A Just and Lasting Peace: A Documentary History of Reconstruction

by John David Smith

  “THE NEGRO’S CLAIM TO OFFICE”

  (August 1, 1867)

  This editorial in The Nation employed the rhetorical question of electing an African-American to the vice presidency as a means of explaining the meaning and power of “race” and in combating racial and ethnic discrimination. Appearing at the moment when freedmen were registering to vote for the first time in the Southern states, but were excluded from voting in most Northern states, the editor put the responsibility for overcoming racism and proscription on the blacks themselves. Once they had proven themselves worthy of opportunity and privilege, they would receive the political opportunities they had earned.

  Men who say a great deal and are fond of startling effects must needs sometimes say things that it is not very easy to make good in calm discussion. Mr. Wade and Mr. Phillips have of late both got into difficulty owing to their having, in their eagerness to be in the advance ground of radicalism, taken up positions which it was easier to occupy than defend. Mr. Wade startled the world a few weeks ago by some rather confused talk about the duty of the Government toward the laboring classes, and as his discoveries were not favorably received by the public, detachments of newspaper correspondents had to be sent to his rescue to disengage him from the unbelievers. Mr. Phillips also having secured all the objects for which he labored for thirty years, began to find himself rather hard pressed for congenial occupation, and has accordingly begun to agitate for the election of a colored man to the Vice-Presidency. The public having received his arguments on this subject with irreverence, not to say with hilarity, and there being some indications that he has advanced too far, detachments of his friends are also coming to his rescue. Harper’s Weekly, accordingly, undertakes to show, last week, that it is by no means “absurd” to claim the Vice-Presidency for the colored people, and that the election of a colored man to office will be the only sure sign that the caste feeling has died out with regard to negroes, and that therefore “we should labor for their election to office both as a sign and as a help.” That is to say, by electing negroes to office, we shall help to destroy the prejudice against them, and at the same time furnish proof that the prejudice has ceased to exist.

  This view of the case is, it seems to us, based on a false impression of the cause of the prejudice against colored people, as well as of the principle which should regulate the bestowal of public offices. This prejudice is not confined to the United States; it exists in a greater or less degree all over the Western World. It exists in almost as great a degree in aristocratic circles in England as in Southern circles in this country; it is nowhere stronger than in white circles in Jamaica, where the negroes have been free for nearly forty years, and have filled almost all public offices, and figured at the governor’s levees, and dined at his table, though we admit it rages nowhere with such virulence as amongst the Anglo-Saxon race. Nor is the African race the only object of it. Hindoos and Chinese are exposed to it in almost the same degree. The contempt with which the average Englishman regards the Hindoo can hardly be surpassed by anything which the negro has in this country to undergo from the most besotted Democrat; and yet the Englishman has seen the Hindoo in all the pomp and pride and circumstance of royalty, and of every other great office; he has seen him serve gallantly in war, and knows him to be acute, refined, and descended from ancestors who, if their glory differed from European glory, were, nevertheless, glorious. Hindoos now are admitted to every department of the government service, sit on the bench, practice in the courts, and yet nobody will say that their official dignities have done much to raise them in the estimation of Englishmen. What they have done is to raise England and Englishmen in the estimation of Hindoos.

  The dislike of Englishmen and Americans to colored people, and their unwillingness to admit their equality, is not due simply to difference of feature, or color, or race, but to difference of feature, color, and race combined with apparent want of mental, moral, and physical vigor. People whom an Anglo-Saxon can “lick” easily he never respects, and cannot readily be got to respect. The Indian is as repulsive in appearance as the negro, and less capable of civilization, and yet, during all the earlier period of American history, an admixture of Indian blood in one’s veins was considered as something to be proud of; and it will be observed that this feeling has declined, and the Indian has fallen into the contempt which at present surrounds him, in the ratio of the decline of his powers of mischief. When he was capable of putting the scalps of a whole colony in danger nobody greatly objected to having a squaw for a grandmother, but since he lost his power of taking scalps at all, nobody likes to acknowledge relationship with him. Taking scalps, to be sure, may not per se be a remarkable indication of anything but ferocity and cunning; but the power of combining and carrying on a destructive war does indicate considerable power both of mind and body. Now the disability of the negro in the eyes of American society is due to the fact that he has never done anything which was an evidence of great capacity. He has never achieved wealth, which, in an Anglo-Saxon community, is the greatest evidence of power, and he has achieved neither literary, nor scientific, nor military distinction. That he has never had a chance to do so it may be easy to show; but society, in judging people, does not take opportunities or want of opportunities into account. Its decisions are shaped simply by accomplished results. When a man talks to it of what he might do if he had a chance, it laughs and leaves him. The only field in which the friends of the negro have been as yet able to produce strong indications of capacity superior to that of white men, is that of art; but it is only very recently that Americans and Englishmen have begun to look on painters or musicians or actors as anything better than vagabond adventurers of whom the community would be well rid.

  We hold, therefore, as we have once before said when discussing this same subject, that the removal of the white prejudice against the negro depends almost entirely on the negro himself. You can work sufficiently on the religious and moral feelings of the white community to secure for him justice and political equality, and a fair chance in the race of life; but as long as the great mass of negroes—in fact, the whole colored population as a class—are in a lower state of civilization than the rest of the population, less learned, less wealthy, less cultivated, less refined, less progressive, have, in short, achieved less in every walk of life, it is chimerical to ask the white majority to bestow on negroes, as a class, special marks of honor by selecting a colored man for the Vice-Presidency or other high office, simply because of his color; and yet, as we understand them, this is what Mr. Phillips and Harper’s Weekly ask us to do.

  The right of negroes, as negroes, to seats in the State legislatures and in Congress we do not question; nay, we assert it, because in the existing state of society in this country negroes can only be fairly represented by negroes. The admission of colored men to the representative body, as long as a sixth of the population are colored, and are separated in feeling and antecedents and condition by a wide gulf from their white neighbors, is not the bestowal of an honor, it is an act of justice. But the election, by the whole Union, to a high Federal office, of a colored man for the sole reason that the fraction of the community to which he belonged was poor and mean and despised, would, in our opinion, be a degradation and perversion of the office, and would not help the colored population, because it would outrage the sense of justice and sense of propriety of the best portion of the whites. There is something very amusing in the simplicity with which Mr. Phillips tries to persuade himself and persuade others, that as soon as people saw a negro foisted into the Vice-Presidency by political manoeuvering, the whites would begin to respect the colored population more than they had previously done. He might as well talk of regulating the temperature by forcing the mercury up and down in a thermometrical tube. Election to office is, and always has been, and we trust always will be, the result of the popular estimate of a man’s character, not the cause of it. Therefore, whenever we see a negro in the Vice-Presidency, it will
, we admit, be a sign that negroes, as a class, have risen in popular estimation. But to raise them in popular estimation, we must go about exhorting them to do the things and lead the life which win popular esteem, instead of exhorting the whites to bestow highest honors or their gifts on the class which has done least to deserve them, or to bestow the most important political trusts on the class which has done least to prove its fitness for them.

  The offices of government, as we understand government, are established for the service of the whole community, and not for the consolation of the unfortunate or unsuccessful, and if there be one political abuse from which, more than any other, the country has in these latter days suffered, it is the practice of bestowing nominations and appointments with reference not to the candidate’s fitness or to the public needs, but with reference to such arbitrary and senseless considerations as “the claims” of particular sections or localities or interests. It is to this abuse of its power by the convention that we owe our present valuable ruler, Andrew Johnson, and it is to this abuse of their power by the President and Senate that we have owed and do still owe most of our worst diplomatic officers, and many of the worst in other branches of the public service. It is to the idea, too, out of which this abuse springs—that offices are “spoils” or prizes and not trusts—that we owe much of the jobbing which marks the election of United States senators. Many a valuable man is lost to the Senate because some one section of a State has “claims” involving the choice of somebody else. To this abuse Mr. Phillips wants to give an immense extension.

  It is said that the arguments now used for the election of negroes to high office are such as have been and are constantly used in favor of the election or appointment of persons belonging to other despised or unfortunate classes, or interests. We deny it in toto. During the long contest in England which preceded the admission of Jews to the House of Commons, nobody ever thought of claiming seats for them as a means of raising Jews in the popular estimation. This work the advocates of their claims well knew the Jews must do for themselves. What was demanded in the case of the Jews, as well as of the Irish Catholics, was the removal as an act of justice of all legal barriers to their holding office. The moral and social barriers they were left to remove themselves by the ordinary means—that is, by industry, learning, energy, activity, eloquence, and public spirit. Baron Rothschild got his seat in the House of Commons not as a means of elevating his race, but because his race was elevated; because it had shown itself in every country in Europe foremost in the work of civilization; because its members were the first in the ranks of commerce, literature, arts, and arms, and because, in short, it had become ridiculous and absurd to exclude a Jew, as Jew, from post of honor. The mere social prejudice against Jews is still strong in every Christian country—stronger with many people than the prejudice against negroes—but as long as Jews are amongst the wealthiest merchants and bankers, the ablest lawyers and scientific men in the world, no prejudice can shut them out from more than their share, calculated on numbers, of political honors.

  The foreign population in this country is more numerous than the negro population, and has contributed far more to its wealth and strength and fame and prosperity. Foreigners are found in the most distinguished places in all walks of life, but how many foreigners are there in Congress? What foreigner has yet been nominated for the governorship of a State or the Vice-Presidency? Two or three have filled second-rate embassies; but, so far as we know, no high official position has yet been conferred by the popular vote on a man of foreign birth, and we have yet to meet with a foreigner who is fool enough to complain of this as a grievance or as an indication that foreigners are treated as “political outcasts.” The exclusion is a natural one, and because natural perfectly just. As long as native Americans do most of the brain work of the country, have most to do with the supply of its ideas and the direction of its industry, the high political positions will fall to their lot. If the day should ever come when high political positions shall be distributed, as treasury clerkships and custom-house places now are, as a mode of relieving or encouraging the helpless or friendless or destitute or incompetent, a serious blow will assuredly be struck at the stability of the government, and we, for our part, hope that nothing of the kind will ever be submitted to by the people either for the sake of the negroes or any other race or tribe, because we know that when negroes have contributed their fair share to the work of civilization and good government, no prejudice can, in a free Christian country, prevent them from receiving their fair share of the prizes.

  “SAMSON AGONISTES AT WASHINGTON”

  (August 24, 1867)

  On March 2, 1867, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act over Johnson’s veto, restricting the president’s patronage powers. It required the approval of the Senate in dismissing officers appointed with congressional consent. Legislators intended the bill, along with the Reconstruction Act, to assume control of the Reconstruction process and to limit Johnson’s power. Accordingly, on August 12, 1867, the president removed the popular secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton, a supporter of the Radicals’ Reconstruction program, and, five days later, transferred General Philip H. Sheridan, who had zealously implemented the Reconstruction Act, from the Fifth Military District (Texas and Louisiana) to the Department of the Missouri. This cartoon, published in Harper’s Weekly on August 24, 1867, depicted Johnson pulling down two massive columns (representing Stanton and Sheridan), causing Reconstruction to collapse on his head. Like Samson in the Bible and later John Milton’s tragedy Samson Agonistes (1671), Johnson destroys himself.

  GEORGE FITZHUGH, “CUI BONO?—THE NEGRO VOTE”

  (September 17, 1867)

  White conservative Southerners like Fitzhugh feared not only black voters, but what they correctly perceived was the national Republicans’ determination to establish their party in the former Confederate states led by the newly enfranchised blacks and white Unionists. Overstating black voters’ numbers, their intentions, their militancy, and their eventual impact, Fitzhugh predicted a black revolution, whereby the freedmen would take political control from white Republicans and enslave their former masters. “They are all armed and ready; all burning for a fight.” Fitzhugh urged Radicals to reverse themselves on the question of black suffrage. Otherwise the South would ignite in race war.

  Messrs. Editors—The Radicals have overreached themselves. The negroes throughout the South are determined not to become their allies and supple tools, but to set up a party of their own, and to vote for none but negro candidates for office. They naturally reject with scorn and contempt the Radical proposition that henceforth there shall be no distinctions of color or race, but that all men shall stand on their own merits. They see, that under a thin disguise, this is a proposition that the negroes shall do the voting, and the Radicals fill all the offices. Four millions of negroes in the South, they insist, by virtue of their numbers and their loyalty, are entitled to fill most of the Federal and State offices at the South, and not to become mere hewers of wood and drawers of water for a handful of false, hypocritical, newly-converted white Unionists. Thrown upon their individual merit regardless of color or race, and they know that no negroes would be elected or appointed to office, for more capable white men are everywhere to be found. Obliterate all distinctions of race, and the negroes at the South, like those at the North, would become outcasts, pariahs, paupers and criminals. They would be confined to the most loathsome and least lucrative employments, and spend half their time in prisons, work-houses and poorhouses. They know that mere political equality would at once condemn them to social slavery—and they see at the North, that this social slavery, or slavery to skill and capital, of an inferior to a superior race, is the worst possible condition in which human beings can be placed. You, and your readers, must see that the negroes will not be satisfied with a nominal, but deceptive equality, but are everywhere determined to become masters of those who lately owned them as slaves. We admire their plu
ck. They are all armed and ready; all burning for a fight. They are impatient at the tedious process of reconstruction, and lavish much more abuse upon the Federal soldiers, the Freedman’s Bureau and the Radicals, than upon the Secessionists. So soon as invested with the voting franchise, they will be full masters of the situation, for they constitute a majority on every acre of good land (except a little about the mountains) from Maryland to Florida, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and from the Rio Grande to Memphis. By mere voting, and selecting none but negroes as county, state and federal officers, in the favored regions where they constitute the majority, in two or three years they might expel the whites from all the fertile sections of the South, and turn those sections into hunting, ranging, fowling and fishing grounds, just as they were held, or infested by the Indians. Nature seems to have intended all the fertile portions of the South for mere roaming grounds for savages, for no where else on the globe would bountiful Nature enable savages to live with so little labor. It would be far easier for negro savages to live without labor on the sea, gulf and river coasts in the South, than in any parts of Africa. Wild fruits are ten-times as abundant in these favored sections of the South as in any parts of Africa; and so are fish, oysters, water fowl, and forest game. Give the negroes the right of suffrage, and at once they become masters of the situation throughout every acre of good land in the South, except about the mountains. They would only have to elect negro judges, sheriffs, justices of the peace, constables, jurors, etc., in order to expel the whole white population, except here and there a few old, infirm, silly, infatuated landholders. Our mechanics have nothing to do, and are rapidly emigrating. White common laborers or hirelings have all disappeared. We have not seen a single one since the war. There is nothing for our educated, enterprising young men to do here, and they are all removing. We have no industrial pursuits, except farming, and that is carelessly, lazily and languidly pursued by a few white landowners, and by troops of freedmen, who work occasionally, in a desultory way—say, on the average, three days in the week. The negro tenants, next year, will claim half of our lands, and negro judges, jurors, justices, etc., will sustain their claims—that is, provided, negro suffrage turns over the South to negro rule. It is a monstrous absurdity, cruelty and attempted deception, to invite white men from the North to settle in the South, subject themselves to negro rule, and probably, ere long, to be massacred by negroes. No! Let the whites at the North first expel the Radicals from power, deny to the negro the rights of citizenship, make him a subordinate, or mere coarse, common laborer, as God and Nature designed he should be, and these white men from the North will find the South a delightful residence. Now, no sane man would live here longer than he could make arrangements to quit but for the hope and expectation that Radical rule is nearly ended, and that the Northern Democrats, soon to come into power, will do justice to the whites of the South, and the whites of the North, by putting the negro to work, and leaving voting, legislating, and governing, to the whites.