A Just and Lasting Peace: A Documentary History of Reconstruction

by John David Smith

  My father came here because he thought that there was a better situation here than in Georgia. Of course, the living was better there because they had plenty of fruit. Then he worked on a third and fourth. He got one bale of cotton out of every three he made. The slaves left many a plantation, and they would grow up in weeds. When a man would clear up the ground like this and plant it down in something, he would get all he planted on it. That was in addition to the ground that he would contract to plant. He used to plant rice, peas, potatoes, corn, and anything else he wanted too. It was all hisn so long as it was on extra ground he cleared up.

  But they said, “Cotton grows as high as a man in Arkansas.” Then they paid a man $2.50 for picking cotton here in Arkansas, while they just paid about 40 cents in Georgia. So my father came here. Times was good when we come here. The old man cleared five bales of cotton for himself his first year, and he raised his own corn. He bought a pony and a cow and a breeding hog out of the first year’s money. He died about thirty-five years ago.

  When I was coming along, I did public work after I became a grown man. First year I made crops with him and cleared two bales for myself at 12½ cents a pound. The second year I hired out by the month at $45 per month and board. I had to buy my clothes, of course. After seven years I went to doing work as a millwright here in Arkansas. I stayed at that eighteen months. Then I steamboated.

  We had a captain on that steamboat that never called any man by his name. We rolled cotton down the hill to the boat and loaded it on, and if you weren’t a good man, that cotton got wet. I never wetted my cotton. But just the same, I heard what the others heard. One day after we had finished loading, I thought I’d tell him something. The men advised me not to. He was a rough man, and he carried a gun in his pocket and a gun in his shirt. I walked up to him and said, “Captain, I don’t know what your name is, but I know you’s a white man. I’m a nigger, but I got a name just like you have. My name’s Webb. If you call ‘Webb,’ I’ll come just as quick as I will for any other name and a lot more willing. If you don’t want to say ‘Webb,’ you can just say ‘Let’s go,’ and you’ll find me right there.” He looked at me a moment, and then he said, “Where you from?” I said, “I’m from Georgia, but I came on this boat from Little Rock.” He put his arm around my shoulder and said, “Come on upstairs.” We had two or three drinks upstairs, and he said, “You and your pardner are the only two men I have that is worth a damn.” Then he said, “But you are right; you have a name, and you have a right to be called by it.” And from then on, he quit calling us out of our names.

  SOURCES OF THE TEXTS

  1. “An Act for the Release of certain Persons held to Service or Labor in the District of Columbia,” in The Statutes at Large, Treaties, and Proclamations, of the United States of America from December 5, 1859 to March 3, 1863, vol. 12, ed. George P. Sanger (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1863).

  2. Abraham Lincoln, “Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation,” in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 5, ed. Roy P. Basler (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953).

  3. Abraham Lincoln, “Emancipation Proclamation,” in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 6, ed. Roy P. Basler (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953).

  4. Abraham Lincoln, “Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction,” in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 7, ed. Roy P. Basler (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953).

  5. “Transcript of Wade-Davis Bill (February 15, 1864),” U.S. National Archives & Records Administration, http://www.ourdocuments.gov/print_friendly.php?flash=true&page=transcript&doc=37&title= Transcript+of+Wade-Davis+Bill+(1864).

  6. “By the President of the United States: A Proclamation,” July 8, 1864, http://www.ourdocuments.gov/print_friendly.php?flash=true &page=transcript&doc=37&title=Transcript+of+Wade-Davis+Bill+(1864).

  7. “The Wade-Davis Manifesto,” in The Radical Republicans and Reconstruction, 1861–1870, ed. Harold M. Hyman (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), 137–47.

  8. Henry Highland Garnet, “Let the Monster Perish,” in Lift Every Voice: African American Oratory, 1787–1900, eds. Philip S. Foner and Robert James Branham (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998).

  9. “An Act to establish a Bureau for the Relief of Freedmen and Refugees,” in The Statutes at Large, Treaties, and Proclamations, of the United States of America from December 5, 1859 to March 3, 1863, vol. 13, ed. George P. Sanger (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1866).

  10. Abraham Lincoln, “Second Inaugural Address,” in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 8, ed. Roy P. Balser (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953).

  11. Charles Sumner, “Right and Duty of Colored Fellow-Citizens in the Organization of Government,” in The Works of Charles Sumner, vol. 9 (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1875).

  12. Andrew Johnson, “Proclamation Establishing Government for North Carolina,” in The Papers of Andrew Johnson, vol. 8, ed. Paul H. Bergeron (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989).

  13. Andrew Johnson, “Amnesty Proclamation,” in The Papers of Andrew Johnson, vol. 8, ed. Paul H. Bergeron (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989).

  14. Emily Waters to Her Husband (July 16, 1865), in Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War, eds. Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland (New York: The New Press, 1994).

  15. Thaddeus Stevens, “‘Reconstruction,’ September 6th, 1865, in Lancaster,” in The Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens, vol. 2, eds. Beverly Wilson Palmer and Holly Byers Ochoa (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997).

  16. “A Freedmen’s Bureau Officer Reports on Conditions in Mississippi, 1865,” in Race and National Power: A Sourcebook of Black Civil Rights from 1862 to 1954, ed. Christopher Waldrep (New York: Routledge, 2011).

  17. “From Edisto Island Freedmen to Andrew Johnson,” October 28, 1865, in The Papers of Andrew Johnson, vol. 9, ed. Paul H. Bergeron (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991).

  18. Andrew Johnson, “Message to Congress,” in The Papers of Andrew Johnson, vol. 9, ed. Paul H. Bergeron (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991).

  19. “Amendment 13,” in The United States Government Manual 2003/2004 (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration, 2003).

  20. Carl Schurz, “Report of Carl Schurz on the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana,” in Carl Schurz, Report on the Condition of the South (New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1961).

  21. Laws of the State of Mississippi passed at a Regular Session of the Mississippi Legislature held in the city of Jackson, October, November and December, 1865 (Jackson, MS: J. J. Shannon & Co., State Publishers, 1866).

  22. Joseph S. Fullerton to Andrew Johnson, February 9, 1866, in The Papers of Andrew Johnson, vol. 10, ed. Paul H. Bergeron (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992).

  23. “Vicksburg, Miss., March 8, 1866,” in John Richard Dennett, The South as It Is: 1865–1866, ed. Henry M. Christman (New York: The Viking Press, 1965).

  24. Charles Sumner to the Duchess of Argyll, April 3, 1866, in The Selected Letters of Charles Sumner, vol. 2, ed. Beverly Wilson Palmer (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990).

  25. “The Civil Rights Act of 1866” (April 9, 1866), Statutes at Large 14 (Thirty-ninth Congress), 27–30.

  26. Benjamin C. Truman, “Relative to the Condition of the Southern People and the States in Which the Rebellion Existed,” Senate Executive Document, No. 43, Thirty-ninth Congress, first session (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1866).

  27. Carl Schurz, “The Logical Results of the War,” September 8, 1866, http://www.trip.net/~bobwb/schurz/speech/warresults.html.

  28. Rhoda Ann Childs’s Statement in Free at Last: A Documentary
History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War, eds. Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland (New York: The New Press, 1992).

  29. George Fitzhugh, “Camp Lee and the Freedman’s Bureau,” De Bow’s Review 2, After War Series (October 1866): 346–55, in The Causes of the South: Selections from De Bow’s Review 1846–1867, eds. Paul F. Paskoff and Daniel J. Wilson (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982).

  30. Frederick Douglass, “Reconstruction,” Atlantic Monthly 18 (December 1866): 761–65.

  31. “President Johnson’s Message,” December 3, 1866, in Edward McPherson, The Political History of the United States of America During the Period of Reconstruction (1871; reprint, Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, [2009]), 144–47.

  32. Claude August Crommelin, A Young Dutchman views Post–Civil War America: Diary of Claude August Crommelin, trans. Augustus J. Veenendaal Jr. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011).

  33. Henry Latham, Black and White: A Journal of a Three Months’ Tour in the United States (1867; reprint, New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969), 262–79.

  34. “An Act to Provide for more efficient Government of the Rebel States” [First Reconstruction Act] (March 2, 1867), Statutes at Large 14 (Thirty-ninth Congress), 428–29.

  35. Anonymous, “Untitled,” Charlottesville Chronicle, March 6, 1867, in The Reconstruction Era: Primary Documents on Events from 1865 to 1877, ed. Donna L. Dickerson (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003).

  36. “The Prospect of Reconstruction,” The Nation 5 (March 14, 1867): 212–13.

  37. “Impeachment from a Legal Point of View,” The Nation 5 (March 14, 1867): 214–15.

  38. “Congress and the Constitution,” The Nation 5 (March 28, 1867): 254.

  39. “The Prospect at the South,” The Nation 5 (March 28, 1867): 254–55.

  40. “Land for the Landless,” The Nation 5 (May 16, 1867): 394–95.

  41. John Forsyth, “The Argument of Numbers,” Mobile Advertiser and Register, June 27, 1867, and W. W. Screws, “Why Oppose a Convention?” Montgomery Daily Advertiser, June 28, 1867, in The Reconstruction Era: Primary Documents on Events from 1865 to 1877, ed. Donna L. Dickerson (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003).

  42. “The Freedmen,” The Missionary Reporter of the A.M.E. Church 1 (July 1867): 4–5.

  43. Thaddeus Stevens, “Reconstruction,” July 9, 1867, in Congressional Globe, Fortieth Congress, first session, in The Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens, vol. 2, eds. Beverly Wilson Palmer and Holly Byers Ochoa (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997).

  44. “The Negro’s Claim to Office,” The Nation 5 (August 1, 1867): 90–91.

  45. “Samson Agonistes at Washington,” Harper’s Weekly (August 24, 1867): 544.

  46. George Fitzhugh, “Cui Bono?—The Negro Vote,” De Bow’s Review 4, After War Series (October 1867): 289–92, in The Causes of the South: Selections from De Bow’s Review 1846–1867, eds. Paul F. Paskoff and Daniel J. Wilson (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982).

  47. “The Virginia Election,” The Nation 5 (October 31, 1867): 354.

  48. “What Shall We Do with the Indians?” The Nation 5 (October 31, 1867): 356.

  49. Andrew Johnson, “Third Annual Message,” in The Papers of Andrew Johnson, vol. 13, ed. Paul H. Bergeron (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996).

  50. J. T. Trowbridge, A Picture of the Desolated States; and the work of Restoration, 1865–1868 (Hartford, CT: L. Stebbins, 1868).

  51. Cornelia Hancock to Philadelphia Friends Association for the Aid and Elevation of the Freedmen, January 1868, in South After Gettysburg: Letters of Cornelia Hancock, 1863–1868, ed. Henrietta Stratton Jaquette (1937; reprint, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1956).

  52. Francis L. Cardozo, “Break up the Plantation System,” in Lift Every Voice: African American Oratory, 1787–1900, eds. Philip S. Foner and Robert James Branham (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998).

  53. “The Impeachment,” New York Times, February 24, 1868, in The New York Times Complete Civil War, 1861–1865, eds. Harold Holzer and Craig L. Symonds (New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2010), 453.

  54. S. A. Atkinson, “The Supreme Hour Has Come,” Athens Southern Banner, March 13, 1868, in The Reconstruction Era: Primary Documents on Events from 1865 to 1877, ed. Donna L. Dickerson (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003).

  55. “Karinus,” Letter to the Editor—“Equal Suffrage in Michigan,” Hillsdale Standard, March 17, 1868, in The Reconstruction Era: Primary Documents on Events from 1865 to 1877, ed. Donna L. Dickerson (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003).

  56. “This Little Boy Would Persist in Handling Books Above His Capacity. And This Was the Disastrous Result,” Harper’s Weekly (March 21, 1868): 192.

  57. Thaddeus Stevens, “Speech on Impeachment Trial of Andrew Johnson,” April 27, 1868, Congressional Globe, Fortieth Congress, second session, supplement 320, in The Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens, vol. 2, eds. Beverly Wilson Palmer and Holly Byers Ochoa (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997).

  58. “The Result of the Trial,” The Nation 6 (May 21, 1868): 404.

  59. “Republican, at Chicago, May,” in Edward McPherson, The Political History of the United States of America during the Period of Reconstruction (1871; reprint, Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, [2009]), 364–65.

  60. Carey Styles, “Not Our ‘Brother,’” Atlanta Constitution, June 24, 1868, in The Reconstruction Era: Primary Documents on Events from 1865 to 1877, ed. Donna L. Dickerson (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003).

  61. “Amendment 14,” in The United States Government Manual 2003/2004 (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration, 2003).

  62. Henry McNeal Turner, “I Claim the Rights of a Man,” in Lift Every Voice: African American Oratory, 1787–1900, eds. Philip S. Foner and Robert James Branham (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998).

  63. “Remarks of William E. Mathews,” The Missionary Reporter of the A.M.E. Church (January 1869): 9–11.

  64. Ulysses S. Grant, “President Grant’s Inaugural Address, March 4, 1869,” in Edward McPherson, The Political History of the United States of America During the Period of Reconstruction (1871; reprint, Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, [2009]), 416–17.

  65. Lydia Maria Child, “Homesteads,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, March 28, 1869, in A Lydia Maria Child Reader, ed. Carolyn L. Karcher (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997).

  66. “Amendment 15,” in The United States Government Manual 2003/2004 (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration, 2003).

  67. Frederick Douglass, “At Last, at Last, the Black Man Has a Future: An Address Delivered in Albany, New York, on 22 April 1870,” in The Frederick Douglass Papers: Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews, vol. 4: 1864–1880, eds. John W. Blassingame and John R. McKivigan (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991).

  68. Carl Schurz, “Enforcement of the Fifteenth Amendment,” in Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz, vol. 1: October 20, 1852–November 26, 1870, ed. Frederic Bancroft (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1913).

  69. “An Act to Enforce the Right of Citizens of the United States to Vote in the Several States of This Union, and for Other Purposes,” in The Statutes at Large, Treaties, and Proclamations, of the United States of America from December 1869 to March 1871, and Treaties and Postal Conventions, vol. 16, ed. George P. Sanger (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1871).

  70. Proceedings of the Ku Klux Trials at Columbia, S.C., in the United States Circuit Court, November Term, 1871 (1872; reprint, New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969).

  71. Hiram R. Revels, “Abolish Separate Schools” in Lift Every Voice: African American Oratory, 1787–1900, eds. Philip S. Foner and R
obert James Branham (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998).

  72. Robert Brown Elliott, “The Amnesty Bill,” in Congressional Globe, Forty-second Congress, first session, March 14, 1871, in Black Congressmen During Reconstruction: A Documentary Sourcebook, ed. Stephen Middleton (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002).

  73. “An Act to Enforce the Provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and for Other Purposes,” in The Statutes at Large, Treaties, and Proclamations, of the United States of America from March 1871 to March 1873, vol. 17, ed. George P. Sanger (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1873).

  74. Charles Stearns, The Black Man of the South, and the Rebels; or, The Characteristics of the Former, and the Recent Outrages of the Latter (1872; reprint, New York: Kraus, 1969).

  75. “The Man with the (Carpet) Bags,” Harper’s Weekly (November 9, 1872): 880.

  76. James S. Pike, The Prostrate State: South Carolina Under Negro Government (1874; reprint, New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1968).

  77. Robert Brown Elliott, “The Civil Rights Bill,” in Lift Every Voice: African American Oratory, 1787–1900, eds. Philip S. Foner and Robert James Branham (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998).

  78. John Mercer Langston, “Equality Before the Law,” in Lift Every Voice: African American Oratory, 1787–1900, ed. Philip S. Foner and Robert James Branham (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998).

  79. James T. Rapier, Congressional Record, Forty-third Congress, first session, June 9, 1874 (Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1874), 4782–84.

  80. “An Act to Protect All Citizens in Their Civil and Legal Rights,” in The Statutes at Large, Treaties, and Proclamations, of the United States of America from December 1873 to March 1875, vol. 18, ed. George P. Sanger (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1875).