beas corpus, he appealed to the Supreme Court, Congress hurriedly deprived that court of jurisdiction.1 Uglier still, these military autocrats were feeding the carpetbag press with public patronage, some restricting the publication of proclamations to Radical papers with meager circulations, and a carpetbag paper in Tennessee was announcing a forthcoming congressional enactment giving Government printing to party papers in the South. And why not? Had not Thad Stevens proposed that every American legation be supplied with Forney's paper at public cost? 2 Under such conditions the people were registered and the vote on constitutional conventions cast. The negroes, under the drillmasters of the League, moved en masse to the polls, while multitudes of the whites, disgusted, and knowing themselves outnumbered, remained away. Thus the news flashed that the Conventions had carried, with great numbers of negro delegates elected who could neither read nor write, and with carpetbaggers in control. What though Stevens had lost the North, had not the South been won? - and the glad tidings gave infinite satisfaction to the intelligentsia in New York and Boston. X Never more astonishing conventions, in personnel, in a civilized nation. Negroes and carpetbaggers dominated, property and intelligence excluded, and strangers in many cases represented districts they had never seen. In Alabama, an Ohioan, as temporary chairman, recognized a Pennsylvanian who nominated a NewYorker for secretary, and the 'New York Herald' correspondent, glancing over the assembly, dubbed it "The Black Crook.' The irreverent described that in Arkansas as 'the bastard collection' or 'the menagerie.' ' 4 Happily there was comedy to relieve the gloom. Thus, in Louisiana a reporter was excluded for calling the negro members 'colored,' and a North Carolina delegate of color demanded the publication of debates, since he wished to ‘expatiate' to the convention and desired his words recorded 'in the archives of gravity.' In 1 Garner, 168. * McMinnville Enterprise, February 16, 1867. 3 Fleming, 517-19. 'Staples, 21. L Hamilton, 258, note. 5 Florida, members with feet on desks and smoking heard from illiterate colleagues the 'pint ob orter' that 'de pages and mess'gers' had failed 'to put some jinal [paper]' on the desks.1 Sometimes in the Mississippi Convention, pistols and knives were as necessary as 'jinals,' and there were frequent fights, and in Virginia, arguments were not infrequently clinched with fists. In Florida, legislation would be stayed to await the outcome of a pugilistic encounter while members puffed at their cigars and shouted encouragement to the combatants. And everywhere, the delegates, having no taxes to pay and no stake in the State, were spending money with a lavish prodigality. The first act of the president of the Florida Convention was to appoint a 'financial agent,' who hastened with an order for money to the State Treasurer, but the military commander intervened. Whereupon the Convention issued fifty thousand dollars in script, of which fifteen thousand dollars was immediately put out, and ten thousand dollars retained by the president. Pages were paid ten dollars a day, One delegate, living three hundred miles away, was given $690 in mileage; another, living in the convention town, received $630; and an emissary of the Radical National Committee (Saunders) drew $649.53, though his alleged home was but twenty miles distant. In Mississippi, the convention cost a quarter of a million, and four obscure Republican papers were paid $28,518.75 for publishing the proceedings. In Arkansas, where each member was voted ten newspapers, the mileage graft was shameless, and the printing was let to a politician without competition at an astounding figure. There was graft everywhere; for the constitution-makers of the day expected to be office-holders on the morrow, and all were in training. Most of the constitutions were monstrosities, proscriptive, and frankly designed to serve the purposes of party. Incendiary talk marked the proceedings. While a Mobile delegate, supported by the carpetbaggers, clamored lustily for the legalization of intermarriage, the scalawags opposed; but as a rule the negroes showed more judgment and a keener appreciation of the realities than the 1 Wallace, 56. 4 Garner, 203. 2 Eckenrode, 97. 3 Wallace, 54. 1 white demagogues. In some places, as in South Carolina, there was much wild talk of dividing the land among the freedmen.* Everywhere, except in Georgia, the conventions centered on the disfranchisement of large blocks of whites, and wrote this infamy into the fundamental law for this was the real purpose of these conventions. In Louisiana, public conveyances were thrown open to both races theaters, public schools, and the university as well and the disfranchisements were sweeping. Again it was an intelligent negro who protested that his race asked no such proscriptions. The disfranchising scheme also encountered opposition from the scalawags of Arkansas, but these were powerless. The Virginia Constitution bristled with test oaths and disfranchisements, transferring power to the ignorant and proscribing intelligence, and even this was an improvement on the original plan, which had sent a chill through the politicians in Washington. In Georgia, a reasonably conservative and sane document was framed because of the determining influence of Joe Brown.1 Ending their work to the satisfaction of the Washington Radicals, helping themselves to as much public plunder as was within reach, the conventions closed in jubilations, and in North Carolina there was a real thanksgiving, with the notorious General M. S. Littlefield, who was to get more than his share of the loot under the governments of 'loyal men,' singing 'John Brown's Body.' These documents, framed by ignorance, malevolence, and partisanship, sounded the death-knell of civilization in the South. ΧΙ Horrified by these fundamental laws, the conservatives everywhere hastily organized against their adoption. In some States they stayed away from the polls, since a majority of votes registered was required. In Georgia, they let the constitution go by default; in South Carolina, they issued an appeal to the people; in Florida, they knew themselves to be overwhelmed. In Mississippi, under the sagacious leadership of General J. Z. George, a Herculean fight was made in the open, with a utilization of both press and platform in every nook and corner, and with as many as sixteen 1 Fleming, 522–23. 'Eckenrode, 97; Stuart, 17. 2 Doc. Hist., 1, 451. Thompson, 193; Avery, 377. meetings a week in a country.1 In Arkansas, the conservatives fought hard, denouncing the Radical leaders as bigamists and degenerates, intimate with the blacks.2 There was no fighting chance in Louisiana and South Carolina, where the emissaries of the Union League had been moving familiarly in the negro cabins, the whiskey shops, and on the plantations. In Alabama, these agents warned the credulous negro that slavery for him was the alternative to adoption, and that the failure of the constitution would deprive their wives of the privilege of wearing hoopskirts. The day before the election, they were warned that the military commander would punish them if they failed to vote 'right.' Thus they were mobilized and marched to the towns the night before election - great droves of them armed with shotguns, muskets, and pistols and knives - and they terrorized the people by firing through the night. Radical politicians, as overseers, marched with them to the polls, glowering upon the weaklings. A spectator described the scene for the 'New York Herald': 'The voter got his ticket from the captain, the captain had it from the colonel, and he from the general, and the general of course had it from the owners and managers in Washington of the grand scheme to secure political supremacy.' The whites were denied access to the polls on the first day. Thus the negroes entered upon their freedom. The result was ratification everywhere but in Mississippi, where it failed decisively, in Alabama, where the majority of the registered did not vote to ratify, and in Virginia, where the masterful management of Alexander H. H. Stuart, before the date was fixed for the election, secured a postponement and paved the way for a compromise on the basis of 'universal suffrage and universal amnesty.' In Georgia, it was the contention of Ben Hill that the constitution was lost by thirty thousand," but no matter it was declared adopted; and Alabama was admitted by Congress despite the failure of her poll, because the Radicals wanted her electoral vote in the election of 1868. Immediately, the political parasites and looters, scalawags and scavengers, knaves and fools, took possession of the State Governments, and entered upon the pillaging of the stricken people. 1 Garner, 213. Fleming, 514-16. 2 Staples, 256. October 14, 1867. CHAPTER XI A PASSING PHASE I NFORGIVING and relentless as was Thad Stevens, his manhood gagged at the punishment of Vinnie Ream — the petty persecution of a woman. On being ordered from the Capitol, she had appealed to Stevens's chivalry, not in vain. Without consulting his associates, he moved that her studio be restored to her, and, under the whip and spur of the previous question, he prevailed. 'Many of the Radicals were disgusted with Thad, but none of them attempted to cross swords with him,' said the correspondent of the 'New York Herald.' But the flame was flickering feebly now, and at times he seemed to soften toward his foes. It was at this time that James Buchanan died. Citizens of the same town, they had ridden the circuit together years before, when Stevens still lived at Gettysburg. One afternoon, at York, they had gone out for a stroll together, and they returned bitter enemies. Just what occurred no one seemed to know. Politics widened the breach. When Buchanan, weary from the toils of State, returned to Lancaster in 1861, they had a common friend in Dr. Henry Carpenter, the physician of both; and both attended his second wedding in 1863. Stevens, who, strangely enough, was very sensitive, afterward complained to Carpenter that he had offered his hand to Buchanan, who had turned away. The physician, knowing the unfailing courtesy of the former President, assured the offended Stevens there was some mistake, and, speaking to Buchanan about it later, found he had seen no proffered hand. He, too, was old, too old to harbor animosities. 'Doctor,' he said, 'you drive about the country. Drive Mr. Stevens out past "Wheatland" and I'll be sitting at the spring and will come out and greet him.' Just then Stevens was unexpectedly recalled to Washington, and the meeting never took place; but Stevens knew of Buchanan's proposal. So runs one story 2 extant in Lancaster to1 July 21, 1868. 2 Told the writer by Judge Brown. |