by Philip Dray
Of course, by late summer of 1875, convincing the Grant administration to authorize new military endeavors in the former Confederacy would have been a tall order for even the most persuasive legislator, black or white. Indicative of how greatly attitudes had changed, even in the North, the influential New York press largely concurred with Hiram Revels's apostate missive to the president; the New York Tribune suggested that Governor Ames suffered from an "excited imagination," and the New York Times proposed that if the Republicans indeed controlled Mississippi, now was the time to prove it, without anyone's help.
Pierrepont duly forwarded Governor Ames's telegrams, notes from his meeting with Senator Bruce and the other men he'd received, as well as some press clippings and his own recommendations to President Grant, who was vacationing at Long Branch. Relaxing at the edge of the serene Atlantic, the president began the chore of sifting through the information, weighing the hardship in the ever-troubled South against the duty of the national government, and pondering what, if anything, was to be made of the once-grand experiment of Reconstruction.
Chapter 10
THE ETERNAL FITNESS OF THINGS
AFTER PRESIDENT GRANT had considered the plight of Mississippi and its stricken Republican government, and weighed the various testimonies and advice received from Mississippians of both races and political parties, it was Attorney General Pierrepont who informed Governor Ames that there would be no troops sent to Jackson. "The whole public are tired of these annual autumnal outbreaks in the South," read Pierrepont's telegram, "and the great majority are ready now to condemn any interference on the part of the Government."
"This flippant utterance," Ames would later remark, "was the way the executive branch of the National government announced that it had decided that the reconstruction acts of Congress were a failure." Pierrepont went on to gently scold Ames for his decision not to arm loyal men in his state. "I suggest that you take all lawful means and all needed measures to preserve the peace by the forces in your own state, and let the country see that the citizens of Mississippi, who are largely favorable to good order, and are largely Republican, have the courage and manhood to fight for their rights and to destroy the bloody ruffians who murder the innocent and unoffending freedmen."
The historian William Gillette has shown recently that Pierrepont had in fact edited Grant's thoughts on the Mississippi predicament. The president, while expressing frustration about "autumnal outbreaks," had conceded that federal assistance would likely be needed in the state because Ames's request, "if made strictly under the Constitution and Acts of Congress there under," could not be refused; but he also told Pierrepont that, in the short term, Ames would do well "to strengthen his position by exhausting his own resources in restoring order before he receives govt. aid."
"Taking advantage of Grant's fatal ambiguity," observes Gillette, "Pierrepont proceeded to impose his own will and to block federal intervention. Quoting from Grant's letter, but out of context, he eliminated the president's appraisal of the situation, narrowed his interpretation of the reach of federal authority, and related nothing but the idea of pressing the Ames government to take defensive action on its own." Still, it's difficult to blame the attorney general for the abandonment of Mississippi. The president knew that the fight there could not likely be won, certainly not on terms favorable to his administration or to the national Republican Party. Pierrepont certainly colored Grant's thoughts with his own bias, but he was delivering a message that the president fundamentally approved.
The governor in Jackson had few, if any, alternatives to pursue if Washington would not act. Black self-defense was a chimera; no one wanted to provoke another Vicksburg, and even black leaders warned Ames to avoid at all costs anything resembling a race war. Ames nonetheless felt he had no choice. He could not relinquish Mississippi to the enemy without a struggle. He arranged for two militia units to be pulled together in Jackson, and one at Edwards Station, a small junction near Clinton, informing Blanche, "I have taken steps to put all the arms I have or can possess into the hands of colored people and shall demand that they fight." No doubt with the humiliating rout at Vicksburg in mind, he ordered one hundred copies of a manual entitled Uptons Infantry Tactics from a publisher in New York for distribution to black militia leaders.
Ames was foundering on what the historian Richard Zuczek has described as "the paradox of law enforcement during Reconstruction ... In using the militia, Republicans incurred charges of military oppression; in not using the militia, Republicans betrayed a weakness that ex-Confederates were all too ready to exploit." Given local whites' deep-rooted dread of black rebellion, Ames's action could not have been more provocative—a carpetbag governor arming black men and encouraging the use of deadly force. The governor was denounced as "a hyena in human form, unfit to live and wholly unfit to die." As things turned out, Ames's bravado and the militia crisis both quickly fizzled: there was a shortage of qualified recruits and insufficient time to create, train, and mobilize a functioning citizen military from scratch. Only two black militia units became active in response to Ames's alert, and the leader of one, the state legislator Charles Caldwell, would pay a high price for his loyalty.
Caldwell, a blacksmith and former slave, had been a delegate to the state's constitutional convention of 1868. Shortly after it, he was assaulted in Jackson and, in a gunfight, had slain his white attacker. When an all-white jury concluded he had fired in self-defense, Caldwell became probably the first free black man in Mississippi ever to be tried and acquitted for taking the life of a white person. A resident of Clinton, he had been present at the rally-turned-riot of September 4 and had tried to head off the violence, but he had fled, along with many other Republicans, to Jackson when whites began their campaign of terror. Upon Ames's call for militia, Caldwell agreed to lead Company A, Second Regiment of Mississippi Infantry, the thirty miles from the capital to Edwards Station to deliver a shipment of arms and ammunition to other militia commanders from a reserve that Ames had kept under federal guard at the capital. The governor and other officials watched nervously as Caldwell's outfit marched and were greatly relieved when the blacks were not harassed while going to or returning from the railhead. Later it was learned that White Liner forces suspected Ames of using Caldwell's force to draw them into a fight, a spectacle that might bring federal troops, so they had shrewdly refused to take the bait. Having allowed Caldwell to march unmolested, the whites simply went back to the kind of terror tactics they knew best, targeting individual blacks.
Ames regretted that he had not earlier demanded that the militia be organized. "Election day may find our voters fleeing before rebel bullets rather than balloting for their rights," he wrote to Blanche.
They are to be returned to a condition of serfdom—an era of second slavery. It is their fault (not mine, personally) that this fate is before them. They refused to prepare for war when in time of peace, when they could have done so. Now it is too late. The nation should have acted but it was "tired of the annual autumnal outbreaks in the South"...The political death of the negro will forever release the nation from the weariness from such "political outbreaks." You may think I exaggerate. Time will show you how accurate my statements are.
In desperation he made one last request for assistance to President Grant, noting that "domestic violence prevails in various parts of this State, beyond the power of the State authorities to suppress ... The Legislature cannot be convened in time to meet the emergency." The administration reiterated its refusal of troops, but this time Pierrepont responded to Ames's plea by sending a Justice Department envoy, the New York attorney George K. Chase, to console the governor and assess the situation on the ground.
Chase, arriving in Mississippi in the first week of October, met the state's leading Democratic representatives, the party executive committee chairman and former Confederate general James Z. George and Ethelbert Barksdale, a prominent newspaper editor. He helped schedule a conference with Ames at the governor's ma
nsion. The Democrats sensed that Ames by now knew the cause of Reconstruction in Mississippi was lost and that he would be glad to accept a dignified compromise that would avoid more riots and killing. But still they worried about a federal insertion of troops as well as a rumor that Charles Caldwell and the deposed sheriff Albert Morgan intended to lead black militiamen back into Yazoo City. Ames continued to back Morgan's reinstatement as sheriff. Chase, however, was assured by Democrats that a large, dangerous white contingent at Yazoo awaited any such black "invasion" and that a massacre would be the certain result. Having noticed that many of the so-called black militiamen in Jackson lacked shoes, the New Yorker had a difficult time imagining them as an effective fighting force. On October 12, to everyone's great relief, Sheriff Morgan announced that he would not attempt to retake Yazoo.
In the meeting at the mansion, held the next day, the two sides agreed that the militia units Ames had activated would stand down, and no new units would be mobilized; in return, the Democrats would allow a fair, safe election to be held in November. Chase later recalled that
the [Democratic] citizens expressed themselves well-satisfied with the Governor, and regretted very much that they had not known him personally before. General [Thomas J.] Wharton ... said he was never more surprised in his life, and that it was hard to tell whether they had captured the Governor or the Governor had captured them. They said they were delighted with the turn affairs had taken, and that there would be no more killing, but there would be peace and quiet, and everybody would have a chance to vote.
The compromise in Mississippi was endorsed by many in the Northern press even as it was understood what Democratic guarantees about voting would likely mean. "Notwithstanding the apparent injustice of driving the negroes away from the polls, it might be better in the end for them, and it might be better for the white people, if that action were suffered, so as to be done with present troubles, at least," said the Cincinnati Commercial. "The state needs peace ... and it needs it badly ... even at the sacrifice of a large share of justice and principle." One of the immediate benefits of the new understanding was General George's willingness to alleviate the problem caused by black farm workers who had fled to the state capital, seeking shelter from White Liner violence; the seasonal cotton harvest was not being brought in. "The city of Jackson was almost literally filled with negroes who had abandoned their work on the plantations and fled there for safety," Ames later told Congress. George personally wrote "passes" to black field hands who had become refugees in Jackson, to enable them to return home without being harassed.
Of course, the Democrats could afford to be lenient that fall in "allowing a fair election," for they had already succeeded at intimidating the black electorate. Not willing to take anything for granted, however, they spent the final weeks of the campaign working to seduce any remaining black voters by hosting several barbecues expressly for blacks, with bands, the firing of cannon, and stem-winder speeches from the candidates. At other Democratic gatherings the imagery was darker, including parades of wagons bearing empty coffins with the names of known carpetbaggers and scalawags inscribed on them. Isolated reports of violent attacks on leading Republicans also continued; the White Liners targeted influential men such as ministers in order to frighten their followers. "One smart nigger in some localities would control the votes of two or three hundred niggers," Chase later said, "and the Democrats wanted to get those recognized leaders out of the way; if they could not scare him out, then they would kill him." When, in the days just before the election, Chase complained of such abuses to George and Barksdale, they explained them away as misunderstandings or incidents of a personal nature. As Chase had feared, the Democrats were reneging on their agreement, but the election was now too close for federal troops to be sent to safeguard the balloting, even if Grant was to approve such a measure.
The tactics of harassment seen in the campaign proved mild compared to those of election day itself. Chase, in later testimony before a congressional committee, described the situation in Yazoo County. "Sublit had a band of ... about 100 armed men ... that went about the country scaring the niggers ... they would start out on a raid with a rope hitched to each saddle, and would ride over the country firing their guns and scaring the niggers, and ... when the niggers would see the ropes tied to their saddles, that was enough for them." Chase also witnessed an attempt to terrorize Governor Ames following a large Democratic barbecue in Jackson:
They went to the United States camp and borrowed a cannon, a Government gun and caisson, hitched up four mules to it ... The mob, as they passed the executive mansion ... would stick their fingers up to their noses and make all sorts of grimaces at the windows ... and hoot and holler at the governor, and several pulled out their pistols and fired at the mansion; while I was standing there a ball went up over my head in the window-casing. The marks are in the mansion and can be seen there.
These efforts at intimidation proved effective, erasing black voting majorities. Thus the Democrats gained control of both houses of the state legislature, while winning back four of the state's six congressional districts. There was no clearer example of the fraud that attended the election than the results from the bitterly contested turf of Republican Yazoo County. There, in the election of 1873, Republican votes had tallied almost 2,500, as opposed to 411 Democratic votes; by contrast, in 1875 the Democrats gathered more than 4,000 votes, against 7 for the Republicans. Not only had black voters stayed away (it was said the seven Republican votes were cast by Democrats in an attempt to suggest a balanced election), but more people had voted than actually resided in the county.
With the election over, the time had come for whites' final reckoning with Charles Caldwell. They had allowed him to play the hero as he led his loyal band of freedmen to Edwards Station, but his kind of courage could not long be endured. Shortly before Christmas 1875, whites in Clinton badgered Caldwell's nephew, David Washington, about his role in the Moss Hill riot; when Caldwell ventured into town to inquire about his relative's mistreatment, a white acquaintance named Buck Cabell invited him into a store basement to share a drink of holiday cheer. Caldwell at first demurred, but eventually acceded to Cabell's request. The invitation, however, was a setup for Caldwell's assassination. "They jingled the glasses, and at the tap of the glasses ... someone shot him right through the back, from the outside of the gate window, and he fell to the ground," his wife explained. Caldwell, badly wounded, begged to be taken out of the store. "He wanted to die in the open air, and did not want to die like a dog closed up." He was dragged out into the street, where he told the armed assailants standing over him, "Remember, when you kill me, you kill a gentleman and a brave man. Never say you killed a coward. I want you to remember it when I am gone." His body was then filled with bullets.
Caldwell's wife came on the run when told about her husband, but it was too late, and she was driven off by the whites. "I went over to the house," she said, "and went upstairs and back to my room, and laid down—a widow." Tragically, Caldwell's brother Sam was also hunted down and killed that same day. When the bodies of the men were laid out in the parlor the next day, mourners witnessed a bizarre ceremony. "At one o'clock the train came from Vicksburg" carrying a group of White Liners, Mrs. Caldwell remembered. "They all marched up to my house, and went in to where the two dead bodies laid, and they cursed them, those dead bodies ... and they danced and threw open the melodeon, and sung all their songs, and challenged the dead body to get up and meet them, and they carried on there like a parcel of wild Indians."
Ames, stunned by the death of a man he'd so recently lauded as a hero, confided to Blanche, "I have never read of such depravity among enlightened people ... and what seems the saddest is that no class of Democrats, it matters not what may be their intelligence or position, frown upon these crimes." He shared his concern that "some of our party are indignant at me because of my action [in reaching a compromise with the Democrats]. By and by they will thank me for it. It was the only wa
y they could be secure ... My dread is that I fear somebody will think I have 'sold out'—but I have not, in any sense."
This concern, and his sense of honor, was all that kept Ames from re-signing on the spot. Now that Republicanism in Mississippi had ended, he could never again hope to be an effective public officer, only the object of scorn and repugnance. Chase, who had remained in Mississippi at Ames's request, tried to cheer him. Describing his own successful professional and social life in New York City, he encouraged the governor to look ahead to new opportunities, to consider resettling in the North, perhaps in a big city where he could pursue a business career. Ames didn't know it, but he was fortunate to be able to contemplate his future at all. According to the Mississippi Democrat W. Calvin Wells, a conspiracy had been put in place to assassinate the governor just before the election. A "committee," Wells reported, "was ... importuned to allow a squad of men to enter Jackson, surround the mansion at night, and take Ames and hang him to a post. We protested, not because we loved Ames, but we knew if this were done, troops would be sent by the President and we would fail to carry the election, and military despotism would be the result."
Shortly after the Mississippi election of November 1875, the black Mississippi congressman John Roy Lynch, who still controlled a substantial amount of black patronage in the state, visited President Grant at the White House to discuss a postmaster appointment in Mississippi. What Lynch most wanted to ask Grant, however, was why he had withheld federal support from Governor Ames.
Lynch, born in 1847 at Vidalia, Louisiana, was the son of a slave mother and an Irish American plantation manager who, before his death, promised both mother and son their manumission. The white friend who was supposed to carry out the dying man's wishes, however, went back on his word, keeping Lynch and his mother in bondage and eventually selling them across the river to Mississippi. Freed by Union forces in 1864, Lynch studied in missionary schools, worked as a photographer's assistant in Natchez, and eventually ran his own photography business and acquired local real estate.