Part 12 (2/2)
The first thing that vexed the Northern armies on Southern soil during the war was the question of the disposition of the fugitive slaves, who immediately began to arrive in increasing numbers. Butler confiscated them, Fremont freed them, and Halleck caught and returned them; but their numbers swelled to such large proportions that the mere economic problem of their presence overshadowed everything else, especially after the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation. Lincoln was glad to have them come after once he realized their strength to the Confederacy.
The Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation was forced, not simply by the necessity of paralyzing industry in the South, but also by the necessity of employing Negro soldiers. During the first two years of the war no one wanted Negro soldiers. It was declared to be a ”white man's war.” General Hunter tried to raise a regiment in South Carolina, but the War Department disavowed the act. In Louisiana the Negroes were anxious to enlist, but were held off. In the meantime the war did not go as well as the North had hoped, and on the twenty-sixth of January, 1863, the Secretary of War authorized the Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts to raise two regiments of Negro troops.
Frederick Dougla.s.s and others began the work with enthusiasm, and in the end one hundred and eighty-seven thousand Negroes enlisted in the Northern armies, of whom seventy thousand were killed and wounded. The conduct of these troops was exemplary. They were indispensable in camp duties and brave on the field, where they fought in two hundred and thirteen battles.
General Banks wrote, ”Their conduct was heroic. No troops could be more determined or more daring.”[96]
The a.s.sault on Fort Wagner, led by a thousand black soldiers under the white Colonel Shaw, is one of the greatest deeds of desperate bravery on record. On the other hand the treatment of Negro soldiers when captured by the Confederates was barbarous. At Fort Pillow, after the surrender of the federal troops, the colored regiment was indiscriminately butchered and some of them were buried alive.
Abraham Lincoln said, ”The slightest knowledge of arithmetic will prove to any man that the rebel armies cannot be destroyed with Democratic strategy. It would sacrifice all the white men of the North to do it.
There are now in the service of the United States near two hundred thousand able-bodied colored men, most of them under arms, defending and acquiring Union territory.... Abandon all the posts now garrisoned by black men; take two hundred thousand men from our side and put them in the battlefield or cornfield against us, and we would be compelled to abandon the war in three weeks.”[97] Emanc.i.p.ation thus came as a war measure to break the power of the Confederacy, preserve the Union, and gain the sympathy of the civilized world.
However, two hundred and forty-four years of slavery could not be stopped by edict. There were legal difficulties, the whole slow problem of economic readjustment, and the subtle and far-reaching questions of future race relations.
The peculiar circ.u.mstances of emanc.i.p.ation forced the legal and political difficulties to the front, and these were so striking that they have since obscured the others in the eyes of students. Quite unexpectedly and without forethought the nation had emanc.i.p.ated four million slaves. Once the deed was done, the majority of the nation was glad and recognized that this was, after all, the only result of a fearful four years' war which in any degree justified it. But how was the result to be secured for all time? There were three possibilities: (1) to declare the slave free and leave him at the mercy of his former masters; (2) to establish a careful government guardians.h.i.+p designed to guide the slave from legal to real economic freedom; (3) to give the Negro the political power to guard himself as well as he could during this development. It is very easy to forget that the United States government tried each one of these in succession and was literally forced to adopt the third, because the first had utterly failed and the second was thought too ”paternal” and especially too costly. To leave the Negroes helpless after a paper edict of emanc.i.p.ation was manifestly impossible. It would have meant that the war had been fought in vain.
Carl Schurz, who traversed the South just after the war, said, ”A veritable reign of terror prevailed in many parts of the South. The Negro found scant justice in the local courts against the white man. He could look for protection only to the military forces of the United States still garrisoning the states lately in rebellion and to the Freedmen's Bureau.”[98] This Freedmen's Bureau was proposed by Charles Sumner. If it had been presented to-day instead of fifty years ago, it would have been regarded as a proposal far less revolutionary than the state insurance of England and Germany. A half century ago, however, and in a country which gave the _laisser faire_ economics their extremest trial, the Freedmen's Bureau struck the whole nation as unthinkable, save as a very temporary expedient and to relieve the more pointed forms of distress following war.
Yet the proposals of the Bureau were both simple and sensible:
1. To oversee the making and enforcement of wage contracts for freedmen.
2. To appear in the courts as the freedmen's best friend.
3. To furnish the freedmen with a minimum of land and of capital.
4. To establish schools.
5. To furnish such inst.i.tutions of relief as hospitals, outdoor relief stations, etc.
How a sensible people could expect really to conduct a slave into freedom with less than this it is hard to see. Even with such tutelage extending over a period of two or three decades, the ultimate end had to be enfranchis.e.m.e.nt and political and social freedom for those freedmen who attained a certain set standard. Otherwise the whole training had neither object nor guarantee. Precisely on this account the former masters opposed the Freedmen's Bureau with all their influence. They did not want the Negro trained or really freed, and they criticized mercilessly the many mistakes of the new Bureau.
The North at first thought to pay for the main cost of the Freedmen's Bureau by confiscating the property of former slave owners; but finding this not in accordance with law, they realized that they were embarking on an enterprise which bade fair to add many millions to the already staggering cost of the war. When, therefore, they saw that the abolition of slavery could not be left to the white South and could not be done by the North without time and money, they determined to put the responsibility on the Negro himself. This was without a doubt a tremendous experiment, but with all its manifest mistakes it succeeded to an astonis.h.i.+ng degree. It made the immediate reestablishment of the old slavery impossible, and it was probably the only quick method of doing this. It gave the freedmen's sons a chance to begin their education. It diverted the energy of the white South slavery to the recovery of political power, and in this interval, small as it was, the Negro took his first steps toward economic freedom.
The difficulties that stared reconstruction politicians in the face were these: (1) They must act quickly. (2) Emanc.i.p.ation had increased the political power of the South by one-sixth. Could this increased political power be put in the hands of those who, in defense of slavery, had disrupted the Union? (3) How was the abolition of slavery to be made effective? (4) What was to be the political position of the freedmen?
The Freedmen's Bureau in its short life accomplished a great task. Carl Schurz, in 1865, felt warranted in saying that ”not half of the labor that has been done in the South this year, or will be done there next year, would have been or would be done but for the exertions of the Freedmen's Bureau.... No other agency except one placed there by the national government could have wielded that moral power whose interposition was so necessary to prevent Southern society from falling at once into the chaos of a general collision between its different elements.”[99]
Notwithstanding this the Bureau was temporary, was regarded as a makes.h.i.+ft, and soon abandoned.
Meantime partial Negro suffrage seemed not only just, but almost inevitable. Lincoln, in 1864, ”cautiously” suggested to Louisiana's private consideration ”whether some of the colored people may not be let in as, for instance, the very intelligent, and especially those who fought gallantly in our ranks. They would probably help in some trying time to come, to keep the jewel of liberty in the family of freedom.” Indeed, the ”family of freedom” in Louisiana being somewhat small just then, who else was to be intrusted with the ”jewel”? Later and for different reasons Johnson, in 1865, wrote to 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 name, 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 thus place the Southern States, in reference to free persons of color, upon the same basis with the free states. I hope and trust your convention will do this.”
The Negroes themselves began to ask for the suffrage. The Georgia convention in Augusta (1866) advocated ”a proposition to give those who could write and read well and possessed a certain property qualification the right of suffrage.” The reply of the South to these suggestions was decisive. In Tennessee alone was any action attempted that even suggested possible Negro suffrage in the future, and that failed. In all other states the ”Black Codes” adopted were certainly not rea.s.suring to the friends of freedom. To be sure, it was not a time to look for calm, cool, thoughtful action on the part of the white South. Their economic condition was pitiable, their fear of Negro freedom genuine. Yet it was reasonable to expect from them something less than repression and utter reaction toward slavery. To some extent this expectation was fulfilled. The abolition of slavery was recognized on the statute book, and the civil rights of owning property and appearing as a witness in cases in which he was a party were generally granted the Negro; yet with these in many cases went harsh and unbearable regulations which largely neutralized the concessions and certainly gave ground for an a.s.sumption that, once free, the South would virtually reenslave the Negro. The colored people themselves naturally feared this, protesting, as in Mississippi, ”against the reactionary policy prevailing and expressing the fear that the legislature will pa.s.s such prescriptive laws as will drive the freedmen from the state, or practically reenslave them.”
The codes spoke for themselves. As Burgess says, ”Almost every act, word, or gesture of the Negro, not consonant with good taste and good manners as well as good morals, was made a crime or misdemeanor for which he could first be fined by the magistrates and then be consigned to a condition of almost slavery for an indefinite time, if he could not pay the bill.”[100]
All things considered, it seems probable that, if the South had been permitted to have its way in 1865, the harshness of Negro slavery would have been mitigated so as to make slave trading difficult, and so as to make it possible for a Negro to hold property and appear in some cases in court; but that in most other respects the blacks would have remained in slavery.
What could prevent this? A Freedmen's Bureau established for ten, twenty, or forty years, with a careful distribution of land and capital and a system of education for the children, might have prevented such an extension of slavery. But the country would not listen to such a comprehensive plan. A restricted grant of the suffrage voluntarily made by the states would have been a rea.s.suring proof of a desire to treat the freedmen fairly and would have balanced in part, at least, the increased political power of the South. There was no such disposition evident.
In Louisiana, for instance, under the proposed reconstruction ”not one Negro was allowed to vote, though at that very time the wealthy intelligent free colored people of the state paid taxes on property a.s.sessed at fifteen million dollars and many of them were well known for their patriotic zeal and love for the Union.”[101]
Thus the arguments for universal Negro suffrage from the start were strong and are still strong, and no one would question their strength were it not for the a.s.sumption that the experiment failed. Frederick Dougla.s.s said to President Johnson, ”Your n.o.ble and humane predecessor placed in our hands the sword to a.s.sist in saving the nation, and we do hope that you, his able successor, will favorably regard the placing in our hands the ballot with which to save ourselves.”[102]
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