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. 1 > Part 35
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The simple record of the sacrifices of the state of Georgia will show resplendently her war record. She sent to the field over 120,000 sol- diers, or 20,000 more than . her voting population at the beginning of the war. No statistics were gathered until 1867, after she had enjoyed two years of recuperation, and there is no means therefore of accurately estimating the damage she suffered. Her aggregate wealth in 1867 was $191,235,520, or $481,497,381 less than in 1861, and her gain from 1865 must have been fully fifteen or twenty millions, making her war loss amount to the prodigious proportion of three-fourths of her wealth. We can best illustrate Georgia's heroism and suffering by comparing her losses with those of the other Southern states: Georgia, 481 millions, or over three-fourths of her wealth; South Carolina, 326, or two-thirds; Mississippi, 355, or two-thirds; Virginia, 186, or two- sevenths; North Carolina, 160, or one half; Kentucky, 104, or one-fifth; Louisiana, 185, or two-fifths; Tennessee, 69, or one-fifth; Florida 36, or one-half; Missouri gained 286 millions.
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332 THE EXTENT OF GEORGIA'S RUIN AND THE WAR ENDED.
Her loss in slaves alone was $272,015,490, or thirty-four millions more than her present wealth. Her lands fell off in value one-half. One- quarter of her railroad track was totally destroyed. Over 2,000 square. miles of her territory had been stripped and ravaged and made a wil- derness of wreck. The public debt was run to over twenty-five millions of dollars, of which over six millions were expended on the families of soldiers, four millions in sending clothing to the Georgia troops, and six millions more upon our state forces outside of Confederate operations. No state in the Confederacy approximated Georgia in her voluntary expenditures in aid of the war. And truth requires the candid admission that Gov. Brown led in this unequaled policy of gen- erous and unstinted military zeal. Concurrently with all of his stub- born and unyielding conflicts for constitutional principle, he to the fullest extent of his official power, gave practical cooperation to the cause, and contributed his private fortune. The substantial significance of such a force cannot be overlooked.
But the end had come. Our efforts, our sufferings, our sacrifices had been unavailing. The war had gone against us, hopelessly, finally. And from the unredeemed wreck of unsuccessful revolution the people of Georgia turned their crushed energies bravely to rehabilitation and the future.
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333-334
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PART III.
The Reconstruction Travesty and a Superb Rehabilitation.
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CHAPTER XXXII.
THE TRANSITION PERIOD OF PURE BAYONET RULE.
The Whimsical Tyranny of Reconstruction .- Venomous Times .- Gov. Brown's Dra matie Experience .-- Outliving a Merciless Ostracism .- Gen. Wilson .- Stephens, Cobb, Hill and Brown arrested .- Gov. Brown's Release .- Gen. Wilson Squelches the " Rebel State Authorities."-Federal Cleverness .- Gen. Wofford .- Mules and Corn Distributed .- Gov. Brown's Resignation .- His Philosophy to "Do the Best we Can."-The Enfranchisement of the Black and Taking the Oath .- The Georgia Union Club in Savannah .- James Johnson Provisional Governor .- His Pronuncia- mento .- His Macon Speech .- Civil and Moral Chaos .- Johnson's Mistake .- Cling- ing to Slavery .- The Dazing Effect of Freedom on the Black .- The. Freedman's Bureau .- The African Problem .- Grim Satire of the Chicago Times .- A Black Deluge and White Bondage.
WE come now to that anomalous, indefinable period in Georgia his- tory, that must stand as the indescribable incongruity of her existence as a commonwealth. It is an epoch that baffles description. Neither war nor peace; marked by the anarchy of war without its dignity and a pretense of peace without its reality; ruled under a scorching travesty of law, alternating with bayonet despotism governed by mob caprice; this era of whimsical yet savage tyranny, known by the abhorrent name of RECONSTRUCTION, must ever remain the ridicule of patriotism and the contempt of statesmanship. It was the spawn of unbridled miglit. It violated every principle of good government. It sported wantonly with every sacred axiom of civil liberty. Inspired by hate, and oper- ated with malice, it abortively retarded for a decade of years, the very ob- ject it claimed to seek, viz :- a solid and fraternal rehabilitation of a sun- dered Union, and a warring people. It was the cruelest bit of political harlequinade ever practiced by an enlightened civilization.
The mother that bore the monster Caliban, must have had the same feeling as she gazed upon the foul, ill-shapen, hideous creature, as the authors of reconstruction at this day, have in looking back upon the ap- palling abortion, they called into existence to re-unite in holy wedlock, the resentful sections of a riven nationality. The annals of the world show no more wicked and inexcusable botch of governmental polity. In using this strong language there is a meed of justice due to honest Southern men, who favored the principle of a martyr's submission to
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GOVERNOR BROWN'S ALTERNATION OF. POPULARITY.
hard terms, as the patriotic requirement of our conquered condition. And there is still another weed of justice due to honest Northern men, who condemned the drift of what they deemed a necesary policy. The acrimony of reconstruction was really no less intense and ruthles., than the savagery of battle. Men were as mad and brutal, and reveled in fully as fiery passion. It is not altogether certain that men were not more hostile and implacable than when fighting, for the spilling of blood, and the clash of arms was a vent for the turbulence of hostility that toned down the inner heat, and satisfied the vengeance. But the repression of active deed during reconstruction made the inspiration of raucor over wrong flame the hotter inwardly.
Those reconstruction days were venomous times, spiteful, acrid, ferocious, absolutely unreasoning. Their fever was different from the war-heat, more stinging and unsparingly proscriptive. There was more execration about it, and utter disregard of magnanimity. It was an epoch of state history, that uo Georgian can ever wish to see re- enacted. War has its glories, its stirring delirium, its triumphs, its renown. But that horrible era of reconstruction has nothing but bitter memories unredeemed by a single element of alloy. This era was to witness the most dramatic experience and tragical test of Gov. Brown. For years he had enjoyed such power and popularity as are vouchsafed to few men in this world. He had strongly swam, not floated, for he bravely breasted his own firm course, upon a flood current of public favor in as stormy a crisis, and as long as any leader ever did in human chronicles. He had made himself the foremost civilian of the Con- federacy, engendering a reputation to be envied, with just enough of implacable enmity to give the proper seasoning to his celebrity, and point to his victories. He was destined to suffer an alternation of pub- lic favor, so sudden, so complete, so overwhelming and savage as to constitute the most extraordinary personal vicissitude of the extraordi- nary period. He was to be the victim of this remorseless odium too, without a shade of moral obliquity or a transgression that the most punctilious, social, moral or legal seruple could fasten to him.
He, himself, in his unconnnon sagacity foresaw much of it and pre- dicted it, but he had no conception of its reach and intensity. He had displayed exceptional daring and firmness in many trying emergencies. But he never had so ferocious a strain upon his adamantine nerve as in this reconstruction time, when he battled with the sentimental but her- culean prejudices of the people. It was a frightful struggle, and must give him the horrors to this day. It battered and ostracized him, it made
337
ARREST OF DISTINGUISHED GEORGIANS.
him for a long time an exile and a practical outcast. It was enough to have crushed and crazed any man of ordinary or even extraordinary mold. Yet he not only resisted but he whipped it, and his political recuperation is as remarkable a case of sublime and indomitable political vitality as was ever seen. It was a grand test of the man's gigantic endurance and power. The writer was warmly on the other side in these fierce-hearted days, and in doing justice to Gov. Brown has noth- ing to recant of his own convictions. The day of passion, even in memory, has passed, and the time has come for rational fair-minded, good-tempered justice. Gov. Brown has been more fortunate than most men in outliving misconception, so terrific that the pangs of death ` were preferable. And he has won such a victory over aspersion as will make the remaining years of his eventful life happy and influential for good beyond estimate, and all the brighter for the antithesis of the long dark epoch.
The surrender left the state in military hands. Gen. Sherman, the most relentless practicer of war's severities, had, with a splendid states- manship, endeavored to give effect to the true consistent theory of the Union movement, and considered the states restored to their autonomy when arms were laid down. Gov. Brown acted on this idea. He called the legislature together to meet in Milledgeville on the 22d day of May, 1865. Gen. Wilson, the Federal commander at Macon, had notified him to surrender the State troops, and he had done so, taking a parole as the commander-in-chief with Gen. Gustavus Smith and his division. Gen. Upton was in command at Augusta, Gen. Croxton in Macon, Col. B. B. Eggleston in Atlanta, and Maj. M. H. Williams in Milledgeville.
Just at this time the surprise was shot upon the state of the arrest of Alex. H. Stephens, Gen. Howell Cobb, Hon. B. H. Hill and Gov. Brown. The latter had returned to Milledgeville the day after he was paroled. The next night the Executive mansion was surrounded by an armed Federal force under the command of a captain who notified the Governor that he was instructed to arrest him. Gov. Brown denied indignantly the right to molest him, producing his parole. But the officer replied, "I am instructed by Gen. Wilson to take that from you." The Governor protested against the outrage, claiming that, as he had not violated his parole, the faith of the United States was pledged to protect him. The officer would take no denial, and there was no chance to resist the armed force, so the parole was delivered up. He was permitted just thirty minutes to make his arrangements for departure, and was not allowed a moment of privacy with his family,
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THE DREADFUL CONDITION OF NORTH GEORGIAA.
from whom he was thus so unceremoniously torn. He was carried on to Washington and incarcerated in Carroll prison. He addressed a letter to President Andrew Johnson, recounting the circumstances of his parole and arrest, and urging the injustice and bad faith of the treatment. After the lapse of a week he was accorded an interview by President Johnson, who promised to investigate the matter. At the end of several days Gov. Brown's release was ordered on his parole, and he returned to Georgia.
Gen. Wilson issued an order forbidding the Legislature to meet, as called by Gov. Brown. His order stated that " Neither the Legisla- ture nor any other political body will be permitted to assemble under the call of the rebel state authorities." The order further said:
" The people of the state are earnestly counseled to resume their peaceful .pursuits, and are assured that the President of the United States will, without delay, exert all the lawful powers of his office to relieve them from the bondage of rebel tyranny and to restore them to the enjoyment of peace and order, with security of life, liberty and property under the constitution and laws of the United States and of their own state."
There must have been a grim vein of satire in Gen. Wilson's compo- sition. The idea of protecting the people of Georgia from "rebel tyr- anny " must have been the suggestion of a satirical humor inspired by an intuitive prevision of the coming cruelties of reconstruction.
In many particulars the Federal soldiers acted very cleverly. Gen. Wilson turned over to Gen. Ira Foster the Confederate mules, horses, wagons and harness, for distribution among the poor, and Col. J. H. R. Washington of Macon, was associated with Gen. Foster to aid in the distribution. In North Georgia, Gen. Wofford induced Gen. Thomas to loan the people 30,000 bushels of corn to feed them while making a crop, and to let the citizens have the straggling government stock scat- tered over the country, to help them to farm. These incidents do imperishable honor to the gallant Thomas. Gen. Wofford, by his tact and manly, liberal dealing, established a good understanding with the Federal Generals, that enabled him to serve the people effectually. The day after his surrender, which took place on the 12th of May, Gen. Judah paid him the compliment of asking him to prepare orders for the government of the country, and Gen. Thomas invited him to a conference for consultation. This northern section was in a dreadful condition, and its distress continued a long time, it had been so fear- fully ravaged. Gen. Wofford was elected to Congress this year, but was not allowed to take his seat. He went to Washington to get an issue of provisions for the thousands of destitute citizens. The Demo-
339
GOVERNOR BROWN RESIGNS AS GOVERNOR.
cratic members of Congress could do nothing, and discouraged him. Nothing daunted, the resolute Wofford interested Judge Kelley of Pennsylvania, in the matter, who introduced and obtained the passage of a resolution authorizing Gen. Howard, of the Freedmen's Bureau, to furnish all of the supplies needed, and remedy the famine of this large section. Even in the middle of the war these upper counties had to be supplied by the state. It was a suggestive coincidence that this section of Georgia, the most reluctant in going into secession, was the most sorely punished by the resulting war.
Gov. Brown returned to Georgia to find that he was not allowed to exercise the functions of the Executive. The language of Gen. Wil- son, speaking for Mr. Stanton, the Secretary of War, was :
" The restoration of peace and order cannot be entrusted to rebels and traitors who destroyed the peace and trampled down the order that had existed more than half a century in Georgia."
On the 29th of June, 1865, Gov. Brown, in order to facilitate the re- organization of the state government and remove any impediment that he might personally interpose to the solution of the great reconstruc- tion problem, resigned his place in a creditable spirit of patriotism. His address was a dignified, manly paper, and a curiously characteristic enun- ciation of the man. It was the utterance of one who has been noted all of his thrilling life for facing unpleasant facts fearlessly, and meet- ing an emergency plumply, without dallying with improbable possi- bilities, or wasting time upon useless expedients. We have never in the South had a more practical man than Gov. Brown. He drives straight to substantial results, having the end in sight at the start, and it is his nature to work with a view to that end. He had given every energy of an unusually powerful nature to winning success in the war, and if all of the men of the South had shown his spirit we would have whipped the fight. When the cause was irretrievably lost, it was the irre- sistible nature of the man, and the movement of a profound common sense to seek the quickest exit from our dreadful abasement and utter ruin. Being conquered summed all the horrors of the situation. And the defeat following such an effort as we had made was the worst of all failures-that in which resistance had continued until we had desperately spent every resource, and were absolutely exhausted and helpless.
Gov. Brown recognized our condition, and faced it in entire frank- ness. The fighting day was gone. He had put out his best efforts while the war was on. When the thing was over, and the day had gone against us, and hope was at an end, the unconquerable practicality of
340
GEORGIA DISFRANCHISED.
the man formulated, in that early hour, the policy which he consistently followed to the last, under such hideous pressure as was simply a mir- acle to have withstood. Here was his declaration of purpose, in his let- ter of resignation:
" The statesman, like the business man, should take a practical view of questions as they arise, and do for those dependent upon him the best that can be done, under all the circumstances, by which they are at the time surrounded."
Carrying out this idea Gov. Brown advised instant and entire acqui- escence in the abolition of slavery, a cordial support of President John- son's administration, and the prompt and general taking of amnesty for participation in the government by all not excepted. President Jolin- son had offered amnesty to all who took the oath of allegiance, except civil officers of the Confederate government, military officers above the rank of Colonel, naval officers above the rank of Lieutenant, Govern- ors, Congressmen, Judges, West Point officers, and citizens worth over $20,000. Of the last class there were 12,470 in the state at the close of the war according to the tax books. Adding the civil and military officers excluded, we had in Georgia somewhere between fifteen and twenty thousand men excepted from voluntary amnesty, this number including the wealth and civil and political leadership of the State.
The two main subjects of consideration and action were submission to the enfranchisement of the black and taking the oath, both of them hard, bitter pills then ; one involving the unconditional renunciation of slavery, the cherished "corner stone " of our fabric for which we had gone to war, and the other, absolute allegiance to the power we had so long fought. Yet where was the power to resist these demands ? Governor Brown took the initiative in urging an instantaneous com- pliance with them, and his letter breathes a strong spirit of patriotism.
In Savannah, on the 31st day of May, 1865, a meeting had been held of what was called the "Georgia Union Club." The President was Col. Win. H. Stark, and the Secretaries L. A. Dodge and J. R. Sealy. A committee on business was appointed consisting of L. S. Bennet, M. Duggan, E. S. Riddell, E. Padelford, H. Brigham, Mr. Wadleigh and J. G. Mills, who reported resolutions which were adopted declaring that sympathizers with secession should not be supported for office, and ask- ing for the appointment of a military Governor. And the following committee was appointed to visit Washington to secure the enforce- ment of the resolutions : W. Woodbridge, Wm. H. Stark, Henry Brig- ham, W. A. Stone, I. S. Bennett, E. S. Riddell, J. G. Mills, C. K. Os- good, Dr. P. Y. Clark, Ed. Padelford and H. B. Weed.
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. HON. JAMES JOHNSON PROVISIONAL GOVERNOR.
On the 17th day of June, Hon. James Johnson of Columbus was ap- pointed by President Andrew Johnson, Provisional Governor of Georgia to reorganize the State. He had been a member of Congress, defeating Gen. Henry L. Benning in 1851. Gov. Johnson repaired to Milledge- ville, and on the 13th day of July, 1865, he issued his Proclamation an- nouncing his appointment, and calling a convention of the people to be elected the first Wednesday in October, 1865, and to assemble on the 4th Wednesday in October in Milledgeville. The oath of amnesty had to be taken to qualify citizens to vote. All redress for wrong was re- mitted to the military authority, and slavery was declared extinct. The most remarkable announcement in this military civil pronunciamento, was the following, which will give the reader an idea of the unhinged condition of the times.
" That the idea, if any such is entertained, that private property will be distributed or parceled out, is not only delusive, but dangerous and mischievous ; and if any attempt should be made by any person or persons to effect such an object by violence or unlaw- ful means, it will only secure to him or them speedy and merited punishment."
On the 15th of July, 1865, two days after his proclamation, Gov. Johnson made an address in Macon, in the City Hall, Gen. Wilson and Hon. Thomas Hardeman being with him on the stage, in which he made a frank statement of his powers and purposes. He declared that he was appointed for the single object of enabling the people of Georgia to form a government-that slavery existed no more, and the fact would have to be constitutionally recognized. Gov. Johnson pro- ceeded to say some very unwelcome things, and it must be confessed that his manner of saying them was not calculated to woo adhesion to his counsel. He declared the war a " stupendous folly " of our own seeking. He concluded with the expression of the belief that Georgia, under the new regime, would increase in prosperity and civilization.
The condition of feeling among our people was very peculiar at that time. It is difficult to give a conception of it now. It was a civil and moral chaos. The South was crushed and bleeding. The only sur- viving faculty was the united capacity for grief and resentment. Prop- erty was gone. From the ashes of a universal ruin, men looked out upon a future apparently without hope. The old order of things was destroyed. All previous experiences had been set at naught. There was nothing to forecast the future. Men were called upon to do hereu- lean things, to bury cherished prejudices, to clean away the saddening ruins of dear hopes, to sepulcher fierce animosities, to conform to loathsome necessities, to remodel everything precious, social, political
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THE CLINGING TO SLAVERY.
and moral. It was a cruel thing in Gov. Johnson to go to abusing the people, and the ungracious reproach he put on the helpless citizens in their misery handicapped him for guiding and serving them. When he closed his speech in Macon, his hearers retired in a sullen dissatisfac- tion. There was an unpleasant conflict of feeling in the state over slavery. Men clung to the dead body, and hoped by some miracle to either revive it, or utilize its remains. The black problem was a grim puzzle in that day. There was all sorts of eager, fanciful hoping about it. It was hard to realize its utter death, and to submit to it. There was hot and curious contention among our folks over the carcass. Strange as it may seem now, in this day of ripe acquiescence in Afri- can freedom, in the chaotic months following the surrender, and up to the October convention in 1865, the vital issue was whether slavery . was dead or alive, and it was acrimoniously discussed. The Govern- ment had proclaimed slavery dead, the "Freedman's Bureau " was universally established, and the negroes, as "Freedmen," were making voluntary labor contracts, yet, strange to say, a large part of our people stuck to the hope of at least some modified form of slavery. The decisive opinion of Gov. Brown and other sensible men carried its weight, but was not conclusive, and the chimerical and mercenary fought this barren issue.
We, who are living under organized government, can form no idea of what it is to be as we were then without civil law, and threatened with an unknown and perilous future. It was an appalling situation that we were in, under the arbitrary control of armed men who had been our foes, who were ignorant of our laws and institutions, and only had the caprice of their own will to govern them and us. Add to this the anxiety about the ignorant, dangerous element of free black labor demor- alized with the novelty of license, and there was room for thoughtful men to be troubled. The negroes were as unsettled and disturbed as the whites. The phase of the colored mind in the bewildering ex- perience of freedom was a psychological study. During the war the negroes had generally manifested a noble fidelity to their masters. Their quiescence was remarkable in the light of the fact that they were the ostensible cause of the struggle, and their destiny was involved. This was due largely to their want of education and the hereditary spirit of subordination born of centuries of slavery.
When freedom came there was no proper conception of it in their ignorant intelligences. The sudden transformation from slavery un- leashed a legion of wild aspirations, blending in their scope unbridled
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THE GREAT BLACK PROBLEM.
appetites and luxurious indolence. The essence of their new liberty was relief from labor. Idleness and vagrancy were the delicious reali- zation of freedom. It seemed impossible to make them believe that they must work and support their families. The country negroes flocked to the towns and cities to live upon the bounty of the government or steal. They had the most impracticable conception of their rights. The military masters found an elephant upon their hands. It was a quaint but grave burden to manage the obstreperous and fantastical freedman of that day. The orders published then are a vivid illustration of the times. And they were curiously inconsistent in their arbitrary disregard of individual right. It was a comical commentary upon this new era of Utopian abolitionism, that its beneficiaries, in the first flush of their sacred emancipation, rushed incontinently to theft and vaga- bondism. And the bewildered commanders issued pronunciamentos as despotic as any ukase of the Russian Czar. Capt. Nunan of the 3rd Ohio cavalry, commanding the post at Milledgeville, promulgated an order that reads like a travesty of law. Said this extraordinary fulmi- nation of authority, "Freedmen that will use any disrespectful lan- guage to their former masters will be severely punished." They were not allowed to go from one plantation to another without passes. A daily inspection of negro cabins was made, to stop stealing and killing of stock. Trading with negroes from the country was prohibited to check the plundering of plantations, and all blacks had to have a writ- ten permit to sell things given by their employers, and specifying the articles to be sold. Those under contract, who run away from their employers, and those who harbored run-aways, were arrested. And yet, with all of this interference with personal liberty, there was a religious adherence to the name of " Freedmen," the outward symbol of freedom.
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