USA > Alabama > Memorial record of Alabama. A concise account of the state's political, military, professional and industrial progress, together with the personal memoirs of many of its people. Volume I > Part 10
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clause of the constitution which declares that: "The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government." As a counter blast to the president's plan, which seems to have been ac- cepted in certain quarters, as a challenge, congress in July, 1864, passed a bill, by a small majority in each house, "to guarantee to certain states a republican form of government." This bill, which, while it did not attempt to confer the suffrage upon the negro, fully asserted the juris- diction of congress by providing that the president should not recognize any state government organized under it until "after obtaining the consent of congress," perished by a "pocket veto." Aroused by what they pleased to term this "studied outrage on the legislative rights of the people," Senator Wade and Representative Henry Winter Davis filed an angry protest, in which they openly charged that "the president, by preventing this bill from becoming a law, holds the electoral votes of the rebel states at the dictation of his personal ambition." Unmoved by this un- warranted assault upon his patriotism, the president held firmly to his original plan, which he was just about to carry into effect when his great life was cut short by the insane act of a theatrical assassin. There seems to be no doubt that the proclamation for the restoration of North Caro- lina, which as issued by President Johnson, May 29th, 1865, and which became the basis of his reconstruction policy, was the identical instrument which his predecessor had prepared upon that subject. Mr. McCulloch, in his "Men and Measures of Half a Century," p. 378, tells us that, "The very same instrument for restoring the national authority over North Carolina and placing her where she stood before her attempted seces- sion, which had been approved by Mr. Lincoln, was, by Mr. Stanton, presented at the first cabinet meeting which was held at the executive mansion after Mr. Lincoln's death, and, having been carefully considered at two or three meetings, was adopted as the reconstruction policy of the administration." President Jonhson not only adopted Mr. Lincoln's plan of reconstruction, but along with it the cabinet which had approved it; and thus armed and equipped he attempted to put it into execution. Within little more than a month after his inauguration he issued the proclamation which his predecessor had prepared for the restoration of civil government in North Carolina. William H. Holden was appointed provisional governor, with authority to call a convention to frame a con- stitution for the state; and in a short time similar action was taken in reference to South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama and other states. Shortly after the assembling of congress in December, 1865, the president was able to report that the people of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee had reorganized their state governments. The conventions of all the seced- ing states had repealed or declared null and void the ordinances of seces- sion; the offices were everywhere filled either by original union men, or by those who, having been pardoned, had taken the oath of alle-
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giance; and the thirteenth amendment to the constitution of the United States, abolishing slavery, had been adopted by twenty-seven states, the requisite three-fourths of the whole number, the reconstructed govern- ments of five of the seceding states having been counted as parts of the twenty-seven. The machinery of government was everywhere in motion, and senators and representatives from most of the reorganized states were in Washington ready to be seated in congress. With the presiden- tial policy as an accomplished fact the thirty-ninth congress entered upon the task of reversing it, and of establishing something radically different in its stead. The battle opened with the resolution passed on the first day of the session, at the instance of Mr. Stevens, for a joint committee of fifteen to report on the condition of "the states which formed the so-called Confederate States of America"-a proposition to which the senate assented, with the proviso that neither house should admit any member from any of the seceding states, until the report of the joint com- mittee on reconstruction, thereafter to be made, should it be acted on. The history of the bitter struggle which ensued is well known. The com- mittee of fifteen prosecuted their ex parte inquisition; and the dominant party reassembled in the last session of the thirty-ninth congress, which began on the first Monday of December, 1866, intent upon removing the lion from their path by the impeachment of the president. While this effort was in progress the congressional programme of reconstruction, which contemplated the granting of the suffrage without qualification to the whole negro race, was put in motion by the passage of a bill provid- ing for the extension of suffrage to the colored race in the District of Columbia-a measure which the president returned with his objections on January 7, 1867. But as the dominant party had now a two-thirds major- ity in both houses vetoes were unavailing. Under this condition of things were passed, over the president's veto, the reconstruciton acts of March, 1867. After having determined for itself, as an historical fact, that the war was not over, congress, in the act of the 2d March-in order, as the preamble recites, "to protect life and property in the rebel states of Vir- ginia, North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisana, Florida, Texas and Arkansas," "until loyal and republican state governments can be legally established"-provided that those states should be remanded to military rule, and divided into military districts. By the supplementary act passed on the 23d of March, provisions were added through which the general design defined in the first act could be more fully carried out. By these extraordinary acts the reorganized state governments were torn down; the negroes were enfranchised, while all who had participated in the war, whether pardoned or not, provided they had previously held any executive, legislative or judicial office under the state or general government, were disfranchised. Provision was at the same time made for the calling of conventions, the framing and adopt- ing of state constitutions, and for the election of state officers upon the
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new basis of suffrage which these acts established. In the meantime, until these new governments could be built up upon the ruins of the old, the military officers in command were to have absolute power over life, liberty, and property, with the sole proviso that death sentences were to be subject to the approval of the president. The only hope of breaking down this unconstitutional legislation was in drawing the validity of these acts before the supreme court of the United States-an end which was supposed to have been attained when the case of McCardle, who denied the power of a military court to punish him, was taken before that court. But after this case had been argued, a bill was passed, March 27th, 1868, over the president's veto, which deprived the court of jurisdiction over such appeals. Such in brief was the character and the history of the legislation under which the minions of reconstruction were permitted by the American congress to inaugurate an epoch of violence and crime in the southern states.
RECONSTRUCTION IN ALABAMA.
As the Lincoln-Johnson theory of reconstruction proceeded upon the assumption that the war in "its revolutionary progress" had deprived Alabama of all civil government, there was an interregnum of two months between the beginning of the military occupation of the state by the federal forces in April and the 21st of June. 1865, when President Johnson issued his proclamation restoring civil authority in Alabama, and appointing Lewis E. Parsons, a union man, provisional governor. In accordance with the presidential scheme the provisional governor was authorized to call a constitutional convention, the delegates to which were to be chosen by those white voters who were qualified by the elec- tion laws at the time of secession, and who would swear to henceforth support the constitution of the United States. This convention, which was authorized to so alter and amend the existing constitution as to secure such a republican form of government as would restore the state to her constitutional relations with the federal government, met in Mont- gomery, on September 12, and in order to legalize facts accomplished by the war, adopted among others three ordinances; one abolishing slavery; another declaring void the ordinance of secession; and a third annulling all ordinances of the convention of 1861 in conflict with the federal consti- tution. Before its adjournment to September 30, the convention, over which presided the venerable Benjamin Fitzpatrick, provided for the election of a governor and general assembly in November. Robert M. Patton of Lauderdale, who was elected to the executive office over William" R. Smith of Tuscaloosa, and Michael J. Bulger of Tallapoosa, succeeded the provisional governor on the 20th of December. The legislature elected at the same time, after adopting with practical unanimity the thirteenth amendment, abolishing slavery, proceeded to the enactment of such leg- islation as was deemed necessary to remedy the evils which then grew
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out of the disorganization of the whole system of labor consequent upon emancipation. The great outcry which then arose at the north by rea- son of the enactment of these laws will be found to have had no reason- able foundation when their provisions are compared with similar enact- ments touching vagrancy, and the relation of master and servant, to be found in Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island and Connecticut. We have already seen that the hopeful effort thus made by the president to restore the seceding states to the union received its first great check when, on the 4th of December, 1865, a resolution was adopted by congress that neither house would admit a southern senator or representative, until after the report of the joint committee on reconstruction should be finally acted on. Under this resolution the senators and representatives chosen to represent the state were refused their seats, and thus matters remained until after Alabama had passed under the dark waters of con- gressional reconstruction.
The spring of 1866 found the people of Alabama disheartened by the refusal of congress to admit their representatives, and alarmed by the threat that their relations with the federal government should never be restored until a new state system could be built up upon the basis of universal suffrage. The new candidates for political honors, who had so lately emerged from a condition of slavery, had been taken in hand by a paternal institution known as the Freedmen's bureau, established by the act of congress of March 3d, 1865-an instituiton which extended its long and powerful arms into every southern state the moment that hos- tilities ended. The agents of this bureau, who were clothed with great power and responsibility, were no less than guardians of the freedmen, with authority to make their contracts, settle their disputes with employ- ers, and do all other needful things in the way of paternal supervision. By the evil influence of these agents, most of whom were looking for- ward to political preferment when negro suffrage should be established, the minds of the newly emancipated were poisoned with all kinds of impossible expectations. As General Grant reported to the president, in December, 1865, "the belief widey spread among the freedmen of the southern states that the lands of their former owners will, at least in part, be divided among them. has come from the agents of this bureau. This belief is seriously interfering with the willingness of the freedmen to make contracts for the coming year." Under the widely extended influence of these official organizers of mischief and discontent a situation, sufficiently difficult and perplexing in itself, was aggravated to an extent which no doubt served well the purpose of those who during the cam- paign of 1866 aroused afresh the passions of the north, and rekindled the dying embers of the Civil war. An account has already been given of the nature of the reconstruction acts of March, 1867, which the congress of 1866-67 passed over the president's veto. in order to overthrow the reorganized governments of the southern states, and to degrade them
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to the level of military departments. Under this "thorough" and dread- ful system the states of Georgia, Alabama and Florida were reduced to a military district, the command of which was given to "an officer of the army, not below the rank of brigadier-general, who was authorized by the acts to "allow local civil tribunals to take jurisdiction of and to try offenders, or, when in his judgment it may be necessary for the trial of offenders, he shall have power to organize military commissions or tri- bunals for that purpose, and all interference under color of state author- ity with the exercise of military authority under this act shall be null and void." By the terms of the reconstruction acts the state of war created by them was not to cease "until the people of any one of said rebel states shall have formed a constitution of government in conformity with the constitution of the United States in all respects, framed by a convention of delegates elected by the male citizens of said state, twenty-one years old and upward, of whatever race, color, or previous conditions, who have been resident in said state for one year previous to the day of elec- tion, except such as may be disfranchised for participation in the rebel- lion or for felony at common law, and when such constitution shall provide that the elective franchise shall be enjoyed by all such persons as have the qualifications herein stated for electors of delegates, and when such constitution shall be ratified by a majority of the persons voting on the question of ratification who are qualified as electors for delegates, and when such constitution shall have been submitted to con- gress for examination and approval, and congress shall have approved the same. and when said state, by a vote of its legislature elected under said constitution, shall have adopted the amendment to the constitution of the United States, proposed by the thirty-ninth congress, and known as article fourteen, and when said article shall have become a part of the constitution of the United States, said state shall be declared entitled to representation in congress, and senators and representatives shall be admitted therefrom on their taking the oath prescribed by law, and then and thereafter the preceding sections of this act shall be inoperative in said state: Provided, That no person excluded from the privilege of holding office by said proposed amendment to the constitution of the United States, shall be eligible to election as a member of the convention to frame a constitution for any of said rebel states, nor shall any such person vote for members of such convention." There was a large and influential body of men in the south who advised acquiescence and par- ticipation in the policy of reconstruction thus devised by congress, "not because we approve the policy of the reconstruction laws, but because it is the best we can do." Those who opposed this view of the situation were drawn together in Alabama in what was known as the conserva- tive party by General James H. Clanton, a wise and courageous man of singular force of character, who had been an old whig, and to the last a friend to the union, and yet as was to be expected one of the bravest and
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most devoted of confederate soldiers. General Pope was appointed to the command of the military district of which Alabama was a part, while General Wager Swayne, his subordinate, was placed in the local com- mand of Alabama, with headquarters at Montgomery. The first political duty which the military commander had to perform under the acts con- sisted of the making of a registration, which was to precede the election "of delegates to a convention for the purpose of establishing a constitu- tion and civil government for such state loyal to the union." When on May 21st, 1867, General Pope ordered the registration of voters, General Swayne appointed for each of the forty-two districts three republicans "to make and complete the registration, superintend the election, and to make return to him of the votes." On August 31st, General Pope ordered an election for delegates to the constitutional convention, the voting to begin October 1st, 1867, and last three days. It was not long after the meeting of this conventon, on November 5th, 1867, before it became apparent that the black man's party, which the politically ambitious Gen- eral Swayne. with the aid of the Union League, had been careful to organize, was in complete control-a fact which was made painfully manifest not only by the refusal of the convention to prohibit the amal- gamation of races, but also by its authorization of mixed schools. How to defeat the ratification of this constitution was the perplexing question which addressed itself to the conference of the leaders of the conservative party, which met at the Exchange hotel in Montgomery on the 1st of Jan- uary. 1868. Under the terms of the reconstruction acts the constitution could only be ratified "by a majority of the votes of the registered elec- tors qualified as herein specified, cast at said election, at least one-half of all the registered voters voting, upon the question of such ratification." It was therefore decided by the conference, after long and anxious con- sideration, to attempt to defeat the constitution by registering and then by staying away from the polls. The greatest danger in this course grew out of the fact that the state and county officers, who were to hold office under the new constitution when ratified, were to be voted for at the same time. If, therefore, the plan failed, the republicans would win a double victory. The venture was however made, and it was completely success- ful. Although the election, which was fixed to take place on the first, second and third days of February, 1868, was by order of General Meade, who had relieved General Pope, extended two days longer, the necessary vote was not cast-less than one-half of the registered voters, required by the acts, failed to vote upon the question of ratification. In spite of all the pressure put upon him to say otherwise, General Meade reported that "the constitution fails of ratification by 8,114 votes.' And yet, in spite of the plain facts, of the case, which General Meade scorned to con- ceal, the house committee on reconstruction dared to report to that body on the tenth of March that the constitution had been ratified. The flimsy pretext of this disgraceful statement was found in the fact that congress,
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after the election had been held under the terms of section 5, of the act of March 23. 1867, had passed a new law which provided that a majority of the votes cast should govern. The conclusion of the committee rested, therefore, upon the proposition that the result of an election could be entirely changed by a law passed after the election was over. In order to conceal as far as possible this monstrous assumption, congress waited until certain other states had held elections under the new law, and then placing Alabama with them, admitted them all in one act which declared in its preamble that they had all adopted their constitutions "by large majorities of the votes cast at the election held for the ratification or rejec- tion of the same." Thus, in the teeth of the fact that the new consti- tution had been beaten in Alabama, and with it the whole band of republi- . can office holders who were to hold under it, congress, by its unauthorized mandate, forced both at the point of the bayonet upon the people of the state. Governor Patton, who held office for seven months longer than his term by permission of the military commander of the district, was succeeded on the thirteenth of July, 1868, by William R. Smith, of Ran- dolph, the defeated candidate for governor, who assumed the executive office by virtue of the act of congress already referred to. All other offi- cers voted for in the February election were in the same manner clothed with public authority. In this way it was that Justices Walker, Byrd, and Judge, who composed the supreme court, were forced to give way to E. W. Peck, Thomas M. Peters, and Benjammn F. Saffold, who claimed under the common title. The saddest phase of this strange condition of things manifested itself when those who claimed to be legislators began the work of destruction by holding three sessions in their first year, beginning respectively July 13th, September 16th and November 2d. Never before had the destinies of the state passed under the control of the ignorant, the vicious and the irresponsible. Such was certainly the character of a majority of this incongruous assembly into whose composi- tion entered twenty-seven negroes, twenty-six in the house and one in the senate. And to heighten the danger this body, which felt none of that responsibility which attaches to elected representative of the people, was beset by a gang of greedy railroad monopolists who were intent upon prostituting the good credit of the state to their own private purposes. To the credit of Governor Smith be it said that, mainly through his instrumentality, a bill was passed at the first session, which was marked by very little other important legislation, removing the disabilities of those who were disfranchised by the new state constitution. Not until the second session did the real work begin when the act, which had been passed February 19th, 1867, extending the state's indorsement to railroads to the extent of $12,000 a mile, under conditions no one would comply with, was taken up and so amended that such aid might be obtained to the extent of $16,000 a mile. Under this act it was that, through bribery of legislators, corrupt practices upon the part of railroad builders, coupled
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with gross carelessness in the executive office, the state was involved in the serious financial difficulties which increased her debt four-fold and dragged down her high credit in the money markets of the world. Many roads begun under this law were constructed after a fashion for a few miles and then abandoned, while the building of the only one actually completed, the Alabama & Chattanooga, was marked by the grossest peculation. This road, which when completed in its entirety would have been entitled to only $4,420,000, had received, when lacking one hundred miles of completion, indorsed bonds to the extent of $5,300,000. Not- withstanding this a subsequent demand upon the legislature for $2,000,000 straight bonds was made and granted. To widen evils of this character the legislature by an act approved December 31st, 1868, authorized cities and towns to subscribe to these railroad ventures, and as their adminis- tration was generally in the hands of the irresponsible a great increase in local indebtedness was thus inflicted upon unrepresented taxpayers.
In 1870 an election was held for governor and other state officers, and for members of the lower house of the legislature. No election was held for senators, as they all held over by refusing to classify so as to permit one-half of their number to be elected as the constitution required. The democrats were successful throughout, a result which was acquiesced in with the exception of the defeated Governor Smith, who undertook to challenge the result by enjoining the president of the senate, R. N. Barr, of Ohio, from counting the vote for that office. But as the newly elected house of representatives contained a large majority of democrats, they, with two senators, constituted a majority of the general assembly, which at once proceeded to qualify the lieutenant-governor-elect, Edward H. Moren, of Bibb. As he had not been enjoined he at once canvassed the returns, obtained by his order from the secretary of state, and declared that Mr. Lindsey had been duly elected. Although Governor Smith still attempted to hold possession of the executive chamber, with the aid of a platoon of federal soldiers drawn from the garrison at Montgomery, he was soon forced to yield possession under a writ issued from the circuit court.
In November, 1872, Grant carried the state against Greeley, and at the same time D. P. Lewis, republican, was elected over Thomas H. Herndon, democrat, of Mobile. The democrats, who according to the returns had elected a majority in both houses, met in the capitol, according to law, canvassed the returns which were in their possession, and in due time declared Lewis duly elected. But it so happened that an uscrupulous adventurer by the name of George E. Spencer, who had been born of the spawn of reconstruction, now desired a re-election to the senate of the United States at the hands of an Alabama legislature. In order to create such a body, favorable to his aspirations, upon his advice, the republicans assembled, in what from its place of meeting was called the court house legislature, which claimed that they had a duly elected quorum in both
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