Part 8 (2/2)

White magistrates were given wide discretion in adjudging Negroes vagrants.[53] Negroes had to sign contracts to work. If without what was considered a just cause the Negro left the employ of a planter, the former could be arrested and forced to work and in some sections with ball and chain. If the employer did not care to take him back he could be hired out by the county or confined in jail. Mississippi, Louisiana and South Carolina had further drastic features. By local ordinance in Louisiana every Negro had to be in the service of some white person, and by special laws of South Carolina and Mississippi the Negro became subject to a master almost in the same sense in which he was prior to emanc.i.p.ation.[54]

These laws, of course, convinced the government of the United States that the South had not yet decided to let slavery go and for that reason military rule and Congressional Reconstruction followed. In this respect the South did itself a great injury, for many of the provisions of the black codes, especially the vagrancy laws, were unnecessary. Most Negroes soon realized that freedom did not mean relief from responsibility and they quickly settled down to work after a rather protracted and exciting holiday.[55]

During the last year of and immediately after the Civil War there set in another movement, not of a large number of Negroes but of the intelligent cla.s.s who had during years of residence in the North enjoyed such advantages of contact and education as to make them desirable and useful as leaders in the Reconstruction of the South and the remaking of the race. In their tirades against the Carpet-bag politicians who handled the Reconstruction situation so much to the dissatisfaction of the southern whites, historians often forget to mention also that a large number of the Negro leaders who partic.i.p.ated in that drama were also natives or residents of Northern States.

Three motives impelled these blacks to go South. Some had found northern communities so hostile as to impede their progress, many wanted to rejoin relatives from whom they had been separated by their flight from the land of slavery, and others were moved by the spirit of adventure to enter a new field ripe with all sorts of opportunities. This movement, together with that of migration to large urban communities, largely accounts for the depopulation and the consequent decline of certain colored communities in the North after 1865.

Some of the Negroes who returned to the South became men of national prominence. William J. Simmons, who prior to the Civil War was carried from South Carolina to Pennsylvania, returned to do religious and educational work in Kentucky. Bishop James W. Hood, of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, went from Connecticut to North Carolina to engage in similar work. Honorable R.T. Greener, the first Negro graduate of Harvard, went from Philadelphia to teach in the District of Columbia and later to be a professor in the University of South Carolina.

F.L. Cardoza, educated at the University of Edinburgh, returned to South Carolina and became State Treasurer. R.B. Elliot, born in Boston and educated in England, settled in South Carolina from which he was sent to Congress.

John M. Langston was taken to Ohio and educated but came back to Virginia his native State from which he was elected to Congress. J.T. White left Indiana to enter politics in Arkansas, becoming State Senator and later commissioner of public works and internal improvements. Judge Mifflin Wister Gibbs, a native of Philadelphia, purposely settled in Arkansas where he served as city judge and Register of United States Land Office.

T. Morris Chester, of Pittsburgh, finally made his way to Louisiana where he served with distinction as a lawyer and held the position of Brigadier-General in charge of the Louisiana State Guards under the Kellogg government. Joseph Carter Corbin, who was taken from Virginia to be educated at Chillicothe, Ohio, went later to Arkansas where he served as chief clerk in the post office at Little Rock and later as State Superintendent of Schools. Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback, who moved north for education and opportunity, returned to enter politics in Louisiana, which honored him with several important positions among which was that of Acting Governor.

[Footnote 1: This is well treated in John Eaton's _Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen_. See also Coffin's _Boys of '61_.]

[Footnote 2: Williams, _History of the Negro Troops in the War of the Rebellion_, p. 70.]

[Footnote 3: Greely, _American Conflict_, I, p. 585.]

[Footnote 4: _Ibid_., II, p. 246.]

[Footnote 5: _Official Records of the Rebellion_, VIII, p. 628.]

[Footnote 6: Williams, _Negro Troops_, p. 66 et seq.]

[Footnote 7: _Official Records of the Rebellion_, VIII, p. 370; Williams, _Negro Troops_, p. 75.]

[Footnote 8: Eaton, _Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen_, pp. 87, 92.]

[Footnote 9: Pierce, _Freedmen of Port Royal, South Carolina_, pa.s.sim; Botume, _First Days Among the Contrabands_, pp. 10-22; and Pearson, _Letters from Port Royal_, pa.s.sim.]

[Footnote 10: Eaton, _Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen_, p. 92.]

[Footnote 11: _Ibid._, pp. 2, 3.]

[Footnote 12: Report of the _Committee of Representatives of the New York Yearly Meeting of Friends_ upon the _Condition and Wants of the Colored Refugees_, 1862, p. 1 et seq.]

[Footnote 13: _Report of the Committee of Representatives, etc_., p.

3.]

[Footnote 14: At an entertainment of this school, Senator Pomeroy of Kansas, voicing the sentiment of Lincoln, spoke in favor of a scheme to colonize Negroes in Central America.]

[Footnote 15: _Special Report_ of the United States Commission of Education on the Schools of the District of Columbia, p. 215.]

[Footnote 16: _Christian Examiner_, LXXVI, p. 349.]

[Footnote 17: Eaton, _Lincoln, Grant and the Freedmen_, pp. 18, 30.]

[Footnote 18: Pierce, _The Freedmen of Port Royal, South Carolina, Official Reports_; and Pearson, _Letters from Port Royal written at the Time of the Civil War_.]

[Footnote 19: _Christian Examiner_, LXXVI, p. 354.]

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