A Just and Lasting Peace: A Documentary History of Reconstruction

by John David Smith

  When you have read this somewhat elaborate paragraph and pondered over it a while, you still ask yourselves: How far does he mean to go and where does he mean to stop? There is plenty of well-expressed criticism; but what is the tangible, specific thing he means to do? The difference between these utterances and those contained in Governor Hayes’s letter is striking and significant. There are none of the precise, clean-cut, sharply-defined propositions put forth by Governor Hayes, indicating how the spoils system with its demoralizing influences is to be eradicated and what is to be put in its place.

  When we try to evolve from this mountain of words the practical things which Governor Tilden promises to do, we find that they consist simply in the appointment of new men, according to an “elevated standard,” whatever that may be, and in holding officers to account for their doings, of course. When the offices are filled with new men superfluous offices are “wisely” to be cut off, and finally the “patient and careful organization of a better civil service system” is to be proceeded with “under the tests, whenever practicable, of proved competency and fidelity.” It seems, then, when we boil it all down and I think I am doing Governor Tilden’s language no violence in saying so that, first, the offices are to be filled with good Democrats in the way of a “clean sweep” and a “new deal of the spoils,” and that afterwards it shall be “patiently and carefully” considered how and where “tests of proven competency and fidelity” can be established, so as to fill the offices with good men. But, first of all things, “the offices for the Democrats, the spoils for the victors.” Does any candid man pretend that it means anything else? Governor Tilden is a profuse writer, having an infinite assortment of words at his command. If he meant anything else, would he not have been able to say so in a precise form of expression? For the short allusion to subsequent systematic reform, to be “patiently and carefully” approached, is even more studiously vague and shadowy than the many paragraphs in party platforms, with the valuelessness of which we have in the course of time become so justly disgusted.

  Or is there any sensible man in the land, even among Governor Tilden’s independent friends, who expects anything else than simply a new distribution of the spoils? If there is, let him read the Democratic newspapers, let him look round among the leaders as well as the rank and file, and he will soon become aware of his mistake. Who does not know that the principle, “To the victors belong the spoils,” was first inaugurated by the Democratic party; that the spoils system of the civil service was developed by that party in all its characteristic features; that for the last forty years it has been its traditional and constant policy and practice, and at this moment their struggle for success is in a great measure inspired by the hope of an opportunity to precipitate themselves upon the public plunder? Is Governor Tilden the man, in case of his election, to constitute himself a breakwater against the universal tendency, the unanimous, impatient will of his party? Or is there, I ask you candidly, and especially those of my independent friends who, although animated with the desire of genuine reform, are inclined to aid the Democrats, is there in the Democratic party any influential element that would urge a Democratic President to advance thorough measures of civil service reform in a non-partisan sense, or that would earnestly support him if he did? If there exists such an influential element, where is it? Is it in the rich men’s Manhattan Club, or in Tammany Hall or anti-Tammany in New York, among the “swallow-tails” or the “short-hairs”? Or is it among the old State-rights Democrats, East and West? Or among the Confederates in the South? Or among the Irish population or the Roman Catholic Democrats generally? If there is in any section of the Democratic party any desire for a genuine reform of the civil service, anything but a demand for a new deal of the spoils, show it to me. I shall certainly be the last man to deny that there are many good, honest, patriotic, well-meaning and able citizens in the Democratic organization and among its leaders. I count among them not a few valued and trusted personal friends. But where are the advocates of genuine civil service reform among them? As far as I know, we have heard only the solitary voice of Senator Gordon, who submitted in the last session of Congress a commendable proposition for the reform of the revenue service; but the commendation it received in the organs of public opinion came almost exclusively from the Republican or independent side. And now will Governor Tilden, if elected, without support in his own party, at the risk of his popularity with his own friends, brace himself up against the furious onset of hungry patriots, and say: “The interests of the service, the cause of reform, demand that the offices of the Government be no longer looked upon as the spoils of party victory; I shall, therefore, keep in office all faithful and efficient officers no matter whether they are Republicans, and turn out only the unworthy ones; go home, my Democratic friends, that I may judiciously discriminate at leisure”? Or will he tell Democratic Congressmen: “The principles on which the civil service is to be reformed demand that I should not permit any Congressional interference with the responsibilities of the appointing power; therefore put your recommendations of your friends in your pockets and let me alone, my good fellow-Democrats”?

  What man in his five senses expects Governor Tilden to do this? Has he ever promised anything of the kind? Certainly he has not. Is he not too inveterate a Democrat and too closely wedded to the traditions of his party to think of it?

  Well, then, what sort of reform will be brought about by a Democratic victory? I assume even that Governor Tilden and the men he may put into his Cabinet will sincerely desire to put only the best available Democrats into office, and will employ every honest effort to that end. But what will be the result? The accession of the Democrats to power will be signalized by the most furious rush for office ever witnessed in the history of this Republic. For years and years hundreds of thousands have been lying in wait, eagerly watching for the opportunity. You find them not only in the North, East and West, but still more in the South. The Southern people have many good qualities, but it is a notorious fact that among them the number of men thinking themselves peculiarly entitled to public place has always been conspicuously numerous. Now they have been on short fare for many years, and long waiting has sharpened their appetite. They will also be quick to remember that Democratic success could be brought about only by a united Southern vote, and that above all others they have claims to reward. Our brave Confederate friends have won renown by many a gallant charge during the war, but all their warlike feats will be left in the shade by the tremendous momentum of the charge they will execute upon the offices of the Government. It will be a rush of such eagerness, turbulence and confusion that men of this generation will in vain seek for a parallel. And now amidst all this, urged on by a universal cry of impatience from all sections of the Democratic party that every radical must be driven from place at once, do you think it for a moment possible that the President and the members of the Cabinet will breast that storm and sit down with cool deliberation, to gather evidence about the character and qualifications of every applicant for the seventy or eighty thousand places to be filled, so as to keep improper men out of office? Is it not absolutely certain that the offices will be filled helter-skelter, as so often before, and that of the applicants those, as a rule, will be the most successful who are the most intrusive and persistent in elbowing their way to the front? Can it in the nature of things be otherwise? And what will become of the cause of reform? . . .

  I, therefore, declare this to be my honest conviction, not only that Governor Hayes, as a man of patriotism and integrity, will, if elected to the Presidency, be true to his word, in using all the Constitutional powers of his office to carry out to the letter the program put forth by himself, but that, powerful as the opposition he will have to encounter may be, the chances will be strongly in favor of the success and lasting establishment of the reformed system, sustained as it will be by the best elements of the Republican party and a patriotic public opinion.

  Indeed, when examining
the relative positions taken by the two candidates for the Presidency, and the prospects they open to us, the opponents of Governor Hayes seem to be utterly at a loss to discover a flaw in the systematic reform he proposes to establish. They find themselves forced back upon the small expedient of discrediting his intentions. “Governor Hayes,” they say, “cannot be in earnest with this plan, for if he were believed to be in earnest there would be a multitude of Republican politicians who would rather see their candidate defeated than such a reform succeed.” There may be such Republican politicians. But Governor Hayes’s own word, publicly spoken, warrants me in telling you that he is in earnest, and uncompromisingly in earnest. If there were Republicans who would try to defeat him for that reason, I am confident it would not change his position. Governor Hayes will ever be proud to have stood up for so good a cause, and would rather be defeated as its faithful champion, than succeed by betraying it. But now I ask you, my independent friends, if that cause is so good that the spoils politician would fear its success more even than the failure of his party, is not there, for you, as sincere friends of reform, every reason to desire and work for its triumph? Considering with candor every circumstance surrounding us, carefully weighing every probability and feeling the necessity of thorough and lasting reform, is it possible that you should hesitate in your choice? Can you fail to see that here is a battlefield worthy of your efforts, here the line of advance towards the objects which, as true reformers, you must hold highest? A change! is your cry. Yes, a change! is mine. But do you not, with me, insist upon a change that opens the prospect of lasting improvement? Is a change of parties all you want, whatever the consequence? If you are in earnest, you will want more; you will want a change in the very being, in the nature of parties.

  That is the great thing needful. But in the success of Hayes, not that of Tilden, will you find it. Can you doubt, then, that a change to Hayes will be a greater and much more wholesome change than that to Tilden? What is a change to Tilden? A change from Republican to Democratic spoils in politics. What is a change to Hayes? A change from the spoils system to a true reform of the civil service and the overthrow of machine politics. That is the prediction I make, and with confidence I look into the future to see it verified. Can the duty of sincere friends of reform be doubtful? I at least see mine as clearly as ever, and to the last will I perform it.

  THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON, “SOME WAR SCENES REVISITED”

  (July 1878)

  In 1877, the year Hayes assumed the presidency, Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823–1911) left Rhode Island for the South, making a sentimental tour of the scenes of his Civil War military experiences in Virginia, South Carolina, and Florida. Americans remember Higginson, the Harvard-trained Unitarian minister, as a fervent abolitionist, freedom fighter in “Bleeding Kansas,” supporter of John Brown, and colonel of the First South Carolina Volunteers, the earliest regiment of emancipated slaves mustered into the U.S. Army. Higginson’s accurate and detailed Army Life in a Black Regiment (1870), originally published as essays in Atlantic Monthly, was an important Reconstruction era text celebrating black equality and manhood. It remains a literary masterpiece. Higginson’s 1878 “Some War Scenes Revisited” provides a clear-eyed Northerner’s view of Southern conditions as Reconstruction faded into memory. The blacks he encountered exhibited “much more manhood than they once did,” the “results from the changed feeling created toward a race of freedmen and voters.”

  Nothing in actual life can come so near the experience of Rip Van Winkle as to revisit war scenes after a dozen years of peace. Alice’s adventures in Wonderland, when she finds herself dwarfed after eating the clover leaf, do not surpass the sense of insignificance that comes over any one who once wore uniform when he enters, as a temporary carpet-bagger, some city which he formerly ruled or helped to rule with absolute sway. An ex-commander of colored troops has this advantage, that the hackmen and longshore-men may remember him if nobody else does; and he at once possesses that immense practical convenience which comes only from a personal acquaintance with what are called the humbler classes. In a strange place, if one can establish relations with a black waiter or a newspaper correspondent, all doors fly open. The patronage of the great is powerless in comparison.

  When I had last left Jacksonville, Florida, in March, 1864, the town was in flames: the streets were full of tongues of fire creeping from house to house; the air was dense with lurid smoke. Our steamers dropped rapidly down the river, laden to the gunwale with the goods of escaping inhabitants. The black soldiers, guiltless of all share in the flames, were yet excited by the occasion, recalled their favorite imagery of the Judgment Day, and sang and shouted without ceasing. I never saw a wilder scene. Fourteen years after, the steamboat came up to the same wharf, and I stepped quietly ashore into what seemed a summer watering-place: the roses were in bloom, the hotel verandas were full of guests, there were gay shops in the street, the wharves were covered with merchandise and with people. The delicious air was the same, the trees were the same; all else was changed. The earthworks we had built were leveled and overgrown; there was a bridge at the ford we used to picket; the church in whose steeple we built a lookout was still there, but it had a new tower, planned for peaceful purposes only. The very railroad along which we skirmished almost daily was now torn up, and a new track entered the town at a different point. I could not find even the wall which one of our men clambered over, loading and firing, with a captured goose between his legs. Only the blue sky and the soft air, the lovely atmosphere of Florida, remained; the distant line of woods had the same outlook, and when the noon guns began to be fired for Washington’s birthday I could hardly convince myself that the roar was not that of our gunboats, still shelling the woods as they had done so many years before. Then the guns ceased; the past withdrew into yet deeper remoteness. It seemed as if I were the only man left on earth to recall it. An hour later, the warm grasp of some of my old soldiers dispelled the dream of oblivion.

  I had a less vivid sense of change at Beaufort, South Carolina, so familiar to many during the war. The large white houses still look peacefully down the placid river, but there are repairs and paint everywhere, and many new houses or cabins have been built. There is a new village, called Port Royal, at the railroad terminus, about a mile from my first camp at Old Fort plantation; and there is also a station near Beaufort itself, approached by a fine shell-road. The fortifications on the old shell-road have almost disappeared; the freedmen’s village near them, named after the present writer, blew away one day in a tornado, and returned no more. A great national cemetery is established near its site. There are changes enough, and yet the general effect of the town is unaltered; there is Northern energy there, and the discovery of valuable phosphates has opened a new branch of industry; but after all it is the same pleasant old sleepy Beaufort, and no military Rip Van Winkle need feel himself too rudely aroused.

  However, I went South not to see places, but people. On the way from Washington I lingered for a day or two to visit some near kinsfolk in Virginia, formerly secessionists to a man, or, to be more emphatic, to a woman. Then I spent a Sunday in Richmond, traversed rapidly part of North Carolina and Georgia, spent a day and two nights in Charleston, two days at Beaufort, and visited various points in Florida, going as far as St. Augustine. I had not set foot in the Southern States for nearly fourteen years, but I remembered them vividly across that gap of time, and also recalled very distinctly a winter visit to Virginia during college days. With these memories ever present, it was to me a matter of great interest to observe the apparent influence of freedom on the colored people, and the relation between them and the whites.