With the close of the Civil War the League did not cease its active interest in things political. It was one of the first organizations to declare for Negro suffrage and the disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of Confederates; it held steadily to this declaration during the four years following the war; and it continued as a sort of bureau in the radical Republican party for the purpose of controlling the Negro vote in the South. Its representatives were found in the lobbies of Congress demanding extreme measures, endorsing the reconstruction policies of Congress, and condemning the course of the President. After the first year or two of reconstruction, the Leagues in the larger Northern cities began to grow away from the strictly political Union League of America and tended to become mere social clubs for members of the same political belief. The eminently respectable Philadelphia and New York clubs had little in common with the leagues of the Southern and Border States except a general adherence to the radical program.
Even before the end of the war the League was extending its organization into the parts of the Confederacy held by the Federal forces, admitting to membership the army officers and the leading Unionists, though maintaining for the sake of the latter "a discreet secrecy." With the close of the war and the establishment of army posts over the South, the League grew rapidly. The civilians who followed the army, the Bureau agents, the missionaries, and the Northern teachers formed one cla.s.s of membership; and the loyalists of the hill and mountain country, who had become disaffected toward the Confederate administration and had formed such orders as the Heroes of America, the Red String Band, and the Peace Society, formed another cla.s.s. Soon there were added to these the deserters, a few old line Whigs who intensely disliked the Democrats, and others who decided to cast their lot with the victors. The disaffected politicians of the up-country, who wanted to be cared for in the reconstruction, saw in the organization a means of dislodging from power the political leaders of the low country. It has been estimated that thirty percent of the white men of the hill and mountain counties of the South joined the Union League in 1865-66. They cared little about the original objects of the order but hoped to make it the nucleus of an anti-Democratic political organization.
But on the admission of Negroes into the lodges or councils controlled by Northern men the native white members began to withdraw. From the beginning the Bureau agents, the teachers, and the preachers had been holding meetings of Negroes, to whom they gave advice about the problems of freedom. Very early these advisers of the blacks grasped the possibilities inherent in their control of the schools, the rationing system, and the churches. By the spring of 1866, the Negroes were widely organized under this leadership, and it needed but slight change to convert the Negro meetings into local councils of the Union League.* As soon as it seemed likely that Congress would win in its struggle with the President the guardians of the Negro planned their campaign for the control of the race. Negro leaders were organized into councils of the League or into Union Republican Clubs. Over the South went the organizers, until by 1868 the last Negroes were gathered into the fold.
* Of these teachers of the local blacks, E. L. G.o.dkin, editor of the New York Nation, who had supported the reconstruction acts, said: "Worse instructors for men emerging from slavery and coming for the first time face to face with the problems of free life than the radical agitators who have undertaken the political guidance of the blacks it would be hard to meet with."
The native whites did not all desert the Union League when the Negroes were brought in. Where the blacks were most numerous the desertion of whites was general, but in the regions where they were few some of the whites remained for several years. The elections of 1868 showed a falling off of the white radical vote from that of 1867, one measure of the extent of loss of whites. From this time forward the order consisted mainly of blacks with enough whites for leaders. In the Black Belt the membership of native whites was discouraged by requiring an oath to the effect that secession was treason. The carpetbagger had found that he could control the Negro without the help of the scalawag. The League organization was soon extended and centralized; in every black district there was a Council; for the state there was a Grand Council; and for the United States there was a National Grand Council with headquarters in New York City.
The influence of the League over the Negro was due in large degree to the mysterious secrecy of the meetings, the weird initiation ceremony that made him feel fearfully good from his head to his heels, the imposing ritual, and the songs. The ritual, it is said, was not used in the North; it was probably adopted for the particular benefit of the African. The would-be Leaguer was informed that the emblems of the order were the altar, the Bible, the Declaration of Independence, the Const.i.tution of the United States, the flag of the Union, censer, sword, gavel, ballot box, sickle, shuttle, anvil, and other emblems of industry. He was told to the accompaniment of clanking chains and groans that the objects of the order were to preserve liberty, to perpetuate the Union, to maintain the laws and the Const.i.tution, to secure the ascendancy of American inst.i.tutions, to protect, defend, and strengthen all loyal men and members of the Union League in all rights of person and property, to demand the elevation of labor, to aid in the education of laboring men, and to teach the duties of American citizenship. This enumeration of the objects of the League sounded well and was impressive. At this point the Negro was always willing to take an oath of secrecy, after which he was asked to swear with a solemn oath to support the principles of the Declaration of Independence, to pledge himself to resist all attempts to overthrow the United States, to strive for the maintenance of liberty, the elevation of labor, the education of all people in the duties of citizenship, to practice friendship and charity to all of the order, and to support for election or appointment to office only such men as were supporters of these principles and measures.
The council then sang "Hail, Columbia!" and "The Star Spangled Banner," after which an official lectured the candidates, saying that though the designs of traitors had been thwarted, there were yet to be secured legislative triumphs and the complete ascendancy of the true principles of popular government, equal liberty, education and elevation of the workmen, and the overthrow at the ballot box of the old oligarchy of political leaders. After prayer by the chaplain, the room was darkened, alcohol on salt flared up with a ghastly light as the "fire of liberty," and the members joined hands in a circle around the candidate, who was made to place one hand on the flag and, with the other raised, swear again to support the government and to elect true Union men to office. Then placing his hand on a Bible, for the third time he swore to keep his oath, and repeated after the president "the Freedmen"s Pledge": "To defend and perpetuate freedom and the Union, I pledge my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor. So help me G.o.d!" "John Brown"s Body" was then sung, the president charged the members in a long speech concerning the principles of the order, and the marshal instructed the neophyte in the signs. To pa.s.s one"s self as a Leaguer, the "Four L"s" had to be given: (1) with right hand raised to heaven, thumb and third finger touching ends over palm, p.r.o.nounce "Liberty"; (2) bring the hand down over the shoulder and say "Lincoln"; (3) drop the hand open at the side and say "Loyal"; (4) catch the thumb in the vest or in the waistband and p.r.o.nounce "League." This ceremony of initiation proved a most effective means of impressing and controlling the Negro through his love and fear of secret, mysterious, and midnight mummery. An oath taken in daylight might be forgotten before the next day; not so an oath taken in the dead of night under such impressive circ.u.mstances. After pa.s.sing through the ordeal, the Negro usually remained faithful.
In each populous precinct there was at least one council of the League, and always one for blacks. In each town or city there were two councils, one for the whites, and another, with white officers, for the blacks. The council met once a week, sometimes oftener, nearly always at night, and in a Negro church or schoolhouse. Guards, armed with rifles and shotguns, were stationed about the place of meeting in order to keep away intruders. Members of some councils made it a practice to attend the meetings armed as if for battle. In these meetings the Negroes listened to inflammatory speeches by the would-be statesmen of the new regime; here they were drilled in a pa.s.sionate conviction that their interests and those of the Southern whites were eternally at war.
White men who joined the order before the Negroes were admitted and who left when the latter became members a.s.serted that the Negroes were taught in these meetings that the only way to have peace and plenty, to get "the forty acres and a mule," was to kill some of the leading whites in each community as a warning to others. In North Carolina twenty-eight barns were burned in one county by Negroes who believed that Governor Holden, the head of the State League, had ordered it. The council in Tusc.u.mbia, Alabama, received advice from Memphis to use the torch because the blacks were at war with the white race. The advice was taken. Three men went in front of the council as an advance guard, three followed with coal oil and fire, and others guarded the rear. The plan was to burn the whole town, but first one Negro and then another insisted on having some white man"s house spared because "he is a good man." In the end no residences were burned, and a happy compromise was effected by burning the Female Academy. Three of the leaders were afterwards lynched.
The general belief of the whites was that the ultimate object of the order was to secure political power and thus bring about on a large scale the confiscation of the property of Confederates, and meanwhile to appropriate and destroy the property of their political opponents wherever possible. Chicken houses, pigpens, vegetable gardens, and orchards were visited by members returning from the midnight conclaves. During the presidential campaign of 1868, the North Carolina League sent out circular instructions to the blacks advising them to drill regularly and to join the militia, for if Grant were not elected the Negroes would go back to slavery; if he were elected, the Negroes were to have farms, mules, and offices.
As soon as possible after the war the Negroes had supplied themselves with guns and dogs as badges of freedom. They carried their guns to the League meetings, often marching in military formation, went through the drill there, marched home again along the roads, shouting, firing, and indulging in boasts and threats against persons whom they disliked. Later, military parades in the daytime were much favored. Several hundred Negroes would march up and down the streets, abusing whites, and shoving them off the sidewalk or out of the road. But on the whole, there was very little actual violence, though the whites were much alarmed at times. That outrages were comparatively few was due, not to any sensible teachings of the leaders, but to the fundamental good nature of the blacks, who were generally content with mere impudence.
The relations between the races, indeed, continued on the whole to be friendly until 1867-68. For a while, in some localities before the advent of the League, and in others where the Bureau was conducted by native magistrates, the Negroes looked to their old masters for guidance and advice; and the latter, for the good of both races, were most eager to retain a moral control over the blacks. They arranged barbecues and picnics for the Negroes, made speeches, gave good advice, and believed that everything promised well. Sometimes the Negroes themselves arranged the festival and invited prominent whites, for whom a separate table attended by Negro waiters was reserved; and after dinner there followed speeches by both whites and blacks.
With the organization of the League, the Negroes grew more reserved, and finally became openly unfriendly to the whites. The League alone, however, was not responsible for this change. The League and the Bureau had to some extent the same personnel, and it is frequently impossible to distinguish clearly between the influence of the two. In many ways the League was simply the political side of the Bureau. The preaching and teaching missionaries were also at work. And apart from the organized influences at work, the poor whites never laid aside their hostility towards the blacks, bond or free.
When the campaigns grew exciting, the discipline of the order was used to prevent the Negroes from attending Democratic meetings and hearing Democratic speakers. The leaders even went farther and forbade the attendance of the blacks at political meetings where the speakers were not endorsed by the League. Almost invariably the scalawag disliked the Leaguer, black or white, and as a political teacher often found himself proscribed by the League. At a Republican ma.s.s meeting in Alabama, a white Republican who wanted to make a speech was shouted down by the Negroes because he was "opposed to the Loyal League." He then went to another place to speak but was followed by the crowd, which refused to allow him to say anything. All Republicans in good standing had to join the League and swear that secession was treason-a rather stiff dose for the scalawag. Judge (later Governor) David P. Lewis, of Alabama, was a member for a short while but he soon became disgusted and published a denunciation of the order. Albion W. Tourgee, the author, a radical judge, was the first chief of the League in North Carolina and was succeeded by Governor Holden. In Alabama, Generals Swayne, Spencer, and Warner, all candidates for the United States Senate, hastened to join the order.
As soon as a candidate was nominated by the League, it was the duty of every member to support him actively. Failure to do so resulted in a fine or other more severe punishment, and members who had been expelled were still considered under the control of the officials. The League was, in fact, the machine of the radical party, and all candidates had to be governed by its edicts. As the Montgomery Council declared, the Union League was "the right arm of the Union-Republican party in the United States."
Every Negro was ex colore a member or under the control of the League. In the opinion of the League, white Democrats were bad enough, but black Democrats were not to be tolerated. It was almost necessary, as a measure of personal safety, for each black to support the radical program. It was possible in some cases for a Negro to refrain from taking an active part in political affairs. He might even fail to vote. But it was actually dangerous for a black to be a Democrat; that is, to try to follow his old master in politics. The whites in many cases were forced to advise their few faithful black friends to vote the radical ticket in order to escape mistreatment. Those who showed Democratic leanings were proscribed in Negro society and expelled from Negro churches; the Negro women would not "proshay" (appreciate) a black Democrat. Such a one was sure to find that influence was being brought to bear upon his dusky sweetheart or his wife to cause him to see the error of his ways, and persistent adherence to the white party would result in his losing her. The women were converted to radicalism before the men, and they almost invariably used their influence strongly in behalf of the League. If moral suasion failed to cause the delinquent to see the light, other methods were used. Threats were common and usually sufficed. Fines were levied by the League on recalcitrant members. In case of the more stubborn, a sound beating was effective to bring about a change of heart. The offending party was "bucked and gagged," or he was tied by the thumbs and thrashed. Usually the sufferer was too afraid to complain of the way he was treated.
Some of the methods of the Loyal League were similar to those of the later Ku Klux Klan. Anonymous warnings were sent to obnoxious individuals, houses were burned, notices were posted at night in public places and on the houses of persons who had incurred the hostility of the order. In order to destroy the influence of the whites where kindly relations still existed, an "exodus order" issued through the League directed all members to leave their old homes and obtain work elsewhere. Some of the blacks were loath to comply with this order, but to remonstrances from the whites the usual reply was: "De word done sent to de League. We got to go." For special meetings the Negroes were in some regions called together by signal guns. In this way the call for a gathering went out over a county in a few minutes and a few hours later nearly all the members in the county a.s.sembled at the appointed place.
Negroes as organizing agents were inclined to go to extremes and for that reason were not so much used. In Bullock County, Alabama, a council of the League was organized under the direction of a Negro emissary, who proceeded to a.s.sume the government of the community. A list of crimes and punishments was adopted, a court with various officials was established, and during the night the Negroes who opposed the new regime were arrested. But the black sheriff and his deputy were in turn arrested by the civil authorities. The Negroes then organized for resistance, flocked into the county seat, and threatened to exterminate the whites and take possession of the county. Their agents visited the plantations and forced the laborers to join them by showing orders purporting to be from General Swayne, the commander in the state, giving them the authority to kill all who resisted them. Swayne, however, sent out detachments of troops and arrested fifteen of the ringleaders, and the League government collapsed.
After it was seen that existing political inst.i.tutions were to be overturned in the process of reconstruction, the white councils of the League and, to a certain extent, the Negro councils were converted into training schools for the leaders of the new party soon to be formed in the state by act of Congress. The few whites who were in control were unwilling to admit more white members to share in the division of the spoils; terms of admission became more stringent, and, especially after the pa.s.sage of the reconstruction acts in March 1867, many white applicants were rejected. The alien element from the North was in control and as a result, where the blacks were numerous, the largest plums fell to the carpetbaggers. The Negro leaders-the politicians, preachers, and teachers-trained in the League acted as subordinates to the whites and were sent out to drum up the country Negroes when elections drew near. The Negroes were given minor positions when offices were more plentiful than carpetbaggers. Later, after some complaint, a larger share of the offices fell to them. The League counted its largest white membership in 1865-66, and after that date it steadily decreased. The largest Negro membership was recorded in 1867 and 1868. The total membership was never made known. In North Carolina the order claimed from seventy-five thousand to one hundred and twenty-five thousand members; in states with larger Negro populations the membership was probably quite as large. After the election of 1868, only the councils in the towns remained active, many of them transformed into political clubs, loosely organized under local political leaders. The plantation Negro needed less looking after, and except in the largest towns he became a kind of visiting member of the council in the town. The League as a political organization gradually died out by 1870.*
* The Ku Klux Klan had much to do with the decline of the organization. The League as the ally and successor of the Freedmen"s Bureau was one of the causes of the Ku Klux movement, because it helped to create the conditions which made such a movement inevitable. As early as 1870 the radical leaders missed the support formerly given by the League, and an urgent appeal was sent out all over the South from headquarters in New York advocating its reestablishment to a.s.sist in carrying the elections of 1870.
The League had served its purpose. It had enabled a few outsiders to control the Negro by separating the races politically and it had compelled the Negroes to vote as radicals for several years, when without its influence they would either not have voted at all or would have voted as Democrats along with their former masters. The order was necessary to the existence of the radical party in the Black Belt. No ordinary political organization could have welded the blacks into a solid party. The Freedmen"s Bureau, which had much influence over the Negroes, was too weak in numbers to control the Negroes in politics. The League finally absorbed the personnel of the Bureau and turned its prestige and its organization to political advantage.
CHAPTER IX. CHURCH AND SCHOOL
Reconstruction in the state was closely related to reconstruction in the churches and the schools. Here also were to be found the same hostile elements: Negro and white, Unionist and Confederate, victor and vanquished. The church was at that time an important inst.i.tution in the South, more so than in the North, and in both sections more important than it is today. It was inevitable, therefore, that ecclesiastical reconstruction should give rise to bitter feelings.
Something should be said of conditions in the churches when the Federal armies occupied the land. The Southern organizations had lost many ministers and many of their members, and frequently their buildings were used as hospitals or had been destroyed. Their administration was disorganized and their treasuries were empty. The Unionists, scattered here and there but numerous in the mountain districts, no longer wished to attend the Southern churches.
The military censorship in church matters, which continued for a year in some districts, was irritating, especially in the Border States and in the Union districts where Northern preachers installed by the army were endeavoring to remain against the will of the people. Mobs sometimes drove them out; others were left to preach to empty houses or to a few Unionists and officers, while the congregation withdrew to build a new church. The problems of Negro membership in the white churches and of the future relations of the Northern and Southern denominations were pressing for settlement.
All Northern organizations acted in 1865 upon the a.s.sumption that a reunion of the churches must take place and that the divisions existing before the war should not be continued, since slavery, the cause of the division, had been destroyed. But they insisted that the reunion must take place upon terms named by the "loyal" churches, that the Negroes must also come under "loyal" religious direction, and that tests must be applied to the Confederate sinners asking for admission, in order that the enormity of their crimes should be made plain to them. But this policy did not succeed. The Confederates objected to being treated as "rebels and traitors" and to "sitting upon stools of repentance" before they should be received again into the fold.
Only two denominations were reunited-the Methodist Protestant, the northern section of which came over to the southern, and the Protestant Episcopal, in which moderate counsels prevailed and into which Southerners were welcomed back. The Southern Baptists maintained their separate existence and reorganized the Southern Baptist Convention, to which came many of the Baptist a.s.sociations in the Border States; the Catholics did not divide before 1861 and therefore had no reconstruction problems to solve; and the smaller denominations maintained the organizations which they had before 1861. A Unionist preacher testified before the Joint Committee on Reconstruction that even the Southern Quakers "are about as decided in regard to the respectability of secession as any other cla.s.s of people."
Two other great Southern churches, the Presbyterian and the Methodist Episcopal, grew stronger after the Civil War. The tendency toward reunion of the Presbyterians was checked when one Northern branch declared as "a condition precedent to the admission of southern applicants that these confess as sinful all opinions before held in regard to slavery, nullification, rebellion and slavery, and stigmatize secession as a crime and the withdrawal of the southern churches as a schism." Another Northern group declared that southern ministers must be placed on probation and must either prove their loyalty or profess repentance for disloyalty and repudiate their former opinions. As a result several Presbyterian bodies in the South joined in a strong union, to which also adhered the synods of several Border States.
The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was confronted with conditions similar to those which prevented the reunion of the Presbyterians. The Northern church, according to the declaration of its authorities, also came down to divide the spoils and to "disintegrate and absorb" the "schismatic" Southern churches. Already many Southern pulpits were filled with Northern Methodist ministers placed there under military protection; and when they finally realized that reunion was not possible, these Methodist worthies resolved to occupy the late Confederacy as a mission field and to organize congregations of blacks and whites who were "not tainted with treason." Bishops and clergymen charged with this work carried it on vigorously for a few years in close connection with political reconstruction.
The activities of the Northern Methodists stimulated the Southern Methodists to a quick reorganization. The surviving bishops met in August 1865, and bound together their shaken church. In reply to suggestions of reunion they a.s.serted that the Northern Methodists had become "incurably radical," were too much involved in politics, and, further, that they had, without right, seized and were still holding Southern church buildings. They objected also to the way the Northern church referred to the Southerners as "schismatics" and to the Southern church as one built on slavery and therefore, now that slavery was gone, to be reconstructed. The bishops warned their people against the missionary efforts of the Northern brethren and against the attempts to "disintegrate and absorb" Methodism in the South. Within five years after the war, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was greatly increased in numbers by the accession of conferences in Maryland, Kentucky, Virginia, Missouri, and even from above the Ohio, while the Northern Methodist Church was able to organize only a few white congregations outside of the stronger Unionist districts, but continued to labor in the South as a missionary field.*
* The church situation after the war was well described in 1866 by an editorial writer in the "Nation" who pointed out that the Northern churches thought the South determined to make the religious division permanent, though "slavery no longer furnishes a pretext for separation." "Too much pains were taken to bring about an ecclesiastical reunion, and irritating offers of reconciliation are made by the Northern churches, all based on the a.s.sumption that the South has not only sinned, but sinned knowingly, in slavery and in war. We expect them to be penitent and to gladly accept our offers of forgiveness. But the Southern people look upon a "loyal"
missionary as a political emissary, and "loyal" men do not at present possess the necessary qualifications for evangelizing the Southerners or softening their hearts, and are sure not to succeed in doing so. We look upon their defeat as retribution and expect them to do the same. It will do no good if we tell the Southerner that "we will forgive them if they will confess that they are criminals, offer to pray with them, preach with them, and labor with them over their hideous sins.""
But if the large Southern churches held their white membership and even gained in numbers and territory, they fought a losing fight to retain their black members. It was a.s.sumed by Northern ecclesiastics that whether a reunion of whites took place or not, the Negroes would receive spiritual guidance from the North. This was necessary, they said, because the Southern whites were ignorant and impoverished and because "the state of mind among even the best cla.s.ses of Southern whites rendered them incapable... of doing justice to the people whom they had so long persistently wronged." Further, it was also necessary for political reasons to remove the Negroes from Southern religious control.
For obvious reasons, however, the Southern churches wanted to hold their Negro members. They declared themselves in favor of Negro education and of better organized religious work among the blacks, and made every sort of accommodation to hold them. The Baptists organized separate congregations, with white or black pastors as desired, and a.s.sociations of black churches. In 1866 the Methodist General Conference authorized separate congregations, quarterly conferences, annual conferences, even a separate jurisdiction, with Negro preachers, presiding elders, and bishops-but all to no avail. Every, Northern political, religious, or military agency in the South worked for separation, and Negro preachers were not long in seeing the greater advantages which they would have in independent churches.
Much of the separate organization was accomplished in mutual good will, particularly in the Baptist ranks. The Reverend I. T. Tichenor, a prominent Baptist minister, has described the process as it took place in the First Baptist Church in Montgomery. The church had nine hundred members, of whom six hundred were black. The Negroes received a regular organization of their own under the supervision of the white pastors. When a separation of the two bodies was later deemed desirable, it was inaugurated by a conference of the Negroes which pa.s.sed a resolution couched in the kindliest terms, suggesting the wisdom of the division, and asking the concurrence of the white church in such action. The white church cordially approved the movement, and the two bodies united in erecting a suitable house of worship for the Negroes. Until the new church was completed, both congregations continued to occupy jointly the old house of worship. The new house was paid for in large measure by the white members of the church and by individuals in the community. As soon as it was completed, the colored church moved into it with its pastor, board of deacons, committees of all sorts, and the whole machinery of church life went into action without a jar. Similar accommodations occurred in all the states of the South.
The Methodists lost the greater part of their Negro membership to two organizations which came down from the North in 1865-the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Zion. Large numbers also went over to the Northern Methodist Church. After losing nearly three hundred thousand members, the Southern Methodists came to the conclusion that the remaining seventy-eight thousand Negroes would be more comfortable in a separate organization and therefore began in 1866 the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, with bishops, conferences, and all the accompaniments of the parent Methodist Church, which continued to give friendly aid but exercised no control. For many years the Colored Methodist Church was under fire from the other Negro denominations, who called it the "rebel," the "Democratic," the "old slavery" church.
The Negro members of the c.u.mberland Presbyterians were similarly set off into a small African organization. The Southern Presbyterians and the Episcopalians established separate congregations and missions under white supervision but sanctioned no independent Negro organization. Consequently the Negroes soon deserted these churches and went with their own kind.
Resentment at the methods employed by the Northern religious carpetbaggers was strong among the Southern whites. "Emissaries of Christ and the radical party" they were called by one Alabama leader. Governor Lindsay of the same state a.s.serted that the Northern missionaries caused race hatred by teaching the Negroes to regard the whites as their natural enemies, who, if possible, would put them back in slavery. Others were charged with teaching that to be on the safe side, the blacks should get into a Northern church, and that "Christ died for Negroes and Yankees, not for rebels."
The scalawags, also, developed a dislike of the Northern church work among the Negroes, and it was impossible to organize mixed congregations. Of the Reverend A. S. Lakin, a well-known agent of the Northern Methodist Church in Alabama, Nicholas Davis, a North Alabama Unionist and scalawag, said to the Ku Klux Committee: "The character of his [Lakin"s] speech was this: to teach the Negroes that every man that was born and raised in the Southern country was their enemy, that there was no use trusting them, no matter what they said-if they said they were for the Union or anything else. "No use talking, they are your enemies." And he made a pretty good speech, too; awful; a h.e.l.l of a one; ... inflammatory and game, too.... It was enough to provoke the devil. Did all the mischief he could... I tell you, that old fellow is a h.e.l.l of an old rascal."
For a time the white churches were annoyed by intrusions of strange blacks set on by those who were bent on separating the races. Frequently there were feuds in white or black congregations over the question of joining some Northern body. Disputes over church property also arose and continued for years. Lakin, referred to above, was charged with "stealing" Negro congregations and uniting them with the Cincinnati Conference without their knowledge. The Negroes were urged to demand t.i.tle to all buildings formerly used for Negro worship, and the Const.i.tutional Convention of Alabama in 1867 directed that such property must be turned over to them when claimed.
The agents of the Northern churches were not greatly different from other carpetbaggers and adventurers taking advantage of the general confusion to seize a little power. Many were unscrupulous; others, sincere and honest but narrow, bigoted, and intolerant, filled with distrust of the Southern whites and with corresponding confidence in the blacks and in themselves. The missionary and church publications were quite as severe on the Southern people as any radical Congressman. The publications of the Freedmen"s Aid Society furnish ill.u.s.trations of the feelings and views of those engaged in the Southern work. They in turn were made to feel the effects of a merciless social proscription. For this some of them cared not at all, while others or their families felt it keenly. One woman missionary wrote that she was delighted when a Southern white would speak to her. A preacher in Virginia declared that "the females, those especially whose pride has been humbled, are more intense in their bitterness and endeavor to keep up a social ostracism against Union and Northern people." The Ku Klux raids were directed against preachers and congregations whose conduct was disagreeable to the whites. Lakin a.s.serted that while he was conducting a great revival meeting among the hills of northern Alabama, Governor Smith and other prominent and sinful scalawag politicians were there "under conviction" and about to become converted. But in came the Klan and the congregation scattered.
Smith and the others were so angry and frightened that their good feelings were dissipated, and the devil reentered them, so that Lakin said he was never able to "get a hold on them" again. For the souls lost that night he held the Klan responsible. Lakin told several marvelous stories of his hairbreadth escapes from death by a.s.sa.s.sination which, if true, would be enough to ruin the reputation of northern Alabama men for marksmanship.
The reconstruction ended with conditions in the churches similar to those in politics: the races were separated and unfriendly; Northern and Southern church organizations were divided; and between them, especially in the border and mountain districts, there existed factional quarrels of a political origin, for every Northern Methodist was a Republican and every Southern Methodist was a Democrat.
The schools of the South, like the churches and political inst.i.tutions, were thrown into the melting pot of reconstruction. The spirit in which the work was begun may be judged from the tone of the addresses made at a meeting of the National Teachers a.s.sociation in 1865. The president, S. S. Greene, declared that "the old slave States are to be the new missionary ground for the national school teacher." Francis Wayland, the former president of Brown University, remarked that "it has been a war of education and patriotism against ignorance and barbarism." President Hill of Harvard spoke of the "new work of spreading knowledge and intellectual culture over the regions that sat in darkness." Other speakers a.s.serted that the leading Southern whites were as much opposed to free schools as to free governments and "we must treat them as western farmers do the stumps in their clearings, work around them and let them rot out"; that the majority of the whites were more ignorant than the slaves; and that the Negro must be educated and strengthened against "the wiles, the guile, and hate of his baffled masters and their minions." The New England Freedmen"s Aid Society considered it necessary to educate the Negro "as a counteracting influence against the evil councils and designs of the white freemen."
The tasks that confronted the Southern States in 1865-67 were two: first, to restore the shattered school systems of the whites; and second, to arrange for the education of the Negroes. Education of the Negro slave had been looked upon as dangerous and had been generally forbidden. A small number of Negroes could read and write, but there were at the close of the war no schools for the children. Before 1861, each state had developed at least the outlines of a school system. Though hindered in development by the spa.r.s.eness of the population and by the prevalence in some districts of the Virginia doctrine that free schools were only for the poor, public schools were nevertheless in existence in 1861. Academies and colleges, however, were thronged with students. When the war ended, the public schools were disorganized, and the private academies and the colleges were closed. Teachers and students had been dispersed; buildings had been burned or used for hospitals and laboratories; and public libraries had virtually disappeared.
The colleges made efforts to open in the fall of 1865. Only one student presented himself at the University of Alabama for matriculation; but before June 1866, the stronger colleges were again in operation. The public or semi-public schools for the whites also opened in the fall. In the cities where Federal military authorities had brought about the employment of Northern teachers, there was some friction. In New Orleans, for example, the teachers required the children to sing Northern songs and patriotic airs. When the Confederates were restored to power, these teachers were dismissed.
The movement toward Negro education was general throughout the South. Among the blacks themselves there was an intense desire to learn. They wished to read the Bible, to be preachers, to be as the old master and not have to work. Day and night and Sunday they crowded the schools. According to an observer,* "not only are individuals seen at study, and under the most untoward circ.u.mstances, but in very many places I have found what I will call "native schools," often rude and very imperfect, but there they are, a group, perhaps, of all ages, trying to learn. Some young man, some woman, or old preacher, in cellar, or shed, or corner of a Negro meeting-house, with the alphabet in hand, or a town spelling-book, is their teacher. All are full of enthusiasm with the new knowledge the book is imparting to them."
* J. W. Alvord, Superintendent of Schools for the Freedmen"s Bureau, 1866.
Not only did the Negroes want schooling, but both the North and the South proposed to give it to them. Neither side was actuated entirely by altruistic motives. A Hampton Inst.i.tute teacher in later days remarked: "When the combat was over and the Yankee school-ma"am followed in the train of the northern armies, the business of educating the Negroes was a continuation of hostilities against the vanquished and was so regarded to a considerable extent on both sides."
The Southern churches, through their bishops and clergy, the newspapers, and prominent individuals such as J. L. M. Curry, John B. Gordon, J. L. Orr, Governors Brown, Moore, and Patton, came out in favor of Negro education. Of this movement General Swayne said: "Quite early.... the several religious denominations took strong ground in favor of the education of the freedmen. The princ.i.p.al argument was an appeal to sectional and sectarian prejudice, lest, the work being inevitable, the influence which must come from it be realized by others; but it is believed that this was but the shield and weapon which men of unselfish principle found necessary at first." The newspapers took the att.i.tude that the Southern whites should teach the Negroes because it was their duty, because it was good policy, and because if they did not do so some one else would. The "Advertiser" of Montgomery stated that education was a danger in slavery times but that under freedom ignorance became a danger. For a time there were numerous schools taught by crippled Confederates and by Southern women.
But the education of the Negro, like his religious training, was taken from the control of the Southern white and was placed under the direction of the Northern teachers and missionaries who swarmed into the country under the fostering care of the Freedmen"s Bureau, the Northern churches, and the various Freedmen"s Aid Societies. In three years the Bureau spent six million dollars on Negro schools and everywhere it exercised supervision over them. The teachers pursued a policy akin to that of the religious leaders. One Southerner likened them to the "plagues of Egypt," another described them as "saints, fools, incendiaries, fakirs, and plain business men and women." A Southern woman remarked that "their spirit was often high and n.o.ble so far as the black man"s elevation was concerned, but toward the white it was bitter, judicial, and unrelenting." The Northern teachers were charged with ignorance of social conditions, with fraternizing with the blacks, and with teaching them that the Southerners were traitors, "murderers of Lincoln," who had been cruel taskmasters and who now wanted to restore servitude.