A Just and Lasting Peace: A Documentary History of Reconstruction (33 page)

(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 pluck. 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.

We have said that the negroes, so soon as they become invested with the right of suffrage, will become masters of the situation, and may seize on and hold all of the property of the whites, without redress on their parts; for negro jurors, justices and judges, taught by Northern Abolition emissaries that they (the negroes) are the rightful owners of all Southern lands and other property, would be sure to profit by the lessons they have thus learned. But they are impatient. This is too slow a process for them. We assure you, and your readers, and the entire North, that the freedmen (with very few exceptions) are anxious, impatient, burning with desire to begin the fight—the war of races—at once. They hold incendiary meetings, caucuses and conventions every day. They are all around; they are continually drilling in defiance of law. They have every where secret military organizations; they daily defy and insult the Federal troops and the Freedman's Bureau. They are ready and anxious to fight all the whites both North and South. They believe themselves far better soldiers than the whites, and are ready to attempt the expulsion or extermination of the whites. Unless the elections at the North, this fall, show a decided Democratic gain, the war of the races will begin ere the commencement of another year. And what will be the consequences? Why, a few hundreds or thousands, whites, men, women and children, will be massacred by the negroes; and then, in retaliation, hundreds of thousands negroes will be exterminated by the infuriated whites. This war of races will brutalize whites as well as blacks. Yet, knowingly, willfully, premeditatedly and advisedly, the Radical leaders are bringing about this inhuman and bloody result. And for why? Not to make allies of the negroes, for the negroes hate and despise them, and are everywhere busy in building up a negro party and in nominating negro candidates for office. They are equally the enemies of radical measures and radical men. In all their meetings in the cotton states, they denounce the direct tax on cotton, and will be sure to oppose the protective tariff; or indirect tax on cotton and other necessaries of life; for such taxes fall most heavily on the laboring classes. They will, for like reasons, be sure to advocate the repudiation of the National debt; whilst white representatives from the South would vote for its payment to the uttermost cent; for such payment would obviously be part of the terms of Reconstruction, which no honest Southron would attempt to violate. Besides, this war of races would involve the North also in war, increase the National debt, greatly increase Federal taxation, destroy altogether the Northern market for her merchandise and manufactures at the South; put a stop to the production of cotton, rice, sugar and tobacco; render reconstruction equally hopeless and undesirable; divide, probably, the Union into a half dozen separate nations, and involve the whole country, without distinction of race or section, in one common, irremediable ruin. But we hope and believe that Northern men begin to see that the continuance of radical rule is rapidly bringing about these disastrous results, and that they will soon hurl these cruel, dishonest and disorganizing rulers from the seats of power, do justice to the South, restore the Union on constitutional terms, and renew amicable and profitable relations between the lately hostile sections.

(October 31, 1867)

George Fitzhugh was not alone in overreacting to the prospect of black voters in the Reconstruction era South. The editor of
The Nation,
while pleased to report that Virginians had taken steps toward complying with the Reconstruction Acts, alleged that black voters in the state had come under the political control of an extreme Radical, Unionist editor the Reverend James W. Hunnicutt (1814–1880), author of
The Conspiracy Unveiled
(1863), a work that condemned secession as a slaveholders' plot.
The Nation
prophesied that Reconstruction would fail if the Republicans pitted whites against blacks.

Virginia
is the first State in which a full vote of both races has been polled under the Reconstruction Act. Although there is a considerable preponderance of white voters in the State, there seems to be no doubt that the call for a convention is sustained by a large majority, and that the convention will be Radical in politics. So far, this is a very acceptable result. But it is attended with some drawbacks which deserve attention, especially as they proceed from causes which may find a larger field of operation and produce very serious results.

We have on several occasions alluded to the dangerous effects which might be produced among the freedmen of the South by the current talk about confiscation, and the suggestions of politicians that the negro might properly use his ballot as a means of personal advantage. It is evident that our warnings were only too much needed and our fears too well founded. The fear, once common at the North, that the votes of the negroes would be controlled by their masters, has been entirely dispelled. The fear, common among a different class, that the negroes would use their power brutally, long since passed away. But while it is clear both that the negroes will vote in a mass for a Republican ticket, and that they will be in the main a law-abiding class, it is also plain that they are in danger of falling into the hands of demagogues who will use them without scruple for purposes which will finally prove disastrous to the race.

Mr. Hunnicutt, of Richmond, is the foremost example of this class. Originally, no doubt, a well-meaning man, zealous for liberty and loyalty, he has been perverted by the prospect of power which his great influence among the colored people opened to him, and embittered by the hatred of his white neighbors. His public language has sometimes had an affectation of liberality, but it is manifest that his actions have all been governed by a narrow desire to keep the Republican party of the State under his own control. He has persuaded the colored people to distrust every white man outside his own little clique; and has urged them to a course of political action which has excluded every respectable white man from their alliance, although thousands were willing and even anxious to co-operate with them upon honorable terms. The natural result of such bigotry was shown in the recent vote of Richmond, where there are hundreds of white Republicans fully as radical as Mr. Greeley or Senator Wilson, yet who were driven to support a Conservative ticket; so that Mr. Hunnicutt and his associates received less than fifty white votes in the whole city. It is true that Mr. Hunnicutt secured his election, which was all that he cared about; but at the cost of consolidating the whole white race in opposition. We rejoice to believe that this event, in view of the narrow escape which Mr. Hunnicutt had from entire defeat, will prove fatal to his higher aspirations. But there are more important interests at stake than the fortunes of a single demagogue. The Republican party puts its existence in peril by tolerating such a policy as has been adopted in Richmond. The national leaders of the party must find some means of liberalizing the party managers at the South, or the whole plan of reconstruction will fail, dragging the party to ruin with it.

We say it deliberately,
no scheme of reconstruction can succeed with the white race at the South unanimously opposed to it
. It can succeed though every rebel, in States where all the whites are rebels, oppose it. It can succeed against the will of nine-tenths of the whole white population of the South. But if it is so managed as to disgust the whole white race as a race, irrespective of birthplace, politics, associations, and interest, it must inevitably fail.