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W.E.B. Du Bois-6October 01, 2004 Black Reconstruction in America [ 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 ] In the previous passages we've looked at the class
formation and how these classes competed. In this, I will have to stint
the gentle reader, since Du Bois provides tremendous detail I cannot
possibly reproduce here. For example, he includes a meticulous account
of the political transformations in each of the 12 Reconstructed
states, as well as corresponding developments in the federal Congress.
In each state, there are major differences in the strategies employed
by the tiny minorities of White immigrants from the North ("Carpet
baggers") and the somewhat larger cohort of Southern Whites who favored
the Union collaborated with other demographics to achieve power. For a
full three years after the capitulation of the CSA to Union forces, the
same elites governed in the South as had during the War; the North
debated the terms of Reconstruction, attempted to impeach Andrew
Johnson, and passed three amendments (13th,
14th,
and 15th)
whose ratification became preconditions for readmission to the Union.
Not until '68 did the tide turn in the violence-ridden South, and the
opponents of Slavery actually make themselves felt. By 1876, in
contrast, nearly every single one of the anti-Slavery legislatures had
been routed as part of a process that began four years earlier. ['Mississippi & Louisiana", p.431] Mississippi
has been called a peculiarly typical state in which to study
Reconstruction. But this should be modified. In direct contrast to
South Carolina, Mississippi was the place where first and last Negroes
were largely deprived of any opportunity for land ownership. The great
black belt plantations on the Mississippi had hardly been disturbed by
war. The barons ruling there, who had dictated the policy of the state,
were to the last degree reactionary because they entirely misconceived
the results of the war. They were determined not to recognize even the
abolition of slavery, and as for establishing peasant- proprietors on
their land or granting even civil rights, they were adamant. To the
proposition of political rights for Negroes, they simply would not
listen for a moment. Mississippi was in all respects a curious state.
It was the center of a commercialized cotton kingdom. The graciousness
and ease of the plantation system had scarcely taken root there.
Mississippi plantations were designed to raise a profitable cotton crop
and not to entertain visitors. Here and there the more pretentious
slave manor flourished, but, on the whole, the level of the state in
civilization and culture was distinctly below that of Virginia and
South Carolina, and smacked more of the undisciplined frontier. In this state there were, in 1860, 353,899 white
people and 437,404 Negroes, of whom less than 1,000 were free. The
population had only been a few thousand at the beginning of the century
and small in 1820. Then from 1840 on, the Cotton Kingdom spread over
Mississippi, greatly increasing its population. The result was that
after the war, there was in this state a group of planters whose great
plantations dominated the rich Black Belt. From Memphis to the Gulf
were a succession of counties with 60% or more of black population,
while on the poor lands of the northeast and southeast were the poor
whites... [p.451] At the first census after the admission of
[Louisiana], 1810, there were 34,000 whites and the same number of
black slaves, and in addition to this, 7,585 free Negroes. In 1820,
when Louisiana entered the Union, the white and black population were
about equal, both being under 80,000. In 1860, there were 350,373
Negroes and 357,456 whites. By 1870, the colored population exceeded
the whites by nearly 2,000. The great influx came between 1840 and
1860. Among the Negro population, 18,647 in 1860 were
free, and represented mainly descendants of the free Negroes in the
territory at the time of the annexation. They were many of them rich
and educated, and they formed a most interesting element in the
population. The migration to Louisiana after 1840 was of a
distinctly lower grade than before—exploiters of commercial slavery,
slave traders and smugglers, gamblers and desperadoes. They made the
situation for free Negroes much more difficult. Rich colored folk, even
those who were well known, were often arrested and mistreated. Yet from the first, when African Americans had a say
in government, a wave of peculation was sweeping the country. It would
tar the Reconstruction governments with the charge of profligacy and
corruption. While Du Bois mentions several of the most egregious cases
of corruption under Reconstruction, he also points to the evidence of
graft under the antebellum "libertarian paradises" of the Deep South.
However, he also outlines the sort of administrative revolution that
hit the USA after the war:
The machinery they were compelled to set up, with
the Cooperation of Northern industry, was a dictatorship of far broader
possibilities than the North had at first contemplated. It put such
power in the hands of Southern labor that, with intelligent and
unselfish leadership and a clarifying ideal, it could have rebuilt the
economic foundations of Southern society, confiscated and redistributed
wealth, and built a real democracy of industry for the masses of men.
When the South realized this they emitted an exceeding great cry which
was the reaction of property being despoiled of its legal basis of
being. This bitter complaint was all the more plausible because
Southern labor lacked sufficient intelligent and unselfish leadership.
Some in truth it got—from black men who gave their heart’s blood to
make Reconstruction go; from white men who sacrificed everything to
teach and guide Negroes. But for the most part their leaders were
colored men of limited education, with the current honesty of the times
and little experience, and Northern and Southern Whites who varied from
conventional and indifferent officeholders to demagogues, thieves,
scoundrels. The next step would have been, under law and order,
gradually to have replaced the wrong leaders by a better and better
sort. This, the Negroes and many whites sought to do from 1870 to 1876.
But they failed because the military dictatorship behind labor did not
function successfully in the face of the Ku Klux Klan and especially
because the appeal of property in the South got the ear of property in
the North. After the war, industry in the North found itself
with a vast organization for production, new supplies of raw material,
a growing transportation system on land and water, and a new technical
knowledge of processes. All this, with the exclusion of foreign
competition through a system of import taxes, and a vast immigration of
laborers, tremendously stimulated the production of goods and available
services. But to whom were the new goods and the increased services to
belong, and in whose hands would lie the power which that ownership
gave? An almost unprecedented scramble for this new
power, new wealth, and new income ensued. It broke down old standards
of wealth distribution, old standards of thrift and honesty. It led to
the anarchy of thieves, grafters, and highwaymen. It threatened the
orderly process of production as well as government and morals. The
governments, federal, state and local, had paid three-fifths of the
cost of the railroads, and handed them over to individuals and
corporations to use for their profit. An empire of rich land, larger
than France, Belgium and Holland together, had been snatched from the
hands of prospective migrant farmers and given to investors and land
speculators. All of the national treasure of coal, oil, copper, gold
and iron had been given away for a song to be made the monopolized
basis of private fortunes with perpetual power to tax labor for the
right to live and work. Speculation rose and flourished on the hard
foundation of this largess.
In the years after Reconstruction, some southern
states had several political parties; in GA, for example, the
Republican Party called itself the "Radical Party", and there was a
"Conservative Party" that bled votes away from the Democrats. |
