The Sequel of Appomattox Part 2

To the const.i.tutional conventions, which met in the fall, it was made clear, through the governors, that the President would insist upon three conditions: the formal abolition of slavery, the repudiation of the ordinance of secession, and the repudiation of the Confederate war debt. To Governor Holden he telegraphed: "Every dollar of the debt created to aid the rebellion against the United States should be repudiated finally and forever. The great ma.s.s of the people should not be taxed to pay a debt to aid in carrying on a rebellion which they in fact, if left to themselves, were opposed to. Let those who had given their means for the obligations of the state look to that power they tried to establish in violation of law, const.i.tution, and will of the people. They must meet their fate." With little opposition these conditions were fulfilled, though there was a strong feeling against the repudiation of the debt, much discussion as to whether the ordinance of secession should be "repealed" or declared "now and always null and void," and some quibbling as to whether slavery was being destroyed by state action or had already been destroyed by war.

In the old state const.i.tutions, very slight changes were made. Of these the chief were concerned with the abolition of slavery and the arrangement of representation and direct taxation on the basis of white population. Little effort was made to settle any of the Negro problems, and in all states the conventions left it to the legislatures to make laws for the freedmen. There was no discussion of Negro, suffrage in the conventions, but President Johnson sent what was for him a remarkable communication to Governor Sharkey of Mississippi:

"If you could extend the elective franchise to all persons of color who can read the Const.i.tution of the United States in English and write their names, and to all persons of color who own real estate valued at not less than two hundred and fifty dollars and pay taxes thereon, you would completely disarm the adversary and set an example the other states will follow. This you can do with perfect safety, and you would thus place Southern States in reference to free persons of color upon the same basis with the free states.... And as a consequence the radicals, who are wild upon Negro franchise, will be completely foiled in their attempts to keep the Southern states from renewing their relations to the Union by not accepting their senators and representatives."

In deciding upon a basis of representation, it was clear that the majority of delegates desired to lessen the influence of the Black Belt and place the control of the government with the "up country." In the Alabama convention Robert M. Patton, then a delegate and later governor, frankly avowed this object, and in South Carolina, Governor Perry urged the convention to give no consideration to Negro suffrage, "because this is a white man's government," and if the Negroes should vote they would be controlled by a few whites. A kindly disposition toward the Negroes was general except on the part of extreme Unionists, who opposed any favors to the race. "This is a white man's country" was a doctrine to which all the conventions subscribed.

The conventions held brief sessions, completed their work, and adjourned, after directing that elections be held for state and local officers and for members of Congress. Before December the appointed local officials had been succeeded by elected officers; members of Congress were on their way to Was.h.i.+ngton; the state legislatures were a.s.sembling or already in session; and the elected governors were ready to take office. It was understood that as soon as enough state legislatures ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to make it a part of the Const.i.tution, the President would permit the transfer of authority to the new governors. The legislature of Mississippi alone was recalcitrant about the amendment, and before January 1866, the elected officials were everywhere installed except in Texas, where the work was not completed until March. When Congress met in December 1865, the President reported that all former Confederate States except Texas were ready to be readmitted. Congress, however, refused to admit their senators and representatives, and thus began the struggle which ended over a year later with the victory of the radicals and the undoing of the work of the two Presidents.

The plan of the Presidents was at best only imperfectly realized. It was found impossible to reorganize the Federal Administration in the South with men who could subscribe to the "ironclad oath," for nearly all who were competent to hold office had favored or aided the Confederacy. It was two years before more than a third of the post offices could be opened. The other Federal departments were in similar difficulties, and at last women and "carpetbaggers" were appointed. The Freedmen's Bureau, which had been established coincidently with the provisional governments, a.s.sumed jurisdiction over the Negroes, while the army authorities very early took the position that any man who claimed to be a Unionist should not be tried in the local courts but must be given a better chance in a provost court. Thus a third or more of the population was withdrawn from the control of the state government. In several states the head of the Bureau made arrangements for local magistrates and officials to act as Bureau officials, and in such cases the two authorities acted in cooperation. The army of occupation, too, exerted an authority which not infrequently interfered with the workings of the new state government. Nearly everywhere there was a lack of certainty and efficiency due to the concurrent and sometimes conflicting jurisdictions of state government, army commanders, Bureau authorities, and even the President acting upon or through any of the others.

The standing of the Southern state organizations was in doubt after the refusal of Congress to recognize them. Nevertheless, in spite of this uncertainty they continued to function as states during the year of controversy which followed; the courts were opened and steadily grew in influence; here and there militia and patrols were reorganized; officials who refused to "accept the situation" were dismissed; elections were held; the legislatures revised the laws to fit new conditions and enacted new laws for the emanc.i.p.ated blacks. To all this progress in reorganization, the action of Congress was a severe blow, since it gave notice that none of the problems of reconstruction were yet solved. An increasing spirit of irritation and independence was observed throughout the states in question, and at the elections the former Confederates gained more and more offices. The year was marked in the South by the tendency toward the formation of parties, by the development of the "Southern outrages" issue, by an attempt to frustrate radical action, and finally by a lineup of the great ma.s.s of the whites in opposition to the Fourteenth Amendment and other radical plans of Congress.

The Joint Committee on Reconstruction, appointed when Congress refused to accept the work of President Johnson, proceeded during several months to take testimony and to consider measures. The testimony, which was taken chiefly to support opinions already formed, appeared to prove that the Negroes and the Unionists were so badly treated that the Freedmen's Bureau and the army must be kept in the South to protect them; that free Negro labor was a success but that the whites were hostile to it; that the whites were disloyal and would, if given control of the Southern governments and admitted to Congress, const.i.tute a danger to the nation and especially to the party in power.

To convince the voters of the North of the necessity of dealing drastically with the South a campaign of misrepresentation was begun in the summer of 1865, which became more and more systematic and unscrupulous as the political struggle at Was.h.i.+ngton grew fiercer. Newspapers regularly ran columns headed "Southern Outrages," and every conceivable mistreatment of blacks by whites was represented as taking place on a large scale. As General Richard Taylor said, it would seem that about 1866 every white man, woman, and child in the South began killing and maltreating Negroes. In truth, there was less and less ground for objection to the treatment of the blacks as time went on and as the several agencies of government secured firmer control over the lawless elements. But fortunately for the radicals their contention seemed to be established by riots on a large scale in Memphis and New Orleans where Negroes were killed and injured in much greater number than whites.

The rapid development of the radical plans of Congress checked the tendency toward political division in the South. Only a small party of rabid Unionists would now affiliate with the radicals, while all the others reluctantly held together, endorsed Johnson's policy, and attempted to affiliate with the disintegrating National Union party. But the defeat of the President's policies in the elections of 1866, the increasing radicalism of Congress as shown by the Civil Rights Act, the expansion of the Freedmen's Bureau, the report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, and the proposal of the Fourteenth Amendment led farsighted Southerners to see that the President was likely to lose in his fight with Congress.

Now began, in the latter half of 1866, with some cooperation in the North and probably with the approval of the President, a movement in the South to forestall the radicals by means of a settlement which, although less severe than the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, might yet be acceptable to Congress. One feature of the settlement was to be some form of Negro suffrage, either by local action or by const.i.tutional amendment. Those behind this scheme were mainly of the former governing cla.s.s. Negro suffrage, they thought, would take the wind out of the radical sails, the Southern whites would soon be able to control the blacks, representation in Congress would be increased, and the Black Belt would perhaps regain its former political hegemony. It is hardly necessary to say that the majority of the whites were solidly opposed to such a measure. But it was hoped to carry it under pressure through the legislature or to bring it about indirectly through rulings of the Freedmen's Bureau.

Coincident with this scheme of partial Negro suffrage an attempt was made by the conservative leaders in Was.h.i.+ngton, working with the Southerners, to propose a revised Fourteenth Amendment which would give the vote to competent Negroes and not disfranchise the whites. A conference of Southern governors met in Was.h.i.+ngton early in 1867 and drafted such an amendment. But, it was too late.

Meanwhile the Fourteenth Amendment submitted by Congress had been brought before the Southern legislatures, and during the winter of 1866-67 it was rejected by all of them. There was strong opposition to it because it disfranchised the leading whites, but perhaps the princ.i.p.al reason for its rejection was that the Southern people were not sure that still more severe conditions might not be imposed later.

While the President was "restoring" the states which had seceded and struggling with Congress, the Border States of the South, including Tennessee (which was admitted in 1866 by reason of its radical state government), were also in the throes of reconstruction. Though there was less military interference in these than in the other states, many of the problems were similar. All had the Freedmen's Bureau, the Negro race, the Unionists, and the Confederates; in every state, except Kentucky, Confederates were persecuted, the minority was in control, and "ring" rule was the order of the day; but in each state there were signs of the political revolution which a few years later was to put the radicals out of power.

The executive plan for the restoration of the Union, begun by Lincoln and adopted by Johnson, was, as we have seen, at first applied in all the states which had seceded. A military governor was appointed in each state by the President by virtue of his authority as commander in chief. This official, aided by a civilian staff of his own choice and supported by the United States army and other Federal agencies, reorganized the state administration and after a few months turned the state and local governments over to regularly elected officials. Restoration should now have been completed, but Congress refused to admit the senators and representatives of these states, and entered upon a fifteen months' struggle with the President over details of the methods of the reconstruction. Meanwhile the Southern States, though unrepresented in Congress, continued their activities, with some interference from Federal authorities, until Congress in 1867 declared their governments nonexistent.

The work begun by Lincoln and Johnson deserved better success. The original plan restored to political rights only a small number of Unionists, the lukewarm Confederates, and the unimportant. But in spite of the threatening speeches of Johnson, he used his power of pardon until none except the most prominent leaders were excluded. The personnel of the Johnson governments was fair. The officials were, in the main, former Douglas Democrats and Whigs, respectable and conservative, but not admired or loved by the people. The conventions and the legislatures were orderly and dignified and manifested a desire to accept the situation.

There were no political parties at first, but material for several existed. If things had been allowed to take their course, there would have arisen a normal cleavage between former Whigs and Democrats, between the upcountry and the low country, between the slaveholders and the nonslaveholders. The average white man in these governments was willing to be fair to the Negro but was not greatly concerned about his future. In the view of most white people, it was the white man who was emanc.i.p.ated. The white districts had no desire to let the power return to the Black Belt by giving the Negro the ballot, for the vote of the Negroes, they believed, would be controlled by their former masters.

Johnson's adoption of Lincoln's plan gave notice to all that the radicals had failed to control him. He and they had little in common; they wished to uproot a civilization, while he wished to punish individuals; they were not troubled by const.i.tutional scruples, while he was the strictest of State Rights Democrats; they thought princ.i.p.ally of the Negro and his potentialities, while Johnson was thinking of the emanc.i.p.ated white man. It is possible that Lincoln might have succeeded, but for Johnson the task proved too great.

CHAPTER IV. THE WARDS OF THE NATION

The Negroes at the close of the war were not slaves or serfs, nor were they citizens. What was to be done with them and for them? The Southern answer to this question may be found in the so-called "Black Laws," which were enacted by the state governments set up by President Johnson. The views of the dominant North may be discerned in part in the organization and administration of the Freedmen's Bureau. The two sections saw the same problem from different angles, and their proposed solutions were of necessity opposed in principle and in practice.

The South desired to fit the emanc.i.p.ated Negro race into the new social order by frankly recognizing his inferiority to the whites. In some things racial separation was unavoidable. New legislation consequently must be enacted, because the slave codes were obsolete; because the old laws made for the small free Negro cla.s.s did not meet present conditions; and because the emanc.i.p.ated blacks could not be brought conveniently and at once under laws originally devised for a white population. The new laws must meet many needs; family life, morals, and conduct must be regulated; the former slave must be given a status in court in order that he might be protected in person and property; the old, the infirm, and the orphans must be cared for; the white race must be protected from lawless blacks and the blacks from unscrupulous and violent whites; the Negro must have an opportunity for education; and the roving blacks must be forced to get homes, settle down, and go to work.

Pending such legislation the affairs of the Negro remained in control of the unpopular Freedmen's Bureau-a "system of espionage," as Judge Clayton of Alabama called it, and, according to Governor Humphreys of Mississippi, "a hideous curse" under which white men were persecuted and pillaged. Judge Memminger of South Carolina, in a letter to President Johnson, emphasized the fact that the whites of England and the United States gained civil and political rights through centuries of slow advancement and that they were far ahead of the people of European states. Consequently, it would be a mistake to give the freedmen a status equal to that of the most advanced whites. Rather, let the United States profit by the experience of the British in their emanc.i.p.ation policies and arrange a system of apprentices.h.i.+p for a period of transition. When the Negro should be fit, let him be advanced to citizens.h.i.+p.

Most Southern leaders agreed that the removal of the master's protection was a real loss to the Negro which must be made good to some extent by giving the Negro a status in court and by accepting Negro testimony in all cases in which blacks were concerned. The North Carolina committee on laws for freedmen agreed with objectors that "there are comparatively few of the slaves lately freed who are honest" and truthful, but maintained that the Negroes were capable of improvement. The chief executives of Mississippi and Florida declared that there was no danger to the whites in admitting the more or less unreliable Negro testimony, for the courts and juries would in every case arrive at a proper valuation of it. Governors Marvin of Florida and Humphreys of Mississippi advocated practical civil equality, while in North Carolina and several other States there was a disposition to admit Negro testimony only in cases in which Negroes were concerned. The North Carolina committee recommended the abolition of whipping as a punishment unfit for free people, and most States accepted this principle. Even in 1865, the general disposition was to make uniform laws for both races, except in regard to violation of contracts, immoral conduct, vagrancy, marriage, schools, and forms of punishment. In some of these matters the whites were to be more strictly regulated; in others, the Negroes.

There was further general agreement that in economic relations both races must be protected, each from the other; but it is plain that the leaders believed that the Negro had less at stake than the white. The Negro was disposed to be indolent; he knew little of the obligations of contracts; he was not honest; and he would leave his job at will. Consequently Memminger recommended apprentices.h.i.+p for all Negroes; Governor Marvin suggested it for children alone; and others wished it provided for orphans only. Further, the laws enacted must force the Negroes to settle down, to work, and to hold to contracts. Memminger showed that, without legislation to enforce contracts and to secure eviction of those who refused to work, the white planter in the South was wholly at the mercy of the Negro. The plantations were scattered, the laborers' houses were already occupied, and there was no labor market to which a planter could go if the laborers deserted his fields.

What would the Negro become if these leaders of reconstruction were to have their way? Something better than a serf, something less than a citizen-a second degree citizen, perhaps, with legal rights about equal to those of white women and children. Governor Marvin hoped to make of the race a good agricultural peasantry; his successor was anxious that the blacks should be preferred to European immigrants; others agreed with Memminger that after training and education he might be advanced to full citizens.h.i.+p.

These opinions are representative of those held by the men who, Memminger excepted, were placed in charge of affairs by President Johnson and who were not especially in sympathy with the Negroes or with the planters but rather with the average white. All believed that emanc.i.p.ation was a mistake, but all agreed that "it is not the Negro's fault" and gave no evidence of a disposition to perpetuate slavery under another name.

The legislation finally framed showed in its discriminatory features the combined influence of the old laws for free Negroes, the vagrancy laws of North and South for whites, the customs of slavery times, the British West Indies legislation for ex-slaves, and the regulations of the United States War and Treasury Departments and of the Freedmen's Bureau-all modified and elaborated by the Southern whites. In only two states, Mississippi and South Carolina, did the legislation bulk large in quant.i.ty; in other states discriminating laws were few; in still other states none were pa.s.sed except those defining race and prohibiting intermarriage.

In all of the state laws there were certain common characteristics, among which were the following: the descendant of a Negro was to be cla.s.sed as a Negro through the third generation,* even though one parent in each generation was white; intermarriage of the races was prohibited; existing slave marriages were declared valid and for the future marriage was generally made easier for the blacks than for the whites. In all states the Negro was given his day in court, and in cases relating to Negroes his testimony was accepted; in six states he might testify in any case. When provision was made for schooling, the rule of race separation was enforced. In Mississippi the "Jim Crow car," or separate car for Negroes, was invented. In several states the Negro had to have a license to carry weapons, to preach, or to engage in trade. In Mississippi, a Negro could own land only in town; in other states he could purchase land only in the country. Why the difference? No one knows and probably few knew at the time. Some of the legislation was undoubtedly hasty and ill-considered.

* Fourth in Tennessee.

But the laws relating to apprentices.h.i.+p, vagrancy, and enforced punitive employment turned out to be of greater practical importance. On these subjects the legislation of Mississippi and South Carolina was the most extreme. In Mississippi orphans were to be bound out, preferably to a former master, if "he or she shall be a suitable person." The master was given the usual control over apprentices and was bound by the usual duties, including that of teaching the apprentice. But the penalties for "enticing away" apprentices were severe. The South Carolina statute was not essentially different. The vagrancy laws of these two states were in the main the same for both races, but in Mississippi the definition of vagrancy was enlarged to include Negroes not at work, those "found unlawfully a.s.sembling themselves together," and "all white persons a.s.sembling themselves with freedmen." It is to be noted that nearly all punishment for petty offenses took the form of hiring out, preferably to the former master or employer. The princ.i.p.al petty offenses were, it would seem, vagrancy and "enticing away" laborers or apprentices. The South Carolina statute contains some other interesting provisions. A Negro, man or woman, who had enjoyed the companions.h.i.+p of two or more spouses, must by April 1, 1866, select one of them as a permanent partner; a farm laborer must "rise at dawn," feed the animals, care for the property, be quiet and orderly, and "retire at reasonable hours;" on Sunday the servants must take turns in doing the necessary work, and they must be respectful and civil to the "master and his family, guests, and agents;" to engage in skilled labor the Negro must obtain a license. Whipping and the pillory were permitted in Florida for certain offenses, and in South Carolina the master might "moderately correct" servants under eighteen years of age. Other punishments were generally the same for both races, except the hiring out for petty offenses.

From the Southern point of view none of this legislation was regarded as a restriction of Negro rights but as a wide extension to the Negro of rights never before possessed, an adaptation of the white man's laws to his peculiar case. It is doubtful whether in some of the states the authorities believed that there were any discriminatory laws; they probably overlooked some of the free Negro legislation already on the statute books. In Alabama, for example, General Wager Swayne, the head of the Freedmen's Bureau, reported that all such laws had either been dropped by the legislature or had been vetoed by the governor. Yet the statute books do show some discriminations. There is a marked difference between earlier and later legislation. The more stringent laws were enacted before the end of 1865. After New Year's Day had pa.s.sed and the Negroes had begun to settle down, the legislatures either pa.s.sed mild laws or abandoned all special legislation for the Negroes. Later in 1866, several states repealed the legislation of 1865.

In so far as the "Black Laws" discriminated against the Negro they were never enforced but were suspended from the beginning by the army and the Freedmen's Bureau. They had, however, a very important effect upon that section of Northern opinion which was already suspicious of the good faith of the Southerners. They were part of a plan, some believed, to reenslave the Negro or at least to create by law a cla.s.s of serfs. This belief did much to bring about later radical legislation.

If the "Black Laws" represented the reaction of the Southern legislatures to racial conditions, the Freedmen's Bureau was the corresponding result of the interest taken by the North in the welfare of the Negro. It was established just as the war was closing and arose out of the various attempts to meet the Negro problems that arose during the war. The Bureau had always a dual nature, due in part to its inheritance of regulations, precedents, and traditions from the various attempts made during war time to handle the many thousands of Negroes who came under Federal control, and in part to the humanitarian impulses of 1865, born of a belief in the capacity of the Negro for freedom and a suspicion that the Southern whites intended to keep as much of slavery as they could. The officials of the Bureau likewise were of two cla.s.ses: those in control were for the most part army officers, standing as arbiters between white and black, usually just and seldom the victims of their sympathies but the ma.s.s of less responsible officials were men of inferior ability and character, either blind partisans of the Negro or corrupt and subject to purchase by the whites.

In view of the fact that the Freedmen's Bureau was considered a new inst.i.tution in 1865, it is rather remarkable how closely it followed in organization, purpose, and methods the precedents set during the war by the officers of the army and the Treasury. In Virginia, General Butler, in 1861, declared escaped slaves to be "contraband" and proceeded to organize them into communities for discipline, work, food, and care. His successors in Virginia and North Carolina, and others in the Sea Islands of Georgia and South Carolina, extended his plan and arranged a labor system with fixed wages, hours, and methods of work, and everywhere made use of the captured or abandoned property of the Confederates. In Tennessee and Arkansas, Chaplain John Eaton of Grant's army employed thousands in a modified free labor system; and further down in Mississippi and Louisiana Generals Grant, Butler, and Banks also put large numbers of captured slaves to work for themselves and for the Government. Everywhere, as the numbers of Negroes increased, the army commanders divided the occupied Negro regions into districts under superintendents and other officials, framed labor laws, cooperated with benevolent societies which gave schooling and medical care to the blacks, and developed systems of government for them.

The United States Treasury Department, attempting to execute the confiscation laws for the benefit of the Treasury, appears now and then as an employer of Negro labor on abandoned plantations. Either alone or in cooperation with the army and charitable a.s.sociations, it even supervised Negro colonies, and sometimes it a.s.sumed practically complete control of the economic welfare of the Negro. This Department introduced in 1864 an elaborate lessee and trade system. The Negro was regarded as "the ward of the nation," but he was told impressively that "labor is a public duty and idleness and vagrancy a crime." All wanted him to work: the Treasury wanted cotton and other crops to sell; the lessees and speculators wanted to make fortunes by his labor; and the army wanted to be free from the burden of the idle blacks. In spite of all these ministrations, the Negroes suffered much from harsh treatment, neglect, and unsanitary conditions.

During 1863 and 1864, several influences were urging the establishment of a national bureau or department to take charge of matters relating to the African race. Some wished to establish on the borders of the South a paid labor system, which might later be extended over the entire region, to get more slaves out of the Confederacy into this free labor territory, and to prevent immigration of Negroes into the North, which, after the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation, was apprehensive of this danger. Others wished to relieve the army and the treasury officials of the burden of caring for the blacks and to protect the latter from the "northern harpies and bloodhounds" who had fastened upon them the lessee system.

The discussion lasted for two years. The Freedmen's Inquiry Commission, after a survey of the field in 1863, recommended a consolidation of all efforts under an organization which should perpetuate the best features of the old system. But there was much opposition to this plan in Congress. The Negroes would be exploited, objected some; the scheme gave too much power to the proposed organization, said others; another objection was urged against the employment of a horde of incompetent and unscrupulous officeholders, for "the men who go down there and become your overseers and Negro drivers will be your broken-down politicians and your dilapidated preachers, that description of men who are too lazy to work and just a little too honest to steal."

As the war drew to a close, the advocates of a policy of consolidation in Negro affairs prevailed, and on March 3, 1865, an act was approved creating in the War Department a Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. This Bureau was to continue for one year after the close of the war, and it was to control all matters relating to freedmen and refugees, that is, Unionists who had been driven out of the South. Food, shelter, and clothing were to be given to the needy, and abandoned or confiscated property was to be used for or leased to freedmen. At the head of the Bureau was to be a commissioner with an a.s.sistant commissioner for each of the Southern States. These officials and other employees must take the "ironclad" oath.

It was planned that the Bureau should have a brief existence, but the inst.i.tution and its wards became such important factors in politics that on July 16, 1866, after a struggle with the President, Congress pa.s.sed an act over his veto amplifying the powers of the Bureau and extending it for two years longer. This continuation of the Bureau was due to many things: to a belief that former slaveholders were not to be trusted in dealing with the Negroes; to the baneful effect of the "Black Laws" upon Northern public opinion; to the struggle between the President and Congress over reconstruction; and to the foresight of radical politicians who saw in the inst.i.tution an instrument for the political instruction of the blacks in the proper doctrines.

The new law was supplementary to the Act of 1865, but its additional provisions merely endorsed what the Bureau was already doing. It authorized the issue of medical supplies, confirmed certain sales of land to Negroes, and provided that the promises which Sherman made in 1865 to the Sea Island Negroes should be carried out as far as possible and that no lands occupied by blacks should be restored to the owners until the crops of 1866 were gathered; it directed the Bureau to cooperate with private charitable and benevolent a.s.sociations, and it authorized the use or sale for school purposes of all confiscated property; and finally it ordered that the civil equality of the Negro be upheld by the Bureau and its courts when state courts refused to accept the principle. By later laws the existence of the Bureau was extended to January 1, 1869, in the unreconstructed States, but its educational and financial activities were continued until June 20, 1872.

The chief objections to the Bureau from the conservative Northern point of view were summed up in the President's veto messages. The laws creating it were based, he a.s.serted, on the theory that a state of war still existed; there was too great a concentration of power in the hands of a few individuals who could not be held responsible; with such a large number of agents ignorant of the country and often working for their own advantage injustice would inevitably result; in spite of the fact that the Negro everywhere had a status in court, arbitrary tribunals were established, without jury, without regular procedure or rules of evidence, and without appeal; the provisions in regard to abandoned lands amounted to confiscation without a hearing; the Negro, who must in the end work out his own salvation, and who was protected by the demand for his labor, would be deluded into thinking his future secure without further effort on his part; although nominally under the War Department, the Bureau was not subject to military control; it was practically a great political machine; and, finally, the states most concerned were not represented in Congress.

The Bureau was soon organized in all the former slaveholding States except Delaware, with general headquarters in Was.h.i.+ngton and state headquarters at the various capitals. General O. O. Howard, who was appointed commissioner, was a good officer, softhearted, honest, pious, and frequently referred to as "the Christian soldier." He was fair-minded and not disposed to irritate the Southern whites unnecessarily, but he was rather suspicious of their intentions toward the Negroes, and he was a believer in the righteousness of the Freedmen's Bureau. He was not a good business man; and he was not beyond the reach of politicians. At one time he was seriously disturbed in his duties by the buzzing of the presidential bee in his bonnet. The members of his staff were not of his moral stature, and several of them were connected with commercial and political enterprises which left their motives open to criticism.

The a.s.sistant commissioners were, as a rule, general officers of the army, though a few were colonels and chaplains.* Nearly half of them had during the war been a.s.sociated with the various attempts to handle the Negro problem, and it was these men who shaped the organization of the Bureau. While few of them were immediately acceptable to the Southern whites, only ten of them proved seriously objectionable on account of personality, character, or politics. Among the most able should be mentioned Generals Schofield, Swayne, Fullerton, Steedman, and Fessenden, and Colonel John Eaton. The President had little or no control over the appointment or discipline of the officials and agents of the Bureau, except possibly by calling some of the higher army officers back to military service.

* They numbered eleven at first and fourteen after July 1866, and were changed so often that fifty, in all, served in this rank before January 1, 1869, when the Bureau was practically discontinued.

As a result of General Grant's severe criticism of the arrangement which removed the Bureau from control by the military establishment, the military commander was in a few instances also appointed a.s.sistant commissioner. Each a.s.sistant commissioner was aided by a headquarters staff and had under his jurisdiction in each state various district, county, and local agents, with a special corps of school officials, who were usually teachers and missionaries belonging to religious and charitable societies. The local agents were recruited from the members of the Veteran Reserve Corps, the subordinate officers and non-commissioned officers of the army, mustered-out soldiers, officers of Negro troops, preachers, teachers, and Northern civilians who had come South. As a cla.s.s these agents were not competent persons to guide the blacks in the ways of liberty or to arbitrate differences between the races. There were many exceptions, but the Southern view as expressed by General Wade Hampton had only too much foundation: "There MAY be," he said, "an honest man connected with the Bureau." John Minor Botts, a Virginian who had remained loyal to the Union, a.s.serted that many of the agents were good men who did good work but that trouble resulted from the ignorance and fanaticism of others. The minority members of the Ku Klux Committee condemned the agents as being "generally of a cla.s.s of fanatics without character or responsibility."

The chief activities of the Bureau included the following five branches: relief work for both races; the regulation of Negro labor; the administration of justice in cases concerning Negroes; the management of abandoned and confiscated property; and the support of schools for the Negroes.

The relief work which was carried on for more than four years consisted of caring for sick Negroes who were within reach of the hospitals, furnis.h.i.+ng food and sometimes clothing and shelter to dest.i.tute blacks and whites, and transporting refugees of both races back to their homes. Nearly a hundred hospitals and clinics were established, and half a million patients were treated. This work was greatly needed, especially for the old and the infirm, and it was well done. The transportation of refugees did not reach large proportions, and after 1866 it was entangled in politics. But the issue of supplies in huge quant.i.ties brought much needed relief though at the same time a certain amount of demoralization. The Bureau claimed little credit, and is usually given none, for keeping alive during the fall and winter of 1865-1866 thousands of dest.i.tute whites. Yet more than a third of the food issued was to whites, and without it many would have starved. Numerous Confederate soldiers on the way home after the surrender were fed by the Bureau, and in the dest.i.tute white districts a great deal of suffering was relieved and prevented by its operations. The Negroes, dwelling for the most part in regions where labor was in demand, needed relief for a shorter time, but they were attracted in numbers to the towns by free food, and it was difficult to get them back to work. The political value of the free food issues was not generally recognized until later in 1866 and in 1867.

During the first year of the Bureau an important duty of the agents was the supervision of Negro labor and the fixing of wages. Both officials and planters generally demanded that contracts be written, approved, and filed in the office of the Bureau. They thought that the Negroes would work better if they were thus bound by contracts. The agents usually required that the agreements between employer and laborer cover such points as the nature of the work, the hours, food and clothes, medical attendance, shelter, and wages. To make wages secure, the laborer was given a lien on the crop; to secure the planter from loss, unpaid wages might be forfeited if the laborer failed to keep his part of the contract. When it dawned upon the Bureau authorities that other systems of labor had been or might be developed in the South, they permitted arrangements for the various forms of cash and share renting. But it was everywhere forbidden to place the Negroes under "overseers" or to subject them to "unwilling apprentices.h.i.+p" and "compulsory working out of debts." The written contract system for laborers did not work out successfully. The Negroes at first were expecting quite other fruits of freedom. One Mississippi Negro voiced what was doubtless the opinion of many when he declared that he "considered no man free who had to work for a living." Few Negroes would contract for more than three months and none for a period beyond January 1, 1866, when they expected a division of lands among the ex-slaves. In spite of the regulations, most worked on oral agreements. In 1866 nearly all employers threw overboard the written contract system for labor and permitted oral agreements. Some states had pa.s.sed stringent laws for the enforcing of contracts, but in Alabama, Governor Patton vetoed such legislation on the ground that it was not needed. General Swayne, the Bureau chief for the state, endorsed the Governor's action and stated that the Negro was protected by his freedom to leave when mistreated, and the planter, by the need on the part of the Negro for food and shelter. Negroes, he said, were afraid of contracts and, besides, contracts led to litigation.

In order to safeguard the civil rights of the Negroes, the Bureau was given authority to establish courts of its own and to supervise the action of state courts in cases to which freedmen were parties. The majority of the a.s.sistant commissioners made no attempt to let the state courts handle Negro cases but were accustomed to bring all such cases before the Bureau or the provost courts of the army. In Alabama, quite early, and later in North Carolina, Mississippi, and Georgia, the wiser a.s.sistant commissioners arranged for the state courts to handle freedmen's cases with the understanding that discriminating laws were to be suspended. General Swayne in so doing declared that he was "unwilling to establish throughout Alabama courts conducted by persons foreign to her citizens.h.i.+p and strangers to her laws." The Bureau courts were informal affairs, consisting usually of one or two administrative officers. There were no jury, no appeal beyond the a.s.sistant commissioner, no rules of procedure, and no accepted body of law. In state courts accepted by the Bureau, the proceedings in Negro cases were conducted in the same manner as for the whites.