THE DESOLATED STATES. 591 CHAPTER LXXXII.1 THE WORK OF RESTORATION. A Year later. - Hopes disappointed. — Position of the Whites of the South. Treatment of Southern Unionists, Black and White. Sections where the Hostility was most intense. Honorable and Noble Exceptions to this State of Feeling. The most Noisy Supporters of the Lost Cause. The Effect of President Johnson's Course in stimulating this Hostility. Review of his Course so far as it relates to Reconstruction. - Interviews with Southern Men. Organization of Provisional Governments. Specimens of the Men appointed by him as Governors. — Defiance of Congress in Advance. — Assurances to South Carolina. Democratic Conventions indorsing the President's Policy. - The Message of December, 1865. - Opposition to Congress. - His "White-washing Message."— Veto of the First Freedmen's Bureau Bill. The 222 of February Speech. Veto of the Civil Rights Bill. - Its Passage over the Veto. Provisions of the Bill. — The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. What it was.— Veto of the Second Freedmen's Bureau Bill. - Passage over the Veto. Its Provisions. - Admission of Tennessee. Mr. Johnson signs the Resolution, but protests. The Memphis Riot. The New Orleans Massacre. Mr. Johnson responsible for them. — General Sheridan's Account of it. The Philadelphia Convention. Its Tears. — It proves a Failure. -- Mr. Johnson weeps. Mr. Johnson's Speeches. Reply to the Philadelphia Committee. -"Congress hanging on the Verge of the Government.” — “Swinging round the Circle." - Disgraceful Conduct of Mr. Johnson. — Billingsgate in his Speeches. Wearisome Platitudes. — The Effect they had on the Elections of 1866. THE hopes expressed by the writer in the preceding chapter were not destined to realize a speedy fruition. The uncertainties arising from the somewhat sudden change in President's Johnson's policy, and the hesitancy manifested by Congress in the adoption of a fixed policy of reconstruction, were already, when that chapter was written, beginning to bear their legitimate fruit. The Southern whites who had participated actively or passively in the Rebellion, and who, when the war closed, were ready to submit without murmuring to such terms as the conquering party saw fit to prescribe, 1 This and the following chapters are furnished by the author of Woman's Work in the Civil War, History of the Civil War, Men of Our Day, etc. had already begun to put on the airs of equals or superiors, and to dictate the terms on which they would come back into the Union. They scouted the idea that negroes had any rights which whites were bound to respect, or that they themselves had by their rebellion forfeited any rights or powers which they had formerly enjoyed. In short, they insisted upon the statu quo ante bellum as their rightful position. While maintaining that it was their right and privilege to honor the graves and memories of the rebel leaders and soldiers who had fallen during the war, and to glorify the living generals and other officers, who had fought for what they fondly called the Lost Cause, they were intolerant of any honors being paid to the Union dead in the South, or any mention of living Union generals, unless accompanied with some scurrilous epithet. A Southern man or woman who had been loyal to the Union during the war, was an object of bitterest hate. If colored, he was shot down, hung, or beaten to death at the first opportunity, and there were always enough "lewd fellows of the baser sort," ready for this work. If a white man, his cattle were killed, his horses stolen, his poultry carried off, his barns were burned, and jokes, about their being struck by lightning on a clear night, were whispered; his crops were destroyed, and he was warned to leave the neighborhood. These were common occurrences in the country. In the towns, it was not quite so bad, except when the mob element was roused to activity, because the number of loyal Union men there was larger, and they were able to protect each other, to some extent. In some sections this bitterness toward Union men was much more intense than in others. In the interior of Louisiana, in Texas, in Southern Alabama, in considerable sections. of Mississippi, in Southern Georgia, and along the coast in the vicinity of Charleston, S. C., and in the neighborhood of Richmond, Petersburg, and Norfolk, Virginia, it was specially rife. West Tennessee too had its full share of it, and Kentucky was the most rebellious State in or out of the Union. THE DESOLATED STATES. 593 It should be remarked, too, that this bitterness did not pervade all classes, even among those who had formerly participated in the Rebellion. The men who had fought most bravely for the South were, very generally, disposed to accept reasonable terms from the victors. They had fought well, but they had been whipped, and there was nothing left but submission, and the endeavor to restore to the South its lost prosperity. In this view of the case, Lieutenant-Generals Longstreet and Johnston, and Major-Generals Forrest, Jeff. Thompson, and many others, coincided; and they, as well as some thousands of the former rebel soldiers, went to work manfully to aid in reconstruction on a fair and liberal basis. The most noisy and violent of the supporters of the "Lost Cause," as they styled themselves, were men and women who had taken no active part, except with their tongues, in the Rebellion, often of Northern birth, but thoroughly southernized in feeling; or, if the men had been connected with the Southern army or navy, they had been depredators on unarmed merchant ships, like Raphael Semmes, J. N. Maffit, or Lieutenant Braine; or bushwhackers, guerrillas, or deserters of the Mosby, Gilmor, and Clanton style; while the women were the imitators and admirers of Belle Boyd, Rosa Greenhow, and Sallie Rochester Ford. Still this class, making up in noise and bluster for what they lacked in numbers and ability, and possessing a sort of recklessness, dash, and abandon, which has always been attractive to the excitable and half-educated people of the South, have succeeding in keeping up an excitement, and an explosive condition of society, very unfavorable to the restoration of quiet, industry, and good order. Whether intentionally or not, the course pursued by President Johnson was admirably calculated to foster just this state of feeling. He commenced his administration by a very great blunder, the refusal to call an extra session of Congress in the summer of 1865. The emergency was one which demanded the assembling of the national legislature, and the harmonious and wise co operation of the executive and legislative branches of the government in the restoration of law, order, and quiet, throughout the nation. Nothing save the overweening vanity and conceit of Andrew Johnson led him to neglect this obvious duty, and to assume to himself powers which the constitution had never granted to him. Beginning with this mistake, let us briefly review his subsequent history so far as it relates to reconstruction, and see how it continued to be "a tragedy of errors.' In June, 1865, delegates from the South were first adOn the mitted to private interviews with the President. 17th of June, he issued his proclamation, providing for the restoration of civil government in Georgia and Alabama, in which he excluded negroes from the category of loyal citizens entitled to vote. He soon after proceeded to appoint provisional governors for the Southern States, an entirely unwarrantable proceeding. The character of these appointments may be seen in a sentiment uttered by Governor Perry, one of the number, soon after his installation. "There is not now in the Southern States," said he, "any one who feels more bitterly the humiliation and degradation of going back into the Union than I do." He ingratiated himself in the favor of the President, by assuring the people that the death of Mr. Lincoln was no loss to the South, while he had every hope that the accession of Mr. Johnson, an old slaveholding Democrat, would be an advantage. In Alabama, under the provisional government established by Mr. Johnson, the Convention prohibited negroes from testifying in the courts. Throughout the South, the unrepentant rebels began at once to make their arrangements for taking part in the government. In November, Governor Perry, of South Carolina, made a public demand, that when Congress met, the clerk of the House should place on the roll the names of representatives from the States lately in rebellion. When South Carolina hesitated to adopt the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, President Johnson assured THE DESOLATED STATES. 595 the Governor, that the clause giving Congress power to enforce it by appropriate legislation, really limited Congressional control over the negro question. After this preposterous assurance, South Carolina accepted the constitutional amend ment. In August and September, 1865, Democratic conventions indorsed the President's policy, and Democratic papers (even those which six months before denounced him as a drunken boor, and demanded his resignation) began to praise him. The Republican party were yet unwilling to believe that the man whom they had elected to the Vice-Presidency would so grossly deceive and betray them, and hoped that after the assembling of Congress all differences would disappear. They found very soon, however, that this hope was vain; for when the Thirty-ninth Congress was organized for business, and the message of the President was read, it was seen that he placed himself in direct opposition to the leaders of the Republican party, and utterly at variance with what he had at first avowed as his own policy. He professed his inability to concede the elective franchise to the freedmen in the South, because he must then of necessity have conceded it also to all colored men in the Northern States. A parity of reasoning would have required him to appoint provisional governors over all the Northern States, because he appointed them in the States lately in rebellion. While Congress was in session, and actually employed in legislating for the restoration of the rebel States, Mr. Johnson removed the Provisional Governor of Alabama, and handed the State government over to the officers elected by the people, thus ignoring the right of Congress to exercise any control over the subject. In reply to the demand of the Senate for information respecting the condition of the rebel States, the President sent a. message professing that they were all in a quiet and peaceful condition, and accompanied it by the reports of Generals Grant and Carl Schurz, which disproved his statements. Mr. Sumner denounced this as an attempt to "whitewash" their |