A Just and Lasting Peace: A Documentary History of Reconstruction (31 page)

(May 16, 1867)

No subject during the debates over Reconstruction elicited more vitriol, north and south, than the confiscation of Southern farms and plantations and the redistribution of property to the freedpeople. Whereas some Radicals, most notably Senator Charles Sumner and Representative Thaddeus Stevens, spoke freely and loosely of redistributing “forty acres” of land to the freedmen, the editor of
The Nation
forcefully opposed this proposal. The magazine noted that not only was land redistribution impractical, but that it would discourage white Southerners from forming new governments, distract the freedmen from imbibing free labor ideals, and, most grievously, corrupt local politics.

Mr. Sumner gave expression in the Senate, two months ago or more, to the opinion that the grant of “a piece of land” to each colored head of a family “was necessary to conclude the glorious work of emancipation.” In answer to enquiries as to where “the piece of land” was to come from, he said it might come from land sold for taxes, and might
have
come out of the property of applicants for pardon as a condition of the pardon. The exact size of “the piece of land” was not settled by Mr. Sumner. This important detail, as well as we can make out, was left to Mr. Phillips, who has decided that the superficial area of the farm which each negro head of a family ought to have, in order to complete the work of emancipation, is forty acres. Mr. Phillips, as might be expected, is not troubled with Mr. Sumner's doubts about where the land ought to be got. He has determined offhand, and with a confidence which makes the difficulty that has been found in governing the world perfectly incomprehensible, that the required number of forty-acre farms ought to be secured by wholesale confiscation of rebel property. But even Mr. Phillips does not seem to have given the subject all the attention it merits; for there was not a word said about it at the last meeting of the Anti-Slavery Association until, towards the close, Colonel Higginson delivered himself of his views upon it, which seems to have wakened Mr. Phillips up to a sense of his neglect, for he drew a confiscation resolution on the spot, and it was passed, of course, without a moment's delay. Whether Mr. Sumner originated the idea or not, it is certain that it has made considerable progress, and, as might be expected, finds great favor amongst the Southern Radicals, and is now a topic at loyalist meetings. At the Hunnicutt convention, a few weeks ago, it was received with enthusiasm; and if the great body of the freedmen throughout the South are not greatly taken by it when it is urged upon their attention, it will show that they surpass in wisdom and self-restraint and honesty any landless class that has ever yet appeared in history. The Southern whites already begin to be considerably alarmed by it, especially in the States in which the blacks are in the majority, and Governor Perry uses it freely, and we may be sure others will do the same, to dissuade the white population from voting for a convention under the Reconstruction act. The amount of mischief which the agitation of the scheme may do, either in postponing reconstruction or preventing the great body of the late rebels from taking part in it, is, we think, incalculable. The argument of the advocates of the confiscation scheme is substantially this: Land is necessary to complete the glorious work of emancipation—forty acres, or thereabouts, for each head of a family; in most States the whites take every pains to prevent negroes acquiring land, and will not sell it even to those who are able to purchase it; the Government does not own any land in the rebel States, or not enough; it is, therefore, right and expedient to seize the land of persons who have taken part in the rebellion or aided it—that is, of the entire landholding class—and divide it amongst the poor, both black and white.

Now, we totally deny the assumption that the distribution of other people's land to the negroes is necessary to complete the work of emancipation. We admit that farmers make the best citizens of a republic, and that the possession of land does exercise a conservative and elevating influence on character, but so does the possession of railroad stock or Government bonds or good clothes. But there is no mysterious virtue in land which makes the manner in which it is acquired of no consequence; like everything else, whether it will prove a blessing or a curse to the holder depends on how he gets it. . . . Farms taken from the rightful owners by the strong hand of power as a piece of political vengeance wreaked without the intervention of courts of justice, in defiance of the forms of law and to the ruin of the innocent and helpless, have never, we are glad to say, brought anything to the takers but political and moral blight and damnation. No community built up in this way ever enjoyed its booty, or ever held it without being depraved by it. This mode of political propagandism has been tried by the English in Ireland, by the Turks in Turkey, by the Spaniards in America, and it has in every case debauched those who tried it. At the South the white has for two hundred years robbed the black, and he is atoning for it to-day in sackcloth and ashes; if we now set the black to rob the white, we may be sure that like retribution will speedily follow. The negro is just entering on free life, and if he is fit to vote, as we believe he is if evil-minded demagogues will let him alone, he is also fit to win a farm for himself as a poor white man has to win it. If it be deemed desirable that he should have land without waiting to earn it, it ought to be given him out of Government lands, and it would be better for the nation to spend five hundred millions in settling him on them rather than allow or encourage him to use his ballot for the purpose of helping himself to his neighbor's goods.

Nor does the proposal to allow the poor whites to share with him in the fruits of confiscation deprive the scheme of one particle of its repulsiveness. Equality is a good thing, but there are certain transactions which it cannot redeem. A division of rich men's land amongst the landless, as the result of a triumph at the polls, would give a shock to our whole social and political system from which it would hardly recover without the loss of liberty. Every election would thenceforward threaten property, and men of property, we may be sure, would find, as they have found under similar circumstances in all countries, the means of protecting themselves—but not through constitutional government.

What the negroes want is education. Let us vote millions for schools, tens of millions for books and papers, but not one cent for gifts or largesses. No man in America has any right to anything which he has not honestly earned, or which the lawful owner has not thought proper to give him. We do not want to see reproduced, in the middle of the nineteenth century and in a Christian republic, the depraved and worthless mob who, in the declining days of Rome, purchased with their votes the privilege of living in idleness on the spoil of the public enemy. We are thus earnest in calling attention to this matter because there are a hundred indications that the talk of confiscation is already unsettling the minds of the negroes, turning their steps away from the paths of peaceful industry, and teaching them to look for comfort and independence in the wilds of political intrigue.

(June 27 and 28, 1867)

In June 1867, two Alabama newspapers, the
Mobile Advertiser and Register
and the
Montgomery Daily Advertiser,
jousted over whether Alabamians should comply with the Reconstruction Act. Opposing the bill on Constitutional grounds was John Forsyth, editor of the
Advertiser and Register,
the state's leading conservative Democratic newspaper (he referred to it as the “S.S.S. bills,” for Sherman-Shellabarger Senate Bill). Responding to Forsyth, editor W. W. Screws of the
Daily Advertiser
argued that boycotting a state convention would empower the Radicals and their black supporters to disfranchise whites and “reconstruct the State by the vote of the negroes alone.”

 

 

JOHN FORSYTH: “THE ARGUMENT OF NUMBERS”

Mobile (Ala.) Advertiser and Register, June 27, 1867

The Montgomery Advertiser publishes a list of the Alabama papers that stand with itself in favor of the Congressional plan of reconstruction, pure and simple. The argument of numbers is the poorest of arguments. In seasons of passion, majorities are almost certain to be wrong. . . .

Those who go for the S.S.S. bills in their totality, simply submit to be radicalized by Radicalism. No amount of pretty talk, warm professions, or plausible excuses, serve to veneer the stubborn fact of abandonment of the Constitution of the Nation, and the hopes of liberty in the future to the pressure of Radical threats and Radical force.

If we know ourselves, we think only of the good of the country. But we do confess to a strong and mastering personal ambition to keep our own record clear and to do no act in these times of trial that will bring the blush of shame to our cheeks or to those who bear our name. We will not, therefore, ratify and endorse and pronounce good a system of legislation expressly framed to degrade the South and dethrone constitutional liberty in our whole country, and thereby give rule and power to the open enemies of free government. Others may bend the knee to expediency and abandon principle, submit to tyranny in the blind hope that humility will purchase liberty in the end, but as for us and our house we will serve only the constitution of our country, in our hearts and in our deeds.

 

 

W. W. SCREWS: “WHY OPPOSE A C
ONVENTION?”

Montgomery (Ala.) Daily Advertiser,
June 28, 1867

A few men in this state oppose the holding of a Convention. Why, it is hard to tell. If they believe that negro suffrage can be prevented by it they are very credulous. Let's see. There is to be an election soon as to whether or not the people want a Convention. Every negro that is registered will vote. At the same time there will be an election for delegates to the Convention who will assemble in this city in case the vote is in favor of a Convention. Every registered negro will vote. The constitution adopted by that Convention, will be submitted to all the voters, black and white. Suppose the majority of voters is against a Convention or elect members that will reject the terms offered. What next? The term of the present Congress lasts until December year and if the present offer is rejected it will disfranchise the great body of [unreadable] whites, and reconstruct the State by the vote of the negroes alone. Its temper has been sufficiently shown already to convince any one that it will not take a step backward.

(July 1867)

During Reconstruction, religious sects like the Philadelphia-based African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church and the interdenominational American Missionary Association (A.M.A.) of New York made considerable inroads proselytizing and teaching among the freedpeople. Numerous Northern denominations and philanthropic groups sent teachers and preachers to the South and, with Freedmen's Bureau support, established churches and schools for the former slaves. Sarah Louise “Sallie” Daffin (c. 1838–?) held a strong commitment to uplifting the freedpeople. Descended from a free black Philadelphia middle-class family, and a graduate of Philadelphia's Institute for Colored Youth, during the Civil War and afterward Daffin taught at several freedmen's schools in Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, and Tennessee. In her 1867 article, Daffin, then working at an A.M.A. school in Arlington, Virginia, implored Northern black congregations to send teachers with “high moral and religious reputations” to educate the freedpeople.

The continually increasing educational demands of the Freedmen upon us, necessitates immediate action on the part of every Church, Association and individual.

Numbers of white churches and benevolent associations of the North have been unsparing in their efforts and means in carrying on a work among our people South, whose vastness can claim no limitation.

At this time we can perceive indications of the importance of the colored people themselves taking hold of the work, and endeavoring to assist in removing the great stumbling block of ignorance out of the way, that Christianity and Education may be firmly rooted on a soil where once slavery and its accompanying legions of crime and woe held precedence.

Our colored churches should be aroused to a proper sense of their duty, and send forth their own teachers into the fields of the South.
The great need is colored teachers.
Not those who can only boast of education—but we want those whose moral and religious reputations will bear any test that will be likely to meet them at every point.

Let care be exercised by our Bishops in sending ministers and missionaries to the Freedmen. Let them be men of ability and influence—men who are the true representatives of our race, and of whom we will not be ashamed.

(July 9, 1867)

Stevens, who on March 2, 1867, had introduced both the Reconstruction Act and the Tenure of Office Act, labored tirelessly to implement Congressional Reconstruction and to rein in the president. On July 8, he presented a bill in the House that added detail and clarified both the first Reconstruction Act and the second Reconstruction Act (enacted March 23, 1867). In this speech the following day, Stevens cogently stated his belief that by seceding and waging a war for independence, the Confederates had forfeited their Constitutional rights as Americans. Castigating Johnson for overstepping his presidential powers, Stevens underscored his opinion that Congress, and only that body, could reconstruct the former Confederate states. “They are our property; their citizens are our subjects.”

Mr. Stevens, of Pennsylvania. I trust that in that time I shall be able to state the position which I hold to be the correct one with regard to this bill, without attempting to answer the various remarks which have been made by gentlemen on the other side.

I confess, sir, that a small portion of the blame with reference to the acts of the President since we adjourned, may be attributed to Congress, in that it used improper language in the acts heretofore passed. And this, it appears to me, was owing to an indistinct conception of the condition of the territory for which we were legislating. If we had then all agreed, as we have since, that the States that were lately in rebellion were conquered territory and as such subject to the power of this nation, and had treated them accordingly, we should have had very little trouble in reconstructing government in the South upon the principle of the admission of new States. But, sir, we were not all perfectly agreed in our understanding of the laws of nations as applicable to this question; nor is it wonderful that we should thus have differed, when even some of the judges of the Supreme Court have differed in their opinions upon this subject. I will state what I suppose to have been our real position.

The nation was afflicted with a civil war which for a time was an insurrection. Some twelve million of the inhabitants of the country claimed that they no longer belonged to this nation. They set up an independent government. They established all the machinery of government, both of a national government and of States under that national government. They raised large armies to defend their pretensions. We, at the period when we declared against them a blockade, admitted them to be, not an independent nation, but an independent belligerent, rising above the rank of insurrectionists, and entitled to all the privileges and subject to all the liabilities of an independent belligerent. The nations of Europe so treated them. We so treated them in our dealings with prisoners of war. In short, there could be no doubt of the fact.

We were, then, at war as two independent nations; and it depended upon the will of the conqueror whether the defeated party should be treated merely as a vanquished nation, or whether we should, in addition, punish them as individuals for the violation of the sovereign rights of the nation. We conquered. What did we conquer? We conquered the confederate government. We conquered all the States forming the confederate government. We conquered a government that had been erected and maintained by those who declared that they owed no allegiance to the Government of the United States. For these conquered rebels to pretend that they had any rights under a Constitution which they had thus repudiated and attempted to destroy, and that the States which had been arrayed in hostility to the nation were still states within this Union, as asserted to-day by the gentleman from Wisconsin, [Mr. ELDRIDGE,] seems to me a bold absurdity. Yet that was the doctrine of the President. That is the doctrine which some gentlemen maintain here.

Under military law we treated them as conquered provinces. What is the law with regard to provinces conquered from a foreign independent belligerent? When you conquer territory from a foreign nation or an independent belligerent, the territory thus conquered is governed by military power, by the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, being in this case the President, until the legislative power of the nation shall have spoken and directed what laws shall govern. But the moment the legislative power of the nation interposes the military authority ceases to have sway, and the Commander-in-Chief has no more to say in regard to this matter than a corporal of militia. He is to do just what the legislative power orders him to do, and he can do nothing else.

A great deal is said about the President acting as Commander-in-Chief of the Army. Until he was superseded in his authority by Congress I have no fault to find with his maintaining military rule in the South. But he assumed to exercise legislative powers; he assumed to establish governments; he assumed to appoint civil officers; he assumed that these conquered provinces should come back at once to the enjoyment of all the rights of loyal States under the Constitution, and be entitled to all the privileges which they had possessed prior to their rebellion. Now, sir, as I said before, nothing of this kind came within the power of the Commander-in-Chief. What is the duty of the Commander-in-Chief? If Congress sends an army to quell the Indian war in Nebraska, what is the Commander-in-Chief to do? Congress orders that army to go there. It raises and equips the army. What do the officers do? They pass no act of legislation; they go there and order the troops when to charge and when to retreat; they drill them; they put them through military exercises. But they can do no act that looks like regulating the object of the war or the object with which the army is sent there. Why, sir, the Constitution of the United States makes express reservation of all such power to Congress. It expressly declares that Congress shall have power “to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces.” The Executive has nothing to do with it; the judiciary have nothing to do with it. Congress is the only and the controlling power. Congress has enacted the rules and articles of war. Could the President of the United States interfere with those? Could he add new articles, new rules, new regulations? Certainly not. The military officers that were sent as commanders in the States were simply appointed as agents of Congress. To be sure, the original bill provided a military supervision simply, and we had intended to follow it up with a law putting reconstruction into the hands of civilians. That is what I should have been disposed to do now, (and I had prepared a bill with that view,) using the military simply as a police and appointing civilians to reconstruct. But if Congress chooses to take officers of the Army and assign them to this duty, they then become the agents of Congress, and neither the President nor any officer under him has any right to interfere or do anything but execute what Congress commands.

Now, sir, it being reduced, I think, to a plain proposition that Congress is the only power that can reconstruct and reclaim these outlying States, the President had no right to call upon the Attorney General or any other officer of the Government to interfere in any manner in such reconstruction. There is but one appeal, and that is either to the agents appointed by Congress or to Congress. It has been well decided in Dorr's case that all power on this subject is vested in Congress. But, sir, we need not look to any such decision. It ought to be known before this time by the President of the United States—it is known, I trust, by the scholars in every colored school in this District—that the Constitution of the United States does not apply to any Territory. The States are parties to the Constitution; they are the contracting powers; they are the substantive body. Territory, however, acquired by purchase or conquest or by inheritance is the property only of that substantive power, of that power bound up by the Constitution; and that power alone is governed by the Constitution, but does not extend for any purpose into any Territory or conquered province. Why, then, talk about the Constitution regulating the action of Congress in a province, in a Territory, in a conquered State, whether conquered from a legitimate State or an illegitimate State?

I may be asked how we would treat the confederate States of America. Just as Congress chooses. They are our property; their citizens are our subjects. Their lives, their liberties are subject to the supreme will of this body, always controlled by the laws of nations, the laws of war, and the laws of humanity. There is no other power on earth; there is no branch of the Government; there is no power in the Government, except what I have mentioned, that has any right to interfere or to say one word on the subject. If you wish to punish the malefactors for violated majesty, that is another matter. Possibly you might do so through your courts of justice. At least you might attempt it, but I do not suppose you can do it. But there is one thing clear: that territory not being yet declared by Congress to be in a state of peace or restoration is under the military authority of the Government, and any tribunal constituted by the military authority, any military tribunal, any court-martial can try any one of those who belonged to the belligerent forces. Jefferson Davis, or any man of the army of the confederacy conquered by us, is this day liable to trial by military tribunal and to sentence. Mr. Speaker, while I would not be bloody-minded, yet if I had my way I would long ago have organized a military tribunal under military power, and I would have put Jefferson Davis and all the members of his cabinet on trial for the murders at Andersonville, the murders at Salisbury, the shooting down our prisoners of war in cold blood. Every man of them is responsible for those crimes.