The Negro in The American Rebellion

Persistent speeechmaker, covered with falsity,
Come, sit now for your portrait. I will paint
As others see you, – men who love their God,
And hate not even you, aye you, attaint
With love of self, and power that’s outlawed.
Behold the picture! See a drunken man
Whose age brings nothing but increase of sin, —
A deceptive ‘policy,’ a hateful plan
To deceive the people, and reenslave the sons of Ham!
Now see it stretching out a slimy palm,
And striking hands with rebels. Nay, nay!
It grasps Columbia by the throat and arm,
And seeks to give her to that beast of prey.”

Intensely in love with himself, egotistical, without dignity, tyrannical, ungrateful, and fond of flattery, Mr. Johnson was entirely unprepared to successfully resist the overtures of the slaveholding aristocracy, by whom he had so long wished to be recognized. It was some weeks after the death of the good President, that a committee of these Southerners visited the White House. They found Mr. Johnson alone; for they had asked for an audience, which had been readily granted. Humbly they came, the lords of the lash, the men who, five years before, would not have shaken hands with him with a pair of tongs ten feet long. Many of them the President had seen on former occasions: all of them he knew by reputation. As they stood before him, he viewed them from head to feet, and felt an inward triumph. He could scarcely realize the fact, and asked himself, “Is it possible? have I my old enemies before me, seeking favors?” Yes: it was so; and they had no wish to conceal the fact. The chairman of the committee, a man of years, one whose very look showed that he was not without influence among those who knew him, addressing the Chief Magistrate, said, “Mr. President, we come as a committee to represent to you the condition of the South, and its wants. We fear that your Excellency has had things misrepresented to you by the Radicals; and knowing you to be a man of justice, a statesman of unsullied reputation, one who to-day occupies the proudest position of any man in the world, we come to lay our wants before you. We have, in the past, been your political opponents. In the future, we shall be your friends; because we now see that you were right, and we were wrong. We ask, nay, we beg you to permit us to reconstruct the Southern States. Our people, South, are loyal to a man, and wish to return at once to their relations in the General Government. We look upon you, Mr. President, as the embodiment of the truly chivalrous Southerner, – one who, born and bred in the South, understands her people: to you we appeal for justice; for we are sure that your impulses are pure. Your future, Mr. President, is to be a brilliant one. At the next presidential election, the South will be a unit for the man who saves her from the hands of these Yankees, who now, under the protection of the Freedman’s Bureau, are making themselves rich. We shall stand by the man that saves us; and you are that man. Your genius, your sagacity, and your unequalled statesmanship, mark you out as the father of his country. Without casting a single ungenerous reflection upon the great name of George Washington, allow me to say what I am sure the rest of the delegation will join me in, and that is, that, a hundred years to come, the name of Andrew Johnson will be the brightest in American history.” Several times during the delivery of the above speech, the President was seen to wipe his eyes, for he was indeed moved to tears. At its conclusion, he said, “Gentlemen, your chairman has perfectly overwhelmed me. I was not, I confess, prepared for these kind words, this cordial support, of the people of the South. Your professions of loyalty, which I feel to be genuine, and your promises of future aid, unman me. I thought you were my enemies, and it is to enemies that I love to give battle. As to my friends, they can always govern me. I will lay your case before the cabinet.” – “We do not appeal to your cabinet,” continued the chairman, “it is to you, Mr. President, that we come. Were you a common man, we should expect you to ask advice of your cabinet; but we regard you as master, aud your secretaries as your servants. You are capable of acting without consulting them: we think you the Andrew Jackson of to-day. Presidents, sir, are regarded as mere tools. We hope you, like Jackson, will prove an exception. We, the people of the South, are willing to let you do precisely as you please; and still we will support you. We are proud to acknowledge you as our leader. All we ask is, that we shall be permitted to organize our State Governments, elect our senators and representatives, and return at once into the Union; and this, Mr. President, lies entirely with you, unless you acknowledge yourself to be in leading-strings, which we know is not so; for Andrew Johnson can never play second fiddle to men or parties.” These last remarks affected Mr. Johnson very much, which he in vain attempted to conceal. “Gentlemen,” replied the President, “I confess that your chairman, has, in his remarks, made an impression on my mind that I little dreamed of when you entered. I admit that I am not pleased with the manner in which the Radicals are acting.” – “Allow me,” said the chairman, interrupting the President, “to say a word or two that I had forgotten.” “Proceed,” said the Chief Magistrate. “You are not appreciated,” continued the chairman, “by the Radicals. They speak of you sneeringly as the ‘accidental President,’ just as if you were not the choice of the people. The people of the North would never elect you again. No man, except Mr. Lincoln, has ever been elected a second time to the presidency, from the free States. They have so many peddling politicians, like so many hungry wolves, seeking office, that they are always crying, ‘Rotation, rotation.’ But, with us of the South, it is different. When we find a man with genius, talent, a statesman, we hold on to him, and keep him in office. You, Mr. President, can carry all the Southern, and enough of the Northern States to elect you to another term.” – “Yes,” responded one of the committee, “to two terms more.” Mr. Johnson, with suppressed emotion, said, “I will at once lay down a policy, which, I think, will satisfy the entire people of the South; but, but – I said that treason should be made odious, and traitors should be punished: what can I do so as not to stultify myself?”

“I see it as clear as day, Mr. President,” said the chairman. “You have already made treason odious by those eloquent speeches which you have delivered at various times on the Rebellion; and now you can punish traitors by giving them office. St. Paul said, ‘If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing, thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.’ Now, many of the Southerners are your old enemies; and they are hungry for office, and thirst for the good liquor they used to get in the congressional saloons.”

“I am satisfied,” said the President, “that I can restore the Southern States to their relations to the Union, and let all who held office before the war, resume their positions again. – “Yes,” remarked a member of the committee; “and you can build up a new party of your own, that shall take the place of the Democratic party, which is already dead.” – “Very true,” replied the President, “there is both room and need of another political party. You may rest assured, gentlemen, that you will be re-instated in your former positions.” The committee withdrew. “My policy” was commenced. The Republicans did not like it; and a committee was sent to the White House, composed of some of the leading men of the North, the chairman of which was a man some six feet in height, stout, and well made; features coarse; full head of hair, touched with the frost of over fifty winters; dressed in a gray suit, light felt hat. The committee, on entering, found the President seated, with his feet under the table. He did not rise to welcome the delegation, but seemed to push his feet still farther under the table, for fear that they might think he was going to rise. The chairman, whom I have already described, said in a rather strong voice, “Mr. President, we have called to ask you to use your official power to protect the Union men of the South, white and black, from the murderous feeling of the rebels.

“As faithful friends, and supporters of your Administration, we most respectfully petition you to suspend for the present your policy towards the rebel States. We should not present this prayer if we were not painfully convinced that, thus far, it has failed to obtain any reasonable guarantees for that security in the future which is essential to peace and reconciliation. To our minds, it abandons the freedmen to the control of their ancient masters, and leaves the national debt exposed to repudiation by returning rebels. The Declaration of Independence asserts the equality of all men, and that rightful government can be founded only on the consent of the governed. We see small chance of peace unless these great principles are practically established. Without this, the house will continue divided against itself.”

“Gentlemen,” replied the President, “I will take your request into consideration, and give it that attention that it demands.” The committee left, satisfied that Mr. Johnson was a changed man. Soon after, the President was called upon by another delegation, a committee of colored men, consisting of Frederick Douglass, William Whipper, George T. Downing, and L. H. Douglass. The negro race was singularly fortunate in having these gentlemen to represent them; for they are not only amongst the ablest of their class, but are men of culture, and all of them writers and speakers of distinguished, ability. The delegation, on entering, found the President seated, with his feet under the table, and his hands in his breeches pockets, and looking a little sour. Mr. Downing, the delegate from New England, first addressed the Chief Magistrate; and his finely chosen-words, and well-rounded periods, no doubt made the President not a lit-, tie uneasy, for he looked daggers at the speaker. The reflection of Downing’s highly cultivated mind, as seen through his admirable address, doubtless reminded the President of his own inferiority, and made him still more petulant; for, when he replied to the delegate, he said, —

“I am free to say to you that I do not like to be arraigned by some who can get up handsomely-rounded periods, and deal in rhetoric, and talk about abstract ideas of liberty, who never perilled life, liberty, or property. This kind of theoretical, hollow, unpractical friendship, amounts to very little.”

After Downing, came the strong words of Douglass. Of this speaker, the President had heard much, and appeared to eye him from head to feet; took his hands out of his pockets; and rested his elbows upon the table. Douglass, no doubt, reminded him of the well-dressed free negro, who, nearly forty years before, had pushed him into the ditch; and this recollection brought up, also, that hateful tailor’s bench, and, still back of that, his low origin.

Mr. Douglass also reminded the President of his promise to be the negro’s Moses. This last remark was cruel in the speaker, for it carried Mr. Johnson back to the days when he was carrying out that deceptive policy by which he secured the nomination on the ticket with Mr. Lincoln; and he appeared much irritated at the remark. His whole reply to the delegation was weak, unfair, and without the slightest atom of logic. Mr. Downing addressed the President as follows: —

“We present ourselves to your Excellency to make known, with pleasure, the respect which we are glad to cherish for you, – a respect which is your due as our Chief Magistrate. It is our desire that you should know that we come, feeling that we are friends meeting friends. We may, however, have manifested our friendship by not coming to further tax your already much-burdened and valuable time; but we have another object in calling. We are in a passage to equality before the law. God hath made it by opening a Red Sea. We would have your assistance through the same. We come to you in the name of the United States, and are delegated to come by some who have unjustly worn iron manacles on their bodies; by some whose minds have been manacled by class legislation in States called free. The colored people of the States of Illinois, Wisconsin, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, the New-England States, and the District of Columbia, have specially delegated us to come. Our coming is a marked circumstance. We are not satisfied with an amendment prohibiting slavery; but we wish that amendment enforced with appropriate legislation. This is our desire. We ask for it intelligently, with the knowledge and conviction that the fathers of the Revolution intended freedom for every American; that they should be protected in their rights as citizens, and be equal before the law. We are Americans, – native-born Americans. We are citizens. We are glad to have it known to the world that we bear no doubtful record on this point. On this fact, and with confidence in the triumph of justice, we base our hope. We see no recognition of color or race in the organic law of the land. It knows no privileged class, and therefore we cherish the hope that we may be fully enfranchised, not only here in this district, but throughout the land. We respectfully submit, that rendering any thing less than this will be rendering to us less than our just due; that granting any thing less than our full rights will be a disregard of our just rights, – of due respect for our feelings. If the powers that be do so, it will be used as a license, as it were, or an apology, for any community or individual, so disposed, to outrage our rights and feelings. It has been shown in the present war that the Government may justly reach its strong arm into States, and demand from them – from those who owe it – their allegiance, assistance, and support. May it not reach out a like arm to secure and protect its subjects upon whom it has a claim?”

Following Mr. Downing, Mr. Frederick Douglass advanced, and addressed the President, saying, —

“Mr. President, we are not here to enlighten you, sir, as to your duties as the Chief Magistrate of this republic, but to show our respect, and to present in brief the claims of our race to your favorable consideration. In the order of divine Providence, you are placed in a position where you have the power to save or destroy us, to bless or blast us, – I mean our whole race. Your noble and humane predecessor placed in our hands the sword, to assist in saving the nation; and we do hope that you, his able successor, will favorably regard the placing in our hands the ballot with which to save ourselves. We shall submit no argument on that point. The fact that we are the subjects of government, and subject to taxation, subject to volunteer in the service of the country, subject to being drafted, subject to bear the burdens of the State, makes it not improper that we should ask to share in the privileges of this condition. I have no speech to make on this occasion. I simply submit these observations as a limited expression of the views and feelings of the delegation with which I have come.”

I omit Mr. Johnson’s long and untruthful speech, and give the reply of the delegation, which he would not listen to: —

“Mr. President, in consideration of a delicate sense of propriety, as well as your own repeated intimation of indisposition to discuss or to listen to a reply to the views and opinions you were pleased to express to us in your elaborate speech to-day, we would respectfully take this method of reply thereto.

“Believing, as we do, that the views and opinions expressed in that address are entirely unsound, and prejudicial to the highest interests of our race, as well as of our country, we cannot do otherwise than expose the same, and, so far as may be in our power, arrest their dangerous influence.

“It is not necessary at this time to call attention to more than two or three features of your remarkable address.

“The first point to which we feel especially bound to take exception is your attempt to found a policy opposed to our enfranchisement, upon the alleged ground of an existing hostility on the part, of the former slaves towards the poor white people of the South.

“We admit the existence of this hostility, and hold that it is entirely reciprocal.

“But you obviously commit an error by drawing an argument from an incident of a state of slavery, and making it a basis for a policy adapted to a state of freedom.

“The hostility between the whites and blacks of the South is easily explained. It has its root and sap in the relation of slavery, and was incited on both sides by the cunning of the slave-masters. These masters secured their ascendency over both the poor whites and the blacks by putting enmity between them. They divided both to conquer each.

“There was no earthly reason why the blacks should not hate and dread the poor whites when in a state of slavery; for it was from this class that their masters received their slave-catchers, slave-drivers, and overseers. They were the men called in upon all occasions by the masters when any fiendish outrage was to be committed upon the slave.

“Now, sir, you cannot but perceive that, the cause of this hatred removed, the effect must be removed also. Slavery is abolished. The cause of antagonism is removed; and you must see that it is altogether illogical – ‘putting new wine into old bottles, mending new garments with old clothes’ – to legislate from slave-holding and slave-driving premises for a people whom you have repeatedly declared your purpose to maintain in freedom. Besides, even if it were true, as you allege, that the hostility of the blacks toward the poor whites must necessarily be the same in a state of freedom as in a state of slavery, in the name of Heaven, we reverently ask, how can you, in view of your professed desire to promote the welfare of the black man, deprive him of all means of defence, and clothe him whom you regard as his enemy in the panoply of political power?

“Can it be that you would recommend a policy which would arm the strong and cast down the defenceless? Can you, by any possibility of reasoning, regard this as just, fair, or wise?

“Experience proves that those are oftenest abused who can be abused with the greatest impunity. Men are whipped oftenest who are whipped easiest. Peace between races is not to be secured by degrading one race, and exalting another; by giving power to one race, and withholding it from another: but by maintaining a state of equal justice between all parties, – first pure, then peaceable.

“On the colonization theory that you were pleased to broach, very much could be said. It is impossible to suppose, in view of the usefulness of the black man in time of peace as a laborer in the South, and in time of war as a soldier at the North, and the growing respect for his rights among the people, and his increasing adaptation to a high state of civilization in this his native land, that there can ever come a time when he can be removed from this country without a terrible shock to its prosperity and peace.

“Besides, the worst enemy of the nation could not cast upon its fair name a greater infamy than to suppose that negroes could be tolerated among them in a state of the most degrading slavery and oppression, and must be cast away and driven into exile for no other cause than having been freed from their chains.”

The most unhandsome and untruthful remarks of the President to the delegation are those in which he charges the slave-masters and the slave with combining to keep the poor whites in degradation.

The construction which he put upon his promise to the blacks of Tennessee – to be the “Moses to lead the black race through the Red Sea of bondage” to – expatriation – was mean in the extreme, and shows a mind whose moral degradation is without its parallel.

CHAPTER XLII – ILL TREATMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE SOUTH

The Old Slave-holders. – The Freedmen. – Murders. – School-teachers. – Riot at Memphis. – Mob at New Orleans. – Murder of Union Men – Riot at a Camp-meeting.

Haughty and scornful as ever; regarding themselves as overpowered, but not conquered; openly regretting their failure to establish a Southern Confederacy; backed up by President Johnson in their rebellious course, – the Southerners appear determined to reduce the blacks to a state of serfdom if they cannot have them as slaves. The new labor-laws of all the Southern States place the entire colored population as much in the hands of the whites as they were in the palmiest day of chattel slavery, if we except the buying and selling. The negro whipping-post, which the laws of war swept away, has, under Andrew Johnson’s reconstruction policy, been again re-instated throughout the South. The Freedmen’s Bureau is as powerless to-day to protect the emancipated blacks in their rights as was the Hon. Samuel Hoar to remain in South Carolina against the will of the slave-holders of the days of Calhoun and of McDuffie. Where the old masters cannot control their former slaves, they do not hesitate to shoot them down in open day, as the following will show: —

A Texas correspondent writes to “The New-York Evening Post” (he dare not allow his name and residence to be printed) as follows: —

“Every day I hear of murders of freedmen. Since five o’clock this afternoon, four new ones have been reported here. The disloyal press suppress the mention of such occurrences.

“Should there be another outbreak in Texas, very many Union men, as well as a large proportion of freedmen, would at once be massacred in order to bring about such another reign of terror as would make the South a unit…

“Three freedmen were murdered in or near the line of an adjoining county a few days ago. The wagon which one of them was driving was robbed of all the fine goods it contained. The other two freedmen were shot by the same man, who is believed to be their former owner. The head of one of them was cut off, and they were left unburied. No investigation has been, or probably will be, made into these murders. If any Union man were to move in the matter, it would be at the peril of his life.

“The brave and loyal man who told me of these murders was applied to by a freed man, a kinsman of one of the murdered, for advice. The freedman was told to go to Austin, and report the facts to the agent of the Freedmen’s Bureau: but he appears not to have arrived. Like the freedman despatched by the chief justice of Refugio County, with a letter setting forth the disorders in that county, he may have been shot on the road.

“My informant, seeing that I set about writing down the facts as to these murders just as he stated them, said to me, ‘Do not make my name public, for it is all I can do to hold my own in – county just now;’ and added, ‘Ikeep no money in my house but a few dollars for current expenses. I can take care of myself in the daytime, but I do not feel safe at night.’”

On the 2d of April, 1866, a Mr. Quisenbery was tried at the Circuit Court for the County of Louisa, Va., for the murder of Washington Green. Green was the former slave of Quisenbery, had worked for said Quisenbery from the fall of Richmond, about the 3d of April, 1865, until about the 1st of October, 1865, when Quiserinbery told him, the said Washington Green, that he had better go and get work somewhere else; that he would not pay him for any thing that he had done. Washington Green went to work for a lady to get some shingles for her, and Quisenbery made a contract with this lady, that she should pay him, for Green’s getting the shingles, by thrashing out his, Quisenbery’s, wheat. It did not satisfy Washington Green, that Quisenbery should not only refuse to pay him for the work which he had already done for him, but that he should also collect what he had earned by hard working for this lady. Green went to Quisenbery, and asked him for the amount of getting the shingles for this lady. Quisenbery said, “Washington, this is three times that you have been after me for that money; I am now going to my hog-pen, and I warn you not to follow me.” He repeated that warning three times. He then went to the hog-pen, got over the fence, stooped down to throw out some corn that the hogs had not eaten. He looked up, and saw Washington Green at or near the fence, and said, “I thought I warned you not to follow me,” and pulled out his knife, and stabbed Green in the throat, and killed him instantly. This is the evidence and confession of Quisenbery, who was tried, and the jury found a verdict of not guilty, without scarcely leaving the jury-box; and Quisenbery was declared guiltless of any crime amid the plaudits of the people.

At Jacksonville, Fla., on the 20th of June last, a freedman complained before Col. Hart, that his last employer would not pay him. The black man afterwards went to the pine-woods, chopping logs. While absent, the man of whom he had complained got a woman to go to the freedman’s wife, and get into a difficulty with her; whereupon the freedman’s wife was arrested, tried, found guilty, and fined fifty dollars, being unable to pay which, she was put up at auction, and sold to the person who would take her for the shortest time, and pay fine and costs. The shortest time was four years! Under another law of the State, the children were bound out till they should become of age!

A free colored man named Jordan opened, by permission of the commandant of the post at Columbia, Tenn., a school for the blacks. The school went on smoothly till Monday, the 11th instant, when two soldiers of the Eighth Tennessee Cavalry went into the school, and broke it up; but the teacher, being so advised, resumed his labor the next day. But, on the 14th, Messrs. Datty, Porter, White, and others, including soldiers of the Eighth Tennessee, the party headed by White the city constable, proceeded to the schoolroom, seized the teacher, and brought him under guard to the court-house, where he received a mock trial. When being asked for his authority for teaching a school, Mr. Jordan replied, that Lieut. – Col. Brown and Major Sawyer were his authority, and wished they would bring Major Sawyer in. One of the men went out, but was absent only for a moment, when he came in, stating that Major Sawyer could not be found; whereupon Mr. Andrews ordered that the teacher be given twenty-five lashes. And they were administered, the man receiving the scourge like a martyr, telling his persecutors that he was willing to suffer for the right; and that Christ had received the same punishment for the same purpose; and he thought, if he could teach the children to read the Bible so that they might learn of heaven, he was doing a good work. To this, a soldier of the Eighth Tennessee said, “If you want to go to heaven you must pray: you can’t get there by teaching the niggers. We can’t go to school, and I’ll be damned if niggers shall.”

Volumes might be written, recounting the shameful outrages committed at the South since the surrender of Lee. Not satisfied with murders of an individual character, the Southerners have, of late, gone into it more extensively. The first of these took place at Memphis, Tenn., May 4, 1866. A correspondent of Hon. W. D. Kelley, of Philadelphia, said, —

“I have been an eye-witness to such sights as should cause the age in which we live to blush. Negro men have been shot down in cold blood on the streets; barbers, at their chairs and in their own shops; draymen on their drays, while attempting to earn an honest living; hotel-waiters, while in the discharge of their duties; hackmen, while driving female teachers of negro children to their schools; laborers, while handling cotton on the wharves, &c. All the negro schoolhouses, and all the negro churches, and many of the houses of the negroes, have been burned, this too, under the immediate auspices of the city police and the mayor: in fact, most of these outrages were committed by the police themselves, —all Irish, and all rebels, and mostly drunk. This is not the half: I have no heart to recount the outrages I have seen. The most prominent citizens stand on the streets, and see negroes hunted down and shot, and laugh at it as a good joke. Attempts have been made to fire every Government building, and fire has been set to many of the abodes and business-places of Union people.

“There is no doubt but that there is a secret organization sworn to purge the city of all Northern men who are not rebels, all negro teachers, all Yankee enterprise, and return the city ‘to the good old days of Southern rule and chivalry.’

“When the miscreants had fired Collins’s chapel (a large frame church, corner of Washington and Orleans Streets, which would now cost fully ten thousand dollars, to rebuild), they stood around the fire which lighted the midnight sky, and made the night hideous with their hellish cheers for ‘Andy Johnson’ and a ‘white man’s government!’ And the supporters of the President, aside from being midnight burners of churches and schoolhouses, robbed women and children, and men, – sparing none on account of age, sex, physical disabilities, or innocence of crime, – even burning women and children alive.