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 9
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62
The crimes committed, in the most peaceful times, within eighteen consecutive months. among any population of eight millions, would, if industriously arrayed, make a fearful record. To make that arraignment of the late Confederate States was the task to which this able committee addressed itself in 1866. The situation in these states was peculiar. When the surviving soldiers returned from the field, around their deso- late homes they found four millions of slaves suddenly manumitted. The returning soldiers were themselves more or less affected by that demor- alization which is an unfailing consequence of protracted war. The negroes were demoralized by their newly-found freedom. They turned, for the most part. a deaf ear to the advice of their old masters and lis- tened with avidity to the tales that were bruited about, said to have come from the stranger friends who had freed them, to the effect that the lands of their rebel masters were to be confiscated and 'divided among them. It is impossible that. under such circumstances. however earnestly all good citizens might strive for the general good. there should not have been friction between the races. Yet. notwithstanding the extraordinary and unprecedented conditions there was. to Gen. Grant. nothing. as his report already quoted shows, in the situation there in the fall of 1865, that was not creditable to the masses of the people. Gen. Grant was not in politics; the gentlemen of the committee of fifteen were, and a few words as to the treatment of one state. as a sample, will suffice to show that the methods employed were such as to allow no rational expectation of reach- ing correct conclusions. As to the condition in Alabama only five per- sons, who claimed to be citizens. were examined. These were all republican politicians. The testimony of each was bitterly partisan; under the government of the state, as it then existed. no one of these witnesses could hope for official preferment. In his testimony each was
3
1
1
77
ALABAMA IN FEDERAL POLITICS,
striving for the overthrow of his existing state government and the set- ting up of some such institutions as followed under congressional recon- struction. When this reconstruction had finally taken place, the first of these five witnesses became governor of his state; the second became a senator in congress: the third secured a life position in one of the departments at Washington; the fourth became a circuit judge in Ala- bama, and the fifth a judge of the supreme court in the District of Columbia-all as republicans. There was no democrat in the sub-com- mittee, which examined these gentlemen, to cross-examine them; and not a citizen of Alabama was called before that sub-committee to answer or explain their evidence. Of the report of this committee, based upon evi- dence taken by such methods, Mr. Blaine permits himself to say (Vol. II., p. 9): "That report is to be taken as an absolutely truthful picture of the southern states at that time." 1
The first session of the thirty-ninth congress now came to a close. Besides the passage, over the president's objections. of a still more radi- cal freedmen's bureau bill than defeated that by his first veto, it had accomplished little else than to drive most of the moderate republicans into the ranks of the extremists. On adjournment, members went into the canvass at home. The late Confederate States were held out of the union; and their status was to be determined by elections at the north. The rejection of the fourteenth amendment, the report of the joint com- mittee of fifteen, the testimony taken by that committee, the evidence furnished by agents of the Freedmen's bureau, the vetoes and the alleged treachery to the republican party of Andrew Johnson-these were the material of the canvass. Mr. Johnson had adhered rigidly to Abra- ham Lincoln's theory of restoration. That theory the republicans now were assailing and Johnson was on trial as an apostate.
The republicans came back to the last session of the thirty-ninth congress, which began on the first Monday in December. 1866, exulting in a great victory. Never since the begining of the government had there been such a campaign during an "off year." Though no president was to be elected, four national conventions had been held; the air was filled with inflammatory speeches and the dying embers of the passions engen- .dered by the Civil war were fanned into flames. The result of the election was a majority, in the fortieth congress, of thirty-one for the republicans in the senate and ninety-four in the house. The republicans were greatly elated. President Johnson, who was still ready with his vetoes, was the only obstacle in their path. It was proposed to remove him by impeach- ment. As put by Mr. Shuckers. himself a republican, in his life of S. P. Chase, (p. 547), the republican leaders at this juncture "felt the vast import- ance of the presidential patronage; many of them felt, too, that according to the maxim that to the victors belong the spoils, the republican party was rightfully entitled to the Federal patronage; and they determined to get
1
.
78
MEMORIAL RECORD OF ALABAMA.
possession of it. There was but one method, and that was by impeach- ment and removal of the president."
On the 7th of January, 1867, Mr. Loan offered a resolution that. "for the purpose of securing the fruits of the victories gained." impeachment of the president was necessary. On the same day Mr. Kelso, also "for the purpose of securing the fruits of the victories gained," introduced impeachment resolutions. Then Mr. Ashley moved and carried resolutions for the appointment of a committee to inquire for grounds on which the president could be impeached. No proof was offered; the committee was to hunt for proof. The president's "bank account was examined. His private conduct in Washington was carefully scrutinized. Men were employed to investigate his public and private character in Tennessee. But nothing was found to his discredit." (McCulloch, p. 394.) Notwith- standing the futility of this effort, in one form or another, the impeach- ment program survived until the next winter, when President Johnson furnished an excuse in the removal of Mr. Stanton from the secretaryship of war, and the impeachment proceedings were then pressed to a con- clusion." It is now well understood that no legal grounds for the impeachment existed; and even at that day, in the height of party , passion, there were seven republican senators, the exact number necessary to save the president, who, in spite of party pressure, voted "not guilty" at the trial.
The excitement prevaling in the country at large, at the time of the impeachment, may be judged of by the following editorial paragraph from the Harrisburg (Penna.) State Guard: "Just as sure as we believe the blood of Abraham Lincoln is on the soul of Andrew Johnson, so certain are we that he contemplates drenching the country once more in the blood of civil war." The effort to impeach the president was not allowed to delay the program of congress. Universal suffrage having been decided on, obviously the first step was. in the language of Mr. Henry Wilson, in his "History of Reconstruction" (p. 267), "the exten- sion of suffrage to the colored race in the District of Columbia, both os d right and an example." The bill to this effect was before the senate. Mr. Buckalew, of Pennsylvania, presented thus the grounds upon which the democrats opposed it: "Our ancestors placed suffrage upon the broad common-sense principle that it should be lodged in and exercised by those who could use it most wisely and most safely and most efficiently to serve the ends for which government was instituted." and "not upon any abstract or transcendental notion of human rights which ignored the existing facts of social life." And, he said: "I shall not vote to degrade suffrage. I shall not vote to pollute and corrupt the foundation of political power in this country, either in my own state or in any other." The debate took a wide range. It was understood that the late Confederate States were to share the fate of the district. One question was whether the right of suffrage, should be confined to those
79
ALABAMA IN FEDERAL POLITICS.
1
who could read and write. Mr. Sumner stated his position thus: "Now, to my mind nothing is clearer than the absolute necessity of suffrage for all colored persons in the disorganized states. It will not be enough if you give it to those who read and write; you will not, in this way, acquire the voting force which you need there for the protection of unionists, whether white or black. You will not secure the new allies, who are essential to the national cause." The bill granting suffrage passed, without qualifi- cation. On January 7. 1867. the president returned it with his objections. Mr. Sherman, discussing the veto, said: "The president says this is not the place for this experiment. I say it is the place of all others, because, if the negroes here abuse the political power we give them, we can with- draw the privilege at any moment."
It is curious, glancing forward a few years, to see the result of this initial experiment. In 1871, while the republicans were still in power in both houses, a law was passed allowing the District of Colum- bia to elect its own legislature and governor. The newly enfranchised voters. who were given the ballot "both as a right and as an example," had thus full opportunity to show their capacity. What was occurring, at that time, in the southern states was always a matter of partisan dis- pute, but the noon-day sun was shining full upon the capital district, and the whole country saw that the political power conferred was being "abused." As Senator Sherman had indicated it might be, it was, in 1874, promptly "withdrawn" by a law which took away, not only from the black man, but also from the white man, the right, which the latter had long enjoyed, of voting in the District of Columbia. The new law provided that the district should be governed by three commissioners appointed by the president. There has not been a ballot cast in the dis- trict since 1874.
Congress had the right to enact universal suffrage in the District of Columbia. It has exclusive jurisdiction there, under the constitution; but that instrument might have been searched in vain, in 1867. for any power over the elective franchise in the states. Mr. Justice Nelson, of the supreme court of the United States, on the circuit had decided, in the case of Egan, that South Carolina was entitled, after her civil gov- ernment had been restored under the presidential plan. to all the rights of a state in the union. In a carefully prepared opinion he said: "A new constitution had been formed, a governor and legislature elected under it and the state placed in the full enjoyment of all her constitu- tional rights and privileges." What was true of South Carolina was true of others of the late Confederate States, and if these states were states, as Mr. Justice Nelson held, then congress had no power over suffrage within their borders.
But the view of the constitution did not suit the majority in congress. The victory at the polls in the fall had put them abreast with Mr. Stev- ens, and now, in the winter of '66-67, they claimed full power over the
.
80
MEMORIAL RECORD OF ALABAMA.
-
-
late insurrectionary states. on the ground that it was for congress to decide when the war had ceased; and they decided it was not yet over. Mr. Fessenden put it thus: "Is there anything more certain than that the conqueror has a right, if he chooses, to change the form of govern- ment, that he has the right to punish?" etc. On the 15th of March, 1867, Senator Howard, of Michigan, said: "They took their own time to get out of the union: let them take their own time to return. They took their own time to initiate the war; we took our own time to close the war." Mr. Maynard, of Tennessee, seemed to think it necessary to show that the continued existence of the war was a fact, really existing, and not a fiction assumed for jurisdictional purposes. and he said, on the floor of the house, in February, '67: "It is not quite accurate to say that we are at peace; that there is no war. What peace is it? The peace of Vesuvius at rest. the peace of the slumbering volcano; the fires banked up, not extinguished; the strength of the combatants exhausted, but their wrath not appeased; no longer able to continue the conflict, but awaiting a favorable opportunity to renew it."
The facts were that for eighteen months prior to Mr. Maynard's speech there had not been, nor has there been, during the quarter of a century elapsing since, any offer or thought in any of the late Confed- erate States, of resistance to the general government; unless one may denominate such the occasional shooting, by a moonshiner, of a revenue officer; and this has occurred, oftener than elsewhere. in the republican district of east Tennessee, represented, the writer believes, by Mr. May- nard when he claimed to be standing on a volcano.
Nevertheless, congress solemnly adjudged, for itself, that the war was not over; and so, on the 2d of March, 1867, in order, as was recited in the preamble. "to protect life and property in the rebel states of Virignia, North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina. Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Texas and Arkansas," "until loyal and republican state governments can be legally established," it was enacted that those states should be divided into military districts and placed under military rule. On the 23d of March. 1867, a supplemental act was passed, com- pleting the plan of reconstruction. These acts annulled the state govern- ments then in operation: enfranchised the negro: disfranchised all who had participated in the war against the union, whether pardoned or not, if they had preiously held any executive, legislative or judicial office under the state or general government; provided for the calling of con- ventions, the framing and adopting of state constitutions, the election of state officers; and, in fact, pointed out all the machinery necessary to put into operation new governments upon the ruins of the old. Until the several states should be admitted under these new governments into the union, the military officers in command were to have absolute power over life, liberty and property; with the sole exception, that death sen- tences were subject to approval by the president. Several ineffectual
-
-
81
ALABAMA IN FEDERAL POLITICS.
efforts were made to get the question of the validity of these laws before the supreme court of the United States. At last the case of McCardle from Mississippi seemed to present it fairly. McCardle, basing his de- nial of the power of a military court to punish him on the ground that the reconstruction laws conferring that authority were unconstitutional, appealed to the supreme court. That court .. denied a motion to dismiss the appeal. The case was then argued on its own merits. The argument was concluded on the 9th March. 1868; and the court took the case under advisement. While it was being so held, to prevent a decision of the question, a bill was rushed through both houses and finally passed, March 27; 1867, over the president's veto. depriving the court of juris- diction over such appeals. This act, of course, implied the fear that the decision would be adverse to the validity of the laws, as a favorable deci- sion would have been of immense value to the republican party. Con- sidering all the circumstances, it is indeed natural to conclude that this hasty action was based upon positive information that the decision, if made, would declare null and void the reconstruction laws. After the passage of these laws and the muzzling of the supreme court. the careful observer of existing conditions, looking at the many adventurers who had followed in the wake of the army, at the numerous employees of the Freedmen's bureau. so long in training for their now fast-ripening oppor- tunities, might easily have predicted that the legislation of congress would inevitably result in what Mr. Lincoln had feared and deplored as far back as 1862.
Just before the election for members of congress. which had been ordered by Governor Shepley in Louisiana, President Lincoln addressed him a letter, November 21. 1862, saying that only "respectable citizens of Louisiana," voted for by "other respectable citizens," were wanted as representatives in Washington. "To send," he says, "a parcel of north- ern men here, elected, as would be understood, and perhaps justly so, at the point of the bayonet. would be disgraceful and outrageous." But party spirit had now gotten far away from the lofty plane on which Lincoln, the statesman, had stood. Even Mr. Garfield, usually generous and conserative, had become so much excited as to say, in the discus- sion of these measures on the 18th February. 1867. and seemingly with exultation: "This bill sets out by laying its hands on the rebel govern- inents and taking the very breath of life out of them; in the next place it puts the bayonet at the breast of every rebel in the south: in the next place it leaves in the hands of congress utterly and absolutely the work of reconstruction." In other words, Mr. Garfield meant that if the re- sults were not satisfactory, congress might, at will, modify or change its plans.
But happily, as it no doubt appeared, there was only need for a few more changes in the law. The reconstructors builded even better than
6*
82
MEMORIAL RECORD OF ALABAMAA.
they knew. The results exceeded even the sanguine prediction of Mr. Henry Wilson. who said. March 15. 1867, on the floor of the senate: "With the exercise of practical judgment, with good organization, scattering the great truth and the facts before the people, a majority of these states will, within a twelvemonth, send here senators and representatives who think as we think, speak as we speak and vote as we vote, and will give their electoral votes for whoever we nominate for president in 1868."
In a little more than a "twelvemonth " from the date of Mr. Wison's prediction-by the close of June, 1868-eight of the eleven Confederate States were represented in both branches of congress. Of these repre- sentatives all but two were republicans, and among the sixteen senators there was not a single democrat. About one-half of these senators and representatives were northern men, elected when, as Mr. Garfield 'said, "the bayonet was at the breast of every rebel in the south" -- a thing Mr. Lincoln had characterized as "disgraceful and outrageous." The "fruits of the war" were being gathered. Nothing remained but to perpetuate existing conditions. Not only did these newly set up states ratify with alacrity the fourteenth amendment, but by the 30th of March, 1870, with their assistance, the fifteenth amendment was also declared part of the constitution. Suffrage had been granted to the negro in the southern ยท states by congress. This amendment provided that "the right to vote should not be abridged by the United States, or by any state on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude." The net results of these reconstruction measures were that, in the forty-first congress, beginning March 5, 1871. when the twelve southern states, including West Virginia. had all been gathered into the fold, they were repre- sented by twenty-two republicans and two democratic senators and forty- eight republicans and thirteen democratic representatives.
RECONSTRUCTION.
The senators and representatives who had been elected to congress in 1865, and who were rejected, were all Alabamians, thoroughly identified with the state, and were democrats. When the reconstruction govern- ment had been put into operation the six representatives elected to the fortieth congress and admitted were all republicans and none of them had been residents of Alabama until after the close of the war. They were of that class known as "carpet-baggers." One of them, Judge C. W. Buckley, was a man of fair talent and good personal character. He served three terms in congress, and has since remained in Alabama and become identified with the state. The new senators were also strangers to the soil of Alabama and both republicans. One of them, Gen. Willard Warner, was a man of considerable ability and of a good character. The other was George E. Spencer. When, in 1-70, his first term as senator was about to expire and the legislature had been elected that was to
83
ALABAMA IN FEDERAL POLITICS.
choose his successor, Mr. Spencer, seeing that he would be defeated by the regular body, whose members had been sworn in under the returns, organized another, called, from the place of its meeting, the "court- house legislature." The republican governor, Lewis, called upon the attorney-general of the United States to decide upon the manner in which one legislature should be made out of these two. This official sent from Washington a telegram, which the governor laid before the regular legislature convened at the capitol as "a gentle intimation of the convic- tions of - the law officer of the United States government of his views." These views were enforced by the United States soldiers, who, as the governor said, were "quietly tented on a lot adjoining the capitol." The new legislative body compounded of the two according to the view of the distant "law-officer," was still against Mr. Spencer. He lacked two votes. These he obtained, one by having a follower to break his pair with an absent democrat. the other by the non-attendance of a democrat who claimed that his liquor the night before had been drugged. Thus Spen- cer got another term as United States senator, carrying him along until March 4, 1879.
Although Alabama did not completely emerge from the eclipse with which the congress by its reconstruction laws had overshadowed it until the great election of 1874, yet George Goldthwaite, a representative citi- zen of the state and a democrat. was elected in 1871 as United States senator for six years. Senator Goldthwaite was a man of high character and had been a distinguished judge of the supreme court, but, at the time of his election, his splendid abilities were already paralyzed by the hand of disease, and he never was able to render to his state the services his countrymen would otherwise have had reason to expect of him.
There were four elections for representatives in congress during the era of Alabama's eclipse. Only in the first. 1868. were the adventurers who had swooped down upon the state able to divide among themselves all these offices. In the forty-first congress, among the six representatives, there were four Alabamaians chosen. Peter M. Dox and William C. Sher- rod, democrats-the latter a gallant Confederate soldier. Charles Hayes and Robert S. Heflin. now become republicans. were elected. Mr. Dox served two terms and Charles Hayes served three.
Among the members of the forty-second congress were William A. Handley and Joseph Sloss, democrats. Mr. Handley was a business man of fine character and had also been a Confederate soldier. Mr. Sloss served two terms.
Re-appointment under the census of 1579 gave Alabama eight repre- sentatives instead of six, and there now appeared, as new members of the forty-third congress (1873-5) Charles Pelham, Christopher C. Sheats, Alexander White, Frederick G. Bromberg. and Col. John H. Caldwell. Bromberg was an independent, Caldwell was a democrat. Pelham Sheats and White were republicans. Mr. White was a lawyer of high rank, and
84
MEMORIAL RECORD OF ALABAMA.
though he was defective in voice, was nevertheless eloquent. He had been extreme in his opposition to the republican party when it was being legis- Jated by congress into the control of his state; but. after the election of a republican president. in 1968, he left the democracy, and now, by his advocacy in congress of a bill to suspend. at the will of the president, the writ of habeas corpus in the southern states, be drew down upon himself the bitterest of maledictions from his former associates. Col. Caldwell, who was also elected to the succeeding congress, had served with dis- tinction in the Confederate army, was a gentleman of very decided talent, of pleasing manners and quite an attractive popular speaker. He is a typical southerner.
PROGRESS FROM 1874 To 1892.
In the election of 1872 the democratic party as an organization had supported Horace Greeley, a life-long republican -- the only instance in which one of the great political parties had selected its candidate for president from the ranks of the other. But the circumstances were peculiar. There seemed to be no hope for a regular democrat. A section of the republican party, calling itself liberal, had in convention denounced the republican party for its treatment of the south, and nominated, as its candidate, Horace Greeley. The democratic national convention indorsed him. Exceptional as this action was, it now appears to have been wise. Partisan misrepresentation had created a wide-spread belief, throughout the northern states, that the "unregenerate rebels" of the souuth were not "loyal to the union." The fact that the masses of the southern democ- racy, although there were some defections, supported Mr. Greeley, who had been a leader in the old abolition party, seems to have paved the way for a great democratic victory in the congressional elections of 1874, and there foreshadowed the notable and fruitless triumph of two years later.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.