USA > Georgia > The history of the State of Georgia from 1850 to 1881, embracing the three important epochs: the decade before the war of 1861-5; the war; the period of Reconstruction, v. 2 > Part 1
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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
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REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 02022 264 9
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016
https://archive.org/details/historyofstateof02aver
29513
THE HISTORY
OF THE
STATE OF GEORGIA
From 1850 to 1881, V.2 18.50-1881
EMBRACING THE
THREE IMPORTANT EPOCHS:
The Decade Before the War of 1861-5; The War; The Period of Reconstruction,
WITH
PORTRAITS OF THE LEADING PUBLIC MEN
OF THIS ERA.
BY I. W. AVERY.
COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME.
NEW YORK : BROWN & DERBY, PUBLISHERS, 21 PARK PLACE.
-0212
THOTBIH WHIT
A10NOUA TO STATO
FUGLME Y SETENICO
360
1729513
STATE INCIDENTS.
more bitter than the one of bullets so recently ended. But it was all one-sided. There could be but one result. We were powerless ; they implacable. Resistance did not convince, it only stimulated anger. Failing of effect, opposition invited increased exaction, and put ami- cable agreement out of the question in the savage temper of our adver- saries and the unbridled force of our victors. Looking back to that burning day, and reviewing the perplexities of that emergency, there was no choice but between the two extremes, the acquiescence of Brown or the deathful hostility of Toombs. The one gave peace, the other wooed extermination. The situation presented no middle ground seem- ingly. But the medium line was pursued, and the writer was its advo- cate, and there came in due and inexorable sequence an additional in- stallment of this hybrid reconstruction, more fantastic and harsh than ever.
During the year 1866 a good deal was done in practical State matters. Maj. Campbell Wallace was put in charge of the State road, and Col. Wm. M. Wadley made president of the Central railroad. Mr. T. W. Chichester borrowed 8400,000 in New York for Gov. Jenkins. Nearly $200,000 was spent to buy corn for the poor of the State. Some $3,630,000 of State bonds had been issued to repair the State road, pay past due coupons and bonds and buy corn, swelling our State debt from $2,676,500 to $5,840,000. Notwithstanding our desperate condition of poverty and ravage, our securities brought ninety cents on the dollar. And in spite of the fact that we were not regarded as a State, the gen- eral government levied upon the State as a State her quota of a direct tax levied on the Union, her part being $584,067.33. There had been granted in the South by President Johnson 7,197 pardons up to the first of May, 1866, of which 1,228 were in Georgia. Judge Erskine had opened the Federal Court in Savannah on the 9th day of May, 1866, with Henry S. Fitch, a brilliant Indianian, as United States District Attorney. Judge William Law, who had practiced forty-nine years in that court, applied for admission and was refused because he could not take the test oath. Ex-Gov. Brown represented him in attacking the constitutionality of the law creating the test oath, and made a speech of great length and magnificent power and legal learn- ing. Mr. Fitch made a reply of uncommon merit and eloquence. Judge Erskine ruled the oath unconstitutional and Judge Law was admitted. The Supreme Court of the United States afterwards declared the test oath unconstitutional.
Ex-Gov. Brown also was employed in an important case involving the
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361
THE BEGINNING OF THE COTTON CRAZE.
constitutionality of the State stay law, and made a speech of surpass- ing erudition and logic. The entire people were deeply interested in this absorbing question, and the case was looked to with profound intensity of feeling. He won his case, the supreme court deciding the law constitutional. Afterwards, when on the supreme bench as Chief-Justice, he ruled in favor of the constitutionality of this class of laws.
A system of county courts was created, the judges being elected by the people of each county, and holding office for four years without salary, but allowed fees. These were important courts, having jurisdic- tion of civil cases, except titles to land, and divorces, and criminal cases except those capital. The Freedmen's Bureau had an almost exclusive jurisdiction of negro affairs. It will ever remain one of the political curiosities of that unique time. The power in these petty Bureau officials was autocratic and sweeping. There was never in the world such a travesty of law. These agents decided titles to land, granted divorces, arrested and imprisoned for debt, made compulsory labor con- tracts for blacks who would not make them, and arbitrarily fixed the value of the services of laborers at from $12 to $15 a month with board and lodging, the laborer, however, to furnish his own clothing and medicine. There were so many outrages perpetrated by these agents, and the clamor was so great, that finally the heads of the Freedmen's Bureau were relieved in Georgia, the Carolinas and Alabama, and military officers were put in charge. It was this year that the planters began the suicidal farm policy they have so pertinaciously pursued ever since, and which has resulted in so much pecuniary embarrassment, of raising cotton to the exclusion of provision crops. The West became the corn crib and smoke-house of the South. Provisions were bought on time at enormous usury, and cotton raised at a loss, and thus the planters became more involved every year. There was a cotton craze, that for a while seemed incurable.
Among the tender and touching things done by the General Assembly was the appropriation of 85,000 to the Ladies' Memorial Association, under the lead of Mrs. Charles J. Williams of Columbus, and Miss Mary A. Green of Resaca, to gather together our soldier dead scattered about and properly mark their graves. Some exquisite speeches were made in the Legislature by several of the members, among them, Hon. James M. Russell, Col. R. J. Moses, Col. Claiborne Snead and J. A. Glenn. This Legislature also granted state-aid to the Macon and Bruns- wick railroad, after a very animated struggle. Ex-Gov. H. V. Johnson
362
A GLOOMY OUTLOOK AND MORE RECONSTRUCTION.
was re-elected United States Senator. In 1866, J. W. Clift and C. H. Prince qualified as members of Congress.
Both during 1865 and 1866 there was considerable agitation of the subject of emigration to Mexico and Brazil, and quite a number fool- ishly expatriated themselves. There was a small colony in Mexico, among whom were Generals Magruder, Hindman and Price and ex-Gov. Harris of Tennessee. But Gen. Lee advised against it, and the good sense of our people condemned such expatriation. And finally the exiles themselves returned, after a bitter experience of hardship in foreign lands. It was the brave thing to stand to our dear land in her adversity, and raise her from her sad ashes. Amid all the obstacles and distractions, the drawbacks and disturbances, there had been a little progress in prosperity. Our people had gone to work bravely. Our cities, especially, had picked up somewhat. Our railroads had been rebuilt, our farms restored in some degree. But the Radical policy had hindered rehabilitation, creating distrust and engendering discourage- ment. Our agricultural labor, the basis of prosperity, was unsettled and in an indescribable condition of demoralization. Adventurers had come in to control this ignorant class, and poison them against their old masters. There was a brooding sense of calamity in the State, and the outlook was gloomy enough.
In this nebulous state of darkness the Radical element in Congress, relentlessly pursuing the strife with President Johnson, and imagining the interest of their party to lie in a truculent increase of severity, passed a measure offered by Mr. Sherman, tendering back the same .Constitutional amendment that had been rejected, with negro suffrage added. The other gentle features of this grim Sherman bill were simply the transformation of our state government into a Provisional concern, handicapped with a bayonet absolutism, and subject to the imperial caprice of an acrid Congress. Truly it would have been a marvel of ingenuity that could have conceived a more incongruous abortion of politico-military polity than this. What a commentary it was, too, on the rancorous and unreasoning popular sentiment backing it at the North, that sturdy, stern old Reverdy Johnson, true and cour- ageous friend of the South in Congress, who had fought a generous battle for us, sadly voted for this bill as the best he could get, and the kindest measure possible. This was reconstruction with a vengeance. Andrew Johnson gamely vetoed it in words of grand force and elo- quence. But the constitutional majority, inspired by public opinion,
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363
WHITE DISFRANCHISEMENT AND BLACK SUPREMACY.
brushed out his ineffectual yet unanswerable protest, and fastened the iron enactment upon the quivering and helpless South.
It was an amazing piece of statesmanship to disfranchise our intelli- gence and make the hereditary slaves of two centuries rulers of our political destiny. It degraded, alarmed and exasperated our people. We had the whole argument of the case on our side. They had the might. Our reconstructors had excelled themselves in this last fantas- tic of national restoration. Our people were angered to white heat, and they entered upon an uncompromising fight against the astounding project. In this crisis ex-Gov. Brown, with that cool method that dis- tinguished him, went North to look into the matter, and see just how earnest the North was, and what hope there was of resistance to these most odious measures. He had taken ground as a matter of choice against these wrongs. He was powerless, as were his people, to suc- cessfully oppose any measures that were inevitable. And he resolved to ascertain just what was necessary to do to restore the state to the control of his state-countrymen. Judge Dawson A. Walker accompa- nied him. These gentlemen went to Washington early in February, 1867, while the Reconstruction measures were pending, and thoroughly gauged public sentiment upon reconstruction. Gov. Brown probed the subject to the bottom. He conversed with the most influential men upon both sides. From President Johnson down he conferred with leaders of every shade of opinion. The impeachment crusade against President Johnson had begun. Against the Sherman bill he had fired a noble but ineffectual veto, and on the last day of the old Congress it went through. The new Congress passed the supplemental reconstruc- tion bill providing for a registration of loyal voters, the calling of a convention by the vote of the people, and the ratification of the consti- tution made by such convention by a popular vote, all under military guidance. Mr. Johnson struck this measure with another spirited veto, but it was promptly passed, and the revengeful malignancy of impeach- ment gathered fresh force from the incident.
It was a gloomy state of things when the very constitutional exercise of official prerogative upon the line of constitutional right in our favor evoked so vengeful a spirit. Gov. Brown satisfied himself that these terms, hard and galling as they were, must be taken, just as they were taken, and he came home and advised their acceptance by the people. Impartially scrutinizing that act of advice, with the passions of the hour cooled, and in the light of final results, it must be confessed that Gov. Brown's course was practical, politic and inspired by his convic-
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364 GOVERNOR BROWN'S FATEFUL RECONSTRUCTION LETTER.
tions of duty. A letter was addressed to him on the 22d of February, 1867, by Ira R. Foster, James F. Alexander, A. R. Reagan, John Collier, L. C. Wells, P. Pease, W. R. Venable, D. F. Hammond, P. L. Wynatt, A. K. Seago, R. P. Zimmerman, L. S. Salmons, William Herring, E. E. Rawson, J. A. Hayden, Joseph Thompson, E. P. Watkins, J. J. Thrasher, T. W. J. Hill and E. Hulburt, asking his judgment as to what course should be pursued by the people of Georgia in the existing crisis.
He answered, and it was the most fateful letter of his life. It has been burned into the history of the country, and it scorched his career for dreary years. He was too sagacious a judge of public opinion, not to foresee that it would elicit a large measure of unpopularity. He showed it to some close friends, and with an accurate prevision of its effect and of the public feeling, he said: "In the present excited state of the popular mind, the chances are that bold leaders will inflame their passions and prejudices, and they will reject the terms proposed, and have to suffer the consequences. And in that case, from having been for years one of the most popular men in Georgia, I shall become for a time the most unpopular from the Potomac to the Rio Grande." The gentlemen in whom he confided his views concurred with him fully, and begged him to withhold the letter, and not immolate himself. They urged that he was out of public office, and therefore was under no obligation to give advice that would impair his popularity. Gov. Brown's reply was to this effect: "I am indebted to the people of Georgia for all that I am as a public man, and I have made up my mind to tell them the truth, and warn them of their danger, be the conse- quences what they may to me as an individual."
To estimate the full effect of this letter, Gov. Brown's position among the people must be understood. For eight long and momentous years he had been the civil autocrat of Georgia, and in a continuous series of heated conflicts he had clutched popular endorsement with an irresistible power. He was by long odds the most potential and idolized public man in the State, seemingly impregnable among the masses. Such a revulsion has rarely been witnessed. The popular idol at one stroke was hurled to the ground, and upon him raged a pitiless storm of vin- dictive execration. The mutterings of the thunder and the play of the lightning began at once on his devoted head. The man who stands before the prejudices of a people has a fearful task before him. But when, as in this case, he confronts not only their prejudices, but their convictions and their memories, the doom of an overwhelming odium is his certain fate.
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365
GOVERNOR BROWN'S PAINFUL ATTITUDE.
The perusal of Gov. Brown's letter at this long distance from that volcanic day, even by one who, like the writer, shared in the fever that fired the Southern heart then, shows it to be a singularly argu- mentative, dispassionate, forcible document, calm-tempered, logical, and driving his cool conclusions home with ponderous emphasis. . The Sher- man bill had not even passed when he wrote, but he predicted its passage. He discussed the relative condition of political parties at the North, he stated the exact realities of the situation, and he advised a prompt, full acceptance of the conditions imposed upon us, a's we could offer no further resistance, and every delay but increased the severity of the terms offered. There was this strong evidence of disinterested sin- cerity in his advice, that he was not a candidate for any office, nor seek- ing any personal benefit; and in addition to this, he was among those disfranchised by the very bill to whose hard stipulations he counseled obedience. Later, Mr. Sherman, the author of the bill, introduced a measure in Congress for Gov. Brown's relief, and this fact was used against the latter as an evidence of some collusion; but it was not only not a part of an understanding, and wholly unprompted by him, but it was a natural outcome of Gov. Brown's attitude, and was probably intended to show that the road to certain reconstruction was the path of submission.
Another burdensome feature of this unpopular position of Gov. Brown, was that it threw him into frightful, personal, and political as- sociations. Home men of no character, unanimated by his patriotism, and disinterested sense of public duty, and seeing in the cruel crisis the chance for place or plunder, joined the reconstruction movement, and such accessions imparted odium to him. The Federal army left among us a host of adventurers, and our helpless condition invited a horde from the North, who naturally sought the protection of the government and the security of Radicalism, in their schemes of personal advance- ment, whose main props were the unscrupulous and ingenious manipula- tion of the deluded African, the supporting tyranny of the soldier, and the proscription of the good whites. To these some felicitous word-user gave the memorable name of " carpet-bagger." The North and the West have given to the South a large element of noble and precious manhood,-social and business strains of virtuous and enterprising blood, and no citizens stand better, or rank higher. And such superb accretions of citizenship, are always welcome and cherished. But the reconstruction carpet-bagger was none of these. Hon. Thomas Nor- wood has made a clever sketch of this wonderful creature. Said he:
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366
.
NORWOOD'S SKETCH OF THE CARPET-BAGGER.
" Ilis like the world has never seen from the days of Cain, or of the forty thieves in the fabled time of Ali Baba. Like the wind he blows, and we hear the sound thereof, but no man knoweth whence he cometh, or whither he goeth. National historians will be in doubt how to class him. Ornithologists will claim him, because in many respects he is a bird of prey. He lives only on corruption, and takes his flight as soon as the car- cass is picked. . . He is no product of the war. He is ' the canker of a calm world,' and of a peace which is despotism enforced by bayonets. His valor is discretion ; his in- dustry, perpetual strife, and his eloquence ' the parcel of a reckoning' of chances, as he smells out a path which may lead from the White House to a custom house, a post office, the internal revenue bureaus, or perchance to either wing of the Federal capitol. His shibboleth is ' the Republican party.' From that party he sprung as naturally as mag- gots from putrefaction. . . Wherever two or three, or more negroes are gathered to- gether, he like a leprous spot is seen, and his cry, like the daughter of the horse-leech, is always, 'give-give-me office !' Without office he is nothing ; with office he is a pest and public nuisance. Out of office he is a beggar ; in office he grows rich till his eyes stick out with fatness. Out of office he is, hat in hand, the outside ornament of every negro's cabin, a plantation loafer, and the nation's lazarene ; in office he is an adept in 'addition, division and silence.' Out of office he is the orphan ward of the administra- tion and the general sign-post of penury ; in office he is the complaining suppliant for social equality with Southern gentlemen."
No record of these unique days is complete without some description of this remarkable character, that flourished in that congenial era with the luxuriance of the " green bay tree." They flocked into the cohorts of reconstruction, and shed by their unwelcome and irrepressible affilia- tion an ignoble discredit upon the honest and patriotic supporters, like Gov. Brown, of a public policy condemned in principle, but assented to as a matter of force in the choice of evils. A meeting was called in Atlanta, and the split began immediately. The meeting divided. Gov. Brown made a strong, clear talk, but it did not heal the breach. Resolutions for and against reconstruction were passed by the sundered halves of the gathering. A meeting was called in Dalton, and after a warm discussion, in which the writer opposed the Brown policy, Judge Walker was endorsed on the Brown line by a majority of four votes.
Gov. Jenkins went on to Washington and instituted proceedings to test the constitutionality of the Sherman bill. His lawyers were Jeremiah S. Black, Robert J. Brent, Edgar Cowan and Charles O'Conor. This was a great proceeding, that involved the existence of a state govern- ment of a million of people, and hundreds of millions of property. The legal form used was a bill reciting by a quaint anomaly, the attempt and failure of the state to secede, and her fixed status in the Union un- der the very philosophy of such failure and as shown by the very act of the United States government submitting constitutional amendments to her for ratification or rejection. The bill urged that the Sherman bill
367
GOV. JENKINS BRINGS SUIT FOR GEORGIA'S SOVEREIGNTY.
and supplement were unconstitutional, and asked that Edwin M. Stan- ton, Secretary of War, Ulysses S. Grant, General of the army, and John Pope, General commanding Georgia, be enjoined from enforcing the Sherman bill in Georgia and come into court to answer. Gov. Jenkins issued, on the 10th of April, 1867, an address, from Washing- ton city to the people of Georgia, advising "a firm but temperate re- fusal of acquiescence in an adoption of the Sherman bill, and a patient, manly endurance of military government, until, in the efllux of time, and on the subsidence of the passions generated by civil war, better counsels shall prevail at the Federal capital-we, meantime, strictly ob- serving law and order, and vigorously addressing ourselves to industrial pursuits." The alternative of this course was prompt acquiescence in the demands of Congress, which he counseled against until at least the result of the great case in the United States Supreme Court was had. He concluded this dignified and important document with these grave words, which powerfully indicate his deep sense of responsibility:
"Should we fail (as fail we may) there will remain nothing that I can do for you. Your destiny will be in your own hands, and you must choose between the alternative first presented. In making that choice, you have my counsel, perhaps erroneous but certainly honest.
It was a peculiarly suggestive and interesting spectacle presented in the antipodal attitude of these two distinguished Georgians, Gov. Jen- kins and ex-Gov. Brown, in reference to this tremendous question of the vitality of a great sovereign State. Both were men of unusual brain power, both of uncommon firmness, both of undoubted personal in- tegrity and truth, both acknowledged statesmen and patriots, and both with the stimulus of an established fame and an exceptional popularity to inspire them. And here they stood in absolute conflict of counsel to their people under all the great burden of their sacred reputations, the fruit of long and crucial years of illustrious public service. It was a dramatic antithesis of momentous advice. It was an opposition of for- midable powers over a gigantic issue. Gov. Jenkins was robed in offi- cial authority. Ex-Gov. Brown was but a simple citizen, yet exalted by the prestige of his recent and unprecedented Executive fame and achievements. There were many deep-hued accessories of this picture. In the stormy days of war Gov. Brown had been the exponent of its clashing turbulence, and Judge Jenkins on the Supreme Bench had placidly administered the civil law, the calm symbol of peace amid the red thunder of strife. Now when the cannon were irrevocably hushed, and the current of blood had ceased beyond hope for the vanquished.
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368
JOSEPH E. BROWN AND CHARLES J. JENKINS.
the unyielding battler stood in the fullest concession to the compact of surrender, working for the speedy and practical restoration of the State's lost sovereignty and the people's crushed welfare, while the severe jurist sturdily contended in a spirit equally patriotic against the same concession, even to the certain prolongation of a subjugated condition. It was a remarkable reversion of attitudes. And following out the striking antithesis, the course of Jenkins led through the reverential approbation of his own people to his deposition and their further politi- cal crucifixion, while the course of Brown steered through unmeasured and unparalleled obloquy for himself, resulted in the ultimate redemp- tion of the commonwealth and the regeneration of her government.
Both of these gentlemen have since then received unusual marks of popular confidence and favor, and now enjoy an enviable affluence of public esteem. Gov. Jenkins, in his ripe old age, has retired from public life, honored and revered, his active years passed away for all time. Gov. Brown, as a. United States Senator, in the very maturity of his great powers, is exercising a marked and beneficial influence in controlling and molding the destinies of this gigantic nation. He is nobly representing that very Georgia that once so execrated him for his devotion to her interest. The matter illustrates the great fact that, however obscured and hidden, the truth will ultimately prevail. And it is of infinitely more concern to men that they should be sincere and honest-purposed than that they should be either wise or correct. Gov. Jenkins failed in his line, yet in spite of its probably protracting the State's rehabilitation, its inspiration was so noble that his countrymen held him in even higher esteem. Gov. Brown's course led to restora- tion, and the very ordeal of unpopularity that his unwelcome but sagacious counsel created, evincing his firm nerve in a disagreeable duty, will but enhance the final valuation of his sacrifices and sufferings.
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