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By Root 1183 0

When ten of the eleven former Confederate states, at the urging of the President, rejected ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, none expressed greater relief or joy than black leaders and newspapers. “Thank God, the Southern oligarchy are blind,” the New Orleans Tribune observed. “This stubbornness of the conquered to refuse the mild and generous terms offered by the conqueror, can only bring the latter to exact stronger guaranties.” Had the amendment been ratified, the Tribune noted, Congress would have been “morally obliged” to recognize the new southern governments and admit their “unpatriotic and illiberal” representatives. “But, thank God, the governing class of the South has not learned prudence yet.… Their folly will save us and save our liberties for the future. It is better for us that the work of reconstruction be protracted. Let the rebels do our work.”72

To win the Civil War and preserve the Union, President Lincoln had been forced to issue the Emancipation Proclamation and to authorize the enlistment of black soldiers. To secure the peace and preserve the gains of the war, black leaders now believed, Congress would be forced to admit them to full participation in political life and to guarantee their civil rights. Confident of precisely that outcome, James Lynch told a state convention of Tennessee blacks in August 1865 to prepare themselves for political power.

In the past struggle, when the nation stood trembling upon the verge of the precipice, the black man came to the rescue, his manhood was recognized in that hour of national trial, and why? From necessity … We were needed to fill up the army, we were needed to supply the place of copperhead conscripts who had no stomach for the fight.… And the question of political power in this country will soon present another necessity which will give us the ballot box.

The return of the South to the Union with enhanced political representation, made possible by abrogation of the three-fifths clause of the Constitution, made this matter all the more urgent, and black spokesmen and newspapers never tired of reminding the North what it might expect if it refused to extend the vote to the former slaves. The “safety and protection” of the nation demanded no less. “Let us help you fight the rebels at the ballot-box,” Tennessee blacks pleaded.73

With every blundering step made by President Johnson, black people came closer to a full recognition of their rights. But the victory, when it came, would be something less than a triumph of democratic principles. That is, Congress would yield to political necessity, not to the spirit of the Declaration of Independence or to black arguments about patriotic service to the country, taxation without representation, and the natural rights of man. Understandably, blacks would celebrate the triumph, while ignoring the mixed motives that made it possible. If they exuded a certain confidence, however, that may have reflected the experience of the past two years, in which they had prepared themselves for this eventuality. Few could contend, at least, that the privileges of voting and holding political office had suddenly been thrust upon a people who had previously given little or no consideration to political matters. By 1867, the issues had been clarified, leaders had emerged, and organizations were being formed to mobilize the mass of blacks who may not have been reached by the convention movement and the black press.

6

NEARLY A HALF CENTURY after emancipation, W. E. B. Du Bois grappled with the problem of black identity. The Negro appeared to him as “a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world.” Forced to view himself through the eyes of white men, to calculate his every move and word in terms of their expectations and demands, his vision permitted him no “true self-consciousness” but rather exposed him to a myriad of conflicting images.

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring