my power, to act for the best interests of the whole people. My best efforts will be given in the same direction in the future, aided, I trust, by my four years’ experience in the office.

  When my first term of the office of Chief Executive began, the country had not recovered from the effects of a great internal revolution, and three of the former States of the Union had not been restored to their Federal relations.

  It seemed to me wise that no new questions should be raised so long as that condition of affairs existed. Therefore the past four years, so far as I could control events, have been consumed in the effort to restore harmony, public credit, commerce, and all the arts of peace and progress. It is my firm conviction that the civilized world is tending toward republicanism, or government by the people through their chosen representatives, and that our own great Republic is destined to be the guiding star to all others.

  Under our Republic we support an army less than that of any European power of any standing and a navy less than that of either of at least five of them. There could be no extension of territory on the continent which would call for an increase of this force, but rather might such extension enable us to diminish it.

  The theory of government changes with general progress. Now that the telegraph is made available for communicating thought, together with rapid transit by steam, all parts of a continent are made contiguous for all purposes of government, and communication between the extreme limits of the country made easier than it was throughout the old thirteen States at the beginning of our national existence.

  The effects of the late civil strife have been to free the slave and make him a citizen. Yet he is not possessed of the civil rights which citizenship should carry with it. This is wrong, and should be corrected. To this correction I stand committed, so far as Executive influence can avail.

  Social equality is not a subject to be legislated upon, nor shall I ask that anything be done to advance the social status of the colored man, except to give him a fair chance to develop what there is good in him, give him access to the schools, and when he travels let him feel assured that his conduct will regulate the treatment and fare he will receive.

  The States lately at war with the General Government are now happily rehabilitated, and no Executive control is exercised in any one of them that would not be exercised in any other State under like circumstances.

  In the first year of the past Administration the proposition came up for the admission of Santo Domingo as a Territory of the Union. It was not a question of my seeking, but was a proposition from the people of Santo Domingo, and which I entertained. I believe now, as I did then, that it was for the best interest of this country, for the people of Santo Domingo, and all concerned that the proposition should be received favorably. It was, however, rejected constitutionally, and therefore the subject was never brought up again by me.

  In future, while I hold my present office, the subject of acquisition of territory must have the support of the people before I will recommend any proposition looking to such acquisition. I say here, however, that I do not share in the apprehension held by many as to the danger of governments becoming weakened and destroyed by reason of their extension of territory. Commerce, education, and rapid transit of thought and matter by telegraph and steam have changed all this. Rather do I believe that our Great Maker is preparing the world, in His own good time, to become one nation, speaking one language, and when armies and navies will be no longer required.

  My efforts in the future will be directed to the restoration of good feeling between the different sections of our common country; to the restoration of our currency to a fixed value as compared with the world's standard of values—gold—and, if possible, to a par with it; to the construction of cheap routes of transit throughout the land, to the end that the products of all may find a market and leave a living remuneration to the producer; to the maintenance of friendly relations with all our neighbors and with distant nations; to the reestablishment of our commerce and share in the carrying trade upon the ocean; to the encouragement of such manufacturing industries as can be economically pursued in this country, to the end that the exports of home products and industries may pay for our imports—the only sure method of returning to and permanently maintaining a specie basis; to the elevation of labor; and, by a humane course, to bring the aborigines of the country under the benign influences of education and civilization. It is either this or war of extermination. Wars of extermination, engaged in by people pursuing commerce and all industrial pursuits, are expensive even against the weakest people, and are demoralizing and wicked. Our superiority of strength and advantages of civilization should make us lenient toward the Indian. The wrong inflicted upon him should be taken into account and the balance placed to his credit. The moral view of the question should be considered and the question asked, Can not the Indian be made a useful and productive member of society by proper teaching and treatment? If the effort is made in good faith, we will stand better before the civilized nations of the earth and in our own consciences for having made it.

  All these things are not to be accomplished by one individual, but they will receive my support and such recommendations to Congress as will in my judgment best serve to carry them into effect. I beg your support and encouragement.

  It has been, and is, my earnest desire to correct abuses that have grown up in the civil service of the country. To secure this reformation rules regulating methods of appointment and promotions were established and have been tried. My efforts for such reformation shall be continued to the best of my judgment. The spirit of the rules adopted will be maintained.

  I acknowledge before this assemblage, representing, as it does, every section of our country, the obligation I am under to my countrymen for the great honor they have conferred on me by returning me to the highest office within their gift, and the further obligation resting on me to render to them the best services within my power. This I promise, looking forward with the greatest anxiety to the day when I shall be released from responsibilities that at times are almost overwhelming, and from which I have scarcely had a respite since the eventful firing upon Fort Sumter, in April, 1861, to the present day. My services were then tendered and accepted under the first call for troops growing out of that event.

  I did not ask for place or position, and was entirely without influence or the acquaintance of persons of influence, but was resolved to perform my part in a struggle threatening the very existence of the nation. I performed a conscientious duty, without asking promotion or command, and without a revengeful feeling toward any section or individual.

  Notwithstanding this, throughout the war, and from my candidacy for my present office in 1868 to the close of the last Presidential campaign, I have been the subject of abuse and slander scarcely ever equaled in political history, which to-day I feel that I can afford to disregard in view of your verdict, which I gratefully accept as my vindication.

  March 4, 1873

  THE END OF RECONSTRUCTION

  1873–1877

  Grant’s reelection proved at best to be a temporary respite from the challenges posed by Reconstruction. While the fall contest itself was fairly peaceful, disputes over election returns in Louisiana and Arkansas plagued Republicans and promised renewed violence, with the most vivid example happening on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, in Colfax, Louisiana, where at least seventy-one African Americans were slaughtered in cold blood by a white supremacist militia. Congressional corruption scandals tainted the Republican triumph and distracted lawmakers from their duties, while in September 1873 a major financial panic led to a severe economic depression
that persisted for years.

  Nor was the news any better the following year. Violence escalated throughout the South in 1874, bringing down Republican regimes in several states. A federal circuit court decision in the Colfax massacre case, U.S. v. Cruikshank, held key provisions of federal enforcement legislation to be unconstitutional, crippling the Grant administration’s ability to prosecute terrorists. Opponents of Reconstruction did not limit their efforts to the ballot box: between September 1874 and January 1875, Louisiana Democrats tried to overthrow the Republican governor and legislature by force in a series of unsuccessful efforts at executing a coup d’état. Voters in the North were weary of Reconstruction and held Republicans accountable for the economic downturn; in the South the continuing depression angered whites, who lost faith in Republican economic initiatives while denouncing government spending that allegedly taxed whites to serve black interests. The Democrats claimed victory in the 1874 midterm elections, seizing control of the House of Representatives and thus dooming the passage of future federal Reconstruction legislation.

  Ulysses S. Grant railed against southern terrorism and northern apathy in a series of public messages to Congress. His blunt language and impassioned protests provided vivid indictments of Reconstruction’s opponents, but did little to halt the deterioration of support for federal intervention in southern affairs. While black congressmen offered powerful arguments in favor of the passage of new civil rights legislation forbidding racial discrimination in public transportation, schools, and accommodations, the resulting Civil Rights Act of 1875 (passed by a lame-duck Republican Congress) excluded public schools, proved difficult to enforce, and would be ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1883. Mississippi Democrats plotted to retake control of their state in 1875, “peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must,” and the resulting Mississippi Plan used violence and intimidation in such a carefully calibrated way as to evade a federal response. When the state’s Republican governor, Adelbert Ames, requested federal intervention, Grant speculated that such action no longer enjoyed public support in the North. Attorney General Edwards Pierrepont then seized upon the president’s hesitation and took it upon himself to direct Ames to rely upon his own resources. Many northern Republicans, afraid that continued federal intervention would hurt the party in northern state elections, especially in Ohio, breathed a sigh of relief when the administration failed to act; so did Mississippi’s Democrats, who claimed victory that fall. Convinced that they had to abandon the South in order to secure the party’s survival in the North, Republicans watched as state after state in the South was “redeemed” by Democratic victories.

  By the time the nation celebrated the centennial of its independence in 1876, many white Americans, North and South, were ready to abandon Reconstruction. Supreme Court decisions that March in Cruikshank and in U.S. v. Reese, a Kentucky voting rights case, dealt death blows to existing enforcement legislation. Only three southern states—South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida—remained under increasingly tenuous Republican rule. That fall Samuel J. Tilden, the Democratic governor of New York, captured a majority of the popular vote in a presidential contest shaped by violence and voter suppression. Convinced that they would have won in a free and fair election, Republicans realized that should disputed returns in South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida result in victories for their candidate, Ohio governor Rutherford B. Hayes, the party could still claim victory in the Electoral College. With Grant in the White House ready to thwart any Democratic attempt to seize power through violence while pressing for a peaceful resolution of the dispute, Congress hammered out legislation creating an electoral commission. Composed of five congressmen, five senators, and five ­Supreme Court justices, the commission was charged with sorting through the disputed returns and determining a winner. When the original fifteenth member of the commission, the nominally neutral Supreme Court Justice David Davis, declined to serve in the wake of his election as an independent to the United States Senate from Illinois, it fell to Davis’s replacement, Justice Joseph P. Bradley, a Grant appointee who had spearheaded the Court’s overturning of Reconstruction legislation in the Cruikshank case, to cast the deciding vote. In a series of 8–7 rulings that reflected the partisan affiliations of its members, the commission awarded all of the disputed electoral votes to Hayes, giving him an electoral majority of one. Behind-the-scenes negotiations prevented a Democratic filibuster that would have kept Congress from accepting the commission’s decision, although the degree to which Republicans and Democrats exchanged favors and promises in a so-called Compromise of 1877 remains in dispute.

  Regardless of the negotiations surrounding the resolution of the disputed election, it had always been Hayes’s intention to adopt a new approach to Reconstruction that shelved federal intervention in favor of encouraging cooperation between southern whites and blacks. This optimistic vision proved a flat failure. Democrats regained control of South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida while retaining their hold on other southern states with nearly no interruption for decades to come. The smothering of black equality in favor of disfranchisement, subordination, and segregation became a cornerstone of the “Redeemed South,” while racial discrimination remained pervasive throughout the nation. As Reconstruction ended, Republicans pondered whether alternate courses of action would have yielded success, or whether the entire enterprise of securing black freedom was doomed to failure from the beginning. African Americans refused to abandon their struggle for equality, but it would take a long time for the nation as a whole to realize that there remained many wrongs to address, a challenge that remains to this day.

  “DEAD MEN ALL AROUND ME”:

  LOUISIANA, APRIL 1873

  Levi Nelson and Benjamin Brim:

  Testimony in the Colfax Massacre Trial

  TRIAL IN THE UNITED STATES CIRCUIT COURT.

  Fifth day’s proceedings in the trial of J. P. Hadnot and others, charged with conspiracy and murder in Grant parish, in April of last year:

  Levi Nelson, sworn—Live at New Hope plantation, Grant parish; was a slave in Grant parish before the war; belonged to old Mr. Calhoun; was in Colfax last April; went to Colfax, as I understood Hadnot’s men were going there to take the courthouse; we remained at the courthouse; old man Hadnot and his sons, Luke, Gilly and Johnny, were there; the men were armed; I was close to them; did not know the other men with them; remained in Colfax ten or twenty days; at one time I saw ———armed men at Colfax; there were 300 colored men at the courthouse; one-half the colored men had no arms; they assembled at the courthouse because they were too frightened to remain home; saw A. Tillman there; on the evening of the fight saw him about three o’clock; that was Easter Sunday; the first white man I saw that day was old man Hadnot; he was within 300 yards of the courthouse; he had men with him; the colored men were lying down when the shooting began; shooting began about 6 A.M.; bullets struck where I was lying; one hit my hat, and one my shoulder; they were firing at us three hours before we got up; some of the colored men fired back; twenty-five colored men were outside the fort; the white men first put their cannon on a pair of cart wheels; they fired at us six times from the first place where they located it on the bank; the bullet was a slug of iron; this one in court is not like those I saw; the slugs struck the courthouse; knew some of the white men at the cannon; John Green was at it; Bill Irwin was there; Bill Cruikshanks and his brother also; this one was there; they kept up the fight all day; they told us to stack our arms and they wouldn’t hurt us, and for us to march out; Shack White held up a white leaf, and asked them not to kill him; Irwin shot him down; the colored people stayed in the fort, laying down; we left the fort because we did not dare to remain; some went into the courthouse and some ran away; the first thing the white men did was to shoot the gun at us; after we went inside the courthouse they shot at us through the windows; then they set the courthouse on fire; I was inside then; when I got a chance to run off I made an attempt, but a man was about to shoot me, whe
n another man saved me, telling me to save a burning building; I did as directed, and when through I asked if I might go; he cursed me, saying he did not come 400 miles to kill niggers for nothing; did not know him; they made me go among the prisoners; the white men then took the colored men around the corner of a coffeehouse and shot them; there were thirty-seven prisoners there with me; the white men said they had a good mess of beeves and would have a good time of it; Nash said it would not do to take prisoners and then kill them; Hickman said to Nash, “Unless these niggers are killed we will kill you;” they stopped killing colored men then to wait for night; Dr. Compton, Clement Penn, Oscar Given, Prudhomme Lemoine, Bill Cruikshanks, Bill Irwin, John Hadnot, Clement Penn, Denis Lemoine, Tom Hickman, all now in court, and George Marsh, Willy Marsh, M. Roberts, ———Sloan, Ben Ballet, Jr., D. Hickman, William Hickman, James Hickman and J. Buckland were in the killing party; they kept me prisoner until midnight; they took me and another man out to shoot us; one bullet struck me in my neck, stunning and dropping me; the other man was killed; they shot him five times; one man told somebody to shoot me again, saying that I was not dead; they did not shoot me again; laid on the ground until morning, fearing to move; dead men all around me; heard the men talking about killing niggers; I crawled off the field, not daring to get on my feet; I finally stood up and walked off, after seeing that the men had gone off; this is the scar made by the bullet which struck my neck; when they first came up with their cannon they halted about 300 yards from the courthouse; one of us tore off a shirt sleeve as a white flag, and shook in the window; firing did not cease then, but colored men were shot down as they left the courthouse, after the white flag was shown; it took me an hour to pull down the burning gutter; there were 300 white men around there then; some of the colored men fired from the courthouse; saw the white men try to set the courthouse on fire; they fired something from the cannon, which was burning; it was a mop with oil on it; the north end was set on fire; they made a colored man set the building on fire; A. Tillman was killed by the white men after the surrender; one man, inside the courthouse was shot and disemboweled, and he was burned up alive in the courthouse; his name was Allen; I know the names of several persons who were in the courthouse; the colored people assembled at Colfax for safety, as they had been told that they would be hurt; I was a voter.