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 II pt 1 > Part 7
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"In the exercise of a right so ancient. so well established and so nec- essary for self-preservation. the Confederate States, in their conventions. determined that the wrongs which they had suffered, and the evils with which they were menaced, required that they should revoke the delega- tion of powers to the Federal government which they had ratified in their several conventions. They subsequently passed ordinances resuming all their rights as sovereign and independent states, and dissolved their con- nection with the other states of the union.
A history of the terrible war that followed does not come within the scope of this article. The southerners fought for their homes and their firesides and the constitution of their fathers as they understood it; the northerners for the union and the constitution of the fathers as they understood it. It was a terrific struggle, the bloodiest in the annals of the world. The gallantry displayed on both sides of the line and the unparalelled losses illustrate the desparation with which the Anlgo-Saxon freeman fights when he believes his liberties are at stake. But this is not the place to tell the story of the war. The confederacy went down in the combat and with it fell its industrial and financial systems. Presi- dent Lincoln repeatedly declared, as did the congress of the United States, that the Federal armies were not fighting to free the slaves, but only for the union. Yet the confederates would not yield. They were de- termined to maintain the government and the constitution they had set up over themselves. Slavery, that was incidentally involved, perished in the shock of battle waged on another issue. The proclamation of emancipation was placed on the avowed ground that it would aid the armies of the union. Confederate paper money, upon which the new government was compelled to rely to carry on the war, went gradually down until it became worthless. The story of this currency is pathet- ically told in the following lines, written on the back of a Confederate bill a short time after the close of the war by Major S. A. Jonas, of Louisiana.
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IN MEMORIAM.
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RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO THE HOLDERS OF CONFEDERATE TREASURY NOTES.
Representing nothing on God's faith now, And naught in the waters below it, As a pledge of the Nation that's dead and gone, Keep it, dear friend, and show it.
Too poor to possess the precious ores. And to much of a stranger to borrow, We issued today our promise to pay, And hoped to redeem on the morrow.
The days rolled on, and weeks became years, But our coffers were empty still ! -
Coin was so rare that the treasury quaked, If a dollar should drop in the till.
We knew it had hardly a value in gold, Yet as gold our soldiers received it; It gazed in our eyes with a promise to pay, And each patriot soldier believed it.
Keep it, for it tells our history o'er, From the birth of its dream to the last, -
Modest, and born of the Angel Hope, Like the hope of success-it passed.
REHABILITATION UNDER ANDREW JOHNSON.
~ The history of Confederate legislation at Richmond and of represent- atives and senators from Alabama in the Confederate congress form no part of this sketch. Alabama during the war had seceded from "Federal politics."
In the spring of 1865, when the stricken armies of the Confederacy were melting away before the victorious columns of the Federals, Wilkes Booth, a weak-minded actor who sympathized with the dying Confederacy and had not the perception to see a difference between Shakespeare's Cæsar and Abraham Lincoln. imagining himself a Brutus, assassinated Mr. Lincoln. It was an appalling crime and to the southern states a dis- aster absolutely irreparable.
Mr. Lincoln could, and, if he had lived, would have saved the south from the awful consequences of the reconstruction acts of 1867-8. Upon his death, Vice-President Johnson, how become president. attempted to carry out the program for the rehabilitation of the late Confederate States that Lincoln had mapped out for himself. How Jolinson failed will be subse- quently pointed out.
The unanimity and heartiness with which the Confederate soldiers laid down their arms and returned to the pursuits of peace in the spring of 1865 was phenomenal. President Johnson began at once the work of restor
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ing to their former position in the Union the states that had seceded. He issued a proclamation of amnesty and pardon. which embraced in its terms most of the persons who had given aid and comfort to the Confed- erate government. Certain classes, not covered by the general terms of the proclamation, which was conditioned on taking the oath of allegiance to the United States, were left to make special applications for pardon, and in most cases the applicants succeeded without difficulty.
Lewis E. Parsons. of Talladega, a democrat of ability, who, though he had remained in Alabama during the war, was nevertheless known as a Union man, was appointed provisional governor of the state. Under the direction and in accordance with the proclamation of President Johnson, Governor Parsons called a convention, which met in Montgomery in the autumn of 1865. and framed a new constitution for the state. During the war Mr. Lincoln had issued a proclamation freeing all the slaves in the revolted states. This proclamation was enforced by the army, and recog- nizea everywhere throughout the south as de facto valid; but there were many who doubted its legality. To put the matter beyond question, the XIIIth amendment to the constitution abolishing slavery throughout the United States had been proposed by congress, and now this convention ratified this amendment.
The election for delegates to this convention had been participated in only by those who were legally qualified to vote by the laws of Alabama as they were at the date of secession. Thus the people who in 1860 con- stituted the governing power of the state were recognized as still entitled to control it. and on their part they repealed the ordinance of secession and willingly did everything else deemed by President Johnson necessary to restore their relations to the Union. The absolute good faith with which they accepted the situation was remarkable. But it ought not to have been surprising. The southern people were going back under the same form of government they had established over themselves, and slav- ery, the immediate source of the dissensions that had rent the sections assunder. was now out of the way forever. , The debated and hitherto debatable question of secesson having been disposed of. all men now acknowledged that the United States were united forever. If partisan politicians had not thrust the free negro in where the slave had been be- fore as a topic of dispute, if the south had been permitted according to
. the Lincoln-Johnson plan, to solve the problems arising out of the new relations of this same population to the whites of the south, there would have been really no further sufficient and sound reason for sectional dif- ference. But unfortunately the southern people, who had been denied the right to settle for themselves the status of the slave, were now to be also refused the right to settle for themselves the status of the freedman. The republican party. in control of both branches of congress, refused to recognize the government set up by the people of the southern states under the Lincoln-Johnson plan.
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In November. 1865, C. C. Langdon, George C. Freeman, Cullen A. Battle, Joseph W. Taylor, Burwell T. Pope and Thomas J. Foster were elected representatives in congress: Lewis E. Parsons and John A. Winston were elected as United States senators; George S. Houston being given a short intervening term. These repaired to Washington and demanded the seats to which they had been chosen. Congress refused to admit them. One of the members elect, Mr. Joseph W. Taylor, published in the Washing- ton papers, while he was pressing his claim, a series of articles, from the last of which the following extract is selected as exhibiting something. at least, of the case made by the applicants. It is sophomoric, but the reader may find it entertaining, and it presents a true picture of the situation as it was at the close of the Civil war.
"Far away in the south, there lies a beautiful land, warmed by glow, ing suns, and fanned by cooling breezs from the sea. Its soil is fertile, its air is pure, and its productions are rich and varied as those of the tropics. The bravery of its sons has become proverbial, and its daugh- ters, fair as the dames of Caucasus. are as virtuous as they are fair. This glowing clime has borne its full part in all the perils of the country. and contributed its full share of glory and fame to the nation. Its heroic dead lie buried on all the battlefields of the republic. The fiery genius of its sons has added to the parliamentary and forensic glory of the land. Its morals, like its intellect, are vigorous in type. Its social life is pure. Over this fair clime, in an evil hour, the fell spirit of sectional discord brought the sweep of the hurricane breath of war. The earthquake jar of contending hosts shook its hills, and its plains ran with the blood of its slaughtered people. After the desolation had spread far and near. the plague of war was stayed. Its smoke lifted from the battlefields of its strife, and it was seen that the fair and fruitful land which, four years before, had entered the arena of the conflict. almost the paradise of love and plenty, was no more. There stood in its place a charred and deso- late land-a land riven by the bolts of war. drenched in blood. and filled with dead men's bones. Myriads of its noblest sons had gone down to the red burial of the brave on the battlefield of strife, or perished by the varied casualties of war. Widowhood and orphanage filled its habitations. in every household there was gloom. in every heart a grief. A fatal blight had fallen upon all its material interests and pursuits. Its fields were desolate, its villages waste. its proudest cities in chains. All but the fragments of its wealth. the virtues of its women, and the heroic re- resolves of its men to bear and to conquer an adverse fate, had perished. To this overpowered and stricken land there came. from a benignant gov- ernment, voices of encouragement and words of cheer. Its people were invited to a political resuscitation under a new order of things, and to seats in the family circle of the nation. Accepting the summons. they have beaten their swords into ploughshares. and their spears into prun- ing-hooks. To every requisition of the government they have yielded a full and unreserved obedience. Acquiescing in all the results of the war, as final and conclusive upon them, both in honor and in fact, they have ratified the sternest issues of the struggle by pulling down their social and industrial fabric, and laying its cornerstone on the foundation of a new, and. to them, untried polity. They have modified their organic laws, and helped to modify the organic law of the nation. adapting them to the new order of things. They know no other purpose, they cherish
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no other resolve than to be true to their plighted word with the nation, and henceforth loyal to its flag and obedient to its laws. That the former relation with the Union of their fathers might be restored. they have, in compliance with express invitation from the national authorities, reorga- nized their state governments. and chosen representatives to both branches of congress. Some of those representatives are now in this city. More of them were present in the capitel halls on the day congress opened its sessions. They stood and knocked at the door of the family mansion of the republic, demanding, as their family birthright, admissions to its fire- side and participation in the hospitalities of its board. The door has been shut in their faces. With a grief too deep for tears many of them have already gone, and soon all of them will go back to their wronged and trampled people. to tell the tale of scornful rejection of the proffered hand of family re-union. Upon the heart of that people, brave and no- ble as they are, will descend a sorrow too deep for utterance-sorrow for their desolate homes, sorrow for ther wasted land, given over again, and for how long they are unable to know, to the ravages of a peace that is war in all but the name. But their grief will be accompanied by no un- manly repinings. From it there will spring no revolt in their outward allegiance, no appeal to the sword as the avenger of their wrong. Their purpose in that regard is nominated in the bond of their honor. and that bond they will keep inviolate forever. But from the agents who merely hold the keys and occupy ,by permission the family mansion of the nation, they will appeal to the principles of these agents. to the real owners of the mansion-the people. the whole people of the United States of Amer- ica. The decision which they will render in the case may be collected even now from their antecedents and character. It comes in the pro- phetic utterances of the popular wish, which reach this city from far and near through the land. It is syllabled in voice from the pulpit and the hustings. It is heralded by that portion of the press that is conservative in character and national in spirit. Its solemn tones echo even now along the capitol halls of the nation. thundering in the ears of the representa- tives of the people. if they would but hear them, the mandatory words that the children of the national household. erring though they might have been, but now reconciled and forgiven, must not be shut out from the fireside and the hospitality of the common family mansion."
But the appeals of Mr. Taylor to congress were ineffectual. and the appeal he proposed to take to the people of the United States in the coming elections met with no better success, as will be seen from the record succeeding.
The death of Abraham Lincoln was an appalling calamity-especially to the south. Had the crazy assassin withheld his hand. reconstruction could never have been formulated, as it was, into the acts of March 2d and March 23d, 1867. Mr. Lincoln's leading thought in the conduct of the war was the preservation of the government of the fathers; and he took issue squarely with those who, like Mr. Sumner, were seeking to take advantage of the times and "change this government from its original form and make it a strong contralized power."* He believed the government to be, as Chief Justice Chase afterward defined it. in Texas vs. White, "an indestructible union composed of indestructible states." Upon
*Nicolay and Hay's "Lincoln"-Century, October, 1888.
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this idea of the constitution he based his theory of restoration-a theory which, at the time of his death, was well known, though it appears to have since been industriously forgotten. This theory was, that the insurrectionary states, notwithstanding the war, still existed as states- that they were never out of the Union and were always subject to the constitution. Hence it followed that those people of these several states, who were entitled to vote by the laws existing at the date of the attempted acts of secession, had, when they returned to their allegiance and were pardoned. the power of reconstruction in their own hands. On this theory President Lincoln aided the people to set up state govern- ments in Tennessee, Louisiana and Arkansas-all without any aid from congress. But from the beginning there were eminent republicans in congress who denied the authority of the president to "intermeddle," as they called it. in this business. As early as 1861, Mr. Stevens, of Pennsylvania. had announced the doctrine, that the constitution and laws were suspended where they could not be enforced; that those who had defied them could not invoke their protection, and that congress could legislate for such rebellious territory outside of and without regard to the constitution.
Mr. Sumner laid down the proposition, in resolutions introduced February 11th. 1862, that, by attempting to secede, a state had committed suicide, and its soil had become territory subject to the supreme control of congress. Both of these theories, which did not differ in result, denied to the president any power whatever in the premises. But Mr. Lincoln seems always to have stood on the declaration made by congress in July, 1861, that the war was being waged "to defend the constitution and all laws in pursuance thereof, and to preserve the Union, with all the dignity, equality and rights of the several states unimpaired: that as soon as these objects were accomplished, the war ought to cease," etc.
Pursuing steadily the spirit of these resolutions, even down to the day of his unhappy death. reconstruction as practiced by him was, sim- ply, restoration of civil authority in the insurgent. but still existent, states by the people thereof, aided by the military power of the United States.
More than two years after this question of power had begun to be mooted in congress the president formulated and communicated to that body, in his message of December 8th. 1863, the plan he proposed there- after to follow. In no material particular did it differ from the theory upon which he had theretofore acted. He said: "Looking now to the present and future, and with reference to a resumption of the national authority within the states wherein that authority has been suspended, I have thought fit to issue a proclamation, a copy of which is herewith transmitted."
In the proclamation, embracing the plan, he offers pardon to all who 5*
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will swear "henceforth" to support the constitution of the United States, etc., and proclaims that when those who, accepting this amnesty, shall. have taken the oath of allegiance, each "being a qualified voter by the election laws of the state, existing immediately before the so-called act of secession, and excluding all others, shall re-establish a state govern- ment, which shall be republican and in no wise contravening said oath; such shall be recognized as the true government of the state," etc. This was President Lincoln's plan for restoring the insurgent states to the Union; it left the question of suffrage. entirely in the hands of those who were qualified to vote under the laws existing at the date of secession. It was precisely this proposition-viz., that each insurgent state, at the time of rehabilitation, must decide for itself whether it would adopt negro suffrage-that angered the republicans in congress when acted on by Andrew Johnson, and culminated in the impeachment proceedings.
But Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson were two different per- . sons. Johnson was pugnacious-seeking always to beat down his adver- sary and never to conciliate. Lincoln, on the other hand, never needlessly antagonized those who could be won to his views, though he was accustomed to adhere to his matured opinions with inflexible pur- pose, as we shall see he did in this case, in the face of the fiercest opposition.
When this message of December, 1863. went in, many of the republi- can leaders were claiming for congress exclusive jurisdiction over the question of reconstruction under the clause of the constitution which declares that: "The United States shall guarantee to every state in this Union a republican form of government." The counter claim by the president, that he could aid the people to set up governments for them- selves, seemed a challenge.
Congress debated the question at length, and finally, in July, 1864. passed, by a small majority in each house, a bill "to guarantee to certain states a republican form of government." This bill did not meet the wishes 'of the extremists, because it did not give the ballot to the negro; but, if it became law, it would be a step gained for the extremists. It asserted the jurisdiction of congress and provided expressly that the president should recognize by proclamation the state governments estab- lished under it, only "after obtaining the consent of congress." The president refused to approve the bill and defeated it by a "pocket veto." July 9th he made a publie statement, giving reasons for his course. The bill, he said, was received by him only one hour before the adjourn- ment of congress, and, among other things, he thought that the system of restoration it provided was "one very proper for the loyal people of any state choosing to adopt it." But he clearly was opposed to forcing it on any state by law, as he went on to say that he would at all times be. "prepared to give the executive aid and assistance to any such peo-
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ple": that is, people who should "choose to adopt it," the congressional plan, "when the insurrection should be suppressed." etc. Senator Wade and Representative Henry Winter Davis responded in angry protest. To the admirers of Mr. Lincoln this document, dated in July. 1864, contains charges that are astounding. After stating that the signers had read the proclamation "without surprise, but not without indignation," the protest contends that want of time for examination was a false pretense. "Ignorance of its contents is out of the question," says the manifesto; and then argues that Mr. Lincoln was cognizant of a plan by which "the bill would be staved off in the senate to a period too late in the session to require the president to veto it in order to defeat it. and that he," the president, "would retain the bill if necessary, and thereby defeat it." The protest further says: "The president, by preventing this bill from becoming a law. holds the electoral votes of the rebel states at the dicta- tion of his personal ambition." and complains that the will of congress is to be "held for nought unless the loyal people of the rebel states choose to adopt it." It also calls Mr. Lincoln's action "a studied outrage on the legislative rights of the people." Here the issue was squarely made whether the president was to restore or the congress to reconstruct the insurgent states. The president went on his way. 1
Long after his plan of restoration had been published to the world his party, in convention assembled. had approved his "practical wisdom," "unselfish patriotism" and "unswerving fidelity to the constitution," and now, in November, 1864, on this platform, Mr. Lincoln received 212 elec- toral votes to 21 for George B. Mcclellan.
On the 5th of December, 1864, the president sent in his last annual message, which was without any allusion to the question of reconstruction, unless it was in his mind when, speaking of the insurgents, he said: "They can at any moment have peace simply by laying down their arms and submitting to the national authority under the constitution;" and its closing words possibly had reference to the same subject: "In stating a single condition of peace. I mean to say that the war will cease on the part of the government whenever it shall have ceased on the part of those who began it." It is very clear that up to this point Mr. Lincoln was determined never to become a party to any political war upon the south- ern states waged for the purpose of compelling them to range under a political banner.
Congress, during the session that ended 1864-65, either did not care or did not dare to insist on any reassertion of its right to reconstruct. On the contrary, seeing. as it undoubtedly did. that the Confederacy was about to collapse. it adjourned on the 4th of March. leaving Mr. Lincoln an open field for his policy of restoration. Every member of that con- gress knew what that policy was. It meant the promptest possible res- toration of civil authority in the states by the aid of executive power. And so, now, shortly before his death, the president went on to prepare,
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or cause to be prepared, the proclamation for the restoration of North Carolina, which was issued by his successor, Andrew Johnson, May 29th, 1865, and was the basis of all Mr. Johnson's subsequent work in that ffeld.
Mr. McCulloch, secretary of the treasury during the last few weeks of Lincoln's and throughout the whole of Johnson's administration, says, in his "Men and Measures of Half a Century," p. 378: "The very same instrument for restoring the national authority over North Carolina and placing her where she stood before her attempted secession, 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 re-construction policy of the administra- tion." On the 18th day of July, 1867, Gen. Grant, before the re-con- struction committee, said that, according to his recollection, "the "very paper (the North Carolina proclamation), which I had heard read twice while Mr. Lincoln was president, was the one which was carried right through" by President Johnson.
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