Capitol Men

by Philip Dray

  The emotions stirred by the demeaning press portraits were hard to set aside. Immediately after the convention adjourned for the day on January 28, the Mercury correspondent Roswell T. Logan was gathering his papers at the reporters' table when he was confronted by the white delegate E.W.M. Mackey. "Are you the writer of the article ... concerning my father?" Mackey demanded. (Mackey's father, Dr. A. G. Mackey, a local customs official, served as the convention's president.) When Logan said that he was, Mackey struck him across the face, exclaiming, "Take that!" Logan attempted to defend himself, and both men were quickly pulled apart by delegates. To protect the journalist, Moses embraced the man in a bear hug and held him against a wall, as blacks watching from a gallery shouted, "Kill the hound! Cut his heart out! Throw him out the window!" Moses refused to relax his grip on Logan, warning that any man who tried to hit the reporter would have to strike him as well. Mackey, in the meantime, hovered about, shouting at Logan for the "mean, contemptible and dirty business" of coming here to "defame the characters of members of the convention."

  A police officer arrived, and Logan requested that he escort him back to the Mercury's office. Mackey, in a sudden show of magnanimity, then insisted that he would escort Logan back safely, and several other delegates of both races spoke up, saying they would accompany the men. In the end, a group of police and delegates of both races provided an "honor guard" for the reporter as he returned to his newspaper's offices. Thus, having freely maligned the delegates and their character, the Mercury provided a test case that proved these judgments erroneous. Even Logan later conceded that the men he had slandered had behaved honorably in seeing that he was not harmed.

  As the delegates coolly defused the crisis over the Mercury, so did they defy South Carolinians' worst fears about the convention. Some white Charlestonians had joked that the convention participants looked "shabby" and that the clothes they wore were gaudy hand-me-downs distributed to war refugees by the Freedmen's Bureau. But the last laugh, and the sartorial coup of the convention, belonged to the black delegate who showed up one morning in the gray overcoat of a Confederate officer. Even the black observers who filled the gallery were, in deference to their surroundings, generally well behaved; the New York Times noted that gentlemen and ladies alike had learned to spit in a civilized manner—that is, into a spittoon.

  Most of the whites present, including members of the press, were seeing and hearing for the first time the phenomenon of black men speaking their opinions freely. Two qualities struck them—(1) the ability of blacks to talk compellingly of the hardships they had endured and relate these experiences to the black community as a whole and (2) the African-influenced cadence of speech, influenced by the preaching in black churches. That Daddy Cain could shake the rafters and "call down Heaven" with his forceful eloquence was already well known to his black constituents, but many whites were new to such performances. Robert Brown Elliott was an equally gifted orator just finding his voice; returning to the offices of the Leader one evening after addressing a voting rights meeting, he had enthused to his colleagues, "I thundered, and by golly they cheered."

  "The colored men in the Convention possess by long odds the largest share of mental caliber," noted the New York Times.

  They are the best debaters [and] there is a homely but strong grasp of common sense in what they say, and although the [grammatical] mistakes made are frequent and ludicrous, the South Carolinians are not slow to acknowledge that their destinies really appear to be safer in the hands of these unlettered Ethiopians than they would be if confided to the more unscrupulous care of the white men in the body.

  Despite the day's familiar refrain that blacks lacked the education and initiative to be politicians, it began to appear that the reverse might be true; the black participants took readily to their duties, patiently mastering the sessions' procedures and more often than not managing to say their piece. When a visiting correspondent of The Nation magazine tried to bait one South Carolina Republican by asking how many of the state's black legislators could read a copy of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, the savvy reply was that they could not only read it but had lived a remarkable "progress" of their own, comparable to Bunyan's, and that they could undoubtedly write better articles about South Carolina than had ever appeared in The Nation.

  The gathering framed a new constitution that vowed the state's allegiance to the Constitution and the government of the United States, and it promised that South Carolina would remain a member of the Union—a significant point, since the state had led the South into secession. The document also called for direct election of several state officials previously appointed by the legislature, and representation in the state house of representatives based on population. This addressed the power balance in the state, which had long allowed the wealthy coastal section, including Charleston, to dominate state politics at the expense of the backwoods upcountry. A basic bill of rights was established, guaranteeing freedom of speech and assembly. The courts were no longer allowed to take a debtor's last thousand dollars' worth of property or five hundred dollars' worth of personal possessions, meaning that poor whites and blacks alike could not be turned out on the street. Prison sentences for debt were abolished. If a woman owned property outright, her assets could no longer be appropriated to pay her husband's debts; nonetheless, Whipper's resolution that women be given the franchise, despite his passionate urging of the issue (which included his view that women were intellectually superior to men), was rejected without a vote. (Whipper spoke from personal experience: his wife was Frances Rollin, one of several well known, opinionated sisters of a light-skinned, aristocratic Charleston family active in state politics.) The South Carolina constitution also authorized the state to seek loans for sorely needed public works projects—bridges, roads, canals, and other types of infrastructure.

  Robert Smalls's most notable accomplishment at the convention was to successfully call for state-sponsored, free, compulsory education for rich and poor, black and white, and the creation of state colleges. In South Carolina at the end of the Civil War, only about 5 percent of the freedmen knew how to read and write, and blacks hurried in a veritable stampede to gain some education after the Freedmen's Bureau opened schools in 1865. The arrival of black suffrage linked education and the all-important ballot, twin priorities among freed people of all ages. Smalls suggested "a system of common schools, of different grades, to be open without charge to all classes of persons" and suggested that it "be required that all parents and guardians send their children between the ages of 7 and 14 to some school, at least 6 months for each year, under penalties for non-compliance." Smalls's keen interest in the subject grew from personal experience. Sensitive about his own lack of education, he had studied diligently since the war to improve his meager reading and writing skills, occasionally working with a tutor.

  Some delegates opposed the compulsory aspect of Smalls's plan, deeming it harsh and undemocratic; others thought it placed too great a demand on a people still recovering from the war's devastation or alleged that it was meant to hasten the mixing of the races. But Alonzo Ransier jumped up to defend the point, saying that the success of the republic as a whole relied on the education of its members and that parents should not be allowed to neglect their children's education. Robert Brown Elliott, born in Boston, raised the example of New England, where compulsory education "has made ... her citizens, poor as well as rich, low as well as high, black as well as white, educated and intelligent." He cast education and understanding as integral to the state's future. "Ignorance is the parent of vice and crime, and was the sustainer of the late gigantic slaveholder's rebellion," he reminded his listeners. "I appeal to gentlemen of the convention to know whether they desire to see a state of anarchy, or a state of confusion in South Carolina ... I desire to know whether they wish to see an independent people, engaged in industrious pursuits, living happy and contented." Other delegates suggested that parents should willingly pay taxes to keep their children in
school rather than maintain them later in penitentiaries; compulsory attendance might keep the state's children from "running around molasses barrels or stealing cotton." One delegate stated that he'd seen, that very morning, "some eighteen colored children standing before the door of the Guard House ... If those little boys and girls were at school, they would not have been arrested."

  The version of Smalls's resolution that ultimately passed provided that all children attend school for a minimum of twenty-four months from age six to sixteen and that each school district keep at least one school open for six months a year. Thus the right to a free education was inserted in the state's constitution for the first time in South Carolina history. Kicking the question of school integration to the state legislature that would enact the relevant laws, the convention resolved that the state's public schools and colleges would be open to all, without regard to race or color. "We only compel parents to send their children to some school," said Cardozo, "not that they shall send them with the colored children; we simply give those colored children who desire to go to white schools the privilege of doing so." Cardozo did suggest that putting children of both races together in schools might serve, in the long run, to diminish racial prejudice, but at this point in time the relative value or harm of mixed schools was a somewhat abstract concern; freed people were primarily interested in education for its own sake.

  Education did ultimately prove one of Reconstruction's quiet successes in South Carolina: by 1877 there were nearly three thousand schools in the state, educating 125,000 young people of both races, and Democrats and Republicans continued to allow a statewide property tax to be levied for that purpose. The strong universal desire for learning, and the fact that the issue of integration was never forced by law, probably accounted for this achievement.

  The black delegates acted with moderation on two other key issues—the further confiscation of land owned by former rebels and their disenfranchisement; essentially, the freedmen refused to impose additional hardships and kicked the matter to Congress. They knew it would be politically unseemly to appear overly vindictive and no doubt feared that placing restrictions on others' voting rights would undermine the ideal of universal suffrage they themselves so strongly embraced. To some it made no sense that the South, in its greatest hour of need, would not call on the considerable experience of its more prominent white men. Smalls advocated, except in extreme cases, their readmittance to positions of leadership, and, trusting the planters and large landowners more than he did the white yeomanry, looked to a potential coalition between blacks and politically moderate whites; he believed that the state's majority black vote, combined with that of these moderates, would "bury the Democratic party so deep ... there will not be seen even a bubble coming from the spot where the burial took place." As one member asked the gathering, "Can we afford to lose from the councils of state our best men? No, fellow citizens, no! We want only the best and ablest men. And then with a strong pull, and a long pull, and a pull together, up goes South Carolina."

  The prospect of "owning a piece of the land that had once owned them" tantalized the freed people like no other aspect of emancipation, and it was an issue that, in response to Richard Cain's efforts, the delegates explored at great length. South Carolina, because of its head start on Reconstruction in the Sea Islands, already had a substantial history of official efforts to provide land to the former slaves. After July 1862 the federal government had begun taxing abandoned plantations in the Port Royal area, posting notices that landowners would have to make an appearance, swear an oath of allegiance to the United States, and remit the tax. It seemed entirely just that large landholders who had been leading secessionists should help bear the cost of the war they had instigated. "Here, beneath these live oaks," mused the Harper's Weekly reporter Charles Nordhoff, "they deliberated, they planned ... the ruin of their country; here was nurtured that gigantic and inexcusable crime." Where property owners could not or would not pay, lands were seized. The United States also appropriated lands held by ranking Confederate military or civil officials as well as property owned by some rebel soldiers. An 1865 Freedmen's Bureau inventory prepared for General Rufus Saxton of available properties in the Port Royal area suggests both the displacement and devastation wrought by the war:

  Six deserted plantations lie along the "Coosa" river eastward from Port Royal ferry and are perfectly desolate, having neither an inhabitant nor a dwelling...

  Estate of Rafe Elliott—lies south east of Gardners Corners; has no houses or other improvements; comprises 800 acres of first quality land. Elliott was a surgeon in the C.S.A. and was killed early in the war...

  Oak Point—belonged to Henry Stewart, a "hard master" who promoted the rebellion in every possible way except to take up arms himself...

  Estate of Hal Stewart—Lieutenant in the rebel army, the Negroes on his father's place say young "mass Hal" was opposed to the war and only went when "he was scripted"; the place is deserted but several tenements are standing in good order, also cotton and gin houses; there are 600 acres of good land...

  John Jenkins Place—lying directly on the "Combahee road" all gone to ruin and everything grown up to weeds...

  In Beaufort, federal commissioners sold almost 17,000 acres subject to sale for nonpayment of taxes at a price of 93.3 cents an acre; blacks bought about 3,500 acres, as well as about 75 homes in Beaufort for as little as $30 to $1,800. Northern missionaries and speculators who had come south with the Union forces obtained additional properties. South Carolina, along with other Southern states, would continue to shift the tax burden onto large property owners or deny them forms of financial relief, with the idea that this would break up once-vast plantations and make small land parcels available to poor whites and freedmen.

  THE SAVANNAH HEADQUARTERS OF GENERAL WILLIAM T. SHERMAN

  The black population of the Sea Islands had grown substantially during the war as refugees by the thousands arrived from combat zones in Georgia and South Carolina. Concerned about this influx, General William T. Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton on January 12, 1865, convened a meeting at Sherman's headquarters in Savannah with black community leaders, chiefly Methodist and Baptist clergymen. When queried as to how the government might best assist the freedmen, the black spokesmen were unanimous in their reply: Land! "The way we can best take care of ourselves," they assured the white men, "is to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor." In response, Sherman issued Field Order Number 15, establishing the Sea Islands as an area for exclusive black settlement where freedmen and their families might be settled on forty-acre parcels. (Sherman mentioned that he had some worn-out army mules he would be willing to give the black settlers to help them get started on their plots of land—the origin of the expression "forty acres and a mule.") Before leaving, the blacks recommended the establishment of separate communities for the two races, for, as one told Sherman and Stanton, "There is a prejudice against us in the South that will take years to get over."

  Two months later Congress created the Freedmen's Bureau to deal with the myriad issues now confronting the devastated South and particularly the four million former slaves. In charge were two New Englanders—General O. O. Howard, who had lost an arm in the Battle of Fair Oaks and was known as "the Christian General" for his work with Northern philanthropies that assisted Southern blacks during the war; and assistant commissioner General Rufus Saxton, the wartime governor of the conquered Sea Islands. With about 300,000 acres of confiscated Sea Islands lands in the bureau's possession, Saxton set about leasing forty-acre parcels, with the stipulation that leasers could buy them at any time. He believed the Southerners had forfeited their land with their ill-conceived rebellion and that blacks deserved the soil on which "they and their ancestors passed two hundred years of unrequited toil." A friend and admirer of Robert Smalls, he felt strongly that black war veterans, who "piloted our ships through these shallow waters, have labored on our forts ... and have enlisted as soldiers in our co
untry's darkest hours," were owed a special debt of gratitude. Smalls had taken advantage of the government's auction of Beaufort properties to purchase the very house where he and his mother had once been slaves.

  As General Howard would later note, however, only a tiny fraction of former Confederate lands were ever under federal control; and in any case, the confiscation edicts proved short-lived, for in August 1865 President Andrew Johnson came out against the practice. Johnson allowed all but the most prominent Confederates to seek and obtain presidential pardons and offered to return their seized property. The president's actions did not apply to the Sea Islands, which were covered separately by Sherman's field order, so Johnson directed General Howard to go to South Carolina and work something out between the former property owners and the blacks who had already taken possession of land. Howard suggested to the president that he require Southern men whose property had been returned to "provide a small homestead or something equivalent to each head of family of his former slaves; but," as Howard remembered, "President Johnson was amused and gave no heed to this recommendation. My heart ached for our beneficiaries, but I became comparatively helpless to offer them any permanent possession ... Why did I not resign? Because I even yet strongly hoped in some way to befriend the freed people."