Reconstruction in South Carolina

THE Civil War of 1861-65 (the term is used here for convenience, though it lacks perfect accuracy) was conducted in substantial or reasonable accordance with the settled rules of war ; and at its close there was a large measure of liberal feeling on the part of the North toward the South, notwithstanding the murder of Mr. Lincoln. This feeling viewed the struggle as one in which both sides were sincere and patriotic (the word is used of design, but in its high and broad meaning), in which both sides were equally brave and devoted ; as well as one which had come to pass quite naturally, from causes which were far deeper than politics or even than slavery. While the victorious section was enjoying the first or early sense of success, sentiments of liberality, of concord, readiness to look forward to better relations, not backward to old quarrels, statesmanlike plans or suggestions of reunion, and restoration of old associations, widely prevailed.

Two main causes now came into operation to disturb this tendency and course of feeling and events. The first of these was the existence at the North, on the part of a strenuous, ardent, vigorous minority, of a deep-seated, longmaturing, highly - developed distrust of the South ; a sentiment resting partly on moral antagonism to slavery, but chiefly on a feeling of dread or hatred of those who had brought on a destructive, and, worst of all, a causeless or unnecessary war. Not all of those who belonged to this class are to be described so mildly. Some, it may be said, if not many, were really moved by an unreasoning antipathy toward those whom they had so long denounced as slaveholders and rebels. Slavery abolished and rebellion subdued, their occupation was gone ; and still they could not adjust themselves to a new order of things.

The other great cause of reaction from the friendly and conciliatory spirit which was the first result of the victory for the Union was the conduct of the South itself. Beaten in arms and impoverished, stripped of slavery, the white South found solace, or saw relief, if not recompense, in harsh treatment of the emancipated negroes, in laws, in business, and in social relations. The effect of this folly was decisive at the North. But added to this was the fatuous course of President Johnson, to whom the South, not unnaturally, gave warm support.

Out of these adverse conditions came reconstruction. Its inception and development into policy and law were not the results or dictates of sober judgment of what was best; least of all were they inspired by statesmanlike forecast, or the teachings of philosophy or history. The writer has recently turned over anew the congressional discussions, in 1866 and 1867, of reconstruction, the South, and especially the negro question, some large part of which he heard at first-hand. It is, for by far the greater part, melancholy reading, — shocking in its crudeness and disregard of facts and actualities, amazing for the confident levity of tone on the part of the leading advocates of the reconstruction acts of 1867, and for its narrowly partisan spirit. Confidence here rose easily into prophecy, and the country was assured of a peaceful, prosperous South, with negro loyalty forever at the helm. The white South was helpless. The black South was equal to all the needs of the hour : ignorant, to be sure, but loyal; inexperienced, but, with the ballot as its teacher and inspiration, capable of assuring good government. Hardly anywhere else in recorded debates can be found so surprising a revelation of the blindness of partisan zeal as these discussions disclose. But it may now be clear to all, as it was then clear to some, that underneath all the avowed motives and all the open arguments lay a deeper cause than all others, — the will and determination to secure party ascendency and control at the South and in the nation through the negro vote. If this is a hard saying, let any one now ask himself, or ask the public, if it is possibly credible that the reconstruction acts would have been passed if the negro vote had been believed to be Democratic.

True views of the situation — views sound, enlightened, and statesmanlike — were not wanting even then. Mr. Lincoln had presented such views ; but above all other men in the whole land, Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts, in his farewell address to the Massachusetts legislature, January 2, 1866, discussed with elaboration the Southern situation, and urged views and suggested policies which will mark him always in our annals, at least with the highest minds, as a true, prescient, and lofty statesman, versed in the past and able to prejudge the future. His valedictory address is veritably prophetic, — as prophetic as it is politic and practical. With this great word resounding through the country, the last excuse for reconstruction as actually fixed upon is swept away; for it could no longer be held, as it had been said by the more timid or doubtful, that the whole business was a groping in the dark, without light or leading. Sentiment carried the day, sentiment of the lower kind, — hate, revenge, greed, lust of power.

It is, however, necessary at this point to be just. Not all who bore part in fixing the terms of reconstruction were ignoble or ignorant. Among them were many unselfish doctrinaires, humanitarians, and idealists of fine type. Among them, too, were men who ranked as statesmen, who in other fields had well earned the name, but who now were overborne or overpersuaded. Back of all these, however, were the party leaders, who moved on, driving the reluctant, crushing and ostracizing the doubtful, brutally riding down those who dared to oppose.

Governor Andrew’s argument and policy may be briefly stated. Three great, flashing apothegms summarize it : (1.) Prosecute peace as vigorously as we have prosecuted war. (2.) Inflict no humiliation, require no humiliation, of the South. (3.) Enlist the sympathy and services of “ the natural leaders ” of the South in the work of reconstruction. To the oftrepeated dictum that those who had ruled the South so long and rigorously — its natural leaders — could not be trusted with this work, Andrew pointed out, with prophetic insight, that these men, if not accepted as friends, would resume their leadership as enemies. Such a vision of the future, such a clear annunciation of truth and fact, fell on blind and impatient or angry minds. The most radical of ante-bellum and war Republicans, the greatest of all our war governors, was struck from the list of party leaders, and reconstruction proceeded apace on other lines and under other leaders. The writer recalls almost numberless interviews on reconstruction with Republican leaders at Washington, especially in the winter of 1866-67, and the summer and fall of the latter year, and particularly with the late Oliver P. Morton. Mr. Morton shared to some large degree with Mr. Thaddeus Stevens the leadership in this enterprise. Against the two combined, no policy could gain even consideration. With Mr. Stevens no argument was possible. His mind was fixed, proof against facts or reason that suggested other views. Mere personal self-respect limited the writer’s intercourse with him to one brief conversation. Not one of these leaders had seen the South, or studied it at first-hand. Not one of them professed or cared to know more. They had made up their minds once for all, and they wished only to push on with their predetermined policy. The one descriptive feature, the one overshadowing item, of their policy was, as has been said, negro suffrage, loyalty under a black skin at the helm, — a policy which, like other historical policies of “ Thorough,” like the policy of Strafford and Laud, whence the fitting word has come, brooked no opposition or delay, and halted for no arguments or obstacles whilst these leaders led. The personal knowledge of the writer warrants him in stating that eyes were never blinder to facts, minds never more ruthlessly set upon a policy, than were Stevens and Morton on putting the white South under the heel of the black South. Again it is necessary to say that not all eminent Republican leaders shared these sentiments, though they acquiesced in the policy. Mr. Sumner, it shall be said, did not, and, strange perhaps to add, Mr. Blaine did not; but both submitted, and even advocated the acts of 1867.

Reconstruction thus conceived, thus developed, thus expounded, was put to test in South Carolina in the winter of 1867—68. Passed, as these acts were, in lofty disregard of the feelings or interest of the whites of the South, the first crucial test they met was of course the attitude of those who were thus disregarded. The first force or element to be reckoned with was the element left out of the account. The property, the education and intelligence, the experience in self - government and public affairs, in this state, were of course wholly with its white population. Numbers alone were with the rest. The first registration of voters in South Carolina under the reconstruction acts, in October, 1867, gave a total of 125,328 persons eligible to vote, of whom 46,346 were whites, and 78,982 were blacks or colored, or a ratio of about 3 to 5. Upon the question of holding a constitutional convention, the first question prescribed by the acts for decision, the total vote in November, 1867, was 71,807, —130 whites and 68,876 colored voting pro, and 2801 contra. Of the members of the convention, 34 were whites and 63 colored. It did not contain one Democrat or one white man who had had high standing in the state previously. By this convention a constitution was framed, made up entirely of excerpts from other state constitutions, but yet a fairly good constitution in all its most important provisions. It continued in force, with a few rather unimportant changes, until 1897. State officers, under this constitution, and a legislature were elected in April, 1868, and the new government went into operation in July, 1868. In the first legislature under reconstruction, the Senate, numbering 33 members, contained 9 colored and 24 whites, of whom 7 only were Democrats. The House of Representatives numbered 124, of whom 48 were whites and 76 colored, only 14 being Democrats. The whole legislature was thus composed of 72 whites and 85 colored, with a total of 21 Democrats to 136 Republicans, or a ratio of nearly 3 to 20.

Truth here requires it to be said that the abstention of the whites from coöperation at this stage of reconstruction was voluntary and willful. The election for members of the convention went by default so far as they were concerned. They might, by voting solidly, and by the use of cajolery and flattery, such as they later did use, or by grosser arts, from which at last they did not shrink, have won an influential if not a controlling voice. All this is clear and certain ; but the fact only shows the recklessness with which the sponsors of reconstruction went ahead. Such abnegation of lifelong sentiments or prejudices, such absolute reversal of themselves, as such a line of conduct required, was possible ; but decent statesmanship does not build on possibilities. The question should have been, not, Is such conduct on the part of the whites possible ? but, Is it to be expected ? No man can say less than that it was to the last degree improbable ; it would hardly be too much to say it was morally impossible. Alone of all prominent men in the state, Wade Hampton in 1868 publicly advised coöperation with the negroes in elections, but his advice passed unheeded.

But it is not true that Stevens or Morton counted on such coöperation of the whites, or cared for it. It was an afterthought to claim it; a retort to those who uttered reproaches as the scheme of reconstruction gradually showed its vanity and impossibility. It cannot be too confidently asserted that from 1867 to 1872 nothing would have been more unwelcome to the leaders of reconstruction at Washington than the knowledge that the whites of South Carolina were gaining influence over the blacks, or were helping to make laws, or were holding office. The writer knows his ground here ; and there is available written evidence in abundance to avouch all his statements and opinions, — evidence, too, which will sometime be given to the world.

No view of the situation in South Carolina in these years would be accurate or complete which did not call to mind the peculiar political or party condition of the white or Democratic population. For fully ten years, if not twenty, prior to 1850, Mr. Calhoun’s immense personality, strenuous leadership, and unquestionably representative views and policies dominated the state, — dominated it to the complete effacement and disappearance of all other leaders or leadership. This influence projected itself forward, and controlled the thought of the state until 1860, as truly as in the lifetime of Calhoun. American political history, for its first century, will record no other instance of individual supremacy over a high - spirited, ambitious, politics - loving community such as the career of Calhoun presents. Nor was his influence in the smallest degree factitious or adventitious. It was simply the result of the application of a stern will, prodigious industry, sleepless but not selfish ambition, and the very highest order of ability to the leadership of a political cause. Calhoun led South Carolina till the outbreak of the war, if not through the war. At the close of the war and at the date of the reconstruction acts, new leadership in political thought and action was necessary; but South Carolina then had no leaders. Not only had she no trained party or political leaders ; she had no men of single commanding influence. The most influential men of the state were the heroes of the war, who, though many of them able and publicspirited, were none of them greatly experienced in public affairs. The state had its full share of able men, an especially able bar, great numbers of planters and business men who had the old-time training in politics, but no man who could to any great degree mould public opinion or control party action. This fact — and it is referred to here only as a fact — was significant of much. In consequence, the Democratic or white party merely drifted, rudderless and at haphazard, from 1867 to 1874, the critical years of reconstruction.

Here, as at all points in this paper, the writer intends to speak with moderation of spirit and entire frankness. He thinks he can do justice to all parties and persons who took active part in reconstruction, though himself an actor, at times somewhat prominent. It will be for others to judge whether he has succeeded, as he has tried to do, in laying aside prejudices or feelings naturally developed by his activity in these scenes, so that he can see the men and events of those days objectively and disinterestedly.

It is now plain to all that reconstruction under the acts of 1867 was, at any rate, a frightful experiment, which never could have given a real statesman who learned or knew the facts the smallest hope of success. Government, self-government, the care of common public interests by the people themselves, is not so easy or simple a task as not to require a modicum of experience as well as a modicum of mental and moral character. In the mass of 78,000 colored voters in South Carolina in 1867, what elements or forces could have existed that made for good government ? Ought it not to have been as clear then as it is now that good government, or even tolerable administration, could not be had from such an aggregation of ignorance and inexperience and incapacity ? Is it not, has it not always been, as true in government as in physics, ex nihilo nihil fit?

Added to this obvious discouragement and impossibility in South Carolina was the fact that these 78,000 colored voters were distinctly and of design pitted against 46,000 whites, who held all the property, education, and public experience of the state. It is not less than shocking to think of such odds, such inevitable disaster. Yet it was deliberately planned and eagerly welcomed at Washington, and calmly accepted by the party throughout the country. What Republican voice was heard against it ?

But the cup of adverse conditions was not yet full. To this feast of reconstruction, this dance of reunion, rushed hundreds, even thousands, of white and colored men from the North, who had almost as little experience of public affairs as the negroes of the South ; and it must be added that, as a class, they were not morally the equals of the negroes of the South. The story at this point is threadbare ; but it must be again said in this review that the Northern adventurers at once sprang to the front, and kept to the front from 1867 to 1874. To them the negro deferred with a natural docility. He felt that they represented the powers at Washington, as they often did, and his obedience was easily secured and held. Are Stevens and Morton and their applauding supporters chargeable with countenancing these men ? Not by express, direct terms; but they are justly chargeable with opening the doors to them, and not casting them off when their true character was perfectly known. So ingrained was the disregard of Southern Democrats in all affairs that concerned the political control at the South, so inflexible was the determination of officials and leaders at Washington to keep the heel on the neck, that hardly one high Republican authority could be appealed to for discountenance of the class referred to. To this tide of folly, and worse, President Grant persistently yielded; while one noble exception must be noted, the gallant and true Benjamin H. Bristow, of Kentucky, as Solicitor-General, Attorney-General, and Secretary of the Treasury.

The quick, sure result was of course misgovernment. Let a few statistics tell the tale. Before the war, the average expense of the annual session of the legislature in South Carolina did not exceed $20,000. For the six years following reconstruction the average annual expense was over $320,000, the expense of the session of 1871 alone being $617,000. The total legislative expenses for the six years were $2,339,000.

The average annual cost of public printing in Massachusetts for the last ten years has been $131,000 ; for the year 1899 it was $139,000, and this included much costly printing never dreamed of in South Carolina in those days. In reconstructed South Carolina the cost of public printing for the first six years was $1,104,000, — an annual average of $184,000, the cost for the single year 1871-72 being $348,000.

The total public debt of South Carolina at the beginning of reconstruction was less than $1,000,000. At the end of the year 1872, five years later, the direct public debt amounted to over $17,500,000. For all this increase the state had not a single public improvement of any sort to show ; and of this debt over $5,950,000 had been formally repudiated by the party and the men who had created the debt, and received and handled its proceeds.

Prior to reconstruction, contingent funds were absolutely unknown in South Carolina; a contingent fund, as known under reconstruction, being a sum of money which a public officer is allowed to draw and expend without accountability. During the first six years of reconstruction the contingent funds in South Carolina amounted to $376,000.

These are pecuniary results, but they tell a moral tale. No such results could be possible except where public and private virtue was well-nigh extinct; nor could they exist alone. In fact, they were only one salient effect or phase of a wide reign of corruption and general misrule. Public offices were objects of vulgar, commonplace bargain and sale. Justice in the lower and higher courts was bought and sold; or rather, those who sat in the seats nominally of justice made traffic of their judicial powers. State militia on a vast scale was organized and equipped in 1870 and 1871 solely from the negroes, arms and legal organization being denied the white Democrats. No branch of the public service escaped the pollution. One typical and concrete example must suffice here. In the counties of South Carolina there is a school commissioner whose powers and duties cover the choice of all teachers of the public schools, their examination for employment or promotion, the issue of warrants for installments of their salary, and, in general, all the powers and duties usually devolved on the highest school officer in a given area of territory. In one of the counties of South Carolina, during the years 1874 and 1875, the school commissioner was a negro of the deepest hue and most pronounced type, who could neither read nor write even his own name; and his name appeared always on official documents in another’s handwriting, with the legend “ his × mark.” He was as corrupt, too, as he was ignorant. Now, what course a county in Massachusetts or other Northern state would take under such an infliction the writer does not venture to say. He is only certain no Northern community would stand it. The people of this county, one morning, found their chief school officer dead in the highway from a gunshot. Such incidents must lead, will lead, in any intelligent community, to deeds of violence. The famous and infamous Kuklux Klan of 1870 was an organized attempt to overawe and drive from office Republican state officers, and especially negroes. It was brutal and murderous to the last degree, being from first to last in the hands almost exclusively of the lower stratum of the white population. Yet it was symptomatic of a dreadful disease, — the gangrene of incapacity, dishonesty, and corruption in public office. No excuse can be framed for its outrages, but its causes were plain. Any observer who cared to see could see that it flourished where corruption and incapacity had climbed into power, and withered where the reverse was the case.

Gradually, under the spur of public wrongs and misrule, political party remedies began to be used by the Democrats, — a word practically synonymous with whites, as Republican was with negroes, — and in 1872 a Democratic canvass was made for state officers. In 1874 the Democrats united with a section of disaffected Republicans in a canvass, in which the Republican candidate for governor received 80,000 votes, and the Democratic candidate 68,000. Still no great or preëminent leader of the Democratic party forces had appeared. In 1874, under the stress of fear of consequences, symptoms of which were then clear, the Republican party, by some of its leaders, and some part of its rank and file, undertook a somewhat systematic effort for “ reform within the party.” For the next two years the struggle went determinedly on, with varying success. Two facts or incidents will illustrate the flow and ebb of reform here. Early in 1875, a notorious, corrupt negro, who had long led the negroes in one of the strongest Republican sections of the state, put himself up as a candidate for judge of the chief (Charleston) circuit of the state. The reform forces barely succeeded in defeating him. Other conflicts from time to time arose, and it was only by a close union of the Democrats in the legislature, and the free and constant use of the executive power of veto, that the reform party was saved from overthrow and rout, — no less than nineteen vetoes being given to leading legislative measures by the governor in a single session. When the legislature assembled for the session of 1875-76, the reform and anti - reform forces were nearly equally matched ; the former including all the Democratic members of the legislature, who were in turn heartily backed by the Democratic party of the state.

A decisive test of strength soon came. As the event of this test marks accurately the turning point in the fortunes of reconstruction in South Carolina under the congressional plan of 1867, the story must be here told with care and some degree of fullness. December 15, 1875, occurred an election by the legislature of six circuit or nisi prius judges for the several circuits into which the state was then divided. On the night preceding the election a secret caucus of the negro members of the legislature was held, instigated, organized, and led by the most adroit as well as the ablest negro in the state, one Robert B. Elliott, formerly of Boston. At this caucus, an oath was sworn by every member to support all nominations made by the caucus for the judgeships. The caucus proceeded to make nominations, choosing for the two most important circuits — Charleston and Sumter — a negro, Whipper, and a white man, F. J. Moses. Not till the legislature was ready to meet on the following day did the fact of this caucus become known. Every man nominated was elected. The storm now broke over the heads of the conspirators in fury. The laugh which for a long time greeted remonstrance died away, and men asked one another what could be done. The governor at once took his stand, undoubtedly a novel and extreme stand ; but, like all decent men who saw the situation at first-hand, he probably felt that sometimes in politics, as in other things, “ new occasions teach new duties.” He publicly announced his determination to refuse to issue commissions to Whipper and Moses. The wrath of the conspirators rose high, but the white citizens strongly backed the executive, and no commissions were ever issued. The sequel was that, after much loud boasting of their courage on the part of Whipper and Moses, they quailed, like the craven cowards they were, before the determination of the people, and never took another step to enforce their claim to office.

At this precise point came the parting of ways between the governor and his Republican supporters, on the one hand, and his white Democratic supporters, on the other hand, in their common reform struggle. It seems dramatic, almost tragic, that, in a matter of so much importance to South Carolina, hearts equally earnest and honest, as we may now believe, and minds equally free and clear, saw in the same event, and that event a signal triumph over the powers of misrule by the allied forces of the reformers, totally different meanings and significance. To the Republican reformers it seemed a splendid vindication of their policy and belief, — that all that was needed was a union of the forces of intelligence and honesty against the common enemy; to the Democratic reformers, on the other hand, it seemed a final and crowning proof that the forces of misrule were too strong to be overcome by ordinary, peaceful methods. Less cannot be said here than that, as is usual, there was truth in both views. There were, no doubt, many searchings of heart in the ranks of each division of the reformers. One eminent and devoted reformer, who felt compelled to go with the Democrats, has left on record an expression of his feelings, in quoting the words of Sir William Waller to his friend and antagonist in the English Civil War of 1640: “That great God who is the searcher of my heart knows with what a sad sense I go upon this service, and with what a perfect hatred I detest this war without an enemy. . . . But we are both upon the stage, and must act such parts as are assigned us in this tragedy.” It was the feeling of many before the contest had opened or passed to the stage of hard fighting.

Pause must be made here long enough to set before an uninformed reader the array of forces for this contest, so significant to South Carolina, and so characteristic and illustrative of the inevitable results of reconstruction on the lines of 1867. It has been remarked that South Carolina had no great leader or leaders after Mr. Calhoun. This was true until 1876, but not later. Great new occasions usually bring leaders. At the head of the Democratic forces in South Carolina, in June, 1876, appeared General Wade Hampton, known only, one might say, till then, except locally, as a distinguished Confederate cavalry officer. He had led the life of a planter on a large scale, and possessed welldeveloped powers and habits of command. Totally unlike Calhoun, Hampton’s strength of leadership lay, not in intellectual or oratorical superiority, but in high and forceful character, perfect courage, and real devotion to what he conceived to be the welfare of South Carolina. Not even Calhoun’s leadership was at any time more absolute, unquestioned, and enthusiastic than Hampton’s in 1876 ; and it was justly so from the Democratic point of view, for he was unselfish, resolute, level-headed, and determined. He was for the hour a true “ natural leader ; ” and he led with consummate mingled prudence and aggressiveness.

The progress of the canvass developed, as must have been apprehended by all who saw or studied the situation, not only into violence of words and manner, but into breaches of the peace, interference with public meetings called by one party, and latterly into widespread riots. The chapter need not be retold. The concealments of the canvass on these points have long been remitted, with the occasion which called for them. It is not now denied, but admitted and claimed, by the successful party, that the canvass was systematically conducted with the view to find occasions to apply force and violence. The occasions came, and the methods adopted had their perfect work. The result is known, but must be stated here for historical purposes purely. By a system of violence and coercion ranging through all possible grades, from urgent persuasion to mob violence and plentiful murders, the election was won by the Democrats. The historian here is no longer compelled to spell out his verdict from a wide induction of facts; he need only accept the assertions, even the vaunts, of many of the leading figures in the canvass since the canvass was closed.

Is there anything to be said by way of verdict upon the whole passage ? Yes; plainly this, at least, — that the drama or tragedy lay potentially, from the first, in the reconstruction policy of Morton and Stevens. The latent fire there concealed was blown to flame by the conduct of affairs in South Carolina under the inspiration, if not direction, of Republican leaders at Washington. No proper or serious efforts were ever made there to ward off or prevent the conflict. Till October, 1876, no doubt seemed to enter the minds of Republican politicians that the brute force of numbers would win, as it had won. Cries of distress, shouts of encouragement, promises of reward for the party in South Carolina, now burdened the mails and kept telegraph wires hot. Managers of the Republican national canvass vied with one another in the extravagance of hopes and promises sent to South Carolina. But the forces aroused by ten years of vassalage of white to black, and eight years of corruption and plunder and misrule, moved on to their end till the end was fully reached.

It has often been asked, Could not the end — freedom from negro domination and its consequent misrule — have been reached by other more lawful and more peaceful methods ? Into speculations of this kind it is not worth while to venture. One thing may be said with confidence, — the whites of South Carolina in 1876 believed no other methods or means would avail. Their course was guided by this belief. Mr. Hallam declares that “ nothing is more necessary, in reaching historical conclusions, than knowledge of the motives avowed and apparently effective in the minds of the parties to controversies.” The avowed motives of the whites in the struggle of 1876 are fully recorded. Are there any evidences that these motives were simulated or affected ? The policy adopted and carried out does not discredit the existence and force of these motives. The campaign of 1876 was conducted as if it were a life-or-death combat.

Finally, the more serious, most serious, question has often been raised: Conceding the wrongs suffered and the hopelessness of relief by other methods, was this campaign warranted ? Different answers will be given by different moralists and casuists. To the writer, the question does not seem of first or great importance. What is certain is that a people of force, pride, and intelligence, driven, as the white people of South Carolina believed they were in 1876, to choose between violence and lawlessness for a time, and misrule for all time, will infallibly choose the former.

The overthrow of Republican or negro rule in South Carolina in 1876 was root-and-branch work. The fabric so long and laboriously built up fell in a day. Where was fancied to be strength was found only weakness. The vauntings were turned to cringings of terror. Poltroons and perjurers made haste to confess ; robbers came forward to disgorge, intent only on personal safety; and the world saw an old phenomenon repeated, — the essential and ineradicable cowardice and servility of conscious wrongdoers. The avalanche caught the innocent with the guilty, the patriot and reformer with the corruptionist, the bribe giver and bribe taker. It could not be otherwise ; it has never been otherwise in such convulsions.

The historian who studies this crowning event of reconstruction in South Carolina will be sure to meet or to raise the question, Why did Republican reformers there adhere to the Republican party in 1876? The answer to this is easy. They were, most of them, trained in another school than South Carolina. Resort to violence and bloodshed was not in their list of possible remedies for political wrongs or abuses. They were ready to risk or to lose their own lives in a contest for good government ; they were not ready to take the lives or shed the blood of others for any political cause not involving actual physical self-defense.

A close or interested student of reconstruction will doubtless ask, In the light of retrospect and the disillusionment of later events, does it seem that good government could have been reached in South Carolina by a continuance of the union of a part — the reforming part — of the Republican party and the whole body of Democrats in the state ? Speculation and reflection have been and will be expended on this question, for to some degree it touches a vital moral point. It has already been said that on this question the two wings — Republican and Democratic — of the reformers of 187476 held opposite opinions. It must be conceded that, unfortunately but inevitably, into the decision of the question in 1876 purely party considerations entered strongly. It would be vain for either side to deny it. Republican reformers were party men ; so were Democratic reformers. Personal ambitions, also, played their usual part, — a large one. Instigations to a strict Republican party contest came freely from Washington. On the other hand, Mr. Tilden, who was made to bear in those days so heavy a load of responsibility for everything amiss in the eyes of his party opponents, was specially charged—a charge still current among the uninformed or the victims of ancient party prejudices — with influencing the Democratic party in South Carolina in this crisis to enter on a party canvass on the lines of violence and fraud. The writer thinks he now knows the charge to be unfounded ; that, on the contrary, if Mr. Tilden’s influence was felt at all, it was in the direction of a canvass for state officers and the legislature on non-partisan lines, and in any event a peaceful and lawful canvass. If there is any interest still attaching to the writer’s own view, he is quite ready now to say that he feels sure there was no possibility of securing permanent good government in South Carolina through Republican influences. If the canvass of 1876 had resulted in the success of the Republican party, that party could not, for want of materials, even when aided by the Democratic minority, have given pure or competent administration. The vast preponderance of ignorance and incapacity in that party, aside from downright dishonesty, made it impossible. An experienced or observant eye can see the causes. The canvass on purely party lines in 1876 necessarily threw Republican reformers and Republican rascals again into friendly contact and alliance. Success would have given redoubled power to leaders who had been temporarily discredited or set aside ; the flood gates of misrule would have been reopened ; and, as was said by one of the leaders of reform when Whipper and Moses were elected judges, “ a terrible crevasse of misgovernment and public debauchery ” would have again opened. The real truth is, hard as it may be to accept it, that the elements put in combination by the reconstruction scheme of Stevens and Morton were irretrievably bad, and could never have resulted, except temporarily or in desperate moments, in government fit to be endured. As Macaulay’s old Puritan sang in after years of Naseby, so may now sing a veteran survivor of reconstruction in South Carolina: —

There is an important inquiry still to be noticed and answered : How did the victors use their victory ? The just answer seems to be, “ Not altogether well,” but emphatically, “ As well as could have been expected,” — as well as the lot and nature of humanity probably permit. Some unfair, unjust, merely angry blows were struck after the victory was won. For the rest, forbearance and oblivion were the rule. Good government, the avowed aim, was fully secured. Economy succeeded extravagance ; judicial integrity and ability succeeded profligacy and ignorance on the bench ; all the conditions of public welfare were restored.

Of secondary results, it is hardly necessary to this review and picture of reconstruction in South Carolina to speak ; but it would be an impressive warning for other like cases if it were added that the methods of 1876 have left scars and wounds which generations of time cannot efface or heal. The appeal for the truth of this remark may be safely made to the most ardent defender of those methods. The price of what was gained in 1876 will long remain unliquidated. No part of it can ever be remitted. The laws of human society, not written in statute books, proclaim that wrong and wrong methods are self - propagating. Long before Shakespeare told it, it was true, even from the foundation of the moral order : —

Every present citizen of South Carolina knows, and those who are truthful and frank will confess, that the ballot debauched in 1876 remains debauched ; the violence taught then remains now, if not in the same, in other forms; the defiance of law learned then in what was called a good cause survives in the horrid orgies and degradation of lynchings.

The chapter of recent events covered by this paper is made up largely of the record of mistakes and crimes followed by the sure, unvarying retributions which all history teaches are the early or late result of evil courses in nations and states as well as in individuals. To whom, humanly speaking, are these woes and wastes chargeable ? The answer must be, to those who devised and put in operation the congressional scheme of reconstruction, — to their unspeakable folly, their blind party greed, their insensate attempt to reverse the laws which control human society.

The designed plan of this paper does not extend to any discussion of the always grave topic of the condition and prospects of the negro race in South Carolina and the South. It has abundantly appeared in what has already been written that that race was used as the tool of heartless partisan leaders. As in all such cases, the tool was cast aside when its use was ended. Who can look on the picture, — the negro enslaved by physical chains for some two centuries and a half, then bodily lifted into freedom by other hands than his own, next mercilessly exploited for the benefit of a political party, and heartlessly abandoned when the scheme had failed, — what heart of stone, we say, would not be touched by these undeserved miseries, these woeful misfortunes, of the negro of the United States ?

What had the negro to show after 1876 for his sufferings ? Merely the paper right to vote, — a right which he had no earthly power or capacity to use or to defend; while, with smug faces, with hypocritic sighs and upturned eyeballs, the soi-disant philanthropists and charity mongers of the North looked on the negro from afar, giving him only an occasional charge to still stand by the grand old party that had set him free! To all who feel a real solicitude for the welfare of the Southern negro, it ought to be said that the conditions of his welfare lie in reversing at all points the spirit and policy of reconstruction which brought on him this Iliad of woes. Philanthropy without wisdom is always dangerous. Disregard of actual conditions is never wise. The negro depends for his welfare, not on the North, but on the South ; not on strangers, however friendly or sympathetic or generous in bestowing bounty, but on his white neighbors and employers. Whatever can be done to promote good relations between him and his actual neighbors will be well done; whatever is done which tends otherwise will be ill done. By industry and thrift the negro can secure all he needs, both of livelihood and of education ; whatever is given him gratuitously promotes idleness and unthrift. With all emphasis let it be said and known — and the writer’s knowledge confirms the saying, as will like knowledge acquired by any honest and clear-sighted person — that the negro at the South is not, in the mass or individually, the proper object of charity.

And of his education let a word be said. Education is, no one disputes or doubts, essential to the welfare of a free or self-governing community. The negro in his present situation is not an exception to the rule. But what sort of education does he need ? Primarily, and in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of one thousand, he does not need, in any proper sense of the words, literary, scientific, or what we call the higher education. It is not too much to say that, up to this time, a great amount of money and effort has been worse than wasted on such education, or attempts at such education, of the negro. To an appreciable extent, it has been a positive evil to him. Give him, or rather stimulate him to provide for himself, education suited to his condition : to wit, abundant training in the three R’s; and after that, skill in handicraft, in simple manual labor of all kinds, which it is his lot to do, — lot fixed not by us, but by powers above us. If there be aspiring spirits in the race, capable of better things, this is the soil from which they may rise, rather than from hotheds or forcing grounds, — the so-called negro colleges and universities now existing in the South. Beyond this, let the negro be taugbt, early and late, in schools and everywhere, thrift, pecuniary prudence and foresight, the duty, the foremost duty, of getting homes, property, land, or whatever constitutes wealth in his community. Above all things, let him be taught that his so-called rights depend on himself alone. Tell him, compel him by iteration to know, that no race or people has ever yet long had freedom unless it was won and kept by itself; won and kept by courage, by intelligence, by vigilance, by prudence. Having done this, let Northern purses be closed ; let sympathy and bounty be bestowed, if anywhere, upon far less favored toilers nearer home, and leave the negro to work out his own welfare, unhelped and unhindered. If these simple methods are adopted and rigorously observed, the negro problem at our South will tend toward solution, and the flood of ills flowing from reconstruction as imposed from without will at last be stayed ; and they can be stayed in no other ways. Constitutional limits of aid by legislation have already been reached and overpassed. Rights, to be secure, must, in the last resort, rest on stronger supports than constitutions, statutes, or enrolled parchments. Self - government under constitutions presupposes a firm determination, and mental, moral and physical capacity, ready and equal to the defense of rights. Neither the negro nor the white man can have them on other terms.

Daniel H. Chamberlain.