XXI. THE KU KLUX REVOLUTION…

XXI. THE KU KLUX REVOLUTION

The Ku Klux movement was an understanding among southern whites, brought about by the chaotic condition of social and political institutions between 1865 and 1876. It resulted in a partial destruction of the Reconstruction and a return, as near as might be, to ante-bellum conditions. This understanding or state of mind took many forms and was called by many names. The purpose was everywhere and always the same: to recover for the white race control of society, and destroy the baleful influence of the alien among the blacks.[1860]

Causes of the Ku Klux Movement

When the surviving soldiers of the Confederate army returned home in the spring and summer of 1865, they found a land in which political institutions had been destroyed and in which a radical social revolution was taking place--an old order, the growth of hundreds of years, seemed to be breaking up, and the new one had not yet taken shape; all was confusion and disorder. At this time began a movement which under different forms has lasted until the present day--an effort on the part of the defeated population to restore affairs to a state which could be endurable, to reconstruct southern society. This movement, a few years later, was in one of its phases known as the Ku Klux movement. For the peculiar aspects of this secret revolutionary movement many causes are suggested.

For several months before the close of the war the state government was powerless except in the vicinity of the larger towns, the country districts being practically without government. After the surrender there was an interval of four months during which there was no pretence of government except in the immediate vicinity of the points garrisoned by the Federal army. The people were forbidden to take steps toward setting up any kind of government.[1861] From one end of the state to the other the land was infested by a vicious element left by the war,--Federal and Confederate deserters, and bushwhackers and outlaws of every description. These were especially troublesome in the counties north of the Black Belt. The old tory class in the mountain counties was troublesome.[1862] Of the little property surviving the wreck of war, none was safe from thievery. The worst class of the negroes--not numerous at this time--were insolent and violent in their new-found freedom. Murders were frequent, and outrages upon women were beginning to be heard of.[1863] The whites, especially the more ignorant ones, were afraid of the effects of preaching of the doctrines of equality, amalgamation, etc., to the blacks. There were soon signs to show that some negroes would endeavor to put the theories they had heard of into practice.[1864]

There was much talk of confiscation of property and division of land among the blacks. The negroes believed that they were going to be rewarded at the expense of the whites, and many of the latter began to fear that such might be the case. The Freedmen's Bureau early began its most successful career in alienating the races, by teaching the black that the southern white was naturally unfriendly to him. In this work it was ably assisted by the preaching and teaching missionaries sent out from the North, who taught the negro to beware of the southern white in church and in school. The Bureau broke up the labor system that had been patched up in the summer and fall of 1865, and people in the Black Belt felt that labor must be regulated in some way.[1865] In the white counties the poorer whites, who had been the strongest supporters of the secession movement, not because they liked slavery, but because they were afraid of the competition of free negroes, began to show signs of a desire to drive the negro tenants from the rich lands which they wanted for themselves.[1866] For years after the war it was almost impossible for the farmer or planter to raise cows, hogs, poultry, etc., on account of the thieving propensities of the negroes.[1867] Houses, mills, gins, cotton pens, and corn-cribs were frequently burned.[1868] The Union League was believed by many to be an organization for the purpose of plundering the whites and for the division of property when the confiscation should take place.[1869] It was also an active political machine. Nearly all the witnesses before the Ku Klux Committee who stated the causes of the rise of Ku Klux said that the League was the principal one. The whites soon came to believe that they were persecuted by the Washington government. The cotton frauds in 1865; the cotton tax, 1865-1868; the refusal to admit the southern states to representation in Congress, though they were heavily taxed; the passage of the Reconstruction Acts, by which the governments in the South were overturned, the negroes enfranchised, and all the prominent whites disfranchised,--all combined to make the white people believe that the North was seeking to humiliate them, to punish them when they were weak. They did not contemplate such treatment when they laid down their arms. As one soldier expressed it: the treatment received was in violation of the terms of surrender as expressed in their paroles; the southern soldiers could have carried on a guerilla warfare for years; the United States had made terms with men who had arms in their hands; they had laid them down, and the United States had violated these terms and punished individuals for alleged crime without trial; yet their paroles stated that they were not to be disturbed as long as they were law-abiding; the whole Reconstruction was a violation of the terms of surrender as the southern soldiers understood it; it was punishment of a whole people by legislative enactment, and contrary to the spirit of American institutions. It was not a matter of law, but of common honesty.[1870]

General Clanton complained that the southern people passed out of the hands of warriors into the hands of squaws.[1871] The government imposed upon Alabama after the voters had fairly rejected it according to act of Congress was administered by the most worthless and incompetent of whites--alien and native--and negroes. Heavy taxes were laid; the public debt was rapidly increased; the treasury was looted; public office was treated as private property. The government was weak and vicious; it gave no protection to person or property; it was powerless, or perhaps unwilling, to repress disorder; and was held in general contempt. The officials were notoriously corrupt and unjust in administration. There were many disorders which the people believed the state and Federal governments could not or would not regulate.[1872] There was a general feeling of insecurity, in some sections a reign of terror. Innumerable humiliations were inflicted on the former political people of the state by carpet-bagger and scalawag, using the former slave as an instrument. Negro policemen stood on the street corners annoying the whites, making a great parade of all arrests, sometimes even of white women. The elections were corrupt, and the law was deliberately framed to protect ballot-box frauds.[1873] The highest officers of the judiciary, Federal and state, took an active interest in politics, contrary to judicial traditions. Justice, so called, was bought and sold. The most thoroughly political people of the world, the proudest people of the English race, were the political inferiors of their former slaves, and the newcomers from the North never failed to make this fact as irritating as possible, by speech and print and action.[1874]

In short, there was anarchy, social and political and economic. As the negro said, "The bottom rail is on top." The strenuous editor Randolph said, "The origin of Ku Klux Klan is in the galling despotism that broods like a nightmare over these southern states,--a fungus growth of military tyranny superinduced by the fostering of Loyal Leagues, the abrogation of our civil laws, the habitual violation of our national constitution, and a persistent prostitution of all government, all resources, and all powers, to degrade the white man by the establishment of negro supremacy."[1875]

Secret Societies of Regulators, before Ku Klux Klan

On account of the disordered condition of the state in 1865, some kind of a police power was necessary, the Federal garrisons being but few and weak. The minds of all men turned at once to the old ante-bellum neighborhood police patrol.[1876] This patrol had consisted of men usually selected by the justice of the peace to patrol the entire community once a week or once a month, usually at night. The duty was compulsory, and every able-bodied white was subject to it, though there was sometimes commutation of service. The principal need for this patrol was to keep the black population in order, and to this end the patrollers were invested with the authority to inflict corporal punishment in summary fashion. There were about two companies, of six men and a captain each, to every township where there was a dense negro population. The attentions of the patrol were not confined to negroes alone, but now and then a white man was thrashed for some misdemeanor.[1877] In this respect the patrol was a body for the regulation of society, so far as petty misdemeanors were concerned, and every respectable white man was by virtue of his color a member of this police guard. He had the right, whether in active patrol or not, to question any strange negro found abroad, or any negro travelling without a pass, or any white man found tampering with the negroes. It was to some extent a military organization of society. Much of this was simply custom, the development of hundreds of years, not a statute regulation, for that was a recent thing in the history of slavery. It was the old English neighborhood police system become a part of the customary law of slavery. After the war some regulation was necessary; the whites were accustomed to settling such matters outside of law or court; it was bred into their nature, and they returned perhaps unconsciously to the old system.[1878]

But now, under the régime of the Freedmen's Bureau backed by the army, the old way of dealing with refractory blacks was illegal. As a matter of fact there was no legal way to control them. The result was natural--the movement to regulate society became a secret one. The white men of each community had a general understanding that they would assist one another to protect women, children, and property. They had a system of signals for communication, but no disguises, and the organization was not kept secret except from the negroes. In one locality the young men alone were united into a committee for the regulation of the conduct of negroes. They requested the women who lived alone on the plantations, the old men, and others who were likely to be unable to control the negroes, to inform the committee of instances of misconduct on the part of the blacks. When such information came, it was immediately acted upon, and the next day there were sadder and better negroes on some one's plantation.[1879] As a rule one thrashing in a community lasted a long time. In Hale County a vigilance committee was formed to protect the women and children in a section of the black country where there were few white men, most having been killed in the war. They had a system of signals by means of plantation bells. There were no disguises, and there was a public place of meeting.[1880] In the same county, in the fall of 1865, the whites near Newberne asked General Hardee, then living on his plantation, to take command of their patrol. His answer was: "No, gentlemen, I want you to enroll my name for service, but put a younger man in command. I have served my day as commander. I will be ready to respond when called upon for active duty. I want to advise you to get ready for what may come. We are standing over a sleeping volcano."[1881] In Limestone County a similar organization was composed of peaceable citizens united to disperse or crush out bands of thieves.[1882] This was in a white county in the northern section of the state, where the people had suffered during the war, and were still suffering, from the depredations of the tories. In Winston and Walker counties the returning Confederate soldiers banded together and drove many of the tories from the country, hanging several of the worst characters.[1883] In central and southern Alabama the citizens resolved themselves into vigilance committees and hanged horse thieves and other outlaws who were raiding the country, some of them disguised in the uniforms of Federal soldiers.[1884]

In Marengo County while negro insurrection was feared a secret organization was formed for the protection of the whites. The members were initiated in a Masonic hall. Regular meetings were held, and each member reported on the conduct of the negroes in his community. There were no whippings necessary in this section, and after a few night rides the society dissolved. The Bureau and Union League were never successful in getting absolute control over the "Cane Brake" region, and therefore the negroes were better behaved and there was less disorder.[1885]

Before Christmas, 1865, when there seemed to be danger of outbreaks of that part of the negro population who were disappointed in regard to the division of property, there was a disposition among the whites in some counties, especially in the eastern Black Belt, to form militia companies, though this was forbidden by the Washington authorities. Some of these companies regularly patrolled their neighborhoods. Others undertook to disarm the freedmen, who were purchasing arms of every description, and in order to do this searched the negro houses at night. General Swayne, recognizing the dangerous situation of the whites, forbore to interfere with these militia companies until after Christmas, when, the negroes remaining peaceable, he issued an order forbidding further interference;[1886] but the militia organizations persisted in some shape until the Reconstruction Acts were passed.

In the eastern counties of the state there was in 1865 and 1866 an organization, preceding the Ku Klux, called the "Black Cavalry." It was a secret, oath-bound, night-riding order. Its greatest strength was in Tallapoosa County, where it was said to have 200 to 300 members. It was not only a band to regulate the conduct of the negroes, but there was a large element in it of the poorer whites, who wanted to drive the negro from the rich lands upon which slavery had settled them, in order to get them for themselves. This was generally true of all secret orders of regulators in the white counties from 1865 to 1875, and exactly the opposite was the case in the Black Belt, where the planters preferred the negro labor, and never drove out the blacks. The "Black Cavalry," it is said, drove more negroes from east Alabama than the Ku Klux did.[1887]

There were local bands of regulators policing nearly every district in Alabama. Few of them had formal organizations or rose to the dignity of having officers or names, but there were the "Men of Justice," in north Alabama, principally in Limestone County, and the "Order of Peace," partially organized in Huntsville early in 1868,[1888] and many other local orders.

The Origin and Growth of Ku Klux Klan

The local bands of regulators in existence immediately after the war were a necessary outcome of the disordered conditions prevailing at the time, and would have disappeared, with a return to normal conditions under a strong government which had the respect of the people. But during the excitement over the action of the Reconstruction convention in the fall of 1867 and the elections of February, 1868, a new secret order became prominent in Alabama; and when, after the people had defeated the constitution, Congress showed a disposition to disregard the popular will as expressed in the result of the election, this order--Ku Klux Klan--sprang into activity in widely separated localities. The campaign of the previous six months had made the people desperate when they contemplated what was in store for them under the rule of carpet-bagger, scalawag, and negro. The counter-revolution was beginning.

The Ku Klux Klan originated in Pulaski, Tennessee, in the fall of 1865.[1889] The founders were James R. Crowe, Richard R. Reed, Calvin Jones, John C. Lester, Frank O. McCord, and John Kennedy. Some were Alabamians and some Tennesseeans. Lester and Crowe lived later in Sheffield, Alabama. Crowe and Kennedy are the only survivors. It was a club of young men who had served in the Confederate army, who united for purposes of fun and mischief, pretty much as college boys in secret fraternities or country boys as "snipe hunters." The name was an accidental corruption of the Greek word kuklos, a circle, and had no meaning.[1890] The officers had outlandish titles, and fancy disguises were adopted. The regalia or uniform consisted of a tall cardboard hat covered with cloth, on which were pasted red spangles and stars; there was a face covering, with openings for nose, mouth, and ears; and a long robe coming nearly to the heels, made of any kind of cloth--white, black, or red--often fancy colored calico. A whistle was used as a signal.[1891]

This scheme for amusement was successful, and there were plenty of applications for admission. Members went away to other towns, and under the direction of the Pulaski Club, or "Den" as it was called, other Dens were formed. The Pulaski Den was in the habit of parading in full uniform at social gatherings of the whites at night, much to the delight of the small boys and girls. Pulaski was near the Alabama line, and many Alabama young men saw these parades or heard of them, and Dens were organized over north Alabama in the towns. Nothing but horse-play and tomfoolery took place in the meetings. In 1867 and 1868 the order appeared in parade in the north Alabama towns and "cut up curious gyrations" on the public squares.[1892] The Klan had not long been in existence and was still in this first stage, and was rapidly speeding, when a pretty general discovery of its power over the negro was made. The weird night riders in ghostly disguises frightened the superstitious negroes, who were told that the spirits of dead Confederates were abroad.[1893] There was a general belief outside the order that there was a purpose behind all the ceremonial and frolic of the Dens; many joined the order convinced that its object was serious; others saw the possibilities in it and joined in order to make use of it. After discovering the power of the Klan over the negroes, there was a general tendency, owing to the disordered conditions of the time, to go into the business of a police patrol and hold in check the thieving negroes, the Union League, and the "loyalists." From being a series of social clubs the Dens swiftly became bands of regulators, adding many fantastic qualities to their original outfit. All this time the Pulaski organization exercised a loose control over a federation of Dens. There was danger, as the Dens became more and more police bodies, of some of the more ardent spirits going to excess, and in several instances Dens went far in the direction of violence and outrage. Attempts were made by the parent Den to regulate the conduct of the Dens, but owing to the loose organization, they met with little success. Some of the Dens lost all connection with the original order.

Early in 1867 the Grand Cyclops of the Pulaski Den sent requests to the various Dens in the southern states to send delegates to a convention in Nashville. This convention met in May, 1867. Delegates from all of the Gulf states and from several others were present, and the order of Ku Klux Klan was reorganized. There were at this time Dens in all the southern states, and even in Illinois and Pennsylvania.[1894] A constitution called the "Prescript" was here adopted for the entire order. The administration was centralized, and the entire South was placed under the jurisdiction of its officials. The former slave states except Delaware constituted the Empire, which was ruled by the Grand Wizard[1895] with a staff of ten Genii; each state was a realm under a Grand Dragon and eight Hydras; the next subdivision was the Dominion, consisting of several counties,[1896] ruled by a Grand Titan and six Furies; the county as a Province was governed by a Grand Giant[1897] and four Goblins; the unit was the Den or community organization. There might be several in each county, each under a Grand Cyclops and two Night Hawks. The Genii, Hydras, Furies, Goblins, and Night Hawks were staff officers. Each of the above divisions was called a Grand *. The order had no name, and at first was designated by two **, later by three ***. The private members were called Ghouls. The Grand Magi and the Grand Monk were the second and third officers of the Den, and had the authority of the Grand Cyclops when the latter was absent. The Grand Sentinel was in charge of the guard of the Den, and the Grand Ensign carried its banner on the night rides.[1898] Every division had a Grand Exchequer, whose duty it was to look after the revenue,[1899] and a Grand Scribe, or secretary, who called the roll, made reports, and kept lists of members (without anything to show what the list meant), usually in Arabic figures, 1, 2, 3, etc. The Grand Turk was the adjutant of the Grand Cyclops, and gave notice of meetings, executed orders, received candidates, and administered the preliminary oaths. The officers of the Den were elected semiannually by the Ghouls; the highest officers of the other divisions were elected biannually by the officers of the next lower rank. The first Grand Wizard was to serve three years from May, 1867.[1900] Each superior officer could appoint special deputies to assist him and to extend the order. Every division made quarterly reports to the next higher headquarters. In case a question of paramount importance should arise, the Grand Wizard was invested with absolute authority.[1901]

The Tribunal of Justice consisted of a Grand Council of Yahoos for the trial of all elected officers, and was composed of those of equal rank with the accused, presided over by one of the next higher rank; and for the trial of Ghouls and non-elective officers, the Grand Council of Centaurs, which consisted of six Ghouls appointed by the Grand Cyclops, who presided.[1902]

A person was admitted to the Den after nomination by a member and strict investigation by a committee. No one under eighteen was admitted. The oath taken was one of obedience and secrecy. The Dens governed themselves by the ordinary rules of deliberative bodies. The penalty for betrayal of secret was "the extreme penalty of the Law."[1903] None of the secrets was to be written. There was a Register of alarming adjectives used in dating the wonderful Ku Klux orders.[1904]

In the original Prescript no mention was made of the peculiar objects of the order. The Creed acknowledged the supremacy of the Divine Being, and the Preamble the supremacy of the laws of the United States.[1905] The Revised and Amended Prescript sets forth the character and objects of the order: (1) To protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenceless from the indignities, wrongs, and outrages of the lawless, the violent, and the brutal;[1906] to relieve the injured and oppressed; to succor the suffering and unfortunate, and especially the widows and orphans of Confederate soldiers. (2) To protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and all laws passed in conformity thereto, and to protect the states and people thereof from all invasion from any source whatever. (3) To aid and assist in the execution of all "constitutional" laws, and to protect the people from unlawful arrest, and from trial except by their peers according to the laws of the land.[1907]

The questions asked of the candidate constituted a test sufficient to exclude all except the most friendly whites. The applicant for admission was asked if he belonged to the Federal army or the Radical party, Union League, or Grand Army of the Republic, and if he was opposed to the principles of those organizations. He was asked if he was opposed to negro equality, political and social, and was in favor of a white man's government, of constitutional liberty and equitable laws. He was asked if he was in favor of reënfranchisement and emancipation of the southern whites, and the restoration to the southern people of their rights,--property, civil, and political,--and of maintaining the constitutional rights of the South, and if he believed in the inalienable right of self-preservation of the people against the exercise of arbitrary and unlicensed power.

The Revised and Amended Prescript, made in 1868, was an attempt to give more power of control to the central authorities in order to enable them to regulate the obstreperous Dens. The purposes of the order, omitted in the first Prescript, was clearly declared in the revision. Little change was made in the administration of the order.[1908]

The order continued to spread after the reorganization in 1867. There were scattered Dens over north Alabama and as far south as Tuscaloosa, Selma, and Montgomery. It came first to the towns and then spread into the country. It was less and less an obscure organization, and more and more a band of regulators, using mystery, disguise, and secrecy to terrify the blacks into good behavior. It was in many ways a military organization, the shadowy ghost of the Confederate armies.[1909] The whites were all well-trained military men; they looked to their military chieftains to lead them. The best men were members,[1910] though the prominent politicians as a rule did not belong to the order. They fought the fight against the Radicals on the other side of the field.[1911]

After the elections in February, 1868, the Ku Klux came into greater prominence in Alabama, especially in the northern and western portions, while south Alabama was still quiet.[1912]

The counties of north Alabama infested were Lauderdale, Limestone, Madison, Jackson, Morgan, Lawrence, Franklin, Madison, Winston, Walker, Fayette, and Blount. In central Alabama, Montgomery, Greene, Pickens, Tuscaloosa, Calhoun, Talladega, Randolph, Chambers, Coosa, and Tallapoosa.[1913] There were bands in most of the other counties, and in the counties of the Black Belt. The order seldom extended to the lower edge of the Black Belt. In the Black Belt it met the Knights of the White Camelia, the White Brotherhood, and later the White League, and in a way absorbed them all.[1914]

The actual number of the men in regular organized Dens cannot be ascertained. It was estimated that there were 800 in Madison County, and 10,000 in the state.[1915] Others said that it included all Confederate soldiers.[1916] The actual number regularly enrolled was much less than the number who acted as Ku Klux when they considered it necessary. In one sense practically all able-bodied native white men belonged to the order, and if social and business ostracism be considered as a manifestation of the Ku Klux spirit, then the women and children also were Ku Klux.

It is the nature and vice of secret societies of regulators to degenerate, and the Ku Klux Klan was no exception to the rule. By 1869 the order had fallen largely under control of a low class of men who used it to further their own personal aims, to wreak revenge on their enemies and gratify personal animosities. Outrages became frequent, and the order was dangerous even to those who founded it.[1917] It had done its work. The negroes had been in a measure controlled, and society had been held together during the revolution of 1865-1869. The people were still harassed by many irritations and persecutions, but while almost unbearable, they were mostly of a nature to disappear in time as the carpet-bag governments collapsed. The most material evil at present was the misgovernment of the Radicals, and this could not last always. But though the organized Ku Klux Klan was disbanded, the spirit of resistance was higher than ever; and as each community had problems to deal with they were met in the old manner--a sporadic uprising of a local Klan. As long as a carpet-bagger was in power, the principles of the Klan were asserted.

The Knights of the White Camelia

The order known as the Knights of the White Camelia originated in Louisiana in 1867,[1918] and spread from thence through the Gulf states. In Alabama it was well organized in the southwestern counties, and to some extent throughout the lower Black Belt. It probably did not exist in the southeastern white counties.[1919] The former local vigilance committees, neighborhood patrol parties, and disbanded militia were absorbed into the order, which gave them a uniform organization and a certain loose union, and left them pretty much as independent as before. There was a closer sympathy between southwest Alabama and Louisiana than between the two sections of Alabama, which perhaps will account for the failure of Ku Klux Klan to organize in the southern counties. The White Camelia came to Alabama from New Orleans via Mobile, and also through southern Mississippi to southwestern Alabama. Later the White League came the same way.

In June 1868 a convention of the Knights of the White Camelia was held in New Orleans, and a constitution was adopted for the order.[1920] The preamble stated that Radical legislation was subversive of the principles of government adopted by the fathers, and in order to secure safety and prosperity the order was founded for the preservation of those principles. The order consisted of a Supreme Council of the United States, and of Grand, Central, and Subordinate councils. The Supreme Council with headquarters in New Orleans consisted of five delegates from each Grand Council. It was the general legislative body of the order, and maintained communication within the order by means of passwords and cipher correspondence. Communication between and with the lowest organizations was verbal only. All officers were designated by initials.[1921]

In each state the Grand Council[1922] was the highest body, and held its sessions at the state capital. The membership consisted of delegates from the Central Councils--one delegate for one thousand members. The Grand Council had the power of legislation for the state, subject to the constitution of the order and the laws of the Supreme Council. In each county or parish there was a Central Council of delegates from Subordinate Councils.[1923] It was charged with the duty of collecting the revenue and extending the order within its limits. The lowest organization was the Council (or Subordinate Council) in a community. This body had sole authority to initiate members. In each county the Subordinate Councils were designated by numbers. Each was composed of several Circles (each under a Grand Chief); each Circle of five Groups (each under a Chief); and each Group of ten Brothers. Officials of the order were elected by indirect methods. An ex-member states that "during the three years of its existence here [Perry County] I believe its organization and discipline were as perfect as human ingenuity could have made it."[1924]

The constitution prohibited the order as a body from nominating or supporting any candidate or set of candidates for public office. Each subordinate rank had the right of local legislation. Quarterly reports were made by each division. The officers of the higher councils were known only to their immediate subordinates. When a question came up that could not be settled it was referred to the next higher council.

Only whites[1925] over eighteen were admitted to membership, after election by the order in which no adverse vote was cast. Each council acted as a court when charges were brought against its members. Punishment was by removal or suspension from office; there was no expulsion from the order; punishment was simply a reducing to ranks. The candidate for membership into the order was required first to take the oath of secrecy, which was administered by a subordinate official, who then announced him to the next higher official.[1926] By the latter the candidate was presented to the commander of the Council, and in answer to his interrogations made solemn declaration that he had not married and would never marry a woman not of the white race, and that he believed in the superiority of the white race. He promised never to vote for any except a white man, and never to refrain from voting at any election in which a negro candidate should oppose a white. He further declared that he would devote his intelligence, energy, and influence to prevent political affairs from falling into the hands of the African race, and that he would protect persons of the white race in their lives, rights, and property against encroachments from any inferior race, especially the African. After the candidate had made the proper declarations the final oath was administered,[1927] after which he was pronounced a "Knight of the ----."

The Commander next instructed the new members in the principles of the order, which he declared was destined to regenerate the unfortunate country, and to relieve the white race from its humiliating condition. Its fundamental object was the "MAINTENANCE OF THE SUPREMACY OF THE WHITE RACE."[1928] History and physiology were called upon to show that the Caucasian race had always been superior to, and had always exercised dominion over, inferior races. No human laws could permanently change the great laws of nature. The white race alone had achieved enduring civilization, and of all subordinate races, the most imperfect was the African. The government of the Republic was established by white men for white men. It was never intended by its founders that it should fall into the hands of an inferior race. Consequently, any attempt to transfer the government to the blacks was an invasion of the sacred rights guaranteed by the Constitution, as well as a violation of the laws established by God himself, and no member of the white race could submit, without humiliation and shame, to the subversion of the established institutions of the Republic. It was the duty of white men to resist attempts against their natural and legal rights in order to maintain the supremacy of the Caucasian race and restrain the "African race to that condition of social and political inferiority for which God has destined it." There was to be no infringement of laws, no violations of right, no force employed, except for purposes of legitimate and necessary defence.

As an essential condition of success, the Order proscribed absolutely any social equality between the races. If any degree of social equality should be granted, there would be no end to it; political equality was necessarily involved. Social equality meant finally intermarriage and a degraded and ignoble population. The white blood must be kept pure to preserve the natural superiority of the race. The obligation was therefore taken "TO OBSERVE A MARKED DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE TWO RACES,"[1929] in public and in private life.

One of the most important duties of the members was to respect the rights of the negroes, and in every instance give them their lawful dues. It was only simple justice to deny them none of their legitimate privileges. There was no better way to show the inherent superiority of the white race, than by dealing with the blacks in that spirit of firmness, liberality, and impartiality which characterizes all superior organizations. It would be ungenerous to restrict them in the exercise of certain privileges, without conceding to them at the same time the fullest measure of their legitimate rights. A fair construction of the white man's duty to the black would be, not only to respect and observe their acknowledged rights, but also to see that they were respected and observed by others.

These declarations give a good idea of what was in the minds of the southern whites in 1867 and 1868, and later.[1930]

Like the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camelia disbanded when the objects of the order were accomplished, or were in a fair way toward accomplishment. In some counties it lived a year or two longer than in others. In certain counties, by order of its authorities, it was never organized. It did not extend north of the Black Belt, though it existed in close proximity to the more southerly of the Klans. As the oldest of the large secret orders, the name of Ku Klux Klan was more widely known than the others, and hence the name was applied indiscriminately to all. A local body would assume the name of a large one when there was no direct connection. The other organizations similar to Ku Klux in objects and methods[1931] did not have a strong membership in Alabama.

The Work of the Secret Orders

The task before the secret orders was to regulate the conduct of the blacks and their leaders, in order that honor, life, and property might be made secure. They planned to do this by playing upon the fears, superstitions, and cowardice of the black race; by creating a white terror to offset the black one. To this end they made use of strange and horrible disguises, mysterious and fearful conversation, midnight rides and drills, and silent parades.

The costume varied with the locality, often with the individual.[1932] The Tennessee regalia was too fine for the backwoods Ku Klux to duplicate. The cardboard hat was generally worn. It was funnel-shaped, eighteen inches to two feet high, covered with white cloth, and often ornamented with stars of gold, or by pictures of animals. The mask over the face was sometimes white, with holes cut for eyes, mouth, and nose. These holes were bound around with red braid so as to give a horrible appearance. Other eyes, nose, and mouth were painted higher up on the hat. Black cloth with white or red braid was also used for the mask. Sometimes simply a woman's veil was worn over the head and held down by an ordinary woollen hat. The "hill billy" Ku Kluxes did not adorn themselves very much. To the sides of the cardboard hats horns were sometimes attached, and to the mask a fringe of quills, which looked like enormous teeth and made a peculiar noise. The mask and the robe were usually of different colors. Sometimes a black sack was drawn over the head, and eyes, mouth, and nose holes cut in it. False or painted beards were often worn. The robe consisted of a white or colored gown, reaching nearly to the heels, and held by a belt around the waist; it was usually made of fancy calico; white gowns were sometimes striped with red or black. As long as the negro went into spasms of fear at the sight of a Ku Klux, the usual costume seems to have been white; but after the negro became somewhat accustomed to the Ku Klux, and learned that there were human beings behind the robes, the regalia became only a disguise, and less attention was devoted to making fearful costumes. As a rule the ordinary clothes worn were underneath, but in Madison County the Ghouls sported fancy red flannel trousers with white stripes, while the west Alabama spirits were content with wearing ordinary dark trousers, and shirts slashed with red. The white robe was often a bed sheet held on by a belt. After a night ride the disguise could be taken off and stowed about the person. The horses were covered with sheets or white cloth, held on by the saddle and by belts. There was, at times, a disguise which fitted the horse's head, and the horses were sometimes painted. Skeleton sheep's heads or cows' heads, or even human skulls, were frequently carried on the saddle-bows. A framework was sometimes made to fit the shoulders of a Ghoul and caused him to appear twelve feet high. A skeleton wooden hand at the end of a stick served to greet negroes at midnight. Every man had a small whistle. The costume was completed by a brace of pistols worn under the robe.[1933]

The trembling negro who ran into the Ku Klux on his return from the love-feasts at the Loyal League meetings was informed that the white-robed figures he saw were the spirits of the Confederate dead, killed at Chickamauga or Shiloh, and that they were unable to rest in their graves because of the conduct of the negroes. He was told in a sepulchral voice of the necessity for his remaining at home more and taking a less active part in various predatory excursions. In the middle of the night the sleeping negro would wake to find his house surrounded by the ghostly company, or find several standing by his bedside, ready, as soon as he woke, to inform him that they were the ghosts of men whom he had formerly known, killed at Shiloh. They had scratched through from Hell to warn the negroes of the consequences of their misconduct. Hell was a dry and thirsty land; they asked him for water. Buckets of water went sizzling into a sack of leather, rawhide, or rubber, concealed within the flowing robe. At other times, Hell froze over to give passage to the spirits who were returning to earth. It was seldom necessary at this early stage to use violence. The black population was in an ecstacy of fear. A silent host of white-sheeted horsemen parading the country roads at night was sufficient to reduce the black to good behavior for weeks or months. One silent Ghoul, posted near a League meeting place, would be the cause of the dissolution of that club. Cow bones in a sack were rattled. A horrible being, fifteen feet tall, walking through the night toward a place of congregation, was pretty apt to find that every one vacated the place before he arrived. A few figures, wrapped in bed sheets and sitting on tombstones in a graveyard near which negroes passed, would serve to keep the immediate community quiet for weeks, and give it a reputation for "hants" which lasts perhaps until to-day. At times the Klan paraded the streets of the towns, men and horses perfectly disguised. The parades were always silent, and so conducted as to give the impression of very large numbers. Regular drills were held in town and country, and the men showed that they had not forgotten their training in the Confederate army. There were no commands unless in a very low tone or in a mysterious language; usually they drilled by signs or by whistle signals.[1934]

For a year or more,--until the spring of 1868,--the Klan was successful so far as the negro was concerned, through its mysterious methods. The carpet-bagger and the scalawag were harder problems. They understood the nature of the secret order and knew its objects. As long as the order did not use violence they were not to be moved to any great extent. Then, too, the negro lost some of his fear of the supernatural beings. Different methods were now used. In March and April, 1868, there was an outbreak of Ku Kluxism over a large part of the state.[1935] For the first time the newspapers were filled with Ku Klux orders and warnings. The warnings were found posted on the premises of obnoxious negroes or white Radicals. The newspapers sometimes published them for the benefit of all who might be interested. One warning was supposed to be sufficient to cause the erring to mend their ways.[1936] If still obstinate in their evil courses, a writ from the Klan followed and punishment was inflicted. Warnings were sent to all whom the Klan thought should be regulated--white or black. The warnings were written in disguised handwriting and sometimes purposely misspelled. The following warning was sent to I. D. Sibley, a carpet-bagger in Huntsville:--

Mr. Selblys you had better leave here. You are a thief and you know it. If you don't leave in ten days, we will cut your throat. We aint after the negroes; but we intend for you damn carpet bag men to go back to your homes. You are stealing everything you can find. We mean what we say. Mind your eye.

JAMES HOWSYN. WILLIAM WHEREATNEHR. [Rude drawing of coffin.] JOHN MIXEMUHH. SOLIMAN WILSON. P. J. SOLON.

Get away!

We ant no cu-cluxes but if you dont go we will make you.[1937]

The published orders of the Klan served a double purpose--to notify the members of contemplated movements, and to frighten the Radicals, white or black, who had made themselves offensive. The newspapers usually published these orders with the remark that the order had been found or had been sent to them with a request for publication.[1938] Each Cyclops composed his own orders, but there was a marked resemblance between the various decrees. The most interesting and lively orders were concocted by the Cyclops editor of the Tuscaloosa Independent Monitor.[1939] Some specimens are given below.

A Black Belt warning was in this shape:--

K. K. K. Friday, April 3rd, 1868 Warning--For one who understands. 26/3/68 No. 5--116 Recorded 8th / 16 / 24--B.

K. K. K.

The following order was posted in Tuscaloosa:--

KU KLUX.

Hell-a-Bulloo Hole--Den of Skulls. Bloody Bones, Headquarters of the Great Ku Klux Klan, No. 1000 Windy Month--New Moon. Cloudy Night--Thirteenth Hour.

General Orders, No. 2.

The great chief Simulacre summons you! Be ready! Crawl slowly! Strike hard! Fire around the pot! Sweltered venom, sleeping got Boil thou first i' the charmed pot! Like a hell broth boil and bubble! The Great High Priest Cyclops! C. J. F. Y. Grim Death calls for one, two, three! Varnish, Tar, and Turpentine! The fifth Ghost sounds his Trumpet! The mighty Genii wants two black wethers! Make them, make them, make them! Presto!

The Great Giantess must have a white barrow. Make him, make him, make him! Presto!

Meet at once--the den of Shakes--the Giant's jungles--the hole of Hell! The second hobgoblin will be there, a mighty Ghost of valor. His eyes of fire, his voice of thunder! Clean the streets--clean the serpents' dens.

Red hot pincers! Bastinado!! Cut clean!!! No more to be born. Fire and brimstone.

Leave us, leave us, leave us! One, two, and three to-night! Others soon!

Hell freezes! On with skates--glide on. Twenty from Atlanta. Call the roll. Bene dicte! The Great Ogre orders it!

By order of the Great BLUFUSTIN.

G. S. K. K. K.

A true copy, PETERLOO. P. S. K. K. K.

The following was circulated around Montgomery in April, 1868:--

K. K. K. CLAN OF VEGA. HDQR'S K. K. K. HOSPITALLERS. Vega Clan, New Moon. 3rd Month, Anno K. K. K. 1.

Order No. K. K.

Clansmen--Meet at the Trysting Spot when Orion Kisses the Zenith. The doom of treason is Death. Dies Iræ. The wolf is on his walk--the serpent coils to strike. Action! Action!! Action!!! By midnight and the Tomb; by Sword and Torch and the Sacred Oath at Forrester's Altar, I bid you come! The clansmen of Glen Iran and Alpine will greet you at the new-made grave.

Remember the Ides of April.

By command of the Grand D. I. H. CHEG. V.

The military authorities forbade the newspapers to publish Ku Klux orders,[1940] and the Klan had to trust to messengers. Verbal orders and warnings became the rule. The Den met and discussed the condition of affairs in the community. The cases of violent whites and negroes were brought up, one by one, and the Den decided what was to be done. Except in the meeting the authority of the Cyclops was absolute.

C. C. Sheets, a prominent scalawag, had been making speeches to the negroes against the whites. The Klan visited him at his hotel at Florence, caught him as he was trying to escape over the roof, brought him back, and severely lectured him in regard to his conduct. They explained to him that the Klan was a conservative organization to hold society together. A promise was required of Sheets to be more guarded in his language for the future. He saw the light and became a changed man.[1941] When a carpet-bagger became unbearable, he would be notified that he must go home, and he usually went. If an official, he resigned or sold his office; the people of the community would purchase a $100 lot from him for $2500 in order to pay for the office. The office was not always paid for; a particularly bad man was lucky to get off safe and sound.[1942] Objectionable candidates were forced to withdraw, or to take a conservation bondsman, who conducted the office.[1943]

Before the close of 1868 the mysterious element in the power of Ku Klux Klan ceased to be so effective. The negroes were learning. Most of the mummery now was dropped. The Klan became purely a body of regulators, wearing disguises. It was said that in order to have time to work for themselves, and in order not to frighten away negro laborers, the Klan became accustomed to making its rounds in the summer after the crops were laid by, and in the winter after they were gathered.[1944]

The activities of the Klan were all-embracing. From regulating bad negroes and their leaders they undertook a general supervision of the morals of the community. Houses of ill-fame were visited, the inmates, white or black, warned and sometimes whipped. Men who frequented such places were thrashed. A white man living with a negro woman was whipped, and a negro man living with a white woman would be killed.[1945] A negro who aired his opinion in regard to social equality was sure to be punished. One negro in north Alabama served in the Union army and, returning to Alabama, boasted that he had a white wife up North and expected to see the custom of mixed marriages grow down South. He was whipped and allowed a short time in which to return North.[1946] White men who were too lazy to support their families, or who drank too much whiskey, or were cruel to their families, were visited and disciplined. Such men were not always Radicals--not by any means.[1947] Special attention was paid to the insolent and dangerous negro soldiers who were mustered out in the state. As a rule they had imbibed too many notions of liberty, equality, and fraternity ever to become peaceable citizens. They brought their arms back with them, made much display of them, talked largely, drilled squads of blacks, fired their hearts with tales of the North, and headed much of the deviltry. The Klan visited such characters, warned them, thrashed them, and disarmed them. Over north Alabama there was a general disarming of negroes.[1948]

The tories or "unionists," who had never ceased to commit depredations on their Confederate neighbors, were taken in hand by the Klan. In parts of the white counties where there were neither negroes nor carpet-baggers the Klan's excuse for existence was to hold in check the white outlaws. For years after the war the lives and property of ex-Confederates were not safe. A smouldering civil war existed for several years, and the Klan was only the ex-Confederate side of it.

During the administration of Governor Smith there was no organized militia. The militia laws favored the black counties at the expense of the white ones, and Smith was afraid to organize negro militia; he shared the dislike of his class for negroes. There were not enough white reconstructionists to organize into militia companies. The governor was afraid to accept organizations of Conservatives; they might overthrow his administration. So he relied entirely upon the small force of the Federal troops stationed in the state to assist the state officials in preserving order. The Conservative companies, after their services were rejected, sometimes proceeded to drill without authority, and became a kind of extra-legal militia. In this they were not secret. But the drills had a quieting effect on marauders of all kinds, and the extra-legal militia of the daytime easily became the illegal night riders of the Klan.[1949]

The operations of the Klan, especially in the white counties which had large negro populations, were sometimes directed against negro churches and schoolhouses, and a number of these were burned.[1950] This hostility may be explained in several ways: The element of poor whites in the Klan did not approve of negro education; all negro churches and schoolhouses were used as meeting places for Union Leagues, political gatherings, etc.; they were the political headquarters of the Radical Party;[1951] again, the bad character of some of the white teachers of negro schools or the incendiary teachings of others was excuse for burning the schoolhouses. The burning of school and church buildings took place almost exclusively in the white counties of northern and eastern Alabama. The school and church buildings of the whites were also burned.[1952] The negroes were invariably assisted by the whites in rebuilding the houses. Most of the burnings were probably done by the so-called spurious Ku Klux. The teachers of negro schools who taught revolutionary doctrines or who became too intimate with the negroes with whom they had to board were disciplined, and the negroes also with whom they offended.[1953] It was likewise the case with the northern missionaries, especially the Northern Methodist preachers who were seeking to disrupt the Southern Methodist Church. Parson Lakin when elected president of the State University was chased away by the Ku Klux, and life was made miserable for the Radical faculty.[1954] Thieves, black and white, and those peculiar clandestine night traders who purchased corn and cotton from the negroes after dark were punished.[1955]

The quietest and most effective work was done in the Black Belt principally by the Knights of the White Camelia. Nothing was attempted beyond restraining the negroes and driving out the carpet-baggers when they became unbearable. There were few cases of violence, fewer still of riots or operations on a large scale.[1956] In northern and western Alabama were the most disordered conditions.[1957] The question was complicated in these latter regions by the presence of poor whites and planters, negroes, Radicals and Democrats, Confederates and Unionists. Tuscaloosa County, the location of the State University, is said to have suffered worst of all. A strong organization of Ku Klux cleared it out. In the northern and western sections of the state politics were more likely to enter into the quarrels. The Radicals--white and black--were more apt to be disciplined because of politics than in the Black Belt. Negroes and offensive whites were warned not to vote the Radical ticket. There was a disposition to suppress, not to control, the negro vote as the Black Belt wanted to do. There were more frequent collisions, more instances of violence.

The most famous parade and riot of the Ku Klux Klan occurred in Huntsville, in 1868, before the presidential election. A band of 1500 Ku Klux[1958] rode into the city and paraded the streets. Both men and horses were covered with sheets and masks. The drill was silent; the evolutions were executed with a skill that called forth praise from some United States army officers who were looking on. The negroes were in a frenzy of fear, and one of them fired a shot. Immediately a riot was on. The negroes fired indiscriminately at themselves and at the undisguised whites who were standing around. The latter returned the fire; the Ku Klux fired no shots, but formed a line and looked on. Several negroes were wounded, and Judge Thurlow, a scalawag, of Limestone County, was accidentally killed by a chance shot from a negro's gun. The whites who took part received only slight wounds. Some of the Ghouls were arrested by the military authorities, but were released.[1959] This was, in the annals of the Radical party, a great Ku Klux outrage.

Another widely heralded Ku Klux outrage was the Patona or Cross Plains affair, in Calhoun County, in 1870. It seems that at Cross Plains a negro boy was hired to hold a horse for a white man. He turned the horse loose, and was slapped by the white fellow. Then the negro hit the white on the head with a brick. Other whites came up and cuffed the negro, who went to Patona, a negro railway village a mile away, and told his story. William Luke, a white Canadian, who was teaching a negro school at Patona, advised the negroes to arm themselves and go burn Cross Plains in revenge and for protection. Thirty or forty went, under the leadership of Luke, and made night hideous with threats of violence and burning, but finally went away without harming any one. The next night Luke and his negroes returned, and fired into a congregation of whites just dismissed from church. None were injured, but Luke and several negroes were arrested. There were signs of premeditated delay on the part of some of the civil authorities, so the Ku Klux came and took the Canadian and four negroes from the officers, carried them to a lonely spot, and hanged some and shot the rest.[1960]

In Greene County the county solicitor, Alexander Boyd, an ex-convict, claimed to have evidence against members of the Ku Klux organization. He boasted about his plans, and the Ku Klux, hearing of it, went to his hotel in Eutaw and shot him to death.[1961]

Another famous outrage was the Eutaw riot, in 1870. Both Democrats and Radicals had advertised political meetings for the same time and place. The Radicals, who seem to have been the latest comers, asked the Democrats for a division of time. The latter answered that the issues as to men or measures were not debatable. So the Democrats and Radicals held their meetings on opposite sides of the court-house. The Democrats' meeting ended first, and they stood at the edge of the crowd to hear the Radical speakers. Some of the hot bloods came near the stand and made sarcastic remarks. One man who was to speak, Charles Hays, was so obnoxious to the whites that even the Radicals were unwilling for him to speak. He persisted, and some one, presumably a Conservative, pulled his feet out from under him, and he fell off the table from which he was speaking. The negroes, seeing his fall, rushed forward with knives and pistols to protect him. A shot was fired, which struck Major Pierce, a Democrat, in the pocket. Then the whites began firing, principally into the air. The negroes tore down the fence in their haste to get away. After the whites had chased the negroes out of town the military came leisurely in and quelled the riot.[1962] The campaign report of casualties was five killed and fifty-four wounded. As a matter of fact only one wounded negro was ever found, and no dead ones.[1963]

A common kind of outrage was that on James Alston, the negro representative in the legislature from Macon County in 1870. Alston was shot by negro political rivals just after a League meeting in Tuskegee. They were arrested, and Alston asked the whites to protect him. The Democratic white citizens of Tuskegee guarded him. The carpet-bag postmaster in Tuskegee saw the possibilities of the situation and sent word to the country negroes to come in armed, that Alston had been shot. They swarmed into Tuskegee, and, thinking the whites had shot Alston, were about to burn the town. The white women and children were sent to Montgomery for safety. About the same time the negroes murdered three white men. The excitement reached Montgomery, and a negro militia company was hastily organized to go to the aid of the Tuskegee negroes. General Clanton got hold of the sheriff, and they succeeded in turning back the negro volunteer company. The affair passed off without further bloodshed, and Alston was notified to leave Tuskegee.[1964]

There were no collisions between the United States soldiers and the night riders. At first they were on pretty good terms with one another. The soldiers admired their drills and parades and the way they scared the negroes. One impudent Cyclops rode his band into Athens, and told the commanding officer that they were there to assist in preserving order, and, if he needed them, would come if he scratched on the ground with a stick.[1965]

While there was not much dependence upon central authority,[1966] there was a loose bond of federation between the Dens. They coöperated in their work; a Den from Pickens County would operate in Tuscaloosa or Greene and vice versa. Alabama Ku Kluxes went into Mississippi and Tennessee, and those states returned such favors. When the spurious organizations began to commit outrages, each state claimed that the other one furnished the men.[1967]

The oath taken by the Ku Klux demanded supreme allegiance to the order so far as related to the problems before the South. Members of the order sat on juries and refused to convict; were summoned as witnesses and denied all knowledge of the order; were members of the legislature, lawyers, etc. It is claimed that no genuine members of the order were ever caught and convicted.[1968]

Though the Klan was almost wholly a Democratic organization,[1969] it took little share in the ordinary activities of politics, more perhaps in the northern counties than elsewhere. In Fayette County, in 1870, the Klan went on a raid, and when returning stopped in the court-house, took off disguises, resolved themselves into a convention, and nominated a county ticket.[1970] Nothing of the kind was done in south Alabama; indeed, the constitution of the White Camelias forbade interference in politics.[1971] The Union League meetings were broken up only when they were sources of disorder, thievery, etc. When cases of outrage were investigated, it was almost invariably found that they had no political significance. Governor Lindsay sent an agent into every community where an outrage was reported, and in not a single instance was a case of outrage by Ku Klux discovered.

It is probably true that few, if any, of the leading Democratic politicians were members of the Klan or of any similar organization. Under certain conditions they might be driven by force of circumstances to join in local uprisings against the rule of the Radicals. But as a rule they knew little of the secret orders. There were various reasons for this. The Conservative leaders saw the danger in such an organization, though recognizing the value of its services. It was sure to degenerate. It might become too powerful. It would have a bad influence on politics and would furnish too much campaign literature for the Radicals. It would result in harsh legislation against the South. The testimony of General Clanton[1972] and Governor Lindsay[1973] shows just what the party leaders knew of the order and what they thought of it. The Ku Klux leaders were not the political leaders.[1974] The newspapers of importance opposed the order. The opposition of the political leaders to the Klan in its early stages was not because of any wrong done by it to the Radicals, but because of fear of its acting as a boomerang and injuring the white party. It was the middle classes, so to speak, and later the lower classes, who felt more severely the tyranny of the carpet-bag rule, who formed and led the Klan. The political leaders thought that in a few years political victories would give relief; the people who suffered were unable to wait, and threw off the revolutionary government by revolutionary means.[1975]

The work of the secret orders was successful. It kept the negroes quiet and freed them to some extent from the baleful influence of alien leaders; the burning of houses, gins, mills, and stores ceased; property was more secure; people slept safely at night; women and children were again somewhat safe when walking abroad,--they had faith in the honor and protection of the Klan; the incendiary agents who had worked among the negroes left the country, and agitators, political, educational, and religious, became more moderate; "bad niggers" ceased to be bad; labor was less disorganized; the carpet-baggers and scalawags ceased to batten on the southern communities, and the worst ones were driven from the country.[1976] It was not so much a revolution as a conquest of revolution.[1977] Society was bent back into the old historic grooves from which war and Reconstruction had jarred it.

Spurious Ku Klux Organizations

After an existence of two or three years the Ku Klux Klan was disbanded in March, 1869, by order of the Grand Wizard. It was at that time illegal to print Ku Klux notices and orders in the newspapers. It is probable, therefore, that the order to disband never reached many Dens. However, one or two papers in north Alabama did publish the order of dissolution, and in this way the news obtained a wider circulation.[1978] Many Dens disbanded simply because their work was done. Otherwise the order of the Grand Wizard would have had no effect. Numbers of Dens had fallen into the hands of lawless men who used the name and disguise for lawless purposes. Private quarrels were fought out between armed bands of disguised men. Negroes made use of Ku Klux methods and disguises when punishing their Democratic colored brethren and when on marauding expeditions.[1979] This, however, was not usual except where the negroes were led by whites. Horse thieves in northern and western Alabama, and thieves of every kind everywhere, began to wear disguises and to announce themselves as Ku Klux. All their proceedings were heralded abroad as Ku Klux outrages.[1980]

In Morgan County a neighborhood feud was resolved into two parties calling themselves Ku Klux and Anti Ku Klux, and frequently fights resulted. In Blount and Morgan counties (1869) former members of the Ku Klux organized the Anti Ku Klux along the lines of the Ku Klux, held regular meetings, and continued their midnight deviltry as before. It was composed largely of Union men who had been Federal soldiers.[1981] In Fayette County the Anti Ku Klux order was styled, by themselves and others, "Mossy Backs" or "Moss Backs," in allusion to their war record. They were regularly organized and had several collisions with another organization which they called the Ku Klux. The Radical sheriff summoned the "Moss Backs" as a posse to assist in the arrest of the Ku Klux, as they called the ex-Confederates.[1982] As long as the Federal troops were in the state it was the practice of bands of thieves to dress in the army uniform and go on raids.

The Radicals took care that all lawlessness was charged to the account of Ku Klux. It was to their interest that the outrages continue and furnish political capital. Governor Smith accused Senator Spencer and Hinds and Sibley, of Huntsville, of fostering Ku Klux outrages for political purposes.[1983]

The disordered condition of the country during and after the war led to a general habit among the whites of carrying arms. This fact and the drinking of bad whiskey accounts for much of the shooting in quarrels during the decade following the war. Few of these quarrels had any connection with politics until they were catalogued in the Ku Klux Report as Democratic outrages. As a matter of fact, nearly all the whites killed by whites or by blacks were Democrats. The white Radicals were too few in number to furnish many martyrs.[1984] The anti-negro feeling of the poorer whites found expression after the war in movements against the blacks, called Ku Klux outrages. In Winston County, a Republican stronghold, the white mountaineers met and passed resolutions that no negro be allowed in the county. General Clanton stated that he found a similar prejudice in all the hill counties.[1985]

In the Tennessee valley the planters found difficulty in securing negro labor because of the operations of the spurious Ku Klux. In Limestone, Madison, and Lauderdale counties the tory element hated the negroes, who lived on the best land, and attempts were made to drive them off. The tories were incensed against the planters because they preferred negro labor.[1986] Judge W. S. Mudd of Jefferson County testified that the anti-negro outrages in Walker and Fayette counties were committed by the poorer whites, who did not like negroes and wanted a purely white population there. In the white counties generally the negro held no political power and hence the outrages were not political, but because of racial prejudice. In the north Alabama mountain counties the majority of the whites were in favor of deportation and colonization of the blacks. But in nearly every county there was also the large landholder, formerly a slaveholder, who wanted the negro to stay and work, and who treated the ex-slave kindly. The poorer whites who had never owned slaves nor much property wanted the negro out of the way.[1987] As a general rule, where the population was exclusively white, the people disliked the negro and wanted no contact with the black race. They wanted a white society, and all lands for the whites. In one precinct in Jefferson County, where all the whites were Republican, an organization of boys and young men was formed to drive out the negroes and keep the precinct white. In the black counties exactly the opposite was true. The secret orders merely wanted to control negro labor and keep it, regulate society, and protect property. General Forney stated that in Calhoun the small mountain farmers, non-slaveholding, poorer whites, were intensely afraid of social equality and hated the negroes, who called them "poor white trash." The feeling was cordially returned by the negroes.[1988]

From Tallapoosa County and from eastern Alabama generally, where the Black Cavalry and its successors flourished, there was a general exodus of negroes who had lived on the richer lands of the larger farms and plantations. The white renters and small farmers were afraid, after slavery was abolished and the negroes were free, that the latter would drag all others down to negro level. The planters preferred negro labor. Therefore the poorer whites united to drive out the negro. This was called Ku Kluxism. The whites wanted higher pay.[1989] Wage-earners felt that they could not compete with the negro, who could work for lower wages. General Crawford, who commanded the United States troops in Alabama, stated that the planter bore no antagonism toward the negro at all, but he wanted his labor; that at present he saw the uselessness of interfering with the negro's politics and was indifferent about whether the negro voted or not; he looked forward to the time when the black voters would fall away from their alien leaders and would vote according to the advice of their old masters; on the other hand, the poorer whites, many of them from the hill country, were hostile to the negroes; they disliked to see them at work building the new railroads, and on all the rich lands, and possessed of political privileges. If rid of the negro, they could be more prosperous and divide the political spoils now shared by the adventurers who controlled the black vote. In north Alabama the negro was more generally kept away from the polls.[1990] This feeling on the part of the poor whites was not new, but had survived from slavery days, and its manifestations were now called Ku Kluxism. The negro was no longer under the protection of a master, and the former master was no longer able to protect the negro. However, there was a general movement among the ex-slaves, under the pressure, to return to their old masters.

Attempts to suppress the Ku Klux Movement

In March and April, 1868, the operations of the Ku Klux Klan came to the notice of General Meade, who was then in command of the Third Military District. By his direction General Shepherd issued an order from Montgomery, requiring sheriffs, mayors, police, constables, magistrates, marshals, etc., under penalty of being held responsible, to suppress the "iniquitous" organization and apprehend its members. The expenses of posses were to be charged against the county. If the code of Alabama was silent on the subject of the offence, the prisoners were to be turned over to the military authorities for trial by military commission. The state officers were reminded that the code of Alabama derived its vitality from the commanding general of the Third Military District, and in case of a conflict between the code and military orders, the latter were paramount. The posting of placards and the printing in newspapers of orders, warnings, and notices of Ku Klux Klans was forbidden. In no case would ignorance be considered as an excuse. Citizens who were not officers would not be held guiltless in case of outrage in their community.[1991] This was a revival of the method of holding a community responsible for the misdeeds of individuals.

Troops were shifted about over northern and central Alabama in an endeavor to suppress Ku Klux. Several arrests were made, but there were no trials. There was much parade and night riding, but as yet little violence. The soldiers could do nothing.

When the carpet-bag government was installed, the military forces of the United States remained to support it. Every one called upon the military commands for aid--governor, sheriffs, judges, members of Congress, justices of the peace, and prominent politicians. No request from official sources was ever refused, and they were frequent. From October 31, 1868, to October 31, 1869, there were fifteen different shiftings of bodies of troops for the purpose of checking the Ku Klux movement. This does not include the movements made in individual cases, but only changes of headquarters. These were principally in northern and western Alabama--at Huntsville, Livingston, Guntersville, Lebanon, Edwardsville, Alpine, Summerfield, Decatur, Marysville, Vienna, and Tuscaloosa.[1992]

After a few months' experience of the carpet-bag government, the bands of Ku Klux were excited to renewed activity. The legislature which met in September, 1868, memorialized the President to send an armed force to Alabama to execute the laws, and to preserve order, etc., during the approaching presidential election. Governor Smith with two members of the Senate and three of the lower house were appointed to bear the application to the President.[1993] In December an act was passed authorizing any justice of the peace to issue warrants running in any part of the state, and authorizing any sheriff or constable to go into any county to execute such process.[1994] This enabled a sheriff of proper politics to enter counties where the officials were not of the proper faith, and arrest prisoners.

One of the members of the general assembly, M. T. Crossland, was killed by the Klan, it was alleged. The legislature offered a reward of $5000 for his slayers, and authorized the appointment of a committee to investigate the recent alleged outrages and to report by bill.[1995] The committee,[1996] after pretence of an examination of about a dozen witnesses, all Radicals, some by affidavit only, reported that there was in many portions of Alabama a secret organization, purely political, known as Ku Klux Klan, and that Union men and Republicans were the sole objects of its abuse, none of the opposite politics being interfered with. It worked by means of threatening letters, warnings, and beatings; by intimidation and threats negroes were driven from the polls; negro schoolhouses were burned; teachers were threatened, ostracized, and driven from employment; officers of the law were obstructed in the discharge of their duty and driven away. In some parts of the state, the report declared, it was impossible for the civil authorities to maintain order. The governor was authorized and advised to declare martial law in the counties of Madison, Lauderdale, Butler, Tuscaloosa, and Pickens.[1997] The committee reported a bill, which was passed, with a preamble of twenty-two lines reciting the terrible condition of the state. To appear away from home in mask or disguise was made a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of $100 and imprisonment from six months to one year. For a disguised person to commit an assault was made a felony, and punishment was fixed at a fine of $1000, and imprisonment from five to twenty years. Any one might kill a person in disguise. The penalty for destruction of property by disguised persons--burning a schoolhouse or church--was imprisonment from ten to twenty years. A warrant might be issued by any magistrate directed to any lawful officer of the state to arrest disguised offenders, and in case of refusal or neglect to perform his duty, the official was to forfeit his office and be fined $500.[1998]

Two days later it was enacted that in case a person were killed by an outlaw, or by a mob, or by disguised persons, or for political opinion, the widow or next of kin should be entitled to recover of the county in which the killing occurred the sum of $5000. The claimants should bring action in the circuit court, and in case judgment were rendered in favor of the claimants, the county commissioners should assess an additional tax sufficient to pay damages and costs. Failure of any official to perform his duty in such cases was punishable by a fine of $100 or imprisonment for twelve months for every thirty days of neglect or failure. In case of whipping the amount of damages collectible from the county was $1000. But if the offenders were arrested and punished, there could be no claim for damages. And if the offenders were arrested during the pendency of the suit for damages, the presiding judge might suspend proceedings in the damage suit until the result of the trial of the offenders was known. It was made the duty of the solicitor to prosecute the claim for the relatives, and his fee was fixed at 10 per cent of the amount recovered; and if the relatives failed to sue within twelve months, the solicitor was to prosecute in the name of the state, and the damages were to go to the asylums for the insane, deaf, dumb, and blind.[1999]

A number of arrests were made under these acts, but only one or two convictions were secured. It resulted that most of the arrests were of ignorant and penniless negroes, who were unable to pay any fine whatever. Governor Lindsay defended several such cases. The laws were so severe that the officials were unwilling to prosecute under them, but always prosecuted under the ordinary laws.

After 1868 there was no further anti-Ku-Klux legislation by the state government, but in 1869-1870 some of the southern states, Alabama among them, began to show signs of going Democratic. Virginia, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas had been forced to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment in order to secure the requisite number for its adoption.[2000] President Grant then sent in a message announcing the ratification as "the most important event that has occurred since the nation came into life."[2001] Congress responded to the hint in the message by passing the first of the Enforcement Acts, which had been hanging fire for nearly two years. The excuse for its passage was that the Ku Klux organizations would prevent the blacks from voting in the fall elections of 1870.[2002] The act, as approved on May 31, 1870, declared that all citizens were entitled to vote in all elections without regard to color or race and provided that officials should be held personally responsible that all citizens should have equal opportunity to perform all tests or prerequisites to registration or voting; election officials were held responsible for fair elections; any person who hindered another in voting might be fined $500, to go to the party aggrieved, and persons in disguise might be fined $5000 or imprisoned for ten years, or both, and should be disfranchised besides. Federal courts were to have exclusive jurisdiction over cases arising under this law, and Federal officials were to see to its execution; the penalty for obstructing an official or assisting an escape might be $500 fine and six months' imprisonment; the President was given authority to use the army and navy to enforce the law; the district attorneys of the United States were to proceed by quo warranto against disfranchised persons who were holding office, and such persons might be fined $1000 and imprisonment for one year,--such cases were to have precedence on the docket; the same penalties were visited upon those who under color of any law deprived a citizen of any right under this law; the Civil Rights Bill of 1866, April 9, was reënacted;[2003] fraud, bribery, intimidation, or undue influence or violation of any election law at Congressional elections might be punished by a fine of $500 and imprisonment for three years; registrations--congressional, state, county, school, or town--came under the same regulation, and officials of all degrees who failed in their duty were liable to the same penalties; a defeated candidate might contest the election in the Federal courts when there were cases of the negro having been hindered from voting.[2004]

This act marked the arrival of the most ruthless period of Reconstruction. Endowing the negro with full political rights had not sufficed to overcome the white political people. Disappointed in that, an attempt was now to be made so to regulate southern elections as to put the mass of the white population permanently under the control of the negroes and their white leaders, and to secure the permanent control of those states to the Republican party. Tennessee had already escaped from the Radical rule, and stringent measures were necessary to prevent like action in the other states. Notwithstanding the Enforcement Act, Alabama, in the election of 1870, went partially Democratic, which was to the Radical leaders prima facie evidence of the grossest frauds in elections. Other states were in a similarly bad condition.

The supplementary Enforcement Act of February 28, 1871, provided for the appointment of two supervisors to each precinct by the Federal circuit judge upon the application of two persons; the Federal courts were to be in session during elections for business arising under this act; the supervisors were to have full authority around the polls, and were to certify and send in the returns, and report irregularities, which were to be investigated by the chief supervisor, who was to keep all records; the supervisors were to be assisted in each precinct by two special deputy marshals appointed by the United States marshal for that district. These deputies and also the supervisors had full power to arrest any person and to summon a posse if necessary. Offenders were haled at once before the Federal court. Any election offence was punishable by a fine of $3000 and imprisonment of two years, with costs. To refuse to give information in an investigation subjected the person to a fine of $100 and thirty days' imprisonment and costs. State courts were forbidden to try cases coming under the act, and proceedings after warning, by state officials, resulted in imprisonment and fine amounting to one year and $500 to $1000, plus costs.[2005]

It was feared that these acts might prove insufficient to carry the southern states for the Republican party in 1872. Grant was becoming more and more radical as the Republican nominating convention and the elections drew nearer. Under the influence of the Radical leaders, he sent, on March 23, 1871, a message[2006] to Congress, declaring that in some of the states a condition of affairs existed rendering life and property insecure, and the carrying of mails and collection of revenue dangerous; the state governments were unable to control these evils; and it was doubtful if the President had the authority to interfere. He therefore asked for legislation to secure life, property, and the enforcement of law.[2007]

Congress came to the rescue with the Ku Klux Act of April 20, 1871, "in which Congress simply threw to the winds the constitutional distribution of powers between the states and the United States government in respect to civil liberty, crime, and punishment, and assumed to legislate freely and without limitation for the preservation of civil and political rights within the state."[2008]

It gave the President authority to declare the southern states in rebellion and to suspend the writ of habeas corpus--after a proclamation against insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combinations, and conspiracies. Such a state of affairs was declared a rebellion, and the President was authorized to use the army and navy to suppress it. Heavy penalties were denounced ($500 to $5000 fine, and six months' to six years' imprisonment) against persons who conspired to overthrow or destroy the United States government or to levy war against the United States; or who hindered the execution of the laws of the United States, seized its property, prevented any one from accepting or holding office or discharging official duties, drove away or injured, in person or property, any official or any witness in court, went in disguise on highway or on the premises of others, and hindered voting or office-holding. Any person injured in person, property, or privilege had the right to sue the conspirators for damages under the Civil Rights Bill. In Federal courts the jurors had to take oath that they were not in any way connected with such conspiracies, and the judges were empowered to exclude suspected persons from the jury. Persons not connected with such conspiracies, yet having knowledge of such things, were liable to the injured party for all damages.[2009]

On May 3, 1871, Grant issued a proclamation calling attention to the fact that the law was one of "extraordinary public importance" and, while of general application, was directed at the southern states, and stating that when necessary he would not hesitate to exhaust the powers vested by the act in the executive. The failure of local communities to protect all citizens would make it necessary for the national government to interfere.[2010]

Ku Klux Investigation

In order to justify the passage of the Enforcement Acts and to obtain material for campaign use the next year, Congress appointed a committee, which was organized on the day the Ku Klux Act was approved, to investigate the condition of affairs in the southern states.[2011] From June to August, 1871, the committee took testimony in Washington. In the fall subcommittees visited the various southern states selected for the inquisition. About one-fourth of the Alabama testimony was taken in Washington, the rest was taken by the subcommittee in Alabama.

The members of the subcommittee that took testimony in Alabama were Senators Pratt and Rice, and Messrs. Blair, Beck, and Buckley of the House. Blair and Beck, the Democratic members, were never present together. So the subcommittee consisted of three Republicans and one Democrat. C. W. Buckley was a Radical Representative from Alabama, a former Bureau reverend, who worked hard to convict the white people of the state of general wickedness. The subcommittee held sessions in Huntsville, October 6-14; Montgomery, October 17-20; Demopolis, October 23-28; Livingston, October 30 to November 3; and in Columbus, Mississippi, for west Alabama, November 11. All these places were in black counties. Sessions were held only at easily accessible places, and where scalawag, carpet-bag, and negro witnesses could easily be secured. Testimony was also taken by the committee in Washington from June to August, 1871.

It is generally believed that the examination of witnesses by the Ku Klux committees of Congress was a very one-sided affair, and that the testimony is practically without value for the historian, on account of the immense proportion of hearsay reports and manufactured tales embraced in it. Of course there is much that is worthless because untrue, and much that may be true but cannot be regarded because of the character of the witnesses, whose statements are unsupported. But, nevertheless, the 2008 pages of testimony taken in Alabama furnish a mine of information concerning the social, religious, educational, political, legal, administrative, agricultural, and financial conditions in Alabama from 1865 to 1871. The report itself, of 632 pages, contains much that is not in the testimony, especially as regards railroad and cotton frauds, taxation, and the public debt, and much of this information can be secured nowhere else.

The minority members of the subcommittee which took testimony in Alabama, General Frank P. Blair and later Mr. Beck of New York, caused to be summoned before the committee at Washington, and before the subcommittee in Alabama, the most prominent men of the state--men who, on account of their positions, were intimately acquainted with the condition of affairs. They took care that the examination covered everything that had occurred since the war. The Republican members often protested against the evidence that Blair proposed to introduce, and ruled it out. He took exceptions, and sometimes the committee at Washington admitted it; sometimes he smuggled it in by means of cross-questioning, or else he incorporated it into the minority report. On the other hand, the Republican members of the subcommittee seem to have felt that the object of the investigation was only to get campaign material for the use of the Radical party in the coming elections. They summoned a poor class of witnesses, a large proportion of whom were ignorant negroes who could only tell what they had heard or had feared. The more respectable of the Radicals were not summoned, unless by the Democrats. In several instances the Democrats caused to be summoned the prominent scalawags and carpet-baggers, who usually gave testimony damaging to the Radical cause.

An examination of the testimony shows that sixty-four Democrats and Conservatives were called before the committee and subcommittee. Of these, fifty-seven were southern men, five were northern men residing in the state, and two were negroes. The Democrats testified at great length, often twenty to fifty pages. Blair and Beck tried to bring out everything concerning the character of carpet-bag rule.[2012]

Thirty-four scalawags, fifteen carpet-baggers, and forty-one negro Radicals came before the committee and subcommittee. Some of these were summoned by Blair or Beck, and a number of them disappointed the Republican members of the committee by giving Democratic testimony.[2013] The Radicals could only repeat, with variations, the story of the Eutaw riot, the Patona affair, the Huntsville parade, etc. Of the prominent carpet-baggers and scalawags whose testimony was anti-Democratic, most were men of clouded character.[2014] The testimony of the higher Federal officials was mostly in favor of the Democratic contention.[2015] The negro testimony, however worthless it may appear at first sight, becomes clear to any one who, knowing the negro mind, remembers the influences then operating upon it. From this class of testimony one gets valuable hints and suggestions. The character of the white scalawag and carpet-bag testimony is more complex, but if one has the history of the witness, the testimony usually becomes intelligible. In many instances the testimony gives a short history of the witness.

The material collected by the Ku Klux Committee, and other committees that investigated affairs in the South after the war, can be used with profit only by one who will go to the biographical books and learn the social and political history of each person who testified. When the personal history of an important witness is known, many obscure things become plain. Unless this is known, one cannot safely accept or reject any specific testimony. To one who works in Alabama Reconstruction, Brewer's "Alabama," Garrett's "Reminiscences," the "Memorial Record," old newspaper files, and the memories of old citizens are indispensable.

There is in the first volume of the Alabama Testimony a delightfully partisan index of seventy-five pages. In it the summary of Democratic testimony shows up almost as Radical as the most partisan on the other side. It is meant only to bring out the violence in the testimony. According to it, one would think all those killed or mistreated were Radicals. The same man frequently figures in three situations, as "shot," "outraged," and "killed." General Clanton's testimony of thirty pages gets a summary of four inches, which tells nothing; that of Wager, a Bureau agent, gets as much for twelve pages, which tells something; and that of Minnis, a scalawag, twice as much. There is very little to be found in the testimony that relates directly to the Ku Klux Klan and similar organizations. Had the sessions of the subcommittee been held in the white counties of north and southwest Alabama, where the Klans had flourished, probably they might have found out something about the organization. But the minority members were determined to expose the actual condition of affairs in the state from 1865 to 1871. No matter how much the Radicals might discover concerning unlawful organizations, the Democrats stood ready with an immense deal of facts concerning Radical misgovernment to show cause why such organizations should arise. Consequently the three volumes of testimony relating to Alabama are by no means pro-Radical, except in the attitude of the majority of the examiners.[2016]

Below is given a table of alleged Ku Klux outrages, compiled from the testimony taken. The Ku Klux report classifies all violence under the four heads: killing, shooting, outrage, whipping. The same case frequently figures in two or more classes. Practically every case of violence, whether political or not, is brought into the testimony. The period covered is from 1865 to 1871. Radical outrages as well as Democratic are listed in the report as Ku Klux outrages. In a number of cases Radical outrages are made to appear as Democratic. Many of the cases are simply hearsay. It is not likely that many instances of outrage escaped notice, for every case of actual outrage was proven by many witnesses. Every violent death of man, woman, or child, white or black, Democratic or Radical, occurring between 1865 and 1871, appears in the list as a Ku Klux outrage. Evidently careful search had been made, and certain witnesses had informed themselves about every actual deed of violence. There were then sixty-four counties in the state, and in only twenty-nine of them were there alleged instances of Ku Klux outrage.

TABLE OF ALLEGED OUTRAGES COMPILED FROM THE KU KLUX TESTIMONY

========================================================== COUNTY |KILLINGS|OUTRAGES|SHOOTINGS|WHIPPINGS|TOTAL --------------|--------|--------|---------|---------|----- Autauga | -- | 1 | -- | -- | 1 Blount (k) | 2 | 3 | -- | 6 | 11 Calhoun | 6 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 9 Chambers (k) | 1 | -- | 1 | -- | 2 Cherokee (k) | -- | 2 | -- | 1 | 3 Choctaw (x) | 11 | 1 | 3 | -- | 15 Coosa | -- | -- | 1 | 12 | 13 Colbert (k) | 1 | 1 | -- | 1 | 3 Dallas (x) | 1 | 1 | -- | -- | 2 Fayette (k) | 1 | -- | -- | 3 | 4 Greene (x) | 11 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 19 Hale (x) | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 7 Jackson | 4 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 10 Lauderdale | -- | -- | -- | 1 | 1 Lawrence (k) | 2 | -- | -- | -- | 2 Limestone (k) | 7 | 1 | -- | 1 | 9 Macon (x) | 1 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 7 Madison (x) | 6 | 19 | 5 | 19 | 49 Marshall (k) | 1 | -- | 1 | 1 | 3 Marengo (x) | 1 | 6 | -- | 4 | 11 Montgomery (x)| -- | 1 | -- | -- | 1 Morgan (k) | 4 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 10 Perry (x) | 2 | -- | 2 | 2 | 6 Pickens (x) | -- | -- | -- | 9 | 9 Sumter (x) | 21 | 4 | 9 | 4 | 38 St. Clair | 1 | 1 | 1 | -- | 3 Tallapoosa (k)| -- | -- | -- | 1 | 1 Tuscaloosa (k)| 8 | -- | -- | -- | 8 Walker (k) | -- | -- | -- | 1 | 1 | | | | +----- Total | | | | 258 ==========================================================

(x) = black counties, and (k) = white counties, where Ku Klux Klan operated.

The Ku Klux Committee reported a bill[2017] providing for the execution of the Ku Klux Act until the close of the next session of Congress. It passed the Senate May 21, 1872, and failed in the House on June 6.[2018] The act of February 28, 1871, was amended by extending the Federal supervision of elections from towns to all election districts on application of ten persons. Other unimportant amendments were made.[2019]

The passage of these laws had no effect on the Ku Klux Klan proper, which had died out in 1869-1870. Nor did they have any effect in decreasing violence. It is quite likely that there was more violence toward the negro in 1871 and 1872 than in 1869-1870. But the laws did affect the elections. The entire machinery of elections was again under Radical control, and in 1872 the state again sank back into Radicalism. But it was the last Republican majority the state ever cast. The execution of these laws did much to hasten the union of the whites against negro rule.

Few cases were tried under the Enforcement Acts, though District Attorney Minnis and United States Marshal Healy were very active.[2020] Busteed, in 1871, testified that at Huntsville he had tried several persons for an outrage upon a negro, and that there were still untried two indictments under the Act of 1870. He stated that his jurors and witnesses were never interfered with. One of his grand juries, in 1871, encouraged by the attitude of Congress, reported that while there was no organized conspiracy throughout the middle district, there was such a thing in Macon, Coosa, and Tallapoosa. Two of the jurors--Benjamin F. Noble and Ex-Governor William H. Smith--objected to the report, and Busteed, the Federal judge, condemned it as unwarranted by the facts.[2021]

Nearly all of the carpet-bag and scalawag witnesses who testified on the Radical side before the Ku Klux Committee complained that the courts would not punish Ku Klux when they were arrested, and that juries would not indict them.[2022]

In 1872 a gang of men in eastern Alabama, the home of the Black Cavalry and the spurious Ku Klux Klan, burned a negro meeting-house where political meetings were held. They were arrested and tried under the Ku Klux Act. Four of them, R. G. Young, S. D. Young, R. S. Gray, and Neil Hawkins, were fined $5000 each and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment in the penitentiary at Albany, New York. Ringold Young was fined $2000 and sent to prison for seven years. ---- Blanks and ---- Howard were each fined $100 and imprisoned for five years. The prisoners were taken from state officers by force, and during the trial there was much parade by a guard of United States troops. There was complaint that the evidence was insufficient, and the punishment disproportionate to the offence even if proven.[2023]

In the elections of 1872 and 1874 there were numerous arrests of Democrats by the deputy marshals, who often made their arrests before election day and paraded the prisoners about the country for the information of the voters. I have been unable to find record of any convictions.[2024]

Later Organizations

While the Ku Klux Klan was disbanded by order in 1869, it is not likely that the order of the White Camelia disbanded except when there was no longer any necessity for it. In one county it might disband; in another it might survive several years longer. It is said that its operations were by order suspended in counties when conditions improved.

The White Brotherhood was a later organization, but had only a limited extension over south Alabama. The most widely spread of the later organizations was the White League, which in some form seems to have spread over the entire state from 1872 to 1874. The close connection between southwestern Alabama and Louisiana accounts for the introduction of both the White Camelia and the White League. In 1875 Arthur Bingham, the ex-carpet-bag-treasurer of the state, stated that he had secured a copy of the constitution of the White League and had published it in the State Journal. Its members were sworn not to regard obligations taken in courts, and to clear one another by all means.[2025]

The White League in Barbour and Mobile, in 1874, declared that no employment should be given to negro Radicals and no business done with white Radicals, and in Sumter County they were said to have gone on raids like the Ku Klux of former days. Military organizations of whites were enrolled and applications made to the Radical Governor Lewis for arms. He rejected the services of these companies, but they remained in organization and drilled. The Confederate gray uniforms were worn. In Tuskegee arms were purchased for the company by private subscription. By 1874 the white people of the state had become thoroughly united in the White Man's Party. There had been no compromises. The color and race line had been sharply drawn by the white counties, and the black counties later fell into line. The campaign of 1874 was the most serious of all. The whites intended to live no longer under Radical rule, and the whole state was practically a great Klan. There was but little violence, but there was a stern determination to defeat the Radicals at any cost; and if necessary, violence would have been used. At the inauguration of Governor Houston, in 1874, several of the gray-coated White League companies appeared from different parts of the state.[2026]

In several later elections the old Ku Klux methods were used, and there was much mysterious talk of "dark rainy nights and bloody moons." The "Barbour County Fever" was prevalent for many years: young men and boys would serenade the Radicals of the community and mortify them in every possible way, and their families would refuse to recognize socially the families of carpet-baggers and scalawags. They would not sit by them in church. The children at school imitated their elders.[2027]

The Ku Klux method of regulating society was nothing new; it was as old as history; it had often been used before; it may be used again; when a people find themselves persecuted by aliens or by the law, they will find some means outside the law for protecting themselves; it is certain also that such experiences will result in a great weakening of respect for law and in a return to more primitive methods of justice.

XXII. REORGANIZATION OF THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM

Break-up of the Ante-bellum System

The cotton planter of the South, the master of many negro slaves, organized a very efficient slave labor system. Each plantation was an industrial community almost independent of the outside world; the division of labor was minute, each servant being assigned a task suited to his or her strength and training. Nothing but the most skilful management could save a planter from ruin, for, though the labor was efficient, it was very costly. The value of an overseer was judged by the general condition, health, appearance, and manners of the slaves; the amount of work done with the least punishment; the condition of stock, buildings, and plantation; and the size of the crops. All supplies were raised on the plantation,--corn, bacon, beef, and other food-stuffs; farm implements and harness were made and repaired by the skilled negroes in rainy weather when no outdoor work could be done; clothes were cut out in the "big house" and made by the negro women under the direction of the mistress. The skilled laborers were blacks. Work was usually done by tasks, and industrious negroes were able to complete their daily allotment and have three or four hours a day to work in their own gardens and "patches." They often earned money at odd jobs, and the church records show that they contributed regularly. Negro children were trained in the arts of industry and in sobriety by elderly negroes of good judgment and firm character, usually women.[2028] Children too young to work were cared for by a competent mammy in the plantation nursery while their parents were in the fields.

In the Black Belt there was little hiring of extra labor and less renting of land. Except on the borders, nearly all whites were of the planting class. Their greater wealth had enabled them to outbid the average farmer and secure the rich lands of the black prairies, cane-brakes, and river bottoms. The small farmer who secured a foothold in the Black Belt would find himself in a situation not altogether pleasant, and, selling out to the nearest planter, would go to poorer and cheaper land in the hills and pine woods, where most of the people were white.

In the Black Belt cotton was largely a surplus money crop, and once the labor was paid for, the planter was a very rich man.[2029] In the white counties of the cotton states about the same crops were raised as in the Black Belt, but the land was less fertile and the methods of cultivation less skilful. In the richer parts of these white counties there was something of the plantation system with some negro labor. But slavery gradually drove white labor to the hill and mountain country, the sand and pine barrens. No matter how poor a white man was, he was excessively independent in spirit and wanted to work only his own farm. This will account for the lack of renters and hired white laborers in black or in white districts, and also for the fact that the less fertile land was taken up by the whites who desired to be their own employers. Land was cheap, and any man could purchase it. There was some renting of land in the white counties, and the form it took was that now known as "third and fourth."[2030] It was then called "shares." There was little or no tenancy "on halves" or "standing rent." But the average farmer worked his own land, often with the help of from three to ten slaves.

On the borders of the Black Belt in Alabama dwelt a peculiar class called "squatters." They settled down with or without permission on lots of poor and waste land, built cabins, cleared "patches," and made a precarious living by their little crops, by working as carpenters, blacksmiths, etc. Some bought small lots of land on long-time payments and never paid for them, but simply stayed where they were. In the edge of the Black Belt in the busy season were found numbers of white hired men working alongside of negro slaves,[2031] for there was no prejudice against manual labor, that is, no more than anywhere else in the world.[2032]

As soon as the war was over the first concern of the returning soldiers was to obtain food to relieve present wants and to secure supplies to last until a crop could be made. In the white counties of the state the situation was much worse than in the Black Belt. The soil of the white counties was less fertile; the people were not wealthy before the war, and during the war they had suffered from the depredations of the enemy and from the operation of the tax-in-kind, which bore heavily upon them when they had nothing to spare. The white men went to the war and there were only women, children, and old men to work the fields. The heaviest losses among the Alabama Confederate troops were from the ranks of the white county soldiers. In these districts there was destitution after the first year of the war, and after 1862 from one-fourth to one-half of the soldiers' families received aid from the state. The bountiful Black Belt furnished enough for all, but transportation facilities were lacking. At the close of hostilities the condition of the people in the poorer regions was pitiable. Stock, fences, barns, and in many cases dwellings had disappeared; the fields were grown up in weeds; and no supplies were available. How the people managed to live was a mystery. Some walked twenty miles to get food, and there were cases of starvation. No seeds and no farm implements were to be had. The best work of the Freedmen's Bureau was done in relieving these people from want until they could make a crop.

The Black Belt was the richest as well as the least exposed section of the state and fared well until the end of the war. The laborers were negroes, and these worked as well in war time as in peace. Immense food crops were made in 1863 and 1864, and there was no suffering among whites or blacks. Until 1865 there was no loss from Federal invasion, but with the spring of 1865 misfortune came. Four large armies marched through the central portions of the state, burning, destroying, and confiscating. In June, 1865, the Black Belt was in almost as bad condition as the white counties. All buildings in the track of the armies had disappeared; the stores of provisions were confiscated; gin-houses and mills were burned; cattle and horses and mules were carried away; and nothing much was left except the negroes and the fertile land. The returning planter, like the farmer, found his agricultural implements worn out and broken, and in all the land there was no money to purchase the necessaries of life. But in the portions of the black counties untouched by the armies there were supplies sufficient to last the people for a few months. A few fortunate individuals had cotton, which was now bringing fabulous prices, and it was the high price received for the few bales not confiscated by the government that saved the Black Belt from suffering as did the other counties.

Neither master nor slave knew exactly how to begin anew, and for a while things simply drifted. Now that the question of slavery was settled, many of the former masters felt a great relief from responsibility, though for their former slaves they felt a profound pity. The majority of them had no faith in free negro labor, yet all were willing to give it a trial, and a few of the more strenuous ones said that the energy and strength of the white man that had made the savage negro an efficient laborer could make the free negro work fairly well; and if the free negro would work, they were willing to admit that the change might be beneficial to both races.

During the spring and summer and fall the masters came straggling home, and were met by friendly servants who gave them cordial welcome. Each one called up his servants and told them that they were free; and that they might stay with him and work for wages, or find other homes. Except in the vicinity of the towns and army posts the negroes usually chose to stay and work; and in the remote districts of the Black Belt affairs were little changed for several weeks after the surrender, which there hardly caused a ripple on the surface of society. Life and work went on as before. The staid negro coachmen sat upon their boxes on Sunday as of old; the field hands went regularly about their appointed tasks. Labor was cheerful, and the negroes went singing to the fields. "The negro knew no Appomattox. The Revolution sat lightly,--save in the presence of vacant seats at home and silent graves in the churchyard, in the memorials of destructive raids, in the wonder on the faces of a people once free, now ruled, where ruled at all, by a Bureau agent." Here it was that the master race believed that after all freedom of the negro might be well.[2033] In other sections, where the negro was more exposed to outside influences, people were not hopeful. The common opinion was that with free negro labor cotton could not be cultivated with success. The northerner often thought that it was a crop made by forced labor and that no freeman would willingly perform such labor; the southerner believed that the negro would neglect the crop too much when not under strict supervision. Yet later years have shown that free white labor is most successful in the cultivation of cotton because of the care the whites expend upon their farms; while cotton is the only crop that the free negro has cultivated with any degree of success, because some kind of a crop can be made by the most careless cultivation.

At first no one knew just how to work the free negro; innumerable plans were formed and many were tried. The old patriarchal relations were preserved as far as possible. Truman,[2034] who made a long stay in Alabama, reported that in most cases there was a genuine attachment between masters and negroes; that the masters were the best friends the negroes had; and that, though they regarded the blacks with much commiseration, they were inclined to encourage them to collect around the big house on the old slavery terms, giving food, clothes, quarters, medical attendance, and a little pay.[2035] At that time no one could understand the freedom of the negro.[2036] As one old master expressed it, he saw no "free negroes"[2037] until the fall of 1865, when the Bureau began to influence the blacks. But with the extension of the Bureau and the spread of army posts, the negroes became idle, neglected the crops that had been planted in the spring, moved from their old homes and went to town to the Bureau, or went wandering about the country. The house servants and the artisans, who were the best and most intelligent of the negroes, also began to go to the towns. Negro women desiring to be as white ladies, refused to work in the fields, to cook, to wash, or to perform other menial duties. It was years before this "freedom" prejudice of the negro women against domestic service died out.[2038] The negro would work one or two days in the week, go to town two days, and wander about the rest of the time. Under such conditions there was no hope of continuing the old patriarchal system, and new plans, modelled on what they had heard of free labor, were tried by the planters. In the white counties the ex-soldiers went to work as before the war, but they had come home from the army too late to plant full crops, and few had supplies enough to last until the crops should be gathered. In most of the white counties the negroes were so few as to escape the serious attention of the Bureau, and consequently they worked fairly well at what they could get to do.[2039]

The first work of the Bureau was to break up the labor system that had been partially constructed, and to endeavor to establish a new system based on the northern free labor system and the old slave-hiring system with the addition of a good deal of pure theory. The Bureau was to act as a labor clearing-house; it was to have entire control of labor; contracts must be written in accordance with the minute regulations of the Bureau, and must be registered by the agent, who charged large fees.[2040]

The result of these regulations was to destroy industry where an alien Bureau agent was stationed, for the planters could not afford to have their land worked on such terms. In some of the counties, where the native magistrates served as Bureau agents, no attention was paid to the rules of the Bureau, and the people floundered along, trying to develop a workable basis of existence. In the districts infested by the Bureau agents the negroes had fantastic notions of what freedom meant. On one plantation they demanded that the plantation bell be no longer rung to summon the hands to and from work, because it was too much like slavery.[2041] In various places they refused to work and congregated about the Bureau offices, awaiting the expected division of property, when they would get the "forty acres and one old gray mule." When wages were paid they believed that each should receive the same amount, whether his labor had been good or bad, whether the laborer was present or absent, sick or well. In one instance a planter was paying his men in corn according to the time each had worked. The negroes objected and got an order from the Bureau agent that the division should be made equally. The planter read the order (which the negroes could not read), and at once directed the division as before. The negroes, thinking that the Bureau had so ordered, were satisfied. In the cane-brake region the agents were afraid of the great planters and did not interfere with the negroes except to organize them into Union Leagues; but elsewhere in the Black Belt the planter could not afford to hire negroes on the terms fixed by the Bureau.[2042]

Northern and Foreign Immigration

With the break-up of the slave system the planter found himself with much more land than he knew what to do with. He could get no reliable labor, he had no cash capital, so in many cases he offered his best lands for sale at low prices. The planters wanted to attract northern and foreign immigration and capital into the country; the cotton planter sought for a northern partner who could furnish the capital. Owing to the almost religious regard of the negro for his northern deliverers, many white landlords thought that northern men, especially former soldiers, might be better able than southern men to control negro labor. General Swayne, the head of the Bureau, said that the negroes had more confidence in a "bluecoat" than in a native, and that among the larger planters northern men as partners or overseers were in great demand.[2043]

For a short time after the close of the war northern men in considerable numbers planned to go into the business of cotton raising. DeBow[2044] gives a description of the would-be cotton planters who came from the North to show the southern people how to raise cotton with free negro labor. They had note-books and guide-books full of close and exact tables of costs and profits, and from them figured out vast returns. They acknowledged that the negro might not work for the southern man, but they were sure that he would work for them. They were very self-confident, and would listen to no advice from experienced planters, whom they laughed at as old fogies, but from their note-books and tables they gave one another much information about the new machinery useful in cotton culture, about rules for cultivation, how to control labor, etc. They estimated that each laborer's family would make $1000 clear gain each year. DeBow would not say they were wrong, but he said that he thought that they should hasten a little more slowly. Northern energy and capitol flowed in; plantations were bought, and the various industries of plantation life started; and mills and factories were established. Because of the paralyzed condition of industry the southern people welcomed these enterprises, but they were very sceptical of their final success. The northern settler had confidence in the negro and gave him unlimited credit or supplies; consequently, in a few years the former was financially ruined and had to turn his attention to politics, and to exploiting the negro in that field in order to make a living.[2045] Both as employer and as manager the northern men failed to control negro labor. They expected the negro to be the equal of the Yankee white. The negroes themselves were disgusted with northern employers. Truman reported, after an experience of one season, that "it is the almost universal testimony of the negroes themselves, who have been under the supervision of both classes,--and I have talked with many with a view to this point,--that they prefer to labor for a southern employer."[2046]

Northern capital came in after the war, but northern labor did not, though the planters offered every inducement. Land was offered to white purchasers at ridiculously low rates, but the northern white laborer did not come. He was afraid of the South with its planters and negroes. The poorer classes of native whites, however, profited by the low prices and secured a foothold on the better lands. So general was the unbelief in the value of the free negro as a laborer, especially in the Bureau districts, and so signally had all inducements failed to bring native white laborers from the North, that determined efforts were made to obtain white labor from abroad. Immigration societies were formed with officers in the state and headquarters in the northern cities. These societies undertook to send to the South laboring people, principally German, in families at so much per head. The planter turned with hope to white labor, of the superiority of which he had so long been hearing, and he wished very much to give it a trial. The advertisements in the newspapers read much like the old slave advertisements: so many head of healthy, industrious Germans of good character delivered f.o.b. New York, at so much per head. One of the white labor agencies in Alabama undertook to furnish "immigrants of any nativity and in any quantity" to take the place of negroes. Children were priced at the rate of $50 a year; women, $100; men, $150,--they themselves providing board and clothes. One of every six Germans was warranted to speak English.[2047] Most of these agencies were frauds and only wanted an advance payment on a car load of Germans who did not exist. In a few instances some laborers were actually shipped in; but they at once demanded an advance of pay, and then deserted. Like the bounty jumpers, they played the game time and time again. The influence of the Radical press of the North was also used to discourage emigration to the South;[2048] consequently white immigration into the state did not amount to anything,[2049] and the Black Belt received no help from the North or from abroad, and had to fall back upon the free negro.

In the white counties there had been little hope or desire for alien immigration. The people and the country were so desperately poor that the stranger would never think of settling there. Many of the whites in moderate circumstances, living near the Black Belt, took advantage of the low price of rich lands, and acquired small farms in the prairies, but there was no influx of white labor to the Black Belt from the white counties.[2050] Nearly every man, woman, and child in the white districts had to go to work to earn a living. Many persons--lawyers, public men, teachers, ministers, physicians, merchants, overseers, managers, and even women--who had never before worked in the fields or at manual occupations, were now forced to do so because of losses of property, or because they could not live by their former occupations.[2051]

While the number of white laborers had increased somewhat, negro labor had decreased. Several thousand negro men had gone with the armies; for various reasons thousands had drifted to the towns, where large numbers died in 1865-1866. The rural negro had a promising outlook, for at any time he could get more work than he could do; the city negro found work scarce even when he wanted it.[2052]

Attempts to organize a New System

Several attempts were made by the negroes in 1865 and 1866 to work farms and plantations on the coöperative system, that is, to club work, but with no success. They were not accustomed to independent labor, their faculty for organization had not been sufficiently developed, and the dishonesty of their leading men sometimes caused failures of the schemes.[2053]

In the summer of 1865 the Monroe County Agricultural Association was formed to regulate labor, and to protect the interests of both employer and laborer. It was the duty of the executive committee to look after the welfare of the freedmen, to see that contracts were carried out and the freedmen protected in them, and, in cases of dispute, to act as arbitrator. The members of the association pledged themselves to see that the freedman received his wages, and to aid him in case his employer refused to pay. They were also to see that the freedman fulfilled his contract, unless there was good reason why he should not. Homes and the necessaries of life were to be provided by the association for the aged and helpless negroes, of whom there were several on every plantation. The planters declared themselves in favor of schools for the negro children, and a committee was appointed to devise a plan for their education. Every planter in Monroe County belonged to the association.[2054] An organization in Conecuh County adopted, word for word, the constitution of the Monroe County association. In Clarke and Wilcox counties similar organizations were formed, and in all counties where negro labor was the main dependence some such plans were devised.[2055] But it is noticeable that in those counties where the planters first undertook to reorganize the labor system, there were no regular agents of the Freedmen's Bureau and no garrisons.

The average negro quite naturally had little or no sense of the obligation of contracts. He would leave a growing crop at the most critical period, and move into another county, or, working his own crop "on shares," would leave it in the grass and go to work for some one else in order to get small "change" for tobacco, snuff, and whiskey. After three years of experience of such conduct, a meeting of citizens at Summerfield, Dallas County, decided that laborers ought to be impressed with the necessity of complying with contracts. They agreed that no laborers discharged for failure to keep contracts would be hired again by other employers. They declared it to be the duty of the whites to act in perfect good faith in their relations with freedmen, to respect and uphold their rights, and to promote good feeling.[2056]

Development of the Share System

At first the planters had demanded a system of contracts, thinking that by law they might hold the negro to his agreements. But the Bureau contracts were one-sided, and the planters could not afford to enter into them. General Swayne early reported[2057] a general breakdown of the contract system, though he told the planters that in case of dispute, where no contract was signed, he would exact payment for the negro at the highest rates. The "share" system was discouraged, but where there were no Bureau agents it was developing. And so bad was the wage system, that even in the Bureau districts, share hiring was done. The object of "share" renting was to cause the laborer to take an interest in his crop and to relieve the planter of disputes about loss of time, etc. Some of the negroes also decided that the share system was the proper one. On the plantations near Selma the negroes demanded "shares," threatening to leave in case of refusal. General Hardee, who was living near, proposed a plan for a verbal contract; wages should be one-fourth of all crops, meat and bread to be furnished to the laborer, and his share of crop to be paid to him in kind, or the net proceeds in cash; the planter to furnish land, teams, wagons, implements, and seed to the laborer, who, in addition, had all the slavery privileges of free wood, water, and pasturage, garden lot and truck patch, teams to use on Sundays and for going to town. The absolute right of management was reserved to the planter, it being understood that this was no copartnership, but that the negro was hired for a share of the crop; consequently he had no right to interfere in the management.[2058]

On another plantation, where a share system similar to Hardee's was in operation, the planter divided the workers into squads of four men each. To each squad he assigned a hundred acres of cotton and corn, in the proportion of five acres of cotton to three of corn, and forty acres of cotton for the women and children of the four families. The squads were united to hoe and plough and to pick the cotton, because they worked better in gangs. Wage laborers were kept to look after fences and ditches, and to perform odd jobs. A frequent source of trouble was the custom of allowing the negro, as part of his pay, several acres of "outside crop," to be worked on certain days of the week, as Fridays and Saturdays. The planter was supposed to settle disputes among the negroes, give them advice on every subject except politics and religion, on which they had other advisers, pay their fines and get them out of jail when arrested, and sometimes to thrash the recalcitrant.[2059]

Several kinds of share systems were finally evolved from the industrial chaos. They were much the same in black or white districts, and the usual designations were "on halves," "third and fourth," and "standing rent." The tenant "on halves" received one-half the crop, did all the work, and furnished his own provisions. The planter furnished land, houses to live in, seed, ploughs, hoes, teams, wagons, ginned the cotton, paid for half the fertilizer, and "went security" for the negro for a year's credit at the supply store in town, or he furnished the supplies himself, and charged them against the negro's share of the crop. The "third and fourth" plan varied according to locality and time, and depended upon what the tenant furnished. Sometimes the planter furnished everything, while the negro gave only his labor and received one-fourth of the crop; again, the planter furnished all except provisions and labor, and gave the negro one-third of the crop. In such cases "third and fourth" was a lower grade of tenancy than "on halves." Later it developed to a higher grade: the tenant furnished teams and farming implements, and the planter the rest, in which case the planter received a third of the cotton, and a fourth of the corn raised. "Standing rent" was the highest form of tenancy, and only responsible persons, white or black, could rent under that system. It called for a fixed or "standing" rent for each acre or farm, to be paid in money or in cotton. The unit of value in cotton was a 500-pound bale of middling grade on October 1st. Tenants who had farm stock, farming implements, and supplies or good credit would nearly always cultivate for "standing rent." The planter exercised a controlling direction over the labor and cultivation of a crop worked "on halves"; he exercised less direction over "third and fourth" tenants, and was supposed to exercise no control over tenants who paid "standing rent." In all cases the planter furnished a dwelling-house free, wood and water (paid for digging wells), and pasture for the pigs and cows of the tenants. In all cases the renter had a plot of ground of from one to three acres, rent free, for a vegetable garden and "truck patch." Here could be raised watermelons, sugar-cane, potatoes, sorghum, cabbage, and other vegetables. Every tenant could keep a few pigs and a cow, chickens, turkeys, and guineas, and especially dogs, and could hunt in all the woods around and fish in all the waters. "On halves" was considered the safest form of tenancy for both planter and tenant, for the latter was only an average man, and this method allowed the superior direction of the planter.[2060] Many negroes worked for wages; the less intelligent and the unreliable could find no other way to work; and some of the best of them preferred to work for wages paid at the end of each week or month. Wage laborers worked under the immediate oversight of the farmer or tenant who hired them. They received $8 to $12 a month and were "found," that is, furnished with rations. In the white counties the negro hired man was often fed in the farmer's kitchen. The laborer, if hired by the year, had a house, vegetable garden, truck patch, chickens, a pig perhaps, always a dog, and he could hunt and fish anywhere in the vicinity. Sometimes he was "found"; sometimes he "found" himself. When he was "found," the allowance for a week was three and a half pounds of bacon, a peck of meal, half a gallon of syrup, and a plug of tobacco; his garden and truck patch furnished vegetables. This allowance could be varied and commuted. The system was worked out in the few years immediately following the war, and has lasted almost without change. Where the negroes are found, the larger plantations have not been broken up into small farms, the census statistics to the contrary notwithstanding.[2061] The negro tenant or laborer had too many privileges for his own good and for the good of the planter. The negro should have been paid more money or given a larger proportion of the crop, and fewer privileges. He needed more control and supervision, and the result of giving him a vegetable garden, a truck patch, a pasture, and the right of hunting and fishing, was that the negro took less interest in the crop; the privileges were about all he wanted. Agricultural industry was never brought to a real business basis.[2062]

An essential part of the share system was the custom of advancing supplies to the tenant with the future crop as security. The universal lack of capital after the war forced an extension of the old ante-bellum credit or supply system. The merchant, who was also a cotton buyer, advanced money or supplies until the crop was gathered. Before the war his security was crop, land, and slaves; after the war the crop was the principal security, for land was a drug in the market. Consequently, the crop was more important to the creditor. Cotton was the only good cash staple, and the high prices encouraged all to raise it. It was to the interest of the merchant, even when prices were low, to insist that his debtors raise cotton to the exclusion of food crops, since much of his money was made by selling food supplies to them. Before the war the planter alone had much credit, and a successful one did not make use of the system; but after the war all classes of cotton raisers had to have advances of supplies. The credit or crop lien system was good to put an ambitious farmer on the way to independence, but it was no incentive to the shiftless. Cotton became the universal crop under the credit system, and even when the farmer became independent, he seldom planted less of his staple crop, or raised more supplies at home.

Negro Farmers and White Farmers

At the end of the war everything was in favor of the negro cotton raiser; and everything except the high price of cotton was against the white farmer in the poorer counties. The soil had been used most destructively in the white districts, and it had to be improved before cotton could be raised successfully.[2063] The high price of cotton caused the white farmer, who had formerly had only small cotton patches, to plant large fields, and for several years the negro was not a serious competitor. The building of railroads through the mineral regions afforded transportation to the white farmer for crops and fertilizers,--an advantage that before this time had been enjoyed only by the Black Belt,--and improved methods gradually supplanted the wasteful frontier system of cultivation. The gradual increase[2064] of the cotton production after 1869 was due entirely to white labor in the white counties, the black counties never again reaching their former production, though the population of those counties has doubled. Governor Lindsay said, in 1871, that the white people of north Alabama, where but little had been produced before the war, were becoming prosperous by raising cotton, and at the same time raising supplies that the planter on the rich lands with negro labor had to buy from the West. This prosperity, he thought, had done more than anything else to put an end to Ku Klux disturbances. Somers reported, as early as 1871, that the bulk of the cotton crop in the Tennessee valley was made by white labor, not by black.[2065] As long as there was plenty of cheap, thin land to be had, the poor but independent white would not work the fertile land belonging to some one else; and before and long after the war there was plenty of practically free land.[2066] Therefore the tendency of the whites was to remain on the less fertile land. Dr. E. A. Smith, in the Alabama Geological Survey of 1881-1882, and in the Report on Cotton Production in Alabama (1884), shows the relation between race and cotton production, and race location, with respect to fertility of soil: (1) On the most fertile lands the laboring population was black; the farmers were shiftless, and no fertilizers were used; there the credit evil was worse, and the yield per acre was less than on the poorest soils cultivated by whites. (2) Where the races were about equal the best system was found; the soils were medium, the farms were small but well cultivated, and fertilizers were used. (3) On the poorest soils only whites were found. These by industry and use of fertilizers could produce about as much as the blacks on the rich soils.

The average product per acre of the fertile Black Belt is lower than the lowest in the poorest white counties. Only the best of soil, as in Clarke, Monroe, and Wilcox counties, is able to overcome the bad labor system, and produce an average equal to that made by the whites in Winston, the least fertile county in the state. In white counties, where the average product per acre falls below the average for the surrounding region, the fact is always explained by the presence of blacks, segregated on the best soils, keeping down the average product. For example, Madison County in 1880 had a majority of blacks, and the average product per acre was 0.28 bale, as compared with 0.32 bale for the Tennessee valley, of which Madison was the richest county; in Talladega, the most fertile county of the Coosa valley, the average production per acre was 0.32, as compared with 0.40 for the rest of the valley; in Autauga, where the blacks outnumbered the whites two to one, the average fell below that of the country around, though the Autauga soil was the best in the region. The average product of the rich prairie region cultivated by the blacks was 0.27 bale per acre; the average product in the poor mineral region cultivated by the whites was 0.26 to 0.28; in the short-leaf pine region the whites outnumber the blacks two to one, and the average production is 0.34 bale, while in the gravelly hill region, where the blacks are twice as numerous as the whites, the production is 0.30, the soil in the two sections being about equal. In general, the fertility of the soil being equal, the production varies inversely as the proportion of colored population to white. Density of colored population is a sure sign of fertile soil; predominance of white a sign of medium or poor soil. Outside of the Black Belt, white owners cultivate small farms, looking closely after them. The negro seldom owns the land he cultivates, and is more efficient when working under direction on the small farm in the white county. In the Black Belt, nearly all land is fertile and capable of cultivation, but in the white counties a large percentage is rocky, in hills, forests, mountains, etc. Many soils in southeast and in north Alabama, formerly considered unproductive, have been brought into cultivation by the use of fertilizers, hauled in wagons, in many cases, from twenty to a hundred miles. Fertilizers have not yet come into general use in the Black Belt. In the negro districts are still found horse-power gins and old wooden cotton presses; in the white counties, steam and water power and the latest machinery. In the white counties it has always been a general custom to raise a part of the supplies on the farm; in the Black Belt this has not been done since the war.[2067] Though many of the white farmers remained under the crop lien bondage, there was a steady gain toward independence on the part of the more industrious and economical. But not until toward the close of the century did emancipation come for many of the struggling whites.

In other directions the whites did better. They opened the mines of north Alabama, cut the timber of south Alabama, built the railroads and factories, and to some extent engaged in commerce.[2068] Market gardening became a common occupation. Negro labor in factories failed. It was the negro rather than slavery that prevented and still prevents the establishment of manufactures.[2069] The development of manufactures in recent years has benefited principally the poor people of the white counties. "For this mill people is not drawn from foreign immigrants, nor from distant states, but it is drawn from the native-born white population, the poor whites, that belated hill-folk from the ridges and hollows and coves of the silent hills."[2070] The negro artisan is giving way to the white; even in the towns of the Black Belt, the occupations once securely held by the negro are passing into the hands of the whites.

In the white counties, during Reconstruction, the relations between the races became more strained than in the Black Belt. One of the manifestations of the Ku Klux movement in the white counties was the driving away of negro tenants from the more fertile districts by the poorer classes of whites who wanted these lands. For years immigration was discouraged by the northern press. Foreigners were afraid to come to the "benighted and savage South."[2071] But in the '80's the railroad companies began to induce Germans to settle on their lands in the poorest of the white counties. Later there has been a slow movement from the Northwest. As a rule, where the northerners and the Germans settle the wilderness blossoms, and the negro leaves.

After ploughing their hilltops until the soil was exhausted, the whites, even before the war, decided that only by clearing the swamps in the poorer districts could they get land worth cultivating. This required much labor and money. After the war, with the increase of transportation facilities, fertilizers came into use, the swamps were deserted, and the farmers went back to the uplands. "By the use of commercial fertilizers, vast regions once considered barren have been brought into profitable cultivation, and really afford a more reliable and constant crop than the rich alluvial lands of the old slave plantations. In nearly every agricultural county in the South there is to be observed, on the one hand, this section of fertile soils, once the heart of the old civilization, now largely abandoned by the whites, held in tenantry by a dense negro population, full of dilapidation and ruin; while on the other hand, there is the region of light, thin soils, occupied by the small white freeholder, filled with schools, churches, and good roads, and all the elements of a happy, enlightened country life."[2072]

The Decadence of the Black Belt

The patriarchal system failed in the Black Belt, the Bureau system of contracts and prescribed wages failed, the planter's own wage system failed,[2073] and finally all settled down to the share system. In this there was some encouragement to effort on the part of the laborer, and in case of failure of the crop he bore a share of the loss. After a few years' experience, the negroes were ready to go back to the wage system, and labor conventions were held demanding a return to that system.[2074] But whatever system was adopted, the work of the negro was unsatisfactory. The skilled laborer left the plantation, and the new generation knew nothing of the arts of industry. Labor became migratory, and the negro farmer wanted to change his location every year.[2075] Regular work was a thing of the past. In two or three days each week a negro could work enough to live, and the remainder of the time he rested from his labors, often leaving much cotton in the fields to rot.[2076] He went to the field when it suited him to go, gazed frequently at the sun to see if it was time to stop for meals, went often to the spring for water, and spent much time adjusting his plough or knocking the soil and pebbles from his shoes. The negro women refused to work in the fields, and yet did nothing to better the home life; the style of living was "from hand to mouth." Extra money went for whiskey, snuff, tobacco, and finery, while the standard of living was not raised.[2077] The laborer would always stop to go to a circus, election, political meeting, revival, or camp-meeting. A great desolation seemed to rest upon the Black Belt country.[2078]

In the interior of the state, the negroes worked better during and after Reconstruction than where they were exposed to the ministrations of the various kinds of carpet-baggers.[2079] In the Tennessee valley, where the negroes had taken a prominent part in politics, and had not only seen much of the war, but many of them had enlisted in the Federal army, cotton raising almost ceased for several years. The only crops made were made by whites.[2080] In Sumter County, where the black population was dense, it was, in 1870, almost impossible to secure labor; those negroes who wished to work went to the railways.[2081] A description of a "model negro farm" in 1874 was as follows: The farmer purchased an old mule on credit and rented land on shares, or for so many bales of cotton; any old tools were used; corn, bacon, and other supplies were bought on credit, and a lien given on the crop; a month later, corn and cotton were planted on soil not well broken up; the negro "would not pay for no guano," to put on other people's land; by turns the farmer planted and fished, ploughed and hunted, hoed and frolicked, or went to "meeting." At the end of the year he sold his cotton, paid part of his rent, and some of his debt, returned the mule to its owner, and sang:--

"Nigger work hard all de year, White man tote de money."[2082]

If the negro made anything, his fellows were likely to steal it. Somers said, "There can be no doubt that the negroes first steal one another's share of the crop, and next the planter's, by way of general redress."[2083] Crop stealing was usually done at night. Stolen cotton, corn, pork, etc., was carried to the doggeries kept on the outskirts of the plantation by low white men, and there exchanged for bad whiskey, tobacco, and cheap stuff of various kinds. These doggeries were called "deadfalls," and their proprietors often became rich.[2084] So serious did the theft of crops become, that the legislature passed a "sunset" law, making it a penal offence to purchase farm produce after nightfall. Poultry, hogs, corn, mules, and horses were stolen when left in the open.

Emancipation destroyed the agricultural supremacy of the Black Belt. The uncertain returns from the plantations caused an exodus of planters and their families to the cities, and formerly well-kept plantations were divided into one-and two-house farms for negro tenants, who allowed everything to go to ruin. The negro tenant system was much more ruinous than the worst of the slavery system, and none of the plantations ever again reached their former state of productiveness. Ditches choked up, fences down, large stretches of fertile fields growing up in weeds and bushes, cabins tumbling in and negro quarters deserted, corn choked by grass and weeds, cotton not half as good as under slavery,--these were the reports from travellers in the Black Belt, towards the close of Reconstruction.[2085] Other plantations were leased to managers, who also kept plantation stores whence the negroes were furnished with supplies. The money lenders came into possession of many plantations. By the crop lien and blanket mortgage, the negro became an industrial serf. The "big house" fell into decay. For these and other reasons, the former masters, who were the most useful friends of the negro, left the Black Belt, and the black steadily declined.[2086] The unaided negro has steadily grown worse; but Tuskegee, Normal, Calhoun, and similar bodies are endeavoring to assist the negro of the black counties to become an efficient member of society. In the success of such efforts lies the only hope of the negro, and also of the white of the Black Belt, if the negro is to continue to exclude white immigration.[2087]

XXIII. POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS DURING RECONSTRUCTION

SEC. 1. POLITICS AND POLITICAL METHODS

During the war the administration of the state government gradually fell into the hands of officials elected by people more or less disaffected toward the Confederacy. Provisional Governor Parsons, who had been secretly disloyal to the Confederacy, retained in office many of the old Confederate local officials, and appointed to other offices men who had not strongly supported the Confederacy. In the fall of 1865 and the spring of 1866 elections under the provisional government placed in office a more energetic class of second and third rate men who had had little experience and who were not strong Confederates. Men who had opposed secession and who had done little to support the war were, as a rule, sent to Congress and placed in the higher offices of state. The ablest men were not available, being disfranchised by the President's plan.

In 1868, with the establishment of the reconstructed government, an entirely new class of officials secured control. Less than 5000 white voters, of more than 100,000 of voting age, supported the Radical programme, and, as more than 3000 officials were to be chosen, the field for choice was limited. The elections having gone by default, the Radicals met with no opposition, except in three counties. In all the other counties the entire Radical ticket was declared elected, even though in several of them no formal elections had been held.

William H. Smith, who was made governor under the Reconstruction Acts, was a native of Georgia, a lawyer, formerly a Douglas Democrat, and had opposed secession, but was a candidate for the Confederate Congress. Defeated, he consoled himself by going over to the Federals in 1862. Smith was a man of no executive ability, careless of the duties of his office, and in few respects a fit person to be governor. He disliked the Confederate element and also the carpet-baggers, but as long as the latter would not ask for high offices, he was at peace with them. It was his plan to carry on the state government with the 2000 or 3000 "unionists" and the United States troops. He did not like the negroes, but could endure them as long as they lived in a different part of the state and voted for him. In personal and private matters he was thoroughly honest, but his course in regard to the issue of bonds showed that in public affairs he could be influenced to doubtful conduct. It is certain that he never profited by any of the stealing that was carried on; he merely made it easy for others to steal; the dishonest ones were his friends, and his enemies paid the taxes. As governor he had the respect of neither party. He went too far to please the Democrats, and not far enough to please the Radicals. He exercised no sort of control over his local officials and shut his eyes to the plundering of the Black Belt. He was emphatically governor of his small following of whites, not of all the people, not even of the blacks. During his administration the whites complained that he was very active in protecting Radicals from outrage, but paid no attention to the troubles of his political enemies. His government did not give adequate protection to life and property.

His lieutenant-governor, A. J. Applegate of Ohio and Wisconsin, was an illiterate Federal soldier left stranded in Alabama by the surrender. During the war he was taken ill in Mississippi and was cared for by Mrs. Thompson, wife of a former Secretary of the Treasury. Upon leaving the Thompson house he carried some valuable papers with him, which, after the war, he tried to sell to Mrs. Thompson for $10,000. Lowe, Walker, & Company, a firm of lawyers in Alabama, gave Applegate $300, made him sign a statement as to how he obtained the papers, and then published all the correspondence.[2088] The charge of thievery did not injure his candidacy. Before election he had been an attaché of the Freedmen's Bureau. After the constitution had been rejected in 1868, Applegate went North, so far that he could not get back in time for the first session of the legislature. A special act, however, authorized him to draw his pay as having been present. In a letter written for the Associated Press, which was secured by the Democrats, there were thirty-nine mistakes in spelling. As a presiding officer over the Senate, he was vulgar and undignified. His speeches were ludicrous. When the conduct of the Radical senators pleased him, he made known his pleasure by shouting, "Bully for Alabama!"

The secretary of state, Charles A. Miller, was a Bureau agent from Maine; Bingham, the treasurer, was from New York; Reynolds, the auditor, from Wisconsin; Keffer, the superintendent of industrial resources, from Pennsylvania. Two natives of indifferent reputation--Morse and Cloud--were, respectively, attorney-general and superintendent of public instruction. Morse was under indictment for murder and had to be relieved by special act of the legislature. The chief justice, Peck, was from New York; Saffold and Peters were southern men; the senators and all of the representatives in Congress were carpet-baggers. There were six candidates for the short-term senatorship--all of them carpet-baggers. Willard Warner of Ohio, who was elected, was probably the most respectable of all the carpet-baggers, and was soon discarded by the party. He had served in the Federal army and after the war was elected to the Ohio Senate. His term expired in January, 1868; in July, 1868, he was elected to the United States Senate from Alabama. George E. Spencer was elected to the United States Senate for the long term. He was from Massachusetts, Ohio, Iowa, and Nebraska. In Iowa he had been clerk of the Senate, and in Nebraska, secretary to the governor. He entered the army as sutler of the First Nebraska Infantry. Later he assisted in raising the First Union Alabama Cavalry and was made its colonel. Spencer was shrewd, coarse, and unscrupulous, and soon secured control of Federal patronage for Alabama. He attacked his colleague, Warner, as being lukewarm.

The representatives and their records were as follows: F. W. Kellogg of Massachusetts and Michigan represented the latter state in Congress from 1859 to 1865, when he was appointed collector of internal revenue at Mobile. C. W. Buckley of New York and Illinois was a Presbyterian preacher who had come to Alabama as chaplain of a negro regiment. For two years he was a Bureau official and an active agitator. He was a leading member in the convention of 1867. B. W. Norris of Skowhegan, Maine, was an oil-cloth maker and a land agent for Maine, a commissary, contractor, cemetery commissioner, and paymaster during the war. After the war he came South with C. A. Miller, his brother-in-law, and both became Bureau agents. C. W. Pierce of Massachusetts and Illinois was a Bureau official. Nothing more is known of him. John B. Callis of Wisconsin had served in the Federal army and later in the Veteran Reserve Corps. After the war he became a Bureau agent in Alabama, and when elected he was not a citizen of the state, but was an army officer stationed in Mississippi. Thomas Haughey of Scotland was a Confederate recruiting officer in 1861-1862 and later a surgeon in the Union army. He was killed in 1869 by Collins, a member of the Radical Board of Education. It was said that he was without race prejudice and consorted with negroes, but he was the only one of the Alabama delegation whom Governor Smith liked. The latter wrote that "our whole set of representatives in Congress, with the exception of Haughey, are ... unprincipled scoundrels having no regard for the state of the people."[2089]

In the first Reconstruction legislature, which lasted for three years, there were in the Senate 32 Radicals and 1 Democrat. In the House there were 97 Radicals (only 94 served) and 3 Democrats. The lone Democrat in the Senate was Worthy of Pike, and to prevent him from engaging in debate, Applegate often retired from his seat and called upon him to preside; the Democrats in the House were Hubbard of Pike, Howard of Crenshaw, and Reeves of Cherokee.[2090] In the Senate there was only 1 negro; in the House there were 26, several of whom could not sign their names. In the apportionment of representatives there was a difference of 40 per cent in favor of the black counties. Hundreds of negroes swarmed in to see the legislature begin, filling the galleries, the windows, and the vacant seats, and crowding the aisles. They were invited by resolution to fill the galleries and from that place they took part in the affairs of the House, voting on every measure with loud shouts. A scalawag from north Alabama wanted the negroes to sit on one side of the House and the whites on the other, but he was not listened to. The doorkeepers, sergeant-at-arms, and other employees were usually negroes. The negro members watched their white leaders and voted aye or no as they voted. When tired they went to sleep and often had to be wakened to vote. Both houses were usually opened with prayer by northern Methodist ministers or by negro ministers. None but "loyal" ministers were asked to officiate. Strobach, the Austrian member, wearied of much political prayer, moved that the chaplain cut short his devotions.

The whites in the legislature were for the most part carpet-baggers or unknown native whites. The entire taxes paid by the members of the legislature were, it is said, less than $100. Applegate, the lieutenant-governor, did not own a dollar's worth of property in the state. Most of the carpet-bag members lived in Montgomery; the rest of them lived in Mobile, Selma, and Huntsville. Few of them saw the districts they represented after election; some did not see them before or after the election. The representative from Jackson County lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The state constitution prohibited United States officials from holding state offices, but nearly all Federal officers in the state also held state offices. This was particularly the case in the southwestern counties, which were represented by revenue and custom-house officials from Mobile. Some of them were absent most of the time, but all drew pay; one of the negro members, instead of attending, went regularly to school after the roll was called. No less than twenty members had been indicted or convicted, or were indicted during the session, of various crimes, from adultery and stealing to murder. The legislature passed special acts to relieve members from the penalties for stealing, adultery, bigamy, arson, riot, illegal voting, assault, bribery, and murder.[2091]

Bribery was common in the legislature. By custom a room in the capitol was set apart for the accommodation of those who wished to "interview" negro members.[2092] There the agents of railroad companies distributed conscience money in the form of loans which were never to be paid back. Harrington, the speaker, boasted that he received $1700 for engineering a bill through the House. A lottery promoter said that it cost him only $600 to get his charter through the legislature, and that no Radical, except one negro, refused the small bribe he offered. Senator Sibley held his vote on railroad measures at $500; Pennington, at $1000; W. B. Jones, at $500. Hardy of Dallas received $35,000 to ease the passage of a railroad bond issue, and kept most of it for himself; another received enough to start a bank; still another was given 640 acres of land, a steam mill, and a side track on a railroad near his mill. Negro members, as a rule, sold out very cheaply, and probably most often to Democrats who wanted some minor measures passed to which the Radical leaders would pay no attention. It was found best not to pay the larger sums until the governor had signed the bill. A member accepted a gift as a matter of course, and no attention was paid to charges of bribery.[2093]

The election of February 4 and 5, 1868, at which the constitution was rejected on account of the whites' refraining from voting, was in many counties a farce. The legislature, in order to remedy any defects in the credentials of the Radical candidates, passed a number of general and special acts legalizing the "informal" elections of February 4 and 5, and declaring the Radical candidates elected. In seven counties no votes had been counted, but this made no difference.[2094]

The presiding officers addressed the members as "Captain, John, Mr. Jones," etc. Quarrels and fights were frequent. One member chased another to the secretary's desk, trying to kill him, but was prevented by the secretary. In the cloak-rooms and halls were fruit and peanut stands, whiskey shops, and lunch counters. Legislative action did not avail to clear out the sovereign negroes and keep the halls clean. Political meetings were held in the capitol, much to the damage of the furniture.[2095]

The only measures that excited general interest among the members were the bond-issue bills. Other legislation was generally purely perfunctory, except in case an election law or a Ku Klux law was to be passed. There was much special legislation on account of individual members, such as granting divorces, ordering release from jail, relieving from the "pains" of marriage with more than one woman, trick legislation, vacating offices, etc. When, as in Mobile, the Democrats controlled too many minor offices, the legislature remedied the wrong by declaring the offices vacant and giving the governor authority to make appointments to the vacancies. The Mobile offices were vacated three times in this way. In connection with the Mobile bill it was found that fraudulent interpolations were sometimes made in a bill after its passage. It would be taken from the clerk's desk, changed, and then returned for printing.[2096]

Some of the laws passed failed of their object because of mistakes in spelling. A committee was finally appointed to correct mistakes in orthography. The House and Senate constantly returned engrossed bills to one another for correction. A joint committee to investigate the education of the clerks reported that they were unable to ascertain which of the clerks was illiterate, though they discharged one of them. The minority report declared that the fault was not with the clerks, but with the members, many of whom could not write. Finally a spelling clerk was employed to rewrite the bills submitted by the members.[2097] For making fun of the ignorance of the Radical members, Ryland Randolph, a Democratic member, elected in a by-election, was expelled from the House.

In 1868 the Radicals, fearing the result of the presidential election and afraid of the Ku Klux movement which was beginning to be felt, passed a bill giving to itself the power to choose presidential electors. The negroes were aroused by the Radical leaders who were not in the legislature, and sufficient pressure was brought to bear on the governor to induce him to veto the measure.[2098]

According to the constitution, the Senate was to classify at once after organization, so that half should serve two years and half four years. No one was willing to take the short term and lose the $8 per diem and other privileges. So in 1868 the Senate refused to classify. Again in 1870 it refused to classify. The Radicals permitted the usurpation because it was known that the Democrats would carry the white counties in case the classification were made and elections held. Then, too, it was feared that in 1870 the Democrats would have a majority in the lower house; hence a Radical Senate would be necessary to prevent the repudiation of the railroad indorsation. So all senators held over until 1872, and by shrewd manipulation and the use of Federal troops the Senate kept a Radical majority until 1874.[2099]

County and other local officials were incompetent and corrupt. The policy of the whites in abstaining from voting on the constitution (1868) gave nearly every office in the state to incompetent men. In the white counties it was as bad as in the black, because the Radicals there despaired of carrying the elections and put up no regular candidates. However, in every county some freaks offered themselves as candidates, and at "informal" elections received, or said they received, a few votes. After the state was admitted in spite of the rejection of the constitution, these people were put in office by the legislature. Had the white people taken part in the elections instead of relying upon the law of Congress in regard to ratification and not refrained from voting, they could have secured nearly all the local offices in the white counties. No other state had such an experience; no other state had such a low class of officials in the beginning of Reconstruction. But the very incapacity of them worked in favor of better government, for they had to be gotten rid of and others appointed. Not a single Bureau agent whose name is on record failed to get some kind of an office. In Perry County most of the officials were soldiers of a Wisconsin regiment discharged in the South; the circuit clerk was under indictment for horse stealing. In Greene County a superintendent of education had to be imported under contract from Massachusetts, there being no competent Radical. In Sumter County one Price, who had a negro wife, was registrar, superintendent of education, postmaster, and circuit clerk. A carpet-bagger, elected probate judge, went home to Ohio, after the supposed rejection of the constitution, and never returned. The sheriff and the solicitor were negroes who could not read. Another Radical was at once circuit clerk, register in chancery, notary public, justice of the peace, keeper of the county poorhouse, and guardian ad litem. In Elmore County the probate judge was under indictment for murder. In Montgomery, Brainard, the circuit clerk, killed his brother-in-law and tried to kill Widmer, the collector of internal revenue. The Radical chancellor and marshal were scalawags--one a former slave trader, the other a former divine-right slave owner. The sheriff of Madison could not write. In Dallas the illiterate negro commissioners voted for a higher rate of taxation, though their names were not on the tax books; their scalawag associates voted for the lower rate. Thus it was all over Alabama.

In July, 1868, the Reconstruction legislature continued in force the code of Alabama, which provided for heavy official bonds. But the adventurers could not make bond. So a special law was passed authorizing the supreme court, chancellors, and circuit judges to "fix and prescribe" the bonds of all "judicial and county officials." Later the suspended code went into effect, and the Democrats succeeded in turning out many newly elected Radicals who could not make bond. Almost at the beginning the Democrats began the plan of refusing to make bond for Radicals, and thus made it almost impossible for the latter to hold office until the legislature again came to their relief.

There were many vacancies and few white Radicals to fill them; the scalawags thought that the negro ought to be content with voting. Smith had many vacancies to fill by appointment. Most of the paying ones were given to Radicals, and many of the others were given to Democrats, whom he preferred to negroes. In the black counties the property owners and the Ku Klux began to make the most obnoxious officials sell out and leave, and Governor Smith would, by agreement, appoint some Democrat to such vacancies. This custom became frequent, and, in spite of himself, Smith's "lily white" sentiments were undermining the rule of his party.[2100] An argument used by the more liberal of the Radicals in favor of removal of disabilities was that in some counties the local offices could not be filled on account of the operation of the disfranchising laws.[2101]

The Federal judiciary was represented by Richard Busteed, an Irishman, who was made Federal judge in 1864. He came South in 1865 with bloodthirsty threats and at once began prosecutions for treason. More than 900 cases were brought before him. There were no convictions, but a rich harvest of costs. He was ignorant of law, and in the court room was arbitrary and tyrannical to lawyers, witnesses, and prisoners. It was charged that he was in partnership with the district attorney. Bribery was proven against him. The leading lawyers, both Radical and Democratic, asked Congress to impeach him, but to no effect. It was his custom to solicit men to bring causes before him. A Selma editor was brought before him and severely lectured for writing a disrespectful article about Busteed's grand jury. There was one Democratic lawyer whom Busteed feared--General James H. Clanton. Clanton paid no attention to Busteed's vagaries, but sat on the bench with him, advised him and made him take his advice, won all his cases, and bullied Busteed unrebuked. The latter was afraid he would be killed if he angered Clanton, and Clanton played upon his fears. At first a great negrophile, Busteed became more and more obnoxious to the Radical party, and was soon accused of being a Democrat and removed. Another Federal officer, Wells, the United States district attorney, had been discharged from the Union army on the ground of insanity.[2102]

The new constitution made all judgeships elective and also provided for the election of a solicitor in each county. The result was seen in the number of incapable judges and illiterate solicitors. The probate judge of Madison was "a common jack-plane carpenter from Oregon," and his sheriff could not write. Many of the judges had never studied law and had never practised. Public meetings were held to protest against incompetent judges and to demand their resignations. Governor Smith usually appointed better men, and not always those of his own party, to the places vacated by resignation, sale, or otherwise. Before the war the state judiciary had stood high in the estimation of the people, and judicial officers were forbidden by public opinion to take part in party politics. Under the Reconstruction government the judicial officials took an active part in political campaigns, every one of them, from Busteed and the supreme court to a county judge, making political speeches and holding office in the party organization. From a party point of view the scarcity of white Radicals made this necessary. Notaries public, who also had the powers of justices of the peace, were appointed by the governor. Their powers were great and indefinite, and in consequence they almost drove the justices out of activity. Some of them issued warrants running into all parts of the state, causing men to be brought forty to fifty miles to appear before them on trifling charges.

The Reconstruction judiciary generally held that a jury without a negro on it was not legal. In the white counties such juries were hard to form. Northern newspaper correspondents wrote of the ludicrous appearance of Busteed's half negro jury struggling with intricate points of maritime law, insurance, constitutional questions, exchange, and the relative value of a Prussian guilder to a pound sterling. When they were bored they went to sleep. The negro jurors recognized their own incompetence and usually agreed to any verdict decided upon by the white jurors. Had the latter been respectable men, no harm would have been done, but usually they were not. A negro jury would not convict a member of the Union League--he had only to give the sign--nor a negro prosecuted by a white man or indicted by a jury; but many negroes prosecuted by their own race were convicted by black juries. For many years it was impossible to secure a respectable Federal jury on account of the test oath required, which excluded nearly all Confederates of ability. As an example of the working of a local court, the criminal court of Dallas may be taken. The jurisdiction extended to capital offences. Corbin, the judge, was an old Virginian who had never read law. He refused to allow one Roderick Thomas, colored, to be tried by a mixed jury, demanding a full negro jury. The prosecution was then dropped because all twelve negroes drawn were of bad character. Corbin then entered on the record that Thomas was "acquitted." Thomas had stolen cotton, and the fact had been proven; but he soon became clerk of Corbin's court and later took Corbin's place as judge, with another negro for clerk. Nearly every Radical official in Dallas County was indicted for corruption in office by a Radical or mixed jury, but negro juries refused to convict them.[2103]

An elaborate militia system was provided for by the carpet-baggers, with General Dustin of Iowa, a carpet-bagger, as major-general. The strength of organization was to be in the black counties, but Governor Smith persistently refused to organize the negro militia. He was afraid of the effect on his slender white following, and he did not think that the negro ought to do anything but vote. He was also afraid of Democratic militia, afraid that it would overturn the hated state government. He tried to get several friendly white companies to organize, but failed, and during the rest of his term relied exclusively upon Federal troops. Even before the Reconstruction government was set going it was seen that the whites would be restless. Forcing the rejected constitution and the low-class state government upon the people against the will of the majority had a very bad effect. They recognized it as the government de facto only, and they so considered it all during the Reconstruction. Then the Ku Klux movement began, and north Alabama especially was disturbed for several years. Smith sometimes threatened to call out the militia, but never did so. However, he kept the Federal troops busy answering his calls. After the election of Grant the army was always at the service of the state officials, who used detachments as police, marshals, and posses. The government had not the respect of its own party, and had to be upheld by military force. It was a fixed custom to call in the military when the law was to be enforced--governor, congressmen, marshals, sheriff, judge, justice of peace, politicians, all calling for and obtaining troops. It was distasteful duty to the Federal officers and soldiers. Though the people knew that only the soldiers upheld the state government, yet they were not, as a rule, sorry to see the soldiers come in. The military rule was preferable to the civil rule, and acted as a check on Radical misgovernment. The whites were often sorry to see the soldiers leave, even though they were instruments of oppression. Wholesale arrests by the army were not as frequent during Smith's administration as later.[2104]

The state government was shaken to its foundations by the presidential campaign and election of 1868. The whites had waked up and gone to work in earnest. It was the first election in which the races voted against one another. Busteed, Strobach, and other carpet-baggers toured the North, predicting chains and slavery for the blacks and butchery for the "loyal" whites in case Seymour were elected. The Union League whipped the negroes into line. Brass bands lent enthusiasm to Radical parades. The negroes were afraid that they would "lose their rights" and be reënslaved, that their wives would have to work the roads and not be allowed to wear hoopskirts. The Radicals urged upon the Democrats the view that those who did not believe in negro suffrage could not take the voter's oath. Many Democrats refused to register because of the oath. There were numbers who would not vote against Grant because they believed that he was the only possible check against Congress. Others felt that so far as Alabama was concerned the election was cut and dried for Grant. But nevertheless a majority of the whites determined to resist further Africanization in government. Their natural leaders were disfranchised, but a strong campaign was made. The hope was held out of overthrowing the irregular revolutionary state government and driving out the carpet-baggers in case Seymour became President. North Alabama declared that a vote for Grant was a vote against the whites and formed a boycott of all Radicals. The south Alabama leaders tried to secure a part of the negro vote, and urged that imprudent talk be avoided and that carpet-baggers and scalawags be let alone, and the negroes be treated kindly as being responsible for none of the evils. Orders purporting to be signed by General Grant were sent out among the negroes, bidding them to beware of the promises of the whites and directing them to vote for him. Some rascally whites made large sums of money by selling Grant badges to the blacks. They had been sent down for free distribution; but the negroes, ordered, as they believed, by the general, purchased his pictures at $2 each, or less. The carpet-baggers were afraid of losing the state. Some left and went home. Others wanted the legislature to choose electors. Still others wanted to have no election at all, preferring to let it go by default; but the higher military commanders, Terry and Grant, were sympathetic and troops were so distributed over the state as to bring out the negro vote. Army officers assisted at Radical political meetings, and the negro was informed by his advisers that General Grant had sent the troops to see that they voted properly. The result was that the state went for Grant by a safe majority.[2105]

During the administration of Smith the incompatibility of the elements of the Radical party began to show more clearly. The native whites began to desert as soon as the convention of 1867 showed that the negro vote would be controlled by the carpet-baggers. The genuine Unionist voters resented the leadership of renegade secessionists. The carpet-baggers demanded the lion's share of the spoils and were angered because Smith vetoed some of their measures; the scalawags upheld him. The carpet-baggers felt that since they controlled the negro voters they were entitled to the greater consideration. Their manipulation of the Union League alarmed the native Radicals.

The negroes were becoming conscious of their power and were inclined to demand a larger share of the offices than the carpet-baggers wanted to give them. Some of the negroes were desirous of voting with the whites. Negro leaders were aspiring to judgeships, to the state Senate, to be postmasters, to go to Congress. Even now the party was held together only by the knowledge that it would be destroyed if divided.[2106]

In 1868 Governor Smith and other Radical leaders, convinced that they were permanently in power, secured the passage of a law providing for the gradual removal of disabilities imposed by state law. The same year a complete registration had been made for the purpose of excluding the leading whites. After disabilities were removed, so far as state action was concerned there was no advantage to Radicals in a registration of voters. On the other hand, it threatened to become a powerful aid to the Democrats, who began to attend the polls and demand that only registered voters be allowed to cast ballots, thus preventing repeating. Consequently, as a preparation for the first general election in the fall of 1870, the legislature passed a law forbidding the use of registration lists by any official at any election. No one was to be asked if he were registered. No one was to be required to show a registration certificate. The assertion of the would-be voter was to be taken as sufficient. And it was made a misdemeanor to challenge a voter, thus interfering with the freedom of elections. After this a negro might vote under any name he pleased as often as he pleased. This election system was in force until 1874, when the Democrats came into power.[2107]

To the Forty-first Congress in 1869 returned only one of the former carpet-bag delegation, C. W. Buckley. Two so-called Democrats were chosen, two scalawags, and a new carpet-bagger. P. M. Dox, one of the Democrats, was a northern man who had lived in the South before the war, who was neutral during the war; and after the war he posed as a "Unionist." Congressional timber was scarce on account of the test oath and the Fourteenth Amendment, so Dox secured a nomination. His opponent was a negro, which helped him in north Alabama. The other Democrat, W. C. Sherrod, who was also from north Alabama, had served in the Confederate army. His opponent was J. J. Hinds, one of the most disliked of the carpet-baggers. Robert S. Heflin, one of the scalawags, was from that section where the Peace Society flourished during the war. At first a Confederate, in 1864 he deserted and went within the Federal lines. Charles Hays, the other scalawag, became the most notorious of the Reconstruction representatives in Congress. He was a cotton planter in one of the densest black districts and managed to stay in Congress for four years. He is chiefly remembered because of the Hays-Hawley correspondence in 1874. Alfred E. Buck of Maine had been an officer of negro troops. He served only one term and after defeat passed into the Federal service. He died as minister to Japan in 1902. This delegation was weaker in ability and in morals than the carpet-bag delegation to the Fortieth Congress.

In the fall of 1870 Governor Smith was a candidate for reëlection against Robert Burns Lindsay, Democrat. The hostility of Smith to carpet-baggers weakened the party. The ticket was not acceptable to the whites because Rapier, a negro, was candidate for secretary of state. The genuine Unionists were becoming ultra Democrats, because of the prominence given in their party to former secessionists like Parsons, Sam Rice, and Hays, and to negroes and carpet-baggers. Lindsay was from north Alabama, which supported him as a "white man's candidate." The negroes had been taught to distrust scalawags, as being little better than Democrats. Smith was asked why he ran on a ticket with a negro. He replied that now that was the only way to get office. He also called attention to the fact that in north Alabama the Democrats drew the color line, and called themselves the "white man's party," while in the black counties they made an earnest effort to secure the negro vote. The Union League, through Keffer, sent out warning that whatever would suit "Rebels" would not suit "union men," who must treat their "fine professions as coming from the Prince of Darkness himself," and that if Lindsay were elected, the "condition of union men would be like unto hell itself." Smith and Senator Warner said that the Democrats would repudiate railroad bonds, destroy the schools, and repeal the Amendments and the Reconstruction Acts. In the white counties the Radical speakers were generally insulted, and soon the white districts were given up as permanently lost. The Black Belt alone was now the stronghold of the Radicals. Strict inspection here prevented the negroes from voting Democratic, as some were disposed to do. Negroes in the white counties voted for Democrats with many misgivings. An old man told a candidate, "I intend to vote for you; I liked your speech; but if you put me back into slavery, I'll never forgive you." Federal troops were again judiciously distributed in the Black Belt and in the white counties when there was a large negro vote. As a result the election was very close, Lindsay winning by a vote of 76,977 to 75,568.

Ex-Governor Parsons, who had now become a Radical, advised Smith not to submit to the seating of Lindsay, but to force a contest, and meanwhile to prevent the vote from being counted by the legislature. So, by injunction from the supreme court, the Radical president of the Senate, Barr, was forbidden to count the votes for governor. But the houses in joint session counted the rest of the votes, and E. H. Moren, Democrat, was declared elected lieutenant-governor. A majority of the House was anti-Radical. The old Senate, refusing to classify, held over. As soon as Moren was declared elected, Barr arose and left, followed by most of the Radical senators, saying that he was forbidden to count the vote for governor. Moren at once appeared, took the oath, and the joint meeting not having been regularly adjourned, he ordered the count for governor to proceed. A few Radical senators had lingered out of curiosity, and were retained. Thus Lindsay was counted in, and at once took the oath of office. By the advice of Parsons, Smith, though willing to retire, refused to give place to Lindsay. The Radical senators recognized Smith; the House recognized Lindsay. Smith brought Federal troops into the state-house to keep Lindsay out, and for two or three weeks there were rival governors. Finally Smith was forced to retire by a writ from the carpet-bag circuit court of Montgomery.[2108]

Lindsay was born in Scotland and educated at the University of St. Andrews. He lived in Alabama for fifteen years before the war, opposed secession, and gave only a half-hearted support to the Confederacy. As he said: "I would rather not tell my military history, for there was very little glory in it.... I do not know that I can say much about my soldiering."[2109] Lindsay was a scholar, a good lawyer, and a pure man, but a weak executive. In this respect he was better than Smith, however, who was supported by a unanimous Radical legislature. Under Lindsay the Senate was Radical and the House doubtful. The Radical auditor held over; Democrats were elected to the offices of treasurer, secretary of state, attorney-general, and superintendent of public instruction. W. W. Allen, a Confederate major-general, was placed in command of the militia and organized some white companies.

The Democratic and independent majority of the House had some able leaders, but many of the rank and file were timid and inexperienced. Several thousand of the best citizens were still disfranchised. There were too many young men in public office, half-educated and inexperienced. In the House there were only fourteen negroes. So far as the legislature was concerned, there would be a deadlock for two years. The Radicals would consent to no repeal of injurious legislation, and thus the evil effects of the laws relating to schools, railroads, and elections continued. Governor Lindsay tried to bring some order into the state finances, but the Democrats were divided on the subject of repudiating the fraudulent bond issues, while the Radicals upheld all of the bond stealing. Lindsay was blamed by the people for not dealing more firmly with the question, but, as a matter of fact, he did as well as any man in his position could do.

One cause of weakness to the administration was the fact that some of the attorneys for the railroads were prominent Democrats who insisted upon the recognition of the fraudulent bonds. These attorneys were few in number, but they caused a division among the leaders. The selfish motive was very evident, though for the sake of appearance they talked of "upholding the state's credit," "the fair name of Alabama," etc. It is difficult to see that their conduct was in any way on a higher plane than that of the carpet-baggers, who issued the bonds with intent to defraud. In order to protect themselves they mercilessly criticised Lindsay.

Most of the local officials held over from 1868 to 1872; in by-elections it was clearly shown that the Radicals had lost all except the Black Belt, where they continued to roll up large majorities, but even here they were losing by resignation, sale of offices, Ku Kluxing, and removal. The more decent carpet-baggers were leaving for the North; the white Radicals were distinctly lower in character than before, having been joined by the dregs of the Democrats while losing their best white county men. Lindsay made many appointments, thus gradually changing for the better the local administration. Owing to the peculiar methods by which the first set of officials got into office, the local administration was never again as bad, except in some of the black counties, as it was in 1868-1869. As the personnel of the Radical party ran lower and lower, more and more Democrats entered into the local administration. But in spite of the fact that they secured representation in the state government, they were unable to make any important reforms until they gained control of all departments. The results of one or two local elections may be noticed. In Mobile, which had a white majority, the carpet-bag and negro government was overthrown in 1870. Though prohibited by law from challenging fraudulent voters, the Democrats intimidated the negroes by standing near the polls and fastening a fish-hook into the coat of each negro who voted. The negroes were frightened. Rumor said that those who were hooked were marked for jail. Repeating was thus prevented; many of them did not vote at all. In Selma the Democrats came into power. Property was then made safe, the streets were cleaned, and the negroes found out that they would not be reënslaved. Governor Lindsay endeavored to reform the local judicial administration by getting rid of worthless young solicitors and incompetent judges, but the Radical Senate defeated his efforts. He was unable to secure any good legislation during his term, and all reform was limited to the reduction of administration expenses, the checking of bad legislation, and the appointment of better men to fill vacancies.[2110]

To the Forty-second Congress Buckley, Hays, and Dox were reëlected. The new congressmen were Turner, negro, Handley, Democrat, and Sloss, Independent. Turner had been a slave in North Carolina and Alabama and had secured a fair education before the war. He had at first entered politics as a Democrat, and advised the negroes against alien leaders. To succeed Warner, George Goldthwaite, Democrat, was chosen to the United States Senate.

In 1872 the Democrats nominated for governor, Thomas H. Herndon of Mobile, who was in favor of a more aggressive policy than Lindsay. He was a south Alabama man and hence lost votes in north Alabama. David P. Lewis, the Radical nominee, was from north Alabama and in politics a turncoat. Opposed to secession in 1861, he nevertheless signed the ordinance and was chosen to the Confederate Congress; later he was a Confederate judge; in 1864 he went within the Federal lines; in 1867-1868 he was a Democrat, but changed about 1870. He was victorious for several reasons: the administration was blamed for the division in the party and for not reforming abuses; Herndon did not draw out the full north Alabama vote; the presidential election was held at the same time and the Democrats were disgusted at the nomination of Horace Greeley; Federal troops were distributed over the state for months before the election, and the Enforcement Acts were so executed as to intimidate many white voters. The full Radical ticket was elected. All were scalawags, except the treasurer. In a speech, C. C. Sheets said of the Radical candidates, "Fellow-citizens, they are as pure, as spotless, as stainless, as the immaculate Son of God."[2111]

In both houses of the legislature the Democrats had by the returns a majority at last. The Radicals were in a desperate position. A United States Senator was to be elected, and Spencer wanted to succeed himself. He had spent thousands of dollars to secure the support of the Radicals, and a majority of the Radical members were devoted to him. Most scalawags were opposed to his reëlection, but it was known that he controlled the negro members, and to prevent division all agreed to support him. But how to overcome the Democratic majorities in both houses? Parsons was equal to the occasion. He advised that the Radical members refuse to meet with the Democrats and instead organize separately. So the Democrats met in the capitol and the Radicals in the United States court-house, as had been previously arranged. The Senate consisted of 33 members and the House of 100. The Democrats organized with 19 senators and 54 members in the House, all bearing proper certificates of election, and each house having more than a quorum. At the court-house the Radicals had 14 senators and 45 or 46 representatives who had certificates of election. There were 4 negroes in the Senate and 27 in the House. In neither Radical house was there a quorum; so each body summoned 5 Radicals who had been candidates, to make up a quorum. It was hard to find enough, and some custom-house officials from Mobile had to secure leave of absence and come to Montgomery to complete the quorum.

The regular (Democratic) organization at the capitol counted the votes and declared all the Radical state officials elected. Lewis and McKinstry, lieutenant-governor, accepted the count and took the oath and at once recognized the court-house body as the general assembly. Lindsay had recognized the regular organization, but had taken no steps to protect it from the Radical schemes. The militia was ready to support the regular body, but Lewis was more energetic than Lindsay. He telegraphed to the nearest Federal troops, at Opelika, to come; when they came, he stationed them on the capitol grounds. He proposed to the Democrats that they admit the entire Radical body, expelling enough Democrats to put the latter in a minority. Upon their refusal, he told the court-house body to go ahead with legislation. Some of the Radicals--one or two whites and four or five negroes--were dubious about the security of their per diem and showed signs of a desire to go to the capitol. These were guarded to keep them in line, and were also paid in money and promises of Federal offices. The weak-kneed negroes were shut up in a room and guarded, to keep them from going to the capitol.

Spencer was determined to be elected and would not wait for the trouble to be settled. On December 3, 1872, the court-house Radicals chose him to succeed himself. The next thing was to prevent the regular assembly from electing a Senator who might contest. Two of that body had died; one or two were indifferent and easily kept away from a joint session; others were called away by telegrams (forged by the Radicals) about illness in their families; three members were arrested before reaching the city; one member was drugged and nearly killed. By such methods a quorum was defeated in both houses at the capitol until December 10, when the absent members came in, and F. W. Sykes was chosen to the United States Senate.

Meanwhile Lewis and the Radical members had appealed to President Grant to be sustained. By his direction United States Attorney-General Williams prepared a plan of compromise skilfully designed to destroy the Democratic majority in the House and produce a tie in the Senate. Lewis was assured that the plan would be supported by the Federal authorities. The plan was as follows: (1) Both bodies were to continue separate organizations until a fusion was effected. (2) On a certain day, both parties of the House were to meet in the capitol, and in the usual manner form a temporary organization--but the Democrats whose seats were contested but who had certificates of election were to be excluded, while the Radical contestants were to be seated. This would give a Radical majority. Then the contests were to be decided and a permanent organization formed. (3) In the same way the Senate was to be temporarily organized, the regularly elected Democrats being excluded, while their contestants were seated, except in the case of the Democratic senator from Conecuh and Butler, who was to sit but not to vote. By this arrangement there was a bare chance that the Democrats might secure a majority of one in the Senate. (4) As soon as the fusion was thus made, the permanent organization was to be effected. Nothing was said about the legality of past legislation by each body, but the understanding was that all was to be considered void.

Meanwhile Lewis had tried to obtain forcible possession of the capitol, but Strobach, the sheriff whom he sent, was arrested by order of the House and imprisoned until he apologized. The Democrats were plainly informed that the "gentle intimations of the convictions of the law officer of the United States" would be enforced by the use of Federal troops, and there was nothing to do but give way. The plan was put into operation on December 17.

In the House contests the Democrats lost their majority, as was intended. In the Senate they lost all except one by the plan itself. To unseat Senator Martin from Conecuh would be a flagrant outrage. So his case went over until after Christmas. The Democrats elected the clerks, doorkeepers, and pages. The Radicals still kept up their separate organization, not meaning to abide by the fusion unless they could gain the entire legislature. During the vacation Lieutenant-Governor McKinstry wrote to Attorney-General Williams asking if the Federal government would support him in case he himself should decide as to the rightful senator from Conecuh. He explained that a majority of the committee on elections was going to report in favor of Martin, Democrat, who held the certificate of election. Further, he said that if the Senate were allowed to vote on the question, the Democratic senator would remain seated. He proposed to decide the contest himself upon the report made, and not allow the Senate to vote. Williams was now becoming weary of the conduct of the Radicals; he told McKinstry that the course proposed was contrary to both parliamentary and statute law, and said that Federal troops would not be furnished to support such a ruling. Moreover, he expressed strong disapproval of the course of the Radicals in keeping up their separate organization contrary to the plan of compromise. He ordered the marshal not to allow the Federal court-house to be used by the Radicals, but the marshal paid no attention to the order.

After the holidays the Democrats and anti-Spencer Radicals hoped to bring about a new election for Senator. On February 11, 1873, Hunter of Lowndes, a Radical member of the House, proposed that the legislature proceed to the election of a Senator. Parsons, the speaker, refused to entertain the motion and ordered Hunter under arrest. McKinstry refused to consider the Senate as permanently organized until Martin was disposed of, fearing a joint session. The Radical solicitor of Montgomery secured several indictments against Spencer's agents for bribery, and summoned several members of the legislature as witnesses. Parsons ordered Knox, the solicitor, and Strobach, the sheriff, to be arrested for invading the privileges of the House. Next, Hunter, who had been arrested for proposing to elect a Senator, had Parsons arrested for violation of the Enforcement Acts in preventing the election of a Senator. Busteed, Federal judge, discharged Parsons "for lack of evidence."

In the Senate the Radicals matured a plan to get rid of Martin. A caucus decided to sustain McKinstry in all his rulings. It was known that Edwards, a Democratic senator, wanted to visit his home. So Glass, a Radical senator, proposed to pair with him, and at the same time both get leave of absence for ten days. Edwards and Glass went off at the same time, in different directions. A mile outside of town, Glass left the train, returned to Montgomery, and went into hiding. Now was the time. The reports on the Martin contest were called up. A Democrat moved the adoption of the majority report in favor of Martin; a Radical moved that the minority report be substituted in the motion. The Democrats were voting under protest because they wanted debate and wanted Edwards, one of the writers of the majority report, to return. In order to move a reconsideration, Cobb, a Democrat, fearing treachery, voted with the Radicals; Glass appeared before his name was reached, broke his pair, and voted; McKinstry refused to entertain Cobb's motion for a reconsideration, and though the effect of the voting was only to put the minority report before the Senate to be voted upon, McKinstry declared that Martin by the vote was unseated and Miller admitted. The temporary Radical majority sustained him in all his rulings, and thus the Democrats lost their majority in the Senate. The whole thing had been planned beforehand; McKinstry had arms in his desk; the cloak-rooms were filled with roughs to support the Radicals in case the Democrats made a fight; the Federal troops were at the doors in spite of what Williams had said. McKinstry now announced that the Senate was permanently organized and the schism healed. Glass was expelled by the Masonic order for breaking the pair. Spencer was safe, since the Republican Senate at Washington was sure to admit him.

In the course of the contest Spencer had spent many thousands of dollars in defeating dissatisfied Radical candidates for the legislature and in purchasing voters. The money he used came from the National Republican executive committee, from the state committee, and from the government funds of the post-office at Mobile and the internal revenue offices in Mobile and Montgomery. More than $20,000 of United States funds were used for Spencer, who, after his election, refused to reimburse the postmaster and the two collectors, who were prosecuted and ruined. Every Federal office-holder was assessed from one-fifth to one-third of his pay during the fall months for campaign expenses. They were notified that unless they paid the assessments their resignations would be accepted. Spencer refused to pay the bills of a negro saloon-keeper who had, at his orders, "refreshed" the negro members of the legislature. But of those who voted for Spencer in the Radical "legislature" more than thirty secured Federal appointments. Of other agents about twenty secured Federal appointments. One of them, Robert Barbour, was given a position in the custom-house at Mobile with the understanding that he would not have to go there. His pay was sent to him at Montgomery.

As a preparation for the autumn presidential contest, Spencer worked upon the fears of Grant and secured the promise of troops, though he had some difficulty. His letters are not at all complimentary to Grant. Finally he wrote, "Grant is scared and will do what we want." The deputy marshals manufactured Ku Klux outrages and planned the arrest of Democratic politicians, of whom scores were gotten out of the way, for a week or two, but none were prosecuted. There was no election of Senator other than that of Spencer by the irregular body and that of Sykes by the regular organization at the capitol, neither of which took place on the day appointed by law. The Senate admitted Spencer on the ground that Governor Lewis had recognized the court-house aggregation. Sykes contested and of course failed; the Senate refused for several years to vote his expenses, as was customary. In 1885, Senator Hoar secured $7,132 for Spencer as expenses in the contest. In 1875 the Alabama legislature, Radical and Democratic, united in an address to the United States Senate, asking that Spencer's seat be declared vacant.[2112]

Under Lewis the Radical administration went to pieces. The enormous issues of bonds, fraudulent and otherwise, by Smith and Lewis which destroyed the credit of the state; ignorant negroes in public office; drunken judges on the benches; convicts as officials; teachers and school officers unable to read; intermarriage of whites and blacks declared legal by the supreme court; the low character of the Federal officials; constant arrests of respectable whites for political purposes; use of Federal troops; packed juries; purchase and sale of offices; defaulters in every Radical county; riots instigated by the Radical leaders; heavy taxes,--all these burdens bore to the ground the Lewis administration before the end of its term. The last year was simply a standstill while the whites were preparing to overthrow the Radical government, which was demoralized and disabled also by constant aid and interference from the Federal administration.

Lewis appointed a lower class of officials than Smith had appointed, among them many ignorant negroes for minor offices. Carpet-baggers and scalawags were becoming scarce. The white counties under their own local government were slowly recovering; the formerly wealthy Black Belt counties were being ruined under the burden of local, state, and municipal taxation.[2113]

To the Forty-second Congress Alabama, now entitled to eight representatives, sent four scalawags, Pelham, Hays, White, and Sheets; one negro, Rapier; and three Democrats or Independents, Bromberg, Caldwell, and Glass; carpet-baggers were now at a discount; scalawags and negroes wanted all the spoils.

In the spring of 1874 the whites began to organize to overthrow Radical rule. They were firmly determined that there should not be another Radical administration. In the Radical party only a few whites were left to hold the negroes together. Some of the negroes were disgusted because of promises unfulfilled; others were grasping at office; the Union League discipline was missed; "outrages" were no longer so effective. The Radicals had no new issues to present. The state credit was destroyed; the negroes no longer believed so seriously the stories of reënslavement; the northern public was becoming more indifferent, or more sympathetic toward the whites. The time for the overthrow of Radical rule was at hand.

SEC. 2. SOCIAL CONDITIONS DURING RECONSTRUCTION

In previous chapters something has been said of social and economic matters, especially concerning labor, education, religion, and race relations. Some supplementary facts and observations may be of use.

The central figure of Reconstruction was the negro. How was his life affected by the conditions of Reconstruction? In the first place, crime among the blacks increased, as was to be expected. Removed from the restraints and punishments of slavery, with criminal leaders, the negro, even under the most African of governments, became the chief criminal. The crime of rape became common, caused largely, the whites believed, by the social equality theories of the reconstructionists. Personal conflicts among blacks and between blacks and whites were common, though probably decreasing for a time in the early '70's. Stealing was the most frequent crime, with murder a close second. During the last year of negro rule the report of the penitentiary inspectors gave the following statistics:--

================================================ CRIMES | WHITES | NEGROES ----------------------------|----------|-------- Murder | 11 | 43 Assault | 2 | 21 Burglary and grand larceny | 15 | 199 Arson | 1 | 4 Rape | 0 | 6 Other felonies | 2 | 14 |----------|-------- Total | 31 | 287 ================================================

Thus 1 white to 16,936 of population was in prison for felony; 1 black to 2294; felonies, 1 white to 8 blacks; misdemeanors, 1 white to 64 blacks. In Montgomery jail were confined about 12 blacks to 1 white. These statistics do not show the real state of affairs, since most convictions of blacks were in cases prosecuted by blacks. To be prosecuted by a white was equivalent to persecution--so reasoned the negro jury in the Black Belt. Under the instigation of low white leaders, the negroes frequently burned the houses and other property of whites who were disliked by the Radical leaders. Several attempts, more or less successful, were made to burn the white villages in the Black Belt; hardly a single one wholly escaped. For several years the whites had to picket the towns in time of political excitement. The worst negro criminals were the discharged negro soldiers, who sometimes settled in gangs together in the Black Belt. More charges were made of crimes by blacks against whites, than by whites against blacks. Most criminals did not go to prison after conviction. The Radical legislature passed a law allowing the sale of the convict's labor to relatives. A good old negro could buy the time of a worthless son for ten cents a day and have him released.

The marriage relations of the negroes were hardly satisfactory, judged by white standards. The white legislatures in 1865-1866 had declared slave marriages binding. The reconstructionists denounced this as a great cruelty and repealed the law. Marriages were then made to date from the passage of the Reconstruction Acts. Many negro men had had several wives before that date. They were relieved from the various penalties of desertion, bigamy, adultery, etc. And after the passage of these laws, numerous prominent negroes were relieved of the penalties for promiscuous marriages. Divorces became common among the negroes who were in politics. During one session of the legislature seventy-five divorces were granted. This was cheaper than going through the courts, and more certain. The average negro divorced himself or herself without formality; some of them were divorced by their churches, as in slavery.

Upon the negro woman fell the burden of supporting the children. Her husband or husbands had other duties. Children then began to be unwelcome and foeticide and child murder were common crimes. The small number of negro children during the decade of Reconstruction was generally remarked. Negro women began to flock to towns; how they lived no one can tell; immorality was general among them. The conditions of Reconstruction were unfavorable to honesty and morality among the negroes, both male and female. The health of the negroes was injured during the period 1865-1875. In the towns the standard of living was low; sanitary arrangements were bad; disease, especially consumption and venereal diseases, killed large numbers and permanently injured the negro constitution.

Negro women took freedom even more seriously than the men. It was considered slavery by many of them to work in the fields; domestic service was beneath the freedwomen--especially were washing and milking the cows tabooed. To live like their former mistresses, to wear fine clothes and go often to church, was the ambition of a negro lady. After Reconstruction was fully established the negro women were a strong support to the Union League, and took a leading part in the prosecution of negro Democrats. Negro women never were as well-mannered, nor, on the whole, as good-tempered and cheerful, as the negro men. Both sexes during Reconstruction lost much of their cheerfulness; the men gradually ceased to go "holloing" to the fields; some of the blacks, especially the women, became impudent and insulting toward the whites. While many of the negroes for a time seemed to consider it a mark of servility to behave decently to the whites, toward the close of Reconstruction and later conditions changed, and the negro men especially were in general well-behaved and well-mannered in their relations with whites except in time of political excitement.

The entire black race was wild for education in 1865 and 1866, but most of them found that the necessary work--which they had not expected--was too hard, and by the close of Reconstruction they were becoming indifferent. The education acquired was of doubtful value. There was in 1865-1867 a religious furor among the negroes, and several negro denominations were organized. The chief result, as stated at length elsewhere, was to separate from the white churches, discard the old conservative black preachers, and take up the smooth-tongued, ranting, emotional, immoral preachers who could stir congregations. The negro church has not yet recovered from the damage done by these ministers. Negro health was affected by the night meetings and religious debauches. In general it may be said that the negro speech grew more like that of the whites, on account of schools, speeches, much travel, and contact with white leaders. The negro leaders acquired much superficial civilization, and very quickly mastered the art of political intrigue.

A very delicate question to both races was that of the exact position of the negro in the social system. The convention of 1867 had contained a number of equal-rights members, and there had been much discussion. A proposition to have separate schools was not made obligatory. A measure to prevent the intermarriage of the races was lost, and the supreme court of the state declared that marriages between whites and blacks were lawful. Laws were passed to prevent the separation of the races on street cars, steamers, and railway cars, but the whites always resisted the enforcement of such laws. Some negroes, especially the mulattoes, dreamed of having white wives, but the average pure negro was not moved by such a desire. When the Coburn investigation was being made, Coburn, the chairman, was trying to convince a negro who had declared against the policy and the necessity of the Civil Rights Bill. The negro retorted by asking how he would like to see him sitting by his (Coburn's) daughter's side. The black declared that he would not like to be sitting by Miss Coburn and have some young man who was courting her come along and knock over the big black negro; further he did not want to eat at the table nor sit in cars with the whites, preferring to sit by his own color. Some of the negroes were displeased at the proposed Civil Rights Bill, thinking that it was meant to force the negro to go among the whites.[2114] There were negro police in the larger towns, Selma, Montgomery, and Mobile, who irritated the whites by their arrests and by discrimination in favor of blacks. The negroes, in many cases, had ceased to care for the good opinion of the whites and, following disreputable leaders, suffered morally. The color line began to be strictly drawn in politics, which increased the estrangement of the races, though individuals were getting along better together.[2115]

The white carpet-baggers and scalawags never formed a large section of the Radical party and constantly decreased in numbers,--the natives returning to the white party, the aliens returning to the North. The native Radicals were found principally in the cities and holding Federal offices, and in the white counties were still a few genuine Republican Unionist voters. The carpet-baggers were found almost entirely in the Black Belt and in Federal offices. As their numbers decreased the general character was lowered. Some of the white Radicals were sincere and honest men, but none of this sort stood any chance for office. If they themselves would not steal, they must arrange for others to steal. The most respectable of the Radicals were a few old Whigs who had always disliked Democrats and who preferred to vote with the negroes. Such a man was Benjamin Gardner, who became attorney-general in 1872.

All white Radicals suffered the most bitter ostracism--in business, in society, in church; their children in the schools were persecuted by other children because of their fathers' sins. The scalawag, being a renegade, was scorned more than a carpet-bagger. In every possible way they were made to feel the weight of the displeasure of the whites. Small boys were unchecked when badgering a white Radical. One Radical complained that the youngsters would come near him to hold a spelling class. The word would be given out: "Spell damned rascal." It would be spelled. "Spell damned Radical." That would be spelled. "They are nearly alike, aren't they?"

The blacks always felt that the carpet-bagger was more friendly to them than the scalawag was, for the carpet-baggers associated more closely with the negroes. The alien white teachers boarded with negroes; some of the politicians made it a practice to live among the negroes in order to get their votes. The candidates for sheriff and tax collector in Montgomery went to negro picnics, baptizings, and church services, drank from the same bottle of whiskey with negroes, had the negro leaders to visit their homes, where they dined together, and the white women furnished music. The carpet-baggers seldom had families with them, and, excluded from white society, began to contract unofficial alliances among the blacks. Scarcely an alien office-holder in the Black Belt but was charged with immorality and the charges proven. Numbers were relieved by the legislature of the penalties for adultery. The average Radical politician was in time quite thoroughly Africanized. They spoke of "us niggers," "we niggers," at first from policy, later from habit. When Lewis was elected, in 1872, a white Radical cried out in his joy, "We niggers have beat 'em." Two years later white Radicals marched with negro processions and sang the song:--

"The white man's day has passed; The negro's day has come at last."[2116]

One effect of Reconstruction was to fuse the whites into a single homogeneous party. Before the war political divisions were sharply drawn and feeling often bitter, so also in 1865-1867 and to a certain extent during the early period of Reconstruction. At first there was no "Solid South"; within the white man's party there were grave differences between old Whig and old Democrat, Radical and Conservative. There were different local problems before the whites of the various sections that for a while prevented the formation of a unanimous white man's party. There were the whites of the Black Belt, the former slaveholders, who wished well to the negro, favored negro education, and looked upon his political activity as a joke, but who came nearer than any other white people to recognizing the possibility of permanent political privileges for the black. They believed that they could sooner or later regain moral control over their former slaves and thus do away with the evils of carpet-bag government.

It must be said that the former slaveholding class had more consideration, then, before, and since, for the poor negro than for the poor white, probably because the negroes only were always with them. The poorest whites felt that the negro was not only their social but also their economic enemy, and, the protection of the owner removed, the blacks suffered more from these people than ever before. The negro in school, the negro in politics, the negro on the best lands--all this was not liked by the poorest white people, whose opportunities were not as good as those of the blacks. Between these two extremes was the mass of the whites, displeased at the way negro suffrage, education, etc., was imposed, but willing to put up with the results if good. The later years of Reconstruction found the temper of the whites more and more exasperated. They were tired of Reconstruction, new amendments, force bills, Federal troops, and of being ruled as a conquered province by the least fit. Every measure aimed at the South seemed to them to mean that they were considered incorrigible, not worthy of trust, and when necessary to punish some whites, all were punished. And strong opposition to proscriptive measures was called fresh rebellion. "When the Jacobins say and do low and bitter things, their charge of want of loyalty in the South because our people grumble back a little seems to me as unreasonable as the complaint of the little boy: 'Mamma, make Bob 'have hisself. He makes mouths at me every time I hit him with my stick.'" Probably the grind was harder on the young men, who had all life before them and who were growing up with slight opportunities in any line of activity. Sidney Lanier, then an Alabama school-teacher, wrote to Bayard Taylor, "Perhaps you know that with us of the young generation in the South, since the war, pretty much the whole of life has been merely not dying." Negro and alien rule was a constant insult to the intelligence of the country. The taxpayers were non-participants. Some people withdrew entirely from public life, went to their farms or plantations, kept away from towns and from speech-making, waiting for the end to come. I know old men who refused for several years to read the newspapers, so unpleasant was the news. The good feeling produced by the magnanimity of Grant at Appomattox was destroyed by his southern policy when President. There was no gratitude for any so-called leniency of the North, no repentance for the war, no desire for humiliation, for sackcloth and ashes and confession of wrong. The insistence of the Radicals upon a confession of depravity only made things much worse. There was not a single measure of Congress during Reconstruction designed or received in a conciliatory spirit.

Under the Reconstruction régime the political, and to some extent the social, morality of the whites declined. Constant fighting fire with fire scorched all. While in one way the bitter discipline of Reconstruction was not lost, yet with it the pleasantest of southern life went out. During the war and Reconstruction there was a radical change in southern temperament toward the severe. Hospitality has declined; old southern life was never on a strictly business basis, the new southern life is more so; the old individuality is partially lost; class distinctions are less felt. The white people, by the fires of Reconstruction, have been welded into a homogeneous society.[2117] The material evils of Reconstruction are by no means the more lasting: the state debt may be paid and wasted resources renewed; but the moral and intellectual results will be the permanent ones.

In spite of the misgovernment during the Reconstruction, there was in most of the white counties a slow movement toward industrial development. All over the state in 1865-1868 and 1871-1874 there were poor crops. The white counties gradually found themselves better able to stand bad seasons. The decadence of the Black Belt gave the white farmer an opportunity. The railroads now began to open up the mineral and timber districts, rather than the cotton counties. During the last four years of negro rule the coal and iron of the northern part of the state began to attract northern capital and rapid development began. The timber of the white counties now began to be cut. In the mines, on the railroads, and in the forests many whites were profitably employed. Farmers in the white counties, having thrown off the local Reconstruction government, began to organize agricultural societies, Patrons of Husbandry, Grangers, etc., and to hold county fairs. The Radicals maintained that this granger movement was only another manifestation of Ku Klux, and it was, in a way.[2118]

Immigration from the North or from abroad amounted to nothing; disturbed political conditions and the presence of the negroes prevented it. Nor did the Reconstruction rulers desire immigration; their rule would be the sooner overthrown. There were two movements of emigration from the state--culminating in 1869 and in 1873-1874. Those were the gloomiest periods of Reconstruction, especially for the white man in the Black Belt. Most of the emigrants went to Texas, others to Mexico, to Brazil, to the North, and to Tennessee and Georgia, where the whites were in power. It was estimated that in this emigration the state lost more of its population than by war.

In the Black Belt the condition of the whites grew worse. Frequent elections demoralized negro labor, and crops often failed for lack of laborers. The more skilful negroes went to the towns, railroads, mines, and lumber mills. On account of this migration and the gradual dying off of slavery-trained negroes, negro agricultural labor was less and less satisfactory. The negro woman often refused to work in the fields. The white population of the Black Belt decreased in comparison with the numbers of blacks. The whites deserted the plantations, going to the towns or gathering in villages. Taxation was heavy, tax sales became frequent. One of the worst evils that afflicted the Black Belt was the so-called "deadfall." A "deadfall" was a low shop or store where a white thief encouraged black people to steal all kinds of farm produce and exchange it with him for bad whiskey, bad candy, brass jewellery, etc. This evil was found all over the state where there were negroes. Whites and industrious blacks lost hogs, poultry, cattle, corn in the fields, cotton in the fields and in the gin. The business of the "deadfall" was usually done at night. The thirsty negro would go into a cotton field and pick a sack of cotton worth a dollar, or take a bushel of corn from the nearest field, and exchange it at a "deadfall" for a glass of whiskey, a plug of tobacco, or a dime. These "deadfalls" were in the woods or swamps on the edges of the large plantations. It was not possible to guard against them. The "deadfall" keepers often became rich, the harvests of some amounting to 30 to 80 bales of cotton for each, besides farm produce. Careful estimates by grand juries and business men placed the average annual loss at one-fifth of the crop. A bill was introduced into the legislature to prohibit the purchase after dark of farm produce from any one but the producer. The measure was unanimously opposed by the Radicals, on the ground that it was class legislation aimed at the negroes. The debates show that some of them considered it proper for a negro to steal from his employer. After the Democratic victory in 1874 a law was passed abolishing "deadfalls."[2119]