CHAPTER VII PATRIOTS MOB A PRESIDENT I TH both sides in savage mood, two bloody incidents in the South played into the hands of the Radicals. In Memphis a group of boisterous drunken negro soldiers, recently disbanded, interfered with the police in the discharge of a legitimate duty, shot an officer, and precipitated an indiscriminate slaughter of the blacks by the rowdy element in the community.' In New Orleans, the revolutionary plan of the Radicals to enfranchise the negroes for party purposes, by an illegal summoning of the delegates of an extinct Constitutional Convention of two years before, aroused the indignation of all and the murderous wrath of the lower classes, and culminated in a massacre. No one questions the conclusion of Professor Burgess 2 that 'common sense and common honesty would hold that the Convention [of 1864] had been finally dissolved.' No one honestly doubted it then; but it was not an age of common sense or common honesty. The purpose was to seize on power and hold it with the army, for the negroes and the carpetbaggers. The president of the defunct Convention refused to act because of the manifest illegality of the proposed call; and even he who agreed to substitute hurried to Washington to secure the countenance of the Republican leaders. He conferred with Thad Stevens, 'Pig Iron' Kelley, and Boutwell, the Puritan; and immediately thereafter the 'New York Times' announced that he 'returned with the assurance that Congress will support the Convention.' Indeed, as the 'Times' report of a Republican caucus proves, Boutwell had urged a postponement of adjournment that Congress might immediately give validity to the new Constitution when adopted. In the congressional investigation reference was made to letters in possession of a Mr. Flanders, signed by members of Stevens's committee, sanctioning the desperate enterprise, but 1 Testimony of Dr. S. J. Quinvy, H. R. 39th Cong., 1st Sess., Report 101. 3 2 Constitution and Reconstruction, 93. 'R. K. Cutler, H. R. 39th Cong., 2d Sess., Report 16, p. 33. • Ibid., 540. Mr. Flanders was not summoned to the witness chair.1 Stevens admitted he might have written him; and conceded that he had told the messenger from New Orleans that the Convention would be legal. Had there been no convention, there would have been no massacre; and there would have been no convention without the encouragement of the Radical leaders in Washington. The conservatives and whites of character? and property, at first incredulous, sought to persuade the Radical leaders in Louisiana to abandon their mad revolutionary project - to be met with jeers. A judge who charged the grand jury on the illegality of the plan was arrested and charged with 'treason and endangering the liberty of citizens under the Civil Rights Bill.' The Mayor and Lieutenant-Governor appealed to the military forces, to be informed, after a queer reticence, that the army would release the delegates if arrested on indictment in a court. They appealed to Johnson and Stanton on that warning. Stanton did not reply; Johnson instructed that the military forces would be expected 'to sustain, not obstruct or interfere with the proceedings of the courts.' This telegram was shown the general in command, and the Mayor and Lieutenant-Governor understood the day before the Convention was to meet that soldiers would be on hand to preserve order. 4 The night before the Convention was one of jubilee and defiance, two or three thousand negroes parading the streets with torches, shouting exultantly; and at a mass meeting they listened to Dr. Dostie, Radical leader, in an incendiary speech. The negro should have his vote- and would! Another meeting would be held. 'I want you to come in your power,' shouted the half-crazed orator. 'I want no cowards to come. . . . We have 300,000 black men with white hearts. Also 100,000 good true Union white men who will fight beside the black race against the hell-hound rebels. ... We are 400,000 to 300,000 and can not only whip but exterminate the other party. . . . The streets of New Orleans will run with blood.' 6 Thousands of white families did not sleep that night in New Orleans. 1 R. K. Cutler, H. R. 39th Cong., 2d Sess., Report 16, p. 259. 2 Ibid., 489. Ibid. 4 Ibid., 165. Ficklen, 163–66. Dawn came. A proclamation from the Mayor called on the people to preserve the peace. The police were mobilized at headquarters for emergencies. General Baird agreed to have troops within easy call - but fatally blundered in thinking the Convention would meet at six o'clock in the evening and not at noon. The troops were at Jackson Barracks far away. Governor Wells, who had gone over to the Radicals, had hidden himself at home.1 Thus the Convention met without molestation, and adjourned to permit the sergeant at arms to bring in the absent members. Then the rattle of a drum- and down the street the flying of a flag- and a procession of negroes, intoxicated with a feeling of triumph. On they marched until, at Canal Street, a white man jostled a marcher, who struck the white. On to Mechanics' Institute, where the Convention was to sit, and there they paused to hurrah. Some of the blacks were armed, and the first shot was fired by one of these at a policeman who had arrested a newsboy for stirring up trouble. The shot brought the police from headquarters on the run, and they charged the procession. The negroes threw bricks and retired into the hall. But all the fury of combat had been awakened, and some of the police fired into the blacks. Dostie, who would live by the sword, died from a sword-thrust in the stomach. In the massacre that followed but one member of the Convention was killed; but there were dead and wounded borne away on drays; and former Governor Hahn, attacked by the mob, was saved by the police fighting for his life. Not all the police turned beast by any means, and the Chief knocked down one of his own men engaged in brutal work. Whiskey played its part; race feeling did the rest; but the better element was not involved.2 When the son of President Taylor, alighting from a tram, heard pistol shots and saw a crowd of roughs and negroes running, he sought to learn the meaning. He met no one he knew his kind were not abroad. He was impressed by the great number of boys from twelve to fifteen, and stopped one youth, who, pistol in hand, was pursuing a fleeing negro. The boy explained that a convention was being held to take away his vote; and when Taylor asked him how long he had enjoyed that inestimable privilege, the youth sheepishly put away his pistol. Baird's troops came up after the 1 Ficklen, 166. 2 Ibid., 169. Destruction and Reconstruction, 248-49. riot was over, and then patrolled the streets with negro troops further to exasperate the people. General Phil Sheridan hastened back to his post from Texas, and hurried a report to the President, admitting the incendiary character of Dostie's bloody speech, conceding that one in ten of the marching negroes carried arms, pronouncing the instigators of the Convention 'political agitators and bad men'; and then denouncing the press for opposing the Convention, and furnishing the Radicals what they wished in the sentence, 'Northern men are not safe.' He was instructed by Johnson that pending an investigation he had full military power to maintain order. The 'political agitators and bad men' petitioned Congress on 'the St. Bartholomew day of New Orleans,' and protested against being left to 'assassins.' General Baird, who had blundered, appointed some of his officers to investigate, and they reported that it was a conspiracy to crush the Convention.1 Johnson thereupon summoned Colonel Richard Taylor to Washington to get his version, and, on his recommendation, placed General W. S. Hancock in charge, and order was restored.2 The Congressional investigation brought the inevitable partisan reports. But an impetus had been given to the waving of the 'bloody shirt,' which had commenced, and thenceforth for years the North was to be told that the Southern whites devoted themselves mostly to the killing of inoffensive blacks. II Meanwhile, Andrew Johnson had set forth on his historic journey to the tomb of Stephen A. Douglas in Chicago. With him were Grant and Farragut; and, among members of his Cabinet, Seward, Welles, and Randall. In the party, too, were Mrs. Patterson, Mrs. Farragut, and Mrs. Welles. Arrangements were made to travel by day alone, and these were adhered to with the exception of the trip by steamer from Louisville to Cincinnati. That Johnson proposed to advocate his policies en route there can be no doubt; it was 1 Ficklen, 170. 2 Destruction and Reconstruction, 251. just such a tour as Roosevelt and Wilson were to make in later years. As President, he felt he had a right, without the consent of Congress, to carry his fight to the people. Riding to the station in Washington through throngs of cheering people, with flags and bunting flying from the buildings, he was to receive ovations all through Maryland and Delaware, and appear on the rear platform introducing Farragut and Grant. It was not until Philadelphia was reached that the organized partisan mobbing of the President began. There the Radical city officials extended no official welcome, and attempts were made through trickery to prevent a demonstration by the people. False information as to the time of the train's arrival was broadcast, but the politicians failed in their conspiracy. Flags were everywhere, many factories were deserted, and when the train stopped at the station, the enthusiastic crowd broke the police lines to clamber upon the platform and to the top of the car. Laborers were straining their throats with cries for 'the tailor President' and the 'Savior of the Union.' When, with difficulty, a lane was forced through the multitude for the passage of the presidential party, and the carriages were reached, the police lines were again crashed as men rushed forward to grasp the President's hand. The procession passed through two miles of welcoming tumult, and it was noted that the Union League Club was not decorated in honor of the head of the Nation. Smug, sour-visaged men within looked out from the windows contemptuously upon the scene. In one of the two speeches Johnson made, he sounded the intended keynote of the journey: 'I trust that the day is far distant when the land we love shall again be drenched with brothers' blood. (Good.) I trust the country will return to peace and harmony and that reconciliation will be brought about, and we be enabled to stand together, one people and one Union.' 1 The 'New York Tribune's' account was one of studied insult. When a confused driver of a cart turned his horse into the crowd, and Johnson sought to quiet the people and prevent a panic, the incident was so described as to make him appear cheap, absurd. The correspondent boasted that the city was 'perfectly bare and destitute of adornment.' The mobbing of the President had com1 New York World, August 29, 1866. |