The Sequel of Appomattox [24]
coincidently with the provisional governments, assumed jurisdiction over the Negroes, while the army authorities very early took the position that any man who claimed to be a Unionist should not be tried in the local courts but must be given a better chance in a provost court. Thus a third or more of the population was withdrawn from the control of the state government. In several states the head of the Bureau made arrangements for local magistrates and officials to act as Bureau officials, and in such cases the two authorities acted in cooperation. The army of occupation, too, exerted an authority which not infrequently interfered with the workings of the new state government. Nearly everywhere there was a lack of certainty and efficiency due to the concurrent and sometimes conflicting jurisdictions of state government, army commanders, Bureau authorities, and even the President acting upon or through any of the others.
The standing of the Southern state organizations was in doubt after the refusal of Congress to recognize them. Nevertheless, in spite of this uncertainty they continued to function as states during the year of controversy which followed; the courts were opened and steadily grew in influence; here and there militia and patrols were reorganized; officials who refused to "accept the situation" were dismissed; elections were held; the legislatures revised the laws to fit new conditions and enacted new laws for the emancipated blacks. To all this progress in reorganization, the action of Congress was a severe blow, since it gave notice that none of the problems of reconstruction were yet solved. An increasing spirit of irritation and independence was observed throughout the states in question, and at the elections the former Confederates gained more and more offices. The year was marked in the South by the tendency toward the formation of parties, by the development of the "Southern outrages" issue, by an attempt to frustrate radical action, and finally by a lineup of the great mass of the whites in opposition to the Fourteenth Amendment and other radical plans of Congress.
The Joint Committee on Reconstruction, appointed when Congress refused to accept the work of President Johnson, proceeded during several months to take testimony and to consider measures. The testimony, which was taken chiefly to support opinions already formed, appeared to prove that the Negroes and the Unionists were so badly treated that the Freedmen's Bureau and the army must be kept in the South to protect them; that free Negro labor was a success but that the whites were hostile to it; that the whites were disloyal and would, if given control of the Southern governments and admitted to Congress, constitute a danger to the nation and especially to the party in power.
To convince the voters of the North of the necessity of dealing drastically with the South a campaign of misrepresentation was begun in the summer of 1865, which became more and more systematic and unscrupulous as the political struggle at Washington grew fiercer. Newspapers regularly ran columns headed "Southern Outrages," and every conceivable mistreatment of blacks by whites was represented as taking place on a large scale. As General Richard Taylor said, it would seem that about 1866 every white man, woman, and child in the South began killing and maltreating Negroes. In truth, there was less and less ground for objection to the treatment of the blacks as time went on and as the several agencies of government secured firmer control over the lawless elements. But fortunately for the radicals their contention seemed to be established by riots on a large scale in Memphis and New Orleans where Negroes were killed and injured in much greater number than whites.
The rapid development of the radical plans of Congress checked the tendency toward political division in the South. Only a small party of rabid Unionists would now affiliate with the radicals, while all the others reluctantly held together, endorsed Johnson's policy, and attempted to affiliate with the disintegrating
The standing of the Southern state organizations was in doubt after the refusal of Congress to recognize them. Nevertheless, in spite of this uncertainty they continued to function as states during the year of controversy which followed; the courts were opened and steadily grew in influence; here and there militia and patrols were reorganized; officials who refused to "accept the situation" were dismissed; elections were held; the legislatures revised the laws to fit new conditions and enacted new laws for the emancipated blacks. To all this progress in reorganization, the action of Congress was a severe blow, since it gave notice that none of the problems of reconstruction were yet solved. An increasing spirit of irritation and independence was observed throughout the states in question, and at the elections the former Confederates gained more and more offices. The year was marked in the South by the tendency toward the formation of parties, by the development of the "Southern outrages" issue, by an attempt to frustrate radical action, and finally by a lineup of the great mass of the whites in opposition to the Fourteenth Amendment and other radical plans of Congress.
The Joint Committee on Reconstruction, appointed when Congress refused to accept the work of President Johnson, proceeded during several months to take testimony and to consider measures. The testimony, which was taken chiefly to support opinions already formed, appeared to prove that the Negroes and the Unionists were so badly treated that the Freedmen's Bureau and the army must be kept in the South to protect them; that free Negro labor was a success but that the whites were hostile to it; that the whites were disloyal and would, if given control of the Southern governments and admitted to Congress, constitute a danger to the nation and especially to the party in power.
To convince the voters of the North of the necessity of dealing drastically with the South a campaign of misrepresentation was begun in the summer of 1865, which became more and more systematic and unscrupulous as the political struggle at Washington grew fiercer. Newspapers regularly ran columns headed "Southern Outrages," and every conceivable mistreatment of blacks by whites was represented as taking place on a large scale. As General Richard Taylor said, it would seem that about 1866 every white man, woman, and child in the South began killing and maltreating Negroes. In truth, there was less and less ground for objection to the treatment of the blacks as time went on and as the several agencies of government secured firmer control over the lawless elements. But fortunately for the radicals their contention seemed to be established by riots on a large scale in Memphis and New Orleans where Negroes were killed and injured in much greater number than whites.
The rapid development of the radical plans of Congress checked the tendency toward political division in the South. Only a small party of rabid Unionists would now affiliate with the radicals, while all the others reluctantly held together, endorsed Johnson's policy, and attempted to affiliate with the disintegrating