by Philip Dray
"A slender, shapely woman": Boston Journal, Jan. 29, 1879; New York Tribune, Dec. 1878; both in Clippings File, Blanche Kelso Bruce Papers, Library of Congress.
"A great big good natured lump of fat": Emma V. Brown to Emily Holland, Mar. 31, 1875, quoted in Sterling, We Are Your Sisters, p. 293; see also Gatewood, pp. 4–5.
"To promote social intercourse": Ibid., p. 4.
[>] "General Grant was less reserved in conversation": New York Times, Dec. 7, 1878.
"Will again march to battle under the banner": Louisianian, Feb. 15, 1879.
[>] "The most unreasonable disturbance in Washington: Simmons, p. 702.
"Mrs. Bruce is a lady of great personal beauty": Boston Journal, Jan. 29, 1879; New York Tribune, Dec. 1878; both in Clippings File, Blanche Kelso Bruce Papers.
"I know it would be the political ruin": Undated, untitled news clipping in Clippings File, Blanche Kelso Bruce Papers.
"I made up my mind to let the society question": Baltimore American, Jan, 25, 1880, in Clippings File, Blanche Kelso Bruce Papers.
[>] "Mr. Lynch has, we don't believe, elevated himself": Washington Bee, Dec. 20, 1884.
[>] "Once let a black man get upon his person": Douglass's Monthly, May 1861, pp. 452–53, and Aug. 1863, p. 852, quoted in Moses, p. 52.
[>] "Let's mark him as we mark hogs": New York Times, Apr. 7, 1880.
[>] "If you think the rule is taught at West Point": Marszalek, "A Black Cadet at West Point," American Heritage.
[>] "I am willing to go as far as the furthest": Ambrose, p. 236. Thirteen black cadets were admitted to West Point in the half-century following the Civil War; only three graduated.
Gardiner, in response to Chamberlain: Marszalek, "A Black Cadet at West Point."
[>] Bradley, curiously, had argued: See Vorenberg, pp. 239–40.
"It would be running the slavery argument": Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 3 S Ct 18 (1883); also see Vorenberg, p. 241.
As for the Fourteenth Amendment: Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 3 S Ct 18 (1883).
[>] "Sumner's Law," so nobly intended: The part of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 making it illegal to deny black representation on juries was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1880 in Ex parte Virginia and Strauder v. West Virginia.
The Harlans voiced support: One Harlan family slave, Robert James Harlan, likely the justice's own half-brother, was allowed to go west in the gold rush of 1848, returned a wealthy man, and purchased his freedom for $500. He became a businessman and community leader in Cincinnati.
[>] "The most perfect despotism": Quoted in Westin, "John Marshall Harlan and the Constitutional Rights of Negroes," Yale Law Journal.
"With the help of God": Przybyszewski, p. 47.
[>] "The memory of the historic part": Harlan, pp. 108–14. A more private source may have also helped inspire the sanctity Harlan granted the cause of equal rights. His eldest daughter, Edith, had served as a teacher in an impoverished black elementary school in Washington and was the family member most personally committed to the eradication of racial injustice. As a representative of a younger generation, she espoused views that seemed progressive to her father. When she died prematurely in 1882—only a year before Harlan would write his dissent in Civil Rights Cases —he was profoundly stricken. "Wherever I go, and whatever I may be doing," Harlan wrote to one of his sons, "her presence will be recognized in its influence upon me. She was to me not simply child, but companion. I am quite sure no character more noble and elevated ever appeared on this earth." John Harlan to James Harlan (son), Nov. 25, 1882, quoted in Yarbrough, p. 145.
"Constitutional provisions adopted in the interests": Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 3 S Ct 18 (1883).
[>] Only six years earlier: Munn v. Illinois, 94 U.S. 113 (1877).
He was also troubled: Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 3 S Ct 18 (1883).
[>] It "should be scattered like the leaves of Autumn": Frederick Douglass to John Harlan, Nov. 27, 1883, quoted in Yarbrough, p. 152.
"One more shocking development of that moral weakness": Civil rights advocates met at Lincoln Hall in Washington on October 22, 1883, a week after the unhappy court ruling. Resolutions were introduced demanding renewed legislative and political action on equal rights from both political parties and calling on black citizens everywhere to form civil rights associations through which "proper agitation" could be pursued. The failure of the white man's Congress and the white man's courts, it was agreed, had crystallized the need for intensified black organization and militancy. "Fellow citizens!" Frederick Douglass declared, "while slavery was the base line of American society ... it admitted no quibbling, no narrow rules of legal or scriptural interpretations of Bible or Constitution ... It was enough for it to be able to show the intention to get all it asked in the Courts or out of the Courts ... O for a Supreme Court of the United States which shall be as true to the claims of humanity as the Supreme Court formerly was to the demands of slavery!" See Proceedings of the Civil Rights Meeting, held at Lincoln Hall, Washington, Oct. 22, 1883, Frederick Douglass Papers, Library of Congress; see also Douglass, Selected Speeches and Writings, pp. 685–93; Chicago Tribune, Feb. 6, 1875; National Republican, Mar. 1, 1875; The Nation, Mar. 4, 1875. Douglass quotations also appear in Douglass, Life and Writings, vol. 4, p. 393.
332 "The nation's equalitarian aspirations": McPherson, "Abolitionists and the Civil Rights Act of 1875," Journal of American History.
15. "The Negroes' Farewell"
[>] "Democracy has won a great victory": Simkins, pp. 171–75; Logan, Rayford W., p. 74.
[>] "His white supremacy howlers": Beaufort New South, Mar. 7, 1895.
They pointed out that Tillman's rationale: New York World, Sept. 30, Oct. 1, Nov. 7, 1895; quoted in Uya, pp. 138–39.
"The only course for reasonable and patriotic men": Chamberlain, "The Race Problem at the South," Yale Review.
"The answer must be, to those who devised": Chamberlain, "Reconstruction in South Carolina," Atlantic Monthly.
[>] "Cast down your bucket where you are": Washington's remarks appear in Woodson, pp. 580–83.
[>] "The mephitic vapor that arises": Wharton, pp. 213–14.
The outcry gradually subsided: The idea of other blacks taking part in the convention had been scotched early in the delegate-selection process when F.M.B. "Marsh" Cook, a black activist, was killed in a hail of bullets while canvassing in Jasper County. "The people of Jasper are to be congratulated that they will not be further annoyed by Marsh Cook," concluded the Jackson Clarion-Ledger in summarizing the crime. Jackson Clarion-Ledger, July 31, 1890; Wharton, pp. 210–11.
"The convention which met [in Columbia] in 1895": See Uya, pp. 139–51; see also Journal of Proceedings, South Carolina Constitutional Convention, Charles A. Calvo, State Printer, Columbia South Carolina, 1895, p. 12.
[>] "For millions of people now living": Charleston News & Courier, Oct. 29, 1895.
"The greatest crime of the nineteenth century": New York World, Sept. 30, 1895.
"Slavery to the negro was a blessing in disguise": Charleston News & Courier, Oct. 25, 1895.
If there was anything encouraging: One of the other black delegates was the former congressman Thomas E. Miller, who, on account of his very light complexion, was known as "Canary Bird." Born into a free black family in Hilton Head and the grandson of Judge Thomas Heyward, a signatory of the Declaration of Independence, Miller had been educated at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and then returned to South Carolina to serve as a lawyer and state legislator. He was in Congress from 1889 to 1891. Known for his candor, he once told Congress of his Southern white neighbors, "There is no people in the world more self-opinionated without cause, more bigoted without achievements, more boastful without a status, no people in the world so quick to misjudge their countrymen and to misstate historical facts of political economy and to impugn the motives of others. History does not record a civilized people who have been so contented with so little and who can feed so long o
n a worthless, buried past." See Congressional Record, 51st Cong., 2nd sess., pp. 2691–96; in Smith, p. 104.
[>] Tillman's own speech to the convention: Journal of Proceedings, South Carolina Constitutional Convention, 1895, pp. 462–64.
[>] But Leslie was an easy target: Mismanagement had plagued the land effort from the start. Purchase agents were impeded by a lack of solid information about what they were buying, as numerous plots of land had not been surveyed since the Revolutionary War, and the agents, many of whom hailed from the North, often did not know their way around the more isolated parts of the state. Many parcels were either overvalued or completely unsuited for cultivation; some turned out to be literally under water—swamplands that would require expensive drainage before they could be used. After Leslie was maneuvered out of his job, the black party operative Robert DeLarge stepped in, although he too proved incapable. By the time more responsible leadership took the reins, the commission, its work never accepted by whites, was in desperate financial straits. It had spent nearly $750,000 on slightly more than 90,000 acres, twice what it had been directed to spend; and many of the lands were of substandard value. In February 1872 the legislation that had created the commission was repealed, ending the experiment.
"Can we not rise to the necessities": Journal of Proceedings, South Carolina Constitutional Convention, 1895, pp. 462–64.
[>] There were, as of the census of 1890: Columbia Daily Register, Oct. 4, 1895, quotes the New York World article; statistics cited in Kindall, "The Question of Race in the South Carolina Constitutional Convention of 1895," Journal of Negro History.
"The doctrine so persistently taught": Miller, Mary J., pp. 16–21.
Smalls warned that Tillmanite abuses: Columbia State, Oct. 27, 1895.
[>] "I stand here the equal of any man": Journal of Proceedings, South Carolina Constitutional Convention, 1895, p. 476; see pp. 473–75 for Smalls's explanation of the case brought against him.
Smalls's "brilliant moral victory": New York press, Oct. 5, 1895, cited by Smalls in Miller, Mary J., pp. 24–25; in Uya, p. 145.
"The coons had the dogs up the tree": Columbia State, Oct. 4, 1895; in Uya, pp. 146–47.
[>] The U.S. Supreme Court would uphold: See Williams v. Mississippi, 170 U.S. 213 (1898).
Strict discipline on the issue that mattered most: Brayton, p. 11.
"Then I'll walk home": Sterling, Captain of the Planter, p. 223.
James O'Hara, the son of a black mother and an Irish sea captain: Anderson, "James O'Hara of North Carolina: Black Leadership and Local Government," in Rabinowitz, p. 103.
[>] An unlettered, straight-talking man: Mobile Register, June 18, 1874; in Smith, p. 83.
George H. White of North Carolina was to have the honor: Other nineteenth-century black Southern congressmen included John A. Hyman and Henry P. Cheatham of North Carolina; Charles E. Nash of Louisiana; and George W. Murray of South Carolina. Black representation from northern states began with the arrival in 1929 of Oscar DePriest of Illinois.
[>] White was also the first member of Congress: In 1891, President Benjamin Harrison had proposed a federal law to stop lynching, but he did so in response to pressure from the Italian government after eleven Italian Americans were lynched in New Orleans on suspicion of having conspired in the assassination of Police Commissioner David C. Hennessey on October 15, 1890. Harrison's proposal received some discussion in Congress but was not presented in the form of a bill. See Dray, pp. 130–32.
[>] Edgefield was not a "new or imperfectly organized community": Proclamation of Daniel Chamberlain, June 1876; Allen, pp. 307–308.
[>] "Whenever the Constitution comes between": Simkins, p. 396.
Mistrials and acquittals" won "through the instrumentality": Allen, pp. 309–10.
[>] "I have examined the question and I am prepared": Congressional Record, 56th Cong., 1st sess., p. 1365.
"It is bad enough that North Carolina": Raleigh News and Observer, undated clipping, quoted in ibid., p. 1507.
[>] "Still sweetly sleeps in the room of the Committee": Ibid., 2nd sess., p. 1638.
"This, Mr. Chairman, is perhaps": Ibid., p. 1638; White tried to remain active in Republican politics in North Carolina, but threats of violence soon drove him from the state. In an act reminiscent of Richard "Daddy" Cain's, the founder of Lincolnville, White eventually bought two thousand acres in Cape May County, New Jersey, and as head of the George H. White Land Improvement Company founded the all-black community of Whitesboro, offering lots for $50 and up. White laid out the streets and supplied "portable" houses that could be easily erected. The impetus for White's purchase may have been the Wilmington, North Carolina, riot of 1898, which had forced a mass exodus of blacks from the city; some of Whitesboro's first inhabitants were from there. By 1906 the town had eight hundred inhabitants, a school, two churches, a railway station, a hotel owned by White, a post office, and a phone. Poet Paul Laurence Dunbar was an early partner in the Whitesboro plan.
Epilogue
[>] Radical optimists "living too frequently": Gillette, p. 365.
"The trouble was ... not that the grant of political liberty": Belz, "The New Orthodoxy in Reconstruction Historiography," Reviews in American History.
That commitment, W.E.B. Du Bois once imagined: Lynd, "Rethinking Slavery and Reconstruction," Journal of Negro History.
[>] The "moral debt" to black Americans: Woodward, Burden of Southern History, p. 67.
[>] "There are those who say to you": McCullough, p. 639; see also Foner, Forever Free, pp. 225–38.
[>] "Are the portraits of Hitler, Mussolini, Joe Stalin": Jackson Daily News, Jan. 20, 1958. Governor J. P. Coleman insisted: New York Times, Jan. 22, 1958.
[>] "Hardly can it be supposed": Post, "A 'Carpetbagger' in South Carolina," Journal of Negro History.
"Who would have thought of this spectacle": St. Clair, pp. 174–75.
Bruce's great prestige, Fortune complained: T. Thomas Fortune to the New York Times, Aug. 14, 1883.
[>] "It is of supreme importance to us as a class": Louisianian, Mar. 4, 1879.
She initially demurred: National Republican, July 6, 1878.
"He was one of the apostles of kindness": Washington Post, May 19, 1898.
[>] Elliott was allowed to address the convention: One final honorific awaited Elliott when, in January 1881, he led a delegation of Southern black leaders to meet with president-elect Garfield at his home in Ohio. Elliott made the group's formal presentation, stressing the abuse to which Southern blacks were now increasingly subjected at the polls and in their daily work, factors that were leading many "to seek relief in strange and uncongenial parts of the country." A rumor emerged, however, that the president-elect had received the Elliott-led delegation with something less than full respect. According to T. Thomas Fortune, Garfield demanded to review a copy of the address Elliott intended to give during the visit and excised parts of which he did not approve, and "otherwise tampered with the document, so emasculating it as to destroy all its saliency." After Elliott had spoken, said Fortune, Garfield "advised the delegation to go home and study, and encourage others to study 'Webster's blue-back speller.'" See New York Times, Feb. 15, 1881, and also T. Thomas Fortune to the New York Times, Aug. 14, 1883.
[>] "Another of the South Carolina Thieves": Charleston News & Courier, Aug. 13, 1884; a far more appropriate eulogy came from Frederick Douglass, who said of Elliott: "Living as I have in an atmosphere of doubt and disparagement of the abilities of the colored race, Robert B. Elliott was to me a most grateful surprise, and in fact a marvel. Upon sight and hearing of this man I was chained to the spot with admiration and a feeling akin to wonder ... To all outward seeming he might have been an ordinary Negro, one who might have delved, as I have done, with spade and pickax or crowbar. Yet from under that dark brow there blazed an intellect and a soul that made him for high places among the ablest white men of the age ... We are not over rich in such men and we may well mourn when one such is f
allen in the midst of his years." Lamson, Peggy, p. 289.
The two men apparently had a falling out: Simmons, pp. 471–72; Smith, p. 60. Pinchback, however, remained a political figure: P.B.S. Pinchback to Blanche K. Bruce, Mar. 22, 1879; Blanche K. Bruce Papers, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.
Ex-president Grant visited New Orleans in 1880: Pinchback mellowed over the years but was never a pushover. When in early 1880 the black newspaper editor George T. Ruby ran an item in his paper, the Observer, suggesting that Pinchback did not deserve a patronage post because of alleged links to organized gambling, Pinchback was livid. Calling Ruby "a cowardly cur," "a vile wretch," "a slanderer," and "a sychophantic fraud," Pinchback accused him of blemishing the reputation of an innocent family (his own) and trying to increase, by cheap tactics, the circulation of the Observer. Two weeks later he announced in the Louisianian that he had upbraided the "cowardly malingerer ... in a public thoroughfare" and would not hesitate "to rid this community of his worthless presence" but that Ruby was so low a character to do so "would render it extremely disgraceful for me to take any further notice of him." Louisianian, Feb. 21, 1880, and Mar. 6, 1880.
Like many others of his generation: P.B.S. Pinchback to Blanche K. Bruce, Mar. 22, 1879; Blanche K. Bruce Papers.
