Capitol Men (40 page)

In Washington he had his share of defenders. The
New National Era
disparaged those senators who might hold Pinchback's early life or character against him. "The period of slavery was itself so monstrous," noted the paper, "that the blackest charges and the most obstreperous
rumor grow clean under its awful enormities. Some become great rowers in Harvard or Cambridge who would have been boatmen without the opportunities of an education, others gamble with cards because they are reduced by the laws to the level of a position where they cannot contend for the management of men." Senator Blanche Bruce, who had made a personal crusade of helping to place qualified black men in government, also spoke for Pinchback. The two were friends with somewhat similar backgrounds—successful businessmen, Tidewater roots, mixed parentage, a riverboat apprenticeship. "As a father, I know him to be affectionate; as a husband, the idol of a pleasant home and cheerful fireside; as a citizen, loyal, brave, and true," asserted Bruce.

When the Senate resumed its work after the Christmas holiday, Pinchback returned to Washington with news that the Kellogg administration had reaffirmed him as its choice for senator. He went personally to lobby the president, although he was disappointed to find Grant hesitant to take a strong position on the matter. The
Era
admonished the president and other leading Republicans, noting that their candidates would need the black vote in the upcoming elections and that blacks would not view favorably a well-liked party loyalist like Pinchback being kept "knocking at the door."

In late January 1874 a new complication arose. A man named George Sheridan, a Democrat who claimed election to a House seat from Louisiana, was staying in the capital with Henry Clay Warmoth, who was serving as Sheridan's adviser. On January 19 they received a visit from E. E. Norton, a Louisiana Republican, who told them a strange story. He claimed that he was Kellogg's original choice for U.S. senator, but when Kellogg informed Pinchback of this, Pinchback objected in strenuous terms that he had already spread $10,000 among Kellogg's legislators in order to secure the job. Kellogg then promised Pinchback that Norton would reimburse him for his outlay. Pinchback took Norton's $10,000 but then double-crossed both Norton and Kellogg by successfully winning the post for himself. Only with great difficulty had Norton retrieved his money from Pinchback. How much of this story was true is hard to fathom—it's unclear why Kellogg would certify Pinchback for the Senate if he was not his preferred choice—but its outline, even in vague form, was highly damaging because it seemed to confirm, as many already suspected, that Pinchback was an unscrupulous opportunist.

Warmoth sent Sheridan to relate the story to Senator Morton, who listened with interest but questioned its veracity. Sheridan, on a tip from
Warmoth, then suggested that Morton simply ask Pinchback about it, predicting that Pinchback was so vain, he would likely admit to cleverly outmaneuvering Norton. Morton did so, and apparently heard enough to be upset, for he abruptly asked the Senate to remove Pinchback's resolution for admission until the Committee on Privileges and Elections could again review his credentials. "I will state to the Senate that since the adjournment of the Senate on last Friday evening I have received information which I think makes it important ... that an investigation touching the circumstances of this election be made." Morton specified that his concern was not with the Kellogg government's legitimacy, but with Pinchback's personal conduct. According to Warmoth, "That was really, and in fact the end of Pinchback's ever being a Senator of the United States."

Pinchback was furious when he realized that someone within the Kellogg government had revealed the Norton story, and he lashed out, threatening to share some secrets of his own. "Let the investigation proceed," he declared. "Of one thing I am certain and that is that the result of a fair investigation will be to make me a minor figure in the grand cavalcade of damned scoundrels who will have to march in my van." Pinchback's outburst and his threat to tell all about his political confreres caused nervous Republicans in Washington to remonstrate with Morton; back in Louisiana, meanwhile, Pinchback's supporters cautioned the senator-elect to tread lightly; anyone familiar with the melodrama of Louisiana politics knew that an inquiry into members of the Kellogg government would lead nowhere good.

Pinchback did have another option: in the campaign of November 1872 he had been elected congressman at large; due to conflicting ballot results, both he and his rival, George Sheridan, claimed victory, although neither had been seated by Congress. With his Senate appointment now blocked, Pinchback renewed his interest in the congressional seat, again citing the fact that since the Republican faction had won the Louisiana statehouse and had been recognized by President Grant, his own election must be valid. If Kellogg had won in November 1872, so had Pinchback. As a result, Congress asked Sheridan and Pinchback to defend their claims before the House. Both addressed that body on June 8, 1874. Sheridan suggested that Republican fraud had brought about the appearance of two Louisianians claiming the same House seat and mocked Pinchback's interest in both Senate and House seats as unseemly, asserting that the ex-governor would be all too glad to pocket both salaries, if possible.

Pinchback in turn defended his loyalty to the Republican Party, even citing his willingness to attempt, at the suggestion of the party's chairman, the ill-fated "railroad race" from New York to New Orleans. "I demand simple justice, I am not here as a beggar" he told the House. "I do not care so far as I am personally concerned whether you give me my seat or not. I will go back to my people and come here again; but I tell you to preserve your own consistency. Do not make fish of me while you have made flesh of everybody else."

There was, however, a technical problem: if Pinchback was accepted by the House, he would have to drop his bid to be a senator, the latter obviously the more prestigious position. Characteristically, he decided to go for broke, renewing his efforts to gain the Senate seat. On January 12, 1875, though the House still had not resolved the claims of Sheridan and Pinchback, the Kellogg legislature reelected Pinchback as U.S. senator, and on February 8 the Senate's Committee on Privileges and Elections at last advised the full body that Louisiana had given him a right to his seat. Morton told his colleagues that with this new certification, Pinchback had a "prima facie title to admission."

The full Senate, however, continued to stall, citing the fact that the Committee on Privileges and Elections was not functioning at full strength. Pinchback, understandably exasperated, petitioned the Senate to act speedily on his claim. Prompting his demand was the fact that Nina had tired of Washington. No doubt in part because her husband's political status was ambiguous, she had never found her legs socially in the city, and despite support from some of the local black elite, she informed her husband that she preferred to wait out his ongoing Senate challenge at home in New Orleans.

On February 15,1875, Morton once again called on the Senate to resolve the issue. It was a month after the national outrage concerning the federal bayonet entry into the Louisiana legislature, and the fall 1874 congressional election results had brought a Democratic majority to the U.S. House; therefore, for the Republicans, Pinchback's admission to the Senate had higher stakes than before. With a newfound party fervor arising from defeat, they were more eager than ever to seat him and help legitimize the Kellogg government, thus also granting legitimacy to the president's handling of the recent crisis in Louisiana. But the Democrats, recognizing this game, were uncooperative. The matter remained unresolved by mid-March, when the Senate agreed to table the issue until December. In the meantime, since Pinchback had largely
abandoned his quest for seating in the House, that position was awarded to Sheridan, who was sworn in on March 3,1875.

In December 1875, nearly two years since Pinchback had first arrived triumphantly in Washington to claim the Senate seat, W. L. McMillen, who had long been his competitor for it, abruptly removed his application and acknowledged the Kellogg government in Louisiana. But so determined were some Southern senators to halt Pinchback that they first tried to block McMillen's withdrawal; then, when that failed, they dug up minor procedural obstructions to slow Pinchback's appeal. The following month, January 1876, brought another surprise: the Louisiana Republican Party, frustrated with Pinchback's inability to win confirmation, had gone ahead and elected another man, J. B. Eustis, to the seat. The Senate reacted unkindly to Eustis's claim; the body was already consumed with resolving Pinchback's.

This latest delay proved too much for the usually subdued Senator Bruce. Pinchback's appointment, Bruce stated, was the only action taken by the Kellogg legislature that had been challenged by Washington, and to disregard Pinchback was to disavow all federal support for Republicanism in Louisiana. He pointed out that since Louisiana had a majority of almost fifty thousand black people, the charge that Pinchback did not represent the state's population was meritless. "Under these circumstances," Bruce concluded, "holding the question in abeyance is, in my judgment, an unconstitutional deprivation of the right of a state, and a provocation to popular disquietude; and in the interest of good-will and good government, the most judicious and consistent course is to admit the claimant to his seat."

In an executive session of the Senate, Bruce used more forceful language. Louisiana's white Republican senator, Joseph R. West, had just told the Senate that the confirmation of a U.S. judge, E. C. Billings, was a matter of urgent importance to the Republican Party in his state. Bruce blew up, indignant that Louisiana's white senator could demand urgent attention to a judicial appointment when Pinchback's case had lingered for so long. Citing the unconscionable delay, Bruce accused the Senate Republicans of abusing the trust of black Americans, waving the bloody shirt when convenient to help keep themselves in power, but behaving disingenuously when it came time to allow a deserving Southern black man the Senate seat to which he'd been elected. Blacks might no longer be slaves, Bruce complained, but politically they were still in bondage to the Northern wing of the Republican Party—good enough to help elect
white men to office, but not hold office with them. He vowed to depart the Senate and return to the Mississippi Delta. "I can make $15,000 a year on my plantations, and the $5,000 I receive here is of no importance ... Nor am I particularly anxious to remain here with a lot of old-time abolitionists."

Bruce then stunned his fellow Republicans by turning on the president. "General Grant has deceived us long enough. He is untruthful, treacherous, and insincere. My people will make terms with the whites who owned the country. They are honest and truthful and will protect the negroes in their rights." When a colleague tried to remind Bruce that Grant had been a loyal friend to the freedmen, Bruce would have none of it, insisting that he and other Southern blacks understood the dynamic of Republican hypocrisy; and he vowed to repeat his criticism of Grant in the open Senate. "You have upheld the Kellogg government in one breath," he scolded, "yet have refused a seat in this body to the Senator elected by the legislature, which you have solemnly declared to be lawful. I do not want to belong to a body which stultifies itself in this manner, and if when the Louisiana case is again called, it be not settled, I will resign my seat in a body which presents this spectacle of asinine conduct."

On March 8, 1876, Bruce got what he demanded: a final vote on Pinchback's appointment. By a close tally of 32-29, Pinchback was rejected. His own and his allies' lobbying efforts had failed to overcome partisan resistance, the persistent doubts about his character, and the simple fatigue many senators felt by now with his presence and the byzantine details of his struggle. In recognition of the three years he had spent in Washington lobbying for his own cause, the Senate awarded him $16,000 in compensation, about what he would have earned, had he held the job.

Thus the remarkable ascent of one of the country's most enigmatic black politicians ended. "[I]n the country the tides were changing," his biographer James Haskins writes, "and now Pinchback had been swept back just as he had been swept forward over a decade earlier. Then, the changing of the tides had heralded a warm season of political power for the black man and of political equality ... But it had been for America an artificial season."

His last hand played, Pinchback did not dally in Washington but went home straightaway to Nina and New Orleans.

O
F THE EX-CONFEDERATE STATES
that the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 sought to reform, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida held on to their Reconstruction governments the longest. The others had, by the mid-187os, already been restored to "home rule" or were in the process of caving in to the forces of redemption. Strenuous efforts to undo Reconstruction were nothing new; the difference now was that the resistance had grown ever more savvy, patient, and sophisticated in its ability to humiliate the occupying foe. In South Carolina, the state's black political leaders, including Robert Brown Elliott, recognized that purposeful measures were needed if the state's Republicans were to ride out the wave of white reaction.

Elliott returned home in February 1874, fresh from his triumphant civil rights speech in Washington, during which he'd gotten the better of former Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens and blazed a name for himself as a Republican orator of note. But when he took the podium at a homecoming gathering in Columbia on February 16, he did not, as some expected, commence a recitation of his now-famous address to Congress. In Washington he had eloquently defended black Americans' claims to Reconstruction's advances; now, at home in South Carolina, he wanted to speak about their responsibility. Deserved or not, the state's politics had become a national subject of ridicule, its Republican leadership deemed incompetent and corrupt. Though the characterizations were obviously exaggerated and inflamed by racial enmity, leaving them unaddressed entailed great risk.