Capitol Men (74 page)

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"
Where peas would not sprout":
Fleming, "'Pap' Singleton, the Moses of the Colored Exodus,"
American Journal of Sociology.
"
I had studied it all out": Senate Report No. 693,
Part 3, 46th Cong., 2nd sess., p. 379; quoted in Fleming, "'Pap' Singleton, the Moses of the Colored Exodus,"
American Journal of Sociology.

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 "
We have Mr. Singleton":
Singleton Scrapbook, Kansas State Historical Society; quoted in Painter,
Exodusters,
p. 129.

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The
Vicksburg Commercial Daily Advertiser
complained: Vicksburg Commercial Advertiser,
May 6, 1879.

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If such a policy [offederally aided black migration]: New York Times,
Feb. 17, 1879.
Windom believed that blacks had the right to depart: Congressional Record,
45th Cong., 3rd sess., p. 483.
"
If the advice of leading colored men":
St. Clair, p. 137.

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They pointed to the example:
Salisbury, p. 191;
New York Times,
Jan. 23, 1879.
To request half a million dollars from Congress:
St. Clair, pp. 143–44; also see Tindall, pp. 169–70.
"
The wretched dupes of Mr. Windom's windy rhetoric": Washington Post,
Dec. 18, 1879.
"
Outrages never before practiced upon any free people":
Salisbury, p. 192.

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Hayes quickly disavowed any "endorsement":
Athearn, pp. 145–46.
"
Fluttering in rags and wretchedness":
Douglass, "Negro Exodus from the Gulf States."

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 "
It is computed that up to date about 5,000 colored persons": New York Times,
Apr. 3, 1879.
One emigrant from Mississippi:
Athearn, p. 26.
"
There was an offer of $80 a month": St. Louis Republican,
quoted in the
New York Herald,
Apr. 3, 1879.
"
It is a matter of sincere regret": Louisianian,
Mar. 29, 1879.

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 "
Until this matter is at least better understood": Louisianian,
Mar. 29, 1879.
Bruce was concerned that the exodus: Louisianian,
Apr. 26, 1879.
"
The sun is the colored man's friend": Missouri Republican,
July 18, 1879, quoted in Athearn, p. 149.
"
The freedman may lack education": New York Herald,
Apr. 11, 1879.
"
Bad as it is":
Douglass, "The Negro as a Man" (speech), Frederick Douglass Papers.

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 "
Some say 'stay and fight it out'":
Brown, William Wells,
My Southern Home,
pp. 247–48.
"
I doubt very much if I had found in the Constitution": New York Herald,
May 13, 1879; see also Painter,
Exodusters,
p. 213.

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The "Exodus Committee," as it was dubbed:
Windom and Blair, "The Proceedings of a Migration Convention and Congressional Action Respecting the Exodus of 1879,"
Journal of Negro History.
The Voorhees committee concluded that "on the whole, [we] express the positive opinion that the condition of the colored people
of the South is not only as good as could have been reasonably expected, but is better than if large communities were transferred to a colder and more inhospitable climate ... When we come to consider the method in which the people were freed ... and that for purposes of party politics these incompetent, ignorant, landless, homeless people, without any qualifications of citizenship ... were suddenly thrown into political power, and the effort was made not only to place them upon an equality with their late masters, but to absolutely place them in front and hold them there by legislation, by military violence ... when we consider these things no philosophical mind can behold their present condition ... without wonder that their condition is as good as it is."
Windom protested the findings:
Salisbury, pp. 193–95.

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 "
Thousands of dollars to find out":
Washington, A
New Negro,
p. 290; Wood, p. 267; Athearn, p. 225.
During 1870–80 the black population of Kansas:
Reports of the U.S. Census, 1860, 1870, 1880.
Their new life was hardly without difficulty:
By the mid-1880s Pap Singleton had soured on Kansas. He founded a new organization, the United Transatlantic Society (UTS), to promote an exodus to Liberia or Ethiopia. The reputation of "Old Pap" attracted numerous members, but the UTS never sailed anywhere. See Fleming, "'Pap' Singleton, the Moses of the Colored Exodus."
"
They do not kill negroes here for voting":
Windom and Blair, "The Proceedings of a Migration Convention and Congressional Action Respecting the Exodus of 1879"; see also Athearn, p. 205.
Fortunately for the new arrivals:
Wood, pp. 274–76.

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 "
The exodus presented proof":
Painter,
Exodusters,
pp. 260–61.
"
The Reconstruction dream of black assimilation":
Harris, "Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi," in
Southern Black Leaders of the Reconstruction Era,
Howard Rabinowitz, ed.

14.
A
Rope of Sand

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 "
Some men are born great":
Reuter, p. 249.
As Martin Gary proclaimed: Charleston News & Courier,
June 4, 1878; Tindall, p. 26.
Tillman ... was at heart: New York World,
Sept. 30, 1895.

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He had been instrumental in founding Clemson:
Thomas G. Clemson was a wealthy widower (he'd married a daughter of John C. Calhoun) and owned a vast estate, formerly owned by Calhoun, named Fort Hill, in western South Carolina. Clemson ceded the site to the state for a public college at his death in 1888, stipulating in a codicil that it would be privately managed, a means of restricting enrollment to whites.
"
They ring out the false":
W. W. Ball, "An Episode in South Carolina Politics," Reconstruction pamphlet collection, Charleston Historical Society.
"
You of the north": Congressional Record,
56th Cong., 1st sess., pp. 2242–45, quoted in Logan, p. 91; see also Press Clippings File, Benjamin Tillman Papers, Clemson University Library.

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 "
That we have good government now":
Tillman, "The Struggles of '76": An Address Delivered at the Red Shirt Reunion, Anderson, South Carolina, Aug. 25, 1909, Reconstruction pamphlet collection, Charleston Historical Society.

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Rainey pointed out: New York Tribune,
Dec. 19, 1878.

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 "
Thereby the time would be frittered away":
Joel W. Bowman to Benjamin H. Brewster, Nov. 2, 1882, South Carolina files, National Archives RG 60 (Justice Department).
"
If you are to go back upon all pledges": Columbia Daily Register,
July 7, 1878; Tindall, p. 29.
"
If you once countenance fraud":
Wade Hampton, quoted in Testimony of E.W.M. Mackay, "South Carolina in 1878,"
Senate Report Serial 1840,
GPO, Washington, 1879.

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Long known as "the Negro's Paradise":
Simkins, p. 153.
"
Shook their heads significantly": The Nation,
Nov. 7, 1878.
The
New York Times
wrote disapprovingly: New York Times,
Jan. 14, 1878.

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With the situation deadlocked:
Hahn, pp. 347–49.
"
Eight hundred red-shirt men":
Towne, pp. 289–91.

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Smalls was again in his element: Louisianian,
Jan. 10, 1880;
New York Times,
Jan. 10, 1880.

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In a speech delivered to Congress:
"An Honest Ballot Is the Safeguard of the Republic," speech of Hon. Robert Smalls, House of Representatives, Feb. 24, 1877,
Congressional Record,
44th Cong., 2nd sess., appendix, pp. 123–36.

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Loyalty among blacks to the Party of Lincoln:
Uya, pp. 111–12.
So pervasive was the Democrats' dominance: New York Times,
Jan. 13, 1878.
"
Like a rope of sand": Charleston News & Courier,
Sept. 3, 1880.

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 "
Polls were opened at unusual places": New York Times,
Dec. 15, 1880.
When the committee found Democratic fraud: Smalls v. Tillman, Congressional Record,
47th Cong., appendix, in Uya, pp. 113–15. This reversal involving Tillman fed the determination of the state's Democrats to move beyond polling-place fraud to more permanent methods of choking off black suffrage.

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 "
Less than a quarter of a century ago": Congressional Record,
49th Cong., 1st sess., appendix, pp. 319–20, in Uya, pp. 123–25.
As a one-man bastion of power:
Ibid., pp. 127–30.
No one had expected the new law:
Persons violating the law would have to pay the aggrieved party $500 and could also be fined by the court or imprisoned for up to a year. Another clause ensured that "no citizen possessing all other qualifications ... shall be disqualified for service as grand or petit juror" in any federal or state court "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

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 "
A thousand federal lawsuits and fines":
Quoted in
New York Times,
Mar. 6, 1875.
The
New York Times
worried: New York Times,
Mar. 6, 1875.

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 "
A respectable-appearing colored man": New York Times,
Apr. 22 and 27, 1875; also Nov. 25, 1879.
"
What good is the civil rights law": New York Times,
June 12, 1875.
Mrs. Henry Jones of Philadelphia also found: New York Times,
Sept. 29, 1875.
The judge fined Greenwall: New York Times,
June 8 and 9, 1875.
In Virginia a hotel clerk named Newcomer: U.S. v. Newcomer,
Feb. 29, 1876, Federal Cases, vol. 27, pp. 127–28.

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 "
Demanded to ride in the same cabin":
Ibid., vol. 10, pp. 1090–93.
The "separate" facilities offered to blacks:
Franklin, p. 127.

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On June 9, 1876, a group: New York Times,
Mar. 23, 1877.
"
If the states are to be allowed":
John M. Harlan to John Harlan (son), Oct. 21, 1883, quoted in Yarbrough, p. 144.

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Little remembered today:
Bruce's ascent from obscurity was perhaps nowhere better illustrated than in a story he loved to tell that had its origin in the streets of prewar St. Louis. One day, when he was twelve or thirteen years old, he was commanded by a well-dressed white man to carry a heavy suitcase to the docks, where the man said he was hurrying to catch a steamboat. Bruce obediently hefted the suitcase onto his shoulder and carried it to the wharf, but once there, the white man grabbed his luggage and raced aboard his boat, rudely neglecting to pay the boy. Years later in the Senate, when Senator Lewis Vital Bogy from Missouri approached Bruce to ask for his vote on a measure important to his home state, Bruce studied Bogy carefully and then introduced himself as the young man he had long ago failed to compensate on the St. Louis waterfront. After recovering from his shock, the embarrassed Bogy offered at once to compound the original amount owed. The two men were said to have become friends. See Smith, pp. 25–26.
"
A slender, shapely woman": Boston Journal,
Jan. 29, 1879;
New York Tribune,
Dec. 1878; both in Clippings File, Blanche Kelso Bruce Papers, Library of Congress.
"
A great big good natured lump of fat":
Emma V. Brown to Emily Holland, Mar. 31, 1875, quoted in Sterling,
We Are Your Sisters,
p. 293; see also Gatewood, pp. 4–5.
"
To promote social intercourse":
Ibid., p. 4.

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 "
General Grant was less reserved in conversation": New York Times,
Dec. 7, 1878.
"
Will again march to battle under the banner": Louisianian,
Feb. 15, 1879.

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 "
The most
unreasonable disturbance
in Washington:
Simmons, p. 702.
"
Mrs. Bruce is a lady of great personal beauty": Boston Journal,
Jan. 29, 1879;
New York Tribune,
Dec. 1878; both in Clippings File, Blanche Kelso Bruce Papers.
"
I know it would be the political ruin":
Undated, untitled news clipping in Clippings File, Blanche Kelso Bruce Papers.
"
I made up my mind to let the society question": Baltimore American,
Jan, 25, 1880, in Clippings File, Blanche Kelso Bruce Papers.

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 "
Mr. Lynch has, we don't believe, elevated himself": Washington Bee,
Dec. 20, 1884.

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 "
Once let a black man get upon his person": Douglass's Monthly,
May 1861, pp. 452–53, and Aug. 1863, p. 852, quoted in Moses, p. 52.

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 "
Let's mark him as we mark hogs": New York Times,
Apr. 7, 1880.

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 "
If you think the rule is taught at West Point":
Marszalek, "A Black Cadet at West Point,"
American Heritage.

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 "
I am willing to go as far as the furthest":
Ambrose, p. 236. Thirteen black cadets were admitted to West Point in the half-century following the Civil War; only three graduated.
Gardiner, in response to Chamberlain:
Marszalek, "A Black Cadet at West Point."

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Bradley, curiously, had argued:
See Vorenberg, pp. 239–40.
"
It would be running the slavery argument":
Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 3 S Ct 18 (1883); also see Vorenberg, p. 241.
As for the Fourteenth Amendment:
Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 3 S Ct 18 (1883).

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 "
Sumner's Law," so nobly intended:
The part of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 making it illegal to deny black representation on juries was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1880 in
Ex parte Virginia
and
Strauder v. West Virginia.
The Harlans voiced support:
One Harlan family slave, Robert James Harlan, likely the justice's own half-brother, was allowed to go west in the gold rush of 1848, returned a wealthy man, and purchased his freedom for $500. He became a businessman and community leader in Cincinnati.